This is what St. Gregory the Theologian has in mind in his Homily on Baptism: "I have not yet begun to think of the One, when the Trinity illumines me with His radiance. Scarcely had I begun to think of the Trinity when the One embraced me again. When One of the Three appears to me, I think that this is the whole, so much so that my gaze is filled with Him, and the rest eludes me; for in my mind, which is too limited to understand the One, there is no more room for the rest. When I unite the Three in one and the same thought, I see a single light, but I cannot divide or consider the united light."[57] Our thought must move unceasingly, running from One to Three, and return again to Oneness; must oscillate incessantly between the two terms of this antinomy in order to arrive at the contemplation of the royal rest of this threefold Unity. How can the antinomy of unity and trinity be enclosed in one image? Is it possible to grasp this mystery without the help of concepts of motion or development that do not correspond to it? And the same Gregory the Theologian deliberately borrows the language of Plotinus, which can only mislead the minds of limited minds, unable to rise above rational concepts, the minds of "critics" and "historians" who are engaged in searching for "Platonism" and "Aristotelianism" in the works of the Holy Fathers. St. Gregory speaks to philosophers as a philosopher, in order to "acquire philosophers for the contemplation of the Holy Trinity: the One is moved by His richness, the Dual is overcome, for the Godhead is above matter and form. The Trinity is closed in perfection, for it is the first to overcome the composition of the dual. Thus the Deity is not limited, but neither does it extend to infinity. The first would be inglorious, and the second would be contrary to order. The one would be completely in the spirit of Judaism, and the second in the spirit of Hellenism and polytheism" [58]. Here, as it were, the mystery of the number "three" shines through: the Godhead is not singular and not multiple; Its perfection transcends the multiplicity rooted in duality (recall the infinite dyads of the Gnostics and the dualism of the Platonists) and finds its expression in the Trinity. The words "finds His expression" do not really fit here: the Godhead does not need to express His perfection either to Himself or to others. It is the Trinity, and this fact cannot be deduced from any principle, cannot be explained by any "sufficient" cause, for there is neither a beginning nor a cause preceding the Trinity.

????? (three) - this "name unites that which is united by nature, and does not allow that with the disintegration of the number the indestructible should be destroyed" [59], says St. Gregory the Theologian. Two is the dividing number, three is the number that transcends division: the one and the plural are gathered together and inscribed in the Trinity: "When I name God, I name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Not because I am suggesting that the Deity is scattered—that would be to return to a tangle of false gods; and not because I consider the Deity gathered together, but because it would mean impoverishing Him. Thus, I do not want to fall into Judaism for the sake of Divine autocracy, nor into Hellenism, because of the multitude of gods" [60]. St. Gregory the Theologian does not try to justify the Trinity of Persons before human reason; it simply indicates the insufficiency of any number other than the number "three." But the question arises: Is the concept of number applicable to God, and do we not thus subordinate the Godhead to one of the external determinations, one of the categories peculiar to our thinking, namely, the category of the number three? St. Basil the Great responds to this objection in the following way: "We do not count from one to plurality by addition, saying one, two, three, or first, second, third, for 'I am the first, and I am the last, and besides Me there is no God' (Isa. 44, 6). Never before has it been said: "the second God", but worshipping God from God, confessing the difference of hypostases, without dividing nature into multiplicity, we remain in unity of command" [61]. In other words, it is not a question of a material number, which serves for counting and is in no way applicable to the spiritual realm, in which there is no quantitative increase. In particular, when this number refers to the inseparably united Divine Hypostases, the totality of which (the "sum", to use not quite suitable language) is always equal only to one (3 = 1), the threefold number is not a quantity, as we usually understand it: it denotes in the Godhead His ineffable order.

The contemplation of this absolute perfection, this Divine fullness, which is the Most Holy Trinity, is God the Person, but not a person enclosed in Himself, the very thought of which is only a "pale shadow of Him" - and this raises the soul of man above the changeable and clouded being, giving it stability in the midst of passions, a clear impassibility (???????), which is the beginning of deification. For creation, changeable by nature, must by grace attain a state of eternal tranquility, partaking of eternal life in the light of the Most Holy Trinity. For this reason, the Church zealously defended the mystery of the Holy Trinity against the natural tendencies of the human mind, which tried to eliminate this mystery by reducing the trinity to one unity and transforming it into the "essence" of the philosophers, manifested in three modes (Sabellian modalism), or by dividing it into three distinct beings, as Arius did.

