Dr. Christopher Veniamin ~ Essence and Energies of God

  In Orthodoxy and only in Orthodoxy we have the theology of the essence and energies of God. The essence of God is what makes Him God, and which we don’t know and can never know or participate in. He is Uncreated and we are created and there’s no way to bridge that chasm into the essence of God. But we do experience His love, and grace, and mercy and justice, and all of the things that we see in Scripture, and these are His energies. This is how we know him. Dr. Christopher Veniamin, professor of Patristics at St. Tikhon’s Seminary, said that the energies are God Himself, but the essence is God in Himself. The energies are how He is outside of Himself, as He relates to His creation. The logoi are on this level of energy. The ideas are Divine and thus cannot be changed. That which is God cannot change. The definition of whale or shark in the mind of God cannot be changed and the Fathers emphasize this over and over again. In their day there were primitive ideas of man coming from animals, but the Fathers reject them as everything is defined by God.

Source:

http://orthochristian.com/93881.html