Athanasius and the Cappadocians

 

I am going to explore an important part of Christian theology as it developed its notion of the identity of the Triune God. I will do so with the help of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Barth, Robert Jenson, Walter Kaufmann, and John Macquarrie. The work of Thomas Oden in "Classic Christianity" helped to guide my reading toward their insights. I will conclude with my attempt to compose a brief statement of the trinity as inspired by these authors, although I will say that sometimes the inspiration is to respectfully move against them.

Athanasius (293-393) born in Alexandria, Egypt, would become secretary to the bishop. That position became the basis for his involvement in the Council of Nicaea in 325. He opposed a priest also from Alexandria, Arius. Athanasius formulated the homoousian doctrine, according to which the Son of God is of the same essence, or substance, as the Father. Arius, on the other hand, maintained that the Son was of a different substance from that of the Father and was merely a creature, much more perfect that any other creature, who was used by God in subsequent works of creation. Athanasius became bishop of Alexandria around 328. During the Arian controversy, politics mingled with theology, and each side labored to win the favor of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. The Arian Party was both influential and very active at the imperial court. Athanasius was exiled five times; more than one-third of his episcopate was spent away from his see. His fifth and final exile lasted only four months and ended in 364. He spent the rest of his life in quiet labor at his post in Alexandria. The theological battle was over, and the victory rested with the cause of Nicene orthodoxy.  He died May 2, 373. His feast day is May 2.

Gregory of Nazianzus offered the following as to the character of the man. “In praising Athanasius, I shall be praising virtue. To speak of him and to praise virtue are identical, because he had, or, to speak more truly, has embraced virtue in its entirety. For all who have lived according to God still live unto God, though they have departed hence.” After listing some biblical heroes, “With some of these Athanasius vied, by some he was slightly excelled, and others, if it is not bold to say so, he surpassed: some he made his models in mental power, others in activity, others in meekness, others in zeal, others in dangers, others in most respects, others in all, gathering from one and another various forms of beauty (like men who paint figures of ideal excellence), and combining them in his single soul, he made one perfect form of virtue out of all, excelling in action men of intellectual capacity, in intellect men of action; or, if you will, surpassing in intellect men renowned for intellect, in action those of the greatest active power.” As a person who held power, he did not go to extremes. “He was sublime in action, lowly in mind; inaccessible in virtue, most accessible in intercourse; gentle, free from anger, sympathetic, sweet in words, sweeter in disposition; angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind; calm in rebuke, persuasive in praise, without spoiling the good effect of either by excess, but rebuking with the tenderness of a father, praising with the dignity of a ruler, his tenderness was not dissipated, nor his severity sour; for the one was reasonable, the other prudent, and both truly wise; his disposition sufficed for the training of his spiritual children, with very little need of words; his words with very little need of the rod, 1 Corinthians 4:21 and his moderate use of the rod with still less for the knife.” As a leader, “cleansed the temple of those who made merchandise of God, and trafficked in the things of Christ, imitating Christ John 2:15 in this also; only it was with persuasive words, not with a twisted scourge that this was wrought. He reconciled also those who were at variance, both with one another and with him, without the aid of any coadjutor. Those who had been wronged he set free from oppression, making no distinction as to whether they were of his own or of the opposite party. He restored too the teaching which had been overthrown: the Trinity was once more boldly spoken of, and set upon the lampstand, flashing with the brilliant light of the One Godhead into the souls of all.”

Paul Tillich had a distinct perspective, viewing him negatively as imposing a strange law (heteronomy) on the functions of reason. His approach claims to represent the depth of reason while placing limits on the actualization of reason. He claims to speak in the name of the ground of being and therefore in an unconditional and ultimate way.[1] The decision of Nicaea, defended by Athanasius in a life and death way, presented a problem Athanasius found difficult to answer; how could a difference exist between the Father and the Son? Does it not become impossible to understand the picture of the Jesus of history?[2] The issue becomes acute for Tillich, who defined God as that which concerns us ultimately. How can ultimate concern find expression in more than one hypostasis? In the terminology of Nicaea, the divine nature (ousia) is identical in God and the Logos, and in Chalcedon, the Spirit. Ousia is that which makes a thing what it is. Hypostasis means the power of standing upon itself, the independence of being that makes mutual love possible. What does the historical Jesus mean for interpretation of the Logos? Can one attribute to the eternal Logos the face of Jesus of Nazareth?[3]

The portion of the Nicaean Creed (325) relevant to these reflections.

 

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten (γεννηθέντα) of the Father the only-begotten (μονογενῆ); that is, of the essence (οὐσίας) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial or “of one being” (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father;

And in the Holy Ghost, 

[But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance (ὑποστάσεως or hypostasis)' or 'essence (οὐσίας),' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'— they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.]

Here are a few canons of contemporary interest:

CANON 3: Women and clergyTHE great Synod has stringently forbidden any bishop, presbyter, deacon, or any one of the clergy whatever, to have a subintroducta (woman) dwelling with him, except only a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such persons only as are beyond all suspicion.

CANON LI – divorce - Bishops shall not allow the separation of a wife from her husband on account of discord.

CANON LXVI re-marriage - Of taking a second wife, after the former one has been disowned for any cause, or even not put away, and of him who falsely accuses his wife of adultery. If any priest or deacon shall put away his wife on account of her fornication, or for other  cause, as aforesaid, or cast her out of doors for external good, or that he may change her for another more beautiful, or better, or richer, or does so out of his lust which is displeasing to God; and after she has been put away for any of these causes he shall contract matrimony with another, or without having put her away shall take another, whether free or bond; and shall have both equally, they living separately and he sleeping every night with one or other of them, or else keeping both in the same house and bed, let him be deposed. If he were a layman let him be deprived of communion. But if anyone falsely defames his wife charging her with adultery, so that he turns her out of doors, the matter must be diligently examined; and if the accusation was false, he shall be deposed if a cleric, but if a layman shall be prohibited from entering the church and from the communion of the faithful; and shall be compelled to live with her whom he has defamed, even though she be deformed, and poor, and insane; and  whoever shall not obey is excommunicated by the Synod.

 

The dogma of Nicaea started the process of stating the thought of the eternal and essential Trinity in a way that broke it loose from its historical moorings and tended to be seen not only as the basis of all historical events but also as untouched by the course of history on the account of the eternity and immutability of God, and therefore also inaccessible to all creaturely knowledge. Athanasius is the beginning of this line of thought.[4] Trinitarian discussion uses the term “self-distinction” since the 1800s. The one who distinguishes himself from another, defines himself as also dependent on that other.[5] This term and concept is important in discussing the constitution of the Trinity.

            On the Incarnation of the Word has an introduction and four discourses. 

            The introduction has 56 sections. He defends the notion of creation out of nothing. In 1-5, had there been a less costly way to reconcile sinners that could have avoided the cross, God would have chosen it.[6] In 1.3, he stresses that the Word of the Father was incorporeal by nature but chose to wear a body out of love and goodness toward humanity and for its salvation. Throughout the introduction, he will stress the inner connection between creation and incarnation. In section 2, he stresses that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who created out of nothing, for the Father made all things through him. In section 3, he defends the notion that Adam had an original immortality in the sense that with participation in the Logos Adam had a disposition for immortality and would have shared in it had he held fast to the knowledge of God. He rightly makes the sharing in the Logos that God gave us at creation the starting point of his doctrine of the incarnation of the Logos. Without this premise the incarnation of the Logos would be alien to our nature. The mistake he makes here is that Paul makes it clear in I Corinthians 15:47 that Adam is of the earth. Adam was mortal. Throughout this section, the biblical story is the story of creation of humanity, the fall of humanity, and the redemption of humanity. Revelation is for the salvation of humanity, thereby mending its brokenness. Throughout sections 4-15, he uses an analogy with the post-exilic historical experience of Israel to say that God is always doing something new in history, always creating or re-creating a new people, ever restoring that which has fallen to nothing.[7] In section 4, he defends his reference to the origin of humanity in a document that is discussion the incarnation of the Word by stressing that our transgression in Adam is the reason for the coming forth of the Logos. God dealt lovingly with humanity by abiding in our corruption. We find the incarnation of Father through the Logos was worthy of deity because what was at issue in this even was the restoration and completion of the participation in the Logos that is related our human nature, that guarantees our immortality and that had been lost through the sin of Adam and its consequences. This loss did not include rationality in which the participation found expression. We also see the difference between Christ and all others for he is the new man from heaven who has overcome death. He suggests that mortality is natural to us but not the actual entry of death. Because of our participation in the Logos, even our body would have had immortality had not Adam fallen into sin. Though human nature is mortal, the fact of physical death is the consequence of sin. He linked the Adam typology to ecclesiology with his thought of a new creation of humanity in Christ based on II Cor 5:17. Yet, he did not raise the question of the relation of the distinctive earthly history of Jesus to the rise of the church. Christ as the new Adam as prototype blocked the idea. In section 4.5, he expresses succinctly the negative character of evil when he said, “What is evil is not, but that is good is.” Evil is lapsing into nothing or ceasing to be, which is a standing threat to all created beings. These beings have been created out of nothing, and it is possible for them to slip back into nothing or to advance into the potentialities for being that belong to them. evil is this slipping back toward nothing, a reversal and defat of the creative process.[8] Underlying the discussion in sections 3-4 is the notion that a will that can choose differently when face to face with the norm of the good cannot be a good will. It is more than weak because it is not firmly set upon the good. In section 6, we must see death as wider than an individual phenomenon, for death having gained upon people, and corruption abiding upon them, humanity in the process of destruction, the rational person made in the image of God was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution. He goes on to say that as the rational creatures were wasting and such works in course of ruin, what was God in his goodness to do? Suffer corruption to prevail against them, and death to hold them fast? And where then would be the benefit of their having been made in the first place? It would be better that God had not made them, left to neglect and ruin. In this way, he rightly connects creation with reconciliation.[9] In section 7, he again makes it clear that we find the incarnation of God through his Logos was worthy of his deity because what was at issue in this even was the restoration and completion of the participation in the Logos that is related our human nature, that guarantees our immortality and that had been lost through the sin of Adam and its consequences. This loss did not include rationality in which the participation found expression. We also see the difference between Christ and all others for he is the new man from heaven who has overcome death. In section 8, he expresses the solidarity of the Logos with humanity. Throughout sections 7 and 8, he rightly makes the sharing in the Logos that was given us at creation the starting point of his doctrine of the incarnation of the Logos. Without this premise the incarnation of the Logos would be alien to our nature. In 9.1, the immortal Word, the Son of the Father, takes a mortal body in Jesus of Nazareth, making him worthy to die in the place of all and participate in the immortality of the Word, ceasing corruption by the grace of the resurrection. In sections 9.3-4, he used the analogy that just as a city becomes secure from banditry by the presence of a single just and powerful ruler, so the presence of the Word in human history checks the conspiracy of the enemy against humanity land puts away death. In section 11, God is higher being than is humanity in part because God is without a body. God has fashioned humanity in a lower way in the body. This lower quality makes it difficult for humanity to know its maker. The goodness of God leads God to make sure that humanity is not destitute of the knowledge of God. they could not be rational without knowing the Word and Reason of the Father. If human knowledge was only of earthly things, they would be no better than other animals. God does not want this, so God creates humanity with a share in the divine image. This image is the Word of the Father, which gives humanity the possibility of knowing the Father and lead a happy life. Yet, humanity rejected God and fashioned their notion of god and even worshipped devils. Even then, God is not hidden, and has in fact unfolded knowledge of God in many forms and ways. God foresaw that humanity would forget its creator, but by grace provided the works of creation to remind humanity of God. In 13.7 he relates the image of God represented by Jesus to the eternal Logos in the flesh. Humanity needed the presence of the image of God in our Lord Jesus Christ to know God. “Whence the Word of God came in His own person, that, as He was the Image of the Father, He might be able to create afresh the man after the image.” This view tends to detach Christological statements from any relevance to our general divine likeness. Christology and anthropology had to go separate ways.[10] In 14, the Son of the Father, being an image of the Father, came to our region to renew humanity, which we might call justifying grace or new birth,[11] made in divine likeness, he sojourns here, taking a body to himself, so that those who would not know the Father from providence may see the Father through the body which the Word has taken up or assumed. In section 15, the Word saw that humanity looked for God nature and the world of sense, so the Word took a body, that of Jesus of Nazareth, and walks among people so that they would recognize the Father through him. He came to save and find the lost. In section 18, he makes the dubious claim that the mighty works of Jesus make his deity visible. His charging evil spirits is not of a man, but of God. or who that saw him healing the diseases to which humanity is subject can still think him man and not God? For he cleansed lepers, made lame people walk, opened the hearing of deaf people, made the blind to see, and in a word drove away from people all diseases and infirmities, from which acts to was impossible even for the most ordinary observer to see his Godhead.[12] He will engage in a long discussion of the death and resurrection of Christ. In 20-32, the one God has created the world, permits its freedom to fall, acts to redeem what has fallen, and brings the whole story to fitting consummation. In 20.1-2, the only way to restore the divine image in humanity was through the Word, the image of the Father. He died for us to pay our debt of death, he offered his sacrifice for all, yielding his body to death in the place of all, to invite humanity to be free of their sin and demonstrate that the divine power is greater than that of death. In 21-25, it was crucial that his death be public and innocent at the hands of others. In 24, Christ accepted the cross and endured a death inflicted by others, especially his enemies. They thought of the cross as dreadful and ignominious, but he saw it as the way to bring death itself to nothing. The death they though would bring disgrace was a monument of victory against death. In 25.2-3, there was no other way for us to receive salvation than for his suffering and death for our sake. He received our curse on the cross. His death is ransom for all. only on the cross does a man die with hands spread out, drawing Jew and Gentile to himself. In 26-30, the heavenly ministry of Jesus begins with the ascension. In 26, he sets forth reasons why the resurrection could occur only after three days. In 27.1-2, he draws a contrast between those who view death with dread and the possibility now of saying that because of the resurrection of Jesus, our death is no longer terrible. One can know that one begins to live.  In section 43, the Lord came to heal and teach those who suffered, thereby showing that the Lord was not engaging in a short journey, here but gave himself to the aid of those in want. The hope was that humanity would more quickly and directly know the Father through a body. For those who think it absurd to believe such, many think that they see divinity in other parts of creation, but they exclude that possibility from the body. In 46-57, we study Jesus of Nazareth because of his transforming power.[13] He pleas for ethical accountability in speech about God.[14] In section 54, we know the invisible by the works of the incarnate Word. We recognize the deifying mission of the Word in these works. We are to marvel that the divine has become visible to us, and by the death of the Son immortality has reached out to humanity. The Word becoming a human being makes the universal Providence known. He was made a human being so that human beings might be made God. His resurrection makes possible the intended and fitting consummation of our humanity. This famous dictum (54.3) does not distinguish what believers are becoming in this age and what they will be in the eschaton. Divination is the goal of the incarnation of the Son. The works of the Holy Spirit in believers, in which their elevation to participation in the life of God takes place, is grace. At issue is the grace of forgiveness of sins, but also at issue is the uplifting of our creaturely constitution into fellowship with the gracious God and into participation in his gracious turning to the world.[15]

