You should be careful not to turn the word energy into a technical term in Basil. I don’t think he sees it in that way. It is only later that the term became a matter of dispute, so you won’t see Basil using it in a technical sense.
You shouldn’t ignore the distinction, the fathers aren’t always clear on the issue. As I mentioned, Basil isn’t always clear. His mentions of the ordering of the Trinity in that way are usually in relation to our communion with God. The Spirit is the light in which we see the Father and the Son.As Gregory I says, Christ has a human and Divine will, and His human will is always subservient to His Divine Will.
Cecilanius: I’ve seen some Eastern Orthodox claim this distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity, but it doesn’t fit with what the Father’s spoke of. In the quotes I cited earlier it is clear in most of them that they are speaking of the immanent Trinity.
All the economic Trinity refers to is how the Trinity manifests Itself in the world. So the Holy Spirit coming down from Heaven as a dove over Christ would be an example of the economic Trinity. The relationship of the Holy Spirit proceeding (proinai) from the Son is eternal and immanent.
The real difference between ekporousos and proinai is not immanent/economic, but rather that ekporousos means “proceeds from the source”, and proinai just means “proceeds”.
That being said, Rahner’s point still doesn’t hold; if the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity were the same then the Son would be begotten of the Holy Spirit, not the Father.
And don’t belittle your intellect. There was a time when even Mardukm didn’t understand this stuff (and I would argue that none of us understand the Trinity, nor can we).
Peace and God bless!
I think you are being a little unfair to Todd here. I haven’t read his whole article but have atleast noticed that he is talking about eternal manifestation of the Spirit, not the hypostatic origin. He states that clearly. I don’t necessarily agree with his theology of essence/energy, but it can’t be used to deny the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit.
He repeatedly calls the Holy Spirit a Divine Energy in his writings, and that’s what I’m addressing. Now obviously he doesn’t believe that the Holy Spirit is merely an energy of the Divine Nature, rather than a Divine Person, but the problem is that by mixing terms the way he does he is directly undercutting the point of the Greek Fathers, namely that the Divine Energy is one in all three Persons. In conflating the Holy Spirit’s manifestation with Divine Energy, he is conflating a Divine Person with a property of the Divine Nature, and he does this to avoid the clear fact that the Fathers say the Person of the Holy Spirit is “through the Son”. He does not seem able to grasp the fact that something can process through something without originating from that thing (as the “hypostasis” of my arm proceeds through my shirt sleeve, and we can even say that it proceeds “from my shirt sleeve”, without saying that the origin of my arm is the shirt sleeve), and this explains the differences in expression without adding anything new to the equation.
Yes, but in doing so they inevitably expressed the Holy Spirit being “through” the Son. They would not have done this had the belief not been well established. It may not have been the point of their argument (and I absolutely agree with you that it wasn’t), but their casual use of this language in demonstrating the consubstantiality of the Trinity indicates their belief, and it is from this language that the Latins developed their defense of the filioque, not because they derived the filioque from these arguments, but as illustration of the meaning of the filioque, and the fact that such a meaning was hardly foreign to the minds of the Fathers, East and West.
I think you are being a little too quick though. I haven’t read Todd’s article yet, but by what you have said and realizing that Todd is well educated on the issues I would say that his view isn’t so controvercial. I would guess that Todd professes that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son. The Spirit is manifested to the world from the Son, but this happens energetically since the Spirit isn’t united to us hypostatically. We are deified in the Spirit, and the Spirit draws us into communion with the Son and ultimately with the Father. That is how I would state it, but I haven’t read Todd’s article and I don’t fully accept the distinction between essence and energy as he states it. I accept it along side of the western idea of simplicity. I think both could become idols if taken to extremes. You end up building up an idol of what God is by making an absolute statement of simplicity or an absolute distinction between energy and essence.He repeatedly calls the Holy Spirit a Divine Energy in his writings, and that’s what I’m addressing. Now obviously he doesn’t believe that the Holy Spirit is merely an energy of the Divine Nature, rather than a Divine Person, but the problem is that by mixing terms the way he does he is directly undercutting the point of the Greek Fathers, namely that the Divine Energy is one in all three Persons. In conflating the Holy Spirit’s manifestation with Divine Energy, he is conflating a Divine Person with a property of the Divine Nature, and he does this to avoid the clear fact that the Fathers say the Person of the Holy Spirit is “through the Son”. He does not seem able to grasp the fact that something can process through something without originating from that thing (as the “hypostasis” of my arm proceeds through my shirt sleeve, and we can even say that it proceeds “from my shirt sleeve”, without saying that the origin of my arm is the shirt sleeve), and this explains the differences in expression without adding anything new to the equation.
While it’s true that the Fathers, East and West, unanimously said that the origin of the Holy Spirit is from the Father alone, they did not say that the eternal, hypostatic breathing forth of the Holy Spirit is only from the Father, but typically say or imply “through the Son”. Todd is trying to introduce a distinction between the procession of the Person, and the procession of the Divine Energy, but such a distinction is nonsensical and certainly not found in the Fathers. In fact, such a distinction actually causes the very error that he is purporting to avoid/correct, because if the Hypostasis proceeds in one way, and the Divine Energy another (the Divine Energy being a necessary aspect of the Divine Nature which the Hypostasis possesses), then there are indeed two processions of the Holy Spirit, and not one.
In short, Todd introduces too many new concepts and details (far more than the Latins do), and can’t juggle them all while avoiding some error or another. Keeping it simple is the name of the game in theology.
Peace and God bless!
