Modelling the Trinity after the man

Human Nature and the Trinity in the Cappadocian Epistle 38

Johannes Zachhuber’s recent study of human nature in Gregory of Nyssa^{Zachhuber, Johannes. Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa – Philosophical Background and Theological Significance (2000:Brill). Further references to this work will be cited as HNGN.} has brought tremendous clarity to the use of physis­-terminology and the conception of human nature that underlies the Cappadocian Ep 38.^{As it is not the intent of this paper to address the contended issue of the authorship of the epistle, I am content herein to follow Zachhuber and refer to it simply as ‘Cappadocian’, without wishing to suggest that he has definitively answered the question; HNGN 61-3.}So much so, in fact, that the scope of what is left to say about the matter in any new or creative way, at least as it pertains to this epistle, has been rather substantially narrowed since his book’s publication a little over a year ago. This short paper, then, will be not so much an attempt at creative expansion upon the theme as an investigation of the model of human nature as Zachhuber presents it, primarily in his book’s first major section,^{I. Human Nature in Trinitarian Doctrine, HNGN 15-122.} in comparison with the actual content of Ep 38. Then, at the end of the paper, I will comment on Zachhuber’s final conclusions regarding the Cappadocian Trinitarian ‘formula’, and offer what is perhaps a less drastic claim about that formula’s insufficiency.

Zachhuber rightly identifies four key terms, and thus four key ideas, that run throughout the discussion of human nature and its relevance toward Trinitarian thought in Ep 38: ou0si/a, u9po/stasij, fu/sij and pra=gma (ousia, hypostasis, nature and thing).^{HNGN 78f, 121.} While subsequent generations of reflection on Cappadocian Trinitarianism would grasp most firmly onto the first two (thus God as one ou0si/a in three u9posta/seij), it is to Zachhuber’s credit that he refuses to let go of fu/sij and pra=gma simply because so much theological reflection has considered the former a mere synonym for ou0si/a and the latter a rather unimportant concept altogether. Ep 38 itself makes generous use of all four terms, in fact employing pra=gma far more often than u9po/stasij for the definition of a subsisting entity; and while ou0si/a and fu/sij do appear to be used interchangeably at some points, there are others at which a distinction is most definitely to be noted.

Distinguishing the character of each of these concepts is, as Zachhuber says, ‘quite complicated’.^{Ibid., 78.} Yet this is only the case insomuch as centuries of theological definition have given weight and implication to these terms that must be somewhat set aside if their genuine meaning in Ep 38 is to be appreciated. The model of human nature is, itself, rather straightforward. The following explanation shall be, admittedly, fairly general (given that I am not here able to dedicate the same 100-plus pages to this subject that Zachhuber was), but I believe it will accurately set forth the essential elements of this model.

The easiest approach is to begin from the individual things themselves: in the discussion of human nature, the individual man or woman. A single ‘man’ the epistle describes as a ‘thing’, a pra=gma, an entity which exists in the cosmos as a distinct being. This is the entity to which society gives a personal name, such as ‘Peter’ or ‘Paul’, and which is able to exist in the society of other human persons as well as in interaction with pra/gmata of other species (animals, plants, etc). It is of these human pra/gmata that the epistle speaks in its opening section:

Ta\ de\ tw~n o0noma/twn i0dikwte/ran e1xei th\n e1ndeicin, di’ h[j ou0x h9 koino/thj th=j fu/sewj e0nqewrei=tai tw~|| shmainome/nw|, a0lla\ pra/gmato/j tinoj perigrafh/, mhdemi/an e1xousa pro\j to\ o9mogene/j, kata\ to\ i0di/azon, th\n koinwni/an, oi[on o9 Pau=loj, h2 o9 Timo/qeoj.

