Second Photian Schism

[SaintNobody]

This is a bit of a technical question.

The older Catholic historians seem to accept the idea that Photius renewed the schism in 879. However, modern historians seem to have rejected the notion that there was a true break, and owe this invention to anti-Photius propaganda.

Do you believe that there was a second Photian schism?

I’m trying to pin this down for a chronology I’m writing.

 

[Ghosty]

This is a bit of a technical question.

The older Catholic historians seem to accept the idea that Photius renewed the schism in 879. However, modern historians seem to have rejected the notion that there was a true break, and owe this invention to anti-Photius propaganda.

Do you believe that there was a second Photian schism?

I’m trying to pin this down for a chronology I’m writing.

There’s certainly no evidence of a second split. It seems that it was previously just assumed, and not based on any hard evidence. The modern view is based primarily on this lack of evidence; Photius was restored to Communion and there is no talk of a second split in any records from the time.

That being said, his views on the Filioque being heretical are not acceptable (nor were they especially accurate), but they were not ruled against during his lifetime and so he wasn’t guilty of any overt disobedience (just as St. John of Damascus, the Early Church Father I know of off hand to speak against the filioque, and who also happens to be a Doctor of the Church).

Peace and God bless!

 

[mardukm]

Dearest brother Ghosty,

(just as St. John of Damascus, the Early Church Father I know of off hand to speak against the filioque, and who also happens to be a Doctor of the Church).

May I ask for a source for your claim that the Damascene spoke against filioque?

In Book 8 of his De Trinitate, the Damascene upholds the Catholic faith in stating:
Accordingly He receives from the Son, Who is both sent by Him, and proceeds from the Father. Now I ask you whether to receive from the Son is the same thing as to proceed from the Father.

The Damascene concludes the affirmative because:
*That which the Spirit will recieve - whether it will be power, or excellence, or teaching, - the Son has said must be received from Him, and again He indicates that this same thing must be received from the Father. For when He says that all things whatsoever the Father hath are His, and that for this cause He declared that it must be received from His own, He teaches also that what is received from the Father is yet received from Himself, because all things that the Father hath are His. *

Note that he asserts this in relation to the very nature of the Spirit, not merely the economic procession. Whatever the Spirit receives from the Father, He receives it by way of the Son. That is the Faith of the Fathers and the Faith of the Catholic Church, East, West, and Orient.

Interestingly, St. John demonstrates what the Latin Catholics have said all along - that filioque was intended to combat a form of Arianism. The context of the Damascene’s statements about the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is actually a defense of the homousion of Father and Son!

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[Ghosty]

Dearest brother Ghosty,

May I ask for a source for your claim that the Damascene spoke against filioque?

In Book 8 of his De Trinitate, the Damascene upholds the Catholic faith in stating:
Accordingly He receives from the Son, Who is both sent by Him, and proceeds from the Father. Now I ask you whether to receive from the Son is the same thing as to proceed from the Father.

The Damascene concludes the affirmative because:
*That which the Spirit will recieve - whether it will be power, or excellence, or teaching, - the Son has said must be received from Him, and again He indicates that this same thing must be received from the Father. For when He says that all things whatsoever the Father hath are His, and that for this cause He declared that it must be received from His own, He teaches also that what is received from the Father is yet received from Himself, because all things that the Father hath are His. *

Note that he asserts this in relation to the very nature of the Spirit, not merely the economic procession. Whatever the Spirit receives from the Father, He receives it by way of the Son. That is the Faith of the Fathers and the Faith of the Catholic Church, East, West, and Orient.

Interestingly, St. John demonstrates what the Latin Catholics have said all along - that filioque was intended to combat a form of Arianism. The context of the Damascene’s statements about the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is actually a defense of the homousion of Father and Son!

