Fr. John Meyendorff on the
Trinitarian Dimension of the
Holy Spirit
It has often been noted that East and West differ in their approach to the mystery of the divine Trinity. The West takes for granted God’s unity and approaches his “trinity” as a matter of speculation, while the East starts with a living experience of the three and then moves to affirm their equal divinity, and therefore, their unity. Thus the Greek Cappadocian fathers of the fourth century were accused of tritheism because “the groundwork of (their) thought lay in the triplicity of equal hypostases (persons), and the identity of the divine ousia (substance) came second in order of prominence to their minds.”
The difference of approach of the trinitarian mystery is not a philosophical one. It is based on a fundamental interpretation of the New Testament by the Greek fathers who understood the Christian faith as primarily a revelation of divine persons. The Christian faith to them is first of all an answer to Jesus’ question, “Whom say ye that I am? … The Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:15-16). The authority and effectiveness of Jesus’ actions, as well as of His teachings, depend upon His personal identity. Only God Himself can be the savior, only God overcomes death and forgives sins, only God can communicate divine life to humankind. And the same approach is valid for the interpretation of Jesus’ sending of “another” from the Father—the Spirit. The primarily personal revelation of God is discovered by the early Greek fathers not only in the classic trinitarian formula—the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19, or the three gifts personally qualified in II Corinthians 13:14 (“ the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion [κοιυωυια] of the Holy Spirit”) but also in the Spirit speaking personally to Philip (Acts 8:19), to Peter (Acts 10:19; 11:12), to the church of Antioch (Acts 13:12), to the apostolic council of Jerusalem (“it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and us”-Acts 15:25). The Spirit is understood here as a presence distinct from that of Jesus but possessing the same divine sovereignty.