Filioque

[jas3]

My breath proceeds from me every time I breathe it. But I am no theologian.

That would be a temporal procession though, not an eternal one. I think the best way to argue for the filioque from Scripture is to argue that the temporal or economic examples we have in Scripture reveal heavenly truths, and therefore the temporal spiration or sending of the Spirit from the Son is indicative of an eternal, ontological procession of the Spirit from the Son. You can also argue, like Florence defined, that the Son is the image of the Father (Heb. 1:3) and therefore has everything of the Father's except fatherhood, and therefore that the Son has the Father's spiration of the Holy Spirit.

But either way, it's not as simple as saying that there's some other sense than eternal procession in which the Spirit can be said to "come from" the Son and therefore "proceed from/through" the Son, which is actually a line of reasoning condemned by Florence, since it would either deny that the Spirit proceeds from the Son "just like" He does from the Father, or it would create two principles or sources from which the Spirit receives the divine essence.

 

[Philip_B]

It is interesting that the Son breathed the Spirit of God onto the apostles, and that Spirit means breath, and that it was the Spirit (breath) of God who acted in creation. My breath proceeds from me every time I breathe it. But I am no theologian.

"And" to make that point I included the reference to John 20:22. If however, as some do you suggest that the Spirit always proceeds from the Son you resolve the Baptism of Jesus narratives to an account of self-authentication. By the way, I dopn;t think Benedict VIII was a theologian either!

 

[prodromos]

It is the language we're typing in.

In the Jewish Talmud it states the following:

Four languages are of value: Greek for song, Latin for war, Aramaic for dirges, and Hebrew for speaking​

 

[The Liturgist]

In the Jewish Talmud it states the following:

Four languages are of value: Greek for song, Latin for war, Aramaic for dirges, and Hebrew for speaking​

Indeed.

But the most interesting part of the Talmud, full stop, as y’all like to say instead of “period”, is surely the delightfully bizarre collection of fish tales from Tractate Baba Batra: Babylonian Talmud, Book 7, tr. Rodkinson: Tract Baba Bathra (Last Gate): Tract Baba Bathra, Part I: Chapter V

 

[JSRG]

English is a terrible language for many reasons, including the above.

English has its issues, but I wouldn't say that's one of them. Especially when one considers that, as The Liturgist noted, the Nicene Creed refers to the Holy Spirit as "it" anyway.

In quite a few ways, I think English is actually a great language. Having studied several, English has various major advantages: The verb conjugations are significantly simpler, and it's almost completely removed grammatical gender, which I regard as one of the worst things to exist in languages. Its fairly strict word order makes it easier to understand what is going on before you even finish the sentence, and its requirement to almost always include the subject in the sentence reduces some irritating ambiguities in other languages where it can sometimes be confusing as to who is even being talked about.

But the big thing that brings English down is the obvious: The spellings. I don't even need to explain how it's an issue, everyone who has ever learned English, even native speakers, understand the issues. Still not as bad as Japanese's writing system, though. The other annoyance of English is the frequent and often inconsistent use of prepositions, especially their use with verbs where you not only have go remember the verbs, but what preposition to use with them.

Still, if one can get past the spellings, which to be fair is a pretty big thing to get past, I'd say English actually does a good job getting rid of a lot of issues other languages have.

 

[prodromos]

Gerard Nolst Trenité's Poem About English Spelling and Pronunciation

Composed by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, "The Chaos" illustrates many of the irregularities of English spelling and pronunciation.

www.thoughtco.com

or this...

I take it you already know​

Of tough and bough and cough and dough?​

Others may stumble, but not you,​

On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?​

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,​

To learn of less familiar traps?​

Beware of heard, a dreadful word​

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,​

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead –​

For goodness sake don't call it deed!​

Watch out for meat and great and threat​

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).​

A moth is not a moth in mother,​

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,​

And here is not a match for there​

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,​

And then there's dose and rose and lose –​

Just look them up - and goose and choose,​

And cork and work and card and ward,​

And font and front and word and sword,​

And do and go and thwart and cart –​

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!​

A dreadful language? Man alive!​

I'd mastered it when I was five!​

 

[The Liturgist]

Especially when one considers that, as The Liturgist noted, the Nicene Creed refers to the Holy Spirit as "it" anyway.