The Church expressed by the term omoousios the consubstantiality of the three Persons, the mysterious identity of the monad and the triad, and the simultaneity of the identity of the one nature and the difference of the three hypostases. It is interesting to note that the expression "omousion" is found in Plotinus [62]. The Trinity of Plotinus consists of three hypostases of one essence: the One, the Mind and the Soul of the world. However, their consubstantiality does not rise to the Trinitarian antinomy of Christian dogma: it appears to us as a descending hierarchy and manifests itself in the continuous emanation of hypostases, which, passing from one to another, are reflected from one to the other. This shows once again how erroneous is the method of historians who want to express the thought of the Church Fathers by interpreting the terms they use in the spirit of Hellenistic philosophy. Revelation opens the gap between the Truth it proclaims and the truths that can be discovered by philosophical speculation. If human thought, which, as a vague and uncertain faith, was led to the Truth by some instinct, could grope outside of Christian teaching to form some ideas that would bring it closer to the Trinity, then the very mystery of God the Trinity remained closed to it. What is needed here is a "change of mind," ???????? ; the word also means "repentance," like Job's repentance when he came face to face with God: "I have heard of you with the ear of my ear; but now my eyes see Thee. Therefore I deny and repent in the dust" (Job 42:5-6). The mystery of the Trinity becomes accessible only to ignorance, which rises above all that can be contained in the concepts of philosophers. However, this ignorance, not only wise, but also merciful, again descends to these concepts in order to change them, transforming the expressions of human wisdom into instruments of Divine Wisdom, which for the Greeks is madness.

It took the inhuman efforts of such Church Fathers as Saints Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and many others to purify the concepts inherent in the Hellenic way of thinking, to destroy their impenetrable partitions, introducing into them the beginning of Christian apophaticism, which transformed rationalistic reasoning into the contemplation of the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity. It was necessary to find a terminological distinction that would express unity and difference in the Godhead, without giving predominance to either one or the other, without allowing the idea of deviating either into the unitarianism of the Sabellians or into the tritheism of the pagans.

The Fathers of the IV, the "Trinitarian" century for the most part, in order to lead minds to the mystery of the Trinity, most willingly used the terms "ousia" and "hypostasis". The term ousia is often used by Aristotle and defines it in Chapter V of his Categories as follows: "That which cannot be said of any (other) individual and that which is not found in any (other) individual, for example, 'this man, this horse', is called ousia mainly. Secondary "ousia" (???????????????) are species in which the first "ousia" exist with the corresponding genera; thus 'this man' is man in kind, and animal in kind" [63]. In other words, the first "ousia" denote "individual existences", the existing individual, the second "ousia" denote "essences" in the realistic sense of the term. The term "hypostasis", having no significance as a philosophical term, denoted in ordinary language that which really exists, "existence" (from the verb ????????? ). St. John of Damascus in his "Dialectic" gives the following definition of the conceptual meaning of both terms: "Substance (ousia) is a self-existent thing that does not need anything else for its existence. Or again: substance is that which in itself is hypostatic (????????????) and has no existence in another, that is, that which does not exist through another, and does not have its being in another, and does not need another for its existence, but exists in itself, and in which accident derives its being" (Chapter 39). "The word 'hypostasis' has two meanings. Sometimes it denotes simple being. According to this meaning, substance (ousia) and hypostasis are one and the same. That is why some of the Holy Fathers said: "natures or hypostases." Sometimes the term "hypostasis" denotes being in itself, being independent. According to this meaning, it is understood as an individual who differs from others only numerically, for example: "Peter, Paul, some particular horse" (ch. 42) [64]). Thus, both terms seem to be more or less synonymous: "ousia" denotes an individual substance, although it may denote an essence common to certain individuals; "hypostasis" is existence in general, but can also be applied to individual substances. According to the testimony of Theodoret of Cyrus, "for secular philosophy there is no difference between ousia and hypostasis. For "ousia" means that which is, and "hypostasis" means that which exists. But, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, there is the same difference between the ousia and the hypostasis as there is between the general and the particular" [65]. The genius of the Holy Fathers here lay in the fact that they used both synonyms to distinguish in God that which is general - "ousia" - substance or essence, and what is particular - "hypostasis" or Person.

