I'm sorry, but I'm not buying your nonsense. I haven't tried to pass off anything. I simply posted what the Nicene creed and Scriptures say. I would submit that it is you that is trying to pass something off by not defining your terms. I've asked you to define your terms and you haven't. I've asked you who is God, you said, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then I asked you how is there one God. You started talking about a divine essence which you wouldn't define. An essence is the attributes or properties of something. It's not a thing in and of itself. They you said the three proposa were distinct yet not separate, yet if they're distinct they cannot be one.
Belief in a divine essence that defies cataphatic attempts at explanation is dogmatic in the Orthodox Church. However, it may help to note that "ousios" of the creed is understood as "essence." I suggest you take a look at St. John of Damascus or indeed for a somewhat apophatic look at the essence, St. (psuedo) Dionysius the Aereopagite.
Nowhere by the way would I ever argue that there is only one prosopon. There are three, and they are united according to essence and ontology; they constitute one Godhood, one God in three persons, not divided into three persons or distributed amongst, nor three Gods functioning as a committee (although SF author Robert A. Heinlein made an amusing quip along those lines).
Separation is different from distinction. If you are happily married, you are not separate from your wife, but you are a distinct prosopon. The unity of the Holy Trinity is infinitely more potent than even the most blissful and harmonious of marriages.
This vagueness let's you denounce other's views without letting your's be nailed down, thus effectively moving the goal post when you view is challenged.
On the contrary, at no point have I moved the goalposts. According to Orthodox theology, we cannot understand the divine essence, and certain questions regarding the inner workings of God are simply unamswerable. You are seeking a comprehensible definition of the incomprehensible, which will invariably result in some form of anthropomorphological error due to the epistemological limitations of humanity itself.
This vagueness let's you denounce other's views without letting your's be nailed down, thus effectively moving the goal post when you view is challenged. However, the fact of the matter is that your view is a logical contradiction. The Scriptures refer to God as "He" not "it". Thus God is a being not a divine essence.
I have not argued that the Divine Essence is God; if you have misread my posts as suggesting the Divine Essence is somehow God and the prosopa are mere attributes but not God per se, then this is a clear error. I should never dream of referring to God as an "it"; this would smack of the worst excesses of deism.
It's quite obvious that one being cannot consist of three other beings or persons.
Which is not the view of Nicene Christianity, in that the persons of the Trinity are not "three other beings or persons" constituting "one being."
Your view doesn't even fit with the Nicene creed as it says, "I believe in one God, the Father'. And contrary to your claim, I have repeatedly, not only acknowledged, but pointed out that the creed also acknowledges that Jesus is God. Twice now I've presented you with the question of resolving that and you've ignored it both times.
What you are making is a nebulous accusation to the effect that God the Father is somehow more God than Jesus Christ, or to be more precise, when we say "One God" we are referring to the Father specifically and not to our Lord. This is a gross distortion of the Nicene position; it is semi-Arian and is contrary to co-essentiality (homoousios).
If you want to understand the Trinity as understood in the Nicene creed I 'd suggest reading the Anti-Nicene writers who came up with it rather than Nicene writers, many of whom held the Augustinian view of the Trinity as espoused in the Anthansian creed.
Let us review the history of the Creed. In the early fourth century, Arius, a priest in the Church of Alexandria, dared claim that Jesus Christ was a creature, that he was of different essence from the Father, God according to honour but not ontology, et cetera. St. Alexander of Alexandria, and his deacon and chosen successor St. Athanasius the Great, objected vehemently to this position. After some controvery, the Council of Nicea was convened by St. Constantine to avoid Arianism spilling over into armed conflict (which it later did). This council sided with Ss. Alexander and Athanasius; St. Nicholas famously slugged Arius and was rebuked, the initial Nicene Creed was adopted.
Then, St. Constantine reposed, but not before the insiduous Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia worked his way into the Imperial Court. The persecution of Nicene Christians began under Emperor Constantius. More confusion occurred due to the emergence of semi-Arianism, which posed that Jesus Christ was of "like essence" to the Father, and Macedonianism or Pneumatomachianism, which denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In addition, an attack against the humanity of our Lord came in the form of Apollinarianism, which in effect states that our Lord occupied or controlled a human body but did not have a human soul.
The Cappadocians (St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and St. Gregory of Nyassa) along with the ageing St. Athanasius were among the main opponents of these views. St. Athanasius and St. Basil had reposed by the time of the Council of Constantinople, but St. Gregory the Theologian was alive, and in ill health. He initially presided at the council, later stepped down, however, the revised creed adopted essentislly reflected his concerns as well as those of the other Cappadocians, St. Athanasius, et al.
The creeds must be understood as refutations of fourth century heresy; they were composed in response to fourth century errors by fourth century fathers, which were not the same errors that were contended with by the likes of Ss. Irenaeus or Hippolytus.
Now, the later work by St. Augustine of Hippo on the Trinity is useful, however, it did not shape Orthodox doctrinal definitions in the mannero of the writings of St. Athanasius and the Cappadocians. St. Augustine is relatively minor in the Eastern churches, some even deny his sainthood; his works tend to be regarded as controversial, and he is chiefly remembered for somewhat overstating the case against Pelagius, in contrast to the more subtle argument by St. John Cassian.
The Athanasian Creed is of unknown origin; no one really attributes it to St. Athanasius, and it is barely used in the Eastern Churches; my own church, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, does not use it. That said, to the extent it agrees with our view I cannot fault it. To say it is opposed to the Nicene position however is obviously wrong given its historic importance in Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism et cetera.
You are mistaken however is that you seem to regard that document as having shaped the Eastern perspective, alpng with St. Augustine, when this is simply false.