I didn’t quite say that. Rather, I said that in Koine Greek the Holy Spirit is referred to in a neutral manner, (but it is called Lord, albeit the word Lord is not of the masculine gender in the Greek language), and in the Syriac language the word used to refer to the Holy Spirit is feminine, due to a quirk of that language.

However in all languages where it is applicable, the Holy Spirit is translated into a male form of the word. And i would say the masculinity implied by Lord is not inherently wrong, since I am concerned about the theological implications of a divine feminine and am not convinced that such a concept is legitimate within Orthodox theology. And I would rather call the Holy Spirit Him than It, and I believe doing so is more true to the spirit of the Nicene Creed, which intended to convey the personhood of the Holy Spirit, particularly when revised in 381 in response to new heresies that had emerged since Nicaea, particularly, as far as the Holy Spirit was concerned, Macedonianism (authentic vintage Pneumatomachianism).

However there are several other important reasons for rejecting the Filioque, for not only does it create implications which in the mind of the poorly catechized lead to a depersonalization of the Holy Spirit, in which the Spirit becomes a property or attribute of the Father and the Son, but also, it distorts the nature of the Trinity itself. In the Orthodox understanding of the Holy and Undivided, all three Persons are coequal and coeternal - the Unoriginate Father begets the Son before all ages and from Him eternally proceeds the Holy Spirit, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are united in sharing the divine essence of the unoriginate Father, with the Son constituing His eternal Logos and the Holy Spirit is, obviously, His eternal Breath, and it is in the incarnation of the Son that the Father is revealed, and it is through the action of the Holy Spirit that the unbelievers are prompted to have faith in the Son, and the faithful, who have received the indwelling Holy Spirit, are guided in their faith.

Additionally, it must be stressed that the uncreated essence of God that is shared by the Father with His only begotten Son and Word, and His Holy Spirit, is incomprehensible to humans - we can know of it, and we can infer from the data of revelation in Scripture certain things about the divine essence, primarily through apophatic theology, which you Latins call the Via Negativa, but it is in respect of His essence that God is described as inscrutable in His ways. Rather, we know God through His uncreated energies, such as Grace (which we hold to be uncreated, and not a creature, which was the view of Scholastic theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas*, however, since many, perhaps, since Vatican II, most, Byzantine Rite Catholics venerate St. Gregory Palamas on the second Sunday of Lent, this would imply that created grace is not the only acceptable belief for Christians in communion with the bishop of Rome, which is good, because Archpriest Andrew Stephen Damick of the Antiochian Orthodox Church in North America identified created grace as one of the Roman Catholic beliefs that is most problematic from an Orthodox perspective in Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy.

* One book I rather hope to read and report upon in the near future is An Orthodox Reading of St. Thomas Aquinas

 

[The Liturgist]

Gerard Nolst Trenité's Poem About English Spelling and Pronunciation

Composed by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, "The Chaos" illustrates many of the irregularities of English spelling and pronunciation.

www.thoughtco.com

or this...

I take it you already know​

Of tough and bough and cough and dough?​

Others may stumble, but not you,​

On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?​

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,​

To learn of less familiar traps?​

Beware of heard, a dreadful word​

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,​

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead –​

For goodness sake don't call it deed!​

Watch out for meat and great and threat​

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).​

A moth is not a moth in mother,​

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,​

And here is not a match for there​

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,​

And then there's dose and rose and lose –​

Just look them up - and goose and choose,​

And cork and work and card and ward,​

And font and front and word and sword,​

And do and go and thwart and cart –​

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!​

A dreadful language? Man alive!​

I'd mastered it when I was five!​

Interestingly many of the orthographic discontinuities enumerated in that poem historically did not exist, whereas in other cases new orthographic pairings have been created, such as the Mary/Marry/Merry merger in the US and the cot/caught merger in Britain.

In Australia and New Zealand, vowel shifts have been embraced, especially by the Kiwis, which are quite dramatic (in the case of Australia, one finds some of the same vowel shifts in certain Southern English accents such as the Cockney accent, but the Kiwi vowel shifts in particular appear to build on this in such a way as to take us into altogether novel territory, for example, the seeming inversion of the vowels in “tick” and “deck.”

