“God and his Word and his Spirit are... one God”
If the Trinity is the one God and Father plus two other persons who fully share his nature and divinity, how is this not three gods? The early Church Fathers often use the relationship between common human nature and particular human persons to illustrate commonality (substance) and particularity (hypostasis) in general, as it also applies to the Trinity. But in the case of multiple human persons, they are referred to as multiple humans, whereas we don’t refer to the three divine persons as three gods. St. Gregory of Nyssa addresses this question in one of his letters to a fellow bishop, Ablabius.
To Ablabius, on “not three gods”
Ablabius was a fourth-century bishop about whom we know very little, other than that Gregory of Nyssa wrote three letters to him (letters 6, 21, and the one under consideration). [1] Apparently, he was presented with a dilemma by non-trinitarian interlocutors which he couldn’t answer, and he wrote to St. Gregory of Nyssa to help solve the problem. Gregory explains the dilemma at hand as follows:
...we are at first sight compelled to accept one of two erroneous opinions, and either to say “there are three gods,” which is unlawful, or not to acknowledge the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is impious and absurd.
The argument which you state is something like this: Peter, James, and John, while belonging to the one human nature, are said to be “three humans”; and it is not absurd by any means that those who are united according to nature, when they are more than one, are enumerated in the plural on the base of the name of nature. So, if in such a case usage permits it and nothing prohibits to say “two” of those that are two or “three” of those that are more than two, how then do we, confessing in the mystical dogmas three hypostases and not admitting any difference between them according to the nature, combat in a certain way the confession of faith from the moment that we speak of the one divinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but prohibit to speak of “three gods”?
St. Gregory goes on to say that to find a solution to this problem would be ideal, but even if one isn’t found, we must keep the tradition received by apostolic succession and ask the Lord for a solution. If he bestows a solution upon anyone by grace, then we should give thanks, but if not, we must hold our faith unchangeably. (As we will see, he does believe there to be a valid solution to the problem.) He offers a first solution, rhetorically directed at uneducated people, which he dismisses as inadequate:
Perhaps one might seem to touch the point if he were to say (speaking offhand to simple-minded people), that the definition refused to reckon gods in any number to avoid any resemblance to the Greek polytheism, lest, if we too were to enumerate the deity, not in the singular, but in the plural, as they are accustomed to do, there might be supposed to be also some community of doctrine.
This answer, I say, if made to more guileless people, might seem to be of some weight. But in the case of the others who require that one of the alternatives they propose should be established (either that we should not acknowledge the divinity in the three, or that, if we do, we should speak of those who share in the same divinity as three), this answer does not provide any solution of the difficulty. And hence we must make our reply at greater length, tracing out the truth as best we may; for the question is no ordinary one.
This first answer isn’t incorrect – we must avoid speaking of “three gods” so that the difference between pagan polytheism and Christian trinitarianism is made clear – but it’s also not sufficient. The answer should satisfy the more simple-minded or guileless of faithful believers, who don’t know (or care) about metaphysics, but it won’t satisfy those who are making the argument in the first place. Nor does this answer tell us in what way trinitarianism is relevantly different from polytheism (which, as we will see, St. Gregory’s final answer does).
His second answer is directed toward pagan (Neoplatonist) philosophers, and addresses the metaphysics of “nature” (physis):
We thus say above all that the habit to name in the plural, with the very name of nature, those who are divided by nature and to say “many humans,” which is equivalent to saying “many human natures,” is an improper use of the word. That this is so may become clear to us from the following:
When we call someone, we do not name him according to nature, to avoid that the commonness of the name leads to some error. For each of those that listen could think to be he himself the one called, given that he is called not with a particular appellative, but based upon the common name of nature. But in pronouncing the word imposed upon him as proper – I intend that which signifies the subject – we distinguish him from the multitude. Thus there are many who participate in the nature, for example disciples, apostles or martyrs, but one alone in all is human, if it is true, as it was said, that “human” is constituted not by that which is proper of each one, but of that which is common to the nature. Human, in fact, is Luke or Stephen, nevertheless, if someone is human, this does not mean certainly that he is also for that reason Luke or Stephen.
However, the concept of the hypostases admits division, by the properties that are manifested in each one, and are considered numerically, according to composition. The nature is on the other hand one, united in itself and a perfectly indivisible unity, which does not augment by addition nor diminish by subtraction; but that which it is, is one and remains one, even if it appears in multiplicity: undivided and permanent and perfect, that is, not divided in the individuals that participate in it.
