Hello again, Everyone,

[As a preface before my post, let me say that my central question here is whether Rome allows the Eastern teaching of a real distinction between the divine essence and energies, or has instead defined against this teaching.]

As most of you probably know, the Eastern Christian theological tradition by and large holds, as one of its most essential teachings, that there is a real distinction (although a distinction that does not destroy divine simplicity) in God between His divine essence and His divine energies. To put it very roughly, the divine energies are uncreated "manifestations" of God "around" the divine essence; God is fully present in each of his energies, and it is through these uncreated energies that we become partakers of the divine nature and become deified. The divine essence, on the other hand, is infinitely beyond being, infinitely incomprehensible and unable to be participated in by any creature. This is a teaching most clearly defined by St. Gregory Palamas, though traces of it go back to Gregory of Cyprus, St. Photius, St. Maximus the Confessor, and even St. Athanasius and the Cappadocians. That said...

What do we do with the following definition of doctrine by Pope Benedict XII (made in 1336, in "Benedictus Deus"): "By this Constitution which is to remain in force for ever, we, with apostolic authority, define the following: . . . [The souls in heaven] have seen and see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision; rather the divine essence immediately manifests itself to them, plainly, clearly and openly, and in this vision they enjoy the divine essence . . . Also the souls of those who will die in the future will see the same divine essence and will enjoy it before the general judgment." Particularly problematic is the idea that we see the divine essence "face to face" and "immediately . . . plainly, clearly and openly." Is there some way that someone sees of making this compatible with the Eastern theological tradition?

As a preliminary to discussion, I'll note that the decree does say that the souls see the divine essence "without mediation of any creature" (emphasis added) and that the divine essence "manifests" itself, but I'd be cautious about being too hasty with this. Someone might seize on those words and say, "That's where it allows the Eastern doctrine! For the Eastern doctrine holds that the mediation of the divine essence occurs not through any creature, but through the uncreated energies, and it is through those very uncreated energies that the divine essence 'manifests' itself." I'd agree that that's a charitable way of looking at those two phrases alone, but in context I don't know if that works, because we have to note, again, that the divine essence is supposedly seen "face to face" and, perhaps more importantly, "immediately;" in this vision, what the souls in heaven "enjoy" is "the divine essence."

So, what do you think? Am I reading this too literally? Am I wrong that an Eastern interpretation doesn't work? Is there some other way of looking at this?

Thanks in advance, and God bless,
Jason

My best advice is to avoid this one for the next while. It's a highly complicated matter and difficult even for specialists. But if you can't resist, start reading Palamas - and be prepared to find it rough going.

Incognitus

I personally do not see how the two positions can be reconciled.

listen and understand.

Eastern theology is Eastern theology (a foundation of the Greek language within Greek culture right when the early church had adopted Greek as it universal language and most of the movers and shakers in the church were - Greek thinkers)

Western theology is Western theology (a foundation in the Latin language within the Latin culture of Rome one ancient Rome became a serious new frontier for the church)

Both - arose from Semetic theology. Both developed in specialized ways - according to the needs of a portion of the church to explain the gospel and church theology - to peoples of different language and cultures.

So the underlying theology is - the same - but the expression of it - is different according to language and culture.

Eastern / Western.

Both theologies (and keep in mind when we say ‘theology’ we are by necessity speaking of - expression (language and symbols) further developed - within the cultures in which they were used.

You can not take the early Greek language - and the Latin language - and squash them together - and expect to have somehow made both languages - the same language.

You can not take Eastern theology - and Western theology - and some how squish them together - and try to made - one - same - theology.

It - is - impossible. Just as impossible as trying to say that the German languages is the same thing as the French language.

The fact remains (after the mental gymnastics that makes one dizzy) that they - are not - the same - language.

The first theology of the church was Hebrew theology (that is what Jesus was - a Hebrew) and it was spoken in Aramaic - and used the language of cosmology (the form of philosophy at the time). So it is filled with parables (the language of natural images).

As the church grew - and Greek began to be used as its universal language - the Greek ‘fathers’ adopted the current form of the Greek language as used by Greek philosophy - to translate Semitic theology - into the Greek mind.

A Greek man named Origen - did most of the transformation from Semetic to Greek. He was considered to be absolutely brilliant by the Greeks of the church - everyone read his works and attended his lectures - and then when they learn all they could from him - they turned on him and called him a heretic. The students - turn on the teacher. The son murders his father the king - in order to take his throne. A typical theme of Greek myth and tragedy plays - it was a Greek cultural tendency. Fighting among the sons and the murder of their father. Arguments among the students for first place and the discrediting and overthrow of the teacher.

Eastern theology (and again - theology is the form of its expression and not the substance of its teaching) reached its peak within the culture of the Byzantine Empire - where - it became the language of the educated - the language of science and law - among the great schools of the Byzantine Empire - where Greek was the natural language.

Concurrently - as the church was also growing quickly within another culture (the Latin culture of Rome) where Greek was not well understood and Latin was the natural language - - - the Earlier from of Eastern expression of theology (using early forms of the Greek language) was transferred to - the Latin language and its culture. Just as the Greek fathers had used the Greek language of Greek philosophy to express Semetic concepts - the church in Latin speaking cultures adopted the Latin language as used by Latin philosophers - to express itself.

So both - churches - did the same thing. They adopted the natural language and concepts of the peoples that they were trying to give the gospel - to.

Latin theology (again - we say that because of the use of the Latin language and culture concepts used to express it) developed (just as the Eastern Greek did) and became pretty solid - also.

And so both expressions of the same contents - developed in isolation from each other (communication was difficult as the internet had not yet been invented J ) to the point where neither Church was well versed in what the other was saying - anymore. So - they argued - and miscommunicated - and got prideful and judgmental on the other - and eventually a tug of war took place as to who would be top dog of the entire church - the Byzantine Emperor (new Rome) or the Bishop of Rome (Old Rome). And the great separation took place along the lines of the split of the Roman empire.

Now - back to the Eastern Expression of theology and the Western expression of theology.

To understand Eastern theology correctly - one must grasp the concepts of Greek philosophy (in its peak) fairly well. For Eastern theology - adopted the terms of Greek philosophy - for its use. We are taking pre-Aristotle - and more what is called today - Neoplatonism - in as much as that name expresses the state of Greek philosophy about the time of Plato.

To understand Western theology - one should grasp Aristotle and Augustine - and them on to Thomas Aquinas.

In other words - each form of theology must be understood with in its own - context of historical time /culture / base language / and current from of philosophy.

Now if you wanted to learn the German language and the French language - you would not go to school and take both classes at once - in the same room - at the same time - while both the German teacher and the French teaching were speaking - at the same time. You might learn some - of both - but you would eventually get confused and cross them up together - and wind up learning neither - well.

So learn one (take your time and do the background reading to learn the culture in which it was formed) and then - learn the other.

If you do that - you will understand both fairly well and fined they compliment each other and do not disagree with each other. If you do not do that - you will be amoung those who - think they understand both - yet understand neither. And find yourself thinking you are forced to pick one as ‘right’ and the other as ‘wrong’. Or - not wanting to do that (and you should not have to do that) you will try gymnastices to squish them both into a languge agreement - and actually be trying to form yet - another - theology from the two.
A “Franco-German’ language (in our example). Now you should be able to see the non-sense - of that. No one will ever agree on that - neither the Germans nor the French because it would bend both languages in foolish ways.

Now - back to Rome - you second misconception - is that Rome “allows” or “disallows” anything - to Eastern theology.

Eastern theology (as I have described it) has been approved through early Councils - and it has not changed in essense - or even much in expression (except it is spoken in English a lot now instead of Greek) - so what - is to dis-allow?

Also - Eastern theology belongs to the Eastern churches - and Rome (since the voluntary separation of some of the Eastern churches from unity with the Latin churches) does not violate the independence of the Eastern churches.

Each church (Eastern and Latin or Western) has the independent right - to its own expression of theology.

Any cooperation with Rome - on these matters - is entirely voluntary. Rome has jurisdiction over - Rome. The Vatican Patriarch is Patriarch and head bishop over - the Latin church - and not over any other church. The Eastern Patriarates are head bishops over their own independent churches - and have no jurisdiction over - the Latin churches.

So Rome has no authority over the expression of Eastern theology - except when (many moons ago) the Eastern churches voluntarily gave the bishop of Rome that authority - when Eastern theology was approved in Ecumenical Councils which were approved by the Pope of Rome. So that phase - was all done - before the separation took place. Exactly how that Eastern theology further developed after the separation - is for the Eastern churches - and not proper to Rome. Exactly how Roman theology developed from Eastern theology - is for Rome - and not for the Eastern churches.

Now - on to the last subject - your question regarding - uncreated energies.

Each expression of theology make use of some words and phrases - in metaphorical ways.

The phrase “uncreated energies” makes sense in the context of Eastern theology. Certainly it is clear that energies - to be energies - must be created (if they are not created they are no-thing). So in the phrase “uncreated energies” the term ‘uncreated’ negates the term ‘energies’. … indicating that it is “like” energies - but is not - energy. We are to imagine something that is like the energies we experience in the world - but is not the same as the energies about us.

All human words - come to us from our sense experience of the created world. As such - they are not appropriate to express something that is not a part of the created world and our sense experiences. So philosophy and theology - use them (it must) as images and symbols - of something else. And do so in an inappropriate use of words.

Both expressions of theology do this. A metaphorical use of some terms. And Jesus did this himself very often - in Jewish parables - similes - and metaphors. After all - no one should really think that Hell is under the crust of the earth in subterranean tunnels - nor that heaven is a place of time and location off in some other dimension. So it is very clear that - at times - theology is spoken in terms that have a symbolic meaning. Shall we think that Hell actually has physical fire?? Of course not. It is symbolic of - emotions and the way fire and unbearable heat feels to our senses.

Natural, physical, and material images - are used to indicate - that which is not physical nor material.

So it is easy to misunderstand these phrases - unless - you are aware of their use within the particular cultures, language, history, and human experience - in which they were coined. And it has been the thorn of all theology that some ‘theologians’ will only grasp a literal meaning (having no background to grasp the metaphorical meaning that was intended) and pass broken judgment on the theology that he has absolutely no authority (let alone understanding) - of. And by doing that he perpetuates rumor which amounts to slander - and places himself above the structure of the episcopate which God assigned to the church - and by that dames the unity of the church.

Now, I would think, that anyone in their right mind, would be a bit fearful of passing such a judgment - where he has no right to judge. But pride - and self importance - fog the brains of some men - and we are all works in progress - so - much will be forgiven - and we all will eventual see things we did that we will be regretful for in front of God. So I would not take these arguments over the semantics of theology - too seriously. Nor would I take theologians too seriously.

When reading theology - take what helps you toward God - and ignore as ‘too hard to understand’ whatever does not seem yet to assist you toward God.

After all - God did not put you here to learn theology - he put you here to pay attention to your conscience in the midst of the events which he arranges for you each day.

When you gate to the gates of heaven - believe me! - you will not be quizzed on - theology. And if you find yourself in a line with a bunch of theologians - I would be a bit concerned and - run!

It is not your intelligence that is tested - it is your heart.

>What do we do with the following definition of doctrine by Pope Benedict XII
Make and effort to understand it within the context of the Latin expression of theology and do not confuse it with the Eastern expression of theology. If you can do that you will come to find that there is no disagreement as you suppose. Both - are saying the same thing - and neither should be taken literally. There is no such thing as uncreated energies and God does not have a face.

Take each form of theology in its own context and do not try to mesh them together on the level of words. They are not the same langauge.

-ray

Dear Ray:

BRAVO! You stated and expressed everything beautifully. If only all in both Churches could read and understand everything you said and realize we were all made differently. That we must be taught to open our hearts to Him in ways that we can understand.

Problem is most people don't want to. They draw a curtain called 'pride' over their mind so that differences become 'anathema'.

Zenovia

I came to a similar conclusion some time ago, though not as complete as brother Ray, I'm not adept to such deep thought...I think.

james

Dear Rayk,

Excellent - but you understate the influence of "Rome" over Eastern theology.

Granted, it was not Rome directly that Latinized our seminaries and our overall way of thinking.

It was the local RC authorities, for various reasons, that did this.

Ultimately, we do not have ONE single Latinization from Rome itself - they all came from local Latin authorities, seminaries and even overt policies.

And before Rome accepted St Gregory Palamas as a saint - Hesychasm was equated with Quietism in the West and the Synod of Zamosc, influenced by Latinization, even proscribed the celebration of his festival.

For too long, EC's have not been think, as Fr. Lypsky said, with "their own" heads.

Alex

Dear Alex,
You write: "Granted, it was not Rome directly that Latinized our seminaries and our overall way of thinking."

Fond though I am of the Peaceable Kingdom, I shall grant no such thing. I suggest reading the history of what went on for centuries at the Pontifical Greek College (which produced several of the hierarchs of the Kyivan Church).

peaceably yours,

Incognitus

Dear Incognitus,

Well, I was quoting Fr. Bohdan Lypsky and if he was wrong, he's not around to retract anything . . .

What could I read about that matter? Any references that I could obtain?

Alex

Dear Incomparable Incognitus,

Actually, Fr. Lypsky, of blessed memory, was right insofar as he was only discussing the UGCC in his talk.

As for the Greeks, they should have known better to begin with . . .

Alex

Dear Alex,
I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember an article by Fr Peter Galadza, of the Institute in Ottawa, discussing the negative influence of the Pontifical Greek College in those days. Check his articles in back issues of Logos.

Incognitus

Dear Incognitus,

You mean my relative?

He never tells me anything, that fellow . . .

You know him, do you?

I wonder if there's anything he could tell me about some things I've been wondering about for some time now . . .

No fear!

Alex

Dear Alex,
Well, I read Logos, so I suppose I could say that I know the writers in the same sense that, having read Joseph Ratzinger assiduously for the past 35 years or so, I could say that "I know Ratzinger" - meaning, in both cases, the published work of these people. But in cases where the people are still living, that use of words is so ambiguous as to be deceptive.
Incognitus

Dear Incognitus,

Well, I have a letter from the Pope's secretary thanking me for the akathist to Pope John Paul II.

Not everyone has one of those, you know!

Happy St Joachim and Anna's Day! (ATEJC) "according to the True, er, Ju-lian Calendar!)

Alex

Dear Ray,

Thank you for your obviously well-thought-out response to my questions. Your reply was lengthy, so I will not address every concern or expression you raise therein, but I do have some concerns that I feel need to be mentioned. Forgive the time it has taken for me to respond -- I did not notice that this thread was still active.

You make an argument that is essentially identical to one I see here quite often, namely:

My response would simply be that I am not attempting to do either of these things. I am not looking for one theology. I am certainly granting that the two theologies are different, and are not one and the same. However, this is a different question than the question of whether or not they are compatible. I am looking for two compatible (i.e., not inconsistent) theologies.

And this, I think, is the crucial problem with the line of argument in your response. You are right that French and German are not the same language; I don't claim that they are. You are mistaken, however, if you are suggesting that the languages cannot be translated into one another, or if you are suggesting that a French speaker cannot eventually, through study, understand a German speaker. When it comes to theology, I am perfectly happy, as you are, to admit that different expressions developed in the East and the West, and often those differences were the results of different languages and cultures. However, I am not concerned with having the same expressions -- no one requires that. What I am concerned with is making sure that the referents of those expressions -- i.e., the theological content that is expressed -- is the same. To give an example, if an English speaker points to an apple and says, "Apple," and a Spanish speaker points to an orange and says, "Manzana [Apple]," the fact that the Spanish speaker is saying something equivalent to what the English speaker is saying does not prevent him from (mistakenly) expressing something entirely different and incompatible with what the English speaker is expressing. They are referring to different objects; only one of them is correct, the other is wrong. My concern is to make sure the same thing is not happening in theology.

This is why it is illegitimate to (implicitly) suggest that it is wrong-headed to ask the kind of questions that I am asking or to attempt to spell out where the compatibility between the two traditions lies, if there is in fact some such compatibility. If one understands Latin theology, and one understands Greek theology, and one understands the referents of those respective theologies, the fact of translation implies that one can compare and contrast them and determine if there is a real disagreement or not (though by saying this I am not attempting to suggest that I have a full and complete understanding of any of the above things). The underlying presupposition of your argument seems to be the false one that it is impossible for two sides with differing languages and cultures to actually disagree; I don't see any reason for believing that. This would seem to make translation an impossible enterprise. Furthermore, you seem to assume that all theological differences are really culutural and linguistic differences, but I don't see why that assumption has to be necessarily granted here. Where's the argument for it?

Finally, you seem to suggest that I might lack understanding of the issues, but I'm not sure why. I have quite a bit of familiarity with Platonism and Neoplatonism, as well as Aristotelianism and some of Augustine and Aquinas (I'm a graduate student in philosophy, if that matters). I also have a decent amount of familiarity with Eastern theologians like Maximos the Confessor and Gregory Palamas. I know Latin and I know some moderately decent amount of (Attic) Greek. Assuming I am understanding things correctly, why, then, can I not make a comparison between them and possibly discover that they are incompatible? It is one thing to say that I might be wrong about that conclusion (although I'm not sure I've even made that claim in the first place), but another thing to suggest that such an idea is just impossible.

I have one last comment about what you have said about the uncreated energies. It is not at all clear to me that you are right when you say that energies, to be energies, must be created. You say "if they are not created they are no-thing." Is this something you're suggesting as a principle? If so, I don't know what your support for it is. The hypostases of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are also uncreated, yet I wouldn't say they are nothing (unless by "no-thing" you mean something entirely different that I don't quite understand). The goodness of God is uncreated, yet it does not seem to be "no-thing." In other words, I don't see any reason for granting your assumption. Furthermore, if the energies really are created as you say, then it seems that Gregory Palamas is just wrong, and I don't think you wish to suggest that. His point in saying that the energies were uncreated was that, if they were created, then we could not really be divinized or become "partakers of the divine nature," because our union in theosis would be with another created thing, not with something divine. He seems, therefore, to really believe (as I do) that they are uncreated. (And without digressing too much, I also think the notion of uncreated energies is central to Maximos the Confessor's defense of the two wills in Christ and free will in the eschaton).

In closing, I agree that human words do not express everything completely; I don't think I suggested they did. However, from this it does not follow that they do not express things partially or at least serve some legitimate purpose. If expressions did not matter at all, there would be no councils with dogmatic definitions. If expressions could not be mistaken, there would be no anathemas for anyone who "says otherwise." Some expressions do matter and do really say different things. That is the mindset I'm operating with. I would be cautious to dispute it.

Thanks again, and God bless,
Jason

The fact that East and West formulate the doctrine of the Trinity differently -- and even sometimes in a contradictory fashion -- does not mean that the reality of the mystery itself is different. The modes of expression are clearly different, but that in itself does not necessitate the idea that the object of reflection is different.

I readily admit that the East approaches the Trinity normally by looking at the hypostases first, while the West normally looks at the unity of essence first, and of course I favor the former approach over the latter, but that doesn't mean that the Western way of reflecting upon the mystery of the Trinity is wrong. I think a certain plurality of expression in relation to the mystery is going to have to be allowed, because the Eastern and Western doctrinal traditions appear to be self-contained wholes. More importantly, we are dealing with the incomprehensible God, and so diversity of expression may be the only possible course of action when confronted with the revelation of this mystery.

As far as the divine energies are concerned, they are uncreated, because they are God as He exists outside of His ineffable and incomprehensible essence.

Todd (Apotheoun),

First, we are blissfully in agreement regarding the divine energies.

We are also -- and let me shout this from the rooftops for everyone to see -- blissfully in agreement when you say:

Indeed, it does not necessitate any such thing. My most recent point was only that it also does not necessitate that the object of reflection is the same (and I think you'd agree with me there). I also agree that the Eastern and Western approaches begin from different starting points. I also agree that we are dealing with the incomprehensible God and that our expressions will always, by necessity, fall short of expressing the fullness of the mystery. That said...

I'm not sure I agree that the East and the West are "self-contained wholes," at least in the strongest sense. Why? Well, because of the very possibility of translation, and also because of the historical facts that the traditions met at councils (such as Florence) and actually discussed these things, that Maximus the Confessor was able to explain the Western understanding of the filioque at his time to the Greeks, that Photius and the Carolingians could debate these issues and presumably weren't always talking completely past eachother, etc. One noteable thing that the Council of Florence even does is expound both the Greek and the Latin understanding, and it explains why the Greeks supposedly had a problem with the Latin understanding, and it also explains how the Latin tradition attempts to meet that problem, and then, in its definition, it actually uses the phrasing "according to the Greeks" and "according to the Latins." So, there seems to be a possibility of at least communicating across traditions. Indeed, I think if we say wholesale that the two traditions are "self-contained," its almost as if we divorce the Western and Eastern fathers from one another even when they were in communion within the early Church, and it also seems to do a bit of damage to historical fact.

That said, my problem still arises from the fact that Florence, even after all that discussion, says that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the son, "according to the Greeks, as cause." So apparently the Greeks said this at the council... Not the Latins. That's why I have such a problem with it. That's why I'm asking what we do about it. And, if the West explicitly says that we know the divine essence, and the East explicitly says we don't know the divine essence, I also have a hard time just saying, "Oh, they must be talking about different things." I don't mean to be glib; these are truly where my problems arise.

Thanks,
Jason

First let me be clear about this, because I am not saying that it is impossible to translate texts from one language to another; instead, I hold that the presuppositions underlying the two traditions are different, sometimes because of linguistic differences, but mainly because the metaphysical approaches are different.

The essentialist focus of Western Trinitarian theology cannot be taken over into the East without doing violence to the very structure of the theology of the East. The East holds that the unity of the God is founded upon the Father, because He is the sole divine cause, while the West focuses the unity of God upon the divine essence, and not upon the hypostasis of the Father. Now, I am not saying that the two expressions of this mystery never come into contact with each other, because that would be ludicrous to propose, but what I am saying is that particular elements of the two traditions cannot be simply transposed. In other words, a theologian cannot take the Florentine understanding of the "filioque" and put it into the Byzantine doctrine of God without doing extreme violence to Byzantine Triadology. For example, it is not possible in Byzantine theology to say that the Son is a cause (passive or active) of the origin of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, because this would be to ascribe a hypostatic property that belongs to the Father alone to the Son, thus confounding the persons, and either leading to Sabellianism or ditheism. In addition, any attempt to make the Son a "co-principle" of the spiration of the Spirit's hypostasis will inevitably lead to modalism, because it will reduce the spiration of the hypostasis of the Spirit to the common divine essence. Moreover, this "co-principle" idea, which is based on an essentialist understanding of the unity within the Trinity, also has the added problem of making the Spirit the principle of His own procession, because He, along with the Father and the Son, possesses the divine essence as a whole (i.e., through perichoresis).

Thus, the two Triadologies cannot be combined in their particular expressions without doing harm to each other, but that does not mean that they are referring to a different reality. The expression of the mystery cannot exhaust the mystery itself. In fact, the dogmatic pronouncements of the Magisterium in connection with the three divine hypostases are apophatic, and that is why Damascene said that the Son and Spirit are differentiated by the origins from the Father, i.e., the former by generation and the latter by procession, but as to how generation and procession are different, Damascene said it is not possible to know ("The Orthodox Faith," Book 1, Chapter 8).

That being said, St. Maximos the Confessor (in the 7th century) did defend the Latin Church's doctrine of the "filioque," and held that it in no way harmed the sole causality of the Father, but that does not mean that St. Maximos would have accepted the Florentine definition of the "filioque." In fact I believe that Maximos would have had problems with the Florentine definition, because it appears to be contrary to what he said the Latin's meant by the "filioque."

Here is what St. Maximos said on this issue, "With regard to the first matter, they (the Romans) have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit--they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession--but that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence."

St. Maximos\' Letter on the Filioque

Now of course it appears that by the 15th century the Latins had forgotten this important point, and that is why the Council of Florence went so far as to say 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 cannot say, in any sense, that the Son is a cause, or source, or principle, of the spiration of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, for to do that would involve falling into various heresies.

God bless,
Todd

I would take with a grain of salt what the "Greeks" said at the Council of Florence, because, like the Second Council of Lyons, it was utterly rejected by the Eastern Churches. Neither Florence nor Lyons will be the basis of any future restoration of communion between the Roman Church and the Churches of the East.

Todd,

I stand in agreement with you, once again, on a good number of points. Speaking of which, I agree that Maximos would not have accepted the Florentine filioque; I didn't mean to suggest that, so forgive me if I did. My point was only that, at one point, the doctrines did have contact with one another, i.e., they didn't develop in a vacuum, so I don't know how legitimate it is to really say that they are two self-contained wholes that cannot be conclusively critiqued from either position. Certainly, attempting to insert Latin theology into Byzantine theology, or Byzantine theology into Latin theology, would nowadays be a complete disaster. However, while they were developing, they were also responding to one another, and so it isn't as if their development was completely divorced and self-contained.

