On Line Library of the Church of Greece

 Christos Sp. Voulgaris

The Biblical and Patristic Doctrine of the Trinity

From: The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, vol. 37 (Νov.) 3-4, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline, Mass., 1992.

7. THE TEACHING OF THE FATHERS

During the 2^nd Century we do not have any sound formulation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, except occasional statements in the baptismal symbols and various inferences in certain Church writers Rome,[xiv] Justin,[xv] Athenagoras,[xvi] Irenaeus,[xvii] Tertullian,[xviii] with occasional expressions of subordinationism of minor importance.[xix]  The New Testament teaching on this subject had not yet been seriously contested; the oral apostolic tradition was still alive in the Church.  However, with the spread of Gnosticism and the rise of Monarchianism of dual origin, that of the Jewish belief that accepted a kind of abstract unity of Jewish monotheism, and that of the pagan which accepted a kind of pantheistic unity in the context of polytheism, the Church was forced to clarify and elaborate the New Testament teaching in its struggle against them.  The Monarchians of Jewish origin stressed God’s transcendence and justice and rejected His inner communion with man in the person of Jesus Christ, while those of pagan origin stressed God’s presence in the world and His love and rejected His transcendence and justice.  This Monarchian heresy of dual origin developed into various forms in the 3^rd and 4^th Centuries, most important of which were Sabellianism and Arianism.  From the latter came the Macedonians who contested the personal character of the Holy Spirit.

During their struggle against these heresies, the Church Fathers initially used the word ‘person’ for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, introduced by Hippolytus, as well as the equivalent Latin word ‘persona’, introduced by Tertullian.  But Sabellians gave to these words the meaning of a temporary form of God’s manifestation or revelation, which forced the Greek Fathers to substitute the word ‘person’ with the word ‘hypostasis’, by which they meant the mode of God’s existence.  Occasionally they also used the word ‘person’, but gave to it the meaning of the word ‘hypostasis’, which is different from the meaning which it has in philosophy and the later theological thinking, where it indicates the self-conscious and independent being without at the same time being a separate entity.  The Western Church continues using the word ‘persona’ instead of the word ‘substantia’ (‘hypostasis’) which in Latin is identical with the word ‘essentia’, and which sometimes causes confusion.  Eventually the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated, and stated at the Councils of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and Constantinople (381 A.D.).  The main protagonists for the Church during this time were Athanasius, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, and Gregory of Nyssa, whose views on the subject we will present here shortly, after a short account of Sabellianism and Arianism.

Introducing Stoicism into biblical thought, according to which God is the essence of the universe, and thus promoting pagan pantheism by way of Christianity, Sabellianism maintained that God shrinks and expands with the world.  When he shrinks, he remains a silent and inactive unit, but when he expands, he becomes active or speaking (Logos) and so Trinitarian and creator of the world.  Writing against these, Athanasius says that such an idea is absolutely wrong, for if the Father is the unit and Trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it follows that the Father also became Son and Spirit, what He was not before His expansion, and therefore, the unit itself, the Father, incarnated and suffered on the cross.  If however, the unit is not the Father, but something else, it follows that this unity is the creator of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.[xx]  Furthermore, if when silent, God is inactive and therefore not creative, it follows that He did not have in himself the Word from the beginning and the power to create, but, instead, acquired them both during his expansion, when He gave birth or spoke.  But then the question arises, where did He acquire them from and for what purpose?  But if He had the World in Himself from the beginning and thus was able to create, the birth of the Logos was not necessary, because he could create even by remaining silent.  And if the Logos was in God before his birth, then after his birth He is outside him.  Such an idea, however, contradicts Christ’s saying “I am the Father and the Father in me (John 14:10,11,39; cf. 17:21).”  “If He is in the Father now,” says Athanasius,” He has always been in Him” (John 17:12).  And if when shrinking God is inactive, as a silent unit, and becomes able to create only when He expands, then He is inferior even to men, who are creative even when remaining silent (John 17:11).  For Athanasius, the Logos and the Spirit were in God from the very beginning, not made later.  For this reason, it was not necessary for him to expand in order to possess the Logos and the Spirit in Himself.  For the same reason God did not have to expand in order to become Trinity and incarnate, for such an idea implies that there was no Trinity before the incarnation, on the one hand, and that it was the Father-unity who expanded and became Son and Spirit.  In this case, the Trinity is a Trinity only by name, something which is totally alien to biblical revelation.

