Can the Eastern Orthodox be Presuppositionalists? #easternorthodoxy #presuppositionalapologetics

We're asking, but why don't you, in brief, because I know you answered this, why can't an Eastern Orthodox person be a consistent presuppositionalist? Maybe.

The Essence-Energy Distinction and Eastern Orthodox Theology

Just a quick summary again. The Eastern Orthodox, and I'm thinking particularly if you read the work of someone like Lasky on the beatific vision or Zazoulas on the being as communion, I've read a book by Reid on the essence-energy distinction.

Here's the best way to put it. The essence-energy distinction posits that God in his essence is modally distinct from God in his energies, that there are qualities that you find in and expressed through the energies that are distinguished from the essence of God, and the essence, therefore, is God not relating to creation.

Energies are the means by which God relates to creation, and I'm not giving an exhaustive answer because you asked me to keep it short, so I'm not doing my typical layered thing, trying to keep it short, so that the point is that Eastern Orthodox theology, as I've seen it, posits the energies as a tertium quid, a place where God and the creature meet and participate.

Tertium Quid, Participation, and the Creator-Creature Distinction

The energies facilitate the meeting between God and the creature in a manner similar to the way Bart's third time is the place where God and man come together and participate in a common event. So I would say that the reason why people get kind of stuck on this is that you can see some similarities between Bart's tertium, which is God's time for us, Oliphant's tertium, which is covenantal properties, Frame's tertium, which is God's second mode of existence, or the Eastern Orthodox tertium, which is energies in which the creature participates.

Creatures participate in energies and not essence, so the essence is the coming together of the creator and the creature in a tertium that violates the logic of this creator-creature distinction and relation that Van Til maintains.

Why Eastern Orthodoxy Cannot Be Consistent Presuppositionalism

There is no tertium, no third thing in which God and man participate in order to relate. The Eastern Orthodox tradition therefore shares a family resemblance to these forms of mutualism and this positing of a tertium that I've cited in various expressions of the Western.

Tradition. Excellent, thank you so much.