Augustinian Neo-Platonism Vs. Orthodox Nicene Theology: the Trinity and the One-Many Problem in the Debate Between East and West by W

Augustinian Neo-Platonism vs. Orthodox Nicene Theology: The Trinity and the One-Many Problem in the Debate Between East and West By W. J. Whitman

“If anyone reads this work and says, ‘I understand what is being said, but it is not true,’ he is at liberty to affirm his own conviction as much as he likes and refute mine if he can. If he succeeds in doing so charitably and truthfully, and also takes the trouble to let me know (if I am still alive), then that will be the choicest plum that could fall to me from these labors of mine. If he cannot do me this service, I would be only too pleased that he should do it for anybody he can.” —St. Augustine1

Augustinian Theology The great partition between Eastern and Western Christianity really traces back to St. Augustine (354-430AD). The different conceptions of the Trinity that now characterize the difference between Eastern Orthodoxy (teaching the monarchia of the Father) and Papism/Protestantism (teaching absolute simplicity and the filioque) were not known prior to the time of St. Augustine, who was to become the chief advocate of what would now be considered the Western tradition. Augustine took the theology of Tertullian (ca. 160-220AD) and combined it with the philosophical framework of the Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus (ca 204-270AD). It is this Tertullian-Plotinus synthesis that the Orthodox Church rejects as heresy.2 Nevertheless, we must not look at Augustine as a heresiarch: for St. Photius, Fr. Michael Pomazansky, and Fr. Seraphim Rose all affirm the status of Augustine among the “blessed” Fathers of the Church. It would be inappropriate for us to question the authority of such great men on this topic. Augustine was merely trying to defend the Trinity from a philosophical perspective. The heretics that denied the Trinity were Neo-Platonists, so it was only natural for Augustine to work within that same Neo-Platonic framework when arguing against them. The

1 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 1, Chapter 1 (I:5) 2 Tertullian’s approach was flawed because he saw the Son as proceeding from the essence of God rather than from the person of the Father—but then the Son would not relate to the Father as a Son because he would be the Son of the Essence rather than the Son of the Father—, but Tertullian did not teach “absolute simplicity” or the “filioque”: these two doctrines were borrowed by Augustine from Neo-Platonism. heresy of Western “theology” only occurs when this philosophical framework is turned into a “dogma” of the faith. In his work On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine lays out the doctrine of the Trinity in a way that is perfectly compatible with Eastern theology, without mentioning absolute simplicity or the filioque.3 In De Trinitate, St. Augustine first speaks of the Trinity in entirely orthodox terms. His heretical ideas only come out later, when he attempts to philosophically defend and explain the Trinitarian doctrines. However, Augustine’s philosophical explanation of the Trinity is heretical and it is precisely this erroneous explanation that is the basis of all of Western Christian thought. Augustine taught that God’s singularity relies entirely upon His absolute simplicity. Therefore, it is impossible to distinguish between God’s essence and His attributes, qualities, and energies: for God must be altogether without distinctions if He is to be absolutely simple. To understand the notion of absolute simplicity you must equate absolute simplicity with pure oneness. Perhaps the following illustration will help: If you want to simplify something, you “break it down.” To totally and absolutely simplify something, you would have to break it down into the most singular and basic components. For example: if you need to simplify some object, you break it down into atoms. Then you can break those atoms down into quarks, which are the most basic parts. These quarks (theoretically) cannot be broken down any further. A quark is purely one—it is a single particle without composition. Therefore, absolute simplicity and singularity are synonymous. Thus, Cornelius van Til writes, “Singularity and simplicity are involved in one another.” 4 And this Augustinian understanding of things is shared by all subsequent Western theological philosophers. To understand St. Augustine, it is important to put him in the proper historical context. When Augustine was writing about the Trinity, the Arian heresy was still prevalent. The Arian apologist Eunomius had developed a rigorous philosophical argument in defense of the heresy. Eunomius followed Greek philosophy and built his defense of the Arian position around the teachings of the Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus. Plotinus, the pagan philosopher, wrote, “And this name, The One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol ‘Apollo’ (α=not; πολλων=of

3 Cf. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Ch. 5 4 Cornelius van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Ch. 16 many) with its repudiation of the multiple…. the designation, a mere aid to inquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement.”5 Eunomius adopted this Neo-Platonic notion of absolute simplicity and asserted that “the Unbegotten God is one and alone…a simple and uncompounded being.” 6 According to Eunomius, God is absolutely “simple, and uncompounded, nor is any internal thing different from him” because “he is without parts.” Therefore the expression “Unbegotten” does not refer to something distinct from the substance (essence) of God itself but God “must himself be the Unbegotten Substance.”7 Simplicity, to Eunomius, requires that God’s substance (essence) be synonymous with his unbegotten-ness. He argues that the Son is begotten and therefore he is not consubstantial with the Unbegotten: “How can reason admit us to equal a begotten substance to that which is Unbegotten?”8 With this doctrine of absolute simplicity, Eunomius was able to eliminate the Trinity. “If either person be Unbegotten, then he is not a Son; and if he be a Son, he is not Unbegotten. But that there is only one God of the universe Unbegotten…what we have said already upon this subject does sufficiently demonstrate.”9 “[God] alone is unbegotten. Now it is impossible that a being should be begotten which has its substance unbegotten,” thus the Son is not God “since the character of Son, and of a being begotten, will not admit that of an Unbegotten Substance.”10 Thus Eunomius argued against the deity of Christ. When addressing this Eunomian argument, Augustine makes a fatal mistake. He grants the heretics their premise—i.e. the presupposition of Neo-Platonic absolute simplicity. Augustine starts with this false premise (absolute simplicity) and then attempts to work up to the true doctrine of God. This is not valid. You cannot allow the “natural man” his false presuppositions and then built upon those presuppositions in order to establish a true and accurate worldview. You must first address the presuppositions themselves. What Augustine should have done is this: he should have pointed out that the doctrine of absolute simplicity lacks any biblical basis and is

5 Plotinus, The Enneads 5.6 6 Eunomius, The First Apology 7 Eunomius, The First Apology 8 Eunomius, The First Apology 9 Eunomius, The First Apology 10 Eunomius, The First Apology a heathen philosophical concept that comes straight out of Plotinus, thus calling the very premise of the Arian argument into question. But this, unfortunately, is not what Augustine did. Instead, St. Augustine concedes the validity of Eunomius’ Neo-Platonic framework, asserting that in God Himself “to be” and “to be wise” cannot “be understood as two different things” because that would be to affirm that God is “not supremely and perfectly simple.”11 Augustine writes: “But now it is not one thing that makes him great and another that makes him God; what makes him great is what makes him God, because for him it is not one thing to be great and another to be God; so it will follow, presumably, that the Father is not God taken singly, but only with and taken together with the godhead he has begotten; and so the Son will be the godhead of the Father just as he is the wisdom and power of the Father, and just as he is the Word and image of the Father. And furthermore, because it is not one thing for him to be and another for him to be God, it follows that the Son will also be the being of the Father, just as he is his Word and his image. This means that apart from being Father, the Father is nothing but what the Son is for him. It is clear, of course, that he is only called Father because he has a Son, since he is called Father not with reference to himself but with reference to the Son. But now we are forced to say in addition that it is only because he has begotten his own being or ‘is-ness’ that he is what he is with reference to himself. Just as he is only great with the greatness he has begotten, because for him it is not one thing to be and another to be great. Are we not then forced to say he is the Father of his own being just as he is the Father of his own greatness, just as he is the Father of his own power and wisdom?

