Orthodox views on the Holy Spirit

[Gabriel_of_12]

With how the Catholic Church is set up now with Infallibility on Faith & Morals through either Council statement or Papal excathedra statement, can the Catholic Church back-out of what it decreed in those councils you quote regarding the eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit from both the Father & the Son equally and still remain “Catholic”?

We can’t back out of when Schism Hater falsely divides up the blessed Trinity, because we Catholics never profess such a heresy in the first place.** So you don’t have to worry about any back out any time soon by Catholics.**

Once the Orthodox figure out that the Consubstantial communion of the blessed Trinity is eternal, then maybe they can graduate to understand the filioque.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

You are accurate. The filioque can’t possibly be true without completely denying the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Trinity.

You Orthodox crack me up; Schism is accurate by his own filioque because he states that the spirit proceeds from the son, which is heresy.

We Catholics dont’ believe in Schism haters filioque.

Filioque = The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. this is confirmed from the Creed that is professed in the “eternal order of the consubstantial communion”.

Schism Haters filioque does not agree with the professed Creed. His spirit procession has the spirit processing from the son independtly and outside the blessed trinity which conflicts with the consubstantial communion.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Everything you say is contradictory.

I think it is more likely that I have been misunderstood.

You say that the Son can’t have anything different from the Spirit

Where did I say that? The Son differs from the Spirit in His hypostatic property of being Begotten, just as the Father differs from both as being Unoriginate and being cause. The Son and the Spirit cannot differ by nature (that is, they cannot differ in what they receive from and share with the Father), as this would render one a creature, but they do differ according to their particular mode of existence (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως), which is what distinguishes their hypostases. That is what St. John of Damascus taught in the quote I provided from Orthodox Faith.

but in the case of the Father, he can, for only he can beget the Son and only he can be source of the Spirit.

See above, the Father alone is cause because this is a distinguishing mark of his hypostasis. If being cause were a property of nature, then either the Spirit should share in it, or the Spirit should be a creature.

If the Spirit can proceed from the Father, the Spirit can proceed from the Son.

This is not true, because if the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it means that the Son participates in a hypostatic mark of the Father, or causality is a natural property of the Godhead. To take causality and apply it to two persons of the Godhead instead of either three or only one would make it neither an hypostatic property, nor a natural property, but an accident as in things composed and created.

You can’t have it both ways.

Nor do I want it both ways. You have constructed a straw man.

The Father does not have attributes not possessed by the the other Persons of the Trinity.

Sure He does. This was self-evident enough that Duns Scotus used this very fact to defend the formal distinction, for if, as Scotus argued, paternity were not formally distinct from that which is communicable, the Son would also be Father, and possess paternity. Then there are the Eastern Fathers too, who universally understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit differ in their hypostatic properties, their particular modes of existence, those being being Unbegotten, being Begotten, and Proceeding

The other two Persons are not inferior in any way.

Untrue, for the Son himself in John 14:28 said, “the Father is greater than I,” and both St. Basil the Great and St. John of Damascus understand this passage in reference to causality, for the Father is greater than the Son with respect to being the cause of the Son. By nature, however, the persons are identical, and none is inferior.

The Role of Father in generating the Son is not an attribute, but instead signifies a relationship. This is also true of the roles of both the Father and the Son in breathing forth the Spirit. It signifies a relationship, not a special attribute.

This reduces the three hypostases of the Trinity into being mere prosopa, distinguished not by a particular property or mode of existence (that is, being robbed of their ontological content), but only by subsistent relationships.

You are wrong in supposing that if the Son has the power of spiration the Spirit must also have it, because spiration is not a power

But you yourself have referred to Spiration as act, and all acts have an associated power (dynamis or potentiality) and actuality (energeia). If spiration cannot be conceived of as a power the neither is it an act.

nor does any Person of the Trinity have a power that the other Persons do not have.

