Orthodox views on the Holy Spirit

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what is the orthodox teaching on the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit? i understand they reject the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. so, if the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit is not one of procession, what is it?
 
ConstantineTG said:
I think the biggest disagreement about the Holy Spirit between Catholics and Orthodox is that Catholics do not believe in John 15:26.
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Latin rite Catholics believe all scripture and tradition, and to assert otherwise is disingenuous, IMO. :confused:

Please read the Acts of the Apostles if you have any doubt how the Church responded to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
 
eddie_too said:
what is the orthodox teaching on the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit? i understand they reject the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. so, if the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit is not one of procession, what is it?
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Your question has been answered a few times or so, look back at Cavaradossi’s posts and read them. Particularly the one where he actually responds to the second time you asked that question.
 
KathleenGee said:
So because of this, the Schism is justified?

I thought we believed in the Nicene Creed.
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I don’t think these Trinitarian disagreements would be enough to justify initial schism, but are possibly enough to perpetuate schism - maybe. OTOH, the schism is justified on grounds of the Papal issues alone even if the Filioque can be dismissed as Latin theological opinion. So resolving this issue won’t necessarily put us any closer to union, sadly.
 
since i missed it the first time, that makes it too much work and bother to address a second time?

how do they say it? thanks for assist brother?
 
the saddest thing about the orthodox’s rejection of unity is that they have so many people teaching so many different things that no one can say for sure what the orthodox position is on much of anything.
 
Reuben_J said:
Hi. Welcome to the Forum.:)🙂
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Hey Reuben, AgainstHeretics is correct. There is a wonderful article on The Catholic Legate that will help you understand the Catholic view better. I will try to find it for you.
 
Neokarny,

Thanks for simplifying as I am a beginner in studying the history of the two churches. Very sad that we need to see this healed and restored and renewed.

I see so much good in the Orthodox Church that we lost through Vatican II. In my elementary study of liturgy, the Orthodox motif in building churches was more communal, and the Latin more hierarchical. I am talking here about the times prior to the Schism. So I am also implying that there was some form of administrative leadership coming out of the Latin Church…because of SS Peter and Paul, even though we do not have the complete 12 apostles founding Western churches as in the East.

Papal infallibility was defined as Christianity began to dismantle… Council of Florence had to be political because alot of the dismantling was also geo-political as in case of Germany and England. And Germany was under the Orthodox Roman Empire.

I am seeing Orthodoxy’s hand not recognizing the seat of Peter, – prior it was handling the settling of disputes and its earliest affluent days being financial support to emerging churches – as indirectly – indirectly enabling ethnic and nationalistic ties. This is my perception.

I think it very sad. From a layperson’s view…the Holy Spirit proceeds from Christ at Pentecost. Regarding Gabriel12-- going back, yes, CCC teaches that God the Father is Creator, and Pope Honorious states that Christ, although He has 2 wills, follows the will of the Father. So you can say God the Father is the Originator. But still in mystery, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal and one and all as one in being…eternity in concept of our linear time concept.

So from this oneness of the Holy Trinity, how far out theologically can you debate mystery??? God the Father created the universe through Jesus Christ before His incarnation with human substance through the working of the Holy Spirit, which to me says the world was created through God’s Spirit…a proceeding just as the Holy Spirit proceeded Jesus at Pentecost. My Latin mind says the Holy Spirit proceeds Christ in the creation of the world and proceeds Christ at Pentecost and Holy Spirit is the life of the Church…going back to the Father’s Yes and Christ the means of creation.

The papal definition of infallibility came about to face off the coming dismantling of Christianity. The Living Tradition in the Holy Father has credence…the world listens to Christ in him and he certainly is not saying anything to contradict the deposit of our faith or the basic goodness of humanity.

I am praying for the healing of the Schism, but again, I cannot help but see it is two different ways of looking at the same thing.
 
Cavaradossi said:
They refer to the progression (προϊέναι) of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. This is the usage of St. Cyril, for example, who never writes that the Spirit proceeds (ἐκπορεύεται) from the Father and the Son, but that the Spirit progresses (πρόεισι) from the Son. The Latin Fathers, lacking separate terms for the two verbs confessed that the Spirit proceeds from both in the sense of the verb πρόειμι, but not in the sense of the verb ἐκπορεύω. This fact is witnessed to by St. Maximus the Confessor (if his letter to Marinus is authentic), who wrote that the Latins in confessing the filioque did not intend to make the Son cause of the Spirit. The Latin pronouncement at Florence, we find directly contradicts Maximus (and therefore the teachings of the Latin in the time of Maximus the Confessor) when it states that,“the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause αἰτίαν], and according to the Latins as principle άρχήν] of the subsistence ύπἁρξεως] of the Holy Spirit, just like the Father.”
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Before I would wish to address what you are saying here, may I ask you for your source where you have quoted the Ecumenical Council of Florence from? I haven’t seen it with these Greek words put in and my guess would be that the documents were written in Latin? Can you verify that the Greek words are in there?

As I’m looking I should probably take the ] to mean that no, these were added by someone else 🤷

Edit: Now that I cut & paste in to Google, it appears to be only a few Eastern Orthodox cites that have it quoted this way and my guess is that these were added by someone other than the Council Fathers. If this is so, this could possibly present a barrier as one would need to verify that’s what the Council Fathers meant.
 