As for the term "persona" (Greek ????????), which was popular mainly in the West, it provoked vehement protests from the Eastern Fathers. Indeed, this word, far from having the modern meaning of "personality" (e.g., human personality), denoted rather the appearance of an individual, appearance, mask ("mask"), or the role of an actor. St. Basil the Great saw in the application of this term to the teaching of the Holy Trinity a tendency characteristic of Western thought, which had already once expressed itself in Sabellianism, making of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit three modalities of a single substance. In turn, the Westerners saw in the term "hypostasis," which they translated by the word "substantia," an expression of tritheism and even Arianism. In the end, all misunderstandings were removed: the term "hypostasis" passed into the West, giving the concept of personality its concrete meaning, and the term "person" or ???????? was accepted and properly interpreted in the East. In this way, the catholicity of the Church was manifested, freeing minds from their natural limitations, which depend on different ways of thinking and different cultures. If the Latins expressed the mystery of the Holy Trinity in terms of a single essence (essentia) in order to arrive from it to the three Persons, while the Greek Fathers preferred as a starting point the concrete, the three Hypostases, and saw in them a single nature, this was one and the same dogma of the Holy Trinity, which was professed by the whole Christian world before the division of the Churches. St. Gregory the Theologian, combining both points of view, says: "When I pronounce the word 'God', you are illumined by a single and threefold light - threefold in relation to particular properties, or to Hypostases (if anyone likes so), or to Persons (let us not argue in the least about names, so long as the words lead to the same thought) - I say 'one' in relation to the concept of essence (ousia) and, consequently, the Divinity. God is divided, so to speak, inseparably and is united separately; for the Divinity is One in Three, and one is the Three, in Whom is the Divinity, or, more precisely, which is the Divinity" [66]. In another word, he briefly expounds his teaching, distinguishing the characteristic features of the Hypostases: "To be unbegotten, to be begotten, and to proceed" gives the names: the first to the Father, the second to the Son, the third to the Holy Spirit, so that the non-union of the three Hypostases is preserved in the one nature and dignity of the Godhead. The Son is not the Father, because the Father is one, but the same as the Father. The Spirit is not the Son, though from God (for the Only-begotten is one), but the same as the Son. And the Three are one in Divinity, and the One is three in personal qualities, so that there is neither one in the sense of Sabellius, nor three in the sense of the present evil division" (i.e., Arianism) [67].

In the way of thinking of the Eastern Fathers, the theological concept of hypostasis, cleansed of Aristotelianism, means not an individual, but a person in the modern sense of the word. In fact, it was Christian theology that gave us our idea of the human person as something "personal," making of each human individual a "unique" being, completely incomparable to anyone else, and irreducible to other individuals. The philosophy of the ancient world knew only human individuals. The human personality cannot be expressed in concepts. It eludes all rational definition and is even indescribable, since all the properties with which we would try to characterize it can be found in other individuals. The "personal" can be perceived in life only by direct intuition, or it can be conveyed by a work of art. When we say: "This is Mozart" or "This is Rembrandt", we always find ourselves in that "sphere of the personal", which cannot be found anywhere else. However, "human persons or hypostases are separated and, according to the teaching of St. John of Damascus, do not exist one in another"; whereas "in the Holy Trinity, on the contrary, ... The hypostases are one in the other" [68]. The work of human persons is different, but the work of the Divine Persons is not different, for the "Three," having one nature, have also one will, one power, one action. St. John of Damascus says that the Persons "are united, not merging, but jointly coexisting with each other and penetrating each other (??????????????????????????????????) without any confusion and fusion, and in such a way that one does not exist outside the other or is not divided in essence according to the Arian division. For, to put it briefly, the Godhead is inseparable in the divided, just as in the three suns, closely adjacent to each other and not separated by any distance, there is one mixture of light and one merging" [69]. "For each (hypostasis) is one with the other, no less than with itself" [70]. In fact, each of the three Persons contains a unity, a single nature, in its own way, which, although it distinguishes Her from the other two Persons, at the same time creates an inseparable bond that unites the Three. "Non-childishness, birth and procession... it is only by these hypostatic properties that the three holy hypostases are distinguished from each other, inseparably distinguished not by essence, but by the distinctive property of each hypostasis" [71]. "For the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in all things, except begottenness, begottenness, and procession" [72].

The only characteristic hypostatic feature which we could regard as peculiar to each of them, and which would not be found in the others on account of their consubstantiality, would be correlation by descent. However, this correlation must be understood apophatically: it is primarily a negation, indicating that the Father is not the Son and not the Holy Spirit, that the Son is neither the Father nor the Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. To consider this correlation differently would be to subordinate the Trinity to one of the categories of Aristotelian logic, the category of relation (or connection). Perceived apophatically, this connection marks the difference, but nevertheless does not indicate "in what way" the Persons of the Holy Trinity originate. "The image of birth and the image of procession are incomprehensible to us," says St. John of Damascus. "That there is, of course, a difference between birth and procession, we have learned, but what is the form of the difference, we do not comprehend in any way" [73]. Even St. Gregory the Theologian should have rejected attempts to determine the mode of origin of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. "You ask," he says, "what is the procession of the Holy Spirit? Tell me first what the non-begettness of the Father is, and then I, in turn, as a naturalist, will discuss the begettness of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit. And we will both be struck with madness because we have spied the mysteries of God" [74]. "Thou hast heard of the birth; do not try to know what the manner of birth is. You hear that the Spirit proceeds from the Father; do not be curious to know how it comes out" [75]. Indeed, if the correlations of origin – non-begetting, birth and procession, by which we distinguish the three Hypostases, lead our thought to the one Source of the Son and the Holy Spirit – to ????????????? , to the Source of the Godhead [76] – the Father, they do not thereby establish a special relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. These two Persons differ in the mode of their origin: the Son is born from the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. This is enough to distinguish them.

