Orthodox views on the Holy Spirit

[josie_L]

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).

And this is what we teach.

 

[josie_L]

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.

I’ll keep posting from the article:

Ergo, the Catholic Church does not deny the Constantinopolitan Creed as originally written. This is why our Byzantine Catholic Churches recite the Creed without the Filioque, and why even we Romans are able to recite the Creed without the Filioque when participating in Byzantine Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Liturgies. This is also why we reject the clause “…kai tou Uiou…” ("…and the Son…") being added to the Creedal expression “ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon” in Greek, even when used by Latin Rite Catholics in Greek-speaking communities. If the Greek word “ekporeusis” is to be used or intended, then it is incorrect and heretical to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son” Neither East nor West believes that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son” as a common source or principal (aitia). Rather, that one Source and Principal (Aition) is the Father, and the Father alone.

But, if the Western Church agrees with the East that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, then what does it mean by “Filioque” – that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son”? Very simply, and keeping in mind the West’s isolation from the original Greek-language intention of the Constantinopolitan Creed, what the West means to express is a truth that is equally valid, but distinct and parallel to, the original Greek-language intention. ** For, when the West speaks of the Spirit “proceeding” from the Father and the Son, it is referring to something all-together different than “procession” as from a single source (aitia). It is not advocating two sources or principals for the Spirit, or some kind of “double spiration”, as is all-too-commonly (and wrongly) assumed by many Eastern Orthodox. Rather, it is using the term “proceeds” in an all-together different sense. And the best way to illustrate the two different senses or uses of the term “proceeds” (Greek vs. Latin) is though the following analogy:**

If a human father and son go into their back yard to play a game of catch, it is the father who initiates the game of catch by throwing the ball to his son. In this sense, one can say that the game of catch “proceeds” from this human father (an “aition”); and this is the original, Greek sense of the Constantinopolitan Creed’s use of the term “proceeds” (“ekporeusis”). However, taking this very same scenario, one can also justly say that the game of catch “proceeds” from both the father and his son. And this is because the son has to be there for the game of catch to exist. For, unless the son is there, then the father would have no one to throw the ball to; and so there would be no game of catch. And, it is in this sense (one might say a “collective” sense) that the West uses the term “proceeds” (“procedit”) in the Filioque. Just as acknowledging the necessity of the human son’s presence in order for the game of catch to exist does not, in any way, challenge or threaten the human father’s role as the source or initiator (aition) of the game of catch, so the Filioque does not deny the Father’s singular role as the Cause (Aition) of the Spirit; but merely acknowledges the Son’s necessary Presence (i.e., participation) for the Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father to Someone else – namely, to the eternal Son. Father and Son are thus collectively identified as accounting for the Spirit’s procession. This is all that the Filioque was ever intended to address; and it was included in the Creed by the Western fathers at Toledo in order to counter the claims of the 6th Century Spanish (Germanic) Arians. These Arians were of course denying this essential and orthodox truth – that is, **the Son’s eternal participation in the Spirit’s procession – an issue which was never challenged or comprehensively addressed in the Byzantine experience, aside from the fact that there does exist throughout the writings of the Eastern fathers the profession that the Spirit proceeds from the Father “through [or ‘by way of’] the Son” – an expression equivalent to the Filioque. **

catholic-legate.com/Apologetics/TheChurch/Articles/Filioque.aspx

 

[KathleenGee]

Thanks Josie for drawing this back out.

I went out today reflecting on proceeding, etc…and again…going back to communion, the oneness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit…I like the analogy of the father throwing the ball…but there must be the son there to catch…the throwing…can this be analogous to the Holy Spirit?

Some how I perceive linear time being projected onto the eternal union of the Holy Trinity.

Secondly, in context that we believe in the Nicene Creed, by putting our energies into these differences, are we taking away from the reality that faith in God through Jesus Christ is a lived out experience rather than theological to the point of Schism in cases such as this?

