Eusebius of Emesa on the Trinity

The quotations found in this post are taken from Robert E. Winn’s Eusebius of Emesa: Church and Theology in the Mid-Fourth Century, published by The Catholic University of America Press in 2011. Eusebius was the bishop of Emesa and a student of Eusebius of Caesarea. This is significant since we would expect to find the Bishop of Emesa’s Trinitarianism to be in line with that of his mentor.

I now quote the section that deals primarily with Eusebius’ Trinitarianism that is found on pp. 163-177. All emphasis will be mine.

Affirming both the unity and the distinction of the Father and the Son was a primary concern of Eusebius’s theology, but the means by which he chose to express the relationship changed. By the time he came to deliver the Jerusalem series, he had come to believe that what he should emphasize was the common nature and essence of the Father and Son and to downplay the hierarchical nature of the church’s theology. This shift is apparent not only in his discussion of the Father and the Son but also in his treatment of the Holy Spirit’s relationship with the Father and the Son. In many of Eusebius’s sermons there is a rudimentary Trinitarian theology, but it is in the Jerusalem series that he expressed this Trinitarian theology with greater precision.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Most creeds of the mid-fourth century discuss the Spirit only incidently and never labor to define precisely the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, Eusebius talked about the Holy Spirit and he had a theology of the Spirit beyond simply acknowledging his existence because of the baptismal formula. There is no doubt that by the time he delivered the Jerusalem series he was fully comfortable with affirming the full divinity of the Spirit, but this is a position that is hinted at in many of his sermons. The explicit statement of Trinitarian theology found in the sermon De fide, habita Hierosolymis will conclude this section, but comments on the Holy Spirit in this sermon, where he implied the divinity of the Spirit, function well as an entry point to how he discussed the Holy Spirit in all of his sermons.

Beginning this sermon with statements of his reticence to take up the audacious task of discussing God, Eusebius acknowledged his dependence on the “grace of the Spirit,” and it was only through this grace that someone could engage properly in theological discussion.¹⁰² Taking up the same point again a few lines later, he reminded his audience why the Spirit was able to bestow this grace. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 2.10–11, he explained that just as only a human spirit fully understands a human person, so only the Spirit from God knows anything about God.¹⁰³ In the context of developing his argument against natural analogies for God and the inability of creation to ascertain anything about God, Eusebius was here implying what he would later establish explicitly, namely, that the Spirit of God is God with the Father and the Son.

A careful reading of his sermons indicates that Eusebius frequently described the Holy Spirit with language that he used elsewhere to describe God. His description of the Holy Spirit in the sermon De Filio is a notable example. By way of context, recall that in De incorporali, Eusebius had set out to establish that God was present to all and yet distinct from all by discussing the differences between incorporeality and corporeality.¹⁰⁴ In De Filio, he began by arguing that the Spirit, despite the fact that he was present to many and had given gifts to many, was not divided up into parts when the Son bestowed him on different individuals. Eusebius then proceeded to differentiate corporeality and incorporeality in order to establish that the Spirit is by nature incorporeal and separate from all place and, as such, could not be divided into parts.¹⁰⁵ It is impossible to know which of these sermons came first, of course, but the arguments about the Spirit’s status he made in De Filio suggests that in his mind the Spirit held the same place as God in the cosmic hierarchy.

By turning to the sermon De imagine we can further clarify his understanding of the Spirit because it was in this sermon that Eusebius discussed the Holy Spirit most extensively. Dependent on the hierarchy of nature and power that was pervasive in his sermons, De imagine treated the Holy Spirit as the level above the angels and beneath the Son. The Spirit, Eusebius claimed, cannot be compared to the angels and is superior in power, but “the undivided and effectual Spirit is present to all the archangels.”¹⁰⁶ Furthermore the Holy Spirit, preserving his integrity and unity, “fills the twelve apostles, and fills the seventy-two, and fills the five hundred brothers, and fills the world, and fills angels and fills archangels; he fills Moses the legislator and his brother Aaron and sister Miriam and his disciple Joshua of Nun and seventy others.”¹⁰⁷ Resorting to the same arguments he employed in De incorporali to prove the superiority of incorporeality, Eusebius used fire as a comparison to explain this characteristic of the Spirit. Just as fire is present to and affects many different objects but retains its unity and integrity, so also the Spirit is capable of doing the same. Thus, the Spirit is present to all, but despite this omnipresence, only fills with the grace of God and the knowledge of God those who acknowledge the teaching about the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures.¹⁰⁸ To explain this contradiction, Eusebius compared the Spirit to a book set up in a public place. It is available for all to read but only the literate actually read and understand it.¹⁰⁹