The objections of St. Gregory the Theologian show that Trinitarian reasoning, not satisfied with the formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit, ???????? - "through the Son" or "in relation to the Son" (an expression used by the Holy Fathers and most often meaning the mission of the Holy Spirit in the world through the mediation of the Son), they tried to establish a connection between the Son and the Holy Spirit according to their hypostatic origin. This relationship between the two Persons proceeding from the Father was established by the Western teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit ab utroque, that is, simultaneously from two Persons - from the Father and the Son. It was the Filioque that was the only dogmatic cause, was the "first cause" of the separation of East and West; the rest of the doctrinal disagreements are only its consequences. In order to understand what the Eastern Fathers wanted to defend by objecting to the Western formula and not accepting it, it is sufficient to compare the two Trinitarian conceptions as they were opposed by the middle of the ninth century.

As we have already said, Western thought, in its exposition of the Trinitarian dogma, most often proceeded from one nature in order to arrive at the Persons, while the Greek Fathers followed the opposite path, from the three Persons to the one nature. St. Basil the Great preferred this last path, which departed from the concrete, in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and the baptismal formula that names the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thus thought could not wander when it first contemplated the Persons, and then proceeded to the contemplation of their general nature. However, both of these paths were quite legitimate, since they did not presuppose in the first case the primacy of the one essence over the three Persons, in the second - the primacy of the three Persons over the common nature. And indeed, we see how the Holy Fathers, in order to establish the distinction between nature and Persons and not to single out either one or the other, use two synonyms - "ousia" and "hypostasis".

When Persons (or Persons) are affirmed, nature is simultaneously affirmed, and vice versa, for nature is not thought outside of Persons or "before" Persons, even if in a logical order. If we upset in one direction or the other the equilibrium of this antinomy between nature and Persons, who are absolutely identical and at the same time absolutely different, we deviate either into Sabellian Unitarianism (God is the essence of the philosophers) or into Tritheism. In the formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, the Greeks saw a tendency to emphasize the unity of nature to the detriment of the real distinction of Persons: the relations of origin, which do not lead the Son and the Spirit directly to the One Source, the Father, the One as Begotten, the Other as Proceeding, become a kind of "system of relations" in a single essence, something logically consequential to the essence. Indeed, in the speculation of the Western Church, the Father and the Son bring forth the Holy Spirit, since they represent one nature; in turn, the Holy Spirit, who for Western theologians is "the bond between the Father and the Son," signifies the natural unity of the first two Persons. The hypostatic properties (fatherhood, birth, procession) turn out to be more or less dissolved in nature or essence, which, as the beginning of the unity of the Holy Trinity, becomes a differentiated relationship: relating to the Son as the Father, to the Holy Spirit as the Father and the Son. Relations, instead of distinguishing Hypostases, are identified with Them. Later, St. Thomas Aquinas would say this: "The name 'Person' means a relation,"[77] that is, an intra-essential relationship that diversifies it, the essence. We will not deny the difference between such a concept of trinity and the concept of, say, St. Gregory the Theologian, who sees in Her (the Trinity) "three holy things that converge into one Lordship and Divinity" [78]. Regnon quite rightly remarks: "Latin philosophy first considers nature in itself, and then reaches its Bearers; Greek philosophy first considers the Bearers and then penetrates into Them in order to find nature. The Latin considers the Person as a mode of nature, the Greek considers nature as the content of the Person" [79].