11St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 7, Chapter 1 (VII:2) For without doubt his greatness is the same as his power, and his being is the same as his greatness.”12 In other words, Augustine argues that because the Bible says that “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God,” it follows that Christ is God because God’s wisdom is synonymous with his being. (Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:24) A little later in the same book, he continues: “So Father and Son are together one wisdom because they are one being, and one by one they are wisdom from wisdom as they are being from being. And therefore it does not follow that because the Father is not the Son nor the Son the Father, or one is unbegotten, the other begotten, that therefore they are not one being; for these names only declare their relationships. But both together are one wisdom and one being, there where to be is the same as to be wise; they are not however both Word or Son, because it is not the same here to be as to be Word or Son, since as we have quite sufficiently shown, these are terms of relationship.”13 Eunomius, the heretic, asserted that the Son “was begotten before all things, by the will of God and the Father” and “that his will is his operation, and not that his Substance is such; and that the Only-Begotten subsisted by the will of the Father” and, therefore, that it is “necessary that the Son preserves this likeness, not as to Substance, but as to operation.”14 In other words, Eunomius denied the deity of Christ because he believed that the Son is born from God’s energies (operation) voluntarily, rather than from His essence necessarily. St. Augustine counters

12 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 7, Chapter 1 (VII:1); Cf. Louis of Granada (1504-1588), The Sinners Guide, Ch. 1: “Creatures are composed of various substances, while He is a pure and simple Being; were He composed of diverse substances it would presuppose a being above and before Him to ordain the composition of these substances, which is altogether impossible…. Therefore Aristotle calls Him a pure act—that is, Supreme Perfection, which admits of no increase…. We find in all creatures diversities which distinguish them one from another, but the purity of God’s Essence admits of no distinction; so that His Being is His Essence, His Essence is His Power, His Power is His Will, His Will is His Understanding, His Understanding is His Being, His Being is His Wisdom, His Wisdom is His Justice, His Justice is His Mercy.” 13 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 7, Chapter 1 (VII:3) 14 Eunomius, The First Apology this argument by appealing to the notion of absolute simplicity. He asserts that God is absolutely simple, therefore His will is identical to His essence (substance). This, he concluded, means that the Son must necessarily be begotten of the essence of God. Hence, the Son is God. Augustine writes: “All this goes to show how ridiculous the logic of Eunomius is, the father of the Eunomian heretics. He was unable to understand and unwilling to believe that the only-begotten Word of God through whom all things were made is the Son of God by nature, that is, he is begotten of the substance of the Father; and so he said that he is not the Son of the nature or substance or being of God but the Son of his will. He wished of course to assert that the will by which God begot the Son is something accidental to him, on the grounds apparently that we sometimes will something that we were not willing before—as though this were not proof of the changeableness of our nature, a thing we could not possibly believe to be the case in God. The only reason it is written Many are the thoughts in the heart of a man, but the counsel of the Lord abides forever (Prv. 19:21) is to make us understand (or at least believe) that just as God is eternal so is his counsel eternal, and therefore unchangeable just as he himself is…. To avoid saying that the only-begotten Word is the Son of the Father’s counsel or will, some have said that this Word simply is the counsel or will of the Father. But I consider it better to call him counsel from counsel and will from will, just as he is substance from substance, wisdom from wisdom.”15 On the surface, this may seem to be a decent argument against the Eunomian position (and it is a very clever argument!). But by affirming the Eunomian premise—the false premise of absolute simplicity—Augustinian “theology” has made itself ever vulnerable to heretical conclusions. Every heresy in the early Church had one thing in common: they were all based on

15 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 15, Chapter 5 (XV:38) Neo-Platonism. In fact, one could argue that Neo-Platonism itself is the essence of all heresy. Augustine unwittingly fell into the snare of Plotinus’ philosophy and all of Western Christendom followed suit. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) read the Aristotelian Islamic philosophers and came to base his understanding of absolute simplicity on the philosophy of Aristotle rather than on Plotinus.16 But Aristotle was as much of a Platonist as was Plotinus.17 Aquinas is still a Platonist and he affirms the doctrine of absolute simplicity. He asserts, “It should be said that God must be held to be simple in every way…. Therefore, since it is impossible that God be composed, he must be completely simple.”18 And like Augustine, Aquinas confounds God’s being and His essence, saying, “It should be said that in God existence is not other than his substance.”19 In Aristotelian philosophy, a descriptive characteristic of a thing is called an “accident” and Aquinas holds that accidents cannot be predicated of God. When someone uses accidental terminology to describe God as wise, great, or holy, Aquinas maintains that these terms are used not as accidental descriptions but as synonyms for God. He asserts that “when categories other than relation are used in divine predication, they all change into substance, much as ‘just’, although it seems to be a quality, signifies substance, and similarly ‘great’ and others like them.”20 “In God there is no difference between the haver and the had, or of participant and participated; indeed he is both his nature and his existence, and therefore nothing alien or accidental can be in him.”21 Thomas Aquinas writes:

16 Aristotle held that there has to be some “Unmoved Mover” that has set all other things in motion. An object doesn’t move until something sets it in motion, so there must be some “first principle” that started the continuum of motion in the universe. Aristotle write, “It is clear then from what has been said that there is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things. It has been shown also that this substance cannot have any magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible…”(Metaphysics, Book 12, Chapter 7) Aquinas’ reliance on Aristotle rather than Plotinus is actually retrogressive, in my opinion. Plotinus’ system was actually an improvement upon Aristotle’s system. Augustine was a better philosopher than Aquinas because at least he followed a more developed and consistent philosophy (Plotinianism), whereas Aquinas reverted back to a less developed philosophy (Aristotelianism). Thomism is a step backwards within Platonist thought. 17 Cf. Cornelius van Til, in a lecture on Philosophy and Apologetics: “[Aristotle] always remained faithful to the principles of Plato. In other words, what Aristotle taught isn’t a change of position in any basic sense.” 18 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 1, Response 19 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 2, Response 20 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 5, On The Contrary 21 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 4, Response “It should be said that the relations which are said temporally of God are not really in him but only according to understanding. There is a real relation when one thing really depends upon another, whether absolutely or in a certain respect…. It should be said that the plurality of persons introduces no composition in God. For the persons can be considered in two ways: first, as compared to essence with which they are really the same, and thus no composition results; second, as they are compared to one another, and then they are compared as distinct, not as made one. So no composition comes from this side either, since every composition is a union.”22 As you can see, Aquinas was an Augustinian. Fr. John Romanides summarizes Augustine’s teaching thus: “For him, each person of the Holy Trinity is identified with God’s essence, i.e. they are the same.”23 Following Augustine, Thomas Aquinas does not merely say that the persons in the Trinity are all “of one essence” (consubstantial) but that they are each identical to the essence. Aquinas speaks of the “essence with which [the persons] are really the same.” Thus Aquinas, following Augustine, confuses the distinction between the essence and the persons within the Godhead. He holds that the persons (hypostaseis) are identical to the essence (ousia). But if that were the case, then the inverse would also be true: the essence would be identical to the persons. Thus the essence of the Father and the person of the Father become identical. But since the essence of the Father is shared by the Son, the Son is thereby rendered both essentially and personally identical to the Father! Therefore, Aquinas concludes: “It should be said that property and essence in the divine do not differ really but in understanding alone, for paternity itself is the divine essence.”24 There it is: paternity (fatherhood) is the very essence of God, according to Aquinas. Allow me to call your attention back to Eunomius the heretic. He identified the essence of God with the Father and then concluded that the Son (the begotten) is not God because he is not the Father (the Unbegotten). Fr. John Zizioulas, a prominent Eastern Orthodox philosopher, rightly asserts that we must avoid “any identification of the essence of

22 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 1, Ad 9-10 23 Fr. John Romanides, An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics, Part 2, Ch. 6 24 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 1, Ad 4 God with the Father, that being the identification that the Eunomians tried to make so that they could then maintain that since the Son is not the Father, He lies outside the essence of the Father and so is not ‘consubstantial with the Father.’”25 If the identification of the essence of God with the Father (per Eunomius and Aquinas) is accurate, then the only way that the Son can in fact be God is if He is the Father. So, Western theology implies that in order for the Father and the Son to be truly consubstantial with one another, fatherhood must be common to both the Father and the Son. This means that the Son is the Father—that they are not really two separate persons at all! The Western Trinitarian formula is fundamentally anti-Trinitarian. Upon Augustinian presuppositions, one must admit that either the Sabellians were correct (i.e. there is no Trinity because the Father is the Son) or the Eunomians were correct (i.e. there is no Trinity because the Son is not the Father); and the Western “theologians” have sided with Sabellius, whom they themselves regard as a heretic. While Augustine and Aquinas were using Trinitarian terminology, they were actually teaching Unitarianism by implication. (Whether or not they were aware that this is what they were teaching is quite another matter.) Thomas Aquinas follows St. Augustine in identifying God’s will and His activity (operation/energies) with His essence: “It should be said that God’s activities can be considered either on the part of the doer or of the done. If on the part of the doer, there is only one activity in God, which is his essence, for he does not do things by an action that would intervene between God and his willing, which is his very existence. But considered on the side of what is done, there are indeed different activities, since through his understanding there are diverse effects of the divine activity. But this does not introduce any composition in him.”26 Western Christianity is generally Unitarian: the Western Trinitarian formula is merely modalistic—it is crypto-Sabellianism. The Western “theologians” explicitly reject the distinction between the essence and the energies of God and they implicitly (sometimes explicitly) deny the distinction between the essence and the persons. Either distinction would undermine their

