oὐσíα and ὑπóσταıς in the trinitarian theology of the cappadocian fathers: basil and...

OÙs…a and ØpÒstasij in the Trinitarian Theology of the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil and Gregory of Nyssa

by Kevin Corrigan

Cappadocian Trinitarian theology is founded upon Scripture and its exegesis1, as also upon a tradition of Christian interpretation, some of the diversity and eclecticism of which are refl ected in the Conciliar documents of the 3rd and 4th centuries as the early Church struggled to fi nd a language that could in some small measure refl ect the Mysteries under inquiry on the basis of all the evidence and its best interpretation. Cappadocian theology also builds upon the legacy of Nicaea and, especially, the work of Athanasius which had laid a strong foundation and established the context for thinking inclusively about the Divinity of all three persons – Father, Son and Spirit. At the same time, however, the major terms in which that theology is phrased, such as oÙs…a and ØpÒstasij, prÒswpon, tÕ koinÒn and tÕ ‡dion/„d…wma etc., have a long heritage in both pagan and Christian thought that has proved very diffi cult to unravel for several good reasons. First, such terms do not belong simply to any one group and should not be traced exclusively back to individual schools of thought. Terms like Øpograf» (“outline” or “delineation”) and genikètaton (“most generic” or “most general”), for instance, in Porphy-ry’s Isagoge (terms that are also used by the Cappadocians) are typically labeled Stoic, but they are really part of a common heritage, neither Stoic nor anything else, in the 3rd and 4th centuries of our era2. Or again, Basil’s usage of oÙs…a is often described as Stoic3, whereas Gregory’s is thought

1 For good examples of just such an approach, see Ath., Ar. I 40-64; Bas., ep. 8, long attributed to Basil, but in fact written by Evagrius of Pontus; see St. Basil, The Letters, with an english translation by R.J. Deferrari, vol. 1, LCL, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1926; see especially vol. 2, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1928, 56f.

2 See Porphyry, Introduction, translation, with a commentary by J. Barnes, Clarendon later ancient philosophers, Oxford 2006, 312-314.

3 Cf. R.M. Hübner, Die Einheit des Leibes Christi bei Gregor von Nyssa. Untersuchungen zum Ursprung der ‘physischen’ Erlösungslehre, PP 2, Leiden, 1974; S.M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea. A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth, Washington D.C. 2007, 92 note 52 (against Hildebrand’s specifi c point in note 52, compare Plot., Enn. VI 7,10 (SCBO, 196,15f. Henry/Schwyzer): kaˆ Ð lÒgoj d{ zîon kaˆ ¥llo ti […] tÕ koinÕn kaˆ tÕ ‡dion). For possible Plotinian “dependence” see note 42 below.

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OÙs…a and ØpÒstasij in the Trinitarian Theology of the Cappadocian Fathers 115

to be Aristotelian4. But, as we shall see, neither of these common views is correct. The picture is simply more complex. Ideas and terms typically bear many different resonances; and ideas invariably cross boundaries in such creative ways that to muster them into tidy camps is to tell us little or nothing about their use, development and infl uence in the 4th century. Sec-ond, as recent work has shown more clearly than before5, there is no single Cappadocian Trinitarian theology, for despite the success of the Council of Constantinople in 381 and the work of the three Cappadocians that made this – in part – possible, this theology was no single monolithic achievement, but for Basil up to his death in 379 a struggle and probing development to fi nd a reasonable solution, for Gregory of Nazianzus a compromise that was for him more like failure6, and for Gregory of Nyssa an attempt to be faithful to tradition and Basil’s legacy that nonetheless produced in his own writings a somewhat more far-reaching “solution” (arguably) than can be found in either Basil or Gregory of Nazianzus.

What I propose to do here, therefore, is a little detective-work with the object of uncovering no single source for the Trinitarian theologies of Basil and Gregory of Nyssa but rather several strands of a much more complex knot, strands that have remained relatively unobserved. The central ques-tion for me is not so much the enquiry into “sources”, that is, one-on-one source correspondences, as the need to determine what intellectual climates helped to make particular views possible (even if by contrast only). In the case of oÙs…a and ØpÒstasij this is particularly complex since both terms were in common usage across the spectrum of the late ancient world7. Nonetheless, I shall sketch a rather different narrative than usual about

4 See, for example, B. Pottier, Dieu et le Christ selon Grégoire de Nysse. Étude systématique du ‘Contre Eunome’ avec traduction inédite des extraits d’Eunome, Série ‘Ouvertures’ 12, Bruxelles 1994.

5 For example V.H. Drecoll, Die Entwicklung der Trinitätslehre des Basilius von Cäsa-rea. Sein Weg vom Homöusianer zum Neonizäner, FKDG 66, Göttingen 1996 and J. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus. An Intellectual Biography, Crestwood (New York) 2001.

6 See McGuckin, St. Gregory (see note 5), 356.7 There is no space here for a history of both terms: for oÙs…a and related terms see K.

Corrigan, Plotinus’ Theory of Matter-Evil and the Question of Substance. Plato, Aristo-tle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, RThAM. Suppl. 3, Louvain 1996; Barnes, Porphyry (see note 2), 40.90.108-112; L. Turcescu, Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons, AAR.AS, New York 2005; C. Stead, Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers, CStS 224, London 1985, VI, 508-517.582-588; VII, 1-14; and for ØpÒstasij and related terms, R. Witt, “Hypostasis”, in: H.G. Wood (ed.), Amicitiae Corolla. A volume of essays presented to J.R. Harris on the occasion of his 80th birthday, London 1933, 319-343; H. Dörrie, Hypostasis. Wort und Bedeutungsgeschichte, NAWG 1955/3, 35-92; A. Smith, Hypostasis and Hyparxis in Porphyry, in: F. Romano/D.P. Taormino (eds.), Hyparxis e Hypostasis nel Neoplatonismo, Firenze 1994, 33-42, and C. Rutten, Hypostasis et Hyparxis chez Plotin, in: Romano/Taormino (eds.), Hyparxis (see note 7), 25-32; Barnes, Porphyry (see note 2), 40; L. Turcescu, ‘Person’ versus ‘Individual’, and Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa, in: S. Coakley (ed.), Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa, Oxford 2003, 97-110.

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116 Kevin Corrigan

part of the intellectual climate that helps to give birth to Basil’s and Gre-gory’s usage of oÙs…a/ØpÒstasij, then go on to note a few features of Basil’s approach that seem unmistakably signifi cant, before looking more closely at Gregory of Nyssa. Since, in my view, Gregory’s anthropology and Christology depend upon his Trinitarian theology, part of the key to understanding his Trinitarian theology, I shall argue here (but only at the end for want of space), is to be found in the way his anthropology treats human oÙs…a, since such oÙs…a is united, through Christ and in the image of God, to the oÙs…a – ØpÒstasij of the Trinity itself. What helps to determine Gregory’s anthropology will also therefore have some bearing upon his Trinitarian thought.

Simply put, my thesis is this: Cappadocian Trinitarian theology depends fi rst and last upon the mystery of divine love revealed in Christ’s incarna-tion, death and resurrection. But from a historical viewpoint, this theology is not possible without the complex intellectual climate that helps to frame it. Part of this indispensable climate is the tension, derived from different strands of Neoplatonism, between the ungeneratedness of the ultimate principle (in Iamblichus, for instance) and the need, especially from a Christian perspective, that this principle also be causa sui, in such a way that while its oÙs…a remains unknown and ungraspable by our thought (œnnoia, ™p…noia or katanÒhsij), our thought can nonetheless determine real propria (‡dia, „dièmata) by means of all the evidence presented to us by God’s works (œrga) in history, scripture, and human rational capacities. Basil, it seems to me, works towards an appropriate realist way of speak-ing about this mystery, i.e., of creating a kind of appropriate language or grammar of assent8; and Gregory completes his brother’s work partly by creatively adopting major themes in Porphyry and Plotinus and thus by showing implicitly that the logical conclusion of Platonism and Neopla-tonism is not the three “hypostases” of Plotinus or the One beyond the One of Iamblichus, but oÙs…a and ØpÒstasij understood in the Christian Trinitarian context. This part of Gregory’s achievement is not at the fore-front of his writings; rather, it lies in those writings as a faint shadow of the transformation of this broader 3rd and 4th century intellectual climate9. If it were to have been more obvious, then Gregory would obviously have failed to develop a Christian doctrine.

