Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« The constant faith and preaching of Christian antiquity concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son as from one principle is demonstrated from the learned doctrine and the Catholic understanding of the holy Fathers, both Western and Eastern ».

Up to the middle of the fourth century, the attack on the part of the heretics, and on that account also the defense, the more diligent exposition, and the more urgent preaching of the Catholic Church concerning the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity was so disposed that it seemed almost restricted to the person of the Father and of the Son; concerning the person of the Holy Spirit, however, simple faith according to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture and of the apostolic tradition prevailed in the Church without direct controversy, and therefore also without more subtle explanations.

For although the heretics fighting against the Word of the Father were by necessary consequence all also blasphemers against the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, nevertheless the direct and express attack and defense was engaged around the Word, the eternal Son of the Father; for it was the conviction of the Catholic doctors no less than of the heretics that, once the Catholic faith concerning the personal distinction of the Son, His generation from the substance of the Father, and His consubstantiality had been overthrown (if that could have been done), the whole doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, and in particular of the person of the Holy Spirit, would at the same time be wholly subverted; and conversely, that once the transmitted faith concerning the Father and the Son was confirmed, faith in the Spirit of the Father and of the Son would be safe, or at least could very easily be defended against heresies from the principles established in the earlier controversy by universal consent.

In the creed set forth by the Nicene Fathers against the Arian heresy, after the distinct exposition of the doctrine of the Father and of the Son, there is simply subjoined the profession of faith in the Holy Spirit: « πιστεύομεν... καὶ εἰς πνεῦμα ἅγιον », without any other declaration. Whence St. Basil says of the Nicene definition: « here the other things indeed are fully and accurately defined, partly to correct what had been injured, partly to guard against what was foreseen to arise; but the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is set down in passing (ἐν παρόδῳ κεῖται), and does not seem to require any inquiry, for the reason that then this question had not yet been raised, but the belief concerning Him (the Holy Spirit) was implanted without deceit in the minds of believers (ἀνεπιβούλευτον ἐνυπάρχειν ταῖς πιστευόντων ψυχαῖς τὴν περὶ αὐτοῦ διάνοιαν). Little by little, however, with the progress of impiety, the evil seeds, which had first been scattered by Arius, the author of the heresy, and afterwards nurtured to the ruin of the Churches by those who had wickedly taken up his errors, together with the consequence of impiety (καὶ ἡ ἀκολουθία τῆς ἀσεβείας), burst forth into blasphemy against the Spirit » Bas. ep. 125. (al. 78) n. 3.

So also Gregory Naz. professes the Nicene faith, but by explaining more distinctly « what was there said in passing (ἐν παρόδῳ) about the Holy Spirit, for the reason that then this question had not yet been raised » ep. 2. ad Cledon. T. II. p. 94 ¹

Besides, Athanasius rightly warns that for the simple faith, which it is not yet proposed to defend against assailants, that profession in the apostolic creed taken over from the Scriptures themselves suffices, by which we believe in one God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: « nor did they (the Nicene Fathers) allow the Holy Spirit to be believed alien from the Father and the Son, but rather they glorified Him together with the Father and the Son in the one faith of the Holy Trinity, because the Godhead is one in the Holy Trinity » Athanas. ep. ad Iovin. Imperat. n. 4. T. I. p. 782.

I. Now in this stage of simple faith in the Holy Spirit — the third person to be glorified together with the Father and the Son, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, who proceeds from the Father and receives from the Son, because all things that are the Father's are the Son's, who is sent by the Father and the Son — it would not be a wonder if a more distinct explanation of the mode of procession were not yet to be found, since no adversary as yet pressed the matter.

Certainly a « more urgent preaching » and, as it were, a polemical defense of the procession from the Father and the Son is not to be expected; and so on this head some progress of the Catholic understanding can easily be admitted (cf. above p. 147), « so that what was before simply believed, the same afterward would be believed more diligently; what was before preached more slowly, the same afterward would be preached more urgently; what was before worshipped more securely, the same afterward would be cultivated more solicitously » (Vinc. Lirin. Commonit. n. 32).

Nevertheless, already in the third century, in the doctrine of the distinction of the divine persons, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son is explicitly declared, namely by the Greek Fathers, in the causal meaning (αἰτιωτικῇ) of the particles ἐξ or παρὰ and διά, just as also the operations ad extra are said to be from the Father through the Son.

Origen (tom. 2. in Io. n. 6): as all things, he says, are said to have been made by God the Father through the Word, so too the Holy Spirit is not ἀγέννητον (unbegotten) but is γενόμενον (made) and γεννητόν (begotten) through the Word, although He stands above the order of all things that have been made; therefore, because He does not proceed from the Father alone, the Holy Spirit is not the Son; « but the only-begotten alone (begotten from the Father alone, as Gregory Thaumaturgus, Basil, and the Nyssen also interpret the name of the only-begotten) is by origin Son by nature, to whom the Holy Spirit is referred by a necessary relation, since the Son ministers to the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, not only that He may be, but that He may be wise and intellectual and just, and whatever else it is fitting to understand Him to be, according to the communication of the notions of Christ which were mentioned a little before » ². He then objects to himself that to the doctrine by which the Holy Spirit is said to have existence through the Word (τὸ πνεῦμα γεννητὸν ὂν διὰ τοῦ λόγου γεγονέναι) it seems repugnant that sometimes in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit is set before Christ, and Christ is said to be sent by the Holy Spirit. Origen's response is the same as that which we gave above (p. 435), that in these passages the discourse is of Christ according to His human nature ³. Origen. Opp. Tom. IV. p. 60-63.

Likewise Dionysius Alex., disciple of Origen: « The Son, he says, is not separated from the Father ... but in their hands is the Spirit, who can be separated neither from the sender (the Father) nor from the bearer (the Son) ⁴ » (apud Athanas. de sentent. Dionys. n. 17. T. I. p. 255).

Then Apollinarius: «We confess one true God... and one Son, God of true God ... and one Holy Spirit, by nature and truth sanctifying and deifying all, who exists from the substance of God through the Son (πνεῦμα ὑπάρχον ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ θεοῦ δι' υἱοῦ)... but all things we profess to have been created by God through the Son (δι' υἱοῦ) in the Holy Spirit» (in Leont., in Spicileg. Rom. Card. Mai T. X. P. II. p. 148. 149).

More explicitly still, the other disciple of Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, sets forth the doctrine in the creed divinely handed down, of which we made mention above p. 141, however much the schismatics strive either to conceal or to pervert its genuine meaning. First, in the creed the personal characteristics of the Father and of the Son are declared. «Perfect begetter of the perfect one, Father of the only-begotten Son, one Lord, alone from the alone, God of God, figure and image of the Godhead». If this is the proper characteristic of the Son — that He alone is from the Father alone — it follows that the Holy Spirit is not from the Father alone, but from the Father through the Son, as earlier Origen, Gregory's master, and afterwards more clearly Basil and the Nyssen, those great venerators of Thaumaturgus, and Epiphanius (haeres. 73) have argued. In fact, the doctrine of the Gregorian creed about the Holy Spirit is this: «One Holy Spirit, having substance from God, and who appeared through the Son; perfect image of the perfect Son.... Perfect Trinity.... And so the Son was never wanting to the Father, nor the Holy Spirit to the Son, but the same Trinity is ever unalterable and immutable». Thus we have the creed from the version prepared in the fourth century by Rufinus (H. E. 1. VII. c. 25). The variant reading, as it now exists in Greek, changes not the doctrine itself but only its mode of expression⁵. Namely, that phrase 'who appeared through the Son' now has in the Greek an addition, which to Lequien seemed — not undeservedly — foreign to the simplicity of that ancient age and to savor of the ingenuity of a schismatic Greekling striving to introduce some obscurity: διὰ Υἱοῦ πεφηνός, ἤγουν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. The words πεφηνέναι, ἐκφανέν, ἐκλάμψαν and their like are used by the Fathers of the very eternal generation of the Son, and therefore, said simply, they ought to be understood of the immanent processions — all the more because they are not rarely predicated of the Holy Spirit with the added determination οὐσιώδης, φυσικῶς, ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας (th. XXXIII). This, however, does not prevent the same words from being able also to be applied, and from the epithets or the context to be understood, of the mission ad extra, which presupposes the internal emission and manifests it. If, therefore, with Rufinus and with Hadrian I (who recites the version of Rufinus, ep. ad Carolum M. Mansi T. XIII. p. 760) one reads: ἓν Πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐκ Θεοῦ τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἔχον, καὶ διὰ Υἱοῦ πεφηνός, the Son is taken according to the divine nature, and hence the name God supposits for the Father; then indeed the direct sense is most clear: the Spirit has subsistence from the Father, as from the primordial principle, in such a way that He at the same time shines forth through the Son. If, however, the Greek addition is admitted, there is indeed another mode of signifying, but the signification itself of the procession will be no less clear. For in this reading the first clause deals with the procession, the second directly with the mission. Now that appearing of the Holy Spirit to men granted through the Son, you understand either through the Son according to His divinity, or through the Son according to His humanity — namely through His merits and His intercession, as He Himself said: «I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete». If the first is said, in the second clause the Spirit is understood to have appeared or to have been sent through the Son, inasmuch as the Son is one with the Father; for He is equally sent by the Father. Whence also in the first clause the Spirit is said to have existence from God the Father, inasmuch as He is one with the Son; all the more because it has been demonstrated that, according to the doctrine of the Fathers, a mission by a person presupposes a procession from that same person (th. XXXIII). If, however, you assume that in the second clause the Son is introduced according to His humanity, then in the former clause the very name God is understood from the antecedents as the Father and the Son, one God. For this profession immediately preceded — that the Son, God of God, is one God with the Father — and there immediately follows: «one Spirit has existence from God (as God the Father and the Son had previously been described)». Moreover, however you interpret the two clauses, that a procession from the Son is included in them is manifest both from the antecedents, because the Son alone is from the Father alone, and much more from the consequents. For just as the generation of the Son from the Father is confirmed by the fact that He is the «image of the Godhead» — namely, the Father's image through the communication of the Godhead — so the manner in which the Spirit shone forth through the Son is declared by the fact that the Spirit is the perfect image of the perfect Son; as Origen, Gregory's master, had said that the Holy Spirit has all the notions, that is, perfections, of the Son from the Son Himself. And what the Fathers afterwards, Athanasius, Basil and others, said — that the order and relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son is such as is the order and relation of the Son to the Father — this Gregory expressed when he said that just as the Son was never wanting to the Father, so the Spirit was never wanting to the Son. But a more splendid demonstration of the faith of the Church on this chapter of doctrine is to be sought from the subsequent age, when «many things pertaining to the catholic faith, while they were being tossed about by the cunning restlessness of heretics, so that they could be defended against them, were both considered more diligently and understood more clearly and preached more insistently», as Augustine says, Civ. Dei XVI. 2. As soon as those ampler declarations and defenses — not indeed of the procession by itself, but of the procession from the substance and in the substance of God — began to become necessary for vindicating the divinity and consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son against the heretics, we see among the doctors of the East no less than of the West the doctrine of the internal order of the relations among the persons, of the unity of the Father and of the Son inasmuch as they are the principle of the Holy Spirit, of the relation of origin of the Holy Spirit to the Father and to the Son — in a word, the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son — set forth most explicitly and certain without ambiguity; and that, as I said, long before the directly opposed heresy had demanded a special inquiry concerning this dogma. Therefore that whole exposition of doctrine, handed down without a polemical purpose, all the more evidently exhibits the argument of universal consensus and of the common faith. II. Concerning the explicit, universal and constant preaching of the dogma among the Latin Fathers, especially from the time at which ampler monuments survive — from the fourth and fifth centuries, I mean, and thereafter — it abundantly appears. 1°. Already the most ancient among the ecclesiastical writers who wrote in Latin, Tertullian, in the second century and at the beginning of the third, sets forth this doctrine. «Everything that proceeds is not on that account separated. But where the Second is, there are two. And where the Third is, there are three. For the Third is the Spirit from God and the Son, just as the third from the root is the fruit from the shoot, and the third from the spring is the stream from the river, and the third from the sun is the beam from the ray⁶. Nothing, however, is alienated from its matrix, from which it derives its properties. Thus the Trinity, running down from the Father through connected and linked degrees, neither obstructs the monarchy nor fails to protect the state of the economy» contr. Prax. c. 8. «I do not derive the Son from elsewhere, but from the substance of the Father... Let this also have been said by me as to the third degree, because I think the Spirit is from nowhere else than from the Father through the Son» ibid. c. 4. 2°. After the middle of the fourth century Hilary, although in his books on the Trinity he looks almost exclusively to the consubstantiality of the Son and treats of the Holy Spirit very briefly and only in passing, nevertheless explicitly teaches that, together with the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the procession from the Father and the Son is handed down in the Scriptures and is to be believed. «But of the Holy Spirit one ought neither to be silent, nor is it necessary to speak.... who is to be confessed with the Father and the Son as His authors.» Having adduced the testimonies of Scripture, in which He is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit who is from God, the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Christ, he solves the threefold question of the Arians. «When they say, through whom He is, and for what He is, or what He is (the Spirit)? if our answer will displease those saying: through whom all things, and from whom all things are (that the Holy Spirit is from Him, i.e. from the Son through whom all things, and from the Father from whom all things)⁷, and because the Spirit is of God (what He is), the gift of the faithful (for what He is in relation ad extra), then both the Apostles and the Prophets would displease» 1. II. n. 29. «May I worship you, our Father, your Son together with you, and may I merit your Holy Spirit, who is from you through your only-begotten» 1. XII. n. 57. cf. n. 55. Deliberately he shows the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, in order from it to demonstrate the consubstantiality of the Father and of the Son 1. VIII. n. 20. First, n. 19, he compares those two among themselves: «who proceeds from the Father» and «whom I will send from the Father», where «the Son shows His power in that He sends». Then he proceeds: the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son is in no way a free question, but defined by Christ Himself. «Nor do I in this now calumniate the liberty of understanding, whether they think the Spirit, the Paraclete, is from the Father or from the Son, for the Lord did not leave this in uncertainty⁸. For under the same words He spoke thus: when that Spirit of truth comes... for He will not speak of Himself... because He will receive of mine and announce it to you. All things whatsoever the Father has are mine; therefore I said: He will receive of mine and announce it to you (Io. XVI. 12-15). He therefore receives from the Son, who is also sent by Him and proceeds from the Father. And I ask whether receiving from the Son is the very same as proceeding from the Father. But if it is believed to differ between receiving from the Son and proceeding from the Father; certainly receiving from the Son will be judged to be the very same and one as receiving from the Father⁹. For the Lord Himself said: because He will receive of mine and announce it to you; all things whatsoever the Father has are mine; therefore I said, He will receive of mine. This which He will receive, whether it is power or virtue or doctrine, the Son said is to be received from Himself, and again He signifies that this very same is to be received from the Father. For when He says that all things whatsoever the Father has are His, and that therefore He said that it is to be received from what is His; He teaches that even what is to be received from the Father is nevertheless received from Himself, because all things which are the Father's are His. This truth has no diversity, nor does it differ from whom it is received, that what is given by the Father is reported as given by the Son... That both are one (the Father and the Son) is the signification of the same divinity in both through generation and nativity, since what the Spirit of truth will receive from the Father, that the Son confesses to be given by Himself¹⁰.