25 Fr. John Zizioulas, The One and The Many, Part One, The Being of God and the Being of Man, § 3 26 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7: “On the Simplicity of God,” Article 1, Ad 7 Plotinian dogma of absolute simplicity. There doesn’t appear to be any difference between the mainstream Protestant and Roman Catholic position and that of the Oneness Pentecostals and other Unitarian sects as far as the substance of the doctrine of God is concerned. The laity in Western Christendom may be Trinitarian but the philosophers, “theologians,” and educated clergy of the Western denominations have all been (at least implicitly) Unitarians. And if the Western theologians are anything but Unitarians, then they are utter irrationalists: for then they must be asserting that God is an utter contradiction by nature. Yet if that is the case, then the God that they are positing cannot possibly exist. This erroneous Trinitarian formula—which makes the absolute simplicity of God the basis of the unity within the Godhead—relies on the assumption that everything in God is identical to His essence. Louis of Granada (1504-1588) writes, “God’s Essence admits of no distinction; so that His Being is His Essence, His Essence is His Power, His Power is His Will, His Will is His Understanding,” etc.27 This is why the Western “theologians” have rejected the distinction between God’s essence and His energies. How, then, can they maintain a distinction between God’s essence and the persons in the Trinity? If they are consistent, they cannot. If a distinction between God’s essence and His attributes would undermine His absolute simplicity, then any distinction between His essence and the persons would do the same. It was only natural that more self-conscious theological philosophers in the West would totally confound the persons and the essence in God: thus Cornelius van Til would assert that God is “simultaneously one person and three persons.”28 Does it not follow from the assertion that the essence is identical to the Father and that the Father is a person, that the essence itself is also a person? If there can be no differentiation between His attributes and His essence, then there can be no difference between His essence and the persons: the essential is totally identified with the personal and the personal totally confounded with the essential. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

27 Louis of Granada, The Sinners Guide, Ch. 1 28 Cf. Cornelius van Til: “We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person. We have noted that each attribute is coextensive with the being of God…. In a similar manner we have noted how theologians insist that each of the persons of the Godhead is coterminous with the being of the Godhead…. God is not an essence that has personality; he is absolute personality. Yet, within the being of the one person we are permitted and compelled by Scripture to make the distinction between a specific or generic type of being and three personal subsistences.”(An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Ch. 17) “The Latin tradition of the Creed confesses that the Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque).’ The Council of Florence in 1438 explains: ‘The Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son; He has his nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration…”29 Considering the general Augustinian framework, it is not very difficult to understand why the Western Christian philosophers were so quick to affirm that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (ex Patri Filioque procedit) as from a single principle. Western theologians can “derive the Son from no other source but from the substance of the Father.”30 According to Western theology, the essence of God is the Father,31 and the Son proceeds from the essence of God as the “essence of essence,”32 so that “the Son is also the essence of the Father.”33 And “the Father and the Son together are one essence.”34 It is only natural to assume that the Spirit would derive His deity from the same source as the Son derives His; and Western theology maintains that the Son derived His deity from the essence of the Father (not from the person of the Father).35 Since the Spirit must proceed from that essence that is shared by the Father and the Son, he must proceed from both as from a single principle. Thus Augustine concluded: “For if the Son has of the Father whatever He has, then certainly He has of the Father, that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from Him.” 36 And the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the same: “And, since the Father has through generation given to the only- begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also

29 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, ¶246 30 Tertullian, Against Praxeas, Ch. 4 31 Cf. “Fatherhood itself is the divine essence.”(Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Question 7, Article 1, Response to 4th Objection) 32 Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 7, Ch. 2 (VII:3) 33 Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 7, Ch. 1 (VII:1) 34 Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 7, Ch. 2 (VII:3) 35 This principle of deriving the Trinity from the essence of the Father rather than His person traces back to Tertullian (ca. 155-220), who was really the first Western “theologian”. Cornelius van Til cites Herman Bavinck as stating that Tertullian was “the first who had tried to derive the Trinity of persons, not from the person of the Father, but from the essence of God.”(Cf. Cornelius van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Ch. 17) 36 Augustine, On the Trinity, Book 15, Ch. 26 (§47) eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.”37 My criticism of the Augustinian position at this point would be that it virtually presupposes a temporal relation between the persons within the ontological Trinity, in spite of the fact that the Trinity exists beyond time and all relations in it must, therefore, be eternal relations. John Calvin (ca. 1509-1564) notes that, in spite of the fact that all three persons are co- eternal, we must maintain “still the distinction of order…the Father being mentioned first, next the Son from him, and then the Spirit from both…. For this reason, the Son is said to be of the Father only; the Spirit of both the Father and the Son.”38 Working within this Augustinian framework, one must admit that if the Son is begotten of the Father alone and proceeds from Him alone as His Word, then there is either a temporal relation within the Trinity or else the Holy Spirit is not God. The two possibilities are (1) that the Father existed eternally and the Son proceeded from Him at one point, then the Spirit subsequently proceeded from both the Father and the Son as from a single principle at a latter point, or (2) that the Holy Spirit is not God because there is something common to the Father and the Son that is not common to him, so that he does not thereby share in the common essence.39 I mean that the Father and Son share their being a source of ontological procession, while the Holy Spirit is not the source of any such procession. This is the same critique that is given by Fr. John Romanides: “Consequently, if the Father’s and the Son’s essence is the cause of the existence of the Holy Spirit, then, the Holy Spirit is a creature. Again, he is a creature, if the cause of the Spirit’s existence, or his procession, is a common energy of the Father and the Son, of which the Spirit is lacking. This is the case because, as Orthodox and Pneumatomachians argue, the lack of even one energy common to the Father and to the Son from the Spirit would demonstrate the created nature of the Spirit.”40

