Introduction
In his recent book Communion and Otherness, John Zizioulas has produced an original chapter entitled ‘The Father as Cause’. Here, Zizioulas reasserts a previous proposal that the ‘Father is the one God’, but in a far more explicit way than in previous papers. However, the danger of this position lies in the possible inference that the divinity of the Trinity is different to the divinity of the Father, and therefore that there exist two different Gods. This danger becomes far more apparent within this most recent chapter, in which Zizioulas explicitly distinguishes between the ‘one God (the Father)’ and ‘the Triune God’. While Zizioulas asserts that ‘the one God and the triune God are thus conceived simultaneously’, this assertion still fails to safeguard against the possible implication that there are two dissimilar Gods.Footnote 1
It is our contention that this problem arises out of a fundamental failure by Zizioulas to adequately distinguish between two alternative forms of divine unity. The first of which is located in the Father as the Trinitarian ‘cause’, who consequently becomes a point of reference to which the Son and the Spirit relate. The second, points to the divine ousia or substance which is shared by the three divine persons and which enables the three persons to be one God. Zizioulas’ failure to distinguish these alternative forms of unity lies in his relational ontology, in which he subjugates the ousia to the person of the Father. This Zizioulas does by presenting the ousia as a form of ontological communion which originates with the Father and reaches out to the Son and the Spirit. This is the essence of Zizioulas’ primary thesis that ‘being is communion’.Footnote 2 However, for Zizioulas, the ousia which is analogous with divine communion comes into existence coincidentally with the emergence of the Son and the Spirit. Thus, Zizioulas asserts, ‘the co-emergence of divine nature with the Trinitarian existence initiated by the Father implies that the Father, too, “acquires”, so to speak, deity only “as” the Son and the Spirit are in existence’.Footnote 3 This could imply that there was a point at which the Father alone existed in a state devoid of deity. However, this is not consistent with the Nicene Creed which states that the Son is, ‘God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God’. Consequently, the only alternative in this case would be that the Father possessed a divinity prior to the existence of the Son and the Spirit of a different type from that of the divine ousia. Therefore, Zizioulas’ understanding of divine nature may leave him open to the accusation that there exist two forms of deity or two different Gods.
Zizioulas primarily claims support for his position from the Cappadocian Fathers. However, we will argue that while the Cappadocians recognised the Father as a unifying point of reference for the Son and the Spirit, they maintained a clear distinction between this relational unity and the ontological oneness which was maintained solely by the divine ousia. While these two particular types of unity have been developed within an Eastern context, first by the Cappadocian Fathers, and secondly by the Orthodox Church; we will show that the West in the shape of St Augustine also identified two such equivalents. However, whereas for the Cappadocians, the Father was the point of reference, we will argue that for Augustine this role was more adequately fulfilled by the Spirit who unites the Father and the Son as a mutually given gift of love. Thus, for Augustine it was the Spirit who not only became a point of reference for the Father and the Son, but in a real sense became the focus of communion. Nevertheless we will show that for Augustine as with the Cappadocians, the ultimate form of unity resided in the divine ousia, which again solely enables the three divine persons to be the one God.
This thesis will be shown first by evaluating Zizioulas’ understanding of the Father as the cause of the divine Trinity, and subsequently as the ontological source of divine unity in conjunction with his Orthodox tradition. Next we will examine the Cappadocian Fathers in order to discover whether Zizioulas’ particular Orthodox understanding of divine unity can be supported. Finally, we will compare the Cappadocians understanding of divine unity with that of Augustine. Here, we will also assess the strength of Augustine's presentation of the Spirit as a source of Trinitarian unity as compared to the Cappadocians and Zizioulas.
