Monarchianism and Origen's Early Trinitarian Theology – a dissertation by Stephen Edward Waers (Part 3)

Part 3 of this series examines chapters 4 and 5 of Waers dissertation. Chapter 4 delves into, “[t]he interplay between the monarchian controversy and the development of Origen’s thought” (p. 216). Waers has made a, “conscious decision to read Origen with his contemporaries rather than with his heirs in the Nicene debates” (p. 216), and his analysis focuses, “almost exclusively on ComJn 1-2, books which Origen composed during the height of the monarchian controversy” (p. 216). Waers offers the following reasons for his emphasis on Orgien’s ComJn 1-2:

The fact that these books are extant in a mostly complete Greek text, untouched by the editorial hand of Rufinus, makes them particularly valuable for reconstructing Origen’s thought. Further motivating my choice to use these two books is the fact that I accept an early dating for their composition, beginning around 217 C. E. This dating means that these two books were composed in the middle of the monarchian controversy, with Contra Noetum (ca. 200-210) and Adversus Praxean (ca. 213) antedating them and the Refutatio (ca. 225-235) and De Trinitate (ca. 240-250) postdating them. This dating of the text, coupled with Origen’s probable contact with monarchianism during his trip to Rome, suggests that the anti-monarchian polemical context is important for interpreting works he composed while still in Alexandria. (p. 217)

Pages 219-228 provide important historical context for Origen’s ComJn, which includes the fact that Origen composed ComJn, “at the request of his patron Ambrose”* (p.225).

Pages 228-241 concerns “Monarchianism and Book 1 of the Commentary on John.” Waers in this section points out that Origen clearly has certain aspects of modalistic monarchianism in mind, placing an emphasis on the real existence of the Logos, who is God’s Son; and that this Logos/Son is distinct from the Father—both of these aspects being denied by the modalistic monarchians. I particularly found the following of interest:

In both ComJn and De Prin., Origen interprets ἀρχή in John 1:1 as a reference to the ἀρχή in Proverbs 8:22ff, where Wisdom is said to have been with God before creation. By means of Pr. 8:22, which itself echoes the opening words of Genesis in the LXX, Origen explicitly links Wisdom with demiurgic functions, even claiming that Wisdom contains within herself all of the forms of what would be created. In De Prin., he asks if any pious person could consider the Father to have ever existed without Wisdom by his side. Later in book one of ComJn, Origen stresses that the Wisdom of God “is above all creation” (τὴν ὑπἐρ πᾶσαν κτίσιν σοφίαν τοῦ θεοῦ). Thus, not only has Origen argued that Wisdom is not something insubstantial, he has also argued that Wisdom has been alongside of, and distinct from, the Father from the beginning, that the Father has never been without Wisdom. (Page 238)

Chapter 5 begins on page 242, and is my personal favorite. The title—Origen the subordinationist; subordination as a means of distinguishing the Father and the Son—sets the tone for the entire chapter. Note the following:

In this chapter, I demonstrate that the intentional subordination of the Son was a common strategy that anti-monarchian writers used to distinguish the Father and Son during the first half of the third century. By situating their terms for distinction within a subordinationist framework, they were able to clarify how the Father and Son were not “one and the same.” The term subordination is often used by scholars with the negative evaluative judgment that whatever is deemed subordinationist was a failure to live up to the standards of Nicaea. I reject this usage as anachronistic when discussing third-century texts and authors and argue, to the contrary, that the subordinationist schemata employed by the authors considered in this chapter were intentionally used to distinguish the Father and Son. Although subordinationism comes to be viewed as heretical in the post-Nicene period, it was an accepted anti-monarchian strategy among some prominent early third-century authors. (Pages 243, 244)

Now, given the fact that scholars use the term “subordination" in more that one sense—e.g. economic, functional, heirarchical, ontological, positional, relational—Waers, in pages 16-25, cogently delves into the issue of subordination. After relating how a number of other scholars have used the term with reference to the Church Fathers of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, Waers writes:

In order to avoid over-generalizing, I work with a definition of subordinationism created from examples in the three main texts I consider in the final chapter: Tertullian’s Adversus Praxean, Novatian’s De Trinitate, and Origen’s ComJn. As I observe when reading these three texts, the subordination of the Son to the Father is not a uniform phenomenon in the early third century. Thus, perhaps my definition will add nuance to the ways we speak of subordination. In the texts I survey, subordination often occurs when the authors speak of the relationship between a cause/source and its effect (in our case, the Father and Son). When authors are dealing with a cause and effect, the effect either lacks something present in the cause or possesses it less fully. (Pages 21, 22)

He then provides the following definition:

The Son is less than the Father and distinguished from him because he has an origin. For both Tertullian and Novatian, the reception or derivation of something from a source necessarily implies that the recipient is less than the source. Novatian is explicit about this and states multiple times that the Son is less than (minor) the Father. This is what I mean by subordination. (Page 23)

Before he examines Origen’s subordinistic/anti-monarchian passages (pages 263-299), he takes a look at what Tertullian and Novatian had to say on this issue (pages 245–263).

Towards the end of his section on Origen, Waers boldly states:

His participation in the divinity of the Father necessarily entails him receiving or drawing it from the Father into himself. Only one is αὐτόθεος, and it is not the Son. (Page 291)

He then presents a number of passages from Origen wherein he subordinates the Son to the Father, and then writes:

Because divinity is received by the Son from a source outside of himself, argues Origen, he would cease to be God if he stopped being with the only true God, who is the Father. (Pages 293)

He ends chapter 5 with the following:

Origen, like Tertullian and Novatian, argued that the derivative or received nature of the Son’s divinity distinguished him from the Father, who alone properly and fully possessed divinity. With regard to divinity, the Son was downstream from the Father, the source from whom he drew it into himself. (Page 299)

Chapter 5 is followed by the Conclusion (pages 300-304). I shall let interested folk read it for themselves…

Grace and peace,

David

*Concerning this Ambrose, Eusebuis wrote:

ABOUT this time Ambrose, who held the heresy of Valtentinus, was convinced by Origen’s presentation of the truth, and, as if his mind were illumined by light, he accepted the ordodox doctrine of the Church. (HE, VI.18 – NPNF, Series 2, 2.264.)

From Jerome we read:

AMBROSE, at first a following of Marcion, and then converted by Origen, became a deacon of the the church and attained great fame through his profession of faith in the Lord. (On Illustrious Men, LVI – FC, volume 100.83.)

