Therefore all these names must be understood as common to deity as a whole, and as containing the notions of sameness and simplicity and indivisibility and union: while the names Father, Son and Spirit, and causeless and caused, and unbegotten and begotten, and procession contain the idea of separation: for these terms do not explain His essence, but the mutual relationship¹⁵⁹¹

1591 Greg. Naz., Orat. 45; cf. also Epist. ad. Evagr., and Greg. Nyss., Epist. ad Ablab.; Dionys., De div. nom., c. 2; Basil, Epist. 43 ad Greg. fratr.

1592 Dionys., De div. nom., c. 2; Greg. Naz., Orat. 37 and 45; Nyss. Epist. ad. Ablab.

When, then, we have perceived these things and are conducted from these to the divine essence, we do not apprehend the essence itself but only the attributes of the essence: just as we have not apprehended the essence of the soul even when we have learnt that it is incorporeal and without magnitude and form: nor again, the essence of the body when we know that it is white or black, but only the attributes of the essence. Further, the true doctrine¹⁵⁹³

1593 ὁ δὲ ἀληθὴς λόγος.

But quite distinct is all that pertains to the divine and benignant incarnation of the divine Word. For in that neither the Father nor the Spirit have any part at all, unless so far as regards approval and the working of inexplicable miracles which the God-Word, having become man¹⁵⁹⁴

1594 Text, ἄνθρωπος, which is absent in some codices and in Dionys., De div. nom., from which these words are taken.

1595 Greg. Naz., Orat. 24: Dionys., De div. nom., c. 2.

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