Arianism, on the other hand, following an abstract Jewish conception about God, maintained that God is the highest cause of the world, without any cause outside himself.  Arianism defined God only negatively, as unborn, not affirmatively, as well as self-existing, which would abolish the idea about the abstract unit.  In this way, Arianism did not think of him as Father and Son, but only as the creator of the Son and through him creator of the world.  Therefore, the Son is the first principle of the world created by God, the medium between himself and the other creatures created by him and after his pattern.  This idea is similar to Plato’s, according to which the inferior gods or demons played an important role at the formation of the world, acting as mediums between the imperfect material things and the highest idea, God.[xxi]  Following this, the Arians maintained that the Son of God is the most perfect creature by whom God created the other creatures, and at the same time the Son is a lesser God, and thus subject to worship in the context of pagan worship of creatures.  As a creature, the Son has a beginning in his existence, in time, and for this reason he is not the Logos, Wisdom, and Power within God.  He is called Logos, Wisdom, and Power because God named him so, not by grace, on account of his communion with God’s word wisdom and power.[xxii]  Confusing between ‘originate’ and ‘unoriginate’, on the one side and ‘made’ and ‘not made’ on the other, the Arians accepted that the Son is neither ‘unoriginate’ nor ‘not made’ like God the Father, but ‘originate’ and ‘made’ like the rest of the creatures, having come into being by the Father’s will.[xxiii]  As ‘originate’ and ‘made’, the Son is changeable, according to the Arians.[xxiv]

The fundamental difference, therefore, between the Church and Arianism was that, according to the first, Christ was first God and then He became man in order to divinize man, while according to the second, Christ was man first and then he became God.[xxv]  This is how Athanasius summarizes: “God, the creator of the universe and king of all, who is beyond all being and human thought, since He is good and made mankind in His own image through His own Word, our Savior Jesus Christ; and He also made man perceptive and understanding of reality through His similarity to Him, giving Him also a conception and knowledge of His own eternity, so that as long as He kept this likeness He might never abandon His concept of God or leave the company of the saints, but retaining the grace of Him who bestowed it on Him, and also the special power given Him by the Father’s Word, He might rejoice and converse with God, living an idyllic and truly blessed and immortal life.  For having no obstacle to the knowledge of the knowledge of the divine, He continuously contemplates by His purity the image of the Father, God the Word, in whose image He was made, and is filled with admiration when He grasps His providence towards the universe.  He is superior to sensual things and all bodily impressions, and by the power of His mind clings to the divine and intelligible realities in heaven.  For when man’s mind has no intercourse with the body, it transcends the senses and all human things and it rises high above the world, and beholding the Word sees in Him also the Father of the Word.  It rejoices in contemplating Him and is renewed by its desire for Him…”[xxvi]  The Father’s revelation and knowledge in Christ can be complete and perfect only if the Word incarnated in Christ is equally perfect, like the Father.  The same principle also applies to the Spirit if He is to bring man to God the Father.  According to Athanasius, God could not be the cause of anything outside himself or the creator of the universe unless there was eternal life and movement within Himself by which internal discernments do not affect God’s eternal essence, since through them He returns to Himself.  Thus, “if the Son was not before his generation, truth was not always in God, which it were a sin to say; for, since the Father was, there was ever in him the truth, which is the Son, who says “I am the Truth” (John 14:6).  And the subsistence existing, of course there was forthwith its expression and image; for God’s image is not delineated from without, but God himself has begotten it; in which seeing himself, He was delighted.  When then did the Father not see himself in his Image?  How should the Maker and Creator see Himself in a created and originated essence? For such as is the Father, such must be the image.  The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker.  These attributes must be in the Image, to make it true that he “that has seen” the Son: has seen the Father”.  If the Son be not all this, but as the Arians consider, originate, and not eternal, this is not a true image of the Father…”[xxvii]

