Confusion in the West: West vs. West on the Filioque

The Orthodox View

 

“Moreover, we have from the letter written by the same Saint Maximus to the priest Marinus concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, where he implies that the Greeks tried, in vain, to make a case against us, since we do not say that the Son is a cause or principle of the Holy Spirit, as they assert. But, not incognizant of the unity of substance between Father and the Son, as he proceeds from the Father, we confess that he proceeds from the Son, understanding processionem, of course, as “mission.” Interpreting piously, he instructs those skilled in both languages to peace, while he teaches both us and the Greeks that in one sense the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son and in another sense he does not proceed, showing the difficulty of expressing the idiosyncrasies of one language in another.”

 

–Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Anastasius Ad Ioannem Diaconum, PL 129, 560-61

 

“It is from the person [substantia] of the Father that the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds.”

 

– John Scotus Erigena, De Divisione Naturae, PL 122, 613

 

Note: John follows the older Latin understanding of substantia is hypostasis and essentia is ousia which is why I translate substantia as “person” here.

 

The view of the Heterodox

 

“The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father because he flows from his substance…and just as the Son received his substance from the Father by being begotten, so also he received from the Father the ability to send the Spirit of Truth from himself through proceeding…For just as the Father and the Son are of one substance, so too by procession from both did the Holy Spirit receive his consubstantial existence.”

 

–Ratramnus of Corbie, Contra Graecorum Opposita Romanam Ecclesiam Inflamantium, PL 121, 229

 

Ratramnus’ assumption that there is only one manner of coming forth from the Father echoing his presupposition on absolute divine simplicity:

 

“Therefore if the Son proceeds from God the Father and the Holy Spirit also proceeds, what will keep the Arians silent, not blaspheming that the Holy Spirit is also the Son of the Father.”

 

– Ibid., PL 121, 247

The Hymn of a Wise Man

O Only-begotten Son and Word of God,

Thou Who are Immortal, yet didst deign

for our salvation to be incarnate through

the most holy Lady and Ever-Virgin

Mary, and without change didst become

Man and wast crucified, trampling upon

death by death, do Thou, O Christ our

God, Who are one of the Holy Trinity and

art glorified, together with the Father

and the Holy Spirit, save us.

- St. Justinian the Great, Emperor and Saint

Interview with Dr. Farrell on GHD

Interview w. Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Concerning his 4-Volume

“God, History, & Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences”

Conducted by Asher Black, March 4, 2008

How long did it take you to research and write this book. Can you elaborate on the kinds of research you did, and where, when, etc.?

The book was written in about 2 weeks, due to the time constraints I was under trying to satisfy my students in the course of the same name that I taught. As for researching it, it is the fruit of many years of patristic study. It would be difficult for me to say, since I started reading the fathers way back in college. So I suppose it represents about 20 years of research and thought.

Tradition: Scripture

“More important is the fact that the content of tradition is nothing other than that which is also preserved in a written form, as Scripture — they are not two different sources. Tradition is not the accumulation of various customs, nor does it provide us with access to knowledge necessary for salvation that is not also contained in Scripture. It is the Gnostics, according to Irenaeus, who appeal to tradition for teachings not contained in Scripture.

“The community founded upon the apostolic Gospel, the Church, is also the community which has recognized certain writings as apostolic and as authoritative Scripture (and will eventually speak of a canon of Scripture). As there were many writings laying claim to apostolic status, the claim to apostolicity, however, was not itself enough to justify the recognition of a particular writing as Scripture. What was essential was the conformity of the writing to the apostolic Gospel which founded the Church, which has been preserved intact, and which had since come to be phrased in terms of a rule/canon of truth/faith. This also means that the apostolic writings are accepted as Scripture within a community that lays claim to the correct interpretation of these writings. Tradition is, as Florovsky put it commenting on Irenaeus, Scripture rightly understood. In Irenaeus’ vivid image, those who interpret Scripture in a manner which does not conform to the rule of truth are like those who, seeing a beautiful mosaic of a king, dismantle the stones and reassemble them to form the picture of a dog, claiming that this was the original intention of the writer (Against the Heresies, 1.8).

