The Cappadocian Fathers, Pt 1: Introduction, Ep 16, Prof. C. Veniamin

Series: Mystical Theology
Episode 16: The Cappadocian Fathers, Part 1: Introduction, Prof. C. Veniamin

Episode 16 of our “Mystical Theology” series is an introduction to the remarkable contribution of the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, and also Amphilochius of Iconium.

Athanasius the Great had emphasized the mystery of the Oneness of the Son and Word of God with God the Father, by means of their "consubstantiality"; while the Cappadocians, building on the work of Athanasius, formulated the teaching of the Church regarding the mystery of the Threeness of God.

Themes covered in this podcast are listed in the Timestamps below.

Q&As related to Episode 16 available in The Professor’s Blog.

Recommended background reading: Christopher Veniamin, ed., Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies (Dalton PA: 2022); The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation: "Theosis" in Scripture and Tradition (2016); and Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, Empirical Dogmatics of the Orthodox Catholic Church: According to the Spoken Teaching of Father John Romanides, Vol. 1 (2012), Vol. 2 (repr. ed. 2020).

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Transcript

Communion of the Godhead: Basil, Zizioulas and Ware

Speaker 1 0:00

So, looking at the great Cappadocian fathers, basil and the two Gregories in particular, and let's begin with a statement that St Basil makes in his work on the Holy Spirit, section 18, or in the other, numbering 45. St Basil says other numbering 45. St Basil says it is in the communion of the Godhead that the unity consists. It is in the communion, the gynonia of the Godhead, distheoditos, very important terms, very important terms Kynonia, communion and theodis, godhead or divinity. So here Saint Basil makes the equation enosis, union equals kynonia. And so some argue that the unity of the Godhead means community. This is a point emphasized by Metropolitan John Zizoulas in his book being as Communion, on page 134, he says Instead of speaking of the unity of God in terms of his one nature, he, saint Basil, prefers to speak of it in terms of the communion of persons. Communion of persons, communion is for Basil, an ontological category. The nature of God is communion. Now there's a little bit of a jump here that Metropolitan John Zizoulas makes when he says this. He says Basil prefers to speak in terms of the communion of persons. Well, he's speaking of the communion of the Godhead. He doesn't actually say the communion of the hypostases. And there is a difference. Communion is not in fact on the level of hypostases. I think I know where Metropolitan John Zizulas is going when he says he's speaking of the hypostases, but one thing which is not communicable in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is what makes a hypostasis unique. That which makes a hypostasis unique is the hypostatic mode of existence of each hypostasis. We said before that the Aryans make the mistake of attributing these modes of existence to the essence instead of the hypostasis. So they call the essence of God, or the nature of God, unbegotten, or they call God the Father unbegotten but referring to his essence. In Cappadocian theology, that which distinguishes and makes unique each of the three divine hypostases is the mode of existence, the tropos, hyparxios. Tropos is the mode or manner, hyparxios, of existence, of existence, of being. What is the distinguishing characteristic of God the Father? It is that he is unbegotten. What is the distinguishing characteristic of God the Son? It is that he is begotten. He is produced from the essence of the Father by generation. And what is the hypostatic characteristic of the Holy Spirit? It is that he proceeds. He is produced by procession and not by generation by generation.

Procession of the Holy Spirit: 2nd Ecumenical Council & Gregory the Theologian

Speaker 1 4:43

So the reason why I pause here, after quoting Metropolitan John Zizulas saying that St Basil prefers to speak of this communion as a communion of persons, is that the personhood, the hypostatic characteristic of each of the divine hypostases in the Holy Trinity is not communicated. Otherwise we would have a Father who is also Son and Holy Spirit, or we would have a Son who is also Father and the Holy Spirit, and so on. So the Fathers teach us that what is communicated, the common essence and the common essential energy, that which the three divine hypostases hold in common is that each one of them is wholly and perfectly God by nature, and so each one of the three divine hypostases possesses the fullness of the divine essence and the fullness of all that follows naturally and properly from that. So the same kingdom, the same glory, the same power, the same light, and so on and so forth. On this question, the basic point is that the Holy Spirit is not a second son. He's not by generation. If you read the minutes of the second ecumenical council take Schwarz or Manzi you will see the emphasis there. Why the emphasis was given not by generation, because the Holy Spirit is unique and distinctive God.

