The Cappadocians and the Doctrine of the Trinity

Basil of Caesarea and his brother Gregory of Nyssa came from a large family with property in three provinces (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina pp. 26–29 (PG 46.966–968)). Gregory writes that when Basil came home from his studies, proud of his rhetoric, their elder sister Macrina won him to the ascetic life, and that she then made the family household a community in which mistress and servants lived alike (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina pp. 26–29 (PG 46.966–968)). Basil had studied at Athens with his friend Gregory of Nazianzus (Socrates, Church History 4.26). He travelled to see the monks of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia (Basil, Letter 223.2), founded monasteries in his own country (Socrates, Church History 4.26), and as bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia built a hospice for travellers and the sick, with physicians and attendants (Basil, Letter 94). Gregory of Nazianzus called it “the new city” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 43.63).

The emperor Valens held a creed opposed to that of Nicaea and had Basil brought before his prefect (Socrates, Church History 4.26). Gregory of Nazianzus describes Basil before the prefect, answering threats of confiscation, exile and death by saying that none of them could touch a man who owned nothing (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 43.48–49).

They sought words for what Nicaea had confessed. Basil distinguished ousia, essence, from hypostasis as the general from the particular: one essence in God, and three hypostases, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Basil, Letter 236.6). When he was attacked for praising the Father “with the Son together with the Holy Ghost” (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 1.3), he wrote On the Holy Spirit to show that the Spirit shares the glory of Father and Son and that this does not make a second God (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 18.45–47). Gregory of Nazianzus says that Basil, under the pressure of the times, avoided calling the Spirit God in so many words and left that to him (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 43.68–69). Gregory did so: “Is the Spirit God? Most certainly” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 31.10). He explained that the Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly and the Son more obscurely, that the New revealed the Son and hinted at the deity of the Spirit, and that the Spirit now gives a clearer proof of himself (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 31.26). Gregory of Nyssa answered the charge of teaching three gods: every act of God comes from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, and the three are distinguished only as cause and caused (Gregory of Nyssa, On Not Three Gods).

Basil died before the outcome (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina pp. 39–41 (PG 46.973–976)). In 381 a council met at Constantinople, where Gregory of Nazianzus was briefly bishop before resigning (Socrates, Church History 5.6–8), and a law of Theodosius named Gregory of Nyssa among the bishops whose communion marked the true faith (Theodosian Code 16.1.3). The creed linked with that council confesses the Spirit as one “who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified” (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), and the bishops’ letter of the next year speaks of one Godhead, power and substance of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in “three perfect persons” (Theodoret, Church History 5.9). See the First Council of Constantinople.

Basil’s rules for monastic communities were also read in the West: the Rule of Benedict commends “the rule of our holy Father, Basil” (Rule of Benedict 73).