The point of the Arians that “there was a time when the Son was not”[xxviii] but came into being in time out of nothing, contrary to what the Scriptures say that He was born from the Father, has fatal repercussions on man’s destiny, for if He was not God by nature, the Image of the Father, He could not be able to divinize man, because He would be in need of divinization himself.[xxix]  But because the Son is the true Image of the Father and in Him everything receives life, “He is not alien to the Father, but consubstantial (homoousios) with Him” [xxx], exactly because He is not made.  Only the Son who is consubstantial with the Father can be the true image of the Father, for if that which is made can be an image of that which is not made, then the created becomes equal to the uncreated.[xxxi]  That this is totally wrong becomes evident from Christ’s command.  He who commanded us to be baptized, not in the name of uncreated and created, nor in the name of the Creator and the creature, but in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.[xxxii]  Therefore, only the word ‘homoousios’ can indicate the exact relationship of the Son to the Father, for likeness is not fit for substances, but only for shapes and qualities.  With respect to substances, we cannot speak of likeness, but of identity, “Thus, man is said to be like man not according to substance, but according to shape and character; according to substance, they are of the same origin.  Equally, man cannot be said to be unlike a dog, but of different origin.  Therefore, the one is of the same origin and substance, while the other of different substance, the Son is not changeable, but always the same because the Father’s substance is neither subject to change.[xxxiii]  For this reason, all those passages of Scripture which ascribe some sort of change to Christ do not imply His unchangeable divine substance, but His human one, which alone is subject to change.  For example, the passage in Philippians 2:9, “Therefore God has highly exulted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name…” indicates Christ’s human nature exulted by his resurrection and exultation.[xxxiv]

Having thus defined the relationship of the Son to the Father, Athanasius goes on to define the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Son and the Father, “so that from the knowledge we have about the Son, we will be able to acquire a good knowledge about the Spirit, too.  For we will discover that the Spirit has that relationship to the Son which the Son has to the Father.”[xxxv]  This is more so since the Son himself said that the Counselor, the Spirit of truth, “will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak…for He will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-14) and thus he breather and gave it to the disciples from himself (John 20:22).  Therefore, that which was said by the Son, that “all that the Father has is mine (John 16:15)” also applies to the Spirit who equally has all that the Father has but through the Son, for as the Son is the Father’s Son; likewise the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, to the extent that he is called the ‘Spirit of God’ or the ‘Spirit of the Son’.  This is how Athanasius understands Paul’s expression “God has sent the Spirit of His Son into hearts, crying, ‘Abba Father’ (Colossians 4:6)” and John’s, “when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, He will bear witness to me (John 15:26).”

It follows then that since the Son is the Son is the Son of the Father and the offspring of His substance, not a creature, but ‘homoousios’ with Him, so the Spirit who is in God and searches the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:11-12) and is given from the Father through the Son, cannot either be a creature.  In other words, if the Spirit is a creature, the Son is a creature also.  Creatures are made out of nothing (Genesis 1:1), while the Son and the Spirit are from God with whom they create all things.  What is said in John 1:3 about the Son, that all things were made through the Word who does whatever the Father does (John 5:19), meaning that since He is creator He cannot be a creature, is also said about the Spirit in Psalms 104:29-30), “when you take away their spirit, they die and return to their dust; when you send forth your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth.”  Thus the Spirit has a creative capacity, for the Father creates all things through the Word in the Spirit, so that where the Word is, there also is the Spirit, while what has been created through the Word has its existence from the Spirit of the Word, as it is written in Psalms 33:6 “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power”.  The Spirit is not outside the Word, but being in the Word, He is in God through Him, so that the gifts are given by the Trinity.  This is what Paul says to the Corinthians, in their variety, it is the same Spirit and the same Lord and the same God who acts all things to all.  In fact, the Father himself acts and gives all things through the Word in the Spirit.[xxxvi]  The same in true also in 2 Corinthians 13:13, where Paul says that, partaking of the Spirit, we have the grace of the Word, and in Him we have the love of the Father.  Therefore, since the grace of the Trinity is one, the Trinity is undivided and its divinity is one, “one God who is above all the through all and in all…this is the faith of the catholic church; for the Lord has founded and rooted it on the Trinity, when he said to the disciples ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:19).”  If the Spirit were a creature, He (Christ) would not have placed Him with the Father.  The Trinity would not be like within itself, if something alien was placed in it.”[xxxvii]

