In response to this accusation of bitheism, St. Gregory of Nyssa remarks that although he confesses both the Father and the Son to be beginningless, yet in application to both Persons he does not understand this beginninglessness in one and the same sense. In his opinion, the Father is absolutely beginningless, both in His essence and in His personal being, while the Son is beginningless only in essence, and not in His personal being; in this latter respect He has a beginning, namely in His birth from God the Father, and therefore can no longer be called beginningless [458]. Thus, Church teaching does not allow for a plurality of principalities; nor does it admit of two gods. Confessing the Father and the Son of one essence with Him, the Church confesses one and the same God in two Persons, because the unity of essence allows us to speak only of persons, and not of gods. "As the Father is God, so is the Son God, and one and the same God in both confessions, because the mind does not imagine any difference in the Godhead, either in nature or in activity" (459). But it seemed inconceivable to Eunomius to speak of this consubstantiality, when the Father is absolute God, and the Son is God, who came into being according to His will. There must be only one and only divinity, absolute and original; if it is not original, then it is not absolute, and the absolute is not the Godhead. Hence, if the Son has existence from the Father, then He is not original, and if He is not original, then it is clear that He does not possess the Father's divinity, and consequently is not of one essence with the Father. Against this series of conclusions, St. Gregory put forward the thesis that there is no temporal interval in the existence of the Father and the Son, but even if there were one, then even then the doctrine of consubstantiality could not meet with any serious objections. Everyone knows that David is the same person as Abraham, although the latter is older than the former by as much as fourteen generations. Mankind (ανθρωπότης) does not suffer from time in the least, and one and the same essence belongs to all men, however long periods of time they may be separated from each other. But this answer of St. Gregory was not at all a question. For Eunomius asserted the distinction between the essence of the Son and the essence of the Father, not on the basis of the temporal difference of Their being, but on the basis of the difference in Their mode of being: the one exists unbegotten, the other begotten, the one original, the other from the cause; hence it seemed to Eunomius that in Them there is a different nature, because one and the same Divinity at one and the same time cannot be and not be something. The whole essence of his objection, therefore, may be briefly expressed in the following question: Can the Born be of one essence with the Unborn? This question is somewhat answered by another example of St. Gregory, in which he clearly tries to clarify the relationship between the concept of consubstantiality and the concepts of begotten and unbegotten. He takes Adam and Abel as an example. The former may be called unborn in relation to the second, while the latter received existence from the former by birth. If we take the point of view of Eunomius, it turns out that Abel was not of the same essence with Adam, as he was born to the unborn; but such a conclusion is manifestly absurd, because in reality they both possess the same complete measure of human essence. Consequently, the mode of being has no significance in relation to the essence, and therefore the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father can be accepted without any contradictions. It goes without saying that this example is far from accurate, because the unbegotten of Adam does not have even a shadow of the likeness of the unbegotten of God the Father, and the begotten of Abel does not have even a shadow of resemblance to the begotten of the Son of God; but in order to clarify the true relationship between the concepts of consubstantiality, begottenness and unbegottenness, it has full significance, and therefore the conclusion of St. Gregory must be recognized as essentially correct.

But as soon as the unity of essence is affirmed, a new objection immediately arises: if the Father and the Son have one and the same divine essence, how could the Father beget His Son from his own essence, when this essence is indivisible, one and only in the absolute sense? In this case, it seems that one of two things must be recognized: either the Father begat His own essence, i.e., Himself, or He begat another essence, but in this case no longer from His own indivisible essence. Taking advantage of the obvious absurdity of the first article of the dilemma, Eunomius turned it into an objection to Orthodox teaching, as a deduction ad absurdum. "You ascribe," he says to the Orthodox theologians, "the birth of another to him of whom you imagine that He is unbegotten, (so that) confessing that the beginningless essence is one and only, and then by birth extending it to the Father and the Son, you affirm that it was born of itself" (462). This objection was the most serious of all the Arian objections we have considered to the direct ecclesiastical belief in the Holy Trinity, because it concerned the accusation of the Church of Sabellianism, and apparently had sufficient grounds for this accusation; but it was also the most difficult objection on the part of the Arians, because it concerned the most incomprehensible mystery of the inner Divine life, and could not be sufficiently revealed by any efforts of human thought. It is not surprising, therefore, that St. Gregory of Nyssa did not resolve this objection quite satisfactorily.