Augustine of Hippo

Speaker 1 6:59

The Holy Spirit is the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, equal in his divine status, homousios with God, the Father and the Son, but is distinct by virtue of the fact that he proceeds from the Father and is not generated, is not begotten of the Father, because these words, these terms, identify the mode of existence. Read St Gregory the Theologian on the Holy Spirit and you'll see this. So these names denote a difference in the hypostatic mode of existence, but St Gregory the Theologian says that there is a difference. We know difference. We know what generation means, what begotten means or what proceeding means. We don't know and this is the problem that Saint Augustine tried to understand what it means that the Holy Spirit proceeds. How is the Holy Spirit uniquely a third hypostasis distinct from the other? And he reduces the mystery to a series of relations. But we'll come to that in due course.

Does “communion” mean “relationship”?

Gregory of Nyssa

Speaker 1 8:39

What we need to establish at this point is that there's a reason why Zizoulas and certain others want to make this point, and there's a reason why I'm alerting you to a question here as to whether it's a legitimate point to make the substitution of communion instead of substance as an ontological category for Zizoulas is one of the striking peculiarities of Saint Basil's teaching on God, as compared with that of Saint Athanasius and certainly with that of the Western fathers. So he's saying that Saint Basil is preferring to use the word communion rather than emphasizing the homoousion of Athanasius. He wants to do the same thing, but he's doing it in a different way and specifically he's using the concept of kynonia in order to achieve that. You know that Saint Athanasius speaks of God's unity in terms of essence, of usia, and that his key word for divine unity is homousios, consubstantial. Metropolitan Callistos in his lectures on the Cappadocians, in his lectures on the Cappadocians, maintains that the Cappadocians also use the term homoousios, but they think of the unity of the Godhead in terms of relationship rather than of a single essence. They prefer to speak of God's unity in terms of the interrelationship between the communion of the persons, between the gynonia of the person. This in no way contradicts Athanasius, says Callistos, but it indicates a shift in emphasis and I think that it's worth noting here that by relationship, metropolitan Callistos means communion. But does communion mean relationship? And Callistos gives the way that Gregory of Nyssa writes in his work on the difference between essence and hypothesis, epistle 38 in the Basilian collection. In other words, it's a letter which was regarded as written by St Basil, but they think now that it's actually by Gregory of Nyssa.

Oneness and Threeness of God & the Church

Speaker 1 11:45

In the life-creating nature of Father, son and Holy Spirit, there is no division, but only a continuous and inseparable kynonia between them. It is not possible to envisage any severance or division, such as one might think of the Son without the Father or separate the Spirit from the Son. But there is between them an ineffable and inconceivable communion and distinction An ineffable and inconceivable communion, kynonia and distinction. So what do we have here? A dynamic theory of the Holy Trinity. We don't think in terms of a static simplicity of the Godhead, but we think of a dynamic unity, and Callistos is pointing to a unity that is expressed in the interplay, the interrelationship of the ginonia of the three persons.

Speaker 1 13:13

So, agreeing with Zizoulas on the question of the relationship, the communion of the persons, pointing out that the Cappadocians also use Homoousios, as does athanasios. But let's see one more quotation by or from Zizoulas, again from his being as Communion, page 134. This does not mean that the persons have an ontological priority over the one substance of God, but that the one substance of God coincides with the communion of the three persons. So Zizula, in saying this, said look, we have equality in the ontological status of the oneness and the threeness of god, and zizoulas is thinking in terms of how this plays out in practice and how it influences ecclesiology, our understanding of the church. The institution that is supposed to express the unity of the church must be an institution which expresses communion. This is what Zizoulas wants to say, and if nothing may be said to be prior or precede the event of communion, what does this communion consist of? What, in other words, is the true nature of the church? True nature of the church, because that is the life of the Trinity in which we have been called to participate and into which we have been invited to enter, a life of communion.

