Cappadocians

Overview

• The Cappadocian Fathers are three 4th-century saints from Cappadocia — Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen), and Gregory of Nyssa — who gave the Church its settled language for the Holy Trinity.

Summary

The Cappadocians are Saints Basil the Great (c. 330–379), his friend Gregory the Theologian (Gregory of Nazianzus), and Basil's younger brother Gregory of Nyssa. Working in the decades after the First Council of Nicaea (325), they defended and deepened its confession of the Son as homoousios (of one essence) with the Father against Arianism and its later forms, and extended the same defence to the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Their decisive contribution was to fix the Trinitarian vocabulary the Church still uses: one ousia (essence) in three hypostases (Persons) — distinguishing clearly the what of God from the who. This settlement was vindicated at the Second Ecumenical Council, Constantinople I (381).

Why It Matters

Nicaea confessed the faith; the Cappadocians gave it the precise words that made it defensible and teachable. Nearly every time we say the Trinity is "one essence in three Persons," Nicaea I we are speaking their language.

Sources

• OrthodoxWiki, Basil the Great (Basil, Gregory the Theologian, and Gregory of Nyssa called "the Cappadocians"; their 4th-century, anti-Arian, homoousios labours).
• See also Homoousios, Hypostasis, Ousia, Constantinople I.