My Interlocutor said:

My misgivings about the West's philosophically based doctrine of the Trinity are connected to the Sabellian modalism inherent in its reduction of the hypostaseis to mere "relations of opposition" within the divine essence. Instead of a theory of "relational opposition" the Eastern Fathers teach that the hypostaseis of the Trinity are truly subsistent and distinct by their particular hypostatic "mode of origin" (tropos hyparxeos).

Let me put it this way, in the Summa Theologica (Prima Pars, Q. 39, A. 1 and A. 2; and Q. 40, A. 1), St. Thomas denies that there is a real distinction between essence (or nature) and hypostasis; thus, the hypostasis of the Father is identical with the divine essence (or nature), and the same holds with the hypostaseis of the Son and the Spirit. As a consequence, the essence of God is the Father, but since the Son and the Spirit possesses the same divine essence as the Father, it follows that they are both the Father as well, since the divine essence is identical with the hypostatic property of paternity. That being said, the subsistent reality of the Father is also undermined, because He possesses the divine essence too, and since the divine essence is held in the Scholastic theory to be identical with the hypostaseis of the Son and the Spirit, it follows that the Father is also the Son, while He is simultaneously the Spirit; and so, the triad of divine hypostaseis collapses into a monad.

As Christopher Hughes puts it in his critique of the Scholastic theory of the Trinity:

          Surely if (a) the essence of x = the essence of y, 

          and (b) the essence of x = x, and the essence of

          y = y, it follows as the night does the day that 

          x = y. And Aquinas maintains both that the divine 

          persons are not distinct from their essences, and 

          that they all have the same essence." [Christopher 

          Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God, 

          (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1989), page

          192]

In other words, the Father (x) is the Son (y), and the Son is the Father, and the same holds in relation to the Spirit. Now it should be noted that the first point (a) of Aquinas' theory conforms to the teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers, but that the second point (b) does not; in fact, the second point conforms to the teaching of Sabellius and not to the theological doctrine of the Cappadocian Fathers.

Moreover, the Scholastic error on this issue is confirmed by what St. Basil the Great said in Letter 236, where he called those who fail to distinguish between essence (or nature) and hypostasis in God, "Sabellians"; for as St. Basil said, "On the other hand those who identify essence (ousian) or substance and hypostasis are compelled to confess only three prosopa, and, in their hesitation to speak of three hypostaseis, are convicted of failure to avoid the error of Sabellius, for even Sabellius himself, who in many places confuses his notions, yet, by asserting that the same hypostasis changed its form to meet the needs of the moment, does endeavor to distinguish prosopa." [St. Basil, Letter 236] The Scholastics, in certain sense, are even more modalistic than Sabellius, because Sabellius could at least admit that there are prosopic distinctions in God, while the Scholastic theory of divine simplicity does not admit of any real distinctions, because the Scholastics saw all real distinctions as necessarily dialectical in nature.

The East rejects the notion that the hypostaseis of the Trinity are mere "relations of opposition" within the divine essence, and it does so: first because it is not possible to know anything about the divine essence, and second because this reduces the hypostaseis to relations, but they are more than that. In fact the "relations" that the West speaks of are the logical consequence of the different "modes of origin" (tropoi hyparxeos) of the three divine hypostaseis, and so they cannot be the focus of man's experience of God, because God is beyond human intellection and logical deduction. One other problem with the Scholastic teaching is that it reduces the hypostaseis to "mental" distinctions within the mind of man, because as St. Thomas said:

          . . . relation as referred to the essence does not 

          differ therefrom really, but only in our way of 

          thinking. [St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 

          Prima Pars, Q. 39, A. 1]

The East rejects this idea for the reasons I mentioned above, i.e., because it reduces the hypostaseis to "relations of opposition," and because it reduces the hypostaseis to mere epistemic concepts, i.e., since they only differ "in our way of thinking." Moreover, the Eastern Fathers assert the very thing that St. Thomas denies, because they say that the hypostaseis "really" differ from each other, but without necessarily involving opposition. The East rejects the dialectical approach of the West.

Now it is important to note that the East rejects not only this part of Thomas' philosophical concept of the Trinity, but also what he says about the Trinity just before the quotation I gave above. Here is what St. Thomas said:

          . . . some have thought that in God essence and 

          person differ, forasmuch as they held the relations

          to be 'adjacent'; considering only in the relations 

          the idea of 'reference to another,' and not the 

          relations as realities. But as it was shown above 

          in creatures relations are accidental, whereas in 

          God they are the divine essence itself. Thence it 

          follows that in God essence is not really distinct 

          from person; and yet that the persons are really 

          distinguished from each other. [St. Thomas, 

          Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Q. 39, A. 1]

