THE HOLY TRINITY

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages.

The Lord's Prayer Orthodox Liturgy

Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages.

Liturgy of the Catechumens, Orthodox Church

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CHAPTER FOUR

From the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit

It is very difficult if not impossible for us to place ourselves alongside the Fathers of the early Church and read the Bible exactly as they actually read it.  Therefore, in this chapter I shall not attempt to enter the minds of the Fathers to explain the way they read, studied and meditated upon the books of the Bible.  However, I shall first make some preliminary remarks to provide a context in which to look at the biblical evidence.

First of all, and of fundamental importance, is that the early Church was self-consciously Trinitarian in that all baptisms from the earliest times were "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."  These words of Jesus did not specifically state the exact ontological or metaphysical relation of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father, but they did place the Three together in an inseparable way.  So the Church spoke of the Holy Triad or the Holy Trinity from the earliest times.  Yet, while speaking of the Triad, they clearly believed that "the God" was not "the Godhead" but "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."  The belief in Yahweh (= Jehovah or the LORD) inherited from the Jews and proclaimed in the holy pages of the Bible was in Christian terms belief in "the Father Almighty."  And this Yahweh, the One God and the Father, was the God who has

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both an Only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and a Holy Spirit, who proceeds from him and rests upon his Son.

Secondly, in the worship of the local churches and in private devotion, prayers were addressed to Jesus the Lord.  This both assumed and raised the question as to his divinity.  And the question, given the conviction that Yahweh, the One God, is the Father, was itself a question of the relation of Jesus Christ to the Father.  Jesus can only be God if he has an eternal relation to the Father, in and by which the Father’s deity is communicated to him.  The metaphysical question arose out of the apparently simple form of Christian prayer and worship.  And the same question arose in other contexts as well – e.g., when Christians explained their Faith to Jews and to pagans and when they claimed that through Jesus Christ alone they received the salvation of God.  What Christians were saying in effect was that the answer to the question "Who is God?" is intimately and inextricably related to the questions "Who is Jesus?" and "What is the exact relation of Jesus to the One he called the Father?"

What I shall attempt to do in this chapter is to gather together and present the basic scriptural evidence for belief in the Holy Triad.  My purpose is to give my reader sufficient grasp of the biblical teaching that he can appreciate the doctrinal debates and conclusions reached in the patristic period concerning the relation of both the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father.  And what I present is not in the patristic sense, strictly speaking, theology ( the contemplative study of the Holy Trinity in terms of the inner relations of the Three), but the economy of God ( the activity of the Father with his Son and his Spirit in the creation and redemption of the world).  In modern terminology, I present the "economic Trinity" of the sacred Scriptures, not the "ontological Trinity" ("the immanent Trinity") of holy Dogma.  In Revelation, of course, the latter is only known through the former.

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The Old Testament makes it clear that Yahweh is the Creator of the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1-3; Is. 42:5).  He creates and sustains the cosmos by his creative word/wisdom and his powerful breath or Spirit:

By the word of Yahweh were the heavens made;

And all their host by the breath of his mouth (Ps. 33:6).

Three New Testament writers build upon this teaching concerning the word and wisdom of Yahweh – which in the Old Testament is found in both the canonical and deutero-canonical books of the Septuagint – as they develop their Christology.  For them, Jesus is the personal Word and Wisdom of God.

First of all, in the Prologue of the Gospel of John there are these statements:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made (1:1-3).

The whole of creation is included in one broad sweep, as it is said that the Father created through (not "by") the Word, who is the Son.

In the second place, in Paul’s Letter to the church in Colossae there is this teaching:

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By the prepositions in and through, Paul communicates the agency and participation of the Son in the creation of heaven and earth.  In another place, Paul presents the activity of Christ in the sustaining and maintaining of the creation: "There is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Cor. 8:6).  Further, God’s plan is "for the fullness of time to unite all things in him [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph. 1:10).  Here the movement is towards God, what shall be when Christ’s redeeming work is totally completed.

Finally, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, making use of description of Wisdom in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible), wrote:

In these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power (1:2-3).

Here Christ is presented as active with the Father in both the creating (through him) and the upholding of the universe.

In none of these texts is there a mention of the Holy Spirit.  However, it is surely right to assume that his presence and activity were taken for granted.  For the first Christians the biblical (O.T.) teaching concerning the Spirit's activity in creation was revealed by God and could not be set aside.  Thus the Father through the Son [the Word] and by the Holy Spirit [the breath of his mouth] is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

Under the old covenant, Yahweh, the LORD, descended into his creation in a variety of ways – e.g., in theophanies, by send-

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ing angels and by placing his word in the mouths of prophets and sages.  The new covenant was established to replace the old (a) by the descent and incarnation of the Word, who is the Son of the Father, and (b) by the descent of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and by his Son.  Salvation, which presupposes the created order and thus occurs within creation, is from the Father, through the Son and by the Spirit.

The narratives of the conception and birth of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel assume and proclaim that God sent his own Son to become man; to achieve this miracle of Incarnation he sent his own Spirit to Mary so that she could and would conceive Jesus.  The message is clear – Yahweh is active as Creator again, creating a new epoch, order and creation through his Son, who is Immanuel, and by his Spirit, the Life-Giver.

At the beginning of his second book, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke presents the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the assembled apostles and disciples.  Now the new creation is beginning to take practical shape.  The Son has descended and ascended and he has poured out his Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Father, upon his own disciples.  Through this anointing and indwelling Spirit, the Lord Jesus will always be with his disciples on earth until the end of the age; and salvation from God in his name will be proclaimed throughout the world.

Speaking of the descent of the Son, St. Paul wrote: "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law..." (Gal. 4:4-5).  Here is Incarnation to achieve redemption.  The Lord Jesus Christ who was "rich" (in heavenly glory) for the sake of man and his salvation became "poor" (in earthly humiliation) so that, through his poverty, poor sinners might become rich (I Cor. 8:9).  The descent of the Son from the heaven of heavens into the world of sin and shame, followed by his glorious exaltation back to the heaven of heavens, is powerfully dramatized by Paul in Philippians 2:5-11.  Here the Son sets aside his eternal privileges and position with the Father

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and descends into the evil world for the salvation of mankind.  To achieve this, he becomes a servant and dies on a cross.