37 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, ¶246 38 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.13.18 39 This is so because the theologians assert that whatever is common to the several persons is related to the essence and whatever is not common to the several is not related to the essence but to the persons. 40 Fr. John Romanides, An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics, Part 2, Ch. 7 The only way out, if one will not reject the Augustinian interpretation of the filioque, is to affirm at the same time a spirituque. To avoid having to affirm that the Holy Spirit is not God, the Augustinians may perhaps add to their formula that the Son proceeds from the Father and the Spirit. But since the Son’s procession is in the form of being begotten, that would clearly imply that the Spirit is the Father of the Son, thereby confusing the Father and the Spirit. This is crypto- Sabellianism. If the Augustinian does not affirm that the Son proceeds both from the Father and the Spirit, then he suggests that there was a time when the Spirit was not: for how can the Son proceed from the essence without proceeding from the Spirit, unless the Spirit is either not God or was not in existence at the time of the procession? Yet if the Spirit were not in existence at any point, it follows that he is not God. But no credible person has ever taught that the Son proceeds from the Spirit, so the filioque is to the Spirit what Arianism is to the Son. It is a form of Subordinationism—Pneumatological Arianism. And even the best of Western “theologians” have fallen into this heresy. Additionally, since the Spirit proceeds from the essence of God (rather than from the person of the Father) according to Augustinian theology, and the Holy Spirit is of one essence with the Father and the Son, the Augustinian must affirm also that the Spirit in fact proceeds from Himself; for He shares the essence from which He proceeds. Moreover, the Augustinian tradition presents the Holy Spirit as the personification of the impersonal attributes of God or as the personification of the union of the Father and the Son. The Spirit is merely something impersonal that has quite literally taken on a persona of its own. Augustine writes: “Therefore, since the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and certainly God is holy, and God is a spirit, the Trinity can be called also the Holy Spirit. But yet that Holy Spirit, who is not the Trinity, but is understood as in the Trinity, is spoken of in His proper name of the Holy Spirit relatively, since He is referred both to the Father and to the Son, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. Therefore the Holy Spirit is a certain unutterable communion of the Father and the Son; and on that account, perhaps, He is so called, because the same name is suitable to both the Father and the Son. For He Himself is called specially that which they are called in common; because both the Father is a spirit and the Son a spirit, both the Father is holy and the Son holy. In order, therefore, that the communion of both may be signified from a name which is suitable to both, the Holy Spirit is called the gift of both.”41 Again, Augustine writes: “Some, however, have gone so far as to believe that the communion of the Father and the Son, and (so to speak) their Godhead (deitatem), which the Greeks designate θεότης, is the Holy Spirit; so that, inasmuch as the Father is God and the Son God, the Godhead itself, in which they are united with each other,—to wit, the former by begetting the Son, and the latter by cleaving to the Father, should [thereby] be constituted equal with Him by whom He is begotten. This Godhead, then, which they wish to be understood likewise as the love and charity subsisting between these two [Persons], the one toward the other, they affirm to have received the name of the Holy Spirit.”42 Augustine observes that the passage that says “God is love” refers to God’s essence, but then he states that “in that simple and highest nature, substance should not be one thing and love another, but the substance itself should be love, and love itself should be substance, whether in the Father, or in the Son, or in the Holy Spirit; and yet that the Holy Spirit should be specially called Love.”43 “So the Holy Spirit is something common to Father and Son, whatever it is, or is their very commonness or communion, consubstantial and coeternal. Call this friendship, if it helps, but a better word for it is love.”44 The substance or essence of God is love, and that love is shared by the Father and the Son; this very same essence of love has taken on a persona of its own and become the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the essence of the Father and Son personified. Thus John Calvin referred to the Holy Spirit as “a hypostasis of the whole essence.”45

41 Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 5, Chapter 11 (V:12) 42 Augustine, A Treatise on Faith and the Creed, Ch. 9 (§ 19) 43 Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 13, Chapter 17 (XIII:29) 44 Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 6, Chapter 1 (VI:7) 45 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.13.20: “For nothing prevents us from holding that [the Holy Spirit] is the entire spiritual essence of God, in which are comprehended Father, Son, and Spirit. This is plain from [Footnote continued on next page.] This erroneous Trinitarian formula is taught by both Roman Catholics and Protestants. Even C. S. Lewis, whom most Orthodox Christians have much respect for, taught this error, saying: “…God is not a static thing—not even a person—but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the ‘spirit’ of that family, or club, or trade union…. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.”46 The Holy Spirit is, in the Augustinian view, merely a literal personification of the abstract relation of the Father to the Son. It now makes perfect sense how so many Westerners could be so easily deceived into believing that the Holy Spirit is itself an impersonal entity; because even when Western “theologians” present the Spirit as a person, they present Him as the personification of something that is abstract and impersonal. Let us suppose, for arguments sake, that their view is correct. Now if relations naturally become persons within the Godhead, then wouldn’t the relation of the Father to the Spirit take on a persona as well? and the relation of the Spirit to the Son take on a persona? and then the new relations between the new persons take on personae as well ad infinitum? This is the argument that St. Photius advanced so long ago. St. Photius, arguing against the Augustinians, writes:

Scripture. For as God is there called a Spirit, so the Holy Spirit also, insofar as he is a hypostasis of the whole essence, is said to be both of God and from God.” Note that if Calvin had merely made this assertion in the context of the perichoresis—that each person is a person of the whole essence because they are all fully God—, then there would be no heresy involved. The problem is that the assertion is made in the context of the Holy Spirit and the filioque alone, so that He is made out to be a “person of the essence” in a sense that differs from that sense which might also be applied to the Father and the Son. 46 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 4, Ch. 4 “Furthermore, if the Son is begotten from the Father, and the Spirit (according to this innovation) proceeds from the Father and the Son, then likewise another hypostasis should proceed from the Spirit, and so we should have not three but four hypostases! And if the fourth procession is possible, then another procession is possible from that, and so on to an infinite number of processions and hypostases, until at last this doctrine is transformed into a Greek polytheism!”47 If you contend that the Father is the essence of God and that the Son is the essence of God, then it follows that the Father is the Son: for two persons that are the same essence are really a single person. Two persons can be consubstantial, sharing one essence, without being confounded into a single person, but they cannot be the one essence without being confounded. It seems, then, that the Father and the Son are together only one single person. Moreover, the Augustinian definition of the Holy Spirit as a literal personification of the union of the Father and the Son leads inevitably to the conclusion that the Spirit is also personally identical to the Father and the Son; for what is the personification of a single person other than that same person? Thus, there is absolutely no differentiation between persons in the Trinity if the Augustinian framework is consistently followed. The Trinity is reduced to nothing more than a crypto-Sabellian Monad!

Nicene Theology (i.e. Orthodox Theology) The Orthodox maintain that the person of the Father is the “sole source” (monarche) of the Godhead. This monarchia of the Father serves as the basis of the unity of the Trinity for Eastern theology. The Son is begotten of the Father alone, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and the Father alone is the eternal source of the Godhead. Thus, the diversity of persons originates in the unity of the Father: for as St. John of Damascus notes, “It is a natural necessity that duality should originate in unity.”48 Since the Spirit and the Son originate in the Father, proceed from Him, and derive their being from Him, they share His nature—each person

47 St. Photius, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, 37, emphasis mine 48 St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 1, Ch. 5 shares in the common essence. The monarchia of the Father is therefore the basis of both the unity and the diversity in God: the persons are diverse insofar as the relations differ—the Son alone is begotten of the Father and the Spirit alone proceeds from the Father—, yet there is an ultimate unity insofar as they share a single essence of the Godhead and thus are together only one God. There is an equal ultimacy of the one and the many within the ontological Trinity. Vladimir Lossky, the great Orthodox philosopher, asserts: “If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one single principle, essential unity takes precedence over personal diversity.”49 So Lossky’s criticism of traditional Western theology is that it does not maintain the equal ultimacy of the one and the many in the Trinity. This Eastern Trinitarian formula has the advantage of being most consistent with Nicaea and Scripture. The Creed starts with the Father Almighty as the one God and moves forward from there. The Nicene Creed states: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty…” Notice that the Father alone is addressed as the “one God.” Only after establishing the unity of God through the Father does the Creed move on to the Son: ‘…and [we believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, very God of very God.’ The Son is “begotten, not made, being of one essence with the Father.” He has His origin in the Father and shares a common essence with Him. Likewise the Spirit is described as ‘proceeding from the Father’ and having His origin in Him. The Spirit too is God by virtue of His having His origin in the “one God the Father.” Eastern Orthodox Trinitarianism is simply strict adherence to the Nicene Creed. And this Orthodox view is also reinforced by Scripture, which takes the same approach.50 Vladimir Lossky, espousing the Eastern doctrine of the Trinity, writes: “…here we are not concerned with number as signifying quantity: absolute diversities cannot be made the subjects of sums of addition; they have not even opposition in common. If, as we have said, a personal God cannot be a monad—if he must be more than a single person—neither can he be a dyad. The dyad is always an opposition of two terms, and, in that sense, it cannot signify an absolute diversity. When we say that God is Trinity, we are