And:

…Ambrose, who, as we have said, was converted from the Marcionite heresy to the true faith, exhorted Origen to write commentaries on the Scriptures, providing him with more than seven secretaries, paying their expenses, and an equal number of copyists, and, more important than this, demanding work from him daily with incredible importunity. For this reason, in one of his letters. Origen calls him ἐργόδιώτην, a task master. (Ibid. 100.88.)

Is Jesus Christ autotheos?

Is Jesus Christ autotheos (αὐτόθεος)? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. Like many other theological terms, autotheos can be—and has been—used in more than one sense. Personally speaking, I first became aware of the term via B. B. Warfield’s reflections on John Calvin’s controversial elucidations on the doctrine of the Trinity.

Back in the fall of 2015 I published a three-part series—part 1; part 2, part 3—that delved into John Calvin's novel concepts concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, which included the denial of the communication/generation of the Son of God’s essence/substance from God the Father. To defend this view, Calvin placed a heavy emphasis on the aseity of the Son—i.e. that the Son is autotheos. An excellent introduction concerning this aspect of Calvin’s Trinitarian thought has been provided by Brannon Ellis, who wrote:

…the heart of Calvin’s approach [concerning the doctrine of the Trinity] was exactly what his traditionalist opponents also embraced. Calvin and his classical critics were in agreement against all forms of antitrinitarianism, regarding the principal role of the affirmation of both ways of speaking of God through careful distinction. They did not agree, however, on the extent to which this shared conviction should be pressed when it came to one of the central claims of Calvin’s position—one that drew explicit attention to the nexus between Unity and Trinity, between the divine processions and the consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Spirit. A constant element in all Calvin’s controversies was his assertion of the aseity (or self-existence) of God the Son, and denial of the legitimacy of this language by all his opponents—both orthodox and heterdodox.

Against antitrinitarians who more or less conflated personal and essential language, making the Son other than the one true God the Father or else indistinguishable from the Father in God, Calvin argued along with classical tradition, that, though the Son is not who the Father is, he is all that which the Father is. But, against some Trinitarians uncomfortable with his strong claim that the Son exists in and of himself, Calvin asserted in a similar manner that we must be able to say everything of the only-begotten Son that we say of the Father with respect to essence. The Son is therefore rightly confessed to be essentially self-existent, possessing deity ‘of himself’ (a se) as the one true God together with the Father and the Spirit.

Calvin’s affirmations along these lines, explicitly employing what I call autothean language, arose in 1588 in response to Valentine Gentile’s exclusive attribution of underived deity to the Father. The adjective autothean was first applied to Calvin’s views by a Roman Catholic polemicist shortly after Calvin’s death. It derives from his appropriation of Gentile’s language in order to claim against Gentile that the Son together with the Father possesses αὐτοθεὸτης (divine aseity), and therefore is αὐτοθεὸς (‘God of himself’, self-existent God). Again, however, Calvin had employed synonymous language—drawing similar criticism—from the beginning of his career. (Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son, p. 2)

Calvin was not the first individual to apply autothean language to the Son. However, he was the first to use autothean language in a sense that eliminated the communication/generation of the Son’s essence from the Father; a sense that evoked the "denial of the legitimacy of this language by all his opponents—both orthodox and heterdodox." It is a sense that stands in contrast with the original Nicene Creed, which states:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things seen and unseen.  And in one Lord, Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father…

One of the most proficient defenders of the Nicene Creed was the Anglican priest/theologian George Bull. In volume 2 of his Defensio Fidei Nicænæ - A Defence of the Nicene Creed, he specifically addressed the application of αὐτόθεος to the Son. His introduction to chapter 1 of Book IV is reproduced below:

THE FIRST PROPOSITION TOUCHING THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SON TO THE FATHER AS TO HIS ORIGIN AND PRINCIPLE, STATED. THIS IS ALSO CONFIRMED BY THE UNANIMOUS CONSENT OF THE ANCIENTS. IT IS SHEWN, THAT THAT EXPRESSION OF CERTAIN MODERN WRITERS, BY WHICH THEY DESIGNATE THE SON, αὐτόθεος, THAT IS, OF HIMSELF GOD, IS QUITE REPUGNANT TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE NICENE COUNCIL ITSELF, AND ALSO TO THAT OF ALL THE CATHOLIC DOCTORS, BOTH THOSE WHO WROTE BEFORE, AND THOSE WHO WROTE AFTER, THAT COUNCIL  (1852 Oxford ed., p. 556 – link to PDF)

He then writes:

...the Son has indeed the same divine nature in common with the Father, but communicated by the Father; in such sense, that is, that the Father alone hath the divine nature from Himself, in other words, from no other, but the Son from  the Father; consequently that the Father is the fountain, origin, and principle, of the Divinity which is in the Son. (Ibid. p. 557)

Bull immediately follows the above with numerous quotations from the Church Fathers that clearly support his ‘FIRST PROPOSITION’. In paragraph #7 on page 565 he begins his examination “of certain moderns, who obstinately contend that the Son may properly be called αὐτόθεος, i.e God of Himself.” He then writes:

This view is inconsistent both with the hypotheses of those who maintain it, and with catholic consent. They say,  I mean, that the Son is from God the Father, as He is Son, and not as He is God; that He received His Person, not His essence, or Divine Nature, from the Father. But this is self contradictory; for, as Petavius rightly says, "The Son of God cannot be begotten by the Father, unless He receive from Him His nature and Godhead." For what else is it ' to be begotten,' than to be sprung from another, so as to have a like nature ? he who is begotten must necessarily have [his] nature in such wise communicated by him [who begets,] as in it to be like him who begets [him.] Unless indeed Christ, in that He is the Son of God, is not God; or receives a relation only from the Father without [receiving] Godhead. I add, that in this case Person cannot be conceived of without essence, unless you lay down Person in the Godhead to be nothing else than a mere mode of existence, which is simple Sabellianism. (Ibid. p. 565)

On the next page, he cogently sums up his argument against those who maintain that the Son is ‘God of Himself’:

...if essence is communicated to the Son by generation, He plainly has His essence from the Father, not from Himself; otherwise either He would not be begotten, or He would not be begotten by another. Hence Damascene, on the Orthodox Faith, i. 10, rightly observes, "All things which the Son and the Spirit severally have, They have of the Father, even being itself." And in what way this opinion of theirs is repugnant to catholic consent, I have shewn a little before. The council of Nice itself certainly decreed that the Son is God of God; He, however, who is God of God, cannot, without manifest contradiction, be said to be God of Himself. (Ibid. p. 566- bold emphasis mine.)

