St Gregory Nazianzen and the Monarchy of the Father

[FrKimel]

I have just completed a three-part article on this topic. Both Eastern and Latin Catholics should find it of interest.

 

[Vico]

I found Vladimir Lossky helpful on the issue of the monarchy, where he specifically refers to St. Gregory of Nazianzus. It is worthwhile to recall here what we have said before about the negative approach characteristic of Orthodox thought– an approach which radically changes the value of philosophical terms applied to God. Not only the image of – cause," but also such terms as “production,” “procession,” and “origin” ought to be seen as inadequate expressions of a reality which is foreign to all becoming, to all process, to all beginning. just as relations of origin mean something different from relations of opposition, so causality is nothing but a somewhat defective image, which tries to express the personal unity which determines the origins of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This unique cause is not prior to his effects, for in the Trinity there is no priority and posteriority. He is not superior to his effects, for the perfect cause cannot produce inferior effects. He is thus the cause of their equality with himself. {20} The causality ascribed to the person of the Father, who eternally begets the Son and eternally causes the Holy Spirit to proceed, expresses the same idea as the monarchy of the Father: that the Father is the personal principle of unity of the Three, the source of their common possession of the same content, of the same essence.

1. “For He would be the origin (arche) of petty and unworthy things, or rather the term ‘origin’ would be used in a petty and unworthy sense, if He were not the origin of the Godhead (tes Theotetos arche) and of the goodness contemplated in the Son and in the Spirit: in the former as Son and Word, in the latter as Spirit which proceeds without separation.” St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 2, 38; P.G. 35, col. 445.

Vladimir Lossky, The Image and Likeness of God, SVS Press: Crestwood, NY, 1976), pp. 71-96.

 

[marlo]

We agree with the Saint, however, can you use a Western Father to provide the exact equivalent of St Gregory Nazianzen explanation of the trinity Especially the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father ?

I have just completed a three-part article on this topic. Both Eastern and Latin Catholics should find it of interest.

 

[FrKimel]

We agree with the Saint, however, can you use a Western Father to provide the exact equivalent of St Gregory Nazianzen explanation of the trinity Especially the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father ?

Probably not–but I am not a patristics scholar. The critical assertion that the Father is the “cause” of the Son and Spirit appears to be a particularly Eastern development.