In his Letters, Paul assumes that the Holy Spirit has descended and is present as the Spirit of Christ in the churches and within individual lives.  He is present because many are confessing "Jesus is Lord," and this is only possible by the Spirit (I Cor. 12:3).  Evidence of spiritual gifts given by the exalted Lord through the Spirit abound in the congregations (I Cor. 12).  Believers know that God has sent the Holy Spirit for they experience the Spirit of the Father and the Son in their hearts as they cry out, "Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6).  In his own ministry as he proclaimed "Christ and him crucified," Paul knew that his speech was "in demonstration of the Spirit and power" and not in the wisdom of men (I Cor. 2:1-5).

For the apostle to the Gentiles, the work of salvation was the work of the Father and of his Son and of his Spirit.  As he explained to Titus, his son in the Faith: "When the goodness and loving kindness of God [the Father] our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior" (Tit. 3:4-6).

At the beginning of his Letters, Paul usually wrote, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (e.g., Rom. 1:7).  This is the downward movement from God the Father and from (through) his Son.  The presence and work of the Holy Spirit is not stated but is assumed – by the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit, grace and peace become realities in the souls of believers.

Caught up in prayerful adoration of the Holy Trinity, Paul wrote these words at the beginning of the Letter to Ephesus:

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less before him.  He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved [Son].  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us (1:3-7).

He continued by blessing God because "you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it" (1:8-14).

The gracious, saving work of God in space and time is traced back here, as Paul engages in holy contemplation, to the purposes of the Father before the creation of the world.  Yet the movement for the salvation of man is the same as elsewhere in Paul’s writings – the Father (in his transcendent, eternal glory) through the Son (by the shedding of his blood) and by the Holy Spirit (the living guarantee of the fullness of the life of the age to come).

The Prologue to the Gospel of John declares that the Word, who is the only Son, comes into the world from the Father and that grace and truth (salvation and revelation) come through him.  As Incarnate God, he is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (1:29).  And in the much quoted words of John 3:16-17: "For God [the Father] so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."

The sending and giving of the Spirit by the Father and the glorified Son to the disciples is given much emphasis in John 14-16.  The Paraclete comes from the Father in the name of the Son: he brings the virtues of the Son to the disciples and continues the mission of the Son in the hostile world.  Yet already in John 3:1-8 it was made clear that the same Spirit, who alone causes spiritual birth into the kingdom of God, is the Holy Spirit who is "from above," that is from the Father.  There is salvation

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only for those who believe in the Son and are "born of the Spirit" and thus "born from above."

In I John, it is made clear that the fellowship of Christians is not only with each other "but is with the Father and the Son;" further, this is because they have "an anointing from the Holy One" which abides in them.

By this we know that we abide in him [God] and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.  So we know and believe the love God has for us (4:13-16).

God the Father sent his Son into the world and gives his Spirit to those who believe in his Son in order that they may abide in God.

The same movement from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit may be seen in the rest of the books of the New Testament. In fact, it may be claimed that one unifying theme either implicit or explicit in all the books is that of the economic Trinity.

The four Gospels were not written merely to provide information concerning Jesus and satisfy curiosity as to his identity.  They were written with an evangelistic purpose – to declare the Gospel of the Father concerning his Son, Jesus Christ, so that Jew and Gentile would believe in Jesus as Lord and Christ and in believing receive God’s salvation.  The purpose of the Gospels is to cause men to turn from sin and idolatry to trust, serve and worship the Father through his Son and by his Spirit.  So while they certainly assume and powerfully declare the economic Trinity, practically speaking they were written to make the movement towards God the Father possible by providing

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the content of the good news of Jesus, in and by whom alone men know and come to the Father.  In fact, we could say that everything in the New Testament was written in order to make possible the "Ascent" from earth into the "new heaven and earth," and from this evil age into the glorious age of the kingdom of God.

To be saved by God the Father into his everlasting kingdom of grace, it is necessary to be united in the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ and be presented or brought to the Father by this divine agency.  Such a removal out of sin into friendship with God is stated with clarity and power in the Letter to Ephesus, where the apostle is discussing the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ and before God:

Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near [to God] in the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace, who has made us [Jew and Gentile] both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility ... that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us to God in one body through the Cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.  And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father (2:13-18).

The last words are very important: "Through Christ we have access in One Spirit to the Father."  Here is the basis of both salvation and worship. Then he continues:

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Here is a powerful picture of a living temple centered on Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit and made not of stones of granite but of apostles, prophets and all true believers, both Jews and Gentiles.  The temple rises from earth towards heaven, which is its goal.  This divine household is built upon the saving work of Jesus Christ, energized and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ, and is oriented towards the Father, who draws it to himself.

The Letter to the Hebrews contrasts that to which the Israelites were brought by the old Exodus through the Red Sea with that to which Christians are brought through the new Exodus of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them.  For they could not endure the order that was given.  "If even a beast touches the mountain it shall be stoned."  Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear."  (12:18-21)

The writer is recalling what is recorded in Exodus 19 and Deuteronomy 9.  He continues:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel (12:22-24).

Entry into the new creation is clearly only possible because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who is the Mediator of the new covenant.

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For Christ has entered ... into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf (9:24).

Knowing through the Gospel what the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit has done in establishing the new covenant, Christians are to respond wholeheartedly.  Because they know that the way to God is now wide open unto those who believe the good news, they are to respond in worship and service.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (10:19-22).

And in terms of practice:

Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for he [the Father] who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and to good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (10:23-25).

As they wait for the Parousia of Christ, the Day of the Lord, Christians are to ascend to the Father in spiritual communion by offering him the sacrifice of good works and the corporate activity of spiritual worship.