49 Vladimir Lossky, The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Theology (in Daniel B. Clendenin’s Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, Ch. 10) 50 Cf. 2 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Timothy 2:5 emerging from the series of countable or calculable numbers.51 The procession of the Holy Spirit is an infinite passage beyond the dyad, which consecrates the absolute (as opposed to relative) diversity of the persons…. If God is a monad equal to a triad, there is no place in him for a dyad…. We say ‘the simple Trinity,’ and this antinomic expression, characteristic of Orthodox hymnography, 52 points out a simplicity which the absolute diversity of the three persons can in no way relativize.”53 Elsewhere, Lossky writes: “The term of ‘monarchy’ for the Father is current in the great theologians of the fourth century. It means that the very source of divinity is personal. The Father is divinity, but precisely because He is the Father, He confers it in its fullness on the two other persons. The latter take their origin from the Father, μόνη ἀρχή, single principle, whence the term ‘monarchy,’ the ‘divinity- source,’ as Dionysius the Areopagite says of the Father. It is from this indeed that springs—in this that is rooted—the identical, unshared, but differently communicated divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The notion of monarchy therefore denotes in a single word the unity and the difference in God, starting from a personal principle.”54 If there is an absolute simplicity of the essence of God, then there is also an absolute diversity of persons. This is what the Western model fails to consistently set forth: the absolute diversity in contrast to the absolute simplicity. The essence of God is absolutely simple and the persons are absolutely diverse, and the principle of both the absolute diversity and the absolute

51 Basil appears to express this idea well: “For we do not count by way of addition, gradually making increase from unity to plurality, saying ‘one, two, three’ or ‘first, second, third.’ ‘I am the first and I am the last,’ says God (Isa. 44:6). And we have never, even unto our own days, heard of a second God. For in worshipping ‘God of God’ we both confess the distinction of persons and abide by the monarchy” (De Spiritu Sancto 8 [PG 32.149B]). 52 Andrew of Crete Great Canon of Repentance, odes 3, 6, 7 53 Vladimir Lossky, The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Theology (in Daniel B. Clendenin’s Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, Ch. 10) 54 Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, Ch. 1, § 5 simplicity is the person of the Father alone. The divine essence of the Father is given to the Son as the Son is begotten of the Father alone. The same essence is given to the Spirit as He proceeds from the Father alone (almost as if the Spirit were a clone produced by budding off from the Father). This shared essence makes the diverse persons one God, while the diverse relations—the Spirit proceeding, the Son being begotten, and the Father alone being the source of the Godhead—guarantees the absolute diversity of the persons. There is an equal ultimacy of the one and the many, but the West upheld the ultimacy of the one to the neglect of the many. Western theology is thereby rendered epistemologically self-refuting on its own principles. (This point may be difficult to grasp for those who are not familiar with philosophy.) Metropolitan John Zizioulas writes: “The relation between unity and diversity is linked with fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, particularly with Trinitarian theology, Christology, and Pneumatology. Implicit in these doctrines is the philosophical issue of unity and otherness, or the ‘one’ and the ‘many,’ which preoccupies the human mind at least since the time of Plato. Does unity precede otherness? Is unity more important than otherness? Do the ‘many’ exist for the sake of the ‘one,’ as Plato would insist in his Laws? These questions are basic to any discussion of the problem of unity and diversity. The Church and Christian theology cannot answer such philosophical questions in any other way except with the help of the basic doctrines of faith on which our very identity as Christians depends. Let us consider some of these doctrines…. “Trinitarian theology involves in its basic structure the problem of the relation between unity and diversity in the form of the ontological relation between the one and the many. The faith in ‘one’ God who is at the same time ‘three,’ i.e. ‘many,’ implies that unity and diversity coincide in God’s very being. The question whether unity precedes diversity logically or ontologically in God is of crucial importance. Medieval [Western Augustinian] theology succumbed to the logic of essentialism or substantialism, which it inherited from Greek thought, and gave priority in dogmatics to the chapter ‘De Deo uno,’ which received precedence over that of ‘De Deo Trino.” God, logically speaking, is first ‘one’ and then ‘many.’ This theological monism is the equivalent to the philosophical monism that characterized ancient Greek thought from the Pre-Socratics to Neoplatonism. Plato wrestled with this problem in his Parmenides but did not succeed in giving the ‘many’ the same ontological priority that he attached to the ‘one.’ This same thing happened with Medieval scholastic theology with regard to God: unity in God comes first; the Trinity follows. The difficulties that Western theology has faced ever since in accommodating the doctrine of the Trinity in common logic are well-known. “Now, the position of medieval theology with regard to the priority of the one God in relation to the Triune God was accompanied by another ontological order, namely that of the priority of substance [or essence] over personhood. Ever since St. Augustine, the One God was identified with divine substance (divinitas), and Medieval theology elaborated this by understanding the three Persons of God as ‘substances’ within the one substance. Given that personhood stands for otherness and plurality in God’s being, the identification of the One God with divine substance and the assignment of logical priority to it has meant that otherness and freedom—two basic ingredients of personhood—must finally succumb to the necessity of substance…. “For the Greek [Orthodox] patristic tradition, the Trinity is as primary ontologically as the unity of God. The ‘one’ and the ‘many’ coincide fully in God. Substance is a relational notion, according to St. Athanasius and the entire Greek patristic thought: without the Son, the Father’s substance is ‘depleted,’ argues the bishop of Alexandria against the Arians. Besides, the One God is for the Greek Fathers the Person of the Father, and this means that otherness—and by extension diversity—is built into the very notion of oneness or unity. God is not first one and then three, but simultaneously one and three. The general is inconceivable without the particular.”55 Within the Trinity, there is something of a genuine filioque: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father though the Son, but not from both as from a single principle. The Fathers all affirm this, yet they speak of the procession as from the Father alone and through the Son in order to demonstrate that the procession differs in relation to each person. The deity of the Spirit is derived from the eternal source of the Father alone and not from the Son. Therefore, St. Gregory Nazianzen (ca. 329-390) writes: “…all that the Father has belongs likewise to the Son, except Causality; and all that is the Son’s belongs also to the Spirit, except His Sonship…”56 St. John of Damascus (ca. 676-749AD) writes: “And the Holy Spirit is the power of the Father revealing the hidden mysteries of His Divinity, proceeding from the Father through the Son in a manner known to Himself, but different from that of generation…. All the terms, then, that are appropriate to the Father, as cause, source, begetter, are to be ascribed to the Father alone…. And we speak also of the Spirit of the Son, not as though proceeding from Him, but as proceeding through Him from the Father. For the Father alone is cause.”57 The Orthodox notion of the filioque can be understood by the following analogy. There is a spigot or faucet (the Father) from which water (the Spirit) flows and a hose (the Son) through which the water flows. The water has its origin from the faucet alone as from a single principle, but can also be spoken of as coming from both the faucet and the hose. Likewise, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son—as from the Father alone and through the Son—but not as

55 John D. Zizioulas, The One and the Many, Part III, “Uniformity, Diversity, and the Unity of the Church”, brackets mine 56 St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 34:10 57 St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 1, Ch. 12 from both as from a single principle. In essence, this Orthodox understanding is economical rather than ontological. St. John of Damascus gives the following analogy: “We have an analogy in Adam, who was not begotten (for God Himself molded him), and Seth, who was begotten (for he is Adam’s son), and Eve, who proceeds out of Adam’s rib (for she was not begotten).”58 Each of the persons of the Trinity dwells within each of the others. By virtue of the shared essence, each person penetrates into the depths of the other persons and dwells within them. This is the Patristic doctrine of the perichoresis.59 Collectively, the Trinity has all the fullness of the Godhead: individually, each person contains all the fullness of the Godhead. This is why St. Paul was able to speak of Christ, saying, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”(Colossians 2:9) Likewise, Christ says: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Then how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? I am not myself the source of the words I speak to you: for it is the Father who dwells in me doing His own work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father in me.”(John 14:9-11) This mutual indwelling or perichoresis is why the Holy Spirit is

58 St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 1, Ch. 8 59 Cf. St. Maximus the Confessor: “There is one God because one Godhead, one, without beginning, simple and supersubstantial, without parts and undivided, identically monad and triad; entirely monad and entirely triad; wholly monad as to substance, and wholly triad as to hypostases. For the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the Godhead, and the Godhead is in Father and Son and Holy Spirit. The whole is in the whole Father and the whole Father is in the whole of it; the whole is in the Son and the whole Son is in the whole of it. And the whole is in the Holy Spirit and the whole Holy Spirit is in the whole of it. The whole is the Father and in the whole Father; and the whole Father is in the whole of it. And the whole is the whole Son and the whole is in the whole Son and the whole Son is the whole of it. And the whole is the Holy Spirit and in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the whole of it and the whole Holy Spirit is in the whole of it. For neither is the Godhead partly in the Father nor is the Father partly God; nor is the Godhead partly in the Son nor the Son partly God; nor is the Godhead partly in the Holy Spirit nor the Holy Spirit partly God. For neither is the Godhead divisible nor are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit imperfectly God. Rather the whole and complete Godhead is entirely in the entire Father and wholly complete it is entirety in the entire Son; and wholly complete it is entirely in the entire Holy Spirit. For the whole Father is entirely in the whole Son and Holy Spirit, and the whole Son is entirely in the whole Father and Holy Spirit; and the whole Holy Spirit is entirely in the whole Father and Son. This is why there is only one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For there is one and the same essence, power, and act of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and no one of them can exist or be conceived without the others.”(Chapters on Knowledge, 2:1) referred to as the Spirit of the Son; because although He proceeds from the Father alone, He belongs to the Son insofar as the Father is in the Son.

