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Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2007

Christopher A. Beeley
Christopher A. Beeley
Affiliation:
Yale University Divinity School
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Extract

Gregory Nazianzen's doctrine of the Trinity has had a most unusual reception in modern times. Since the Council of Chalcedon in 451 Gregory has been honored with the title “the Theologian” for his definitive teaching on the Trinity in the late-fourth century. His influence was then strongly felt in the christological developments that continued through the eighth century, and his stature in Greek Christian tradition is comparable only to that of Augustine in the West, although his influence is felt there as well. Yet despite his acknowledged ecumenical significance, Gregory's theological achievement has often eluded modern patristic scholars and systematic theologians. Even the most recent wave of specialized work on Gregory and the current synoptic studies of patristic doctrine have tended to overlook major aspects of his work. One of the most acute points of confusion in current scholarship—and a matter of no little significance for Nicene theology—is Gregory's doctrine of divine causality and the monarchy of God the Father within the Trinity. The recent debate over this topic, I would suggest, reflects the extent to which Gregory's doctrine has yet to be assimilated in contemporary historical and systematic theology. In this article I will seek to clarify Gregory's doctrine of divine causality in light of its current reception and to give some indication of its wider significance.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 100 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 199 - 214
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© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Gregory Nazianzen's doctrine of the Trinity has had a most unusual reception in modern times. Since the Council of Chalcedon in 451 Gregory has been honored with the title “the Theologian” for his definitive teaching on the Trinity in the late-fourth century. His influence was then strongly felt in the christological developments that continued through the eighth century, and his stature in Greek Christian tradition is comparable only to that of Augustine in the West, although his influence is felt there as well. Yet despite his acknowledged ecumenical significance, Gregory's theological achievement has often eluded modern patristic scholars and systematic theologians. Even the most recent wave of specialized work on Gregory and the current synoptic studies of patristic doctrine have tended to overlook major aspects of his work. One of the most acute points of confusion in current scholarship—and a matter of no little significance for Nicene theology—is Gregory's doctrine of divine causality and the monarchy of God the Father within the Trinity.1

In Gregory's usage

, and

are virtually interchangeable terms for “cause,” and often appear together with the closely related term

(source, origin, first principle; also chronological beginning, office, or authority). See John P. Egan, “

/‘Author’,

/‘Cause’ and

/‘Origin’: Synonyms in Selected Texts of Gregory Nazianzen,” Studia Patristica 32 (1997) 102–7. On Gregory's doctrine of the Trinity, see now my Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

The recent debate over this topic, I would suggest, reflects the extent to which Gregory's doctrine has yet to be assimilated in contemporary historical and systematic theology. In this article I will seek to clarify Gregory's doctrine of divine causality in light of its current reception and to give some indication of its wider significance.

A Scholarly Puzzle

Since the 1970s scholars have been puzzled by the variety of ways in which Gregory speaks of divine causality, particularly in a handful of passages in the Theological Orations (Or. 27–31). One of the most frequently cited is Oration 31.14, a passage in which Gregory defends the unity of the Trinity against certain objections by his Eunomian opponents. The recent English translation of Lionel Wickham highlights the very ambiguities under consideration:

We have one God because there is a single Godhead. Though there are three objects of belief, they derive from the single whole and have reference to it. They do not have degrees of being God or degrees of priority over against one another. They are not sundered in will or divided in power. You cannot find there any of the properties inherent in things divisible. To express it succinctly, the Godhead exists undivided in beings divided. It is as if there were a single intermingling of light, which existed in three mutually connected Suns. When we look at the Godhead, the primal cause, the sole sovereignty, we have a mental picture of the single whole, certainly. But when we look at the three in whom the Godhead exists, and at those who derive their timeless and equally glorious being from the primal cause, we have three objects of worship.2

Or. 31.14. Gregory of Nazianzus, Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory Nazianzen (intro. and commentary Frederick W. Norris; trans. Lionel Wickham [Or. 28–31] and Frederick Williams [Or. 27]; Leiden: Brill, 1991) 286; reprinted in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (intro., trans. [Or. 28–31; Epistulae 101–2], and notes Lionel Wickham; trans. Frederick Williams [Or. 27]; Popular Patristic Series; Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 2002) 127–28.

In the final two sentences Gregory seems to be saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all derive from a common First Cause (

), which is the Divinity itself (or the “Godhead,”

). This statement echoes Gregory's point at the beginning of the passage that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all derive from “the single whole,” which presumably refers also to the Divinity. Thus in this passage Gregory is thought to be identifying the Divinity as the primal cause of the three persons of the Trinity and the ground of the divine unity.

Yet elsewhere in the Theological Orations, Gregory speaks of “God” (

) as “the creative and sustaining cause of all things,”

3

Or. 28.6.

the first cause, which the angels encircle4

Or. 28.31.

and for which all rational natures long.5

Or. 28.13.

In other passages, he ascribes causality specifically to the Father, and he even argues that the Son and the Spirit are “less” than the Father in terms of causality, although not in terms of being or nature.6

Or. 29.3, 15.

Yet again, Gregory argues that God has no cause: “What among all things that exist has no cause (

)? Divinity. For no one can speak of the cause of God (

), otherwise it would be prior to God.”

7

Or. 30.2.

And finally, as if combining these last two points, Gregory writes that God is the cause of all things but has no cause himself.8

Or. 31.33.

