One of the Cappadocian fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus (c.330–389), given the title, “The Theologian,” was instrumental in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, specifically the distinct terms to describe the Persons of the Godhead (Unbegotten, eternally begotten, and procession). Gregory’s main contribution to the development of Christology was in his opposition to Apollinarius. He argued that when Adam fell, all of humanity fell in him; therefore, that fallen nature must be fully united to the Son—body, soul, and mind; ‘for the unassumed is the unhealed’.
Gregory’s Doctrine of the Trinity
His clearest statement on the Trinity is found in his Oration 25.15–18. Oration 25 is part of a series of sermons delivered in 380. As a gesture of gratitude, Gregory dedicates Oration 25 to Christian philosopher Maximus the Cynic, as a sort of ‘charge’ for him to push forward and remain strong in the orthodox teachings of the faith. And these sections are that orthodox articulation.
In creedal fashion, Gregory outlines the orthodox definition of the Trinity, stating:
God, unbegotten, the Father, and one begotten Lord, his Son, referred to as God when he is mentioned separately, but Lord when he is named in conjunction with the Father, the one term on account of his nature, the other on account of his monarchy; and one Holy Spirit proceeding, or, if you will, going forth from the Father, God to those with the capacity to apprehend things that are interrelated, but in fact resisted by the impious though so recognized by their betters and actually so predicated by the more spiritual. Neither should we place the Father beneath first principle, so as to avoid positing a first of the first, thus necessarily destroying primary existence; nor say that the Son or the Holy Spirit is without beginning. Thus, we shall avoid depriving the Father of his special characteristic. Paradoxically, they are not without beginning, and, in a sense, they are; they are not in terms of causation, since they are indeed from God although they are not subsequent to him, just as light is not subsequent to the sun, but they are without beginning in terms of time since they are not subject to it. Otherwise, that which is transitory would be antecedent to things that abide, and that which has no independent existence to things that do. . . . For what the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have in common is their divinity and the fact that they were not created, while for the Son and the Holy Spirit it is the fact that they are from the Father. In turn, the special characteristic of the Father is his ingenerateness, of the Son his generation, and of the Holy Spirit its procession. (Orat. 25.15, 16)
A key aspect in Cappadocian Trinitarianism is the monarchial order of the Godhead, whereby the Father is Source (Principle, Unbegotten, or Ingenerated), the Son is begotten (generated) and the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Father as Source is his special characteristic, from which the Son and the Spirit find their causal origin. It is important that when reading Gregory’s account, we understand that his use of cause is not temporal; rather, it is an implication of the oneness of God, according to Scripture’s presentation of God (e.g., Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:9 [cf.8:6]; 2 Cor 1:2; 13:13; Gal 1:1; Jas 1:1; 1 Pet 1:3). In the Son and the Spirit being generated from the Father (as cause), which is an eternal act, with the active terms denoting relations as they both have the same divine nature. Their point of origin from the Father delineates their relation (thus a real distinction) to him. The Father is always Father; therefore, he has always had a Son (Orat. 25.15). The Son is not the Father, the Son is not the Spirit, the Father is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. Giving priority to the Father in the Godhead is what maintains Christian monotheism. And therefore, the Father has the primary causality in God, whereby the divine will is carried out in one divine act, not three wills carrying out three divine acts. The logic behind the monarchial ordering is that if the Son and the Spirit are given the same characteristic of the Father, we then have three sources, three distinct beings, thus three gods. However, that is not what we have; rather, the:
Godhead exists undivided in beings divided. It is as if they were a single intermingling of light, which existed in three mutually connected suns. When we look at the Godhead, the primal cause, the sole sovereignty, we have a mental picture of the single whole, certainly. But when we look at the three in whom the Godhead exists, and at those who derive their timeless and equally glorious being from the primal cause, we have three objects of worship (Orat. 31.14).
Gregory affirms the eternality of the Son and the Spirit, “since there never was a time when he began to be a Son ; . . otherwise, there would be a time when the one was not a Father and the other not a Son.” Elsewhere, Gregory writes, “[The Son] must share in the glory of the uncaused, because he stems from the uncaused” (Orat. 29.11). And the Spirit, “truly Holy in that there is no other like it in quality or manner and in that its holiness is not conferred but is holiness in the absolute, and in that it is not more or less, nor did it begin or will it end in time” (Orat. 25.16). The distinctions between the three are a matter of relational order not nature. And with the Father as the only source of the Trinity, his unique identity, Nicene orthodoxy stands opposed to Arianism and Sabellianism. It avoids the fatal errors of these aberrant theologies, in that the Son is not a creature (as according to Arianism) nor is God merely three different manifestations of one person (according to Sabellianism).[1]
With the monarchy of the Father, he is the source of the Trinity, and the source of the three divine persons (hypostasis). For Gregory, the oneness of God is maintained “if both Son and Spirit are causally related to [the Father] alone without being merged or fused into him and if they all share one and the same movement and purpose,” being identical in essence (Orat. 20.7). We avoid tri-theism because the Father as the Source (who is, importantly, without source) of divinity shares it with the Son and the Spirit by means of his eternal generation and procession. And the Son, in the temporal sense, is the source of all things; thus, also he is the Lord of all things, including time (Orat. 20.7). The Father, in the eternal sense, is the cause of the Son, for he is the Father’s Word, who speaks and brings creation into existence (Ps. 148.5 LXX). This act of creation is ineffable; God’s “act of will and its fulfilment are identical” (Orat. 20.9).
