Distinctions Between East and West
Distinctions Between East and West However, gradually, a significant difference between the East and the West developed in the doctrine of the Trinity. The ontological procession of the Son from the Father was understood in the second century as an eternal generation; and similarly, for the Holy Spirit, who could not remain separate from the Father and the Son, a similar procession had to be assumed. The relationship of the Spirit to the Father and the Son had to be established. Athanasius taught in this regard that the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of both the Father and the Son or of Christ, possessing the same idiothv, taxiv, and fusiv in relation to the Son as the Son does to the Father. He is said to proceed from the Father, ekporeuesyai, because He is sent and given from the Logos, para tou logou, who is from the Father. As the procession of the Father, the Holy Spirit is always in the hands of the Father, who sends Him, and the Son, who bears Him, and cannot be separated from Him. He is not the brother or son of the Son, but is the Spirit of the Father, just as the Son is the son of the Father. But although He is not called Son, He is not separate from the Son, for He is called the Spirit of wisdom and of sonship; if we have the Spirit, we have the Son, and vice versa. However, why one is called
Son and the other Spirit is incomprehensible, but so teaches the Scripture. He is united with the Son, as the Son is with the Father.
Thus, Athanasius very clearly teaches a dependence of the Spirit on the Son but does not explicitly state that He proceeds from the Father and the Son. The three Cappadocians speak in the same spirit; they clearly teach that the Holy Spirit stands to the Son as the Son to the Father, that He follows the Son in order, that the Spirit gives us the Son and the Father, that He proceeds from the Father
and is thought of after and with the Son, that He is from the Father through the Son, and that only the proper distinction gives each of the Three Persons their own Name; but the procession of the Spirit from the Son is not explicitly stated by any of them. It cannot be said that this was denied or contested by them, for this question had not yet arisen. Hence, expressions are found in Gregory of Nyssa,
Epiphanius, Didymus, Cyril, and others, which seem to teach the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. They use the prepositions para and ek, say that the Holy Spirit takes everything from Christ, and that Christ is the Source of the Holy Spirit, John 7:38; they state that He is from the Essence of the Father and of the Son and that He is the Image, the mouth, the breath of the Son; they acknowledge that He is the third Person, existing after the Son, and receives everything from the Father through the Son, and so on.
However, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity took a different direction in the East than in the West. Cyril, in opposition to Nestorius, who made Christ dependent on the Holy Spirit and thus reversed the order of the Persons, entirely in accordance with the Greek fathers, taught that the Spirit proceeded from the Father through the Son, dia tou uiou. Similarly, Damascenus says that the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Son because He is revealed and communicated through Him; that He proceeds from the Father through the Son; but he expressly rejects the idea that He is from the Son and has His existence from Him, reducing Son and Spirit to one cause. And this remained the doctrine of the Greek Church. The East adhered to the theology of the fathers. However, the West went further. Tertullian had already begun to derive the Trinity not from the Father but from the Essence of God, and he also said: "I consider the Spirit to come from no other source than from the Father through the Son." Hilary places the Spirit in the same relation to the Son as the Son to the Father, saying that the Spirit proceeds from the
Father and is sent and distributed by the Son, indeed, the Son has authority over Him. But above all, Augustine surpassed the Greek fathers. He conceives of the Three Persons as relations in the one, simple Godhead and therefore had to relate the Spirit not only to the Father but also to the Son. Augustine clearly teaches that the Holy
Spirit stands in relation to both the Father and the Son, that He is an ineffable communion of Father and Son. While the names Father and Son express only the reciprocal relationship and not that to the Spirit, our language is too poor for that. Yet, the Spirit is called a gift from the Father and the Son. He has both as a principle; it must be admitted that the Father and the Son are the principle of the Holy
Spirit. But these are not two principles, just as the Father, Son, and Spirit are not three principles of creation. No, Father and Son are one principle of the Spirit. The Son also has this, that He also sends forth the Spirit, received from the Father; for the Son can be distinguished from the Father in nothing except that He is the Son.
This teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit is then found after Augustine in the symbol of the Synod of Toledo in 400, in the letter of Leo I to Turribius, in the Athanasian Creed, and in the symbol of the Third Synod of Toledo in 589, which inserted the filioque into the text of the Constantinopolitan Creed. The church and theology in the West followed Augustine and repeatedly defended the filioque against the East, and the Reformation aligned with this position.
However, despite all attempts at agreement, the East remained steadfast in its old position, even at the conference of the Old
Catholics in Bonn in 1875.
The fruitlessness of all these attempts is all the more remarkable because the difference seems so slight. The Greeks do not teach subordinationism and acknowledge the full homoousia of the Three
Persons; they also place the Holy Spirit in a certain relation to Christ, who sends and distributes Him; they also have no objection to saying
that He proceeds from the Father through the Son, dia tou uiou, per filium. Conversely, the Western church has stated that the procession of the Father and the Son should not be understood as emanating from two principles and existing in two spirations, but as from one principle and in one spiration. Pope Leo acknowledged that the inclusion of the expression filioque in the old creed was formally incorrect; even the formula ex patre per filium as such did not pose a problem in the West. And yet, no agreement was reached. The Greeks always retained a great objection that, if the Holy Spirit also proceeded from the Son, there would be two principles, two aitiai, in the Godhead. This points back to another doctrine of God and to another practice of piety. The opposition to the filioque remains in the Greek church as the last vestige of subordinationism. Although the Three Persons are thought of as perfectly one and equal, that unity and equality belong to the Son and the Spirit only from the Father. He is the source and origin of the Godhead. If the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son, then the Son stands beside the Father, and the principle of unity is broken and a kind of ditheism is upheld.
For the Greeks, the unity of the essence and the root of the Trinity do not lie in the divine nature as such but in the person of the Father.
He is the sole aitia. The Three Persons are not three relations in the essence, not a self-unfolding of the Godhead, but it is the Father who communicates His essence to the Son and the Spirit. But from this follows that the Son and the Spirit now also stand beside each other, and both in the same way have their aitia, their principle, in the Father. In both, the Father reveals Himself. The Son makes Him known, the Spirit enables enjoyment of Him. The Son does not reveal the Father through the Spirit, nor does the Spirit lead to the Father through the Son. But both are to some extent independent; both open a way to the Father. Orthodoxy and mysticism, intellect and will, stand dualistically side by side. And this peculiar relationship between orthodoxy and mysticism is the hallmark of Greek piety.