www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Bartholomew: With Francis, we invite all Christians to celebrate

It really depends whether you're talking about the Catholic teaching or the text of the creed: the text of the creed (in English) does indeed say "who proceeds from the Father and the Son" and not "who eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son", but it is clear that the latter statement is Catholic teaching as well.

Amen.


Without compromise.


Exactly.



Calling him a unionist is a bit of spin doctoring.

Amen my brother in Christ!

St Justin Popovic pray for us!

I don't, and neither does the rest of the Roman Catholic Church. As I was saying in the post to which you are referring here, there is only one "source" of "spiration" of the Holy Spirit. When we Romans speak of the Spirit "proceeding from" the Father AND the Son, we're using the same words ("who proceeds from") to refer to both processes, but are meaning those same words in two different ways. (Kind of like the way we speak of "loving" our spouses and "loving" chocolate bars....For most anyway, exact same word but an entirely different experience.)

Peace.

It's almost axiomatic to Catholic thought that the economic Trinity is a reflection of the transcendent Trinity. We find the separation of the two to be jarring; it's one of the aspects of Orthodox thought that we find most alienating. But there are Orthodox theologians who share our concerns. David Bentley Hart would say the following:


This is also essentially the Catholic position, and is why I don't think the filioque will ever be removed from the Latin Creed (though Hart was in favor of its removal on other grounds).

I also don't think prevailing contemporary theological trends in Latin circles favor removing the filioque. Cardinal Avery Dulles was against its removal, Fr. Aidan Nichols (who taught theology at the Angelicum and wrote Rome and the Eastern Churches)doesn't seem to be in favor of it, Fr. Thomas Weinandy is proposing further development to trinitarian doctrine, and, though I haven't read them, I'm doubtful that the burgeoning Ressourcement Thomists would be in favor of it. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Yves Congar. The age of ecumenical sanguinity has passed, and the future seems to be slow, painstaking attempts at mutual understanding, and, when possible, common witness.

Greetings in Our Lord, Alex.


I hope it doesn't seem like I'm splitting hairs here as I say (especially since, as I said, I don't really have strong feelings about this topic one way or the other)...

If we were speaking of "alterations", "changes" (heavy on the quotation marks for now), or "subtractions" from the original creed, then I'm with you completely. But an "adornment" to the creed, for particular use solely in the West (inasmuch as it is a western adornment), would seem to me to be another matter. (Perhaps this is just a reflection of ignorance.)

The West, as you know, has all sorts of verbal adornments, we're very big on verbosity...for better on occasion, and for worse in others. So why not a small "adornment" to the Nicene Creed? If it were executed "willy nilly", or, like I said, actually changed the original Creed in any way (i.e. altered the wording to say something like, "I believe in God, the Mother Almighty" or something like "I believe in the Father who proceeds from the Son"), that would be one thing. But because neither of those charges apply...


But that's part of the point - that the original creed itself is not altered. It is left in tact, and simply "adorned" by the West in its common usage.

I suppose if one wants to argue that the Nicene Creed is one of those components of the Christian faith that truly is universal in every sense of the word and should, therefore, always and everywhere be completely uniform and not "adorned" in any way by any particular Churches...I could potentially buy into that. However, there is a little bit of irony in there that operates in both directions.

1) Firstly, it would seem to be the more eclectic and diverse East that is insisting on uniformity here, rather than exercising "oikonomia." (Which, yes, I know, does have its limits.)

2) And it's ironic that it's Rome, for all intents and purposes at the moment, who is essentially "promoting ecclesiastical diversity" here.

Very interesting.


Ah. Ok.


It doesn't. It does, however, illustrate an additional point that is also very true and important; namely, the fact that the Spirit also proceeds from the Son to the human race (albeit in a different manner, obviously, than He "proceeds from" the Father). A fact that the West has felt the need, over the course of its history, to highlight, but which it also does not impose (to the best of my knowledge) on any of the Eastern Churches.

Peace be with you, brother.

Dear brother Recluse,

Well, of course I believe if the Pope says to remove the filioque from the Creed, it will be removed. My point, as indicated in my prior post, was that if he does it, it will be removed not because of some unilateral authority of the Pope of Rome to do so, but because of a personal authority to represent the Catholic Church and speak for the orthodox bishops of the Catholic Church. The divinely instituted primacy is always, and can only always, be taken in the context of the divinely instituted College of bishops as a whole, not apart or separated from it. Primacy has no meaning apart from the College of bishops.

