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The Trinity - Gregory Nazianzen

 

St. Gregory Nazianzen one of the Cappadocian Fathers writes:  We worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, One Nature in Three Individualities. (Or. xxxiii. 16), The Trinity is a true Trinity; not a numbering of unlike things, but a binding together of equals. Each of the Persons is God in the fullest sense. The Son and the Holy Ghost have their Source of Being in the Father, But in such sense that They are fully consubstantial with Him, and that neither of Them differs from Him in any particular of Essence. The points of difference lie in the Personal Attributes; the Father Unoriginate, and Source of Deity; the Son deriving His Being eternally from the Father, and Himself the Source of all created existence; the Holy Ghost proceeding eternally from God, and sent into the world. (Or. in laud. Athanasii, xxi. 10) From the day I renounced the things of the world to consecrate my soul to luminous and heavenly contemplation, when the supreme intelligence carried me hence to set me down far from all that pertains to the flesh, to hide me in the secret places of the heavenly tabernacle; from that day my eyes have been blinded by the light of the Trinity, whose brightness surpasses all that the mind can conceive; for from a throne high exalted the trinity pours upon all, the ineffable radiance common to the Three. This is the source of all that is here below, separated by time from the things on high...From that day forth I was dead to the world and the world was dead to me. (Poemata de seipso) No sooner do I conceive of the One, than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do distinguish them than i am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what i am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light. (Oratio XL, 41) The one is set in motion in virtue of its richness; the two is surpassed (for the deity is above matter and form); the three contains itself in perfection, for it is the first which surpasses the composition of the two. Thus the Godhead does not dwell within bounds, nor does it spread itself indefinitely. The first would be without honour, the other would be contrary to order. The first would be wholly Judaic, the other Hellenistic and polytheistic. (Oratio XXII, 8) Trinity: the name which unites things united by nature, and never allows those which are inseparable to to be scattered by a number which separates (Oratio XXIII, 10) The very fact of being unbegotten, or begotten, or proceeding, has given the name of Father to the First, of Son to the Second, and to the Third, Him of whom we are speaking, of the Holy Ghost, that the distinction of the Three Hypostases may be preserved in the one nature and dignity of the Godhead. For neither is the Son Father, for the father is One, but He is what the father is; nor is the Spirit Son because He is of God, for the Only-begotten is One, but He is what the Son is. The Three are One in the Godhead, and the One Three in properties; so that neither is the Unity a Sabellian one, nor does the Trinity countenance the present evil division. (Arianism) (Oratio XXXI, 9) The Three have one Nature - God. And the union is the Father, from whom and to whom the order of Persons runs its course, not so as to be confounded, but so as to be possessed, without distinction of time, of will, or of power. (Oratio XLII)

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