That is again because you conflate hypostasis with nature. No person has any natural power that another does not have, but according to hypostasis, the Father has causality, which neither the Son nor the Spirit have, as taught by Gregory the Theologian in his 34th Oration, when he writes: “All that the Father has belongs likewise to the Son, except Causality; and all that is the Son’s belongs also to the Spirit, except His Sonship…”

Spiration signifies relationship, and that relationship is the love between the Father and the Son.

So then do you deny that Begetting and Spiration are acts?

 

[jimmy]

Gabriel, do you somehow think the creed is seperate from the language used by the fathers in opposition to the heretics. Gregory Nazianzen used the same words we have used in opposition to the Arian heretics, and the Pneumatamachians (Spirit fighters). Read his theological orations. If the concept of property, nature, hypostasis, and etc. don’t make sense to you, then you need to read the fathers, because they are part of Catholic dogma. You are rejecting the fathers. You can’t speak of the filioque without these terms being discussed.

 

[jimmy]

If you apply them to the Creed they are new. Filioque compliments the Creed from consubstantial. What you added here has nothing to do with the Creed that is professed. When have we ever professed “Monarchy” in the creed? Let alone “Casuality” is never in the profession of the Creed.

Let us keep it simple ? by sticking to what is professed from the Creed. Now if you want to digress in what is consubstantial, we can relate this to the filioque that is professed by all in the Creed. But don’t invent a different filioque and pretend that is what Catholics profess and believe, your filioque is wrong and never Catholic, I dare say it is revealed heretical here because now you have the filioque rigidly denying the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Wow, now I understand why so many heretical teachings came from the Orthodox side of the Church early on.

In other words, the west added a new doctrine to the faith when it added the filioque, because since it wasn’t part of the creed until the 11th century it had nothing to do with the faith.

No that is incorrect; you are wrong to state such a false thing as fact. The fact what I stated and what the filioque professess is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father AND the Son The reality of what is professed from the Creed as the Son being consubstantial with the Father.

I never said the “Spirit proceeds from the Son”, that is never the filioque. If your going to chop up the filioque and add new different themes and poetics to filioque, you are not discussing the Catholic filioque anymore.

If the creed said ‘the Spirit proceeds from the Father and proceeds from the Son’ would it be saying something different. It is called an ellipsis when you remove words that are implied. It is throughout all of language.

Ok I will bite; You are right your filioque proves “the divinity of the Son and disproves the divinity of the spirit, because you made it a natural property, and denied it to the Spirit”.

I agree with you and your view of the filioque here is heretical before it ever reaches the Creed. How can you place your interpretation of the filioque into the Creed when it contradicts the Holy Spirit as being the Lord and giver of life?

Here is what the CCC teaches about the filioque which is addressing the **eternal order **of what is consubstantial. Add any more to this and you enter heresy.

I agree, what you said was perfectly accurate to your heretical view of the filioque which does not exist in the Catholic faith, nor is it believed.

The dogma of the Trinity is dependent on those who developed the language. We wouldn’t have the creed as it is without the Cappadocian fathers, and their defense used the language we have used. You can’t ignore it. You can’t pretend that the only valid words are those used in the creed.

 

[dvdjs]

Arguments along the line of “you say X, therefore you must believe Y” are not exactly compelling. Especially as words certainly fall short, when trying to eff the ineffable. Here is a useful point of departure from the Agreed Statement of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation. scoba.us/resources/orthodox-catholic/2003filioque.html

We are convinced from our own study that the Eastern and Western theological traditions have been in substantial agreement, since the patristic period, on a number of fundamental affirmations about the Holy Trinity that bear on the Filioque debate:

• both traditions clearly affirm that the Holy Spirit is a distinct hypostasis or person within the divine Mystery, equal in status to the Father and the Son, and is not simply a creature or a way of talking about God’s action in creatures;

• although the Creed of 381 does not state it explicitly, both traditions confess the Holy Spirit to be God, of the same divine substance (homoousios) as Father and Son;