The Greek Fathers always maintained that the beginning of unity in the Holy Trinity is the Person of the Father. Being the beginning of the other two Persons, the Father is thereby the limit of the correlations from which the Hypostases derive their distinction: giving the Persons their origin. The Father also establishes their relationship with the one principle of the Godhead as birth and procession. That is why the Eastern Church opposed the formula of the "Filioque", which seemed to damage the unity of the Father: either it was necessary to break the unity and recognize the two principles of the Godhead, or to substantiate unity, first of all, by the community of nature, which would thereby come to the fore, transforming the Persons into interconnections within a single essence. For Western relations, they "diversify" the primary unity; for the Eastern, they signify both difference and unity, for they refer to the Father, who is the Beginning and the "reunion" of ????? (????????? ) Trinity. It is in this sense that St. Athanasius the Great understands the saying of St. Dionysius of Alexandria: "We spread the Indivisible Unity into the Trinity, and we again reduce the indivisible Trinity into the Unity" [80]. And in another place he declares: "One principle of the Godhead and unity of command in the proper sense" [81]. In the words of the Greek Fathers, "there is one God, because there is one Father." Persons and nature are posited, so to speak, simultaneously, without the one logically preceding the other. Father-????????????? , the Source of all Godhead in the Trinity, brings forth the Son and the Holy Spirit, imparting to them His nature, which remains one and indivisible, identical with itself in the Three Persons. To confess one nature means for the Greek Fathers to see in the Father the One Source of Persons who receive the same nature from Him. "In my judgment," says St. Gregory the Theologian, "faith in one God is preserved when we relate the Son and the Spirit to one Principle, without composing or mixing them, and affirming the identity of essence, as well as what can be called the one and same movement and will of the Godhead" [82]. "We have one God, because the Godhead is one. And to the One are raised Those Who proceed from Him, being Three in faith... Therefore, when we have in our thoughts the Divinity, the First Cause and unity of command, then what we imagine is one. And when we have in our thoughts Those in Whom the Divinity is and Who proceed from the First Principle before time and with equal honor, then we worship the Three" [83]. St. Gregory the Theologian here brings the Divinity and the Person of the Father so close that one might think that he confuses them. But in another place he clarifies his thought: "... the one nature in the Three is God, and the Unity (??????) is the Father, from Whom the Others and to Whom They are raised, not merging, but co-existing with Him and not separated from each other by time, nor will, nor power" [84]. St. John of Damascus expresses the same thought with his characteristic precision: the Father... "Of Himself He has being, and of that which He has, He has nothing of another; on the contrary, He Himself is for all things the beginning and cause of the image as it exists by nature. ... Thus, everything that the Son has and the Spirit has from the Father, even existence itself. And if anything is not the Father, it is neither the Son nor the Spirit; and if the Father did not have what the Father did not have, the Son and the Spirit do not have; but through the Father, that is, because there is a Father, there is a Son and a Spirit; and through the Father the Son has, and also the Spirit has all that He has, because the Father has all these things... When we consider in God the First Cause, unity of command... we see the One. But when we consider Those in Whom there is Divinity, or rather Those Who are Themselves Divinity, Persons Who proceed from the First Cause, ... that is, the hypostases of the Son and the Spirit, then we worship the Three" [85].

But according to the teaching of St. Maximus the Confessor, it is the Father who gives distinction to the Hypostases "in the eternal movement of love" (??????????????????????) [86]. He communicates His one nature equally to the Son and the Holy Spirit, in whom it is one and indivisible, although it is communicated in different ways, for the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father is not identical with the birth of the Son from the same Father. Manifested through the Son and together with the Son, the Holy Spirit exists as a Divine Person proceeding from the Father, as St. Basil the Great clearly says: "From the Father proceeds the Son, by Whom all things came into being, and with Whom the Holy Spirit is always inseparable from our minds, for it is impossible to think of the Son without being enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Thus, on the one hand, the Holy Spirit, the Source of all good things given to creation, is connected with the Son, with Whom He appears inseparably; on the other hand, His being depends on the Father, from Whom He proceeds. Consequently, the distinguishing feature of His hypostatic attribute is that He manifests Himself after the Son and with the Son, and has His being from the Father. As for the Son, Who by Himself and with Himself makes the Spirit proceeding from the Father known, He alone shines from the unborn Light, as the only Son; it is His own attribute, which distinguishes Him from the Father and from the Holy Spirit, and designates Him as a person. And God alone above all has this pre-eminent attribute of His Hypostasis, that He alone is the Father and does not proceed from any beginning; it is by this sign that He is known as a Person" [87]. St. John of Damascus expresses his opinion no less precisely, distinguishing the Persons of the Holy Trinity and not subordinating them to the category of relations: "It should be known that we do not say that the Father proceeds from anyone, but call the Son Himself the Father. We do not say that the Son is the cause, nor do we say that He is the Father, but we say that He is both of the Father and the Son of the Father. And of the Holy Spirit we say that He is of the Father, and we call Him the Spirit of the Father, but we do not say that the Spirit is also of the Son, but we call Him the Spirit of the Son (??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????)" [88].