In any case, it once again comes down to my most difficult area of understanding with you: the dogmatic status of the Council of Florence. That council says in its very definition that the Greeks pronounce the Son as cause. It also says that these truths need to be believed by all Christians. The Greeks at Florence did say this, although there is of course the possibility that they were coerced in some way. In any event, the Orthodox Church certainly did not end up accepting this council. Rome, however, did. So my real point, I suppose, is this: if one is in union with Rome, and Rome holds as one of its councils that the Greeks say that the Son is a cause and, indeed, must believe this (even if not reciting it in their creed, and even if the "filioque clarification" does say certain qualified things like that the Father is the sole Trinitarian cause or the sole immediate cause), then it seems that the implication is that the Catholic doctrine, East and West, is that the Son is in some sense cause. I don't see the filioque clarification denying this. I don't see Florence or Lyons denying this. I have a hard time seeing, therefore, how an Eastern Catholic can deny this (particularly when this is considered in the larger light of the fact that Rome seems to be requiring that the Orthodox, for union to occur, must accept the papacy as it has developed even up to this day; in other words, they don't seem to be willing to go back on any of their councils -- see the "How Catholic? How Orthodox?" thread I started).

Forgive me a hundred times over, seriously, for pushing this point so hard, but it is just one that I truly do not understand.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

I do not believe that the Council of Florence represents the Byzantine doctrine at all; rather, it is a Latin council (binding on Latins) that promoted the Latin doctrine, and the Easterners that where there assented under pressure from the Emperor, who wanted union in order to gain Western military assistance in the war with the Muslims. Thus, the Council of Florence does not reflect Eastern doctrine at all. Within the Byzantine theological tradition to hold that the Son is a cause of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit is heretical, and was condemned at the Council of Blachernae. The original Latin doctrine of the "filioque" can be conformed to Byzantine Triadology, but it is not possible to conform the teaching of Florence in the same manner, because is not the same as the teaching of the West at the time of St. Maximos.

Florence is a dead issue, and as such, it can never be the basis for a restoration of communion between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox. The Roman Church implicitly accepts this, since it has entered into dialogue with the Orthodox, unless of course you think that Rome is acting duplicitously in its dealings with the East, i.e., pretending that dialogue is possible when in fact Rome intends to force Florence down the throats of the Orthodox. As far as I can tell, Rome has realized that Lyons and Florence are not acceptable to the East, and so it is willing to start afresh, as we all should be.

God bless,
Todd

Dear Ray,

I must say, in all humility and without intending any offense, that, in all seriousness, these (seemingly ad hominem) notions as that these sort of disagreements are for the most part about pride, or that what we really ought to do is just agree to disagree because we're all "made differently," ultimately end up being somewhat dangerous. I agree that they sound good, and I join in the prayer that all will open their hearts to one another and attempt to genuinely understand. However, it seems to me that one part of genuine understanding involves acknowledging what real differences there may be, talking them out, seeing how they can work together, and so on. Genuine understanding involves dialogue, sometimes about very difficult and complex issues, and sometimes about issues where there seems to be entrenched disagreement. We must not rule out from the beginning that there might possibly be irreconcilable differences, because to do so is to treat the differences as, in some sense, a priori settled from the outset, and so it is to treat them without the requisite seriousness and sincerity. In my opinion, we have to allow them full expression and then get down to the hard work of working them out, if they can be worked out. Some of this involves pressing and difficult dialogue, including a development of arguments (in the non-aggressive meaning of the word) in order to convey one's position and in order to understand what the dialogue-partner is thinking and why. I do not believe we should be dismissive about this. Forgive me if I have misunderstood you.

That said, I believe that Todd and I have been doing just fine having these sorts of dialogues without letting pride get in the way. As far as I know, he holds no animosity toward me; and, of course, I hold none toward him. You will see, I hope, my reluctance to sometimes push a point that I don't understand, and you will see me ask for forgiveness before I ask what I think may be either an incessant question that I repeatedly ask or (what seems to me) a particularly difficult question that strikes at the heart of what my dialogue partner is saying. Please take my word for it when I say that I am doing this all in an attempt to better understand, and to hopefully work these issues out in whatever way I may humbly be able to do so.

God bless,
Jason

Todd,

In line with my most recent comment to Ray, I want to thank you again for your response and say that I think that I finally understand your position. Hopefully this means I can stop bringing up Florence whenever I talk to you.

That said, I must admit to still having some difficulty. No, I do not think that Rome intends to "force Florence down the throats of the Orthodox." Their "Filioque Clarification" certainly was helpful (particularly when it stated that the Creed of 381 is the normative creed), but in my opinion (and the opinion of most Orthodox I know) it was unfortunately ambiguous. This ambiguity allows it to be interpreted consistently with Florence and yet at the same time to appear (and possibly be interpreted as) completely Orthodox. I only wish there would be a more clear statement on this issue. Furthermore, I do not really know of any evidence that Rome has realized that Florence and Lyons are not acceptable to the East -- well, let me qualify that. Certainly Rome has recognized that they were not successful union councils and that they do not adequately express the Eastern doctrine. Even so, it seems to me that they still recognize Lyons (and probably Florence) as binding and correct when truly understood, at least when it comes to the dogmatic portions of those councils. Sure, they may believe that the councils are unacceptable to the Orthodox because they were expressed in typically Latin language, the Easterners were coerced and pressured, and so on. They may acknowledge that they may not serve as ground for union. But this does not thereby imply that they will not still view them as ultimately in some way necessary once union has been achieved. The fact that the Filiioque Clarification cites the Council of Lyons as its evidence for "the Catholic doctrine" (emphasis added) is perhaps the most clear suggestion that there is still something to these councils, even when it comes to discussions involving the Orthodox.

Thoughts?

All the best,
Jason

My position is slightly more nuanced than it may have appeared from my previous post. I hold that Florence and Lyons are binding on Latins, but not on the East, because the definitions are formulated in a Latin way and reflect only the Latin understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity.

The West is going to have to accept that the East formulates and expresses the mystery of the Trinity differently, and the East must accept that the West has its own way of expressing the doctrine.

That being said, any restoration of communion in the future will have to allow for the distinctive modes of expression of both traditions.

God bless,
Todd

Todd,

Your recent clarification is nice, particularly in that it's a position I'm very sympathetic toward. That said, right now I don't have much more to add. However, I think I'll be sending a private message your way in a moment, because I have a question or two that are slightly more personal and at least less related to this discussion here. Thanks!

All the best,
Jason

Dear Jason...

A well done reply!

I do not have the time to read it well tonight - but I look forward to a good read of it tomorrow.

May I say that, you are the spirit of discussion. And I am joyed - to grasp your meaning better. You seem to have a mind suited to this stuff - so it will be a pleasure.

At first reading - I think I understand your focus better now.

It will be a pleasure to sharpen our terms together.

We will take it slow because these discussions always are so tied to agreements of terms.

-ray

Ray,

Thank you much for the kind words. I will be glad to discuss whatever you'd like!

Speaking of my first response to you, I admit that I do worry that I might have come across a bit abrasively. I hope that I was not too flippant in my response. I didn't intend to be, in any case! Forgive me if I did in fact come across that way at all.

God bless,
Jason

Oh no... no problem. I can tell that you like to wrap your mind around this stuff. In fact - I invite you to be a bit flippant is you think it will help. Be blunt and bold.

Now - I shall re-read you - and form a continuation.

-ray

Dear Apotheoun:

I have held my reply because - you are doing so well.

-ray

Dear Jason…

Apotheoum seems to have done very well in explaining to you that the two theologies are not compatible - yet have the same origin.

Eastern theology solidified at a time when the terms of philosophy were closer to cosmology (the use of physical imagery and likened to physical experiences) and it peaked with the scholastics of the Byzantine Empire and its culture.

Western theology solidified post-Aristotle - when the terms of philosophy solidified on the expression of mental concepts and mental experiences.

They are two different approaches - two different languages.

Two different ways to understand the same - thing.

Both of them are less - than their origin. And are only signs or pointers - back to that wordless origin.

The difficult comes when someone tries to build God through them. The God that will be produced - will always be at odds with whatever God that is produced when they also try to build God from their own theology.

It is a blessing - that each church - has its own form of theology. And it is often overlooked that there are several forms of Eastern theology (Coptic theology is also Eastern and there are several forms of Oriental theology). And it has been a human mistake of past history that the big boys on the block (Orthodox and Latin) have been so self conceited to think that only they (one or the other) was right and anyone else was wrong. The test of ‘compatibility” between the theology of independent churches - has been a human failure. There is a remedy for this - but I will not mention it except to say that among the Orthodox it is the ‘first place’ of honor given to the Ecumenical Patriarch.

So I will say it again. Each theology must be understood within its own context (culture, time in history, spoken language, terms of philosophy, history, etc) because each theology is its own ‘language’ and no translation into another theology - will be entirely compatible - and eventually end up like Apotheoum said “do violence to the other” in their catophatic forms.

The items which you assumed that I implied - and I did not imply - I will not address. They have nothing to do with our subject.

As to uncreated energies - I continue to maintain that this is intended to be an apophatic image - a negation - of the physical image of created natural forces like wind, water currents, fire, storms, etc… as they shape the creation… so the subject is likened to natural and created energies forming and shaping creation… but is not these created forces. This is done in much the same way that Jesus liken Providence to the invisible force (energies) of wind “You know not where it comes from and where it goes to”. It (uncreated energies) is a way to understand (through a knowable physical likening) what we have no senses to know. It is a very physical and cosmological like way to say it. Eastern! And unless it is taken apophatically - it is also irreconcilable with other portions of Eastern theology which negates all and every attribute to the God nature (admitting no division and an incomprehensible Oneness before even the act of procession).

Be it Eastern or Latin theology - at its final - its peak of understanding - lay this area which - if not melted away by experiential union with God - is incomprehensible and contradictory. That my friend is the limit - of - words. This is where theology itself (the whole) must become apophatic (mere human words) and must cease to be catophatic (assigning specific attributes to God). Where the substitute of ‘talking about’ makes way for the real and direct experience of.

Word of theology are sign. But unlike road signs (which tell us how to get where we want to go) the signs that are theology - tell us were we are once we have already gotten there. They are an imitation - compared to the real thing. We must not confuse the human explanation (words) of what a thing is - for the thing itself. That was the lesson of Socrates. The God that we think God is - is a far cry from what God thinks of himself. That is the ladder of assent where God destroys in us the idol of him we build time and time again. How could it be any other way - we are human - and not able to grasp God. Nothing understands self better than self. God is the only one which fully grasps himself. And even grace - does not violate our human nature for we never ever become God - that we might understand God as he understands himself.

Mister Eckhart was a blend of Eastern and Western theology - he understood both and often spoke a blend of both at once…. and what did it get him? Accusations and misunderstandings from those who could not raise above - words. They prefered to hear themselves and so they could never hear what Eckhart was saying.

Now there is a good litmus test (if you want one) if you can read and understand Mister Eckhart - and find no real problem - you are well on the way to grasping both the theologies of the Eastern church and the Western church. I believe he was the last, in the line of Latin shcholars, who truely was a man of both lungs.

Peace to you.

-ray

Ray,

Thank you for your thoughts. I don't wish to comment much more on this issue, as I believe we are simply talking past one another now. I will simply reiterate only a few brief points and leave it at that.

(1) First, it seems to me that the continued talk about "theological expressions being unable to fully express the Mystery" is one big red herring; of course our expressions can't fully express the Mystery, but that doesn't mean that some of those expressions aren't still wrong. It certainly doesn't mean that they are all okay. If someone were to say (God forbid!) that Christ is a creature, he would of course be terribly mistaken and incorrect, not just expressing the same Mystery in his own finite language. So, the crucial work to be done still remains to determine if the different expressions are orthodox, not just to determine that they're different expressions.

(2) The example you cite of Coptic theologians actually makes my point for me. Nowadays, people have realized that some people who appear to be monophysites and confess the "one nature" of Christ actually mean "one hypostasis" by their terminology, and so therefore say something compatible with orthodoxy although not in the same language. What this means is that they were able to communicate across different theological traditions, translate their terms, and understand that the same thing really was being expressed. That's exactly the kind of work I'm calling for here. We can't conclude a priori that all different expressions are acceptable.

(3) This sort of work has not been done, it seems to me, with regard to the Eastern and Western views of the Trinity. I could cite the many posts on this very forum expressing confusion about this issue, but I needn't do so, because it seems to remain a simple fact that the Western tradition has not adequately explained what it means when it says that the Son is a "cause" of the Holy Spirit (as it does at the Council of Florence), and so on. Metropolitan John of Pergamon points out this very fact himself in his response to the Vatican's clarification on the filioque, and goes so far as to say that this may even be the crucial issue in the discussion. That is why I still think my questions here seek answers beyond "they're saying the same thing in different languages," or "they mean the same thing but they started from different starting points," because those answers are question-begging; that is, they beg the very question I'm asking here, which is: "are they saying the same thing?" This is where I think the work needs to be done, and this is where I've heard little more than suggestions to the effect that it is arrogant to ask such questions. Forgive me if it truly is, but what I have been trying to seek is a real understanding of the issues. Apotheoun's answer, while it did answer questions for me, was not an answer that demonstrated that the two traditions are compatible; rather, his was an answer that they are not compatible, but that the Latin tradition is okay for the Latins. I still think the latter contention also might beg the question (i.e., on what grounds do you say that they are "okay"), but I have not pressed the issue because my thoughts which began the discussion were thoughts about how to address the Western councils as an Eastern Catholic, and he answered those thoughts.

(4) Here is why I think the response that "they are just using different theological expressions" or that "they are coming from different starting points" is potentially dangerous: if that response is used a priori without a demonstrable reason for saying as much, it leads to a slippery slope. Consider the possibility of someone suggesting (God forbid!) that the Arians were really innocent of heresy because their expression that Christ is a creature (i.e., "there was a time when the Son was not") was valid given their starting assumptions and context (i.e., Origenism). Clearly, this would be absurd. We must truly figure out what's being said before we conclude that the expressions are legitimate. As the Ecumenical Councils show, some expressions, regardless of context or language, really are wrong.

(5) Finally, from what I understand, some of Meister Eckhart's ideas were formally condemned by the Church, so I'm not sure if his is a good example to suggest. However, I admit to not knowing much about him. This website says that Pope John XXII published a bull condemning some ideas from his works, but of course that's not a scholarly website.

Anyway, thank you again for your time.

God bless,
Jason

Jason,

Let me begin by saying that – over the last few years – I have not been all that interested in trying to reconcile the Latin tradition with the Byzantine tradition; instead, I have focused all of my efforts on assimilating and understanding, to the degree that I can, the Byzantine doctrinal tradition without forcing it in a Latin framework. I have made a conscious effort to learn about the Triadology and Christology of the Eastern Church without reference to Western developments. Now perhaps this effort on my part is misguided, but I simply want to understand the Byzantine tradition on its own terms, i.e., I want to see from within, as a Byzantine, and not as something foreign to my own experience of God.

Clearly the differences between the East and the West are difficult to accept, but I do not believe that communion can be reestablished between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches if the dialogue between them requires either of the partners to repudiate a large portion of their doctrinal tradition. Besides, in a way that transcends my intellectual abilities, I think the two traditions – in spite of apparent contradictions – are really speaking about the same reality.

Now of course there is an inherent difficulty present within the dialogue between the two traditions, because each tradition begins with a different focus and each one has different presuppositions, and so a person who undertakes to judge one doctrinal system with the underlying presuppositions of the other system, will inevitably see what appears to be heresy within the views of the other side in the dialogue. Nevertheless, the desire for the restoration of full visible communion is a good thing, and it must be sought, but it must not involve either of the two traditions having to repudiate what it is that makes it unique.

As far as your comments about a type of dogmatic relativism are concerned, certainly I am not arguing that every possible position is true and acceptable, but I am saying that the two great traditions – which were united during the first millennium – each has a vision of the truth that is compatible with the unity that existed between East and West for nearly a 1,000 years, and so neither side should require the other to renounce something that is fundamental to its living experience of God.

May the Lord bless you,
Todd

Dear Ecce Jason:

Go to the top right of this page - seleclt "search" and then search inside this forum (4.East-N-West) on this phrase...

"doing a study - filoque - need help"

You may find it interesting.


Early on, the Greeks formulated the filoque. And the Latins adopted it from the Greeks.

Within a few years - one of the Greek words involved - had a change in meaning (as words sometimes, over time, come to a slightly diffrent meaning through use).

Quick communication not being a hall mark of the era - news sometimes took a year to travel between Rome (Latin speakers) and Byzantium (Greek speakers)- so the Latins were unaware that the Greek had fine tuned the phrasing and meaning. So the Latins when on thier merry way still using the orginal meaning that everyone agreed upon.

Now to add to things - the word "and" can be taken in two ways. One way is unitive and the other way is additive.

John is going to the store.
Mary is going to the store.

John (is going to the store) and Mary is also going to the store.

Now if John and Mary are not going to the same store - it is additive. Each is doing the same thing ... but not together. "Mary's going to the store" is in-addition-to John's going to the store.

But if John and Mary are going to the same store at the same time (together) it is unitive.... not additive.

Now add to that, that in the orginal Greek (as with Hebrew) that it is one word which can either be translateded as "and" or "but". As 'and' it is unitive or additive - as 'but' it is 'on the other hand'.

Plus the old Greek has dozens of ways to form this "and" - while the Latins have fewer.

So you can see that the nuances of languge became involved. While the Greeks fine tuned things and discared the older formular (which the Latins had adopted) the translatrion into Latin - made it read with a slightly diffrent nuance - anyway. So the Greeks were codeming a way to translate the older Greek (in light of the nenw worod usage) and the Latins (still reading it the old way) could not figure out - why.

The trick is - that with the nenwer meaning of the Greek words involved - the older formular now meant something diffrent than it what it meant when it was first coined.

Neither sidie realizing that the culprit was the shift in the meaning of one or two Greek words - each assumed that the other side was just being nasty for no good reason!

Now here is the way in which I read my RC version.

Additive.

If we considier - just - the father and the holy spirit (the sin not included in this relationship) - then it is the father who sends the holy Spirit.

And if we considier - just - the son and the holy Spirit (the father not included) then we are talking about Jesus during his time on earth when he sent the holy spirit.

It is a little like this...

We have the sun - sending its light - through a windows into a room - and there is a spot of light on the floor.

If we consider - just the sun and the spoot on the floor - the sun is causing the spot on the floor.

But if we do not consider the sun - and all we are concerned with is the window and the sport on the floor - we do say that the window is the cause of the spot on the floor. In this way looked at - the windows is a secondary cause. It is be-cause of the window - that there is a spot of light on the floor.

Now if we take that (window and floor) and now rejoin the sun to it - the sun is the primary cause.

Do you see? Thiis trick of human ways - all depends on which way the 'and' is being used and in what relationships the objjects involved are set to each other (as you can see - they can be set in a few ways and not just one way).

Now in truth, when we are taking 'procession' we are rightfully dealing with the old Greek concept of the method of creation from the simple unity of the Monad (One) to duality and so on and so forth to multiplicity of created natures. I assume you know something about that Greek pattern. Under that concept in the place of Greek philosophy - it is proper to consider that which is created - as a set. That which is un-created (God or Monad) as one ‘set’ and that which is created as another distinct set. The ‘set’ of creation is headed by the first thing created (its pinnacle) which is the Son - and in relation to the Son (disregarding the Monad) it is proper to say that the Holy Spirit (into the world) comes by way of the Son as its cause (not origin - but cause). As such - it is proper to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son - as a cause (but not as origin).

But just try to find a Roman Catholic who understand his own filogue properly! Most need not give it much thoughts. So you can’t blame them.

Cheers.
-ray

That is what most people think - but a short study reveals that Mister Eckhart himself was not comdemned. What was condenmed is the way some people were interpeeting him. So the bull condemns certain ways in which 5 (or was it 11) of his statements could be interpreted. Eckhart was given the opurtunity to 're-cant' these interpretations - which he did - while adding to his re-cant - that these were not his meaning and he himself never held these.

The inquiry wanted to condem him personally but the Pope interceded and only the heritical interpretation - of 5 of his statements were condemned. Interpretations which he himself never held.

-ray

Ray,

Thanks for the additional information. I'll be brief because I think this discussion is running thin (at least it is for me). First, regarding the history of the filioque, I would recommend a book by Professor Richard Haugh (professor of Classics and Religious Studies) called "Photius and the Carolingians," if you can get your hands on it (it's sometimes hard to find). Haugh extensively covers the history of the filioque and explicitly deals with the patristics, including St. Athanasius, to determine whether or not they really ever professed anything like the filioque (he says they didn't, and I tend to think he's right; particularly with Athanasius, we have now discovered that some works that we thought were his really weren't, and so on). Also, if you can possibly find it (this one's even more difficult to get), look for "Free Choice in Saint Maximus the Confessor" by Joseph Farrell. That one will dispel the idea that Trinitarian philosophy comes from the Greek "Monad" philosophy. Furthermore, it's just wrong to speak of the Son as a creation.

Also, the Eastern understanding of the Trinity denies that the Son is even a secondary cause of the Spirit's hypostatic procession.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

??

No need for it to be dispelled - I do not hold it.

Yes. I too give up. There seems to be too much static noise in the line. Communications are down. Confusion has the upper hand.

-ray

Forgive me if I'm over-stepping anything, but I think I may have the "linguistic key" that is part of the hang-up. If I'm wrong, oh well, but it's worth a shot.

I see the issue of "cause" being tossed around a lot here, and it seems to be done with little consideration of what "cause", or rather "causa" means. I don't think it carries the sole implication of "point of origin", but would be better understood as "by way of". In this sense both the Father and the Son are "causes" of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has only a single origin (the Father). To illustrate it with the actual language, we can say that the Holy Spirit comes "by way of" the Father, and we can also say that the Holy Spirit comes "by way of" the Son, without eliminating the Father, and the Father alone, as the sole source of the Holy Spirit.

Let's use a modern English example. If I'm traveling from Seattle to Nashville, and I pass through Portland, Oregon, we can say two things. The people in Nashville can say "He came to us by way of Seattle", and "He came to us by way of Portland". In both statements, the source, Seattle, remains the same.

This is why after much discussion at Florence, it apparently became clear to both sides that when the Latins said "and the Son", it was the same linguistically (and was always intended to mean) as "through the Son". The documents say "according to the Greeks by cause" because the meaning of the word is "by way of", so that the Holy Spirit comes "by way of the Son, originating in the Father". This view is backed up by Scripture as demonstrated at the Council, and agreed to by the Greeks.

With this in mind, the troublesome and confusing phrase "as from one principle and a single spiration" makes a lot more sense. Since it was already agreed that the Son was "subordinate" to the Father, and that the Son receives from the Father, the main issue was whether or not the Holy Spirit is from two sources, the Father and the Son seperately, or from a single source (the Father, source of all) with the Son only as a "cause" or a "by way of". By saying "by one principle" it seems as though the Council thought it put that baby to rest, but they apparently didn't take into account the future development of language combined with the political factors that would harbor resentment almost immediately after the close of the Council. I don't think the Greeks present were presenting heresy at all, but rather I think they simply understood the Latin term "causa", and it was used to summarize their beliefs in the Latin documentation.

Unfortunately this distinction in the term "cause" is muddied by modern English, and we tend to say things like "the flood was caused by the rain", which does not reflect the full breadth of the term "causa" in Latin, and adds to it the implication of origin which was not the universal implication of the term "causa".

God bless!

Ghosty,

Thank you very much for your well-thought-out response. While it does certainly make me think, there are a few problems I have with it.

First, here are some phrases from the decrees of the Council of Florence, with some emphasis added (my explanations of why these are problematic will follow):

Okay, now on to why I don't think any of this will mesh with your view.

(1) First, the council says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both, as from one principle. It seems to me that this indicates that the procession of the Holy Spirit was viewed as some sort of "cooperation" between the Father and the Son, who together spirated the Spirit in one and the same movement (i.e., they were both sources of the procession, together); thus, I find it hard to adapt this language to your view that the Father ultimately spirated the Spirit, albeit by way of the Son. There seems to me more attributed to the Son here (though I will grant that maybe you can make your view compatible with this piece alone, although I think it'll require some work).

(2) The council says the Son should be signified according to the Latin word "principle," and not only that, it says the Son is principle of the subsistence (hypostasis) of the Holy Spirit just like the Father. So, two points: first, the word "cause" may be possibly interpreted as "by way of," but the word "principle" does not seem to lend itself to this interpretation; second, the phrasing that the Son is a principle "just like the Father" is certainly problematic. The view seems to be that they both play the same role in the procession of the Spirit (and I would maintain that a reading of Scholastic theology during this time period will show that that is exactly what was meant).