Adding to the confusion is that in this passage (Or. 31.33), he seems to be rejecting the image (

) of the sun casting its sunbeams on a wall or in water as an adequate model or illustration (

) of the Trinity, because it ascribes causality to the Father; whereas earlier in the series he had employed the image of the sun precisely to argue for the causality of the Father.

9

Or. 29.3.

From this puzzling variety of statements scholars have tried to determine whether, for Gregory, divine causality belongs to God the Father uniquely, to God, the Divinity, or the Trinity as a whole, or to none of them.

The current scholarly debate stems from a 1973 article by E. P. Meijering on Gregory's doctrine of the will.

10

E. P. Meijering, “The Doctrine of the Will and of the Trinity in the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus,” Nederlands theolgisch tijdschrift 27 (1973) 224–34; repr. in idem, God, Being, History: Studies in Patristic Philosophy (Amsterdam: American Elseveir, 1975) 103–13.

According to Meijering, Gregory's claim that the Father is greater than the Son as cause but not greater in being is “logically untenable.”11

Ibid., 232.

The basis for Meijering's judgment is a rather strained comparison of Gregory with Plotinus and Athanasius. For Plotinus, the fact that the first Principle (the One) eternally generates and thus causes the second Principle (unchangeable being) makes the second Principle ontologically inferior to the first; whereas for Athanasius, the Son is not caused by the Father at all but is co-eternal,

, and therefore completely equal with the Father.

12

Though it is a widely held perception among twentieth-century theologians, the claim that Athanasius teaches pure divine equality apart from causality is simply unfounded. For an emphasis on the priority of the Father and the derivation of the Son, see Orationes contra Arianos 1.16, 58; 3.6; Epistulae ad Serapionem 1.14, 16; and John Behr, The Nicene Faith: The Formation of Christian Theology (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004) 238–45.

Meijering evaluates Gregory's doctrine on the assumption that Plotinian subordinationism and Athanasian equality are the only two logical positions available for describing causal relations within the Trinity. Either the Father is the cause of the Son, making the Son ontologically inferior, or else the Father does not cause the Son and they are purely equal. Gregory's claim that the Father causes the Son and that they are ontologically equal therefore fails by trying to combine two mutually exclusive options.13

Meijering, “Doctrine of the Will,” 233.

His combination of the categories of

and

, moreover, is arbitrary and serves as an example of the “devastating storms” that Harnack believed had arisen from the alliance of Christian orthodoxy and Greek philosophy.

14

Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (3 vols.; 5th ed.; Tübingen: Mohr, 1931–1932) 2:267. Meijering, “Doctrine of the Will,” 234. Although Meijering brushes it aside at the end, his article is heavily influenced by Harnack's understanding of the relationship between Nicene orthodoxy and Greek philosophy (see the opening statement on p. 224).

Meijering's analysis and the larger assumptions on which it is based have held considerable sway in recent decades. In his landmark commentary on the Theological Orations, Frederick Norris notes John Meyendorff's claim that for Gregory the Father is both cause and first principle of the divine nature,

15

Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (2d rev. ed.; New York: Fordham University Press, 1983) 183.

yet he favors instead the analysis of Meijering, and credits him with spotting “perhaps the most glaring error in Gregory's understanding of God.”16

Norris, Faith, 45 n. 215; see also 136–37, 176, and 199, commenting on Orations 29.3; 30.16; and 31.14. For an indication of the same view prior to Meijering's article, based on Or. 29.2–3, see Norris, “Gregory Nazianzen's Doctrine of Jesus Christ” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1970) 116–18.

Around the same time, two influential, synoptic works offered similar assessments. R. P. C. Hanson's monumental study of the fourth century interprets Gregory as locating the source of the Trinity in the divine nature, from which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all derive—a point that reflects Hanson's acceptance of the conventional view that Cappadocian doctrine is characterized primarily by the distinction between

and

.

17

R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988) 710, reading Or. 23.7 and 29.2.

Although he acknowledges Gregory's claim that the Father is the cause of the Son,18

In Or. 40.43 and 30.7.

Hanson is skeptical that this claim could be compatible with traditional pro-Nicene doctrine. Accordingly, he too cites with approval Meijering's comparison of Gregory to Plotinus.19

Hanson, Search, 713 and n. 143, reading Or. 30.8–10.

In his systematic treatment of patristic doctrine, Thomas Torrance argues that Gregory succeds in opposing the monarchy of the Father and any sense of causal relations within the Trinity—an unfortunate remnant of Origenist subordinationism that had lingered in Basil and Gregory of Nyssa—by adopting the view of Athanasius that the three persons are entirely equal.20

Thomas Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (New York: T&T Clark, 1988) 319–22. Richard Cross, “Divine Monarchy in Gregory of Nazianzus,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14 (2006) 105–16, at 108.

Although their conclusions are quite different, Torrance operates with the same assumption as Meijering does, namely that causal subordinationism and causeless equality are the only two viable options.

Further attempts to solve the problem have come from John Egan and Richard Cross. In a paper from the 1991 Oxford Patristics Conference Egan assesses ancient and modern arguments both for and against Gregory's reference to the Father as first cause in Oration 31.14.

