www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Divine Essence/Energies

Ghosty,

[By the grace of God, I was able to post this much earlier than I thought. Forgive me for the length of it! And while I have the time to do it, let me second Apotheoun's recommendation; I should have linked you to that Tomus since I explicitly mentioned it.]

I wrote a lengthy reply to you and then accidentally erased it, so you'll have to forgive me if the reply I type now is unforgivably terse. Suffice it to say that I like your analogy because it captures a position that I used to hold quite nicely, but I can now no longer agree with that position. To explain why, I will need to attempt a brief crash-course in Eastern Trinitarian theology, which is not only very difficult but also potentially dangerous.

The Eastern theological tradition is very informed by the Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian Fathers, Fathers who were essential in developing the doctrine professed as dogma at the earliest ecumenical councils. These Fathers began with the revelation that there are three Persons in the Trinity (you will see the language of "three hypostases" used from time to time, but it means, at least these days, essentially the same thing), and then worked from this revelation to the fact that these three divine Persons are also one God, sharing one consubstantial divine essence. Having begun with the revelation of the hypostases, of course, the Cappadocian Fathers noted that the Father is the "monarch" in the Trinity (although without subordinating the others and making them "less God"), in the sense that He is the source or "cause" of the other two Persons; he begets the Son and spirates the Spirit. Thus, there is one God because there is one Father, who shares His divine essence with His only-begotten Son and with the Holy Spirit. However, all three Persons are of course fully God.

The question that immediately arises is how these three divine Persons are really distinct if they all share the same divine nature, the same divine will, etc. The Cappadocian answer is that the three Persons are identical according to nature, but unique as Persons (Hypostases) by virtue of the way in which they possess that shared divine nature. The Father, as the unbegotten source, possesses the fullness of the divine essence in an unbegotten way. The Father begets the Son by communicating the fullness of the divine essence to Him and sharing it with Him; the only difference between the Father and the Son, then, is that the Father possesses the same essence in an unbegotten manner while the Son possesses that essence in a begotten manner. The Father spirates or "processes" the Spirit by communicating the fullness of the divine essence to Him and sharing it with Him in a "spirated" way; the only difference between Father and the Spirit, then, is that the Spirit possesses the same essence in a spirated manner. So, the manner of origination is what distinguishes the three Persons from eachother; according to the Cappadocians, these are the irreducibly unique hypostatic (Personal) properties that make the Persons unique: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, the Spirit is spirated. In everything else (i.e., the nature), they are identical.

So, the question becomes how it could be possible that the Son could share the procession of the Spirit (as the filioque suggests, and as your analogy suggests) in any form. Recall that the begetting of the Son consists only of the communication of the same divine nature to the Son, albeit in a "begotten" way. If that is the case, though, then someone defending the filioque will have to say that in communicating the essence, the Father communicated to the Son the procession of the Spirit; but that will require saying that the procession of the Spirit is a property of the communicated divine nature (since that is what the Father communicates to the Son in begetting Him). However, if the procession is a property of the divine nature, then you run into serious problems: the Holy Spirit, as consubstantial with the other two Persons, will end up possessing the fullness of the identical divine nature (remember, He's fully God) and so will end up either having to process Himself or to process another Person, and then that Person (as also consubstantial) will end up having to process another Person, and so on, to infinity. On the other hand, maybe the defender of the filioque will suggest that the Father not only communicates to the Son the divine essence, but also communicates His Personal property of being able to spirate the Spirit. The Orthodox critique, however, will continue at this point. First, how can it even be possible that the Father communicate His Personal property to the Son? Remember, the Father is the source precisely because He possesses the divine nature in an unbegotten way; but the Son is not unbegotten, so there has to be some other manner in which the Father could somehow share His Personal property with the Son, and that notion alone introduces a lot of confusion. Second, on the Orthodox view, there's just no reason at all to want to say this; in fact, there's reason against not saying this, because all that's been revealed to us is that the Father is the monarch and that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father" -- going beyond that into something that appears quite confusing would be highly dangerous. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if the Father shares His Personal property with the Son, then there are a number of additional strange results: (1) the Spirit will appear to be less God than the Father and the Son, because each of them will end up possessing identical Personal properties and being sources of a Person, whereas the Spirit will be for some reason unable to possess that hypostatic property and will not be a source of any Person; (2) the Persons will no longer be identical in every way except their unique Personal properties, because those properties will no longer be "unique;" the Persons of the Father and the Son will be blurred slightly by virtue of sharing a hypostatic property, so it will be the case that the Father and the Son are more identical than the Spirit is to either the Son or to the Father; (3) by virtue of the above, the Trinity will be turned into a sort of a "dyad," with the Father and the Son seeming to be a sort of monarchy, together, over the Spirit (in fact, the monarchy of the Father will be ultimately limited, if not destroyed, by this, because the Father is no longer monarch -- that is, he is no longer the only (mono) principle (arche)). Finally, to reemphasize, it's just unclear by what mechanism the Personal property of the Father could be communicated to the Son but not the Spirit, and it's also unclear why we'd want to say this when revelation seems to not say it at all.

