You are welcome. It was time for Palamas, and I hope, after reading this, many people who have asked me about him before will have had a good introduction. I should probably have included this passage from Dionysius, since I think it also is where Palamas is coming from, where his work can be seen as a corrective interpretation of Dionysius: “And, if any one, having seen God, understood what he saw, he did not see Him, but some of His creatures that are existing and known,” PSeudo-Dionysius (Letter 1). Palamas changes the term from “creature” to “uncreated energy of God” so to say it really is God who is experienced.

As you can guess, I don’t think Balthasar’s criticism remains valid, but comes from looking to Palamas through his Western tradition (which is why he ties Palamas to Eckhart). The West famously has had problems, especially in the past couple centuries, with Trinitarian theology (as Rahner pointed out in his short little book). While it is clear the distinctions between “The One God” and “The Three Persons” as separate treatises helps affirm this breakdown (though it doesn’t have to, and I don’t think it did with Thomas, for example, despite how people try to say it did), the East has, I would say, never separated the two, and has always been “Trinity” first if one were to put the two issues in context (so that I would think the Western tendency. when exaggerated, is monism/modalism and the Eastern tendency is Tri-theism). In this way, I think he is looking and reading Palamas outside of Palamas’ greater context and point, and reads too much into it. Nonetheless, I do think he got more out of Palamas than most of the Western critics, for he did point out that there is a similarity within Palamas’ thought and the subjectivity of the modern era. I think we could say it’s not that the “Deity behind the Trinitarian guise” which is mysterious, but the persons themselves have it. The Trinity is revealed in Palamas, because the action always remains Trinitarian. Both of these would be in accord with what Balthasar also wants to say. I think ultimately the problem is more linguistic than real (which has often been the case East/West).