And as “crowd,” “people,” “army,” and “assembly” are all said in the singular, even if each is thought in the plural, so, according to the more exact manner of expression, one could also properly speak of one human, even though those in whom that same nature is manifested are a multitude. It would then be far better to correct our erroneous habit and not extend any more the name of nature to the multiplicity, rather than, as slaves of this habit, to transfer this error also to the divine dogma.
St. Gregory of Nyssa gives this argument in greater detail in his other treatise To the Greeks, on the commonality of concepts. As we will see, this is not his final answer to the problem, but it’s still worth looking at. In both works, he rejects the Neoplatonic view that universals (i.e., nature/substance) are divisible collections of particulars, in favor of the view that universals are one and indivisible. [2] This is because universals (like “human”) refer to what is common: what it is to be human is the same in Luke and Stephen (hence we can’t pick them out of a crowd by saying “human”), and even though Luke has the whole “human,” for Stephen to be human is not for Stephen to be Luke. Furthermore, adding and subtracting human beings doesn’t change what it is to be human, which shows that human nature can’t be a (mere) collection.
If this argument is correct, then common nouns that signify universals (like “human”) can only properly be used in the singular. St. Gregory appeals to collective nouns (“crowd,” “people,” “army,” “assembly”) as similar examples. [3] These nouns are collective because they refer to items whose proper parts can’t be referred to by the same name (i.e., a member of the crowd is not also a crowd). Likewise, universals don’t have proper parts that can be referred to by the same name, because they are indivisible and have no proper parts at all. [4] The whole universal is present in each particular, and can’t be divided between them. Therefore, Luke is a human and Stephen is a human, but they are not parts of “human,” hence strictly speaking there is only one human.
St. Gregory goes on to say that even though referring to “many humans” is strictly wrong, it isn’t dangerous (“no harm results from the mistaken use of the name”). However, referring to “three gods” is dangerous, and we are constrained by Scripture (he cites Deut 6:4) to confess “one God.” In his treatise To the Greeks, he explains that because humans are born and die, we are constrained to count humans, but there is no such change in the Trinity. Furthermore, humans come from different causes, whereas the Trinity comes from the Father alone. “Therefore... we proclaim one God, one Cause [the Father] together with those who are caused by him [the Son and the Holy Spirit], since he co-exists with them.”
Does St. Gregory of Nyssa’s argument here succeed? I’m not so sure that it does, and even if it does, it seems precarious to tie the doctrine of the Trinity to both metaphysics and grammar that were just as controversial in the fourth century as they are today. Fortunately, his final answer (which is directed not to the uneducated, nor to Neoplatonist philosophers, but to Christian philosophers like himself and Ablabius) doesn’t rely on such controversial metaphysics.
Most people think that the word “divinity” [theotēs] is based in nature. And as the heaven and the sun or another of the elements of the cosmos are denoted by those particular words that indicate the subjects, thus, also in reference to the supreme and divine nature, they say that the word “divinity” was fittingly adapted to that which is manifested, as a sort of proper name. But we, following the teachings of the Scripture, have learned that the divine nature cannot be designated with any name, and is ineffable. And we say that any name, either formulated by human usage or transmitted by the Scriptures, is useful to interpret that which is thought of the divine nature, but does not include the signification of the nature itself.
St. Gregory’s final answer to the question starts from the apophatic assertion that the divine nature is ineffable, hence “divinity” and “God” don’t apply to the nature in itself. Rather, they refer to “the things around the divine nature” (tōn peri tēn theian physin). For example, when we say the divine nature is “incorruptible,” we say that the nature doesn’t undergo corruption, but we don’t say what it is that is not corrupted. Likewise, when we say “life-giving,” we indicate an action, but not what it is that performs the action. These names tell us what we can and can’t know about the divine nature, but they don’t tell us what that nature is in itself.
Therefore, considering the diverse activities [energeias] of the supreme power [dynameōs], we adapt the appellatives from the activities known to us. And we say that one of the activities of God is also the activity of watching and observing and, so to speak, to see, by which he sees all from above and regards all, seeing the thoughts and penetrating with the power of his gaze to the invisible things. Therefore we think that “divinity” [tēn theotēta] has received its name from vision [tēs theas] and that he who has the regard [tōn theōron] on us is called God [theos] both by custom and by the teaching of the Scriptures.