“It is not that what is claimed to be the picture of a king can be arbitrarily imposed upon Scripture — Scripture is fixed — it is “the ground and pillar of our faith,” as Irenaeus puts it, modifying Paul’s words, about the Church, to Timothy (1 Tim 3:15; although as Bart Ehrman has noted, parts of the text were modified during the course of the second century to produce a more ‘orthodox’ text). Scripture is that to which one must continually return, to be sure of the ground on which we stand.

“If tradition is essentially the right interpretation of Scripture, then it cannot change — and this means, it can neither grow nor develop. A tradition with a potential for growth ultimately undermines the Gospel itself — it leaves open the possibility for further revelation, and therefore the Gospel would no longer be sure and certain. If our faith is one and the same as that of the apostles, then, as Irenaeus claimed, it is equally immune from improvement by articulate or speculative thinkers as well as from diminution by inarticulate believers (Against the Heresies, 1.10.2). We must take seriously the famous saying of St. Vincent of Lerins: “We must hold what has been believed everywhere, always and by all” (Commonitorium, 2).

“From an Orthodox perspective, there simply is, therefore, no such thing as dogmatic development. What there is, of course, is ever new, more detailed and comprehensive explanations elaborated in defense of one and the same faith — responding, each time, to a particular context, a particular controversy etc. But it is one and the same faith that has been believed from the beginning — the continuity of the correct interpretation of Scripture. And for this reason, the Councils, as Fr. John Meyendorff pointed out, never formally endorsed any aspect of theology as dogma which is not a direct (and correct) interpretation of the history of God described in Scripture: only those aspects were defined as dogma which pertain directly to the Gospel. So, for instance, the only aspect pertaining to the Virgin Mary that was ever recognized as dogma is that she is Theotokos — “Mother of God” — for she gave birth to our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ — it is something which pertains to the Incarnation, rather than to Mary herself. Whilst individual theologians have speculated about other aspects concerning the Virgin herself, and her glorification, items not directly pertaining to the Gospel of Christ’s work of salvation, such as the Assumption and the Immaculate conception, have never been held to have the status of dogma in the Orthodox Church. “

 –Father John Behr

A Talk given at the University of North Carolina / March 23, 1998

The handmaiden of the Devil

“Whence spring those “fables and endless genealogies,” and “unprofitable questions,” and “words which spread like a cancer? ” From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says, “See that no one beguile you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and contrary to the wisdom of the Holy Ghost.” He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers) become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth, whilst it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by the variety of its mutually repugnant sects. What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.” Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.”

-Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum c.7, 9

A faint voice of Orthodoxy amongst the Predestinarians: A recall of the patristic ordo theologiae

“[J]ust as there is not, has not been, and will not be any human being with whom Christ is not consubstantial, there has not been, is not, and will not be any human being for whom He did not die.”

–Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims at the Council of Quercy in 843

Huge News!

As many of you know, I’ve been a friend of Dr. Joseph P. Farrell (+Photios) for some years now. Perry and I are one of the few few people that have (autographed) copies in book form of his most prolific work, God History and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences. He has written to inform me that he will be publishing on CD-Rom a copy of God, History, and Dialectic along with other works such as Free Choice in Saint Maximus the Confessor, a revised translation to the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, and a translation of Saint Maximus’s Opsucula Theologica et Polemica (never before been translated in english). I do not have all the details yet, and I do not know if all these works will be included on only one CD-Rom or simultaenously, but +Photios indicated it would be sometime late this year.

 I will keep you informed of any news that I hear.

The 9th Century Crisis: Political, Theological, Social, and Prophetic

Farrell, Most Rev. Bishop Photios, S.S.B. God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences.  Excerpt from Volume II:

The Inception of the Two Europes

The Ninth Century Crisis and the Emergence of the Two Europes: The First Phase and its Central Ikon

 

The mediaevalist Norman Cantor made the following suggestive observation in a book on mediaeval historiography that is replete with intriguing implications:

We have not dealt with the making of the other Middle Ages — primarily Arab, Byzantine, and Jewish.  That is the subject of another inquiry.  It is my personal prejudice that while these other mediaeval civilizations are of enormous importance not only intrinsically but in respect to their impact on the West, for a variety of reasons, including sheer chance, the magisterial intellectua; structures that were created to priviliedge of the European Middle Ages in the twnetieth century were largely lacking with respect to the conceptualization of these other mediaeval socieities.^[i]