My approach here will be as follows. First, I shall take up Eunomius’ position and the Neoplatonic debate that, I believe, underlies it. I shall then sketch out the hidden Neoplatonic background to Gregory’s Chris-

8 On this see L. Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy. An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology, Oxford 2004, 14f.258f.

9 See Bas., Epistula ad Adolescentes 7; english translation: St. Basil, The Letters, with an english translation by R.J. Deferrari, vol. 4, LCL, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1934, 407: “it is diffi cult to believe that it is by mere chance that it [pagan thought] coincides with our principles, and not through its imitating them designedly [spoud»]”.




tian theory, a theory that employs Neoplatonism in order to refute it, but simultaneously incorporates some of its major insights in a highly creative way.

Eunomius holds the view, broadly speaking, that the term ¢gšnnhtoj (“ungenerated”) is a proper name to denote the essence of God; or, in other words, ¢gšnnhtoj really tells us what God is10. By contrast, “Son” and “Spirit” do not indicate the oÙs…a of the ungenerated Father. They are subordinate oÙs…ai, a little, in fact, like the two derivative oÙs…ai of the Neoplatonists – despite Eunomius’ protestations against “the Hellenic error”11.

Basil, by contrast, argues that a negative or privative term like ¢gšnnhtoj cannot defi ne the positive reality of the Godhead. In fact, none of our terms for God can defi ne or grasp the oÙs…a of God. God’s nature is not capable of being known by us. What we can know, however, are the works of God in history and in ourselves which teach us something not about God’s es-sence, but about God’s loving and eternal reality for us12. For both Basil and Gregory, such knowledge is not merely relative or restricted to our minds alone. Adapting Porphyry’s notion of properties, like laughter, that do not defi ne the essence, yet necessarily inhere in those natures of which they are the properties or individual characteristics, Basil and Gregory effectively argue that the divine names, appropriately used in Scripture, really inhere in God and tell us something unique about God without defi ning God’s unknowable and uncircumscribable nature13. Though I

10 Cf. Bas., Eun. I 5 (SC 299, 176,79-81; 180,124-129 Sesboüé); I 11 (208,5-8 S.); I 16 (228,17-20 S.); I 19 (238,10-20 S.); I 19 (240,25-29 S.) etc. See also Eunomius, The Extant Works, text and translation by R.P. Vaggione, OECT, Oxford 1987, 29, for the tendency to confuse ¢gšnnhtoj/¢gšnhtoj and gennhtÒj/genhtÒj.

11 See Eun., apol. 16 (OECT, 52,5 Vaggione).12 See P. Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, The transformation of the classical heritage 20,

Berkeley 1994, 93-132. Cf. Gr. Nyss., Eun. I 42 (Gregorii Nysseni Opera 1, 36,20-37,1 Jaeger).

13 Porphyry’s account of the “tradition” (probably Peripatetic) in the Isagoge is as follows: “They divide property into four: what is an accident of a certain species alone, even if not of it all (as doctoring or doing geometry of man); what is an accident of all the species, even if not of it alone (as being biped of man); what holds of it alone and of all of it and at some time (as going grey in old age of man); and fourthly, where ‘alone and all and always’ coincide (as laughing of man). For even if man does not always laugh, he is said to be laughing not in that he always laughs but in that he is of such a nature as to laugh – and this holds of him always, being connatural (sÚmfuton) like neighing of horses. And they say that these are properties in the strict sense, because they convert: if horse, neighing; and if neighing, horse” (Porph., intr. [CAG 4/1, 12,13-21 Busse]; english translation: Barnes, Porphyry [see note 2], 11f. and commentary 213-219). Propria or „dièmata of this fourth kind, according to Porphyry, have the peculiar feature that they are neither simply accidental qualities nor substantial activities (or “complements of the substance”, sumplhroànta – in the more technical vocabulary). That is, for Basil and for Gregory they are not “parts” of God’s substance, which does not have parts and cannot, in any case, be grasped and, equally, they do not qualify God’s substance, which would be impossible since Divine substance is not quality. The distinction between qual-ity simply and quality as pertaining to the substance of something goes back to Arist.,



118 Kevin Corrigan

have no space to develop this further, the Neoplatonic view of propria (from the Isagoge of Porphyry) is far more signifi cant here than Hübner’s14 longstanding view of a Stoic origin for Basil’s view of substance15, namely, that the Stoic distinction between “commonly qualifi ed” (koinîj poiÒn) and “peculiarly qualifi ed” („d…wj poiÒn) substance lies behind Basil’s con-ception, since there is a broader intellectual context at stake here, as we shall see below, rather than some vague terminological correlation. Basil’s view is in fact not Stoic16.

Metaph. D (Aristotelis Opera 2, 1020b,13-18 Bekker): “primary quality is the differentia of substance […] second, the affections of things moved qua moved”) and is developed in Plotinus’ discussion of two senses of quality in Plot., Enn. II 6, where the same thing can be both a quality or accident simply or an activity (™nšrgeia) and complement of the substance (for context see Corrigan, Plotinus’ Theory [see note 7], 188-193). Bas., hex. IV 5 distinguishes between: 1) proper qualities or „dièmata, 2) names or titles (proshgor…ai), 3) subsequent accidents (t¦ Ûsteron prosginÒmena), and 4) essential complements that provide the cause of being (t¦ sumplhroànta), but does not appear to distinguish 1) and 4) suffi ciently: „dièmata and t¦ sumplhroànta. Gregory, however, distinguishes clearly the substance or nature from the special property: “For this [name, God] which indicates the substance does not tell the “what” of it (which is clear since the what of the substance is inconceivable and ungraspable), but as taken from some property belonging (prosÒntoj) to it, this hints at (paradhlo‹) the substance, just as when neighing and laughing said to be properties of natures signify the natures of which they are properties” (Gr. Nyss., comm. not. [GNO 3/1, 21,20-22,3 Müller]). According to Gregory, then, the divine substance remains incompre hensible and ungraspable in itself but the individual properties and persons hint at or “show alongside” the natures they represent and are therefore not simply properties of our thought but tell us something real about the divine, that is not what it is, but how it is. This latter distinction between the “what” and the “how” is to be found in Basil (cf. tÕ pèj: Bas., Eun. I 15 [226,36f. S.]) and corresponds to the distinction between knowing God from God’s activity and power (i.e., knowing the how) without knowing the substance (i.e., knowing the what) (see Bas., ep. 234f.). It also occurs in Gr. Nyss., tres dii (GNO 3/1, 56,11-17 Müller): the lÒgoj of cause and nature are different, the former being given kat¦ tÕ pëj e"nai. The distinction may well fi t the Stoic third genus, the “disposed” (pëj œcon) (as Sesboué suggests in his introduction: Basile de Césarée, Contre Eunome, suivi de Apologie, intro-duction, traduction et notes de B. Sesboué, SC 299, Paris 1982, 81) or the fourth genus, the “relatively disposed” (prÒj t… pëj œcon), but it can be found in Porphyry and even in Arist., Metaph. D (1072a34 B.), and so has broader application still. For further detail on these questions in Basil and Gregory, I am indebted to a recent ground-breaking doctoral dissertation at Emory University, Atlanta (Georgia) by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, “Seek and Ye Shall Find”. Divine Simplicity and the Knowledge of God in Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, unpublished Diss. 2007.

14 Cf. Hübner, Die Einheit (see note 3).15 Supported more recently by B. Studer, Gott und unsere Erlösung im Glauben der Alten

Kirche, Düsseldorf 1985 [english translation: M. Westerhoff, Trinity and Incarnation. The Faith of the Early Church, Collegeville [Minnesota] 1993); R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. The Arian Controversy 318-381, Edinburgh 1988, 864; and cf. S.M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology (see note 3), 92 note 52 (and for an overview see also the Appendix 1 on p. 193-209).

