The God of Nicea & Constantinople & the Locus of Existence

Theological Letters — Part 2 of 3

This letter-turned-essay was originally occasioned by a discussion with a colleague, “Richie.” I expressed to him my belief that the ontological argument has metaphysical commitments that are incompatible with the commitments of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople — and thus of the Nicene Creed. While intrigued by the case, he pressed whether such commitments are essential to the argument, a point that led me to distinguish the classical formulation by Anselm from the contemporary formulation of Plantinga. After fleshing out my conclusions to Richie in a letter, I took the extra step of revamping the piece into a formal essay, which I plan to publish in the coming year. Read part 1 here.

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Two aspects of the N-C understanding of the Trinity are relevant to the Anselmian version of the ontological argument. The first is its distinction between hypostasis and ousia, which reveals where the N-C confession locates existence. The second is the doctrines of eternal generation and procession, respectively, which introduce uniquely Christian doctrines that entail further commitments concerning the existence of divine persons. As we will see, both features pose significant difficulties for a N-C embrace of Anselm’s argument. I will first flesh out the N-C doctrines, and then return to Anselm in light of this exposition. We will begin with the former.

Nicene Trinitarianism is known largely for its profession that the Trinity consists of three hypostases (often translated “persons”) and one ousia (often translated “substance,” “essence,” or “nature”). The hypostasis-ousia distinction is largely developed by the Cappadocian fathers — Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa — after the Council of Nicea (325 AD) as a clarification codified at the Council of Constantinople (381 AD). While those familiar with the Cappadocian “formula” may take these terms for granted, the development that the N-C use of hypostasis represents is significant in ancient philosophy.

Within ancient pagan philosophy, greater attention is paid to the issue of universals than to individuals. We find some skeptical interest in the question of identity, such as whether Theseus’ ship is the same ship, despite changing out all of its boards over time,¹ and perhaps in response to such questions, the Stoics introduce the notion of an idiosyncratic quality (idiōs poion) that differentiates one individual from another. Yet, it is unclear whether the Stoics are addressing the metaphysical question of individuality or the epistemological question of identity.²

In Aristotle, the metaphysical place of the individual is clear, but the definition is strictly negative. The individual, or primary substance, is the point at which divisions between genera and species terminate. As for what the primary substance is, it is being that is neither in a subject nor predicated of a subject.³ In other words, once we reach the end of universal predicates, all we can say is what the subject is not.

In Porphyry, we find something akin to the Stoic notion of idiosyncratic properties in application to the metaphysical question of particularity. The particular, says Porphyry, consists of a unique combination of properties that can never be said of another individual.⁴ Such a definition appears to offer a “bundle theory” in which particularity is an emergent phenomenon produced by a unique composite of universals.

Admittedly, there are legitimate questions about whether Aristotle or Porphyry have a more robust view of the individual than such readings admit.⁵ But whether they do or not, there is no question that the metaphysics of the individual play a far more important role in the Eastern Church fathers, given their development and defense of Trinitarian and Christological doctrines.

The first point of note when looking at the Eastern fathers on particularity is their chosen terminology. Rather than employing atomon (individual), tode ti (this something), or either to kata meros or hekastos (particular), the Eastern fathers use hypostasis.

The term hypostasis takes on this meaning in the fourth century thanks to the Cappadocians. Prior to their innovative use of this term, the words hypostasis and ousia were two of several words for “substance,” used interchangeably for an individual, a species, or a genus — all of which were considered substances.⁶ The point is evident in the Council of Nicea. When condemning the Arian claim that the Father and the Son are of two different natures, the council of Nicea uses hypostasis and ousia as synonyms for “nature” or “essence,” anathematizing those “who affirm that the Son of God is of a different substance or essence” (i.e., hypostasis or ousia).⁷ Yet, the semantic range of the word “substance” created confusion in the wake of Nicea. As Basil of Caesarea points out, some, when speaking about the number of divine subjects, would confess several hypostases, while others, when speaking about the number of natures, would confess only one hypostasis.⁸

In order to address this post-Nicea confusion, the Cappadocians introduce a definitive change in language: “The distinction between ousia and hypostasis is the same as that between the general and the particular, as, for instance, between the animal [human] and the particular man.”⁹ From this point onward, Christian thinkers were to use hypostasis to refer to the particular subject and ousia to refer to the nature or essence of that subject.

