The Church Fathers · c. 390
On Not Three Gods
Ad Ablabium
Gregory of Nyssa · c. 335 – c. 395
What it is
A short answer to the obvious objection: if Peter, James, and John are three men, why are Father, Son, and Spirit not three Gods. Gregory replies that calling three men three is already a loose habit of speech, and that the divine persons are one because every divine action begins in the Father, proceeds through the Son, and is completed in the Spirit as a single motion.
Why it lasted
The most concentrated statement of the Cappadocian solution, and the source of the rule that the works of the Trinity toward the world are undivided — the axiom all later Trinitarian theology is built on.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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