The doctrine of the energies of God received its final formulation in the Byzantine theology of the fourteenth century, and above all in St. Gregory Palamas. He bases himself on the distinction between Grace and Essence, "the divine and deifying radiance and grace is not the essence, but the energy of God" (η Θεια και Θεοποις ελλαμψις και χαρις ουκ ουσια αλλ ενεργια εστι Θεου)77 The notion of the Divine energy received explicit definition in the series of Synods held in the fourteenth century in Constantinople. There is a real distinction, but no separation, between the essence or entity of God and His energies. This distinction is manifest above all in the fact that the Entity is absolutely incommunicable and inaccessible to creatures. The creatures have access to and communicate with the Divine Energies only. But with this participation they enter into a genuine and perfect communion and union with God; they receive "deification."78 Because this is "the natural and indivisible energy and power of God," (φυσικη και αχωριστος ενεργεια και δυναμις του Θεου)79 "it is the common and Divine energy and power of the Tri-Hypostatic God."80 The active Divine power does not separate itself from the Essence. This "procession" [proiene, προιεναι] expresses an "ineffable distinction," which in no way disturbs the unity "that surpasses essence."81 The active Power of God is not the very "substance" of God, but neither is it an "accident" [symvevikos, συμβεβηκος]; because it is immutable and coeternal with God, it exists before creation and it reveals the creative will of God. In God there is not only essence, but also that which is not the essence, although it is not accident — the Divine will and power — His real, existential, essence-producing providence and authority.82 St. Gregory Palamas emphasizes that any refusal to make a real distinction between the "essence" and "energy" erases and blurs the boundary between generation and creation — both the former and the latter then appear to be acts of essence. And as St. Mark of Ephesus explained, "Being and energy, completely and wholly coincide in equivalent necessity. Distinction between essence and will [thelisis, θελησις] is abolished; then God only begets and does not create, and does not exercise His will. Then the difference between foreknowledge and actual making becomes indefinite, and creation seems to be coeternally created."83 The essence is God's inherent self-existence; and the energy is His relations towards the other [pros eteron, προς ετερον]. God is Life, and has life; is Wisdom, and has wisdom; and so forth. The first series of expressions refers to the incommunicable essence, the second to the inseparably distinct energies of the one essence, which descend upon creation.84 None of these energies is hypostatic, nor hypostasis in itself, and their incalculable multiplicity introduces no composition into the Divine Being.85 The totality of the Divine "energies" constitutes His pre-temporal will, His design — His good pleasure — concerning the "other," His eternal counsel. This is God Himself, not His Essence, but His will.86 The distinction between "essence" and "energies" — or, it could be said, between "nature" and "grace" [physis, φυσις and haris, χαρις] — corresponds to the mysterious distinction in God between "necessity" and "freedom," understood in a proper sense. In His mysterious essence God is, as it were, "necessitated" — not, indeed, by any necessity of constraint, but by a kind of necessity of nature, which is, in the words of St. Athanasius the Great, "above and antecedent to free choice."87 And with permissible boldness one may say: God cannot but be the Trinity of persons. The Triad of Hypostases is above the Divine Will, is, as it were, "a necessity" or "law" of the Divine nature. This internal "necessity" is expressed as much in the notion of the "consubstantiality" as in that of the perfect indivisibility of the Three Persons as They co-exist in and intercompenetrate one another. In the judgment of St. Maximus the Confessor, it would be unfitting and fruitless to introduce the notion of will into the internal life of the Godhead for the sake of defining the relations between the Hypostases, because the Persons of the All-Holy Trinity exist together above any kind of relation and action, and by Their Being determine the relations between Themselves.88 The common and undivided "natural" will of God is free. God is free in His operations and acts. And therefore for a dogmatic confession of the reciprocal relations between the Divine Hypostases, expressions must be found such as will exclude any cosmological motives, any relation to created being and its destinies, any relation to creation or re-creation. The ground of Trinitarian being is not in the economy or revelation of God ad extra. The mystery of the intra-Divine life should be conceived in total abstraction from the dispensation; and the hypostatic properties of the Persons must be defined apart from all relationship to the existence of creation, and only according to the relationship that subsists between Themselves. The living relationship of God — precisely as a Triad — to the creation is in no way thus obscured; the distinction in the relations of the different Hypostases towards the creation is in no wise obscured. Rather, a fitting perspective is thus established. The entire meaning of the dogmatic definition of Christ's Divinity as it was interpreted by the Church actually lay in the exclusion of all predicates relative to the Divine condescension which characterize Him as Creator and Redeemer, as Demiurge and Saviour, in order to understand His Divinity in the light of the internal Divine Life and Nature and Essence. The creative relationship of the Word to the world is explicitly confessed in the Nicene Creed — by Whom all things were made. And "things" were made not only because the Word is God, but also because the Word is the Word of God, the Divine Word. No one was as emphatic in separating the demiurgical moment in Christ's action from the dogma of the eternal generation of the Word as St. Athanasius the Great. The generation of the Word does not presuppose the being — and not even the design — of the world. Even had the world not been created, the Word would exist in the completeness of His Godhead, because the Word is Son by nature [Yos kata physin, υιος κατα φυσιν]. "If it had pleased God not to create any creatures, the Word would nevertheless be with God, and the Father would be in Him," as St. Athanasius said; and this because creatures cannot receive their being otherwise than through the Word.89 The creatures are created by the Word and through the Word, "in the image" of the Word, "in the image of the image" of the Father, as St. Methodius of Olympus once expressed it.90 The creation presupposes the Trinity, and the seal of the Trinity lies over the whole creation; yet one must not therefore introduce cosmological motifs into the definition of the intra-Trinitarian Being. And yet one may say that the natural fulness of the Divine essence is contained within the Trinity, and therefore that the design — His good pleasure — concerning the world is a creative act, an operation of the will — an abundance of Divine love, a gift and a grace. The distinction between the names of "God in Himself," in His eternal being, and those names which describe God in revelation, "economy," action, is not only a subjective distinction of our analytical thinking; it has an objective and ontological meaning, and expresses the absolute freedom of Divine creativity and operation. This includes the "economy" of salvation. The Divine Counsel concerning salvation and redemption is an eternal and pre-temporal decree, an "eternal purpose" (Eph. 3:11), "the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God" (Eph. 3:9). The Son of God is from everlasting destined to the Incarnation and the Cross, and therefore He is the Lamb "Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:19-20), "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). But this "purpose" [prothesis, προθεσις] does not belong to the "essential" necessity of the Divine nature; it is not a "work of nature, but the image of economical condescension," as St. John Damascene says.91 This is an act of Divine love — for God so loved the world ... And therefore the predicates referring to the economy of salvation do not coincide with those predicates by which the Hypostatic Being of the Second Person is defined. In Divine revelation there is no constraint, and this is expressed in the notion of the perfect Divine Beatitude. Revelation is an act of love and freedom, and therefore introduces no change into the Divine nature.92 It introduces no change simply because there are no "natural" foundations for revelation at all. The sole foundation of the world consists in God's freedom, in the freedom of Love.