Cavaradossi said:
The Father is, as St. Basil teaches, the cause of the other two Hypostases of the Trinity. They have their existence from the Father. Even the decree of Florence teaches this, saying that the Son, just like the Father is the principle of the Spirit’s ὕπαρξις (Greek for existence). Of course, we disagree and say that the Father alone is principle and cause of the Spirit’s ὕπαρξις.
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The Church also teaches that the Father is the cause of the spiration:
“What’s more, the author of The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy (quoted by Mr. Quattrone above) is simply wrong when he claims that John of Montenegro (and thus the Western Church) saw the Son as a “cause” of the Spirit in the sense of an “aition”. This is specifically what John of Montenegro was denying when he proclaimed that Rome recognizes only one Cause (Aition) of the Spirit – namely, the Father. It is only when one twists and misrepresents the Western view (force-fitting it into a Byzantine preconception) that a ‘contradiction’ is created. The Roman position has never changed: **The Father is the sole Cause (Aition / Principium) of the Spirit; but, with that taken for granted, one may also validly speak of the Spirit proceeding from both Father and Son in a collective sense – that is, with the Father acting as Cause (Aition / Principium) and the Son acting as eternal, essential Participant in the Father’s spirating of the Spirit – the Spirit of Sonship, which of course requires the Personal existence and participation of a Son.” **
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catholic-legate.com/Apolo…/Filioque.aspx
“At this point, it may be very helpful for us to distinguish between two important Greek words. Above, we discussed the semantic differences between the Greek term “ekporeusis” (i.e., to proceed from a sole Source, Principal, or Cause) and the unequivalent Latin term “procedit” – the term unwittingly used by the West to translate Constantinople I’s “ekporeusis”, and so the root of the semantic confusion. However, there is yet another Greek term for “proceeds”, which is “proienai”, and this term, which is equivalent to the Latin term “procedit”, is used quite often among Eastern (especially Alexandrian) fathers to refer to the Spirit’s procession from both Father and Son. For, when the Greek fathers use “proienai”, they are not referring to the Father’s monarchy at all, but to the same, collective sense of the Spirit’s procession (involving both Father and Son) as expressed in the Western tradition. We will explore this aspect of the Eastern fathers’ theology below.”
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The last time we spoke about this I asked if you could read the article I had posted, I’m guessing you didn’t. 😃
 
eddie_too said:
the saddest thing about the orthodox’s rejection of unity is that they have so many people teaching so many different things that no one can say for sure what the orthodox position is on much of anything.
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I’m starting to see that too.
 
LionHeart777 said:
Before I would wish to address what you are saying here, may I ask you for your source where you have quoted the Ecumenical Council of Florence from? I haven’t seen it with these Greek words put in and my guess would be that the documents were written in Latin? Can you verify that the Greek words are in there?

As I’m looking I should probably take the ] to mean that no, these were added by someone else 🤷

Edit: Now that I cut & paste in to Google, it appears to be only a few Eastern Orthodox cites that have it quoted this way and my guess is that these were added by someone other than the Council Fathers. If this is so, this could possibly present a barrier as one would need to verify that’s what the Council Fathers meant.
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If anything, the Greek translation of the council (which is where those bracketed Greek words have been pulled from), is more favorable to the council’s pronouncement. For if subsistence had been translated literally as ὑποστασις, instead of ὑπαρξις, it would look far worse.
 
thanks cavarasossi for providing that post to me.

now can i ask what you mean by the word manifest in this context. i am confused because typically, as a verb, the word means to make known by displaying or revealing. to whom is the Son making the Holy Spirit known or to whom is the Son revealing the Holy Spirit? i ask this as relative to using the word manifest to describe the eternal relationship between the Two.

so, maybe i am misunderstanding your use of the word manifest relative to the eternal relationship?
 
josie_L said:
The Church also teaches that the Father is the cause of the spiration:

catholic-legate.com/Apolo…/Filioque.aspx
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The argument is nonsense. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the Father and the Son are one cause and principle of the Spirit, and the Council of Florence decrees that the Son should be confessed as being cause by the Greeks (meaning the term aition) of the Holy Spirit. But if the Roman Catholics are willing to abandon those teachings of Florence and the schoolmen, we would not object.
 
eddie_too said:
thanks cavarasossi for providing that post to me.

now can i ask what you mean by the word manifest in this context. i am confused because typically, as a verb, the word means to make known by displaying or revealing. to whom is the Son making the Holy Spirit known or to whom is the Son revealing the Holy Spirit? i ask this as relative to using the word manifest to describe the eternal relationship between the Two.

so, maybe i am misunderstanding your use of the word manifest relative to the eternal relationship?
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It has to do with the Greek term energeia (energy). The idea is that God has from eternity manifested as actuality (energeia) which can be participated in by creatures (a teaching integral to theosis), even before any creatures (including time) or external referent existed.
 
that makes sense when applied to the Godhead. i do not see how it simultaneously applies within the Godhead to the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit.
 
eddie_too said:
that makes sense when applied to the Godhead. i do not see how it simultaneously applies within the Godhead to the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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Because there is a certain taxis (ordering) among the persons. As the Cappadocians taught, God acts in the specific ordering of the Father causing an energeia, the Son then preparing it, and the Spirit perfecting it (these terms are, of course, rough analogies, as the Cappadocians themselves admit). In this sense, the Spirit as energeia pours forth and is eternally manifest through the Son. This is why the Spirit is said to receive of the Son, and to be the Spirit of the Son (for the Spirit communicates the energies of the Son), but not to be the Spirit from the Son (for the Spirit does not have existence from the Son, but has this from the Father alone).
 
Cavaradossi said:
The argument is nonsense. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the Father and the Son are one cause and principle of the Spirit, and the Council of Florence decrees that the Son should be confessed as being cause by the Greeks (meaning the term aition) of the Holy Spirit. But if the Roman Catholics are willing to abandon those teachings of Florence and the schoolmen, we would not object.
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Never heard that attributed to Thomas Aquinas, nor the council of Florence.

I will ask you again if you could please read this article: catholic-legate.com/Apolo…/Filioque.aspx
 
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