To wit (and I must confess I am very curious what the prevailing Kiwi pronunciation of “wit” is) I should like to obtain the views of our dear NZ friends @Carl Emerson and @Ignatius the Kiwi

(and I do mean dear - I regard @Carl Emerson as a personal friend and I have extreme admiration for @Ignatius the Kiwi and regard him along with @prodromos and @FenderTL5 as one of the Eastern Orthodox stalwarts on the forum, whose posts are thoroughly reliable, and who I pray that if I should post a misunderstanding or erroneous statement concerning Orthodox theology, will notice it; indeed I have often wished there was a way I could make certain of my posts available for review while saved as drafts by those members).

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Gerard Nolst Trenité's Poem About English Spelling and Pronunciation

Composed by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, "The Chaos" illustrates many of the irregularities of English spelling and pronunciation.

www.thoughtco.com

or this...

I take it you already know​

Of tough and bough and cough and dough?​

Others may stumble, but not you,​

On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?​

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,​

To learn of less familiar traps?​

Beware of heard, a dreadful word​

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,​

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead –​

For goodness sake don't call it deed!​

Watch out for meat and great and threat​

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).​

A moth is not a moth in mother,​

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,​

And here is not a match for there​

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,​

And then there's dose and rose and lose –​

Just look them up - and goose and choose,​

And cork and work and card and ward,​

And font and front and word and sword,​

And do and go and thwart and cart –​

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!​

A dreadful language? Man alive!​

I'd mastered it when I was five!​

Yet we type it in here.
I hear it in the liturgy.
I read it in Shakespeare.
I read it in the holy scriptures.
It is in truth a wonder, clumsy and subtle, and it is our mother tongue.

 

[zippy2006]

I think the vast majority of people who debate about it online are vastly underqualified to do so (myself included)

This is the one thing in the thread that is especially true.

Here is Jaroslav Pelikan:

"If there is a special circle of the inferno described by Dante reserved for historians of theology, the principal homework assigned to that subdivision of Hell for at least the first several eons of eternity may well be a thorough study of all the treatises . . . devoted to the inquiry: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father only, as Eastern Christendom contends, or from both the Father and the Son as the Latin Church teaches?"

 

[Fervent]

I think it undermines the unique hypostasis of the Father, but that its addition is understandable considering the heretical positions that were being dealt with in Rome. I also think we'd be much better off trying to understand why each position is compelling to those who disagree with us rather than fighting over something as far beyond human comprehension as the mystery of the Trinity. But then I don't think this dispute was every fully about the theological separation, but more a matter of which bishops and principalities the participants are loyal to.

 

[prodromos]

I think it undermines the unique hypostasis of the Father, but that its addition is understandable considering the heretical positions that were being dealt with in Rome

What were those heretical positions?
How were they not dealt with by the following clauses in the Creed about the Son,

"Light from light, true God from true God"?​

 

[Fervent]

What were those heretical positions?
How were they not dealt with by the following clauses in the Creed about the Son,

"Light from light, true God from true God"?​

Subordinationism, for many of the same reasons that Orthodox complain that the filoque subordinates the Holy Spirit. And there's far too much to go over to explain in a post or forum thread.

 

[The Liturgist]

Subordinationism, for many of the same reasons that Orthodox complain that the filoque subordinates the Holy Spirit. And there's far too much to go over to explain in a post or forum thread.

Not really, its just another flavor of Semi-Arianism. The best defense against it is liturgical, by ensuring prayers are directed to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and to make a point of referring to all three persons as God.

In particular, many Western Christian writings and religious texts written by Nicene Trinitarians will refer to God and to Jesus Christ in such a way so that the layman who only hears that will assume that Jesus Christ is the Son of God but not God Himself.

This is also why referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God, is so important, because Nestorianism causes further confusions of this sort.

 

[prodromos]

Subordinationism, for many of the same reasons that Orthodox complain that the filoque subordinates the Holy Spirit. And there's far too much to go over to explain in a post or forum thread.

I've seen no evidence that Rome was battling such a heresy.

 

[prodromos]

Not really, its just another flavor of Semi-Arianism. The best defense against it is liturgical, by ensuring prayers are directed to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and to make a point of referring to all three persons as God.

In particular, many Western Christian writings and religious texts written by Nicene Trinitarians will refer to God and to Jesus Christ in such a way so that the layman who only hears that will assume that Jesus Christ is the Son of God but not God Himself.

