gregory of nyssa

I've just handed in one of my major end of term papers. Here's the conclusion for your perusal.

"Supposing that the opponents in mind are the pneumatomachians, Gregory’s affirmation of the homoousia of the Spirit with the Father and Son had drawn the charge that his view entailed the opinion that there were ‘three gods’. In the fourth chapter, this paper explained Gregory’s first move against the charge, whereby he explains how according to the rules of grammar there could never be three ‘gods’ since natures are singular. But Gregory shows the truth of the point through a discussion of the error in saying there are three men, which is common habit. The effect of this however, is to trivialise his argument, for one may simply reply that though the semantic point is true, there are still three human individuals, and so why not three divine individuals? The fifth chapter then details Gregory’s response to the claim that there are three divine individuals by showing how the defining attributes or particularities of human persons are not present in the divine persons. Whereas human persons are differentiated by their having their own principles of movement, action and will, the trinitarian persons do not have these separately, but rather there is one power, goodness, will etc which is effected by all three persons of the trinity. In this way Gregory retains the divine unity by showing the disanalogy between divine persons and human persons, even though both kinds of persons are multiple hypostases sharing one nature respectively.
Such a strong emphasis on unity is in danger of confusing the persons, because if they are the same in every respect then there is no differentiation, and the persons are a fiction. Rather, chapter seven details how Gregory points to cause as the one criterion which establishes the peculiar attribute which differentiates the persons. The Father is the cause, the Son is caused directly by the Father, and the Spirit is caused by the Father through the mediation of the Son. The ‘process’ of causation and mediation is not to be understood as a temporal succession, for Gregory affirms that it happens ‘without delay’ and emphasises that “between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there is no interstice into which the mind might step as into a void.” The generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit are eternal, and the causal distinction only goes to how the divine being subsists, and not to what it is. The whole being of Godhead thus remains eternal, uncreated, perfect in goodness and power, unchangeable, and ineffable. It is only the “idea of cause [that] differentiates the Persons of the Holy Trinity” and this distinction only penetrates to the mode of being, not the nature of being. This nature remains “unchangeable and undivided, for these reasons we properly declare the Godhead to be one, and God to be one, and employ in the singular all other names which express Divine attributes” – thereby Gregory shows Ablabius why we do not say there are ‘three gods’."