The Lord Is the Spirit. John A. Studebaker
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that occurred regarding the Church’s understanding of its role in the world? This question is one to ponder as we examine two major contributors to the Filioque debate: Augustine and John of Damascus.
Augustine
Augustine (354–430) was intensely interested in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Though the Filioque doctrine had already been taught in one form or another by other Church Fathers (i.e., Tertullian, Hilary, Ambrose), Augustine’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of love and the Spirit of unity between the first two Persons of the Trinity was considered novel for his time. Beginning with the idea of the Trinity as pure relation, Augustine calls the Spirit the vinculum caritas (“bond of love”) between the Father and the Son,65 and a caritas (“mutual gift”) primarily from the Father to the Son, but also from the Son to the Father.66 As the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, he “proceeds”67 simultaneously from both the Father and the Son (and thus from only one source). Holding that the Spirit receives His divinity from the Son (just as the Son receives His divinity from the Father), Augustine rules out the idea that the Son is only a medium through which the Spirit proceeds (as proposed in the Eastern view). Instead, the Spirit acts as the principle agent in the economy of Christ’s salvation by bringing the sinner into the life of the Trinity, into the relationship of love provided therein. Augustine gives the following summary of the Spirit’s work:
According to Holy Scripture, this Holy Spirit is neither only the Spirit of the Father nor only the Spirit of the Son, but is the Spirit of both. Because of this, he is able to teach us that charity which is common both to the Father and to the Son and through which they love each other.68
Latin tradition regarding the trinitarian Persons exposes this understanding of the Spirit. In the unity of the godhead (which is defined in the word homoousios), the Persons are distinguished by the way they are relationally opposed to each other. Since the Spirit and Son proceed equally from the Father, there must be a processional relationship between Son and Spirit as well (proceeding from Son to Spirit) in order for them to be distinguished.69 In De Trinitate Augustine confirms this Latin conception of procession by referring to the terms “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” as “relative” terms—that is, expressions of relationship. Since such relational diversity exists within the same substance or “essence,”70 absolute terms such as “good,” “all-powerful,” and “Creator” apply to each of the Persons without diversifying or multiplying the substance. Though all three Persons may rightly be called “Creator,” this does not amount to three creators.71
Augustine deals with the question of Filioque in De Trinitate as well, and his conclusions accord with the above thinking. In his writing he seems to make a deliberate effort to oppose the Eastern conception of the Spirit by associating divine auctoritas (i.e., authority or source or authorship) with the Father alone (rather than to all three Persons). Augustine states,
Scripture enables us to know in the Father the principle, auctoritas, in the Son being begotten and born, nativitas, and in the Spirit the union of the Father and the Son, Patris Filioque communitas. . . . The society of the unity of the Church of God, outside of which there is no remission of sins, is in a sense the work of the Holy Spirit, with, or course, the co-operation of the Father and the Son, because the Holy Spirit himself is in a sense the society of the Father and Son.72
How does Augustine deal with John 15:26, which tells us that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father”? He replies that the Father communicated to the Son all that he is, apart from his being Father. Thus, all that the Son has comes from the Father.73
John of Damascus
John of Damascus (ca. 675—ca. 749) has been described as “the last great theologian of the Eastern Church.” John’s pneumatology is essentially a synthesis of the basic concepts provided by Athanasius and the Cappadocians. His De Fide Orthodoxa came to serve as a primary textbook for Eastern theology that provided Greek theologians with many theological standard concepts, including the monarchy of the Father, the distinction between the Son’s begetting and the Spirit’s ekporeusij (“procession”), and clarifications regarding the Son/Spirit relationship (i.e., the Spirit comes “through” the Son, “rests in” the Son, expresses the Son, and is communicated by the Son). He also provides one of the few early documents that literally grant “authority” to the Spirit:
Likewise we become also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, which proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son, the object of equal adoration and glorification with the Father and the Son, since it is con-substantial and co-eternal, the Spirit of God, direct, authoritative, the foundation of wisdom and life and holiness; God existing and addressed along with the Father and the Son; uncreated, full, creative, all-ruling, all-effecting, all-powerful, of infinite power; Lord above all creation, and not under any Lord.74
Such an authority is associated with the energies of God, which Eastern theology distinguished from God’s essence.75 The divine energies function to make the incomprehensible and inaccessible essence of God comprehensible and accessible, thus providing a theoretical foundation for communion with God and for the Eastern understanding of the Trinity. John also popularized the use of the term perichoresis in the theology of the Trinity.76 It was first used by Maximus the Confessor to express the oneness of action and effect resulting from the union of the two natures in Christ.
Perichoresis in the theology of the Trinity points to the in-existence of the Persons within each other, the fact that they are present to each other, that they contain one another and that they manifest each other. This in-existence is based on the unity and identity of substance between the three, even in the teaching of the Greek Fathers.77
The Greek en was used to indicate the way that the Persons that exist within God “hypostatize” the same substance. They are “in” or “within” each other. Each one is also eij, turned “toward” the other and given “to” the other. John begins by speaking of the one God as the absolute being, rather than of the three hypostases. This one God, however, is also the Father, who by means of monarchy is Father by nature of the Son and the “Producer” of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not another Son—he does not proceed by begetting but by ekporeutoj.78 In contrast to Augustine, John draws a parallel between the Son who is “begotten” and the Spirit who “proceeds”: “We have learned through faith that there is a difference between begetting and proceeding, but faith tells us nothing about the nature of that difference.”79 The Spirit, therefore, proceeds from the Father alone. The crucial distinction between John’s theology and Western theology thereby arises when we consider the relationship between the Spirit and the Son. John says, “We do not say that the Son is the cause, nor do we say that he is Father . . . We do not say that the Spirit comes from the Son (ek tou Uiou), but we do say that the Spirit is of the Son.”80 The idea here is that the Spirit’s property—procession—is only accessible and intelligible to us in reference to the Son, and that the Spirit “penetrates” the Son until the Spirit remains and dwells in the Son while still