Epistemology (The Knowledge of God and the Knowledge of Man) The Creator necessarily existed prior to creation. But having existed prior to creation, there was nothing beside Himself which the Creator could compare Himself to and contrast Himself against.60 But without a compare-and-contrast analysis, knowledge simply cannot exist: this is what is referred to as the problem of the one and the many in philosophy. Fr. John Romanides gives the following summary: “The known object is describable. We know its description and are able to describe it. But what enables us to describe it? Its resemblance to another object that we already know. A similarity exists between the object we want to describe and something else. “Another aspect of knowledge is difference. Similarity and difference form the basis of human created knowledge. When similarity and difference are present, an object can be described. Similarity and difference make an object susceptible to description and classification according to genus, species, et cetera. These categories of similarity and difference are the foundations of human knowledge.”61 But if one maintains that the foundation of human knowledge is the categories of similarity and difference, then one must also maintain that all such categories have the ontological Trinity as their basis. Otherwise human knowledge is not contingent upon God; to hold to such a position is absolute heresy. All created categories of similarity and difference have the eternal corresponding categories in the Trinity as their ultimate basis. According to St. Basil

60 Cf. Vladimir Lossky: “The living God must be evoked beyond the opposition of being and non-being, beyond all concepts, including, of course, that of becoming. He cannot be opposed to anything. He knows no nothingness which would oppose Him.”(Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, Prologue) & St. Maximus the Confessor: “We maintain, however, that the divine substance alone has no contrary because it is eternal and infinite and bestows eternity on the other substances; furthermore that nonbeing is the contrary of the substance of [created] beings and that their eternal being or nonbeing lies in the power of the one who properly is Being…”(Four Centuries on Love 3:28) 61 Fr. John Romanides, Patristic Theology, Ch. 35 of Caesarea, “The distinction between ousia and hypostasis is the same as the distinction between the general and the particular.” 62 The clear implication is that the epistemological categories of the one and the many—i.e. similarity and difference—are eternally present in the Godhead. God is eternally self-conscious, knowing Himself via His eternal general and particular categories. Fr. Michael Pomazansky observes: “Reason tells us that God is a self-existing Being, since nothing can be the cause or the condition of the existence of God.”63 Likewise, he notes: “The knowledge of God is vision and immediate understanding of everything, both that which exists and that which is possible, the present, the past and the future,” and God is “self-sufficing to Himself.”64 This means that God is also eternally self-conscious. So Pomazansky raises the question, “How did the life of God proceed before the creation of the world?” The answer given is that He contemplated His own being within the ontological Trinity: “It contemplated the beloved radiance of His own goodness, the equal and equally perfect splendor of the Triply- shining Divinity known only to the Divinity and to whomever God reveals it.”65 The knowledge of God is analytical: He knows Himself eternally through an eternal analysis of His own being— there is an eternal analysis of the epistemological categories of the one and the many within God. Nevertheless, since God is eternal, we cannot think of this analysis as if it were temporal. Pomazansky is quick to stress that God is eternal: “The existence of God is outside time, for time is only a form of limited being, changeable being.”66 In other words, God cannot be said to have acquired knowledge through an analysis; rather He eternally knows through an eternal analysis. There was never a point when He did not know nor was there ever a point when He was not analyzing—the analysis and the “attaining” of knowledge are eternally simultaneous. Thus, St. Gregory Palamas writes, “How could one conceive of a beginning of God’s self-contemplation, and was there ever a moment when God began to be moved toward contemplation of Himself?

62 St. Basil of Caesarea, Letter 236: To Amphilochius 6 63 Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part 1, Ch. 1, The Attributes of God 64 Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part 1, Ch. 1, The Attributes of God 65 Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part 2, Ch. 3; Pomazansky is quoting St. Gregory of Nazianzus; concerning God’s “self-contemplation” cf. St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 2, Ch. 2 66 Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part 1, Ch. 1, The Attributes of God Never!”67 The correct [orthodox] understanding of the Trinity is of vital importance because a non-Trinitarian “god” could not possibly know anything.68 Now, upon the Roman Catholic and Protestant presuppositions, which present God as a crypto-Sabellian Monad, there is no possibility of such an analysis. Since the relations in the Trinity are merely logical and philosophical distinctions, not real ontological diversities, there can be no contrasting analysis within the Godhead itself. In absolute similarity without diversity, there can be no analysis: one cannot know what darkness is, unless he has been able to contrast it with light. Thus, one former Protestant, who has turned to Orthodoxy, points out: “Here reason cannot operate within the One since reason requires relations between conceptual objects and within a completely singular and absolutely simple One, relations are not simply possible.”69 In other words, the Western definition of God is necessarily self-refuting. God cannot be omniscient and an absolutely simple Monad devoid of real diversity. Epistemologically speaking, God’s knowledge is contingent upon His own being and the eternally equal ultimacy

67 St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads III. ii. 6. [Classics of Western Spirituality, translation by Nicholas Gendle] 68 Cf. Apostolos Makrakis: “According to the doctrine of the Scriptures and the Church God is One and Triune. He is One according to essence, but Triune according to the persons or hypostases. According to this, in the Godhead is the identity and the person distinguished; and for this neither is it fitting that we should divide and part the Divine essence, nor to confuse together into one the Divine substances or Persons. For the first, on the one hand, leads into polytheism, and the second into the assertion of a God neither having reason or spirit, consequently of a God not knowing Himself. However, the second assertion leads into Sabellianism and theism. For the heretic Sabellius denying the trihypostatic union of the Divinity, as an imposter, discoursed of a God having one person manifesting Himself in three properties, and not in three persons and substances (hypostasis). But the ancient and more recent theism accepting a God of having one person runs against the teaching of the Gospel concerning God, and contends against it…. Of things pertaining to God we predicate the identical and particular. The identical, on the one hand, is predicated of the nature and essence, which is one and commonly predicated of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But what is this common essence and nature? The Immaterial and Spiritual, the Self-intelligent and All- intelligent, the Omnipotent and All-good, that which by the word is declared God. Wherefore, we say, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit; this is what is meant that the Three Persons have their essence in common. Identity, therefore, does not make a number one, two, three, but a monad. Whence we say, that because the Three Persons in the Godhead also have identity of essence, for this reason, they make a monad of essence and not a triad. For the One in Three, being made identical, also make one another identical. And they are being made identical in the idea of the essence, the Godhead. Wherefore, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are made One in the essence of the Godhead and constitute One God, having the word ‘God’ as a common predicate.”(The Political Philosophy of the Orthodox Church, Part I: Philosophical and Theological Pre-Suppositions, “The Doctrine Concerning the One Triune God”) 69 Perry C. Robinson, Anglicans in Exile of the one and the many within Himself—that is, God’s knowledge rests upon the ontological Trinity as its basis. If God is the creator of man, it follows that human knowledge is necessarily contingent upon God. And since the “categories of similarity and difference are the foundations of human knowledge,” 70 as Romanides observes, it necessarily follows that the created categories of similarity and diversity are contingent on the parallel categories in the ontological Trinity, so that the ultimate foundation of all human knowledge is the ontological Trinity. If man is created by the Trinitarian God and human knowledge is created, then human knowledge must be totally contingent upon the Trinity. Any denial of this fact is manifest apostasy, the total rejection of the Christian God.71 If God is the ontological Trinity, then He is the Concrete Universal! He has within Himself the eternal categories of the one and the many. Nikolai Berdyaev writes: “There is a concrete universality distinct from an abstract generality. This concrete universality is not extra-personal, but is the highest content of the personal life…. God is a Person rather than a Universal Essence.”72 “From the point of view of the world history of thought, as concerned with the problem of personality, an immense importance attaches to the doctrine of the hypostases of the Holy Trinity. It might be said that the awareness of God as personality precedes the awareness of man as personality.... Personality is a union of the one and the many.”73 All of His thoughts reflect these eternal epistemological categories. And “the creation of the world,” according to Pomazansky, “is the realization of the eternal thought of God.”74 Therefore, the temporal one and many may be said to be analogical to the eternal categories of the one and

