Gregory of Nazianzen (Part Two)
I.
Christ and
Trinity: Light from Light in Convergence
The doctrine of the Trinity is the
constant focus of Gregory’s theological meditations, it seems. “The Trinity is not only the essential
expression for the Christian life [for Gregory]; in an important sense it is that life.”[1] While we have no space to provide sufficient
or comprehensive treatment of the Trinity in Gregory, we can outline the
doctrine as far as it relates to the themes outlined in the first section, to
give additional hints as to the completed picture of the Nazianzen’s
Christology. To begin we can immediately
link up his Christology of theosis
with his understanding of the Trinity by citing his opening confession to the
fifth Theological Oration:
There was the true light, which
enlightens everyone who comes into the world (Jn. 1.9)—the Father. There was the true light, which enlightens
everyone who comes into the world—The Son.
There was the true light which enlightens everyon who comes into the
world—the other Paraclete. “Was” and “was”
and “was” but one thing was; “light” and “light” and “light” but one light and
one God. This is what David imagined
long ago when he said “in your light we shall see light”. And now we have both seen and proclaimed the
concise and simple theology of the Trinity (!): out of light (the Father) we comprehend light (the Son) in light (the
Spirit) (31.3).
Hence
already just from this quote we can sense a connection between Christ, theosis, and the Trinity: Christ
divinizes us because He is God from God, Light from Light. In our divinization, we might say, this is
not merely a transfusion and acceleration of our nature in itself, but is in
fact a representing to our finitude a communion with the very Trinity. Thus, as a final analysis of this paper, we
will look briefly at how the unity and distinction of the Trinity is conceived,
and so how these relate to Gregory’s Christology and Soteriology, and
ultimately our own theosis. Indeed the unity and diversity in the Trinity
for Gregory are incredibly important for two reasons: the first is, as Ayres
puts it “one of the most distinctive aspects of Nazianzen’s Trinitarian
theology is the manner of his emphasis on the harmony of unity and diversity in
the Godhead.”[2] Hence automatically it would behoove us to understand Christ
in relation to this distinctive feature of his thought, as Christ is, as we
saw, the second Person of the Godhead become Incarnate for us.
Secondly, of course, is the
so-called renewal of Trinitarian theology’s particular interest in Cappadocian
theology. This interest is a peculiar
one, however, for in particular several of Gregory’s key aspects of
Trinitarianism are contested sites many contemporaries wish to discard, while
nonetheless retaining other elements of what they see as Cappadocian “social”
Trinitarianism. While again, due to
limited space, we cannot deal with this issue in detail, it will be seen in
passing that merely adopting certain features of Nazianzen’s Trinitarianism is
harder than it sounds, as the pieces are quite soundly interlocked with one
another.
The
monarchy of God the Father—his unique identity as the only source and sole
principle of thee Trinity, lies at the heart of Gregory’s major
conceptualization of Trinitarian doctrine (e.g. Or. 20.6-7; 23.6-8). In
fact, the unity of the Trinity simply is
the Father (42.15)[3] which
originates in Him and is shared by the Son and the Spirit. This is an intriguing statement because, for
Gregory, it guarantees that in the Son Incarnate we encounter God himself, for the Three are not as three
“parts” but rather “a perfect Trinity consisting of Three Perfects,” (Or. 29.2) and indeed Gregory feels that
the Trinity signifies absolute completion in a way that “Monad” or “Dyad” does
not. In addition the primary Source
being identified with the Father is also the specific architectural theme
whereby each of the three hypostasis
are given unique identity. “The Source
who is without source—Source in the sense of Cause, fount, and eternal light,”
and the Son (like the Spirit) are not uncaused or without source (20.7). Distinct from ousia, (as Basil is credited with pioneering) the hypostaseis are, as Gregory famously
puts it, “relations [schesis]” or “modes of existence” towards one another
(29.16): indeed in a beautiful image he notes “it is as if there were a single
intermingling of light among three suns that are related to one another”
(31.9). They are all unique in the sense
that they are all related; and they are all related as a result of the eternal
generation and procession of Son and Spirit.
At this
point we can safely comment on a few criticisms of Gregory’s concept of
Trinity, indicating that they are misplaced, in order to further clarify what
it is Gregory is teaching and how it relates to Christology. We shall deal with them briefly and answer
them all in turn. E.P. Meijering accuses
Gregory of internal inconsistency by, on the one hand, adopting a heuristic of
causation from Plotinus where any “caused” was inferior ontologically to its
“cause,” and yet simultaneously, following Athanasius, affirms
consubstantiality of the generated Son and Spirit with the Father.[4] This accusation against Gregory has been
answered in a recent essay,[5] so
we will pass over this critique here and note only that Meijering’s reading of
Gregory is superficial, and so the problem he poses is an artificial imposition
rather than real problem.
More immediately serious (because
they are frequently repeated) are the accusations of Pannenberg,[6]
Boff,[7]
and Moltmann,[8] that the
Father as source, despite claims to the contrary, is actually subordinationism,
and conflates the Father with the whole substance of God. Due to space limitations, and noting—with
only slight trepidation—that Pannenberg is by far the most careful and generous
commentator of the three, and appears to be the only one to have read
Patristics extensively,[9] we
will deal with his criticism as representative.