You'll see arguments like the above made (although perhaps slightly less clearly, by contemporary standards) by St. Photius (in the 9th century) against the Latins, part of the result being that the Pope had the creed without the filioque engraved on two silver plates and put on display for all to see, and you'll also see them being reiterated by later Orthodox apologists, including at the aforementioned Council of Blachernae.

Now, the Latin response is that this is an inadequate way of understanding the Trinity because it seems to make the Son and the Spirit independent, and Scripture clearly posits some relationship between them (the Spirit is "the Spirit of the Son," after all). But the Orthodox have a response to this, and this is where the essence/energies distinction comes in. First, on the Orthodox view, you have to understand that God exists beyond His essence; He is His essence and He is also His energies, without there being any sort of composition that would compromise His simplicity. In some sense, His energies are His "manifestations." So, the Orthodox express the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit in a number of ways:

(1) First, note that the Father begets the Son by communicating the fullness of His nature to Him, and also spirates the Spirit by communicating the fullness of the divine nature to Him as well. But, you'll notice that the divine nature which the Father communicates to the Spirit is the nature that is also shared by the Son, so there is a sort of filioque on the level of essence but not on the level of Persons; the Spirit shares the essence of the Father and the Son but He does not proceed personally from both (he proceeds personally only from the Father). This is, historically, the understanding that St. Maximos the Confessor and St. Cyril of Alexandria gave to the filioque early on (pre-schism), before it was developed further at Florence to include Personal procession.

(2) The Spirit does proceed from the Father and the Son in the sense of manifesting temporally into creation from the Father and the Son. This is one sense in which He is the "Spirit of the Son." The early Fathers clearly distinguish between this and the eternal hypostatic (Personal) procession of the Spirit in the theological (internal and eternal) Trinity which comes from the Father alone -- in fact, they use two different Greek words to distinguish the two different types of procession, and the one that signifies hypostatic procession (ekporeusis) always refers only to the Father alone. The Son has the ability to send the Spirit into the world because they are consubstantial, not because He processes His hypostatic existence.

(3) This is where the essence/energies distinction comes in. The Orthodox also go as far as to say (in the Tomus of 1285) that there is an eternal relationship between the Son and the Spirit, albeit in reference to the energies and not to the internal Trinity. While the Father alone processes the Spirit as Person in the internal Trinity, the Son -- again, because the Son and the Spirit are consubstantial -- eternally manifests the Spirit in the divine energies. He does not cause his Personal existence in any way, but He does manifest His existence in the divine energies, shining Him forth eternally. I won't go further with this point because the idea of divine energies, if it is new to you, will have to be substantially clarified.

So, just as a reiterative conclusion, you can see why the Orthodox have a problem with the Council of Florence. It says that the Father and the Son are a cause not only of the Holy Spirit according to essence, but also according to the Spirit's "subsistent being" (which typically means "hypostasis"). Furthermore, it indicates that the Father communicates the property of processing the Spirit to the Son in begetting Him, to the point that the Spirit can even be said to proceed from the Son.

Given the above, hopefully you can see why positing the Son even as an intermediary cause of the Spirit's personal existence is problematic to the Eastern understanding. Your analogy works if it refers to the Spirit's eternal or temporal manifestation, but not if it refers to the origination of His Person.

God bless,
Jason

P.S. I will say that I am beginning to flesh out a different understanding that may work in making Florence amenable to an Orthodox understanding. I will let you know if and when I actually do flesh it out.

I think this is where the linguistics really comes into play. As we stated, cause can also mean "by way of" in Latin, but there is an issue with the other word "proceed" that causes ( :p ) a hang up. Latin theology uses the same word for both "ekporeuesthai" and "proeinai"; it is context that determines the meaning. In the context of the Creed, the Father is principal, comes first in the Creed, and the rest of the Creed can be said to "flow down" from the first theological statement about God the Father.