• both traditions also clearly affirm that the Father is the primordial source (arch‘) and ultimate cause (aitia) of the divine being, and thus of all God’s operations: the “spring” from which both Son and Spirit flow, the “root” of their being and fruitfulness, the “sun” from which their existence and their activity radiates;

• both traditions affirm that the three hypostases or persons in God are constituted in their hypostatic existence and distinguished from one another solely by their relationships of origin, and not by any other characteristics or activities;

• accordingly, both traditions affirm that all the operations of God - the activities by which God summons created reality into being, and forms that reality, for its well-being, into a unified and ordered cosmos centered on the human creature, who is made in God’s image – are the common work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even though each of them plays a distinctive role within those operations that is determined by their relationships to one another.

There are of course actual points of contention. But some seem to arguing these points, in particular, claiming that these points are not accepted by one or another church. Where does that come from?

Btw the second point is interesting. Does anyone know when/how we went beyond the Creeds of 325 and 381 to “Trinity, one in essence”.

 

[1Tim215Mommy]

We can’t back out of when Schism Hater falsely divides up the blessed Trinity, because we Catholics never profess such a heresy in the first place.** So you don’t have to worry about any back out any time soon by Catholics.**

Once the Orthodox figure out that the Consubstantial communion of the blessed Trinity is eternal, then maybe they can graduate to understand the filioque.

Actually Gabriel of 12 your claim that Schismhater isn’t correctly presenting the Catholic Teaching, but he is expressing correctly exactly what is in the Catholic Catechism of the Catholic Church re: the belief of the Filioque. The Holy Spirit, according to Catholic Teaching, is an eternal spiration from the Father and an eternal spiration from the Son.

Clarification on what I was asking. Is it possible for the Catholic Church to back out of that considering it is official Teaching of eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit from the Father & eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit from the son, as is described in the CCC with cited quotes linking to Catholic Ecumenical Councils, back out to change the official Teaching to believing that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally ONLY from the Father and was sent to the Church at a specific point in-Time aka at Pentecost through the request of Son Who Himself was conceived at a specific point in-Time aka the Annunciation by the Holy Spirit?

My guess is that the Catholic Church can’t back out of it without acknowledging it doesn’t have Infallibility in the matters of morals and faith. If my guess is correct, then that would prevent any reconcilliation of the Catholic & Orthodox Churches because Orthodox could never claim the Holy Spirit eternal proceeds from both Father and the Son as the CCC proclaims because to do so would deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

jimmy;10975240]Gabriel, do you somehow think the creed is seperate from the language used by the fathers in opposition to the heretics.

No, you don’t understand the filioque professed in the Creed which points to what is in the Creed which compliments the consubstantial communion which is One God. We stop here with the filioque. (all is already settled in the definitions).

When we begin the procession of the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the Father and the Son. Stop here, because it is here from this consubstantial communion who is God, yet from the procession the whole Trinity remains One God in the procession, but distinctly the filioque points to this consubstantial communion, that identifies the substance of the Father and the Son therefore because the Father is with the Son the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.

When we profess to believe in One God, we are including all of what the apostles and Jesus revealed to us about God, which can include all of your languages, terminology of the Early Fathers etc, etc… This is where your language belongs when discussing God.

When we are professing faith in the Trinity which is the Father, Son, Holy Spirit from the Creed we are professing “Consubstantial” which is God. We don’t need all the jargron you present here, because it is believed. One who professess the Creed need not profess every detail and term the ECF’s discussed, this is done from catechesis not from the Creed.

When we are professing the procession of the Holy Spirit stop. We are not including from this procession of the Holy Spirit everything and all that God is, and everything about the whole God head, we don’t need your jargron here either, because we are only professing distinctly the procession of the Holy Spirit nothing else need be said or added to this profession. Although the Creed addresses each person. We are only professing the procession of the HolySpirit here.