I think it is dangerous to take words that weren’t technical language in early sources, and to declare them to be technical language, and then to go back to the early sources and use them as support for the technical language. It has happened many times in history when the traditional language was abandoned for the sake of a new language (Chalcedon is an example). There is obviously a relationship between the Son and the Spirit in the Trinity other than the manifestation to the world, but it can be understood in various ways. I think it is dangerous to speak of the procession happening as a process from the Father through the Son as if the Spirit recieves His origin through the Son. As I mentioned above, ‘from the Father’ and ‘in the Son’ seems to be a more appropriate understanding.Jimmy:
Yes, but in doing so they inevitably expressed the Holy Spirit being “through” the Son. They would not have done this had the belief not been well established. It may not have been the point of their argument (and I absolutely agree with you that it wasn’t), but their casual use of this language in demonstrating the consubstantiality of the Trinity indicates their belief, and it is from this language that the Latins developed their defense of the filioque, not because they derived the filioque from these arguments, but as illustration of the meaning of the filioque, and the fact that such a meaning was hardly foreign to the minds of the Fathers, East and West.
Arguments justifying the filioque really don’t seem to pop up, in my experience anyway, until after 1054. Prior to that it seems that the Latins were content that this teaching simply “was”; it wasn’t until the East started raising clear theological objections to it (which came around this date) that specific arguments on how the filioque could be true were developed.
Peace and God bless!
I’m not quite sure what you mean by technical term here. In the letter, Basil distinguishes between God’s essence, which he says is simple and cannot be approached or known, and the energies of God that come down to us, from which we come to know God. This is, in a nutshell, the essence/energies distinction made by St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox today.
Would Basil have anathematized someone for not making a distinction between essence and energy? All Basil’s statement amounts to is saying that there is an infinite difference between God and His creation, and that God actually acts upon creation to make it like Himself. What I mean by technical language is something like the role that hypostasis and ousia play in Basil and the other Cappadocians.
Perhaps you should read the article first, then, so we can have a discussion about what he has actually said. I’m open to correction, but at this point you’re not even basing your statements on his writing.
I have had discussions with Todd, so I have a general idea of what he believes. From my discussions I can gather enough to know that he accepts that the Spirit is a divine person with the same essence as the Father and Son. But I will read his article.
Just because the main argument wasn’t about the Procession of the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean they weren’t making technical distinctions. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in describing the Holy Spirit being from the Son, is explicitely making a technical claim (he even says he is describing how Persons are differentiated in the Trinity), even though his purpose is to show consubstantiality. If someone says “I’m speaking of the Persons”, we can assume they are indeed speaking of Persons, even if they are doing so to make a point about the Essence.
Again, I’ve never said he claimed otherwise. I said he’s conflating terms and meanings to avoid certain difficulties. When it suits him, he treats the Holy Spirit as a Divine Energy, despite the Divine Energy being one and common to all Divine Persons and not unique to each.
I just read the paper and I think that what I said above is pretty accurate to what Todd said in his paper. Especially with his references to perichoresis and persons of the Trinity resting in other persons.
What does existence through the Son even mean? It is a metaphysical novelty that wasn’t used by the fathers. It is as if the Son were some sort of pipe through which water flows. Is there some destination for the Spirit’s existence?
He says it right here:
There is a huge difference between something proceeding energetically, and something proceeding as energy. If I throw a knife, it is proceeding from me energetically, but the knife is not my energy; throwing is my energy. To use an example that is closer to the case in question, if I send my daughter to the store, my command and sending could be called an energy, but my daughter could not. My daughter proceeds both energetically and “substantially” from me, energetically in being sent, substantially in being my daughter, but she is never, ever an energy of either my person or my nature.
The three Divine Persons indwell in eachother, not by being passed back and forth as Divine Energy, but by virtue of all three possessing a single Divine Energy and Nature, one being, if you will. When the Son speaks we hear the Father, because their Voice is singular. When we see the Son we see the Father, because the Divinity is one and the same, not merely in the manner of two seperate humans sharing one human nature.
I’m not speaking of the relationship between the Trinity and the world, but rather the eternal relationship of the Trinity. He says that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally “as Divine Energy”, but again the Holy Spirit is not Divine Energy, so He can’t be uniquely received as Divine Energy. Rather, we receive the whole Trinity in the Divine Energy, because the Divine Energy is one between the three Divine Persons (this goes back to perichoresis). So we also receive the Son and the Father, not just the Holy Spirit, and none of them are Divine Energy, properly speaking.
St. Gregory of Nyssa is the Eastern Father who speaks most clearly and unequivocally on this matter. I’ve quoted him already in this thread, but I’ll do it again:
St. Basil also speaks in this way, and though it might be argued that he’s refering to our experience of God, it seems clear to me that he is using our experience to highlight an ontological reality. He writes in “On the Holy Spirit”, Chapter 18:
The fact that he is speaking of the inherent Holiness and Royal Dignity leads me to believe that he is indeed talking about the ontological reality of God, and not merely our experience of the Holy Spirit “through the Son”. He is taking our knowledge of God, which comes from the Holy Spirit to confess Christ as the Son, which in turn reveals the Father, and using it to also illustrate and compare an ontological reality within the Holy Trinity.
Like St. Basil, St. John is speaking of both worldly experience and ontological existence, especially how the worldly experience reveals the hidden Life of the Trinity, and we can see this by his speaking of the generation and derivation of the Son, and then continuing on to speak of the Holy Spirit.
I tried to post a response last night, but a car crashed into a tree across the street and I had to check it out.
Excellent! It’s an amazing read, one of my favorite Patristic works in fact. You might be surprised at how “systematic” it is, given the tendency of Eastern writings to be more rambling and mystical. In the West he is generally considered the Patristic “founder” of systematic theology, and the major inspiration to the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas. In a way, the Exposition is like the “Eastern Patristic Summa Theologica”.