(3) The next paragraph is even more problematic. There, the council says that, because the Son has everything from the Father, he also has the procession of the Spirit from the Father, so much so it can even be said (alone, as it is in this paragraph) that "the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Son" (if they were trying to get at the Greek view here, why not at least say through?). Taking this notion in context with the other points about the Son being a principle "just like the Father," and it seems clear that what the council is saying is that the Son shares the same property that the Father shares, namely, the full procession of the Spirit. This is perhaps the most flagrant part of the decrees for Orthodox ears.

(4) Finally, in its decree to the Oriental churches (I believe to the "Jacobites"), the council professes unequivocally that the Spirit proceeds at once from the Father and the Son. Again, especially given the above phrases which create the context for this saying, it seems that the council is holding that the procession from the Father and the Son is identical and immediate. I find it hard to interpret a "by way of" here, if what's being said is that the Spirit proceeds from both at once -- especially in light of the earlier comments.

Other facts are also distressing. First, the Orthodox had already rejected any notion that would even allow the Son to be a secondary, subordinate, or mediate cause of the Spirit's hypostasis (subsistence) at the Council of Blachernae in 1285. At that council, they explained that the Orthodox doctrine of "from the Father through the Son" means not that the Son plays any role in the Spirit's hypostatic origination in the internal life of the Trinity, but that the Son plays a role in the Spirit's origination in the external (although still eternal) life of the Trinity, i.e., in the divine energies. The Spirit proceeds from the Father as sole source, and is manifested in the energies through the Son. Second, there are additional facts such as that the Greeks at the council held out against the filioque for so long that they were running out of food, they wanted to give up on the council and return home numerous times, and they seemed to possibly have agreed to the council's decrees only after realizing that their homeland was under attack and that they were not going to receive military aid from Rome unless they agreed (this was explicitly mentioned to them by the Pope, if I recall correctly); furthermore, Mark of Ephesus was silenced right at the moment that he was likely going to bring up the Eastern notion of the divine energies for discussion at the council, and he (probably not coincidentally) ended up being one of the Orthodox who did not sign the decree.

In any case, there are probably even more things to say about this, but I've already been too wordy, so I'll stop there.

Thanks for your post, and God bless. I do sympathize with the attempt to make Florence compatible with the Eastern doctrine, as I have struggled with that issue for months (as Apotheoun will tell you); unfortunately (as Apotheoun will also tell you), those "struggles" have continuously failed.



All the best,
Jason

Ecce Jason: I will be back on later to do more research and posting, as I have to get to Mass at the moment. If you know of any sources of the discussion of the Council, and the decrees, in Latin, that would be wonderful to have.

As for a quick answer to your "why not just say through", I think it has more to do with the fact that the Latins understood that it meant the same thing in their language, and were more concerned with getting the Greeks to understand that fact then go about changing their liturgies. Arrogance and intransigence? Certainly, but that seems to be the character of both sides throughout the centuries. In defense of the Latins, however, once the understanding was had, there was really no reason to make the change that would require issuing a new decree to change the liturgy in all Latin parishes. I'm sure they thought they had put the problem to rest at that point, and didn't foresee the issue flaring up later. Had they seen what would come of it, it's quite possible they would have simply made the change, as Latins even today generally don't even recite the filioque when celebrating with our Eastern brothers and sisters.

God bless!

Ghosty,

Sure, I can give you a few sources. First, I'll cite some online material (since, of course, that's easiest to access):

(1) The Decrees of the Council of Florence (in English -- I don't know where to find them in Latin, but I expect that EWTN is a legitimate enough source; the most relevant portion here is Session 6)

(2) Here , you can find (about 1/6 of the way down the page) three chapters of The Council of Florence by Joseph Gill, S.J., available online. They are very pro-Latin, but they include a good amount of the actual dialogue that took place at the council. In the second of those chapters, you'll see Gill's admission that Mark of Ephesus was forbidden to mention the Eastern essence/energies distinction at the council (and even the interpreter was silenced when others began asking that Mark be allowed to speak). Gill more or less brushes this off and notes that the Latins "then and now" consider this doctrine wrong. Also, Gill seems (at least in these chapters) to not realize how deeply indebted the Latin position is to Augustinian notions of divine simplicity, and how foreign to the Greeks such Augustinianism must have sounded (Gill tends to paint the Greeks almost as buffoons at places because they don't understand). In the third of those chapters you will also see the emperor occasionally making veiled threats to the Greeks as they continue to refuse union, and you'll also see the Pope emphasize how much military help the Greeks will receive if they will just agree to the doctrinal formulas. (By the way, Gill's work also includes a translation of the council's decree, and it more or less matches the one at EWTN.)

One thing you might notice in Gill's work is the fact that in the second of the aforementioned chapters, the Latins go on to base a lot of their arguments for the filioque on the Scriptures and the Fathers, so...

(3) Photius and the Carolingians by Professor Richard Haugh. This is a real book, not available online. In this book, Haugh traces the development of the filioque doctrine from its early formation to the time of Photius (late 9th century). Inadvertently, he responds to many of the arguments that the Latins make at Florence (as cited in Gill's book). In particular, this book includes a nice appendix of the patristic sources, detailing who really believed what and which works were really authentic and which were spurious. The book as a whole also does a nice job of drawing out the Augustinian assumptions behind many of the Western arguments, showing why they are more or less meaningless to the East.

(4) Byzantine Theology, by John Meyendorff. This book is more of a general overview of a wide array of subjects, but it includes some good stuff on Florence and the filioque. In particular, it notes that many of the participants at the Council of Florence were hardly what one would call "representative" of Eastern theology; in particular, Scholarios was a Thomist, many of the delegates were Barlaamites (a position that had been condemned in the East about a century earlier and which was skeptical as to whether or not divine truths were actually even attainable), Gemistos Pletho had actually ceased being a committed Christian and had succumbed to some form of Platonized paganism (and there are reasons to wonder whether Bessarion, his close friend, had succumbed to the same -- he wrote a manifesto entitled Refutations of the Blasphemies Directed Against Plato which, according to Meyendorff, seems to indicate that he was with Pletho on this), and finally the majority of the delegation was selected from the elite of Constantinople alone.

Finally, two good supplements might be:

(5) The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity\'s Filioque Clarification

(6) An Orthodox Response to the Pontifical Council\'s Clarification

That should keep you busy. Enjoy!

God bless,
Jason

Well, since it looks like I won't have time to do the full amount of research I was hoping to do tonight, I'm gonna do the best I can and see if we can at least get started unpacking some of the questions you raised, maybe even putting a few of the pieces in the right place in the process! Before I continue, I must ask out of curiousity what your faith background is. I'm an Armenian, Latin Catholic, raised in a secular-atheistic household. I came to the faith through studying Orthodox Judaism, to boot :p

Anyway, on to the points. I won't necessarily be able to provide clear citations tonight, but I think it will suffice that we put our brains together and see if anything seems to "stick". Since we're not trying to debate eachother down, I don't see a reason to proof-text at this point (plus my eyes are falling out of my skull), so I'll just spew out some Latin-minded stuff and we'll see if it looks right

1) Ok, the concern you raise here to me seems to indicate that you're hearing something akin to "two guys (Father and Son) holding the same hose (spiration) that's spraying the water (Holy Spirit)". I admit that the language is troubling, but upon reflection I don't think that "together with the Son" necessarily indicates a requirement, but rather a simple statement of fact, possibly eternal fact. Ignoring for a moment the issue with the "passivity" of the idea of a "source", let's imagine a garden hose (the Father), united with a spray nozzle (the Son) spraying water (the Holy Spirit). The water undoubtedly comes from the hose; the nozzle could be removed without at all changing the source of the water, and the hose does not depend on the nozzle to put forth the water. When we spray the water, however, it comes from the hose and the nozzle as from a single principle. There are not two streams of water, but one, and the "monarchy" of the hose is preserved, because in the most fundamental sense the water originates from it, but in another sense the water sprays from the nozzle united with the hose (and the nozzle obviously has no water to spray without the hose). Even if the hose and nozzle never come apart, even if they are eternally together, the order is preserved; one does not have to remove the nozzle in order to know it's a nozzle, or to make it a nozzle. Hence, the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father with the Son.

2) In this case, with the above description, principle does seem to lend itself to the "by way of" interpretation, because the Holy Spirit "sprays" from a single point in the eternal unity of the nozzle and hose, but as I showed above that single point of origin (the tip of the nozzle, in this illustration) is fully dependant on the hose. Remove the Father and Son from eternal unity, and you have the Holy Spirit proceeding solely from the Father, but with eternal unity it proceeds from the Father and the Son. Now if I'm understanding hypostasis correctly, and I'm likely not (do I get an instant philosophy degree if I really am?), then the fundamental being of the Holy Spirit (spray) can proceed from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, but since the Father and the Son are eternally united, the Son together with the Father are the principle of the spray, the hypostasis, the fundamental being.

3) This exception, which I admit seemed huge when I first sat down to think about this problem tonight, now doesn't seem like such an issue at all. I'm certain that this is because I've now lost track of the Eastern thought process of Energies, but I've come this far and I'm going to keep running with it until I pass out!

Yes, the nozzle shares, as an eternal fact, the full procession of the water, even so much that the spray shoots forth from the nozzle eternally, but this is only because the nozzle receieves everything (namely the water, in this particular case) from the hose by virtue of its eternal unity with it. Heat the hose, and the nozzle will get hot, drop the hose and the nozzle will hit the ground as well, put a kink in the hose, and the water will cease to flow from the nozzle just as much as from the hose. For all intents and purposes the hose and the nozzle are one, yet they are wholly identifiable as seperate. Furthermore, the "monarchy" of the Father is preserved, because while the nozzle immediately becomes nothing by dead plastic when removed from the hose, the hose retains all of its charictaristics when the nozzle is removed: it still sprays, get's hot in the sun, flops on the ground when dropped, ect. The nozzle is no longer a nozzle to anything, but a nozzle-shaped piece of plastic waiting for a hose: it receives even its nozzleness, if you will, from being on a hose.

4) If the above holds, then this exception is really moot, I believe, as the Holy Spirit would of course come "at once" from the nozzle together with the hose. The key is not to have the nozzle and hose as eternally seperate, but rather as eternally together, so it's not "at once from this hose here, and that nozzle over there", but rather "at once from this hose-and-nozzle".

Whew, ok. Now keep in mind this was purely to give a fresh presentation of the Latin viewpoint, not to directly address how the Eastern conception works. I'm specifically trying to address the concerns you raised in relation to my point about "cause", and hopefully I've done so without totally damaging the Eastern formulation of the Trinity. I can't even be certain that I've given a perfect illustration of the Latin position, as tired as I am, but reading over my own writing everything computes.

Most importantly, I think it must be said that the hose-nozzle-spray analogy is purely for the purpose of working on the filioque, and not intended as any kind of definative statement about God (no, the Father is not a rubber hose :p )

I'll leave it at this for now, and you can read it, think about it, and then show me all the places I've gone horribly wrong. I'll even let you call me dirty names

Good night, and God bless!

Ghosty,

Thanks for your responses. I haven't read through your latest yet, but I wanted to let you know that it's likely I won't get to it until at least later this evening, if not tomorrow.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

I recommend reading the dogmatic Tomus of the Council of Blachernae (A.D. 1285) in order to better understand the Byzantine rejection of the Latin formulation of the "filioque."

Click here: Tomus

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 :

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.

OK.. then answer me - if the procession of the Holy Spirit is a procession of its hypostatic origin - where is it proceeding to? in order that we say it "proceeds"… ?

Is it - proceeding somehow inside God himself - and not into creation??

Impossible.

At least in Western philosophy. And in Eastern theology - there is no procession - unless - it be the procession into creation. The procession of creation - from the Godhead.

What locations exist inside God's nature - that something can proceed from one place to another - inside God's nature?

Please give me no more books. My library is full and knowledge is not the same as understanding. If it were we would understand everything we went out to know - and we find that is not the case for us humans.

This man is a personal friend of mine.
http://www.svots.edu/Faculty/Paul-Nadim-Tarazi/
And I have been the only - Roman Catholic - to be invited twice to private get-together of a select group of some of the top Orthodox theologians of the world (fly in) as a privileged observer and participant in the seminars.

That is not a recommendation of my views - but it should be a testament to my grasp of Eastern Orthodox theology (at least the all-expenses-paid invitation part J ). I have written three unpublished studies on the book of Genesis (my particular area) … and I studied it … in the Hebrew.

So I am not a stranger to Eastern theology, Catholic theology, or Old Testament theology.

On the other hand - I am nobody. Just a guy who loves philosophy, psychology, and theology, especially where they meet.

I enjoy yakking with you. This is all just a discussion and nothing hangs in the balance. It is good excersise for us and not much more than that. We are free to make mistakes and mess things up… but I will not be reading any books just for a discussion - at the same time I do respect the drive that has lead you to read so many in your own pursuit of God. May you always have the discernment to separate the wheat from the chaff.

- - - -


So I present to you three questions.

1) If the procession of the Holy Spirit is regarding his hypostasis origin within God (and not - into creation) … I ask you where is it proceeding from and where is it proceeding to?

2) You seem to imply that it may be possible that the Holy Spirit proceed from the Son - in a relationship restricted to - the Son and creation.
Are you?

3) Is the procession of the Holy Spirit we are talking about - in the sense of ‘procession’ as used by SS Gregory, Palamas, and Maximus the Confessor?

because if it is - it is most definitely - a procession into creation as outline in Dionysius Areopagites chapters "Celestial Hierarchy".

-ray

Apotheoun: You are still reading into the words meanings that are not necessarily implied in Latin.

When Gregory was speaking with "except causality", he was not refering to the Latin use of cause as "by way of". How do we know this? Because he admits that the Holy Spirit does proienai from the Son, which is also cause in the sense of "by way of", and also principle as in the excerpt from the Summa I used above. Principle has a variance in meaning in Latin that actually includes any kind of "procession", whether it be generative, co-generative, or simply prior in the procession when taking the two subjects together (as in this case with the Son and the Holy Spirit).

The Holy Spirit is not an effect of the Son processing, but rather is an effect of the Father processing, therefore there is no causality involved in any sense. This understanding is upheld as absolutely critical by the Latins in order to preserve the sole procession of the Spirit. Thomas Aquinas says, in response to Objection 1 :

Notice that fundamental to the phrasing "and the Son" in this case, Thomas Aquinas states that it must be understood as meaning immediately from the Father, not immediately from the Father and the Son together. To understand his illustration with Adam and Abel, it must be remembered that at the time it was believed that the child became implanted in the womb directly from the semen, or "seed", and not by any contributing factors within the mother. Therefore the whole of the person of Abel was deposited into Eve by Adam, and the whole of the person of Abel proceeded out of Eve. In the medieval mind of Aquinas, there was no causality in Eve, as she is a completely passive receiver and conduit of the procession.

Now let's take this example further, as Thomas Aquinas might have if the question had been raised. Keeping with the medieval understanding, if Eve was taken from Adam's side with Adam's seed in her womb, then Abel would receive his personhood immediately from Adam, and mediately from Eve. His personhood would proceed from Adam and Eve as one principle, because upon proceed from Eve he does not recieve "the rest" of his personhood from Adam. Furthermore, he come in a single movement of processing, because he is not placed in Eve's womb partially at the initial seperation, and then more deposited later by Adam, but before his personhood proceeds from Eve.

Breaking it up we can say these facts about Abel:

1) He derives his personhood completely from Adam, as nothing is communicated to him by Eve.

2) He comes from Adam and Eve together, as to say otherwise would be to say that a "half-person" came out of Eve, and was then completed by a second procession by Adam.

3) His personal identity of "First born of Adam" requires nothing from Eve, nor does it interfere with Eve coming first, since Eve comes out of Adam, but not as his seed.

4) In relationship with Eve, she is unquestionably principle to Abel, because Eve preceeds Abel in coming from Adam, and the entire personhood of Abel comes out of Eve. This does not make Eve a "doer" in the eternal procession of Abel, however, since she is principle only in relation to Abel; she is not principally principle (principaliter), i.e. actual doer, and the Greek understanding of αιτία (aition). (at this point I will mention that since we apparently don't have a Greek copy of the Decree of Florence available, we don't know if the Latins meant aition when it said "according to the Greeks by cause", because cause has a more fluid meaning in Latin; they could very well have meant something akin to proienai).

5) Abel's whole personhood comes out of Eve, as neither part of it is left inside of Eve, nor is he completed after leaving Eve by a second procession and principle. So Eve is principle to Abel in their relationship just like Adam is principle to Abel in their own relationship. Again, however, she is not principally principle (principaliter), or the Greek understanding of aition.

As a final point, I've come across another interesting reason as to why the Latins find the use of the term "through the Son" distasteful. The Greek alternative proposed was "επόρευσις εκ Πατρός δι'Υιού", but the Latins consider this heretical because it implies that the Son participates in some way in the επόρευσις of the Holy Spirit, which Latins insist He does not. The επόρευσις of the Holy Spirit derives absolutely nothing from the Son, but rather belongs solely to the Father as principaliter. To the Latins, the phrase επόρευσις εκ Πατρός δι'Υιού by itself comes dangerously close to assigning to the Son what is properly only the Father's.

Ecce Jason: I'm eagerly awaiting your own idea of how it works. I'm learning a lot through this ongoing conversation.

Peace be with you.

Ray,

Let me begin with the words of St. Gregory Nazianzen:

"You ask what is the procession of the Holy Spirit? Do you tell me first what is the unbegottennes of the Father, and I will then explain to you the physiology of the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Spirit, and we shall both of us be stricken with madness for prying into the mystery of God" (Oration #31).

Again:

"You hear that the Spirit proceeds from the Father? Do not busy yourself about the how" (Oration #20).

In other words, Ray, I do not know exactly how the Spirit proceeds, but neither did I claim to. Nor is there any reason to suppose that we need to know the exact mechanics of how exactly the Spirit was processed. All I know is that Scripture reveals that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and Christ Himself says this at a point where he seems to contrast it with the sending of the Spirit into the world:

"When the Paraclete comes whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness concerning me" (John 15:26).

These are the things that have been affirmed not only by Scripture but by the tradition of the Church. This, you say, is impossible; but are not all things possible with God?

Leaving aside all that, let me be more analytic and to the point: your question erroneously presumes that, if the Spirit is going to proceed from the Father, then he must proceed into a place. I do not know why you assume that. I have no reason for thinking that that is true. Is the Father in a place? Where? Is the Son begotten of the Father in eternity? Where is He begotten to? Inside God or outside? The fact is that these questions themselves have faulty presuppositions. The divine essence is "beyond being" in the sense that the categories of being do not even apply to it. This is why St. Gregory of Nazianzen cautioned us against prying into the mysteries of God unless we be stricken with madness. It makes no sense to demand that the procession of the Holy Spirit be to a "place" just because procession in the world means movement from one place to another. The divine essence is infinite and incomprehensible, and our language regarding it is apophatic; at some point our concepts break down before the unboundedness of God and we must merely accept what has been revealed (that the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father) with reverent silence.

You ask me: "What locations exist inside God's nature - that something can proceed from one place to another - inside God's nature?" I answer: I never said that locations exist in God's nature. That is your presupposition (you think it's necessary for procession for some reason), not mine.

I want to speak frankly for a moment, so forgive me. These questions of yours indicate a true misunderstanding of the doctrine of God. I mean that sincerely and with genuine concern. I mean no offense by them. Humbly, I will submit to you that the idea that the Spirit proceeds from the Father not just into creation, but in eternity as well, is one of the most clearly fixed doctrines of Scripture and Tradition that there can possibly be. I am not sure how you can think otherwise. You say that you do not want to read books, however, so there is little that I can recommend at this point... And I confess to having a hard time speaking with you on these matters at all. Again, forgive me.

I want to close with the words of Orthodox Father John Breck. He was Professor of New Testament and Ethics at St. Vladimir's Seminary (which is where you say your friend is at, so he may have known him), and is presently Professor of Biblical Interpretation and Ethics at St. Sergius Theological Institute. Here you are:

"[In John 15:26] a clear distinction is made . . . between two actions: 'sending' and 'proceeding.' To the Greek Fathers, this indicates a distinction between the inner life of the Trinity and its temporal, 'economic' manifestation within human history, referred to respectively in contemporary theological language as the 'immanent Trinity' (ad intra [which, translated, means roughly: to the inside]) and the 'economic Trinity' (ad extra). Whereas the 'sending' of the Spirit, by the Father or the Son, concerns the earthly mission or economia [economy], the 'procession' has been understood in Eastern patristic thought to refer to an eternal act by which the Father . . . brings forth the hypostatic being of the Spirit and communicates to him his own divine essence. The question is whether we can affirm, in the 'filioquist' perspective of the Latin tradition, that the Son plays an active role in that eternal bringing forth of the Spirit" (Fr. John Breck, Scripture in Tradition, p. 170-171).

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

Ghosty,

I'm about to bow out of this discussion because it's becoming clear to me that there is just too much background lacking on behalf of all of us involved, so that we're getting nowhere and we're going around in circles. However, I did want to ask you where you got this from: The reason I ask is that not only that I have never heard this in my studies, and not only do St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John of Damascus, and so on, use this expression, but Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople even used it at the Seventh Ecumenical Council and was not, as far as I know, reprimanded. You say the Latins consider this heretical, but have you read the clarification on the filioque from the Vatican? It says (with some emphasis added): Thoughts?

God bless,
Jason

Let me be as explicit as I can be: the East denies precisely what it is that the West affirms, i.e., it denies that the Holy Spirit proceeds "by way of" the Son. There is a manifestation of the Spirit through the Son, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the procession of the Spirit as hypostasis.

Thus the East holds a position that denies precisely what it is that St. Thomas affirms in the Summa, and that the Council of Florence teaches in its decree.

Moreover, "proienai" has nothing to do with the existential origin of the Spirit and therefore the Son is not a cause, source, origin, or principle of the hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit. The term "proienai" concerns the "shining forth" of the Spirit through the Son as divine energy, it has nothing to do with the hypostatic origin of the Holy Spirit, and so there is no sense in which the Son can be thought of as a cause of the Spirit, not even with the expression "by way of," thus the Western teaching is not compatible with the doctrine of the East.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Hello everyone,

I am coming in on the tale of end of this, though I have been following it. First, thanks to all who participated. It's a well thought out debate I think. I just want to post my own two bits about the following quote from
Apotheoun.

This seems like a strong statement (especially for a Byzantine Catholic)-- that the gap is unbridgable. Even the Eastern Orthodox are generally moving away from this position. If we look at Bishop Ware for example...

"The filioque controversy which has separated us [Eastern Orthodox and Catholics] for so many centuries is more than a mere technicality, but it is not insoluble. Qualifying the firm position taken when I wrote [my book] The Orthodox Church twenty years ago, I now believe, after further study, that the problem is more in the area of semantics and different emphases than in any basic doctrinal differences"

So I guess my question is that if Ware's position becomes the widely accepted stance of Eastern Orthodoxy (which seems to be slowly happening at least from my own experience) then would that be enough for you to believe the two teachings are compatable? Or would you think that the EO had made a mistake and continue to hold to your current thought? Just curious. Thanks again.

Welcome... yes... it is pretty darn exciting! Some well thought out digging going on here - with very capable people.

If iit gets you thinking and digging into your books - it is very worth your time.

-ray

Nowhere have I said that the "filioque" problem is insoluble; instead, what I have made clear is that any solution that makes the Son a cause, source, origin, or principle (actively or passively) of the hypostatic existence of the Holy Spirit is not compatible with the Byzantine theological tradition. The hypostatic procession (ekporeusis) of the Holy Spirit is from the Father alone, and so the Spirit does not hypostatically proceed either "from", "through", or "by way of" the Son.

Moreover, I do not think that the Florentine decree can be conformed to the doctrinal tradition of the Eastern Churches, and so it cannot form the basis of any future restoration of communion between the East and the West.

As far bishop Ware's comments are concerned, they do not seem all that substantive (at least as quoted), and so without a fuller explanation from him about his understanding of the hypostatic origination (ekporeusis) of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone, and of the Spirit's eternal manifestation (proienai) in the divine energy through the Son, I cannot really judge his position. But that being said, I sincerely doubt that he would be willing to compromise divine revelation itself (cf. John 15:26) and hold that the Son is a principle or cause of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit.

To understand better the distinctions I have mentioned, i.e., between the Spirit's hypostatic procession and His eternal manifestation in the divine energy, I suggest reading the Tomus of Blachernae (A.D. 1285), which gives the official position of the Byzantine Church on this issue (and which was also the official act whereby the Eastern Church rejected the union proposed by the Council of Lyons).