Blessings,
Marduk

I was refering to St. John’s statement in “The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” where he says:

Further, it should be understood that we do not speak of the Father as derived from any one, but we speak of Him as the Father of the Son. And we do not speak of the Son as Cause or Father, but we speak of Him both as from the Father, and as the Son of the Father. And we speak likewise of the Holy Spirit as from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father. And we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son: but yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son.

I had never read the citations you supplied, and they’re quite informative. I have only ever read this particular work of his, and took his statement as an outright rejection of the Filioque, but the quotes you’ve provided give it a much different context. I humbly thank you for sharing them with me.

As a side note, is that work of St. John’s available online anywhere? I’d LOVE to read it.

I did find this exposition of his, in which he seems to describe the Filioque quite well:

balamand.edu.lb/theology/JoWrit_trinity.htm

A particular statement of interest from that source is this:

Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature.

Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one.

The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat.

Peace and God bless!

 

[anthony022071]

This is a bit of a technical question.

The older Catholic historians seem to accept the idea that Photius renewed the schism in 879. However, modern historians seem to have rejected the notion that there was a true break, and owe this invention to anti-Photius propaganda.

Do you believe that there was a second Photian schism?

I’m trying to pin this down for a chronology I’m writing.

The schisms of Constantinople that preceded Photios were due to heretics,such as the Arians and Monophysites. Photios was a usurper,and he objected to the filioque.

newadvent.org/cathen/12043b.htm

catholictradition.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_catholictradition_archive.html

 

[anthony022071]

In Book 8 of his De Trinitate, the Damascene upholds the Catholic faith in stating:
Accordingly He receives from the Son, Who is both sent by Him, and proceeds from the Father. Now I ask you whether to receive from the Son is the same thing as to proceed from the Father.

The Damascene concludes the affirmative because:
*That which the Spirit will recieve - whether it will be power, or excellence, or teaching, - the Son has said must be received from Him, and again He indicates that this same thing must be received from the Father. For when He says that all things whatsoever the Father hath are His, and that for this cause He declared that it must be received from His own, He teaches also that what is received from the Father is yet received from Himself, because all things that the Father hath are His. *

John Damascene also wrote:

“He is the Spirit of the Son, not as being from Him but as proceeding through Him from the Father.”

“He is a sanctifying force that is subsistent, but proceeds unceasingly from the Father and abides in the Son.”

“And the Holy Spirit is the power of the Father revealing the hidden mysteries of His Divinity, proceeding from the Father through the Son in a manner known to Himself, but different from that of generation”

“[The Holy Spirit] is the median (meson) of the Unbegotten and the Begotten and He is joined with the Father through the Son.”

“I say that God is always Father since He has always His Word [the Son] coming from Himself and, through his Word, the Spirit issuing from Him” (Dialogue Against the Manicheans 5 [A.D. 728]).

 

[steve_b]

I was refering to St. John’s statement in “The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” where he says:

:
Further, it should be understood that we do not speak of the Father as derived from any one, but we speak of Him as the Father of the Son. And we do not speak of the Son as Cause

 

[Ghosty]

Ghosty;3327438:

I was refering to St. John’s statement in “The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” where he says:

IOW He says

The One and same Spirit is of

AND from the Father, but only of, but NOT from the Son.

For clarification, using his language, can you give an example where once something is of you, it can’t be from you as well?

As Augustine said simply, (I paraphrase)

The Father eternally loves the Son and the Son eternally loves the Father and from this love the HS proceeds.

Personally I’ve not read the original language that St. John was writing in, but it’s quite possible (and likely, if it was Greek) that the nuance of what he is saying is lost in the translation to English (and to Latin as well).

Greek has a few more varied ways of saying “from” than Latin or English, and some of them would be heretical when applied to the Son since they mean “from the Source” and not merely coming forth from. Given what he says in the other sources Mardukm quoted, I’d guess he’s using word that means “from the Source” when he says that the Spirit isn’t from the Son, but again I don’t know for sure.

Peace and God bless!

