ORLAPUBS P. R140: THE FILIOQUE IN A NUTSHELL

It is the unacceptable and unilateral addition of the words "and the Son" in the Creed to describe the procession of the Holy Spirit. In the Creed approved by Ecumenical Synods, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone; with the addition of the words, "and the Son," The Spirit putatively proceeds from the Son as well as from the inoriginate Father. See the discussion in St. John of Damaskos, Exact exposition of the Orthodox Faith, III.11-19.

John 15:26 distinguishes the ekpórefsis (procession) of the Paraclete from the Father (alone) in the Trinitarian Essence and the ékpempsis or sending (mission) of the Paraclete by the Son in the economy of the created cosmos.

If you insist on confusing essence and energy--existence and the Latin intellectus, the Reformation voluntas as being part of God's Essence--you will of course confuse ekpórefsis and ekpórefsis. St. John of Damaskos, in his Exact exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Ch. III.13-19 (as well as II.22-23), not only distinguished the Willer from the two wills and two willings but also appropriated ekpórefsis procession to Essence and ékpempsis to Energy.

Even more fundmental is the difference between the overall approaches to thinking about the Trinity:

(a) the Unity is Personal(ist) in the East, founded on the Father as the source of all Being.

(b) the Unity is Essential(ist) in the West, based on the unity of one divine Essence.

From Augustine of Hippo on, there arose the view that the Energies (in the created world) and the Essence of God are parallel (the doctrine of the "analogy of being"). Augustine found triads in much of the created world. The idea is that if the Spirit was sent by the Son in the world (John 15:26), it must also be true that the same Paraclete should also proceed from the Son in the Trinitarian Essence. It is to be observed that, without a distinction between the unknowable divine Essence (the relations of the Son and holy Spirit to the Father) and the uncreated Energies operating in the created cosmos (Jesus's "sending" the Paraclete in the world of time), such a conclusion can seem plausible; to those (viz. the Orthodox) who distinguish energies from the essences they radiate from, the conclusion is of course implausible. Secondly, in his book On the Trinity, Augustine also claimed that in the divine Essence relations are substantial and determine the beings they relate--when in fact the contrary is true. Given this idea, though, it is necessary--so Augustine thought--to assume that the Spirit (in direct contravention of John 15:26) proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father (the only procession mentioned in the original Creed of the ecumenical Synods); for otherwise, untoward conclusions about the Trinity would have to be embraced. Both the assumption and the allegedly necessary conclusions from the assumption do not hold.

Eastern Orthodoxy rejects speculations by finite reason that go beyond revelation and what can be reasonably inferred from revelation--chiefly, what uncreated Being beyond being would not be. (This kind of thinking is termed "apophatic.")

Western theologians can never understand Orthodox theology so long as they are prevented from (even provisionally) thinking in terms of the Orthodox distinction between Essence and Energies; in Augustine's Neo-Platonism and the second-hand Aristotelianism that the scholastics got from Latin translations of Arabic translations of Aristotle, energy (rather than dýnamis "potential, power") was identified with essence. (In the following table, the Icon of God is the Western Image of God; Western "likeness" is a mistranslation of omoíosis "cognation, assimilation"-- "likeness" would be a non-energetic omoíoma.)

Note that Philp. 2:13 (with Gal. 2:20, etc., interpreted in harmony with the foregoing; CLICK HERE) overcomes the Western dichotomy or antinomy of faith and works: "For 'tis God energizing in you all both to will and to energize for the sake of pleasing Him."
Western theologians have contended that the simplicity of God (a philosophical concept) is violated by speaking of the divine Energies as not being the same as the divine Essence. But there being three Hypostaseis in one Essence violates that philosophical premise too; and note that the Energies are not hypostatic and more than they are "accidents." The interested reader interested in a few subtleties of the concept of divine Energies is recommended to read V. Lossky, Mystical theology of the Eastern Church (1957, pp. 78ff). He observes that the distinction between God's Essence and the Energies that radiate from It does not involve any division, separation, or composition in the divine Essence--all of which would violate the unicity of the Essence. He also (ibid., p. 81) rejects the psychologism in Augustinian-Latin Triadology holding that the Son proceeds in the divine Essence by mode of intellect, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by mode of will.

