Christian Diaz, 2nd Year Theology

ATHANASIUS CONTRIBUTION TO TRINITY

How did Athanasius help clarify the term homoousios.
Theosis – he says that our salvation requires the deification of our human nature. This is made
possible when Jesus was incarnate assuming our human nature, which is deified and lifted up to
be partaker of his Divinity by his Divine Nature.
If Jesus is only human, and if our human nature is joined only to a lowly creature like us, then
we cannot raise our nature and much less be saved.

Eternal Begetting of the Son - The begetting of the Son is not of man’s. We do not conceive the
things of God in a human way. Hence, the generation of the Son is impassable and eternal, for
he is from God who is begotten without time. The Sonship of Jesus is proper to the essence
of the Father. For the Father cannot be a father without the Son, vice versa. There is an
eternal distinction.

Holos Theou - The Son is whole God, not only a part of the Father. But what the Father has is
all in the Son. Who worships the Son worships the Father. Hence by knowing the Son, knows
the Father

Analogy – The Son and the Father are like, brightness from light, river from a well, branch from
a root.

The Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit does not have the same status as the Son, but someone who
proceeds from the Father and the Son. Athanasius, uses the biblical revelation of Baptism and
Descent of the Spirit where Jesus the Son has made our human nature sanctified by the Holy
Spirit. He also uses analogy to express the indwelling of the triad, like fountain (Father), river
(Son), to drink (Spirit). The actions of God are expressed in Jesus Christ, effected by the Spirit.

Athanasius’ Contribution - He assigned new meaning to Ousia and Hypostasis. Ousia is one
being (God) and hypostasis as the three persons.
CAPPADOCIAN FATHER’S CONTRIBUTION TO TRINITY
The Cappadocians argued that ousia and hypostasis should not beunderstood as synonyms.
Rather, ousia should be used to refer to the OneBeing of God, while hypostasis should be
referred to the Three “Persons”. Inshort, ousia is used to refer the Oneness of the Trinity, while
hypostasis is used to refer to the Threeness of the Trinity

Cappadocian theologians (Gregory of Nyssa,Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Caesarea) introduced a

distinction between ousia and hypostasis, the former referring to Aristotle’s deutera ousia and the latter
to his prōtē ousia. “Persons” finally attained their own ontological status as something more than
a subcategory of essence. Thus, faced with the fact of the incarnation, Christians could for the first time
talk about persons as sharing in a common essence and yet related to each other as distinct individuals
with their own properties of personal identity. This breakthrough turned out to have tremendous
significance notonly for the doctrine of the Trinity but for the concept of human personhood as well.
Thus, the formulation of the third-century Latin father Tertullian, “one in essence, three in persons,” was
given adeeper conceptual footing.

For them, the Father is the fount and cause of the other two coequal Persons. They helped establish the
terminology of hypostasis for the threeness and ousia for the oneness of the Trinity. Their theological
expositions were the basis for the position endorsed by the second ecumenical council, Constantinople
381.