Here's where the Latin becomes important. Principal is completely different from principle. The Latin "principalis" becomes principal, and principium becomes principle. The Father is indisputibly "principalis", meaning the head and ultimate source of the Trinity, the monarch, and He is described by the Latins as "principle without principle", i.e. source without source, or uncaused cause.

Now we get into a bit of a conundrum based on your description of Eastern Theology, which is admittedly not exhaustive in any way. The Creed definately describes the Son's identity as "begotten", and the Holy Spirit's identity as "proceeding", but it does not identify the Father's identity as "the one that begets and processes". That seems to be an invention unique to the Cappodocian Fathers, albeit not heretical obviously. My point is that it's simply not there in the Creed. Rather, the identity of the Father is "Almighty" and "maker of all". His monarchy does not depend on the begetting or the processing of the Son and Holy Spirit, unlike the Son and Holy Spirit who's identities are explicitely connected to the Father.

While the Cappadocian theology certainly illustrated the principles of what would become the Creed against Arianism, the question is whether or not the Creed represents Cappadocian theology par excellance, or if Cappadocian theology was built on the revealed eternal truth about God through a certain kind of argumentation, and later understanding of the Creed.

Most importantly, the formation of the part of the Creed that deals with the communication of elements from the Father to the Son actually predates the Cappadocian Fathers, who were infants or not yet born at the time of the Council of Nicea. This is absolutely critical in any discussions about the potentially heretical nature of the Latin understanding, namely that it grew alongside the Cappadocian understanding after the formation of the Creed, not before. It is wrong, therefore, to impart the Cappadocian meaning explicitly to the Creed, just as it is wrong to impart the Latin meaning explicitely to the Creed. This is something that I think is often forgotten in these discussions, namely that though the Cappadocian Fathers were writing in Greek, they were basing their Greek, and the subsequent theories, off of the Creed, not visa versa.

That being said, we must deal with the question of whether or not the Latin understanding, which grew contemporaneously with the Greek understanding, can be said to express the same Faith, and if they're compatible. I think we can certainly say that the Latin understanding is perfectly compatible and consistant with the language of the Creed, and the same can be said of the Greek understanding.

A word for word translation of the theologies may not be possible, but rather a reaching of the mind into the "opposing" theology and asking "does this work?" For this to happen we must put aside our later developments and go to the core of the Creed, building up from that the theology in our minds (as was historically done).

Now, with all of that said, does the Council of Florence allow for the Eastern understanding? I believe it does, but in a peculiarily Latin language that has left Greeks scratching their heads wondering how Latins can go on saying the filioque in Latin, but dropping it in Greek.

One key to the Latin understanding of the Council of Florence must be the term "principle". What stands out to me is that in other Latin works, the Father is refered to as "principle without principle", or "uncaused cause". This language indicates a peculiarity of Latin thought that may not be translating well into Greek, namely that if something can be set aside as being a "principle without principle", then the other things, in this case the Son, must be be "principles with principles". At first glance, this appears to be a contradiction, or at least a simplification, because if b causes c, and b is caused by a, then c can be said to be caused by a. In this case, b is the principle of c, but it is not a principle in the same was as a, which is "principle without principle" in this equation. The use of the term principle doesn't actually distinguish between these two, but what does distinguish it is the way that Latins constantly speak of the Father as "Principle without principle", and also the fact that they call Him the principal of the Trinity, and of Creation.

Now, if we go back to the language of Florence, what I think we'll find is that far from trying to override the Greek understanding, it was trying to preserve it. The Holy Spirit has its subsistant being from the Father and the Son, as from one principle. With the above understanding of principle, this actually preserves the Greek sense, because it prevents anyone from taking the Greek formulation, which accepts through the Son without problem, and saying "Well, sure the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son, but that's only PART of its subsistance, it gets the other part from another spiration directly from the Father." Since the Cappadocian Fathers admit a mediating role to the Son, this language must be utilized to preserve the single spiration of the Holy Spirit. This also accounts for the "at once" language used later with the Oriental Churches.

So, the Son being called the principle of the Holy Spirit does not impart any kind of characteristic of the Father, namely Him being "principle without principle". In Latin this is expressed as "principaliter" (notice the principal, rather than principliter). All it is saying, in the above equation, is that b leads to c, as opposed to b here, and a there, lead to c, which would be utterly heretical.