 

[Cavaradossi]

I’ll keep posting from the article:

catholic-legate.com/Apologetics/TheChurch/Articles/Filioque.aspx

The article directly contradicts the Florentine decree of union in teaching that the Son is not principle and cause of the Spirit in the same sense that the Father is principle and cause of the Spirit: We declare that when holy doctors and fathers say that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, this bears the sense that thereby also the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause, and according to the Latins as principle of the subsistence of the holy Spirit, just like the Father.

ewtn.com/library/councils/florence.htm

Furthermore, Thomas Aquinas also teaches that the Father and Son are equally cause of the Holy Spirit, only allowing that the Father is said to be principally the cause because spiration is a power proper to the Father, which is shared with the Son. If the Son received from the Father a numerically distinct power for the spiration of the Holy Ghost, it would follow that He would be a secondary and instrumental cause; and thus the Holy Ghost would proceed more from the Father than from the Son; whereas, on the contrary, the same spirative power belongs to the Father and to the Son; 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.

ST I, 36, iii, ad. 2.

 

[Nicea325]

The article directly contradicts the Florentine decree of union in teaching that the Son is not principle and cause of the Spirit in the same sense that the Father is principle and cause of the Spirit: We declare that when holy doctors and fathers say that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, this bears the sense that thereby also the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause, and according to the Latins as principle of the subsistence of the holy Spirit, just like the Father.

ewtn.com/library/councils/florence.htm

Furthermore, Thomas Aquinas also teaches that the Father and Son are equally cause of the Holy Spirit, only allowing that the Father is said to be principally the cause because spiration is a power proper to the Father, which is shared with the Son. If the Son received from the Father a numerically distinct power for the spiration of the Holy Ghost, it would follow that He would be a secondary and instrumental cause; and thus the Holy Ghost would proceed more from the Father than from the Son; whereas, on the contrary, the same spirative power belongs to the Father and to the Son; 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.

ST I, 36, iii, ad. 2.

Again…very clear:

But, if the Western Church agrees with the East that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, then what does it mean by “Filioque” – that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son”? Very simply, and keeping in mind the West’s isolation from the original Greek-language intention of the Constantinopolitan Creed, what the West means to express is a truth that is equally valid, but distinct and parallel to, the original Greek-language intention. **For, when the West speaks of the Spirit “proceeding” from the Father and the Son, it is referring to something all-together different than “procession” as from a single source (aitia). It is not advocating two sources or principals for the Spirit, or some kind of “double spiration”, as is all-too-commonly (and wrongly) assumed by many Eastern Orthodox. **Rather, it is using the term “proceeds” in an all-together different sense. And the best way to illustrate the two different senses or uses of the term “proceeds” (Greek vs. Latin) is though the following analogy:

If a human father and son go into their back yard to play a game of catch, it is the father who initiates the game of catch by throwing the ball to his son. In this sense, one can say that the game of catch “proceeds” from this human father (an “aition”); and this is the original, Greek sense of the Constantinopolitan Creed’s use of the term “proceeds” (“ekporeusis”). However, taking this very same scenario, one can also justly say that the game of catch “proceeds” from both the father and his son. And this is because the son has to be there for the game of catch to exist. For, unless the son is there, then the father would have no one to throw the ball to; and so there would be no game of catch. And, it is in this sense (one might say a “collective” sense) that the West uses the term “proceeds” (“procedit”) in the Filioque. Just as acknowledging the necessity of the human son’s presence in order for the game of catch to exist does not, in any way, challenge or threaten the human father’s role as the source or initiator (aition) of the game of catch, so the Filioque does not deny the Father’s singular role as the Cause (Aition) of the Spirit; but merely acknowledges the Son’s necessary Presence (i.e., participation) for the Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father to Someone else – namely, to the eternal Son. Father and Son are thus collectively identified as accounting for the Spirit’s procession. This is all that the Filioque was ever intended to address; and it was included in the Creed by the Western fathers at Toledo in order to counter the claims of the 6th Century Spanish (Germanic) Arians. These Arians were of course denying this essential and orthodox truth – that is, the Son’s eternal participation in the Spirit’s procession – an issue which was never challenged or comprehensively addressed in the Byzantine experience, aside from the fact that there does exist throughout the writings of the Eastern fathers the profession that the Spirit proceeds from the Father “through [or ‘by way of’] the Son” – an expression equivalent to the Filioque.

 

[neokarny]

It is not advocating two sources or principals for the Spirit, or some kind of “double spiration”, as is all-too-commonly (and wrongly) assumed by many Eastern Orthodox.

You realize that Cavaradossi never once said such was the Latin position, right?