In the last paragraph of chapter 1 (#10), Bull acknowledges a sense in which αὐτόθεος can legitimately be applied to the Son; note the following:

...no Catholic would deny that the Son both may and ought to be called αὐτόθεος, that is to say, true and veriest God. Hence, even Eusebius, who (if any one) acknowledged the subordination of the Son to the Father, as to His origin and principle, yet still did not hesitate to declare, that the Saviour is "worshipped, and rightly worshipped, as the genuine Son of the supreme God, and αὐτόθεος (very God)." Where by the word αὐτόθεος, is clearly meant, not one who is God of Himself, but one who is truly God; as may be gathered both from the fact that it is the Son of God, who is here called αὐτόθεος, as well as from the fact that in the same breath the Father is designated the supreme God; (Ibid. p. 569)

It is now time to answer the opening question of this post: Is Jesus Christ autotheos (αὐτόθεος)? If one defines αὐτόθεος as ‘God of Himself’, then NO; but, if one defines αὐτόθεος as ‘very God’ (i.e. God of God/God from God), then YES.

Grace and peace,

David

P.S. This post was prompted by this comment posted on March 13, 2021.

Augustine - on God the Father as 'the principle without principle'

Back on 10 July 2016, I published one of my personal, favorite posts:

Augustine - on causality of the Son from the Father and the monarchy of God the Father

In that post I provided a number of examples which prove beyond any doubt that Augustine clearly taught the Son owes his existence to God the Father.

Today, I am publishing yet one more example of causality from Augustine; note the following:

We can ask whether we should understand the words "In the beginning God made heaven and earth" only in accord with history, or whether they also signify something in figures, and how they conform to the gospel and for what reason this book begins in this way. According to history one asks whether "In the beginning" means in the beginning of time in the principle, in the very Wisdom of God. For the Son of God said that he was the principle. When he was asked, "Who are you?" he said, "The principle; that is why I am speaking to you." For there is a principle without principle, and there is a principal along with another principal. The principle without principle is the Father alone, and thus we believe that all things are from one principle. But the Son is a principle in such a way that he is from the Father. (Augustine, On the Literal Translation of Genesis, in  Fathers of the Church, vol. 84, p. 148 - bold emphasis mine.)

The maxim that 'the principle without principle is the Father alone', employed by Augustine, became an important component of Catholic dogma, being adopted by Church councils, and theologians (most notably, Thomas Aquinas). Directly related to this dictum is the monarchy of God the Father, as well as the often neglected  teaching that it is the Father alone who is autotheos.

Hope to have more on 'the principle without principle is the Father alone', in the near future (the Lord willing).

Grace and peace,

David

John Calvin on the Trinity: "an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity" ??? - part three

In part one and part two of this series we examined two polar opposites as to whether or not Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity constituted, "an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity." In this post, we will examine the claim that Calvin's Trinitarianism is essentially the same as that of the 4th Lateran Council.

The Reformed apologist, Steven Wedgeworth, in his "Is There a Calvinist Doctrine of the Trinity?" (link), wrote:

When one turns to the text of the Fourth Lateran Council, the similarity with Calvin becomes immediately apparent.

Wedgeworth goes on to provide quotations from the 4th Lateran Council, and then focuses on doctrinal points Catholics and Calvinists hold in common. But, and this importantly, he virtually ignores a portion from the 4th Lateran Council (even though he quotes it) that a number of Reformed folk clearly deny—maintaining that Calvin denied it too—the teaching that, the Father, in begetting the Son from eternity, gave him his substance. From the Constitutions of the 4th Lateran Council we read:

We, however, with the approval of this sacred and universal council, believe and confess with Peter Lombard that there exists a certain supreme reality, incomprehensible and ineffable, which truly is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, the three persons together and each one of them separately. Therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that reality — that is to say substance, essence or divine nature-which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found. This reality neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds; the Father begets, the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds. Thus there is a distinction of persons but a unity of nature. Although therefore the Father is one person, the Son another person and the holy Spirit another person, they are not different realities, but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit, altogether the same; thus according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial. For the Father, in begetting the Son from eternity, gave him his substance, as he himself testifies : What the Father gave me is greater than all. It cannot be said that the Father gave him part of his substance and kept part for himself since the Father's substance is indivisible, inasmuch as it is altogether simple. Nor can it be said that the Father transferred his substance to the Son, in the act of begetting, as if he gave it to the Son in such a way that he did not retain it for himself; for otherwise he would have ceased to be substance. It is therefore clear that in being begotten the Son received the Father's substance without it being diminished in any way, and thus the Father and the Son have the same substance. Thus the Father and the Son and also the Holy Spirit proceeding from both are the same reality. (4th Lateran Council - LINK - bold emphasis mine.)

[NOTE: This doctrine that the Son receives His divine essence from the Father is known as communicatio essentiae—i.e. communication of essence.]

In order for one to make that claim that Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity is essentially the same as the Trinitarianism defined at the 4th Lateran Council, one must demonstrate that Calvin clearly taught that, "the Father, in begetting the Son from eternity, gave him his substance". This means that the Son receives not only His personhood from the Father, but also His Godhood/divine essence. This particular portion from the 4th Lateran Council is a reaffirmation of the same teaching found in numerous Church Fathers, and importantly, in the Nicene Creed. The beginning of original the NC of 325 reads as follows:

We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten begotten from the Father, that is from the substance [Gr. ousias, Lat. substantia] of the Father... (LINK)

Though some Reformed folk (e.g. Benjamin W. Swinburnson, Steven Wedgeworth) believe that Calvin affirmed the 4th Lateran Council teaching that, "the Father, in begetting the Son from eternity, gave him his substance" (i.e. communicatio essentiae), Warfield is convinced that he did not. Note the following:

The principle of his doctrine of the Trinity was not the conception he formed of the relation of the Son to the Father and of the Spirit to the Father and Son, expressed respectively by the two terms "generation" and "procession": but the force of his conviction of the absolute equality of the Persons. The point of view which adjusted everything to the conception of " generation " and " procession " as worked out by the Nicene Fathers was entirely alien to him. The conception itself he found difficult, if not unthinkable; and although he admitted the facts of " generation " and " procession," he treated them as bare facts, and refused to make them constitutive of the doctrine of the Trinity. He rather adjusted everything to the absolute divinity of each Person, their community in the one only true Deity; and to this we cannot doubt that he was ready not only to subordinate, but even to sacrifice, if need be, the entire body of Nicene speculations. Moreover, it would seem at least very doubtful if Calvin, while he retained the conception of "generation" and "procession," strongly asserting that the Father is the principium divinitatis, that the Son was "begotten" by Him before all ages and that the Spirit "proceeded" from the Father and Son before time began, thought of this begetting and procession as involving any communication of essence. (B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity”, in Calvin and Calvinism, volume V of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield – Baker Book House, 1981 reprint, pages 257, 258 -bold emphasis mine.)