That the Spirit is equal to the Son and the Father, and not a creature, was not enough to define exactly His identity and relationship to the other two Persons of the Trinity.  The Arians maintained that, if He is not a creature, He is a Son, so that there are two Sons, the Word and the Spirit.  More particularly, if the Spirit takes what is the Son’s, it follows that the Father is the Spirit’s grandfather and the Spirit is the Father’s grandson.[xxxviii]  Replying to these outrageous views, Athanasius observes that the Spirit is not called Son in the Bible, but Holy Spirit of God, exactly as the Son is not called Holy Spirit.  Each person has a peculiar name of his own, by which he is known and which is indicative of his identity and peculiar attribute.  “Why the same name,” asks Athanasius, “is not given to both, but, instead, the one is called Son and the Other is called Spirit?”[xxxix]  As we are not supposed to change the names of the various created things, since such a thing would cause a confusion with respect to their identity and quality, likewise, to a higher degree, we are not supposed to change the name “of those above creation to whom God gave the name” and who have “an eternal residence.”  Under this principle, “The Father is Father and not grandfather, and the Son is God’s Son and not the Father of the Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit and not the Father’s grandson or the Son’s brother.”[xl]  If we change the names of the divine persons, we abolish their identity and relation to each other.  If we give names to the divine persons, like we do to human persons, by calling them grandchildren and grandparents, we reverse the order of things by giving an absolute status to human reality and a relative one to the reality of the Trinity.  Such a thing, however, has nothing to do with the church’s faith consisting in what Christ said, in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).  Therefore, the Father cannot be called grandfather, and the Son cannot be called Father, and the Holy Spirit cannot be called otherwise, except as He is called.  It is impossible to alter this faith, for the Father is always Father, and the Son is always Son, and the Holy Spirit is always Holy Spirit, and called so.  This is because the Father does not have His origin from a Father; so He does not give birth so someone else’s Father; nor is the Son part of the Father and as such an offspring to give birth to a Son… and the Holy Spirit and as such He is of God, and we have believed that He is given from the Father through the Son.  Therefore, the Holy Trinity remains unchangeable and known as one Godhead.”[xli]

As we gather from the above, Athanasius defined the relationship of the Son and the Spirit to the Father by emphasizing their consubstantiality, but he did not, at the same time, define exactly each person’s different mode of existence, in relation to the others, in the context of the identity or unity of their substance.  This is due to the fact that the archbishop of Alexandria used the words ‘ousia’ and ‘hypostasis’ as synonyms, avoiding the use of the word ‘prosopon’.   The difference of the Son’s mode of existence from the Father’s mode of existence, is indicated by him by the use of expressions about the Son as the Father’s Image, the very stamp of His hypostasis, Word, Wisdom, Radiance, etc.  The exact distinction of each person’s mode of existence in relation to the others is made by Basil and the two Gregories who carried out the clarification of the Church’s faith and doctrine on the Trinity to a further point.  It is interesting to note, however, that the three Cappadocian fathers usually avoid speaking about God, and when they do, they mainly infer the Father.  What they always do, though, is speak about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  For them, God is the three Persons whose common energy underlines God’s unity and identity in Himself.