Salvation has three tenses in the New Testament.  By the unique, sacrificial, atoning death of Jesus Christ, salvation is procured

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once for all and forever.  We are saved by the propitiatory and expiatory death of the Lord Jesus.  Once a person believes in Jesus and confesses that he is Lord, then he enters into salvation – he is being saved from sin and into the life of the Holy Trinity.  Salvation is for him "already" experienced, but it is "not yet" fully realized.  He knows that he is still a sinner in a mortal, sinful body.  However, he will certainly enjoy the fullness of salvation when, after the Parousia of the Lord Jesus Christ, in his resurrection body and with all the saints he beholds the glory of God the Father in the face of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The New Testament has a lot to say about the privileges and duties of those who are being saved from this evil age into the fullness of salvation in the life of the age to come.  Within these privileges and duties we find worship and prayer.  In such holy activities, the Church on earth is united in the Holy Spirit with the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father and High Priest in heaven: her worship ascends to the Father within the worship and prayer offered unceasingly by Jesus, the Priest, to the Father.  Christ at the right hand of the Father, interceding for his Church: and the Holy Spirit is interceding from within the souls of his people (Rom. 8:26, 34.).  This activity of the Spirit with the Son to the Father for the elect will continue until the end of the age when Christ shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

Speaking as a Christian to Christian believers, Paul told the church in Philippi: "We are the true circumcision who worship God in spirit, [or "worship by the Spirit of God"] and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh" (3:3).  Here is Paul’s simple theology.  Because of Jesus Christ (who he is and what he has done and is doing), worship ascends in the Spirit to the Father.

Worship [Prayer] is not only thanksgiving, praise and worship; it can also be petition and intercession.  Thus Paul made this request of the church in Rome, a church he had not yet

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visited: "I appeal to you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God’s [the Father’s] will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.  The God of peace be with you all.  Amen" (15:30-33).

In writing to the church in Colossae, Paul put it simply: "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through him" (3:17).  Likewise he told the church in Rome: "I appeal to you therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (12:1).

The First Letter of Peter is clear that, as those who are chosen by the Father, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and being sanctified by the Holy Spirit (1:1-2, 19), Christians are placed in such a privileged relation to God that they have a joyous duty both to proclaim the Gospel and offer spiritual sacrifice in worship and service:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s [the Father’s] own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy (2:9-10).

And recalling Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 28:16, which refer to Christ as the chief cornerstone of God's new Temple, Peter wrote:

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a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God [the Father] through Jesus Christ (2:4-5).

The assembled local church, as the holy priesthood, offers its worship, prayer and service in the Holy Spirit to the Father through Christ the High Priest.

In his very short Letter Jude told his fellow Christians, whom he addressed as "those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ," to "Build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Spirit; wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."  He ended the Letter with this doxology which points to the "Ascent" of the faithful to the Father.

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever.  Amen.

So the Church, the Bride of Christ, invokes her Lord, giving him the honor which is his due, and moves in, with and through him to render her worship to the eternal Father.  In this movement from earth to heaven, and from forgiven sinners to the heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit is wholly present, but invisible and often anonymous.  Thus in the New Testament there is no example of prayer being offered directly to the Holy Spirit.  This practice came later, after the dogma of the Trinity had been clarified and the divine personhood of the Holy Spirit clearly established as a truth of the Faith at the Council of Constantinople (381).

Even so, in Christian liturgy and devotion, direct addressing of the Holy Spirit is rare.  The Father is made known to the Church through the Son and the Son is made known by the Spirit.  However, there is no fourth divine Person to make the Spirit known. The Holy Spirit is the locus, even as the Son is

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the agent, rather than the object of divine revelation. Creation is from the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit, and the response of the creature is to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit.  Thus the Spirit is experienced within the Church rather like the air that is breathed.  He is known in his effects and not like a visible, external object.

From this brief presentation of the Trinity in the economy, it is possible to see how and why controversy could arise concerning the status of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  It is clear that "God" is "the Father" and "the Father" is "God."  However, it is not absolutely clear in what sense the incarnate Son, who is called "Lord," actually possesses and participates in the Godhead.  To be pre-existent is one thing; but to be "God" is another.  All agreed that the Son is pre-existent.  Yet this does not settle the nature of his unique relation to the Father.  Further, it is even less clear in what sense the Holy Spirit, who is also clearly pre-existent, is to be called God, or is to be said to possess the Godhead of the Father.  So, though Baptism was in the Name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there was still room for debate as to the precise relations of the Three, one to another before and after the creation of space and time.

For studies of the doctrine of the economic Trinity see A. W. Wainwright, The Trinity in the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1965) and Peter Toon, Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996).  For the dogma of the Trinity see Bertrand de Margene, S.J., The Christian Trinity in History (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1982).

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CHAPTER FIVE

Arianism Rejected

It has been said, that a person has first to be a Christian to become a heretic, and that there has to be truth before there is heresy and error.  In the early Church, the truth of the Gospel was known, believed, taught and preached before it was formally stated by synods of bishops in Ecumenical Councils.  Thus, heresy existed from the apostolic age through to the first Council in 325.  Not only the books of the New Testament, but also the writings of the early Fathers confirm this.  For example, in the latter part of the second century, Irenaeus wrote a book against false knowledge, which is known in English through the translation of its Latin (not original Greek) title, Against Heresies.

The specific teaching, which was declared to be a heresy at the Council of Nicea in 325, is known as Arianism, after Arius, a presbyter of the church in Alexandria in Egypt.  Arius and others who supported him were influenced by the teaching of Lucian, who ran a theological school in Antioch, and to whom they were exceedingly loyal.  Lucian was absolutely clear that

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there is one and one only God, who is both the God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus Christ.  This Antiochene theologian was a Unitarian in contrast to a Trinitarian, since he taught that there is no plurality within the unity of God.  Further, he held that the Logos, incarnate as Jesus, is a supremely unique, created being, who is supernatural but not divine in the sense that the Father is divine.

Commenting on the origins of the Arian controversy, Dr. J. N. D. Kelly, wrote:

The outbreak of the Arian debate is probably to be placed somewhere in 318, when Arius was presiding as priest over the church of Baucalis.  The broad lines of his system, which was a model of dovetailed logic, are not in any doubt. Its keystone was the conviction of the absolute transcendence and perfection of the Godhead.  God (and it was God the Father whom he had in mind) was absolutely one: there could be no other God in the proper sense of the word beside him.  (Early Christian Creeds, p. 232.)