16 Whatever one is to make of Basil’s insistence that he is speaking of the “material” sub-stratum in Bas., Eun. II 4 or of Gregory’s addition “not” the material substratum, in Gr. Nyss., Eun. III 5,22 (Gregorii Nysseni Opera 2, 168,2f. Jaeger), Bas., Eun. I 19 is, in my view, defi nitive, that is, Basil also insists that his Trinitarian theology is incompatible with materialism, but compatible with formal causality. Bas., Eun. II 4 (SC 305, 18,3-20,13




However, what seems to have escaped attention is the precise Neopla-tonic background to Eunomius’ position. This background can be found in Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis – in a critique, of all things, of Plotinus’ notion of ÐmooÚsioj, surely signifi cant in so far as it refutes a common modern convic-tion that the term ÐmooÚsioj is never used “to signify the unity of incorporeal natures” by Neoplatonists17. Let us take up the ÐmooÚsioj context fi rst.

For Plotinus the trace of divinity in the soul implies a consubstantiality and kinship of the soul with the divine18. If this is so, how much more consubstantial must the divine be with itself, one is surely entitled to ask. By contrast, in the De Mysteriis, Iamblichus rejects Plotinus’ position about the consubstantiality of the soul with the divine as follows but leaves the bigger question very much open:

For if one thing somehow comes to be [is perfected] from two, this is entirely of the same form and of the same nature and of the same essence (ÐmooÚsion). So the elements coming together produce from many one specifi c thing, and many souls are commingled into one whole-soul. Nevertheless, anything which is completely transcendent cannot become one with that which has gone from itself; nor may the soul then produce some one form of substance in communion with the divine inspiration19.

Sesboüé): “while the names of Peter, Paul, and […] of all human beings are different, the substance of all is one. That is why we are the same as one another in most respects, while in the properties alone considered in relation to each that we are different, one from another. For this reason too names are not signifi cative of the substances, but of the distinctive properties which characterize the individual. Whenever we hear Peter at any rate, we do not think his substance from the name – and by substance I now mean the material substratum – but we are imprinted as to the notion of the properties considered in relation to him”. Basil’s specifi cation of the “material substratum” here may mean no more than that he refers to the material individual subject called Peter (rather than any more complex signifi cation of oÙs…a), that is, a material subject fashioned out of “clay” (according to Job 33,6 and Gen 2), as Basil almost immediately specifi es in Bas., Eun. II 4 (20,32 S.). That Basil is aware of a more complex (and formal signifi cation) is already clear in Bas., Eun. I 19: if the commonality of substance is taken to involve some distribution or division of a pre-existing matter into the things that come from it (by Eunomius), then we cannot accept this, Basil argues. But if one understands it to be like “one and the same lÒgoj of being in the case of both and if by hypothesis the Father is conceived as light in relation to the substratum, and light is also agreed to be the substance of the Only-Begotten, and whatever lÒgoj of being one attributes to the Father, this same lÒgoj also applies to the Son; if the commonality of substance is taken in this way, then we accept it and will say that the doctrine is ours” (Bas., Eun. I 19 [240,32-242,40 S.]). What this means, therefore, is that Basil is not committed to a Stoic materialist position, but that instead he distinguishes material and formal descriptions and may simply refer to an individual substance like Peter in Bas., Eun. II 4 above as one would to a material subject. See A. Radde-Gallwitz, “Seek and Ye Shall Find” (see note 13), appendix 2, for a much fuller treatment of the whole question.

17 M.J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato, Ashgate studies in philosophy and theology in late antiquity, Aldershot 2002, 5.

18 E.g. in Plot., Enn. IV 7,10 (159,19 H./S.). 19 Iamb., Myst. III 21 (CUFr, 128 des Places = Jamblichi De mysteriis liber, 150,3-15 Parthey).

English translation: Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, translation with an introduction and notes by E.C. Clarke, J.M. Dillon and J.P. Hershbell, Writings from the Greco-Roman world 4, Atlanta 2003.



120 Kevin Corrigan

While consubstantiality of the soul with the divine is not possible, Iambli-chus envisages consubstantiality of souls with each other; and, implicitly in the subsequent context, even though the divine is unmixed, Iamblichus leaves open the possibility that a divine intelligible substance, if perfected from two or more elements, might be primarily consubstantial with it-self.

If this is so – and there is nothing to contradict and much to support it – then a) the Neoplatonists conspicuously use ÐmooÚsioj of incorporeal natures, like souls and the divine nature, and b) they also imply that if oÙs…a is primarily divine and if the divine is perfected from one or more, then ÐmooÚsioj would be used most properly of the divine and would signify unity and equality not of compound nature, but of a substance or real substantial nature.

So, whether or not ÐmooÚsioj comes from Valentinian Gnosticism or from some other source, the intellectual context for applying it to primary oÙs…a or divine intellectual substance is available from Neoplatonism (much more readily than it is from Stoicism or elsewhere).

However, the obvious problem with Neoplatonism (as also with Middle Platonism), from a 4th century Christian point of view, is the sense of subordinationism involved with intellectual triads derived vertically – as, for example, in Amelius’ apparent three intellectual gods: he who is, he who has and he who sees20. One traditional answer to the problem of three Persons and somehow One God had been to identify the Father with the common oÙs…a to which the Son belonged qua derivation (as in Origen and others)21. But this problem does not really apply in Plotinus where Intellect is a triple, but simultaneous procession and conversion of a single oÙs…a that has three distinct eternal moments. It is oÙs…a from the beginning and oÙs…a in its goal or tšloj. 'Arc» and tšloj – or “where from” and “where to” – are one without subordination22. Porphyry’s Fa-ther-Life-Intellect triad is by contrast, a vertical, subordinationist deriva-tion, for the Father is identifi ed with the ¤pax ™pškeina and the demiurgic intellect with the dˆj ™pškeina23. The intellectual climate for a one-many substance/consubstantiality application to the Trinity is available, there-fore, from Neoplatonism, from Plotinus, if not from Porphyry. The three hypostases application, however, is a different matter. And so too is the

20 Procl., in Tim. D (BSGRT, Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum commentaria 3, 103,18-28 Diehl); in Tim. B (BSGRT, Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum commentaria 1, 306,1-3 Diehl; cf. 398,16-26 D.); on this see K. Corrigan, Amelius, Plotinus and Porphyry on Being, Intellect and the One, ANRW 2/36/2, 1987, 978-984.

21 Cf. J. Zachhuber, Once again. Gregory of Nyssa on Universals, JThS 56, 2005, (75-98) 85; and compare R. Cross, Gregory of Nyssa on Universals, VigChr 56, 2002, 372-410.

22 E.g., Plot., Enn. III 8,8 (372,39 H./S.); V 8,7 (279,46f. H./S.).23 P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, vol. 1. Les textes porphyriens dans l’œuvre théologique

de Marius Victorinus, Paris 1968, 264-266.




question of ¢rc» and tšloj. For Gregory (arguing against Eunomius), the Trinity is simultaneously ungenerated and endless, i.e., without ¢rc» and without tšloj24.

Let me now briefl y treat the ¢gšnnhtoj question in the same chap-ter of Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis. What would be primarily at issue for a Christian in the passage from Iamblichus cited above is the question that what “has gone forward” from a transcendent principle or cause cannot be consubstantial with it, for the procession of the Son from the Father is precisely the counter-example to Iamblichus’ Neoplatonic conviction and, furthermore, the question of derivation of a principle from itself is precisely the issue for Iamblichus against the remarkable view in Plotinus of the One’s self-constituting or self-deriving freedom. In De Mysteriis III 19 (126,15 d.P.), Iamblichus – implicitly against Plotinus’ view that the One is causa sui – uses the substantival form tÕ ¢gšnnhton to designate his own principle (a phrase that only appears once elsewhere in the surviving corpus – at De Mysteriis VIII 6 [200,11 d.P.]) against the view that cause and caused – here of generation – can be coordinate:

For the superior being will no longer be unbegotten if it is the cycle of genera-tion that brings it, nor will it be the primordial cause of everything if itself be coordinated with some things by reason of other causes25.

