A Loud Absence: T.F. Torrance in the Light of Stephen Holmes (Part Four)

(Want to catch up?  Here is Part One, Part Two, Part Three)


As we stated, Torrance places an uttermost value on the homoousios.  In fact, the homoousios can fairly be said to structure and interconnect with several other theological concepts such as perichoresis, mutually determining the shape that these concepts take in his systematic thought.  As Paul Molnar nicely summarizes it, “Here the homoousion, perichoresis, and the onto-relational concept of persons [for Torrance] function together with the result that God is understood as fully three distinct persons in communion with one another within the eternal Godhead.”[1]  Now again, as far as systematic theology is concerned, this is an admirable formulation.  But our interest is how this prioritization of the homoousion and its concomitants in turn shape Torrance’s historical judgments, and how these fare in regards to more recent scholarship like the work of Stephen Holmes.  Paul Molnar, albeit inadvertently, points us in the direction we shall look on the page after his quote just above:

[Because of the homoousion] the divine monarchy must be understood to reside in the being of God as one and three.  Here Torrance is critical of some of the Cappadocians, namely Basil and Gregory [Nyssa] ... because they made too sharp a distinction between the immanent and the economic Trinity and because they never referred to the Holy Spirit as God.  Further, they thought of the Father as arche and this implied degrees of deity, thus opening the door to subordinationism which, of course, Torrance strongly opposes because any such thinking undermines the Deity of the Son and the Spirit and thus calls into question God’s actions ad extra as Savior and Redeemer.[2]

Now there is a lot in this quote but we can distill the historical claims into four points. Using his concept of homoousion as a criterion (along with its concomitants of perichoresis and onto-relation) Torrance judges Basil and Nyssa deficient because 1.) Basil and Nyssa don’t seem to locate God’s monarchy in the divine essence but rather 2.) they refer to the Father as arche which seems to imply gradations of deity and “opens the door to subordinationism.”  Basil and Nyssa also 3.) Make too sharp a division between immanent and economic Trinity.  Also of issue was 4.) that Nyssa and Basil don’t refer to the Holy Spirit as God.   Let us deal with this fourth point first.

This point seems a non sequitur, especially since Basil and Nyssa were both prime opponents of the pneumatomachoi (spirit-fighters) who denied the deity of the Spirit (also referred to as the “Macedonians” after Macedonius of Constantinople).  For example, as Ayres puts it, Eustathius of Antioch who championed Nicaea but denied the full-equality of the Spirit led him into “direct conflict with Basil, to whom such a position could only seem a disingenuous avoidance of Nicaea’s obvious implications.”[3] 

Now, one interesting point is that despite Basil’s full-on apologetic and theological unpacking of the Holy Spirit’s full divinity in On the Holy Spirit it is true that Nazianzus and others critiqued his friend for never using the term homoousios (Epistle 58). Perhaps this is the root of Torrance’s accusation?  If it is, it would add weight to our thesis. It is likely that Basil never uses this phrase due to sensitivity towards its still prevalent Marcellan connotations (meaning that the Son is not his own hypostasis) and as such prefers phrases like physike koinonia (community of nature) and homotimia (equality of honor).  Precisely so, in Epistle 113, Basil seems to have pastoral reservations regarding those who still have aversions to the term and yet nevertheless confess that “the Holy Spirit is not a creature.”  As such he urges the clergy of Tarsus (the recipients of the letter) toward communion with those who deny the Spirit is a creature.  Ultimately Nazianzus agreed with Basil’s prudence lest “the truth be destroyed by the bright clarity of our proclamation” (Epistle 58).   In fact, Athanasius himself (the eventual champion of homoousios!), writes regarding the uproar Basil’s reserve caused:

I have learned from our beloved Dianius that [monks at Caesarea] are vexed, and are opposing our beloved bishop Basil … I have pointed out to them what is fitting, namely that as children should obey their father, they should not reject what he approves.  For if he were suspected as torching the truth, they would do well to condemn him.  But if they are confident, as we all are, that he is a glory to the Church, contending rather on behalf of the truth and teaching those who require it, it is not right to combat such a man, but rather to accept with thanks his good conscience.  From what the beloved Dianius has related, they appear to be vexed without cause. (Letter 53 to Palladius).

It seems then, that the charge that Basil (and Nyssa) do not call the Holy Spirit “God,” if true, is unfair to their actual positions.  This may be a nitpick, but there it is.  On to the next points.

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[1] Paul Molnar, Thomas F. Torrance: Theologian of the Trinity (New York: Ashgate, 2009), 63.

[2] Ibid., 64.

[3] Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 215.