In this post, i provide analysis and harmony/synthesis/consensus of the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and ecumenical Councils with a special focus on refuting a nasty Eastern Orthodox member claims that are contrary to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I do this in full charity and my views should not be seen as an impediment to dialogue but a response to the attacks of this Eastern orthodoxy member who is a vile anti-Catholic. Note he cannot debate me online but instead asks for a phone debate!
Andrew said;
“now you are just being silly the Greek fathers are the most hostile towards your nonsense. You treat the Fathers like Protestants treat scripture you proof text…. But ecumenical councils spoke on this already and called the filioque HERESY…. You’re acting like a clown I told you I’m driving you keep sending these long messages surely we can do a phone debate?”
My response;
Andrew Herbst,
you profess the Orthodox heresy that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ALONE and NOT from both the Father and the Son. First, i have to tell you that this is the controversy that led to the Greek Schism and you are merely repeating this,talking about what you believe in your faith and NOT the Apostolical faith.
You said that the Greek Fathers are hostile towards me but you did not indicate any while you also hinge on the claim that Councils anathematized the filioque which is false from you. As far as i know Greek Fathers all agree with me;First let us begin with the Latin Fathers before we go to the Greek Fathers and the councils.
The Latin Fathers unanimously teach Filioque in the sense of a hypostatic procession; their teaching is not, restricted to an energetic procession. How could the Greek Fathers have held an understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit antithetical to the unanimous understanding of the Latin Fathers who openly professed Filioque, with whom they were in communion for centuries, and whom the Eastern Orthodox venerate as saints? The teaching of Catholic Church, unlike that of the Eastern Orthodox Church, does justice to the Greek and Latin Fathers. Should we expect any different of a Church that follows the teaching of St. Photios, who, despite his great virtues and learning, misunderstood the West, knew no Latin, and failed express the truly Catholic tradition, for he did not include the Latins, St. John of Damascus, and ante-Nicene saints among the Church Fathers? What we will refer to as Photian monopatrism, first appears, not in any orthodox writer, but in the work of the Nestorian Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia, an arch-heretic of the Antioch school whose writings and person were condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II) in 553.(ironically this council is the one of the Councils you suggested anathematized the Filioque)!
Looking at the Greek Fathers, first we need to make it clear that the Eastern Orthodox have not preserved the true understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit, ever since what started as a dispute over misunderstood words became hardened into a theology incompatible with the sacred Catholic dogma that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; now the Orthodox, at the very most, will grant, following Patriarch Gregory II the Cypriot of Constantinople, that the υπόστασις (hypostasis) of the Spirit is eternally energetically manifested through the υπόστασις of the Son. The Orthodox maintain the Patristically impossible position that the Father and the Son do not, together, spirate the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit. Filioque is necessary in order to fully explain the distinction between the Person of the Son and the person of the Holy Spirit, to preserve the correct τάξις (order); the Trinity of Persons are distinguished by the relations of origin, as Patriarch St. Gregory Nazianzen the Great Theologian of Constantinople and Bishop St. Gregory of Nyssa teach. Since the Holy Spirit is a υπόστασις and given that He proceeds in some way from the Son, He must proceed as υπόστασις from the Son, which is to say His υπόστασις is from the Son. In other words, the υπόστασις of the Holy Spirit proceeds (is) from the Son eternally, but the primordial/unoriginate source of His divine hypostasis is the Father alone, for the Father alone is the (unoriginate) πηγή (source) and αἰτία (cause) of divinity. The Holy Spirit receives from the Son the being and oυσία (ousia = nature) of the Father, which the Son receives as Only-Begotten.
Andrew, you also claim that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “THROUGH THE SON” but your forget that ‘through’ signifies cause or productive principle; and from the fact that the Son sent the Holy Spirit to creatures there is evidently collected that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son from eternity.
Another of the Greek Fathers is Blessed Athanasius who says in his Creed, “The Holy Spirit is not made nor created nor generated by the Father and the Son, but proceeds.” Note that Athanasius did not say ‘from the Father through the Son’.
The other Greek Father is St. Basil, whom the Greeks put before almost all the others. So he says in book.2 against Eunomius, “Now this is obscure to all, that no operation of the Son is separated from the Father, nor is there anything in reality which is present to the Son and alien to the Father. For all that is mine, he says, is yours and yours mine. How then does he attribute the cause of the Spirit to the onlybegotten alone?” Note that Basil was writing against Eunomius who was not disputing about the gifts but about the substance of the Holy Spirit, and he wanted the Son alone to be truly the cause of the Holy Spirit and Basil succeeded in refuting him proving that not only is the Son the cause of the Spirit but the Father too, because everything the Son has the Father has.
“From the Son” and “through the Son” are different ways to express the true doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. According the Catechism of the Catholic Church §248,The Greek formula directly expresses the order according to which the Father and Son are the one principle of the Holy Spirit, and implies their equality as principle. The Latin formula directly expresses the equality of the Father and Son as principle, and implies the order. The great Byzantine Fathers and Doctors had no reservations about being in communion with those great Latin Fathers and Doctors who openly and dogmatically professed Filioque.
Before you continue in vain arguing that Filioque is false, learn that there are three personal properties, taking properties in the strict sense of a relation of origin constituting a divine person: the property of the Father–paternity–is γέννησις (generation), the property of the Son is filiation, and the property of the Holy Spirit is procession, i.e., passive spiration. Saint Basil the Great of Caesarea says in Epistle 214:4, “In God, whatever appertains to nature is common … but the Person is known by the character of paternity, or filiation, or sanctifying power.“ Sts. Gregory the Wonderworker of Neocaesarea, Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Cyril of Alexandria (Doctor of the Incarnation), Eulogios, and John of Damascus (Doctor of the Assumption) teach the same truth.