Subsequently, in De Mysteriis III 21, Iamblichus’ argument is implicitly, but pointedly directed against Plotinus’ view that the One is sÚndromon with itself in the sense that it “derives its existence from itself” (Plotinus, Enneas VI 8,2026) or has “granted itself existence” (Øpšsthsen aÙtÒn; Enneas VI 8,1627), when he argues that the gods cannot be produced by any ÐmooÚsion mixture as follows:

But what indeed is this commixed form of ØpÒstasij? For if it is the compound (sunamfÒteron), it will not be one from two, but something composite (sÚnqeton) and brought together from two. But if as an entity different from both, the eternal things will be changeable, and divine things will not differ from physical things in generation. And it will be absurd that an eternal being should grow through generation, but more absurd still that anything subsisting from eternals (ti [...] ™x ¢#d…wn ØfesthkÒj) will be dissolved28.

Behind the whole argument here, and much more explicitly with Eunomius and the Cappadocians, is the question whether or not there can be a com-

24 Gr. Nyss., Eun. I 42.25 Iamb., Myst. III 19 (126, d.P. = 146,14-17 P.).26 Plot., Enn. VI 8,20 (268,17-19 H./S.).27 Plot., Enn. VI 8,16 (262,29 H./S.).28 Iamb., Myst. III 21 (129 d.P. = 151,13-152,4 P.).29 Cf. Plot., Enn. V 4,1 (234,19 H./S.) (and Pl., Phdr. 245d [SCBO, 248d,1 Burnet]): ¢rc¾

d{ ¢gšnhton.



122 Kevin Corrigan

mixed form of ØpÒstasij that is neither composite nor a “third over two elements”, but something simultaneously ungenerated29 and yet causa sui, something so free that it is simultaneously ¢gšnnhtoj, monogen»j and the perfection of ¢rc» and tšloj in a single unity30.

This I suggest is roughly the model that Basil works towards in the Epistulae, Contra Eunomium and De Spiritu Sancto31 and precisely the model that Gregory articulates more fully in his Trinitarian thought and anthropology.

By contrast with Apollinarius (who seems content in Epistula 362 to work with a generic view of deity: “there is one overlying genus or one underlying matter whenever we assume the genarchic peculiarity of the highest principle […]”32), Basil in Epistula 361, and elsewhere, wants to avoid both a common overlying genus and a prexistent underlying subject view as well as any division into hierarchy or subordination, in talking about consubstantiality. At the same time, in Epistula 236 he offers an analogy: “OÙs…a and ØpÒstasij have the difference that the common (tÕ koinÒn) has with reference to the particular (tÕ kaq' ›kaston), for example, as the living creature has with reference to ‘the particular man’”33. As Hildebrand remarks34, this does not make divinity a generic concept and personhood a question of membership in a species or something abstracted from divine oÙs…a. Rather, Basil insists upon the concrete unity of shared substance and individual personhood in a way that is neither Aristotelian (second or fi rst substance) nor Stoic (as Hildebrand wrongly supposes35) nor simply a version of the generally accepted Neoplatonic view of the universal as later summarized by Simplicius: namely, that the universal or common element is a) the transcendent cause of individual things, b) the enmattered form present in many, and c) the concept abstracted from the individuals and then predicated of them36. Basil seeks to avoid any subordinationism and any cutting up – ¢pomerismÒj – of divine substantial unity into particulars or hierarchies37. The analogy and language he uses are common currency, but the concrete unity of common and particular is nonetheless, as we shall see, more like Plotinus’ usage in relation to

30 See also the TractTrip 1, and Stead, Substance (see note 7), IV, 588.31 See Bas., ep. 52.261f.214.236.361 (and 362: Apollinarius to Basil); Bas., Eun. II 4 (and

by contrast Gr. Nyss., Eun. II 5,22 [168,2f. J.]); Bas., Eun. II 9; Bas., De spiritu.32 Bas., ep. 362 (LCL, 336 Deferrari) from Apollinarius to Basil.33 Bas., ep. 236 (400.402 D.).34 Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology (see note 3), 92.35 Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology (see note 3), 92 note 52.36 Simp., in Cat. 5 (CAG 8, 82,35-83,20 Kalbfl eisch).37 There is surely a hint here of Platonic/Neoplatonic dia…resij in so far as unity and be-

ing get cut up in the second part of Plato’s Parmenides or the threat of oÙs…a getting cut up into little pieces in Plot., Enn. VI 2,22 (70,14 H./S.). The language of “cutting” (tšmnesqai) or splitting/dividing (diaire‹n) is familiar in logic, e.g. Porph., intr. 5,3; 10,10; and see Barnes, Porphyry (see note 2), 112.




intellect in Enneas VI 738, even more so than it is to Porphyry’s logical discussion of more generic and more specifi c predication in the Isagoge, that is, the contrariety of the species-producing differentiae (i.e., ungenerated and generated) that do not destroy the common oÙs…a of the Godhead, a discussion that Basil adapts in Contra Eunomium II 28 and elsewhere39.

Basil is also aware of the distant similarities between his own view and Plotinian Neoplatonism in the late De Spiritu Sancto for he takes time to distance his view explicitly from the Plotinian “originary hypostases” and to contrast this latter pagan position with Paul’s “fi rst” and “second man”. In De Spiritu Sancto XVI,38 he writes: “And in the creation of reasonable natures think for me of the pre-original principal cause of what comes into being, the Father; the creative/demiurgic cause, the Son; the perfecting cause, the Spirit […]”. And he goes on to clarify: “And let no one think that I am speaking of three originary hypostases or saying that the activity (™nšrgeia) of the Son is incomplete (¢telÁ), for the ¢rc» of beings is one creating through the Son and perfecting in the Spirit”. Just as Plotinus asserts in Enneas VI 7,1f.40, so for Basil no activity of the demiurgic intellect can be incomplete, that is, no demiurgic activity can be a kind of Aristotelian k…nhsij in need of perfection. All is concretely present – common and particular – from the beginning. So while number is a sign indicative among us of the plurality of subjects (Øpoke…mena; De Spiritu Sancto XVII,43), in the case of God (De Spiritu Sancto XVIII,44):

38 Cf. Plot., Enn. VI 7,18 (208,34-209,51 H./S.); VI 7,16 (204,1-8 H./S.). Cp. Enn. VI 7,10 (196,15f. H./S.): kaˆ Ð lÒgoj d{ zîon kaˆ ¥llo ti […] tÕ koinÕn kaˆ tÕ ‡dion.

39 E.g., Bas., Spir. XVII,41 (SC 17bis, 392,6-393,15 Pruche): Those who are clever in vain pursuits say that some names are common with broad signifi cative extension and others are more restrictive. For example, substance is a common name, predicable of all things, both inanimate and animate alike. “Animal” is more specifi c, being said of fewer things than the former, but of more than those that are ranged under it since it embraces the nature of both rational and irrational beings. “Human” again is more specifi c than “animal”, and “man” [as a distinguished gender] than “human”, and the individual, Peter, Paul or John, than “man”. Basil adapts Porphyry or some other similar “source” for his own purposes (cf. Porph., intr. [4,21-26 B.], “Substance is itself a genus. Under it is body, and under body animate body, under which is animal; under animal is rational animal, under which is man; and under man are Socrates and Plato […]. Of these items, substance is the most general and is only a genus, while man is the most special and is only a species […]; english translation: Barnes, Porphyry [see note 2], 6) – but with the very big difference (among others) that substance is not “only a genus” for Basil and that contraries do exist within it, but in such a way that they do not destroy the Godhead. What is good for an “introduction” does not work for theology (as Porphyry also makes clear in places). So in Bas., Eun. II 28 (120,43-50 S.): “the properties themselves are often counterdistinguished from one another, to be opposed in contrariety, yet for all that they do not tear apart the unity of substance, for example, the winged and the footed, the aquatic and the terrestrial, the rational and the irrational; for since one substance underlies them all, the properties do not estrange the substance”. Here I am indebted to Andrew Radde-Gallwitz’ treatment (A. Radde-Gallwitz, “Seek an Ye Shall Find” [see note 13], 286-290 [appendix]).

