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Tomdstone
Guest
The Eastern Orthodox hold to the Nicene Creed as given by the infallible Council of Constantinople.
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lmelahn
Guest
The Eastern Orthodox understand the term “procession” (Greek, ekporeusis) the way that St. Basil the Great and the other Cappadocian Fathers used the term, not the way the Latin Fathers used it.
Notice how ek-poreusis etymologically means “going from something,” whereas pro-cessio means “going ahead” (without mention of the origin).
For the Greek Fathers, ekporeusis necessarily includes the ultimate origin of whatever is sent or given. Hence, the ekporeusis of the Holy Spirit can only be from the Father. (If you try to say that the Spirit “ekporeutai” from the Son, that is tantamount to saying that the Son is also a distinct co-eternal principle of the Holy Spirit, which is a heresy.)
In Greek, the term that is more or less equivalent to the Latin processio is a different one: to proienai.
Saying that the Spirit ekporeutai from the Father and the Son is a heresy. Likewise, saying that the Spirit procedit (or proeisi) from the Father alone would be heresy.
See a document called The Greek and Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit.
So there is no fundamental problem with the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit.
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Tomdstone
Guest
What you say contradicts post #90 which asserts that the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity “does not result in perfect Love”’
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Tomdstone
Guest
You wrote:
But the Orthodox view of the Trinity is based on the Nicene Creed as given by the infallible Council of Constantinople. This creed does not include the filioque.
But the Orthodox view of the Trinity is based on the Nicene Creed as given by the infallible Council of Constantinople. This creed does not include the filioque.
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Aloysium
Guest
I would extend my thanks to those who take the trouble to explain the Catholic position. Your perspective and insights are much appreciated.
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lmelahn
Guest
Well, I respectfully disagree with #90 on that score
.If you read what the Greek Fathers actually say (a good place to start is St. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa, which is basically a summary of all the previous Fathers), there is no fundamental difference between their position and the Western Church’s position.
The misunderstandings between us have arisen largely because translators thought that processio meant exactly the same thing as ekporeusis; however, it does not.
Now, if we mistranslate ekporeusis as “procession” in the Western sense, and try to assert that the Holy Spirit proceeds (procedit or proeisi) from the Father alone, then yes, that would make it impossible for the Holy Spirit to be the Love between Father and Son. The Eastern Orthodox make no such claim, however.
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javid
Guest
ِDear (name removed by moderator), If we accept thateach person is God, so he can do what God can do, because the person is a perfect God. We can limit God in roles.
I explained my problem. How can we imagine a simple being that consists of three beings? A simple being is a pure being and has no parts.
O.K. Divine persons are simple. But how can the Divine Essence be simple, while it consists of three persons?
Let’s accept your view, then Divine Essence has two distinct person. The problem is how can the Essence be simple while has two person in it?
Yes, But how about the divine simplicity?
God does not change beween roles, but he can change the roles. The father and The Son are not roles, but in your explanation, their distinction is their roles.
The problem is how The Holy Trinity is simple, while it contains three persons?
The problem is that the family is not self-exist so it can be consist of members, But God is self-exist.
Yes, But it seems that you claim that roles make trinity. So when you wrote “God existed before roles” then we must think that God existed before Triity, So Trinity can’t be Essential.
You just need to prove that love makes two persons, Let me show an another problem.
We can’t imagine God, without his personality. So if God as the Father, Loves himself, who is the person who is loved? The son? I don’t think so, When God the father loves himself, the person who is loved is the father!
Why we must think there is a second person?
I explained my problem. How can we imagine a simple being that consists of three beings? A simple being is a pure being and has no parts.
O.K. Divine persons are simple. But how can the Divine Essence be simple, while it consists of three persons?
Let’s accept your view, then Divine Essence has two distinct person. The problem is how can the Essence be simple while has two person in it?
Yes, But how about the divine simplicity?
God does not change beween roles, but he can change the roles. The father and The Son are not roles, but in your explanation, their distinction is their roles.
The problem is how The Holy Trinity is simple, while it contains three persons?
The problem is that the family is not self-exist so it can be consist of members, But God is self-exist.
Yes, But it seems that you claim that roles make trinity. So when you wrote “God existed before roles” then we must think that God existed before Triity, So Trinity can’t be Essential.
You just need to prove that love makes two persons, Let me show an another problem.
We can’t imagine God, without his personality. So if God as the Father, Loves himself, who is the person who is loved? The son? I don’t think so, When God the father loves himself, the person who is loved is the father!
Why we must think there is a second person?
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Aloysium
Guest
You can think whatever you want.
In approaching any truth, one submits one’s mind to the source of that truth; in this case it is what God Himself has revealed through His Holy Church.
Organizing and reorganizing your concepts of love, relation, person, being, spirit, everything that you may relate to God do not and never will capture the Reality which is the Ground of our being.
They cannot.
Do you merely want to understand?
One loves Him, praises Him, fears Him, is in awe; and it is only through that relationship that any of this makes any sense.
There are many excellent answers here. Their inability to connect with you demonstrates the fact that God is not something out there to be understood.
My hunch, informed by Zen I suppose, is that your frustration will plague you until your mind gives up and you surrender to Him. He is asking you to have faith.
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javid
Guest
I meant by reason, not by faith…
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Aloysium
Guest
You have faith in your perceptions.