Latins never, ever speak of the Father together with the Son being the "principaliter", nor do they call the Son together with the Father "principal". Principle, however, is only used in the "through" sense in the Council of Florence, and the issue of the "ultimate principle", or "principaliter" is never broached, so on the face it can seem to exclude a meaning of principle that is actually never raised in the first place.

In the end, the very language of "principle without principle" implies that the Latin understanding is much more dynamic, and actually quite precise in its own way. Calling the Son the principle together with the Father, or even just the principle since the Holy Spirit is mediated by the Son actually says nothing of the nature of the Son, but rather cuts off heresy about the Holy Spirit. Since the Eastern Theology actually falls quite neatly within this, as I understand it (since the Son IS admitted as a mediating factor in the spiration, and therefore a principle in the broad sense, and not "principle without principle"), the Council of Florence could actually be seen as an ultimate Conciliar defence of Greek theology, that had previously stood purely on popular opinion and acceptance.

This also seems to be consistant with the Latin Church's encouragement towards the Eastern Catholic Churches, espescially in recent decades, to "get back to the basics" of Eastern Theology, meaning embracing talk of Energies and Essences rather than playing with pseudo-Latin explainations that try to fit both theologies together. The Latin Church, with full consideration of the Council of Florence, has no difficulty in faith with the Eastern traditions, though discussing them over tea without a healthy dose of aspirin may not be recommendable.

Please share your thoughts on this with me, I'm very curious. Just remember that the Latin understanding of terms, espescially with the Council of Florence, must be understood from the Latin framework.

Which raises a question: do we still have the decisions of the Council in Greek?

Very well put!!!

Now the reason that I subscribe to the third position described above, is that the divine essence is beyond comprehension, and so a man actually comes to know that the three divine hypostases are consubstantial because he experiences the divine energies that flow from them, and not because he experiences the divine essence itself. In other words, the three divine hypostases become known to man through their enhypostatic enactments of the divine essence, and not by a direct apprehension of the divine essence itself, which is and remains incommunicable.

The problem of the "filioque" is centered upon a different conception of origination in the Trinity, because the East holds that the Father alone gives hypostatic existence to the Son, and that the He alone gives hypostatic existence to the Spirit, while the West wants to say that the Son participates, at least in some way, in the hypostatic origin of the Holy Spirit. This Western idea cannot be assimilated into Byzantine Triadology without ultimately destroying it, for it blurs the hypostatic properties of the Father and Son, and ultimately leads to Sabellianism (confounding the persons), or to ditheism (positing two causes). Thus, I don't see any way that the "filioque" as it is held by many in the West (i.e., following the statements of Lyons and Florence) can be accepted by the East, and I say this as one who accepted the Western formulation for 17 years. As a Byzantine Catholic I hold that the Father alone gives existential being to the Holy Spirit, while at the level of divine energy (but not as hypostasis) the Spirit is manifested from the Father through the Son, and as far as I can see, this is the only way to safeguard the monarchy of the Father as it has always been held in the East.

Apotheoun: While it's true that the East holds to a different understanding of the Trinity, it must be remembered that the fine tuning of it came after the Creed, not before. Therefore we can be united in the pledge of the Creed, which binds the Church, but different in our ways of expressing it.

The Cappadocian Fathers were not even around to discuss the matter at Nicea, and rather built a theology around the decision there, putting forth new argumentation. This is exactly what happened in the West in Latin, using the Latin writing of the Creed. It is improper to import the Cappadocian understanding "backwards" on to the Creed, just as it's improper to do the same for the Latin. The Creed says what the Creed says, but it does not say exactly how the processes described should be formulated or built upon.

While there are differences, we are not reciting a different Creed by any stretch. The question seems to be whether or not a Catholic can hold to the Eastern/Cappadocian understanding according to the definitions of the Council of Florence. In other words, is there room in the Catholic Church for both theological understandings.

God bless!

There is no support whatsoever in either the original Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) or in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (A.D. 381) for the "filioque." Moreover, there are explicit rejections of the "filioque" as it was later formulated by the West (Lyons and Florence) in the Cappadocians and Damascene, and others; and even St. Maximos the Confessor, who tried to defend the Western use of the "filioque," emphasized the fact that the West (during his time) was not making the Son a cause of the Holy Spirit, but sadly the Western bishops at Florence forgot that fact.

The "filioque" cannot, in any sense of the term, refer to the existential origin of the Holy Spirit.

Blessings to you,
Todd

The West still doesn't make the Son a "cause" in the sense that St. Maximos was describing. That's a red herring at worst, and a misreading and misunderstanding of Latin doctrine at best. That has already been addressed in this thread.

