The energy functional of ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is extended to the regime finite resistivity and transformed into an intuitive form, which separates pressure-gradient, current-density drive stabilising phenomena, analogously version derived by Greene Johnson ( Plasma Phys. , vol. 10, issue 8, 1968, pp. 729–745). resulting resistive not in form a solvable eigenvalue problem but intende...