He fully recognized that the Son of God, as consubstantial with God the Father, is in unity with Him in all divine attributes, in divine will and activity, in unity to absolute identity in everything except hypostasis. But what is this hypostasis? In what way does it differ essentially from the meaningless ονομα Sabellians? Avoiding this phantom of Sabellianism, St. Gregory rather sharply inclined to distinguish the divine hypostases almost to the point of their complete separation, so that the real unity of essence for him was merely an identity in essence. In response to Eunomius' objection that in Orthodox teaching, as in Sabellianism, the Persons of the Father and the Son are merged, he put forward an unfortunate example of the consubstantiality and difference of human individuals, and on the basis of this example he tried to clarify the separate existence of the Divine Persons of the same essence. "Two men, Adam and Abel," he says. In relation to nature, they are one man, but in the distinctive properties seen in each of them, they have an unmerged difference between them. Therefore, it cannot be said in the proper sense that Adam begot a different essence in comparison with himself, but it is more correct (to say) that he begot another self from himself, (because) in this (other) together (with birth) everything conceivable in the essence of the begetter is given. Hence, what we have learned on the basis of human nature in the way which reason has consistently indicated to us, this, I think, we must take as the path to an infallible understanding of the divine dogmas" (463). If in Adam and Abel there is μία ουσια, while υποστάσείς their υποστάσείς are different and unmerged in one and the same essence, then this will be an image of the consubstantiality and difference of the Divine hypostases. According to the example of Abel, the essence in the Son of God is not any new and different from the essence of the Father, but the same essence of the Father, because everything that is only thought in the essence of the Father is also thought in the essence of the Son born of Him. Such an understanding of consubstantiality most consistently led to the formulation of the question: if the essence of the Son is identical with the essence of the Father, but not one with it, then is not the division of the indivisible divine essence recognized in this case? From the point of view of St. Gregory, the answer to this question should have been affirmative, and yet he categorically denied the obvious conclusion from his understanding. In his view, the divine essence is one and indivisible, and this indivisibility, in his understanding, is not only preserved, but also proved in the most convincing way. "Man," he said, "when he gives birth to a man, does not divide his nature, but it is wholly in the begotten and in the begotten: it is not divided or transferred from one to another, nor is it lost in the one when it is perfect in the other, but being wholly in the one, it is also wholly in the other" (465). By analogy with this indivisibility of human essence, St. Gregory thought to explain the indivisibility of essence in the Divine birth; but it is self-evident that this inseparability is only logical, inseparability in the idea, and not in reality. If this is how the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father should be understood, then Eunomius is quite right when he accuses the Orthodox Church of paganism, because the Father and the Son, in the understanding of St. Gregory, are two Gods, just as Peter and John are two people. But this misunderstanding was caused only by the terrible specter of Sabellianism, when the Arians made a grave accusation of the Orthodox theologians of merging the Divine Persons, and when this accusation necessarily forced the Church Fathers to express their disagreement with the teaching of Sabellius as sharply as possible. In a perfectly legitimate striving for a visual separation of his teaching from the teaching of Sabellius, St. Gregory of Nyssa deliberately chose the sharpest, and therefore the most extreme, example, which fatally led him to the separation of the Divine essence, and as a consequence necessarily called for the construction of crude analogies. But when he was not in danger of being accused of Sabellianism, and when he could reason independently of the sophistic questions and objections of the Arians, he reasoned quite correctly, understanding the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father in his own absolute sense. In the "Discourse Against Arius and Sabellius," for example, denouncing the wisdom of the latter, St. Gregory explains the well-known words of the Saviour in the following way: "I and the Father are one in essence, one in dignity, one in reason, one in wisdom, but not one in hypostasis" (466). Explaining to the "raging Arian Achilles" how the two can be one, he says: "The Father and the Son, occupying one and the same place, and being perceiving each other, and being one, as we said a little earlier, differ only in one hypostasis and name, one from the other, being in fact one in the other" (467). How this existence of one in the other is possible, St. Gregory clearly illustrates by the following example: the smell of the world, when it is poured out in the air, becomes inseparable from the air, so that it seems to us that it has merged (συνδιακεχυται) with the air, but in reality both the smell of the world and the air exist unchangeably: in the same way in the Godhead "you will find that both are one in essence and in agreement of thought, and that (yet) this one (God), as we said before, hypostasis and name (is divided) into the Father and the Son" [468]. Here the real unity of the divine essence is unconditionally affirmed, so that the Divine hypostases seem to lose all real significance and are mere names: but whoever compares this teaching of St. Gregory with his teaching expressed in polemics with Eunomius, will certainly be far from being accused of Sabellianism, but will only agree that he thought the unity of the Divine essence to be equally real. and the distinction of the Divine Persons.