The decision to employ hypostasis, as opposed to ousia, in this way is not surprising, given how the term was first introduced to Christian theology. Origen uses the word as a means of opposing Sabellian and Sabellian-style views that say that the Father and the Son are two only in thought or concept, not in reality. Origen argues, to the contrary, that the Father and the Son are two “substantially,” or in reality (tō hypostasei).¹⁰ In the hands of the Cappadocians, this notion of hypostasis develops into a distinctly Christian view of the individual or particular subject.¹¹

Epistle 38 of Basil of Caesarea’s corpus — often attributed to his brother Gregory of Nyssa¹² — is likely the first fully developed treatment of the Cappadocian view of hypostasis.¹³ In this letter, the author first speaks about the common nature shared by several individuals, which we identify by a general noun: “we employ the noun [human] to indicate the common nature, and do not confine our meaning to any one human in particular.”¹⁴ This common nature, says the author, does not and cannot exist on its own. For, as the author explains, the common nature “has not standing” or “stability” (stasis), presumably playing on the word hypostasis.¹⁵ Hence, the nature never exists on its own, but only ever subsists (hyphestōsan) in the individual. Using Paul as an example, “the nature [physin] subsists in the thing indicated by the name [Paul].”¹⁶

A certain existential priority is thus introduced here. The hypostasis is ontologically anterior to the nature, the nature subsisting within the hypostasis, which supplies the nature with stability and existence. And lest we think this relationship between a hypostasis and its nature is relegated to creatures, not God, we should remember that Epistle 38 is written specifically to clarify the concept of the divine hypostases.

This existential priority is not unique to this letter. In Epistle 52, Basil of Caesarea is emphatic that a nature is never anterior to, or underneath (hypercheimena), the hypostasis.¹⁷ The existential reality is always the reverse: The hypostasis is what supplies existence to a nature, giving to it concrete reality, or stability.¹⁸

The individual, on this view, is neither a posterior product of a bundle of properties, nor is it identifiable with the particular lump of matter in which properties adhere, nor is it a phenomenon emerging out of the hylomorphic composition of form and matter. Rather, the individual is its own discrete reality that sits beneath these. In the subject, natures and matter adhere, and the individual subject supplies concrete existence and stability to the otherwise-abstract nature, not vice versa.

The view has some resonance with the so-called “moderate realism” of Aristotle, insofar as it denies that form has any concrete existence apart from material instantiation. However, rather than locating concrete existence in either matter or the hylomorphic bundle of form and matter, the Eastern Church fathers introduce the individual as its own principle with its own discrete, non-repeatable reality, ontologically anterior to and beneath both the form and matter it possesses.¹⁹

This view became normative for the Eastern Church fathers after the Cappadocians. As Johannes Zachuber points out, the notion that natures subsist in individuals proved critical to answering the Christological conundrums after Constantinople, leading up to Chalcedon.²⁰ Moreover, in the centuries after Chalcedon, we not only find echoes of the view, but the position is identified as distinctively Christian.

By the seventh century, Maximus the Confessor identifies the bundle theory, in which an individual is a product of “ousia with idiomata,” as the position of “the philosophers,” and he differentiates the Christian view from this position, Christians holding that hypostasis is the discrete subject that exists beneath the nature.²¹ As we will see, the metaphysical commitment that the hypostasis is the locus of existence will mark the first challenge to a N-C embrace of Anselm’s argument.

The second challenge concerns the doctrines of eternal generation and procession. According to the N-C view, the Son is begotten of (or eternally generated by) the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from (or is spirited by) the Father. Within the N-C framework, both begetting and proceeding are causal terms: The Father causes the Son and the Spirit to exist and to have his (divine) nature. These modes of causation are not making or creating. As the N-C Creed declares, the Son is begotten not made. But begetting and spiration are modes of causation, nonetheless.²²

The point is evident in the Cappadocian dealings with the Eunomians. The crux of the Eunomian case for a heteroousian position (i.e., the Son is of a different nature than the Father) is the pro-Nicene doctrine that the Father is uncaused, while the Son is caused. From this the Eunomians argue that the Father, being unoriginate, is ontologically superior to the Son, who originates from the Father.²³ The Cappadocian reply never shies away from the point that the Father causes the Son or that the Father, unlike the Son, is uncaused. Gregory of Nyssa freely admits, “When ... this word [unoriginate] has the meaning of ‘deriving existence from no cause whatever,’ then we confess that it is peculiar to the Father.”²⁴ What the Cappadocians deny is twofold. First, they deny that this difference between Father and Son indicates a difference in nature. Second, they deny that this mode of causation is creation.