The etymology of “God” (theos) from a verb like “to behold” (theaomai) was common in the ancient world. Gregory takes this to the logical conclusion that “God” and “divinity” are agent nouns, referring to the doer of a certain action (beholding), rather than a proper or common noun. Elsewhere he adduces Scriptural support for this claim, since other beings – including mere humans like Moses – are called gods (Exod 7:1; Num 22; 1 Sam 28:13; Ps 96:5; Jer 10:11), “god” can’t refer to an individual or a nature (Ad Eustathium). However, neither is the term “god” entirely disconnected from nature, since in metaphysics, natures ground certain powers (dynameis) which are expressed in certain activities (energeiai). [5] This is made clear in a passage from St. Gregory’s To the Greeks:
For [”God”] signifies the substance, not in that it represents what the substance is (that is obvious, since the “what” of the divine substance is beyond our understanding and mental grasp), but in that it hints at the appropriate characteristic by which we can lay hold of it – just as being able to neigh or to laugh, being what we call “natural characteristics,” signify the natures of which they are characteristics [idiomata].
Now it is a characteristic of the eternal substance to which Father and Son and Holy Spirit belong to survey and understand [theōrein] and know all things: not just what takes place in action, but even what is grasped in the mind. This is proper to that substance alone, since it is the cause of all things, has made all things, and reigns over all things as its own productions, presiding over all human affairs by some appropriate but ineffable word of command. Understood on this basis, the noun “God” signifies, properly speaking, that substance which truly rules all things as creator of all.
Natures or substances, like hypostases, have their own characteristics (idiomata) which are powers and activities. Although to be divine, that is, to behold all things, is not what the divine nature is, it is a proper characteristic of the divine nature. Therefore, St. Gregory’s second and third answers to the question are not disconnected; but the question of the number of gods in the Trinity is, properly speaking, a question about activity and not nature. Thus, he asks:
Consider whether this activity is properly of only one of the persons affirmed by faith to be in the Holy Trinity, or if the power extends to the three persons... Scripture attributes the act of beholding equally to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. David says, “Behold, O God [i.e., the Father] our defender” [Ps 84:9], and from this we learn that beholding is a proper activity of God, so far as God is conceived, since he says, “Behold, O God.” But Jesus also sees the thoughts of those who condemn him and question why by his own power he pardons people’s sins. For it says, “Jesus, beholding their thoughts” [Matt 9:4]. And of the Holy Spirit also, Peter says to Ananias, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” [Acts 5:3] showing that the Holy Spirit was a true witness, aware of what Ananias had dared to do in secret, and by whom the manifestation of the secret was made to Peter.
In response to this, St. Gregory of Nyssa anticipates that someone will point out that three people who perform the same kind of action are still called three – e.g., three philosophers, three farmers, three shoemakers – and so all the more we should refer to “those who are contemplated in the same activity” (i.e., the Trinity) as “three gods.” He begins his answer by articulating an account of how activities are individuated in the case of humans:
For humans, even if they exercise in much the same activity, complete their own affairs separately, each one alone, without participating exactly, in the proper activity, with those that exercise the same profession. For, even in the case of different orators, the profession, which is one, has the same name in the different orators, while those that exercise it act each one alone, one and the other pronouncing discourses in their own way. Therefore among humans, the activity of each being divided inside the same profession, one speaks in a proper way of many humans, since each one is separated in a proper environment, according to the particular conditions [idiotropon] of activity.
On the other hand, regarding the divine nature, we have not learned that the Father accomplishes something by himself, in which the Son does not participate, or that the Son in his turn operates something without the Spirit. But every activity which from God is propagated to creation and is called according to the various conceptions, has its origin from the Father, continues through the Son, and is accomplished in the Holy Spirit. For this reason the name of activity is not divided in the multiplicity of those who act, since the care of something is not exclusive to each one in particular. But all that is realized, regarding either our providence or the economy and order of the universe, is realized in a certain manner by the three, but the things that are realized are not in fact three.
Just as in the case of beings, activities can belong to the same kind (e.g., oration), but are individuated by their own particular conditions. We can properly speak of multiple orators because, although their activities are of the same kind, each one has a different style of oration and does so at a different time and place. This is precisely what is not the case in the Trinity, because each activity of God is the same one from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.