Thus ended the polemic between St. Gregory of Nyssa and Eunomius on the question of the true divinity of the Son of God. The general conclusion of all St. Gregory's arguments about the Son of God and His relation to God the Father can be expressed in the following three propositions: a) the Son of God has His personal existence by an incomprehensible act of beginningless, uninterrupted birth from the essence of God the Father: therefore b) He is co-existent with His Father and consubstantial with Him, and therefore

c) He is the true Son of God and the true God.

4. The revelation by St. Gregory of Nyssa of the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Spirit in connection with the objections to this teaching on the part of Eunomius and the Doukhobors.

The state of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. In the first three centuries. The Appearance of the Doukhobor Heresy at the End of the Third Century. Macedonia and the renewal of this heresy in the fourth century. Macedonia's attitude to anomaeism; the teaching of Macedonius about the Holy Scriptures. Spirit; whether this teaching was only a further development of the principles of anomaeism and the application of these principles to the third hypostasis of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity? The unpreparedness of the Fathers of the fourth century for the defense and revelation of the Orthodox teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Spirit. Refutation of Doukhoborism by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. The teaching of Eunomius about the Holy Spirit. The refutation of this teaching by St. Basil the Great. The insufficiency of the defense and disclosure of the Church's teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Athanasius and Basil the Great, and the development of Doukhoborism. The defense and disclosure of the teaching about the Holy Scriptures. Gregory of Nyssa; the peculiarities of his teaching on the Holy Scriptures. In comparison with the teaching of Athanasius of Alexandria and Basil the Great. The foundation of the personal independent existence of the Holy Spirit. The teaching of Gregory of Nyssa about the Holy Spirit as the "kingdom" of the Father and the "anointing" of the Son; the meaning and scientific and theological significance of this teaching. The teaching of St. Gregory on the personal attitude of St. The Spirit to God the Father and God the Son. The teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the analogies used by St. Gregory to clarify this teaching. The teaching of Gregory of Nyssa on the mediating activity of the Son between the initial activity of the Father and the final activity of the Holy Father. Spirit; meaning and significance of this teaching. The teaching of Gregory of Nyssa on the consubstantiality and equality of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is with God the Father and God the Son. General conclusion.

Simultaneously with the teaching about the Son of God, St. Gregory of Nyssa also revealed the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Trinity. Spirit; but if the revelation of the first teaching was made by him in the highest degree of detail, and even in detail can be recognized as completely satisfactory, then the revelation of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures is not the same. The spirit cannot be called either particularly complete or particularly satisfactory. The reason for this phenomenon lies in the fact that the Orthodox theologians of the fourth century in this case had almost no positive or negative historical preparation for themselves, because the Fathers and teachers of the Church of the first three centuries clearly spoke only about the personal existence of the Holy Spirit. The question of His nature and His relationship to God the Father and to God the Son was either not raised at all, or if it was, it was resolved extremely generally and indefinitely. All their attention was mainly riveted by the historical Personality of the God-Man. They felt too vividly the work of salvation of people accomplished by Him, and this immensely majestic work seemed to overshadow in their religious consciousness all other truths of faith, so that they knew and wanted to know only Christ, crucified and glorified, and glorifying others in His eternal kingdom. In striving for this knowledge, they touched upon the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Only insofar as His house-building activity for the human race was inseparably linked with the same activity of the Son of God, i.e., in other words, insofar as it was impossible not to touch Him. They spoke, for example, about St. The Spirit, as prophesied about Christ [469] — they spoke of the Spirit of grace as continuing in the church the work of salvation of people accomplished by Christ [470] — according to the commandment of the Saviour, they confessed in the symbols of baptism faith in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, as the third Person with the Father and the Son [471] — and this was enough. Of the ancient ecclesiastical writers, only Athenagoras raised the question of the attitude of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit to the Father and the Son, but he solved it very briefly and far from definitely. "We affirm," he says, "that the Holy Spirit, working in the prophets, proceeds from God like a ray of sunshine, flowing from Him and returning to Him," and then, refuting the pagan accusation of Christians of godlessness, he remarks that Christians "confess God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and acknowledge their unity in power and difference in order" [472]; but how exactly this "unity and difference" is to be thought of — Athenagoras did not explain it more or less thoroughly and definitely. Even Origen himself did not in the least attempt to grasp the teaching of the Holy Scriptures more broadly. In the spirit and to put more deeply at least the main points of this teaching, although he had the most urgent motives for this. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, he reports that in his time there were two equally incorrect opinions about the Holy Scriptures. Some said that He was created through the Son, others asserted that He was not created, but only because they recognized Him as the simple, impersonal power of the Father (473). Emphatically declaring his disagreement with the second opinion, Origen noticeably hesitated about the first: sometimes he said that the Spirit was created by the divine Logos, and sometimes, on the contrary, he taught that He "truly proceeds from God Himself" and is "a partaker of the Father and the Son in honor and dignity." Obviously, Origen did not know how to really teach about the Holy Scriptures. Spirit; He sincerely tried to listen to the voice of the church, but the church was silent.