21

John Egan, “Primal Cause and Trinitarian Perichoresis in Gregory Nazianzen's Oration 31.14,” StPatr 27 (1993) 21–28. Egan considers Pseudo-Cyril, apud John Damascene in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos (ed. Bonifatius Kotter; 6 vols.; Patristische Texte und Studien; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973) 2:29.265–30.274; A. J. Mason, ed., The Five Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge Patristic Texts; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899) 163, n. on line 6; A. Theodorou, “Light as Image and Symbol in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus,” [in Greek] Theologia 47 (1976) 254—all three commenting on Or. 31.14; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 183; John McGuckin, “ ‘Perceiving Light from Light in Light’: The Trinitarian Theology of St. Gregory Nazianzen,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 39 (1994) 7–32; and André de Halleux, “Personalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens? Une mauvaise controverse,” Revue Théologique de Louvain 17 (1986) 286—commenting more broadly.

While Egan concludes that this passage does refer to the Father as cause, he agrees with Meijering and Norris that Gregory's doctrine of the causality of the Father is on the whole “philosophically arbitrary.”22

Egan, “Primal Cause,” 28. In a paper from the following Oxford Conference, Egan inclines slightly more toward the monarchy of the Father, citing McGuckin's recent study (“Perceiving Light,” 29); though he refrains from committing himself: Egan, “

/‘Author’,” 106–7 and n. 28.

Focusing on the same text, Richard Cross argues just the reverse. Against Torrance, he maintains that Gregory does teach that the Father causes the Son in some sense; though he argues that the term “monarchy” refers not to the Father's unique activity, but to the indivisible divine essence as a whole, typically in its actions toward creation.23

Cross, “Divine Monarchy,” 114, 116.

However, pace Egan, he argues that in Oration 31.14 Gregory does not speak of the causal priority of the Father (though he does elsewhere), but rather of the causal relation between the divine essence and the three persons.24

Thus he interprets Or. 29.2 as well.

In this way Gregory shows the divine essence to be “coordinatively common” to all three persons, in order to answer Eunomian objections that pro-Nicene doctrine divides the divine essence and is fundamentally tritheistic.25

Cross, “Divine Monarchy,” 112–13.

In the end Cross cautions against taking this generic sense of causality too seriously. Meanwhile, somewhat independent of this discussion, John McGuckin published an insightful overview of Gregory's trinitarian doctrine, followed by a full-scale intellectual biography.26

McGuckin, “Perceiving Light,” 7–32; idem, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 2001).

Although at points he speaks of the shared

as the foundation of the divine unity,

27

McGuckin, “Perceiving Light,” 21–23.

and like Hanson and Cross, he tends to identify the monarchy with the divine unity as opposed to the Father,28

Ibid., 25.

nevertheless McGuckin ultimately emphasizes the causality of the Father as the root of the Trinity and of the structure of the knowledge of God.29

Ibid., 12 n. 6; see also 27 and 31. The later biography reiterates this position: e.g., St Gregory, 294.

Finally, the recent studies of fourth-century doctrine by Lewis Ayres and John Behr take different positions on the subject. Ayres follows Egan's assessment of the problem, allowing for the possibility of inconsistency on Gregory's part in Oration 31.14, though, like Hanson, he seems to consider the divine essence to be the primal cause, from which all three persons derive and to which they return.30

Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 244–45; reading Or. 23.8; 29.2; and 31.14.

Thus, according to Ayres, even Oration 42.15—one of Gregory's strongest statements of the priority of the Father—speaks of “the persons qua persons continually returning to their source.”31

Ibid., 246.

Behr's study, which is essentially a serial reading of the Theological Orations and the letters to Cledonius,32

Ep. 101–2.

opposes Meijering and follows McGuckin, identifying God the Father as the source and cause of the Son and the Spirit.33

Behr, Nicene Faith, 343–44, 347–48, 361 n. 49, reading Or. 29.2–3 and 31.14.

Gregory's Doctrine of Divine Causality

Despite the confused and uncertain state of current scholarship, Gregory's doctrine of divine causality is in fact quite clear and consistent, and it holds a central place in his larger theological system. Much of the difficulty among recent studies appears to stem from an almost exclusive reliance on the Theological Orations at the expense of other, equally important texts. Apart from the apparent enigmas in passages like Oration 31.14, the Theological Orations pose the additional difficulty of not being a sustained, positive exposition of Gregory's doctrine. Organized as a series of responses to objections by Eunomians and Pneumatomachians, they are mainly defensive in character and consist almost entirely of negative argumentation. For a more complete treatment of divine causality (among other subjects),34

Gregory's christology and his doctrine of purification and illumination, for example, are also greatly illumined by reference to other texts.

we must therefore look to other texts that bring out more directly the doctrinal commitments that Gregory is defending in the Theological Orations.35

Although much of Gregory's work takes place in an atmosphere of theological debate, and polemical engagement was a large part of his initial motivation to accept the duties of the priestly office in 362, the differences in this regard between the Theological Orations and other texts are often rather pronounced.