The heretical perversity, therefore, is not to be permitted to the liberty of impious understanding» Hilar. 1. c. 3°. In a similar manner, from the words of Christ «He will receive of mine», other Fathers teach and inculcate the communication of nature into the Holy Spirit from the Son just as from the Father: Marius Victorinus (a contemporary of Hilary) contr. Arian. 1. I. Bibl. Max. T. IV. p. 257; Ambros. de Spir. Sancto 1. II. c. 12. n. 134; Leo M. in Pentecoste serm. I. c. 3; II. c. 5. «If I do not depart, the Paraclete will not come to you. These two, therefore, are also from another, one from the other: the Holy Spirit from the Son, as the Son from God; and correspondingly the Holy Spirit from the Father. That all three are one: the Father is not a silent silence, but a voice in silence (i.e., the Father is not sterile but fruitful of the Word), the Son is now the voice, the Paraclete the voice of the voice: when the Spirit of truth comes, He will lead you into all truth; but He does not speak truth of Himself, for Christ is the truth; but whatever He hears, He will speak... Because He will receive of mine... He says, therefore: He will receive of mine, because one motion, that is, the acting action (divine life), is Christ and the Holy Spirit; and the first is to live, and from that which is to live comes to understand; to live indeed is Christ, to understand is the Spirit¹¹; therefore the Spirit receives from Christ, Christ Himself from the Father, and therefore the Spirit also from the Father. All things, therefore, are one, but from the Father» Marius Victorin. 1. c. 4°. Since it was St. Augustine's purpose to explain the whole doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity according to the catholic faith more distinctly, he differs from his predecessors only in this, that he more insistently and diligently, with arguments drawn from the words of Scripture and reasonings from the internal economy of the mystery, proposes and illustrates the handed-down faith and the catholic understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. There would be no need here to cite the testimonies of the holy Doctor, since quite many have already been described above, and besides his doctrine in this chapter is most well known. For he teaches the procession from the Father and the Son not only perhaps in particular texts; but the relation of the Father and of the Son inasmuch as they are one principle of the Holy Spirit, the generation of the Son through the communication of both the essence and the numerically one spiration-power, the unity of love in the Father and the Son for the production of subsisting love as immanent term — these, I say, constitute in Augustine an essential element in the very notion of the Trinity, without which the origin, distinction, and consubstantiality of the divine persons cannot be rightly understood; and they are repeated by him in all the places where he expounds the catholic concept of the mystery by itself. Just as the other Fathers, so also Augustine sometimes treats a special controversy against the Arian Pneumatomachi, who, denying that there are three consubstantial divine persons, used to express their heresy with respect to the third person in this way, that although they conceded the Son to be from the Father, they nevertheless denied that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, whom they said was created by the Son. In this special controversy, therefore, Augustine, like the other Fathers and like the Second Council itself, in order to vindicate the divinity of the Holy Spirit in direct opposition to that heresy, insists on this article of catholic faith: that no less than the Son, the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Father. Now, appealing to this doctrine of Augustine and of the other Doctors about the procession from the Father as from the principle, source, and root of the Most Holy Trinity (ἀρχή, προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία, κορυφή, πηγή, ῥίζα τῆς θεότητος), which is indeed common to all Catholics and without which the procession from the Son could not be understood in the catholic sense, Macarius Bulgakow dares bluntly to write to his Russians that all those Fathers denied, and namely Augustine and Fulgentius directly rejected, the catholic doctrine¹², by which the Holy Spirit is to be believed to proceed from the Father and the Son. That it may be set before the eyes how unheard-of is the impudence with which this man — among his own a Bishop and celebrated with the fame of theological learning — mocks the ignorance of his followers, let us gather in some compendium the doctrine of Augustine, although from the above it is already sufficiently well seen. a) The Holy Spirit, inasmuch as it is the proper name of the third person, is a relative name signifying the one spirated by that divine person of whom He is called the Spirit. It is contained in the divine revelation of the Scriptures that the Spirit is the Father's just as He is the Son's; and hence it must be believed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This doctrine is inculcated by Augustine in many places, some of which we have described from ep. 238. ad Pascentium, from 1. IV. n. 29. de Trin., in th. XXXII. n. II. He repeats the same in de Trin. 1. V. c. 11. n. 12; 1. XV. c. 26. n. 45; Serm. 214. (which is the third on the rendering of the creed) n. 10; in Io. Tract. 99. n. 6-8. In this last place, as he is wont in sermons to the people, he institutes as it were a dialogue with his hearers. «Here perhaps someone may ask whether the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son? For the Son is the Son of the Father alone, and the Father is the Father of the Son alone; but the Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of one of them but of both.» He proves this from the Scriptures: Matth. X. 20; Gal. IV. 6; Rom. VIII. 11. «And there are many other testimonies by which this is evidently shown, that the Spirit, who in the Trinity is called the Holy Spirit, is both the Father's and the Son's..... Why, therefore, should we not believe that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son, since He is also the Spirit of the Son,» Tract. 99. in Io. 1. c. This very thing he expresses without that dialogical form in Trin. 1. IV. n. 29, which place I shall shortly describe. b) The Holy Spirit, hypostatically, or as the holy Doctor is wont to speak, properly is and is called the common goodness, holiness, charity of the Father and of the Son, or even «the Father's and the Son's community,» and by this same personal character of His He is the gift, i.e., eternally donnable by the Father and the Son. All these things, moreover, Augustine explicitly explains in many places, and they cannot be understood except from the procession from the Father and the Son. Serm. 71. n. 18. 29; Civ. Dei XI. c. 24; de Trin. V. n. 12; VI. n. 7. 11; XV. n. 27. 29. 31. 37. 50. «The Holy Spirit, according to the holy Scriptures, is neither the Father's alone nor the Son's alone, but of both, and therefore He intimates to us the common charity by which the Father and the Son love one another (as the subsisting charity produced through one common love of the Father and of the Son)...... Not in vain in this Trinity is nothing called Word except the Son, nor Gift of God except the Holy Spirit...... Thus, therefore, He (the Father) begot Him (the Son) that the common Gift should also proceed from Him, and the Holy Spirit should be the Spirit of both..... If, therefore, one of these three is properly to be called charity, what is more apt than that this should be the Holy Spirit?» Trin. XV. n. 27. 29. Compare the remaining cited places. c) To seek from faith some understanding of this procession, he illustrates it from the acts of the created spirit, which, faith being presupposed, exhibit to us a certain image of the Most Holy Trinity. For just as from memory and understanding (from the mind already informed with habitual knowledge and from the word of the mind), as from parent and offspring, love proceeds, so in some measure the substantial love, the Holy Spirit, is understood to proceed from the Father and the Word. Read de Trin. 1. XV. n. 41. 43. 47. 50. «The love of man proceeding from knowledge (from the mind and from thought already formed)¹³, and joining memory and understanding, as common to parent and offspring, whence it is understood to be neither parent nor offspring, has in this image some, albeit very unequal, likeness of the Holy Spirit» n. 43. See the citations in th. XXVI. XXXI. d) Most diligently Augustine declares the unity of the Father and of the Son in the spiration of the third person: namely, that just as the divine essence and every perfection, so also the spiration-power and (what in God is the same) the spiration itself is in the Father uncommunicated, but in the Son the same numerically one spiration-power and spiration is communicated by the Father through generation. Therefore the Father is the source of the Trinity; from the Father «the Holy Spirit principally proceeds», i.e., as from the primordial principle, which Augustine more often also calls the authority or the notion of the author, i.e., of primordial origin in the Father. This doctrine, common to Augustine with the rest of the Fathers, without which the procession of the third person from the first and second as from one principle could not stand, surely pertains to the catholic faith, since in the end it contains nothing else than that the Son, the second person, is generated by the first person, the Father, in the unity of essence, and the power of spirating the third person, the Holy Spirit — or, as Augustine says, that «the Son, from whom He has that He is God — for He is God of God — from Him He certainly has, that the Holy Spirit should also proceed from Him.» Now this chapter of catholic doctrine — that the Father is the source of the Trinity, and that not only the Son but also the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father — Macarian treachery tears away from the other connected chapters and, suppressing the contexts, proclaims that Augustine and the other Fathers «directly reject» the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. Let us hear the holy Doctor of the Church. The question of Maximus the Arian — why the Holy Spirit is not the Son, if according to the catholic doctrine He is from the substance of the Father — Augustine dissolves by this one reason, that the Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone but also from the Son, and therefore His procession is not through generation; yet this very thing the Son has from the Father. «The Son is from the Father, the Holy Spirit is from the Father, but the former is begotten, the latter proceeding; therefore the former is the Son of the Father of whom He is begotten, but the latter is the Spirit of both, since He proceeds from both. But for this reason, when the Son spoke of Him, He said, He proceeds from the Father, because the Father is the author of His procession, who begot such a Son, and by begetting gave to Him that the Holy Spirit should also proceed from Him. For unless He proceeded also from Him, He would not say to the disciples: receive the Holy Spirit, and give Him by breathing, so that, signifying that He also proceeds from Himself, He might openly show by blowing what He gave by breathing secretly¹⁴. Because, therefore, if He were born, He would be born not only of the Father nor only of the Son, but of both indeed, without doubt He would be called the Son of both; and by this, because He is in no way the Son of both, it was not fitting that He be born of both¹⁵. But what difference there is between being born and proceeding, who, speaking of that most excellent nature, can explain?...... Let it be enough for us, therefore, that the Son is not from Himself, but from Him of whom He was born; the Holy Spirit is not from Himself, but from Him of whom He proceeds; and because He proceeds from both, as we have already shown, whence He is also called the Spirit of the Father (he cites Rom. VIII. 11) and the Spirit of the Son (Rom. VIII. 9)¹⁶; for there are not two Holy Spirits, as if each of each, but rather one Spirit of the Father and of the Son» contr. Maximin. 1. II. c. 14. n. 1. Who would believe that any Photian ever dared to appeal to this place? Nevertheless Macarius twice cites this very testimony, from which to demonstrate that Augustine directly rejected the catholic doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. But he transcribes only the first period up to those words: 'the latter proceeding'; then, inserting dots and suppressing the rest, he concludes his citation with the last words: 'the Holy Spirit is not from Himself, but from Him of whom He proceeds', in which he carefully notes that it is said in the singular 'from Him', not in the plural 'from them'¹⁷; but the following he again expunges. Good God! This man in many places dares to accuse the western doctors of fraud in citing testimonies!! The very same doctrine as in the cited place is repeated in 1. IV. n. 29. de Trin.: that the Father is the principle not of the Son only but also of the Holy Spirit, and in this sense of the whole Godhead; for although the Spirit proceeds by one and the same procession also from the Son as from the Father, nevertheless the Father remains «the principle of the whole Godhead,» because the spiration-power is not from itself in the Son, but communicated by the Father — the same which in the Father Himself is from itself and originally. «Just as to be born is for the Son to be from the Father, so to be sent is for the Son to be known to be from Him. And just as for the Holy Spirit to be the gift of God is to proceed from the Father, so to be sent is to be known to proceed from Him¹⁸. Nor can we say that the Holy Spirit does not also proceed from the Son; for not in vain is the same Spirit called the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. Nor do I see what else He meant when, breathing upon the face of the disciples, He said: receive the Holy Spirit. For that corporeal breath...... was not the substance of the Holy Spirit, but a demonstration through a fitting signification that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son.... What, therefore, the Lord said, whom I will send you from the Father, shows the Spirit of the Father and of the Son; who also, when He had said, whom the Father will send, added, in my name. He did not, however, say, whom the Father will send from me, as He said, whom I will send you from the Father; evidently showing that the Father is the principle of the whole divinity or, if it is better said, of the Godhead¹⁹. He, therefore, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is referred to Him of whom the Son was born» Aug. 1. c. Most fully the holy Doctor describes the catholic dogma about the Holy Spirit in the last chapters (c. 17-27) of book XV of de Trin., in which the absurd exceptions which Macarius is wont to oppose to the most explicit testimonies cannot be feigned even by a Photian: that the discourse among the Fathers is either of consubstantiality only or of temporal procession, i.e., of the mission of the Holy Spirit, not of the eternal procession of the same Spirit from the Son as from the Father. As for what the most candid man is then wont to suspect about almost all the testimonies — that they were corrupted and interpolated by the Latins — let him rather say that the Fathers and namely Augustine never existed in the world; for this will be neither more insipid nor less credible to the peoples than that. Meanwhile let us hear Augustine.

