Filioque: New Angles and Considerations.

The debates on the Filioque typically revolve around the canonical historical questions (such as the creed) and "what church father said what". For the most part, the metaphysics doesn't go beyond using the arguments of St. Photius for the Orthodox and Thomas Aquinas for the Roman Catholics, but especially today, since the metaphysics are difficult to understand and most people's understanding of Trinitarian theology does not go beyond the basic formula that God is "one in essence three in persons", there's not much fruitful discussion that occurs. This text will be looking at the Filioque from the discussion I had with Prof. Dr. Scott Williams here.

Most who've watched my many videos on the Filioque might already be aware of the basic argument: Council of Florence says the Spirit has His hypostasis from the Father and the Son as one cause, St. Maximus' letter to Marinus on the other hand says only the Father is cause and that's what the fathers say. I still am of the opinion that an intelligent reading of both Florence and St. Maximus points out that they clearly contradict each other, but this is not the purpose of this writing, I want to go beyond the canonical question and consider two important questions: Is the Filioque biblical and is the filioque even necessary within Latin metaphysics?

A Lacking Biblical Argument

One of the things I thought about after my debate with Militant Thomist is that his argumentation and reasoning effectively led him to admit that the Filioque, outside of just simply assuming metaphysical beliefs that get you to it, is not biblical. Roman Catholicism has two main arguments for the Filioque being biblical: That there's a relation between the Son and the Spirit, and Revelation 22:1 says that the Spirit proceeds from the throne of God (Father) and the lamb (Son).

The issue with the first argument is that it assumes that any relation between the persons of the Trinity can be read into relation of origin, but that's an assumption that is not biblical and one which we don't have to accept. The Orthodox are willing to agree that it shows that the Father is the (sole) source of Divinity insofar as everything is from the Father, but it doesn't therefore mean that, for instance the Son breathing the Spirit to the apostles (John 20:22) means that the Spirit is caused by the Son. A simple argument to demonstrate the absurdity of this assumption is Isaiah 48:16 which talks about the incarnation: "Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me." here we see that it is the Father and the Spirit that sends the Son, if the Son breathing and sending the Holy Spirit is proof that the Son causes the Spirit, then doesn't Isaiah 48:16 prove that the Spirit causes the Son by this logic? The Orthodox reading of the relations of the persons as mutual glorification is more biblical, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9) because the Spirit manifests the activity/energy of Christ (St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, Ch. 2) both in time and in eternity.

This only leaves us with Revelation 22:1, Roman Catholics argue that the Greek term "ekporeuomenon" that is used in the creed and in John 15:26 is a kind of a magic word that signifies existence/hypostatic procession alone. I can't blame them too much because I can see how they might have come off with that impression, but as Siencienski argues, the term "ekporeuomenon" is used to signify existence/hypostatic procession alone in the fathers, not in the bible. Various patristic authors such as St. Andrew of Caesarea (Commentary on the Apocalypse) and St. Ambrose (On the Holy Spirit read Revelation 22 as a temporal event, pointing out that "throne" and "lamb" symbols as evidence, which shows us that this procession is not eternal, and thus it cannot be hypostatic but a temporal procession which I assume most people at this point understand that the Orthodox accept. Militant Thomist in our debate himself agreed with my argument and admitted that Revelation 22:1 does not necessarily prove the Catholic case (which is ironic because prior to the debate he was very quick to comment in one of my videos that it does prove the Filioque). A Roman Catholic then might claim that this means we lose out on our silver bullet in John 15:26, but I will explain why that's not the case.

"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:"

Christ first starts by saying that the sending of the Holy Spirit is from Himself and the Father, as we've already said this is clearly indicative of a temporal procession. What's key here is that the term "procession" in this case does not include Himself but the Father alone. We understand two key things: Procession in John 15:26 is distinct from sending, and it excludes the Son. One might argue that our hermeneutic principle tells us that we must assume the other Trinitarian persons whenever only one is mentioned, unless stated otherwise. For example the baptism done in Christ's name (Acts 8:16, Acts 19:5) we read as Trinitarian because even though it invokes Christ's name alone, since its an activity, we do not exclude but include the Father and the Spirit. The problem with this is that this hermeneutic applies because all activites are Trinitarian, but procession is not an activity that the Trinity does (since the Son nor the Spirit do not cause themselves), but rather a (hypostatic) act unique to the Father (or the Father and the Son if you believe the Filioque). Even if you're a Filioquist, reading the Son into the procession is another example of a egregious assumption of one's position.