Among Gregory's major statements of trinitarian doctrine,36

Key discussions occur in Or. 20.5–12; 23.6–12; 34.8–15; 27–31 (the Theological Orations); 25.15–18; 38.3, 7–9 (= 45.3–5), 13 (= 45.9), 15 (= 45.27); 39.11–12; 40.34, 41–43; and 42.15–18; and Carmen 1.1.1–3, with shorter or more sporadic passages occurring in Or. 2.38; 6.11–13; and 41.8–14. Like the Theological Orations, however, Or. 38–40 and 42 are also more rhetorically complicated than the others. In Or. 38–40 Gregory is addressing a mixed, imperial assembly as the new archbishop, including a group of baptismal candidates who were only recently under the charge of the Homoian Bishop Demophilus. In Or. 42 Gregory is defending himself before the bitterly fractured Council of Constantinople, which has rejected his doctrinal platform and now also his leadership as president. References to passages from multiple orations will be listed in chronological, not numerical, order, according to the revised dating of McGuckin (St. Gregory, vii–xi and passim).

the most straightforward, and probably the most significant, is Oration 25.15–18. In the late summer or early fall of 380, shortly after delivering the Theological Orations, Gregory dedicates Oration 25 to the Christian philosopher Maximus the Cynic as Maximus is about to return home to Alexandria. Gregory offers the piece both as a gesture of personal gratitude for Maximus's theological assistance, and no doubt also to signal his intention to remain allied with Bishop Peter and the powerful Alexandrian church.37

This gesture would turn out to be the single biggest mistake of Gregory's career. Soon afterward, Maximus portrayed Gregory's commission as an endorsement of his succession to the see of Constantinople. He quickly returned to the capital with a number of Egyptian bishops and the blessing of Bishop Peter, after which the bishops attempted to consecrate him under the cover of night in Gregory's own church. The service was broken up by a group of parishioners who discovered what was happening, but the damage was already done to Gregory's reputation among the other major sees.

At the climax of the oration, Gregory commissions Maximus to teach the true faith, which he then outlines in a brief creedal statement along with several pages of commentary, ranging from technical matters of trinitarian logic to the ascetical and rhetorical dimensions of right doctrine. The opening section of this statement speaks directly to the subject of divine causality and bears quoting at length.38

I have formatted these opening lines to indicate its creedal structure.

“Define our piety,” Gregory tells Maximus, “by teaching the knowledge of:

One God, unbegotten, the Father; and

One begotten Lord, his Son,

referred to as “God” (

) when he is mentioned separately, but “Lord” when he is named together with the Father—the first on account of the [divine] nature, the second on account of the monarchy; and

One Holy Spirit, who proceeds (

) or goes forth (

) from the Father,

“God” (

) to those who understand properly things proposed to them—combated by the impious but understood by those who are above them, and even professed by those who are more spiritual.

39

Here Gregory refers to his efforts to defend the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and to the three groups he has recently addressed: the more radical opponents of the Spirit's divinity, whom he calls “Spirit-fighters” (

); those who believe the Spirit is divine but do not confess it publicly (including the late Basil); and those who, like himself, confess the faith openly with the public proclamation of the Trinity. See Or. 41.6.

[Teach] also that we must not make the Father subject to [another] source (

), lest we posit a “first of the First,” and thus overturn the [divine] Existence.

40

.

Nor should we say that the Son or the Holy Spirit is without source (

), lest we take away the Father's special characteristic (

). For they are not without source—and yet in a sense they are without source, which is a paradox. They are not without source with respect to their cause (

), for they are from God (

) even if they are not subsequent to him in time (

), just as light comes from the sun.

41

Gregory holds the ancient view that the sun emits light instantaneously, taking no time.

But they are without source with respect to time, since they are not subject to time.42

Or. 25.15.

In this opening section Gregory conspicuously anchors his confession in the special role of God the Father as source and cause of the Trinity. For the past year in the capital, he has labored arduously for the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit and their coequality with the Father, against a broad array of opponents. And yet, perhaps surprising to the modern interpreter, Gregory defines the faith in the biblical and traditional pattern of referring to the Father as “God” in the primary sense, just as the creed of Nicea had done. Following the New Testament witness, God is first and foremost the Father of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; yet by virtue of their timeless generation from the Father, the Son and the Spirit fully share the Father's divine nature and are therefore also God.43

I use the term “generation” to refer both to the begetting of the Son and the sending forth of the Spirit by God the Father. When I mean to distinguish them, I will speak of the “begetting” of the Son and the “sending forth” or “procession” of the Holy Spirit.

Accordingly, Gregory initially characterizes the three persons chiefly by their point of origin and their resulting relationships to one another: the one God is the unbegotten Father of Jesus Christ; the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who is begotten from the Father; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.44

Gregory again employs a creedal format, with the same emphasis on the priority of the Father and the relations of origin, in the doctrinal statement at Or. 39.12.

Yet in addition to this brief set of terms, and before he has even finished the opening creedal statement, Gregory makes a point to specify the causal relationships that derive from God the Father. With respect to creation (“when mentioned separately”), the Son is also “God,” because he fully possesses the divine nature that he receives from the Father; but in the eternal relations among the three persons of the Trinity (“named together with the Father”), the Father is “God” in the primary sense, and the Son is “Lord,” on account of the monarchy of God the Father (again, as they are typically proclaimed in the New Testament).45

E.g., Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:9; 2 Cor 1:2; 13:13; Gal 1:1; Jas 1:1; 1 Pet 1:3. In the Gospels, the Johannine epistles, and Hebrews, “Son” takes the place of “Lord” in the other books.

As Gregory elaborates, it is the special property of the Father to be the cause and source of himself (as self-existent Divinity, being unbegotten, uncaused, and without source), of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—and thus the cause and source of the Trinity as a whole. To deny the Father's character as source of the Trinity—either by positing a source other than the Father or by conceiving of the Son or the Spirit other than as deriving their existence from the Father as their cause—is for Gregory equivalent to denying the existence of God altogether.

