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  • Divine Monarchy in Gregory of Nazianzus
  • Richard Cross (bio)

I

The correct understanding of the teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus on the causal relations between the persons of the Trinity has recently been a matter of considerable contention. Central to the problem is a passage in Oration 31.14 in which Gregory apparently claims that the divinity is the monarch of the persons:

When therefore we look at the divinity, the primal cause and monarchy, it seems to us that there is one. But when we look at those in whom the divinity exists, and those who are beings timelessly and in equal glory from the primal cause, we worship three.1

This suggests that all three persons somehow derive from the divinity. Thus, it seems to identify the primal cause of the three persons as the divinity and to assert that the three persons are somehow "from" this divinity. The divinity is therefore, apparently, the "monarch" of the persons. This sort of teaching seems to be confirmed in other passages—which I discuss below—in which Gregory identifies the divine monarchy with the divinity or the Trinity of persons.

As is also widely acknowledged, however, Gregory also claims on many occasions that the Father is the cause of the Son and Spirit. A few representative texts on this latter point should suffice, all of which occur in the context of discussions of the origination of the Son and/or Spirit:

What is eternal is not necessarily uncaused, in so far as he [viz. the Son] is related to the Father as cause. So they [viz. the Son and Spirit] are not unoriginated in cause.2

We admit that the Father is greater, as cause, than the Son.3

. . . all that the Father has belongs to the Son, except causality.4 [End Page 105]

Not only this, the Father is held to be the cause both of the being and of the divinity of the Son and Spirit:

I wish to say that the Father—from whom is both the equality and the being of the equals—is greater.5

[The Father] is the principle . . . of the divinity, which [divinity] is seen in the Son and Spirit.6

This is clearly a very strong doctrine of the monarchy of the Father. Gregory claims too not merely that the Father is the cause of the Son and Spirit, but sometimes that the Father is somehow the explanation for the unity of the Trinity: "The union is the Father, from whom and to whom the order [of persons] is led."7 And, in line with all this, Gregory is equally clear in denying that the divinity (as opposed to the Father) is the cause of Son and Spirit:

The principle is not separated from that which lacks a principle: for being a principle is not the nature [of the thing that is a principle], just as lacking a principle is not the nature [of the thing that lacks a principle]. For these things are circumstances of a nature not the nature itself.8

The idea is that being the principle of the Son and Spirit is not a feature of the divine nature, as it were; it is proper to the Father—it is a feature of what it is to be the Father: "[The Father] is cause by nature," and "We assign 'greater' to the nature of the cause."9

John P. Egan has recently summarized the modern debate surrounding Oration 31.14, a debate which focuses precisely on the seeming contradiction just highlighted—namely, that Gregory seems to assert both that the Father is the cause of Son and Spirit and that the divinity is the cause of all three persons.10 Egan himself holds that, in the passage quoted at the beginning of this article, a reasonable case can be made in favor of understanding the primal cause to be the Father. His reason is simply Gregory's insistence elsewhere that the Father is cause of Son and Spirit.11 He notes too the opinions of three other writers [End Page 106] who agree with this reading: Ps.-Cyril (the author of de sacrosancta trinitate),12 A. J. Mason...

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