Arius explained his own theology to his Bishop, Alexander, in a letter sent about 320 from a refuge outside the city.  His clear belief in the absolute unity of God and the distinctiveness of the Son as a unique creature cannot be missed:

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To establish his own orthodoxy, Arius proceeded to declare that he rejected the teaching of the heretics Valentinus, Manichaeus and Sabellius.  In doing this, he rejected the use of the (soon to be famous) word, homoousios, of the Son, since he believed that it implied that (as used by Manichaeus and others) the Son is an actual portion or piece of the Father and thus, there is actual division within the divine essence (ousia) of the Godhead.

About the same time, Arius also wrote a letter to Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, his friend and former fellow student in the academy of Lucian in Antioch.  He said:

I want to tell you that the Bishop [of Alexandria] makes great havoc of us and persecutes us severely, and is in full sail against us: he has driven us out of the city as atheists, because we do not concur in what he publicly preaches, namely, that, "God has always been, and the Son has always been: the Father and the Son exist together: the Son has his existence unbegotten along with God ever being begotten, without having been begotten: God does not precede the Son by thought or by any interval however small: God has always been, the Son has always been: the Son is from God himself. (Ibid., p. 344.)

Apparently, the Bishop’s teaching that the Son is as eternal as is the Father and also that he is of the same deity as the Father, was heard by Arius and others as meaning that the Son is an actual part of the Father – and God who is indivisible is now divisible.  His own position was:

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Arius proceeded in his self-defense to explain to Eusebius the real cause of their persecution in Alexandria and Egypt:

We are persecuted because we say, ‘the Son had a beginning, but God is without beginning.’  This is really the cause of our persecution; and, likewise, because we say that he is from nothing.  And this we say because he is neither part of God, nor of a lower essence.  (Ibid., p. 345.)

Certainly, Arius clearly identified the basis of the bitter division.  His Bishop said that the Son is not a creature, not even the highest possible form of a created being, because he is divine in the same way that the Father is divine.  In contrast, Arius wanted to give the highest possible place to the Logos/Son in the divine scheme of things, but without stating that the Son possesses deity as the Father possesses deity.

Some of the theological sayings of Arius from his book, Thalia (= "Banquet," a popular medley of verse and prose), were collected by Athanasius and included in his own book, On the Synods of Ariminum and Seleucia.  Here is a selection of them:

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Father, who is by himself.  For the Son does not know his own essence: for, being Son, he really existed at the will of the Father.  (Ibid., p. 351.)

From these quotes, it is obvious that for Arius there was a great metaphysical gulf between God, the Father, and his (uniquely created) Logos or Son.  Even though divine titles may be given to the unique, creaturely Son, he has no intimate relation with God for the simple reason that, in the final analysis he is a creature.

It may be said that Arius, his teachers and his supporters, were reading the Scriptures and interpreting theology from a Greek or hellenistic point of view.  In the common cosmology of their time, the supreme God was seen as wholly separate from all created and material existence.  Since Godhead is absolutely unique, wholly transcendent and totally indivisible by nature, its essence cannot be shared or communicated.  The fact of the matter is that God is God and God is inescapably One!  This position is not negotiable!

So the Son must be a creature, formed out of nothing by God, who in forming him becomes his "Father."  As a creature, the Son had of necessity a beginning, even though this beginning is before the beginning of the universe and the angels.  Further, being a creature, the Son has no direct, genuine knowledge of the Father, since he belongs to an entirely different plane of existence and is of a wholly different essence.  So the Father remains ineffable to his Son, who, being a creature, is by definition liable to change and error (for only the true God is unchangeable).  Nevertheless, the Arians did allow that the Son as creature could be called by divine names, but these were only courtesy titles.  However, they searched the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to come up with texts which suggested that the Son was a creature and that, as such, he was subject to ignorance, weakness, suffering and personal development.

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The late Dr. Philip E. Hughes, an Anglican clergyman, gave a very good summary of the nature of Arianism as a theological system when he wrote:

The Christ devised by Arius was in being as remote from man as he was from God.  Sharing neither in man’s time nor in God’s eternity, he was supposed to serve as a buffer to keep God and matter from direct contact with each other; but then he had to be defined as himself the first creature, before whose begetting God was not the Father, and whose own creation was willed in order that he might become the agent of the creation of all things else.  To postulate that he was brought into being nontemporally or pretemporally in no way saved him from being bounded by temporality.  The assertion that "there was once when he was not," even though the word "time" is not mentioned, is an inescapably temporal assertion.  Estranged from the essential nature and the essential power of God, he cannot in any absolute sense be described as the Son of God and the Divine Word, but only in a reduced deferential sense as a concession to the uniqueness of his intermediate position.  Arius’ Christological statements define an ontology that is concerned with and controlled by questions of cosmology rather than soteriology: and it was soteriology that was ultimately at issue.  (The True Image, p. 268.)

Put very simply, the Arian Christ could be neatly fitted into current hellenistic cosmology, but he could not be presented as the Savior of the world to whom the Gospels and Epistles witness!  In Arianism, the Gospel is in the service of hellenistic metaphysics and cosmology. In orthodoxy, as we shall see, hellenistic techniques are in the service of the Gospel!

In the light of this exposition of the theological position of Arius, it is not surprising that the following anathemas containing its characteristic tenets were added to the Nicene Creed in 325 at the First Ecumenical Council.

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Those who say that "There was once when he was not," and "Before he was begotten he was not," and that "He was made of things that were not," or say that he is "of a different substance or essence," or that the Son is a creature or changeable or transformable – these persons the holy, catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.

While Arianism was defeated at the Council, it was not immediately defeated within the Church throughout the Roman Empire.  Its appeal there, as indicated above, was its seeming agreement with current and widely known hellenistic cosmology.  Arianism was culturally acceptable while Orthodoxy was not.