The monarchy of God the Father—his unique identity as the “only source” and “sole principle” of the Trinity—figures prominently in each of Gregory's major doctrinal statements

46

As well as in each of the shorter passages, with the exception of Or. 6, where it is assumed although not discussed.

and proves to be the most fundamental element of his theological system. His first published discussion of the Trinity, in the set of three orations that he delivered as a newly ordained priest at Easter 362, focuses on this very theme.47

Or. 2.36–38. Preceded only by a brief, formulaic statement in Oration 1 in the same series, which warns the congregation in Nazianzus not to be led astray from “the sound faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one Divinity and Power” (Or. 1.7). Whether Or. 2.38 is original or was added when Gregory expanded the oration during his retirement, its literary position at the beginning of his ordained ministry is significant.

Taking up the conventional definition of Nicene orthodoxy as being opposed to both Arianism and Sabellianism, Gregory argues that what distinguishes the true faith from both of these errors is the monarchy of the Father. On account of the Father's rank as source of the Son and Spirit (

), he writes, the Son cannot be understood as a creature, as the Arians argue (who are “overly devoted” to the Father), nor can all three be simply different manifestations of only one person, as the Sabellians allege (who are “overly devoted” to the Son).

48

While Gregory regularly employs the conventional pro-Nicene opposition to Arians and Sabellians (Or. 2.36–37; 20.5; 21.13, 35; 33.16; 34.8; 30.6; 31.9, 30; 37.22; 39.11; 42.16), these statements function less as expressions of primary doctrinal content (as if Christian truth were essentially a mean between two extremes!) than as catch phrases and political slogans to signal his alignment with the broader pro-Nicene movement. This restricted meaning can be seen in the fact that Gregory rarely calls the Eunomians “Arians”—in the Theological Orations, for example, Or. 31.30 is an oblique reference, and Or. 30.6 and 18 refer only to imaginary Sabellians—and in his infrequent use of the terms in his panegyric on Athanasius, where he narrates the history of the fourth-century controversies (Or. 21.13, 25), and in Oration 33, whose traditional title is Against the Arians and On Himself (Or. 33.16).

Years later, in his first oration in Constantinople, Gregory quotes and elaborates on this early statement.49

Or. 20.6–7. Again, whether he made this borrowing in real time or inserted it later when he edited his orations, the literary effect is the same.

Here he explains further that the monarchy and primary causality of the Father is the root of both the oneness of God (

) and the fact that there are three unique hypostases or persons (

).

50

And in the previous section,

(Or. 20.6). Gregory's addition of the phrase

to the original quotation from Or. 2.38 is one of several indications that he is not wedded to the particular terminology of

, which is sometimes imagined to be a fixed Cappadocian term.

Because the Father fully conveys his Divinity to the Son and the Spirit as he generates them, all three persons possess the same divine nature and are therefore one God. Hence, there is one God because the Son and the Spirit refer back to the Father as a single cause (

) and the origin of everything that they are and do.

51

Or. 20.7. See also Or. 41.9; 29.3; 30.16; 31.14, 30; 38.15 (= 45.27); 42.15.

When the Scriptures speak of the Son and the Spirit as possessing divine qualities or being generated or sent by the Father, they are referring ultimately to the Son's and the Spirit's source in the Father. For example, Jesus' statement that the Father is greater than he is (John 14:28) refers not to the Son's economic inferiority as the incarnate Lord, as Augustine preferred to interpret it,52

E.g., De Trinitate 1.15, 18; 6.10. Although Gregory includes the phrases “my God and your God” and “greater” (John 20.17; 14.28) in the list of lowly, economic references to the Son in Or. 29.18, in this later passage he indicates his preference for the monarchian interpretation: “to say that the Father is greater than the Son considered as a human being is true, but trivial” (Or. 30.7).

but to the Father's superiority to the Son as the eternal source of his existence. Jesus' statement is therefore a direct, theological claim about the life of God.53

Or. 30.7. This reference to the Father's superiority as source is the main burden of the exegetical argumentation of the fourth Theological Oration (Or. 30.2–16).

Likewise, Gregory writes, “Everything that pertains to the Spirit refers back to the first cause [the Father], just as everything that pertains to the Son”—such as the titles Life, Light, Goodness, and Lord.54

Or. 41.9. Gregory makes the same point, with specific reference to lowly expressions of the Spirit, at Or. 31.30. For the term “first cause,” see also Or. 31.14, 16, 30; 37.5.

As an expression of the unifying effect of the monarchy, Gregory famously states that the unity of the Trinity simply is the Father, “from whom the issue [the Son and the Spirit] come and to whom they are referred.”55

Or. 42.15.

As the basis of the divine unity, the monarchy of the Father thus serves as Gregory's most frequent reply to the charge of tritheism.56

See Or. 20.6; 23.6–7; 31.30; 25.16, 18; 38.8, 15; 40.41; 42.15.

Conversely, Gregory continues, the monarchy of the Father is the root of the trinitarian distinctions as well.

57

For polemical reasons Gregory finds himself needing to defend the divine unity and coequality against Eunomians, Pneumatomachians, and Homoians of various sorts more often than the permanent distinctions between the three persons, on which all parties were agreed. Yet he makes the point nevertheless, often against imaginary modalists.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are preserved as three unique entities because the Father is permanently “the Source who is without source—Source in the sense of cause, fount, and eternal light,”58

.

and the Son (and the Spirit) are not uncaused or without source.59

Or. 20.7.