God bless!

Florence is quite clear about this, because it does identify the Son precisely as a "cause" in the Greek sense of the term. That is why I reject the definition of Florence on the "filioque," because I cannot simultaneously hold it and the doctrine of the energetic manifestation of the Spirit through the Son.

As the Florentine decree states: "In the name of the holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we define, with the approval of this holy universal council of Florence, that the following truth of faith shall be believed and accepted by all Christians and thus shall all profess it: that the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has His essence and His subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration. 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."

As a Byzantine I reject the idea that the Son participates, in any sense of that term, in the hypostatic origin of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, I reject the idea that the Father and the Son can be "one principle" of hypostatic action, or that they together spirate the Holy Spirit as hypostasis. To admit any of these ideas leads � within the Byzantine theological tradition � to heresy.

Generation and procession are hypostatic properties of the Father alone, and as such, they cannot be shared with the Son without falling into a form of modalism.

Ghosty,

I'll be brief since it's very, very late, and I have very little time. Forgive me.

First, lets not jump the gun about the Cappadocians coming "after the Creed." They did come after Nicea, yes, but the Creed at Nicea didn't even have the Trinitarian theology finished yet (regarding the Holy Spirit, it said only, "I believe in the Holy Spirit.") The details regarding the Holy Spirit were fleshed out after and together with the Cappadocians, and since the issue we're all discussing here is the very issue of the Holy Spirit's procession (something that was not put into the Creed until after the Cappadocians), I'd say the Cappadocian Fathers are extremely relevant, if not normative, for considerations of these sorts. There is some truth to saying that the theology of the Creed just is their theology. Finally, it was that version of the Creed, without the filioque, which was finalized and which became the normative Creed for the entire Church, the Creed which could not be changed in any way. So the Cappadocians are the ones who finished it off.

Now, as for your argument that the Creed does not identify the Father as "the one that begets and processes," and therefore that's not the normative understanding, well... I find it somewhat weak, at best. The Creed also doesn't say that the Father is unbegotten -- but is that not clearly part of the Father's identity, or are we to hold that that's also not a normative identification by parity of reasoning? Anyway, that's perhaps a minor point here, so I'll not dwell on it.

You note that the Greek word for procession has distinctions. That's a very important fact. The Greek word ekporeusis indicates procession with reference to the origin. The Ecumenical Creed uses this very word, describing the Spirit as ek tou Patros ekporeoumenon [proceeding from the Father]. It mentions only the Father as source. This is identical to the theology of the Cappadocians, who even explicitly say (I think it's Gregory of Nyssa) that the Son possesses everything the Father has, except causality. These are the same Cappadocians who developed the background for the insertion of the Spirit's procession into the Creed, so I'd say that their understanding of who causes the Spirit's procession, and whether the Son is involved at all, carries a decent amount of weight. These Cappadocians refer the ekporeusis only to the Father alone, never to the Son or the Father with the Son or any such thing. So, if not conclusive, the evidence is at least very heavily on the anti-filioque side.

You mention Maximus the Confessor but say that his understanding of the filioque is not contrary to the current Western understanding of "cause." Here is what Maximus has to say, with some Greek words emphasized:

"For the procession they [the Romans] brought the witness of . . . St Cyril of Alexandria in his sacred study on the Gospel of St John. On this basis they showed that they themselves do not make the Son cause [aitia] of the Spirit. They know, indeed, that the Father is the sole cause of the Son and of the Spirit, of one by generation and of the other by ekporeusis -- but they explained that the latter comes [proienai] through the Son, and they showed in this way the unity and the immutability of the essence."

Maximus says that the Father is the sole cause, without qualification. He also equates the Father's causation of the Son with the Father's causation of the Spirit; he is the sole cause of both, of one by generation and one by ekporeusis (procession). Just as no one participates in His causation of the Son, it therefore makes sense to assume, based on Maximus' linking of the two causations, that no one else participates in His causation of the Spirit either. Finally, note that when Maximus does move on to say what the filioque actually means in the West, he changes the Greek from ekporeusis to proienai. This change is significant because it suggests that the filioque did not originally refer to the Spirit's hypostatic origin from the Father at all. Rather, it referred to a more general procession. What could this more general procession be? Maximus mentions it in the next line; it's a procession that shows the unity of the essence. This matches perfectly with the Orthodox position I described earlier in this thread, where there is an acceptable "filioque" on the level of divine essence (ousia) or energetic manifestation because each of those show the consubstantiality. Nothing Maximus says indicates a thing about the filioque referring to the Spirit's hypostatic origin; in fact, it reads directly against that.

