Patristic Consensus and Normative Orthodox teaching of Monarchical (Conciliar) Trinitarianism
A review of the debate between Dr. Joshua Sijuwade and Jonathan Hill and my subsequent X discussion.
Over the last few days on X, I have come across an Orthodox individual and multiple Roman Catholics dovetailing him, who seem to insist the Patristic Monarchical view of the Trinity is not Orthodox. The discussion stems from the debate between Dr. Joshua Sijuwade, an Orthodox Philosopher, and Jonathan Hill, hosted on the Transfigured Life Youtube channel last October. Dr. Sijuwade presented the Monarchical View, while Hill presented the Egalitarian view.
Hill proceeded to debate me on X after claiming that notable Orthodox Apologists, like Jay Dyer or Dr Sijuwade online are not teaching correct Orthodox Theology. See the post thread here.
The absurd part of this claim is not only the many Orthodox Priests like Archpriest John Behr, and scholars like Dr. Beau Branson and Perry Robinson share this view have been on Jays show discussing these things, but that this is taught in the Orthodox Catechism. When I was entering the Orthodox Church in 2020, this is what I learned from my priest in the class. On the Orthodox Church in America website, it explicitly expresses the view.
You can find the OCA Catechism here. In Chapter 6 can read statements on The Primacy of the Father. I will pull the section here:
For the Orthodox, discussion of the Holy Trinity must begin with the Father. He is the principle of unity within the Trinity: the Son is divine because He is the Son of the Father, eternally begotten by him; the Holy Spirit is divine because He is the Spirit of the Father, eternally proceeding from the Father and resting in the Father’s Son. Though Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all co-equal and co-eternal, the Father is the aitia, the cause of the Son and the Spirit, not in terms of time (as if the Son and Spirit came into being after the Father), but hypostatically, in terms of their personhood. The fathers referred to this as “the monarchy” of the Father.
We see this primacy of the Father asserted in the creed. The Nicene Creed begins by declaring, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty.” That is, there is only God—viz. the Father almighty. But the Father is not alone. He has with him his only-begotten Son and Word, begotten of the Father before all ages, homoousios with the Father, sharing his ousia, his essential divinity. Also, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father i.e., He was not created by him as were the angels but has his hypostatic existence from the Father’s own being. Thus, the Creed proclaims the Trinitarian nature of God, while asserting the hypostatic primacy of the Father. The Father may also be identified with the God of the Old Testament, the One worshipped by Israel (The Creed also hints at this when it declares that the Father is the “Maker of heaven and earth”)
This ongoing conversation has highlighted a persistent misunderstanding in Trinitarian theology, particularly around the role of the Father as the sole unbegotten source or “monarch” of the Godhead. Hill at least in our discussion seemed to insist that Dr Sijuwade made the claim that the Father is God alone at the exclusion of the divinity of the Son and the Spirit. This of course, is a straw man. As evident in my discussion with him and the Roman catholic interlocutor who wanted to interject himself on Hill’s side, Hill insisted that Dr Sijuwade is saying that only the Father is God in a predicative sense - in terms of divinity. But no Orthodox Christian says that. At one point in the debate after Dr Sijuwades 3rd time reiterating the position and correcting the misunderstanding, Hill admits “I have no problem calling the Father the One True God” at 47:35.
At its core, the mistake revolves around equivocation on key terms, most notably, what is meant when we affirm that “God, the Father is the One God.” Critics like Hill interpret this as a predicative claim excluding the Son and Holy Spirit from divinity, suggesting the Father alone is ‘the Only God’ in terms of shared essence. However, this straw-mans the Monarchical position, which distinguishes between nominal and predicative uses of ‘God’ without denying the consubstantiality of the Trinity.
It is very clear from Scripture, the history of the Church, the Councils and the Patristic writings, that ‘God’ is referring to at least two different things. It doesn’t have a univocal meaning as Hill seems to keep falling back into.
Dr. Sijuwade dedicated much of the debate to clarifying this distinction. Nominally, ‘God’ functions as a proper name or referential term, designating the Father as the arche (principle), font, and source of the Trinity, this emphasizes who He is in terms of identity and relational role, not merely what He is in substance or nature in terms of divinity. Predicatively, ‘God’ describes the divine essence (ousia), applying equally to the Son and Holy Spirit through their shared consubstantiality (homoousios) with the Father. Hill’s responses often implied that this view denies the Trinity as ‘God’ or that ‘God’ can refer to all three Persons contextually. Yet, no proponent of Monarchical Trinitarianism disputes the predicative application. The emphasis is on precision to align with patristic, scriptural, credal, and liturgical sources.
In short, it is clear there are at least two ways the term ‘God’ is used. One to pick out the divinity (essense) and one as a name or identifying someone based on the hypostasis (person) in relation to the whole Trinity.
