Trinitarian Theology

Question 1

Athanasius addressed the issues of what council, and what was the argument about?

Answer 1

Council of Alexandria in 362

Athanasias interviewed both sides of the theological debate; both sides were saying the opposite thing (using the term hypostases differently), but claiming the same thing

3 hypostases folks were trying to secure diversity and the one hypostases folks were trying to secure the unity of God but neither was refuting the other side

Question 2

What did those who spoke of three subsistences (hypostases) mean to communicate about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why did they “use such expressions”?

Answer 2

To establish that God is truly three; distinguishing the three

Question 3

In addition to acknowledging “a Holy Trinity”, what else did those who spoke of three subsistences (hypostases) acknowledge?

Answer 3

Holy Trinity is One Godhead,
One Beginning
the Son is coessential with the Father
the Holy Spirit is not a creature, nor external, but proper to and inseparable from essence of the Father and the Son.

Question 4

What did those who spoke of one subsistence (hypostasis) mean to communicate about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Answer 4

“we use the word Subsistence thinking it the same thing to say Subsistence or Essence ‘But we hold that there is One, because the Son is of the Essence of the Father, and because of the identity of nature.”

Question 5

When those who spoke of one substance used the word subsistence (hypostasis), they thought it was the same thing as saying what?

Answer 5

Essence

Question 6

What did those who spoke of one substance believe?

Answer 6

that there is on Godhead and that it has one nature and not that there is one nature of the Father from which that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are distinct.

Question 7

What did Basil attempt to do?

Answer 7

• Basil attempted to define the problematic terms used to describe the trinity so that everyone could be on the same page.
• God is one OUSIA (essence) and three HYPOSTASES (properties)

Question 8

We are here most interested in Basil’s discussion of how “divinity is one in this way”. In what is “the unity (between the Father and Son) thought to reside”?

Answer 8

The formula of essence (divinity)

Question 9

How does Basil illustrate the “formula of essence/being”?

Answer 9

Light

“the Father is conceived of as light in his substrate, then the substance of the Only-Begotten is also confessed as light”

Question 10

What distinguishes the Father and the Son from each other according to Basil? In what does their “difference” lie?

Answer 10

the distinctive features (or properties) that characterize each

Question 11

What are properties of an essence “like” according to Basil?

Answer 11

Like marks or forms that distinguish what is common

Question 12

Properties “distinguish what is common by means of individual characteristics.” What is an example of what is common to the Father and Son?

Answer 12

For instance, deity (theotes) is common

fatherhood and sonship are individualities

Question 13

What is the distinction between ousia and hypostasis?

Answer 13

Ousia = defines unity/ the general characteristics
Hypostases = defines particularities

Question 14

Basil - In the case of the Godhead, what do we confess “so as not to give a variant definition of existence”?

Answer 14

“We confess one essence or substance..”

Question 15

In the case of the Godhead, what do we confess “in order that our conception of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be without confusion and clear”?

Answer 15

we confess a particular hypostasis

Question 16

What are the three “separate characteristics” that Basil identifies which enable us “to give a sound account of our faith”?

Answer 16

Fatherhood
Sonship
Sanctification

Question 17

Basil - Fill in the Blanks
“Hence it results that there is a satisfactory preservation of the ____ by the confession of the _____ while in the distinction of the ______ regarded in each there is the confession of the peculiar properties of the _____ .”

Answer 17

Unity
one Godhead
individual properties
Persons

Question 18

According to Basil, those who “identify (equate) essence (ousia) or substance and hypostasis” must fall into one of two possible errors. What are the errors?

Answer 18

• Confess only three Persons

- Error of Sabellius – the same hypostases changed it’s form tot meet the needs of the moment

Question 19

Nazianzus says, “Monotheism, with its single governing principle, is what we value”. He then proceeds to state what monotheism is not and is in his way of thinking: how does he define it?

Answer 19

• Monotheism is when something converges towards it’s source; not just a movement ourward but rather an eternal coming back to the source; dynamic and timeless movement

Question 20

Nazianzus explains what “the result is” of his particular understanding of Monotheism, what is “the result”?

Answer 20

The result is that though there is numerical distinction, there is no division in the being

Question 21

Nazianzus - What are the “Christian terms” for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to which Gregory says we should “limit ourselves”?

Answer 21

‘the Ingenerate, “
“the Begotten,”
“what Proceeds from the Father.”

• This becomes standard after Gregory** 1 ousia, 3 hypostes, characterized by these properties

Question 22

Nazianzus wants to provide a way of speaking about the timeless/eternal generation of the Son and procession of the Holy Spirit. “How is it, then, that these latter are not like the Father in having no origin, if they are co-eternal with him?”

