The Beholder

What does it mean to call God “God”?  Gregory of Nyssa says (in his letter “On Not Three Gods”) that the word theos is derived from the word for “vision” ( theas ), so that to call God “God” is to call Him the “Beholder” ( theoron ).

Insofar as Scripture says that each of the Three Persons “beholds,” thus the Scripture call each “Beholder” or “God”: “Now if any one admits that to behold and to discern are the same thing, and that the God Who superintends all things, both is and is called the superintender of the universe, let him consider this operation, and judge whether it belongs to one of the Persons whom we believe in the Holy Trinity, or whether the power extends throughout the Three Persons. For if our interpretation of the term Godhead, or ??????, is a true one, and the things which are seen are said to be beheld, or ?????, and that which beholds them is called ????, or God, no one of the Persons in the Trinity could reasonably be excluded from such an appellation on the ground of the sense involved in the word. For Scripture attributes the act of seeing equally to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

As John Behr points out ( The Nicene Faith: Formation Of Christian Theology, 2 Volume Set (Pt. 1 & 2) ), this means that “divinity” refers not to a nature but rather signifies an activity, and a Triune activity.  In a formula that had a great influence on Calvin, Gregory concludes: “Regarding the divine nature, we have not thus learnt that the Father does anything by himself in which the Son is not conjoined, or again that the Son activates anything individually without the Spirit, but that every activity extending from God to creation and named according to [our] manifold conceptions, originates from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.”