The Trinity and Gregory of Nyssa

Sarah Coakley's Powers and Submissions is difficult reading.  I would not say that her sentences are as well tailored as her clothes.  But, here's what I got out of Chapter Seven: 'Persons' in the Social Doctrine of the Trinity: Current Analytic Discussion and 'Cappadocian' Theology.

Traditional thinking says that Latin doctrine of the Trinity (Augustine, etc.) emphasizes the unity of the Trinity, while Greek doctrine (Gregory of Nyssa, etc.) emphasizes the triune social aspects of the Persons of the Trinity.  Coakley suggests too often we read our modern, individualistic notions of person back into the doctrine of the Trinity.  At the same time, certain theologians go overboard and balk at any notion of person as relational in the Trinity. 

Coakley says that Gregory of Nyssa is often misread.  He does not start with a social approach to the Trinity, if that means starting with Three and then speaking of One.  Nor does he define divine hypostasis by an analogy of three individual men.  If you read more of his work, "a rather different perception of his trinitarian theology emerges, one which is in no doubt about the unity of the divine will in action but which is highly diffident about probing the details of the nature of God in Godself beyond a certain, cautiously delimited point."  He has a very apophatic perception of God. 

Coakley lists ten points about Gregory:
1.  He does not start from three apologetically.  He emphasizes the unified will and power of God and denies that there is a greater and lesser in the divine.
2.  Since the Father is the source of the other Persons, the Father has logical priority.
3.  The analogy of three men united by manhood is also a disanalogy.  "In the case of the Divine nature we do not [as in the case of men] learn that the Father does anything by himself in which the Son does not work cojointly, or again that the Son has any special operation apart from the Holy Spirit." (quote from Gregory, not Coakley.)

I would like to digress with this third point and ask that the church put to final rest the horrible formula "Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier."  This is not workable trinitarian language.  The Son also creates, the Father also sanctifies, the Holy Spirit also redeems.  You can't divide the Trinity into jobs.  I think this is a modern form of modalism.  So stop it.  Thank you.

4.  On an experiential level (as opposed to logical), Gregory starts with the Holy Spirit.  "The Spirit is our point of entry into the divine flow from the spring of the Father" (Gregory quote)
5.  Hypostatis does not mean three individual self-consciousnesses. 
6.  The talk is of communion (koinonia) between the Persons, not community.  This distinction is critical in his Letter 38, where he is "most certainly not enjoining the unification of separate individuals into a community."  (Coakley quote)
7.  Number cannot apply strictly to God.  "We cannot add up the numbers in the Trinity the same way as we count heads at a gathering of humans."  I'm not sure what Coakley's point is here.
8.  "Gregory's favored analogies for the Trinity stress the indivisibility of the persons and even a certain fluidity in their boundaries."  Other analogies he uses: spring, chain, rainbow.
9.  He has an apophatic notion of any talk of the essence of God.  "In his Commentary on the Song of Songs, we find a wealth of discussions of the dark incomprehensibility of the divine nature." 
10.  He uses free imagery for the divine persons in his exegetical work.  (arrow, wind)

To sum up: Coakley believes there is no modern notion of person in Gregory's work such as a focus on self-consciousness or autonomy, and that his use of the word person is analogical.  What does that mean?  She defines analogy as stretching a term to fit new applications.  The persons of the Trinity are not persons in the sense that you and I are.  But his use of the term hypostasis is literal, and he believes the formula Father, Son and Holy Spirit is revealed. 

Gregory's writings explore a certain type of gender fluidity, especially in Commentary on the Song of Songs.  The stages of ascent to God involve a darkening of the mind, and the spiritual senses take over the intellect.  Here Gregory moves from the metaphor of a youth going courting for Sophia to the metaphor of a bride seeking the divine bridgegroom.  Then, while Sophia is courted by the soul, she's described as a manly woman, but when the soul becomes receptive, Christ becomes the bridegroom seeking her.  (This Sophia/Christ language is not Coakley, but Gregory's.)  In his seventh Homily, the mother of the groom is associated with the Father, and Gregory explains that the names 'father' and 'mother' are effectively the same and quotes Galatians 3:28.  Coakley states that this linguistic play with gender is not a rhetorical flourish, but that Gregory is showing us that "gender stereotypes must be reversed, undermined and transcended if the soul is to advance to supreme intimacy with the trinitarian God."