«Whoever can understand without time the generation of the Son from the Father, let him understand without time the procession of the Holy Spirit from both. And whoever can understand that in what the Son said, as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son to have life in Himself (Io. V. 26)...... that He so begot Him without time, that the life which the Father gave to the Son by begetting is coeternal with the life of the Father who gave it; let him understand that as the Father has in Himself that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him, so He gave to the Son that the same Holy Spirit proceeds from Him, and both without time; and that the Holy Spirit is so said to proceed from the Father, that it be understood that He also proceeds from the Son, as from the Father being the Son's. For if whatever He has, the Son has from the Father; from the Father He certainly has, that the Holy Spirit should also proceed from Him...... How, therefore, would the Son not be most absurdly called the Son of both, since as generation from the Father bestows on the Son essence without beginning of time, without any mutability of nature, so the procession from both bestows on the Holy Spirit essence without any beginning of time, without any mutability of nature?.... For the Father alone is not from another...... But the Son was born of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father principally, and, He Himself giving without any interval of time, commonly from both..... He is not, therefore, begotten from both, but the Spirit of both proceeds from both» Aug. Trin. XV. n. 47. Then in n. 48 Augustine himself transcribes several things from his tractate XCIX. on John, or, as he says, «what in a certain sermon to the ears of the christian people I taught through the testimonies of the holy Scriptures, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both; but speaking to the faithful, not to the unbelieving», from which tractate above in th. XXXIV. and elsewhere we have cited many things.

e) In these things which we have described, we now have most clearly declared in what way the Father communicating, and the Son having the one communicated spiration, are by that very fact one principle of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless Augustine still explicitly teaches this in so many words. An inquiry and a certain hesitation, as it were, appears in the holy Doctor not about the matter but about the name of principle. For He is called principle by reason of creation; thus the three persons are one principle of the creature. If, then, He is called principle in the Trinity also by reason of generation, the Father is the principle of the Son. But since the Holy Spirit is neither created nor begotten, it is asked whether the name of principle is rightly said also by reason of this procession, which is not through generation but through spiration, which Augustine calls giving, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit proceeds as a gift or (as he explains elsewhere) as charity. «He proceeds from eternity, but because He so proceeded that He might be donnable, He was already a gift, even before there was one to whom it would be given... For the Spirit is sempiternally a gift, but temporally given». Now if the Father is called the principle of the Holy Spirit by reason of this procession or sempiternal giving, by that very fact this principle is one: the Father and the Son. «One principle with respect to the creature is said of God, not two or three principles. But with respect to each other in the Trinity, if the begetter is principle with respect to what He begets, the Father is principle with respect to the Son, because He begets Him. But whether the Father is also principle with respect to the Holy Spirit, since it is said, He proceeds from the Father (Io. XV. 26), is no small question. Because if it is so, He will be principle not only of that thing which He begets or makes, but also of that which He gives. Where that also shines out, as far as it can, which is wont to move many: why the Holy Spirit is not also the Son, since He too goes out from the Father, as is read in the Gospel. For He went out not as born, but as given; and therefore He is not called Son, because He was neither born as the only-begotten, nor made, as we are, to be born through the grace of God into adoption.... If, therefore, what is given also has as its principle him by whom it is given, because it did not receive from elsewhere that which proceeds from him²⁰, it must be confessed that the Father and the Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit, not two principles; but just as the Father and the Son are one God, and relatively to the creature one creator and one Lord, so relatively to the Holy Spirit one principle; but with respect to the creature the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one principle, as one creator and one Lord» Aug. Trin. V. n. 14. 17. cf. contra sermon. Arianor. n. 19.

5°. St. Fulgentius hands down and defends most clearly the same doctrine according to all the heads which we have noted from Augustine. But here we shall concentrate the whole into few words, yet in such a way that it may sufficiently appear with what good faith Macarius asserted that Fulgentius directly rejects the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son²¹. From the many testimonies we shall choose three, in which the holy Doctor of Ruspe proposes a certain series of articles of faith: l. de Fide ad Petr.; l. de Trin. ad Felicem c. 2; l. X. contr. Fabian. fragm. 36. In the book to Peter he sets forth «forty chapters most firmly pertaining to the rule of true faith, so that if anyone should wish to gainsay not only all but even each one of them, he may appear a heretic and an enemy of the christian faith, and on this account to be anathematized by all Catholics» there n. 85. Now among these chapters of faith the eleventh is this very thing: Hold most firmly and in no way doubt that the same Holy Spirit, who is the one Spirit of the Father and of the Son, proceeds from the Father and the Son. For the Son says, when the Spirit of truth comes, who proceeds from the Father, where He taught that He is His Spirit, because He Himself is the truth. That the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son, the prophetic and apostolic doctrine commends to us» l. c. n. 52. In the book against Fabianus is contained the explanation of the individual articles of faith, as they are proposed to be believed «in the symbol of the christian faith (the apostolic), in whose brevity the sum of the whole christian belief consists; where, however, a right mind of the believer is necessary, lest what he hears unto the effect of salvation he himself should wish to twist unto the punishment of death». Now in the article: I believe in the Holy Spirit, what catholic faithful believe and profess, Fulgentius thus declares to the Arian: «We confess that we believe in the Holy Spirit, who is the one Spirit of the Father and of the Son, proceeding from the Father and the Son, remaining naturally in the Father and the Son (immanent procession), having the origin of His divinity from the Father and the Son (having origin in His divine hypostasis through the communication of the divine nature), having naturally the truth of one Godhead with the Father and the Son» l. c. p. 655. To Felix the catholic notary he declares «how he ought to believe concerning the holy Trinity, which is God, or how he may be able to defend the catholic and orthodox faith against the errors of the heretics». For this purpose he certainly sets forth nothing else than what must necessarily be believed by Catholics». Receive, he says, the faith in which you were once reborn, believing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit». This faith now set forth by Fulgentius in words most similar to those which are had in the Athanasian symbol, just as it embraces the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, so no less does it embrace His procession from the Father and the Son, whose profession he repeats and inculcates four times within a few periods. «The Father is begotten of no one, the Son is begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father and the Son... The essence of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is not diverse; but if it were, neither would the Son be truly begotten of the Father, nor would the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son. But because the Son is true, that is, begotten of the essence of the Father, the Holy Spirit also is true, proceeding from the Father and the Son. But if the Son or the Holy Spirit are of another kind (nature) than the Father, neither is the Son truly the Father's, whom a differing essence makes foreign; similarly neither would the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, which it is madness to say, because holy Scripture manifests by faithful narration both that the Son was begotten of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father»²² l. c. p. 330.

