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Did you mean “…in the divine essence common to the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit”?
Really? I thought the Eaterns teach that the Father is the Source of the Essence. Does that not imply a “subordination” even in Essence?
I’m not an expert on Eastern Trinitarianism, but it seems to me that this is not the difference. Rather the difference is the willingness to assign a distinction of Essence and Energy even WITHIN the Godhead. On that point, it would also be a difference with the Orientals. I personally don’t think this is a matter that should cause or perpetuate disunity (since it delves into the Mystery of God which I think the Church should or can define), but I think many EO are willing to do just that on this matter (i.e., being dogmatic on a matter that should not or can not be defined).
Blessings,
Marduk
I am puzzled by your response because I listed the three relationships:
Code:
Father-Son
Spirator-Spirit
Son-Holy Spirit.
I suppose we are in agreement.
Did you mean “…in the divine essence common to the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit”?
No, we say of the Son “one in essence with the Father”. But it is true that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are consubstantial. *
- CCC 685 To believe in the Holy Spirit is to profess that the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son: “with the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.” For this reason, the divine mystery of the Holy Spirit was already treated in the context of Trinitarian “theology.” Here, however, we have to do with the Holy Spirit only in the divine “economy.”
Personally (no pun intended), I solve this whole issue with that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit have one will in eternal personal cooperation and participation.
Augustine of Hippo, On The Trinity, why the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is termed the Holy Spirit (because He proceeds from both the Father and the Son):
- Wherefore, if Holy Scripture proclaims that God is love, and that love is of God, and works this in us that we abide in God and He in us, and that hereby we know this, because He has given us of His Spirit, then the Spirit Himself is God, who is love. Next, if there be among the gifts of God none greater than love, and there is no greater gift of God than the Holy Spirit, what follows more naturally than that He is Himself love, who is called both God and of God?
And if the love by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, ineffably demonstrates the communion of both, what is more suitable than that He should be specially called love, who is the Spirit common to both?
For this is the sounder thing both to believe and to understand, that the Holy Spirit is not alone love in that Trinity, yet is not specially called love to no purpose, for the reasons we have alleged; just as He is not alone in that Trinity either a Spirit or holy, since both the Father is a Spirit, and the Son is a Spirit; and both the Father is holy, and the Son is holy—as piety doubts not. And yet it is not to no purpose that He is specially called the Holy Spirit; for because He is common to both, He is specially called that which both are in common. Otherwise, if in that Trinity the Holy Spirit alone is love, then doubtless the Son too turns out to be the Son, not of the Father only, but also of the Holy Spirit. For He is both said and read in countless places to be so—the only-begotten Son of God the Father; as that what the apostle says of God the Father is true too: “Who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His own love.” He did not say, “of His own Son.” If He had so said, He would have said it most truly, just as He did say it most truly, because He has often said it; but He says, “the Son of His own love.”
Therefore He is the Son also of the Holy Spirit, if there is in that Trinity no love in God except the Holy Spirit. And if this is most absurd, it remains that the Holy Spirit is not alone therein love, but is specially so called for the reasons I have sufficiently set forth; and that the words, “Son of His own love,” mean nothing else than His own beloved Son—the Son, in short, of His own substance. For the love in the Father, which is in His ineffably simple nature, is nothing else than His very nature and substance itself—as we have already often said, and are not ashamed of often repeating. And hence the “Son of His love,” is none other than He who is born of His substance.
newadvent.org/fathers/130115.htm
Q: Really? I thought the Eaterns teach that the Father is the Source of the Essence. Does that not imply a “subordination” even in Essence?
A: No, for example Vladimir Lossky writes on p. 47 of Orthodox theology: an introduction:
“Does not the monarchy of the Father imply a certain subordination of the Son and the Spirit? No, for a principle can be perfect only if it is the principle of a reality equal to it. The Greek Fathers readily spoke of the “Father-cause,” but this is merely an analogical term whose deficiency the purifying use of apophaticism enables us to measure. In our experience, the cause is superior to the effect. In God, on the contrary, the cause as fulfillment of personal love cannot produce inferior effects: it wishes them to be equal in dignity, and is therefore also the cause of their equality. Besides in God there is no extraposition of cause and effect, but causality within one and the same nature. Causality here does not provoke and external effect as in the material world, nor an effect which is reabsorbed into its cause, as in the ontological hierarchies of India and Neo-Platonism; it is only the important image of an expressible communion.”
)
Like I said, this is fine. What I find disagreeable is the idea that there are distinctions in God apart from the three persons. What you say here is more like what I’ve seen called different “modes” of relations between God and creatures and between the three persons in these threads in the past. That’s perfectly fine to me. What I don’t accept is the distinctions being created apart from God’s persons.