            The discourses that come after the introduction are specific refutation of Arius and discussion of biblical texts.

            The first letter to Serapion shows Athanasius is already laying the ground for including the Holy Spirit in the discussions regarding the how Christians would identify God. Some persons, while opposing Arius in his view of the Son or Logos of the Father, developed the notion that the Holy Spirit was less than Father and Son, a creature created by the Father, and thereby differs only in degree from the angels. He viewed this as blasphemy against the “holy Triad.” This view continued the subordinationist thinking of previous thinkers. He argues that the Spirit shares in the oneness of the Word with the Father.

            We will now explore his Four Discourses Against the Arians. He will develop the relational definition of the trinitarian distinctions that the Cappadocians and Augustine would adopt. Revelation becomes an epiphany, the Logos appearing in the flesh in order that we might attain the knowledge of the invisible God. He could be right that the thesis of the consubstantiality of the Son and Spirit better preserves the unity of God than his opponents could when they thought they could defend the divine unity as a monarchy of the Father only by giving a lower, creaturely ranking to the Son and Spirit within the order of being.

            Throughout discourse one, he will make the point that the union of God and human being is so permeant that readers of scripture cannot always easily separate out what Christ says of himself as God what he says of himself as human. When the scripture student keeps clearly in mind that though divine this one is human though human this one is divine, then, for him, the scriptures make sense, and each narrative unfolds plausibly. However, such is the textual problem that the two natures theory presents to readers of the text. It would be worth exploring today if there is another way to obtain the objective of Athanasius apart from the two natures theory of the nature of Christ. In 1.1-11, the affirmation of faith by Peter in Mark 8:29 is remarkable in that Jesus accepted it. Jesus is not one who points someone to the door as he is the door itself. In 1.4, he celebrates Christ as having attributes that could only be intrinsic qualities of God, for the only uncreated being is God. Arius denies the Son by making him a being God created. In 1.5, he is appalled that Arius teaches that Son and Spirit are of different essence from the Father and are thus alien to the divine essence. In 1.6, Arius teaches that the Word is not “very God,” and that thus the Son is foreign to, separated from, estranged, and disconnected from the divine essence. In 1.7, Arius proposes heresy, is a foe of Christ, and a forerunner of Antichrist. In 1.8, he uses scripture as a cloak to sow the ground with his poison and to seduce the simple. In 1.9 the Nicaean Creed contains the phrase “of one being” or “consubstantial” (ὁμοούσιον). At the time the word had only vague and ambiguous theological uses. Those at the council knew Arius could not sign on to this creed. We now read the phrase as Athanasius understood it. For him, it means that the Son is the same one as the Father, by resemblance to the Father; the relationship marked by the prepositions needed to state the Son’s status as image is taken as itself constitutive for the one the being of God. That the Father and the Son are of one being means that precisely the relation of the Son to the Father belongs both to what it means to be God and to the fact of their being God. The Son is the image of the Father, but his deity is not an image of the Father’s deity but the same deity. That there is God the Son is proper to the facts both of the Father’s being the Father and of his being God. Thus, the trinity is God, presuming extension of this thinking to the Spirit.[16] In 1.11-21, in John 1:1-4, he identifies Christ with the Word present in creation, but also whom the world was made. He identifies Jesus as the same Word who is from the beginning. In 1.11, the Son is the power and wisdom of the Father. The presupposition of Philippians 2:5-11 is paradoxically that Jesus is God and with God. He says that ignorance expressed by Jesus was economically assumed by the Lord, as a way of voluntarily constraining his omniscience. Given the debate with Arius, the argument makes some sense. Yet, Athanasius gets himself into trouble textually because of his way of viewing the incarnation. In 1.13, Hebrews 1:1-4 contains triune assumptions, that Christ is preexistent, one with God, the stamp of God’s very being, not less than God, higher than the angels, and all creaturely powers, yet distinguishable from the Father, whose coming is attested by the Holy Spirit. In 1.17, he detaches the eternal Son from all the human things that the Gospels record concerning Jesus. He would not even concede that there is change in the theological knowledge of God, a gradual emergence of the Trinity. He wonders what kind of religion it would be that does not remain the same but attains to perfection only in the course of time? For then there will be more development, and that without ceasing. Given the philosophical setting, we might understand the reason he takes this approach. Yet, I would also argue that religions that do not change are the religions that die. Every age has its flaws and sins from which adherents need liberation and healing. I would argue that the Bible is a record of profound change, from the simple awareness of the divine we find in the Patriarchs, to the liberating divine warrior, Yahweh, to the establishment of nation with a monarch under the divine ruler, Yahweh, to a people under covenant regardless of the land or temple, to the affirmation of Jesus as Lord and Savior of humanity. The church has undergone vast changes in its history, experiencing liberation from its bondage to sin and healing from that ails it. In 1.20, he took the statement in John 14:6 to mean that the Son was the truth and life of the Father, and that therefore, of course, the Son is one of essence with the Father. In 1.21 he regarded divine kingship as one of the attributes, applying to both Father and Son because of Psalm 45:6-7. In 1.29 he argued against the Arians that the Father would not be the Father without the Son. Does that mean that the deity of the Father is dependent on the relation to the Son? If so, it would be the basis of true reciprocity in the trinitarian relations.[17] Athanasius emphasized the participation of all three hypostases in all divine activity as a consequence and condition of their unity of essence. His most important argument was that the Father would not be the Father without the Son and therefore he was never without the Son.[18] This implies plurality in God because semantically Father is a relational term. However, apart from the story of Jesus and his Spirit-empowered life, there is no reason the Father would have only one Son. This view does not explain how we are to understand the unity in detail. As a result, the distinctions and particularities of Father, Son, and Spirit could no longer be based on distinctions in their spheres of working. He taught trinity in God only based on church tradition, the scriptural witness to revelation, and especially the baptismal formula. But this basis is not enough for modern theology since historico-critical exegesis no longer justifies the thesis that the threefold form of deity is a datum of revelation in the form of an express statement with the authority of revelation. No one in the Arian controversy denied the distinction of three hypostases. The issue was how to define their unity with the deity of the Father.[19] In 1.35-36, he tries to distance the Son and the Trinity from all becoming and change. In 1.35, remaining what he was, the Son became what he was not. Yet, he is again appalled at the idea of change and development, for if the Word is alterable and changing, what will be the end of this development? If the Father is unalterable, what are we to make of the Word “becoming” flesh? In 1.37-38, he asserts that Jesus did not attain divinity as if an accomplishment, for we do not say that man became God, but that God became man. In 1.39 even the incarnation brought no change to the immortal Son. “He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us.” Further, “He Himself only is very Son , and He alone is very God from the very God, not receiving these prerogatives as a reward for His virtue, nor being another beside them, but being all these by nature and according to essence.” In 1.40, based upon Philippians 2:5-11, “He was not from a lower state promoted: but rather, existing as God, He took the form of a servant, and in taking it, was not promoted but humbled Himself. Where then is there here any reward of virtue, or what advancement and promotion in humiliation? For if, being God, He became man, and descending from on high He is still said to be exalted, where is He exalted, being God?” In 1.41, the exaltation of Jesus was personal, behavioral, and redemptive consequence for the life of the believer. It reveals the pattern of the work of the Spirit to enable to the believer to die to sin, rise by grace, walk in the way of holiness, and prepare for eternal life.[20] Jesus humbled himself with reference to the assumption of the flesh and he exalted him with reference to the flesh. In 1.44, in Christ, the Logos has come from heaven in the flesh and death could not master him. In 1.46, he regarded divine kingship as one of the attributes, applying to both Father and Son because of Psalm 45:6-7. In 1.48, even the incarnation brought no change to the immortal Son. The incarnation could add nothing to God. “For when our Lord Jesus Christ had been among us, we indeed were promoted, as rescued from sin; but He is the same; nor did He alter, when He became man.” I do get his concern here. Yet, I do think that somehow, finding temporality embraced by God is not as horrible as Athanasius thinks. Theologians need to figure a way toward that notion. In 1.62, he will again make the point that even the incarnation brought no change to the immortal Son. In 1.63, he thinks it would be an error to think of becoming in God, “For God is always, and one and the same.” He considered it absurd to ascribe becoming to the essence of God.

            We turn to Discourse 2. In 2.6, even in his physical appearing the Son undergoes no change. The biblical statements about the faithfulness of God bear witness to his immutability. In 2.8, any biblical statements that imply there might be becoming or change in God relate to the human nature of Jesus. In 2.10, the biblical statements about the faithfulness of God bear witness to his immutability. In 2.14-18, the sufferings of Jesus were finite, but his sacrifice had infinite value due to his Sonship. In 2.14, it is the death of Christ for all that conforms his right to rule over all. only one who dies for all has a right to rule over all. Only God the Son could die efficaciously for all. In 2.16, cosmic creation is a work peculiar to God. though it may unfold in an evolutionary process, the evolutionary process itself does not create itself.[21] In 2.19-24, earlier teaching of the Jewish people on creation became transmuted in the light of the experience of Jesus of Nazareth. In 2.19, the angelic host are incorporeal, lacking bodies. In 2.23, the plural form Elohim in the Old Testament is a linguistic intensive, emphasizing the fullness of the divine majesty, which is a devout corroboration of what the New Testament would reveal regarding God. In 2.41, he presupposes the distinctions and relations of Father, Son, and Spirit are in harmony with the monotheistic character of the biblical belief in God and the tradition of philosophical theology. Baptism has never been in the name of one God and two creatures, the outcome of the teaching of Arius. Triune language has been definitive of orthodox Christian teaching. In 2.43, In the letters to Serapion presuppose the distinctions and relations of Father, Son, and Spirit are in harmony with the monotheistic character of the biblical belief in God and the tradition of philosophical theology. In 2.67, he presupposes the distinctions and relations of Father, Son, and Spirit are in harmony with the monotheistic character of the biblical belief in God and the tradition of philosophical theology. In 2.70, he presupposes the distinctions and relations of Father, Son, and Spirit are in harmony with the monotheistic character of the biblical belief in God and the tradition of philosophical theology.