Because the Father eternally generates the Son and sends forth the Spirit as begotten and proceeding Divinity, they are distinct from the Father and from each other by virtue of their eternal origins in the Father. Hence, Gregory makes the well-known definition that the three persons are “relations” (

) or “modes of existence” toward one another (

).

60

Or. 29.16. See also Or. 31.9:

. For Gregory, what distinguishes the Spirit from the Son is their distinct modes of generation from the Father (procession versus begetting) (Or. 31.8–9), in contrast with the Augustinian tradition, which locates the difference in the Spirit's dual procession from the Father and the Son (see Augustine, Sermones. 71.20.33; In Evangelium Johannis tractatus 99.8–9; Trin. 4.29; 15.29, 47–48.) It may be a provocative suggestion in light of the filioque controversy, but there is an interesting comparison to be made between the Augustinian scheme and the arguments of the Eunomians and Pneumatomachians, as Gregory presents them. While Augustine emphatically asserts the unity and consubstantiality of the Trinity against both groups, he appears to share their assumption that the difference between begetting and procession does not suffice to prevent the Spirit from being a second Son, which is the main point Gregory is addressing in Or. 31.7–9.

In a famous, if often misunderstood, passage Gregory seeks to give expression to the dynamic life of the Trinity, which constantly arises from and returns to God the Father. Near the beginning of the third Theological Oration he writes that, contrary to the anarchy and polyarchy of the Greeks, which tend toward chaos and disorder, Christians recognize a monarchy in which a generative monad (the Father) eternally produces the Son and Spirit, thus transcending duality and making a triad. Here again, what makes for the unity of this eternal dynamic is that the distinct issue (the Son and the Spirit) “converge” on their source in unity, bringing about a union of divine nature, will, and action among all three.61

Or. 29.2. A similar reflection occurs in Or. 23.8.

Gregory's doctrinal commitment to the monarchy of the Father can be seen in the fact that, even as a pro-Nicene bishop, he continues to argue in fairly strong terms that the Father is “greater” than the Son and the Spirit as their cause and source. In his oration On Baptism from Epiphany 381, in which he gives a summary of the faith to a group of recently Homoian catechumens, Gregory goes so far as to say that he would rather simply call the Father “greater,” on account of his role as the source of both the equality and the divine being of the Son and Spirit, except that his detractors wrongly assume that a divine cause produces inferiors rather than equals.62

Or. 40.43.

For this reason Gregory is forced several times to explain that just because the Father is greater than the Son as cause does not mean that he is greater in being.63

See also Or. 29.15 and 30.7.

In making this qualification Gregory does not mean to weaken or cancel the priority of the Father, but on the contrary to clarify it as the foundation of the unity, the distinctions, and indeed the very Being of the Trinity.

The consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit with the Father and the divine unity, as well as the distinct identities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are therefore the eternal result of the Father's divine generation. The monarchy of the Father is the foundational principle of trinitarian logic and the fundamental dynamic that contains and gives meaning to the grammatical aspects of consubstantial unity and relational distinctness. In this sense the Nicene term

functions mainly as a cipher for the more fundamental concept of the monarchy.

64

It is therefore understandable that Gregory uses the term so seldom and mainly to align himself publicly with the pro-Nicene movement for which it has become a watchword; or else to answer opposition to the term (see, e.g., Or. 31.10, with reference to the Holy Spirit).

Accordingly, in his discussion of the divine names at the end of the fourth Theological Oration, Gregory comments that Christ is called the “Son” to indicate both that he is identical with the Father in essence (

) and that he derives from him (

).

65

Or. 30.20.

With Gregory's doctrine now in view, we can return to those passages that locate the divine causality somewhere other than in God the Father. In speaking of God, the Divinity, or even the Son and the Holy Spirit as cause or source, Gregory is referring not to causal relations within the Trinity, but to divine causality toward creation. In the eternal life of God, the Father remains the sole cause and source; yet as a result of the monarchy of the Father (and certainly not in conflict with it) the Trinity or God or the Divinity in general, and the Son and the Spirit in particular, are also the cause and source of other things.66

Or. 4.21; 20.7; 28.6, 13, 29, 31; 42.17; Carm. 1.1.6.4; 1.1.31.7.

In this sense Gregory calls the Son “the Source from the Source”;67

Or. 38.13 = Or. 45.9. In an interesting variation, Gregory also refers to the Father, Son, and Spirit as “Without source, Source, and That which is with the Source” (

, Or. 42.15). On the Spirit's role as source and cause of creation, see Or. 41.9; 31.29.

or, expressing both internal and external causality together, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “Cause, Creator, and Perfecter”.68

Or. 34.8.

. Related is Gregory's argument that, while the Son is not without source with respect to the Father in eternity, nevertheless, as the maker of time, he is without source with respect to time (Or. 20.7; 39.12).

Finally, Gregory's statements that God or the Divinity has no cause serve to indicate that God is not caused by anything else and has no cause outside himself but is rather the cause of all things.69

Or. 23.7; 28.9; 29.19; 30.2, 11; 31.23; 38.3, 13.

In light of this exposition, we can, finally, suggest a more accurate translation of Oration 31.14:

We have one God because there is a single Divinity and the things that issue from one [cause] refer back to it, even if three things are believed in.

70

Or. 31.14. The Son and the Spirit refer back to the Father from whom they come.

.