For example, the Scriptures tell us that our life is from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we don’t have three lives (nor does each divine person give us one-third of a life), therefore there is only one action and properly speaking one life-giver. Likewise, we read that God the Father judges all things through the Son in the Holy Spirit (Isa 4:4; Matt 12:28; John 5:22; Rom 3:6), yet there is only one judgment. St. Gregory concludes, “the name derived from activity cannot be divided among many where the result of their mutual activity is one.”
Therefore, every good reality and every good name, depending on the power and will without principle [i.e., the Father], are carried to completion in the power of the Holy Spirit by means of the Only-Begotten God, without interval of time or of space, since there does not exist any duration in the movement of the divine will from the Father through the Son to the Spirit, nor is it thinkable; and one of the good names and good concepts is that of “divinity.” Thus it would not be reasonable to divide the name in a multiplicity, since the unity in activity impedes the plural enumeration... Thus neither are they three gods, according to the meaning assigned to the term “divinity,” even though this appellation belongs to the Holy Trinity.
This is the conclusion of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s third (and final) answer to the question of the number of gods in the Trinity. Because “God” properly refers to an activity, and every activity of the Trinity is one (proceeding from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit), the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God (and one Creator, one Savior, one Judge, etc.). Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are not additional deities who could potentially disagree with or thwart the will of God, but they are precisely the ones through whom and in whom the will of the Father is accomplished (hence, they are “the Word of God” and “the Spirit of God”).
Does this agree with the customary use of language (unlike Gregory’s second argument)? I think so, even though the activity of the Trinity is far removed from what we’re used to as humans. The activities of humans are necessarily divided up because of our materiality: two people cannot act in the same way at the same place and time. But consider this example, given by Beau Branson in his dissertation. [6] Suppose, per impossibile, that there were three human beings unbound by the constraints of materiality, who always did (exactly) the same thing with one result, and they work for a general contractor. Would he be justified in telling you that he has “three painters” and charging you triple the man-hours for their one activity of painting? This would be extremely misleading if not false. But this scenario, which is impossible in the human case, is precisely the case for the immaterial persons of the Trinity.
St. Gregory continues his letter to Ablabius by returning to his second answer, in case Ablabius’ opponents refuse to concede that “God” refers to activity rather than nature. Whether “God” refers to one or the other, the result is the same: “The Father is God; the Son is God; and yet by the same proclamation there is one God, because no difference of either activity or nature is contemplated in the divinity.” Finally, he considers whether this argument leads to the identity of persons in the Trinity (i.e., modalism). It does not, because there is a difference of cause between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; this difference belongs to “the how it is” (to pōs einai), rather than the nature, “the what it is” (to ti einai). Therefore, we rightly proclaim the distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while confessing them to be one God.
Unity of will and activity
St. Gregory of Nyssa’s argument in Ad Ablabius shows in what sense the Trinity is one God, and how the relationship between the three divine persons is relevantly different from three human beings or pagan polytheism. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share numerically one activity and will, which is impossible in the case of humans and certainly unlike the Greek gods. Because “God” according to its etymology refers to an activity, the Trinity is one God and not three. Therefore, although “God” as a proper noun refers to the Father as the sole cause of everything else, each of the divine persons are equally predicated “God” since they share the divine nature and activity, and together the three are one “God” since their activity is one (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or 31.14).
The collective use of “God” to refer to the Trinity isn’t found in the New Testament or the early Fathers prior to the fourth century. However, the gospel of St. John does explain the unity of God the Father and Jesus Christ in terms of the unity of their works (e.g., John 5:17-30; 10:25-38; 14:8-12). The view that “God” (theos) refers to an activity goes back to Plato, who derived it from theō, “to run” (Cratylus 397d), and was picked up by Philo of Alexandria, who interpreted it as “the creative power” (Abr 121). St. Justin Martyr understood “God,” among other titles, as “appellations derived from his good deeds and works” (2 Apology 6). St. Theophilus of Antioch derived theos from tithēmi, “to place,” or theō, “to run” (Autol 1.4-5). Clement and Origen of Alexandria likewise understood the divine names, including “God,” to refer to his power and activities (Clement, Stromata 5.12; Origen, On Prayer 24.2-3; De Princ 1.1.6). [7]
St. Justin Martyr says that the reason the Word (i.e., Jesus) is called various names, including “God,” is because “he ministers to the Father’s will, and was begotten by an act of the Father’s will” (Dial 61). Likewise, St. Theophilus of Antioch states that the Word, “being God,... whenever the Father wills, he sends him to any place” (Autol 2.22). St. Irenaeus of Lyons says that the Son is named “God” because “he is the visible of the Father” (Adv Haer 4.6.6), yet “in the substance and power of his [i.e., the Father’s] being there is shown forth one God” (Epid 47). St. Hippolytus of Rome insists that although we speak of three persons, we “shall not, indeed, speak of two gods but of one,” because:
The Father decrees, the Word executes, and the Son is manifested, through whom the Father is believed on. This economy of harmony leads back to the one God [i.e., the Father], for there is one God. (Against Noetus 14)
I do not mean that there are two gods, but that it is only as light from light, or as water from a fountain, or as a ray from the sun. For there is but one power, which is from the All; and the Father is the All, from whom comes this power, the Word. (Against Noetus 11)
In his dialogue with Heraclides, Origen of Alexandria stated that there is a sense in which we refer to two gods (i.e., the Father and the Son), but they are one God because “the power is one.”