Not only did he associate the Spirit with God by attempting to prove that he possessed divine incorporeality and was the source of the grace of God and the knowledge of God, but he also expressed the same doubts about defining the Spirit as he did about defining the Father and the Son. Eusebius was willing to use the analogies mentioned above to prove the Spirit’s superiority over angels, but he was nevertheless hesitant to do this. He made his transition from talking about the Spirit to talking about the Son in De imagine by confessing that, although he had used analogies, the Spirit is ineffable, someone who ought to be feared, and these analogies have provided nothing worthy of the Spirit. Thus, he intended to avoid using analogies for the Son since they would be equally worthless for defining him.¹¹⁰

The way Eusebius treated the Holy Spirit in De imagine, De fide, habita Hierosolymis, and other sermons suggests that for him the Holy Spirit was closely associated with the Father and the Son. In the doxologies with which he typically concluded his sermons as well as in other passages where he used the baptismal formula of Matthew 28 as a guide, Eusebius clarified how he understood the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These Trinitarian formulas indicate the extent to which he was willing to associate the Holy Spirit with the divine nature the Son shared with the Father.

The biblical model Eusebius used to conclude most sermons was the epistle of Jude 25, and, as he expressed it at the end of De imagine, this model involves “worshiping one, through one and in one.”¹¹¹ A typical benediction runs as follows: “let us return glory to the one through one and in one from the one church: to the unbegotten Father, through the only-begotten Son, in one Holy Spirit glory, power, honor, both now and always and throughout all ages. Amen.”¹¹² In some sermons, Eusebius altered this formula slightly so that the preposition “with” connected the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. Thus he closed the fourth sermon in De incorporali in this way: “May both glory, honor, governance, majesty, both now and always and through all ages be to the true Unbegotten Father through his one true Only-begotten Son, with the Holy Spirit. Amen.”¹¹³ Another alternative is found in the final sermon in the series preached at Jerusalem. Eusebius concluded by indicating the need to give “glory and honor and dominion and worship and majesty to the one true unbegotten God and to the one offspring of the true God and to the one Holy Spirit of God.”¹¹⁴ Elsewhere he reduced this simply to giving honor to the Trinity (Երրորդութիւն).¹¹⁵

Eusebius is a classic example of what Basil of Caesarea would note a few decades after the death of the bishop of Emesa. The church had developed different ways of associating the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son through different prepositions, and Basil himself was known to vary his terminology.¹¹⁶ The variations in Eusebius’s terminology, however, do not obfuscate the theological implication of these doxologies. For Eusebius, the Holy Spirit ought to be associated with the glory and honor due to the Father and the Son. Trinitarian passages in his sermons other than the doxologies confirm the implications that are present in these doxologies.

In two sermons, Eusebius used the story of Jesus’ baptism to talk about the relationship between the Father and the Son, as discussed above, but also between the Spirit and the Father and Son. Thus in the midst of discussing the account of the baptism in one sermon, Eusebius summed up the significance of the event:

It is fitting to say this alone, that the Father truly is, that the Son truly is, and the Holy Spirit is. These are not meaningless names or empty words, but a true nature. The unbegotten Father is alone unbegotten; the only-begotten Son is alone only-begotten, and there is a Holy Spirit who is sent by the Son according to the will of the Father.¹¹⁷

Similarly as he was concluding the second sermon with the title De hominis assumptione, Eusebius reminded his audience that there can be no comparisons of God with the natural world. Instead of making these kind of comparisons, what should be said is brief: “one unbegotten Father born from no one; one only-begotten, born from the one Father; one Holy Spirit.”¹¹⁸ Although avoiding their theologically significant vocabulary, in this sermon Eusebius was echoing the authors of the second creed of the Dedication Council (341). When acknowledging that Jesus had commanded his disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the bishops had explained “obviously [in the name] of the Father who is really Father and the Son who is really Son and the Holy Spirit who is really Holy Spirit, because the names are not given lightly or idly, but signify exactly the particular hypostasis [ὑπόστασις] and order and glory of each of those who are named so that they are three in hypostasis but one in agreement.”¹¹⁹

With the creed of the Dedication Council, Eusebius emphasized in his doxologies and other passages that invoke Trinitarian language that the Holy Spirit is unique and independent but is also understood in close relation to the Father and the Son. Although he did not follow the authors of the second creed of the Dedication Council by using the word “agreement” (συμφωνία) to define the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Eusebius had other methods to establish a common divinity shared by the three. Thus, Eusebius used the adjective “one” to indicate the unique and independent existence of the Father and the Son and the common divinity the Father and the Son shared. The Son and the Father are “one and one” or “one from one.” It is in this context that Eusebius’s use of the adjective “one” for the Holy Spirit ought to be understood, as, for example, in the passage from De hominis assumptione cited above or in his doxologies where he used the term for the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in unison. Citing the three as “one and one and one” suggests some sense of the parity between them or even that the relationship between the Father and the Son, as “one and one,” is analogous for the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son. It is significant that in some of the doxologies concluding his sermons he offers glory, honor, and power to all three.