40 Plot., Enn. VI 7,1 (183,45-184,48 H./S.).



124 Kevin Corrigan

41 Bas., Spir. XVIII,44 (404,20-406,8 P.).42 For example, P. Henry, Études plotiniennes, vol. 1. Les États du texte de Plotin, ML.P 20,

Paris 1961 (= Brussels 1938), 185-196 (cf. already A. Jahn, Basilius Magnus Plotinizans, Bern 1838) and H. Dehnhard, Das Problem der Abhängigheit des Basilius von Plotin. Quellenuntersuchungen zu seinen Schriften De Spiritu Sancto, PTS 3, Berlin 1964; criti-cized by J.M. Rist, Basil’s Neoplatonism. Its Background and Nature, in: P.J. Fedwick (ed.), Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic. A Sixteen-Hundredth Anniversary Symposium, vol. 1, Toronto 1981, 137-220.

43 Bas., Spir. XVIII,45 (406,22 P.). 44 Bas., Spir. XVIII,47 (412,3 P.).45 Bas., Spir. XVIII,45 (408,25 P.); cf. Plot., Enn. VI 2,8 (53,17 H./S.).46 Bas., Spir. XVIII,45 (408,26 P.).47 Bas., Spir. XVIII,45 (408,34 P.).48 Basile de Césarée, Traité du Saint-Esprit, texte grec, introduction, traduction et notes de

B. Pruche, SC 17bis, Paris 1968, 408 note 4.

One God and Father and One only begotten Son and one Holy Spirit. We announce each of the hypostases in its own unity, but when we have to count, we are not carried off by an ignorant arithmetic to a conception of polytheism. For we do not count by addition, making increase from a one to a many, saying neither one, two and three nor again fi rst and second and third. [...] Worshipping God from God, we confess the proper character of the hypostases (tÕ „di£zon tîn Øpost£sewn), but we abide (mšnomen) upon the monarchy, without scattering the theology into a divided plurality41.

“Dependence” on Plotinus has often been noted in the early work, De Spiritu (whose authorship by Basil, it is true, has been doubted), and in chapter 9 of the later De Spiritu Sancto42. But this is not really dependence, since Basil implicitly uses elements from Plotinus against Neoplatonism, such as – in the whole of this section (De Spiritu Sancto XVIIf.) – when he argues that the Christian “One” is truly one and neither composite nor a “one of many” (|n tîn pollîn) (unlike Plotinus’ Intellect, one may suppose) nor again a formless unity implicitly, but a “one form/shape, as it were” (morf»n)43 – through whose illuminative power “we fi x our gaze upon the beauty of the image of the invisible God and are led to the vision beyond beauty (Øpšrkalon) of the archetype”44. The striking adjective, Øpšrkalon, in this context suggests that Basil has read Enneas VI 7 (esp. VI 7,32f.) and is correcting Plotinus’ argument that the One is a shapeless beauty beyond beauty, even if Basil agrees that the One must remain unmeasured. Several of the other terms Basil employs to unfold the substantial connectedness of the Persons are also Plotinian, such as the attachment (sunaptÒmenon) of the Holy Spirit “through the one Son to the one Father”45 and the “completion” that the Spirit contributes (sumplhroàn)46, a union described as mon¦j prÕj mon£da47, a phrase of which B. Pruche in his edition of De Sancto Spiritu remarks: “l’inspiration plotinienne de ce passage ne paraît pas douteuse”48. However, the language is a common, shared heritage and the formula is not the Alexander of




Tralles/Numenius/Plotinian mÒnoj prÕj mÒnon formula49, but something closer perhaps to Origen’s usage50.

So the limited point I want to make is not the one-on-one source cor-relation, but rather the overall character of the intellectual climate. If Basil links the three Neoplatonic Øpost£seij to his own notion of monarc…a; if he argues implicitly against Neoplatonism that to count three hypostases arithmetically, and subordinately51, is to mistake their own conception of substantial number and to coordinate substance with quantity; and if he also argues that the unity of the Trinity cannot be composite or a “one of many” or a formless unity, then a plausible way for Gregory to develop Basil’s thought is to fi nd a way through the Neoplatonic notions of oÙs…a and Øpost£seij that makes more sense than Neoplatonism (from a Chris-tian viewpoint) and that highlights this solution in a striking formula that succinctly presents its difference from either Neoplatonism or Gnosticism: “one substance in three hypostases”, that is, not three substances in three hypostases!

Faint traces of exactly this approach and of the provenance of the ¢gšnnhtoj – causa sui model can be found in several of Gregory’s works. I shall treat only two passages here: Basil’s Epistula 38 (which is perhaps by Gregory but may well not be52) and Ad Ablabium quod non sint tres dei. In Epistula 38 (as in so many other passages in Gregory and Basil’s works) Gregory fi rst draws the analogy between the common term “man” and individual human beings, on the one hand, and the oÙs…a and the individualizing persons of the Trinity, on the other. How do we follow up the distinguishing characteristics of each of the persons? From Scripture (e.g., 1Cor 12,11; John 1,3: “All things came into being through Him, and separate from Him came into being not one of the things that consist.”) we

49 For the formula see K. Corrigan, “Solitary” Mysticism in Plotinus, Proclus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Pseudo-Dionysius, JR 76, 1996, 28-42.

50 This is quite in tune with Dehnhard’s view of the infl uence of Origen’s Trinitarian theol-ogy on Basil – as well as Iren., haer. V 6, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Eusebius.

51 See, for example, Bas., Spir. XVII,41-43 and up to XVIII,47, throughout which Basil is concerned to differentiate his own position from Neoplatonism and so naturally thinks of, e.g., Plot., Enn. V 1,4.6. Cf. Pruche (see note 48).

52 V.H. Drecoll, Die Entwicklung (see note 5) has argued on the basis of style, content, manuscript tradition etc. and also because the view of oÙs…a/ØpÒstasij and humanity is in agreement with Basil’s statements elsewhere that Basil is the author. This is compelling evidence, I think. But of course the latter view is also in accord with Gregory’s thought. I think, in general, that Gregory is much more in tune with Basil and that he takes up and develops Basil’s thought more often than is generally realized. Equally, an infl uence of Gregory on Basil is possible at times. So despite – and because of – my feeling that this question is not ultimately susceptible of resolution and that perhaps it does not need to be resolved in favour of Gregory, I am in further sympathy with Drecoll’s view – with some reservations as will appear below. Drecoll also thinks that Basil’s view of oÙs…a is not Stoic, but more Aristotelian. This – with substantial modifi cation in favour of later antiquity, as will appear, in part, in my argument here – is, I think, along the right lines.



126 Kevin Corrigan

learn that “there is a power that subsists ungenerately and without begin-ning (¢genn»twj kaˆ ¢n£rcwj), which is the cause of the cause of all things that exist. For the Son, by whom all things are and with whom the Holy Spirit must always be conceived inseparably, is from the Father (™k […] toà patrÒj)”. In other words, there is a relation of cause and caused between the persons of the Trinity that is simultaneously a unity of ungeneratedness and self-causation in the Divine nature (not as substance but as eternal ef-fi cacy, operation or works53). For a pagan thinker like Plotinus, this would be to confl ate the self-productive One with the inner triplicity of Intellect or to make cause and caused (e.g., soul and body) a single item without interval or without anything in between them, something impossible – since for Plotinus (as for Gregory) everything except the “One” is characterized by interval. For Gregory, by contrast, the Trinity is not a confl ation of the One and Intellect, but the elimination of intermediate divine substances and the positing of internal relationality or hypostases in the One itself as part of the logic of substance and individuality which, by eliminating numerical hypostases, adapts and develops the frameworks established by Plotinus for understanding God or the One as the form of self-causality in Enneas VI 8 and for re-interpreting the triplicity of substance as Intel-lect in Enneas VI 7 (and elsewhere) both as a self-generating act in itself and as an act “of” or “from” the Good simultaneously. So it is hardly surprising in one of the passages following the passage cited above that Gregory should think of Plotinus and of how his own conception might be misunderstood. He argues as follows:

While the particular distinguishing notes as handed down through Scrip-ture teach us to recognize the hypostases or persons, other terms such as infi nite, incomprehensible, uncreated etc. do not yield distinction, but:

A certain continuous and undivided community is seen in them. And through whatever concepts (no»mata) you reach a conception of the greatness of any one of the portions of the Holy Trinity, through these same concepts you will arrive invariably at Father, Son and Holy Spirit looking upon their glory, since there is no interval between (diale…mmati metaxÚ) [them] in which the mind will walk upon a void (tÁj diano…aj kenembatoÚshj). The reason is that there is no-thing which intrudes itself between these persons, and that apart from (par£) the divine nature there is nothing which subsists that could really divide it from itself by the interposition of the alien and that there is no emptiness as an interval without subsistence (diast»matÒj tinoj ¢nupost£tou)54.

