The Latins think of personality as a mode of nature; the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person. (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Easatern Church, 58)
The Father—πηγαία θεότης, source of all divinity within the Trinity—brings forth the Son and the Holy Spirit in conferring upon them His nature, which remains one and indivisible, identical in itself in the Three. (Ibid., 59)
What does Eastern Orthodox believe concerning the monarchy of the Father? One way to think about it from a Western perspective is to believe that the Son and the Spirit have derivative being from the Father, a form of subordinationism. However, given that the East rejects subordinationism, that is obviously not the way they think of the Trinity, so how do they conceive of the Trinity?
To this, Eastern theologian Vladimir Lossky, when speaking of the Trinity, asserts that the monarchy of the Father teaches that the "source of all divinity within the Trinity" is the Father. But since nature is the content of the person, this merely asserts primacy of the Father within the Trinity, a "functional subordination" if you will speak anachronistically. The "being" in Western thought is untouched by this doctrine. The person can be said to consist of the content of the person (the "what") and alongside the person as hypostasis (the "who"). The conferrence of the nature of the Father deals with the content of the Son which derives from the Father.
If that is truly what the Eastern view of the Trinity is, as Lossky asserts and I make inferences based upon what is said, then it seems that the Eastern view of the Monarchy of the Father is way superior to any Western view of the Trinity.
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