Now, it is quite interesting that though most Catholic apologists of Calvin's day were as convinced as Warfield that Calvin did not teach "any communication of essence" from the Father to the Son, there was one who believed that he did, and that man was none other than the esteemed Robert Bellermine. Warfield takes Bellermine to task in the following selection:

The evidence on which Bellarmine relies for his view that Calvin taught a communication of essence from Father to Son is certainly somewhat slender. If we put to one side Bellarmine's inability to conceive that Calvin could really believe in a true generation of the Son by the Father without holding that the Son receives His essence from the Father, and his natural presumption that Calvin's associates and pupils accurately reproduced the teaching of their master - for there is no doubt that Beza and Simler, for example, understood by generation a communication of essence - the evidence which Bellarmine relies on reduces to a single passage in the "Institutes" (I. xiii. 23). Calvin there, arguing with Gentilis, opposes to the notion that the Father and Son differ in essence, the declaration that the Father "shares" the essence together with the Son, so that it is common, tota et in solidum, to the Father and the Son. It may be possible to take the verb "communicate" here in the sense of "impart" rather than in that of "have in common," but it certainly is not necessary and it seems scarcely natural; and there is little elsewhere in Calvin's discussion to require it of us. Petavius points out that the sentence is repeated in the tract against Gentilis - but that carries us but a little way. It is quite true that there is nothing absolutely clear to be found to the opposite effect either. But there are several passages which may be thought to suggest a denial that the Son derives His essence from the Father. Precisely what is meant, for example, when we are told that the Son "contains in Himself the simple and indivisible essence of God in integral perfection, not portione aut deflexu," is no doubt not clear: but by deflexu it seems possible that Calvin meant to deny that the Son possessed the divine essence by impartation from another (I. xiii. 2). It is perhaps equally questionable what weight should be placed on the form of the statement (§ 20) that the order among the Persons by which the principium and origo is in the Father, is produced (fero) by the "proprieties"; or on the suggestion that the more exact way of speaking of the Son is to call Him "the Son of the Person" (§ 23) - the Father being meant - the term God in the phrase "Son of God" requiring to be taken of the Person of the Father. When it is argued that "whoever asserts that the Son is essentiated by the Father denies that He is selfexistent" (§ 23), and "makes His divinity a something abstracted from the essence of God, or a derivation of a part from the whole," the reference to Gentilis' peculiar views of the essentiation of the Son by the Father, i.e., His creation by the Father, seems to preclude a confident use of the phrase in the present connection. Nor does the exposition of the unbegottenness of the essence of the Son and Spirit as well as of the Father, so that it is only as respects His Person that the Son is of the Father (§ 25) lend itself any more certainly to our use. A survey of the material in the "Institutes" leads to the impression thus that there is singularly little to bring us to a confident decision whether Calvin conceived the essence of God to be communicated from the Father to the Son in "generation" and from the Father and Son to the Spirit in "procession." And outside the "Institutes" the same ambiguity seems to follow us. If we read that Christ has "the fulness of the Godhead" of Himself (Opp. xi. 560), we read equally that the Fathers taught that the Son is "of the Father even with respect to His eternal essence" (vii. 322), and is of the substance of the Father (vii. 324). In this state of the case opinions may lawfully differ. But on the whole we are inclined to think that Calvin, although perhaps not always speaking perfectly consistently, seeks to avoid speaking of generation and procession as importing the communication of the Divine essence; so that Petavius appears to be right in contending that Calvin meant what he says when he represents the Son as "having from Himself both divinity and essence" (I. xiii. 19). (B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity”, in Calvin and Calvinism, volume V of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield – Baker Book House, 1981 reprint, pages 258-260 - bold emphasis mine.)

I believe that Warfield's understanding of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity is the correct one. Not only does his view make sense of the negative historical reactions to Calvin's views, but it also lends more consistency to Calvin's overall reflections on the Trinity. Though Calvin certainly maintained a number of common points with other Trinitarians within the Augustinian trajectory of Trinitarian thought, I believe that he introduced a theological novum in denying that the Son receives His Godhood/divine essence from the Father. This denial when coupled with his strict teaching that the Son is autotheos, gives considerable weight to Warfield's claim that, Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, "marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity".

However, with that said, I depart from Warfield on the nature of this so-called "epoch"; Warfield believes that it constituted a positive theological development, I do not, but rather, maintain that it is a negative development, and as such, it should be rejected.

Grace and peace,

David

John Calvin on the Trinity: "an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity" ??? - part two

In my last thread, I provided quotes from five Reformed theologians who affirmed (to one degree or another) that Calvin's elucidations on the doctrine of Trinity marked, "an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity" (link). In this post, I provide two Reformed contributions which present a substantially different view, a view that basically conforms to the notion that Calvin's take on the Trinity, "carefully avoided anything that could have been considered an innovation". Those who adopt this view, have a difficult task before them, and I say this for three important reasons: first, from a strictly historical perspective, the extant evidence presents considerable opposition to such a view. Brannon Ellis has provided an excellent summary of the early historical responses to Calvin's reflections:

In the years after Calvin's death his autothean stance garnered sustained criticism, not only from antitrinitarians, but from the great majority of quite orthodox fellow trinitarians as well. Controversy over his views spread to include Roman Catholics from the 1560s and Lutherans from the 1590s. After the turn of the seventeenth century, Arminius and his Remonstrant successors joined the general opposition to this language...Each of these trajectories rejected Calvin's advocacy of the aseity of the Son, remaining in polemic with the Reformed who universally took it up. (Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son, p. 3.)