            We now turn to Discourse Three. In 3.5, the deity of the Father is thus in the Son. We see the Father in the Son and we shall contemplate the Son in the Father. In 3.6, as the Father is not the Father without the Son, so he does not have his Godhead without him. He is daring on this point, for the common view was that the deity of the Father is unconditional while the deity of Father and Son derive from the deity of the Father. He boldly states that the Son is the condition of the deity of the Father.[22] “For the Son is such as the Father is, because He has all that is the Father's. Wherefore also is He implied together with the Father. For, a son not being, one cannot say father. … But when we call God Father, at once with the Father we signify the Son's existence. Therefore, also he who believes in the Son, believes also in the Father: for he believes in what is proper to the Father's Essence; and thus the faith is one in one God. And he who worships and honors the Son, in the Son worships and honors the Father; for one is the Godhead; and therefore one the honor and one the worship which is paid to the Father in and through the Son. And he who thus worships, worships one God; for there is one God and none other than He.” In 3.9, The Son teaches us to know the Father as the only true God. In 3.14-15, in ascribing to Mary the term theotokos, bearer of God, the tradition never intended the slightest implication that Mary gave birth to the Godhead, but only to the incarnate Son. In 3.25, to the Father are ascribed works done alone as creator, redeemer, and consummator. The one who does the works of God must be none other than God. In 3.26-28, he examines in compact sequence the deity of the person, the humanity of the person, and the unique personal union of God and humanity in one person. He will accuse Arius dressing up Judaism in Christian clothes. In 3.30, God knows what will happen, but does not unilaterally determine each event, a notion that would dishonor human freedom and the reliability of secondary causes. The mere foreknowing does not circumvent secondary cause. The knowledge of God is that of free choice, of human and creaturely willing. In 3.36, the Father hands over his lordship to the Son as to have it anew in him. In 3.42-53, the logic of the humbling of God is characterized by paradox, surprise, and reversal. As God, the God-man does not advance but descends into ignorance and humiliation. As man, the God-man does advance in wisdom and stature to demonstrate his full participation in the human condition.[23] In 3.58-67, the prayer of Jesus at Gethsemane shows that Jesus had a self-determining human will in which his human will was consecrated to follow voluntarily the divine will. In 3.58, the Son came to die. 

            The Anti-Nicaean thinkers defended subordinationism so that there can be a savior-God to suffer and otherwise stoop to us while God remains free from such contamination. The Father is really God and the Son is God in that he is closely assimilated to God. What Nicaean thinkers needed was a way to differentiate the three otherwise than by ranking them. The Cappadocians rose to the challenge. They related ousia to the one deity of God and hypostasis for each of Father Son and Spirit. ousia was a for a real thing as far as it is what it is. Peter, Paul, and Barnabas share ousia in their humanity. Hypostasis is how we distinguish Peter, Paul, Barnabas from each other. The First Council of Constantinople in 381 affirmed Nicaea and added reflections on the Spirit.

 

And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life (ζῳοποιόν), who proceedeth (ἐκπορευόμενον) from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.

In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

 

The early councils assumed that deity is equivalent to impassibility. They did not recover the biblical understanding of the Logos as God’s speech. The theology acknowledges only relations of origin as constitutive for the divine life. This meant the suppression of the eschatological character of the scriptural history of God.[24] The dogma of Nicea (325) and Constantinople stated the thought of the eternal and essential Trinity in a way that broke it loose from its historical moorings and tended to be seen not only as the basis of all historical events but also as untouched by the course of history on the account of the eternity and immutability of God, and therefore also inaccessible to all creaturely knowledge. The eternal and unchangeable Father is the basis for the knowledge of Son and Spirit because they are of the same substance. Therefore, this divine substance is unreachable from finite, creaturely reality. The dogma makes the immanent Trinity independent of the economic Trinity and increasingly ceased to have any function relative to the economy of salvation.[25]

            Authors like Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus continued the work of Athanasius in defending the Nicaean Council. They sought an answer to the Arian charge of tritheism, and the problem of the unity of God arose afresh. The derivation of the Son and Spirit from the person of the Father no longer sufficed as an answer to the charge. The Father is only one of the three persons in God in distinction from the unity of the divine essence. They sought the unity of the Trinity in the activity of Father, Son, and Spirit. As regards the outward relation of the trinity to the creaturely, the Cappadocians taught that the trinitarian persons work together here, and that the perichoresis and the unity of origin from the Father, which explains genealogically the monarchy of the Father, this commonality of outward action is an expression of their unity in the divine essence. They thought they could meet the challenge of tritheism in this way. However, common activity is not constitutive for the persons or their distinction. One cannot infer their relations, independence, or dependence, from the unity of their common work. The failure of this approach led them to reflect on the relations between the persons as far as these are constitutive for their distinction and autonomy. The relations define the distinctions.[26]

Basil (329-379)

            St. Basil the Great (329-379) was born of a distinguished family of Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, which was a province of Asia Minor of special importance in the 4th century due to its position on the military road between Constantinople and Antioch. The family had been Christian since the days of the persecutions of Christians, which ended early in the 4th century. One of Basil's uncles was a bishop, as later were two of his brothers (Gregory and Peter of Sebaste). His theological and ecclesiastical policy aimed to unite against Arianism the former semi-Arians and the supporters of Nicaea under the formula “three persons (hypostases) in one substance (ousia),” thus preserving both unity and the necessary distinctions in the theological concept of the godhead. On Eusebius' death in 370, Basil became his successor, although some of the other bishops in the province opposed him. 

            His primary contribution to theology was his book, On the Holy Spirit.  Standard modern exegetical and theological discussions of the Holy Spirit have given little attention to the great early treatises on the Holy Spirit, among them this work by Basil. In this book, we see that one of the fundamental consensual decisions of the church is the affirmation that the Spirit will not lead the church in any direction that is contrary to the written word.[27] He writes to Amphilochius (1). He accuses opponents of petty attention to syllables (2-5). His opponents are clear that they believe the Son is not with the Father, and the Spirit has a rank in below Father and Son. They pervert the simplicity and artlessness of the faith (6.13). The effect is to propose the remoteness of the Father. Yet, Christ is the power and wisdom of God, the image of the invisible God, the brightness of divine glory (6.15). The Son and the Spirit are worthy of participation in the doxology and baptismal liturgy of the church. In 8.18, Christ shows his divine power in his suffering. Nothing in creation sets forth the excellency of divine might, to the point of being incomprehensible, that God impassibly and through flesh would have close conflict with death, to the end that by the suffering of the Son he might give to us freedom from suffering. In 8.21, in the prologue of John, the world is created by the Word who is made flesh in Jesus. The Word in Jesus is coeternal with the Father. The Word is God, creator of the universe. The Creator, made known personally in Jesus, comes into our history to present himself clearly to our view. In 9-12, scripture attests the Holy Spirit as eternal, life giving one, of one essence with God. In 9.22-23, the texts of scripture leave no doubt in our minds of the importance of teaching of and by the Spirit. Further, the relation of Father and Spirit is described as a sending forth. Sanctifying grace is given in order that the believer may spontaneously and habitually love good and resist evil. In 9.22, the Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father. As “Holy Spirit,” the Spirit has a name appropriate to what is incorporeal, immaterial, and indivisible. God is Spirit, and therefore not like our nature so subject to change and variation. The Spirit is the supplier of life. The Spirit is “full, self-established, omnipresent, origin of sanctification, light perceptible to the mind, supplying, as it were, through Itself, illumination to every faculty in the search for truth; by nature un-approachable, apprehended by reason of goodness, filling all things with Its power, but communicated only to the worthy; not shared in one measure, but distributing Its energy according to "the proportion of faith;" in essence simple, in powers various, wholly present in each and being wholly everywhere; impassively divided.” God’s own Spirit is shared effortlessly with other spirits “without ceasing to be entire, as a sunbeam whose kindly light falls on him who enjoys it as though it showed for him alone yet illumines land and sea and mingles with the air.” In 9.23, the illumination the Spirit bestows is himself. He uses the image of a sunbeam falling on bright and transparent bodies, “so souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual and send forth their grace to others.” Through this means comes “foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, the being made God.” In 14.33, amid continuing history there remains this period between the times in which the reign of God has been inaugurated yet not consummated as expected in the last days. The manna in the wilderness becomes a type of the living bread, the exodus a type of baptism. The Spirit “used this gentle treatment, fitted for our needs, gradually accustoming us to see first the shadows of objects, and to look at the sun in water, to save us from dashing against the spectacle of pure unadulterated light, and being blinded. Just so the Law, having a shadow of the things to come became the means to train the eyes of the heart.” In 16.37, God works, and the Son serves, and the Holy Spirit is also present by choice, dispensing gifts. In 17, he rejects those who argue that we are not to number the Spirit with the Father and the Son. Christians do not have a fascination with the number 3. In 18.46-47, if the gates of hell shall not prevail (Mat 16:18) then the church will never decline into total forgetfulness, because of the guidance provided by the Spirit, who the Father promised always to accompany and remind the church. In 18.46 the Spirit is God because the worship due the Spirit is a worship due to God alone. The Spirit receives glory through communion with Father and Son. In 18.47, when the power that enlightens us enables us to fix our eyes on the beauty of the image of the invisible God, and through the image we see the supreme beauty, then the Spirit of knowledge is inseparably with us, bestowing on us time to love the vision of the truth and the power of beholding the image, leading us to the fullness of knowledge. The way of the knowledge of God lies from the Spirit through the Son and to the Father. Further, the natural goodness and the inherent holiness and the royal dignity extend from the Father through the Spirit. In this way, we preserve the monarchy of the Father and acknowledge the hypostases of Father, Son, and Spirit.

            In Against Eumonius 2.17, he will argue that the Father is the source and principle of deity. The Son was begotten be the Son always is and co-exists with the Father, from whom the Fatehr is the cause of the existence of the Son. The Son is from eternity, being connected in a begotten way to the unbegottenness of the Father. The point is that the Father alone is without origin. However, this thought has a close link to the subordinationism of the pre-Nicaean apologists which Nicaea rejected. Such subordination of the Son was a major hurdle to overcome in recognizing the full deity of the Son.[28] The fact that he could not go as far as did Athanasius, who would suggest that we can think of the Father as unbegotten only in the relation with the begotten Son, suggests that the full deity of the Son and Spirit had not been elucidated in the unity of the divine essence.

            In letter 38, he offers a most helpful distinction in the theological language used. He states the purpose as considering the difference between οὐσία and ὑ πόστασις. He could compare the relation between one deity and the three persons to that between a general concept and its individual realizations. Peter is a human being, but no more so than is Andrew, John, or James. “Human being” in this case is a general noun, οὐσία, while Peter and the others denote a limit and specificity, ὑ πόστασις. “Human being” relates to what they have in common, while Paul and Timothy direct our attention only to them and their uniqueness. He ignored the threat to monotheism that was posed by the idea of a plurality of divine beings. “He who receives the Father virtually receives at the same time both the Son and the Spirit; for it is in no wise possible to entertain the idea of severance or division, in such a way as that the Son should be thought of apart from the Father, or the Spirit be disjoined from the Son. But the communion and the distinction apprehended in Them are, in a certain sense, ineffable and inconceivable, the continuity of nature being never rent asunder by the distinction of the hypostases, nor the notes of proper distinction confounded in the community of essence.” He admits what he says reflects the truth but is not fully the truth. What he says cannot have complete correspondence with spiritual truth. He draws an analogy with what we perceive with the senses, such as the brightness of the bow in the cloud. The brilliance of the light reflects off the moisture in the clouds and creates many colored stands in the bow, yet do not perceive an interval between them. In a comparable way we can envision a community of essence within the Trinity. He admits our thinking can get dizzy when reflecting upon trinitarian life. In any case, the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit define the distinctions. This was logical approach, but it helped little to answer the ontological question of the constitution of the persons. He went back to the older thought that the Father is the source and principle of deity, that the Son and Spirit receive their deity and their unity with the Father from him, and that the Father alone is without origin.[29]

            In Letter 125, he stresses that those we must distance ourselves from those who call the Holy Spirit a creature, for he is holy by nature, as is the Father and Son. The church is of right mind to do so, for we receive trinitarian baptism. 