Zizioulas’ Orthodox Understanding of the Father as cause and Source of Trinitarian Unity
Zizioulas presents two alternative views in regard to the unity of God, the first of which he locates with the Greek Fathers, the second within the Augustinian tradition. These alternatives are described by Zizioulas who asserts: ‘Either God is one because of the Father (“Monarchia”, in an ontological and not simply a functional sense), or he is one because of the one ousia which is equally shared by the three persons’.Footnote 4 According to Zizioulas it was the Greek Fathers who correctly identified the unity of God within the person of the Father, rather than in the one ousia.Footnote 5 This reflects to some extent Orthodox doctrine. In fact, Ware has openly asserted that: ‘According to the Greek Fathers of the fourth century, whom the Orthodox Church follows to this day, the Father is the sole source and ground of unity in the Godhead’.Footnote 6 Although these Fathers are not specified, Ware, indicates that Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom are among the most reverenced.Footnote 7 It is therefore, understandable that Zizioulas as an Orthodox titular bishop is eager to locate within the Cappadocians such an affirmation that the sole source of Trinitarian unity resides in the person or alternatively in the hypostasis of the Father rather than in the shared ousia. However, although this may be the Orthodox stance, we will be arguing that it is not a true representation of the Cappadocians position.Footnote 8
One of the reasons why this position has been asserted by the Orthodox Church relates to the Father's primary and unique position within the Godhead, as both ‘source’ and ‘cause’ of the Son and the Spirit. Within a monarchical structure, the Father is identified as the principle of unity, because it is the Father who establishes the relationships of Son and Spirit via generation and procession.Footnote 9 The Father then becomes a type of reference point to which the Son and the Spirit locate their identity. However, we would argue that more than this, the Father is also a point of reference for Orthodox Trinitarian theology. We have already noted that Zizioulas asserts, ‘the one God is not the substance but the Father’.Footnote 10 Meyendorff expounds this idea, as he quotes John of Damascus:
If the Father does not exist, then neither does the Son and the Spirit; and if the Father does not have something, then neither has the Son or the Spirit. Furthermore, because of the Father, that is, because of the fact that the Father is, the Son and the Spirit are.Footnote 11
Thus, for Orthodox Trinitarian theology, it seems that the Son and the Spirit depend on the Father as the one God, not only for their existence, but also for every attribute that that existence contains. There is also the inference that while the Son and the Spirit would not exist without the Father, the Father would still theoretically exist without the Son and the Spirit. Therefore Zizioulas understands the existence of the Trinity as the free decision of the person of the Father rather than an unavoidable necessity.Footnote 12 This conception of the Father as supreme monarch and source appears to be for Orthodoxy, the connecting hub from which Trinitarian theology revolves. The centrality of the Father for Orthodox Trinitarian theology can be clearly seen in Ware's statement that, ‘St Irenaeus speaks of the Son and the Spirit as the “two hands” of God the Father; and in every creative and sanctifying act the Father is using both these “hands” at once’.Footnote 13 Thus, the Father is the reference point both for Orthodox Trinitarian theology, and for the Trinitarian theology of Zizioulas. The question is, do the Cappadocians concur with this position?
The Cappadocians Understanding of Trinitarian Unity
It is true that the Cappadocians understood the Trinity in terms of a divine monarchy. Within this monarchy, it is the Father as the source and cause of the Son and the Spirit who is recognised as the divine monarch. It is also in the Father's exclusive role as source and cause that the divine persons remain distinctive. As Gregory of Nazianzus in Oration 31.7 argues regarding the Spirit: ‘If he is ingenerate, there are two unoriginate beings’. If he is begotten from the Father, ‘there will be two sons who are brothers…If he is begotten from the Son, our God apparently has a grandson’.Footnote 14 Therefore, in order to retain the Trinitarian distinctiveness, it is important to affirm that the Father alone is unbegotten, that the Son alone is begotten, and that the Spirit alone proceeds.Footnote 15 The question then is, how can one person be an offspring while the other is not, and