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

The Trinity: a 'clear' Biblical teaching, or a post-Biblical development?

In the combox of our previous thread, Lvka (an Eastern Orthodox brother in Christ), articulated some of the distinctions between the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the Trinity and those generally held by Augustinian/Western Trinitarians (link to Lvka's post). Lvka's reflections brought back to mind Fr. Boris Bobrinskoy's detailed book on the Trinity: The Mystery of the Trinity. Fr. Bobrinskoy is an ordained Orthodox priest, and the Dean and Professor of Dogmatic Thelogy at St. Sergius Institute, Paris (see Orthodox Wiki bio). The following is my response to Lvka; I am utilizing it as an introduction to the theme of this thread:

==Good morning Lvka,

Thanks much for your informative reply—an excellent summation of the post-Palamas EO view. Now, I would like to let Fr. Boris Bobrinskoy (Dean and Professor of Dogmatic Theology at St. Sergius Institute) 'fill in', so to speak, the development/progression of the doctrine of the Trinity in EO thought/history. (All the following quotations will be from his The Mystery of the Trinity, English trans. by Anthony P. Gythiel, SVS Press, 1999.)

Fr. Bobrinskoy begins his reflections on the development/progression of the doctrine of the Trinity with what he terms "the ecclesial explanation of the trinitarian dogma". (MT, p. 6.) He then writes:

"To study the progression of trinitarian revelation, there is the classical method, the so-called chronological and doctrinal method:

1. Form the first foreshadowings, the first Old Testament intimations, to the fullness of the New Testament;

2. Inside the New Testament itself, through the pedagogy of Jesus, His words and deeds, from Galilee to the Passion; then in the testimonies that follow;

3. Finally, from the post-apostolic writings to the earliest ecumenical councils.

Actually, the evolution of trinitarian dogma does not end at the Second Ecumenical Council, but continues through what is sometimes called the "christological period" (which extends to about the eighth century, and is characterized by the proclamation of the mystery of Christ in all its aspects), through the "pneumatological period" (which continues to about the fourteenth century, and culminates in the synthesis made by St Gregory Palamas. It particularly emphasizes the integration of the human being into the mystery of Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit), and is, in our day, catching a second breath in what is called "the era of the Church." The theological progression cannot be doubted, though it is not brought about according to a linear scheme, but with strong movements, underground advances, times of regression, even of crisis." (MT, pp. 6-7.)

And a bit later:

"A living theology cannot be severed from the living environment that forms the body of the Church, where the Spirit of knowledge and of truth breathes. A theological reading of Scripture cannot be made outside the great Tradition which, generation after generation, searches the Bible in order to discover within it the presence of Christ, and in Him, the face of the Father." (MT, p. 7.)

He then provides the following quote from St. Gregory Nazianzen ("On The Holy Spirit"):

"'The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Ghost; lest perhaps people might, like men loaded with food beyond their strength, and presenting eyes as yet too weak to bear it to the sun’s light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that by gradual additions, and, as David says, Goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory the Light of the Trinity might shine upon the more illuminated.' (MT, p. 8 - St Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio XXXI [Theologica V] 26, PG 36:161. Tr Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2ns ser., vol. 7, p. 326.)"

Fr. Bobrinskoy then adds:

"This is an exception text because it accept a dogmatic progression not only from the Old Testament to the New, but from the New Testament to the Church. Here St Gregory Nazianzen differs from St. Basil who applied the principle of tradition and antiquity much more stringently. Certainly, Gregory Nazianzen could, in the dialectic of his argumentation, legitimately see a dogmatic innovation in the profession of the divinity of the Spirit, for such divinity is not clearly stated in Scripture. In the New Testament, it is merely intimated through the revelation of the Son,; and, in the Old, through the revelation of the fatherhood of God." (MT, p. 8.)

Me: I think it is safe to say that Fr. Bobrinskoy believes that the continued work of the Holy Spirit in the Church is necessary for one to arrive at a correct understanding of the Godhead and the doctrine of the Trinity. After a workout and lunch, I plan to type up a new thread, reproducing the material in this post, and adding some more reflections on this issue.== [See THIS AF THREAD for an earlier treatment on the development of doctrine in Gregory Nazianzen.]

