HS and The Cappadocians

Question 1

Basil is discussing that the Holy Spirit is one with God. What are we supposed to “understand from” the story of Sapphira?

Answer 1

this shows that to sin against the Holy Spirit is to sin against God

• The HS does what the Father and Son do, so it is what they are.

Question 2

Basil specifies the different roles or activities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the creation of the angels. What is the role/activity that he assigns to each of them?

Answer 2

• The HS is participating in the creative process of the godhead; the three activities (below) combine one inseparable activity

God/ Originator - commands
Son/Word - creates
Spirit - perfects, strengthens, sanctifies

Question 3

If the Spirit “is not begotten like the Son”, then how is the Spirit “of God” according to Basil?

Answer 3

Because He proceeds from the mouth of the Father, and is not begotten like the Son.

Question 4

Gregory of Nazianzus - What is the problem that arises if the Holy Spirit is a creature like human beings, just created a little earlier?

Answer 4

“If he has the same rank as I have, how can he make me God, how can he link me with deity?”

Question 5

Gregory of Nazianzus lists a variety of opinions that existed with regard to the Holy Spirit. What did some “amongst our own experts” take the Holy Spirit to be?

Answer 5

Amongst our own experts, some took the Holy Spirit as an active process, some as a creature, some as God.

And others are agnostic saying there is no scripture that determines it either way.

Question 6

Gregory of Nazianzus notes the logical dilemma, which Nicetas also encountered, that only the categories of ingenerate (unbegotten) and begotten apply to God. Explain how there are either “brothers” or a “grandson” if the Spirit is said to be begotten

Answer 6

If he is ingenerate, there are two unoriginate beings. Ifhe is begotten, we again have alternatives: either begotten from the Father or from the Son. If from the Father, there will be two sons who are brothers.

(If he is begotten from the Son, our God apparently has a grandson)

Question 7

How does Gregory of Nazianzus answer the logical dilemma? What is the “midway term between ingeneracy and generacy” that diffuses the logical dilemma?

Answer 7

procession

Question 8

How does Gregory of Nazianzus answer his question, “What, then, is ‘proceeding’?”?

Answer 8

The Spirit proceeds

-We can’t understand what generate or proceeds mean.

Question 9

Gregory of Nazianzus uses the phrases “in so far as”, “in as much as”, and “to the extent that” to explain the gains that come from positing the Spirit’s procession from the Father. What are the gains for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that he identifies? “

Answer 9

he is no creature
he is not Son
he is God

Question 10

Gregory of Nazianzus gets at the significance of the two terms (“generate” and “proceed”) in Ora 31.9. What is “the very fact” that “gives them (the Three) whatever names are applied to them – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”?

Answer 10

The very fact of not being begotten, of being begotten and of proceeding, gives them whatever names are applied to them-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively.

Question 11

Is the Spirit “of the same substance” (homoousios) with God according to Gregory of Nazianzus?

Answer 11

“Certainly.
Is he of the same substance?
Yes, if he is God.”

Question 12

Gregory of Nyssa - We, for instance, confess that the Holy Spirit is of the same rank as the Father and the Son, _____, to be thought or named, that devotion can ascribe to a Divine nature. We confess that, save his being contemplated as with peculiar attributes in regard of Person, __________ according to Scripture, but that, while not to be confounded with the Father in being never originated, nor with the Son in being the Only-begotten, and while to be regarded separately in certain distinctive properties, He has in all else, as I have just said, an exact identity.

Answer 12

so that there is no difference between them in anything

the Holy Spirit is indeed from God and of the Christ

Question 13

According to Nyssa, is there any difference between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit according to nature (ousia)?

Answer 13

No difference in Divine nature

Question 14

Nyssa - What is the “peculiar attribute” of the Holy Spirit?

Answer 14

From God and of the Christ

Same ousia, distinction lies at the level of the person

Question 15

Gregory of Nyssa is also comfortable distinguishing the Three by means of numerical order. He is careful, however, to say what the ascription of “numerical order” to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does not suggest: what is it unreasonable “to suppose the numerical order to be a sign of”?

Answer 15

a sign of any diminution
or essential variation!

Question 16

Nyssa says that his opponents “must accept one of two alternatives” with regard to the Holy Spirit, what are they?

Answer 16

Not call Him divine at all or to refrain from “subtracting from his Diety any of those conceptions which are attributable to Diety.

Question 17

What is keeping Nyssa’s opponents from ascribing creative activity to the Spirit?

Answer 17

That scripture says that “through the Son all things were made”
- scripture doesn’t specifically say that the Spirit creates and therefore isn’t as much God.

Question 18

Nyssa - What is “the view which is consistent with all reverence”?

Answer 18

We are not to think of the Father as ever parted from the Son, nor to look for the Son as separate from the Holy Spirit.

Question 19

How does Gregory use power language to secure the participation of the Spirit in the activity of creation?

Answer 19

Design is transmission of power from the father through the son and completed in the spirit. One power flows through all three.