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 are there any of the properties of divisible things, even if it is possible to perceive them. But, if we have to put it succinctly, the Divinity is undivided among things that are divided, as if among three suns that are related to one another there were a single co-mingling of their light. So when we look at the Divinity and the First Cause and the monarchy, what appears to us is one thing; but when we look at the things in which the Divinity exists, and the things that exist from the First Cause timelessly and with equal glory, there are three things that are worshipped.

The word order of the first sentence may seem to suggest that the phrase

refers to the Divinity, and consequently that

refers to all three persons, so that Gregory is saying that the unity of God is preserved if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all understood as deriving from a single cause, which is the divine essence. However, Gregory's consistent doctrine of the monarchy of the Father and parallel expressions in other texts make this reading unlikely. This sentence is effectively a paraphrase of the first sentence of Oration 20.7, where Gregory first discusses the monarchy of the Father at any length: “There is one God because the Son and the Spirit are referred back to a single cause.”

71

Or. 20.7.

.

As Gregory explains in the same passage, God the Father is the source and cause that preserves the divine unity.72

See also Or. 42.15.

Yet because the monarchy of the Father causes all three persons to share the divine nature, one can also speak of the divine unity in this derivative sense, in terms of the single Divinity. At the beginning and the end of Oration 31.14 Gregory is making both points, as he often does; though here he mentions the result of the monarchy (the single, shared Divinity) before the monarchy itself, which has led to some confusion among interpreters.73

I.e., Gregory mentions that all three persons share “a single Divinity” (at the beginning of the passage), or simply “the Divinity” (at the end), before referring explicitly to the Father's generation of the Son and the Spirit, or his prime causality and monarchy, which is the cause of the shared Divinity.

In this passage Gregory is therefore referring not to the Divinity, but to the Father, as the cause of the Trinity, which is the point on which he ends (the First Cause and the monarchy). It will be obvious by now that this is neither the clearest nor the most important passage for establishing Gregory's doctrine of divine causality, but merely one that has needed to be interpreted in concert with other, clearer texts since at least the seventh century.74

Pseudo-Cyril reads Or. 31.14 together with Or. 20.7 and 42.15 (Egan, “Primal Cause,” 26–27 and nn. 26, 35). Incidentally, the Chalcedonian Pseudo-Cyril is one of the first to consider Gregory's doctrine of the monarchy of the Father inconsistent with what he thinks is an adequate trinitarian perichoresis. It was to become a venerable tradition.

Gregory and Current Scholarship

It remains now to give an assessment of recent scholarship and to offer some summary reflections on the significance of Gregory's doctrine of divine causality. The first and most obvious point is that, for Gregory, the cause of the Trinity is God the Father, not the divine essence in general, as Hanson, Torrance, Ayres, and to some extent Cross,75

With regard to the monarchy and divine causality in Or. 29.2 and 31.14.

have argued. We can also observe that the most consistently bedeviling texts are Orations 29.2 and 31.14. In each case, this view of divine causality is indicative of other problems in the interpretation of Gregory's work. For Ayres, the substitution of the divine essence for the monarchy of the Father, by which a generic sort of “three-in-oneness” is seen to express what it means to be God, manages to align Gregory with the essential pro-Nicene principles that Ayres has identified, but at the expense of many of Gregory's deeper concerns.76

Ayres, Nicaea, 245. Ayres also denies that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as relations are modes of existence toward one another; he regards Gregory's proto-perichoretic conception of the Trinity as involving a dynamic movement toward unity in general, rather than the movement of the Spirit and the Son toward the Father (246–47); and he consequently overlooks Gregory's central perception of the revelation of the Trinity in the divine economy (on which more below). For a fuller assessment of Ayres's book—including its many strengths—see my forthcoming review in the Journal of Religion.

(I will comment further on Hanson and Cross below.)

Yet the main response is to point out that Gregory's doctrine of divine causality is not at all illogical or arbitrary, as Meijering claims (followed by Norris, Egan, and Hanson), but represents the very heart of what he takes to be the catholic faith. Moreover, in the case of Meijering and Torrance, it is inherently suspicious, to say the least, to argue that (a) causeless ontological equality, as supposedly taught by Athanasius, constitutes the only viable orthodoxy; (b) any doctrine other than causeless ontological equality is an unfortunate vestige of Plotinus or Origen; and therefore (c) Gregory's doctrine is illogical and dogmatically insufficient. The irony in these assumptions is that they rule out of court what is arguably the very essence of Nicene orthodoxy. Moreover, this approach represents a pervasive tendency in modern patristic analysis and systematic theology to assume, quite apart from the textual evidence, that the unique causality and monarchy of the Father is a priori contradictory with the unity, co-equality, and shared Divinity of the Trinity. To cite a prominent example, it is precisely this interdependence between the Father's causality and the equality of the three persons that Wolfhart Pannenberg criticizes in the Cappadocians. In Pannenberg's view, the priority of the Father threatens the equality of the three persons and fails to distinguish the Father from the divine substance. Thus the Cappadocians represent a relapse to an older subordinationism and fail to answer the Eunomian charge of tritheism.77

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; 3 vols.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991) 1:279–80 and n. 70, 322–23, 385. Pannenberg follows the earlier judgment of Karl Holl, Amphilochius von Ikonium in seinem Verhältnis zu den grossen Kappadoziern (Tübingen: Mohr, 1904) 146–48, 174.

