In the mind of Gregory, the Orthodox doctrine of the
Blessed Trinity is the fundamental dogma of Christianity, in contrast
with all other religions, and with all heretical systems.
“Remember your confession,” he says to his hearers in an
Oration against the Arians; “Into what were you baptized?
The Father? Good, but still Jewish. The Son? Good; no
longer Jewish, but not yet perfect. The Holy Ghost? Very
good; this is perfect. Was it then simply into these, or was
there some one common Name of these? Yes, there was, and it is
God.” And in the same oration he calls Arianism a new
Judaism, because it ascribes full Deity only to the Father; and he
speaks of One Nature in Three Individualities, intelligent, perfect,
self-existent, distinct numerically, but one in Godhead.
“In created things,” says Ullmann, “the several
individuals are embraced in a common conception, though in themselves
only connected together in thought, while in fact they are not
one. Manhood is only an intellectual conception; in fact there
exist only Men. But in the Godhead the Three Persons are not only
in conception, but in fact, One; and this Unity is not only a relative
but an absolute Unity, because the Divine Being is perfect in all Three
Persons, and in all in a perfect equality. In this sense
therefore Gregory and all orthodox Trinitarians maintain the Unity of
God. But within this Unity there is a true Trinity, Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Nature.”
We worship, he says (Or. xxxiii. 16), the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
One Nature in Three Individualities. So that, as he says
elsewhere (Or. in laud. Athanasii, xxi. 10), the Trinity is a true
Trinity; not a numbering of unlike things, but a binding together of
equals. Each of the Persons is God in the fullest sense.
The Son and the Holy Ghost have their Source of Being in the Father,
but in such sense that They are fully consubstantial with Him, and that
neither of Them differs from Him in any particular of Essence.
The points of difference lie in the Personal Attributes; the Father
Unoriginate, and Source of Deity; the Son deriving His Being eternally
from the Father, and Himself the Source of all created existence; the
Holy Ghost proceeding eternally from God, and sent into the world.