In the Nicene period, St. Athanasius describes the unity of Father and Son in terms of icon theology: the Father is the one God, while the Son as his perfect image is called the one God (Orat c. Ar 3.3-6). This is not to the exclusion of identity of activity, since he goes on to explain the numerical identity of activity between the Father, Son, and Spirit (3.10-15). St. Basil also uses icon theology to describe how there are not three gods (De Spir Sanct 18.45-47), but affirms that all of God’s names refer to his activities rather than his substance (Letter 234), and that “in every activity, the Holy Spirit is indivisibly united with the Father and the Son” (De Spir Sanct 16.37-40). St. Gregory of Nazianzus says that God’s nature cannot be defined, but we know about him by the things he has made (Or 28.3-17), and derives “God” (theos) from theō, “to run,” or aithō, “to burn” (30.17-19). He explains the unity of the Trinity not only in terms of nature, but also “a union of mind and an identity of motion” (29.2), and that they aren’t “divided in will or parted in power” (31.14).
In summary, all of the elements of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s answer in Ad Ablabium were present in Christian theology before him, although he was the first to clearly articulate them in this way. After the fourth century, the identity of will, power, and activity in the Trinity was widely agreed upon, [8] and was repeatedly affirmed at the ecumenical Council of Constantinople III in 681. [9] For example, Pope Agatho’s letter which was endorsed by Constantinople III states:
...as we confess the Holy and inseparable Trinity, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to be of one divinity, of one nature and substance, so we will profess also that it has one natural will, power, activity, dominion, majesty, potency, and glory. And whatever is said of the same Holy Trinity essentially in singular number we apprehend as from the one nature of the three consubstantial persons, having been so taught by canonical logic.
Finally, St. John of Damascus writing in the eight century begins his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by affirming the ineffability of God’s substance and nature (1.1-2). We can only make positive statements about “the things around the nature,” not the nature itself (1.4). The word God is “indicative of his activity” and is derived from theō, “to run,” or aithō, “to burn,” or theaomai, “to see” (1.9; all of these etymologies are found in the earlier Fathers). The Trinity, however, has no “difference of will, or intention, or activity, or power, or anything else that in us gives rise to a real and complete division” (1.8). At the end of his discussion of the Trinity, he says,
Owing to the three hypostases, there is no compoundness or confusion; while, owing to their being consubstantial and dwelling in one another, and being the same in will, and activity, and power, and authority, and movement (so to speak), we recognize the indivisibility and unity of God. For God and his Word and his Spirit are in reality one God. (Expos 1.8)
I don’t think there’s a better one-sentence summary of the doctrine of the Trinity than that. This sums up the monarchy of the Father (because the first person of the Trinity is “God” simpliciter); the unity of will and activity in the Trinity (because Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are “his Word” and “his Spirit”); and the fact that this Trinity is really “one God.”
Conclusion
The doctrine of the Trinity is not really metaphysically complex, at least, it’s not supposed to be. The statements of the Creed are enough: there is one God, the Father; and one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, true God from true God, consubstantial with the Father; and the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who proceeds from the Father and is conglorified with the Father and the Son. The purpose of this doctrine isn’t to idly speculate about God, but to explain how we can come to truly know him: only through his Son Jesus Christ, in his Holy Spirit, because Christ is the icon of the invisible God who perfectly reveals his will and activity to us.
Any metaphysical speculation about the Trinity is only meant to defend and give substance to these basic affirmations. [10] In what ways are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit similar and different? How are they one God and not three? Even so, St. Gregory of Nyssa’s answers to these questions don’t really rely on a lot of metaphysics. The similarity and difference in the Trinity is the same as the common human nature shared by individual human beings. The Trinity are one God because “God,” according to Scripture and reason, refers to an activity, and the will and activities of God the Father are perfectly and indivisibly enacted through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.