Since Maximus mentions St. Cyril as evidence for the Roman filioque, lets also look at what Cyril says:

"The Spirit proceeds [proeisi, not a derivative of ekporeusis] from the Father and the Son; clearly, he is of the divine substance, proceeding [proion] according to the substance [ousiodos] in it and from it."

Here again, Cyril does not use ekporeusis but uses only cognates of proienai. He clarifies that what he means by this is, once again, a procession on the level of divine essence, not on the level of hypostatic existence.

Even when Maximus does use the expression "through the Son" with the ekporeusis, he clarifies that even then he is not talking about the hypostatic existence, but only about the level of divine essence/nature:

"By nature [phusei] the Holy Spirit according to the essence [kat'ousian] takes substantially [ousiodos] his origin [ekporeuomenon] from the Father through the Son."

Again, the evidence remains strongly on the Eastern side.

Finally, you refer to the language regarding "principle without principle" and so on, and say that while the Father is the uncaused cause, this may allow room for the Son to be the caused cause or the "principle with principle." This is exactly the line of argumentation that I used to think worked. First, however, the Orthodox explicitly condemned exactly that understanding at the Council of Blachernae in the Tomus of 1285. Consistent with the whole of Eastern tradition, from the Cappadocians, through St. Cyril, through Maximus, through Photius, and so on, they allowed that the Spirit proceeded according to His hypostasis (subsistent being) from the Father alone. Second, the Greeks do not understand "through the Son" to mean that the Son was a "principle with principle" or any such thing regarding the Spirit's hypostasis. As Maximus mentions above, he means this with regard to the divine essence. Photius in the 9th century allows the Son to play a role only in the sending of the Son into the world in time. The aforementioned Council of Blachernae elaborates, using the essence/energies distinction (which itself traces back through the Cappadocians, Maximus, etc.) to explain that "through the Son" also expresses the fact that the Spirit is manifested forth eternally in the divine energies through the Son. He proceeds in His hypostatic existence from the Father as source (in the internal Trinity), and the Son manifests His existence in the divine energies (in the "external" Trinity).

Again, this was the Orthodox understanding before Florence. So clearly, based on the intense and drawn-out disagreement among the Greeks at Florence, and the eventual disavowal of the Council, it at least was not at all clear that what the Latins were saying was the same as what the Greeks were saying by "through the Son." In fact, all of the above suggests that exactly the opposite was the case.

Finally, there remains the problem of explaining how the Son becomes a "principle with principle" of the Spirit anyway. Where did He receive that property? The Father begat the Son by sharing the fullness of the divine essence with Him. But clearly being the "principle with principle" is not a property of the divine essence (or else the Spirit would also be the principle of a Person), so how did it get communicated to Him? Did the Father create it for Him (forgive this potential blasphemy!) out of nowhere? If so, this would seem to almost make the Son a creature. Or did the Father communicate His Personal attribute as principle to the Son, so that the Son could be the principle too (albeit principle "with principle" rather than "without principle")? If so, the Father and the Son are more identical than the Spirit is to either one of them, and you risk subordinationism. Either that, or you risk blurring the distinctions between hypostases. Or, you face the question of why the Father didn't also give special properties to the Spirit if He was going to give them to the Son? Etc., etc. In other words, this opens up a whole dangerous can of worms.

One addition: I would also point out that the fact that the Father is unbegotten, while the Son is begotten and the Spirit is processed, even if those are the only explicit hypostatic properties of each, implies by that very fact that the Father is the cause. Unbegotten = cause in the Trinity. Why? Because, if the Father is the only one who's unbegotten, and the Son and the Spirit are begotten and processed, where is it likely that those begettings and processions are coming from? The Father, of course. This accords with revelation without going beyond it (i.e., even Scripture says the Spirit "proceeds from the Father," full-stop). It also accords with the Ecumenical Creed and the Cappadocians; each phrase of the Creed that addresses the Son and the Spirit speaks in a parallel manner about their origins (those are the first lines about them), and the Creed says only that the Son is begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father. It accords with St. Cyril, St. Maximus, St. Photius, Pope Leo's silver plates, and so on. It accords with the Greek distinction between ekporeusis and proienai. I could go on, but I think the point is more or less made.