Scripture provides foundational support for this nominal primacy of the Father. John 17:3 explicitly states, Jesus saying:
“And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Here, ‘the only true God’ nominally identifies the Father as the unbegotten source and role within the Trinity, while affirming the Son’s divine mission. This in no way diminishes the divinity of the Son because in the same passage, Christ demonstrates he is divine.
This echoes 1 Corinthians 8:6:
“yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist”
and Ephesians 4:6
“one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all”.
These passages use “God” synonymously with “Father,” assuming His role as the ultimate origin without subordinating the Son or Spirit because of the two ways in which “God” is being used.
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 AD) reinforces this, beginning with:
“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,”
directly paralleling John 17:3. As an irreformable standard of Orthodox faith, the Creed interprets all theology through the lens of the Father’s monarchy, while subsequent articles affirm the Son as “begotten of the Father before all ages” and the Spirit as “proceeding from the Father.” Hill acknowledged this language multiple times in the debate yet he equivocated by blending senses, advancing an egalitarian model where the Trinity is nominally ‘the one God’ without hierarchical sourcehood.
Hill affirmed the Trinitarian position, then proceeds to miss the forest for the trees or seems to misunderstand the position again. As evident in our X discussion, no matter how many time it was reiterated, he then falls back on a strawman arguing that Dr. Sijuwade said the Father is ONLY God excluding the Son and Spirit. This is a very dishonest or at the very least mistaken view of what is being said. Multiple times in the debate, you can hear Dr Sijuwade correct Hill that he never denies the Trinity is God when speaking about the divine nature and all three persons together. This is the Monarchical Trinitarian position. It seems each time I tried to restate the position and give the Patristic evidence, Hill moves the goal post, shifting the argument from what the debate was clearly about (Monarchical Trinitarianism) to what he thinks Dr Sijuwade said as some ‘gotcha’. It is all mudding the waters and a red herring.
More to the point, Orthodox Liturgical texts further illustrate this balance and yet distinction. In the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (the key climax of the whole Divine Liturgy), the prayer of the Priest addresses the Father distinctly:
“It is meet and right to hymn Thee, to bless Thee, to praise Thee, to give thanks unto Thee, and to worship Thee in every place of Thy dominion: for Thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing, eternally the same, Thou and Thine Only-begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit.”
The possessive ‘Thy’ maintains the Father’s nominal primacy as Monarch, even as it affirms shared divinity. Hill frequently cited phrases like “O all-holy Trinity, our God” from the Great Doxology: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory. O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty; O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; O Holy Spirit.” These use “God” predicatively for the Trinity’s essence, which is undisputed in Monarchical theology. No one denies the Trinity is God in essence. The point is contextual: relational and identitarian language nominates the Father as ‘the One God’ due to His sole monarchy.
St Basil’s Divine Liturgy Anaphora prayer says:
“Master, Lord, God, worshipful Father almighty, it is truly just and right to the majesty of Your holiness to praise You, to hymn You, to bless You, to worship You, to give thanks to You, to glorify You, the only true God, and to offer to You this our spiritual worship with a contrite heart and a humble spirit…You are without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, beyond words, unchangeable. You are the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the great God and Savior of our hope, the image of Your goodness, the true seal of revealing in Himself You, the Father.”
The single most important part of the Divine Liturgy for Orthodox Christians is the Eucharist. The Eucharistic prayer of the priest is arguable one of, if not the most important prayer of the service. Here you can see the Father is named the ‘only True God’ before the prayer proceeds to name the Lord Jesus Christ. The language seems to be suggesting not just the primacy of the Father, but singling out the Father as the one God.
Patristic witnesses overwhelmingly support this view, with full citations revealing nuanced distinctions often overlooked in egalitarian interpretations.
The Father is referred to God in two ways. ‘God’ common to the Deity, but ‘the God’ or ‘the One God’ can be referred to as a proper name of the Father.
Again ‘God’ alone is a proper name of God without a beginning, but ‘God’ with the addition of the article becomes a relative term. For example, the Son is God, but not without a beginning eternally from the Father. And again ‘God’ is a term common to the Deity, but ‘the God’ is proper to the Unbegotten. Thus we come back to the same point, that God alone is a proper name of the Unbegotten- the Father. This explicitly differentiates nominal (monarchical) and predicative (essential) senses.
St Gregory of Nazianzus says in Oration 31 (Fifth Oration):
“To us there is One God, for the Godhead is One, and all that proceeds from Him is referred to One, though we believe in Three Persons. For one is not more and another less God; nor is One before and another after; nor are They divided in will or parted in power; nor can you find here any of the qualities of divisible things; but the Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate Persons; and there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other. When then we look at the Godhead, or the First Cause, or the Monarchia, that which we conceive is One; but when we look at the Persons in Whom the Godhead dwells, and at Those Who timelessly and with equal glory have their Being from the First Cause, there are Three Whom we worship.”