**When we profess the procession of the Holy Spirit only, the whole God head revealed from Consubstantial, that this eternal procession comes from the Father and the Son. In this understanding of the filioque which compliments consubstantial, never divides the blessed Trinity as One God.

What you Orthodox are doing with the professed filioque from the Creed, is taken it out of the Creed and it’s consubstantial context and chopping it all up into pieces, until you find what you think you found is a contradiction with the filioque apart from the creed. From your experiment with the filioque, I ask you Orthodox to take a step back from your surgical tables and look at what you got? What the mess you got on your tables is never the filioque professed in the Creed.

You Orthodox just invented your own Frankenstien monster of a foreign filioque, which is never Catholic. **

I don’t reject the Fathers terminology which never can never define God. I know what you Orthodox are trying to do here with the filioque. When the OP asks for your own views on the Holy Spirit.

When I profess the filioque from consubstantial in the Creed, my faith just accepted all the terminology of the ECF’s as it pertains to the Creed. Outside of the Creed when they write, belongs outside of the Creed.

I do reject the secular philosophical aspects that you try to force upon the divinity.

Gee Iam sorry, jimmy didn’t mean for a long post forgive me.

 

[dvdjs]

Actually Gabriel of 12 your claim that Schismhater isn’t correctly presenting the Catholic Teaching, but he is expressing correctly exactly what is in the Catholic Catechism of the Catholic Church re: the belief of the Filioque. The Holy Spirit, according to Catholic Teaching, is an eternal spiration from the Father and an eternal spiration from the Son.

Clarification on what I was asking. Is it possible for the Catholic Church to back out of that considering it is official Teaching of eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit from the Father & eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit from the son, as is described in the CCC with cited quotes linking to Catholic Ecumenical Councils, back out to change the official Teaching to believing that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally ONLY from the Father and was sent to the Church at a specific point in-Time aka at Pentecost through the request of Son Who Himself was conceived at a specific point in-Time aka the Annunciation by the Holy Spirit?

My guess is that the Catholic Church can’t back out of it without acknowledging it doesn’t have Infallibility in the matters of morals and faith. If my guess is correct, then that would prevent any reconcilliation of the Catholic & Orthodox Churches because Orthodox could never claim the Holy Spirit eternal proceeds from both Father and the Son as the CCC proclaims because to do so would deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

1. The question is: what is the CC conveying with the language of Florence? Is the meaning different from what you think? I suspect that there is a wide divergence. If you are interested in learning, I recommend, as a start, searching through the archives for Ghosty’s especially thoughtful posts on the issue. Or this from an Orthodox priest:
   pontifications.wordpress.com/filoque/
   And presumably you have read this:
   catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=1176
2. The hypothetical about back-tracking is amusing, I suppose. But the it is a good question to think about, especially those who mistake the doctrine of infallibility as somehow enabling the Pope to make up doctrine of his own accord. That view is, in fact, diametrically opposed too reality: the doctrine of infallibility has the effect of insuring rigorously binding precedents that cannot be overturned.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I think it is more likely that I have been misunderstood.

Where did I say that? The Son differs from the Spirit in His hypostatic property of being Begotten, just as the Father differs from both as being Unoriginate and being cause. The Son and the Spirit cannot differ by nature (that is, they cannot differ in what they receive from and share with the Father), as this would render one a creature, but they do differ according to their particular mode of existence (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως), which is what distinguishes their hypostases. That is what St. John of Damascus taught in the quote I provided from Orthodox Faith.

See above, the Father alone is cause because this is a distinguishing mark of his hypostasis. If being cause were a property of nature, then either the Spirit should share in it, or the Spirit should be a creature.

This is not true, because if the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it means that the Son participates in a hypostatic mark of the Father, or causality is a natural property of the Godhead. To take causality and apply it to two persons of the Godhead instead of either three or only one would make it neither an hypostatic property, nor a natural property, but an accident as in things composed and created.