yet both come from the same source, and be of the same substance? Gregory responds to this by using an analogy from Genesis 2–4. Here, in Oration 31.11, Gregory asks, ‘what was Adam? Something molded by God. What was Eve? A portion of that molded creation. Seth? He was the offspring of the pair’.Footnote 16 Gregory concludes therefore, that while Seth was an offspring and Eve was not, they both however shared the same nature, and were from the same source, being Adam. However, within the above analogy, while Seth's primary source was Adam, it might be argued that Eve was also a secondary source. Gregory of Nyssa in On Not Three Gods has in fact alluded to this, in relation to the Trinity, where he writes:
For one is directly from the first Cause, and another by that which is directly from the first Cause; so that the attribute of being Only-begotten abides without doubt in the Son, and the interposition of the Son, while it guards His attribute of being Only-begotten, does not shut out the Spirit from His relation by way of nature to the Father.Footnote 17
The implication of describing the Father as the first cause might be that there is also a second cause. This does seem to be a distinct possibility for Gregory, who clearly sees the Spirit in some way as proceeding from the Son. Smail further identifies this idea in Gregory's On the Holy Spirit, which describes an analogy of ‘light’, which ‘has its origin in the first candle (the Father) but is transmitted to the third candle (the Spirit) through the second candle (the Son)’.Footnote 18 However, this does not detract from the fact that the Father remains the primary source of the Son and the Spirit, which is why it has been suggested that the Father is also the source of Trinitarian unity. While Wilks has objected to the assertion that the Cappadocians understood the basis of unity to be located in the hypostasis of the Father,Footnote 19 this view does superficially appear to be validated by Gregory of Nazianzus. Wilks himself cites Gregory's proposition in Oration 42.15 which states that ‘the Three have one Nature (physis)-God. And the union is the Father, from whom and to whom the order of Persons runs its course’.Footnote 20 Although this citation, which has been extensively used to support the Orthodox position,Footnote 21 in locating the unity in the Father, it doesn't appear to be normative of the Cappadocians. In fact within section 16 of the same Oration, Gregory states: ‘Thus we are regenerated, acknowledging the Unity in the ousia and in the undivided worship, and the Trinity in the hypostasis of prosopon (which term some prefer)’.Footnote 22 Within Oration 42 therefore, Gregory clearly doesn't identify the source of Trinitarian unity solely with the Father, but locates the source of unity also in the divine ousia, and the undivided worship. This suggests that unity is being used in alternative contexts within this Oration. There is indeed a sense in which the Father does unite the son and the Spirit, in that the Father is the one from whom the Son and the Spirit proceed. This means as Smail suggests, that ‘the Son and the Spirit have a divinity that is not their own, but is derived from his [the Father]’.Footnote 23 However, Gregory plainly states in Oration 45.4 ‘when I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Ghost’.Footnote 24 Therefore, although the Son and the Spirit might derive their divinity from the Father, there was also never a time when the Father was God alone. This is because as Gregory states in Oration 29.17, ‘there never was a time when He [the Father] was without the Word [the Son], or when He was not the Father’.Footnote 25 Gregory had in fact previously stated in section 16 of this Oration, that: ‘Father is not a name either of an essence or of an action, most clever sirs. But is the name of the relation in which the Father stands to the Son, and the Son to the Father’Footnote 26 Therefore, the Father requires the Son in order to be the Father. Here, Volf makes the following pertinent point: ‘If the Father is conditioned by the Son and the Spirit, then he is constituted by them. That is, he is God only as Father’.Footnote 27 Thus, although the Son was begotten of the Father, there was never a time when the Son did not exist. As Gregory states in Oration 31.4: ‘If the One was from the beginning, then the Three were so too’.Footnote 28 Gregory even goes so far as to make the statement in Oration 29.3 that ‘in respect to Cause they are not unoriginate; but it is evident that the Cause is not necessarily prior to its effects, for the sun is not prior to its light. And yet they are in some sense unoriginate, in respect of time’.Footnote 29 In Oration 31.31–32 Gregory