According to St. Basil the divine energy for the creation and the renewal of the universe runs “from the Father, through the only Son, to the Spirit” and this means that “the way of the knowledge of God lies from one Spirit through the one Son to the one Father.”[xlii]  In other words, God reveals himself as He really is in Himself, and this means that the way of His revelation is the way of His knowledge, which runs from Pneumatology to Christology and from there to ‘Patrology’.  “For this reason never do we separate the Paraclete from His union with the Father and the Son.  For our mind being enlightened by the Spirit looks up at the Son, and in Him as in an image beholds the Father.”[xliii]  It is obvious then, why Old Testament monotheism, grounded on the principle “Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one God (Deuteronomy 6:7),” was unable to lead man to the true knowledge of God.  Starting from this kind of monotheism, we cannot understand “the characteristics that are sharply defined in the case of each (i.e., person),” as for example paternity and sonship and holiness [xliv] nor can we understand Their unity, i.e., the whole Godhead who makes up the content of our faith.  This means that heresy, as partial and one-sided faith is not just imperfect, but a distorted faith, “for he who does not believe the Spirit does not believe in the Son, and he who has not believed in the Son does not believe in the Father.”  Denying one person equals to denying the whole Godhead, “for the naming of Christ is the confession of the whole, showing forth as it does the God who gave, the Son who received and the Spirit who is the unction.”  So we have learned from Peter, in the Acts, of ‘Jesus of Nazareth whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit’, and in Isaiah, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me’, and the Psalmist, ‘Therefore God, you God has anointed you with the oil, of gladness’.[xlv]

In St. Basil’s view, each person in the Godhead is “the influx of the individual qualities,” which is the characteristic sign of each person’s existence,[xlvi] the meeting point of his peculiar attributes.  For this reason, as far as God is concerned, enumeration must be done in a Godly way.  In other words, God’s hypostases must be co-numerated, not sub-numerated, for monarchy in the Trinity is identified with the substance, not with a particular person.  We say that God is one, not according to the number, but according to the substance.[xlvii]  “Do you maintain that the Son is numbered under the Father, and the Spirit under the Son, or do you confine your subnumeration to the Spirit alone?  If, on the other hand, you apply this subnumeration also to the Son, you revive what is the same impious doctrine, the unlikeness of the substance, the lowliness of rank, the coming into being in later time, and once for all, by this one term, you will plainly again set circling all the blasphemies against the Only begotten.”[xlviii]  In fact, Basil averts enumerating the persons in God so that it will not be taken to imply three Gods:  “In delivering the formula of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, our Lord did not connect the gift with number.  He did not say ‘into first, second, and third,’ nor yet ‘into one, two, and three,’ but He gave us the boon of the knowledge of the faith which leads to salvation, by means of holy names… Number has been devised as a symbol indicative of the quantity of objects… Count, if you must; but you must not by counting do damage to the faith.  Either let the ineffable be honored by silence; or let holy things be counted consistently with true religion.  There is one God and Father, one Only-begotten, and one Holy Spirit.  We proclaim each of the hypostases singly; and, when count we must, we do not let an ignorant arithmetic carry us away to the idea of plurality of Gods.  For we do not count by way of addition, gradually making increase from unity to multitude, and saying one, two, and three-nor yet first, second, and third.  For ‘I, God, am the first, and I am the last.’ …  For the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son… and therein is the unity.  So that according to the distinction of Persons, both are one, and according to the community of substance, one.”[xlix]  Unity and distinction go hand in hand in God in such a way that neither the distinction of the persons breaks the unity of substance, nor the identity of substance confuses the peculiarity of the qualities.  Speaking about three Persons, we understand the same thing united and distinguished, according to St. Basil.

Along the lines also moves the thought of St. Gregory the Theologian, according to whom the Monarch whom we hold in honor is “that which is not limited to one person, but one which is made of one quality of substance and a union of mind, and an identity of motion, and a convergence of its elements to unity, a thing which is impossible to the created nature, so that though numerically distinct there is no severance of substance.  Therefore, unity having from all eternity arrived by motion at duality, found its rest in Trinity.  This is what we mean by Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  The Father is the begetter and the emitter; without passion of course, and without reference to time, and not in a corporeal manner.  The Son is the begotten, and the Holy Spirit the emission; for I know not how this could be expressed in terms altogether excluding visible things….When did these come into being?  They are above all ‘when’.  But if I am to speak with something more of boldness, when the Father did.  And when did the Father come into being?  There never was a time when He was not.  And the same thing is true of the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Ask me again, and again I will answer you, When was the Son begotten?  When the Father was not begotten.  And when did the Spirit proceed?  When the Son was, not proceeding but, begotten beyond the sphere of time, and above the grasp of reason….  How then are they not alike, unoriginate if they are coeternal?  Because they are from Him, though not after Him.  For that which is unoriginate is eternal, but that which is eternal is not necessarily unoriginate, so long as it may be referred to the Father as its origin.  Therefore, in respect to cause, they are not unoriginate; but it is evident that the cause is not necessarily prior to its effects, for the sun is not prior to its light.”[l]