Arius and his supporters rejected the use of the word homoousios ("consubstantial" or "of the same essence") to describe the relation of the Father and the Son.  To them the Son was heteroousios, "different in substance/essence."  However, some of the less radical were happy to use the similar (in terms of spelling) but very different word (in terms of meaning), homoiousios.  The addition of the iota changes the meaning from "of the same" to "of similar" ousia (essence), and thus, can serve the aim of separating the Son metaphysically and ontologically from the Father.  So it is not surprising that the opponents of the Nicene Faith – Arians and others – were ready to speak of the Trinity as consisting of Three Persons (treis hypostaseis), but not of Three equal Persons (as in classic orthodoxy) within one Godhead.  In Arianism, the Three – the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – were three different beings, with only the Father being truly God and the other two being unique creatures of this God in unique relations of order to him (hence a holy Trinity).

Later, during the rule of Constantius from 350 to 361, the Nicene Faith was openly attacked, and a radical form of

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Arianism made its position known, whose advocates and supporters were known as the Anomoeans.  They taught that the Son was unlike (anomoios) the Father.  A statement of faith produced by a synod held at Sirmium in 357 explicitly forbad the use of either the homoousios or the homoiousios (which by this time was the word favored by the moderates who did not think of themselves as heretical Arians)!  The content of this confession of belief led St. Hilary to describe the document as a blasphemy!  Though a Trinity was confessed by the Arians it was a Trinity in which the Son is unlike the Father in essence; and the Spirit, though a creature like the Son, is also unlike the Son in essence and being.  Here the Spirit is a "third power" and of "the third rank."

The opponents of the Nicene homoousios who favored anomoios went too far and efforts were made by some who took a middle ground to try to find a compromise.  In this context, the word homoios (like in all respects) was suggested and approved by the Emperor.  For all practical purposes the public faith of the Church soon became Homoean, a position which the Emperor believed allowed all reasonable churchmen to exist alongside each other in the one Church.  This "neutral" faith (which effectively opened the door wide for all kinds of Arianism) was set forth in creeds produced by various synods in 359 and 360.  As he pondered all this, St. Jerome wrote his now famous words – "the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian" (Dialogue of a Luciferian and an Orthodox Christian, p. 19).  We may also recall that between the years 336 and 366 that most celebrated defender of the Nicene Faith, Athanasius, who had become Bishop of Alexandria in 328, was often assailed by wicked slanders of the Arians and endured five periods of banishment or exile from his diocese.

The most well known product of the Homoean position is the Creed produced at a synod in Constantinople in January

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360.  It is rather clumsy in style, but does exclude the Anomoeans:

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that no mention at all should be made of it in the future, since indeed the divine Scriptures nowhere have made mention of the substance of the Father and the Son.  Nor indeed should the term "hypostasis" be used of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

But we say the Son is like the Father, as the divine Scriptures say and teach.  But let all heresies which have either been condemned previously, or have come about more recently and are in opposition to this creed, be anathema.

This Creed became the official statement of what was to be (by the supporters of the Nicene homoousios) called Arianism in the period leading up to the Council of Constantinople in 381.  However, as far as the Emperor was concerned the Creed was the Faith of the Church and he sent it to all Bishops requiring them to sign it.

Between 360 and 381, there was a drawing together in understanding of the Homoeousians (who favored the homoiousios and opposed both the Anomoeans and the Homoeans) and the Homoousians (who stood by the Nicene homoousios).  By this time the debate also specifically included the status of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father.  Is the Holy Spirit "of like essence" or "of unlike essence" to, or just "like," the Father?  Therefore, due to the convergence of aim and doctrine, it was possible at the Council of Constantinople in 381 for the 150 bishops both to confirm the Faith of Nicea, with its homoousios and its anathemas against original Arianism, and to promulgate a further Creed, which confirmed the faith of Nicea and also stated the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Further, the Fathers at the Council of Constantinople (381) declared the following in the first of their seven canons:

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in particular that of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, that of the Arians or Eudoxians, that of the Semi-Arians or Pneumatochoi, that of the Sabellians, that of the Marcellians, that of the Photinians and that of the Apollinarians.

We must attempt to identify the groups which are anathematized.

The "Eunomians or Anomoeans" were the ultra Arians who said that the Son and the Spirit are unlike the Father.  Eunomius was the Bishop of Cyzicus in Mysia, Asia Minor, and he was very active in promoting the rejection of both the homoousios and the homoiousios.  He served the orthodox cause in the sense that the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa) shaped their doctrine of God and human knowledge largely in response to what they perceived to be the errors of Eunomius.

The "Arians or Eudoxians" were the new Arians of the period from 360 onwards.  They preferred the vague statement that the Son and the Spirit are "like" (homoios) the Father.  Eudoxius was first Bishop of Antioch (358) and then Bishop of Constantinople (360-370).  He first favored the Anomoean position, but later embraced the Homoean theology.

The "Semi-Arians or Pneumatochoi [Spirit-fighters]" referred to those who were opposed to the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, but who counted in their number some who were prepared to say of the Son that he was at least homoiousios (and maybe even homoousios) with the Father.  What they were generally prepared to affirm of the Holy Spirit is that he is neither God nor a creature, but occupies some middle position.  They claimed that Scripture did not clearly state that the Holy Spirit belonged wholly to the Godhead.

The "Sabellians" were named after Sabellius, of whom virtually nothing is known.  Sabellians sought to safeguard monotheism and at the same time be Trinitarian by claiming that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three manifestations or

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phases or showings of the One God (as if God were a Triangle with a name for each of the three sides).  Thus, white the Unity of God was absolutely real, the Trinity of God was metaphysically unreal, for the Three were only an appearance and an accommodation to mankind.  Other names for this heresy are Modalism or Modalistic Monarchianism.  Naturally Sabellians could use homoousios of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but not in a Nicene sense!  For them it meant that God is One indivisible Substance or Essence or Nature, whom Christians see as Three in One.

The "Marcellians" were named after Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, an extremist who strongly supported the homoousios but in what seemed to many to be a Sabellian direction.  Apparently he taught that the Son and the Spirit only emerged within the Godhead for the purpose of creation and redemption.  Thus when all the work of redemption is done they will be "reabsorbed" into the unity of the Godhead.  The clause, "his kingdom will have no end," in the Creed of Constantinople (381) was inserted against this heresy.

The "Photinians" were the supporters of Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium and a disciple of Marcellus of Ancyra.  He also taught a provocative form of Sabellianism.