This is also why referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God, is so important, because Nestorianism causes further confusions of this sort.

I've heard a suggestion that the 'charismatic' revival in the Catholic Church was caused by an overcorrection to the lack of liturgical reference to the Holy Spirit as God in the Latin rite. I'm not familiar enough with Latin rite liturgical texts to make a judgement, but I note that Eastern Orthodox liturgies are replete with references to Father, Son and Holy Spirit as God.

 

[Fervent]

Not really, its just another flavor of Semi-Arianism. The best defense against it is liturgical, by ensuring prayers are directed to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and to make a point of referring to all three persons as God.

In particular, many Western Christian writings and religious texts written by Nicene Trinitarians will refer to God and to Jesus Christ in such a way so that the layman who only hears that will assume that Jesus Christ is the Son of God but not God Himself.

This is also why referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God, is so important, because Nestorianism causes further confusions of this sort.

Fair enough, as I said I am not a fan of the filoque because it undermines the hypostasis of the Father. But I believe we would profit far more from seeking to find common ground with our fellow Nicene Christians rather than disputing the areas where we disagree. I'm under the impression that there are Orthodox theologians that have made great strides in understanding the filoque in a way that is far less immediately objectionable, and while the historic grievance is worth noting the reality is that it is highly unlikely that the Roman church will abandon it after defending it for so many centuries.

As I am neither Orthodox nor Catholic, I am not sure my opinion matters much in the end. I just don't see why we look for reasons to maintain the schisms rather than seeking to understand the perspectives of those who disagree with us.

 

[rturner76]

I think it's somewhat of a more political than spiritual controversy. The Eastern Church had reasons for going against Rome. I agree with many who have posted about it. It created the schism but seems to me like semantics more than doctrine. The East needed a reason to break from the Roman Church's power, which was a good reason. One of the biggest differences in the Eastern and Roman Churches is that (this is my understanding). The Eastern Church believes that all has been revealed through Christ and his followers and the roman Church believes that she continues to receive revelation as God stay an active participant in The Church. I have been challenged on this notion and have found some Bible verses that go against that notion however, I have also found support for it so I guess it's whatever one's most trusted theologian says. I'm not 100% sure about the right and wrong of the change and why, other than I know The Church was battling with Arianism and it may have been a way to go against that. Arianism almost took over but for the defenses put up by the Roman Church so they were trying to emphasize Jesus' role as part of the Godhead. Three in one with neither part being more important than the other (this is all from my current understanding and I could surely be proven wrong).

 

[prodromos]

The East needed a reason to break from the Roman Church's power, which was a good reason.

What power do you imagine the bishop of Rome had outside of his jurisdiction? That was never a problem for the East, so it would never have been a factor.

 

[rturner76]

What power do you imagine the bishop of Rome had outside of his jurisdiction? That was never a problem for the East, so it would never have been a factor.

I disagree. The Bishop of Rome was to be considered "first among equals." The way I see it, he had the final vote if there was a tie. It wasn't the Pope who made the Filioque, it was a vote by the Bishops of the Western Church. He didn't just say "This is what it is and you can do nothing about it." There was an Ecumenical Conference where the Eastern Church got out voted. Then THEY chose to remove themselves from the Western Church. I also believe that there were political powers at play who wanted to keep the cash in their own Church (s) like the Greek, and Russian Churches including the Oriental and Middle Eastern Churches like Syria and Jerusalem who didn't want to fill the coffers of the Roman Church who held sway over the entirety of Western Europe which was all united under Rome. So like I said, it was both doctrinal for the Greek and Syrilac Churches but more than that I think it was political with every Metropolitan having full autonomy over their nation's Church. They wanted to keep the tithes in their own countries rather than send the tithes to Rome. I don't blame them for that but the first opportunity they had, it was crucial that they break from Rome. For one it's Greek/Syriac vs. Latin which is the older approved writings plus the issue of keeping the tithes within the countries that had established Metropolitans. We are still separated a thousand years later basically because of what I see as semantics. Both Churches are Catholic (universal) but one is Roman (Western Europe) and one is Orthodox (Oriental and Eastern). I chose the Roman version because the Liturgy and Bible readings are the same for every Mass all over the world. So one can go to Mass in Ohio and get the same Mass as one in Spain (or South America or Italy) so for me personally it feels like aa global unity. I understand if others see it differently.