Scripture and God in Christianity

Persons, and is not three separate things." 635 He further argues that "The Father is God and the
Son is God; and yet by the same affirmation God is one, because no distinction of nature or of
operation is to be observed in the Godhead.... since the divine, single, and unchanging nature eschews
all diversity of essence, in order to guard its unity, it admits of itself no plural significance."
636
He distinguishes between Persons on the basis of causality, "the only way by which we distinguish
one Person from the other, by believing, that is, that one is the cause and the other depends
on the cause. Again, we recognize another distinction with rearguard to that which depends on
the cause. There is that which depends on the first cause and that which is derived from what
immediately depends on the first cause. Thus the attribute of being only-begotten without doubt
remains with the Son, and we do not question that the Spirit is derived from the Father." 637 He
concludes arguing that "The principle of causality distinguishes, then, the Persons of the holy
Trinity. It affirms that the one is uncaused, while the other depends on the cause. But the divine
nature is in every way understood to be without distinction or difference. For this reason we
rightly say there is one Godhead and one God, and express all the other attributes that befit the
divine in the singular." 638 How the uncaused first cause and the caused or derived from the Father
can be the same, equal in all properties and respects is a valid question not satisfactorily answered
by any of the Cappadocians.
This Cappadocian analogy is one of the two chief types of analogy that has been used throughout
the course of Christian history in reference to the Trinity. The Cappadocians begin with a consideration
of three persons, as we have just seen, while Augustinian analogy emphasizes coequal
Trinity by distinguishing the persons in terms of internal relations within a person (e.g., memory,
will, and intelligence or love, the lover (amans) and the object loved (quod amatur). 639 Both of
them are not satisfactory and have several flaws. The former, for instance, could lead to tritheism
while the latter could lead to Sabellianism or Unitarianism. Francis Young rightly observes about
Gregory of Nyssa's analogy that "No matter how much he protests their common eternity, common
activity and common will, it is difficult to call a theology based on such a definition of their
common nature, monotheistic." 640 Others like Harnack, F. Loofs, F. W. Green 641 have observed
that this Cappadocian position was really a kind of Homoean view, or to use Harnack's words, "
the community of substance in the sense of likeness (or equality) of substance, not in that of unity
of substance." 642 To E. R. Hardy this observation is misleading and "far from fair". He argues
that "ousia is not to be regarded merely as a universal, and hypostasis as a particular instance of
it. That would surely lead to tritheism. The Cappadocian idea is far more subtle. The nature of
the Godhead more nearly corresponds in their thought to Aristotle's idea of a particular, concrete
existence (proto ousia), not to the deutera ousia which members of a species have in common.
The ousia in the Godhead is identical in each Person: the common humanity in men is only generic."
643
Hardy's explanation is attractive but seems a little forced and artificial. The Cappadocians seem
to have used the terms in their generic forms without much specifications. It will be too much to
say that the Cappadocian Fathers intended tritheism but it seems quite fair to observe that their
distinction between three Persons of the Trinity and their usage of the analogy of Peter, James,
and John could easily lead to tritheism as it was observed even during their own life time. Our
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