One final note, I do believe that the "filioque" as it was held during the time of St. Maximos the Confessor is conformable to the teaching of the Byzantine Church, but sadly the later Western Councils (Lyons and Florence) have moved the Western teaching beyond that original conception of the "filioque" and have made the Son a co-principle (or a single principle) with the Father in the procession of the Holy Spirit as hypostasis, and this idea cannot be conformed to the teaching of the Eastern Church at any time in its history.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Link to the definition of the Council of Blachernae: Tomus of 1285

If you mean to say that the Byzantine church rejects the Latin form... you are mistaken.

Have I missed your meaning here?

-ray

The Byzantine Catholic Church may accept the Latin form, but the Byzantine Orthodox certainly do not.

Moreover, to accept the Latin doctrinal expression, at least as it is found in the Councils of Lyons and Florence, leads ultimately to the rejection of the Cappadocian understanding of the Trinity, since clearly the Cappadocians, and those who followed them (e.g., St. Maximos, St. John Damascene, St. Photius, Gregory of Cyprus, St. Gregory Palamas, et al.) reject any type of causality by the Son in the hypostatic relations of the Trinity. The Father is the sole cause of the Son and the Spirit, the former by generation and the latter by spiration, and to ascribe any kind of causality to the Son leads either to ditheism or modalism.

Blessings to you,
Todd

There are over 14 churches which follow the Byzantine rites.

The Albainian Church, Bulgarian Church, Byelorussian, Croation, Gegorian, Greek, Hungarian, Italo-Albanian, Melkite, Romanian, Russian, Rutenian, Slovackian, and Ukranian, and let us not forget this one - the Byzantine Catholic church.

Some understand the correct meaning of the filoque in Latin theology and some others add words and imagine meaning that is not there through following the fallible human mistakes of the non-ecumenical Council of Blachernae regarding their gross misreading of the Latin filoque - by adding all kinds of words and thoughts to it that was not part of the Latin form.

The same was done to the Copts who were wrongly accused of being Monophysites, excommunicated, shunned, and called heretics... which they were not. So this kind of misunderstanding raised to the level of divine truth - has happened before.

Now that canon of the Council of Blachernae - is fallible right? As fallible as the Orthodox canon which states that any member who allows himself to be treated by a Jewish doctor - must be excommunicated. Or at least we can ignore it like the Orthodox ignore the canon which states that the Bishop of Rome has first place among the bishops… right?

Does this mode of speaking help things?

Or - are you open minded enough with charity and efforts at human understanding - to entertain the idea that some - unintentional - misunderstanding - might have taken place… ?

The word hypostasis does not appear in the Latin form - what right did they have (Blachernae) to insert that meaning into it... and then accuse the Latins of it ??

The only thing that Blachernae rightly condemned - is their own personal interpretation of it. They condemned themselves over it. And pinned it on the Latins.

That is my personal opinion. It is getting that way from the lack of charity and simple human understanding that some (not all) Orthodox display when dealing with the subject. It is very Calvinistic - as if they were personally denying Christ - if they even consider earlier Orthodox members had made a human error on such an issue - while any Orthodox who comes to understand the real meaning of the Latin filoque and says so - is practically shunned and made to fear he stepping over into heretic-land.

Sorry … my charity sometimes wears thin over how many times we Latins re-explain it once again - and meet only deaf and uncharitable ears who perpetuate this mistake and prolong the separation of the churches.

Ta Ta.

It is time for me to leave this subject before I lose all charity in light of this persistent falsehood that separates the churches. The devil - have his way.

-ray

Dear Ghostly...

You are essentially right in your interpretation of the filoque. I did like the garden hose slimily. I re-read it slowly several times. Where did you get that? If you do not mind – I may use it sometime.

Don't let anyone talk you out of your understanding by snowballing you with out of context quotes, words added to it that it does not have, and tons of useless knowledge substituting for even a bit of human understanding.

I see no reason to go back to a heartless slavery to the letter of the law that Jesus freed us from.

I leave this thread now.

Nice to have met you.

-ray

Dear Ray you said:

"The only thing that Blachernae rightly condemned - is their own personal interpretation of it. They condemned themselves over it. And pinned it on the Latins."

I say:

BRAVO!

In Christ,

Zenovia

On this topic it is clear that we will have to agree to disagree.

It may be that in order for me to embrace fully the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of A.D. 381, and the writings of the Cappadocians, Maximos, Damascene, and Palamas, et al., that I will have to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. I thank RayK in particular for this new insight.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Dear Ghosty, and All Involved,

Clearly this discussion has been overrun with ad hominem assertions against persons rather than fruitful dialogue concerning the issues at hand. I am saddened to see this, and ask forgiveness for whatever part in it I may have had. Respectfully, I will likely be bowing out of this conversation after this post. I wish only to add some words of caution.

Ghosty, you have been advised: While I do not know to whom this particular barb is personally referring, I hope you will take me at my word when I say that my aim has never been to "snowball" anyone, and furthermore that I do not believe quotes have been submitted out of context. Such statements require support, of course, so I encourage you to investigate things on your own. I had hoped that this dialogue would involve that sort of mutual investigation and discussion, and it has up until this point; I have had no problems with you at all, and I hope you have had no problems with me. I have enjoyed discussing things with you and I believe that you understand where I'm coming from. Apparently, however, others do have certain grievances here. I am sorry to see that, and I ask forgiveness for what cause I may have had in it.

To all, I would like to also say that I do not feel that what has been posted here has been "tons of useless knowledge substituting for even a bit of human understanding." Ghosty, Apotheoun, and others of us have engaged in friendly dialogue precisely with the purpose of understanding one another and ferreting out where the disagreement really lies, or if there even is one. We have done hard work trying to do this. Time and time again we have gone "back to the drawing board," so to speak. This has all been done in a spirit of charity, and I thank all of the aforementioned people for the opportunity to dialogue. I know that we were at least approaching this with the aim of understanding, and I hope that -- despite the characterizations of others -- some of that has actually been achieved.

We have been advised not "to go back to a heartless slavery to the letter of the law that Jesus freed us from." I would submit that this is a terribly uncharitable mischaracterization of what is really going on here. To add some perspective, consider the First Ecumenical Council and its response to the Arian controversy: some of the most crucial discussion involved disputes over one letter (i.e., the dispute was over whether the proper word for the Creed was homoousion or homoiousion)). I would be quite dismayed if that Council was ended without a solution because someone there might have thought that they had returned to "heartless slavery to the letter of the law." While certainly there is such slavery, I would humbly contend that discussions about important articles of faith are not (at least, not always) examples of such slavery; sometimes what one believes and says really is important (if that were not the case, applying that test to the First Ecumenical Council would -- God forbid! -- have left Arianism within the realms of Orthodoxy). Again, I do not believe there is any support to be offered for thinking that we are submitting to this "slavery" here by freely talking amongst ourselves about an issue that has been one of importance for the reunion of churches. We have been dialoguing as open-minded companions here, at least until these most recent and unfortunate posts. I hope that such dialogues, without these latter interruptions, can continue on this board in the future.

God bless, Everyone,
Jason

That is my impression reading the words of the Council as well. In fact, if John Beccus had said what he said in the Latin Church he would likewise be condemned. The Son is not, and can not be understood as, "cause" in the sense of aiton. Likewise, the union between the Father and the Son is absolutely not aiton. Only the Father is aiton, in Latin principaliter. To say that the Son has any function as aiton of the person of the Holy Spirit is absolute heresy. That is not what the Latins have ever said, and it is not how it is defined at the Council of Florence.

What does appear to have happened is a miscommunication of what the Greeks intended. The writings of the Council of Florence indicate a profound misunderstanding of the Greek Fathers, if indeed they are using "cause" to mean aiton (we REALLY need an original Greek copy of the decree). What's very noticible, however, is that the Latins say "according to the Greeks", but then they do not use the same terminology to explain their view. In light of the distinction of "principaliter" we've been discussing, this is a very important fact!

Principle, in Latin principium, does not have the connotation of "deriving itself from", but rather is simply "starting point". Latins were not unaware of the ambiguity this caused, which is why Thomas Aquinas stressed that the Son is principle in the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. In order to ensure the understanding that the actual origin of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit is preserved and understood, they coined the term principaliter to describe the Father's role. The reason that they stress that the Son is the principle of the person of the Holy Spirit is precisely to avoid the possible confusion of having part of the person of the Holy Spirit coming out of the Son, and part of it coming out of the Father seperate from the Son.

Let me stress this: by principaliter it is understood that, in processing (ekporeusis) the whole and complete personhood of the Holy Spirit, he "hands it off" to the Son, who then spirates (breathes) the Holy Spirit out. This occurs eternally, and not simply when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit out on the Apostles, but it doesn't not represent the participation of the Son in ekporeusis.

Ecce Jason: I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so definative in my statements. I blame it on my fatigue.

To clarify, I believe the Latins do not use the Greek phrasing of "through the Son" even when speaking Greek because of the implications it holds in Latin, not because of what it entails in Greek. A few posts back I mentioned that Thomas Aquinas illustrates this conundrum while explaining something else. To refresh it a bit, in Latin we can reverse the "through" in most cases when either the relationship between the two is unknown otherwise, or they share the same characteristics. This is also true in English to some extent, for example:

"Fire burns through heat" becomes "heat burns through fire". Since both heat and fire can be said to burn on their own. By saying the former, you are not ruling out the latter.

We can also make up a term and have the same result due to the indeterminate nature of the second term (this is the case in the Creed). This happens when we say "Brian works through gog,' or "gog works through Brian." Now, even if we first say "Brian made gog", we are not actually subordinating gog to Brian in such a way that prevents reversal, because we don't know from context what characteristics were imparted to gog by Brian. If gog is a super-human AI that takes over and controls Brian's actions (unknown, but possible), then "Brian works through gog" loses its automatic subordinating element, and actually means that Brian is able to work by the will of gog, and also that gog works through Brian, who acts as his pawn.

Now, in the Creed "through" is actually used once, when it says "through Him all things were made," refering to the Son. The context has already been provided, however, because earlier in the Creed it says of the Father "maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen." Since the Father is already understood to be the maker of everything when standing on His own, the "through" of the Son is necessarily understood to be subordinate to the Father. In the case of procession, however, nothing is mentioned until we get to the case of the Holy Spirit. There is no context for procession, even though the Son is understood to be "begotten" of the Father. This leaves open room for reversal in the manner of Brian and gog. That's just begging for another Western heresy; it's practically inviting it right into the Creed.

Now whether the Westerners were concious of this fact or not is another matter, but I think it's very good that they didn't go down that road given the linguistic implications of Latin. We have enough problems as it is. Now, again, this isn't to say that the expression in Greek is heretical, or even that it's heretical in Latin when properly understood, only that within the context of the Creed it poses more problems in Latin than filio que.

One intriguing and simple solution to this problem that I've seen put forth online is to simply place through with and, so it would read as "proceeds from the Father and through the Son", which in Latin would be "qui ex Patre et per Filium procedit".

And don't worry, I'm not interested in any ad hominems. Only the ideas matter to me here

God bless.

Ghosty,

Thanks for your most recent words. Without getting into the nitty-gritty (because, as I recently said, I'm trying to withdraw from this discussion at least for now), I wanted to ask you about this: I'm not quite sure if that's true, particularly because Beccus was in frequent interaction with the Latins, including the legates of the Pope and the Pope himself (via letters). Plus, see this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia , which even states that the doctrines which Beccus was defending at the Council of Blachernae just were "the doctrines of the Western Church" (it says not only that he defended them, but that he defended them "energetically" and is easily the first among those Greeks who adhered to union with Rome).

God bless,
Jason

Apotheoun said:

This seems to be an incorrect assertion to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, prior to the Council of 1285, Maximus articulated that there was no rejection on either side of the meanings of the other. In the Council itself, the issue of "by way of" never seems to come up at all, at least not that I have seen. Remember, the Council would originally have been written in Greek, and in reading the English here I can only assume that when the Council says "cause", that's the usual translation in English of "aiton", which is properly "sole origin". To apply "aiton" to the Son, or to the Father with the Son, is absolutely, fundamental heresy in Latin thinking. It would be the same as applying "principaliter" to the Son, or to the Father together with the Son, which is explicitly overruled, most notibly by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Lastly, the recent position by the Orthodox scholars, who are of course favorable to the said Council of 1285, and base their principles on it, has been one of increasing understanding that the Latin distinction does not, and has never once been understood to, impart "aiton" to the Father and the Son together. The main issue that remains is to ultimately settle what is meant, and by ultimately I mean sitting down jointly and definatively, because the Latin Church has put forth its understanding and the Orthodox have found it quite agreeable, pending joint "hashing out" and declaration.

The real question, which is becoming more and more clear to the Orthodox and Catholics, is whether or not the filioque can be permitted to stay in the Latin expression of the Creed, and the Latin Church does not have any dogmatic assertions on that matter to conflict with any ultimate decision.

What must be remembered, however, is that it may indeed be necessary to have a slightly different text in Latin than in Greek in order to properly convey the Greek understanding. In previous centuries, before linguistics was well understood, this was not viewed as a necessity. As linguistics has become a science, however, we have seen more and more that word-for-word translation can actually do much more to harm understanding than to promote it. Language is not matter of translating terms, but also meanings, and sometimes the terms and meanings that are harmonious in one language are conflicting or ambiguous in another.

I tutor English to non-English speakers of many different languages, and the FIRST question I ask them, after their name, is what their native language is. This is absolutely critical to conveying concepts and meanings. Here's an example of the problems that can occur:

In English, the word "in" can mean both "inside" and "with". For example, if a concert Hall was called Harmony, you could say "When we sing in Harmony, we will sing in harmony." The former refers to inside, and the latter to "with". The problem is that, grammatically speaking, both uses of harmony are nouns, so you can't make a rule saying "if in is followed by a noun, it means inside", or visa versa with "with". You literally have to "know what is meant" just by knowing.

The problem arises, in translation, when the connotation of a word in one language contradicts the connotation in another. If the word for "inside" in some hypothetical language implies "inside but absolutely seperate from", you've got a major issue to overcome in translating "When singing in Harmony, we will sing in harmony". Furthermore, they may not have a word for harmonious singing if they are a culture that only practices soloistic singing or chanting. So when we translate the word "in" in the first part of the sentance, it makes perfect sense to use the word for inside in the new language, because the people within the building do not become part of the building by entering. No conflicts. When we get to the second part, however, we have a very difficult problem. We can't use the word for inside, and then just say "we mean it in a different way this time", because the word for "inside" carries a connotation that completely contradicts the actual meaning. In this case, the people singing should be completely seperate, perhaps in different rooms, or singing at different times, or even singing different songs. Furthermore, there's no word in this culture for "singing together", because it doesn't happen in that culture.

We end up where the only way to translate the text is to leave the first part "as is", and turn the second part into something like "we will use our voices, while in the same room, at the same time, singing the same song, to mix the notes in such a way that is pleasing to the ears". Now the person in the other culture can somewhat grasp what is intended, but still doesn't "know" the difference between the uses of "in", because the solution is unique to this particular case, and can't be applied to, say, "walk a mile in my shoes". What's more, the text of the translation can't be translated back into English unless one knows exactly what was originally translated. After all, mix notes doesn't necessarily imply that the different people are using different notes, only that the notes of the song are being mixed in a pleasing way. That could be ANY song sung in concert, not necessarily a harmony part. After all, the point of a song isn't to mix notes in a way that sounds bad.

Going back to the original issue, the solution in the Catholic Church, with its multiplicity of languages, has been to use different texts of the same Creed depending on the language being spoken. It expresses the same truth, but in order to do so it absolutely must be different, and possibly mutually exclusive when it comes to translating back and forth, as in my example above. If Latins take out the filioque, it leaves open the possibility that a fundamental aspect of the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and of the Son too, will be denied (as happened in ancient history in the West, though that may not be a problem that would arise anymore. On the other hand, it would give the Mormons claim to professing the Creed, as their theology is ONLY combatted, within the Creed, with the filioque), and if they use "through", as the Creed stands, it lends itself to giving TOO much to the Son when spoken in Latin.

It's a linguistic problem that has HUGE significance, and must be dealt with jointly and charitably. What we are trying to do here in this thread is simply to see if Eastern Catholics are "left out in the cold" by the Council of Florence, and to me it seems clear that given the Latin understanding of the terms used in the Decree, Eastern Catholic Theology is not only welcome, but definatively protected. If that were not the case, then at some point in the 500 years of unity, a Latin-speaking Pope would have ordered an abandonment of the Eastern conception upon hearing it on the basis of the Council of Florence, and it's silly to assume that no Latin theologians in that time ever heard of Energies and Hypostasis. :p

God bless!

RayK: Use whatever you like of mine. The water hose bit was all me, as was the Adam/Eve/Abel thing, but that was with inspiration from Thomas Aquinas. I can't guarentee that any of it will appease everybody, but it's all just my humble attempts at clarifying the Latin position, as a Latin Catholic.

God bless!

Ghosty,

You and I have two very different understandings of the nature of the Trinity.

I hold that the Father alone is cause within the Godhead, and so He alone causes the Son by generation, and He alone causes the Spirit by procession (ekporeusis). This causal power of the Father is what differentiates Him from the other two hypostases (persons) of the Trinity (i.e., the Son and the Spirit).

That being said, I accept that there is a manifestation (proienai) of the Spirit through the Son, not as hypostasis (person), but as energy, and that this eternal manifestation is not causal, but is a true shining forth of the Spirit from the Father through the Son within the divine energy, both temporally and eternally.

Nevertheless, neither the Son nor the Spirit are causes within the inner life of the Godhead, for the property (idiomata) of causation is a characteristic of the hypostasis of the Father alone. Moreover, because the Father alone is cause within the Godhead it follows that there is only one God.

The West, beginning with Augustine, has a different conception of the Trinity, which primarily focuses upon the unity of the divine essence over the trinity of hypostases.

The West thinks that the Son can be a "co-principle" with the Father in originating the Holy Spirit as hypostasis (i.e., at the level of the Spirit's subsistent being), but for an Easterner this idea involves the confounding of the hypostases (persons) of the Father and the Son, which is simply a form of Sabellianism. In the Byzantine tradition it is impossible to ascribe the properties of the Father to the Son, without simultaneously destroying the reality of the Trinity of persons.

As I see it, you continue to confuse the hypostatic origin of the Spirit, which comes only from the Father, with the eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son as divine energy. That is why I cannot agree with you when you speak of the Spirit proceeding "by way of" the Son.

Finally, I should point out that I changed rites, after having been a Latin Rite Catholic for more than 17 years, because of these theological issues.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Apotheun: No, nothing you described in your Eastern description conflicts with the Western description, even taking Augustine's terms into account.

After some pondering, it occured to me that part of the problem we are facing is due to a subtle but linguistically inherent logical fallacy when translating Latin to Greek.

Namely, this is the fallacy of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc", or "after this, therefore because of this". Now Latins have a word that implies "cause" in the Greek sense, and also includes an issuing forth of something: propagare (from which we get propigate).

Now consider this for a minute: if the Latins had intended to indicate true cause on the part of the Son in any way, why don't they use the term "propagare" in reference to the "Father together with the Son"? We have a word that means that, means it much more directly than any other word in Latin, why insist on using "principium" to the exclusion of "propagare"? It's because principium does not carry the inherent connotation of propagare.

Now, whatever is being used to indicate "principle" in Greek seems to carry with it an inherent "propagare" that does not exist in Latin. A principium can also be a propagare, but it's not directly implied in the word itself. Again, we need to see the Council of Florence in Latin, but I see nothing to indicate from the English translations that propagare is being used. If they had meant propagare, they would have said it, as they do elsewhere.

To use your words with insertion:

Now propagare isn't the same word as causa, but it does seem to properly sum up the Eastern conception of transmitting personhood. If the Latins had intended to say that the Son was a cause in the Greek sense, the aiton, they would have used propagare. The fact that the Council explicitly states that the Latins call it "principium" indicates that they were avoiding using "propagare".

Yes, we have different explainations of the Trinity, based on different starting points, but they don't pose any contradiction for eachother, nor are either of them ruled out by the Council of Florence. What's more, the difference in views was established before even the Council of Chalcedon, and was not a cause for disunity then.

Ecce Jason: The reason that John Beccus' pronouncements would be considered heretical in Latin is precisely because I can only assume that he was using the word "aiton" when he said that the Son was a cause of the Holy Spirit. Such an understanding is absolutely heretical in Latin, and would be the equivalent of calling the Son "co-principaliter" and/or propagator of the Holy Spirit. Had he said in Latin, what he said in Greek, he would have anathemized so fast his head would have been spinning.

Now whether or not Beccus intended that is another question, and I'm no expert. The words he used in Greek were absolutely, disgustingly heretical, however.

As for the Catholic Encyclopedia, it's not always a good source on matters regarding the Schism. For example, it also definatively states that Patriarch Photius was excommunicated by Pope John VIII, which is positively false. Photius died in communion with Rome.

God bless.

Okay, really, this is intended to be my last post in this thread.

Ghosty, if the Catholic Encyclopedia isn't good enough -- and I agree that it has some bad errors (although I don't know if the thing about Photius is one of them; I think he was actually excommunicated but then restored to a communion at a later time) -- you can look at some of the work of the aforementioned Fr. Joseph Gill, S.J. (who wrote the book on the Council of Florence). His praise for John Beccus is equally high. See his book Church Union : Rome and Byzantium.

As for your other concerns, mark the following words of St. Thomas Aquinas. They seem to me to be more or less definitive. In them he explains that by "principle" the Latins do mean a cause of the origin of Persons, they just don't say "cause" because it sounds to them like it makes the Son a creature and so on. He also indicates that he understands the Greek distinction between hypostases and the essence. Finally, he even says that the Son participates in the procession of the Spirit with the Father because He (the Son) shares the Father's property of spirating the Spirit and He actively spirates the Person of the Spirit with Him(!). This is all from his work, Contra Errores Graecorum [Against the Errors of the Greeks] (I've added emphasis in certain places). The last quote is probably the most damaging:

If you want to see the Latin, it's here .

God bless,
Jason

It seems to me that you're reading an awful lot into Thomas's words. Since you seem to have access to an English edition of the Contra erres Graecorum, would you be so kind as to forward me (possibly to my PM box) the entirety of the actual passage being used? My Latin is rusty, to say the least, and a lot is left out in what you post here.

That being said, you are presenting an argument with some of the text, and I'll address them by each major point:

First I would point out that him saying three reasons is not a limiting factor. He's simply articulating three reasons, and ennumerates them. Secondly, the fact that the Father is called principle of the Son, which is absolutely true, is not an indication that principle shares the same meaning/implication as aiton. He's simply expressing that it's customary to use the term principle, which describes the relationship between two points on a given trajectory. The Father is definately principle, so that term is used to describe the Father's relationship to the Son.

Don't you think that, while throwing around principle so often, he would have included it in this list if it meant "consubstantial origin"? On the contrary, he's setting these aside from the term principium, which does not imply a consubstantial origin. Principium refers only to the relationship between two points, the starting point of a particular motion as it relates to two points. Let me use an example from Thomas Aquinas' discourse in the Summa about the Holy Spirit:

I highlight one particular example just for ease of explaination, but all are suitable. In this case, love of gain is most certainly the principle of the artisan working, because the love of gain leads the artisan to work. Love of gain is hardly consubstantial with working, in this case manual work. They couldn't be more different, in fact, as one is emotional and the other is material. There is no essence or substance communicated whatsoever. Compare this with the word fount, which relates directly to what is coming from the fount. A fount of water, for example, pours water, and that water is the same water that is coming from the fountain; they are consubstantial. A fount of water does not put forth blood, and a fount of blood does not put forth water, and the water that the fount puts forth is not distinct from the "founting", but it is rather one continuous stream. While the fount is the principle of the water, principle does not imply consubstantiality, and does not imply that any substance or essence is communicated by the principle. Indeed a fountain made of stone could be the principle of the water, and it would not send forth little fountains made of stone (differing essence), nor would the water be of one body with the stone fountain (differing substance). :p

I don't think he's saying that they mean the same at all, and I think that's reading far too much into it, perhaps even with an improper intention behind it. He's saying that the Greeks were attempting to explain something, just as when Latins use the term principle. He's not equating the terms, but rather the efforts. I see absolutely nothing here to indicate otherwise, and in fact it seems to be a rather odd twisting of his words.

Again the term "persons" is bracketed in where there's no reason to believe it should be. In fact, knowing Aquinas' work it's far more likely that he means substance there, rather than persons. I'm not sure why you're doing it that way.

Regardless, nothing in this paragraph seems to pose any problems, so I'm not certain why you quote it. All he's saying is that each person should have some term attached to them: generates, begotten, proceeds. If you mean to imply that he's indicating a kind of union between the Father and the Son because the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father and the Son, that's nonsense in this context because that would imply a unity of personhood, that the Father and the Son are not distinct persons, and Thomas Aquinas certainly never held to that.