[Other] nouns have a more specific meaning, through which it is not the common element of the nature that is indicated by the term, but the circumscription of a certain thing which, with respect to its individuality, has nothing in common with the genus: for example, ‘Paul’ or ‘Timothy’.^{Ep 38 [198]. Throughout this paper, references to Epistle 38 will be abbreviated Ep 38. The number in brackets refers to the page number in Loeb 190, ed. Deferrari, who does not divide the text into sections as Courtonne helpfully does in his edition of the text. The Loeb edition is, however, that preferred by the Theology Faculty at the University of Oxford, where this paper was written, and thus it has been used throughout. All translations from Ep 38 are my own unless otherwise specified.}

This passage is revealing on a number of levels. First, it confirms our above statement regarding the definition of individual persons as pra/gmata: Paul and Timothy, as examples, are individual ‘things’ within a larger genus (o9mogene/j, which is here synonymous with fu/sij earlier in the quotation), marked out by individual defining characteristics (oi0kei=a gnwri/smata^{Ibid., [202].}) that are not shared with others of the species. Secondly, there is a distinction between the ‘nature’ (fu/sij) to which such individuals belong, and a ‘common element’ (koino/thj) underlying this nature. We shall have more to say on this in a moment, in our discussion of ou0si/a, but first we must add that thirdly, the above passage denotes a process of ‘circumscription’ (perigrafh/) that is the source of the individual’s distinction from other entities of the same nature. Here we have our first taste of the author’s conception of u9po/stasij. In a single phrase, then, we have the epistle’s entire model of human nature presented in brief.

The individual human pra=gma is related to others of the same nature by means of the common element (koino/thj) underlying them all, namely the ou0si/a. The author of the epistle refers to it elsewhere as ‘the indefinite concept of the ousia’ (h9 a0o/ristoj th=j ou0si/aj e1nnoia)^{Ibid., [200].} or simply a ‘common element’ (to\ koino/n),^{Ibid., [198].} and it represents what in modern parlance is generally termed ‘human nature’ (to be distinguished from ‘nature’ as it is used in the epistle, see below). Participation in, or more particularly the instantiation of, the human ou0si/a causes a given pra=gma to be a human individual, rather than a tree, or a dog, etc. The ‘formula of ousia’ (lo/goj th=j ou0si/aj, a phrase of Aristotelian origin^{Aristotle, Categories 1a1-2; cf. HNGN 71-93. Zachhuber goes into great detail on the philosophical background to the language and philosophy of Ep 38, which need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say in the present context that, while Aristotelian, Platonic and Stoic influence can be detected in both the terminology and philosophical background to the epistle, it has been modified to such a degree that one cannot presume to explain the Cappadocian system purely by reference to the teachings of these schools.}) by which a given individual can be accurately described, then, is the denotation of the essence of which he or she is a particular instantiation, and it is from this general principle that the Cappadocian author can famously say, ‘Those who are described by the same formula of ousia are consubstantial (o9moou/sioi) with one another’.^{kai/ ei0sin a0llh/loij o9moou/sioi oi9 tw~| au0tw~| lo/gw| th=j ou0si/aj u9pografo//menoi, Ep 38 [198].} If what makes Paul a man is his particular definition in terms of the human ou0si/a, and what makes Peter a man is his definition by the same ou0si/a, then it is only logical to deduce that Paul and Peter are of the same essence, and thus consubstantial (homoousioi).

We have thus accounted for pra=gma and ou0si/a, two of the four terms that stand out as key in Ep 38. The definition of u9po/stasij follows directly upon the conceptual relationship of these two, and has already been hinted at with reference to the process of ‘circumscription’ (perigrafh/) in the above quotation. Hypostasis is presented in the epistle not as a specific entity or thing, as in the common modern usage whereby one might speak of something ‘affecting the third hypostasis of the Trinity’, as if that hypostasis were an entity that could be described as having a particular existence. We have already seen that for such an individual entity, the Cappadocian author prefers the term pra=gma. The u9po/stasij seems, rather, to be the process or principle of instantiation that circumscribes or ‘cuts off’ (xwri/zw^{Cf. Ep 38 [198]}) from the general ou0si/a a particular pra=gma. Zachhuber defines it as ‘the principle of individuation’^{HNGN 78.} and the ‘individualising element’,^{Ibid., 121.} both of which terms seem apt to the task. The author of the epistle himself defines hypostasis as follows:

Tou=to ou]n e0sti\n h9 u9po/stasij, ou0x h9 a0o/ristoj th=j ou0si/aj e1nnoia, mhdemi/an e0k th=j koino/thtoj tou= shmainome/nou sta/sin eu9ri/skousa, a0ll’ h9 to/ koino/n te kai\ a0peri/grapton e0n tw~| tini\ pra/gmati dia\ tw~n e0pifainome/nwn i0diwma/twn paristw~sa kai\ perigra/fousa.

