| Summary: | This article deals with problems of Orthodox understanding of the category “energy” in the context of the formula of Imiaslavie “The name of God is the energy of God”. Based on works by S.S. Khoruzhii and P.Yu. Malkov, the paper critically analyses contemporary studies of Russian theologians and philosophers that look for inconsistencies in the doctrine of the energy nature of the name and ideas about energy as an agent of substance. The paper also raises a number of issues related to seeing magism in the concept of name-energy which presumably makes possible to determine God through the knowledge of God’s name. Another issue is the understanding of energy as a symbol, i.e. as a category that implies an alien element with regard to the substance which the energy belongs to. The doctrine of energy as the agent of the substance does not mean that a concrete person is devoid of the status of the acting one. Besides, in the context of debate with mono-energists and mono-philites, such attribution of energy to substance was supposed to point to the fashion of the action, rather than to the hypostasis being devoid of the relationship with energy. This demonstrates that the identification of Imiaslavie, which does see the energy in proper names, with mono-energist conceptions of action is not tenable. An analysis of texts by St. Gregory of Palamas attests to the contradictory character of modern theologians’ attempts to contrast the idea about name as energy with those views that were developed in the course of Palamist controversies in the 14th century as to the question about the link between the categories of energy and hypostasis. The cited texts by St. Gregory of Palamas show that they do not exclude a connection between the notions of hypostasis and energy.
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