The passage from De fide cited above indicates that Eusebius intended his expansion of the “one and one” formula to convey that what the Father and the Son shared as “one and one” is extended to the Holy Spirit. When Eusebius told his audience that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not empty names but “a true nature,” he meant for them to understand the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son as analogous to the relationship of the Son to the Father. Just as the Son possesses the divine nature of the Father as his own nature, so, in Eusebius’s mind, the Holy Spirit also possesses this divine nature as well and thus deserves the honor and glory that his doxologies grant him.

The elements of a Trinitarian theology are present in the sermons of Eusebius discussed above. Eusebius believed that with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit ought to receive the same glory and honor, and he strengthened the sense of equality implied in his doxologies by qualifying the Holy Spirit as the “one” Spirit in conjunction with the one Father and the one Son. Thus, for Eusebius, just as the Son possesses the divine nature of the Father, so also the Holy Spirit is of the same nature as the Father and the Son. He also believed that just as the Son is subordinate to the Father, so also the Holy Spirit, one step beneath the Son in the ascent to the Father he narrated in De imagine, is subordinate to the Son and the Father.

It is now time to turn to the Trinitarian passages in De fide, habita Hierosolymis. These passages do much to clarify what he meant by the “true nature” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have already seen that in this sermon Eusebius stated that the Son has a nature equal to the Father and is from the essence of the Father but that he is nevertheless not the Father.¹²⁰ Having made this claim, he then proceeded to further explain what he meant by this statement and it was at this point that he introduced the Holy Spirit:

Everything that the Father is, the Son is the same, except that he is not Father. Everything that the Son is, the Father is the same, except that he is not Son and did not take flesh. And everything which the Father and the Son are, the Holy Spirit is the same except that he is not Father or Son, and did not become flesh as the Son. [22] The Father is life: “I am a living Lord says the Lord of Hosts” [Zephaniah 2.9]. The Son is also life: “I am life and light and truth.” The Holy Spirit is life: “The flesh does not help anything, but it is the Spirit who makes life” [John 6.63]. There is one Lord and one God and one king. We confess the Holy Trinity and not lords and gods and kings. It is for this reason that the seraphim were crying out in the temple yonder, “Holy, holy, holy”—three times holy and one time Lord. Since there is one lordship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.¹²¹

Again in the next paragraph he repeated the theme, “the Father is father and the Son is son and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God.”¹²³

At the conclusion to his lengthy introduction to this sermon, Eusebius once again used Trinitarian language. In this final passage he connected what he had been stating throughout this sermon about the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Indeed, saying “God with God” is a name of God. God with God and not gods. We do not confess two unbegottens or two begottens but one unbegotten and one offspring and one Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father. Three and one; one and three. And because we confess one essence of the Holy Trinity perfect in three states of persons. The person of the Father is not the person of the Son and the person of the Son or Holy Spirit is not the person of the Father, although originally the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are from one essence.¹²⁴

This passage is as useful a summary as any of the theological position he staked out in this sermon. On the one hand, he was insisting the church must confess that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in their divine nature or divine essence. Although, as in all of his sermons, defining the divinity of the Son is a particular concern in this sermon, he also labored in this sermon, as this passage indicates, to clarify the divinity of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, he was insisting that the church must confess the unique individual existence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the “one and one and one.” Stressing this point was a common theme in his preaching, but it is significant to note the emphasis he gave it and how he punctuated this emphasis. Just as he apparently saw the need to emphasize the divinity of the Son and the Spirit by equating nature with essence, so here he added the word “person” apparently to strengthen the notion of the individual existence of the Father and the Son.

As with many of his contemporaries in the mid-fourth century, Eusebius in this sermon was engaging the theological tradition of his predecessors and his peers in order to affirm his own understanding of the divine economy. He was asserting the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit with renewed devotion while at the same time reaffirming his conviction that the Son and the Spirit must be acknowledged as eternally distinct from and dependent on the Father. One can sense in this sermon, however, that he was finding the theology of subordination he had inherited from Eusebius of Caesarea increasingly problematic. Perhaps for this reason he attempted to smooth out the rigid theological hierarchy reflected in other sermons by emphasizing the equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Eusebius’s cosmos there was one major line of demarcation: creature and creator. By the time he delivered this series of sermons at Jerusalem, therefore, he had come to believe that it was necessary to emphasize firmly that the God of creation encompassed three persons who were all equally God and there could consequently be no doubt about the status of the Son and the Spirit with respect to this cosmic line.

Further Reading

Eusebius on the Trinity Part 1

Eusebius’ Trinitarian Baptismal Formula