There are
essentially two criticisms put forward by Pannenberg. In the first he says “Nazianzus calls the
Father the basis of both of the other two persons and of their unity with
him. It did not seem to occur to either
him or Basil that this does not logically agree with his thesis that pater is a hypostasis that must be distinguished from the ousia. The incompatibility is that the Father as the source and
origin of deity cannot be distinguished from the substance as the other two
persons can [ergo making them unequal or portions].”[10] This is actually not an altogether unfair
critique as it does raise an important question about Gregory’s
consistency. Two different answers have
been put forth. On the one hand
Zizioulas has argued extensively that Pannenberg would be right, except “causal
language is permissible, according to the Cappadocians, only at the level of personhood, not of substance (Basil C. Eun. 1.14-15; Gregor Naz. Theol. Or. 3.2; 15) it refers to the how
not the what of God.” This means for Zizioulas that “what the
Father ‘causes’ is the transmission not of ousia
but of personal otherness (the tropos
hyparxeos or how of being). The principle of causality distinguishes the persons, it involves
the emergence of otherness in divine
being. The Father as ‘cause’ is God, or the God in an ultimate sense, not because he holds the divine essence and
transmits it—this would indeed endanger the fullness of the divine being of
the other persons [as Pannenberg argues]…--but
because he is the ultimate ontological principle of divine personhood…He
produces ‘wholes of the whole.’”[11]
Zizioulas explains a little more:
‘For the Cappadocians ‘being’ is a notion we apply to God simultaneously in two
senses. It denotes…what he is (ti estin)…and
this the Cappadocians call ousia or
substance or nature of God; and…it refers to how he is (hpws estin)
which they identify with personhood.” He
continues and links them: “given the fact that, according to these Fathers,
there is no ousia in the nude, that
is, without hypostasis, to refer to God’s substance without referring
simultaneously to his personhood, or to reserve the notion of being only to
substance, would for them amount to a false ontological statement…The three
Persons of the Trinity denote God’s being just as much as the term
substance.” Hence “giving existence or
being to the Son by the Father is a matter not of [transmitting nature] or of
the what God is, but of the how God is,”[12]
in other words Zizioulas argues it is Person to Person causation within the one substance, not a
transmission of substance per se. The
Father creates an equal, is the monad, moving to dyad, then triad, is a
production of hypostasis within the
one substance, of which the Fathers is the first tropos hyparxeos or “how” that ousia
exists. The tropos or hypostasis thus
creates a schesis within the essence,
and does not transmit ousia.
On the other hand, though not as
opposed to Zizioulas as they think they are, both Ayres and Beeley have
countered that in Gregory ousia and hypostasis cannot be counterposed
against one another in the way Pannenberg wants.[13] As Fulford notes[14]
the concept of infinite ousia does
not allow the subordination Pannenberg sees, since it would only produce equals
from equals. Identifying the Father as
the source of ousia, while
ontological, is ontological in the sense of a heuristic indicator, since
infinity cannot be horded in that way, so once generation has occurred it is
not partitioned among the three, and the taxis of origin remains at the level
of hypostasis or schesis only, not
substance (similar to Zizioulas’ analysis, though through a different logical
route). In a similar way Ayres has
recently defended Augustine’s Trinitarianism with the same logic.[15] As Gregory himself notes the Father is the
one from whom his equals have equality (Or.
40.43) and indeed Gregory glosses cause in relation to the Begettor/ Begotten
schema: there is a taxis of origin,
to be sure, but a (necessary) equality of ousia,
just like a son is equal to the nature of the father, and not alien to him
(29.10). Moreover (and perhaps
uncomfortably to the modern egalitarian mind) Beeley notes that for Gregory homoousios is a cipher for the concept
of Monarchy, and merely indicates equality through
the taxis. It thus indicates, not
ontological subordination, but the affirmation of the irreversible flow of
monarchy and generation.[16] As we saw in the first section as well,
ontological subordination could hardly be implied by Gregory’s soteriology of theosis and its relation to Christology,
or else his entire schema would fall apart.
Finally, we will leave with one
last criticism of Pannenberg, and an answer.
Pannenberg notes in general (not against the Cappadocian’s explicitly)
that if we leave the Trinitarian relations at the level of modes of origin, it
hardly does justice to the reciprocal nature of relations displayed in the New
Testament—the Father has, after all, handed his kingdom over to the Son, and
the Son gives it back. The bare form of
generation and procession do not cover this, says Pannenberg: “Relations among
the three persons that are defined as mutual self distinction cannot be reduced
to relations of origin in the traditional sense…The Son is [e.g.] not merely
begotten of the Father. He is also
obedient to him, and thereby glorifies him as the One God.”[17] Since this criticism was not specifically
aimed at the Cappadocians, or Gregory, we cannot fault Pannenberg for missing a
key theme in Gregory that would answer this criticism. In Oration
42, which Ayres notes was written close in time to the Theological Orations, we read “The Three have one nature—God. The principle of unity is the Father, from
whom the other two are brought forward
and to whom they are brought back, not so as to coalesce, but so as to
cleave together” (42.15) and in Or.
