Gregory of Nyssa and the Three Gods Problem

This chapter argues that Gregory’s principal claim in his treatise To Ablabius—On Not Saying ‘Three Gods’ (one of the most widely cited works of patristic Trinitarian theology) is that it is the unity of activity—as opposed to the unity of nature—that defeats the idea that the three hypostases are three gods. Here it is maintained that Gregory is concerned in To Ablabius with the semantics of the term ‘deity’ (θεότης‎), and that his etymological exposition of this term as a name of activity is illuminated by attention to overlooked parallels between this work and Gregory’s second book Against Eunomius. The chapter shows that Gregory understands the unity of divine action by analogy with the unity of any intentional action—an account of Trintarian unity that is here called the ‘intentional action’ model.