The focus of Palamas’ system is the so-called ‘‘energy’’ doctrine, which is developed by him to its ultimate consequences. This doctrine, being based on Book IX of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, was discussed by the Aristotelian commentators and especially by the Neoplatonists and, as early as the fourth century, a number of prominent Greekspeaking theologians adopted it in their teachings. It constitutes a crucial element of the metaphysical views of most of the Byzantine philosophers and theologians, however, without necessarily being the center of those doctrines. According to this doctrine, each existing essence has its powers and gives expression to two types of energies or activities, which can be defined respectively as ‘‘causal’’ and “existential”; though the essence of every being remains unknowable in itself, it becomes knowable by means of its realization in action. The energies of the first type have a beginning and an end in their end product, while the latter are the very life of the essence, its existential expression ad extra. From this perspective Palamas differentiates the creative and the deifying energy of God. According to Palamas, the saints are able, without becoming God by nature, to receive by grace the very essential or natural energy of God, which is uncreated and defined as the proper divine existence. The energies are realities (pragmata) but not essences (ousiai). The energy is not identical with the essence, nor does it constitute a separate substance, being the activity of the essence par excellence. This distinction is neither conceptual nor yet a real division (pragmatike diairesis); it is rather an actual differentiation (pragmatike diakrisis).
The Light of Tabor is, according to the hesychasts, the expression of the natural divine energy on the part of Christ. The participation in this energy is exactly the deification, which can be received already in this life. In this connection Palamas underlines the free cooperation (synergia) of man; with the experience of the divine, man lives the life of God in God Himself. The Palamite Christocentrism is based exactly on the personal presence of the Savior - by essence, by energy and by hypostasis - in history. Through Christ people obtain the possibility of direct communion with God, not mediated, say, by the hierarchy of angels. This existential participation in the essential energies of God does in no way replace the sacramental participation. It rather presupposes the sacramental life in Christ and is construed by Palamas precisely on the basis of the Eucharist.
Palamas does not underestimate the natural intellect and philosophy; he treats them as divine gifts, which are the condition and the cause of any knowledge. Thereby God is recognized as the cause of being. Nevertheless, the knowledge of God achieved in this way by man is only partial. The proper knowledge of God is the direct vision of the natural divine energy. This supernatural light is given to all, but only the saints see it. It is a positive existential experience and practice beyond rational knowledge, including the speculative theology. This positive experience goes beyond the cataphatic as well as the apophatic way of knowing God. Palamas does not refer to a next phase in the process of knowing, but to another sphere of knowledge, which is the field of true encounter with the living God. Both spheres of knowledge are not only subordinated, but also coordinated within man.
Palamas insists that human nature is superior to that of the angels, precisely because man has flesh. This is why
Man receives life not only as essence, but also as energy and man’s spirit (pneuma) is life given to the body. Exactly, the body is the organ which coordinates between the natural and supernatural energies of man that are subordinated in the nous and are sent out of the flesh in the world. Palamas rejects the psychological interpretation of man and considers human beings as psychosomatic entities; thus the stress is not on the nature, but on the hypostasis, which is conceptualized as the boundary and the center of the world.
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