See other things no less clear in the same Fulgentius, contra Fabian. fragm. XVIII. p. 602; XXV. p. 610; XXVII. p. 611. 612; XXIX. p. 626; XXXV. p. 652; ep. 14. ad Ferrand. diacon. n. 9. 28; de Incarn. ad Scarilam n. 3. 4. 6°. Pope Hormisdas, after the Acacian schism was extinguished, set forth to the emperor Justinian the universal faith concerning the mystery of the Trinity and of the Incarnation. In the doctrine of the Trinity these things are to be believed: «God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, an undivided Trinity. And yet it is known that it is proper to the Father that He should beget the Son, proper to the Son of God that He should be born from the Father equal to the Father, proper to the Holy Spirit that He should proceed from the Father and the Son under one substance of Godhead. It is also proper to the Son of God that, according to what is written, in the last days the Word should become flesh and dwell in us»²³ Hormisd. ep. 79. ad Iustin. Augustum.

7°. The bishops of Africa in the profession of faith to king Huneric, of which we spoke above p. 49, likewise declare: «we believe that the unbegotten Father and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son²⁴ are of one substance or essence» Victor Vitens. de persec. Vandal. l. III. n. I. ed. Ruinart. p. 43. 8°. In the year 447 the Council of Toledo (II) was celebrated by order of Pope Leo the Great against the Priscillianists, one of whose errors among others, reported to him by Turribius, bishop of Astorga, the Pontiff thus designates: «They assert that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the same person, as if the same God (namely the same in hypostasis) were named now Father, now Son, now Holy Spirit; nor (as is to be believed by the catholic faith) is one who begot, another who was begotten, another who proceeded from both» s. Leo ep. 15. c. 1. Moreover, in that Council was published «a rule of catholic faith against all heresies and most of all against the Priscillianists, which the bishops of Tarragona, of Carthage, of Lusitania and of Baetica made, and with the mandate of Leo, Pope of the city of Rome, sent to Balconius, bishop of Galicia». In this creed there is the explicit profession: «we believe in one God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.... that the Father is not the Son Himself, but has a Son who is not the Father.... that the Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is neither the Father Himself nor the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. The Father, therefore, is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Paraclete not begotten but proceeding from the Father and the Son»²⁵ Hard. I. p. 993. Then, in the Third Council of Toledo of the bishops of Spain and of Gallia Narbonensis under king Reccared in the year 589, there is a profession of faith against the Arian heresy proposed by the king, in which it is said: «the Holy Spirit is equally to be confessed and preached by us to proceed from the Father and from the Son, and to be of one substance with the Father and the Son». In the Constantinopolitan creed itself, which the king gave subscribed with his own hand together with the Nicene formula and the Chalcedonian definition, is inserted the declaration of faith «in the Holy Spirit... proceeding from the Father and the Son». With joyful acclamations the king's profession was received by the whole Council, and the same, with 23 anathematisms, was repeated and subscribed by the bishops, clerics and elders of the Gothic people converted from the Arian heresy. In anathematism III it is decreed: «if anyone does not believe, or shall not have believed, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and shall not have said that He is coeternal with the Father and the Son and coequal, let him be anathema». Moreover, at the king's request the Council decreed «that all the churches of Spain and of Galicia keep this rule, that at every time of the sacrifice, before the communion of the body of Christ or of the blood, according to the custom of the eastern parts, they recite with one mind and clear voice the most holy creed of the faith» (namely according to the formula recited there) Hard. III. p. 469. sqq.

To this is also to be referred the explicit profession of the Council of Hatfield of all the bishops of England under Theodore of Canterbury (a Greek by nation) in the year 680 (Mansi XI. p. 176); then the Athanasian symbol, which is known from the canons of Autun published under St. Leodegar in the year 676 or 677 to have already been in public use in the seventh century²⁶, and the learned have proved by certain arguments that it already existed at the beginning of the sixth century²⁷. Whoever, therefore, is the author of this symbol, certainly long before the controversy arose it was the public profession of faith of the clergy and of the catholic people, by which it is said that «the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding». The other Latin Fathers — Gregory M., Eucherius, Vigilius of Thapsus, Gennadius, Avitus of Vienne, Paschasius the deacon (unless he is Faustus of Riez), and others — see in Petav. l. VII. c. 8. n. 5. sq.; Lequien dissert. Damasc. I. n. 4. 10. and in the others. Certainly the consensus is such in the explicit profession of doctrine, that according to the principles about catholic tradition which we have demonstrated elsewhere, it could not have been derived from anywhere else than from written or handed-down revelation and from the legitimate explanation of revelation. And hence also according to the same principles, even from the consensus of the western Fathers alone it must be held certain that it could not have happened that the churches and Fathers of the East followed the opposite doctrine with common consent (cf. above p. 147. 148). But if the doctrine of the easterners were not explicit, and their manner of speaking ambiguous and more obscure, this one thing would follow: that their opinion would have to be explained from the explicit, clear and common doctrine of the westerners and so reduced to the catholic understanding. If the schismatics deny these principles, they contradict the greatest holy doctors of the East themselves, they close off to themselves the way of reconciling among themselves the eastern Fathers, namely also in the doctrine of the consubstantial Trinity, and — what is most pernicious of all — they subvert the whole economy of catholic tradition. Cf. Bessarion. opusc. aur. p. 213; and what the bishops of the Greeks confessed in the Council of Florence, Hard. IX. p. 390. III. But the doctrine of the Greek Fathers about the procession of the Holy Spirit is no less explicit and constant than that of the westerners, which indeed could already appear from the testimonies adduced above in passing; it must, however, be demonstrated separately. Here, then, we shall confine ourselves to those testimonies only in which they teach in so many words the procession from the Father and the Son, the procession from the Son as from the Father, to treat afterwards of the other principles and explanations of the same Fathers, by which they not only enunciate this very dogma but also declare it more distinctly and illustrate it. 1°. St. Athanasius, against the Arians, who, denying the consubstantiality of the Son, did not yet dispute directly about the nature of the Holy Spirit, demonstrates the divinity of the Word from the very revealed procession of the Holy Spirit from the Word. «The Son does not become a partaker of the Spirit, so as to be in the Father; nor does He Himself receive the Spirit, but He rather imparts Him to all. Nor does the Spirit join the Word to God the Father, but rather the Spirit receives from the Word.... In one way the Son is in the Father, in another we attain to be in Him. Unless perhaps, as always, they even now dare to say that the Son attained, by participation of the Spirit and by right deeds, to be in the Father. But to admit this even into thought is too impious. For He Himself, as has been said, gives to the Spirit (al. gives the Spirit), and whatever the Spirit has, He has from the Word... He wills us to receive the Spirit, so that through the Spirit of the Word which is in the Father, we too may seem to become one through the Spirit in the Word, and through Him (the Word) in the Father.... We shall be judged to become one in the Father and the Son through the Spirit dwelling in us, who is in the Word, which (Word) is in the Father»²⁸ Athan. contr. Arian. serm. III. n. 24. 25. Athanasius therefore demonstrates the divinity of the Word from this: that according to the Scriptures it is not the Holy Spirit, τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ὂν ἐν τῷ Πατρί, that sanctifies the Word and joins Him to God the Father with that participation of divinity by which the Arians conceded the Son to be called God; but that the Holy Spirit Himself, whom the adversaries did not yet at least explicitly dare to deny to be God, has all things which He has, and hence His very divine nature, from the Word — which is the very definition of procession through communication of nature. Whence it is not the Word that receives from the Holy Spirit, so as to be God in that Arian sense, but the Holy Spirit is God of God the Word, and in this sense the Spirit is in the Word as in His principle, and the Word in the Father likewise as in His principle through communication of nature, which Athanasius says elsewhere: «the property of the Holy Spirit with respect to the Son is the same as the property of the Son with respect to the Father». In a somewhat inverted order, in the letters to Serapion Athanasius argues against those Semi-Arians whom he himself calls Tropici. For they conceded that the Son is true God; but they said that the Holy Spirit is a creature of the Son, not however through communication of the divine nature, and therefore does not proceed from the Father. Whence against them the holy Doctor shows that the Spirit proceeds from the Son through communication of all the perfections which are the Son's, and hence if the Son is true God, the Holy Spirit is also true God; and therefore He proceeds from the Father just as from the Son, since all things which are the Son's are the Father's. Although Serapion had asked only for the doctrine about the Holy Spirit, nevertheless Athanasius spends the whole second letter on demonstrating the divinity of the Son. He gives the reason for this at the beginning of the third letter: because the Spirit has all things from the Son, as the Son has all things from the Father, therefore the divinity of the Son is the foundation from which the divinity of the Holy Spirit is demonstrated. For however much you show from the Scriptures that the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, unless it stands that the Son is God, neither will it stand that the Spirit of the Son is God. On the contrary, if the Son is true God, which indeed the adversaries did not deny, by that very fact His Spirit is demonstrated to be true God, because He receives from the Son all things which are the Son's. «Since the Lord said: the Paraclete will not speak of Himself, but whatever He will hear He will speak, because He will receive of mine and announce it to you; since likewise, when He had breathed, He gave Him from Himself (ἐμφυσήσας ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦτο) to the disciples, and so the Father poured Him out, as it is written, upon all flesh; therefore rightly and deservedly was it before done and written by me concerning the Son of God, that from the knowledge of the Son (from whom namely the Spirit hears and receives, and from whom He is given) we may be able to attain also the right knowledge of the Holy Spirit. For what property we have known the Son to have with respect to the Father, the same we shall find the Spirit to have with respect to the Son. And just as the Son says: all things whatsoever the Father has are mine; so we shall discover that all these things are through the Son also in the Spirit. And as the Father showed the Son in these words: this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; so the Spirit is the Son's: for the Apostle says, He sent the Spirit of His Son»²⁹. There follow then the testimonies in which the Spirit is called the Father's just as the Son's. «Truly, therefore, if the Son, on account of His property with respect to the Father and because He is the proper offspring of His substance, is not a creature but consubstantial with the Father; so neither will the Holy Spirit be a creature on account of His property with respect to the Son, and because He is given from Him to all, and the things which He has are the Son's»³⁰ ep. 3. n. I. Again a little below the procession is declared in another way. «The Holy Spirit is and is called the ointment and the seal.... This ointment is the breath of the Son... Moreover, inasmuch as He is the seal, He expresses the Son, so that what is sealed has the form of Christ... But if the Spirit is the good odor and form of the Son, it is clear that the Spirit is not a creature, since also the Son, being in the form of the Father, is not a creature » ³¹ ib. n. 3. In another place: «The Son breathed the Spirit upon the face of the Apostles, saying: receive the Holy Spirit; that we may learn that the Spirit who is given to the disciples is from the fullness of the divinity; for in Christ, says the Apostle, dwells all the fullness of the divinity bodily.» In the Scriptures the Holy Spirit is called water in many places. «Therefore David said: since with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light. For he knew that with the Father the Son is the fountain of the Holy Spirit » ³² I. de Incarn. contr. Arian. n. 9.

2°. St. Epiphanius in the Ancoratus, a book which he wrote especially to declare the catholic faith about the Holy Spirit, often proposes this dogma. «The Father unbegotten... the Son begotten... the Holy Spirit eternal, not begotten, not created, not a brother, not an uncle, not a grandfather, not a grandson, but the Holy Spirit is from the same essence of the Father and of the Son; for the Spirit is God... He is called neither by the name of the Son nor by the name of the Father, so that the names which belong to one only are not common, except the name God (which is common to the three); for indeed in the Father the name God, in the Son the name God; in the Holy Spirit the name of God and God ³³, for He is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son, not according to some composition, as in us there is soul and body (as if the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son were said as it were the soul of the Father and of the Son), but He is in the midst of the Father and of the Son, from the Father and the Son, third in appellation ³⁴ (as a distinct hypostasis); for going, he says, teach.... in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit» Ancorat. n. 7. 8.