Nor do I want it both ways. You have constructed a straw man.

Sure He does. This was self-evident enough that Duns Scotus used this very fact to defend the formal distinction, for if, as Scotus argued, paternity were not formally distinct from that which is communicable, the Son would also be Father, and possess paternity. Then there are the Eastern Fathers too, who universally understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit differ in their hypostatic properties, their particular modes of existence, those being being Unbegotten, being Begotten, and Proceeding

Untrue, for the Son himself in John 14:28 said, “the Father is greater than I,” and both St. Basil the Great and St. John of Damascus understand this passage in reference to causality, for the Father is greater than the Son with respect to being the cause of the Son. By nature, however, the persons are identical, and none is inferior.

This reduces the three hypostases of the Trinity into being mere prosopa, distinguished not by a particular property or mode of existence (that is, being robbed of their ontological content), but only by subsistent relationships.

But you yourself have referred to Spiration as act, and all acts have an associated power (dynamis or potentiality) and actuality (energeia). If spiration cannot be conceived of as a power the neither is it an act.

That is again because you conflate hypostasis with nature. No person has any natural power that another does not have, but according to hypostasis, the Father has causality, which neither the Son nor the Spirit have, as taught by Gregory the Theologian in his 34th Oration, when he writes: “All that the Father has belongs likewise to the Son, except Causality; and all that is the Son’s belongs also to the Spirit, except His Sonship…”

So then do you deny that Begetting and Spiration are acts?

I am not nearly as educated as you in this area, but I will try to respond in my own words.

Begetting and Spiration are not acts in any ordinary sense of the words. When something always was, is, and always will be, it is, IMO, more accurate to say that it just is. I am reminded of I Am Who Am.

If we go back before the creation and peek in on God, we will find that they are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At no point (if infinity has points lol) will we find it any different–. Father, Son and Holy Spirit always exist.

This puts severe limitations on our concepts of begetting, spirating, proceeding, acting, causation, origin, power, or any other finite term we employ to describe God.

When the Father begets the Son, are not the Father, Son and Spirit already in existence? When we say the origin of the Son is the Father, we do this in the sense that the Son has no beginning. So we have to understand origin without beginning.

We also have to understand the power of begetting in a different sense than we usually ascribe to power. In the ordinary sense, a power is something we can choose to employ or not to employ. Can God choose not to employ the power of begetting a Son? The Son, remember, already and always exists. There was never a point in infinity when the Father alone existed. Is it not against the nature of the Father to not beget the Son? When a power describes that which is and will always be, it less resembles a power and more resembles a state of being. That is why I see begetting and spirating as signifying relationships, and not as powers in the ordinary sense.

God is All Powerful. Each Person in the Holy Trinity is God. Therefore, is not each Person All Powerful?

How, therefore, can the Father be more powerful than the Son? The scripture you quoted must have been pointing to relationship and not to greater in the sense of power. This is why I say that begetting refers to the relationship. If you use the term power in describing begetting, it cannot be in any ordinary sense of the word, unless all the Persons of the Trinity possess it. I will also grant you that it refers to the idea of origin, but only in the sense of origin without beginning.

Sorry, Cavaradossi, that I did not attempt to answer each and every point of yours. They just got to be too many. Even what I did reply got away from me I think. It certainly is difficult to discuss these things without multiplying words. My lack of not addressing each point means no disrespect.

 

[1Tim215Mommy]

1. The question is: what is the CC conveying with the language of Florence? Is the meaning different from what you think? I suspect that there is a wide divergence. If you are interested in learning, I recommend, as a start, searching through the archives for Ghosty’s especially thoughtful posts on the issue. Or this from an Orthodox priest:
   pontifications.wordpress.com/filoque/
   And presumably you have read this:
   catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=1176
2. The hypothetical about back-tracking is amusing, I suppose. But the it is a good question to think about, especially those who mistake the doctrine of infallibility as somehow enabling the Pope to make up doctrine of his own accord. That view is, in fact, diametrically opposed too reality: the doctrine of infallibility has the effect of insuring rigorously binding precedents that cannot be overturned.