IS THE AUGUSTINIAN PARALLELISM BETWEEN CREATED AND UNCREATED CONSONANT WITH THE ORTHODOX TRADITION?

First, there is in Orthodoxy no analogia entis "analogy of being" or parallelism between created finite being and the infinite "Being beyond being," at least the (for a finite intellect) unknowable and altogether imparticipable divine Essence. It should be recalled that the Persons of the all-holy Trinity are defined strictly by their relations in the West (Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, etc.); nevertheless, the Persons are psychologically characterized from creative reason (the Son), and will or love (the Paraclete). Thomists view the divine Essence as "consisting" of intellect and the actus purus of existence (SEE CITATIONS ON THIS PAGE)--both being operative--the Latin understanding of what the East would more properly conceptualize as uncreated Energies. The Franciscan tradition from Duns Scotus (from Richard of Middleton, Scotus's earlier contemporary) onward steadfastly maintained that "will is the noblest power in the soul" and that "will is simply nobler than the intellect." This was due not least to the causal efficacy of will. All Latins, following Augustine, have held the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son in the divine Trinitarian Essence (His Essential ekpórefsis or procession) to be parallel with the Paraclete's being "sent" (His energetic ékpempsis by Jesus Christ) in the economy of creation. But John 15:26--the definitive text on the subject, from which the Greek technical terminology derives--provides no such warrant for the Latin cacodoxy; it makes no sense in the traditional Orthodox framework. The very Revd. Protopresvyter Georges Florovsky has pointed out that if the created paralleled the uncreated, God must never have not been creating and upholding an eternal universe--as the early Alexandrian theologian, Origen, maintained. It is quite foreign to Orthodoxy to infer that what our finite intellects can know in the temporal world might necessarily or even likely parallel the Being beyond being of the divine Essence.

Secondly, Augustine's idea of substantial relations lies at the heart of the whole business. But relations do not create entities; entities are the basis of relations. Augustine held that the Persons of the Trinity differ only relationally--not, as in Orthodox thinking, in terms of properties based on how they ontologically proceed from the Father, the sole Source of all that is--uncreated and created being. Note that the processions create the relations--not vice-versa. Augustinianism reverses Cause and effect.
Thirdly, the Orthodox hold it to be necessary in monotheism for there to be a single Font and Source of Being--the inoriginate Father. If this principle is not upheld--and it is hardly upheld in the dyadic procession of the Holy Spirit--monotheism becomes questionable.

No, the four Eastern patriarchates rejected the Filioque as heretical teaching, for which cause the Roman patriarch split from those who held fast to the holy tradition and followed a separate course, adding ever more novel teachings to the holy tradition. The fact that the Filioque was a unilateral innovation not approved by an ecumenical Synod or the other four patriarchates of the Church then existing deprives the Filioque of any chance of being guaranteed divine truth.

WERE ROME'S REASONS PURELY THEOLOGICAL? OR WAS THE FILIOQUE THE RESULT OF POLITICAL PRESSURE?

Politics played a decisive role. When the Germanic tribes overran Italy and the rest of Europe--creating the Western Dark Ages--in time Charlemagne (a Frank) aspired to be the Roman Emperor. But the Roman emperor resided chiefly in Constantinople (though at times Western capitals existed in Milan--later Ravenna--and in Trier in Germany). In order to discredit the Byzantine-Roman emperor and have himself crowned Holy Roman emperor, Charlemagne used the tactic of denouncing the East as heretical for not allowing the Filioque (itself being a Germanic invention foisted on the Latins, who had earlier rejected it). Helpless as the pope was in his political plight--the Franks were to cleanse the old Roman episcopate of all who disagreed with them and install Frankish bishops in their places--the pope simply yielded in return for the strengthening of his position. In return for Charlemagne's support of the papacy, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor on Christmas day in 800--a time when the Arab Empire of the Abbasid Caliphs, whose capital was the luxurious and highly civilized city of Baghdad (with perhaps half a million inhabitants), ruled a territory extending eastward to India and China and Indonesia. (Spain with North Africa west of Egypt remained under an Umayyad Emir, though Nigeria was not Umayyad.)

