Meredith -capadocienii

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http://itq.sagepub.com/content/48/3-4/196.citationThe online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/002114008104800305

1981 48: 196Irish Theological QuarterlyAnthony Meredith

The Pneumatology of the Cappadocian Fathers and the Creed of Constantinople

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The Pneumatology of the CappadocianFathers and the Creed of Constantinople

Anthony Meredith

In the last twenty-five years a great deal of industry has been devoted to thequestion of the influences on and meaning of the Constantinopolitan Creed.Much of this question has to do with what we are to make of thepneumatology of Basil the Great. In chapter xviii of the Preface of Volume3 of the great Maurist edition of St. Basil Maran lists much of the ancientevidence that illustrates the enigmatic character of Basils writing. Gregoryof Nazianzus both in his letters and above all in his funeral oratian feltcalled to defend his friend against the charge of minimalism which waslevelled against him in the 370s. More recently Basil has had his accusersand defenders on precisely the same charge. So, for example, Dom JeanGribomont 4.S.B.2 and others see the disinclination of Basil to apply eitherGod or consubstantial to the Holy Spirit as evidence of Basils defectivebelief in this matter. Fr. B. Pruche, however, in his recent re-edition of theDe Spiritu Sancto insists that this omission on Basils part is not to beunderstood as a denial of the deity of the third person.3 He points to twofactors that must be taken seriously: (i) Basils economy, (which even themore outspoken Athanasius praised so highly) meant that for the sake ofpeace he was prepared not to insist on verbal forms when such insistencewould rupture the fragile peace of the church; (ii) Though he does not callthe Spirit God expressis verbis, the substance of the doctrine is present inhis writings.

Gregory of NazianzusGregory Nazianzens stance is important for two reasons. Firstly, he was,despite his bravado, uneasy with Basils views. Secondly, his silence on theCreed of Constantinople is not an indication of the non-existence of theCreed prior to Chalcedon (as Hort supposed), but rather of Gregorysunease at the decisions of the Council. Certainly the natural reading of hissecond Letter to Cledonius (=Ep. 102.2) gives the impression that he waseither ignorant of or unhappy with the compromise formula of the 150Fathers. It is possible, as has been suggested, that his dissatisfaction (ifsuch it was) may have arisen from factors which were not dogmatic. His ownremoval from the see of Constantinople and from the presidency of theCouncil, whether because he had supported the candidature of Paulinusrather than that of Flavian to the see of Antioch, vacated by the death ofMeledos, or because in his acceptance of Constantinople while alreadybishop of the tiny see of Sasima he had transgressed the seventh canon ofNicaea, which forbade such translations, undoubtedly predisposed him to

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take a less than happy view of the Council where his glory had been soshortlived. But even if we admit that the Creed tried to pacify themoderates by omitting the ascription in so many words of either deity orconsubstantiality to the Holy Ghost, contenting itself with the clause, whotogether with the Father and the Son is both adored and glorified, are weto infer from this that its formulation was simply a reproduction of Basilspneumatology? Or were Basils imperfect views modified by others in thedirection of a more full-blooded assertion of what we normally suppose tobe the belief of the church, the full deity of the Holy Ghost?

In what follows little will be said of the views of Nazianzus. That hebelieved and unequivocally proclaimed the full deity of the Spirit is plainfrom the following passage taken from Or Theol 5.s.10. What then? Is theSpirit God? Most certainly. Is he consubstantial? Yes, if He is God ...His very bluntness suggests that he possessed none of Basils willingness toadmit that dogmatic formulae, despite their usefulness for giving expressionon occasion to the timebound particularity of Christian believing, can onlygo a certain distance in the unravelling of theological mysteries. Indeed hadnot that patriarch of orthodoxy, the mighty Athanasius himself, admittedas much in his Tomus ad Antiochenos of 362? It may be doubted whetherGregory shared so liberal a view as this, even though one may be able todetect in him something of Athanasius arguments for the deity of the HolySpirit as they occur in the latters Letters to Serapion. And if Gregorylacked Basils political toughness and astuteness, he also lacked hislargeness of theological vision. The main contribution of Gregory to thedebate, aside from his vigorous assertion of belief in the deity of the thirdperson, comes in the fifth theological oration, sections 22 and 26, where heargues interestingly and originally for the gradual revelation in history ofthe full nature of the godhead: it was only in the time of the church that thedeity of the Holy Spirit became clearly known, (though we cannot becertain whether he thought that it only then became true).

Basil the Great and Gregory of NyssaI intend (a) to summarize the doctrine of Basil on the Holy Spirit, with themain aim of trying to solve the problem of the differences between variousapparently legitimate interpretations of his views: can one get beyond thedilemma and decide? What was his exact contribution? Do Plotinus andOrigen shed any light on his true views? (b) I will assess the tradition andoriginality of Gregory of Nyssas views. That he was important emerges fromtwo facts: (i) The emperor Theodosius appointed him aguarantee and enforcerof orthodoxy in the civil diocese ofPontus;4 () The same emperor invited himto preach funeral orations for his little daughter Pulcheria c. 3 83 and for hiswife Placilla in 385.

In what follows I owe a good deal to the monograph on Basils treatiseby Hermann Doerries,l to its criticism by Basil Pruche O.P., especially inhis revised edition of the text and translation in Sources Chrtiemzes, and


198

finally to the article by Dom J. Gribomont O.S.B. reprinted in the firstnumber of lIord and Spirit for 1979. The attentive reader will easilyobserve at what points the influences of these several writers have takenover, but I do not intend to mark all points of direct dependence onsecondary sources at each occurrence.

(a) Basil the GreatBasils interest in the Holy Spirit stretches from one of his earliest writings,the Contra Eunomium 3 of c.361, to letter 258 addressed to Epiphaniusbishop of Salamis in or around 377 (Courtonne in the Bude edition simplywrites 6crite vers 1an 377). In other words Basils writings span a periodof just fifteen years and Doerries thinks it possible to trace adevelopment of thought within that time; and in this conviction, though notquite in the same way or for the same reason, he is followed by Pruche. Ifthis were so one would expect Basils views on the deity of the third personto become more marked with the progress of time; but this is by no meanswhat happens. In the earliest of his works against the Anomoeans he seemsto be far more outspoken in his assertions about the full deity than in hislater writing. So for example in C.E. 3.3 he insists on the total differencebetween creature and creator in a way that forcshddows his brothers moretrenchant and expanded treatment in his own Cozy Eunomiu11l of twentyyears later. For Basil (op. cit.) the Holy Spirit together with the Father andthe Son form the only members of the class of uncreated beings: the Holy

, Spirit possessed the same onomata phuse6s as do they; and in C.E. 3.4 heargues that he also possesses the same onomata energeias. It is true that inhis early work Basil does not apply the actual words theos or homoousiosto the third person; though in certain other respects C.E. 3 seems to gofurther than his De Spiritu Sancto, written c.375. ,

Again there is a certain unity in diversity in the way the two treatisesemploy the argument from divinization in order to prove the full dignity ofthe Spirit. Both use it at C.E. 3.5 and De Sp.S. ix.23. But verbally and inintention there is ,a great difference. In the earlier, for example, Basil usesthe verb theopoieisthai; in the latter the phrase theos genesthai. It does notseem purely accidental that the former expression links Basil withAthanasius, who in treating of the deity of the Son in Contra Arianos 2.70or with the Spirits godhead in the Letters to Serapioll, considered-theargument from deification, using this verb, to be paramount. (The samemay be said for Gregory of Nazianzus, who argues with such terminologyfor the Sons deity in Oratio Theologica 3.19 and 4.14 and for the Spiritsat O.T. 5.29). The other phrase - theos genesthai - links Basil withClement of Alexandria (cf. Strom. 7.1.3), Origen and Plotinus, and seemsto have more to do with ethical perfection than with ontological status. It isdifficult to know with any degree of certainty how far such differences ofexpression are significant. But if they are significant they suggest that astime went on he became less rather than more emphatic about the role of


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the Spirit; and if they are not significant then the case for progress becomeshard to sustain. Terminology varied even as the particular situationsthemselves varied and called forth differing responses, which cannot withany ease be fitted into a pattern of growth.

In spite of pressure from his friend Gregory of Nazianzus in letter 58 toaffirm the consubstantiality of the Spirit, Basil in his reply (Ep. 71.2),though denying certain charges made against him, yet made no assertion ofthe type looked for. This direct or implicit refusal on the part of Basil to gobeyond the language of Nicaea is a marked feature of his pneumatology. Itis also true that (e.g. in letter 52) he is prepared to assert on the basis of thebaptismal formula of Mt .28.19 that the Spirit ought to be numberedtogether with the Father and the Son, and that, as a corollary to this, theSpirit must be above creation, though he must always be numbered thirdafter the Father and the Son. If however this were the sum total of histhoughts on Pneumatology he would not take us very far and might seemto merit the strictures passed on him by Gribomont and Doerries. After all,merely to assert, as he insists, any good Christian must (EP. 113), that theSpirit is not a creature does not of itself lead to the conclusion that theSpirit must be God. Such a conclusion would only follow if Basil had addedthe further premise that the categories of creature and crtator betweenthem comprise the whole of reality. Gregory of Nyssa on more than one &dquo;

. occasion in his Contra Eunomium (cf. CE i.270 ff.) does make adichotomy, but Basil does not do so. And because he does not do so itwould be open to an objector to argue that there existed a third categorybetween creature and creator to which the Holy Spirit belonged. That thisis not a fanciful argument is shown, (a) by a passage in De Spiritil Sanctoitself (xx. 51), where he refers to some unnamed critics who suggested thatthe Spirit was neither slave nor master but free and, (b) by a similar claim ofintermediary status for the Spirit made by the Macedonians, according to apassage in Socrates (H.E. 11.25). Didymus the Blind (De Trznitate ii, 8 =PG 39.617c) seems to have taught a not dissimilar doctrine.6

But were these - adherence to the Nicene formula, the case to be drawnfrom Mt 28:19, and the assertion that the Spirit must not be thought of as acreature - the only arguments adduced by Basil for supporting what hebelieved about the nature of the third person? If they were they seem, atany rate in the light of later orthodoxy, to be woefully inadequate. It wouldbe quite unfair to those who, like Pruche and Kelly, favour the orthodoxyof Basil to suggest that their case rests here. To read through the De SpirituSancto with care and with this question in mind, Is Basil teaching the fulldeity of the third person of the Trinity? is to be made aware of howtantalizingly perplexing the whole subject is. At times one feels that hs is andthat it would be mere carping verbalism to deny him the palm oforthodoxy; at others, however - and I shall deal with those passages alittle later - his conception seems to differ little if at all from that of Grigenor Plotinus. In Basils defence the following may be urged: (i) Although it is


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perfectly true, as Doerries points out, that the term homotimia7 is nowhere inthe treatise applied to the Holy Spirit, this by itself is a somewhatambivalent assertion. First of all the argument is a slightly mechanical oneand ignores the fact that at De Sp.S. xxiii.54, for instance, Basil arguesthat full honour and glory should be paid to the Holy Ghost along with theFather and the Son. Again, as Dr. Kelly points out, in Ep. 90.2 and 159.2Basil quite unequivocally gives equality of honour to the second issue. Inthe latter passage Basil claims that we offer equality of glory to the Spiritbecause we are persuaded that he is not foreign to the divine nature.Could anything be clearer? Nor is it a solitary instance. De Sp. S. xviii.45places the Spirit with Father and Son in the same class of noncreatedbeings, xxiii.54 describes the Spirit as being theion tiphusei, and xxiv.556ends with the fine question Who would be so bereft of the promises ofeternal life as to enlist the Spirit with creatures and distric6te him from thedeity?;(iii)One final point should be made. In De. Sp. S. xxiii. 54, above all,Basil makes assertions about the Holy Ghost which are very strongarguments indeed for accepting the view that he believed in his full divinity.In that chapter not only is it stated that he is by nature divine, but also he isassigned all the traditional epithets of godhead. He exists everywhere, hebelongs to that nature which embraces all things, that is the divine nature,and he is unlimited in size. In xxii.53 he is incomprehensible and in xxiv.56he shares with the Father and the Son the essential goodness and life-givingpower which are the acknowledged and distinctive qualities of the Fatherand the Son. The striking and puzzling thing about all this is that Basil,though prepared to make such immense claims for the Holy Spirit, is notprepared to make the final one that He is god and consubstantial.

. Two further passages adducible in favour of the claim that Basil believedin and taught the deity of the third person in the strong sense ought now tobe mentioned. But here again he in the end disappoints because of hisfailure to ascribe the terms god and consubstantial to the Holy Spirit.One passage comes from the beginning of his theological career ContraEunomium 3.2 (c. 36 1), the other, if the dating of Bernardi is correct comesfrom the very end, 378, the Homilies on the Hexaemeron. In the firstpassage he begins by distinguishing sharply between the Godhead andcreation, and follows this up with what looks like a parallel distinctionbetween sanctifying power and things sanctified. If there is a realparallelism the corollary would seem to be the deity of the third person. Inthe latter work, Horn. 2.6., in the course of the interpretation of Gen. 1:2and the Spirit moved over the face of the deep Basil notes, on theauthority of an unnamed Hebrew master, that the Spirit is the Holy Spiritwho broods like a bird over its young. Basil concludes the section with theinteresting remark that it is quite clear that the Holy Spirit is not without ashare in the creative activity of God. This is a very important passage andit is a great pity that it has no clear parallel elsewhere in the work of Basil.Here and only here with clarity does Basil emancipate himself from the


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Origenist tradition in which he worked. Elsewhere, as we shall see shortly,he is content to follow Origen in restrieting,the action of the Holy Spirit tothe sanctification of rational beings, whether human or angelic. In the pres-cnt text he is assigned a place in the actual creation of the whole universe. Itcould be argued that Basils weakness on the Holy Spirit consists preciselyin his unwillingness to do everywhere what he does on this.one occasion.Once it came to be accepted that the peculiar and essential feature of thedivine nature was its creative power and, further, that to assert divinity ofany being must mean that that being created, any failure to assert creativityof the Spirit, however glorious his other activities, must entail at best aweak view of his divinity.

Does Basil make any further statement about the person and role of the

Spirit which will shed some light on the vexed question of his own attitudeto his full deity? Basil connects the work ofthe Holy Spirit with thesanctification, the moral and intellectual perfecting of the individualbeliever. His perfective character is well brought out by a passage in DeSpiritu Sancto 16:38 where his role is distinguished from that of the Fatherwho is called prokatarkilko aitia first cause of all that comes to be andfrom that of the Son who is the demiourgike aitia fashioning cause whereasthe Holy Spirit is the perfector of things made - teleiotike. Lest it be

. thought that the Spirit is at the root of the perfection of all things as a sortof co-partner in the work of creation Basil goes on to restrict the Spiritssphere to the realm of intelligent, created beings, angels and humans. Thereare indeed moments in the text when it looks as if Basil in his eagerness todeny any ultimate separateness to the three persons by insisting on theirunity of action. makes of the Holy Spirit simply the power that givescompletion to the whole complex of the natural order. But at the end of thechapter, when he comes to deal with the hackneyed text, By the word ofthe Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth all thepower thereof (Ps 33.6 [LXX. 32.6]), he understands the latter half of theverse to refer to the sanctification of the spiritual powers. The naturalperfection of the heavens is the work of the Son, the moral perfection of theblessed spirits belongs to the Holy Spirit.8 8

_

The Influence of Plotinus on BasilThe restriction of the work of the Holy Ghost to perfecting receivesfurther elucidation if two further questions are asked: (i) What does thiswork of perfecting involve? (ii) Does the work of the Spirit precede andcause, or does it afterwards enhance and strengthen the perfection a man1as achieved by himself?

(i) Part of the perfecting work done is the achieving (in a sense to bejiscussed under (ii)) of moral perfection. De Sp. S. ix.23 lists among theeffects of the Spirits presence the separation of the soul from thosepassions that alienate man from God. Once the soul has been purified andio returned to its natural state it is capable of seeing the divine nature,


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though this capacity on its part is closely connected with illumination fromthe Holy Ghost. He shines on those who have been cleansed from alldefilement and makes them spiritual by fellowship with him. Thisenlightenment makes them capable of understanding mysteries and alldivine truth, and ends up by making them not only lik~ God but themselvesdivine.

This pattern is too consistently repeated to be thought of as a merepeculiarity of the treatise under consideration. The action of ellainpsis orphtismos occurs as the specific function of the third person on manyoccasions in the letters. In Ep. 233, written in 376 to Amphilochius, thebishop to whom his great treatise had been addressed, he writes that theintelligence which is mingled with the deity of the Holy Spirit is capable ofseeing great spectacles and divine beauty. In letter 226, written a yearearlier to the ascetics underhis care, he states that our minds, onceilluminated by the Holy Spirit look up to the Son and see within themselvesthe image of the Father. In other words for Basil the condition for thepossibility of perceiving the Father and the Son is the presence of theenlightening indwelling Spirit.

(ii) If enlightenment is the characteristic function of the Holy Spirit, itremains to be discovered more precisely, if possible, how He operates. Ishis action equivalently our own action or does he actually in somemysterious way either effect our moral and spiritual condition by causing itor at least enhancing and strengthening it once we have achieved someadvance by ourselves? The passage which sheds most light on thisimportant and vexed problem in De Sp. S. ix.22-23, a text which as bothGribomont and Doerries point out cannot be overestimated for the light itsheds on the heart of Basilian pneumatology. It is also important because itis the main text in this work that almost certainly shows the influence onBasil of Plotinus, though on the existence and extent of this influence themain discussions in Henry, Jahn, Johnston and Dehnard9 cannot be said toagree.Two things seem quite clear: (i) The action of the Spirit is described in

terms of the moral improvement of men; (ii) Certain strong echoes ofPlotinus, which admittedly do not occur side by side either in Plotinus or inBasil, are to be found in De Sp. S. ix. 23 and arguably nowhere else in thistreatise. On the first point Basil writes that the close connection of the soulwith the Spirit is a result of the recession of the soul from moral impurities.Its return to its native beauty enables it to approach the Spirit, whichenlightens the now purified soul making it bright and spiritual and able tobehold divine truths and become truly godlike. The language in which thisprocess is described, notably the words perilampe and apostilbei have theircounterparts in two treatises of Plotinus Enneads 2.9.2.16-18 and5.8.10.26 respectively. In the former text it is the world soul, the equivalentof the Holy Spirit, that enlightens individual souls, which in fact derivefrom it. Basil and Plotinus describe a similar role for the Spirit/world soul


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and us similar terminology to do so. If, as seems not improbable;

(especially if the little work on the Holy Spirit is genuine - a work that islittle more than a cento of quotations from Plotinus) it is true that Basilowes something to the system of Plotinus, then the imperfect distinction hemakes between the human spirit and divine Spirit becomes only toointelligible: he has simply taken over the imperfect distinction existing in theEnneads between individual souls and the world soul.

Such a view of the relation between the two authors and their systems is re-inforced if we compare what sort of ends they propose for man. Over andabove the famous description of ecstacy at the end of Ennead 6.9.11, wehave a further passage in a later treatise On Virtues 1.2 where Plotinusdescribes the effects of purification, likening them initially to the hornoi6sisdescribed in the Platonic commonplace (Theaetetus 176b), but then goingbeyond that to describe the result as tautotes tini theo, a sort of divinization(Ertrz. 1.2.5.2). This connexion made by Plotinus between moral perfectionand divinization is echoed in several texts of Basil. Of all these perhaps themost remarkable occurs in De Sp. S. xxii. 53, where as a direct result of themoral purification of the soul then comes the Holy Spirit to make it divine.This naturally raises the question of the relation between the moral successof the individual and the descent of the Dove.

It must at once be admitted that Basil, arguably without exception,restricts the gift of the Spirit to those who have shown themselves worthy ofhis presence. As in the hita Antonii 10 and in the Pseudo MacarianHomilies, the grace of the Holy Spirit is consequent upon the moralprowess of the Christian. On this subject Basils writing is quite coherent.From C.E. 3.4 right through to De Sp. S. xxvi.6l-63 the presence of theSpirit. is made to depend entirely on the moral worthiness of theindividual.10 In the earlier text, commenting on I Cor 12:4 Basil observesthat the gifts of the Spirit are distributed to those worthy to receive them.There is no sense of this worthiness deriving from a prior indwelling of theSpirit. This fact may result from the general difficulty the Greek traditionseems to have experienced in trying to describe different descents of thesame Holy Spirit.&dquo; 1 -

The Influence of OrigenBasils dependence upon Origen is a feature of his writing that hasfrequently been noticed. His early enthusiasm bore fruit in the shape of acollection of extracts from Origen, the Philocalia, made together with hisfriend Gregory of Nazianzus and designed to show that becoming aChristian did not automatically entail a sacrifice of the intellect. It is truethat especially towards the end of his life in the Homilies Oil theHexaemeran Basil had occasion to censure the views of his master; butrejection of some particular views is easily. compatible with retaining thedeeper principles. Although the researches of Professor Nautin in his as yetuncompleted work on Origen have raised some doubts about the role of


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Gregory Thaumaturgus Apostle of Cappadocia in transmitting Origensthought to the Cappadocians, in two important respects they do reproducehis views:

(i) In at least two passages in the De Sp. S. alone, xvi. 38 and 40, Basilrestricts the work of the Spirit to the sanctification of the rational order ofcreation alone. Precisely the same restriction is met with in Origen. In onewell-known passage, De Principiis 1.3.5, he assigns the whole realm ofcreation to the Father, the creation of rational beings to the Son and finallytheir sanctification to the agency of the Holy Ghost.12

(ii) When in De Sp. S. xxvi. 61 Basil discusses the presence and effects ofthe Holy Spirit in the soul, some such picture as the following emerges.First of all the soul is purified and ceases to live according to the flesh.After that, apparently, rather than concomitantly with it, the Holy Spiritenters and takes possession of the soul, making it thereby spiritual. Assuch He gives both form and perfection to the soul, though it seems fromwhat Basil says here and elsewhere, that the Spirit may depart if the soul isuntrue to its acquired purity. So, too, had God left the temple and the houseof Israel in Ezechiel 8:6. The effect of the indwelling of the Spirit is thepresence within the spiritual man of the various charismata - all based onI Cor 12.13 Now all this teaching of Basils has a strong family resemblanceto what may be found passim in Origen, above all in the De Principiis,from which the following references come. At 1.1.3 he writes that onlythose share in the gift of the Holy Spirit who have deserved (sic) to besanctified by his grace. Even more clearly at 1.3.7 Origen quotes1hefavourite verse from Ps.32 (33).6, By the word of the Lord the heavenswere made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth, and refers thelatter half of the verse the spiritus Sancti gratia quae dignis praestatur,ministrata per Christum. It appears from these texts that Origen like Basilafter him did not believe that the Holy Spirit was the cause of moralperfection in man, as St. Paul seems to have done, but rather came to dwellin the hearts of those whose lives made a fit home for him. Even if Dehnardis not correct (op. laud. 38-46) in arguing that the influence of Plotinus onBasil was modified by that of Origen, it remains only too clear that Origendid exercise a great influence on Basil. Basils teaching on this point seemsto be an amalgam of two views. First of all, to be morally and intellectuallyperfected is to be spirit-filled; in other words the action of the Spirit in us isdescriptively the same as our moral perfection. Secondly the Spirit seals ourmoral and enables our spiritual perfection as pneumatikoi. The firstis Plotinian; the second Origenist.

Summary of Basils PneumatologyIt is now possible to sum up Basils teaching on the nature of the HolySpirit. We started by inquiring how significant was his failure to describeHim as either god or cvnsubstantial with the Father and the Son. Hecame, as we have seen very close to it, and was even prepared on occasion,


205

though never in the De Sp. S., to ascribe equality of honour to the HolyGhost. I have argued that this caution is not to be understood simply as aneirenic gesture or as an example of Basils economy, which led him toadjust the expression of his views to the character of the audience. On thecontrary the defective nature of his pneumatology proceeds from animperfect (or barely existent), awareness of the role played by the HolySpirit in the work of creation. On one occasion certainly, III Hex. 2.6, andon one other arguably, De Sp. S. xix. 49 he does associate the third personexpressly with the work of creating.&dquo; And in the latter of these two cases itis doubtful whether by creation Basil means much more than the re-creation which results from sanctification and resurrection through thedescent of the Dove. In other words the creative action of the Spirit seemsto be identical with the spiritual perfection of the Christian. In all this Basilshows himself to be a (sub)conscious disciple of Origen, who had written asfollows in De Principiis 1.3.5. In those persons alone do I think that theoperation of the Holy Spirit takes place, who are already turning to a betterlife, and walking along the way that leads to Jesus Christ. At times Basilgoes even further, as in De Sp. S. ix. 22-23, and actually identifies theSpirits action with the moral perfection of man; and in this case both inthought and in phrase he recalls Plotinus.

(b) Gregory of NyssaThe greatest contribution to the study of the pneumatology of Gregory ofNyssa in recent years is undoubtedly the work of Werner Jaeger. In twomasterly productions, Gregor von Nyssas Lehre votiz Heiligen Geist andTivo Rediscovered works of Early Christian Literature he has put thewhole field of Christian scholarship in his debt, for it is above all inAdverstis Macedonianos and De Instituto Christiatto that Gregory treatsthe doctrinal and ascetical aspects of the Holy Spirit. (In the latter areaJaegers opinion that Gregory is dependent on the Great Letter of Macariushas been largely rejected by more recent scholarship which sees Gregory asa tributary of Macarius and through him of the Messalian tradition).The principal thesis of Jaegers treatment of the doctrinal work is this:

that the main lines of Gregorys argument, and consequently the basicstructure of his thought are Neoplatonist and not Christian at all. If this iscorrect and if we accept the contention that Gregorys views and not thoseof his elder brother triumphed in the church at Constantinople, then itwould seem to follow that we profess a Neoplatonic. faith in Christiandress. (i) In Adv. Mac. 13 (= Jaeger 111.i.99.13) Gregory wishes to proveagainst the enemy that the Holy Spirit creates along with the Father andthe Son. This point in itself is interesting when taken in conjunction withwhat was said about Basil. Now his argument for the creative activity ofthe Spirit is that He could not have been idle or jealous at creation, suchbehaviour being inappropriate to divine beings; and he quotes all butverbatim Timaeus 29c which insists that there can be no jealousy in God.


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It is hardly the case that the use of a commonplace to establish the creativeactivity of the Spirit constitutes by itself a major sell-out to Platonism.After all, the important premise upon which the argument ultimately restsis that the Holy Spirit is God and therefore that he must create. And thatpremise is not derived from the writings of philosophy. Interestingly for sophilosophical a thinker, there seems to be less case for postulating Plotinianinfluence on Gregory in any point of real consequence than on Basil. Oneof the reasons for this is simply that Gregory saw far more clearly and usedfar more coherently the cardinal Christian doctrine of creation than didBasil. He saw that it was the characteristic activity of God; and that too hescarcely owed to Plato.

(ii) Another example of Gregorys supposed - dependence onNeoplatonism is said to be found in the argument that the divine nature canreceive nothing because it is perfective of other beings. Jaeger sees here anexample of the Plotinian principle that the cause is superior to the effect.Now it is perfectly true, as Dodds has pointed out in his note on ProclusElements of Theology 7, that this principle is one of those on which thewhole structure of Neoplatonism reposes (cp. also Ennead 5.5 ad finem).But surely the point is that Gregory already knows the superiority of theSpirit aliunde and is simply quoting the dictum to illustrate rather thanprove his point. The whole discussion occurs in chapter 18 of the treatise.Whereas Jaeger sees the two Platonic principles as %nderlying the wholefabric of Gregorys argument, it seems possible, even preferable, to seethem at best as confirmatory of conclusions arrived at by other methods.

De facto the main arguments used by Gregory for the deity of the HolySpirit can be reduced to three: (i) He is descriptively similar to the Fatherand the Son; {ii) he is inseparable from the Father and the Son; (iii) He is co-creative with the Father and the Son. The first argument appears in twodifferent shapes: a) The epithets applied to the Spirit traditionally and inScripture are none of them peculiar to him, but belong equally to the Fatherand the Son; b) the particular expressions ascribed to the Father and theSon, aside from those two titles, are shared by the third person. This typeof argument, which may be found at some length both in Adv. Mac. 6 andin Ref. Coif. Eunornii 204-206 and 214-217, is not novel in Gregory andlooks back to similar procedures in Basil. He had argued in that way for thelordship of the Spirit in De Sp. S. xxC52 and for his incomprehensibility inxxii. 53. It is in his third argument for co-creativity that Gregory goesbeyond his brother. As we have already indicated in dealing with Gregorysalleged dependence on Plotinus, Gregory had to insist on the fully creativeactivity of the Spirit if he was to vindicate his title to full deity; and this wasa step Basil had been unwilling and indeed within his Origenist frameworkunable to take.A further, related point at which Gregory departs from the Origenist

position of his brother Basil is in his treatment of the relation betweenimage and likeness. Origen, in common with Irenaeus, Clement and others


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distinguished the two on the basis of Genesis 1:26 f. So he writes in DePrincipiis 3.6.l. Now the expression, &dquo;In the image of God created Hehim,&dquo; without any mention of the word &dquo;likeness, conveys no othermeaning than this, that man received the dignity of Gods image at his firstcreation but that the perfection of his likeness has been reserved for theconsummation. Becoming spiritual, it emerges as the chapter progresses, isthe acquisition of this likeness; and it is a short step from there toconnecting the gift of the spirit with this likeness. Basil, too, makes a likedistinction and regards the Spirit as perfecting rather than causing theexistence of created reality. In both these respects Gregory differs from hisbrother. The Spirit does create and there is for him no distinction betweenimage and likeness. This last point is made in chapter 5 of the GreatCatechetical Oration (cf. Srawleys note on page 24.5 of his commentary).That these two points cohere closely together is clear if it is rememberedthat a refusal to distinguish between the action of creation and that ofsanctification and a refusal to distinguish between man in his natural andman in his ideal state are two sides of the same coin.

The reason for the differences between Basil and Gregory

Is it possible to discover any likely source that helps to explain thissubstantial divergence from his brother on the part of Gregory? It is ofcourse possible that Gregory owed his change of heart on this matter to thewritings of his namesake of Nazianzus. It is perfectly true that Nazianzus-ould have influenced Nyssa; he was certainly much bolder and moreexplicit than Basil in his affirmation of the full divinity of the Spirit _temporally speaking also he could have influenced his namesake. Hedelivered his theological orations in Constantinople before either the Adv..Mac. or the Ref. Conf. Eun. or the Or. Cat. appeared. Nevertheless boththe texture and the structure of their respective arguments seem to me sodifferent as to argue against dependence either way. A further and muchmore likely possibility presents itself in the shape of Athanasius. Not onlyhad he unequivocally defended the deity and consubstantiality of the HolySpirit against the Tropici in his Letters to Serapion, (c. 3 60) bishop ofThmuis; but also the sort of arguments he used are at times very like thoseof Gregory. This point is well brought out by C.R. Shapland in his veryuseful notes to his translation of the Letters.A few examples may help to illustrate the sort of dependence envisaged,

although it should be emphasised that by themselves they cannot beconsidered as probative. (i) Both writers, Athanasius at Ser. 4.2 and Gregoryat Adv. Mac. 1 use Proverbs 24:4. Answer a fool according to his folly. Butthis may be a mere weapon of conventional abuse. (ii) Both authors use John16:14, He (sc. the Spirit) will glorify me, for he will take what is mine anddeclare it to you at Ser. 1.20; 21 and Mac. 10 respectively. (iii) The Spiritsinvolvement in the whole of creation, so crucial an element of Gregoryspolemic in Mac. 10; 13; 17 is surely foreshadowed, if not explicitly stated by .


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Athanasius at Ser. 1.9; 23. (iv) Finally Gregorys contention in chapter 20that a denial of the deity of the Spirit necessarily leads to a denial of the othertwo persons deity is not unlike a similar statement made at Ser. 1.2; 22:Two further points might be made in favour of the view that it is possible

to detect Athanasian influence in Gregory. (i) Gregory is very insistent on astrong connexion between the actions and persons of Son and Spirit. This isclear at Contra Eunomium 1.280 and even more so in Or. Cat. 2. In thelatter passage he argues that just as it is impossible to conceive a spokenword without a breath, so it is impossible to have The Word without theBreath of God, or the Holy Spirit. This argument can be paralleled in Ser.1.9. (ii) It was noted above that one of the central and significantdivergences between Basil and Gregory was on the relation of image andlikeness. It is not therefore without interest that Athanasius in the Delncarllatione (passim but cf. 3.3) was one of the first if not the earliest ofthe Fathers to refuse to draw a distinction.

Admirable as is Gregorys insistence on the continuity between natureand grace, between creation and perfection, and between the activities ofFather and Son and those of the Spirit, we must begin to wonder whatexactly does the Spirit do. In Gregory the principal role of the Holy Ghostin his formation of the moral life of the Christian, expressed by the termsfeleidsis or morphsis. for which he depends primarily on two NewTestament texts, Mt 5:48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as yourheavenly Father is perfect, and Romans 12:2 Be transformed by therenewal of your mind. Morph6sisin particular, as Jaeger has indicated inEarly Christiaftity and Greek Paideia, is the characteristic way ofdescribing the Spirits function, though it should be noted that his sweepingstatement to the effect that it is an idea that occurs everywhere, is not infact supported by any adduced evidence. In Adv. Mac. 15 Gregory arguesfor the deity of the Holy Spirit by suggesting that true morphsis isimpossible if the whole of the mystery of God in three persons be notequally divine. If all three persons are not both fully divine themselves andbelieved to be so, then salvation, that is the Christian formation of thebeliever, does not occur. A similar connexion between right faith and moralperfection is also made in De Instituto 43:8 ff.

But what is the precise role of the Spirit in this process? How does hehelp to form the moral life of the Christian? Has Gregory so identified themoral progress of the individual with the action of the Holy Spirit as toleave the latter a purely formal role? One of the disturbing features of hispneumatology, as Parmentier and others have pointed out, in his relativesilence on the Spirit. He is barely mentioned at all in the great spiritualcommentaries on the Song of songs, Ecclesiastes and the Life of Moses.An added difficulty, and one that has been noticed in Basil also, is hisapparent restriction of the activity of the Holy Spirit to the souls of theworthy. In Adv. Mac. 19(= 106.9) the true Life, which is the only-begottenSon, is imparted by the activity of the Spirit tois axiollmellois presumably


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meaning those who have been found worthy. The insistence on theworthiness of the recipient, especially in the De Instituto is too frequent afeature to be merely accidental (cf. esp. p. 44.3 ff). Gregory seems justabout to avoid giving the Holy Spirit as another name for ~ the moralperfection of men, by insisting on one feature of his activity, viz. that he is afellow worker with the Christian in his task of spiritual growth. It hasalready been noticed that in the Ref. Conf. Eitnoniii 227-229 Gregoryrejected Eunomius restriction of the activity of the Holy Spirit toencouragement hupophnesis (227), prefering by implication the language ofsynergy. And this way of speaking is particularly prominent again in theDe Instituto. The picture Gregory paints there is of moral endeavourmeeting the action of the Holy Spirit. Labour and the grace of the Spirittogether form the Christian soldier ((43.7-47.42). In other words it ispossible to sum up the activity of the Holy Spirit in our regard as a fusionof sll11ergeia and morphosis. What is not clear is what the latter adds to theformer idea.

It must be clear by now that much of what Gregory has to say about thefunctioning of the Holy Spirit owes a good deal to the pneumatology of hisbrother. The co-operative function of the Spirit, sliding at times into anidentification between the Spirit and the life of moral excellence, therestriction of his activity to the worthy, the use of perfection to describehis particular role, all these can be paralleled in Basil. Where he differs fromBasil he may well be dependent on Athanasius. The main areas ofdistinction are Gregorys willingness to speak of the Spirit both as Godand as consubstantial and in the resolute absorption of the work ofperfection into that of creation. This latter may also result, as in the treatiseQuod non sum tres dei, from the need to assert the unity of the threepersons in action and in nature, though this too is a feature that Gregoryrather than Basil shares with Athanasius. It is precisely in the area of theunity of the Godhead and the particular action of the Holy Spirit that thebrothers disagree and the two sides were only in the end resolved by thesomewhat unhappy doctrine of appropriation.

(c) Conclusion The central aim of this article has been to establish the views of theCappadocians and relate them to the formula about the Holy Ghostcontained in the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed (= C). It is unnecessaryin the present context to rehearse the vexed question of the actualprovenance of C. The silence of the Acta and indeed of every document upto the Council of Chalcedon of 451 have led Harnack, Hort and Caspari,among others, to conclude that there was never any such thing as C. Onthe whole, however, it is better to say with Ritter15 and Kelly that theCouncil did produce a creed, and that the silence about C. at that time, asthereafter, was largely a result of the reverence for the Creed of Nicaea,which C. was thought, (incorrectly, no doubt), to be supplementing. This


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tremendous reverence for Nicaea is seen both in the first canon ofConstantinople and in scattered references in the letters of Basil (cf. esp.Epp. 175; 258).

The question at once arises: What is the origin of the words in C. whichare lacking in N., especially of the clause; &dquo;who, together with the Fatherand the Son is both adored and glorified&dquo;? Gribomont, Doerries and Kellybelieve, though for different reasons and with differing conclusions, that themajor influence on the wording of C. was Basil; Jaeger, on the other hand,supports Gregory- of Nyssa. What catches the attention of the first threescholars is the striking similarity in attitude and phraseology between C.and Basil. It is significant, however, both for the theses they argue for andfor the enigmatic character of Basil that whereas Gribomont cites similarityof attitude to prove the fact that the credal formula of Constantinople isstrongly stamped with Basilian economy, Kelly cites the language ofBasils Epp. 90 and 159 to prove not only Basilian influence on C. but alsothe substantial orthodoxy of both. By orthodoxy Kelly clearly meansagreement about the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. He holds that the slightreserve shown by both C. and Basil-in affirming God and consubstantialof the third person is: a) connected and b) does not prove the refusal ofeither to assert what he and we take to be the faith of the church about thenature of the Holy Ghost (cf. esp. Early Christian Creeds, p. 342). Againstsuch a conslusion it would doubtless be possible for Gribomont to arguethat Kelly is assuming what he ought to prove; and that if Basil is behind C.and is himself not too clear (to say the least) about the deity of the Spirit,then neither is C. itself too clear. Such an interpretation of the known factswould find some measure of support from the negative, if not disgruntled,attitude of Gregory of Nazianzus towards the council and towards C. itself.Jaegers suggestion is that whatever the general provenance of the Creed, arevision of N. or the Ancoratus 119 of Epiphanius of Salamis, the stress onsun in C. is best explained by the intervention of Gregory of Nyssa. It istrue that SUl1 is a marked feature of C. and also that above all in Adv. Mac.9 the tying in of the worship, nature and activity of the Holy Spirit withthose of Father and Son is the stock in trade of the argument. But then inEp. 159.2 Basil has sundoxazontes which is as strong as one could wish. Itis perhaps only in the proskunsis of C. that it goes beyond Basil and in thisdecidedly unambiguous expression of adoration we are not far from thelanguage of Gregory in Adv. Mac. 24. If this is true, then the latters beliefin the full deity of the Spirit has had a decided effect on Faith.

1. Oratio 43. 68; 69. In this passage Gregory distinguishes in Basils writing on the HolyGhost between the actual expressions employed and the nous and skopos. He alsocomplains somewhat peevishly of those who fail to make such a distinction.2. Intransigence and Irenicism republished in Word and Spirit 1979 from the original inEstudios Trinitarios IX, 1975, Salamanca.3. Basile de Csare sur le Saint-Esprit. (Sources Chrtiennes, 17bis).4. Cf. Cod. Theod. LXVI, tit. 1., L.3 for July 30, 381.


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5. Hermann Doerries, Der Beitrag des Basilius zum Abschluss des Trinitarischen Dogmasin Abhandlungen der Akadamie der Wissenschaften in Goettingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 111,39. Goettingen, 1956.6. Gregory of Nyssa also on at least one occasion in the Adv. Mac. ch. 17 (= Jaeger,Opera Omnia 3.1.104.8) explicitly rejects the suggestion that there can be any intermediarybeing between creator and creature. 7. In De Sp. S. homotimia is indeed used at vi. 13; 15, but on both occasions it refers tothe Sons deity. 8. in De Sp. S. xvi. 40 the grace of the Holy Spirit is the crown of the just, and in thesame passage sanctity is stated quite clearly to be exothentes ousias. This view has kinshipwith the view of Irenaeus at Adv. H. 4 Praef. and 5.6.1. that the likeness to God does notbelong to us by nature, but is part of the gift of the Spirit; a like distinction is made byOrigin at C.C. 4.30 and D.P. 3.6.1.9. Jahn, Basilius Magnus Plotinizans, Berne 1844; C.F.H. Johnston, The Book of St.Basil the Great... on the Holy Spirit. Oxford, 1892; Henry, Les Etats du Texte de Plotin,Museum Lessianum, Paris 1936; H. Dehnard. Das Problem der Abhaengigkeit des Basiliusvon Plotin, Berlin 1964.10. Cf. esp. also C.E. 2.4 and 3.5 and De Sp. S. xxvi. 61.11. This point is brought out very clear at De Sp. S. xvi. 38 ad init.12. A similar treatment of 1 Cor 12:4-6 occurs in Origens Comm. in Jn. 2.10.77.13. Cf. De. Sp. S. xvi. 38; xxvi. 63 and C.E. 2.4.14. Professor Pia Piuslampe makes a nearly convincing defence of the orthodoxy of Basilin a recent book; Spiritus Vivificans: Grundzuege einer Theologie des Heiligen Geistes nachBasilius von Caesarea, Munster 1981. One of her central arguments (pp. 49 ff.) is that forBasil perfecting is an extension of creation, and if this is so to say that the Holy Spiritperfects, as Basil undoubtedly often claims he does, is tantamount to a claim that he creates.But, Hom in Hex. 2.6. and possibly De Sp. S. xvi. 38 apart, all the evidence is the otherway.15. Ritter A. M., Das Konzil von Konstantinopel und sein Symbol, Goettingen, 1965. pp.97-111.


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