Relevantly Fr. Sergius’ describes in The Comforter the Latin position as:“The Father is the cause of the Son and the initial cause of the Holy Spirit (principium imprincipiatum); the Son is the derivative cause (principium principiatum) of the Holy Spirit; whereas the Holy Spirit is not a principium at all.” Which is, as he goes on to call it, “consistent subordinationism.” The barren, fruitless (not a principium) Spirit is forever subordinate to the fruitful (principium) hypostases of the Father and Son.

 

[EIF5A]

If the Holy Trinity is infinite and cannot be understood in fullness, what’s the point in arguing about semantic/linguistic minutiae when the core belief about the Trinity is the same between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches?

Would God judge us for not understanding the Trinity in the most perfect form, or would He judge us for using this difference as a cause for contention and continued division?

At some point, wouldn’t human logic and understanding be insufficient to conceive of someone infinite?

I apologize. From a non-Catholic/Orthodox perspective, it seems tragic to see this as one cause for separation between the two.

 

[AgainstHeretics]

If the Holy Trinity is infinite and cannot be understood in fullness, what’s the point in arguing about semantic/linguistic minutiae when the core belief about the Trinity is the same between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches?

Would God judge us for not understanding the Trinity in the most perfect form, or would He judge us for using this difference as a cause for contention and continued division?

At some point, wouldn’t human logic and understanding be insufficient to conceive of someone infinite?

I apologize. From a non-Catholic/Orthodox perspective, it seems tragic to see this as one cause for separation between the two.

The point is that only one belief is true and the Catholic Church cannot undogmatize its dogmas.

 

[Nicea325]

You realize that Cavaradossi never once said such was the Latin position, right?

Relevantly Fr. Sergius’ describes in The Comforter the Latin position as:“The Father is the cause of the Son and the initial cause of the Holy Spirit (principium imprincipiatum); the Son is the derivative cause (principium principiatum) of the Holy Spirit; whereas the Holy Spirit is not a principium at all.” Which is, as he goes on to call it, “consistent subordinationism.” The barren, fruitless (not a principium) Spirit is forever subordinate to the fruitful (principium) hypostases of the Father and Son.

And I never once stated such a comment was mentioned.

 

[neokarny]

And I never once stated such a comment was mentioned.

Your post was vague (to me, at least) since it was responding to Cavaradossi and attempting to clarify the Latin view juxtaposed to a misunderstanding or misrepresentation. So, I thought you were implying that he was in fact guilty of the latter.

 

[neokarny]

If the Holy Trinity is infinite and cannot be understood in fullness, what’s the point in arguing about semantic/linguistic minutiae when the core belief about the Trinity is the same between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches?

Would God judge us for not understanding the Trinity in the most perfect form, or would He judge us for using this difference as a cause for contention and continued division?

At some point, wouldn’t human logic and understanding be insufficient to conceive of someone infinite?

I apologize. From a non-Catholic/Orthodox perspective, it seems tragic to see this as one cause for separation between the two.

As AgainstHeretics said, the biggest problem is that the Roman Church dogmatized its particular understanding. So even if we accepted the Filioque as a theological opinion that we don’t share, it ultimately doesn’t matter since they can’t allow for anything less than its universal acceptance as dogma.

 

[EIF5A]

The point is that only one belief is true and the Catholic Church cannot undogmatize its dogmas.

But are the dogmas (which are words and limited by our linguistic perception) really distinct between the two Churches? I have yet to see an example of where there’s overt contradiction.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Again…very clear:

But, if the Western Church agrees with the East that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, then what does it mean by “Filioque” – that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son”? Very simply, and keeping in mind the West’s isolation from the original Greek-language intention of the Constantinopolitan Creed, what the West means to express is a truth that is equally valid, but distinct and parallel to, the original Greek-language intention. For, when the West speaks of the Spirit “proceeding” from the Father and the Son, it is referring to something all-together different than “procession” as from a single source (aitia). It is not advocating two sources or principals for the Spirit, or some kind of “double spiration”, as is all-too-commonly (and wrongly) assumed by many Eastern Orthodox. Rather, it is using the term “proceeds” in an all-together different sense. And the best way to illustrate the two different senses or uses of the term “proceeds” (Greek vs. Latin) is though the following analogy:

If a human father and son go into their back yard to play a game of catch, it is the father who initiates the game of catch by throwing the ball to his son. In this sense, one can say that the game of catch “proceeds” from this human father (an “aition”); and this is the original, Greek sense of the Constantinopolitan Creed’s use of the term “proceeds” (“ekporeusis”). However, taking this very same scenario, one can also justly say that the game of catch “proceeds” from both the father and his son. And this is because the son has to be there for the game of catch to exist. For, unless the son is there, then the father would have no one to throw the ball to; and so there would be no game of catch. And, it is in this sense (one might say a “collective” sense) that the West uses the term “proceeds” (“procedit”) in the Filioque. Just as acknowledging the necessity of the human son’s presence in order for the game of catch to exist does not, in any way, challenge or threaten the human father’s role as the source or initiator (aition) of the game of catch, so the Filioque does not deny the Father’s singular role as the Cause (Aition) of the Spirit; but merely acknowledges the Son’s necessary Presence (i.e., participation) for the Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father to Someone else – namely, to the eternal Son. Father and Son are thus collectively identified as accounting for the Spirit’s procession. This is all that the Filioque was ever intended to address; and it was included in the Creed by the Western fathers at Toledo in order to counter the claims of the 6th Century Spanish (Germanic) Arians. These Arians were of course denying this essential and orthodox truth – that is, the Son’s eternal participation in the Spirit’s procession – an issue which was never challenged or comprehensively addressed in the Byzantine experience, aside from the fact that there does exist throughout the writings of the Eastern fathers the profession that the Spirit proceeds from the Father “through [or ‘by way of’] the Son” – an expression equivalent to the Filioque.

No amount of pretty colors can bring the views expressed in that article into consonance with the teachings of Florence, because the Florentine decree does now allow for the idea that the Son is a different kind of cause from the Father, saying that the Son is cause of the Spirit’s subsistence just as the Father.

Also, the Orthodox are not idiots. We realize that the Latins teach that the Father and the Son are one principle in response to Greek concerns about the Monarchy of the Father, but we reject this solution as unsatisfactory, which is why we have formally rejected it since at least the time of the Council of Blachernae. Really, where have you guys been for the past 700-800 years that you still think we reject the Filioque because we think it teaches procession from two principles?

 

[eddie_too]

who speaks with authority for all the orthodox?

 

[dvdjs]

Also, the Orthodox are not idiots. We realize that the Latins teach that the Father and the Son are one principle in response to Greek concerns about the Monarchy of the Father, but we reject this solution as unsatisfactory, which is why we have formally rejected it since at least the time of the Council of Blachernae. Really, where have you guys been for the past 700-800 years that you still think we reject the Filioque because we think it teaches procession from two principles?

If you search CAF, you will find no shortage of posters who identify themselves as Orthodox and dispute this very point - claiming two sources. In fact, on this thread the suggestion to accept the work of the Joint Theological commission as a point of departure, rather than rehash things that might be considered to have been settled - even settled long ago, was not well received. If you read the chapter on the “Myth off Schism” by Orthodox theologian DB Hart, you be acquainted with the backsliding on the scholarship on this matter. So much so, that it is really a little unfair to suggest that spending time on this point implicitly suggests that Orthodox are idiots, or that opposition to the Latin teaching does not stem from this problem, or that there is some incoherence on the Orthodox position - a situation that probably also applies to Catholic posters here - that makes the objections difficult to understand.

 

[dvdjs]

From DB Hart:

Since at least the time of Vladimir Lossky it has become something of a fixed idea in modern Orthodox theology that Western theology has traditionally forgotten the biblical truth that the unity of the Trinity flows from the paternal arche and come to believe instead that what constitutes the unity of God is an impersonal divine essence prior to the Trinitarian relations.

… It has become so lamentably common among my fellow Orthodox to treat this claim that Western theology in general posits some ‘impersonal’ divine ground behind the Trinitarian hypostases, and so fails to see the Father as the ‘fountainhead of divinity’, as a simple fact of theological history (and the secret logic of Latin ‘filioquism’) that it seems almost rude to point out that it is quite demonstrably untrue, from the patristic through the medieval periods, with a few insignificant exceptions.