Cappadocian emphasis on Mystery vs Arians and Eunomians

Speaker 1 15:37

Communion, now, on a certain level. This is all well and good, but Metropolitan Callistos says that we could call this emphasis on communion, the communion of persons, a social doctrine of the Trinity, and that could be one pointer to the Cappadocian approach. You have a model of the Holy Trinity as a community and a communion of persons, a social doctrine of persons, a social doctrine. I'm going to leave that question hanging because I want to come back to it in greater detail and discuss in particular, what is the character of this communion, what does the communion of the three members of the Holy Trinity, in fact consistent.

Speaker 1 16:42

The next thing that Callistos wants to emphasize is that the Cappadocians place considerable emphasis on the mystery, the mystery of the Holy Trinity, that God is a mystery. God is not some logical puzzle that we can solve, but God is and will always remain living mystery. The Trinity is the object or subject of our worship. And here the Cappadocians are responding to the extreme Arians of the 350s and 360s. Now, arius himself had followed the apophatic line of thinking he had allowed for the divine mystery. In the Thalia, arius affirms that God, the Father, is ineffable, beyond understanding, beyond the understanding even of the Logos. The Son says Arius cannot comprehend the father's essence. Indeed, he doesn't even know his own essence. So the early Arians emphasize the mystery the father is totally unknowable and the son's knowledge of the father is limited, and our knowledge is much more limited than that. So Arius is apophatic in his approach to God. We said that the Anemoians, aetius and Eunomius, later abandoned this approach, and they have their reasons for doing so.

St Basil the Great on God as mystery

Speaker 1 18:42

But the Cappadocians insist also on the impossibility of grasping God's essence with the human mind, of the impossibility of describing that essence. And St Basil says, characteristically, every theological expression fails to convey properly the meaning of the speaker. Our intellect is weak and our tongue is yet more inadequate. That's from his epistle number seven. So we cannot express in words all that we think, and our thought cannot grasp the true meaning of God, he who makes his own intellect, says Saint Basil. The measure of reality does not reflect that. It is easier to measure the whole ocean with a tiny cup than to grasp the ineffable greatness of God with the human mind.

St Basil the Great on the limitations of the human mind

St Basil the Great’s “essence–energies” distinction

Speaker 1 20:00

On Psalm 115, we do not know, says Basil, the true nature, the inner essence of our own soul, or even of the ground on which our feet are standing. There's always, even in the things nearest and most familiar to us, an unknowable residue. How much less can we know, then, the inner essence of the unknowable God, asks Basil. But of course, St Basil did not simply think that God is totally unknowable. He makes a celebrated distinction in his Epistle 234, a distinction between the essence and energies of God and energies of God between the usia and energia, which has a long history in the Christian East.

Speaker 1 21:08

We know our God from his energies, he says, but we do not claim to draw near to his essence, for his energies come down to us, but his essence remains unknowable. So the essence means God is transcendent, the energies, that God is imminent. The essence refers to God as unknowable. The energies refer to God as revealed, knowable in the experiential sense. So we know something of God. We know God by experience, but we cannot define and describe what God is.

Appeal for support

Speaker 1 22:02

So behind the dispute, the Cappadocians and Arians, there's the question of the divine status of the sun and the question of the knowledge of God and the language which we use in order to convey that knowledge. In other words, there's a mystery and the mystical element remains. So what I would like to do is to take a look at how the Cappadocians, to take a look at how the Cappadocians affirm the divine unity and then to look at how they mark out the distinctions within the Godhead, how they speak of the threefoldness of God, the Holy Trinity, god, the Holy Trinity and the distinctiveness and uniqueness of each of the three divine hypostases. Please subscribe to our channel and share with your friends Click on the join button below our video and become a friend or reader of the Mount Tabor Academy. Support our drive to introduce the theology and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church to the wider community.