And yes, I say all of this thinking that I may have a way to work this out that's different from what's been discussed so far.

God bless,
Jason

I too lost a very lengthy post, so I'll have to make this brief. I apologize if my brevity and frustration with losing a lot of work comes across as rudeness to anyone, as that's certainly not intended!

Ecce Jason: It I didn't communicate what I was intending before, so I'll try again. The words proienai and ekporeusis both translate as processio in Latin; there is no other word that can substitute. That's the key of the problem. If Latins left it at "proceeds from the Father", they'd be leaving out the proienai, which is testified to by the Cappadocian Fathers. It was this gap that left them open to continued heresy in the West, where it was closed in the East, because the heretics could always use the fact that "the Holy Spirit doesn't proceed (proienai) from the Son according to the Creed" to contradict Scripture. The Latins did the only thing they could do, which was to declare that the Holy Spirit also proceeds, in the sense of proienai, from the Son.

To deal with this difficulty of distinguishing between the procession of the Father and the Son, the Latins starting with Augustine used "principaliter" (which comes to us in English as principally) to describe the status of the Father. This term basically means "originates at the top", showing that the sole origin of the Holy Spirit is from the Father, and is synonymous with "principle without principle" without implying that a "principle with principle" is a cause in the "does it" sense.

Now, what I was trying to illustrate above is that being a principle does not necessarily imply being the cause, in the strict sense as opposed to "by way of", of something. A principle, in Latin, is merely the "origin" of the relationship of two subjects, and does not imply "doing" anything. So, when taking the Son and the Holy Spirit alone, the Son is the principle of the Holy Spirit. For an illustration of this we'll use the Summa Theologica [newadvent.org] :

Paying particular attention to the areas in bold, we see here that both cause and principle can mean "by way of", and the last case is an example of this. The mallet is the principle of the art in the relationship between the two, as indicated by the first bolded section, but it is not a an active factor, nor is it necessary by implication, but rather it is simply the connective median between the actor and the object. The art proceeds from the artist, through the mallet as by one principle.

Why stress "as by one principle", or for that matter "together with"? The reason is actually quite critical, and is tied to why you can't say "proceeds (ekporeusis) from the Father, and proceeds (proienai) from the Son" in Latin. The stress is not unitive, in that it isn't to say that the Father working along with the Son as a single source spirates the Holy Spirit, but rather it is to eliminate the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds partially from one point, and partially from another, and "pools" as the Third Person of the Trinity. By stressing them together, you are actually eliminating the dual-procession, ensuring that the Holy Spirit comes by no origin other than the Father alone. Otherwise you end up with the loophole that perhaps the Son is doing a bit of this on His own, and that is absurdly heretical.

Now, the final problem is "why not just say through". This too was dealt with by Aquinas somewhat, but only by accident. You see, through in English, but much moreso in Latin (per), can have two very different implications depending purely on context. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way:

[quote]When anyone is said to work through anything, the converse proposition is not always true. For we do not say that the mallet works through the carpenter; whereas we can say that the bailiff acts through the king, because it is the bailiff's place to act, since he is master of his own act, but it is not the mallet's place to act, but only to be made to act, and hence it is used only as an instrument.[quote]

We can grasp whether through (per) means direct or indirect in this case only because we know that a bailiff is necessarily subject to a king. Now through (per) does appear in relation to the Son and Father in one place in the Latin Creed, when it says (in English) "through Him all things were made." We already have the establishment of the Father as the "maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen", however, placed in priority to the Son's begetting. In the case of procession, however, we have a totally new clause coming up "after" the Father and the Son are already established as identities in the Creed. Since neither is identified as the "processor of priority", we don't have an indicator of what, if anything, is the "motivator" versus the "instrument".

Ultimately what we have is a Creed that is beautiful in Greek, but quite simply can't be translated word for word into Latin without doing extreme violence to the Trinity. We end up cutting out the Son from any kind of relationship with the Holy Spirit, which is not what the Cappadocian Fathers and the writers of the Creed intended. Furthermore, any solution to the problem on the Latin side is going to cause issues: using "through the Son" will confuse those speaking Latin, and using "and the Son" will anger the Greeks. In the days before cell-phones, however, the Latins only knew that "through the Son" wasn't acceptable, or at least not easy, and merrily ran with "and the Son" understanding the whole time that the Father was "principaliter", a new understanding coined by Augustine in "On the Trinity" necessary to distinguish between the two different types of principles.