The language here seems to refer ‘Him’ as a person, the Father, yet distinguishing from how we speak about all three persons as all being equally divine and ‘one’ by nature.
St Gregory of Nazianzus says in Oration 25
“…our orthodox faith by teaching us to recognize one God, unbegotten, the Father, and one begotten Lord, his Son, referred to as God when he is mentioned separately, but Lord when he is named in conjunction with the Father, the one term on account of his nature, the other on account of his monarchy”.
St. John of Damascus says in Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Ch. 8:
“God and His Word and His Spirit are in reality one God.”
St. John seems to pick out the Father here as “God” while referring to the Son and Spirit as “His”, while still saying they are one God. “God” is referred to twice, here but seem to be used in two ways- one in nominative sense and one in a predicative sense.
St. Gregory Palamas, in his Confession of Faith (1351), declares:
“The Father is without beginning… He alone is the cause, root and source of the Godhead beheld in the Son and the Holy Spirit; He alone is the primary cause.”
This underscores the Father’s causal primacy.
Even St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on John 17:3, cited by Hill in the X discussion, supports this when read fully and in context:
“And this is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. … For by a true belief in the Son, namely as begotten of the very essence of God the Father, and as bearing the title of Son in its fullest and truest meaning, we are firmly convinced that He is true God and eternal life.”
St. Cyril contrasts ‘the true God’ (Father as source) with false gods, without negating distinctions.
St Cyril elsewhere in his commentary on the Creed says:
“God has the prerogative of Father; and more honoured is this than in all the rest. A father, not by passion, not by union, not in ignorance, not by effluence, not by diminution, not by alteration…
[W]e say, ‘We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;’ that we may remember that the same is both the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Maker of heaven and earth.”
This seems to suggest that ‘God’ here names the Father, specifically when it comes to his role and person in relation to the Son. The Son is not the Father, so the specific identifier here is naming the Father as God because of his relationship to the Son, as well as the whole creation.
Critics like Hill and aligned Roman Catholics have been accused of cherry-picking, reinterpreting sources through an egalitarian lens that risks anachronism or heresy. Their view risks promoting tritheism or reifying the Trinity in a way that splits the three persons. The Monarchical view, grounded in this holistic tradition, preserves relational unity without essential hierarchy, aligning with Orthodox fidelity to patristic teaching. this was explicated quite clearly by Dr. Sijuwade who is an expert in this topic and well read in the primary sources and the philosophical concepts used by the Fathers.
Further, this view is not disputed among the many standard Orthodox scholars. Because Hill seems to reject scholars like Dr Beau Branson and Dr Joshua Sijuwade on this, we will use more “reputable” and widely used scholars.
Vladimir Losskey in The Mystical theology of the Eastern Church explains in Chapter 11:
“The monarchy of the Father is the basis of the Trinity’s unity… the Father is the source of the common nature which is communicated to the Son and the Spirit.” Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944), p. 58.
In his “The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine” he also says:
“The same monarchy of the Father conditions both the hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit and the generation of the Son, and the manifesting economy.”
Vladimir Lossky, “The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine” (1948), p. 5.
Lossky’s entire discussion does a great job making a distinction between what is meant when the Father is called God in regard to his hypostasis, while not excluding the Son and Spirit’s consubstantial nature with Him. He again says:
“The Father is called the cause (aitia) of the hypostases of the Son and the Holy Spirit, or even the “Godhead-source” (pegaia Theotes). Sometimes He is designated simply as “God,” with the definite article ho Theos, or even as autotheos…With reference to the Father, causality expresses the idea that He is God– Person, in that He is the cause of other divine persons– the idea that He could not be fully and absolutely Person unless the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal to Him in possession of the same nature and are that same nature”
From John Meyendorff (former Dean of St Vladimir Theological Seminary) in Byzantine Theology Chapter 14 “Triune God”:
The Father is the “cause” (airia) and the “principle” (arche) of the divine nature, which is in the Son and in the Spirit. What is even more striking is the fact that this “monarchy” of the Father is constantly used by the Cappadocian Eathers against chose who accuse them of “tritheism”: “God is one,” writes Basil, “because the Father is one.”
And the same thought is found in Gregory of Nazianzus: God is the common nature of the three, but the Father is their union [henösis].” and John of Damascus in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith also affirms the essential dependence of the Son and the Spirit upon the Person of the Father.”
He goes on in the same section:
By accepting Nicaca, the Cappadocian Fathers eliminated the ontological subordinationism of Origen and Arius, but they preserved indeed, together with their understanding of hypostatic life, a Biblical and Orthodox subordinationism, maintaining the personal identity of the Father as the ultimate origin of all divine being and action: “The three [are] one God when contemplated together; each [is] God because [they are] consubstantial; the three [are] one God because of the monarchy [of the Father]”(Oration 40:41).