In the above passage, two features (apart from the obvious general context) betray the relation yet gulf between the Cappadocian and the Neoplatonic positions. First, the participle kenembatoàsa (“treading upon empty air”) is so rare a word in classical and patristic Greek usage that it almost

53 Cf. Gr. Nyss., Eun. I 42.54 Bas., ep. 38 (208 D.); english translation, adapted: St. Basil, The Letters, with an english

translation by R.J. Deferrari (see note 1), vol. 1, 209.




certainly refl ects its most distinctive appearance in late antiquity in Ploti-nus, Enneas III 9,355. When the soul goes towards that which is after it, it goes towards non-being, Plotinus argues, and it does this whenever it is self-related; “for, wishing to be directed towards itself it makes an im-age of itself, what is not, as if treading on empty air (kenembatoàsa) and becoming more indefi nite; and the indefi nite image of this is in every way dark”56. The contexts, of course, are different, but Gregory indicates – quite simply – that the triadic unity of the Trinity is not like soul making body or one ØpÒstasij making another in which some unformed emptiness fi rst emerges before this indefi nite x converts to its principle and becomes subsistent. There is no treading upon empty air. Instead, there is “nothing apart from the divine nature”.

Second, this emphasis upon the lack of interval, though so characteristic of Gregory’s own thought and of his polemic with Eunomius57, indicates precisely how the Trinity is to be understood in relation to Neoplatonism58: namely, as the form of concurrent (sundromÁj) self-constituting unitary substance. Even Plotinus, for instance, in his remarkable work on the freedom of the One (Enneas VI 8) fi nds it necessary to express this purely unitary reality in threefold terms (however imperfectly and with many caveats). I give two striking examples:

[…] if the Good is established in existence (Øfšsthke), and choice (a†resij) and will (boÚlhsij) join in establishing it (sunuf…sthsin) – for without these it will not be – but this Good must not be many, its will (boÚlhsij) and substance [and chosen willing (tÕ qšlein) – del. Vitringa] must be brought into one; but if its

55 Plot., Enn. III 9,3 (380,11 H./S.).56 The verb is used by Plutarch (see A Greek-English Lexicon, compiled by H.G. Liddell/R.

Scott, revised and augmented throughout by H.S. Jones, new [9th] edition, Oxford 1940, 938 s.v. kenembatšw), and once (cf. A Patristic Greek Lexicon, edited by G.W.H. Lampe, Oxford 71984, 741 s.v. kenembatšw) by Basil in a related sense against an Arian position: “Let your intellect not tread on empty air crossing over ages earlier than the Son”, think-ing of a time “when he was not” (Bas., Chr. generat. [PG 31, 1460a Migne]), but it is used by Gregory in his Contra Eunomium with exactly similar force as in Bas., ep. 38: for example, Gr. Nyss., Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii 100 (Gregorii Nysseni Opera 2, 353,25f. Jaeger; = Gr. Nyss., Eun. II in the edition of Migne in PG 45, 512a): oÙdenˆ tù metaxÝ diast»mati tÁj diano…aj ¢pÕ toà uƒoà prÕj tÕn patšra kenembatoÚshj”. Cp. Gr. Nyss., Eun. III 2,131 (95,8f. J.; = Gr. Nyss., Eun. IV in the edition of Migne in PG 45, 665b): “stepping into an empty hole” (kenembatÁsai tù bÒqrJ). This is perhaps (slight) support for Gregory as author of Bas., ep. 38.

57 Eunomius calls “the generation of substance of the Son immediate (¢mes…teuton) and says that it preserves indivisibly the relation to the Generator, Maker and Creator”, see Gr. Nyss., Eun. III 2,117 (91,4-7 J.; = Gr. Nyss., Eun. IV in the edition of Migne in PG 45, 661a).

58 H.U. von Balthasar, Présence et pensée. Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse, Paris 1942 (= Presence and Thought. An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa, translation by M. Sebanc, San Francisco 1995), takes Gregory’s view of di£sthma to be one of the crucial and most original features of his thought. This is true but it should not obscure the fact that something similar can be found in Neoplatonism. See for example Plot., Enn. VI 7,39 (233,2-10 H./S.); VI 5,5.



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59 Plot., Enn. VI 8,13 (258,50-58 H./S.).60 Plot., Enn. VI 8,20 (267,13-268,27 H./S.).61 Cf. Gr. Naz., or. 29,9 (i.e. Oratio tertia theologica 9 [SC 250, 192-196 Gallay]), distances

the Trinity from the Greek “overfl ow of goodness” with its succession of causes.

chosen willing (tÕ qšlein) comes from itself, it is necessary that it also gets its being from itself, so that our discourse has discovered that he has made himself. For if his will (boÚlhsij) is the same thing as his existence (ØpÒstasij), then in this way he will have brought himself into existence (Øpost»saj)59.

And a little later, in Enneas VI 8,20, Plotinus argues that although we use these terms incorrectly, (1) activity, (2) substance and (3) perfection of (1) making, (2) selfhood and (3) eternal generation must be identical in the Good:

Now certainly an activity not enslaved to substance is purely free and in this way he himself is himself from himself (aÙtÕj par’ aÙtoà aÙtÒj) […] if he is rightly said to hold himself together (sunšcein), he is both himself and the bringer of himself into being, granted that what he by his nature holds together is what from the beginning he has made to be […] but now if he was what he is before eternity existed (prˆn a„îna e"nai), this “he had made” must be understood to mean that making and self are concurrent (tÕ sÚndromon); for the being is one with the making and the, so to speak, eternal generation60.

If one puts these two passages together with Iamblichus’ and Eunomius’ claim that ¢gšnnhtoj is, in some measure, a more appropriate term for God, then we are exactly in the intellectual climate, I suggest, closest to the emergence of Gregory’s own theory. Like Plotinus, he holds that there is no interval in the One and that the One has to be causa sui, which implicitly makes it a trinity. Like Iamblichus, and in tune with Porphyry’s Father-Life-Intellect triad, if not with its subordinationism, he can adopt ¢gšnnhtoj, together with ¢teleuta‹oj, but in a different form. However, unlike Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists, he and Basil (as well as Gregory of Nazianzus61) reject the “originary hypostases” in favor of a single Trinitarian model based upon Scripture, but one which simultane-ously adapts two primary triadic models of self-causation in Plotinus, namely, that of the One in Enneas VI 8 and that of intellectual substance as an internal act “of” or “from” the Good in Enneas VI 7 (and other works). Furthermore, Gregory’s Trinitarian language resonates strongly with Plotinus’ “Trinitarian” One in these passages above. Like Plotinus’ One, Gregory’s Trinity is sundrom» and self-subsisting, cause of itself, but also ¢gšnnhtoj. I do not suggest that these are “sources” in the traditional sense, but rather they are alternative intellectual frameworks that provide an indispensable background and fully compelling context to the Cappado-cian achievement. Cause and caused cannot be coordinated in traditional Neoplatonism except in the two crucial instances of self-causation we have cited above.




62 Gr. Nyss., Eun. I 42 (224,24-225,2 J.); Gr. Nyss., comm. not. (25,4-6 M.) has a different variant: “For one and the same is the person of the Father from who the Son is generated and the Holy Spirit proceeds”.

63 Gr. Nyss., tres dii (55,24-56,10 M.).64 See, for example, Plot., Enn. VI 7,18 (207,1-13 H./S.); VI 7,40 (234,5-236,49 H./S.).