70 Fr. John Romanides, Patristic Theology, Ch. 35 71 God is a necessary presupposition precisely because He precedes all of man’s suppositions. He comes first in order of time and logic. He created our minds and structured our thoughts. This is implied in the very definition of the term God. Presuppositionalism is necessary for theists—for God as a presupposition is implied in the very term God—, and, therefore, one might classify anti-presuppositional apologetics as a form of crypto-atheism. 72 Nikolai Berdyaev, Spirit & Reality, Chapter 2, § 2 73 Nikolai Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, Part 1, § 1 74 Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part 1, Ch. 1, The Attributes of God the many within God’s mind, which categories have as their basis the ontological categories in the Trinity.75 However, it cannot be maintained that the thoughts in the mind of God had a real existence prior to creation. Any Platonic notion of an analogy of being, whereby the things in this world have some sort of analogous relation to the real metaphysical existence of their parallel forms in another world, must be rejected outright. Such notions blur the distinction between the created and the Uncreated, making the created eternally existent in its own right by virtue of its analogical form. The thoughts of God, however, do not have such an existence so as to make the eternal thought of creation imply an eternal creation. God’s thought and will are not coterminous with His being, as Western theology falsely teaches. Just as we know that the monster under the bed in a child’s mind has no real existence but is merely an imagination, so the thought in the mind of God had no real existence until He willed it into being.76 Thus, Fr. Michael Pomazansky writes: “The unchangeability of God is not contradicted, likewise, by the creation of the world. The world is an existence which is outward with relation to the nature of God, and therefore it does not change either the essence or the attributes of God. The origin of the world is only a manifestation of the power and thought of God. The power and thought of God are eternal and are eternally active, but our creaturely mind cannot understand the concept of this activity in the eternity of God. The world is not co-eternal with

75 Cf. Paulos Mar Gregorios: “Gregory [of Nyssa]…proceeds to develop his own epistemology based on the principle of analogia or proportionality.”(Cosmic Man: The Divine Presence, Ch. 2) & “In order then at the same time to deny diastēma [discontinuity] between the Three Persons of the Trinity, and to affirm diastēma [discontinuity] between the Creator and the creation, Gregory [of Nyssa] has to lay down an axiom—the total incommensurability of Creator and creation. In the process he also destroys all possibility of analogia entis…”(Cosmic Man: The Divine Presence, Ch. 4, § 4) In other words, there is a sense in which created things are analogous to divine things and there is another sense in which they are not. 76 Cf. Fr. John Romanides: “The confusion of God’s energy and essence implies that between Creator and creatures there is a kinship of essence. Thus, the world either exists in the essence of God in the form of archetypes or, in its material form, it is co-beginningless in essence and co-eternal with God.”(The Ancestral Sin, Ch. 2) The Augustinian identification of God’s thoughts/energies with His essence means that the Platonic forms in God’s mind are identical to His essence. Hence, created things have a real eternal existence in God and are also coterminous with God. The Creator-creature distinction is totally obliterated. God; it is created. But the creation of the world is the realization of the eternal thought of God (Blessed Augustine).”77 And Fr. John Romanides writes: “The distinction, however, between essence and energy in God helps us to understand the creation of the world out of nothing. The Aristotelian philosophers of Antioch, who were against the Christian notion of God’s ‘perfection,’ argued the following points against the Christian doctrine of the creation out of nothing. God, before creation, must have been creator ‘potentially,’ and, at creation, He must have become ‘actually’ creator. Hence, God is changeable and, consequently, ‘imperfect,’ becoming ‘perfect’ through creation. This argumentation is refuted by certain documents, attributed to Justin Martyr, which mention that God did not create the world from His essence but by His energy. Essence and energy are not identified, but distinguished. This means that God creates whatsoever He wants, whenever He wants, without His essence being affected, because it remains unaffected and unchangeable. God’s decision, then, about the creation of the world is not a matter of His essence, but of His will. Since it takes place by will, this means that God is not by necessity related to the world, nor is He changed from ‘potentiality’ to ‘actuality,’ since God does not create the world from His essence, but by His energy and will.”78 Again, Vladimir Lossky writes: “In the great Platonic tradition, God is always conceived as the principle of everything that exists and the world develops from them, without ontological break. For Christians, on the contrary,

77 Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part 1, Ch. 1, The Attributes of God 78 Fr. John Romanides, An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics, Part 1, Ch. 3 all emanationism is impossible, the ontological break is total, creation ex nihilo is free.”79 Within the Augustinian framework, in order to be consistent, Western theology must affirm a sort of continuity and analogy of being that confounds the distinction between the Uncreated and the created. All of Western theology is summed up in the following words of Louis of Granada: “We find in all creatures diversities which distinguish them one from another, but the purity of God’s Essence admits of no distinction; so that His Being is His Essence, His Essence is His Power, His Power is His Will, His Will is His Understanding, His Understanding is His Being, His Being is His Wisdom, His Wisdom is His Justice, His Justice is His Mercy.”80 Western theology does not allow any distinction between God’s mind, will, energy and His essence. Since God’s essence is identical to His thought, the very thought of creation in the mind of God implies that the creation is God. Since God’s mind, will, and energy are identical to His essence, according to Western theology, God’s creation must have proceeded from His essence. But if that is the case, then the procession of creation from the essence of God would be tantamount to the procession of the Spirit. Western theology has a definite pantheistic implication.81 Moreover, if God’s thought is coterminous with His being, doesn’t it follow that His thoughts about creation would have being in themselves? thereby implying that God’s eternal plan for creation requires eternal creation as its necessary corollary? St. Gregory of Nyssa, affirming the Orthodox position, taught that between God and creation there is a discontinuity of being—a total ontological break. God’s essence is absolutely other. However, God’s energies are able to communicate certain of His attributes and characteristics to creation. There is a gulf between the Creator and the created, but God’s energies are of His essence and carry His qualities with them. Certain of His attributes (e.g.

79 Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, Prologue 80 Louis of Granada, The Sinner’s Guide, Ch. 1 81Cf. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Christianity and Evolution, “Introduction to the Christian Life,”) where he espouses “Christian ‘pantheism’” and asserts “that Christianity is pre-eminently a faith in the progressive unification of the world in God; it is essentially universalist, organic and ‘monist’…. Contrary to the over-popular preconception, it is in Christianity (provided it is understood in the fullness of its Catholic realism) that the pantheist mysticism of all time, and more particularly of our own day (when it is so dominated by ‘creative evolutionism’) can reach its highest, most coherent and most dynamic form…” Thus Pierre Teilhard is an example of a Roman Catholic philosopher who has carried Western theology to its pantheistic conclusion. existence) can be communicated to creation through God’s energies.82 God willed to create and His energies immediately communicated existence to the concept of created existents, which had no real existence beforehand. God’s attributes can only be known through creation if they are communicated to it by His energies: “For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”(Romans 1:20) But only some of His attributes are so communicated to creation. Some of His attributes (e.g. aseity, omniscience, etc.) are incommunicable. There is a total discontinuity of being when we consider the essence of God, but there is a degree of continuity when we consider the communication of certain divine attributes through His omnipresent energies. This doctrine is not unique to St. Gregory of Nyssa: the same distinction is made by the vast majority of the Church Fathers, including such great names as St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Maximus the Confessor.83 The Orthodox philosopher Dr. Clark Carlton commented that “the distinction between the essence and energies of God, which Roman Catholics like to call Palamism but actually runs throughout the history of Orthodox thought, is nothing more than a linguistic convention for affirming that God is both transcendent and immanent.”84

