Eastern Catholics generally do not include the *filioque *when singing/reciting the Creed.
The reason for my question is not a matter of rejecting the filioque per se. Rather, I find the claim that the denial of the filioque essentially denies the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father to be entirely unconvincing since the same people who make the argument that the Son must share in the spirating of the Spirit if he is consubstantial with the Father do not also insist that the Spirit must share in the begetting of the Son if he is consubstantial with the Father.
Well, I haven’t had much time to think about this, but a few thoughts are these:
The Father has perfect knowledge of Himself; and the idea that God has of himself cannot be imperfect. Whatever is in the Father must be in His idea of Himself, and must be exactly the same as it is in Himself. Otherwise, God would have an imperfect idea of Himself, which would be nonsense. Thus, because God is infinite, eternal, all-powerful, his idea of Himself is infinite, eternal, all-powerful. Because God is God, His idea of Himself is God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God.”
The Father knows and loves. His idea knows and loves. In other words, His idea is a person. Men have ideas, and any given idea is something. God’s idea of himself is not something only; it is Someone, for it can know and love.
The Thinker and the Idea are distinct, the one is not the other, Father and Son are two persons. But they are not separate.
Among men, fathers are always older than sons simply because a human being cannot start generating the moment he exists; he must wait till he develops to the point where he can generate. But God has not to wait for a certain amount of eternity to roll by before he is sufficiently developed. Eternity does not roll by; it is an abiding now; and God has all perfections in their fullness, not needing to develop. Merely by being God, he knows himself with infinite knowing power, and utters his total self-knowledge in the totally adequate idea of himself which is his co-eternal Son.
The production of a Second Person does not exhaust the infinite richness of the divine nature. Our Lord tells of a third person. There is a Spirit, to whom Our Lord will entrust his followers when He Himself shall have ascended to the Father.
Father and Son love each other, with infinite intensity. What we could not know, if it were not revealed to us, is that they unite to express their love and that the expression is a third divine person. In the Son, the Father utters his self-knowledge; in the Holy Spirit, Father and Son utter their mutual love.
Their love is infinite; its expression cannot be less. Infinite love does not express its very self finitely; it can no more produce inadequate expression than infinite knowledge can produce an inadequate idea. Each gives himself wholly to the outpouring of his love for the other, holding nothing back–indeed the very thought of holding back is ridiculous; if they give themselves at all, they can give themselves only totally–they possess nothing but their totality! The uttered love of Father and Son is infinite, lacks no perfection that they have, is God, a person, someone.
As the one great operation of spirit, knowing, produces the second person, so the other, loving, produces the third. but be careful upon this–the second proceeds from, is produced by, the first alone, but the third, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from Father and Son, as they combine to express their love. Thus, in the Nicene Creed we say of him
qui ex patre filioque procedit–who proceeds from the Father and the Son; and in the
Tantum Ergo we sing
procedenti ab utroque–to him who proceeds from both.
When I grow up, I hope to be as wise as you