29 Gregory uses the language of “convergence” to explicate a similar movement
back towards the Father, which, as Gregory is wont to stress, is not a separate
movement from generation or spiration, but one fluid exit and return.[18] Nor indeed, as he noted, is it a coalescence,
but distinction is maintained. In this
way Ayres argues it anticipates the later use of perichoresis.[19] Generation and Spiration are then not what
Pannenberg worries they are: merely schematic or geometric, but are in fact reciprocal (without subverting taxis).
Conclusion
To pull the whole picture together
then: for Gregory, Christ is an Equal generated from the Father, Light from
Light, who became Incarnate and took up our infirmities in the path to the
cross and resurrection. As the visible
figure of the invisible, the incarnate Christ is not only “God crucified,” but
is our vehicle for purification and contemplation of an otherwise inaccessible
infinite God. To this picture, for it to
be more complete, we would have had to add Gregory’s pneumatology, and to a
larger extent his epistemology which is connected with this. But for our purposes we can say Christ, for
Gregory, is the light in which we see (indwelled by the Spirit): “In your light
we shall see light.” He is our access to
the father, the sheepgate through which the flock enters, the pattern whereby
we become conformed, ascetically disciplined, and constantly become more and
more illuminated as we are drawn forward into theosis which is, since Christ is a divine member of the Holy
Triad, entrance into the very perichoretic dance of the Trinity itself. Christ is not only our savior, but he is the
renewer of our entire person, including our imagination and vision, in which we
are constantly, in relation to contemplation of this divine mystery of Christ
and the Trinity, exhorted to refigure and understand the world itself. No longer absorbed in idolatry to finite
things, the weight of these things moving toward nothingness is lifted, so that
all things are freed for a constant exchange of gifts and charity, of love and
surrender to the lover, of self-giving and receiving without fear of ultimate
loss. As Gregory exhorts us, Christ is
the one that allows us “To walk toward Him shining,” with the very same light
He is.
[1] Beeley Gregory Nazianzus p.187.
[2] Ayres Nicaea and Its Legacy p.245.
[3] Statements such as these are
dealt with in detail in John Zizioulas Communion
and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York:
T&T Clark, 2006) esp. pp.113-154 where he defends “personal” causation
against “ousiological” causation.
[4] E.P. Meijering “The Doctrine
of the Will and the Trinity in the Orations
of Gregory of Nazianzus” in God Being
History: Studies in Patristic Philosophy (Amsterdam: North Holland
Publishing Company, 1975) pp.224-234.
[5] Ben Fulford “One Commixture
of Light: Rethinking Some Modern Uses and Critiques of Gregory of Nazianzus on
the Unity and Equality of the Divine Persons,” in International Journal of Systematic Theology vol. 11 No.2 April
2009 pp172-189.
[6] Wolfhart Pannenberg Systematic Theology III vol. trans.
Geoffery W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Eerdman’s Publishing, 1991-1997) I:279n.70.
[7] Leonardo Boff Trinity and Society trans. Paul Burns
(Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishing, 2005) p.84f. In particular Boff critiques the Father as
Origen because it implies temporality and theogony. These are both, to put it bluntly, ridiculous
critiques because they ignore the fact that Gregory and the other Cappadocians
specifically talk about how this is not what they mean contra Eunomius and the
neo-Arians who accuse the Cappadocian’s of being “temporists” and introducing
pathos into the Divinity.
[8] Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom p.94f; 129-150;
199. Moltmann, to be fair, is not just
criticizing the Cappadocians, there are few who escape his accusations as he
disavows all forms of Lordship or Monarchy as oppressive. He even polemically turns Trinitarianism against monotheism. To which Pannenberg with his dry German humor
comments that Moltmann has made a “very
poor terminological decision.”
[9] As Fulford “One Commixture
of Light” notes, Moltmann misuses an analogy of Adam, Seth, and Eve so
egregiously from Nazianzen—as an example of Trinity as a family, rather than as
how a single nature can exemplify different modes of origin—he says we can do
little but either assume Moltmann does what he wants with the text, or simply
hadn’t read it.
[10] Pannenberg ST I:279n70.
[11] Zizioulas Communion and Otherness p.128-130.
Italics are original to Zizioulas.
[12] Ibid
pp.124-133. It should be noted that this
appears to be a development of his original arguments in Being as Communion which had more of a tendency to play communion
against substance. Here he utilizes much
more extensively the concept of tropos
and schesis to explain the persons.
[13] Beeley Gregory of Nazianzus p.212ff.; Ayres Nicaea and Its Legacy p.248.
C.f. Beeley’s essay “Divine Causality and the Monarchy of the Father in
Gregory of Nazianzus,” in Harvard
Theological Review 100 (2007), though it is expanded in Beeleys book.
[14] “One Commixture of Light”
p.176.
[16] Beeley Gregory of Nazianzus p.214.
[17] Pannenberg ST 1:320.
[18] Fulford “One Commixture of
Light” p.180.
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