If you mean to say that Thomas Aquinas is, by recognizing that hypostasis means person, he is suggesting by saying that the "Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son" implies that the hypostasis or personhood is derived in any way from the Son, you'd be sorely mistaken. The Holy Spirit passes through the Son, like a train through a city, but derives nothing from such a procession, just as the train derives nothing from the city.

Yes, so? At most this indicates a personal error, and reflects in no way on the dogma put forth by the Council of Florence, as that document never uses the term "active". The discussion isn't whether or not Thomas Aquinas is an infallible witness to the doctrine, as he's anything but! The discussion is what the terms mean, and none of the terms under discussion are used in this passage. In fact, the term "spirate" doesn't appear in the Creed either, and that the Son actively spirates the Holy Spirit is not a confession of Faith for the Latins.

In fact, that the term "activa" is specifically used here, but does not appear in the documents of the Council of Florence in relation to spiration, indicates that "activa" is not implicitly understood in spiration. If it was, one would expect it to either always be used in Latin, or never used at all. That it appears here, specifically to show a kind of unity with the Son and the Father, indicates that the modifier "activa" is required to demonstrate the "unity of image" that the author is attempting to demonstrate.

Furthermore, it's not clear whether or not this is Thomas Aquinas quoting another, or saying it himself; we don't even know to whom to apply the error.

In short, don't be too quick to apply meanings to words that aren't implicit in the text. Careful analysis shows that your fears are unfounded, at least in the case of this particular work.

As for your first remarks, yes Photius was excommunicated, but he was actually restored to communion by John VIII, and died in communion. My point is that the Catholic Encyclopedia states that John VIII excommunicated Photius yet again, which is utterly false.

As for the work of Fr. Joseph Gill, you've already said that he's tried to make the Greeks out to be bafoons, which indicates he has a polemical bent to him. Also, just because he praised Beccus doesn't mean he fully understood what the implications of "aiton" are in Greek. Recent proclaimations by the Catholic Church have explicitely ruled out any participation of the Son in the "aitia" of the Trinity. This much is said in the "Filioque Clarification" document you linked to earlier. Therefore, if Beccus ascribed aitia in any way to the Son, his views are heretical in the Latin Church.

Since you don't want to participate in the thread anymore, feel free to PM me any response you have.

God bless!

Dear Ghostly...

You see Ghostly - there is some type of blockage. No matter how many times we explain the meaning of the Latin Filoque - it is as if they simply can not hear it. It is spooky.

We agree with them (as to what the filoque should not mean) - and they insist we don't agree. It is truly spooky.

An indoctrination so strong that when we present the color blue - they actually physically see - the color red.

Of course, this IS the human condition - isn't it. We are all subject to this illusion in varied degrees and areas. So when we see it - we must say "There go I." There is the cause in humanity of all my troubles.

I have come to the strong conclusion that the differences between the Latin church and certain Eastern churches (the differences that hurt) are all based in habits of human nature and culture.

The Greek fathers were - a two sided coin. On one hand they solidified the church socially - on the other hand we were lucky to survive them. The early Councils were more a sign of the arguments and differences - than a sign of their like mindedness. The Councils were needed - because they we so because these fathers were so boisterous, argumentative, separated, divided, and self righteous. The Councils were rather a sign of some unity while underneath there was seething disunity… bishops imprisoning other bishops… excommunications being thrown about by everyone… the slaughter of the pagans by the edict of Byzantine bishops… imprisonment of the Pope of Rome by the Byzantine Emperor… the confiscation of all property of any Christian who professed the Pope as head of the church - the imprisonment of such as Maximus for having sympathies for Rome … the excommunication of any church which refused to adopt Greek as their theological language (as the Copts and church of Ethiopia refused).

The sins of the Byzantine empire - would later be repeated in Europe with the sins of the Latin hierarchy partnering with Kings - and result in the Reformation.

Spiritual authority and state authority (Christendom) had an effect of a rapid social growth of the church. But - at the expense of its spiritual life. Perhaps it would have been better to demand that all bishops must live in the desert - wear rags - and eat locust - and never be called “your holiness”.

So while we can all look back at the Byzantine Empire and lament that it was indeed … ‘paradise lost’… it was a paradise that simply can not be. Not here. Not ever. Not in physical form.

Cheers.
-ray

Ray,

With all due respect, I would like to suggest that your personal innuendos are not only uncharitable, but are also offensive. The implication that there is almost something defective in those of us who are having trouble with the Latin filioque (i.e., there is some "blockage," and we apparently can't see what is clearly the truth -- despite the fact that this truth has been an area of disagreement amongst holy men and scholars for over 1000 years) is not only crass, it is an impediment to true Christian dialogue, to true desire for unity, and to any sense of civility in discussion. I would suggest, in fact, that such insults against persons are often the very factor that makes the reunion of churches so difficult, and I would suggest, on that basis, that you reconsider them.

Forgive me if this post is too aggressive and/or offensive.

May God bless you,
Jason

Ghosty,

I'll likely PM you. However, I should point out (and I should have pointed out originally) that the translation of the Latin is not my own, and the words inserted in brackets were not inserted by me but by the translator. Sorry for being unclear about that. In any case, I did check some of the translation against the Latin and it generally seems correct.

Here's the link to the translation: Against the Errors of the Greeks .

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

Ghosty,

I'm going to go ahead and post this here only because I think Apotheoun may be interested in it too. Hope you don't mind! I have placed a * by one of the points that I think is maybe most important.

In regard to the fact that Thomas mentions there are three reasons for the Latins not to use "cause," instead of "principle," you say:

I didn't say that it was a limiting factor. However, he does say quite plainly that there are three reasons, and they are the only ones he gives, and he mentions nothing about not wanting to make the Son a "cause" of the Holy Spirit. That's all I claimed. My reasons for mentioning this are twofold: first, Thomas was quite possibly the philosopher that made as many distinctions and gave as many reasons as possible, so the fact that he gives only these three reasons is still significant (and he does not say there are "at least" three reasons, just that there are three -- and Thomas is known for his carefulness, too); second, this shows that Thomas and the Latins (Contra Errores Graecorum was written for the Pope, after all) understood exactly what the Greeks meant by "cause," and they allowed the Son to be both a cause and a principle of the Holy Spirit at Florence, which seems to at least speak slightly against your claim that the Latins would regard the Greek view as almost heretical and as actually heretical were it said in Latin (again, Thomas suggests nothing of the sort, and is in fact explaining why it would really be fine to say "cause"). Even so, this is not a central point, so let's continue.

When Thomas says that, instead of cause, the Latins use other words to denote consubstantial origin, you object:

What you're saying about "setting these aside" from principium is simply not in the text; in fact, Thomas' language absolutely does suggest quite the opposite of what you're saying: namely, that he does means to include the word "principle" here -- and to define that term as something having to do with consubstantial origin -- because the paragraph immediately before this one is the one wherein he says that, instead of using "cause," the Latins use "principle or originator" (you see the implicit equivalance; the terms are interchangeable), and then he says there are three reasons. This passage just is his first reason, so obviously he's connecting them and taking it as an explanation for why they use words like "principle" or "originator" to express origin instead of cause (as he explicitly says in the preceding paragraph). Even when he lists the words, he explicitly says we use these words "and other names of this kind." So the idea that he's setting aside terms that are clearly delineated against "principle" is stretching it, at best.

You then attempt to argue from a passage in Thomas' Summa Theologicae that "principle" does not mean consubstantial origin. I will grant your point that it does not always mean consubstantial origin, but I never claimed that, and that point is not relevant to my argument here. In fact, again, the passage you cite from the Summa is irrelevant against Thomas' point in the Contra Errores Graecorum because, in the Summa, he explicitly says that he's talking about "principle" with reference to final cause, whereas in the Contra Errores he explicitly says that he is talking solely about originating cause and not final cause. This is shown in the portions already quoted.

Regarding Thomas' third reason, you say:

The portion in ellipses is not that significant; you can refer to the full translation I provided in the thread, if you'd like (and as I noted, the translator added the bracketed words, not me). In fact, referring to the translation will make my next point...

As for my "leaping by this point," I don't understand why you say that. My claim with regard to Thomas' third reason was only this: principle refers to origin even more than "cause" does. You say I'm leaping, but here's what Thomas says in that passage: "No word pertains to origin, if indeed we can speak of origin with regard to the divine, as much as 'principle' does." I almost said exactly what he said, word for word.

Now, you say that his only point is that "principle" applies to "origin" the best. Fine, even that is generally the same as the point I'm making. However, you then go on to make the rather odd claim that "origin" here does not mean "deriving its essence and substance." Well, first, in saying this you assume another point of yours (namely, that Thomas has set "principle" aside from the other words) which I already addressed above. But beyond that, you also again go against the most obvious reading of what Thomas is saying. The entire context of this passage is Thomas elaborating on the manner in which the Father is the origin of the essence, substance, and Person of the Son. Maybe I should have included more of the translation in the first post. If you go and look at the words he includes from other saints (which I left out, using ellipses) you'll see him referring to words that speak of eternal origin outside of time, "the cause of his true origin," the Council of Nicea (which was almost exclusively about the intra-Trinitarian essence), and so on. In fact, a few sections down in the Contra Errores, Thomas explicitly refers to the essence being begotten and spirated, and even says that the Son spirates the essence of the Holy Spirit (see the section entitled "How it should be understood when it is said that essence is begotten in the Son and spirated in the Spirit").

Finally, when I present what is probably the most clear proof that Thomas means exactly what I've been claiming that he means (and, by the way, what scholars have generally always taken him to mean), you say:

But you have been using Thomas and his use of terms to defend Florence, by attempting to say that "cause" doesn't mean (in Thomas or medieval Latin) what we think it means! This shows patently that that defense does not work (and see also the * point below).

This is a red herring. No one ever claimed he was infallible, but see my preceding point about your defense technique. Further, Thomas' doctrine set the background for the discussion at Florence, and it more or less was the doctrine of the Latins at that time (again, see my * point below); if you doubt that, read the dialogues that took place at Florence. Montenero was a Thomist, or at least an Augustinian.

You also say: Again, refer to my prior points about his doctrine setting the background, however. And even so, the notion that "spiration" is not necessarily active is, as far as I know, just incorrect. See Metropolitan John's comments on the Filioque Clarification; even from the time of the Cappadocians the procession was understood to be an activity. And even if this point doesn't hold, Thomas still admits that the Father and the Son share a property, and this is indeed expressed at Florence when it says that the procession of the Spirit is given to the Son by the Father. You can say that Florence doesn't explicitly say that a property was shared, but that seems to be the most obvious reading of it, and it is also the way it has been historically understood, and it is also the way of reading it that meshes with Thomas (and the rest of Latin theology; see my * point below) here.

You then add: * It seems to me quite clear. He's quoting Richard of St. Victor, and he's doing so approvingly. Look at the translation. He also quotes Augustine in the same passage. In fact, what's even more damning is that he says explicitly that *this "error" is an example of the custom among Latins(!)*. This is the way the Latins themselves customarily understand it, not just Thomas. This is the Latin understanding, and this understanding is the backdrop for Florence. I don't know what more to say beyond that.

Read the rest of the text, too. It's all the more telling.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

Dear Jason,

Glad to see you are still hanging around the thread I have a question for you. In your opinion to what extent does each side get to be the arbiters of their own tradition? For example, if Ghosty was telling you that Eastern Orthodox actaully misinterpreted some part of Gregory of Palamas and in fact Ghosty had decided that his interpretation was the correct one would that bother you at all? I mean isn't each side in the best positon to interpret their own saints? I have a feeling that is part of the reason RayK is expressing frustration, though perhaps a bit too strenuously Anyway, just a thought I had. I wish I was knowledgable enough to contribute something more substanitive, lol.

Matt,

Actually, your question is a very good one. And, to some extent, my answer is (get ready for this), "I don't know." I'll explain why by doing something very Thomistic and making a distinction.

Each side certainly gets to interpret which statements are authoritative (in the sense of having binding implications) and which are not. Each side certainly gets to tell me what their doctrinal position is. However, this doesn't mean that each individual on either side automatically has more authority than an individual on another side when it comes to historical interpretation or interpretation of individual authors. For example, if a Roman Catholic scholar who specializes in the doctrine of St. Gregory Palamas came here and started telling me that I had Palamas all wrong, I'd certainly listen up. Of course, the scholar could present a fairly conclusive case as to why by showing me where I went wrong, and so on. So, that's the distinction. When it comes to Roman Catholic doctrine, Roman Catholics are certainly in a better position to tell me what their doctrine is, and if they are Roman Catholics of authority (i.e., they're bishops or some such thing), I basically have to shut up and listen to some extent. However, when it comes to an historical matter such as what a given historical figure did or did not say, there's some room for discussion and argument, I'd think; again, if a scholar came here and started slapping me around with evidence, I wouldn't say that he was wrong just because he's not Orthodox or some such thing. So as long as the discussion is one that involves historical evidence, I don't really think anyone's privileged; one can present a case regardless of what "side" one is on.

Now this brings up an interesting question. Because clearly, the Roman Catholic Church has interpreted its filioque doctrine in a way that's very compatible with what Ghosty and others are saying; their recent filioque clarification is all about the Father as the sole source of the Trinity. So, to some extent, I may be arguing more against historical Roman Catholicism at Florence (i.e., 15th century Roman Catholicism) than contemporary Roman Catholicism and its actual doctrine. On the other hand, however, there is some extent to which Florence still is the doctrine. For example, one problem in the debate is whether or not the Son is a "cause" of the Holy Spirit. The recent Filioque Clarification suggests that the Roman Catholic Church does not think so anymore, but I would say that the document is unfortunately ambiguous at this point: for example, whenever it refers to the fact that the Father is the sole cause of the Spirit, it says, "sole Trinitarian cause," or sole cause "in a principal, proper, and immediate manner," i.e., it always uses a modifier to qualify the statement, never saying flat-out that the Father is the sole cause. It leaves open the possibility that the Son is a cause in a non-principal or mediate manner, and even that is not acceptable in the East.

So, I don't know if I've even answered your question, but there it is. Let me know.

God bless,
Jason

By the way, in case there's confusion, I'm not Orthodox; I'm Eastern Catholic.

Jason,

That was a good answer and I agree with most of it. One point is who gets to say what Florence really stated about the filioque? I mean if the Latins say that Florence does not contradict their current position and that you are just misinterpreting it to say what it was never intended to then should you defer to them? I mean they are the ones who accept it as a valid council. I'm not sure of the answer to that one.

Matt

For a very different view of the Western understanding of the "filioque" than that presented by Ghosty, I recommend reading Fr. David Coffey's (Marquette University theology department) article entitled "The Roman Clarification on the Filioque" (International Journal of Systematic Theology, volume 5, no. 1, March 2003), where he explains in connection with the decree of the Council of Florence, that "The document [i.e., the decree] makes it clear that the 'principle' (principium) and 'cause' (causa, Greek: aitia) of the Spirit is the Father and the Son, not just the Father alone, and that it is the eternal production of the Spirit, not just His appearance in the economy, that is being addressed," for as he goes on to say, ". . . what the Spirit has from the Father and the Son is 'His essence and subsistence' (essentiam suam suumque esse subsistens). His essence is His divine nature, His consubstantiality with the other divine persons; and His subsistence is His personhood." [Fr. David Coffey, The Roman Clarification on the Filioque, IJST, vol. 5, no. 1, March 2003: pages 9-10] In other words, Fr. Coffey holds that Florence, following in the tradition of Augustine and Thomas, is teaching that the Spirit has His participation in the divine essence and His hypostatic origin from the Father and the Son as "principle" and "cause" (aitia). In the article he asserts quite clearly that the Eastern idea that the Father alone is the "cause" of the Spirit is wrong, and was condemned at Florence. The two positions, that of the East and that of the West, as presented respectively by the Cappadocians (and all who followed them in the East) and by St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Council of Florence (in the West), are very different. The West is asserting precisely what the East will not affirm, i.e., that the Son is involved in the hypostatic origination of the Spirit, and that the Father and the Son are both true causes (aitia) within the Godhead.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Jason,

I agree with you that St. Thomas believes that he is relating the "custom of the Latins" in connection with the "filioque," and he clearly is faithful to the Augustinian view of the Trinity.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Matt,

See Apotheoun's above remarks for some important information regarding the Roman Filioque Clarification. Fr. Coffey at least interprets it how I interpret it.

Furthermore, the problem, as I mentioned, is that the clarification on the filioque is ambiguous. The current position expressed in the clarification is that the Father is "sole Trinitarian cause," or sole cause "in a principal, proper, and immediate manner;" the position expressed at Florence is that the Son is a cause too. How do you make these statements compatible? By noting that the "clarification" always uses modifiers to qualify what it means when it says the Father is sole cause; it says that the Father is the sole principal or immediate cause, but taking this in tandem with Florence's statement that the Son is also a cause seems to suggest that the current view, as expressed by Rome itself, is exactly what I'm saying: that the Son is a mediate cause of the orign of the Holy Spirit.

If they come out with another, less ambiguous clarification that says that they mean something else by this, sure, I'll listen to it. Until then, this is the only way I see of making their statements consistent... Unless they've repudiated Florence, which I am unaware of.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

I agree with you, the "Clarification on the Filioque," which I view as a good thing overall, is rather ambiguous, i.e., it is open to various interpretations, even some that are diametrically opposed to each other.

In my humble opinion it supports the Florentine view that the Son, at least in some way, can be a "cause" of the hypostasis of the Spirit, and that ultimately is problematic.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Actually, it directly contradicts that view, at least so far as cause is concerned in the Greek sense (which is what the Tomas speaks of):

Of particular note is that Trinitarian Principle is not the same as principle in general, but refers to a very specific kind of principle in the Trinity. Notice that the Council is saying that the Father is the sole aitia of the Holy Spirit. See also:

There doesn't seem to be any room for interpreting the Son as aitia, or "cause" in Greek. There is no possible reading of the document that allows for this. In light of that, and the fact that this comes from a Pontifical Council, Fr. David Coffey's exposition is completely out of line with the Vatican's understanding of the terms used. I'm afraid that when it comes to such matters, the Pontifical Council at the Vatican holds far greater sway than some lone theologian.

Incidently, and not to make this a personal attack on Coffey, but isn't this the same man who also denied that Christ rose from the dead ? If so, he's been explicitly censured by the CDF (under then Cardinal Ratzinger) in the past. Quite frankly, the man isn't a good first option in discussing the views of the Catholic Church. He's also complained, IIRC, with the Vatican II Council using Scripture to back up its assertions, since he does not view Scripture as inerrant. Can you find a more reliable, and, well, orthodox source for this view? He's not a man that is known for believing what the Church teaches.

If you're basing your concerns on the writings of a theologian who has been investigated, and censured, by the Church's Inquisition, I think you've got little reason to be worried

Now to Ecce Jason's remarks:

Thank you for not intending offense in your statements. At this point in the discussion it is necessary to directly address eachother's readings and interpretations, and this could lead to the idea that we're making ad hominems. I also want to stress that I'm in no way intending to direct anything against you as a person. So if my following words seem harsh or overly direct, please remember that they are in the context of us directly addressing misconceptions we may personally hold.

Thomas Aquinas, while brilliant, also died 200 years before the Council of Florence, and was not privy to the discussion there. Furthermore, the fact that the Latins understood the Greeks to be calling the Son "aitia" indicates that they did not understand the full implication of the term, because such a view has been torn down since, most espescially in the above Pontifical Council. If they had understood the implications, and intended what you say they did, they would have used the term "principaliter", which is the term both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine used to describe the Father as sole author of the Trinity. You've never demonstrated that the Latins have ever called the Father together with the Son "principaliter", with the exception of Fr. Coffey who's comments directly contradict the Pontifical Council's statements on the matter.

If you grant that, then why insist that it does mean consubstantial origin in the Council of Florence, when there's absolutely no indication that this was their intention. Furthermore, Thomas is speaking here about terms that imply consubstantial origin, and based on what you concede, and the fact that Thomas doesn't list principle among the terms, seems to indicate that you are trying to work contradiction into a text (Council of Florence), where none is self-evident.

You admit that the meaning could be as I say, but still seem to be bending over backwards to put yourself in opposition with the Church. I don't say this in order to be harsh, but rather as a fellow Catholic who doesn't want to see my brother suffer spiritually over a contradiction of his own making.

Which leads me to another point: if the Church intended as you say, why hasn't it made an official effort over the six centuries since the Council to stamp out Eastern theology? In a time of rampant heresy (Protestantism), and an active Inquisition that was pulling scientists to trial for so much as suggesting that Scripture might have been in error (Galileo), not one effort was made to eliminate Eastern theology. Jesuit theology was suppressed more than Eastern theology, and this during a time when Rome exerted more power over Easterners than any time in its history. If there was a contradiction, why didn't anyone, East (c'mon, man, the Melkites!) or West, bring it up?

Again, the beliefs of Thomas Aquinas are not espescially important in this discussion. He's only significant insofar as the definition of terms is concerned. Thomas Aquinas held numerous views that were subsequently overruled by the Church. The question is not whether Thomas Aquinas believed a certain way (and given the Latin priority of unity of substance of the Trinity, it's not clear that he believed what you imply he did), but rather if the language of the Council of Florence implies a meaning contrary to Eastern theology. As we've both already stated, principle does not necessarily imply consubstantial origin. One can't use this particular excerpt of Thomas' to indicate that it does.

The only way that the Council of Florence stands against Eastern theology is if principle implies consubstantial origin (not in the sense of ousia, which is common to all the Persons, but rather of a unique consubstantial relationship between Father and Son), and nothing indicates that it does. What I will concede is that the Council of Florence allows too much leeway in believing, erroneously, that the Son participates in the aitia (in the Greek implication), or the principaliter of the Holy Spirit, but it absolutely does not enforce the view that it does. Like the original Creed of Nicea, it does not say enough, but what it says is not heresy, nor does it cause conflict between East and West.

Incidently, both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Communion recognize that the Council of Florence can't be a basis for unity, and this is part of the reason: it's too ambiguous and prone to multiple contrary interpretations. Ambiguity is the exact opposite of clear and decisive declaration, however, which seems to be your concern about it contradicting Eastern theology.

No, it doesn't. If principle means what you say it means, he would not have illustrated non-consubstantial principles in the Summa. The fact that he thought that the Father and Son were a consubstantial element is irrelevant, because it is never stated in the Council of Florence that they are. If they had intended to say exactly what Thomas Aquinas says about them being consubstantial, they could have easily used the words to do so. The fact that they didn't doesn't seem to be an oversight given the use of the term "principaliter" in Augustine's writings (and Thomas by way of Augustine). If the Father and Son are consubstantial in the personal origin of the Holy Spirit, then the term "principaliter" could not be used to describe the Father alone, which Augustine absolutely does, and the Pontifical Council absolutely does.

A final thought on this subject regarding Thomas' personal views on the matter, it must be understood in the perspective of the Western understanding of the Trinity as starting with the essence and substance of God (ousia) and working out from there to understand the Persons. Since God is one being, one entity, it is erroneous to say that the Father and Son are of different substances. To do so would be to endorse the Mormon view that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct people who cooperate in a "corporation" called God. When speaking purely on individual relations, however, and in the Greek perspective, they can be said to be different substances. Since that view did not predominate in the West, however, the Persons (all of them) are always spoken of as consubstantial, of one ousia. To illustrate:

Who is the Father? God is.
Who is the Son? God is.
Who is the Holy Spirit? God is.
Who begets the Son? God does.
Who processes the Holy Spirit? God does.

This does not lead to Modality in Latin thinking, because the Persons are presented as distinct relations between eachother, and these relationships can only be understood one on one, hence principle is the term used. The only way it could lead to Modality is if the Persons did not relate to one another, but rather only to the substance and essence of God. Incidently, the Orthodox admit that the filioque exists in this aspect of God! From the response to the Pontifical Council by Metropalitan John of Permamon:

In other words, the Greeks absolutely understand that the filioque exists eternally in the ousia God, and the Latins always speak on the level of ousia when they refer to the Father and Son being consubstantial in processing the Spirit.

Did you read the paragraph below or above that one? After quoting some Scripture and Greek thought, he actually points out that this is an error in thinking, and corrects it! He says:

He does not quote it approvingly at all, but rather to correct an error of presumption on the meaning of image on the part of the Latins. Not a single mention in his clarification that the Son takes His "image" from the Father because He also "actively spirates" the Spirit, but rather because the Son's "duty", as it were, is the be the "face" of the Father, but eternally (in being begotten) and temporally (in being conceived in Mary). Since the Holy Spirit is not put forth so as to be a face of God, as Jesus was on Earth, the Holy Spirit is not "the image of the Father". But, as the Holy Spirit shares the essential attributes, He is the image of God.