            In Letter 214.4, he refers to the Latin of the west as inadequate, given that they simply present the Greek word ousia in the Greek. “I shall state that ousia has the same relation to hypostasis as the common has to the particular. Every one of us both shares in existence by the common term of essence (ousia) and by his own properties is such an one and such an one. In the same manner, in the matter in question, the term ousia is common, like goodness, or Godhead, or any similar attribute; while hypostasis is contemplated in the special property of Fatherhood, Sonship, or the power to sanctify. If then they describe the Persons as being without hypostasis, the statement is per se absurd; but if they concede that the Persons exist in real hypostasis, as they acknowledge, let them so reckon them that the principle of the homoousion may be preserved in the unity of the Godhead, and that the doctrine preached may be the recognition of true religion, of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the perfect and complete hypostasis of each of the Persons named.”

            He writes to Amphilochius. In Letter 234, he stresses that we “know” attributes of God, but we do not “know” the essence of God. If we claim to know the divine essence, we are ignorant of who God is. Knowledge of the divine essence involves perception of the divine incomprehensibility, so that object of our worship is not that of which we comprehend. In Letter 235, he ponders whether knowledge or faith come first. He prefers to say faith, but he can see why one would put knowledge first. He confesses that he knows what is knowable of God, but also recognizes that which is beyond comprehension. In an analogous way, I know myself and am ignorant of myself. I know who I am, but as far as I am ignorant of my essence, I do not know myself. We know only in part. In 236.6, “The distinction between οὐσία and ὑ πόστασις is the same as that between the general and the particular; as, for instance, between the animal and the particular man. Wherefore, in the case of the Godhead, we confess one essence or substance so as not to give a variant definition of existence, but we confess a particular hypostasis, in order that our conception of Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be without confusion and clear. If we have no distinct perception of the separate characteristics, namely, fatherhood, sonship, and sanctification, but form our conception of God from the general idea of existence, we cannot give a sound account of our faith. We must, therefore, confess the faith by adding the particular to the common. The Godhead is common; the fatherhood particular. We must therefore combine the two and say, I believe in God the Father. The like course must be pursued in the confession of the Son; we must combine the particular with the common and say I believe in God the Son, so in the case of the Holy Ghost we must make our utterance conform to the appellation and say in God the Holy Ghost. Hence it results that there is a satisfactory preservation of the unity by the confession of the one Godhead, while in the distinction of the individual properties regarded in each there is the confession of the peculiar properties of the Persons.”

Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389)

            

St. Gregory of Nazianzus (or “the Theologian”) was born near Nazianzus, in Cappadocia (now Turkey), and educated in Alexandria and Athens. He was baptized in 360 by his father, who was bishop of Nazianzus. Deciding to pursue a life of devotion, he went to Pontus, where he lived in the desert near the Iris River (now the Yeşil River in Turkey) with St. Basil. The two men compiled an anthology of the writings of the Christian teacher and theologian Origen, called the Philokalia (Greek, “Love of the Beautiful”). Basil later became bishop of Caesarea and, in 371 or 372, prevailed upon Gregory to accept the see of Sasima, a small village in Cappadocia. Gregory disliked public life, however, and retired until the death of his father in 374. His feast day is January 2 in the Roman Catholic church and January 25 in the Orthodox church.

I will discuss the five theological orations, which one can also refer to as orations 27-31. 

            In the First Theological Oration (27) is a preliminary discourse against the Eunomians. In 27.3, he offers some advice that many persons engaged in contemporary debates would do well to heed. To philosophize about God is not for everyone. Reflecting upon divine things is not that cheap and low. Nor can one speak of such matters before every audience. Members of the audience need to at least be in the process of purification. The proper occasion is when we are free from external disturbance. “For it is necessary to be truly at leisure to know God; and when we can get a convenient season, to discern the straight road of the things divine. And who are the permitted persons? They to whom the subject is of real concern, and not they who make it a matter of pleasant gossip, like any other thing, after the races, or the theatre, or a concert, or a dinner, or still lower employments.” Further (27.4), we must philosophize only on matters within our reach and within the grasp of the audience. Given the controversies they face in theological matters (27.5), he urges “a certain decorum, so there is also in speech and silence; since among so many titles and powers of God, we pay the highest honour to The Word. Let even our disputings then be kept within bounds.” He observes (27.6) that a hostile listener is not worth the time and effort. Even the scriptural names for God do not comprehend the divine essence, that is, as God knows the divine self. God is uncreated and self-sufficient, qualities no temporal and finite being can possess. God cannot give such qualities to any part of creation. “For if we ourselves wantonly misuse these words, it will be a long time before we shall persuade them to accept our philosophy. … Such results follow to those who fight for the Word beyond what the Word approves; they are behaving like mad people, who set their own house on fire, or tear their own children, or disavow their own parents, taking them for strangers.” He then turns from the nature of the audience to the nature of the speaker (27.7). “What is this great rivalry of speech and endless talking? What is this new disease of insatiability? Why have we tied our hands and armed our tongues? We do not praise either hospitality, or brotherly love, or conjugal affection, or virginity; nor do we admire liberality to the poor, or the chanting of Psalms, or nightlong vigils, or tears. We do not keep under the body by fasting, or go forth to God by prayer; nor do we subject the worse to the better. … we do not make our life a preparation for death; nor do we make ourselves masters of our passions, mindful of our heavenly nobility; nor tame our anger when it swells and rages, nor our pride that bringeth to a fall, nor unreasonable grief, nor unchastened pleasure, nor meretricious laughter, nor undisciplined eyes, nor insatiable ears, nor excessive talk, nor absurd thoughts.” He concludes, “But with God we shall have converse, in this life only in a small degree; but a little later, it may be, more perfectly.” I want to suggest that part of the application of his thoughts is that a good mentor in Christian truth requires a theological temperament which recognizes a humbled self-awareness, a realistic consciousness of one’s actual ignorance, the limitation of one’s knowledge, one’s tendency to be deceived, and one’s egoistic interpretation of the facts. Christian theology requires the rational exercise of thinking since it is reasoned discourse about God, modestly framed in a way consonant with the immeasurability of its divine Subject.

            In the Second Theological Oration (28), he refers (28.1) to the previous oration as focusing on the theologian. He is ready to enter theological questions regarding Father, Son, and Spirit, one in diversity, diverse in unity. In 28.3, he asks, “What is this that has happened to me, O friends … and fellow-lovers of the truth?” He has ascended the Mount, seeing “only that Nature, which at last even reaches to us.” He can only see the back parts of God. In 28.4, we find a caution against trying to define God. “It is difficult to conceive God but to define Him in words is an impossibility, as one of the Greek teachers of Divinity taught, not unskillfully, as it appears to me; with the intention that he might be thought to have apprehended Him; in that he says it is a hard thing to do; and yet may escape being convicted of ignorance because of the impossibility of giving expression to the apprehension, But in my opinion it is impossible to express Him, and yet more impossible to conceive Him. For that which may be conceived may perhaps be made clear by language, if not fairly well, at any rate imperfectly, to anyone who is not quite deprived of his hearing, or slothful of understanding. But to comprehend the whole of so great a Subject as this is quite impossible and impracticable, not merely to the utterly careless and ignorant, but even to those who are highly exalted, and who love God.” The grand quality of creation draws our attention (28.5), “But far before them is That nature Which is above them, and Out of which they spring, the Incomprehensible and Illimitable--not, I mean, as to the fact of His being, but as to Its nature. For our preaching is not empty, nor our Faith vain, nor is this the doctrine we proclaim; for we would not have you take our candid statement as a starting point for a quibbling denial of God, or of arrogance on account of our confession of ignorance. For it is one thing to be persuaded of the existence of a thing, and quite another to know what it is.” Thus, the incomprehensible essence of God does not mean we are speechless about God. In 28.6, he thinks it an intellectual embarrassment and offensive to reason to accept an infinite regress. He refers to Hebrews 11:3. Thus, God is the efficient and maintaining cause of all things. The things we see invite us to reflect upon their author. “For how could this Universe have come into being or been put together, unless God had called it into existence, and held it together? For everyone who sees a beautifully made lute and considers the skill with which it has been fitted together and arranged, or who hears its melody, would think of none but the lute maker, or the lute player, and would recur to him in mind, though he might not know him by sight. And thus to us also is manifested That which made and moves and preserves all created things, even though He be not comprehended by the mind.” In 28.7, “For what will you conceive the Deity to be, if you rely upon all the approximations of reason? … Is He a body? How then is He the Infinite and Limitless, and formless, and intangible, and invisible?” In 28.8, he says that to avoid infinite regression, we can presume a final cause. In 28.9, divine essence is incorporeal, unbegotten, unoriginated, unchanging, incorruptible still does not define divine essence, which has no beginning, is incapable of change or limitation. God is self-existent, a quality known only to God and not communicable to finite and temporal things. He then (28.10) wants us to ponder whether God is nowhere or somewhere. If God is above the universe, “how could this Transcendence and that which is transcended be distinguished in thought, if there is not a limit to divide and define them? Is it not necessary that there shall be some mean to mark off the Universe from that which is above the Universe?” He is stressing the incomprehensibility of the divine essence. God is the transcendent one, which summarizes what theology means by unlimited presence, knowledge, and influence of God. God is spirit and those known, like the wind, only from the effects of the divine working. As Spirit, God is invisible. Often, we do best to revere God and silently celebrate the holy presence of God. In 11-21, he argues that to affirm that God is high and lifted above creaturely reality does not imply that God is absent from creatures. In 28.15, he anticipates Feuerbach and Freud that any talk of the divine is a projection toward reality. People honored their passions by turning them into gods. The devil “laid hold of their desire in its wandering in search of God, in order to distort to himself the power, and steal the desire, leading it by the hand, like a blind man asking a road; and he hurled down and scattered some in one direction and some in another, into one pit of death and destruction.” In 28.16, “But reason receiving us in our desire for God, and in our sense of the impossibility of being without a leader and guide, and then making us apply ourselves to things visible and meeting with the things which have been since the beginning, doth not stay its course even here.” In 28.17, no human being will discover the essence of God. Our mind and reason will not behold such until the time when we shall know even as we are known. We can only perceive a small portion of the light in this life. In 28.20, “Wherefore he estimates all knowledge on earth only as through a glass darkly, as taking its stand upon little images of the truth.” In 28.21, “The truth then, and the whole Word is full of difficulty and obscurity; and as it were with a small instrument, we are undertaking a great work, when with merely human wisdom we pursue the knowledge of the Self-existent.” In the rest of this oration, he makes the point that “what we were laboring to shew, that even the secondary natures surpass the power of our intellect; much more then the First and (for I fear to say merely That which is above all), the only Nature.” Throughout this oration, if God is infinite it follows that we cannot define divine essence. The concept of infinite is also and not least of all the basis of the incomprehensibility of the unity of God in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity. He could speak of the mystery of the Trinity.