The same doctrine is most explicitly repeated ibid. n. 70. 71. 72., which place Epiphanius himself again transcribed in Haeres. LXXIV. n. 7. 8. «If God and the Father is light, the Son is light of light... Wisdom is wholly God; therefore the Son is Wisdom from Wisdom... but the Spirit is from both, Spirit of spirit; for the Spirit is God... But someone will say: therefore we posit two Sons, and how is He the only-begotten? Nay rather, who are you who contradict God? For if He (the Father) calls Him who is from Himself Son, but the Holy Spirit Him who is from both — which things, understood by the saints by faith alone, are lucid, illuminating, have a lucid power, and in the faith of light keep consonance with the Father Himself (with the doctrine of faith about the Father) — hear, whoever you are, that the Father is truly the Father of the Son, wholly light; and the Son is truly the light of the Father, light of light;... and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, the third light (in hypostasis) from the Father and the Son » ³⁵ Haeres. LXXIV. l. c.

Moreover, the same holy Doctor expressly explains the words of Scripture « he will take of mine » Io. XVI. 14. 15. of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. « Christ is believed, from the Father, God of God, and the Spirit from Christ or from both, as Christ himself says: who proceeds from the Father, and he will take of mine » Ancor. n. 67. 72.; Haeres. LXXIV. n. 10. « The Spirit is always with the Father and the Son... proceeding from the Father and taking what is the Son's, not alien to the Father and the Son, but from the same essence and from the same Godhead, from the Father and the Son, subsisting always with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit » Haeres. LXII. n. 4. In the same way he interprets the appellations Spirit of Christ, Spirit of the Son Ancor. n. 8. 72.

Epiphanius, therefore, without any doubt held among the dogmas « understood by the Saints through faith » the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son: τὸ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ Anc. 8.; ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς οὐσίας Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ ib. 7.; παρὰ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ ib. 7.; ἀπὸ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ ib. 72.; παρὰ τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ Haer. 74. n. 10.; παρ' ἀμφοτέρων ib. n. 7.; ἐκ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἢ παρ' ἀμφοτέρων Anc. 67. etc. This faith he found in the profession of the Eastern Churches, as moreover is evident from the creed which, reported by Epiphanius, we shall describe below in a more opportune place.

3°. St. Cyril frequently hands on the same doctrine in modes of speech and manifold arguments. Now, however, we seek only the express words themselves. After he had said that the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, that is, the Spirit of the Son, who is the truth, and that the Son gives the Holy Spirit as His own proper Spirit, he adds a declaration. « Will anyone then not think with the fullest right, nay, rightly believe, that the Son, inasmuch as the natural goods of God the Father are essentially common to Him, has the Holy Spirit in the same way in which the Father is understood to have Him; not received from without, for it is foolish and mad to think so; but just as each one of us contains his own proper spirit in himself and pours it forth outward from his inmost bowels? For this reason Christ breathed corporeally, signifying that, just as a spirit proceeds corporeally from the human mouth, so from the divine essence there is poured forth, in a manner befitting the Godhead, the Spirit who is from Him (Christ the Son) » ³⁶ in lo. p. 810.

The same thing, if it can be, still more clearly he repeats in the Thesaurus. The Spirit whom blessed Moses affirms that God breathed into man, the same Christ, renewing it in us, after the resurrection from the dead breathed into His disciples... Since therefore the Holy Spirit, dwelling in us, renders us conformed to God, and He indeed proceeds from the Father and the Son, it is manifest that He is of the divine essence, proceeding essentially in it (communicated to Himself) and from it (inasmuch as it is in the Father and the Son as the principle by which) ³⁷, just as a breath proceeding from the human mouth, although this is a humble example and not worthy of so great a matter; for God exceeds all things » Thesaur. p. 345.

« The Spirit of truth, that is, his own, the Son calls the Paraclete; for the Holy Spirit is not understood as alien from the essence of the Only-begotten, but proceeds naturally from it, being nothing other than He as regards the identity of nature, although He is understood to be in His own subsistence.... He will not speak of Himself... since the Spirit is, as it were, my mind... And He will announce to you the things to come; as if He said: this will be to you a sign, that the Spirit is altogether from my substance, and, as it were, my mind » ³⁸ in lo. pr. 925. 926.

« Through all things John infers the unfailing equality of the Son with the Spirit, who is His own proper Spirit and is poured forth from Him according to nature » (τὸ ἴδιον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν προχεόμενον Πνεῦμα cf. supra p. 427. 438) in lo. p. 126. ³⁹

« Thus we say that the Spirit receives from the Father and the Son the things that are theirs (λαμβάνειν τὸ Πνεῦμα ἔκ τε τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ τὰ αὐτῶν), not as though He had at some time not had the knowledge and power that is in them, and only then began to have it, when He is thought to receive; for the Spirit is always wise and powerful, nay, He is wisdom itself and power, not from some participation but from His own nature.» There follows then the comparison, familiar to Cyril, of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son with the procession of fragrance from aromatic herbs (cf. supra p. 367.) in lo. p. 931.

You have here, as in Athanasius, not only the assertion of the dogma but also a lucid declaration of what the procession is; namely, the communication of all the things that are God's, that is, of the essence with the absolute perfections, from the Father and the Son into the Holy Spirit.

« If the Son dwells in us through the Spirit... why would it not be that, just as He Himself is, so also from Him is His Spirit (οἷος αὐτός τε καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ τὸ Πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ), having all His power? » Dial. VI. de Trin. T. V. P. I. p. 598. « Inasmuch as (Christ) is God and from God the Father, the Spirit is His own, and in Him, and from Him (ἴδιον αὐτοῦ τε, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ, καὶ ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὸ Πνεῦμά ἐστι), just as indeed this is understood also of God the Father. Inasmuch as He was made man and like to us, He is said to have the Spirit as imparted » in Ioel. T. III. p. 228.

After the sense in which Cyril in the ninth anathematism had said that the Holy Spirit is the Son's own had been called into calumny by Theodoret, the holy Doctor, in the very Council of Ephesus, declared those words of the anathematism in this way: « the Only-begotten Word of God, made man, remained nevertheless God, and is all that the Father also is, the Fatherhood alone excepted, having the Holy Spirit as His own, who is from Him and inheres in Him essentially » (because, namely, the procession is immanent: ἴδιον ἔχων τὸ ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ οὐσιωδῶς ἐνυπάρχον αὐτῷ Πνεῦμα ἅγιον) Mansi T. V. p. 16. The same explanation was already contained most clearly in the very letter with the anathematisms to Nestorius. « Although the Spirit (it is said there n. 10) is in His own hypostasis, and is considered in Himself, inasmuch as He is the Spirit and not the Son; nevertheless He is not alien from Him (the Son). For He is named the Spirit of truth, and Christ is the truth; and He is poured forth from Him (Christ the Son) just as indeed also from God the Father ⁴⁰... Since the Spirit belongs to Him who is the power and wisdom of the Father, that is, of the Son, He Himself also (the Spirit) is in Himself wisdom and power » Mansi T. IV. p. 1079. Doubtless, by Him who is the power and wisdom of the Father through generation, that is, by the Son, just as by the Father, is the Holy Spirit poured forth, so that He Himself also is the same wisdom and power, and therefore there is one wisdom and power communicated from the Father into the Son, from the Father and the Son into the Holy Spirit. All these things, just as they evidently enunciate not the mission but the generation of the Son, so they evidently enunciate not the mission of the Holy Spirit, such as Macarius with the other Photians invents, but His immanent procession.

But since Cyril gave the explanations of the anathematisms at the request of the Fathers, and these same explanations, once the declarations had been heard, were approved by the Council itself ⁴¹ and thereafter by the ecumenical Councils IV, V, VI and by the Lateran Council under Martin I. and by all the Fathers approved and held as the very creed of the Council of Ephesus (see Tract. de Incarn. th. XX.), it can be denied only impudently that great weight of authority accrued to the otherwise common doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son; although the Council indeed directly intended the definition not of this dogma, but of the other dogma concerning the hypostatic unity of the incarnate Word.

4°. Celebrated is the testimony of St. Basil, from which both in the Council of Florence and on other occasions the clear doctrine of the ancient Greek Fathers has always been demonstrated by Greek Catholics against the schismatics. At the beginning of book III against Eunomius, Basil adduces the saying of the heretic: « since we have learned from the Saints that the Holy Spirit is third in dignity and order (ἀξιώματι καὶ τάξει), we believe that He is also third in nature ». In the refutation Basil, as indeed he is read by Greek Catholics, has these words. « For what necessity is there, that, if the Spirit is third in dignity and order, He should also be third in nature? For in dignity (ἀξιώματι) the doctrine of piety teaches that He is second to the Son, as having His being from Him, and receiving from Him and announcing to us, and altogether depending on that cause (the Son) ⁴²; but that He is a third nature we have been taught neither from the Sacred Scriptures, nor can that be consequentially gathered from the aforementioned (that He is third in order and dignity of origin). For just as the Son is indeed second in order from the Father, since He is from Him; and in dignity, because His principle and cause is He, in that the Father is His, and because through Him there is approach and access to God and the Father; but in nature He is in no way second, because the Godhead is one in both: so assuredly, even if the Holy Spirit is second from the Son in order and dignity, it is nevertheless not rightly demonstrated from this, as though it would follow that He is of an alien nature » Basil, l. III, Against Eunomius, n. 1.

The more recent codices and editions omit the words which we have underlined, « as having His being from Him ..... altogether depending on that cause ». That more recent reading has: « For in dignity the doctrine of piety teaches, perhaps (τάχα), that He is second to the Son ». Further down also, where it is said: « even if the Holy Spirit is second from the Son in order and dignity », they add a restricting particle: « so that we may even altogether concede it » (ἵνα καὶ ὅλως συγχωρήσωμεν). That the reading, as we have described it, is genuine and consequently the other is corrupt, has been demonstrated both by internal arguments and by the authority of the codices by Patriarch Beccus, book on the Holy Spirit, nn. 1. 2. 3. (Graec. Orthodox. T. I. p. 226. sq.); ch. 2, ibid. p. 252; Bessarion, On the Procession of the Holy Spirit (opusc. aurea p. 169. sqq.); Allatius, On the Consensus, l. III. ch. 1. p. 891; Petav. VII. ch. 3. n. 14. sqq.; Maranus, Preface to T. III of the Works of St. Basil, § 3. ⁴³

Bessarion relates that at the Council of Florence, of which he himself had been a great part, six codices were brought forward, of which three belonged to the Archbishop of Mitylene, one to the Latins (brought from Constantinople by Card. Cusanus), one to the emperor of the Greeks, and the last to the Patriarch. In the first five the reading stood entire, as the Catholics defended it; in the last only, and one indeed written more recently, was the other reading, which pleased Mark of Ephesus. Then Bessarion proceeds: « after the sacrosanct synod was concluded, upon our return to Constantinople, when I had decided to examine nearly all the codices of those sacred monasteries, whatever more recent ones I found, written after that great controversy (after the schism was confirmed), all these had the truncated sentence; but those that were of an older hand and by mutual comparison more ancient, all these, not fewer than the corrupted ones, remain sound and entire ». In the monastery of Christ the Savior he found « something worthy of tears and admiration ». In a most ancient codex « a man bold in mind indeed but bolder still in hand, using iron against the parchment, had erased the truth ⁴⁴, yet the matter succeeded less well for him; for since the place is empty and the half syllables themselves still appear, they both convict his audacity and nevertheless clearly express the truth itself ». In another codex the place had been obliterated with ink, but afterwards restored by the hand of Demetrius Cydonius.