You have faith in the family and society that taught you what makes up the world.
You have faith in your memory.
You have faith that your mind is connected to reality.
You seem to have unshakeable faith that what my words mean to me, mean the same thing to you. As we saw above, procession means very different things to different people.
It is reason based on many decades of living, prayer and meditation that tells me that God is a Trinity.
It is reason that tells me that finding that the Church has been consistently right in everything thusfar, that I should consider it to be correct in what I have yet to understand.
It is reason that translates the personal experience of God as Love, into the understanding that as such He must contain all that consitutes a perfect relationship. Everything is founded not on things but on relationally. He is perfect relationally. I would say He is beyond simple, because I apply the word to things. He is One, the Creator of all that is and that oneness is Love Itself.
To quote you:
In the beginning was the Word , and** the Word was with God **,and the Word was God
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Tomdstone
Guest
Some people would question your assumption that the Church has been consistently right in everything thusfar. For example, in the original Nicene Creed the Church taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Several hundred years later, they changed the creed and inserted the filioque.
There are other issues such as torture, burning at the stake for heretics, talking in Church, clowns at Mass, dancing ladies at Mass, puppets at Mass, meat on Fridays, Limbo, which have been brought up also.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Then they would be guilty of not being able to separate faith and morals from Church discipline. Discipline is always subject to change.
Linus2nd
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RaphaelJ
Guest
It depends on what you mean by change. The Catholic position is that the original creed was correct but to better explain the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Son, the filioque clause was added. Of course, the Father is the ultimate source.
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Tomdstone
Guest
I don’t see how both can be correct:
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone period.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and from the Son.
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Aloysium
Guest
What does “proceeds” mean?
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Tomdstone
Guest
One guess is:
to come forth.
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Aloysium
Guest
According to Imelahn above the Greek and Latin words that are translated in English as procession do not have the same meaning.
What I would think is that the love that exists in the person of the Holy Spirit, “coming forth” from the Father to the Son and that from the Son to the Father are of a different nature.
The Father gives Himself to the Son, that through the Word a universe is created and is “brought into” a filial relationship with the Father. The Son loves the Father in obedience to His will. This is something we are asked to do in order to attain eternal fulfillment. Since we are unable to do so, the Word became man, offering Himself as the sacrifice that saves and redeems us. To the extent that we understand the Holy Spirit as being about power, then He proceeds from the Father. If we are speaking of Him as love, then He proceeds from each to the other. I’m not sure that’s how it is understood. That is how, off the top of my head, I would put it. Correct me if I am wrong.
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Tomdstone
Guest
My guess is that you are probably right from the Roman Catholic POV, but I don’t think that the E. Orthodox fully accept this explanation although there may be parts of it which they may perhaps consider acceptable.
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Aloysium
Guest
I think you will have to reference this to convince anyone.
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Tomdstone
Guest
The Orthodox wikipedia has something to say about it. And the standard wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_teaching_regarding_the_Filioque
"Vladimir Lossky asserted that any notion of a double procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son was incompatible with Orthodox theology.[1] Orthodox scholars who share Lossky’s view include Dumitru Stăniloae, John Romanides and Michael Pomazansky. Sergius Bulgakov, however, was of the opinion that the filioque did not represent an insurmountable obstacle to reunion of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.[1]
The Eastern Orthodox interpretation of the Trinity is that the Holy Spirit originates, has his cause for existence or being (manner of existence) from the Father alone[2] as “One God, One Father”.[3] That the filioque confuses the theology as it was defined at the councils at both Nicene and Constantinople.[4] The position that having the creed say “the Holy Spirit which proceeds from the Father and the Son”, does not mean that the Holy Spirit now has two origins, is not the position the West took at the Council of Florence. Where the Roman Catholic side explicitly stated that the Holy Spirit has its cause of existence from the Father and the Son.
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Also see: orthodoxwiki.org/Filioque#Objections_on_doctrinal_grounds
Its inclusion in the Creed is a violation of the canons of the Third Ecumenical Council in 431, which forbade and anathematized any additions to the Creed, a prohibition which was reiterated at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in 879-880. This word was not included by the Council of Nicea nor of Constantinople. …
It is contrary to Scripture, particularly in John 15:26: “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.” Thus, Christ never describes the Holy Spirit as proceeding from himself, but only mentions the Spirit’s procession in terms of the Father.
The justifications for including the filioque in the Creed—bolstering the divinity of the Son and emphasizing the unity of the Trinity—are redundant, given the original wording of the Creed. That is, the Son already is described as “light of light, very God of very God,” and so forth. The Spirit also “with the Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified.” Additionally, the Creed itself begins with a statement of belief in “one God.”
The filioque distorts Orthodox Triadology by making the Spirit a subordinate member of the Trinity. Traditional Triadology consists in the notion that for any given trait, it must be either common to all Persons of the Trinity or unique to one of them. Thus, Fatherhood is unique to the Father, while begottenness is unique to the Son, and procession unique to the Spirit. Godhood, however, is common to all, as is eternality, uncreatedness, and so forth. Positing that something can be shared by two Persons (i.e., being the source of the Spirit’s procession) but not the other is to elevate those two Persons at the expense of the other. Thus, the balance of unity and diversity is destroyed."
The above are quotes from the sources given.
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