1. Are you suggesting that Catholics (& Orthodox understanding of Catholic Teaching) are to ignore the Teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church & interpret any of the Catholic Councils differently than the Catholic Church does as described in the CCC 246?
2. Alright, if it is true that Catholic Infallibility found both in the person/office of the Pope AND in Catholic Council the latter of which declared & is quoted in the CCC 246 “The Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son; He has his nature and subsistence at once from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration.” can never be overturned then there is absolutely no possibility for a union of the two Churches as the there will never be agreement on God, Himself. Not even if Orthodox agreed to The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father eternally through the Son at a specific point in human history aka Pentecost BECAUSE the Catholic Church would never be able to agree to it - per your own words - because they couldn’t back-out of their previous official Teaching from the Catholic Council quoted in CCC 246.

Oh wait, dvdjs has been on my ignore, I wasn’t logged in when I read & responded to dvdjs post. I recall exactly why dvdjs was placed on ignore and anyone reading dvdwjs’ posts will quickly see why. I won’t be responding any further to dvdjs.

 

[dvdjs]

1. Are you suggesting that Catholics (& Orthodox understanding of Catholic Teaching) are to ignore the Teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church & interpret any of the Catholic Councils differently than the Catholic Church does as described in the CCC 246?

No.

1. Alright, if it is true that Catholic Infallibility found both in the person/office of the Pope AND in Catholic Council the latter of which declared & is quoted in the CCC 246 “The Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son; He has his nature and subsistence at once from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration.” can never be overturned then there is absolutely no possibility for a union of the two Churches as the there will never be agreement on God, Himself. Not even if Orthodox agreed to The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father eternally through the Son at a specific point in human history aka Pentecost BECAUSE the Catholic Church would never be able to agree to it - per your own words - because they couldn’t back-out of their previous official Teaching from the Catholic Council quoted in CCC 246.

You may interpret the words of the catechism in your own way that leads to insurmountable obstacles, but many, learned people do not.

That is not what you would get from the joint declaration on the SCOBA webpage, the patient explanations here from Ghosty, the erudite writings of Fr. Kimel, for whom we might all take a moment of prayer during trying times, the Vatican’s clarification on the Filioque, and so forth - material that I suggested that you consider. One thing is for sure, no one has any basis for thinking that the Western formula manifests an undermining of the monarchy of the fact or his sole role as cause.

In fact most learrned people are just tired of the indulgence in quibbling over the formula of words and working to a common understanding of each other’s meaning and faith. That is the point of the dialogue, both in the commissions and, on good days, here.

 

[dvdjs]

Of course, there is a easy way out - even if there are irreconcilable differences. From what many EO posters here have said, indeed insisted, there is no concept of binding precedent within the EOC.

So, perhaps in the neo-neo-patristic synthesis, the conciliatory views of St, Maximos the Confessor, Bessarion, and like-minded others will rise to prominence, and the take of the hard-liners might be deemed yet another pseudo-morphisis. Who knows? There was a time in which Mohilla and Dositheus were the quintessence of Orthodox authenticity.

 

[jimmy]

Gabriel, you need to read the fathers. The creed and the theology behind it are inseparable. If you want to call Gregory Nazianzen a secularist, that is your problem. You can’t ignore the word hypostasis because it isn’t used in the creed. You can’t ignore the word diophysite because it isn’t used in the creed. You can’t ignore energea because it isn’t used in the creed. You can’t ignore the word diothelite because it isn’t in the creed. There is one doctrine of the Trinity, and all the terms go together. You can’t ignore patristics because you don’t think they fit with the Filioque. The doctrine of the Filioque must deal with the patristic terminology of the Trinity, because it modifies that doctrine. Without dealing with the terminology you ignore any potential problems. You refuse to consider things in their context.