uses several analogies in order to describe this eternal process. He again describes the sun, which emanates a beam, which in turn emanates light. Although this analogy appears to be useful in illuminating both the simultaneous and eternal procession, and the monarchical source of the Godhead, Gregory rejects it as inadequate. The reason for this is the notion that the members of the Godhead appear ‘incomposite’, and that while the Father is shown to be substantial, the other members of the Godhead are pictured as mere ‘potentialities’ or ‘attributes’ of the Father.Footnote 30 There is a similar problem with Gregory's analogy of a ‘source, a spring, and a river’. Here, the danger lies in the possible suggestion, both that the deity is in constant flow, and that just as the three different types of liquid, are in fact numerically one and the same, so also the three divine persons are also numerically one. Gregory of Nyssa in Basils Letter 38.7 uses similar imagery. Here, the begetting of the Son is likened to that of the brightness that is produced by a flame. While the flame creates the brightness, the brightness itself does not come after the flame, but occurs simultaneously with the flame. Thus, while the Son derives his existence from the Father, this does not suggest any division between them in relation to time or space. Instead it is necessary for the ‘caused to be always conceived of together with the cause’.Footnote 31
While Gregory identifies the Father as the union between the divine persons by virtue of being their source, Gregory didn't suggest that the Father alone constituted the one God. Gregory in Oration 39.11 instead says:
When I speak of God you must be illumined at once by one flash of light and by three. Three in Individualities or hypostasis, if any prefer so to call them, or prosopon, for we will not quarrel about names so long as the syllables amount to the same meaning; but One in respect of the ousia that is, the Godhead.Footnote 32
Thus, in regards to the unity of the Godhead, whereas the three Persons are understood in their distinctiveness, the unity of the one Godhead is revealed in the divine ousia. Basil of Caesarea explains this distinction in Letter 236.6, in that the ousia represents what is general, and the hypostasis what is particular, as with the general animal, and the particular man. More specifically Basil explains that ‘The Godhead is common; the Fatherhood particular’.Footnote 33 Basil continues, ‘there is a satisfactory preservation of the unity by the confession of the one Godhead, while in the distinction of the individual properties regarded in each there is the confession of the peculiar properties of the Persons’.Footnote 34 Within Letter 210.5 Basil further identifies the divine unity with the ousia, saying, ‘As he who fails to confess the community of the ousia or substance falls into polytheism, so he who refuses to grant the distinction of the hypostasis is carried away into Judaism’.Footnote 35 Here, as Meredith notes, Basil would have also had in mind Arius and Sabellius as representatives of polytheism and Judaism.Footnote 36 Therefore, the ousia as the source of unity, was as crucial in avoiding Arianism, as the distinction of the hypostasis were in refuting Sabellianism. Therefore, God is one, not because the Father is one, but because the ousia is one. In this sense therefore, unity resides ultimately in the divine ousia.
Finally, Gregory of Nyssa uses a fairly unique analogy, which acknowledges the Father as source, but also identifies the unity in the nature. Here, within his Great Catechism 1–2. Gregory uses the mind, the word, and breath, as analogies of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. He begins by stating, ‘the Word itself, and He from whom He is, do not differ in their nature. As in our own case we say that the word is from the mind, and no more entirely the same as the mind, than altogether other than it’.Footnote 37 Frank further explains, ‘Just as the Word of man finds utterance in breath, so the Word of God finds utterance in Spirit’.Footnote 38 Here, then the three are both interdependent and distinct, but remain one, because they share a common nature. Thus, for the Cappadocians, while divine unity is located to a degree in the Father, this unity does not ensure the ontological oneness of God as Zizioulas has asserted. On the contrary for the Cappadocians it was only through the shared ousia that God's oneness could be safeguarded. Consequently, it may be that the Cappadocians are also far closer to Augustine than Zizioulas would like to admit. We will therefore assess Augustine's understanding of divine unity in light of our investigation of the Cappadocian Fathers.