Blessings

May I ask: when my Eastern brethren speak about the apparent "opposition" to the beatification of P. Athenagoras, is this with respect to a general attitude in all of Eastern Orthodoxy, or with respect to an attitude within the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate?

If the former, why would the attitude of the whole of EO'xy be involved in this matter? I always thought that the strength of the glorification process in Orthodoxy was its LOCAL element first and foremost.

Blessings

Though I believe St. Mark misunderstood the West on several matters (filioque and purgatory, the most obvious ones), I believe his concerns were thoroughly orthodox/Orthodox.

I think part of the roadblock to ecumenism is the attitude that the theological expressions of the Church Fathers were divinely inspired in exactly the same way as Scripture. Thus, there is a legalistic mentality inherent in some quarters of Orthodoxy that refuses to seek understanding. True ecumenism can only come through and with the spiritual fruit of understanding, not by legalistically imposing theological expressions of human origin. To such groups, however sadly, the spiritual fruit of understanding IS compromise.

To understand each other according to each others' unique theological expressions is not compromise in the least, I truly believe.

Blessings

Dear brother Talon,

I grant you 10/10 for intention, but I believe your presentation here does not address the true distinction between the Eastern and Western debate on filioque.
"Proceeding from" in the Latin perspective is not JUST about the temporal, economic sending, but indeed refers to the essential being of the Holy Spirit as He relates to the Son.

The concern of the early Eastern Fathers was that the filioque seemed to make the Son a SECOND and EQUAL Source of the Holy Spirit with the Father, as if the Father NEEDED the Son to be the Source of the Holy Spirit. This was never what the Latin Church taught.

As explained by Pope St. JP2 of thrice-blessed memory, the Latin teaching did not delve into the mechanics of origination, but intended merely to establish the CONSUBSTANTIALITY of the three persons equally. Who would or could deny that the Holy Spirit was consubstantial with the Father AND the Son (i.e., filioque)? THAT is what "proceeds" means in the Latin Church. It is not merely about the economic sending.

Of course, there are extremists on both sides of the camp - I've met Latins who insist in their apologetics/polemics, contrary to the actual teaching of the CC, that the Son IS a Source of the Holy Spirit; I've met Easterns who insist in their apologetics/polemics, contrary to the teaching of the Eastern Fathers, that the manifestation or sending is merely temporal, and not eternal (the modern Eastern argument [by some]goes that since what is eternal refers to the esse of God, then the manifestation/sending cannot be eternal, but only temporal). These extremes only serve to perpetuate disunity, notwithstanding that they actually misrepresent what the Churches are actually teaching on the matter.

My concern is that "false ecumenism" which seems to be an underlying theme in this thread. We can't accept each other merely "on the surface," but each respective group needs, through the spiritual fruit of understanding, accept the orthodoxy of the other group's theological expressions by searching out what those expressions ACTUALLY mean.

Blessings

Dear brother Talon,

What you say here is not the issue between the Eastern and Western Churches. Brother Alex hit the nail on the head that it is actually about the eternal (to be more precise) ORIGINATION of the Holy Spirit. The fact is that "procession" means something different to the Latins as it does to the Easterns. To the Latins, "procession" refers to consubstantiality, while to the Easterns "procession" refers to origination.

The distinction is a difference in theological conception. But both conceptions are thoroughly orthodox, but only if taken within the context of the theological Tradition in which it exists. Trying to impose one's theological presuppositions on the other party will only lead to misunderstanding and disunity.

Blessings

Gotta love the internet.

I agree that Latin teaching doesn't really amount to what Easterners have some times thought it did. But I don't think the early Eastern Fathers share the same allergy to talking about the Son's involvement in the Spirit's procession.

For example, Saint Athanasius's arguments for the Spirit's divinity--that is, the Spirit's consubstantiality--are wholly based on the scriptural witness that he is the Spirit of the Son. (Letters to Serapion) According to St. Athansius, we know that the Spirit is divine because throughout scripture he accompanies the Son accomplishes his divinizing work in his Spirit. It is very hard to imagine an Orthodox theologian today saying the same without sounding throughout a number of emphatic buts.

I don't mean to forward the claim that the Early Greek Fathers taught the filioque. I do, however, think that it is anachronistic to think of Latin teaching as some sort of later cancer and to imagine the Eastern tradition in unanimous agreement with the later Eastern rejection of that Western teaching. Insistence on the Spirit's procession from the Father alone is later too.

Yeah. That's what I said.

ROTFL!