This, then, is the hypostasis: not the indefinite concept of ousia, which, from the generality of the term, discloses no stasis (‘sistence’) at all, but rather the concept which, by means of the particularities disclosed, establishes and circumscribes in a specific thing what is general and uncircumscribed.^{Ep 38 [200].}

One is immediately struck by the strong distinction between pra=gma and u9po/stasij in this passage: the hypostasis is a concept (reading an inferred repetition of e1nnoia, though the notion may be better titled ‘principle’ than ‘concept’) by which a particular, individual thing (pra=gma) is established as a particular, individual thing. The author clearly views u9po/stasij primarily as conceptual principle and not as independent reality: one would be hard pressed to justify, from the above passages, speaking of ‘an’ hypostasis. It seems that this is an under-appreciated subtlety of the Cappadocian formula on human nature (and thus on Trinitarianism as well): one cannot properly speak of the hypostasis of Peter or Paul as the thing which exists as or in their persons; rather, they are the pragmata individualised by their particular hypostasisation of the human ou0si/a. u9po/stasij is best described as an act of differentiation or individuation, providing the character of an individual pra=gma, but not co-equal or identical with it.

Only fu/sij remains, then, in the model of human nature presented in Ep 38, and it is perhaps the most subtly delineated of the epistle’s four key terms. Accepting the fact that, on occasion, fu/sij and ou0si/a are used interchangeably by the Cappadocian author here, as elsewhere, the task at hand is to discover what is meant by those instances in which the two terms in fact indicate two different concepts. One of these instances has already been presented in the first quotation from the epistle, in which the notion of ou0si/a was described as ‘the common element of the nature’ (h9 koino/thj th=j fu/sewj). It is apparent that ou0si/a is understood as a common essence shared in a nature, and the very notion of something ‘common’ (koino/j) or ‘shared’ implies a multiplicity to the concept of fu/sij. ‘Nature’ seems to be a compound, a general ‘genus’ (o9mogene/j, as it is termed later in the same passage) made up of all the members of a class; for example, all human persons (pra/gmata) together forming the fu/sij ‘man’. It is therefore assumed that all members of a given nature share the same ou0si/a, since it is their very consubstantiality that makes them members of the same genus, yet fu/sij and ou0si/a remain distinct in that the latter signifies the actual essence which, when hypostasised, makes a pra=gma a man, and the former is the collective identity into which a pra=gma is joined when the human ou0si/a is hypostasised. Zachhuber summarises this difficult distinction thusly:

It is clear that the ousia and hupostasis [sic] occur only in this combination. Phusis is the whole of which those individuals are parts. Both its identity and unity, it appears, are safeguarded by the underlying unity of ousia which is one in many. Ousia, then, is one in the entire nature, yet whole in each individual. It can, however, never subsist on its own. Hupostasis, finally, is unique with each person thus accounting for their individuality.^{HNGN 78.}

To take the investigation back to its beginning, the model of human nature evidenced in Ep 38 draws primarily on the concepts of ou0si/a, u9po/stasij, fu/sij and pra=gma in the following manner: an individual person exists as a pra=gma hypostasised from the common human ou0si/a, making up part of the human fu/sij which is the collective whole of all consubstantial human pra/gmata. The individual man may thus be addressed in reference to his hypostasised individuality (thus ‘Peter’ or ‘Paul’), or with reference to his nature (thus ‘man’), depending on whether it is the particular, individualised elements of his person or the more general human characteristics that one desires to emphasise.