            In the Third Theological Oration (29) he begins his discussion of the Son. In 29.3, the sources of time are not subject to time. “And when did the Father come into being. There never was a time when He was not. And the same thing is true of the Son and the Holy Ghost. Ask me again, and again I will answer you, When was the Son begotten? When the Father was not begotten. And when did the Holy Ghost proceed?” In 29.16, we have an important discussion of the relations within the trinity. The relations of Father, Son, and Spirit define the distinctions. Thus, Father “is the name of the Relation in which the Father stands to the Son, and the Son to the Father. For as with us these names make known a genuine and intimate relation, so, in the case before us too, they denote an identity of nature between Him That is begotten and Him That begets.” This was logical, but it helped little to answer the ontological question of the constitution of the persons. He went back to the older thought that the Father is the source and principle of deity, that the Son and Spirit receive their deity and their unity with the Father from him, and that the Father alone is without origin. In 29.17, he affirms that the term used of the Son make the deity of the Son clear: God--The Word--He That Was In The Beginning and With The Beginning, and The Beginning. The Son is only-begotten, the way, truth, and life. The Son is the wisdom and power of God. He is the image of God, Lord, and King. In 29.20, he points to the historical life of Jesus, baptized as a man, but remitting sin as God. He was tempted as a man, but conquered as God. “He hungered--but He fed thousands; yea, He is the Bread that giveth life, and That is of heaven. He thirsted--but He cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. Yea, He promised that fountains should flow from them that believe. He was wearied, but He is the Rest of them that are weary and heavy laden. He was heavy with sleep, but He walked lightly over the sea. He rebuked the winds, He made Peter light as he began to sink…. He is stoned but is not taken. He prays, but He hears prayer. He weeps, but He causes tears to cease. He asks where Lazarus was laid, for He was Man; but He raises Lazarus, for He was God. He is sold, and unbelievably cheap, for it is only for thirty pieces of silver; but He redeems the world, and that at a great price, for the Price was His own blood. As a sheep He is led to the slaughter, but He is the Shepherd of Israel, and now of the entire world also. As a Lamb He is silent, yet He is the Word, and is proclaimed by the Voice of one crying in the wilderness. He is bruised and wounded, but He healeth every disease and every infirmity. He is lifted up and nailed to the Tree, but by the Tree of Life He restoreth us…. He lays down His life, but He has power to take it again; and the veil is rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened; the rocks are cleft, the dead arise. He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again; He goes down into Hell, but He brings up the souls; He ascends to Heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.”

            The Fourth Theological Oration (30) is the second concerning the Son. He will defend the two natures in one person theology by saying that this is the only way to have the scriptural witness maintain its beauty and cohesion. In becoming human, God teaches by embodiment the value of true humanity. The incarnation has far-reaching importance beyond Christology. It also teaches about humanity. The divine Logos eternally experiences full awareness of the cosmos, but as incarnate Logos he has become voluntarily subjected to human limitations, ignorance, weakness, temptation, suffering, and death. In 30.6, God measures all by comparison with his own suffering, so that he may know our condition by his own. In 30.20, the frequency and intensity of the ascriptions of lordship and unique divine sonship to Jesus are distinctive themes of the New Testament. “He is called Son because He is identical with the Father in Essence; and not only for this reason, but also because He is Of Him. And He is called Only-Begotten, not because He is the only Son and of the Father alone, and only a Son; but also because the manner of His Sonship is peculiar to Himself and not shared by bodies. And He is called the Word, because He is related to the Father as Word to Mind; not only on account of His passionless Generation, but also because of the Union, and of His declaratory function.” In 30.21, “He is called Man, not only that through His Body He may be apprehended by embodied creatures, whereas otherwise this would be impossible because of His incomprehensible nature; but also that by Himself He may sanctify humanity, and be as it were a leaven to the whole lump; and by uniting to Himself that which was condemned may release it from all condemnation, becoming for all men all things that we are, except sin;--body, soul, mind and all through which death reaches--and thus He became Man, who is the combination of all these; God in visible form, because He retained that which is perceived by mind alone.”

            In the Fifth Theological Oration (31) he focuses upon the Holy Spirit. In 31.8 he stresses the procession of the Spirit from the Father. In 31.9, we see again that the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit define the distinctions. “the difference of manifestation, if I may so express myself, or rather of their mutual relations one to another, has caused the difference of their Names…. For neither is the Son Father, for the Father is One, but He is what the Father is; nor is the Spirit Son because He is of God, for the Only-begotten is One, but He is what the Son is. The Three are One in Godhead, and the One Three in properties.” This was logical, but it helped little to answer the ontological question of the constitution of the persons. He went back to the older thought that the Father is the source and principle of deity, that the Son and Spirit receive their deity and their unity with the Father from him, and that the Father alone is without origin. In 31.10, as the Son is worshiped so is the Spirit. As the Son is begotten, so the Spirit goes forth from God otherwise than by being created but also in some other way than by being begotten. The two cases are thus parallel; therefore, the Spirit too must be recognized as homousios with the Father. In 31.14, the different relations by which each of the three is the one God for and from the others, are the differences by which they are three. Finally, therefore, there was a way to say what by now all but the stubbornest traditionalists realized needed to be said: “Differentiated though the hypostases are, the entire and undivided godhead is one in each.” He stresses unity in trinity and trinity in unity. Barth will use the term “triunity” in part based upon this oration. We can only think of the act, will, and essence of God as one but we know three as objects of worship. He refers to this as the dialectic of the union and distinction in the mutual relation. “To us there is One God, for the Godhead is One, and all that proceeds from Him is referred to One, though we believe in Three Persons. For one is not more and another less God; nor is One before and another after; nor are They divided in will or parted in power; nor can you find here any of the qualities of divisible things; but the Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate Persons; and there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other. When then we look at the Godhead, or the First Cause, or the Monarchia, that which we conceive is One; but when we look at the Persons in Whom the Godhead dwells, and at Those Who timelessly and with equal glory have their Being from the First Cause--there are Three Whom we worship.” Gregory had to reinterpret the comparison of the three rays because it did not do sufficient justice to the independence of the hypostases proceeding from the Father.[30]

In 31.19, as the Son is worshiped so is the Spirit. As the Son is begotten, so the Spirit goes forth from /God otherwise than by being created but also in some other way than by being begotten. The two cases are thus parallel; therefore, the Spirit too must be recognized as homousios with the Father. In 31.25, 26, salvation cannot make a sudden change, for God did that, violence would be done to us. if we move toward salvation by way of persuasion,, like a tutor or physician, one partly removes and partly condones habits. The gospel beguiles people into gradual changes. “Now the two Testaments are alike in this respect, that the change was not made on a sudden, nor at the first movement of the endeavor. Why not (for this is a point on which we must have information)? That no violence might be done to us, but that we might be moved by persuasion. For nothing that is involuntary is durable; like streams or trees which are kept back by force. But that which is voluntary is more durable and safe. The former is due to one who uses force, the latter is ours; the one is due to the gentleness of God, the other to a tyrannical authority.” 

In Orations 34.10, the three can be individually identified by their relations to one another precisely with respect to their join possession of the same deity, for “all that the Father has belongs likewise to the Son, except Causality; and all that is the Son's belongs also to the Spirit, except His Sonship, and whatsoever is spoken of Him as to Incarnation for me a man, and for my salvation, that, taking of mine, He may impart His own by this new commingling.” In Orations 40.41, Barth will to unity in trinity and trinity in unity with the use of “triunity,” referring to this oration. We can only think of the act, will, and essence of God as one but we know three as objects of worship. He refers to this as the dialectic of the union and distinction in the mutual relation. He refers to “the confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. This I commit unto you today; with this I will baptize you and make you grow. This I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the One Godhead and Power, found in the Three in Unity, and comprising the Three separately, not unequal, in substances or natures, neither increased nor diminished by superiorities or inferiorities; in every respect equal, in every respect the same; just as the beauty and the greatness of the heavens is one; the infinite conjunction of Three Infinite Ones, Each God when considered in Himself; as the Father so the Son, as the Son so the Holy Ghost; the Three One God when contemplated together; Each God because Consubstantial; One God because of the Monarchia. No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of That One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.” 

In Or 40.43, I am not sure what to make of his comment. “I should like to call the Father the greater, because from him flows both the Equality and the Being of the Equals (this will be granted on all hands), but I am afraid to use the word Origin, lest I should make Him the Origin of Inferiors, and thus insult Him by precedencies of honor. For the lowering of those Who are from Him is no glory to the Source. Moreover, I look with suspicion at your insatiate desire, for fear you should take hold of this word Greater, and divide the Nature, using the word Greater in all senses, whereas it does not apply to the Nature, but only to Origination. For in the Consubstantial Persons there is nothing greater or less in point of Substance. I would honor the Son as Son before the Spirit, but Baptism consecrating me through the Spirit does not allow of this.” Here is how Pannenberg interprets. He calls the Father the basis of both the being of the other two persons and of their unity with him. It did not occur to him or Basil that this does not logically agree with his thesis that father is a hypostasis that must be distinguished from essence. The incompatibility is that the Father as the source and origin of deity cannot be distinguished from the substance as the other two persons can. The problem with this line of thinking was that it links to subordinationism in pre-Nicene views of the Trinity. He says the Father alone is without origin among the three persons of the Trinity, that the Father is the origin and fount of deity for the Son and Spirit. He had the thesis that the Father is the fount of deity in a way that threatens the mutuality of the deity of the persons of the trinity. 

 

Gregory of Nyssa (335-394)

Gregory of Nyssa was born in Neocaesarea (now Niksar, Turkey), younger brother of Saint Basil. Gregory married, but on the death of his wife he entered the monastery founded by Basil in Pontus, near the Iris River. About 371 he was ordained by his brother and made bishop of Nyssa. Gregory's religious position was strictly orthodox, and he was particularly zealous in combating the doctrine of Arianism. The Arians charged Gregory with fraud in his election to the bishopric and with mishandling the funds of his office. Convicted of these charges, he was exiled from Nyssa in 376 to 378. After his return Gregory was a strong supporter of the orthodox position against the Arians at the first Council of Constantinople in 381. In the next year he was sent by the church to reorganize the churches of Arabia. His feast day is March 9.

A central idea in Gregory’s writing is the distinction between the transcendent nature and immanent energies of God, and much of his thought is a working out of the implications of that idea in other areas–notably, the world, humanity, history, knowledge, and virtue. This leads him to expand the nature-energies distinction into a general cosmological principle, to apply it particularly to human nature, which he conceives as having been created in God’s image, and to rear a theory of unending intellectual and moral perfectibility on the premise that the purpose of human life is to become like the infinite nature of God.[31] In fact, one could say that his epochal contribution in his letter to Eunomius to the Christian doctrine of God was to show that we are not to seek the basic form of the thought of God in the concept of a first cause, but in that of the Infinite. In an analogous way to how people know a benefactor through actions, so we know the divine essence through the energies or acts of God. For example, in the act of God as reconciler, we perceive the God as creator. He thinks that we may rationally know both God’s existence, especially by inference from the order of the world to an intelligent author, and by divine perfection. On this ground he believed in addition that reason is forced to confess the unity of God.

In Or cat. Magna 6.2, 7.2, (I did not have access to this text) he uses Neo-platonic ontology to describe evil as ontologically null and void because it is not work of the divine will or an object of divine good pleasure. Wickedness and evil have no doubt entered creation with the knowledge and permission of God. he was wrong to link it with an attempt to absolve God from responsibility for the coming of evil into creation. 

I did not have access to the following as well: In de hom op 5, he regards our rational nature as a copy of the divine Nous and Logos. He related divine likeness to the soul. In Or Cat 10 he makes it clear that the divinity of the Word lays hold of humanity. In Holy Spirit s, 3, he uses a classical metaphor of the three torches.