5°. The other passage of Gregory of Nyssa, customarily adduced by all the Greek apologists (from serm. III on the Lord's Prayer), is the one which I described above on p. 420. The Greek Catholics Beccus, Bessarion and the rest read it thus: « since it is common to the Son and to the Holy Spirit not to be unbegotten, lest any confusion be thought of in this matter, again it is necessary to show the unconfused difference in their properties, so that both the common element is preserved (that they are not ἀγέννητοι) and the proper element is not confused (that the Son in one way and the Holy Spirit in another proceed from the principle). For the only-begotten Son is named from the Father by Sacred Scripture, and in this the doctrine of faith fixes His property; but the Holy Spirit is said to be from the Father and is confirmed by testimony to be from the Son (καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς λέγεται καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ εἶναι προμαρτυρεῖται). For if anyone, he says, does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. Therefore the Spirit, while He is from God, is also the Spirit of Christ; but the Son, who is from God, is not also or called the Spirit of the Holy Spirit; nor is this relative consequence mutual » (in Beccus among the opusc. aur. p. 141). In our editions of the Works of Nyssen (T. I. p. 739. ed. Paris. 1615) the whole passage has fallen out; now we have the lacuna supplied by Card. Mai (SS. VV. T. VII. p. 6.) The reading in the codices, even in those which Maius brought to light, is varied. The more recent books, with the particle 'Εκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ excised, have: τὸ δὲ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς λέγεται, καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ εἶναι προμαρτυρεῖται, which reading even Petavius judged to be preferred (l. VII. ch. 3. n. 13). But the reading καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ εἶναι προμαρτυρεῖται is extant in the Vatican codex, which, in Mai's judgment, antedates the age of Photius by two centuries; in another codex of the eleventh century he observed the particle 'Εκ, which had originally been written, deleted by erasure (Card. Mai, Nova Bibl. VV. PP. T. IV, p. 40. sqq.). The Greek Catholics, as I said, Beccus, Calecas, Bessarion, Hieronymus Donatus writing in Greek, etc., not only constantly read ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ, but Bessarion (opusc. aur. p. 245) also testifies that the particle 'Εκ is found in the more ancient codices and is lacking only in the more recent. Moreover there exists an instrument authentically drawn up before Patriarch Beccus and nine other bishops, with princes present, by which the Referendary of the Church of Constantinople confessed that he had erased with iron the particle 'Εκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ from the Cod. of the great oeconomus Xiphilinus. He did not consider, as is added there, that « the other books also had been examined for this very thing, and that they too have the full reading of the particle 'Εκ and had escaped the corruption » (in Allatius, On the Consensus, l. III. ch. I. p. 893. sqq.). On both passages of Basil and Gregory see also the distinguished Hugo Laemmer in Bibl. Scriptor. Graec. orthodox. T. I. p. 27. sq. 38. sq.

But whichever way the testimony is read, whether this one of Gregory or that of Basil described above, even if the more recent and less explicit reading be allowed, nevertheless both from these very passages and from other places of Basil and Gregory their opinion is evidently demonstrated: that the Holy Spirit is understood to proceed from the Son just as from the Father by this very fact, that He is third in order and so in origin, and that He is relatively, i.e. by reason of origin, the Spirit of the Son. Hence also at the Council of Florence, sess. XX. and XXI. (Hard. T. IX. p. 226. sqq.), however much John the theologian of the Latins, against Mark of Ephesus, insisted on demonstrating the genuineness of the reading brought forth by him from the codex of Cardinal Cusanus in the cited testimony of Basil, equally nevertheless from other places and from the very reading defended by Ephesus he showed the altogether unambiguous opinion of Basil concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. See what we have cited above, pp. 424. 429. 431.

6°. We shall briefly note the doctrine of the Orientals, who wrote not in Greek but in Syriac or Arabic. Renaudotius mentions a most ancient Florentine Syriac codex ⁴⁵ containing the canons of the Synod of Seleucia in Mesopotamia, celebrated under Isaac of Seleucia and his brother St. Marutha by 40 bishops around the year 410. In its canon 2. there is contained a profession of faith, by which among other things it is said « we confess in the living and Holy Spirit, the living Paraclete, from the Father and the Son » Mansi III. p. 1168; Renaudot. Liturg. orient. T. II. p. 272. 274.; Asseman. Bibl. Orient. T. III. P. II. n. 235. Now we have the Syriac text itself ⁴⁶ described by the distinguished Lamy, Professor of Louvain, from a Parisian codex (Revue catholique de Louvain 1860. March p. 168).

Assemanius, l. c., also adduces words from the Office of the Chaldeans, where at Matins of the Sunday of the Annunciation there is read a protestation of faith in one God, who is « an eternal Father who has no Father, from Him a Son who has no Son, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them » ⁴⁷. From the Jacobites, Patriarch Dionysius III, in the middle of the tenth century, and so at the time that elapsed between Photius and Cerularius, in a synodical letter to Mennas, Patriarch of the Copts, expressly professes the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son: « The Father has existence from no one but exists unbegotten, and the Son is begotten from the Father from eternity, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son » ⁴⁸ Assem. B. O. T. II. p. 131. 132. More is also read from the catechesis of the Monophysites and other documents in Abraham Ecchellensis. (Concil. Mansi T. II. p. 1704. seq.). Testimonies for the faith of the Armenians in Gabriel Avedichian, Congreg. Mechitar. (Dissertazione sopra la processione dello Spirito Santo dal Padre e dal Figliuolo. Venezia 1824).

The opinion of the Oriental communions, which although torn from the Catholic Church by other errors do not however pertain to the Photian schism, was excellently set forth, and from the principles of true theology, under Pope Paul V, by the Chaldean archimandrite Adam. Very truly indeed he said that, the dogma of consubstantiality being assumed, that the Father and the Son are one, in the very profession of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father there is contained and understood an implicit profession of His procession from the Son. Therefore, while the Photians deny this, by that very fact they pervert the true notion of consubstantiality and fall into a certain species of Semiarianism. Thus that Chaldean bore most lucid witness to the consensus of the Orientals with the Roman Church in this dogma and their dissent from the Photian heresy. « Concerning the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, as the Orientals confess, and the Fathers of the great Church of Rome, who profess that He proceeds from the Father and the Son, both parties acknowledge the truth. And one true testimony suffices for true believers, namely that voice which was uttered from the mouth of the most beloved Jesus: I and the Father are one... And if they are one and not two (in essence), what division is there between that voice which we confess, namely that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and that that He proceeds from the Father and the Son? Behold, they are one and not two, and there is no division between them.... But concerning the Holy Spirit He said: He will take from what is mine and will declare it to you; everything that my Father has is mine. And if so there is no division between the incomprehensible persons of the hidden Godhead.... who will ever place a distinction between that voice, the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and that one, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son? If the Orientals say that He proceeds from the Father, because they know that the Father possesses nothing beyond what the Son has, nor the Son beyond the Father, just as they have learned from the living Son, who said to the Father: everything that I have is yours; and what you have is mine. And the Fathers of the great (Roman) Church wish to show that the Son is not more abject than the Father in any respect.... they say therefore that the saving Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and their profession is true without doubt » Asseman. Bibl. Or. T. III. P. II. p. 234.

We shall conclude this exposition of the doctrine of the Fathers with the words of the great Bessarion in his dogmatic oration (Hard. XI. p. 368), « Remember therefore that the Fathers must necessarily be thought to consent to one another, nor can we speak or judge otherwise, if we wish to be Christians and to preserve the principles of the faith. For the Latin Fathers teach most clearly and most fully that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, and that the Son, like the Father, is His principle. Then we have also demonstrated that the Orientals no less than the Occidentals say this very thing, since some say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son (about which we shall soon speak), others that He is from the Father and the Son and from both, and so they openly teach that He is also from the Son. Thus teaching, they consent to the Latin Fathers and all say the same things, as speaking in one and the same Spirit ».

« In the formula more frequent among the Greek Fathers, whereby the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father through the Son, 1° the very same dogma is enunciated, as is manifestly evident both from the words considered in themselves and from their explanation among the Fathers themselves. 2° Because in this manner of speaking the procession from the Father is signified as from a primordial principle communicating the spirative power also to the Son, and the procession through the Son as from one having the spirative power communicated by generation, the saying of St. Maximus and of St. John Damascene is thereby reconciled with the catholic dogma — they who, asserting the procession of the Spirit through the Son, alone among all the holy Doctors seem to have denied the procession from the Son ».

I. By common consent the Greek Fathers teach that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. This indeed even the schismatics are compelled to concede, but to the proposition torn from its contexts they substitute alien meanings by sophistical evasions, which could have been devised only by men foolishly resisting evident truth. No one has better comprised the sum of all that is to be said here than Bessarion in chapter 6. of the distinguished dogmatic oration, which, delivered to his Greeks at the Council of Florence, he himself afterwards translated into the Latin tongue (Hard. IX. p. 335. sqq.). We shall speak first of the formula itself in itself and according to the signification of the prepositions ex and per; then of the more explicit declarations of the Fathers.

1°. If the locution be considered in itself, no one gainsaying it, the Father is indicated as the principle of the eternal procession, the Holy Spirit as the proceeding term: from the Father proceeds the Holy Spirit. But where the principle or cause is introduced through the particle a or ex and the term or effect is added, and so the enunciation is directly causal; in such an enunciation that also which is interposed in the oblique case under the particle διά, per, always and necessarily has the character of a principle or cause, whether formal or efficient. This must first of all be declared, from which afterwards there will be understood the unity and the distinction of the twofold formula under discussion.

a) If the subjects governed by the particles a and per be not distinct hypostases, this latter will indicate the formal reason of the cause, or that which can be reduced to the formal reason; e. g. by God through omnipotence the world is created, by man through the intellect the true is understood, through the will the good is sought. If the hypostases be distinct and the term be an effect, the particle per designates the efficient cause, but in created things subordinated to the more principal cause; for the principal cause acts through the subordinate cause; e. g. by the agent through the instrument the work is effected etc.

In the transference to God this signification is modified according to the nature of the subject; for in the divine persons subordination cannot be except that of origin, according to the ἀξίωμα of a principle preceding from a principle. Hence in the whole biblical and ecclesiastical manner of speaking all works ad extra are said to be from the Father through the Son; where although the nature is one, and consequently the principle by which of the operation is one, and the operation is one and undivided, nevertheless the distinction among the persons is so indicated that the numerically one nature and operative power and operation are communicated from the Father to the Son. Whence the particles a and per signify one and the same causality, but at the same time they co-signify the ἀξίωμα of the principle in the person from whom as from a primordial source the operation is, and the origin in the person through whom that one is said to operate (cf. above p. 163. 200).

Although therefore separately it may equally be said, e. g., that all things are created through the Father, and that all things are created by the Son; yet not without absurdity could it be said that all things are created by the Son through the Father, because, as I said, in this conjunction besides the causality, which is one of the Father and of the Son, there is at the same time signified the communication of the nature and of the operative power from one person into another.

On the signification of particles of this kind, at length and against the Arians, St. Basil discourses in the book On the Holy Spirit c. 2-8. «That the Father creates through the Son, among other things he says, that neither shows the Father's operation to be imperfect nor demonstrates the Son's power to be weak; but it declares the unity of the will (of the substantial will, which is the very divine essence itself), so that the particle per has the force of a confession of the primordial cause» ¹ l. de Spiritu Sancto c. 8. n. 21.