My second passage is from Ad Ablabium quod non sint tres dei where Gregory argues that the three Persons are to be distinguished by origin, the Father as the cause (tÕ a‡tion) and the Son and Spirit as caused (a„tiat£), the Son immediately and the Spirit mediately from the Father by the inter-mediary of the Son – or as in Contra Eunomium I 42, the Spirit as caused by the Only-Begotten-Son)62. This triple causality is without subordina-tionism for it is beyond time or any Arian “when he was not”, and it is faintly reminiscent of the way that Plotinus describes the triplicity-in-unity of intellect. Gregory puts his theory in the following way:

[…] while we confess the invariable character of the nature, we do not deny the difference in respect of cause and that which is caused in which alone we apprehend that there is distinguished from the other, because we believe that one is the cause and the other is from the cause (™k toà a„t…ou); and in what is from a cause, again we recognize another difference. For one is directly (prosecîj) from the fi rst and the other is through that which is directly from the fi rst so that the attribute of being Only-Begotten abides without ambiguity in respect of the Son and the fact that the Spirit is from the Father is not in doubt, and while the interposition of the Son, which guards for Him His Only-Begotten name, does not shut out the Spirit from the natural relation to the Father63.

Now there are passages in the Enneades that bear a faint resemblance to this, especially in Enneas VI 7, where Plotinus tantalizingly outlines a triplicity within intellect as “of” the Good or “from the Good” or, in a context that is far from clear, develops the notion of a self-generating thinking and a non-generating, perfecting thinking that together form a sunupÒstasij or coexistent-reality64. But the puzzling feature of the above passage (and others) is the very notion of causality itself and particularly the language, introduced a little after the passage cited, of “cause” and “caused” (a„tiatÒn). Similar language is used in the Adversus Graecos ex communibus notionibus. But why introduce subordinate-sounding philo-sophical language if one can avoid doing so? Generation there has to be in order to distinguish Father and Son, but why employ caused-language which should commit the user, one might say, to a greater-lesser distinc-tion between cause and caused when Gregory and Basil expressly deny this of divine substance?

The reason, I suggest, lies in the conception of causality that underlies the overall framework of Gregory’s thought. According to Gregory’s ac-count of humanity, the whole of humanity is contained in God’s creation, and precontained in Adam, though we experience generation from different actual fathers in time and over history. This means that, in time, cause and



130 Kevin Corrigan

caused are different though interrelated items or persons65, and that in the defi nition of substance or human nature as a whole, cause and caused are interrelated in such a way that what is caused has its cause in itself as in its own nature. In God, by contrast, cause and caused are a single substance as fl owing relationally from Father66. Thus, what are “many and different” in our case are a sunÚparxij of cause and caused in God67.

As far as I know, only Plotinus has a comparable intellectual viewpoint, developed in Enneas VI 7,1-5 and VI 7,40 – and implicit elsewhere. Gre-gory’s world is of course entirely different, since there are no intermediary Øpost£seij and the One is not “beyond being”, but if humanity is made in the image of God, then what is interrelational for us but dynamically unifi ed in our shared substance must, through Scripture and our ability to form concepts, be already presaged not in God’s substance (about which we can know nothing) but in how God is in relation to history. So for Plotinus, things in the sensible world “establish jointly cause and caused together in relation to each other” (Enneas VI 7,268) (as a refl ection of a much greater unity in the intelligible world) in such a way that “the things caused have their causes in themselves” (Enneas VI 7,269), just as in “this man”, “what has made him exists in him, not separate” (Enneas VI 7,470) or just as “man” cannot be thought without the “one” which is co-exist-ent (sunÚparcon) with it (Enneas VI 6,1071; cf. VI 8,14). This reciprocity Plotinus calls in Enneas VI 8,14 the internal cause which brings into exist-ence together each part (t¾n a„t…an sunapogennîsan)72. Co-generation or sunupÒstasij, is then a function both of human substantiality and of intel-lectual substance, for Plotinus. The latter – intellectual substance – Plotinus calls a sunupÒstasij in Enneas VI 7,40, or a “self-generating power”, and in his much earlier work on the “primary hypostases”, he describes this as a causal generative process:

[…] intellect makes being exist (Øfist£j) in thinking it, and being (tÕ Ôn) gives intellect thinking and being (tÕ e"nai) by being thought. But the cause of thinking is another, which is also the cause of being; they both therefore have a cause other than themselves. For simultaneously they co-exist (sunup£rcei)73.

65 Cf. Gr. Nyss., comm. not. (24,26-25,4 M.).66 Cf. Gr. Nyss., comm. not. (25,6-14 M.).67 Gr. Nyss., comm. not. (25,7f. M.).68 Plot., Enn. VI 7,2 (185,35-37 H./S.).69 Plot., Enn. VI 7,2 (185,35-37 H./S.).70 Plot., Enn. VI 7,4 (188,24-30 H./S.).71 Plot., Enn. VI 6,10 (166,49-51 H./S.).72 Plot., Enn. VI 8,14 (259,24 H./S.). See also Eun., apol. 15 (52,12 V.), who argues that

just as we distinguish the Ungenerated from the Only-Begotten so we accord the same pre-eminence which the maker must have to his products to the Son, in accordance with John 1,3 (“all things were made through him”) “since the creative power was begotten coexistentially in him from above” (sunapogennhqe…shj ¥nwqen aÙtù tÁj dhmiourgikÁj dun£mewj).

73 Plot., Enn. V 1,4 (191,28-31 H./S.).




This passage is ambiguous, for Plotinus is probably thinking, we might insist, of his principle beyond being, namely, the One. But in fact, the whole passage is actually about intellectual substance and it can be read (as it could well have been by Gregory and Basil) as referring to the inter-nal intellectual cause that makes being and thought subsist (a signifi cant overlap between internal and external generative principles such as we fi nd in Plotinus’ discussion of love’s immeasurability as generative of beauty in intellectual substance in Enneas VI 7,3274). We should compare Gregory’s strikingly similar language in Adversus Graecos ex communibus notioni-bus75 with the lines from Enneas V 1,4, cited immediately above:

That is indeed why the one as cause of its (two) causeds, we say is one God; since indeed it co-exists with them (sunup£rcei)76.

Gregory has, in fact, adapted Plotinus’ theory to fi t an entirely changed context. He is effectively using Plotinus’ theory and particular formulation to combat the Eunomian-type view that there can be no sunÚparxij of a quasi-Plotinian kind: “It is not only impious but positively ridiculous for those who grant that there is one unique unbegotten being to say that anything else exists either before it or along with it (proup£rcein […] ½ sunup£rcein). Indeed, if something else did exist before the Unbegotten, it is that which would properly have to be called “Unbegotten” and not the second. On the other hand, if some other individual existed along with the Unbegotten (sunup£rcoi), then by the community whereby each existed along with the other, their being one only and Unbegotten would be taken away”77. For Eunomius, there is either a One beyond the One or a co-existence that destroys unity. But for Gregory, why does one need a mysterious principle beyond being when mystery and revelation can be preserved simultaneously within the logic of substance and hypostasis itself? Gregory’s theory of both the Trinity and the human being therefore develops inexorably the logic-in part-of Plotinian Neoplatonism78 but in

74 Plot., Enn. VI 7,32 (224,23-225,2 H./S.).75 Gr. Nyss., comm. not. (25,6-8 M.).76 As so often, Gregory here is completing his brother, Basil’s work-naturally, since co-exist-

ence in this sense is a major anti-Eunomian motif of their combined Trinitarian theology. See Bas., Spir. XXVI,63 (472,8-10 P.): TÕ g¦r kur…wj kaˆ ¢lhqîj sunup£rcein ™pˆ tîn ¢cwr…stwj ¢ll»loij sunÒntwn lšgetai.

77 Eun., apol. 10 (44,10-46,19 V.).78 Despite Zizioulas’ view (J. Zizioulas, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and

the Church, CGT 4, London 1985, 47; idem, On Being a Person. Towards an Ontology of Personhood, in: C. Schwöbel/C.E. Gunton [eds.], Persons, Divine and Human. King’s College Essays in Theological Anthropology, Edinburgh 1991, 45; and for critical assess-ment Turcescu, ‘Person’ [see note 7], 97-110) that uniqueness is a feature of relational personhood and not of irreducible individuality (a notion he links to the Latin West), uniqueness in Gregory and Basil belongs to individual perceptible things right from the beginning, but this is also by virtue of the community of substance that comes from God, and ultimately because of the unity of Persons and Substance in the Trinity. Individual-



132 Kevin Corrigan

order to do away entirely with a supposed ØpÒstasij that has no substance (e.g., the Plotinian or Iamblichean One), as well as “hypostases” such as Intellect and soul that are “all things” in different ways, while preserving the ungraspability of God and the incomprehensibility even of the human substance to itself.