Answer 22

Because they are from him, though not after him.

…for things which produce Time are beyond time.

Question 23

Nazianzus - Who alone knows how the Son is begotten?

Answer 23

It is a way known only to the begetting Father and the begotten Son.

• It’s pointless to ask how He was begotten because it’s beyond our human vision

Question 24

Nazianzus argues against the notion, which we find in Eunomius, that the Son and the Father must be different beings (have different essences) because one is unbegotten and the other is begotten.

• Why must the begetter and the begotten be the same?

Answer 24

it is in the na- ture of an offspring to have a nature identical with its parent’s.

Question 25

Nazianzus - If “they do not mark out separate beings”, then what are ingenerateness (unbegotteness) and generateness (begotteness)?

Answer 25

they are separate qualities of the same being.

Question 26

Nazianzus wants to explain what “Father” and “Son” mean in such away that allows them to be the same being or substance/essence. If “‘Father’ designates neither the substance nor the activity”, what does it designate?

Answer 26

• designates how they are related and are the same in nature
• names are the most fundamental way to say that God is three but Gregory says that names tell us how they are related, what is shared and what is continuous.

Question 27

Inseparable Operations - what is the difference between Basil and Gregory of Nyssa?

Answer 27

Basil = 3 activities combined to form one activity
Gregory = one activity flows through all three

Question 28

What is the “statement… of such a kind” that Gregory of Nyssa’s opponents use to illustrate their argument?

Answer 28

Peter James and John have one human nature but we call them three men so why not call the F S and HS three Gods.

Question 29

What is the conclusion do the opponets draw (and Gregory admits) from their illustration – what “is not absurd”?

Answer 29

How do you share a nature?

Question 30

According to Nyssa, Scripture teaches that the “divine nature is unnameable and unutterable”. That being the case, what do names really tell us about the divine nature – what do we “say that every name” is?

Answer 30

They tell us something about that nature; who or what God is.

Question 31

Nyssa - What does the name “God” or “deity” tell us about that being/nature that we refer to as “God”?

Answer 31

• “Diety” tells us that God observes all things; if God sees God has the power to give life; if God creates then God has the power to create

Question 32

Nyssa - What is it about how the activity of God occurs that makes it inappropriate to distinguish the activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Answer 32

• the action of each is not divided and peculiar/distinct; whatever happens happen through the 3; god does not work by having three distinct activities

Question 33

Nyssa - What is the only thing that distinguishes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from each other? What is it “by which alone we seize the distinction of the one from the other”?

Answer 33

• The difference between cause and causality.

- one activity that starts off from the father, proceeds through the son and completed by the Holy Spirit

Question 34

Augustine begins his sermon with reference to Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan, a story which would seem to be problematic for pro-nicene theology. What are the three “things” that “these three are apparently separated by” in the baptismal account?

Answer 34

separated by place, separated by function, separated by action.

Question 35

What is the catholic faith of which Augustine says, “this is what we know, this is what we believe”?

Answer 35

one inseparable trinity or triad;

one God, not three gods

Question 36

Augustine explicitly identifies the problem that the baptismal account seems to present t, what is the problem?

Answer 36

Where now is the inseparable trinity?

Question 37

What is “the question that is commonly put by the more eager brethren” AND what is Augustine’s answer to it?

Answer 37

“Does the Father do anything that the Son doesn’t do, or the Son do anything that the Father doesn’t do?”

No.

Question 38

“If the Father does nothing without the Son and the Son nothing without the Father, won’t it follow, presumably, that we have to say the Father too was”, what?

Answer 38

Incarnated

Augustine says this is a false dilemma and that there is a third option; the son does nothing without the father as in scripture but that the incarnation belongs only to the son

Question 39

How does Augustine affirm inseparable operations with regards to the incarnation?

Answer 39

The Son is the one who suffers and dies but it is the work of the father therefore BOTH the father and son are at work.

Question 40

Augustine puts his solution (to the apparent contradiction between the incarnation of the Son and the doctrine of inseparable operations) a different way. What is the first thing he had to bring proof of concerning the birth of Christ?

Answer 40

“The first thing I have to bring proof of concerns the birth of Christ, how the Father effected it and the Son effected it.”

• There’s a difference between the action and the product being produced.
• The work of the incarnation (birth, suffering, resurrection) is through both but belongs to the son only.

Question 41

Augustine - What is the succinct, 10-word, sentence that explains how we can understand both the incarnation of the Son and the doctrine of inseparable operations to be true?

Answer 41

“You have the persons quite distinct, and their working inseparable.”

Question 42

What are the “three somethings which can be indicated separately and which operate inseparably”? What are the three things human beings “have got”?

Answer 42

Mind - Memory, Understanding, Will