The same doctrine of St. Basil was contracted into a compendium by Chrysostom hom. V. al. IV. in Ioan. n. 2. 3. Explaining the words: «all things were made through him», he shows that the particle per does not signify a «diminution» (ἐλάττωσιν), as the Arians thought, but that there is expressed «the one dignity of the creative operation of the Son with the Father». Nevertheless, he says, «if here it is said through him, it has been placed for no other reason than that no one might suspect the Son to be unbegotten» ² l. c. n. 2.

Thus also Cyril, speaking directly of the mission of the Holy Spirit, declares that by the very fact that the Father is said to send through the Son there is indicated one principle of the mission, the Father and the Son, the distinction nevertheless being preserved between the Father begetting and the Son begotten, as with Paul it is said of the Father, from whom are all things; of the Son, through whom are all things; and for this reason while the Father is said to send separately, the Son is understood together with the Father, and in turn the Father together with the Son. «The Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father. He gives therefore the Paraclete, i. e. the Holy Spirit, not the Father separately and the Son separately indeed; but rather He is given to the saints by the Father through the Son; and on that account while the Father is said to give, the Son gives, through whom are all things; while the Son is said to give, the Father gives, from whom are all things» Cyrill. in Io. p. 810. See August. Trin. IV. n. 29. above p. 459. 460.

Now if the term be not an effect, but a person proceeding from the substance, i. e. through the communication of the nature; the signification of the particles a Patre per Filium is not on that account destroyed, but is modified according to the character of such a procession. As therefore in the works of efficiency, e. g. in creation, the particle per Filium signifies the cause no less than the other, a Patre, and indeed one cause, with the co-signification of the distinction of persons, in that the Father communicates to the Son the creative power; so in this ad intra procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son each particle retains the αἰτιατικήν force; but just as the particle a Patre now signifies not the efficient cause but the principle of spiration (as the schismatics themselves readily concede), so also the other, per Filium, signifies the same principle, with the co-signification of the distinction of the persons of the Father and of the Son, in that the power and the act of spiration is communicated from the Father into the Son, and thus from the Father through the Son proceeds the Holy Spirit. Just as therefore in creation from the Father through the Son there is signified not one cause and another cause but one cause, yet two persons, and at the same time the origin of the Son from the Father; by a like reasoning in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son there is exhibited one principle of the procession, because just as the essence is one, so also the spirative power is one, while the persons are shown to be two, whose the essence is under the formal reason also of the spirative power, but in such a way that the Father is the principle without principle (προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία), the Son is not a principle without principle but one with the Father principle of the Holy Spirit, just as He is one God and creator with the Father, inasmuch as by generation He has all things communicated which are the Father's (except paternity), and hence also the spirative power. For the Father and the Son are not more distinguished from one another by spiration than by the Godhead or by the absolute attributes, since there is no other distinction between them than through the formal reason of paternity and of filiation ³

b) From what has been said it appears that the sentence whereby the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father through the Son differs from the other whereby He is said to proceed from the Father and from the Son not in the thing signified, but nevertheless in the manner of signifying the same thing. In this other manner of speaking the declaration of the unity of the principle is directly regarded, but the order of origin between the Father and the Son, although contained in the very names, is not however explicitly expressed with respect to the spiration itself, which is communicated to the Son from the Father. In the former manner of speaking, on the other hand, the purpose is directly to signify the order of origin between the two spirating persons, that the Father is the primordial font (προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία), from whom as the essence so also the spirative power is communicated to the Son; the unity of the principle, however, is contained not explicitly in the particles themselves a Patre per Filium, but rather in the signification of the subject (God the Father and God the Son). The western Fathers therefore, in the formula solemn for them whereby they say the procession from the Father and from the Son, directly enunciate against the Arians the unity of essence and of spiration, and include the distinction of persons against the Sabellians; the eastern, in the formula more frequent for them of the procession from the Father through the Son, directly enunciate the distinction and the order of the spirating persons to the exclusion of Sabellianism and to repel the calumny, more than once attempted by the Arians, of confusion of persons, and at the same time include the unity of the principle against the Arian heresy. Compare what we have said about the western formula: «one substance in three persons», in comparison with the formula of the eastern: «one essence in three hypostases» (above p. 120. note).

Moreover we have seen that the eastern also embrace the formula: from the Father and from the Son; nor are there lacking Latins who equally take up the other, from the Father through the Son; who indeed no less expressly establish the procession principally from the Father, in the same sense in which the eastern call the Father the primordial principle προκαταρκτικὴν αἰτίαν (above p. 450. 456. seq.). Namely, although the Son even ad intra is a principle (ἀρχή), He is nevertheless not without principle (ἄναρχος), and therefore in comparison with the Father neither προκαταρκτική; but ἄναρχος καὶ αἰτία προκαταρκτικὴ the Father alone is, the Son is ἀρχή, the Holy Spirit ad intra is not the principle of another person. This Gregory Naz. or. 42. al. 32. n. 15 said most beautifully. «The one without principle, and the principle, and the one that is with the principle, is one God.... The name of the one without principle is Father, of the principle Son, of the one that is with the principle (the name) Holy Spirit; but the nature of the three is one, namely God. The union, however, is the Father, from whom and to whom those who proceed in order are referred» ⁴ 2°. If the contexts of the Fathers themselves are inspected, and the manner in which they teach the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son, no place is left for doubting their sense and their agreement with the western Fathers.

For a) they not only simply say the procession from the Father through the Son, but they directly declare that their discourse is about the immanent and eternal procession of the person of the Holy Spirit, which is through the Son, and so not only about the mission ad extra. For they say that the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son essentially, according to essence, by nature, naturally. See the testimonies in the places cited above p. 438.

b) They describe this very procession, what it is: namely, that the nature is communicated from the Father through the Son to the Holy Spirit. «What property (relation) we know to be the Son's toward the Father, the same we shall find the Holy Spirit to have toward the Son; and just as the Son says: all things that are the Father's are mine (namely by the immanent origin of the Son from the Father); so we shall find that all these things are through the Son also in the Spirit (by like reason, therefore, by immanent origin)» ⁵ Athanas. ep. 3. ad Serap. n. 1. «Natural goodness and essential holiness and royal dignity flow from the Father through the Only-begotten into the Spirit» Basil. de Spir. Sancto c. 18. n. 47. «Since the Spirit naturally (φυσικῶς) proceeds through the Son, as His own Spirit, He is said (in the Scriptures) to receive, along with all things which He perfectly has, the things that are the Son's» Cyrill. in Io. p. 929. 930.

c) Declaring the procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son, they say that, according to the order of origin among the divine persons, the Son is the medium between the Father and the Holy Spirit in such a way that the Son alone is from the Father alone, the Spirit however not from the Father alone but from the Father through the Son; and therefore the Son is proximately from the Father, and the Spirit through Him who is proximately from the Father. Whence they say that there is an order among the persons, such that «by thought alone, according to the reason of principle, the Son is pre-understood before the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit» (Nyss. contr. Eunom. I. p. 164); that the Father is the cause (αἴτιον) of the Holy Spirit, «but through the Word as the medium» διὰ μέσου δὲ τοῦ Λόγου (s. Maxim. l. quaest. et dubior. q. 34); and in this sense that the proper personal character of the Holy Spirit is this, that «He is manifested after the Son and together with Him, and the Son manifests the Spirit through Himself and with Himself» (Basil. ep. 38. al. 43. n. 4). But of this doctrine of the Fathers we shall treat separately below.

d) All the comparisons by which the holy Doctors frequently illustrate the procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son exhibit the Holy Spirit proceeding equally from the Son, so that they at the same time show that the spiration power is in the Son as communicated from the Father. «The Father is the sun, the Son the ray, the Spirit the splendor»; «the Father the fountain, the Son the river, the Spirit the stream»; or «the Father the spring, the Son the fountain, the Spirit the water»; «the Father the root, the Son the shoot, the Spirit the fruit»; «the Son the flower, the Spirit the fragrance from the flower» (Cyrill. dialog. VI. p. 593); «the Son the honey, the Spirit the sweetness»; «the Son the fire, the Spirit the heat»; «the Son the water, the Spirit the refreshment»; «the Son the mouth of the Father, the Spirit the breath from the mouth»; «the Son the mind of the Father, and the Wisdom of the Father and the truth of the true Father, the Spirit from the mind and the Spirit of Wisdom and the Spirit of truth»; «the Son the life, the Spirit the power (ἐνέργεια) of the Son Himself». See the citations passim in the foregoing; cf. also Emum Hergenroether Animadv. in Photii mystag. § II. n. 6. (Migne PP. GG. CII. p. 422).

From all these things it is manifest how unjustly Mark of Ephesus in the Council of Florence refused to subscribe to the definition in which the rest of the Greek bishops agreed with the Latins. «With this holy universal Council approving, we define that this truth of faith be believed and received by all Christians, and so all profess that the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and that He has His essence and His subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration; declaring that what the holy Doctors and Fathers say, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, tends to this understanding, that by this it is signified that the Son is also, according to the Greeks indeed the cause (αἰτίαν), according to the Latins however the principle of subsistence of the Holy Spirit (ἀρχὴν τῆς τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος ὑπάρξεως), just as the Father also. And since all things that are the Father's, the Father Himself gave to His Only-begotten by begetting, except to be the Father, this very thing, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, the Son Himself has eternally from the Father, from whom He was also eternally begotten» Harduin. IX. p. 422. 986.

II. From that more frequent usage of the Greek Fathers of distinguishing the order of the persons of the Father and the Son in the very doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, and from their zeal always to declare explicitly the Father as the primordial source of the Trinity (κορυφή, ῥίζα, πηγὴ τῆς θεότητος, ἄναρχος ἀρχή, προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία), it came about that from the seventh century onward some Greeks thought that, from the manner of speaking of the Fathers, the signification of the name cause or principle, αἰτία, and of the particle ἐξ, at least where the internal processions are concerned, was already determined to designate the Father alone, who is the primordial principle, προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία ⁶. With this presupposed, certainly neither could the Son be said by them to be the αἰτία or primordial principle of the Holy Spirit, nor the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Son, but only, according to the formula, in the sense which we have said to be determined, to proceed from the Father through the Son. This manner of understanding the locutions of the ancient Fathers, certainly too exclusive, by itself indeed as yet contains no dogmatic error; it could nevertheless offer, and in fact afterwards did offer, to the schismatics the occasion of erring, or rather of covering over with some varnish the error in the very dogma. There are two Greek writers, one of the seventh, the other of the eighth century, who took the name αἰτία and the particle ἐξ in the signification that has been stated.

In the Council of Florence there was produced by the Greeks a fragment from the letter of St. Maximus to Marinus, presbyter of Cyprus (Hard. IX. p. 306.; Opp. s. Maximi T. II. p. 68. sqq.; from the translation of Anastasius Bibliothecarius in Galland. XIII. p. 38. cf. the same Anastasius' ep. to Ioan. diacon. ib. p. 31; Lequien. Damascen. dissert. I. n. 10) ⁷. There Maximus reports that the Constantinopolitan Monothelites had censured only two things in the synodical letter of the Roman Pontiff by whom they had been condemned: one «concerning the divine incarnation, that he had written that the Lord, as man, is without the sin of the first parent» (ἄνευ τῆς προπατορικῆς ἁμαρτίας) ⁸; but the other, which pertains to our matter, they charged, «because he said that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son» ἐκπορεύεσθαι δὲ τοῦ Υἱοῦ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ⁹.

In men who could twist the clearest statement, in which it is taught that Christ is without the corruption of sin, to an alien sense, it is not surprising that they also found a calumny for this other point about the procession from the Son; of what sort it was is understood from the response of the Romans, as reported by Maximus.