Thus when you claim that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, you rob the Son of a role in the eternal hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit but Greek Father Gregory of Nyssa would refute your claims. In Sermon 3 on the Lord’s Prayer, the Cappadocian Father says, “the Spirit both is said to be from the Father, and is further testified to be from the Son. For, it says, “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” [Rom 8:9]. Therefore the Spirit, Who is from God, is also the Spirit of Christ; but the Son, Who is from God, neither is nor is said to be “of the Spirit,” nor does this relative order become reversed.”
Again in “Against the Macedonians on the Holy Spirit” 6 , St. Gregory says that the Son, with the Father, gives existence to the Holy Spirit and Athanasius adds that: “David sings in the psalm [35:10], saying: ‘For with You is the font of Life;’because jointly with the Father the Son is indeed the source of the Holy Spirit.”
Now turning to the councils, i will repeat what i already told you. At the first ecumenical council of Nicaea, Gelasios of Cyzicus testifies in History of the Council of Nicaea 2:22 that Bishop St. Leontios of Caesarea declared on behalf of the Holy Fathers assembled there that “the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and is proper to the Son and gushes forth from Him.“ Thus from antiquity the Church believed that the Holy Spirit proceeded in some manner from the Son, although Eastern Orthodox apologists would, through a Palamite lens, interpret “gushing forth” as referring to an energetic procession or manifestation, rather than a statement about the τρόπος ὑπάρξεως of the υπόστασις of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Son.
At the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I) in 381,the Holy Fathers against the Greeks who claimed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son alone-assembled at the Second Ecumenical Council wanted to affirm the ὁμοούσιος of the Holy Spirit with the Father, not the precise τρόπος ὑπάρξεως (mode of coming to be) of the Holy Spirit. Thus they considered the εκπόρενσις of the Holy Spirit from the Father as the sole unoriginate πηγή (source) and αἰτία (cause) of divinity, and were not immediately concerned with the relation of origin between the Holy Spirit and the Son.
In 431 Canon VII of Ephesus prohibits additions to the Creed “defined by the holy fathers who convened in the city of Nicaea,” the creed composed in 325; it does not prohibit adding to the Creed that the holy fathers of Constantinople I composed in 381, which did not attain ecumenical status until Rome ratified Constantinople I later on. That is why St. Cyril recites the Nicene Creed of 325 in Epistle 17 (Page 77:117) and the holy fathers of Ephesus read the Nicene Creed of 325, not the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, at the 6/22/431 opening of the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus.
At the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon), it is more obvious when we consider the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 regarding the Nicene Creed of 325, to which several explanatory statements were added by the 381 Council of Constantinople I,“This wise and saving Symbol of Divine grace would have sufficed to the full knowledge and confirmation of the faith; for it teaches thoroughly the perfect truth of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and presents to those who receive it faithfully the Incarnation of the Lord.”
It is clear, then, that the holy Fathers of the seven ecumenical councils considered expository clauses licit in cases of new heresies.
Further at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II) in 553,Session 1,the Fathers said;
“We further declare that we hold fast to the decrees of the four Councils, and in every way follow the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Theophilus, John [Chrysostom] of Constantinople, Cyril, Augustine, Proclus, Leo, and their writings on the true faith.”
The Fifth Ecumenical Council followed “in every way” the “writings on the true faith” of the aforementioned Holy Fathers, meaning that it endorsed the Triadology of each of these God-bearing Church Fathers. But we have seen that Sts. Athanasius the Great (Doctor), Basil the Great (Doctor), Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril (Doctor of the Incarnation), and even others like Hilary (Doctor), Augustine the Great (Doctor of Grace), and Leo the Great (Doctor) taught that the Holy Spirit derives His existence from the Father and the Son.
At the end of this discourse, we can see who has the facts right between me and you. Also note that for up to the time of the schism Greece flourished with learned and holy men, so that all the general Councils were celebrated among the Greeks; but after the schism for almost 800 years they have had no Council, no holy man famous for miracles, very few learned men. But the Latins at this time have had twelve general Councils and innumerable particular ones. Again in each age there have been men very famous for miracles, new orders of religious, many learned men.
The Greeks have been convicted in Councils, they have been converted to our faith four or five times, and perhaps even more often,and they have always returned to their vomit.
The Latins have always in disputations remained superior in the same faith and doctrine; lastly among the Latins very powerful kingdoms and empires still flourish, but the empire of the Greeks has been overthrown by the Turks, the enemies of Christ; and it has been almost destroyed, and all of them live in very wretched servitude, and are compelled to carry the very heavy yoke of captivity. Woe to them for abandoning the true faith.
The cause of their fall is their stubbornness in error about the procession of the Holy Spirit, Constantinople was taken, the Emperor killed, and the empire wholly extinguished by the Turks on the very feast of the Holy Spirit.
References:
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Mystagogy
St.Athanasisus; On the Incarnation of the Word Against the Arians
St. Basil the Great; Against Eunomius
St.Gregory Nazianzen; Oration
St.Gregory on Nyssa; Sermon 3, the Lord’s Prayer, Against the Macedonians
Will R.Huysman, 2009; Filioque
Nichols, Aidan, O.P. Rome and the Eastern Churches: A Study in Schism. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992. p. 214.