Pro-Nicene Authority Theology and Gregory of Nyssa

Abstract

This article reexamines the notion of ‘authority’ in the Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission debate in light of what the author calls ‘pro-Nicene authority theology’. The article suggests that the modern debate’s emphasis on God’s will departs in some ways from the pro-Nicene way of forwarding the Son’s and Spirit’s equality with the Father, as shown in a couple of key passages in Gregory of Nyssa. The modern tendency is to reason from oneness of nature and being to oneness of authority. The pro-Nicenes, however, reasoned in the reverse—from an identity of authority to an identity of nature and being—on the basis of an ontological kind of unity that exists between authority and nature.