Van Tillian Trinitarianism It is my contention that Western theology in general and in all of its particular manifestations is epistemologically self-refuting. Cornelius van Til is perhaps the greatest Western Christian philosopher of all time and his writings have influenced my thought almost more than any other writer I have encountered, so I felt it was necessary to deal with Van Til’s

82 Cf. St. Maximus the Confessor: “In bringing into existence a rational and intelligent nature, God in his supreme goodness has communicated to it four of the divine attributes…”(Four Centuries on Love 3:25) 83 Cf. Paulos Mar Gregorios’ work on the epistemology of St. Gregory of Nyssa: “Across the diastēma or discontinuity between the Creator and the creation, there exists the continuity of metousia or participation. Without that participation, nothing can exist. But participation in Being, in Life, in the Good are all three inseparable from each other. Participation in the ousia of God means to be autozoēs, autogathos, ho ontōs ōn. This is possible only for the Three Persons of the Triune Godhead. What we can participate in is the being, life, and goodness of God as it is given to us in God’s energeia which has brought us into being, sustains us in life, and leads us in the good. All three belong to the nature of man, and the whole of the nature of man is God’s gracious gift. Nature is grace.”(The Cosmic Man: The Divine Presence, Ch. 5, § 5) 84 Dr. Clark Carlton, Faith and Philosophy broadcast on Ancient Faith Radio on 2/20/2010 titled “Palamism Explained in Twelve Minutes or Less” thoughts on the Trinity separately. This consideration is warranted by the fact that Van Til’s “One-Many Argument” for the Trinity is the entire basis of my rejection of Western Christendom. Since I have taken this Van Tillian argument as a point of departure in the refutation of the Western doctrine of the Trinity, it would be appropriate to give special attention to Van Til’s “theology.” I do not believe that Van Til’s theology is actually much different from Western theology in general: Van Til merely stated traditional theology in a new way, but the substance of what he taught is not too different from the “Trinitarianism” of John Calvin or Thomas Aquinas. Van Til’s understanding of the Trinity does come extremely close to the Orthodox understanding as expressed in the works of St. Maximus the Confessor, Vladimir Lossky, and John Zizioulas. His Trinitarianism is almost Orthodox. By saying that God is “simultaneously one person and three persons,”85 Van Til is attempting to express the equal ultimacy of the one and the many in the Godhead, which is paradoxical and seemingly contradictory. The doctrine of the equal ultimacy of the one and the many in the Trinity is affirmed by Maximus, Lossky, and Zizioulas in equally confusing and paradoxical terms. On this point the Orthodox agree with Van Til, whereas many Western “theologians” condemn Van Til’s teaching about the Trinity as heresy. To a certain extent, we might look at Cornelius van Til as a philosophical point of contact between East and West. Yet, while Van Til’s theology is a step in the right direction, he has failed to be consistent in the application of the notion of “the equal ultimacy of the one and the many.” In the area of “theology proper”, the filioque is where he strays from the truth. He also fails to carry this principle of “equal ultimacy” to its logical conclusion in ecclesiology, soteriology, and other areas. To Van Til, the “one and the many” is only an epistemological issue. It was Francis Schaeffer (Van Til’s disciple) that would explore what Van Til’s theology implies in the areas of politics, ecology, and the arts. It is no surprise that Frank Schaeffer—the son of Francis Schaeffer, Van Til’s greatest disciple—would convert to Orthodoxy after having been raised and educated by one of the greatest Van Tillian philosophers. Van Til’s theology was

85 Cf. Cornelius van Til: “We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person. We have noted that each attribute is coextensive with the being of God…. In a similar manner we have noted how theologians insist that each of the persons of the Godhead is coterminous with the being of the Godhead…. God is not an essence that has personality; he is absolute personality. Yet, within the being of the one person we are permitted and compelled by Scripture to make the distinction between a specific or generic type of being and three personal subsistences.”(An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Ch. 17) already a step towards Orthodoxy and Francis Schaeffer took another step in the same direction. There are many people (especially among conservative Protestants) who claim that Frank Schaeffer’s conversion to Orthodoxy was disingenuous. I think that they are wrong. If he just wanted attention, it would have caused a bigger stir for him to convert to Roman Catholicism. Moreover, decades have passed and Frank Schaeffer is still Orthodox. I came to believe in Orthodoxy by way of Cornelius van Til and Francis Schaeffer, so it makes perfect sense to me that Francis Schaeffer’s son would turn to Orthodoxy too. Having noting that Van Til seemed to be headed in the right direction, I will also say that his pneumatology reveals that he is just as much an Augustinian heretic as Calvin and Aquinas were! Van Til did not go far enough! Van Til falls back into the Augustinian error when he gets to the Holy Spirit and affirms the doctrine of the filioque. Van Til strove to maintain the equal ultimacy of the one and the many within the ontological Trinity and attempted to guard against any form of subordinationism. Van Til writes: “Using the language of the one-and-many question we contend that in God the one and the many are equally ultimate. Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundamental than unity. The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on a par with the Father. It is a well-known fact that all heresies in the history of the church have in some form or other taught subordinationism.”86 It is my contention that, in accepting the filioque, Van Til fell prey to a certain form of subordinationism himself: for the filioque is Pneumatological Arianism, as I have argued above. Van Til repeatedly affirms his acceptance of the filioque clause of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Furthermore, Van Til makes the following comment: “The three persons of the Trinity are co-substantial; not one is derived in his substance from either or both of the others. Yet there are three distinct persons in this unity; the diversity and the identity are equally underived.”87 This is simply conformity to Western theology. Van Til is just asserting that the persons of the Trinity

86 Cornelius van Til, The Defense of the Faith, Ch. 2, § 1 87 Cornelius van Til, The Defense of the Faith, Ch.1, § 1 are from the essence rather than deriving their being from the person of the Father. Cornelius van Til maintained that the procession of the Spirit is from the essence of the Godhead rather than from the persons. This is what all Western “theologians” have taught. Nevertheless, if the Spirit proceeds from the essence of the Godhead but does not proceed from Himself, then it follows that the Spirit is not God because He was not encompassed in the essence of God from which He proceeds. Likewise, it follows that the Son is not God because His generation is from the Father alone (and not simultaneously from the Spirit and Himself), which indicates that He is outside the Godhead—He stands outside the essence of God; for if He were God, then He would have to proceed from Himself since He would be encompassed in the essence of God from which He proceeds. This logically reduces to subordinationism: the Son is not God (Arianism) because He does not proceed from the whole essence—if He did, then He would have to be generated by the Father and the Spirit (Spirituque)—and the Holy Spirit is not God (Pneumatological Arianism) because He is outside of the essence of God from which He proceeds insofar as His procession is not from Himself (that is, because there is no Spirituque following the ex Patri Filioque). Moreover, this entire Western framework, which Van Til consistently adheres to, leads inevitably to the conclusion that God is nothing more than a mere Monad—that is, that there is no Trinity at all. The procession of the persons, according to Van Til and Western theology, are from the essence of God rather than from the person of the Father. The persons are identified with the essence and the persons of the Son and the Spirit proceed from the essence (and not from the person of the Father). Yet if the Son is generated by essence rather than from the person of the Father, then the terms “Father” and “Son” become devoid of meaning—the Son does not relate to the Father as son; for His being is in no way related to the Father’s. His relation is directly to the essence. And if the persons are all identified with the essence and there are no relations between the persons individually, then it follows that there is no differentiation between the persons either; for the diverse relations are the only basis for the differentiation. In other words, Van Til’s “Trinity” reduces to a Monad, just like Western “theology” in general. According to his theology, there is neither real relation nor is there differentiation within the Trinity. Van Til’s god is epistemologically self-refuting: for it does not even contain within itself the epistemological categories of the one and the many. And so his god lacks the basis for knowledge. And Van Til’s god is identical to the god of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in general—the “theology” is the same.