Fr. Bobrinskoy is yet one more Trinitarian scholar who acknowledges that the doctrine of the Trinity is far from being an explicit teaching of the Bible. Bobrinskoy, like so many Catholic scholars (and a few Anglican), points to the need of the Holy Spirit working through the Church to make clear/explicit, what is only implicit in the Scriptures (their understanding, of course). Even a few Protestant scholars have admitted that the doctrine of the Trinity is found wanting in the Bible—note the following selections:

The Trinity. The NT does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity. "The Bible lacks the express declaration that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of equal essence and therefore in an equal sense God himself. And the other express declaration is also lacking, that God is God thus and only thus, i.e. as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These two express declarations, which go beyond the witness of the Bible, are the twofold content of the Church doctrine of the Trinity" (Karl Barth, CD, I, 1, 437). It also lacks such terms as trinity (Lat. trinitas which was coined by Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 3; 11; 12 etc.) and homoousios which featured in the Creed of Nicea (325) to denote ttha Chirst was of the same substance of the Father (cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 1968, 113, 233-7). (J. Schneider, "God", in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 2, p. 84.)

Part of the problem for the ordinary Christian may be that in its debates and struggles, the ancient church was forced to use extrabiblical terms to defend biblical concepts...Biblical language could not resolve the issue, for the conflict was over the meaning of biblical language in the first place. (Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity, pp. 1, 2.)

Because the Trinity is such an important part of later Christian doctrine, it is striking that the term does not appear in the New Testament. Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the *canon...While the New Testament writers say a great deal about God, Jesus and the Spirit of each, no New Testament writer expounds on the relationship among the three in the detail that later Christian writers do. (Daniel N. Schowalter, "Trinity", in The Oxford Companion To The Bible, p. 782.)

In all of these elements of revelation, of course, Scripture has not yet provided us with a fully developed trinitarian dogma…Scripture contains all the data from which theology has constructed the dogma of the Trinity. Philosophy did not need to add anything essential to that dogma: even the Logos doctrine is part of the New Testament. It all only had to wait for a time when the power of Christian reason would be sufficiently developed to enter into the holy mystery that presents itself here. (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, trans. John Vriend, pp. 279, 280.)

Though all of above scholars certainly believe that 'basic elements' for the development of the doctrine of the Trinity can be found in the Bible, a question which should be asked by everyone that embraces sola scriptura (and in so doing, rejects any authoritative, infallible 'rule of faith' outside of the Bible), is: were those 'basic elements' correctly developed by the Church? This, IMHO, is a crucial question, for if one is truly 'honest' with the Biblical data, and the subsequent developments of theology and christological, one will acknowledge with Dr. Raymond Brown that:

...in no NT passage, not even in Matt. 28:19 (“Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”) is there precision about three divine Persons, co-equal but distinct, and one divine Nature—the core dogma of the Trinity. Greek philosophy, sharpened by continuing theological disputes in the church from the 2nd to the 5th centuries, contributed to the classical formulation of the dogma…If ‘tradition’ implies that first-century Christianity already understood three coequal but distinct divine Persons and one divine Nature but had not developed the precise terminology, I would dissent. Neither the terminology nor the basic ideas had reached clarity in the first century; problems and disputes were required before the clarity came…Precisely because the “Trinitarian” line of development was not the only line of thought detectable in the NT, one must posit the guidance of the Spirit and intuition of faith as the church came to its decision. (Raymond E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis & Church Doctrine, 1985, pp. 31-33.)

The older, but respected, Cyclopedia of Biblical and Ecclesiastical Literature, concurs with Dr. Raymond:

The first class of texts, [i.e. triadic] taken by itself, proves only that there are three separate subjects named, and that there is a difference between them; that the Father in certain respects differs from the son, etc.; but it does not prove, by itself, that all three belong necessarily to the divine nature, and possess equal divine honor...

Matt. xxviii, 18-20. This text, however, taken by itself, would not prove decisively either the personality of the three subjects mentioned, or their equality or divinity. (Vol. X, p. 552.)


I shall end this opening post with a recommendation to those who have not read the threads here at AF listed under the label, Subordinationism (especially this older thread), to do so.


Grace and peace,

David