Thomas Aquinas, in quoting Richard of Victor, is doing nothing more than his typical "Objection 1: style of argumentation, and then proceeds to demolish the objection, which itself is usually based on the writings of a Father or major philosopher. In doing this he is actively trying to correct a Western error by bringing it in line with the Greek Fathers (such as St. Athanasius, whom he quotes in the paragraph above the one you cited). This is classic Thomas Aquinas, and it is actually in support of the Greek arguments and claims (which is also classical Thomas Aquinas).

Honestly, I've seen nothing to indicate that Thomas Aquinas held an erroneous view of the Trinity, applying a unique consubstantial relationship to the Father and Son that was not shared by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, even if he did, I've seen nothing that indicates that this error was carried over to the Council of Florence. In fact, the man's brilliance in identifying potential Western misunderstandings, as in the case of Richard of St. Victor, still appears to be second to none.

In short, if you go into the readings with the intention, or even inclination, of turning ambiguity against yourself, you will do so. What must be remembered, however, is that definative statements are being pulled out of ambiguous ones, and that is an unhealthy thing to do, espescially in light of the Pontifical Council's clarification on the matter. The ambiguity of previous documents should not be viewed as a reason to object to the definativeness of later ones, anymore than the ambiguousness of the Council of Nicea on the matter of the Holy Spirit should be seen as grounds for rejecting the formula established by the Council of Constantinople.

Remember, there is no need to set the Magisterium against you when the Magisterium is taking your side

Peace be with you, and God bless!

Actually, it directly contradicts that view, at least so far as cause is concerned in the Greek sense (which is what the Tomas speaks of):

Of particular note is that Trinitarian Principle is not the same as principle in general, but refers to a very specific kind of principle in the Trinity. Notice that the Council is saying that the Father is the sole aitia of the Holy Spirit. See also:

There doesn't seem to be any room for interpreting the Son as aitia, or "cause" in Greek. There is no possible reading of the document that allows for this. In light of that, and the fact that this comes from a Pontifical Council, Fr. David Coffey's exposition is completely out of line with the Vatican's understanding of the terms used. I'm afraid that when it comes to such matters, the Pontifical Council at the Vatican holds far greater sway than some lone theologian.

Incidently, and not to make this a personal attack on Coffey, but isn't this the same man who also denied that Christ rose from the dead ? If so, he's been explicitly censured by the CDF (under then Cardinal Ratzinger) in the past. Quite frankly, the man isn't a good first option in discussing the views of the Catholic Church. He's also complained, IIRC, with the Vatican II Council using Scripture to back up its assertions, since he does not view Scripture as inerrant. Can you find a more reliable, and, well, orthodox source for this view? He's not a man that is known for believing what the Church teaches.

If you're basing your concerns on the writings of a theologian who has been investigated, and censured, by the Church's Inquisition, I think you've got little reason to be worried

Now to Ecce Jason's remarks:

Thank you for not intending offense in your statements. At this point in the discussion it is necessary to directly address eachother's readings and interpretations, and this could lead to the idea that we're making ad hominems. I also want to stress that I'm in no way intending to direct anything against you as a person. So if my following words seem harsh or overly direct, please remember that they are in the context of us directly addressing misconceptions we may personally hold.

Thomas Aquinas, while brilliant, also died 200 years before the Council of Florence, and was not privy to the discussion there. Furthermore, the fact that the Latins understood the Greeks to be calling the Son "aitia" indicates that they did not understand the full implication of the term, because such a view has been torn down since, most espescially in the above Pontifical Council. If they had understood the implications, and intended what you say they did, they would have used the term "principaliter", which is the term both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine used to describe the Father as sole author of the Trinity. You've never demonstrated that the Latins have ever called the Father together with the Son "principaliter", with the exception of Fr. Coffey who's comments directly contradict the Pontifical Council's statements on the matter.

If you grant that, then why insist that it does mean consubstantial origin in the Council of Florence, when there's absolutely no indication that this was their intention. Furthermore, Thomas is speaking here about terms that imply consubstantial origin, and based on what you concede, and the fact that Thomas doesn't list principle among the terms, seems to indicate that you are trying to work contradiction into a text (Council of Florence), where none is self-evident.

You admit that the meaning could be as I say, but still seem to be bending over backwards to put yourself in opposition with the Church. I don't say this in order to be harsh, but rather as a fellow Catholic who doesn't want to see my brother suffer spiritually over a contradiction of his own making.

Which leads me to another point: if the Church intended as you say, why hasn't it made an official effort over the six centuries since the Council to stamp out Eastern theology? In a time of rampant heresy (Protestantism), and an active Inquisition that was pulling scientists to trial for so much as suggesting that Scripture might have been in error (Galileo), not one effort was made to eliminate Eastern theology. Jesuit theology was suppressed more than Eastern theology, and this during a time when Rome exerted more power over Easterners than any time in its history. If there was a contradiction, why didn't anyone, East (c'mon, man, the Melkites!) or West, bring it up?

Again, the beliefs of Thomas Aquinas are not espescially important in this discussion. He's only significant insofar as the definition of terms is concerned. Thomas Aquinas held numerous views that were subsequently overruled by the Church. The question is not whether Thomas Aquinas believed a certain way (and given the Latin priority of unity of substance of the Trinity, it's not clear that he believed what you imply he did), but rather if the language of the Council of Florence implies a meaning contrary to Eastern theology. As we've both already stated, principle does not necessarily imply consubstantial origin. One can't use this particular excerpt of Thomas' to indicate that it does.

The only way that the Council of Florence stands against Eastern theology is if principle implies consubstantial origin (not in the sense of ousia, which is common to all the Persons, but rather of a unique consubstantial relationship between Father and Son), and nothing indicates that it does. What I will concede is that the Council of Florence allows too much leeway in believing, erroneously, that the Son participates in the aitia (in the Greek implication), or the principaliter of the Holy Spirit, but it absolutely does not enforce the view that it does. Like the original Creed of Nicea, it does not say enough, but what it says is not heresy, nor does it cause conflict between East and West.

Incidently, both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Communion recognize that the Council of Florence can't be a basis for unity, and this is part of the reason: it's too ambiguous and prone to multiple contrary interpretations. Ambiguity is the exact opposite of clear and decisive declaration, however, which seems to be your concern about it contradicting Eastern theology.

No, it doesn't. If principle means what you say it means, he would not have illustrated non-consubstantial principles in the Summa. The fact that he thought that the Father and Son were a consubstantial element is irrelevant, because it is never stated in the Council of Florence that they are. If they had intended to say exactly what Thomas Aquinas says about them being consubstantial, they could have easily used the words to do so. The fact that they didn't doesn't seem to be an oversight given the use of the term "principaliter" in Augustine's writings (and Thomas by way of Augustine). If the Father and Son are consubstantial in the personal origin of the Holy Spirit, then the term "principaliter" could not be used to describe the Father alone, which Augustine absolutely does, and the Pontifical Council absolutely does.

A final thought on this subject regarding Thomas' personal views on the matter, it must be understood in the perspective of the Western understanding of the Trinity as starting with the essence and substance of God (ousia) and working out from there to understand the Persons. Since God is one being, one entity, it is erroneous to say that the Father and Son are of different substances. To do so would be to endorse the Mormon view that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct people who cooperate in a "corporation" called God. When speaking purely on individual relations, however, and in the Greek perspective, they can be said to be different substances. Since that view did not predominate in the West, however, the Persons (all of them) are always spoken of as consubstantial, of one ousia. To illustrate:

Who is the Father? God is.
Who is the Son? God is.
Who is the Holy Spirit? God is.
Who begets the Son? God does.
Who processes the Holy Spirit? God does.

This does not lead to Modality in Latin thinking, because the Persons are presented as distinct relations between eachother, and these relationships can only be understood one on one, hence principle is the term used. The only way it could lead to Modality is if the Persons did not relate to one another, but rather only to the substance and essence of God. Incidently, the Orthodox admit that the filioque exists in this aspect of God! From the response to the Pontifical Council by Metropalitan John of Permamon:

In other words, the Greeks absolutely understand that the filioque exists eternally in the ousia God, and the Latins always speak on the level of ousia when they refer to the Father and Son being consubstantial in processing the Spirit.

Did you read the paragraph below or above that one? After quoting some Scripture and Greek thought, he actually points out that this is an error in thinking, and corrects it! He says:

He does not quote it approvingly at all, but rather to correct an error of presumption on the meaning of image on the part of the Latins. Not a single mention in his clarification that the Son takes His "image" from the Father because He also "actively spirates" the Spirit, but rather because the Son's "duty", as it were, is the be the "face" of the Father, but eternally (in being begotten) and temporally (in being conceived in Mary). Since the Holy Spirit is not put forth so as to be a face of God, as Jesus was on Earth, the Holy Spirit is not "the image of the Father". But, as the Holy Spirit shares the essential attributes, He is the image of God.

Thomas Aquinas, in quoting Richard of Victor, is doing nothing more than his typical "Objection 1: style of argumentation, and then proceeds to demolish the objection, which itself is usually based on the writings of a Father or major philosopher. In doing this he is actively trying to correct a Western error by bringing it in line with the Greek Fathers (such as St. Athanasius, whom he quotes in the paragraph above the one you cited). This is classic Thomas Aquinas, and it is actually in support of the Greek arguments and claims (which is also classical Thomas Aquinas).

Honestly, I've seen nothing to indicate that Thomas Aquinas held an erroneous view of the Trinity, applying a unique consubstantial relationship to the Father and Son that was not shared by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, even if he did, I've seen nothing that indicates that this error was carried over to the Council of Florence. In fact, the man's brilliance in identifying potential Western misunderstandings, as in the case of Richard of St. Victor, still appears to be second to none.

In short, if you go into the readings with the intention, or even inclination, of turning ambiguity against yourself, you will do so. What must be remembered, however, is that definative statements are being pulled out of ambiguous ones, and that is an unhealthy thing to do, espescially in light of the Pontifical Council's clarification on the matter. The ambiguity of previous documents should not be viewed as a reason to object to the definativeness of later ones, anymore than the ambiguousness of the Council of Nicea on the matter of the Holy Spirit should be seen as grounds for rejecting the formula established by the Council of Constantinople.

Remember, there is no need to set the Magisterium against you when the Magisterium is taking your side

Peace be with you, and God bless!

Apotheoun:

Actually, it directly contradicts that view, at least so far as cause is concerned in the Greek sense (which is what the Tomas speaks of):

Of particular note is that Trinitarian Principle is not the same as principle in general, but refers to a very specific kind of principle in the Trinity. Notice that the Council is saying that the Father is the sole aitia of the Holy Spirit. See also:

There doesn't seem to be any room for interpreting the Son as aitia, or "cause" in Greek. There is no possible reading of the document that allows for this. In light of that, and the fact that this comes from a Pontifical Council, Fr. David Coffey's exposition is completely out of line with the Vatican's understanding of the terms used. I'm afraid that when it comes to such matters, the Pontifical Council at the Vatican holds far greater sway than some lone theologian.

Incidently, and not to make this a personal attack on Coffey, but isn't this the same man who also denied that Christ rose from the dead ? If so, he's been explicitly censured by the CDF (under then Cardinal Ratzinger) in the past. Quite frankly, the man isn't a good first option in discussing the views of the Catholic Church. He's also complained, IIRC, with the Vatican II Council using Scripture to back up its assertions, since he does not view Scripture as inerrant. Can you find a more reliable, and, well, orthodox source for this view? He's not a man that is known for believing what the Church teaches.

If you're basing your concerns on the writings of a theologian who has been investigated, and censured, by the Church's Inquisition, I think you've got little reason to be worried

Actually, it directly contradicts that view, at least so far as cause is concerned in the Greek sense (which is what the Tomas speaks of):

Of particular note is that Trinitarian Principle is not the same as principle in general, but refers to a very specific kind of principle in the Trinity. Notice that the Council is saying that the Father is the sole aitia of the Holy Spirit. See also:

There doesn't seem to be any room for interpreting the Son as aitia, or "cause" in Greek. There is no possible reading of the document that allows for this. In light of that, and the fact that this comes from a Pontifical Council, Fr. David Coffey's exposition is completely out of line with the Vatican's understanding of the terms used. I'm afraid that when it comes to such matters, the Pontifical Council at the Vatican holds far greater sway than some lone theologian.

Incidently, and not to make this a personal attack on Coffey, but isn't this the same man who also denied that Christ rose from the dead ? If so, he's been explicitly censured by the CDF (under then Cardinal Ratzinger) in the past. Quite frankly, the man isn't a good first option in discussing the views of the Catholic Church. He's also complained, IIRC, with the Vatican II Council using Scripture to back up its assertions, since he does not view Scripture as inerrant. Can you find a more reliable, and, well, orthodox source for this view? He's not a man that is known for believing what the Church teaches.

If you're basing your concerns on the writings of a theologian who has been investigated, and censured, by the Church's Inquisition, I think you've got little reason to be worried

Now to Ecce Jason's remarks:

Thank you for not intending offense in your statements. At this point in the discussion it is necessary to directly address eachother's readings and interpretations, and this could lead to the idea that we're making ad hominems. I also want to stress that I'm in no way intending to direct anything against you as a person. So if my following words seem harsh or overly direct, please remember that they are in the context of us directly addressing misconceptions we may personally hold.

Thomas Aquinas, while brilliant, also died 200 years before the Council of Florence, and was not privy to the discussion there. Furthermore, the fact that the Latins understood the Greeks to be calling the Son "aitia" indicates that they did not understand the full implication of the term, because such a view has been torn down since, most espescially in the above Pontifical Council. If they had understood the implications, and intended what you say they did, they would have used the term "principaliter", which is the term both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine used to describe the Father as sole author of the Trinity. You've never demonstrated that the Latins have ever called the Father together with the Son "principaliter", with the exception of Fr. Coffey who's comments directly contradict the Pontifical Council's statements on the matter.

If you grant that, then why insist that it does mean consubstantial origin in the Council of Florence, when there's absolutely no indication that this was their intention. Furthermore, Thomas is speaking here about terms that imply consubstantial origin, and based on what you concede, and the fact that Thomas doesn't list principle among the terms, seems to indicate that you are trying to work contradiction into a text (Council of Florence), where none is self-evident.

You admit that the meaning could be as I say, but still seem to be bending over backwards to put yourself in opposition with the Church. I don't say this in order to be harsh, but rather as a fellow Catholic who doesn't want to see my brother suffer spiritually over a contradiction of his own making.

Which leads me to another point: if the Church intended as you say, why hasn't it made an official effort over the six centuries since the Council to stamp out Eastern theology? In a time of rampant heresy (Protestantism), and an active Inquisition that was pulling scientists to trial for so much as suggesting that Scripture might have been in error (Galileo), not one effort was made to eliminate Eastern theology. Jesuit theology was suppressed more than Eastern theology, and this during a time when Rome exerted more power over Easterners than any time in its history. If there was a contradiction, why didn't anyone, East (c'mon, man, the Melkites!) or West, bring it up?

Again, the beliefs of Thomas Aquinas are not espescially important in this discussion. He's only significant insofar as the definition of terms is concerned. Thomas Aquinas held numerous views that were subsequently overruled by the Church. The question is not whether Thomas Aquinas believed a certain way (and given the Latin priority of unity of substance of the Trinity, it's not clear that he believed what you imply he did), but rather if the language of the Council of Florence implies a meaning contrary to Eastern theology. As we've both already stated, principle does not necessarily imply consubstantial origin. One can't use this particular excerpt of Thomas' to indicate that it does.

The only way that the Council of Florence stands against Eastern theology is if principle implies consubstantial origin (not in the sense of ousia, which is common to all the Persons, but rather of a unique consubstantial relationship between Father and Son), and nothing indicates that it does. What I will concede is that the Council of Florence allows too much leeway in believing, erroneously, that the Son participates in the aitia (in the Greek implication), or the principaliter of the Holy Spirit, but it absolutely does not enforce the view that it does. Like the original Creed of Nicea, it does not say enough, but what it says is not heresy, nor does it cause conflict between East and West.

Incidently, both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Communion recognize that the Council of Florence can't be a basis for unity, and this is part of the reason: it's too ambiguous and prone to multiple contrary interpretations. Ambiguity is the exact opposite of clear and decisive declaration, however, which seems to be your concern about it contradicting Eastern theology.

No, it doesn't. If principle means what you say it means, he would not have illustrated non-consubstantial principles in the Summa. The fact that he thought that the Father and Son were a consubstantial element is irrelevant, because it is never stated in the Council of Florence that they are. If they had intended to say exactly what Thomas Aquinas says about them being consubstantial, they could have easily used the words to do so. The fact that they didn't doesn't seem to be an oversight given the use of the term "principaliter" in Augustine's writings (and Thomas by way of Augustine). If the Father and Son are consubstantial in the personal origin of the Holy Spirit, then the term "principaliter" could not be used to describe the Father alone, which Augustine absolutely does, and the Pontifical Council absolutely does.

A final thought on this subject regarding Thomas' personal views on the matter, it must be understood in the perspective of the Western understanding of the Trinity as starting with the essence and substance of God (ousia) and working out from there to understand the Persons. Since God is one being, one entity, it is erroneous to say that the Father and Son are of different substances. To do so would be to endorse the Mormon view that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct people who cooperate in a "corporation" called God. When speaking purely on individual relations, however, and in the Greek perspective, they can be said to be different substances. Since that view did not predominate in the West, however, the Persons (all of them) are always spoken of as consubstantial, of one ousia. To illustrate:

Who is the Father? God is.
Who is the Son? God is.
Who is the Holy Spirit? God is.
Who begets the Son? God does.
Who processes the Holy Spirit? God does.

This does not lead to Modality in Latin thinking, because the Persons are presented as distinct relations between eachother, and these relationships can only be understood one on one, hence principle is the term used. The only way it could lead to Modality is if the Persons did not relate to one another, but rather only to the substance and essence of God. Incidently, the Orthodox admit that the filioque exists in this aspect of God! From the response to the Pontifical Council by Metropalitan John of Permamon:

In other words, the Greeks absolutely understand that the filioque exists eternally in the ousia God, and the Latins always speak on the level of ousia when they refer to the Father and Son being consubstantial in processing the Spirit.

Did you read the paragraph below or above that one? After quoting some Scripture and Greek thought, he actually points out that this is an error in thinking, and corrects it! He says:

He does not quote it approvingly at all, but rather to correct an error of presumption on the meaning of image on the part of the Latins. Not a single mention in his clarification that the Son takes His "image" from the Father because He also "actively spirates" the Spirit, but rather because the Son's "duty", as it were, is the be the "face" of the Father, but eternally (in being begotten) and temporally (in being conceived in Mary). Since the Holy Spirit is not put forth so as to be a face of God, as Jesus was on Earth, the Holy Spirit is not "the image of the Father". But, as the Holy Spirit shares the essential attributes, He is the image of God.

Thomas Aquinas, in quoting Richard of Victor, is doing nothing more than his typical "Objection 1: style of argumentation, and then proceeds to demolish the objection, which itself is usually based on the writings of a Father or major philosopher. In doing this he is actively trying to correct a Western error by bringing it in line with the Greek Fathers (such as St. Athanasius, whom he quotes in the paragraph above the one you cited). This is classic Thomas Aquinas, and it is actually in support of the Greek arguments and claims (which is also classical Thomas Aquinas).

Honestly, I've seen nothing to indicate that Thomas Aquinas held an erroneous view of the Trinity, applying a unique consubstantial relationship to the Father and Son that was not shared by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, even if he did, I've seen nothing that indicates that this error was carried over to the Council of Florence. In fact, the man's brilliance in identifying potential Western misunderstandings, as in the case of Richard of St. Victor, still appears to be second to none.

In short, if you go into the readings with the intention, or even inclination, of turning ambiguity against yourself, you will do so. What must be remembered, however, is that definative statements are being pulled out of ambiguous ones, and that is an unhealthy thing to do, espescially in light of the Pontifical Council's clarification on the matter. The ambiguity of previous documents should not be viewed as a reason to object to the definativeness of later ones, anymore than the ambiguousness of the Council of Nicea on the matter of the Holy Spirit should be seen as grounds for rejecting the formula established by the Council of Constantinople.

Remember, there is no need to set the Magisterium against you when the Magisterium is taking your side

Peace be with you, and God bless!

Well that was rather odd! For those reading this, those posts all say the same thing, so don't worry about trying to read all of them :p

Quoting the "Clarification on the Filioque" issued by the Vatican in 1995 as support for what the Tomus of 1285 and what the Council of Florence taught begs the question, because both Jason and I have said that the "Clarification" is ambiguous in its presentation of the issue, in that it invariably qualifies its statements about the Father as sole cause of the other two persons of the Trinity by saying things like, "The Holy Spirit, therefore, takes his origin from the Father alone (ek monou tou Patros) in a principal, proper, and immediate manner." Now for an Easterner the modifying phrase "in a principal, proper, and immediate manner," is problematic, because it can be interpreted to mean that the Son also causes the Holy Spirit, but in a secondary or mediate manner.

Therefore the quotations that you have provided above do not necessarily say what you are asserting that they say, and this is the case because other statements in the same "Clarification" modify the quotations you’ve supplied and make the "Clarification" itself ambiguous.

Moreover, as far as Fr. Coffey's article is concerned, you cannot really refute his argument until you read his argument. Certainly he is not the "Magisterium” and he never presents himself in that way, but as many authors have pointed out, the "Clarification on the Filioque" was anonymously written and was not approved by the Pope as other documents of the Magisterium are, and therefore it remains in some sense an unofficial text of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Moreover, the Council of Florence has asserted that the Latin use of word "principle" and the Greek use of the word "cause" are synonymous, and that is why Fr. Coffey has argued that the Western teaching does make the Son a “cause” of the Spirit’s hypostasis, and that can be verified by simply reading Fr. Coffey's essay in its entirety.

Blessings to you,
Todd

This is irrelevant to the case at hand, because I'm certainly not endorsing everything that Fr. Coffey has written during his lifetime, but what I am saying is that in this particular article he has shown, quite clearly, that the Council of Florence taught that the Latin word "principle" was understood by the Latins themselves as synonymous with the Greek word "cause" (aitia).

Now of course I don't believe that the Greeks have ever taught that idea; rather, that is the teaching of the Latin bishops at the Council of Florence, and you can read many of the deliberations and debates that took place at the Council by reading the translations of the acts of the Council of Florence that can be found in Fr. Gill's book on the Florentine decree.

It is the West, not the East, that said that "principle" and "cause" (aitia) mean the same thing, and it is the West that asserted that the Son is a principle or cause of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, not the East. The East has denied that idea in the Tomus of 1285, and in other documents written both before and after that Council, for as the Byzantine bishops declared at the Council of Blachernae; ". . . we know and believe that the Son is from the Father, being enriched in having the Father as His cause and natural principle, and in being consubstantial and of one nature with the Spirit, which is from the Father. Even so, He is not [i.e., the Son], either separately or with the Father, the cause of the Spirit; for the all-Holy Spirit's existence is not through the Son and from the Son as they who hasten toward their destruction and separation from God understand and teach. [Psalm 73:27] We shun and cut off from our communion those who do not correctly uphold the sound faith but blaspheme blatantly, and think and speak perversely [Acts 20:30] and perpetuate what is most alarming and unbearable to hear."

Clearly the Byzantine Church rejected any notion of the Son as "cause" of the Holy Spirit at the Council of Blachernae, while the bishops at Florence taught precisely the opposite, i.e., they taught that the Son is a cause (in the Greek sense of that term) of the Spirit, for as they declared, "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."

Thus, the two Councils, Blachernae and Florence, are teaching two very different things, the former is teaching that the Son is not a "cause" of the Holy Spirit, while the latter is teaching that the Son is a "cause" of the Spirit, and this was the main point of Fr. Coffey's article, in which he used both the Latin and Greek terminology of the Florentine decree to show that Florence is teaching that the Son is a "cause" (aitia) of the subsistent being of the Holy Spirit.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Apotheoun: Your insistance that the miscommunication at the Council of Florence is definitive strikes me as a bit strange. By the same argument, the Oriental Orthodox should still be called monophysites because that is what the rest of the Church thought they were saying, even though all subsequent history proves otherwise.

The fact that the Council states that the Greek word "aitia" and the Latin word "principium" are synonymous proves only that there was a major breakdown in communication, which is easily seen in all records of the discussions at the Council. Breakdowns in communication do not make for solid Dogmatic pronouncements. Take the passage in question, for example:

The Latins were relying on the Greek testimony to this, and saying that the Greeks had testified that the Son was aitia. This doesn't mean that the Latins knew what the implication of aitia was in Greek, and nothing indicates that this was properly communicated. Indeed, the use of the term "principaliter", and never in relation to the Son, indicates that Latins had in their own language made the distinction that Greeks had with the term aitia; they just weren't aware of the fact that aitia could only mean "principaliter". There's absolutely no reason to suspect otherwise.