The "Apollinarians" were the followers of Apollinarius, who was Bishop of Laodicea in the second part of the fourth century.  Their heresy is strictly speaking a Christological heresy in contrast to a Trinitarian heresy for it relates to the make-up of the Person of Christ (the union within him of the divine and human natures).  We shall examine its content in Part Three.

Finally, a word about the translation of homoousios.  The traditional translation into English is either "consubstantial" or "of the same substance."  Some favor "coessential" or "of the same being" because of the connotation widely attached to the term "substance" as descriptive of three-dimensioned solidity.  We shall use any of these translations according to context, and to present a justifiable variety of expression.

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The two books by J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev, ed. (San Francisco: Harper, 1978) and Early Christian Creeds (New York: Longman, 1991), are of great value.  For translations from original documents see J. Stevenson, ed., A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to A.D. 337 (London: SPCK, 1957).  The exposition of patristic Christology by Philip E. Hughes in his The True Image. The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) is accurate and readable.  Also valuable is R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988).

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CHAPTER SIX

Orthodoxy Proclaimed – The Homoousios

Outside the inspired and authoritative content of the Holy Scriptures, there is probably not a more important word in the Christian vocabulary than the Greek word homoousios as it is found in both the Creed of Nicea (325) and the Creed of Constantinople (381).  Another way of stating this is to say that the phrase, "Of one substance [essence] with the Father" ( in Greek, homoousion to patri) as declaring the truth concerning Jesus Christ is crucial for the existence of Christianity.  However, it is a phrase which must be clearly understood in terms of what it is stating both positively and negatively.  The Creeds declare that there is one Godhead and that Godhead is wholly possessed not only by the Father, but also by the Son.  Thus, in terms of Deity the Father and the Son, though distinct as Persons, are of one essence (or "of one substance" or "consubstantial").  And if the Father and the Son, though distinct, each possesses the whole Godhead entirely, then it cannot be said of the Son that his deity ("essence" or "substance") is like that of the Father.

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The confession of faith by the Bishops began with the expression of belief in the one true and living God, known in the Old Testament as Yahweh Elohim (the LORD God) and known in the New Testament as ho Pater, "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."  It is important to note that the "one God" is not the Godhead but "the Father Almighty."  This God, the Father, is the Creator of the whole universe, wherein man dwells, and of the whole invisible heaven, wherein the angels dwell.

In the second paragraph, the Bishops described and proclaimed the Lord Jesus Christ in whom they believed.  Using titles and descriptions from Scripture, especially the Gospel of John, they called him the "Son of God" and "the only-begotten of the Father."  Following the teaching of John 1, Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1, they proclaimed that the Father created the heavens and the earth through this same Jesus Christ.  And following the Gospel accounts they spoke of the Incarnation of the Son, his manhood, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, his ascension and his future coming as the Judge.  In all this they took for granted the pre-existence of the Son before his becoming man.

The big question they faced was not whether or not the Son was pre-existent.  All agreed that the Son existed before he actually became man.  The question was: "What is the relation of the Son to the Father?"  In answer the Bishops at Nicea declared:

[the only-begotten Son is] from the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father...

The wording was intended to be anti-Arian and to make it very clear that the Son was not a creature.

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That Jesus Christ is "from the very essence or substance (ousia) of the Father" was intended to clarify the previous words, begotten from the Father.  Contrary to the Arian claim that the Son had been created out of nothing before the creation of the heavens and earth, the Bishops insisted that the Son is generated out of the Father’s very essence, substance and being.

Jesus Christ is "true God from true God" – the Father Almighty is "true God" and Jesus Christ is also "true God" from the One who is the "true God."  That is, Jesus is not called God as a title of honor as Arians maintained.  He is truly God in whatever sense the Father is truly God.

Jesus Christ is "begotten not made."  Arians used the verb "to beget" of the Son in relation to the Father, but by it they meant "to make."  In contrast, the Son, as the tradition since Origen had taught, is eternally begotten of the Father.

Finally, Jesus Christ is "of one substance with the Father."  Here is the use of homoousios and it is clearly intended to imply that the Son fully shared the deity, divinity and Godhead of the Father.

To make the rejection of Arianism as clear as possible, the bishops pronounced anathemas at the end of the Creed of 325 upon several typical phrases, catchwords and slogans written by Arius in his book of verse, Thalia.  The statements condemned were:

There was when the Son was not.

Thus the positive faith is that the Son is from the same eternity as is the Father, that he is of the same essential deity as is the Father and that he is immutable.

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In affirming that the Son is of the same, identical essence, substance and being as the Father by using the word homoousios, the Bishops moved outside Scriptural language.  They would certainly have preferred to have used only Scriptural phrases and words in confessing the precise relation of the Son to the Father.  However, when they tried to do so they found that the Arians had already given their own interpretation to those phrases.  Thus, in order to state what they believed the sacred Scripture actually taught concerning Jesus Christ, they turned to the compound adjective, homoousios, with ousia as its principal element.

The word ousia had several meanings in Greek philosophical writings and the Bishops were obviously aware of these.  So they were aware that in using the adjective, homoousios, as well as the noun, ousia, in the Creed, they were using words with several possible meanings – but they knew, and the Arians knew, that all the meanings were within the range of "substance" and "being" and "essence" and thus "identical substance" and "identical being" and "identical essence."  Thus, in selecting this word for inclusion in the Creed, the Bishops intended it to make clear in as formal a way as possible that the truth of the Gospel is that the Son is truly God, in the sense that he fully shares the one, divine nature which his Father has.

In setting forth this teaching concerning the relation of the Son to the Father, the Bishops not only proclaimed the truth of the Gospel, they also produced the first statement of dogma – that the Son is of one substance with the Father.  In short, the use of the homoousios is the first, official statement of the dogma of the Holy Trinity, even though the Nicene Creed of 325 expresses belief "in the Holy Spirit" in minimum words.  At later Councils, the full dogma that both the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one substance with the Father and with each other will be set forth in detail.  In fact, the general doctrine of

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the Trinity in the Nicene Creed is what has been called the doctrine of the economic Trinity – creation and salvation "from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit."  But into this presentation of the economic Trinity there is placed a truth – the homoousios – which belongs to what is called the doctrine of the immanent or ontological Trinity (God-as-God-is-unto-himself).