Augustine's Trinity with reference to the Cappadocians
We have already highlighted Gregory of Nyssa's inference in On Not Three Gods, and On the Holy Spirit, that the Spirit proceeds in a secondary manner from the Son. This doesn't initially appear to be too dissimilar from Augustine's assertion that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the SonFootnote 39 (filioque being Latin for ‘and the Son’). So for instance, in, On the Trinity 15.29 Augustine states:
God the Father alone is He from whom the Word is born, and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds. And therefore I have added the word principally, because we find that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also. But the Father gave Him this too, not as to one already existing, and not yet having it; but whatever He gave to the only-begotten Word, He gave by begetting Him.Footnote 40
Thus, as Hill explains, for Augustine ‘the Father is the origin of the Holy Spirit and so is the Son, but the Son is “origin from origin”, whereas the Father is purely and simply origin’.Footnote 41 This sounds not to dissimilar from Gregory of Nyssa's assertion in On Not Three Gods that: ‘one is directly from the first Cause, and another by that which is directly from the first Cause’.Footnote 42 Both Augustine and Gregory therefore, identify the Father as the primary source of the Spirit, while also allowing that the Spirit proceeds in a secondary manner from the Son. Where Augustine differs however, is in his assertion that, in begetting the Son, the Father transfers to the Son an equal capacity to originate the Spirit.Footnote 43 This is because, as Smail suggests, whereas in the East the Father was the sole originator of divine persons, ‘in the West to originate the divine person of the Spirit was seen as the prerogative of the divine nature which Father and Son both share’.Footnote 44 This, however, as with the Cappadocians, was not understood in relation to time, thus, Augustine in On the Trinity 15.47 states:
Just as generation from the Father, without changeableness of nature, gives to the Son essence, without beginning of time; so procession from both, without any changeableness of nature, gives to the Holy Spirit essence without beginning of timeFootnote 45
Augustine thus differentiates between these eternal processions, and the historical processions which he terms as missions. Here, the missions relate to the divine economy, or saving activity of the Trinity in history, specifically within the period of the New Testament. However, the missions, as Hill notes, ‘had the effect of revealing the eternal processions’.Footnote 46 Here it is worth noting that there had previously been a tendency towards subordinationism in the concept of being sent, in that culturally a superior would send an inferior. Hill reveals that Tertullian had asserted that because the missions involved the sending of the divine Son, then the Son is inferior to the Father who sent him. In response according to Hill, Augustine suggested that while ordinarily one is first sent and then proceeds to carry out what one has been sent to do, the divine Son proceeds or rather is begotten before being sent. Therefore, for the Son Procession precedes mission.Footnote 47 Thus, Augustine asserts in On the Trinity 4.27 that the Father sends the Son, ‘not because one is greater and the other less, but because one is the Father and the other the Son’.Footnote 48 Thus, in relation to the Trinity, being sent doesn't denote inferiority but order. Augustine further identifies this equality in On the Trinity 4.28, explaining that to describe the Son as ‘born means that he is from eternity to eternity – he is the brightness of eternal light (Wis 7.26). But that he is sent means that he is known by somebody in time’.Footnote 49 Therefore, being sent represents the temporal economy of the Trinity, while being begotten, or proceeding is eternal.
Augustine, as with Gregory of Nazianzus in Oration 29.16, also understands the Father, Son, and Spirit in terms of eternal relations. Kelly notes, the divine persons are ‘relations, as real and eternal as the factors of begetting, being begotten and proceeding’.Footnote 50 Augustine argues that the Father and Son cannot be understood in relation to themselves, otherwise they would be so according to substance, and neither can they be understood as accidents because they are unchanging. Thus Augustine in On the Trinity 5.6 suggests that what is spoken of God relates to something else, ‘as the Father in relation to the Son and the Son in relation to the Father, which is not accident; because both the one is always Father, and the other is always Son’.Footnote 51 Although the names Father and Son naturally relate to each other, this is not the case for the name Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit's name itself denotes relationship. Thus, Augustine states in On the Trinity 5.12
Because both the Father is a spirit and the Son is a spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy. Therefore, since the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and certainly God is holy, and God is a spirit, the Trinity can be called also the Holy Spirit. But yet that Holy Spirit, who is not the Trinity, but is understood as in the Trinity, is spoken of in His proper name of the Holy Spirit relatively, since He is referred both to the Father and to the Son, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son.Footnote 52
It is here that we can observe a clear break from the Cappadocians Trinitarian theology. Augustine's previous shift in attributing the origin of the Spirit to the Father and the Son now affect the way in which the Holy Spirit relates to them both. The Spirits designation as holy and Spirit derives from them. A further shift can be seen in the same passage where Augustine also relates the Holy Spirit to a gift given by the Father to the Son, and from the son to the Father. Here Augustine in On the Trinity 5.12 explains:
When we say, therefore, the gift of the giver, and the giver of the gift, we speak in both cases relatively in reciprocal reference. Therefore the Holy Spirit is a certain unutterable communion of the Father and the Son; and on that account, perhaps, He is so called, because the same name is suitable to both the Father and the Son.Footnote 53
As with the Son however, there was never a time when the Spirit did not exist. Thus, Augustine explains in On the Trinity 5.17, that ‘the Spirit is a gift eternally, but a thing that has been given in time’.Footnote 54 A further relational designation of the Spirit is that of love. Augustine in On the Trinity 15.37 states, ‘if the love by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, ineffably demonstrates the communion of both, what is more suitable than that He should be specially called love, who is the Spirit common to both?’Footnote 55 For the Cappadocians, the Father was understood as a source of unity within the Godhead, in that the Father was a reference point for the Son and the Spirit. For Augustine however, it is the Spirit who more adequately unites the Father and the Son as a gift of love mutually given and received by the Father and the Son. As with the Cappadocians however, this needs to be qualified, in that the ultimate unity and oneness lies in the divine nature or essence, rather than in the persons of the Godhead.