Second, even though the early Reformed camp, "universally" embraced Calvin's teaching on, "the aseity of the Son", they were divided into two opposing positions concerning the doctrine of eternal generation, with one of the two clearly being a novel development—i.e. those who taught that that God the Father did not communicate the divine essence to the Son via eternal generation.

Third, Warfield's exhaustive treatment on Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity presents substantial evidence that his read on Calvin's thought is the correct one—that Calvin added something important to the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity—and that it, constituted "an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity." (It is important to keep in mind that it is a separate issue whether or not this "epoch" was a positive or negative development.)

Adherents of the position that Calvin's take on the doctrine of the Trinity did not entail any real innovation/s, begin with the presupposition that those who oppose their view have grossly misunderstood what Calvin himself taught. This is the only recourse they have when the early historical opposition to Calvin's position is brought into play; they maintain that the Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant Trinitarians had incorrectly read Calvin—i.e. they all got it wrong.

This supposed incorrect reading of Calvin apparently has also been a major problem among "several" Reformed folk, for one fairly recent (2012) proponent of non-innovation view, has published an online critique of three "modern" Reformed theologians (Robert Reymond, Gerald Bray and Roger Beckwith) who:

...have claimed that the Calvinistic or Reformed doctrine of the Trinity represents a distinctive break with, and perhaps an advancement of, the Nicene tradition. They assert that Calvin’s attribution of the term autotheos to the eternal Son, as well as his statements about the “unbegotten” essence of God, represent a correction to implicit subordinationism within the long-standing tradition. (Steven Wedgeworth, "Is There a Calvinist Doctrine of the Trinity?" - LINK.)

Wedgeworth continues with:

In this paper, we will investigate how these claims arise in the history of Reformed theology and respond by examining the context in which Calvin made his (now) controversial statements. We will argue that the recent thinkers who suggest that there is a distinctively Calvinistic doctrine of the trinity have misunderstood Calvin’s context, and thus wrongly assumed his theology to be creative on this point. We will thus contend that rather than creating a new theological construction, Calvin was instead working within an old Western tradition.

Later in the paper, Wedgeworth attempts to defend the views that not only was Calvin, "working within an old Western tradition", but also that Calvin's position was virtually identical to that of Peter Lombard and the 4th Lateran Council !!!

Though Wedgeworth's paper is certainly interesting, and worth reading, I believe that a number of his conclusions are problematic. (In part 3 of this ongoing series I will provide some reasons why I believe this to be so.)

Another online paper delves into the division between Reformed folk who believe that Calvin maintained a non-innovative, historical view of eternal generation and those who adamantly deny this—i.e. Calvin introduced a novel concept which advanced/corrected the historical understanding of eternal generation. Benjamin W. Swinburnson, sets the tone for his extensive essay with the following:

A central issue that arose from these 16th century polemics was the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God. What precisely were Calvin’s views on the subject? Did it represent a distinctive break with Patristic and Medieval orthodoxy? If so, what is the precise nature of Calvin’s distinctiveness?

Different answers have been given to these questions over the past four hundred years. Broadly speaking, two schools of interpretation have emerged. One school views Calvin’s teaching on eternal generation as being in substan­tial continuity with his Patristic and Medieval predecessors and Reformation successors, while the other tends to view him as making some kind of distinc­tive break with past interpretations of the doctrine—a break (it is argued) that was not always consistently implemented by his successors. Both schools of thought tend to agree that Calvin embraced a form of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, but they disagree as to how he defined it. Specifically, the main area of dispute concerns Calvin’s acceptance or rejection of the idea of communication of essence in eternal generation. ("John Calvin, Eternal Generation, and Communication of Essence: A Reexamination of His Views" - HTML version here; PDF here.)

Swinburnson endorses and defends the view that Calvin taught, "the idea of communication of essence in eternal generation", and maintains that Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity did not introduce any novel concepts. (Warfield embraced the opposite view, and I lean towards his assessment, but I remain somewhat open to the possibility Calvin had no explicit position on this issue.)

I shall conclude this post with a suggestion to those who are interested in this topic that they read both of the online papers I linked to above, as well as Warfield's substantive essay, which was linked to in the previous thread.

Part 3 coming soon...

Grace and peace,

David

John Calvin on the Trinity: "an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity" ??? - part one

Over the last few days, I have been reading the selections from Brannion Ellis' book, Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son, that have been provided online via Google preview (LINK). The book is an interesting one, in that it is attempting to defend a middle position between two contrasting views of Calvin's Trinitarian thought—i.e. between the view that Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, "marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity" [1]; and the stark, contrasting view that Calvin's Trinitarian thought, "carefully avoided anything that could have been considered an innovation" [2].  (Though Ellis is not the first person to present a mediating position between the two polarized views, his is certainly the most exhaustive.)

Ellis' book brought back to mind a definitive work penned by B. B. Warfield. It was way back in 1981, that I purchased the Baker Book House reprint edition of "The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield" (10 volumes). Shortly thereafter, I read volume 5, which contained the substantive essay, "Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity" (pages 189-284). [This essay was originally published in The Princeton Theological Review, 1909, and is available online HERE.] It was in this contribution by Warfield that I first came across the term αὐτόθεος (autotheos). Given the high regard that the Reformed community had for Warfield, I accepted the bulk of his assessments without any critical reflection, assessments which included the following:

Clearly Calvin's position did not seem a matter of course, when he first enunciated it. It roused opposition and created a party. But it did create a party: and that party was shortly the Reformed Churches, of which it became characteristic that they held and taught the self-existence of Christ as God and defended therefore the application to Him of the term αὐτόθεος; that is to say, in the doctrine of the Trinity they laid the stress upon the equality of the Persons sharing in the same essence, and thus set themselves with more or less absoluteness against all subordinationism in the explanation of the relations of the Persons to one another. When Calvin asserted, with the emphasis which he threw upon it, the self-existence of Christ, he unavoidably did three things. First and foremost, he declared the full and perfect deity of our Lord, in terms which could not be mistaken and could not be explained away. The term αὐτόθεος served the same purpose in this regard that the term ὁμοούσιος had served against the Arians and the term ὑπόστασις against the Sabellians. No minimizing conception of the deity of Christ could live in the face of the assertion of aseity or αὐτόθεότης of Him. This was Calvin's purpose in asserting aseity of Christ and it completely fulfilled itself in the event. In thus fulfilling itself, however, two further effects were unavoidably wrought by it. The inexpugnable opposition of subordinationists of all types was incurred: all who were for any reason or in any degree unable or unwilling to allow to Christ a deity in every respect equal to that of the Father were necessarily offended by the vindication to Him of the ultimate Divine quality of self-existence. And all those who, while prepared to allow true deity to Christ, yet were accustomed to think of the Trinitarian relations along the lines of the traditional Nicene orthodoxy, with its assertion of a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, at least in mode of subsistence, were thrown into more or less confusion of mind and compelled to resort to nice distinctions in order to reconcile the two apparently contradictory confessions of αὐτόθεότης and of θεός ἐκ θεοῦ of our Lord. It is not surprising, then, that the controversy roused by Caroli and carried on by Chaponneau and Courtois did not die out with their refutation; but prolonged itself through the years and has indeed come down even to our own day. Calvin's so-called innovation with regard to the Trinity has, in point of fact, been made the object of attack through three centuries, not only by Unitarians of all types, nor only by professed Subordinationists, but also by Athanasians, puzzled to adjust their confession of Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God" to the at least verbally contradictory assertion that in respect of His deity He is not of another but of Himself. (B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity”, in Calvin and Calvinism, volume V of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield – Baker Book House, 1981 reprint, pages 251, 252.)

And:

In his assertion of the αὐτόθεότης of the Son Calvin, then, was so far from supposing that he was enunciating a novelty that he was able to quote the Nicene Fathers themselves as asserting it " in so many words." And yet in his assertion of it he marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. Not that men had not before believed in the self-existence of the Son as He is God: but that the current modes of stating the doctrine of the Trinity left a door open for the entrance of defective modes of conceiving the deity of the Son, to close which there was needed some such sharp assertion of His absolute deity as was supplied by the assertion of His αὐτόθεότης. If we will glance over the history of the efforts of the Church to work out for itself an acceptable statement of the great mystery of the Trinity, we shall perceive that it is dominated from the beginning to the end by a single motive — to do full justice to the absolute deity of Christ. And we shall perceive that among the multitudes of great thinkers who under the pressure of this motive have labored upon the problem, and to whom the Church looks back with gratitude for great services, in the better formulation of the doctrine or the better commendation of it to the people, three names stand out in high relief, as marking epochs in the advance towards the end in view. These three names are those of Tertullian, Augustine and Calvin. It is into this narrow circle of elect spirits that Calvin enters by the contribution he made to the right understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. That contribution is summed up in his clear, firm and unwavering assertion of the αὐτόθεότης of the Son. By this assertion the ὁμοουσιότης of the Nicene Fathers at last came to its full right, and became in its fullest sense the hinge of the doctrine. (Ibid. pages 283, 284- bold emphasis mine.)

I subsequently began to notice that a number of other Reformed theologians embraced similar views; note the following:

Students of historical theology are acquainted with the furore which Calvin's insistence upon the self-existence of the Son as to his deity aroused at the time of the Reformation. Calvin was too much of a student of Scripture to be content to follow the lines of what had been regarded as Nicene orthodoxy on this particular issue. He was too jealous for the implications of the homousion clause of the Nicene creed to be willing to accede to the interpretation which the Nicene fathers, including Athanasius, placed upon another expression in the same creed, namely, 'very God of very God' (θεόν ἀληθινὸν ὲκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ). No doubt this expression is repeated by orthodox people without any thought of suggesting what the evidence derived from the writings of the Nicene Fathers would indicate the intent to have been. This evidence shows that the meaning intended is that the Son derived his deity from the Father and that the Son was not therefore αὐτόθεος. It was precisely this position that Calvin controverted with vigour. He maintained that as respects personal distinction the Son was of the Father but as respects deity he was self-existent (ex se ipso). Hence the indictments leveled against him. (John Murray, "Systematic Theology", Studies in Theology, volume 4 in the Collected Writings of John Murray, 1982, p. 8.)

Gerald Bray:

It therefore comes as something of a surprise to discover that the Protestant Reformers, in spite of their links with the Augustinian tradition, and notwithstanding Karl Barth's claim that he was walking in their footsteps, had a vision of God which was fundamentally different from anything which had gone before, or which has appeared since. The great issues of Reformation theology – justification by faith, election, assurance of salvation – can be properly understood only against the background of a trinitarian theology which gave these matters their peculiar importance and ensured that Protestantism, instead of becoming just another schism produced by revolt against abuses in the mediaeval church, developed instead into a new type of Christianity.

The radically different character of Protestantism, and especially Calvinism, has often be recognized by secular historians, but its theological origins have seldom been discerned. Partly this is because theology is a difficult and unpopular subject, which many scholars in other disciplines refuse to take seriously, preferring to treat theological statements as mythical conceptualizations of what are really socio-economic problems.

Partly too, it is the result of theologians' failure, or sheer inability, to perceive the uniqueness of what the Reformers taught about God. It is often assumed that the Reformers accepted their ancient inheritance without quarrel, and had nothing original to contribute to it. Many people assume that that Calvin's defense of the Trinity, for example, was intended mainly as a refutation of heretics like Servetus, and offers little that could be termed new.

Recent ecumenical discussions have tended to confirm this impression. Today both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians are inclined to stress the superficial causes of the Reformation, like the abuse of clerical power, and play down the underlying theological differences...The great pillars of Reformation doctrine are not Scholastic shibboleths perpetuating an artificial divide in Western Christendom, but claims about the being of God which are of such vital importance that those who rejected them felt that they were no longer in spiritual fellowship with people who insisted on making them the heart of their religion.

Far from being more or less the same as its Catholic counterpart, Reformation theology is distinguished from it by a number of characteristics, of which the following are the most significant. First, the Reformers believed that the essence of God is of secondary importance in Christian theology. (Gerald Bray, The Doctrine of God, 1993, pp. 197, 198 - bold emphasis mine.)

In the next two paragraphs, Bray provides his support for the above 'characteristic', and then moves on to the second:

The second point which distinguishes the theology of the Reformers is their belief that the persons of the Trinity are equal to one another in every respect. (Ibid. p. 200)

His extrapolation of the 'point' over the next two pages leads into number three:

...the third principle of Reformation theology, which is that knowledge of one of the persons involves knowledge of the other two at the same time. (Ibid. p. 202)

In what follows, Bray outlines his understanding of how the Reformers avoided what he terms the "semi-Sabellian" understanding of the Trinity that dominated the Western tradition, prior to the Reformation period, quoting the following from Calvin's Institutes:

. . . to the Father is attributed the beginning of action, the fountain and source of all things, to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and arrangement in action, while the energy and efficacy of actions is assigned to the Spirit (I,13,18).