Relationship to the Trinity

What then of the applicability of this model to the conception of the Holy Trinity? The author of Ep 38 evidently believes that one will not ‘wander astray’ (a9marti/zw) if the same principles applied to human nature are translated to the doctrine of the divine,^{o3n toi/nun e0n toi=j kaq’ h9ma=j e1gnwj diafora=j lo/gon e0pi/ te th=j ou0si/aj kai\ th=j u9posta/sewj, tou=ton metatiqei\j kai\ e0pi\ tw~n qei/wn dogma/twn, ou0x a9marth/seij, Ep 38 [202].} but is this really the case?

To a remarkable degree, the analogy does, in fact, hold its own. The divine ou0si/a, much as the human ou0si/a, is the same among all u9po/staseij, or individuated pra/gmata of that ou0si/a, namely the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Consequently there is no alternative, within this model, but to recognise that each of the three persons is homoousioi with each of the others. Likewise, the attributes related to the common, collective fu/sij of these hypostasised pra/gmata are common to each of the three, as they are drawn from the essence shared by all. So writes the author:

o9 ga\r tou= a0kti/stou kai\ tou= a0katalh/ptou lo/goj, ei[j kai\ o9 au0to\j e0pi/ te tou= Patro\j kai\ tou= Ui9ou kai\ tou= a9gi/ou Pneu/mato/j e0stin. ou0 ga\r to\ me\n ma=llon a0kata/lhpto/n te kai\ a1ktiston, to\ de\ h[tton.

For the principle of uncreatedness and incomprehensibility is one and the same with respect to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; for one is not more incomprehensible or more uncreated than another.^Ibid.

Yet each particular hypostasisation of the divine ou0si/a results in an individual pra=gma together making up the divine fu/sij, and therefore it is possible to speak of certain qualities in each person that are ‘conspicuously and wholly marked off’^{thlaugw~j kai\ a0mi/ktwj … a0forisqh/setai, Ep 38 [204].} from those common to all through the collective character of the divine nature. It would seem that the author of this epistle has found an analogy that accommodates for both the divine union of the three persons of the Trinity, whilst still taking into account their independent defining characteristics and individual ‘personalities’.

But the model is not without its flaws. The great difficulty with this Cappadocian formula lies in its conception of ou0si/a, and it is a problem that has been noted by many.^{In addition to Zachhuber himself (HNGN 118-122 and elsewhere), he mentions Hübner, Kelly, Meredith, Hanson, Lebon, Ritter and Balás as all having addressed this issue (notes on ibid., 119, 121-2).} Just what is this ‘essence’ of which each of the pra/gmata (or ‘persons’, if we may here adopt for clarity a term that is not found in Ep 38 itself) hypostasises? The epistle makes it clear that the essence, the ‘formula of ousia’, does not by itself signify any subsisting entity (sta/sij),^{Ep 38 [200].} but rather it is that ‘indefinite notion’ (h9 a0o/ristoj e1nnoia) which is circumscribed in the individual. ‘Indefinite notion’, however, is hardly a satisfying definition of ou0si/a! The tendency of this phrase to suggest a mere conception rather than an actual reality (which, as I have suggested, does apply fairly well to the Cappadocian understanding of u9po/stasij) is counterweighted by the insistence throughout the epistle that the ou0si/a is an actual entity (though not a pra=gma), a real element that is the inner essence of the godhead. One is left, then, with this ‘divine element’ called ou0si/a and little explanation of its precise characteristics. Two explanations seem most plausible, and neither is particularly appealing: on one hand the ou0si/a might be seen, as it is often described, as the underlying, ‘consubstantial substratum’^{o9moou/sion u9pokei/menon: so Gregory of Nyssa describes the common ousia that underlies human nature in Contra Eunomius 3.5.} of the divinity from which the three hypostatic persons derive their own ou0si/ai as incidentals from an antecedent. This, however, leaves us with the divine ou0si/a as a ‘fourth substance’, a substantia prior, in the godhead: Father, Son, Spirit and shared Essence. This is hardly acceptable to a Trinitarian theology, and it is against precisely this danger that the Homoiousians established their rejection of o9moou/sioj. An antecedent ou0si/a from which the three persons derive (this being a rather ‘materialistic’ conception of ou0si/a) cannot be seen to stand along side a true Trinitarianism, unless the persons of the godhead are seen as being ou0si/a in their ‘substance’ and u9po/stasij in their ‘accidents’, but that the substance/accident distinction is not fit for the deity was clear even to Eunomius.^{Cf. HNGN 120.}

But the other most plausible explanation of the character of ou0si/a in Ep 38 is perhaps still more prone to problematic consequences.^{Zachhuber addresses this interpretation in HNGN 118-122, as well as earlier in section 2.4.} If the divine essence is not an independently subsisting entity in its own right, then it must be something which exists, in its fullness, in each of the hypostatic persons that ‘share’ it. The term ‘share’ in such a model, however, becomes highly metaphorical, for if a common ou0si/a does not come about from a process of derivation (problematically bringing about the four-member godhead described above), then it must come to exist in each person independently or, to employ Zachhuber’s term, co-ordinately.^{HNGN 54, and elsewhere} The divine essence is thus ‘shared’ by all three persons of the godhead inasmuch as it is entirely identical for each; but these three identical ou0si/ai are in fact distinct, co-ordinate entities. This is, of course, a veiled definition of tritheism. Three co-ordinate essences appear, at least by many (if not most) interpretations, to equal three gods—a charge that Gregory of Nyssa was to face more than once in his lifetime.

So it would appear that the application of the Cappadocian model of human nature to the persons of the Trinity results in either the addition of a fourth element to the godhead, the division of the individual persons into substance/accident compounds, or finally their division into three distinct gods. In extrapolating upon the details of both problems and positing possible pro-Cappadocian responses, Zachhuber finally notes, ‘But even so, I think, this is the point where the Cappadocian theory ultimately collapses’.^{Ibid., 120.} It is on this comment that I would like to make a few brief closing remarks.

Does the Cappadocian theory truly pose such insurmountable obstacles? It is not to be disputed that it contains certain conceptual flaws that give rise (and certainly have given rise) to substantial cause for confusion and misinterpretation, yet it is perhaps a bit more defensible with regard to the above critiques than Zachhuber is ready to admit. In the first instance, the charge that an antecedent essence requires derivative participation is based off of a conception of ou0si/a that is both materialistic and willing to admit of time as relevant to discussion on the inner character of the Trinity. The Cappadocians energetically deny both presuppositions (though the issue is not addressed in Ep 38). While the Cappadocians may not have been able to give precise definition to just exactly what the divine ou0si/a is, Gregory of Nyssa at least would have been quite comfortable to apophatically clarify what it is not, and it is certainly not a material ‘substance’ in the thought of Basil or either of the two Gregories. If there is some kind of derivation, it cannot be seen as analogous to, for example, an apple shared among three people, for the divine ou0si/a is not a material pra=gma as is an apple. Further, such an analogy concentrates the derivation on the flow of time: there was a time when the apple was not shared, when it was one. Again, the Cappadocians are emphatic in their insistence that the thee persons of the Trinity are co-eternal. An interpretation of their human nature analogy in Ep 38 must be given in light of their other works which, while they may not offer a precise conclusion to the question of what the divine essence is, at least give clarification as to what the Cappadocians could not have meant it to be.

The charge of tritheism is perhaps more substantial, yet again the notion of co-ordination equalling co-origination implies (a) a generation or origination of all the persons, which the Cappadocians fervently denied; (b) that there was a time, not only when the Son ‘was not’, but when in fact none of the divine persons existed; and (c) that the ou0si/ai of the persons are same only by exact likeness and not an actual sameness . Again, these are all suppositions that the Cappadocians deny elsewhere in their writings. Once more one is able to employ the larger corpus to dismiss certain interpretations of the formula as being unauthentic to the intention of the authors themselves, while remaining unclear as to what the precise intention was.

In the end, the issue of the divine ou0si/a in its relationship to the model of human nature remains confoundingly unclear. Yet one feels that even with all the confusion to which the Cappadocian theory gives rise, much more clarity has been brought to the Trinitarian discussion than was ever offered previous to the work of Basil and the two Gregories.