If you have done much reading about the development of Trinitarian theology, you’ll likely already know that there are two Greek words that contributed to some of Christianity’s biggest controversies (homoousios and hypostasis). And, similarly, you’ll likely already know that affirmation or denial of homoousios became the sticking point for many of the bishops involved in the controversies leading up to the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).

What if I told you some sixty years before the Council of Nicaea would codify homoousios over against the Arians, a significant group of bishops condemned the use of “ousia language” to describe God—including homoousios?

Such an episode is exactly what happened at Antioch in 268, where a controversy arose concerning Paul of Samosata. Likely the most notable dispute over the Son’s identity in the third century, Antioch is one example of the ways these “words of being”—words like hypostasis or ousia—were used in the third century.

These words did not have fixed meanings in the same way they do now; instead, these words would be refined through the fires of coming controversies. Studying how the pre-Nicenes used these terms help us get a better sense of how Christian orthodoxy came to be—and how it came to be so focused on three Persons in one Essence.

Gregory the Wonderworker as a Test Case

Using the example of Gregory the Wonderworker, who is himself a student of Origen and participant at Antioch, I want to help us think through how to read pre-Nicene writers. We ought to read the earliest Christian theologians like we would read a topographic map: always considering the ways surrounding theological geographies influenced their thought and vocabulary.

Let’s begin, then, by reading his exposition of the faith.

Article 1: There is one God: Father of the living Word (who is) subsistent wisdom and eternal power and image — Perfect begetter of perfect, Father of only-begotten Son.
Art. 2: There is one Lord, only of only, God of God, image and likeness of Divinity, active Word: Wisdom comprehensive of the complete system and Power of all made creation; True Son of True Father, Invisible of Invisible, Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal, and Eternal of Eternal.
Art. 3: And one Holy Spirit, having subsistence from God, manifested through the Son, specifically to men — image of the Son, perfect of perfect, life and cause of all living; holiness who arranges holiness, by whom God the Father is made manifest, who is over everything and in all. And God the Son, who is through everything.
Art. 4: Perfect Trinity: in glory and in eternity and in sovereignty, with no division nor differentiation.[1]

From Article 1 of his exposition, we may draw three conclusions about Gregory’s theology: (1) God’s identity is uniquely linked to the identity of his only-begotten Son, (2) the Son’s existence is somehow expressed in language of subsistence, image, and power (ὑφεστώσης and χαρακτῆρος and δυνάμεως), and (3) this Son’s subsisting, imaging, and “powering” is eternal. Gregory later clarifies the identity of the only-begotten Son in Article 2: this Son is the Lord, who Gregory calls “only of only, God of God, image and likeness of divinity.”

On its face, the phrase “only of only, God of God” is a conundrum that logically entails some underlying relationship between the nature of the Father and the nature of the Son. After all, two separate things cannot share the title of “only,” and it is impossible for two to be “God” without confessing ditheism. How, then, can Gregory refer to two “things” as “God” by asserting the Son is “God of God?” This is possible if (and only if) the Son is the very “image and likeness of divinity.”

This phrase is particularly insightful. Though Gregory’s use of “image” in Article 1 gives us little context, his use of the term in Article 2 follows the syntactical line of Hebrews 1:3, where the author calls the Son the “imprint of very being” (χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως). Similarly, Gregory’s use of “image of divinity” (εἰκὼν τῆς Θεότητος) echoes 2 Corinthians 4 and Colossians 1, where the Son is given the same title (in those places rendered “εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ).”

Without spending too much time on exegeting Greek texts, what becomes evident is this: in his exposition of the faith, Gregory seeks to preserve the ways the Scriptures talk about the Son. This Son is the one who is established as perfect begotten by Perfect, subsistent Wisdom, and eternal image, and yet is not identical to the Father in every way because he is not the Father; the Son shares in characteristics that necessitate he is divine. The Son is the “only of only,” yet is not alone since he has a Father; he is God of God, yet he is not God the Father; he is begotten but in a way whereby he partakes in the Father’s invisibility, incorruptibility, immortality, and eternality. As such, the Son subsists as everything that it is to be God without introducing division or temporality to the divine nature. He is, as Gregory says, the very “image and likeness of divinity.”

We get an even fuller picture of Gregory’s use of hypostasis when he discusses the Spirit having or holding His subsistence from God. For Gregory, language of subsistence (indicated throughout his exposition by use of hypostasis) is primarily an expression of distinct, extant “thingness,” irreferential to the nature or underlying existence that comprises a being. The absence of the term in Article 4 clues us into this. If Gregory were using hypostasis to describe a function of something’s given nature or underlying essence, the term would almost certainly make an appearance in his conclusion on the unity of the Trinity without division or differentiation; instead, language of hypostasis is assigned to those individual persons who “subsist” within God (namely, the Son and the Holy Spirit).

How Should We Read the Pre-Nicenes?

From what survives, Gregory never reaches the full-throated Nicene assertion that the Son is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father. Since the term was used by Paul of Samosata to claim there were two essences in God, Gregory would have likely avoided the term.[2] That said, he does make clear there is a multiplicity of existence or subsistence within divinity. And, to show how the case lies in the point, Gregory’s rejection of this ousia language and its introduction of a multiplicity of essences at Antioch tells us that Gregory believes it is within one single divinity that these subsistent “things” exist.

Later pro-Nicene use of Gregory’s writings show us that his language such as “subsistent Wisdom” or the Spirit’s “having subsistence from God” was received as a sturdy enough foundation upon which later figures could build a doctrine of the Trinity. For example, Gregory’s exposition of the faith is quoted in full in Gregory of Nyssa’s oration on the life of the Wonderworker, where Nyssa states Gregory left this “God-given teaching to his successors as a kind of inheritance, by which the people there are initiated to this day,” demonstrating the legacy of the exposition. Additionally, the entirety of the exposition’s Greek text can be found in John of Damascus’s On the Holy Trinity without attribution of any kind.[3] These later citations cite Gregory’s works with little reserve, even in light of their surer place within the trajectory of orthodoxy.

From Gregory’s work, we can deduce that third-century theologians wielded the language of later discussions with a distinct lack of etymological development that would bloom during later controversies—and because of this, we must consider the sense in which pre-Nicene authors were trying to talk about God. When we zoom out, we see the ways many sought to uphold both the unique status of the Father as Father and the divinity of the Son in their respective polemical and theological contexts.

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[1] Translated from Migne, PG 10.983. Translations consulted include Roberts and Donaldson (ANF 6:48–49) and Nyssa’s recollection of the exposition found in Slusser’s Life and Works on Gregory Thaumaturgus. There exists an addendum at the end of the work insisting “there is nothing created or subservient in the Trinity.” Abramowski and Slusser both argue the omitted passage is too neatly Nicene to presume its origin lies with Thaumaturgus. Due to its unreliability, it is omitted; outside of this, the exposition of the faith is accepted as authentic. Article subdivisions are mine.

[2] For more on Antioch 268, there are a few good academic articles out there. First, I recommend the chapter “Origen and Orthodoxy” in Mark Edwards, Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 79–103. You may also be interested in Dragoș Andrei Giulea, “Antioch 268 and Its Legacy in the Fourth-Century Theological Debates,” in Harvard Theological Review 111, no. 2 (2018): 192–215, which I think is the clearest explanation of the events published as of late.

[3] You may find these in Migne’s PG 46.912D and PG 95.12, respectively. Their use and inclusion by each of these figures mildly suggests there are some communities that used Gregory’s exposition as some kind of creedal formula.