In view of this silence of the Church, on the one hand, and the complete vagueness of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, at the end of the third century there appeared and began to spread the teaching that the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is incomparably inferior to the Father and the Son, which He fulfills in relation to the first two Persons of the Holy Spirit. Trinity is a purely official purpose. that He also received His being through creation from the Father through the Son of God [474]. But even at this time the church was silent. The fourth century came; Arianism gradually prepared, opened up, and in a very short time embraced the whole East. Mankind again directed all the efforts of its thought to the understanding of the divine Person of its Saviour, and as a result the revelation of the teaching about the Holy Spirit. The spirit was again pushed into the future. The Ecumenical Council of 825, which expounded in detail the Church's teaching on the Son of God, on the Holy Spirit. The Spirit only briefly remarked: "We believe also in the Holy Spirit." The Fathers of the Council, engaged in the struggle against Arianism, did not yet see the urgent need to formulate more precisely the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Because the Arians at first did not touch this teaching at all. But as soon as the first fervor of the Arian struggle had passed, the question of the Holy Spirit, on a par with the question of the Son of God, became the subject of lively and heated theological disputes. The main representative of the Doukhobor movement was now the Arian bishop of Constantinople, Macedonius.

Macedonius did not belong to the strict, i.e., consistent, Arians. In his convictions he was a pure Omiusian, and it seems that he separated himself so sharply from the strict Arians that he was ready to join the Orthodox rather than agree with the former that the Son of God is not God and is not equal to the Father. At least, the strict Arians suspected Macedonius of Arian injustice, and in 361 deprived him of the episcopal cathedra [475]. This fact undoubtedly shows that Macedonius, as not a strict, consistent Arian, touching upon the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, is not a Arian. Spirit, did not at all think of continuing the work of Arius. Accepting the monarchian principle of Arianism, he unconditionally rejected all conclusions from it and even, contrary to all logic, thought contrary to it. If, however, he deliberately avoided the ready-made conclusions drawn by others, if he deliberately departed from that anti-Christian abyss into which others fatally led him, then all the more could he not draw these conclusions and throw himself into this abyss voluntarily, he could not do this unconditionally, because, adhering to the strictly Arian or Anomaic principle, it was possible to pass to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Only after applying this principle to the teaching about the Son of God, and Macedonius resolutely rejected this application. It is clear that the teaching of Macedonius about the Holy Spirit. The spirit had its root not in Arianism. We have already noticed that before the appearance of Arianism, at the end of the third century, the teaching on the ministerial attitude of the Holy Spirit appeared and began to spread. The Spirit to the Father and the Son, and about His created origin by the will of the Father and the power of the Son. Arianism, which concentrated all its attention on the revelation of the doctrine of the Son of God, for a time suppressed the Doukhobor movement that had begun, but as soon as the first fervor of the Arian struggle had passed, this movement resumed again and found a champion in the person of the Constantinople bishop Macedonius. Macedonius fully agreed that the Holy Spirit is incomparably inferior to God the Father and the Son, that in relation to the first Persons He is only διάκονος και ύπηρέτης, that He does not have the same glory and honor of worship as Them, and that in general He is not God and should not be called God. Thus, Macedonius did not continue Arianism and did not begin a new heresy, but simply accepted and resumed the teaching of the Doukhobors at the end of the third century. He is remarkable only for the fact that by his participation he gave the Doukhobor movement a special strength, and thereby finally forced Orthodox theologians to pay due attention to this teaching. But it was here that it turned out that Orthodox theologians were poorly prepared to defend and reveal the Church-Orthodox teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Spirit. They clearly and expressively confessed their faith in the true divinity of the Holy Spirit. And they were not able to reveal and defend this faith to the same degree satisfactorily as they revealed and defended the Orthodox teaching about the Son of God. This is true even in relation to such pillars of Orthodoxy as St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Basil the Great.