First, as is clear from my earlier posts, the East accepts the very idea that Thomas rejects, i.e., the East believes that ". . . in God essence and person differ," and so, the two sides really do teach something substantially different about the doctrine of the Trinity. Second, the hypostatic distinctions in God are not "oppositional relations" they are true "modes of origin" independent of human thought. In fact God in His essence is beyond any category of human thought or predication. That being said, the Eastern Fathers teach that God the Father is "cause" (Greek: aitia), while the Son is generated by the Father, and the Spirit is processed from the Father, and both "generation" and "procession" are hypostatic properties of the Father, which cannot be shared by the other two hypostaseis. In other words, the Father is distinct as "cause" within the Trinity, while the Son is distinct as being "generated," and the Spirit is distinct because He is "processed." Thus, it is true to say that God the Father is the sole source, principle, origin, and font of divinity, and the Son and the Spirit derive their origin from Him, not through a mere "oppositional relation," but through a distinct and subsisting hypostatic "mode of origin" (tropos hyparxeos) unique to each person. As a consequence, any "oppositions" that arise within God are the result of the distinct hypostatic properties, and this means that the hypostaseis cannot be reduced to "relations of opposition," since these relations are derived from the different "modes of origin" and not vice versa. In other words, the West is reducing the Trinity to a philosophical speculation where man moves through rational categories in order to try and "prove" that God is a triad of divine hypostaseis, while the East holds that it is not possible to "prove" such a thing, because it is in fact a datum of divine revelation that must simply be accepted by the gift of faith, which transcends reason. The Eastern Fathers are unanimous in teaching that the human mind cannot rise up to, nor discover anything about, the essence of God, because the human mind is a diastemic reality and the divine essence is adiastemic. As St. Gregory of Nyssa explains:

          The whole created order is unable to get out of 

          itself through a comprehensive vision, but remains 

          continually enclosed within itself, and whatever

          it beholds, it is looking at itself. And even if it 

          somehow thinks it is looking at something beyond 

          itself, that which it sees outside itself has no being.

          One may struggle to surpass or transcend diastemic 

          conception by the understanding of the created 

          universe, but he does not transcend. For in every 

          object it conceptually discovers, it always compre-

          hends the diastema inherent in the being of the 

          apprehended object, for diastema is nothing other 

          than creation itself. [St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies

          on Ecclesiastes, 7:412]

What St. Gregory is emphasizing here, is the ontological gap that exists between uncreated and created essence, and this gap is permanent, which means that there can be no participation by man in the divine essence, because the divine essence is utterly transcendent. Moreover, because of the diastemic nature of creation the Eastern Fathers reject the idea that there is an "analogy of being" between the uncreated and the created, because as Fr. Florovsky said, Creation 'comes into being, made up from outside.' And there is no similarity between that which bursts forth from nothing and the Creator Who verily is, Who brings creatures out of nothing." [Fr. Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, (Nordland Publishing Company: Belmont, Massachusetts, 1976), page 48] Thus, the East rejects as impossible the very thing that St. Thomas tries to do in the quotation I gave above, i.e., to compare "relations" in creatures, and "relations" in God, and then come to a conclusion about the what relations are in the divine essence. This kind of comparison is contrary to the teaching of the ancient Fathers, and that is clear if one remembers that the divine essence is beyond intellectual comprehension; and so, through his intellectual concepts, St. Thomas is trying to do the very thing that St. Gregory of Nyssa condemned and said was impossible, i.e., St. Thomas tries to intellectually transcend the diastema. Sadly, St. Thomas thought he had "learned" something about the essence of God, but of course the Church Fathers hold that that is impossible; in other words, St. Thomas has fallen into the very same trap that Eunomius fell into centuries earlier, because he mistakenly believed that he has learned something about the divine essence by comparing it to creatures, but as St. Gregory of Nyssa said, ". . . in every object it [i.e., the human mind] conceptually discovers, it always comprehends the diastema inherent in the being of the apprehended object," and so, all that St. Thomas has done is fool himself into thinking that he has transcended the created order. Moreover, to believe that the epinoetic conceptions that man forms about God rise up and transgress the adiastemic boundary is the height of hubris and borders on a form of idolatry.

Finally, my Interlocutor said:

To which I responded by saying:  the problem with the West's position is — as I have noted above — that it has reduced the Trinity to a philosophical speculation based upon rational reflection, but God is beyond rational reflection; in fact, God is beyond being, and He is beyond essence (i.e., He is hyperousios), and the West, by reducing the hypostaseis to relations within the unknowable divine essence, has made two mistakes: first, it has made the unknowable and utterly transcendent divine essence knowable; and second, it has reversed the order of knowledge in connection with the triad of divine hypostaseis, i.e., it has taken what is a logical conclusion arising from the distinct "modes of origin," and has made those "oppositional relations" the foundation of its philosophical theory of the Trinity. The hypostaseis of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are not distinct because they are in some type of "oppositional relation"; instead, they are distinct because of their different subsisting properties. The error of the Scholastic leads them to posit "four" oppositional relations, yet only three hypostaseis, but the Eastern Fathers never taught this, and in fact they would find it very strange to say the least. 

Eastern and Western Triadological and Christological Differences

by Steven Todd Kaster

Original Version:  13 May 2006 (from a thread at the Phatmass Phorum)

Copyright © 2006-2025 Steven Todd Kaster