Conclusion
We have observed at the outset of this paper that Zizioulas has suggested two alternative views of divine unity. The first of which he located in the Monarchia of the Father which he derived from the Greek Fathers (i.e. the Cappadocians), the second he located in the ousia which he traced back to Augustine. However, for Zizioulas, only the former of these views could be accepted. This was because both views according to Zizioulas related to the oneness of God and were therefore diametrically opposed to each other. This proposal was based on Zizioulas’ relational ontology in which the ousia was perceived in terms of divine personal communion. It was also dependent on the Father as cause which meant that the divine communion proceeded exclusively from the Father to the Son, and from the Father to the Spirit. Consequently, for Zizioulas, the ousia could not be a basis for divine oneness because the Son or Spirit did not refer back to each other but only to the Father. Zizioulas also claimed that the one God had to be a person and according to the biblical picture this person was the Father. Consequently, Zizioulas asserted that the Father not the ousia was the one God. However, by locating the divine unity solely with the Father, Zizioulas risked the threat of subordinationism in which the Son and the Spirit had a lesser divinity to the Father.
As we observed, Zizioulas claimed support for this thesis from the Cappadocian Fathers. However, on examination of the Cappadocians we found a clear distinction between the divine unity established by the Father and that of the ousia. While for the Cappadocians the Father was the cause and source of the Son and the Spirit and therefore their point of reference, the Father was not understood by the Cappadocians in any sense as the one God. Neither was the unity created by the Father able to preserve so to speak the divine oneness. On the contrary this role was clearly shown by the Cappadocians to be fulfilled exclusively by the divine ousia. It was therefore, only in this way that the dangers such as subordinationism could be combated.
While the Cappadocians recognised the Father as a point of reference for the Son and the Spirit they failed to make an adequate connection between the Son and the Spirit. As we have observed, this difficulty was overcome by Augustine. Thus, while Augustine maintained with the Cappadocians, that the Father was the primary Trinitarian cause and source he was also able to make an obvious connection between the Son and the Spirit. Here, we saw that Augustine did this by showing that the Spirit was given by the Father and the Son as a mutual gift of love. Therefore, for Augustine the Spirit became a unifying point of reference for the Father and the Son. Also, because the Spirit is explicitly described as the Spirit of fellowship it seems appropriate that the Spirit should therefore be recognised as the focus of divine unity. However, again as with the Cappadocians, Augustine insisted that the divine ousia was the only source of divine oneness. Thus, it is essential to distinguish between these two fundamental forms of divine unity in order to maintain the integrity of the One God in three persons.
It would appear that in his eagerness to emphasise a personal relational ontology and to maintain the Father as cause, that Zizioulas has failed to make this distinction. This has led to his misreading not only of the Cappadocians but also of Augustine. However, this tendency may be understandable from an Orthodox perspective in which the Father as cause is central to Trinitarian theology. Thus, Zizioulas’ thesis though problematic reveals a genuinely original and helpful contribution. Zizioulas has managed to challenge the individualistic tendency of Western theology by locating communion at the heart of divine personhood, while retaining their necessary distinctiveness.