As for my excerpts from the Pontifical Councils documents, what is ambiguous about "Sole Trinitarian Cause"? In light of that term, the statement "The Holy Spirit, therefore, takes his origin from the Father alone (ek monou tou Patros) in a principal, proper, and immediate manner," holds no ambiguity whatsoever, espescially with the term proper in there (which, incidently, is the term Thomas Aquinas used). In other words, the Father can properly be said to be the first and immediate cause (aitia) of the Holy Spirit. That is precisely what the Greeks profess.

Your statements that there is no room for mediation in the Trinity in the Tomus don't actually stand up to scrutiny, unless you can point out which part you are refering to. The only parts I find that specifically refer to a mediating role are these:

The Greek term here is aitia, again. Of course it doesn't follow that the Son is aitia of the Spirit just because the Spirit processes through Him from the Father. That's just plain logical fact. Nothing in this statement precludes a mediating role by the Son, however, but rather precludes the notion that, through mediation, He is in some way the aitia of the Holy Spirit. Again I say that is just plain logic.

Again, the fact that there was miscommunication between the Latins and the Greeks, which is obvious from the fact that the concept of Engergies was not even broached, is grounds enough to pressume that the Latins didn't actually know the implication of aitia. Furthermore, the fact that the Latins themselves explicitely demarcate the difference in their own language with the term principaliter indicates that, had they known the implication of the Greek, they never would have used the term "cause" as representing what the Greeks believed, and making it synonymous with principium, because the Latins themself did not view principaliter as synonymous with principium.

On a final note of interest, in re-reading the document for the umpteenth time, I came across a rather amusing terminology that I had previously missed (and remember I can only infer what the actual words in Greek are, since I don't have the original, only English):

Causative principle? As opposed to what kind of principle? If principle necessarily means aitia, as complaints about the Decree of Florence seem to insist, then why in Greek is this distinction made? Now it's quite possible that what is meant here is not principle in the sense of αρχή, which is normally translated into Latin as "principium", but if that's the case it clearly demonstrates the difficulties inherent in translation. If it is the same word normally translated as "principium" (which would make perfect sense, given that English derives the word principle solely from Latin's principium), then this whole debate just got a whole lot more ridiculous, because even the Greeks need to specify on the matter in their own documents. :p

At any rate, I see that this conversation is largely grinding to a halt. Ecce Jason is bowing out, and both Apotheoun and I are pretty much intransigent at this point, and I foresee little new information that could come up to cause either of us to re-evaluate our positions. If it does, or a much more definative argument comes along, then I most certainly will re-evaluate, but until then I'm going to pretty much have to stay where I'm at.

I will ask Apotheoun, however, that if it's possible would you send me a link to Fr. Coffey's article? While I quite frankly don't trust a single implication out of his mouth that isn't personally stamped by the Pope (and not because I demand that of every priest, but because this man literally denied the Resurrection of Christ, and still does for all I know), I'm more than happy to review the facts he presents.

Peace be with you and God bless!

The two quotations in your post, which are taken from the Tomus of 1285, are specifically aimed at refuting the teaching of the Council of Lyon on the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son as from a single principle. Thus, the rejection of this idea found within the decree of Lyons applies equally as a condemnation of the Florentine decree issued about two centuries later.

The first quotation given by you goes on to say:

"This being so, they introduce a plurality and a multitude of causes in the procession of the Spirit, even though this was prohibited on countless occasions. As such, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God." [Tomus of 1285, no. 7]

That is why the East rejects the idea of calling the Son a "cause," "principle," "source," or "origin," of the Holy Spirit, either understood actively or passively, immediately or mediately; in other words, the only way that the East and the West will agree on the issue of the existential procession of the Holy Spirit is for the West to stop using these terms in connection with the Son. But that is precisely what the West has been unwilling to do.

The second quotation that you've provided from the Blachernae Council of 1285 is a condemnation of those Westerners who connect the Father and Son as cause of the Spirit within the immanent Trinity (theologia), with the unified energetic activity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in creating the world (oeconomia). That is what the Tomus goes on to say, in the portion of number nine that you did not quote, i.e., it condemn those who misuse the phrase "through the Son" in connection with creation by applying it to the inner life of the Trinity, for as the Tomus puts it:

"For the formula 'through the Son' here [i.e., in theologia] denotes the manifestation and illumination (of the Spirit by the Son), and not the emanation of the Spirit into being. If this was not so, it would be difficult, indeed, even to enumerate the theological absurdities that follow. To these, who irrationally express such views, and ascribe them to the writings of the saints, and from these stir up a multitude of blasphemies, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God." [Tomus of 1285, no. 9]

In other words, the Son cannot be described as a "cause," "principle," "source," or "origin," of the hypostatic being of the Holy Spirit, because the Eastern phrase, "through the Son," refers to the energetic manifestation of the Spirit through the Son, and not to His existential procession of origin, which comes only from the Father.

Once again, unless the West can abandon any use of the terms, "cause," "principle," "source," or "origin," in connection with the Son, I don't see how the two viewpoints can be coordinated. The West, notwithstanding your protests to the contrary, really is asserting that the Son in some way produces the Holy Spirit as hypostasis, and this is clear from the teaching of the Council of Florence, for as the Latin bishops there said:

". . . 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."

That being said, nothing in the Vatican's "Clarification" indicates that the Holy See has rejected the teaching of the Council of Florence on this issue, and until it clarifies the status of Florence, I don't see how the two sides can be said to agree on the doctrine of the procession (ekporeusis) of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone.

Moreover, I don't believe that the Latin Church views the idea of the Son as a "principle" or "cause" of the Spirit as a "miscommunication"; rather, it views it as a doctrine. Now of course this matter can be easily clarified if the Western Church simply stops calling the Son a "principle," "cause," "source," or "origin," of the Holy Spirit, but as I have said before, so far the Western Church has not been willing to do that.

Finally, as far as Fr. Coffey's article is concerned, if you have access to a university library, you can access the article online through EBSCO, otherwise you'd have to find a copy of the article in the "International Journal of Systematic Theology" itself. I don't believe that the article is available for free on the internet, but can only be accessed through a university library or by registering through EBSCO itself (which involves paying a fee).

Blessings to you,
Todd

In your post you said the following:

But this is precisely what the East is rejecting, i.e., the vague and imprecise use of the notion of mediation.

The Son does not in any way mediate the Spirit's hypostatic origin, and because the Western Church does not differentiate between the hypostatic origin of the Spirit, and His eternal energetic manifestation through the Son, the Western teaching ultimately makes the Son a "principle" of the origin of the Spirit as hypostasis, which is unacceptable. That is why I still hold that you are misreading the Council of Florence, because the Council clearly asserts that the Father and the Son together give the Holy Spirit "His essence and His subsistent being." [Council of Florence, Session 6, 6 July 1439]

The West has collapsed the hypostatic origin of the Spirit, which comes only from the Father, down into His energetic manifestation through the Son. In fact the West doesn't distinguish these two things at all, and that is why it makes the Father and the Son into a single principle of the Holy Spirit's essence and hypostasis.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Ghosty,

We will have to agree to disagree about the doctrine of Thomas. It seems clear to me that he is not at all using Richard of St. Vincent and Augustine as part of an "Objection 1" style arguments as he does in the Summa; he is not objecting to their views on the matter at all, but is in fact endorsing them. I can say nothing more than that I think I've made my case here. It seems that you have misunderstood some of my points, but there is just too much to go back over again.

I will say that you continue to make an argument such as this: "If the Council of Florence meant what Thomas meant, why didn't they just say that?" First, this is an unsound argument from silence and ultimately proves nothing; again, read the debates that took place at Florence and you'll see what they meant, regardless of whether or not they put the identical words into the actual definition. Second, I made a similar argument regarding different terminology at Florence earlier, and you rejected my argument.

Finally, I would say that you are ultimately misunderstanding the Eastern objection to the filioque. Your use of the Tomus of 1285 and the Council of Blachernae suggests this, but Apotheoun is addressing that, so I will say nothing about it. However, the additional continued insistence that the clarification on the filioque has already addressed this issue and has declared that the Father is the "sole Trinitarian cause" and is the "monarch" of the Trinity also suggests that you misunderstand us. None of us denies what you have said about the Filioque Clarification with regard to those two points; indeed, it has been declared in the clarification that the Father is the sole Trinitarian cause and is the monarch of the Trinity. It also uses the term "principaliter" regarding the Father alone. We acknowledge that. None of this, however, addresses anything we're saying.

The Latin view is that the Father is the sole ultimate (principaliter*) source or cause of the Trinity, but that the Son is also a cause, in some way, of the Holy Spirit together with the Father. You ask Apotheoun how we can say the clarification is ambiguous when it says that the Father is the "sole Trinitarian cause" (emphasis yours). I can explain by merely shifting your emphasis and saying that it is ambiguous precisely because it says the Father is "sole Trinitarian cause" and not just "sole cause of the Spirit's procession;" to use your own argument, if that's what they meant, why didn't they just say it? At other points, as Apotheoun has noted, it says that the Father is the sole cause "in a proper, principal, and immediate manner." What the document is saying by calling the Father the sole "Trinitarian" cause and the sole cause "in a principal, proper, and immediate manner" is that the Father is the sole ultimate source of the Trinity, and all causation in the Trinity ultimately comes from Him; however, it is still allowing that the Son is a mediate or non-principal cause of the Spirit. The Father is the sole Trinitarian cause because He causes both the Son and the Spirit and is thus the only source of the Trinity; the Son is not a Trinitarian cause because He does not have this property. However, on the Latin view, as it is expressed at Florence, and as is entirely consistent with the ambiguity of the Filioque Clarification, and as it is expressed by Thomas (or at least, so I say), and as it is argued by Fr. Coffey, and as it is traditionally held by most all scholars, the Son is still some sort of cause of the Spirit's procession in a mitigated way. This is our problem; we can't allow that the Son is a cause of the Spirit's hypostatic procession at all.

Let me also just say that I am not trying to find contradictions. Ask Apotheoun; I used to argue with him about this and claim that he was wrong and that your position was right, Ghosty. It was only after detailed study, reading books and various articles and documents, that I realized exactly what it is going on here and why the Latin position remains, quite unfortunately (I wish there was no problem for me to find), problematic. I do not mean to be divisive by saying this; I mean only to point out the problems so that they can hopefully be worked out in the future, allowing a more full and open union to be achieved.

I agree, however, that the discussion seems to more or less be coming to a close here, for now.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

-----

* I know the two words are not equivalent, but I'm suggesting this is part of the term's import here.

All language can be ambiguous - you must find out the intended meaning of the author - that is the true meaning.

If someone wrote to you a letter - and you read it - and misinterpret some phrases in that letter - and then (later) you and the letter writer were again together and you told him how you interpreted his letter - if the author said “that is not what I meant” and then told you his intended meaning when he used those words…

would you argue with him and insist that he meant what you read and interpreted - and that he did not mean - what he claims he meant?

Word are easily twisted. They are just signs (physical) and contain no meaning (mental) in themselves. Marks on paper. Sounds in the air. It is men’s minds which assign to these marks and sounds - meaning. And all men vary as to shades of meaning for the signs. So the defining item is the intended meaning of the author.

The most important thing about words at all - is their - intended meaning. IN light of that… you must accept how the author intended to use the signs - of you will imagine him to have said something which he did not say (in meaning).

-ray

No, you post was not too aggressive.

I hereby make public apology. And it is not the first time.

I have a bit of admiration for you for sticking this thread out! Some other Easterners would slam the gate shut and never think about this troublesome area themselves. They would just accept the ‘party line’ (referring to the Tumos that were brought up).

Read the canon, I must admit, pushed me to the edge. Quote: “Dangerous doctrine … headed to destruction“… you must realize that we Catholics who find value in our Church where we worship Christ - are - insulted by such stuff. Heretic and heretical and all that. I am aware these were not your words (and I thank you for that).

I have now regained my composure and tolerance for such stuff which has gone on far to long and far to needlessly. I assume the end of it is in sight and so that is why I am ants in the pants.

Jason… your sincerity at trying to figure this out… is admirable.

I wish I could help more.


And as a last comliment - I have always said (at the board) that the people who disagree with me usually assist me more than the people who agree with me. I love - a good oponent! It is they who force me to think in new ways and ask myself "am I wrong? did I miss something?"

It is good to examine ones own beliefs and faith from time to time (speaking of myself). I do not wish to become "too Catholic" if you know what I mean.

-ray

Ecce Jason:

Actually, that shift in emphasis doesn't change the meaning at all. I'm honestly suprised that you would think it does. Trinitarian means "pertaining to the Trinity", and therefore saying that the Father is the sole Trinitarian cause means precisely that He is the sole cause within the Trinity, since the Father can never be understood to be outside of the Trinity; the Father does not cause the Father, after all, and that's explicit in the Creed. To suggest that that's a possible reading of the document is to completely ignore the continuous and unbroken claims in the Latin Church.

That is why I say there seems to be an effort, whether intentional or not, to read contradiction into these passages. Having gone back and read previous discussions between you and Apotheoun, it seems to me that it originated with Apotheoun's insistance that mediation implied aitia on the basis of the Council of 1285, but that implication is nowhere found in that document. Another point of the document that Apotheoun continues to bring up is that:

...but this is not at all the case in the Council of 1285! No one (in this thread at least) has provided a single citation that precludes "principle" in the manner I've described. The only way that "principle" is ever precluded in the Council of 1285 is as a "causitive principle", in that they are quoting John of Damascus when he says:

The Latins absolutely agree 100% with that assesment, and always have, even at the Council of Florence and Lyons. Despite the communication break down, and the misunderstanding of the fact that aitia meant "causitive principle", the Latins never used their own term for causitive principle, namely principaliter, to describe the Son's relationship with the Holy Spirit. Not once. Nor did they ever use the term principaliter to apply to the "union" of the Father and the Son in processing the Holy Spirit.

Rather, it seems (and purely by reason of lack of sources) that a contradiction between the Eastern view and the Western view is being assumed, which is a view that even the Orthodox do not currently take.

Apotheoun: You continue to state that the Eastern theological viewpoint can not accept, in any way, the Son as principle to the Holy Spirit. I can only assume that you are speaking of a Church Father's writing on this subject, since this is not stated in the Council of 1285. Which Father, or other source, states that principle (understood as unique from aitia, despite the misunderstanding of Florence; again, they would have said principaliter if they had intended to ascribe such a connotation to the relationship between Father and Son) must be excluded from the Son?

In asking this I'm not doubting its existence, I simply can't find it myself and I want to see the source with my own eyes. So far all I see is your insistance that the miscommunication of Florence indicates that principium means something it actually does not, and can be seen to not mean that (aitia) by its use in other places; if you have brought up the specific source, I must have missed it. In fact, it would seem that even Greek recognizes an inherent difference between aitia and principle, and the distinction is made in the Council of 1285.

I want to say that this matter is extremely critical for me, as my faith in both the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches rises or falls based on the outcome of this discussion. I'm not attempting to take either side, but rather find where the actual definitions rest. It's not enough to assume in this case, and I must see these things with my own eyes. If there are conflicts, I must see them for myself, and so far I have not. That's why I ask for the sources: not in order to justify one theology over the other, but rather to see if indeed a contradiction necessarily exists.

Thank you for all your time and patience.

Peace be with you and God bless!

Ray,

First, let me thank you for having the grace to accept criticism; that is admirable of you, and your apology regarding past words is of course accepted. I hope that you will accept my own apology too, first for airing my difficulty with your post publicly (I perhaps should have PMed you) and second for the times at which I may have also been uncharitable -- it happens at times that we forget that we are discussing things with other people rather than simply trying to refute an argument, and I sometimes am guilty of forgetting just that.

Having said as much, I can certainly understand your reactions to the Tomus of 1285, for you are quite right that it declares things rather boldly! Of course -- and as you are well aware -- there were different circumstances going on at that time, particularly what was viewed as a sham, forced union at Lyons, which may have set the context for such language. As you've noticed, I haven't used those words.

I share your feelings about having a good opponent to make you always think over your own opinions, and this dialogue has certainly made me do that from time to time. So, all in all, it has been a good experience, even if we meager few have not quite managed to solve the issue completely just yet!

God bless,
Jason

Not being able to debate the Greek and Latin on the level that you guys are capable...

(I only married a Greek - I can speak it or read it with labor and several reference books)...

If interrogating the Greek and Latin of these old documents is doing good - fine and well. Researching such things by reading the opinions of others (as certified as they may be as experts) is always a task of noticing their particular bias. They usually write books to the purpose of proving what they believe. So what they write is bias to proving what they wish to prove. Not really good research. If these doctorate people had indeed discovered the problem - all things would be hunky-dory now. So I doubt that these people really got anywhere except in their own minds.

Let me throw in a little thought..


IF, the filoque of the Latin’s had meant that the Son was the cause for the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit (proceeded from the Son in a hypostatic way) … would it not be reasonable to expect that doctrine to ripple through the Latin church and show up - in many places? Yet there is no supporting evidence in that regard.

A Roman Catholic from that age of 12 - never once had I encountered any such idea. I had always understood - that the Father was the origin of both the Son and the Holy Spirit… and never once had any implication that the Son gave birth to the Holy Spirit.

As I remember it - the most descriptive way it was described to me - was “The Holy Spirit is the love that goes back and forth between the Father and the Son”.

But it had always been clear to me that within the world stage - Jesus could ‘send’ the Holy Spirit.

The Father sends the Holy Spirit (sent to Mary, send as a dove over Jesus) and the Son sent the Holy Spirit (“I will send the parakeet…”)

(a bit of humor)

And in prayer we ask the Father “send your holy spirit…” and we sometimes ask Jesus to “send the holy spirit“.

But no where at any time in my memory was there ever ever - any idea that the Son gives ‘birth’ to the Holy Spirit or that the Spirit proceeds from the Son in way of the Son causing the person of the holy spirit to exist.

It has never ever meant that to any Catholic I have ever spoken to, hear, or read.

As far as fighting over semantics - as if language had power over men and not men having power over language - that has always seemed silly to me. My own father was a semantic-arguing person… and I could never figure out why he did not know that words - are a tool. They are a means and not an end in themselves. As such - they are used to point to an intended meaning - but the intended meaning (a mental experience) always takes precedence over the tools (words).

I suppose this has always been so with me. Sometimes I have had the occasion to assist people with psychological problems… and it is very important to learn “their language”. If one is going to communicate and understand them - one must be flexible with words and find out how they are using them and what their intended meaning is. So it has always been just an important part of human understanding to me. Tools of human communication. Tools only. They do not contain meaning nor understanding. Meaning is a mental experience and so too is understanding. The intended meaning always - takes precedence over the tools.

So, in summary…

IF - the Latin clique HAD meant at any time - that the Son was the cause of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit - then without a doubt - that concept should run through Catholic doctrines - and it does not. In light of its absence in the etire body of Catholic teaching - it seems just plain old reason to me that it would not be the complete opposite of all other body of Catholic teaching - in the filque alone.

And _ I make the point that the Canon which we have been talking about - is not infallible - and not ecumenical. It may then be a local law (canon) which condemns a certain meaning which can be derived by some people - from the filoque - in a certain view and mind set. But - as non-infalable and non-ecumenical it has no power or authority that would allow it to condemn a thing of another independent church.

As good intended as it was by those which wished to protect Easterners from such an interpretation - the method they choose - was a mistake.

-ray

Ghosty,

I don't know what more to say here either. I'm going to do as much work as I can here with the Filioque Clarification to show you why it says what I'm saying, and then, if you're not persuaded, we're likely going to have to agree to disagree. Here is how the situation seems to stand: (1) your reading is less consistent than mine is with regard to the Filioque Clarification itself, as the clarification even suggests that what I'm saying "Trinitarian" cause means is exactly what it means (I'll give evidence for these claims in a moment), (2) your reading is less consistent with Florence and requires an unprecendented (and somewhat anachronistic) reinterpretation of words that goes against what the Latin doctrine has been taken to mean, not only by Orthodox and Catholic interlocutors through the centuries, but also by scholarship almost ever since the time it was elaborated, (3) your reading goes against the explicit wording of Florence (i.e., Florence says the Son is a cause and processes the Spirit "just like the Father", but you say He's not -- at least, not in the sense that everybody has been taking it -- and that He doesn't cause just like the Father), and here I could question your reinterpretation with arguments analogous to the ones you've been making toward me (i.e., why doesn't Rome just say that they don't mean what everyone seems to think they mean by "cause" explicitly, rather than in the ambiguous ways we've pointed out? -- obviously if they did this they would make a huge step to reunion and ease all Orthodox worries), (4) your reading goes against the way Catholic authors have interpreted the Catholic doctrine (cf. Fr. David Coffey), (5) your reading goes against the way Orthodox authors have interpreted the doctrine and the clarification (cf. Metropolitan John of Pergamon's response to the clarification, and many others), (6) your reading requires either a reinterpretation of Thomas that goes against the standard one or requires saying that Thomas simply erred here, (7) your reading is incompatible with the Eastern Orthodox Council of Blachernae. My reading suffers from none of these faults.

Before moving to the Filioque Clarification's explanation of "sole Trinitarian cause," however, let me just say that my own interpretation of it was not suggesting that the Father is the cause of the Father, as you seem to imply. Of course I don't believe that.

For simplicity's sake, here are the various phrasings that the Clarification gives to the Father:

(1) Note this language regarding "principle without principle:" "The Father alone is the principle without principle of the two other persons of the Trinity, the sole source (peghe) of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Just look at that. Of course the Father alone is the "principle without principle" of the other two persons in the Trinity; who else could be? The Son can't be a "principle without principle" of the other two persons, nor can the Spirit. And of course He's the sole source of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; again, who else could be? The way these phrasings are linked is certainly ambiguous to say the least, if not entirely unhelpful. If the Clarification wanted to be clear, it could have said plain and simply: "sole cause of the Holy Spirit's origin," without connecting his "soleness" to both persons -- of course he's the sole source of both.

Then, after this already ambiguous phrasing, it says:

(2) "The Holy Spirit, therefore, takes his origin from the Father alone (ἐκ μόνου τοῦ Πατρός) in a principal, proper, and immediate manner."

Okay, so the "therefore" is a logical connective tying it back to the previous statement. The previous statement is the one above, that the Father is the sole "principle without principle" of the two other persons. So because the Father is such a principle of the two Persons, the Holy Spirit originates from Him in a principal, proper, and immediate manner. Again, the modifiers here suggest the intrinsic possibility that someone else might be the cause of His origin in a mediate or non-principal manner. Absolutely nothing rules this out. In fact, connecting this back to the ambiguous and unhelpful language about the Father being the "principle without principle" of the two other persons, the only thing that is definitively stated here, especially considering that the clarification adds all these additional qualifiers ("in a principal, proper, and immediate manner"), thereby increasing the ambiguity, is that the Father is the sole ultimate source in the Trinity, because (i.e, "therefore," as the clarification itself says) He is the sole source of the other two persons, and so He is the sole ultimate and principal source of the Spirit's origin. All this seems to come straight from the clarification itself, and that's exactly the meaning I've been taking from it.

(3) "The Western tradition, following St Augustine, also confesses that the Holy Spirit takes his origin from the Father 'principaliter', that is, as principle."

Again, these are qualifiers that modify the way of understanding the origin. "Principaliter," according to my Latin dictionary (Cassell's), means "original, beginning, or first." Again, the qualifiers therefore suggest that the Son could be a cause of the Spirit's existence in a non-original or secondary way. (By the way, I'm not the only one that thinks so; see this Orthodox response). This all connects to the next point...

(4) "In this sense, therefore, the two traditions recognize that the "monarchy of the Father" implies that the Father is the sole Trinitarian Cause (Αἰτία) or Principle (principium) of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Again, the clarification links this type of causation to both person's of the Trinity, not just the Spirit, which suggests exactly the reading I gave it -- namely, that the Father is the sole ultimate or originating cause. It even says, "in this sense, therefore," the Father is sole cause; why doesn't it say in every sense the Father is sole cause?! And in what sense, exactly, does it mean? It means the sense expressed immediately prior to it: namely, in a principle (first, beginning), original, sense.

(5) The Clarification says that the reason the Orthodox refuse to say "and the Son" is because "ekporeusis" refers only to origin. In fact, it says "That is why . . . the Catholic Church has refused the addition [to the Creed in Greek]." In other words, the Catholic Church refuses to add it to the Greek Creed because it realizes that it implies the original cause, i.e, the origin, and clearly no one thinks that the Son is the origin of the Spirit. But this is not -- I emphasize, not -- the same as saying that He's not a cause in any sense. And there's the rub. The Clarification does not even mention that this is the Orthodox objection, so it does not even address the real issue head-on; nor does it ever say, without qualification, that the Son is not a cause in any sense. The above makes this abundantly clear.