If one was to try to make the Filioque biblical, it would be done either by placing natural revelation above supernatural revelation (considering metaphysical assumptions as having priority over the teachings of scripture), or assuming that the Bible affirms your beliefs from the get-go. A more honest reading of scripture would direct you instead to believe the following argument:

1. The Father is the sole source of Divinity (See St. Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names)

2. The Holy Spirit is Divine

3. The Father is the sole source of the Holy Spirit

Anti-Filioquist Latin Metaphysics

One of the key takeaways from my stream with Prof. Dr. Scott Williams, who is an expert on medieval scholastic theology, is that even if one were to assume what one might call "Latin Metaphysics" (Absolute Divine Simplicity, generation and spiration being essential and not hypostatic etc.) it does not follow that one must accept the Filioque. A very short reasoning is that even if we were to assume that generation (which results in the Son) and spiration (which results in the Spirit) to be essential, they are acts that conceptually occur simultaneously and if they are conceptually simultaneous, then the Son "is too late" to cause the Spirit since He conceptually comes to be at the same time.¹ Moreover, this also showcases that it's not the relations that distinguish the persons (the relations manifest and make the distinction known in eternity and in time) but rather it is the powers themselves that result in distinct persons.

This is an incredibly important and fascinating angle that I believe Orthodox Christians should consider, even if we would disagree with the idea that the generative power and spirative power are in the essence. The Roman Catholic still has to answer why the acts cannot be conceptually simultaneous, they can perhaps answer that there's an ordering in the Bible and in the fathers and the various analogies they use, but once again it is just as, if not more likely, to read them as eternal energetic relations since whenever the ordering is made clear in scripture, it's always about the activities that the Trinity does (like baptism).

The standard Thomist view is that the first hypostasis is named as Father, because of His relation of opposition with the Son, in this scheme for Thomists persons are identified as relations. The relations don't merely let us know who is who, the relations in a way are the persons. This is why Thomists argue that there must be a Filioque, since in this scheme the only way to distinguish between the Son and the Spirit must be a relation, and since the scripture for the most part considers the Son second and the Spirit third, it means the Son must've caused the Spirit. We've already showed that this is a view that simply assumes what the Bible is saying, but even on a metaphysical level there are some issues. Consider the following statements:

1. The first hypostasis is Father either prior to generating the second hypostasis or posterior.

2. If the first hypostasis is the Father prior to generating the Son, then the first hypostasis is the Father independent of having a Son or not.

3. If the first hypostasis is the Father posterior to generating the Son, then prior to the generation the first hypostasis does not exist.

To put this into other words, if the Father is Father because He has a Son, and if the Son comes to be as a result of the generative act, then the Father doesn't exist prior to generating the Son. There's a contradiction between a conceptually simultaneously occuring relation (Father-Son relation of opposition) that comes about as a result of an activity that is cause-effect, and thus is not conceptually simultaneous but ordered (Father -> Son ordering).

As a result, the Thomistic account has within the medieval latin scholastic tradition a couple of challenges, while I'm not going to go into all of them, and those who are interested in Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent's challenge can watch my stream with Williams, I'd like to highlight one thing that stood out to me which was Henry of Ghent's outlook on the properties of the Divine persons. Williams in our stream mentioned that Henry of Ghent considers there to be numerous (around 30) constitutive hypostatic properties that the Father has, to my ears this has a significant meaning, namely that it seems like at least some medieval scholastics considered the possibility of distinction not necessarily implying division or composition, meaning that we can speak about not just multiple hypostatic properties of the Divine persons (something St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John of Damascus does), but also a plurality of properties, that is, energies/activities of God.

Concluding Remarks

The ignorance of Orthodox theology and poor methodology (which even Orthodox themselves unfortunately commit themselves to) results in important issues like the Filioque properly unadressed. The Orthodox view of energetic procession shouldn't be treated as an ad hoc defense, but a genuine view of the church fathers in how they view the Trinity. When considering discussions about the Orthodox view of the Trinity, simply assuming one's own position and imposing it on the other will not get anyone anywhere. While dealing with a difficult metaphysical aspect of this debate, I also tried to go back to the basics, which is scripture as my source of beliefs about God and it seems quite difficult to argue that the Filioque is biblically justified. On the other hand, it seems that the Orthodox view is the only view that makes proper sense of what scripture teaches about the Holy Spirit's procession. My personal impression is that a lot of the medieval Latin theologians were in some ways "forced" to work around with the Filioque, and it contributed to the departure of the Latin tradition from Orthodox belief into a metaphysical spiral fueled by endless speculation.

1. Few words must be said about "conceptual" ordering. I am not saying that there's any temporal ordering in the Trinity, this would mean that the Son and the Spirit are created which is clearly heretical. Conceptual ordering however still exists, for instance we might consider a lit match which has fire, heat, and light temporally existing simultaneously, but the heat and light due to being caused by the fire is still conceptually prior. This is another reason why the first hypostasis cannot be caused by the second hypostasis since that'd be contradictory.