Scripture declares the divine qualities of the Son and the Spirit, which is in reference to their source being that of God the Father. When Jesus refers to the Father being greater than he is (John 14:28), Gregory interprets this statement to mean “the Father’s superiority to the Son as the eternal source of his existence” (contrary to Augustine who prefers to see it as the Son’s economic inferiority as the incarnate Lord).[2] In Oration 29.14, Gregory does away with any notion of an inferiority in the Son by those who emphasize the divine names, overlooking the unique equally shared divine nature. In doing so, Gregory writes, you “rob the Son of it [unique deity] and make him subordinate. You give the Son a second level in quality and worship.” We plunge into deep error when we mistakenly assume names indicates quality of nature or differing substance. The names designate relationships between the persons of the Godhead—all share in the same substance.
In Oration 23.11, Gregory offers a succinct definition of the Trinity. He writes:
The Trinity, my brothers, is truly a trinity. Trinity does not mean an itemized collection of disparate elements; if it did, what would prevent us from calling it a decad, or a centad [a hundred], or a myriad, if the number of components so justified? The arithmetical possibilities are many; indeed, more than these examples. Rather, Trinity is a comprehensive relationship between equals who are held in equal honor; the term unites in one word members that are one by nature and does not allow things that are indivisible to suffer fragmentation when their number is divided.
In 25.17, Gregory addresses some of the concerns, thus errors, that stem from a human understanding of a monarchial view of God. First, addressing worship, he notes the miraculous manner of its union, as Trinity; therefore, we are worshiping the One true God. As it pertains to the Son, again the human mode needs to be dispelled, as being generated he does not have passions as human generation entails (cf. Orat. 23.10), for the divine is impassible even in generation. Generation does not mean creation; therefore, generation is not temporal, otherwise the Son wouldn’t be divine thus not part of the Godhead. As of the procession, Gregory writes, we only know of proceeding by biological means; of the Spirit proceeding from the Father, “let us go mad for prying into God’s secrets” (Orat. 31.8).
Gregory gives us a helpful reminder about the intention of the language being used in Trinitarian discourse. The names do not present any manner of shortcoming or deficiency in the Godhead; rather, they are for the purposes of “safeguarding the distinctness of the three hypostases within the single nature and quality of the Godhead” (Orat. 31:9). For Gregory, “the monarchy of the Father is the foundational principle in trinitarian logic and the fundamental dynamic that contains and gives meaning to the grammatical aspects of consubstantial unity and relational distinctness.”[3] We call the Spirit—Spirit because he is not the Son, nor the Father. He has his own role in the divine economy, as revealed to us the NT. All three have the full divine nature, each one complete in oneself, by identity of being and power. Gregory writes that this is how we can best explain and understand the Trinity; if it “is convincing, we ought to thank God for the insight. If not, we should look for a better one” (Orat. 31.16).
In conclusion, it is important that we say something about the Father as Cause. Gregory’s emphasis on the Father as the source of the Godhead, the Trinity, does not mean the Father is the originator of divinity, as in the cause of the divine nature. Rather, the Father as Source, alone is A se—self-existent. He has life in himself and has shared it with the Son. And the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Source, being of the same divine nature from the Father but distinctly not the Son. And all three manifest themselves in one divine act of redemption, “a truly golden chain of salvation. From the Spirit comes our rebirth, from rebirth comes a new creating, from new creating a recognition of the worth of him who effected it” (Orat. 31.28).
~ Romans 11:36
[1] Christopher A. Beeley, “Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus,” Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 (April 2007): 207.
[2] Ibid., 208. In Orat. 30:7, Gregory does take up the matter, stating, “the explanation that the Father is greater than the Son considered as a man is true, but trivial. Is there anything remarkable about God’s being greater than man? Certainly this must be our answer to those who preen themselves on their ‘being greater’.”
[3] Ibid., 209.
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