 

[StRaphael]

Indeed we must always look at the original language and historical and theological context. The Greek Fathers, working from an approach different from the Latin one but complementary and equally legitimate rather than contradictory, say that the Spirit proceeds not from (ek) the Son (e.g. the Doctor St. John of Damascus in the passage you quoted) simply because ekporeusis can, by definition, characterize only the relationship of origin to the principle without principle of the Holy Trinity, viz. the Father.{1} To say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son in that manner, rather than the correct sense of proceeds (proesi), would mean that the Son is the principle without principle and thus would turn the Son into the Father. That is why we avoid the error of professing that the Holy Spirit is “to ek tou Patros ai tou Uiou ekporeuomenon”.{2}

The Father alone is underived; He is the principle without principle of the entire Godhead, i.e. the Father alone is the source (peghe) and arche anarchos; the Son is not the arche anarchos. That is to say, the Son is not aitia (St. John of Damascus says only the Father is aitia) because aitia deals with ekporeusis (origin from the sole principle without principle) but the Son is, together with the Father, the one principium from which the Holy Spirit proceeds because principium is more general and corresponds to processio, which signifies origin in any way at all as opposed to the restricted ekporeusis. Thus we see that St. John of Damascus did not exclude Filioque but rather upheld the true Catholic teaching when the terms are properly understood.

The Filioque deals not with the ekporeusis of the Holy Spirit from the Father as the sole principle without principle (arche anarchos) and source (peghe) of the Godhead, but reveals the procession (proienai = processio) of the Holy Spirit in consubstantial communion from the Father and the Son, i.e. the communication of consubstantial divinity from the Father to the Son and from the Father, through and with the Son, to the Holy Spirit.{3}

God bless you and yours!

{1} Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (9/20/1995): The Greek and the Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (English translation from L’Osservatore Romano).
{2} Ibid.
{3} Ibid.

 

[Agnusstick]

May I ask for a source for your claim that the Damascene spoke against filioque?

In Book 8 of his De Trinitate, the Damascene upholds the Catholic faith in stating:
Accordingly He receives from the Son, Who is both sent by Him, and proceeds from the Father. Now I ask you whether to receive from the Son is the same thing as to proceed from the Father.

The Damascene concludes the affirmative because:
*That which the Spirit will recieve - whether it will be power, or excellence, or teaching, - the Son has said must be received from Him, and again He indicates that this same thing must be received from the Father. For when He says that all things whatsoever the Father hath are His, and that for this cause He declared that it must be received from His own, He teaches also that what is received from the Father is yet received from Himself, because all things that the Father hath are His. *

Note that he asserts this in relation to the very nature of the Spirit, not merely the economic procession. Whatever the Spirit receives from the Father, He receives it by way of the Son. That is the Faith of the Fathers and the Faith of the Catholic Church, East, West, and Orient.

Interestingly, St. John demonstrates what the Latin Catholics have said all along - that filioque was intended to combat a form of Arianism. The context of the Damascene’s statements about the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is actually a defense of the homousion of Father and Son!

Blessings,
Marduk

Marduk, the quote you gave is not from St. John Damascene, but from St Hilary of Poitiers! They share a volume in Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers by Ph. Schaff… Please look it up, your quote is from Book VIII of De Trinitate by St. Hilary, page 364, not at all from Book I, Chp VIII of De trinitate by St John Damascene, which comes after page 560.
(ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf209.pdf)
By the way, the idea of St Hilary was more recently upheld by Mitr. John Zizioulas (who is regrettably seen as an ecumenist, thus far from being accepted widely by the Orthodox).

 

[mardukm]

Thanks. This thread is pretty old. There is another old thread wherein I had pointed out the mistake, for exactly the reason you point out - they are in the same volume of NPNF.

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[Peter_J]

This thread is pretty old.

Plus, even when the thread was active back in '08, no evidence was ever presented for a so-called “second Photian schism”.