In conclusion, the doctrine of the Trinity is not a logical problem to be solved. It is the confession of the revelation of God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, which is experienced in the liturgical life of the Church. The final word of the Church is therefore not analysis, but praise:
Come, O people, / let us worship the divinity in three persons: / the Son in the Father, with the Holy Spirit. / For the Father timelessly begot the Son, co-eternal and co-enthroned with him; / and the Holy Spirit was in the Father and is glorified with the Son. / We worship one power, one substance, one divinity, / and we say: “Holy God, / who created all things through your Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit; / Holy Mighty, through whom we know the Father, / and through whom the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the world; / Holy Immortal, comforting Spirit, / who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son. / O Holy Trinity, glory to you!” [11]
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[1] Anna M. Silvas, Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters, 140-142, 187-189; although it’s not certain that all of these letters were written to the same individual.
[2] See both Richard Cross, “Gregory of Nyssa on Universals,” Vigiliae Christianae 56, no. 4 (2002): 372-410; and Johannes Zachhuber, “Once Again: Gregory of Nyssa on Universals,” Journal of Theological Studies 56 (2005): 75-98; who despite their differences agree that St. Gregory of Nyssa believed in the indivisible oneness of universals, and disagreed with the Neoplatonists on this point.
[3] Here he is once again drawing on the ancient Greek grammarians, who often used the same words as examples of collective nouns: Dionysius Thrax, Grammar 14; Apollonius Dyscolus, Syntax 1.67.
[4] This interpretation of St. Gregory of Nyssa is drawn from Beau Branson, The Logical Problem of the Trinity (2014), 123-134.
[5] Aristotle first made the distinction between dynamis (“power” or “potential”) and energeia (“activity” or “act”). This view is clearly articulated by St. Gregory of Nyssa in a fragment of a letter to Xenodorus preserved by St. Maximus the Confessor: “For we say that activity [energeian] is the natural power [dynamin] and movement of each substance without which a nature neither is nor is known.”
[6] Branson, Logical Problem, 191-193.
[7] David Bradshaw, Divine Energies and Divine Action: Exploring the Essence-Energies Distinction (2023), 119-122.
[8] However, the view that “God” refers to activity rather than nature fell out of popularity in the West after the fourth century. St. Ambrose of Milan, who was strongly influenced by the Cappadocians, affirmed that the name “God” (along with his other names) refer to his power and activity, and that the unity of divinity in the Father and the Son is a unity of activity (De Fide 1.1.6-3.25). St. Hilary of Poitiers, on the other hand, states that the name “God,” when applied to the Trinity, refers to the indivisible divine nature (De Trin 7.11-13). St. Augustine affirms that every name applied to God either refers to substance or relation, and “God” is a name of the substance (De Trin 5.2-8).
It’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t collapse into either tritheism or modalism. Unless we accept St. Gregory of Nyssa’s controversial metaphysics and grammar, according to which there is only “one human,” we would either have to say that there are three gods (i.e., three instantiations of the divine nature), or that there is only one instantiation of the divine nature. It seems like the latter is what later Latin theologians want to affirm, but not without difficulty (see for example the Fourth Lateran Council). On the other hand, if “God” refers to an activity, then the Trinity can be one God without any obvious danger of modalism.
[9] Scott M. Williams, “Discovery of the Sixth Ecumenical Council’s Trinitarian Theology: Historical, Ecclesial, and Theological Implications,” Journal of Analytical Theology 10 (2022): 332-362.
[10] Along these lines, it’s interesting to note that many of the later theological conflicts and dogmatic decisions of the Church are already present in ‘seed form’ in the fourth century. The Fathers wrote about the relationship between substance and hypostasis (cf. the Fourth and Fifth Ecumenical Councils), between will and activity, on the one hand, and substance and hypostasis, on the other (cf. the Sixth Ecumenical Council), icon theology (cf. the Seventh Ecumenical Council), and the distinction between God’s substance and activities (cf. the Palamite controversy). These later disagreements were not about idle metaphysical speculation, as opposed to the concrete matters of faith, but were precisely about how we can truly access God through faith in his Son Jesus Christ.
[11] Pentecost Vespers, Doxastikon (Tone 8, attr. Leo VI).
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