In fact, I would go so far as to claim that the understanding of the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit found in Augustine is not only compatible, but identical, with that of the Cappadocian fathers—including Gregory’s and Basil’s belief that the generation of the Son is directly from the Father, while the procession of the Spirit is from the Father only per Filium (sed, to borrow a phrase, de Patre principaliter). I have no wish to dwell very long upon the matter here, but I might observe that both Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa even distinguish generation and procession within the Trinity in terms primarily of the order of cause: that is, both claim that the procession of the Spirit differs from the generation of the Son principally in that the former occurs through the Son. As Gregory writes (in a passage that would fit very well in, say, Book V of Augustine’s De Trinitate):

… while confessing the immutability of the [divine] nature, we do not deny difference in regard to cause and that which is caused, by which alone we discern the difference of each Person from the other, in that we believe one to be the cause and another to be from the cause; and again we conceive of another difference within that which is from the cause: between the one who, on the one hand, comes directly from the principle and the one who, on the other, comes from the principle through the one who arises directly; thus it unquestionably remains peculiar to the Son to be the Only Begotten, while at the same time it is not to be doubted that the Spirit is of the Father, by virtue of the mediation of the Son that safeguards the Son’s character as Only Begotten, and thus the Spirit is not excluded from his natural relation to the Father.1

This is the very argument—made by Augustine in De Trinitate—that scores of Orthodox theologians in recent decades have denounced as entirely alien to Eastern tradition.

… Since the time of Lossky, various modern Orthodox theologians have adopted an exaggerated ‘Photianism’ and have, in their assault on ‘filioquism’, argued that—though, within the economy of salvation, the Spirit is breathed out by Christ upon the apostles—the Trinitarian relations as revealed in the economy of salvation are distinct from the eternal relations of the immanent Trinity. This is theologically disastrous, and in fact subversive of the entire Eastern patristic tradition of Trinitarian dogma. Were this claim sound, there would be absolutely no basis for Trinitarian theology at all; the arguments by which the Cappadocians defended full Trinitarian theology against Arian and Eunomian thought—in works like Basil’s De Spiritu Sancto and Gregory’s Adversus Macedonianos—would entirely fail. Orthodoxy would have no basis whatsoever.

 

[Cavaradossi]

From DB Hart:

Hart is a clown who has either never read Lossky, is deliberately misrepresenting him, or is blaming him for something which is not his fault. Lossky himself in In The Image and Likeness of God writes that it is possible that the filioquism in Augustine’s De Trinitate points to the Spirit’s eternal manifestation through the Son instead of procession from Father and Son as one principle. Lossky also wrote that understanding the ‘dia Huiou’ solely as being the economic sending of the Spirit in time would be a mistake.

His criticism, in fact, is mainly of the theology of Thomas Aquinas. He criticizes Thomist triadology as being impersonal for the reason that in Thomism, the relations of opposition form the bases for the hypostases. Since opposition may only be formed between two terms the Father and Son out of necessity become an impersonal unity which is opposed to the Holy Spirit. That the Father and the Son form an impersonal principle of the Holy Spirit also implies that the hypostases in this scheme are subordinated because their diversity is relative (and according to Lossky, therefore secondary), as opposed to the primary unity of the essence. This is why Lossky characterizes the Western approach to the Trinity as being impersonal, because it stresses the unity of the essence over the diversity of the persons.

 

[dvdjs]

Hart is a clown…

Got it.

 

[Cavaradossi]

If you search CAF, you will find no shortage of posters who identify themselves as Orthodox and dispute this very point - claiming two sources.

But that does not matter, because it is a fact that procession from the Father and the Son as one principle has been condemned in Orthodoxy for at least 700 years.

If you read the chapter on the “Myth off Schism” by Orthodox theologian DB Hart, you be acquainted with the backsliding on the scholarship on this matter.

Hart misrepresents Lossky to the point that one wonders if he is literate.

So much so, that it is really a little unfair to suggest that spending time on this point implicitly suggests that Orthodox are idiots, or that opposition to the Latin teaching does not stem from this problem, or that there is some incoherence on the Orthodox position - a situation that probably also applies to Catholic posters here - that makes the objections difficult to understand.

But not even the much-maligned (wrongly in my opinion) Vladimir Lossky misrepresented the Latin teaching as being from two principles, nor does he fall into denying the eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son (though Hart wrongly seems to imply that he caused others to do so). He did dare to criticize Thomism (as if that were a crime), but he presents its premises quite accurately. Hart is simply wrong, on this matter, and the arrogance of his writing style makes his comical misrepresentations of Lossky all the more ironic, given that these types of misrepresentations are what he aims to dispel.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Got it.

Yes, ignore the part where he misrepresents Lossky. Let’s just focus on the fact that I am not a fan of Hart (perhaps because his writing style is unbearably arrogant without warrant; I could understand one being slightly arrogant when he is right, but to be so arrogant when he is wrong…)