TRYING TO SQUARE THE TRIANGLE

      The Latins defend the Filioque with principles that are outside of the welkin (as a character of Shakespeare's would say) of the Orthodox: The assumptions of the Western paradigm are not part of the axioms or first principles of the Eastern paradigm--which is a dozen centuries older. Give that hard fact, the only ways in which the circle of the Eastern view of the procession of the all-holy Spirit can be squared with the Western view of the procession of the holy Spirit are, or so I claim, the following. Note that the second and third views involve dissection of the Trinitarian Mystery in ways that, even though some come from writers of undoubted Orthodoxy, are foreign to the Orthodox phronema.
      My information about the diverse views mentioned here comes from D. Reid's Energies of the Spirit. pp. 100-111 of his admirable book. For those who, like this writer, do not intend to plow through he original writings fairly presented and critiqued by Reid, an outline or summary of Reid's comments should suffice. Of these views, those of Florovsky and Staniloae involve a confusion of cause-and-caused with ontological succession, despite disclaimers, in some quasi-temporal sense: The uncreated Energies are not "as eternal" as the Essence!
     1) One can just give up and tell each side that one is willing to let the other side hold it's views, however contrary to those of one's own side they may be.
     2a) One can distinguish (a) an "eternal" divine Essence from (b) "co-eternal" (Florovsky) uncreated Energies or from the "aionic eternity" (Staniloae) of the divine Energies, including the Trinitarian processions. One can assume, with such authors, that the case of each is well-argued.
     2b) A distinction between the Essence and divine will can be and has been resorted to. It would make better sense to locate certain capacities or faculties (dynámeis) like the power to exist, to know, and to will in the Essence but the energizations of those powers in the Energies. (This is impossible, if God is, as Aquinas thought, pure realization [actus]--no unrealized existing, knowing, or acting. Of course, one can accept that nothing in God is unactualized without confusing the realization with the capacity to be energized.) That the willing is in some way not as eternal as the Essence or that either the Essence of creation depends on the faculty of will is gobbledygook to the Eastern ear.
     2c) Bryennios' distinction of the "two Names" of each Person--one essential, one energetic--is even more evidently a resort to word magic than (2b)--no less than is calling Christ a "Word." It's Nominalist from the word "go." Speaking of one Person's "resting in" or "shining forth from" another Person of the Trinity is pretty metaphor but objectively reduces to word magic.
     As for the Eastern theologians, for whom energy is distinct from essence, why analyse and dissect the architecture of the Trinity in "economic" or "temporal" terms--which involve time? As for the Western theologians who (contrary to John 15:26) eschew this distinction and posit an Augustinian analogy of being between the mission of the Spirit from Christ in time and the procession of the Spirit in the divine Essence , Reid offers ample refutation. This is all based, as said earlier, and laid out above in the main text of this page, on assumptions that are untenable in the Eastern paradigm.
      Evidently, some writers can satisfy themselves with purely verbal tricks for squaring the triangle of the Trinity, but talking across para- digms is generally disingenuous. The writers (and Reid) seem not to be aware of this problem. But ignoring this fly in the pudding advances the syncretistic cause not a whit, as countless examples from history attest. The Spirit eternally proceeds either from the Father and Source of all being alone or from the Father and the Son; it cannot be both ways, and the Orthodox generality will never accept the latter innovation. Looking as far afield as we may, there is no acceptable way to bring the Filioque into harmony with the view of the Standard of Belief. The effort may be noble in intent but misguided in that one can no more square the triangle than one can square a circle. One view may be right, as each side things; both views cannot be right any more than pretending that there is a contradiction in saying that God can be one in a give respect (Essence) and trine in another respect (Persons).
     We can solve any quandary by inventing new words and their accompanying concepts; but if the words fall short of referring to any intelligible reality, that method is the method of word magic.

For numerous additional arguments against Filioquism raised by St. Photios, CLICK HERE.

ekpórefsis "procession"	ékpempsis, ékphansis "mission in the created cosmos" (John 15:26)
ICON of GOD	ASSIMILATION to (COGNATION with) GOD
apothéosis "(pagan) Deification" (in essence)	théosis "Divinization through participating in the uncreated Energies of Grace--Christ's LIFE"