He immediately then writes:

Viewed in relation to action, the three persons of the Trinity can be distinguished as follows:

Father : beginning

Son : arrangement

Spirit : efficacy

This scheme preserves the priority of the Father, which from ancient times has been expressed by the term 'source of the Godhead' (Greek: pēgē tēs Theotētos; Latin: fons Deitatis) without the ontological implications which such a statement is bound to have in the context of an Origenist theology. (Ibid. p. 203)

After introducing the fact Calvin stated, "that each person of the Trinity is autotheos", he goes on to emphasize that Calvin's, "words are carefully chosen so as to avoid any hint of causality", and that the Son is not, "ontologically dependent on the Father as the only true autotheos." (Ibid. p. 204)

This is not the place to critique Bray's sweeping assessments (of which I think there are a number of significant problems); the intent of the quotations are to establish that he clearly believes the Reformers (especially Calvin) understanding of the Trinity introduces a break within the Western tradition via some novel aspects.

Richard A. Muller:

The Reformed doctrine of the Trinity (and, of course, also the doctrine of the Person of Christ) is characterized by a declaration of the aseity of Christ's divinity: considered as God, the Second Person of the Trinity is divine a se ipso — he is autotheos. This had been a point of controversy with both the antitrinitarians and with Rome since the time of Calvin, and in the course of the development of Reformed dogmatics in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, it became not only the distinctive feature of Reformed trinitarianism but also a crucial point, defended against any and all opponents. (Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics - The Triunity of God, 4.324.)

Interestingly enough, a bit later, Muller adds:

The radical statement of the son's aseity found in Calvin's trinitarian polemic is not echoed by all of the early orthodox Reformed theologians: as Amyraut noted, there as no debate among the orthodox over the distinct personal identify of the Son, but there was discussion over whether he stood in utterly equal majesty and dignity with the Father. (Ibid. p. 326)

He then provides the following quote from Ursinus:

God the Father is that Being who is of himself, and not from another, The Son is that self-same Being, or essence, not of himself, but of the Father. (Ibid. p. 236)

Morton H. Smith:

It is of interest to observe the treatment of these concepts by the Nicene theologians (325 A. D.). They sought to define to define the eternal generation of the Son as follows: first, it was not by creation that Christ is the Son of God. Second, it is temporal, but eternal. Third, it is not after the manner of human generation. Fourth, it is not by the division of essence. After giving these four negations, the following positive speculations are suggested: first, the Father is the beginning, the fountain, the cause, the principle of the being of the Son. Second, the Son thus derives his essence from the Father by eternal and indefinable generation of the divine essence from the Father to the Son. Calvin was the first one to challenge these last two speculations. He taught that the Son was a se ipso with regard to his deity. He did not derive his essence from the Father. (Systematic Theology, volume one, 1994, p. 152 - bold emphasis mine.)

Warfield, Murray, Bray, Muller and Smith are representatives of the view that Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, "marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity". (It is important to note that those who are supporters of this view do not believe Calvin's overall Trinitarianism lies outside the Augustinian tradition—or that it is devoid of any historical precedent—but rather, they focus on features of his thought they feel are innovative.)

In my next post, I will provide selections from the opposing view; that Calvin, concerning the Trinity, "carefully avoided anything that could have been considered an innovation".

Grace and peace,

David

Notes:

1. B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity”, in Calvin and Calvinism, volume V of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield – Baker Book House, 1981 reprint, page 283.

2. Francois Wendel, Calvin - Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, English trans., Philip Mairet, 1963, Baker Books edition, 1997, p. 168.

The Monarchy of God the Father and the Trinity - selections from Eastern Orthodox scholars/theologians

Over the past few years, I have provided a number of selections from Eastern Orthodox scholars/theologians concerning 'the monarchy of God the Father' and the doctrine of the Trinity. In this post I expand some of the excerpts, and add a few more.

Boris Bobrinskoy (The Mystery of the Trinity, 1999) -

The paternity of the Father is unique, ineffable, perfect, not only the mystery of the relation between the Father and the Son, but also the archetypal foundation of all human fatherhood, source of the perfect grace coming from on high, from the Father of lights (Jm 1:17): "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Page 262).

Following the Cappadocians, the patristic tradition differentiates in the mystery of the Father between His "absolute," negative property of being ungenerated, and His "relative" and positive property of Paternity.

The proprium of the Hypostasis of the Father is to be "without cause," without "beginning." These negative terms carry all the weight of the Uniqueness of the Father, who is the only one not to receive His origin in the divinity from another Hypostasis. But these terms do not suffice, and the concept of "Ungenerated" specifies still more the unique character of that One who does not have origin.

"The Father is uncaused (anaitios) and ungenerated (agennētos); He is not from another, but He has being from Himself [i.e. autotheos]; and whatsoever He has, He does not have from another." [3]

3. St. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, I.8, PG 94:821D. (Page 263)

...the Father is not only "uncaused" and "ungenerated," but he is the "cause," the "principle" (archē) not only of the being of creatures, but also of the trinitarian Hypostases of the Son and of the Spirit. (Page 264)

St. Gregory Nazianzen said, "I want to call the Father greater (than the Son); this expression "greater" refers to cause, not to essence, because to those who are like essence (tōn homoousiōn) there is no greater or less in the point of essence.) [5]

5. Oratio XL., In sanctum baptisma, 43, PG 36:419BC. (Page 264)

Causality, then, belongs properly to the Father. This is the fundamental principle of the "monarchy". (Page 265)

The Monarchy of the Father proclaims, by necessity, the nontemporal origin of the Son and the Spirit. (Page 265)

The Father is the sole cause of the Godhead... (Page 266)

Thus, the oneness of God is placed not only on the level of the nature common to the Three, but on the basis of the personal relation or origin from the Father. (Page 266)

