“Among the most significant contributions to fourth-century Trinitarian theology was that of a trio of theologians collectively known as the Cappadocian Fathers. Their name is taken from their place of origin, Cappadocia, a region in what is today called Turkey. They are St. Basil, commonly known as the Great (d. 379), Basil’s younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394), who became a bishop after his wife’s death, and Basil’s closest friend, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), who eventually (briefly) became the Bishop of Constantinople and presided for some time over the Council of Constantinople held in 381” (138).
“The Cappadocians were, in a sense, the immediate theological successors to St. Athanasius in the Eastern Church, and they wrote important reflections on Trinitarian theology and Christology, in response to the ongoing work of “semi- Arians” and “neo-Arians,” churchmen who were influenced in various ways by the original intuitions of Arianism” (381).
The Cappadocians make a major contribution to the speculative development of Nicene doctrine in a number of ways.
1. Apophaticism
Against the neo-Arian rationalism of Eunomius, who claimed to have definitional knowledge of the divine essence (i.e. God is rightly defined by the name “unbegotten” and therefore when we utter the name we come to know God truly in what he really is – led to saying since the Son is begotten in the sense of being created and therefore a creature), the Cappadocian Fathers stressed the apophatic (or negative) character of all our knowledge of the divine nature. This is due to God’s transcendence as the author of existence. We know him only from his effects, which he infinitely transcends as their more perfect cause.
2. Kataphaticism
At the same time, we also have positive knowledge of God by divine revelation and we can speak about
- eternal processions: of begetting and spiration within the godhead;
- distinction of persons: the Father, Son, and Spirit are both (1) three distinct hypostases (a very important term they adopt from Origen) or three subsistent persons, and are (2) homoousios, one in being or substance;
- relations of origin: the hypostases (or persons) are delineated in their particularity within the Trinity by relations of origin, precisely so as to distinguish the persons while still granting that the fullness of the deity is present in each person. Therefore, even when the Father, Son, and Spirit act as one ad extra, they always act personally in accord with their relations of origin (from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit).
3. The divinity of the Holy Spirit
3 arguments for the divinity of the Holy Spirit as homoousios with the Father and the Son:
- Source of divinization: He works by and in the power of God, as he is the source of divinization in human beings. No one can sanctify the creation by divinization who is not himself divine. But the Holy Spirit does indeed divinize us.
- He proceeds eternally from the Father: Just as the Father exists from all eternity relationally as Father by the eternal begetting of the Son, so he must exist from all eternity as the paternal font of the Spirit by spiration. This eternal procession is proper to the godhead. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is God.
- Liturgical Praxis: The Holy Spirit is worshiped, honoured, and glorified as God in the New Testament and in the Church. See baptism triple invocation, for example (cf. Matt 28:19).
At the Council of Constantinople in 381, the Church affirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
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