(6) "The doctrine of the Filioque must be understood and presented by the Catholic Church in such a way that it cannot appear to contradict the Monarchy of the Father nor the fact that he is the sole origin (ἀρχὴ, αἰτία) of the ἐκπόρευσις of the Spirit."

Again, we all agree that He's the sole origin. The question is whether or not the Son can be a secondary cause, which is exactly the issue the Clarification skirts and ambiguates.

(7) To add to my case, the Clarification cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which pronounces exactly what I have been claiming they are professing: "'The eternal order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the Father, as the 'principle without principle' (DS 1331) is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, he is, with the Son, the single principle from which the Spirit proceeds' (Second Council of Lyons, DS 850)."

There you have it. The Father is the first origin (again, Ghosty, why such a strange qualifier if they mean to say he's the only cause?). But he is also, the Catechism is quick to note, together with the Son, the principle from which the Spirit proceeds. All of this once again very strongly implies that the Son is a secondary or mediate cause, who has received this causality (as suggested at Florence) from the Father as the ultimate source.

I really think I've said enough regarding the Clarification, and I am now weary of writing, to be honest.. So I'll let Apotheoun respond to you regarding the Tomus of 1285 if he'd like. I highly recommend you pick up Crisis in Byzantium by Aristeides Papadakis, however, as it is all about the history of the Council of Blachernae and the Tomus of 1285 and makes clear what's going on here.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

[Post deleted... Maybe?]

Jason

Ghosty,

Something else just occurred to me. The filioque historically rose as an issue ever earlier than all this, in the 9th century, at the time of St. Photios. St. Photios' response to the filioque is one of the most important statements of the Orthodox position (although it is elaborated upon at the Council of Blachernae), so you may consider reading his response to it as well. Speaking of which, you ask for evidence that the Orthodox have a problem with saying that the Spirit is a "principle" of the Son. Here's one point from Photios' Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit that may work, although I'm not sure:

"And you should consider this: if the Spirit proceeds from the Father and proceeds also from the Son — O deceiving drunkenness of impiety! — why do not the Father and the Spirit beget the Son for the very same reasons — who will atone for this blasphemous chattering which turns the monarchy into many principles and causes!"

Check out the history of the issue, too, 'cause it's maybe even more interesting. Photios got the Pope to convene a council (the so-called Photian Synod of 879-880), at which it was agreed that the addition of the filioque to the Creed was illegitimate. The council was regarded as an ecumenical council. It enjoyed full participation of Eastern bishops and papal legates and was also accepted by the Pope, but Roman Catholics tended to forget this Council after the schism with Orthodoxy and stopped counting it as ecumenical (as the work of Francis Dvornik on The Photian Schism makes clear). In fact, here are the words from that Council's declaration:

"We embrace with mind and tongue and declare to all people with a loud voice the Horos (Rule) of the most pure faith of the Christians which has come down to us from above through the Fathers [i.e., the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed without the filioque], subtracting nothing, adding nothing, falsifying nothing; for subtraction and addition, when no heresy is stirred up by the ingenious fabrications of the evil one, introduces disapprobation of those who are exempt from blame and inexcusable assault on the Fathers . . . Therefore, this holy and ecumenical Synod embracing whole-heartedly and declaring with divine desire and straightness of mind, and establishing and erecting on it the firm edifice of salvation, thus we think and loudly proclaim this message to all:

[The whole Creed is then recited, without the filioque.]

Thus we think, in this confession of faith we were we baptized, through this one the word of truth proved that every heresy is broken to pieces and canceled out. We enroll as brothers and fathers and coheirs of the heavenly city those who think thus. If anyone, however, dares to rewrite and call Rule of Faith some other exposition besides that of the sacred Symbol which has been spread abroad from above by our blessed and holy Fathers even as far as ourselves, and to snatch the authority of the confession of those divine men and impose on it his own invented phrases and put this forth as a common lesson to the faithful or to those who return from some kind of heresy, and display the audacity to falsify completely the antiquity of this sacred and venerable Horos (Rule) with illegitimate words, or additions, or subtractions, such a person should, according to the vote of the holy and Ecumenical Synods, which has been already acclaimed before us, be subjected to complete defrocking if he happens to be one of the clergymen, or be sent away with an anathema if he happens to be one of the lay people."

Photios' Mystagogy can be found here: The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit

God bless,
Jason

Dear Friends,

It's occurred to me that I'm contributing a bit too much time to these forums lately, and that I need to step back and focus more on prayer and spiritual discernment and those sorts of things. As such, the frequency of my contributions, at least to this discussion, will at least wane if not cease.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

In fairness, I do want to either tone down or retract entirely my contentions that Ghosty's statements regarding the decree of Florence go against what has been believed "by scholarship almost ever since the time it was elaborated," and also that his ideas require an unprecedented reinterpretation of Aquinas. Such statements are clearly over the top, as I am of course not an expert on either of these matters, and so not really in a position to know these things definitively. It's also possible, as I read over my recent post, that I may have overstated things a bit, though I do stand by the general ideas I've expressed there. Just wanted to say all of that since, on a re-reading, my post comes across to me as a bit too overly enthusiastic. Sorry about that.

In any case, forgive me for my many recent posts (the one regarding Photios, for example, may or may not be relevant to the issue here at all).

God bless,
Jason

RayK: I concur that this whole idea, that the Holy Spirit in some way derives His being from the Son, is completely novel and frankly rather odd to the ears of this particular Latin. So far we've only seen the testimony of a single Latin to this being the teaching, and this is a man under censure by the Vatican for denying that Jesus physically rose from the dead (and to my knowledge he still does). That this odd doctrine should be somehow "hidden" from all of Latin Christianity for 600 years, only to pop up in the mind of a single Jesuit scholar, coincidentally alongside denying the resurrection of Christ, seems a bit far fetched. I'm much more prone to toss this new conception out with the rest of Fr. Coffey's new conceptions. Indeed, new seems to be the operative word with Fr. Coffey, as he's also slammed Vatican II for using Scripture to support its teachings. He is a terrible "go-to" guy for Latin teachings.

Read the writings of John Paul II, or any other orthodox Latin theologian and philosopher, and you will not see this idea come up. It's as if we've suddenly discovered a heresy in our midst, being promulgated from the Vatican for 600 hundred years without anyone noticing, and nobody actually speaking in such a way.

Ecce Jason: First I will respond to your statements about my reading, but only so that others can understand where I'm coming from (EDIT: and in light of the charity and concession that your most recent post has indicated. None of what I say is directed as a personal attack on you, as you yourself have admitted that your basis of saying certain things may not have been well founded). I know you need a break, and I'm not inviting response from you. Let us just say that, given everything that's been said, your claims can stand, as can mine, and those reading our discussion can determine for themselves which is true, if either.

(1) This will be handled by me with your piece by piece analysis below.
(2) This is a claim without foundation. On the contrary, as RayK and I, as Latins, have indicated, this is a very novel notion that. Even if it has been brought up before, it has never permeated Latin thinking or teaching. I've seen nothing mentioned here to indicate otherwise, and your claim requires some citation and support. Without any support, it stands purely as opinion on your part, and stands fully against the experience of RayK and myself as Latin Catholics, and frankly every Latin I've discussed this with (one of whom is currently in the seminary). If this has indeed been the standard view of the Latins throughout history, it should be easily demonstrated, yet it has not been at all. In fact, my reading is completely consistant with everying I've (and apparently RayK) been taught as a Latin, which has always been under the shadow of Florence.
(3) This is actually false. Florence never calls the Son a cause, but rather says "according to the Greeks indeed as cause". We know that the Greeks did not claim this, and if they did they were speaking heresy as demonstrated by the Council of 1285. The Latins never ascribe the term cause to the Son in their own language, and there is ample reason to believe that they didn't grasp the nuances of the term aitia in Greek. Rather the Latins use the term principle, which can be shown to have never had the meaning of aitia (cause) in either Latin or Greek, as a new term was created (principaliter) to specify and differentiate the kind of principle that the Father was. If principle had the implication you suggest, principaliter would never have been coined as a modifier for it. Of special note is that, apparently, in Greek this modifier is required as well, as seen in the Tomus of the Council of 1285, where "causitive principle" is used to describe the Father's unique type of principle.
(4) Fr. Coffey is the only Catholic author who has been demonstrated to hold this (heretical) view, and he is a man known for innovation and heresy. He is also a man who has been publically censured by the Vatican for teaching, in spite of 2000 years of tradition and scholarship, that Jesus never physically rose from the dead. To my knowledge he has never recanted this notion, although he has ceased to publish it.
(5) While my interpretation goes against tradition Orthodox interpretation (and if it didn't, we might not be seperate Churches now), it does not seem to go against modern Orthodox interpretation, such as Bishop Ware's, that the filioque is an issue of semantics. On the contrary, my view seems to be much closer to "an issue of semantics" than the one you are proposing.
(6) My reading simply requires that certain terms be understood properly, and does not judge Thomas Aquinas' beliefs one way or another. Whether or not Thomas Aquinas' formulation of the Trinity would be heretical today is immaterial; indeed many of Thomas Aquinas' views would be considered heretical today, for example his view that the human soul only enters the fetus 40 days after conception. My reading may contradict Thomas' viewpoint, but it does not contradict his use of terms.
(7) As I've shown, this is not clearly the case. The Council in question speaks only of the Son as being incompatible with as a "causitive principle", which is the very idea I'm espousing. The Council of 1285 does not speak against the Son as a mediating principle at all. Indeed, the response to the Clarification, based on the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, seems to indicate that the Son was explicitely understood by at least one Church Father as a mediating principle.

Again, this is not meant to beg a response from you at all. I respect your wishes to bow out of the conversation, and I truly believe that both of us are set in our views. I only present this as my counter-view to your points, so that people reading our discussion can fully understand each of our stances. Now I'll continue to your enumerated points about issue (1) above.

1) While I agree that it's unhelpful when taken alone, I don't think it's unclear when taken in the context of the document itself. Indeed, later in the document it states:

Here it specifically relates the sole origin of the Spirit to the Father alone, as is the understanding of the Latin Church. While the passage you cite may be ambiguous when standing alone, it is hardly ambiguous in the context of the document.

2) You complaint here is directly related to my above point, and should be viewed in this light. The statement of the modifiers must be understood in the context of them meaning "sole origin" of the Holy Spirit. This is made explicitly clear in the document.

3) While it could be understood to be this way, such a view is a novelty in Latin thinking until proven otherwise. This is certainly a point of ambiguity, which the Orthodox rightly request clarification of, but in light of the Latin tradition that I am aquainted with, the clarification will be obvious. The Son has never been expressed as a "cause" in the sense of "aitia", but rather as a mediating principle, which does not seem to be ruled out by the Orthodox belief (despite Apotheoun's claims to the contrary).

4) It does say "in every sense" later in the document, in that it says "is the sole origin of the Spirit". That statement leaves no room for reading the Son into it, and it does not contradict the open understanding of principle, which seems to include the notion of "principle without cause (aitia)" according to the Greek. Principle without aitia is not ruled out by the Tomus of the Council of 1285, and therefore can't be used as a reason (within the context of this conversation and citations) of rejecting the Latin understandting of the filioque.

5) The issue is not whether the Latins view the Son as a "cause" in the Latin sense (which is broad and includes "by way of", as demonstrated in its use by Aquinas), but whether they view Him as the "cause" in the Greek sense, which is understood as "aitia", or sole origin. The reason that the document doesn't mention this as an objection by the Orthodox is because it's not an objection by the Orthodox. That is an assertion that has not been demonstrated in this discussion in the least. Every Greek document supplied states that the Son can not be involved in the "aitia" of the Holy Spirit, and to this the Latins readily agree (except in the case of Fr. Coffey, and he's dealt with above). The fact that the Latins relate "aitia" to "principium" is easily explained by miscommunication, espescially since even the Greeks do not understand "aitia" (cause) as "principium", as can be seen by their use of "aitia" in the term "causitive principle" in the Tomus of the Council of 1285. A causitive (or "aitian" to use an Anglification) principle is obviously not the same as a principle, or else the statement of "aitian" principle would be redundant.

6) The document does not skirt this issue, because the issue is not actually an issue at all. Sole origin eliminates the possibility of a secondary origin, at least in the sense that the Greeks object to. The Holy Spirit derives nothing of His personhood from the Son, though the whole of His personhood does flow from the Son. Therefore, the Holy Spirit's whole personhood is derived from the Father, and His whole personhood proceeds (proinai) from the Son (after all, why would only part of the Holy Spirit be blown forth from the Son? That is absurd). The terminology is not "primary" and "secondary" origin, but rather "sole" origin. This eliminates the possibility of a "secondary" origin, in the derivative and "aitian" sense, from the Son.

7) The Catechism does seem to be ambiguous on this point, but remember that we are reading a translation, and not the original Latin; it is quite possible that it is rendered differently in Latin than it appears in English. That being said, the Catechism is not an infallible document, and its statement, while ambiguous, is not definative. Without definative terms, AND infallible nature, no source can be said to rule our either of our positions, as both of our positions rest well within the ambiguous and non-infallible definitions in these cases. I will again stress, however, that the Orthodox Council of 1285 does not rule out a mediative element to the Son. That is an apparent invention that others have placed on to the document. While it does rule out a mediative "aitia", it does not speak at all of a mediative principle.

This confusion seems to stem from the Council of Florence's apparent identification of principium and aitia, an identification that, if it exists (no one has presented the Greek text of the document in question, so we can't even be sure that the Latins were using "causa" to mean "aitia"), is based on miscommunication and in no way indicates a clear understanding that would be required for such a statement to be dogmatic. In short, the Latin Church can not force a definition, in Latin, on the Greeks based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of Greek terms. If the Latins mistakenly believed that the word in Greek for "to assault" was synonymous with the Latin word for "to love", one could not interpret a Latin pronouncement that "The Greeks have said we must assault each other, and we Latins agree that we must love eachother, and so we state that all Catholics must love eachother" as a dogmatic pronouncement that Catholics must assault eachother. Such a conclusion is absolutely preposterous.

I will gladly pick up the book you mention, though I have my doubts that it will say much different from what I've already concluded of the Council of Blachernae, as I absolutely believe that it was a wholly orthodox Council, proclaiming with sincerity the orthodox view of the Trinity. Of course, by orthodox I mean the Traditional view, as shared by both the Catholics and the Orthodox.

Thank you so much for this discussion. It has been enlightening and very fruitful for me. Indeed, I believe it may be enlightening and fruitful for a great many people reading it, and I will do my best to share it with as many as possible.

Peace be with you always, and may God's Grace abound in your life!

EDIT: In response to your post about Photius, it may interest you to know that Photius has been "rehabilitated" in the Latin Church in the past century by the scholarship of Fr. Francis Dvornik. I would also point out that the reason that the Council in question can't be counted as Ecumenical is that it stated that it made invalid a previously held Ecumenical Council (Ecumenical in that it was convened and ratified by a previous Pope), which is impossible to do under any authority whatsoever. That does not mean that Photius' statements are incorrect, nor that they are correct, merely that the Council that renewed him to Communion with the Catholic Church is not Ecumenical, and therefore neither are his personal statements about the issue of the filioque. His renewal of Communion, however, is very real and was never broken afterwards.

For what it's worth, Photius' words must be understood in the context of his, let's say, over abundance of enthusiasm on the subject, and the understanding that the the ban on additions to the Creed was intended as additions in meaning, in particular those meanings that are contrary to the meaning of the original.

In short, Photius over-stated his case in a Council that can not be considered Ecumenical even though it was wholly endorsed by a Pope.

For what it's worth, I personally consider Photius to be fully Catholic, if a bit abraisive, and I feel that upon Re-Unification he should be recognized by the Catholic Church as a Saint for his (overly exuberant) defense of orthodoxy, and in light of his traditional position of Sainthood in the East.

And I want to tell of my admiration for Jason and Todd for sticking with this discussion in such a scholarly way as you did too Ghostly. The history has been well out of my area - and so I learned something from everybody. While I came into this discussion with some confidence in my ability (based upon my own research in near areas) you three ran circles around me with church history - and all three of you impressed me no end - I say - no end - with your (plural) demonstrated ability to logic! It is not often that I encounter such that can ‘clear the decks’ and hold, and follow, some difficult thought - a thread woven through many colored fabric.

It really makes hardly any diffrence to me the out come (as if we are questioned on such high things daily). What is demonstrated is that each of you - make it your own. That is - such things as these are not simply believed because someone told us it was true - but great reflection and research is put into it - an examination of "what I believe".

Certainly God is smiling on us from heaven right now - because we four find it very uncomfotable to be seperated brothers.

There is hope for all of us.

-ray

Thank you for your kind words, RayK. I'm actually planning on archiving this discussion for future reference, as it's been very informative and has covered a LOT of ground. It's worth archiving for the links alone

God bless!

Part of the problem in this discussion is that some people are laboring under the misconceived notion that the Latin bishops at Florence were trying to simply translate the word "principium" as "aitia," when this is clearly not the case. If you read Fr. Gill's book, where he has translated the debates that took place at the council, you can see that this is not what the Latin bishops were doing. Instead, they were drawing an equivalence between "principle" (Latin: principium) and "cause" (Greek: aitia) because the West never really used the word "cause" (Latin: causa) in connection with the generation or procession of the hypostases in the Trinity. In other words, the Latin bishops were not trying to translate "principium" as "aitia"; instead, they were saying that the two sides were using these different words in an equivalent sense, i.e., that the Latins mean by principle what the Greeks mean by cause. Thus it is not a mistranslation at all, because they weren't trying to translate the words in the proper sense of the term; rather, they were declaring that these two different words were describing the same type of idea in the respective theological traditions, i.e., they were declaring that what the Latins mean by "principle" in connection with the Father and the Son, is what the Greeks mean by "cause" in connection with the Father alone. Thus, the Latin bishops triumphed at the Council of Florence, forcing upon the Greeks a conception of the Trinity that was foreign to the Byzantine tradition, and that is why the Easterners later repudiated the Council of Florence. In fact the repudiation of Florence by the East makes absolutely no sense unless the interpretation given to the council is consistent with the one that I and Jason (and Fr. Coffey) are making. Regardless, it is not a problem of translation (in the common sense of that term), and that is much is clear by simply reading the acts of the council.

Apotheoun: God bless you, and thank you for being so persistant. I must continue to differ with you, however, as I believe that what you have presented is a mischaracterization of the dialogue at Florence. Let me explain myself:

I've read the recounting of these particular discussions by Gill (numerous times, as it turns out, as I discovered that it was the same description I've been basing my understanding on for some time now, I just didn't know it came from that book or author), and what you are saying is still a matter of translation.

You see, the Greeks were arguing (or seemed to be) that in no way, shape, or form could procession be admitted to the Son, and the Latins utterly destroyed that argument time and time again. Ultimately the Latins and the Greeks adopted the term cause as synonymous with principle, but the actual implications of "aitia" as "sole originating principle" were never once broached.

At the one point this issue could have been broached (when Mark brought up Athanasius' statements about the Father being sole fount of deity), it was side-tracked by a totally different letter of Basil's that dealt with the Son's involvement in the Spirit's procession. This was because Mark was trying to use the statements of Basil and Athanasius, of the Father being the sole fount of deity, to show that the Son was in no way involved in the procession of the Spirit. Now Mark may have innocently been trying to protect only the ekporeusis of the Spirit, but the Latins weren't speaking on that. Rather, they were speaking on the proienai, and both words are translated as "procession" in Latin.

This is where translation becomes critical, because neither side could fully understand the language of the other; they were speaking through interpreters. If Mark was stressing ekporeusis it would have been completely lost on the Latins, who only heard from the interpreter "proceeds". What's more, it's not unlikely that when the Latins said "proceeds" it was being translated into Greek as ekporeusis, as that is the word used in the Greek Creed and in the Greek Bible where proceeds is used in the Latin Creed and Latin Vulgate.

Notice that the Latins never once attack the quotation by Mark of Athanasius on the issue of "sole fount of deity" specifically, but rather on whether or not it rules out procession. Indeed, that same source is used by the Latins to show that the Holy Spirit does proceed from the Son. All the Latins were trying to show is that the Holy Spirit could be said to proceed from the Son, but they never intended to infringe on the "sole fount of deity" of the Father. If they had intended for the Son to be partaking in the "sole fount of deity" along with the Father, they would have specifically said so. Rather, they continually say only that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. Since the disctinction between ekporeusis and proienai are not made in Latin, with the single word procession for both, there was no way for them to know that Mark was defending ekporeusis on the grounds that it implies aitia, or "sole fount of deity". Likewise, if procession was being translated back into Greek as ekporeusis (which I believe is quite likely given the fact that the only mutual religious context that the word "procedere" is used in Latin is when it corresponds to ekporeusis), there was no way for Mark to know that the Latins were not speaking of the Son as partaking in the "sole fount of deity".

Again I stress: the Latins did not, and have not (except in the case of Fr. Coffey, apparently. I'm still waiting to read his actual article) challenged the concept of the Father as "sole fount of deity". They contained their argument solely to the issue of procession, which in Latin has a broad connotation, and includes both ekporeusis and proienai.

I encourage everyone to read the dialogue , and every time a Greek says proceeds, think proienai (general procession, including such concepts as funeral processions), and every time a Latin says proceeds think ekporeusis (procession from a single point of origin, literally "proceeds from the mouth") and you'll get the idea of what is going on. The two sides were literally speaking past eachother, and there was no way for them to know it.

What's more, the Greek delegation, with the exception of Mark Eugenicus, actually conceded to the Latin argument, and signed the agreement! There was no opportunity for the necessary correction or clarification, no way for the Latins to know that they had unwittingly backed the Greeks into a heresy. When the Decree was drawn up, it used the very general Latin words, and was designed spefically to protect the Greek/Latin understanding that there were in no way two seperate processions of the Holy Spirit.

So, to address your points directly:

This is translation, and it is mistranslation at that. The Latins didn't know what aitia implied, they only knew that they thought it meant principle. In light of the fact that the Greeks were only arguing against procession in general (from the Latin perspective, and due to the fact that procedere means what proienai does in Greek), the Latins thought they had demonstrated the equivalence purely by showing citations. The underlying implications were not discussed nor understood.

Yes, but only because the Greek argument had centered purely on showing that the Holy Spirit didn't proceed from the Son. From the Latin language, this is pure non-sense, and if the Greeks had said the same in Greek, but with proienai, it would have been non-sense as well. When the Latins showed that the Holy Spirit DID proienai from the Son (not realizing that the Greeks were hearing ekporeusis) the Greeks conceded, but wrongly given what they were hearing. The Latins stopped pushing the issue at that point because there was nothing to push against; the Greeks had conceded, and all that remained was drafting up the final document.

You are correct here, but only partially. It was rejected by the East because when the Bishops got home, they told everyone that they had agreed with the Latins that the Holy Spirit ekporeusis (sole origin and source) from the Father and the Son. They were condemned as heretics who had gone against 1400 years of orthodox thought and teaching. It was not the Decree in Latin understanding that they rejected, but rather the translation and Greek understanding of it provided by the Bishops who signed to it.

In the mean time the Latin Church continued teaching what it always had, that the Father was the sole source of deity, i.e. of the Holy Spirit and of the Son, the principaliter. Aside from Fr. Coffey (and I've yet to actually see this article you keep mentioning), no Latin has made the claim that the Son shares in the sole source of deity with the Father. We have continued to say, a la Augustine, that the Holy Spirit is a gift from the Father to the Son (obviously implying that Holy Spirit must find its absolute origin in the Father), and a la Thomas Aquinas that the Holy Spirit stands between the Father and the Son as a procession from Father to Son. This whole concept, based as it is on the Holy Spirit deriving His entire personhood from the Father, becomes one of the key foundations for John Paul II's "Theology of the Body", which is typified by the concept of "a gift given by a giver, to the receiver, so that the receiver may share it with the world". This absolutely precludes the gift taking any derivative origin from the receiver, or else it wouldn't be a gift, and this point is made explicitly by JPII of blessed memory.

In short, not only is this conception you are presenting not held by the Latins, it never has been, and would actually destroy a whole corpus of work and theology that has culminated in the "Theology of the Body", a work that has been said to put JPII in the running for title of Doctor of the Church. Hardly things that could be if your assertion is true.

You might argue that there has been an abandonment of the "hard-line" since the Council of Florence, but you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate that your interpretation, in the Latin context, was ever held. Indeed, as RayK said, it would have shaped the very essence of the Latin Church, and there would be indications of that now, rather than Theology of the Body.

Bless you for being so patient and persistant, and may God's grace shine on you always.