One of the major problems with western theology is that you treat everything as if it is a seperate doctrine. This discussion is a perfect example. You want to ignore the patristic terminology on the Trinity because you think it is completely seperate from the Filioque. And with that your not even talking about a seperate doctrine; it is the same doctrine of God, which you want to split into seperate subjects. In reality it is all associated, and you can’t ignore any of it.

 

[EIF5A]

I wonder if God will say at the end, “None of you got it completely right.”

Using human words and logic to describe the Holy Trinity would certainly have limits, no…?

::escapes::

 

[KathleenGee]

Can there be a merging of the two?

The Heavenly Father, is Creator and Jesus is the Eternal Word through which the universe was made through the life giving force of the Holy Spirit…

Jesus said after He will come the Comforter Who will teach them many things. After Jesus’ glorious ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost to fill and lead the Church.

We need definitions to the Sacred Mysteries…but words will never be enough. Just my simple reflections.

 

[jimmy]

I wonder if God will say at the end, “None of you got it completely right.”

Using human words and logic to describe the Holy Trinity would certainly have limits, no…?

::escapes::

I agree to a large extent, and I tend to oppose further dogmatizing anything. I don’t like the progressive approach to doctrine and dogma. But, if someone is going to make a dogma, they should be open to criticism, they have anathematized and excommunicated those who dare to think differently. If the Filioque had remained just an idea in the region of Gaul, it probably would have never been a big issue. But it was added to the creed in Rome, and anathemas were later attached to it.

As it is, one side will have to change. Rome claims infallibility, the east opposes infallibility and the doctrine of the Filioque.

 

[jimmy]

Can there be a merging of the two?

The Heavenly Father, is Creator and Jesus is the Eternal Word through which the universe was made through the life giving force of the Holy Spirit…

Jesus said after He will come the Comforter Who will teach them many things. After Jesus’ glorious ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost to fill and lead the Church.

We need definitions to the Sacred Mysteries…but words will never be enough. Just my simple reflections.

If you can find a way to merge the two sides, and at the same time Malle them both happy I will gladly follow. Or just make the two approaches compatible, regardless of what the two sides think, I will gladly follow.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I wonder if God will say at the end, “None of you got it completely right.”

Using human words and logic to describe the Holy Trinity would certainly have limits, no…?

::escapes::

Well, doesn’t it really come down to the other main disagreement between Catholics and Orthodox? That is, doesn’t it come down to whether or not the Pope has primacy? If he does have primacy, then the question is settled. Doctrine has been declared. If not, then maybe indeed none of us got it completely right-- or not.

There seems to be no resolution to this dilemma without the pronouncement of a final authority. Do you think maybe God never wanted it settled? I guess if the Pope or the Roman Church isn’t infallible, then it doesn’t really matter. But then, who can one trust for the right teachings on faith and morals? For the time being, anyway, the differences between Orthodox and Catholic seem small in terms of teaching, but that may not always be the case. Then what? Did God fail us with the way he structured his Church? I think I’m bordering on sarcasm, and I don’t want to do that. I respect my Orthodox brothers and I hope some day we come back together. Maybe there is a solution that we just cannot see at present.

 

[KathleenGee]

I am still waiting to find the historical sources that said mistranslations caused misunderstanding and then caused the Eastern and Western Churches to excommunicate each other.

When I look at the disagreements on this Filoque on this thread, albeit I am not educated like others here, it does appear to not justify Schism.

I also think there is just cause on both sides, and when there is just cause and we cannot obtain what we precisely want, it is a matter of forgiveness and mutually accepting each other’s differences. I am also pointing to the Greek Church not forgiving the Catholic Church for what the Norman Crusader bands did to the Orthodox going back hundreds of years.

Christ dictates that we forgive and re unite.