The Council of Constantinople at Blachernae in 1285 AD which was a pan-Orthodox synod against the Latin unionists on the Fillioque called by Patriarch Gregory II. The Tomos states:
“We believe as we have been taught from the beginning and from the Fathers. We have been taught and we believe in One God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, who, being without principle (ἄναρχος), unbegotten, and without cause, is the natural principle and cause of the Son and of the Spirit.
We also believe in His only begotten Son, who, being consubstantial with Him, was begotten eternally and without change from Him, through whom all things were made. We believe in the all-Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the same Father, which, with the Father and the Son together, is worshipped as coeternal, co-equal, co-essential, co-equal in glory, and as joint-creator of the world.”
Council of Constantinople-Blachernae (1285 AD), Tomos (Exposition of the Tomus of Faith Against Beccus).
The Monarchical view bolsters the argument against the Filioque heresy as well. Which is ironic because it is the Roman Catholics (who affirm the Fillioque) who are siding with Hill on this debate. Hill doesn’t even know that his view is the logical entailment to the Latin position.
Lossky references this as upholding “the monarchy of the Father” against Western distortions (Mystical Theology, p. 58). Ware calls it a defense of “the Father’s monarchy” as the Trinity’s unity (The Orthodox Church, p. 211).
Hill would have to deny what was again affirmed at the Council. The councils collectively affirm the Father’s monarchy as the ‘One God’, as essential to Orthodox dogma, countering heresies and Western innovations like the Filioque, which is seen as introducing necessity or duality into God’s inner life and ontology.
As we all know, correct belief is correct worship. Correct doctrine is vital to the Orthodox Christian life as it is the rudder for the spiritual life as the Fathers argue. It is errors in the Trinity that lead to heresy. This is why St Gregory Palamas debated Barlaam, the Council of Constantinople, Patriarch Gregory of Cyrus - Tomos against John Bekkos, St Photius against the Fillioqists. These debates safeguard the Church’s Apostolic teaching and her fidelity.
Fr. John Behr (former Dean of St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary) wrote a good article on the topic which you can find here. He says:
“The Father alone is the one true God. This keeps to the structure of the New Testament language about God, where with only a few exceptions, the word “God” (theos) with an article (and so being used, in Greek, as a proper noun) is only applied to the one whom Jesus calls Father, the God spoken of in the scriptures. This same fact is preserved in all ancient creeds, which begin: “I believe in one God, the Father…”
Elsewhere Fr. John Behr says in his paper, Calling upon God as Father: Augustine and the Legacy of Nicaea:
“The one God confessed by Christians in the first article of the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople is unambiguously the Father”
Fr John Hopko (also former Dean of St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary) on Ancient Faith Radio Podcast on The Holy Trinity:
”Now in the Bible, in the creeds, and in the liturgy, it's very important, really critically important, to note, and to affirm, and to remember, that the one God, in Whom we believe, strictly speaking, is not the Holy Trinity. The One God is God the Father. That in the Bible, the One God is the Father of Jesus Christ. He is God Who sends His only-begotten Son into the world. And Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And then, of course, in a parallel manner, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God.”
Ultimately, clarifying this equivocation could foster genuine dialogue. The Patristic Monarchical view isn’t innovative but the enduring Orthodox norm, as Dr. Sijuwade ably demonstrated. The above statements from reputable Orthodox priests and theologians (and Deans of St Vladimir’s) show the continuity of this view into the Orthodox Church today. The Egalitarian view of the Trinity, as Beau Branson makes a case against Dale Tuggey, does not make sense of the Patristic and Scriptural witness to the idea of Monarchy of the Father. The consensus seems to be that when we refer to the ‘One God’, it is used for the Father because of the unitive principle and origin of the divine nature in the person (hypostatis) of the Father. To say all three are the One God in the same sense, collapses the Trinity into Tri-theism, which is the argument Unitarians often levy at Trinitarians. This is because it collapses the personal identity of the members of the Trinity, making the Son and Spirit the source of the divine nature in of themselves instead of attributing only to the Father. This is the root of the error.
When Orthodox Christians say the Trinity is God, we are speaking of all three sharing the divine essence, and picks out the predicative use of the word ‘God’. If one says “the One God is the Trinity”, it is strictly speaking incorrect and not the patristic use, because the ‘Trinity’ picks out all three persons nominatively and says nothing about essence, thus implying the sole cause of what makes the Trinity ‘God’ by nature is pertained to all three.
The Monarchical view remedies this problem by the nominative use of referring to the unitive principal in person of the Father, not in the divine essence.
You can read Dr. Beau Branson’s work on the Monarchical View of the Trinity here.
Dr Sijuwade’s work can be found on here.
References