For Plotinus, to be an ØpÒstasij – an existent – is to contain one’s cause in oneself, that is, to the degree something is complete, a complete gšnnhma or product, it contains its why in itself:

So the reason why is contained in its existence (Øpost£sei). In each individual thought and activity of intellect then of a man, for example, the whole man shone forth […]79.

The individual Øpost£seij and the whole nature or substance are re-ciprocally united in individual human beings and humanity as a whole. Similarly, in intellect the common element is “that which belongs over all”, – cf. Gregory’s “the God over all” in Epistula 3880 – while “each is as it were a distinctive character of its own” (‡dioj oŒon tÚpoj), (Plotinus, Enneas VI 7,16). And this distinctive character has in the previous few lines – in one of the most striking passages in the Enneades – been likened to a face/person: a “many-faced thing shining with living faces/persons all running together to the same” and with the whole noàj-intellect seated upon their summits. Here ØpÒstasij and prÒswpon are equivalents for individual realities which share a common oÙs…a.

So there are important alternative trajectories to Porphyry’s assumption of a technical usage of hypostasis in the distinctive title he gave to Enneas V 1 elsewhere in the Enneades themselves. This usage in Enneas VI 7 is very like Gregory’s theory – if in a totally different context, though the virtue of Gregory’s view is that it has a much broader application and is a lot more economical than that of Plotinus.

ity and substance are like two sides of a single coin in human beings, whereas they are pure unity in distinction without interval in God. The term oÙs…a, that Gregory and Basil adopt and develop – not simply from Plato or from Aristotle or from the Stoics, but from the long and complex tradition of ancient thought –, therefore applies both to God and to created substances analogically insofar as the image of God is refl ected in them. There are no individuals without oÙs…a, but individuality expresses uniqueness or peculiarity, whereas oÙs…a expresses the inexhaustible community of being. Gregory’s view of substance, therefore, takes a notion developed by Origen, Plotinus, Porphyry and others and forges a pathway to link Plato’s usage with that of Aristotle, namely, oÙs…a as spiritual reality with oÙs…a as individual compounds (in the Categoriae), in which the form/soul is also primary oÙs…a (in the Metaphysica) and God the primary/exem-plary oÙs…a, tÒde ti and tÕ tˆ Ãn e"nai (Arist., Metaph. D). Without materializing the spiritual world (with the Stoics) and without spiritualizing the material world (with the Neoplatonists), Gregory outlines a realist view of oÙs…a that states the concreteness of its apparently early meanings: property, stuff, but “stuff” that links us to the complete reality of the creation and the Creator.

79 Plot., Enn. VI 7,2.80 Bas., ep. 38 (206 D.).




Two fi nal points can be made here in relation to Plotinus’ usage of the term ØpÒstasij and Gregory’s notion of humanity as a whole. First, ØpÒstasij is not a technical term in Plotinus or Porphyry’s usage (though in the Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides the individuality of a ØpÒstasij [„diÒthj Øpost£sewj toà e"nai – XI,20; XI,9] results from the collection [¥qroisma] or concourse [sundrom»] of qualities in the whole substance – and this certainly is a forerunner of Gregory and Basil’s us-age81). But one can nonetheless chart in Plotinus how a non-technical usage gives rise to a conception comparable to that of Gregory.

Second, if Gregory’s notion of humanity as whole in the fi rst creation is to be seen in the way I have suggested here, then it is obvious – against the views of Hübner, Drobner, Von Balthasar, Meredith, Zachhuber, Pot-tier, and many others – that this view is neither purely conceptual82, nor an Aristotelian “universal concept” (Allgemein begriff)83 nor a general nature considered abstractly or deductively extrapolated from some a priori pure instance, nor again the “sum” of all human beings84 or a Platonic Form85 or an Aristotelian second substance86, but rather a fi rst created substance in a Christian sense that demonstrably has its roots in Plotinus’ view of humanity87 (and probably that of Origen88). But I have no space to de-velop this here.

In conclusion, the impetus and rationale for Basil’s and Gregory’s Trini-tarian theology is altogether Scriptural and Apostolic, but the deep frame-work and models both incorporated and developed have a lot to do with Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. The refutation of one overtly Christian but cryptically Neoplatonic view in the person of Eunomius led to the

81 Which also has the virtue of making Plotinus’ negative view of sensible substance qua sensible (e.g., Plot., Enn. VI 3,8f.) (there are other more positive views) redundant for Gregory.

82 E.g., A. Meredith, The Divine Simplicity. Contra Eunomium I 223-241, in: L.F. Mateo-Seco/J.L. Bastero (eds.), El ‘Contra Eunomium I’ en la producción literaria de Gregorio de Nisa, VI Coloquio International sobre Gregorio de Nisa, Navarra 1988, (339-511) 342f.

83 Cf. Hübner, Die Einheit (see note 3), 67-94.84 Von Balthasar, Présence (see note 58), 53-84, especially 81 (who takes this to be an

exclusively Stoic notion). Even Zachhuber takes it this way (Zachhuber, Once again [see note 21], though we can also compare his recent debate with Cross, Gregory of Nyssa [see note 21]).

85 Against the Platonic idea or Stoic universal idea see E. Corsini, Plérôme humain et plérôme cosmique chez Grégoire de Nysse, in: M. Harl (ed.), Écriture et culture philosophique dans la pensée de Grégoire de Nysse, Actes du colloque de Chevetogne (22-26 septembre 1969), Leiden 1971, (111-126) 123.

86 See Pottier, Dieu (see note 4).87 This is another story, but it is implicit in the theory I have proposed here.88 Cf. Or., hom. in I Reg. 1,4 (GCS Origenes VIII, 5,16-7,12 Baehrens): “There was one man

[1Sam 1,1] […]. The just in one. The many just are also one”. Cat. Cor. 9,24 (CGPNT 5, 182,9-24): “[…] all the saved are one”, french translation by von Balthasar, Présence (see note 58), 281f.



134 Kevin Corrigan

incorporation and development of several important items from the causa sui models implicit in Plotinus, together with Porphyry’s view of propria and Iamblichus’ insistence that the fi rst principle must be ungenerated. This resulted in a logic of oÙs…a and ØpÒstasij that created a grammar for speaking about a mystery on the basis of all the scriptural evidence and that simultaneously eliminated the Neoplatonic “hypostases” by restoring them to the only places their logic warranted: that is, in individuals, whose substance simultaneously guarantees the community of their being.

ABSTRACT

Der vorliegende Artikel vertritt die Auffassung, daß die Trinitätstheologie Basilius’ des Großen und Gregors von Nyssa – namentlich die Hypostasenlehre – sich ganz wesentlich der Tradition christlicher Schriftexegese, dem Vermächtnis des Konzils von Nicaea sowie dem Werk des Athanasius verdankt, daß sie jedoch gleichzeitig Resultat der intellektuellen Rahmenbedingungen ihrer Zeit ist. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, wie Basilius und Gregor sich mit den philosophischen Entwürfen Plotins, Porphyrius’ und Iam-blichs auseinandersetzen, indem sie diese teils widerlegen, teils aber auch adaptieren und weiterführend umgestalten. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Debatte in Iamblich, De mysteriis zwischen Iamblich, der auf der Bedeutung eines ungewordenen Prinzips beharrt, und Plotin, der in seiner früheren Sicht das Eine als causa sui versteht – eine Auseinandersetzung, die sich in der Position des Eunomius widerspiegelt. Die Verknüp-fung von Ursache und Verursachtem in der Theorie Plotins von der innerlichen Inhärenz des Intellekts ist damit weniger direkte Quelle für die Hypostasenlehre Basilius’ und Gregors als vielmehr ein hilfreiches Gerüst aus dem „intellektuellen Klima“ der Zeit heraus, dessen sich beide Theologen bei der Entwicklung ihrer trinitätstheologischen Konzeptionen bedient haben.



oὐσíα and ὑπóσταıς in the trinitarian theology of the cappadocian fathers: basil and...

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