This is classic begging of the question to be considered. The Son eternally proceeds the Spirit because Christ says the Spirit “receives of mine”, which can only refer to eternal procession. Classic circular logic!
You must have failed Logic 101. I said that “receives of mine” can only refer to eternal reality because the Holy Spirit only “receives” in eternity. I never said, or even suggested, that it could only be eternal because that’s what Christ meant; that would be circular logic.
“Recieves of mine” can quite easily refer to the Spirit receiving Christ’s teaching, which the Spirit then passes on to men, in the same way that Christ speaks of not giving His own teaching, but that which He recieved from the Father.
This would still be an eternal reality, and not a temporal one. The Holy Spirit didn’t receive the teaching of the Father in time, unless you want to argue that the Holy Spirit had imperfect knowledge until the Incarnation. I’d like to see you defend such a position.
I was showing that the same logic by which you deduce an eternal procession from the Son by the words of Christ “He shall receive of mine” can be used to deduce a begetting of the Son by the Spirit. It is a reductio ad absurdum. I wasn’t saying that the Son was conceived. You seem to be incapable of understanding that.
Again you’re failing at basic logic. Christ’s human nature was conceived, not the Divine. Unless you are arguing that the Holy Spirit ALSO has a human nature, or any other nature than Divine, this comparison doesn’t stand. Christ could be conceived temporally because the human nature is finite and temporal; the Holy Spirit is eternal and infinite, and in no way can He change temporally, not by receiving, not by conception, not in any sense at all.
So, even if when we do say that Christ was “conceived of the Holy Spirit”, it would only refer to the human nature and not the Divine Nature. This is why it’s a case of apples and oranges.
I haven’t been “proven wrong” of anything. The words of Aquinas themselves show up your error here: he explicitly says that the “one principle” that spirates the Spirit is both the Father and the Son “confusedly”. And when Florence adopts his “one principle” teaching, that is exactly what they mean, the Father and the Son together, as one, eternally proceed the Spirit. All your verbal gymnastics cannot obscure that fact.
You don’t seem to understand what you’re citing. Yes, Aquinas says that it refers to the Father and the Son “confusedly”, because the procession doesn’t itself refer to a specific trait of either. It is a “broad term” that covers both Persons and their role.
Aquinas also explicitely highlights the distinction between the role of the Father and the Son when he says:
and therefore the Holy Ghost proceeds equally from both, although sometimes He is said to proceed principally or properly from the Father, because the Son has this power from the Father.
So even when the term “equally” is used, a distinction is very clearly being made. Had Latin possessed a term which referred to a specific kind of procession from a source, like ekporousis, there would not be one term holding the place for two meanings. Since Latin only has one term, however, it must stand “confusedly” for both meanings at once, but in every major work on the subject (including the Council of Florence) this distinction is made clear, and is not merely left to a simplistic interpretation of the word “equally”.
I never said it did, I said, and still say, it means “equally”. “Equally” means “equally”. You cannot admit the straightforward, intuitive, commonplace sense of “equally” in this context, but you cannot give a convincing alternative account of “equally” in this context that does not amount to double eternal procession. You have likened it to someone who came from the bedroom through a hallway saying “I came equally from the bedroom and the hallway”. First of all, an alernative explanation is not a “proof”, and especially not one as unconvincing as that. That is clearly a tortured rendering of “equally”; it cannot be taken seriously.
See the above passage of Aquinas. In one breath he says “equally”, and yet also says that the Father is the Source. You can’t twist “equally” to mean that both the Father and the Son are the Source, which is what it would take to prove that ekporousis from the Father is contradicted by the filioque.
As always you insist on reading your own meaning into the text, rather than accepting the obvious facts of what is being said. If “equally” meant what you’re insisting, the Father in no way could be called the Source apart from the Son, and in no way could the Son be said to receive the Spiration from the Father. You are proven wrong by the very texts you cite.
There is no mystery to what is happening here; Rome has realized the importance of the monarchy of the Father (praise God), but you feel you must try to “save” the decrees of Lyons and Florence by twisting the words they use out of all recognition.
I’m just pointing out that Florence calls the Father the Source, which is the explicit recognition of the monarchy of the Father. Rome has never broken with the teaching of Florence, nor should it; to do so would be to break with the teaching of the all the Early Fathers, East and West.
Peace and God bless!
