How is a participatory understanding of the divine mystery to be attained?

The next question concerns the nature of human participation in God. Participation implies duality, not identity, but the two terms are not commensurate, the one being finite, the other transcendent. Palamas’ solution to the problem of participation was his development of the essence–energies distinction based on Basil of Caesarea’s distinction between the divine essence and its attributes. Testimony to this distinction was sought in the gospel accounts of the transfiguration of Christ, which thus became the subject of detailed exegesis. This chapter discusses the distinctions Palamas sought to make, including one he hotly denied between a higher and a lower divinity, and concludes that the distinctions are not ontological but are intended to highlight the centrality of the experience of God.