The presentation of the Holy Trinity in the Bible is of God in action as the Creator, the Savior, and the Judge. The movement from God to man is "from the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit."  Likewise the movement from man to God is "to the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit."  In the use of the homoousios the Bishops were describing God as God is unto himself.  They were speaking of the internal relation of the Father and the Son, and by implication of the Father and the Holy Spirit. In fact, the word "theology" developed the restricted meaning in the Church of the contemplation of the immanent or ontological Trinity, the true study of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one in ousia.  (Later the distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity was put in terms of the contrast of the essence and the energies of God.  However, the essence is known only through the energies of God and the immanent Trinity known only through the economic Trinity.)

Of course, there were dangers in using the word homoousios.  One such danger was encouraging the development of Sabellianism and another was of being interpreted as Sabellian.  Certainly some Arians, as well as others more kindly disposed to the Nicene Creed, believed that to use homoousios was actually to mean that God is a Unity and that in that Unity there cannot be any genuine plurality (Trinity).  Thus, what Christians call the Holy Trinity would be a Trinity of appearance, not a Trinity of reality.  For Sabellianism there are three Modes or Manifestations of the Unity, so that the one God is known successively (or even simultaneously) as the Father, the Son

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and the Spirit.  In terms of salvation history, some Sabellians said that the Old Testament reveals God in the Mode of Father, the Gospels reveal God in the Mode of the Son, and the Acts and Epistles reveal God in the Mode of the Holy Spirit.

We may note in passing that Sabellianism was a continuing problem for the Church in the West and that the Quicunque Vult or the Athanasian Creed was composed and used to combat the doctrine that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were simply Modes of the One God.  (See further J. N. D. Kelly, The Athanasian Creed, 1965.)

Though some of the orthodox party of the fourth century did lean towards Sabellianism, the major supporters of the Nicene Creed always insisted that the Holy Trinity is a genuine Trinity of Persons.  The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father even though, importantly, they share one and the same deity and divinity.  Apart from having to make clear that they were not Sabellians, the orthodox also had to develop a vocabulary to speak of the Holy Trinity in such a way that what was being affirmed could not easily be misunderstood and misinterpreted.

But why was precision of definition so necessary?  Why did the orthodox fight so long and so hard to retain the homoousios?  Why was a right doctrine of the relation of Jesus Christ to the Father so important?  Several answers were given and may still be given to these questions.

First of all, the Bishops believed that God had acted and spoken in Jesus Christ and that the Church had the solemn and sacred duty of speaking rightly of Jesus Christ, his identity and his mission.  If God had provided a revelation of who he is and who is his Son, then the Church must surely study and set forth that truth.

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In the second place, they judged that Arianism, when fully seen for what it was, was nothing more than a form of polytheism.  Instead of the Holy Triad/Trinity, the Arians were worshipping three deities related to one another in a hierarchy – a form of tritheism.  Certainly one (God the Father) was absolutely supreme, but the other two (the Son and the Spirit) were certainly not either angels or men and so were inferior deities.

Thirdly, the Bishops knew that Arianism undermined their whole tradition of worship and prayer.  Not only did they baptize converts in the one name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they also addressed prayers both to the Father and to the Son.  They worshipped God in and through God – the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.

In the fourth place, the Bishops, Athanasius in particular, knew that Arianism proposed a Mediator, who could not truly be a Savior.  A created being, however wonderfully created and gloriously endowed, could not save a people from sin, death and Satan.  He could teach them, perform miracles and provide an example to them, but he could not save them from eternal death into eternal life.  Only a Savior who is truly God become man can restore sinful, diseased man to a right relation and communion with the Father.  That is, only a Savior who is homoousios with the Father can be the Savior of the world.

Finally, as we noted in the last chapter, the Bishops judged that Arianism was primarily a form of Greek cosmology.  It used the Christian biblical data to fill out in a religious sense the commonly held Greek view of God (gods) and the cosmos.  Thus, it was a sell-out to a sophisticated form of paganism.

We have already noted that the Creed of 381 is not identical with that of 325.  In fact, it is a related but different Creed, which retains the homoousios concerning the Son and declares the true deity of the Holy Spirit.

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The first part of the second paragraph of the Creed of 381 sets forth the relation of Jesus Christ to the Father in these words:

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance [homoousiosl with the Father, through whom all things came into existence, who because of us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man....

This is somewhat less emphatic than is the similar paragraph in the Nicene Creed.  One reason for this is that the Nicene Creed is taken for granted as being in existence and as being received as the Faith by the Church.

Here, in the context of proclaiming the economic Trinity (creation and redemption from the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit), the Bishops proclaim the reality of the immanent Trinity.  They confess the truth concerning the Son of God – the truth to which the Scriptures point and bear witness.  Thus, as with the Nicene Creed, they make clear that the relation of the Son to the Father is not that of being created or physically procreated before or with space and time.  Rather, the relation is that of the Son always possessing the very essence or substance or deity of the Father without being the Father.  The Son is "true God of true God."  Always and forever ("before all ages") the Father shares his deity with his Son so that the Son always has exactly the one and the same deity as does the Father.  The Son is "of one substance with the Father."  Yet the Son, is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son.  And, it is the Son not the Father who is incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.

The words "was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary" serve to make clear the fact that there was a real and true incarnation of the eternal Word.  As the incarnate Son, and

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known as Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Word loved, trusted and obeyed the Father and did all that he did in his manhood through the inspiration, illumination and power of the Holy Spirit.  So he was confessed as the Messiah, the Christ, the Lord. It is this Story which the Four Gospels tell and the Epistles interpret.  It is the Story of the "oikonomia" (the ordered process of the self-disclosure of God), the action of God as the economic Trinity.  Yet in and through the economic Trinity is necessarily seen by the eyes of faith the immanent Trinity; and (as the Bishops so clearly recognized) the only way to safeguard the economic Trinity and ensure the confession that the Son of God is truly and really the genuine Savior of the world is to speak truthfully of the immanent Trinity.  Thus, the inescapability of the confession that the Son is homoousios with the Father (and with the Holy Spirit).