Among Western theological students (let alone professional theologians), it needs reiterating that Gregory's theological work takes place within a doctrinal and devotional context that depends entirely on the priority of God the Father; on this general point (irrespective of how they understand it) Gregory and the Eunomians were in complete agreement.78

Together with other Homoians and the Pneumatomachians. Michel Barnes similarly observes that Eunomius and Gregory of Nyssa both assume that some form of divine causality is required, “Eunomius of Cyzicus and Gregory of Nyssa: Two Traditions of Transcendent Causality,” Vigiliae christianae 52 (1998) 59–87, at 62.

The fact that the heroically pro-Nicene Gregory does not go to great lengths to avoid suggesting that the Father is in any way superior to the Son and the Spirit should give us pause as modern interpreters.

To set the record straight, Gregory's doctrine of divine causality entails the affirmation that causality and consubstantiality, just as much as causality and personal distinctions within the Trinity necessarily belong together in one and the same theological principle. For Gregory, as for any Nicene theologian, there is no unity and equality in the Trinity—and there is no Trinity—if the Father does not convey his Divinity to the Son and the Spirit by generating them; and there is no sense of causality and ordered hierarchy in the Trinity except the one by which the Father produces the Son and the Spirit as full partakers in his Divinity and thus ontological equals. Gregory would firmly reject the suggestion that the Father set the Trinity in motion (as if previously), and now that it is up and running, the ordered structure of the relations of origin somehow fades into the background, leaving a purely reciprocal, “perichoretic” exchange of Divinity. Even though the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit continually pour out and return the divine being, it is always, in an eternally prior sense, the Father's divine being that they share.

It is here that we can see the difficulty with Cross's interpretation of Oration 31.14. While Gregory is indeed answering Eunomian objections concerning the divisibility of the divine essence (as well as accusations of tritheism), he does not do so on the basis of the causal priority of the divine essence as a whole. In fact, such a reply would necessarily fall short, since the Eunomians are objecting not to the divisibility of a common divine nature per se, in the sense of a generic class to which three members belong, but rather to the idea that the Son who is begotten from the Father can receive the Father's divine being (the only divine being) without dividing it. In other words, like Hanson, Pannenberg, and others, the Eunomians object to the possibility of divine relations being both causally ordered and equal at the same time. Gregory's response is therefore to argue not for the unity or consubstantiality of three things in general—as if unity-in-diversity per se were the problem—but in defense of the intrinsic connection between causality and ontological equality in God.79

So Or. 30.7: “Being derived from such a cause [as the Father] does not mean being less than the uncaused.”

From a different quarter, Meyendorff is of course right to identify the Father as cause and source, as far as it goes. However, he understands the Father's priority to mean that the

of the Father is the source of the divine nature, so that Gregory exemplifies the Eastern, “personalist” view of the Trinity, which is superior to the Western, “essentialist” view. This dichotomy between Greek, patristic personalism and Latin, scholastic essentialism in trinitarian doctrine, which was set in motion in the seventeenth century by Denys Petau, recycled for twentieth-century consumption by Théodore de Régnon, and subsequently developed into a caricature of “Greek” and “Latin” approaches to the Trinity, fails to do justice to Gregory's doctrine, to say the least.

80

As the fine study of André de Halleux has argued: “Personalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens? Une mauvaise controverse,” RTL 17 (1986) 129–55, 265–92; see 149–50 on Gregory in particular. De Régnon comments on Gregory in Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité (3 vols.; Paris: Victor Retaux et Fils, 1892) 1:405. On the rather strange development of de Régnon's theory in the twentieth century, see Michel Barnes, “De Régnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies 26 (1995) 51–79, and Kristin Hennessy's contribution in this HTR issue.

For Gregory, God the Father is not some sort of divine person who exists primary to or independent of the divine nature; rather, he is the divine nature in its unbegotten mode of existence, or “unbegotten Divinity,” as I have suggested. Hence, the Father is the cause of the Son and the Spirit, and thus of the divine nature that is in them,81

See Or. 42.15.

but not of the divine nature per se, except in the sense that the Father is cause of himself in virtue of his self-existence, which is not what Meyendorff means.

At the heart of the matter for Gregory—and, I would argue, for Nicene theology in general—is the way in which the monarchy of the Father represents the structure and meaning of the divine economy (from which the idea derives). The nature of divine causality, as I have sought to show in Gregory's work, bears directly on the identity and saving work of Christ and is implicated in the very possibility of the knowledge of God. Hanson's account illustrates this principle in reverse, by the way in which his location of the causality in the divine essence correlates with his view that Gregory practices double-subject christological predication.82

Hanson, Search, 713. These two points do not necessarily go together, of course; but the fact that they are so closely related in Gregory's thought makes Hanson's denial of both rather telling.

For in the same breath that he levels out the Trinity, depriving the Son of his eternal definition by the Father, Hanson also removes the Son's presence in Jesus Christ as a single subject of existence to save and to reveal the knowledge of God. Yet for Gregory the priority of God the Father as the real, eternal ordering of the divine life represents both the structure of the divine economy and the theological meaning of Christian existence,83

Observed also by McGuckin, “Perceiving Light,” 29. See now ch. 4 of my Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity.

which is to know the divine light of the Father made manifest in the luminous Son by the light of the equally brilliant Spirit.84

Or. 31.3.

The extent to which this aspect of Gregory's doctrine has not been recognized among contemporary theologians is probably an indication of a more general unease with the Nicene faith itself.

Footnotes

Thanks to Lewis Ayres and Rowan Greer for comments on a draft of this article, and to Michel Barnes and Verna Harrison for discussion of an earlier version presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society.