Fast forward to the Council of Florence, and the term principaliter isn't even used in the final definitions, even though it's emphatically understood by the Latins, and has been used since the time of Augustine to the modern day. Likewise, "through" isn't added because it appears that the Greeks are willing to agree as things stand (under false, and forced, pretenses as it turns out) and there is no need to then turn around have to explain to the other Latins how to understand that "through" doesn't imply reversible order after a thousand years of not having to worry about it.

I still hold that the definitions passed do not contradict Eastern theology, but rather defend it in Latin terms. Hopefully with the above clarification it will be more obvious what I meant in my previous post.

God bless!

Apotheoun: I think you're reading too much into the words used in the Council. Here are some things said by Thomas Aquinas two centuries before the Council in question:

This indicates that by "principle" it is not meant that the Father and Son are somehow "working as a team", because that would be a determinate statement. Rather, he says that the former is an acceptable determinate statement. Notice that he even says that "together" does not indicate a determinate use of the term principle. He underscores this when he says:

If "the principle of the Holy Spirit is the Father and Son" was meant as "the Father and Son working jointly", then it would not be indistinct at all. Thomas Aquinas is stressing that the use of the term principle is broad, and its precise meaning is not given simply by the context. On this matter he finally says:

You see, "together" absolutely does not imply a distinct statement.

Now taking the most apparently glaring problem from Florence:

Principle does not imply that the Holy Spirit comes from "within" the Son on any level; the Son is not generating the Holy Spirit. The reason that such wording is used is so that the Holy Spirit is not divided in how it receives its hypostasis, part from the Son and part from the Father.

Now for the other "trouble paragraph":

All this is saying is that the Spirit must be said to proceed (proienai) from the Son. That was a fundamental aspect of the understanding in Greek, as we've seen from the other Fathers, and it can only be expressed in Latin with the word proceed. There simply is no other way to say it.

Hopefully this puts some doubts to rest, though I'm not confident that it will. I will pray that you can understand and see the inherent linguistic difficulties that led to this mess. But, if not, at least you've provided a great opportunity to study up on the subject!

God bless!

Ghosty,

You seem to be missing the point of the Eastern position entirely. The East is denying that the Son acts as a cause, in any sense of that term, of the hypostatic origin of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Spirit proceeds (ekporeusis) from the Father alone, as it concerns His hypostatic existence, and thus He is not spirated from the Father and the Son, nor is He spirated from the Father through the Son, as it concerns His hypostatic origin.

There is only one causal principle in the Trinity, the Father; for as St. Gregory Nazianzen said, "Everything the Father is said to possess, the Son likewise possesses, except causality." [St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 34] Thus, in Byzantine Triadology, the Son is not a cause, source, or principle (actively or passively) of the hypostatic origin of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit receives His existence only from the Father.

In other words, the West is confusing the hypostatic origin of the Holy Spirit, which comes only from the Father, with the energetic manifestation of the Spirit through the Son.

Thanks, Todd. That's the quote I was looking for (St. Gregory Nazianzen)!

Jason

You are confusing hypostasis origin - with - procession. They are not the same thing.

The filoque is concerned with - procession - the procession - of the holy spirit into the created world.

The minute one adds the word �procession� to it � one is by absolute necessity� talking of �the procession of creation� through its hierarchy � in the way SS Gregory and Palamas understood it from Dionysius the Areopagite.

Now I am going to have to go back and read what Ghostly - said.

>"Everything the Father is said to possess, the Son likewise possesses, except causality."
This - is out of context. The Son possesses everything of the Father - except causality - in regards to the nature of God. Period. End of thought. The minute you bring creation into the picture (the relationship between God and his created world) the Son now becomes a cause himself (he is not a robot) within that created world.

Do you want to re-phrase?

-ray

Ray,

With all due respect, the procession of the Holy Spirit does refer to His hypostatic origin in the Trinity. That the filioque does not refer merely to the created world is accepted unequivocally on both sides. Even at the Council of Florence the procession was noted to refer to the Holy Spirit's "essence and subsistent being" (hypostasis), and it was also noted that this procession was eternal. But creation is not eternal. Therefore if the procession has only to do with the created world, all sides (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant for that matter) are terribly misinformed.

I would suggest reading some of the links I gave to Ghosty above, including the Pontifical Councils' clarification on the filioque and Metropolitan John's response, and so on.

Take care, and God bless,
Jason

P.S. By the way, Apotheoun was not saying at all that the Spirit does not "proceed" from the Son when it comes to the created world.