At the basis of its revelation of the teaching about the Holy Spirit. St. Athanasius of Alexandria posits the concept of the Trinity. "If," he says, "there is a Trinity, and faith (η πίστις – Christianity) is based on the Trinity, then let them say; whether it has always been a Trinity, or whether there was a time when it was not a Trinity: and if the Trinity is eternal, then the Spirit, eternally coexisting (συνον) with the Logos and existing in Him (ον), is not a creature, because there was a time when there were no creatures" (477). Bearing in mind the Omiusians, who agreed to recognize the true divinity of the Son of God and unconditionally rejected the divinity of the Spirit, St. Athanasius argues his position by posing the following dilemma: either the Trinity, in the confession of the Father and the Son and in the denial of the Spirit, must be transformed into a duality, or it is the real Trinity; but in this case the Holy Spirit is no longer a creature, but a Divine Person, equal to the Father and the Son [478]. That He is indeed the Divine Person, St. Athanasius confirms by the testimony of the commanded formula of baptism, in which the Lord Himself numbered the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit to God the Father and the Son, and thereby clearly showed that the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not composed of Him who created and created, but that Her divinity is one (μία ταυτης η θεότης εστι) [479]. Thus, the Holy Spirit must necessarily be recognized as the true God, and indeed, according to the teaching of St. Athanasius, He possesses a perfect divine nature: He is immutable and unchangeable [480], eternal and incorruptible [481]; He is and is called the Spirit of sanctification and renewal [482]; He is the life-giving and creative Spirit [483] — He is the true God.

But if the nature of St. The Spirit is undoubtedly divine, and He is a special, independent Person of the uncreated divine Trinity, then in what relation should He be thought of to God the Father and the Son of God? The Omiusians reasoned on this question in the following way: if the Holy Spirit has His being directly from the Father, then He is the brother of the Son of God, who has His being from the same Father; but if He does not come from the Father directly, but through the Son, then He is the son of the Son of God and the grandson of God the Father. Orthodox theologians considered this reasoning to be the most obvious absurdity, but nevertheless in its essence it undoubtedly has a serious, albeit negative, meaning. It clearly shows that the simple concept of the Trinity alone is not enough to think of the Holy Trinity. The Spirit is the third Person in the Godhead, that for this thinking it is necessary to know in what relation the Holy Spirit stands to God the Father and the Son of God, and how exactly the very concept of the Trinity can and should be conceived. The naïve sophism of the Omiusians clearly exposes their complete inability to answer these necessary questions; they understood very well that it was necessary to confess the Holy Scriptures. Trinity, but they did not know at all how exactly to confess Her. Ordinary human considerations led them to the destruction of the Trinity, although they did not want this destruction at all, as is most convincingly proved by all the Omiusian aspirations to equate the Father and the Son, in spite of the contrary requirements of the Arian principle. Therefore, the sophism presented by them had to be taken as seriously as possible, and this was very well understood by such deep Orthodox minds as St. Athanasius of Alexandria; But in view of the fact that the question posed by the Arians had never been raised before and the Church had never solved it, it was difficult to give a clear and definite answer to it, especially in those turbulent times, when one careless word could entail innumerable disasters for the Church and Orthodoxy. This explains precisely the circumstance that St. Athanasius of Alexandria, speaking of the attitude of St. The Spirit to God the Father and the Son, is expressed very briefly and indefinitely. He says in general that the Holy Spirit is "most of all proper to the Son and not alien to God," "proper to the Logos and the divinity of the Father," "proper to the essence of the Logos, proper to God" (484) — all expressions that in no case can be called particularly clear and fully expressing the essence of Orthodox teaching, although St. Athanasius apparently considered them so. They require an obligatory explanation: what exactly is this closeness of the Holy Spirit? The Spirit to God the Father and God the Son? We do not find a clear answer to this question in St. Athanasius. He only says that "the Son is the image of the invisible Father, and the Spirit is the image of the Son; and as the Son dwells in His own image, in the Spirit, so also the Father in the Son" [485]. By these vague expressions, of course, he only wanted to indicate that the Holy Spirit is in an essentially intimate relationship, both with the Father, from Whom He proceeds, and with the Son, with Whom and in Whom He exists.