By the time of the Council of Constantinople, there was a general agreement among the orthodox concerning the vocabulary to be used to speak of the Holy Trinity – i.e., one ousia in three hypostaseis; three Persons in and of one Substance or Essence.  There had been a clarifying of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit initially by Athanasius (see especially his Letters to Serapion, who was the Bishop of Thmuis in the Nile delta in Egypt) and then by the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil and the two Gregorys.  Between 370 and the Council of Constantinople in 381, the latter brought clarity of expression to the doctrines concerning both the Person of the Holy Spirit and the nature of the Holy Trinity.

Basil composed De Spiritu sancto (375) in which he argued that the Holy Spirit is to be given the same glory, honor and worship as are the Father and the Son, for he is not below them but with them in the Unity of the Godhead.  Also in this treatise, he discussed the various possible renderings of the doxology ("glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit," and "glory be to the Father with the Son and with the Holy Spirit") claiming that both were orthodox.  However, as a result

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of the desire to avoid possible Arian teaching, what we now know as the Gloria (the second of those cited) won out in the liturgy of the Church.  Thus, today in the West we say, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen."

Gregory of Nazianzus proclaimed even more clearly than did Basil the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the truth that the Spirit is homoousios with the Father and the Son.  However, he was very conscious of the late development in the Church of a clear sense of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit and he offered this brief explanation.  "The Old Testament announces the Father clearly and the Son obscurely.  The New Testament has manifested the Son, but it has only indicated the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  At present, the Spirit is among us and shows himself in all his splendor.  It would not have been prudent, before one recognized the divinity of the Father, to preach openly the divinity of the Son, and as long as that of the Son was not accepted, to impose the Holy Spirit – if I may dare to express myself thus" (Oration 31.26).

Both Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa were active in the Council of Constantinople (381).  The third paragraph of the Creed approved there, is much longer than that of the Nicene Creed and reads:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified, who spoke through the prophets...

There is no claim here that the Holy Spirit is actually one in substance with the Father and the Son.  The word homoousios is avoided in order to gain the acceptance of the Creed by all present in the Council.  However, what is said of the Holy Spirit is clearly sufficient to make clear that he possesses true divinity and is really God.

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To call the Holy Spirit "Lord" is to follow St. Paul (II Cor. 3:17ff.); to call him the "life-giver" is to follow St. John and St. Paul (John 6:63 and II Cor. 3:6).  The description of the Spirit proceeding from the Father is based on the words of Jesus recorded in John 15:26 (see also St. Paul in I Cor. 2:12).  And the claim that the Spirit spoke through the prophets is based on St. Peter in II Peter 1:21.

However, it is in the words "who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified" that the Council set forth most clearly its belief in the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  These words were taken from St. Basil’s treatise on the Holy Spirit, to which we made reference above.  To say that the Church is to worship and to give glory to the Father with the Son and with the Holy Spirit is to say in the language of worship what the homoousios states in the language of dogma.  This fact was recognized by the Second Council of Constantinople (554) which confirmed that the confession of orthodoxy is: "We believe there is one substance (ousia) of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in three most perfect Subsistences or Persons ."

Worship (adoration) and glory are what the Church offers in its praise to the Three Persons (not specifically to the Godhead which they share).  The expression "together with" emphasizes that the Three who are "co-adored" are distinct from each other, but that the motive of their adoration is one and the same.  Therefore, one can adore the Father alone, but one cannot adore the Father exclusively for he is truly the Father of the Son and the Father from whom proceeds the Holy Spirit.  To adore the one Person is by necessity to adore all Three, because there is one substance of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Regrettably no copy of the Ecumenical Council’s doctrinal decisions known as "The Tome" has survived.  However, there is a summary of its doctrine in the Synodical Letter produced by the local synod of Constantinople in 382, the year after the Ecumenical Council in the same city.  It will be helpful to quote

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from it where it expounds the orthodox teaching on the Holy Trinity with reference to the received Faith:

This Faith...is the most ancient, and accords with the creed of our Baptism, and teaches us to believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: believing, that is to say, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have a single Godhead and power and substance, a dignity deserving the same honor and a coeternal sovereignty, in three most perfect Hypostases [subsistences], or three perfect Persons.  So there is no place for Sabellius’ diseased theory in which the Hypostases are confused and thus their proper characteristics destroyed.  Nor may the blasphemy of Eunomians and Arians and Pneumatomachi prevail, with its division of substance or nature or of Godhead, and its introduction of some nature which was produced subsequently, or was created, or was of a different substance, into the uncreated and consubstantial and co-eternal Trinity.

Thus by 381, the full dogma of the consubstantial Holy Trinity had been created and received by the Church.  From now on anything that fell short of this dogma, or exceeds it, or is contrary to it, would be judged as erroneous and heretical.  (For the addition of the Filioque to the Creed in the West see Appendix I, "I believe/We believe.")

When the doctrine of the Trinity finally came to be formulated as one ousia in three hypostaseis, this implied the following. God, from the point of view of internal analysis, is one object; but, from the point of view of external presentation, God is three objects.  His unity is safeguarded by the teaching that these three objects of presentation (hypostaseis) are not merely precisely similar (as the Semi Arians admitted), but in a true sense, identically one.  So the sum God+God+God is not three Gods, but is simply God!  This is "because the word God, as applied to each Person of the Trinity distinctly, expresses a

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Totum and Absolute which is incapable of increment either in quantity or in quality" (Prestige, God, p. 169).

G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: William Heinemann, 1936), is still excellent reading, as is also Viadímir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke, 1957).  The writings of Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers, Basil and the two Gregorys, may be read in English in the appropriate volumes of the series A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890-1900; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1994).  Of great value also is the selection of documents in J. Stevenson, ed., Creeds, Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church, A.D. 337-461 (London: SPCK, 1966).  Some of the writings of the two Gregorys are in Edward R. Hardy, Christology of the Later Fathers (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966).  For a detailed study of ousia see G. C. Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).

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