Gregory based his doctrine on the incomprehensibility of God on the infinity of God. Gregory is a mentor for Christian theology as it devises a trinitarian concept of being itself.[32]

I will begin with a discussion of Against Eunomius Book I. In 1.17, Gregory insists that God exists in God’s energeiai just as much as in God’s nature. Through such energeiai, God is present within oneself, and thus the pure in heart can “see God.” Gregory’s concept of the divine energies is remarkably like the Western concept of grace, except that for Gregory, as for Eastern thinkers in general, grace is due to the actual presence of God and not some action at a distance. So, we directly experience the divine energies in the only thing in the universe that we can view from within–ourselves. But God’s energies are always a force for good. Thus, we encounter them in the experience of virtues such as purity, passionlessness, sanctity, and simplicity in our own moral character. In 1.18, we know the essence of God through the energies and activities of God. In 1.22 (314) clearly seeing the relation between the baptismal mandate and experience and the use of the personal name Father, Son, and Spirit in Christian life, which is also a compressed telling of the narrative by which Scripture identifies God. This was the foundation on which the ancient church developed the Christian understanding of God. Then, (366) when we speak of God we may think first of the three identities, each of whom is God. then there is the life among them, the complex of their energies, which is the proper referent of phrases such as “the one God.” “We regard it as consummately perfect and incomprehensibly excellent yet as containing clear distinctions within itself which reside in the peculiarities of each of the Persons: as possessing invariableness by virtue of its common attribute of uncreatedness but differentiated by the unique character of each Person. This peculiarity contemplated in each sharply and clearly divides one from the other: the Father, for instance, is uncreate and ungenerate as well: He was never generated any more than He was created. While this uncreatedness is common to Him and the Son, and the Spirit, He is ungenerate as well as the Father. This is peculiar and uncommunicable, being not seen in the other Persons. The Son in His uncreatedness touches the Father and the Spirit, but as the Son and the Only-begotten He has a character which is not that of the Almighty or of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit by the uncreatedness of His nature has contact with the Son and Father but is distinguished from them by His own tokens. His most peculiar characteristic is that He is neither of those things which we contemplate in the Father and the Son respectively. He is simply, neither as ungenerate, nor as only-begotten: this it is that constitutes His chief peculiarity. Joined to the Father by His uncreatedness, He is disjoined from Him again by not being 'Father.' United to the Son by the bond of uncreatedness, and of deriving His existence from the Supreme, He is parted again from Him by the characteristic of not being the Only-begotten of the Father, and of having been manifested by means of the Son Himself. Again, as the creation was effected by the Only-begotten, in order to secure that the Spirit should not be considered to have something in common with this creation because of His having been manifested by means of the Son, He is distinguished from it by His unchangeableness, and independence of all external goodness.” Finally, there is the divine ousia, deity sheerly as such the character by exemplification of which someone is called God, which is infinity. The divine ousia is the infinity of the one God that is, of the mutual life of the identities. “The First Good is in its nature infinite, and so it follows of necessity that the participation in the enjoyment of it will be infinite also, for more will be always being grasped, and yet something beyond that which has been grasped will always be discovered, and this search will never overtake its Object, because its fund is as inexhaustible as the growth of that which participates in it is ceaseless.” Infinite-being cannot be something other than its own infinity. Such deity can be infinity-as-such. It is the infinity of something, which is the mutual action of Father, Son, and Spirit. Their action is limitless. What happens among them has no boundaries; nothing can hinder what they enact. If we label the triune action love, then we must say; the love of the Father can embrace whatever the coming of the Spirit brings; the love of the Son can endure whatever his Father sends him to do; the creativity of love by the Spirit is inexhaustible. This love is God. such infinity appropriate to deity is temporal infinity. God is infinite because no temporal activity can keep us with the activity that is God. no temporal process can keep pace with it (1:366).[33] In 1.25, “that this view of theirs will bring us to the conclusion that the Father is not from everlasting, but from a definite point in time.” “But if we must at all risks confess this absence of beginning in the Father, let not such exactitude be displayed in fixing for the life of the Son a point which, as the term of His existence, must cut Him off from the life on the other side of it; let it suffice on the ground of causation only to conceive of the Father as before the Son; and let not the Father's life be thought of as a separate and peculiar one before the generation of the Son, lest we should have to admit the idea inevitably associated with this of an interval before the appearance of the Son which measures the life of Him Who begot Him, and then the necessary consequence of this, that a beginning of the Father's life also must be supposed by virtue of which their fancied interval may be stayed in its upward advance so as to set a limit and a beginning to this previous life of the Father as well: let it suffice for us, when we confess the 'coming from Him,' to admit also, bold as it may seem, the 'living along with Him;' for we are led by the written oracles to such a belief.” We can know that God truly exists without pretending to know how God exists, or without claiming to know all that God knows about the existence of God. Only the infinite can know the infinite. In 1.26, “It is clear, even with a moderate insight into the nature of things, that there is nothing by which we can measure the divine and blessed Life. It is not in time, but time flows from it…. it is inevitable that our apprehensive faculty, seeking as it does always some object to grasp, must fall back from any side of this incomprehensible existence. All, I say, with any insight, however moderate, into the nature of things, know that the world's Creator laid time and space as a background to receive what was to be; on this foundation He builds the universe. It is not possible that anything which has come or is now coming into being by way of creation can be independent of space or time. But the existence, which is all-sufficient, everlasting, world-enveloping, is not in space, nor in time: it is before these, and above these in an ineffable way; self-contained, knowable by faith alone; immeasurable by ages; without the accompaniment of time; seated and resting in itself, with no associations of past or future, there being nothing beside and beyond itself, whose passing can make something past and something future. … It is above beginning and presents no marks of its inmost nature: it is to be known of only in the impossibility of perceiving it. That indeed is its most special characteristic, that its nature is too high for any distinctive attribute.” In 1.42, “The eternity of God's life, to sketch it in mere outline, is on this wise. He is always to be apprehended as in existence; He admits not a time when He was not, and when He will not be. Those who draw a circular figure in plane geometry from a center to the distance of the line of circumference tell us there is no definite beginning to their figure; and that the line is interrupted by no ascertained end any more than by any visible commencement: they say that, as it forms a single whole in itself with equal radii on all sides, it avoids giving any indication of beginning or ending. When, then, we compare the Infinite being to such a figure, circumscribed though it be, let none find fault with this account; for it is not on the circumference, but on the similarity which the figure bears to the Life which in every direction eludes the grasp, that we fix our attention when we affirm that such is our intuition of the Eternal. From the present instant, as from a center and a point, we extend thought in all directions, to the immensity of that Life. We find that we are drawn round uninterruptedly and evenly, and that we are always following a circumference where there is nothing to grasp; we find the divine life returning upon itself in an unbroken continuity, where no end and no parts can be recognized.” God is infinite because God overcomes all boundaries (1:666-672). The Arians wanted to keep divinity from action and suffering, which is what the Word endured. In contradiction precisely the action and suffering of the Word qualifies the Word to be God. futurity determines divine infinity. The mark of deity is endless futurity. Arians need to let that which is to come guide their thinking and have real hope. The being of God is that God keeps things moving. To be God is always to be open to and always to open a future, transgressing all past-imposed conditions. Such eternity is appropriate to the God of the gospel.[34] Gregory suggests that it is not order in general but the blending of opposites into a harmonious whole that would have never happened spontaneously, but only through the power of a Creator. Opposites not only fail to annihilate each other, but they even contribute to an overall harmony. The emphasis here is not on order in general, but on unexpected order. Given what we know about motion and rest, heaviness and lightness, and the rest, Gregory argues, we would expect to find them excluding, rather than complementing, each other. The fact that they behave in unanticipated ways can only be explained by the exercise of divine power. For us as modern readers, the fact that a phenomenon seems to violate what we think we know of the laws of nature does not imply that it really does violate those laws. Our knowledge may simply be too limited. So the fact that we find order in nature that we don’t expect may simply be a function of the limitation of our knowledge rather than of the intervention of God in the world. [35]

            We now turn to Against Eunomius Book II. In 2.2, the trinity “is divided without separation, and united without confusion. For when we hear the title Father, we apprehend the meaning to be this, that the name is not understood with reference to itself alone, but also by its special signification indicates the relation to the Son. For the term Father would have no meaning apart by itself, if Son were not connoted by the utterance of the word Father. … That Spirit is indisputably a princely Spirit, a quickening Spirit, the controlling and sanctifying force of all creation, the Spirit that works all in all as He wills…. For the differentiation of the subsistences makes the distinction of Persons clear and free from confusion, while the one Name standing in the forefront of the declaration of the Faith clearly expounds to us the unity of essence of the Persons Whom the Faith declares.” He is saying that we have the unity of the three persons in the unity of their activity. This approach might well help to relieve the difficulties in understanding the relation of the three persons in the unity of the divine essence if the unity of the ray of their common activity derives from the mutual relations of the persons. They thought that they could cogently meet the charge of tritheism in this way. But the unity of the divine activity could also be thought of as a collective unity od divine beings existing prior to the common activity if the thought of uniform activity was to be related to that of a trinity of divine persons. The common activity is not constitutive for the persons of their distinction. The idea of one divine activity could not offer any constitutive basis for distinctive persons. It does not rule out a collective cooperation of ontologically independent beings. Gregory and the Cappadocians had to reflect on the relations between the persons insofar as these are constitutive for their distinction and autonomy.[36] He deals with the question of why three instances of the divine ousia do not make three gods. God is a predicate. Therefore, how many gods we assert depends on to how many subjects we attribute it, there are three instances of the divine ousia but these are not three gods as three instances of humanity are three human beings because /god is not a word for the divine ousia. God is not a word for this or any form. God refers to the mutual action of the identities’ divine energies to the perichoretic triune life. and since all divine action is the singular mutual work of Father, Son, and Spirit, there is only one such life and therefore only one subject of the predicate God. First, the term is referent for all such language as God is the mutual life of Father, Son, and Spirit. All we have is a triunely personal perichoresis, a communal life. this being of God is a going on, a sequentially palpable event. Second, the Father, Son, and Spirit live this life. There is a hypostatic being of God that one must distinguish from the act of divine being, as the antecedence of those who do the act. Third, we do need to posit a divine ousia. There must be what we may call deity, which he defines infinite.[37] In 2.8-11 the Word is coeternal with the Father. In 2.14, he begins a discussion of the Holy Spirit. “But what room is there for the charge of tritheism against those by whom one God is worshipped, the God expressed by the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost?” In 2.15, “the doctrine of the Church declares that in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost there is one power, and goodness, and essence, and glory, and the like, saving the difference of the Persons. … from the identity of operations it results assuredly that the Spirit is not alien from the nature of the Father and the Son. And to the statement that the Spirit accomplishes the operation and teaching of the Father according to the good pleasure of the Son we assent. For the community of nature gives us warrant that the will of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one, and thus, if the Holy Spirit wills that which seems good to the Son, the community of will clearly points to unity of essence.”

            We will turn to Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book. To say God is holy is to say God is perfect in goodness, both in essence and in the energies or activities that proceed from that essence. “God is not an expression, neither has He His essence in voice or utterance. But God is of Himself what also He is believed to be, but He is named, by those who call upon Him, not what He is essentially (for the nature of Him Who alone is, is unspeakable), but He receives His appellations from what are believed to be His operations in regard to our life.”  He will stress that while the Father is ungenerate, the divine essence includes the generation of the Son. Father and Son experience no separation. He is imagining the closest possible connection between Father and Son. By connection, he means “the union and blending of spiritual with spiritual through identity of will. Accordingly, there is no divergence of will between the Father and the Son, but the image of goodness is after the Archetype of all goodness and beauty, and as, if a man should look at himself in a glass (for it is perfectly allowable to explain the idea by corporeal illustrations), the copy will in all respects be conformed to the original, the shape of the man who is reflected being the cause of the shape on the glass, and the reflection making no spontaneous movement or inclination unless commenced by the original, but, if it move, moving along with it — in like manner we maintain that our Lord, the Image of the invisible God, is immediately and inseparably one with the Father in every movement of His Will. If the Father will anything, the Son Who is in the Father knows the Father's will, or rather He is Himself the Father's will. For, if He has in Himself all that is the Father's, there is nothing of the Father's that He cannot have. If He has all things that are the Father's in Himself, or, say we rather, if He has the Father Himself, then, along with the Father and the things that are the Father's, He must needs have in Himself the whole of the Father's will.” 