Vladmir Lossky (Orthodox Theology, Eng. trans. 1978, 2nd ed.) -

The term "monarch" for the Father is current in the great theologians of the fourth century. It means that the very source of divinity is personal. The Father is divinity, but precisely because he is the Father, He confers it in its fullness on the two other persons. The latter take their origin from the Father, μόνη ἄρχή, single principle, whence the term "monarchy," the divinity-source," as Dionysius the Areopagite says of the Father. It is from this indeed that springs—this that is rooted—the identical, unshared, but differently communicated divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Page 46)

John Meyendorff (Byzantine Theology, 2nd ed, 1983) -

The same personalistic emphasis appears in the Greek Fathers' insistence on the "monarchy" of the Father. Contrary to the concept which prevailed in the post-Augustinian West and in Latin Scholasticism, Greek theology attributes the origin of hypostatic "subsistence" to the hypostasis of the Father—not to the common essence. The Father is the "cause" (aitia) and the "principle" (archē) of the divine nature, which is in the Son and in the Spirit. What is even more striking is the fact that this "monarchy" of the Father is constantly used by the Cappadocian Fathers against those who accuse them of "tritheism": "God is on," writes Basil, "because the Father is one." (Page 183)

John Zizioulas (Being As Communion, 1985) -  

Among the Greek Fathers the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological "principal" or "cause" of the being and life of God does not consist in the one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father. The one God is not the one substance but the Father, who is the "cause" both of the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit. (Pages 40, 41)

John Behr -

So how can Christians believe in and worship the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and yet claim that there is only one God, not three? How can one reconcile monotheism with trinitarian faith?

My comments here follow the structure of revelation as presented in Scripture and reflected upon by the Greek Fathers of the fourth century, the age of trinitarian debates. To avoid the confusion into which explanations often fall, it is necessary to distinguish between: the one God; the one substance common to Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and the one-ness or unity of these Three.

The Father alone is the one true God. This keeps to the structure of the New Testament language about God, where with only a few exceptions, the world “God” (theos) with an article (and so being used, in Greek, as a proper noun) is only applied to the one whom Jesus calls Father, the God spoken of in the scriptures. This same fact is preserved in all ancient creeds, which begin: I believe in one God, the Father…

“For us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8:6).

The proclamation of the divinity of Jesus Christ is made no so much by describing Him as “God” (theos used, in Greek, without an article is as a predicate, and so can be used of creatures; cf. John 10:34-35), but by recognizing Him as “Lord” (Kyrios).

Beside being a common title (“sir”), this word had come to be used, in speech, for the unpronounceable, divine, name of God Hiself, YHWH. When Paul states that God bestowed upon the crucified and risen Christ the

“name above every name” (Phil 2:9),

this is an affirmation that this one is all that YHWH Himself is, without being YHWH. This is again affirmed in the creeds.

“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God… true God of true God.”

According to the Nicene creed, the Son is

“consubstantial with the Father.”

St Athanasius, the Father who did more than anyone else to forge Nicene orthodoxy, indicated that

“what is said of the Father is said in Scripture of the Son also, all but His being called Father” (On the Synods, 49).

It is important to note how respectful such theology is of the total otherness of God in comparison with creation: such doctrines are regulative of our theological language, not a reduction of God to a being alongside other beings. It is also important to note the essential asymmetry of the relation between the Father and the Son: the Son derives from the Father; He is, as the Nicene creed put it, “of the essence of the Father” – they do not both derive from one common source. This is what is usually referred to as the Monarchy of the Father.

St Athanasius also began to apply the same argument used for defending the divinity of the Son, to a defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit: just as the Son Himself must be fully divine if He is to save us, for only God can save, so also must Holy Spirit be divine if He is to give life to those who lie in death. Again there is an asymmetry, one which also goes back to Scripture: we receive the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead as the Spirit of Christ, one which enables us to call on God as “Abba.” Though we receive the Spirit through Christ, the Spirit proceeds only from the Father, yet this already implies the existence of the Son, and therefore that the Spirit proceeds from the Father already in relation to the Son (see especially St Gregory of Nyssa, To Ablabius: That there are not Three Gods).

So there is one God and Father, one Lord Jesus Christ, and one Holy Spirit, three “persons” (hypostases) who are the same or one in essence (ousia); three persons equally God, possessing the same natural properties, yet really God, possessing the same natural properties, yet really distinct, known by their personal characteristics. Besides being one in essence, these three persons also exist in total one-ness or unity.

There are three characteristics ways in which this unity is described by the Greek Fathers. The first is in terms of communion:

“The unity [of the three] lies in the communion of the Godhead”

as St Basil the Great puts it (On the Holy Spirit 45). The emphasis here on communion acts as a safeguard against any tendency to see the three persons as simply different manifestations of the one nature; if they were simply different modes in which the one God appears, then such an act of communion would not be possible. The similar way of expressing the divine unity is in terms of “coinherence” (perichoresis): the Father, Son and Holy Spirit indwell in one another, totally transparent and interpenetrated by the other two. This idea clearly stems from Christ’s words in the Gospel of John:

“I am in the Father and the Father in me” (14:11).

Having the Father dwelling in Him in this way, Christ reveals to us the Father, He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15).

The third way in which the total unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is manifest is in their unity of work or activity. Unlike three human beings who, at best, can only cooperate, the activity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one. God works, according to the image of St Irenaeus, with His two Hands, the Son and the Spirit.

More importantly,

“the work of God,” according to St Irenaeus, “is the fashioning of man” into the image and likeness of God (Against the Heretics 5.15.2),

a work which embraces, inseparably, both creation and salvation, for it is only realized in and by the crucified and risen One: the will of the Father is effected by the Son in the Spirit.

Such, then, is how the Greek Fathers, following Scripture, maintained that there is but one God, whose Son and Spirit are equally God, in a unity of essence and of existence, without compromising the uniqueness of the one true God. (From the online article, The Trinity: Scripture and the Greek Fathers - link - bold emphasis added)

Thomas Hopko -

... in the Bible, in the creeds, and in the Liturgy, it’s very important, really critically important, to note and to affirm and to remember that the one God in whom we believe, strictly speaking, is not the Holy Trinity. The one God is God the Father. In the Bible, the one God is the Father of Jesus Christ. He is God who sends his only-begotten Son into the world, and Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Then, of course, in a parallel manner, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of God, that the Holy Spirit, being the Spirit of God, is therefore also the Spirit of Christ, the Messiah, because the Christ is the Son of God, upon whom God the Father sends and affirms his Holy Spirit. (From the online transcript of the podcast, The Holy Trinity - link)

Grace and peace,

David