Therefore, according to Gregory, the word about God is a word about the Trinity, comprehending out of Light (the Father), Light (the Son), in Light (the Holy Spirit), i.e., “concisely and simply the doctrine of God.”[li]  In contrast to this, in Greek idolatry the divine is divided into many gods after the example of humanity, which, though one, is also divided into many men.  In both cases, unity is only theoretical and the particular persons differ from each other according to time, passions and power, i.e., they have many and different contrasts and energies.[lii]  But in Christianity, the persons of the Trinity having one and the same substance, have also one and the same energy, that of the Father taken over by the Son born from Him, and by the Spirit, who proceeds from Him, also.  Thus, the accusations of the heretics against the church’s faith, as centering around three Gods, are absolutely foreign to the reality of the Trinity.

This issue is taken up in more detail by Gregory of Nyssa, who observes that since God is to an abstract, motionless, and lifeless unity, He must be regarded as the cause and effect of himself.  Nevertheless, the cause is distinguished from the effect which is double: while we confess the invariable character of the nature, we do not deny the difference in respect of cause, and that which is caused, by which alone we apprehend that no Person is distinguished from another; by our belief, that is, that one is the cause, and another is of the cause; and again in that which is of the cause we recognize another distinction.  For one is directly from the first cause, and another by that which is directly from the first cause; so that the attribute of being Only-begotten abides without doubt in the Son, and the interposition of the Son, while it guards His attribute of being Only-begotten, does not shut out the Spirit from His relation by way of substance to the Father.”[liii]  According to Gregory, enumeration fits only to persons, not to substance. “The idea of the Persons admits of that separation which is made by the peculiar attributes considered in each severally, and when they are combined to us by means of number; yet their nature is one at union in itself, and an absolutely indivisible unit, not capable of increase by addition or of diminution by subtraction, but in its essence being and continually remaining one, inseparable even though it appears in plurality, continuous, complete, and not divided with the individuals who participate in it.”[liv]

The enumeration of the persons, however, raises the question whether we finally accept three gods in the Trinity.  This issue is exclusively discussed by Gregory in his above-mentioned work to Ablabios, as well as in his other treatise ‘Contre Centes’.  Ablabios asks Gregory, why in the case of men, Peter, James, and John, though of one and the same human nature, they are counted and spoken of in the plural as three men, while in the case of the Trinity, we refuse to say three gods, although we confess the three Persons and accept no difference between them with respects to substance and admit that God is one, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit?  Gregory’s answer to this is that in the case of men, we present and name as many those who have the same human nature as if there were many natures, improperly and out of a habit, because the name ‘man’ indicates mainly the common substance of all human persons, each one of which is indicated by a separate name, such as Luke, Stephen, etc., and not by the name ‘man’.  But even when say ‘many men’, in the plural, it is not harmful and dangerous, because the word indicates the substance, man cannot be regarded as a unity in himself, as one, simple being, but as changeable and somehow as a multitude.  ‘Man’, as a general term, cannot be regarded as existing in every person, because the older ones die and new ones take their place, so that humanity is thought of as consisting sometimes by more and sometimes by fewer persons, while by the change of the individual human persons, changes also humanity as such, or the human substance which is also numbered with the persons.  This, however, cannot be said about the Trinity, for its Persons remain the same and unchangeable, without being increased to become four or decreased to become two.  Therefore, it is wrong to mean three gods when we speak about the three Persons, the more so since the three Persons in God exist together without being separated from each other in time or in place, or according to will or according to energy, etc., that is, everything that is proper to men and separates them from each other.