His rational basis for knowing God involves frequent appeals to Scripture, of course, but he also argues for the existence of God. And although he concedes that God’s inner nature will always remain a mystery to us, Gregory holds that we can attain some knowledge of God’s energies. This does not mean, however, that God does not have a transcendent nature. For Gregory everything that exists has an inner nature that cannot be known immediately and is knowable only through its energies. God is only the most striking instance of this. If it can be shown that God exists, it follows necessarily in Gregory’s mind that God has a nature. But God’s existence is derived from our knowledge of God’s energies, and those energies are in turn known both indirectly and directly. The indirect route relies on the order apparent in the cosmos. The fact that the universe is orderly indicates that it is governed according to some rational plan, which implies the existence of a divine Planner. In noting this, Gregory is relying on an argument that had been around since the early Stoics–the argument from design (cf. Cicero, Nature of the Gods II 2.4 – 21.56). Now there are several things to notice about this argument. In the first place it is an analogical one: just as a work of art leads us to infer the existence of an artist, so the artistry displayed in the order of nature suggests the existence of a Creator. But if Gregory’s argument is nothing more than a generalized appeal to the harmony of the universe, it is not a very persuasive basis for proving the existence of God. For that there are laws of nature is nothing surprising: to have anything at all, from cosmos to quark, is to have order. If this is all that Gregory means, his argument at best reduces to the cosmological, or “first cause,” argument that any chain of creating or sustaining causes requires a first member, which “everyone would call God,” as Thomas Aquinas puts it (Summa Theologiae I q. 2 a. 3). Such an argument, however, is not very convincing. Why not an infinite chain of causes, for instance? Or even more to the point, why can’t things exist on their own? It does not seem that the cosmological argument rules out either of these two possibilities. [38]

            He explains the love of God for humanity in a beautiful way. He suggests that the Incarnation is worthy of human flesh because of the intrinsic goodness of human nature. “We account for God's willingness to admit men to communion with Himself by His love towards mankind. But since that which is by nature finite cannot rise above its prescribed limits, or lay hold of the superior nature of the Most High, on this account He, bringing His power, so full of love for humanity, down to the level of human weakness, so far as it was possible for us to receive it, bestowed on us this helpful gift of grace. For as by Divine dispensation the sun, tempering the intensity of his full beams with the intervening air, pours down light as well as heat on those who receive his rays, being himself unapproachable by reason of the weakness of our nature, so the Divine power, after the manner of the illustration I have used, though exalted far above our nature and inaccessible to all approach, like a tender mother who joins in the inarticulate utterances of her babe, gives to our human nature what it is capable of receiving; and thus in the various manifestations of God to man He both adapts Himself to man and speaks in human language, and assumes wrath, and pity, and such-like emotions, so that through feelings corresponding to our own our infantile life might be led as by hand, and lay hold of the Divine nature by means of the words which His foresight has given.”

            Toward the end of the book, he anticipates some of the negative theology of later generations. Theology is the investigation of a reality and is not simply speculation. A community of people persist in believing in God. God is not an object in the world. God is not finite and thus not an object for scientific investigation. “It is a sacred duty to use of Him names privative of the things abhorrent to His Nature, and to say all that we have so often enumerated already, viz. that He is imperishable, and unending, and ungenerate, and the other terms of that class, where the sense inherent in each only informs us of the privation of that which is obvious to our perception, but does not interpret the actual nature of that which is thus removed from those abhorrent conditions. What the Deity is not, the signification of these names does point out; but what that further thing, which is not these things, is remains undivulged. Moreover, even the rest of these names, the sense of which does indicate some position or some state, do not afford that indication of the Divine nature itself, but only of the results of our reverent speculations about it. For when we have concluded generally that no single thing existing, whether an object of sense or of thought, is formed spontaneously or fortuitously, but that everything discoverable in the world is linked to the Being Who transcends all existences, and possesses there the source of its continuance, and we then perceive the beauty and the majesty of the wonderful sights in creation, we thus get from these and such-like marks a new range of thoughts about the Deity, and interpret each one of the thoughts thus arising within us by a special name, following the advice of Wisdom, who says that by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionately the Maker of them is seen Wisdom 13:5 . We address therefore as Creator Him Who has made all mortal things, and as Almighty Him Who has compassed so vast a creation, Whose might has been able to realize His wish. When too we perceive the good that is in our own life, we give in accordance with this the name of Good to Him Who is our life's first cause. Then also having learned from the Divine writings the incorruptibility of the judgment to come, we therefore call Him Judge and Just, and to sum up in one word, we transfer the thoughts that arise within us about the Divine Being into the mould of a corresponding name; so that there is no appellation given to the Divine Being apart from some distinct intuition about Him. Even the word God (Θεὸς) we understand to have come into usage from the activity of His seeing; for our faith tells us that the Deity is everywhere, and sees (θεασθαι) all things, and penetrates all things, and then we stamp this thought with this name (Θεὸς), guided to it by the Holy Voice. … We are taught, then, by this word one sectional operation of the Divine Being, though we do not grasp in thought by means of it His substance itself, believing nevertheless that the Divine glory suffers no loss because of our being at a loss for a naturally appropriate name. For this inability to give expression to such unutterable things, while it reflects upon the poverty of our own nature, affords an evidence of God's glory, teaching us as it does, in the words of the Apostle, that the only name naturally appropriate to God is to believe Him to be above every name Philippians 2:9 . That he transcends every effort of thought, and is far beyond any circumscribing by a name, constitutes a proof to man of His ineffable majesty.” Thus, Gregory counters Eunomius by repudiating the central presupposition of Eunomian theology–that one can derive by a process of analysis concepts that are predicated of God. God is incomprehensible; thus, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose that God can be defined by a set of human concepts. When we are speaking of God’s inner nature, all that we can say is what that nature is not. Gregory anticipates the negative theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius and much medieval thought.

Nevertheless, if that were the whole story–if we were left with God’s utter incomprehensibility and nothing more–then Gregory’s theology would be a very much stunted exposition of Christianity. After all, in the Beatitudes Christ promises, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8) If God’s inner nature is knowable only negatively, how is this possible? More generally, if God is simply some remote, unknowable entity, what possible relation to the world could God ever have? Gregory answers these questions by distinguishing between God’s nature (phusis) and God’s “energies” (energeiai)–the projection of the divine nature into the world, initially creating it and ultimately guiding it to its appointed destination (Beatitudes VI [1269]). The idea of God’s energies in Gregory’s theology approximates to the Western concept of grace, except that it emphasizes God’s actual presence in those parts of creation which are perfected just because of that presence. By distinguishing between God’s nature (sometimes he uses the word “substance”–ousia) and God’s energies, Gregory anticipates the more famous substance-energies distinction of the fourteenth century Byzantine theologian Gregory Palamas. [39]

            We shall next consider On the Holy Spirit: Against the Macedonians. He shares a direct affirmation regarding the Holy Spirit. “We, for instance, confess that the Holy Spirit is of the same rank as the Father and the Son, so that there is no difference between them in anything, to be thought or named, that devotion can ascribe to a Divine nature. We confess that, save His being contemplated as with peculiar attributes in regard of Person, the Holy Spirit is indeed from God, and of the Christ, according to Scripture , but that, while not to be confounded with the Father in being never originated, nor with the Son in being the Only-begotten, and while to be regarded separately in certain distinctive properties, He has in all else, as I have just said, an exact identity with them. … We are not to think of the Father as ever parted from the Son, nor to look for the Son as separate from the Holy Spirit. As it is impossible to mount to the Father, unless our thoughts are exalted there through the Son, so it is impossible also to say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are to be known only in a perfect Trinity, in closest consequence and union with each other, before all creation, before all the ages, before anything whatever of which we can form an idea. The Father is always Father, and in Him the Son, and with the Son the Holy Spirit…. (In a well-known image) the grace flows down in an unbroken stream from the Father, through the Son and the Spirit, upon the persons worthy of it.” He offers a well-known analogy. “It is as if a man were to see a separate flame burning on three torches (and we will suppose that the third flame is caused by that of the first being transmitted to the middle, and then kindling the end torch ), and were to maintain that the heat in the first exceeded that of the others; that that next it showed a variation from it in the direction of the less; and that the third could not be called fire at all, though it burnt and shone just like fire, and did everything that fire does. But if there is really no hindrance to the third torch being fire, though it has been kindled from a previous flame, what is the philosophy of these men, who profanely think that they can slight the dignity of the Holy Spirit because He is named by the Divine lips after the Father and the Son?”

            We now turn to On the Holy Trinity, and of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit, which is to Eustathius. “The Lord, in delivering the saving Faith to those who become disciples of the word, joins with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit also; and we affirm that the union of that which has once been joined is continual; for it is not joined in one thing, and separated in others. But the power of the Spirit, being included with the Father and the Son in the life-giving power, by which our nature is transferred from the corruptible life to immortality, and in many other cases also, as in the conception of "Good," and "Holy," and "Eternal," "Wise," "Righteous," "Chief," "Mighty," and in fact everywhere, has an inseparable association with them in all the attributes ascribed in a sense of special excellence. And so we consider that it is right to think that that which is joined to the Father and the Son in such sublime and exalted conceptions is not separated from them in any.”

            We now turn to On the Faith, which is to Simplicius. “Therefore both He Who was formed in the Virgin's womb, according to the word of the prophet, is the servant, and not the Lord (that is to say, the man according to the flesh, in whom God was manifested), and also, in the other passage, He Who was created as the beginning of His ways is not God, but the man in whom God was manifested to us for the renewing again of the mined way of man's salvation. So that, since we recognize two things in Christ, one Divine, the other human (the Divine by nature, but the human in the Incarnation), we accordingly claim for the Godhead that which is eternal, and that which is created we ascribe to His human nature. … the Church believes, as concerning the Son, so equally concerning the Holy Spirit, that He is uncreated, and that the whole creation becomes good by participation in the good which is above it, while the Holy Spirit needs not any to make Him good (seeing that He is good by virtue of His nature, as the Scripture testifies); that the creation is guided by the Spirit, while the Spirit gives guidance; that the creation is governed, while the Spirit governs; that the creation is comforted, while the Spirit comforts; that the creation is in bondage, while the Spirit gives freedom; that the creation is made wise, while the Spirit gives the grace of wisdom; that the creation partakes of the gifts, while the Spirit bestows them at His pleasure.”

            We now turn to On “Not Three Gods,” written to Ablabius. He is clear that to write of the divine essence is a difficult matter, “nature is unnameable and unspeakable, and we say that every term either invented by the custom of men, or handed down to us by the Scriptures, is indeed explanatory of our conceptions of the Divine Nature, but does not include the signification of that nature itself… it is clear that by any of the terms we use the Divine nature itself is not signified, but some one of its surroundings is made known. For we say, it may be, that the Deity is incorruptible, or powerful, or whatever else we are accustomed to say of Him. But in each of these terms we find a peculiar sense, fit to be understood or asserted of the Divine nature, yet not expressing that which that nature is in its essence. … if we say that He is the Giver of life, though we show by that appellation what He gives, we do not by that word declare what that is which gives it. And by the same reasoning we find that all else which results from the significance involved in the names expressing the Divine attributes either forbids us to conceive what we ought not to conceive of the Divine nature or teaches us that which we ought to conceive of it, but does not include an explanation of the nature itself.” The divine essence is beyond our language to capture. He recognizes only three ontological questions. Is It? What is it? How is it? He taught that only the latter applies to the hypostases. This allows us to read him in a metaphysically revisionary way. He stresses that we have no insight into the mode of the unity of the divine and human in Christ. It being an event is beyond question for us, but not how, which we do not investigate for it is beyond understand.

            He then explores the unity of the trinity in divine action. “As we have to a certain extent shown by our statement that the word Godhead is not significant of nature but of operation, perhaps one might reasonably allege as a cause why, in the case of men, those who share with one another in the same pursuits are enumerated and spoken of in the plural, while on the other hand the Deity is spoken of in the singular as one God and one Godhead, even though the Three Persons are not separated from the significance expressed by the term Godhead. … But in the case of the Divine nature we do not similarly learn that the Father does anything by Himself in which the Son does not work conjointly, or again that the Son has any special operation apart from the Holy Spirit; but every operation which extends from God to the Creation and is named according to our variable conceptions of it, has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit. For this reason the name derived from the operation is not divided with regard to the number of those who fulfil it, because the action of each concerning anything is not separate and peculiar, but whatever comes to pass, in reference either to the acts of His providence for us, or to the government and constitution of the universe, comes to pass by the action of the Three, yet what does come to pass is not three things. … there is one motion and disposition of the good will which is communicated from the Father through the Son to the Spirit…. Since, then, the character of the superintending and beholding power is one, in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as has been said in our previous argument, issuing from the Father as from a spring, brought into operation by the Son, and perfecting its grace by the power of the Spirit; and since no operation is separated in respect of the Persons, being fulfilled by each individually apart from that which is joined with Him in our contemplation, but all providence, care, and superintendence of all, alike of things in the sensible creation and of those of supramundane nature, and that power which preserves the things which are, and corrects those which are amiss, and instructs those which are ordered aright, is one, and not three, being, indeed, directed by the Holy Trinity, yet not severed by a threefold division according to the number of the Persons contemplated in the Faith, so that each of the acts, contemplated by itself, should be the work of the Father alone, or of the Son peculiarly, or of the Holy Spirit separately, but while, as the Apostle says, the one and the selfsame Spirit divides His good gifts to every man severally 1 Corinthians 12:11, the motion of good proceeding from the Spirit is not without beginning — we find that the power which we conceive as preceding this motion, which is the Only-begotten God, is the maker of all things; without Him no existent thing attains to the beginning of its being: and, again, this same source of good issues from the will of the Father.”

He deals with the question of why three instances of the divine ousia do not make three gods. God is a predicate. Therefore, how many gods we assert depends on to how many subjects we attribute it, there are three instances of the divine ousia but these are not three gods as three instances of humanity are three human beings because God is not a word for the divine ousia. God is not a word for this or any form. God refers to the mutual action of the identities’ divine energies to the perichoretic triune life. Since all divine action is the singular mutual work of Father, Son, and Spirit, there is only one such life and therefore only one subject of the predicate God. God is the Father as he is the source of the Son’s and the Spirit’s deity; God is the Son as he is the recipient of deity from the Father; God is the Spirit as he is the spirit of the Son’s reception of deity from the Father. He is saying that the unity of the three persons is to be found in the unity of their activity. The rule for reflection on the trinity is that all action that impacts the creature from God begins with the Father and is actual through the Son is perfected in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the attribution of the action is not divided among the plurality of actors. Each of the three is a hypostasis differentiated from other instances of the same ousia so as to be enumerable by the different way in which this instance of deity has deity. 

This approach might well help to relieve the difficulties in understanding the relation of the three persons in the unity of the divine essence if the unity of the ray of their common activity derives from the mutual relations of the persons. They thought that they could cogently meet the charge of tritheism in this way. But the unity of the divine activity could also be thought of as a collective unity od divine beings existing prior to the common activity if the thought of uniform activity was to be related to that of a trinity of divine persons. The common activity is not constitutive for the persons of their distinction. The idea of one divine activity could not offer any constitutive basis for distinctive persons. It does not rule out a collective cooperation of ontologically independent beings. Gregory and the Cappadocians had to reflect on the relations between the persons as far as these are constitutive for their distinction and autonomy.[40]

As I have noted, Gregory stresses the Infinite in a way that distinguishes him from others. “we, believing the Divine nature to be unlimited and incomprehensible, conceive no comprehension of it, but declare that the nature is to be conceived in all respects as infinite: and that which is absolutely infinite is not limited in one respect while it is left unlimited in another, but infinity is free from limitation altogether. That therefore which is without limit is surely not limited even by name. In order then to mark the constancy of our conception of infinity in the case of the Divine nature, we say that the Deity is above every name: and Godhead is a name. Now it cannot be that the same thing should at once be a name and be accounted as above every name.”

            We now turn to Address on Religious Instruction. In Chapters 5-6, he stresses the reasonable quality of Incarnation. “If the entire world was created by this second Divine hypostasis, then certainly was man also thus created; yet not in view of any necessity, but from superabounding love, that there might exist a being who should participate in the Divine perfections. If man was to be receptive of these, it was necessary that his nature should contain an element akin to God; and that he should be immortal. Thus, then, man was created in the image of God. He could not therefore be without the gifts of freedom, independence, self-determination; and his participation in the Divine gifts was consequently made dependent on his virtue. Owing to this freedom he could decide in favor of evil, which cannot have its origin in the Divine will, but only in our inner selves, where it arises in the form of a deviation from good, and so a privation of it.” In Chapter 24, he said the transcendent power of God is shown in his condescension to our weak nature, rather than displayed in the vastness of the heavens or the luster of the stars or the orderly arrangement of the universe or perpetual oversight of it. In Chapter 26, said God defeated the devil by deceitfully outwitting him the devil, seizing on the bait of Christ’s human nature as it is with greedy fish and swallowed the fishhook of his divinity, and thus was destroyed. Later, Anselm would say that such images violated the proper dignity of God.[41]

            He wrote a letter to Eusebius. “He appears in flesh to us, Who holds the Universe in His grasp, and controls the same Universe by His own power, Who cannot be contained even by all intelligible things, but includes the whole, even at the time that He enters the narrow dwelling of a fleshly tabernacle, while His mighty power thus keeps pace with His beneficent purpose, and shows itself even as a shadow wherever the will inclines, so that neither in the creation of the world was the power found weaker than the will, nor when He was eager to stoop down to the lowliness of our mortal nature did He lack power to that very end, but actually did come to be in that condition, yet without leaving the universe unpiloted?

The logical consequence of Christ’s deification is the apokatastasis–the restoration of humanity to its unfallen state. Because evil is a privation of the good and is therefore limited, Gregory believes that there is a limit to human degradation. At some point, everyone must turn around and strive for the good. Besides, the ultimate good, which is God, is infinitely attractive. Thus, Gregory endorses Origen’s (First Principles I 6.3, II 10.4 – 10.8, III 6.5 – 6.6) much-maligned theories of remedial punishment and universal salvation (Great Catechism 8 [36 – 37], 26 [69], 35 [92]; Making of Man 21 – 22 [201 – 205]; Soul and Resurrection [97 – 105, 152, 157 – 160]). In other words, for Gregory as for his intellectual ancestor Origen, everyone–even Satan himself (Great Catechism 26 [68 – 69])–will eventually be saved. This means that there is no such thing as eternal damnation. Hell is purgatory; punishment is temporary and remedial. As Gregory puts it in a colorful metaphor, the process of purgation is like drawing a rope encrusted with dried mud through a small aperture: it is hard on the rope, but it does come out clean on the other side (Soul and Resurrection [100]). [42]

Because he was committed to the idea that humans have a unique value that demands respect, Gregory was an early and vocal opponent of slavery and also of poverty. Against the former Gregory marshals three arguments (Ecclesiastes IV [665]): (1) Only God has the right to enslave humans, and God does not choose to do so; indeed, it was God who gave human beings their free wills. (2) How dare a person take that precious entity–the only part of the created order to have been made in God’s image–and enslave it! (3) As humans who were created in the divine image, all people are radically equal; therefore, it is hubristic for some to arrogate to themselves absolute authority over others. Against the latter, he appeals, once again, to the “dignity of royalty” theme–that poverty is inconsistent with the rulership bestowed on humankind at its creation (On Compassion for the Poor [477]). Both slavery and poverty sully the dignity of human beings by degrading them to a station below the purple to which they were rightfully born; and although we may congratulate ourselves on having outlawed slavery, it is important to remember that for Gregory poverty is no different.[43]

 

 

 

My trinitarian statement

Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and John of Damascus were among those who urged church councils to adopt a set of beliefs regarding God, Christology, and the Holy Spirit. They would present their beliefs in concise, summary form. I thought I would put my mind to the same task. 

Christian theology builds upon the ambiguous human experience of the divine, the sense that our finite and temporal lives connect to something much larger, and we are accountable for the lives we lead.

The Trinity is the way Christians identify God. This doctrine seeks a glimpse into the inner life of God, even though God is beyond our comprehension. God is infinite and eternal, meaning that God is present in every place and in every moment, giving God intimate knowledge of every place and every moment. The infinite and eternal essence of God means that the energy, grace, and presence of God is a reality for every finite and temporal thing. The mark of deity is endless futurity. The divine essence keeps things moving forward to an open future in a way that transcends past conditions and remains open to newness. The essence (οὐσία) of God is energy and movement. The Father has always generated the Son and the life-giving gift of the Spirit has always proceeded from the Father. Therefore, the inner life of God always included humanity and the finite and temporal world from which humanity would emerge. The Father was always moving outward toward all that the Son and Spirit embrace about our world. The three as ὑ πόστασις have always self-distinguished themselves from each other, recognizing that in distinguishing oneself from another defines oneself as also dependent upon that other. The essence of God is the loving embrace of this mutual relationship and dependence upon each other. The Father, through the Son and Spirit, has brought finitude, temporality, and therefore suffering, into the inner life of God, having done so eternally. 

What Christians say about the essence of God has its basis in revelation witnessed to in scripture. The event of the Jewish teacher and prophet Jesus of Nazareth is the heart of this revelation. What some would say is impossible, the humbling of divinity to embrace a human being in his finitude, temporality, suffering, and death, Christianity proclaims as good news for the world. Raised by Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph, raised in the humble setting of Nazareth and distant from Jewish political and religious authority in Jerusalem and Roman political and economic authority in Rome, he received baptism by John the Baptist, taught using the humble form of parable and aphorism rather than the exalted form of learned discourse, and performed healings and exorcisms. Jesus lived a Spirit-filled life and ministry, led a life faithful to the Shema of Israel and the Jewish people, faithful to a loving embrace of the neighbor, and faithful to the proclamation to the rule of God. The Son or Word of the Father, in this event that embraces finitude, temporality, suffering, and death, is revealing what it is to be God and determines the nature of divine infinity and eternity. Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnation of the Son. As the Triune God is a communion within divine life, so is the life of Jesus an intimate communion of the divine and human. While differing in gender, race, and economic settings, what makes us human transcends such differences, making the incarnation of the Son of saving significance for all persons. The oneness of the divine essence has a parallel in the oneness of human essence. The self-actualizing of divine life within the relations of the trinity has a parallel in the actualization of a human life in relation to others. Despite sin and suffering in this world, the Father lovingly embraces this world and finds it worthy of reconciliation and redemption. The event of incarnation discloses the enslavement of humanity by sin. The cross reveals the extent of the love of God for humanity, bringing forgiveness of sin. He endured the suffering and shame of the cross in his death for others and for their sin, but also received the gift of life through the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. 

Those who turn toward this event live their lives in Christ and Christ lives in them, through the life-giving influence of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit gathers a people called the church who place their faith in the truth of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, thereby experiencing justification with God, builds them up in love toward God and their neighbor, thereby experiencing sanctification through the Spirit, and enlivens them to a life of hope, thereby living with a meaningful vocation. They can live in reconciliation with God and with their world. They honor the disciples and other saints, leaders, and teachers of the church throughout its history. The focus of this life is no longer inner-directed but directed outward, under the influence of the Spirit, toward faithfully embodying the truth of the event of revelation through prayer and meditation upon the biblical witness, especially in love toward God and neighbor, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the vice-virtue lists in the New Testament, and leading a faithful, loving, and hope-filled life. In this way, embracing the truth expressed in the doctrine of the trinity by faith will not be an abstraction, but engages those who believe it in an ongoing process of transforming love through the Spirit and into the image of the Son. One becomes part of a community united with Christ in his baptism, a symbol of moral cleansing, and in the Supper over which he presides, in communion with Christ and with fellow believers. One can then live with a future that includes the hope of personal and cosmic redemption, in which finitude and temporality will find their completion in the loving embrace of the trinitarian relation.

---

[1] Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol I, 85.

[2] Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol II, 142-3.

[3] Tillich Systematic Theology, vol III, 88-90

[4] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol I, 332-3.

[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol I, 313

[6] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, p. 416.

[7] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, p. 133.

[8] John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, 234. 

[9] John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, 244, 246-7

[10] Pannenberg, vol II, 209)

[11] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, 614.

[12] Gordon Kaufmann, Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective, 181.

[13] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, 214.

[14] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, 219

[15] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol 3, 197

[16] Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol I, 102-3.

[17] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol I, 284.

[18] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, volume I, 272-3

[19] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, V 1, 278.

[20] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 448.

[21] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 126.

[22] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol I, 322.

[23] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 341.

[24] Jensen, Systematic Theology, vol I, 108.

[25] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol I, 332-3.

[26] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol I, 384-5.

[27] Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 185.

[28] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol I, 279-80.

[29] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol I, 274.

[30] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol I 278.

[31] Donald L. Ross, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/

[32] – Jenson, Systematic Theology, 212.

[33] Jenson, Systematic Theology, Vol I.

[34] See 3/10:36 and 1:666-672. See Jenson, Systematic Theology, 214-6.

[35] Donald L. Ross, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/

[36] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol I, 278, See C. Eun 2.149  

[37] Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol I, 2:102 See 2:69-70.

[38] Donald L. Ross, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/

[39] Donald L. Ross, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/

[40] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology vol I, 278,

[41] Kaufmann, A Historicist Theology, 395.

[42] Donald L. Ross, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/

[43] Donald L. Ross, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/