The remarks are intriguing because they allude to the elevation of the historiographical tradition of Western Europe to “canonical status”, yet hint that something is amiss that cannot be explained solely by reference to the West.  Paradoxically, it is the Jewish and Islamic aspects of “the other Middle Ages” that are the most understood by the West, and the other Christian Middle Ages, that of the splendid edifice of the Byzantine Roman Empire and Church, that are so obscure.  And yet, it is the Byzantine Empire and Church which hold the key to the decryption of the central moment in the emergence of the two Europes, that moment in the ninth century when Augustinism becomes the broad theological culture of the Frankish empire, and has begun both to be driven by, and to drive, the political and cultural outlook of the West, and come into conflict with the First Europe’s representative in the West: the papacy.  Without that perspective, all remains obscure at best or unintelligible at worst.

Accepting Augustine: The Dialectic of Opposition in Orthodoxy

Beginning with Adolph von Harnack and Reinhold Seeberg in the Nineteenth century, the first historians of doctrine in the modern, comprehensive and systematic sense, there is a growing awareness of a sea-change in the fourth century, a change associated with the name of St. Augustine of Hippo Regius. The Byzantinist Joan M. Hussey remarks, in her little book, Church and Learning in the Byzantine Empire that “insofar as it is possible to assign a watershed, that comes in the fourth century, between those who follow Augustine on the one hand, and those who follow the Cappadocians on the other.”  The comment, coming as it does from a scholar of a civilization, and by no means a theologian, is a significant one, for it means that underlying all other expressions of the problem, be they cultural, canonical, or even liturgical, the underlying problem is dogmatic and more specifically Trinitarian.

Even St. Maximus the Confessor indicates as much.  When the inquiry is made concerning the presence of the filioque in some of the formularies of the Latin West, he accepts the doctrine, but only insofar as expressing the sending of the Spirit by the Son, and explicitly rejects the doctrine in its Augustinian form.

But the most succinct statements of the problem may be found in the early twentieth century Calvinist historian James Orr’s Progress of Dogma:

“With Augustine, theology passes from East to West, and from the region of theology proper to that of anthropology.  Not that this great Father was not a theologian in the stricter sense as well.  No man plunged deeper than he into the mysteries of the divine nature in his discussions of the Trinity.” (p. 131)

On this point, the perception both of Eastern Orthodox and Western scholars regarding the position and significance is the same.

Hilary of Poitiers on the ordo theologiae and commentary by Joseph Farrell

“The term homoousios (of one substance) may express a grasp of the true faith; but it lends itself to deception.  If we apply it to a combination of distinction and likeness of nature, to insist that the ‘likeness’ asserts not a likeness in mere externals (speciem) but in underlying reality (genus), then our teaching accords with the truth of our religion: providing that we take ‘one substance’ as meaning a likeness of distinct entities, so that unity means not numerical singularity but equality…. If ‘Father and Son or one substance’ is taken as implying a single entity, though signified by two names, we may confess the Son in name, but we do not acknowledge him in thought, if by confessing ‘one substance’ we are asserting that one single being is himself both Father and Son.  Again, there is a foothold for the error which supposes the Father to have divided himself, to have cut off a part of himself to be his Son…. There is also a third error, which takes ‘Father and Son of one substance’ to indicate a prior substance, which the two share equally.  The orthodox will assert ‘one substance of Father and son’; but he must not start from that: nor must he hold this as the chief truth, as if there could be no true faith without it.  HE will assert ‘one substance’ without danger, when he has first said, ‘The Father is ingenerate; the Son has his origin and existence from the Father; he is like the Father in goodness, honour, and nature.’  He us subject to his Father, as the origin of his being…. He does not come from nothing; he is generate.  He is not unborn; but he shares in timelessness.  he is not the Father, but the Son derived from him.  He is not a portion, he is a whole: not the Creator himself, but his image; the image of God, born of God, from God: he is not a creature; he is God.  But he is not another God in underlying substance, but one God through essence of undiffering substance.  God is one, not in person, but in nature.”(De synodiis 67-69)