Stoyan Tanev > Quotes

“When one turns to St. Paul against this Hellenistic background, the first point which leaps to attention is that Paul reserves energeia and energein (the active form of the corresponding verb) for the action of spiritual agents—God, Satan, or demons.4 This was quite unprecedented. Earlier sources had used both terms freely in a variety of ways, including for the action of material objects, human beings, and the natural elements, as well as of spiritual beings. This is true even of two sources that in other respects often provide important precedents for Pauline usage, the Septuagint and Philo of Alexandria.5 Paul’s restriction of energeia and energein to supernatural action was so striking that it apparently established a precedent for subsequent Christian literature. All occurrences of the two terms in the Apostolic Fathers refer to the action of God, Christ, angels, or demons. This association between energeia/energein and supernatural agency was not without an effect upon the meaning of the two terms. The energeia of a supernatural agent, when it is present in a human being, is most readily understood as a power or capacity for certain kinds of action. We accordingly find energeia shifting toward the meaning of “a capacity for action or accomplishment” (‘energy’ in sense 2), and energein shifting toward that of “to be active in a way that imparts an energy.”
― Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter

“In fact, it can be shown that energeisthai in antiquity is never middle, but only passive, and furthermore that Paul’s use of the term was uniformly taken as passive by the Church Fathers. So understood the meaning of energeisthai falls into place as correlative to energein, meaning either (depending on the context) “to be acted upon” or “to be made effective, to be energized.” That energeisthai is passive was already recognized around the turn of the last century by two eminent New Testament scholars, Joseph B. Mayor and J. Armitage Robinson.7 Unfortunately their work was ignored by most subsequent translators and lexicographers. I will not repeat here the evidence that energeisthai is passive, merely remarking that it seems to me about as solid as such a case could be.8 Once the true meaning of this word is recognized, Paul’s usage in the anomalous verses turns out to fit the predominant pattern, for the unexpressed agent in virtually every case is God or Satan. I have elsewhere reviewed all the relevant passages in detail.9 Here I will mention just a few that seem especially significant. One is Colossians 1:29, where Paul refers to himself as “striving according to Christ’s working (or energy, energeia), which is being made effective (or energized, energoumenēn) in me” (Col 1:29). This verse brings out well the synergistic tendency of Paul’s thought. On the one hand, the divine energy is at work within Paul, transforming him, so that from this standpoint he is the object of God’s activity; on the other, it finds expression in Paul’s own activity, so that Paul’s free agency and that of God coincide. Indeed, not only do the actions Paul alludes to in this passage exhibit full engagement and self-control, they do so more than did his actions prior to his conversion. As the story is told in Acts, Saul was trapped in self-deception until God set him free on the road to Damascus. Now the divine energy which works in him is also his own, more truly than anything he did was his own before he ceased to “kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5).”
― Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter

“This passage begins by asserting that even such an ordinary and voluntary action as calling Jesus lord requires the cooperation of the Spirit. It goes on to list a variety of spiritual gifts, each one an energēma (something performed) of the Spirit. They include not only extraordinary gifts like the working of miracles, but also more ordinary qualities such as faith and the “word of wisdom.” Again there is no dividing line between the natural and the divine. Any believer is called to a life of continual cooperation with the Spirit, a cooperation that can manifest itself in any number of ways, both exceptional and mundane. To speak of synergy could be misleading if it suggested a picture of two equal agents who simply choose to work together. Plainly, since in these cases one is the Creator and the other a creature, the action of the latter depends for its reality upon the active support of the former. I take it that Paul interprets this notion in light of the common experience (which he had vividly shared) of feeling that one’s actions were not truly one’s own while one was mired in sin and self-deception. On his view, synergy, the cooperation of God and man, is neither a symmetrical relation nor one in which the divine overpowers and replaces the human. It is rather one in which the human becomes fully human by embracing the divine. This is not a radically new idea; indeed, it is a prominent theme in the Old Testament.10 What is new is the use of the vocabulary of energeia to express it.”
― Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter