The Blessed Trinity and the Greek Fathers of the Church at the Council of Nicaea

In the Gospel of Matthew (28, 18-20) we read: “All authority has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.” [NRSV]

We can assume that this was the preeminent baptismal formula of the early Church to baptize candidates “in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” as it is still in use up to the present day. However, we also read that people were simply baptized ‘in the Name of Jesus’. Also, disciples of John the Baptist still practiced the Baptism of Repentance. This latter group needed the ‘Laying on of Hands’ in order to receive the Holy Spirit.

The proclamation of tolerance in 313 AD brought a vast change for Christians in the Roman Empire. Persecutions were stopped; all citizens were allowed to become Christians and to practice their religion; confiscated possessions of early Christians were returned; individual churches as well as other ecclesiastic bodies were permitted to have ownership.

This newly gained freedom had positive as well as negative consequences: people were allowed to express their beliefs without being persecuted. This was especially important in the understanding of the Blessed Trinity. The concept of ‘Yahweh’ (or as the Jews out of reverence only pronounced the name of God simply as ‘the Lord’) was strongly influenced by the Jewish Tradition. However, as our Lord preferred to address God as ‘Father’, this name was preeminent. In addition, the understanding of the Holy Spirit had been strongly coined by the Old Testament writings, especially in the book of Genesis and in the calling of the prophets. Yet diverse opinions evolved regarding the understanding of Jesus the Christ.

Among the many heretical theories there are two opposing ones to be mentioned. One declared that Jesus was simply a human person who received divine powers at his baptism, yet lost those powers before he suffered on the cross (Monarchianism). The other one proclaimed that the Father had accepted human nature, had suffered and was solely responsible for the act of Redemption (Patripassianism). For this reason, Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicaea (a Greek town of today’s Western Turkey) in 325 AD to clear the theology of the Blessed Trinity.

The Fathers of the Church came together and decided that Jesus Christ had both natures: the human as well as the divine. Hence, he had the divine as well as the human nature right from the time of his conception as the angel Gabriel explained to Mary. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” [Luke 1, 35]

Next came the task of explaining the Blessed Trinity. Now, the Greek Fathers of the Church were cultured people who visited the amphitheaters to watch the ancient Greed dramas. Unlike our modern plays where the actors dress in costumes in order to make known which character they represent, Greek actors did not do so. Instead they held a mask in front of their faces which were modeled according to the person they played, i.e. a king, or a woman, or a god, etc. The Greek name for this mask was ‘Prosopon’. Hence, the Greek Fathers of the Church concluded, that God had revealed himself through three Prosopoi or masks, the one of the Father, the one of the Son, and the one of the Holy Spirit. It was the one God who had spoken to us through three masks. When the Council was concluded and the results were sent to Rome in order to be accepted by the Latin Church, they readily agreed, since the Greek word ‘Prosopon’ was translated into the Latin ‘Persona’. Their understanding of ‘Persona’ was precisely that of the Greek Fathers, namely the ‘role’ or the ‘character’ of an actor. Unfortunately, our modern understanding of ‘persona’ has changed into ‘person’ and received a completely different meaning.

The Greek understanding of the ‘Father’ and the ‘Son’ was strongly influenced by Greek philosophy, especially Neo-Gnosticism. Imagine watching the sky on a beautiful moonless night. Who among us is not impressed by the multitude of stars and their fascinating constellations? All this has been conceived by a great Mind. Neo-Gnosticism perceived that the Great Mind (NOUS in Greek) was the source of all things.

In the gospel of St. John we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him.” This is precisely what the philosophers were thinking, the Greek Fathers concluded. The NOUS is constantly generating and expressing himself through the Word (LOGOS in Greek), so the Son is constantly begotten by the Father. Yet everything is created through the Son.

The Greek and Latin creed differ in one small item. Nicaean Theology maintains that ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father’, thus emphasizing that the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from God; the Father is the only one cause of the two other persons. The Latin Church already some time before the Council of Nicaea had introduced the ‘Filioque’ clause in order to counter Arianism. The heresy of Arius claimed that the Son was not of the same substance as the Father and was not ‘from the beginning’. When the Arian heresy entered the South of Spain, the Latin Church added the ‘and the Son’. Thus our Creed says, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, emphasizing that the Son is of equal divinity with God, the Father.

One interpretation of Neo-Gnosticism believes that the NOUS and the LOGOS are in constant communication in and through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that holy communion between Father and Son. One of our descriptions of the Holy Spirit is that he is the Sanctifier. As only the triune God is holy, so the Holy Spirit embraces the entire creation and especially us, the target of redemption, to make ready and present to God.

This article is part of the sermon given on Trinity Sunday at 7:45 am by

The Rev. Dr. Gregory W. Wyes; Mr. Greg Foraker edited this article.