In the first place, as to the manner of speaking, they answered that both the Latin Fathers and St. Cyril had said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. As to the matter itself, however, they said that they were not ignorant that the Father is the αἰτίαν, namely the principle without principle both of the Son by generation and of the Holy Spirit by active emission (as Anastasius renders ἐκπόρευσιν). But when the Holy Spirit is said to proceed also from the Son, there is understood the procession from the Father through the Son, so that namely the active spiration is in the Son as communicated from the Father, and thus all things that are the Father's are also the Son's, and the Son is truly consubstantial with the Father, which consubstantiality would be destroyed if the act of spiration communicated from the Father were denied to the Son. «And first indeed they (the Romans) brought forward the consonant testimonies of the Latin Fathers, and moreover also those of Cyril of Alexandria, from his sacred work which he wrote on St. John the Evangelist; from which they showed that they do not make the Son the cause (αἰτίαν) of the Holy Spirit; for they knew the Father as the one cause of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, of the one indeed by generation, of the other however by procession (κατὰ τὴν ἐκπόρευσιν); but that they signified that He comes forth through Him (through the Son), and by this reason demonstrated the unity of the essence and the complete equality» ¹⁰ s. Max. l. c.

Therefore it can truly be said what Anastasius Bibliothecarius (ep. ad Ioan. diacon. Galland XIII. p. 31) says of St. Maximus: «he teaches both us and the Greeks that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son in a certain respect and in a certain respect does not proceed», namely, that He does not proceed from the Son as from a first person through a spiration power not communicated, but that He proceeds through the Son, who is the second person, and therefore, the spiration power having been communicated from the Father, one principle with the Father of the Holy Spirit ¹¹ Moreover St. Maximus, where he directly sets forth his own opinion, expressly teaches that the Holy Spirit is so naturally the Spirit of the Son as He is naturally the Spirit of the Father, and hence that the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son is the same as that which is to the Father, «because He ineffably proceeds essentially from the Father through the begotten Son» ¹² Quaest. 63. in Script. Opp. T. p. 238. He repeats the same things in the same words in the solution of doubt 53 to the king of Achrida (Bulgaria); but there, after the words «He ineffably proceeds essentially from the Father through the begotten Son», for a still stricter declaration of the internal procession, he adds these: «therefore no cutting or division can be conceived in any way, as if either the Father without the Son (because He is eternally generated) or the Son without the Spirit (because He eternally proceeds) were understood (οὐκ ἔστιν οὖν ἢ τὸν Πατέρα χωρὶς τοῦ Υἱοῦ ἐννοηθῆναι, ἢ τὸν Υἱὸν χωρὶς τοῦ Πνεύματος); but there is in these a certain ineffable and incomprehensible unity and at the same time distinction» ibid. p. 671. Not less clearly, in the place cited a little above, he explains the matter by a comparison. He asks why it cannot be said that the Father and Christ are of the Holy Spirit, when nevertheless it is said, as the Spirit of God, so the Spirit of Christ. This is the response: «As the mind is the source of reason (of the word expressed in the mind), so also it is the source of the spirit (of the voice), but through the intermediate reason; and as we cannot say that reason (the internal word) is of the voice (has its origin from the voice), so neither can we say that the Son is of the Holy Spirit» (because namely the Spirit has its origin from the Son). We say that the Spirit is of the Son; but not conversely, because the Son does not proceed from the Spirit» ¹³ (quaest. et dubior. q. 34. ibid. p. 313). Compare the doctrine of Augustine described above, p. 408.

From the same principles the sense of St. John Damascene is now also understood, who is the other author of the eighth century, denying that the procession is said to be from the Son, but constantly at the same time affirming that it is from the Father through the Son. For Damascene says, Fid. Orthod. l. I. c. 8: «We do not say that the Father is from something, but we call Him Himself the Father of the Son; the Son likewise we call neither cause ¹⁴ nor Father, but rather that He is from the Father and the Son of the Father. Finally, we say that the Holy Spirit is both from the Father and the Spirit of the Father; but that the Spirit is from the Son we do not say, yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son; for if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, says the divine Apostle, he is not His; and we profess that He appeared through the Son and is communicated to us ¹⁵. For He breathed, he says, and said to His disciples: receive the Holy Spirit. Just as in the sun there is both ray and splendor; for it itself is the source of the ray and of the splendor, and through the ray the splendor is communicated to us» Damasc. l. c. That in what he says, that the Spirit appeared through the Son, the eternal procession is included, is shown both by the testimonies of Scripture and by the comparison which he uses; for from the same things the Fathers are wont to demonstrate the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit through the Son (cf. supra, p. 450. 452. 473). See also homil. in Sabb. sanct. n. 4. T. II. p. 817.

Moreover Damascene himself often expressly declares the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit through the Son. «I know that the Father alone is superessential..... He Himself is the abyss of the Word, the begetter of the Word and through the Word the producer of the manifesting Spirit...... The Holy Spirit is the manifesting power of the Father of the hidden things of the Godhead, proceeding from the Father indeed through the Son..... the Spirit of the Father, as proceeding from the Father; for no motion (ὁρμή, vital motion, or act of the will; cf. Marium Victorin. supra p. 453) is without the Spirit. And He is the Spirit of the Son, not because He proceeds through Him from the Father; for the Father alone is the cause» (primordial) ¹⁶ Damascen. de divin. nominibus T. I. p. 148. To these he has like things in dialog. contr. Manich. n. 5. p. 432; ep. ad Iordan. n. 28. p. 497.

In that latter place he repeats what St. Basil had said (supra p. 429. 430): «The Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father through the Son and the Word; not however in the manner of filiation (οὐχ υἱικῶς δέ)... For if the Spirit is the Son of the Son, He too will have a Son, and that one another, and so to infinity». These things manifestly show that Damascene understood the procession through the Son as through a producing principle of the Holy Spirit; for he could not have said otherwise: if the procession from the Father through the Son (which he confesses and teaches) were in the manner of filiation, it would follow from this that the Spirit would be the Son of the Son. Read Bessarion. de Process. Spiritus Sancti p. 261 sqq. (inter opusc. aurea); and in orat. dogmat. (Hard. IX. p. 350. sq.) ¹⁷

« The catholic doctrine of the Greek Fathers agreeing with the Latin Fathers shines forth most clearly from the comparison which they institute between the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son and the relation of the Son to the Father; for 1° they teach that the Son alone has origin from the Father alone and proximately from the Father, whereas the Holy Spirit has origin not from the Father alone, but with the Son interposed and through the Son; 2° with all the same names and locutions by which the relation of origin of the Son to the Father is expressed, they also describe the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son, with almost only the appellation of Son, of begotten, and of generation excepted ».

I. As the distinguishing character of the person of the Son is handed down by the Fathers, that He alone is from the alone, i.e., proceeding from the one person of the Father. Whence they say that the personal character of the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the property of the Son by this very fact, that the Spirit proceeds not already from the Father alone, but from the Father through the Son. St. Basil, where he expressly declares the distinguishing notions of the persons, beginning from the third person, speaks thus. « Since the Holy Spirit..... depends on the Son ¹, with whom He is conceived inseparably, but from the Father He has to depend (subsist) as from a cause, whence also He proceeds; this is the notional character of that hypostatic property, that He is manifested after the Son (cf. above th. XXXIII.) and with Him, and has subsistence from the Father. But the Son, who manifests through Himself and with Himself the Spirit proceeding from the Father, alone shining forth unigenerately from the unbegotten light ² has no community with the Father or with the Holy Spirit in the property of the notions. But He who is God above all (the Father, see above p. 154) has a certain preeminent mark of His hypostasis, that He alone has to be Father and to subsist from no cause » Basil. ep. 38. al. 43. n. 4.

We have a commentary on this doctrine of Basil from his brother Gregory of Nyssa, both in l. I. cont. Eunom. and in ep. ad Ablab., at the places described above p. 431. There Gregory teaches expressly that the distinction between the divine persons, and in particular between the Son and the Holy Spirit, is none except by reason of the principle, in that one has origin from the other; and so the Holy Spirit depends on the Son in the sense in which the Son has being from the Father. Then the difference between the procession of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit from the Father is taught to be this, that the second person, the Son, is from the first person proximately (προσεχῶς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου), i.e., with no other person interposed, and therefore the Son is only-begotten, i.e., begotten from the one first person; on the contrary the Holy Spirit, the third person, is indeed also from the first person, but not proximately, i.e., not from the first person alone, but through the second from the first, or, as Nyssenus says, with the second person interposed, which Basil had said by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit « after the Son ». Elsewhere Nyssenus declared the same thing by a comparison. The Trinity, he says, is « as it were one flame distinguished in three lamps, yet in such a way that we suppose the first flame to be the cause of the third light, kindling the farthest through the succession of the middle light ³ (namely that the Father is the principle of the third person, in that through the second person, the Son, He communicates the same nature to the third person, the Holy Spirit) Nyss. orat. de Spir. S. n. 6. edit. Card. Mai (VV. PP. Nova Bibl. T. IV. Migne T. XLV. p. 1307).

Hence it comes about, say both Gregory and Basil, that a) only the Son is from the one person (τὸ μονογενὲς ἐπὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ μένει = μόνος μονογενῶς ἐκλάμψας); for the Spirit is now not from one but from two persons. Whence b) as Nyssenus speaks, the third person is also from the first, but from the first through the second who is intermediate (ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου διὰ τοῦ προσεχοῦς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου, τῆς τοῦ Υἱοῦ μεσιτείας ὡς ἀπεργασθείσας τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς οὐσιώδους πρὸς τὸν πατέρα σχέσεως — ἅπτεται τοῦ τρίτου φωτὸς εἶναι τὴν πρώτην φλόγα, ἐκ διαδοχῆς διὰ τοῦ μέσου τὸ ἄκρον ἐξάψασαν). Athanasius had said the same: « The Spirit is said to proceed from the Father, because He shines forth from the Word, which is confessed to be from the Father »; and Basil: « The Spirit is conceived inseparably with the Son, and the Son manifests through Himself and with Himself the Spirit proceeding from the Father, alone shining forth unigenerately ».

To me certainly, by this comparison of Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory between the relation of the Son to the Father alone as to His principle, and the relation or, as they say, dependence of the Holy Spirit not from the Father alone, but from the Father through the Son and with the Son interposed (τῆς τοῦ Υἱοῦ μεσιτείας), the Father and the Son seem to be proposed as one principle of the Holy Spirit no less clearly, and in part even more distinctly, than when it is simply taught by Epiphanius, Cyril, and the other Fathers, and by Basil and Gregory themselves (above p. 477. sqq.), that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and has being from the Son as from the Father.

It alone remains to be declared, what that interposition (μεσιτεία) of the Son between the Father and the Holy Spirit is, and in what sense the procession, as it were mediated, from the Father is to be understood. If the procession from the Father were said to be mediated in the sense that the Son is from the Father, and then the Holy Spirit from the Son alone, this would surely be a most grave error subverting the whole economy of the most Holy Trinity, and finally coinciding with the heresy of the Pneumatomachi, who in this way asserted the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son alone, and by this very fact partly expressly denied the unity of nature of the three persons, partly, once those principles were laid down, could no longer defend it consequentially. And so the Fathers, who directly attacking this very heresy defended that order among the persons so solicitously in order to declare the unity of nature, would surely be understood absurdly in that sense.

But indeed the genuine sense in those locutions is not obscure. Just as nature, so every operation ad extra is one, undivided, and common to the three persons; nevertheless the Father is called the primordial cause, the Son the one working, the Holy Spirit the one perfecting; the Father is said to work through the Son in the Holy Spirit. All these locutions suppose the undivided unity of operation and enunciate only the distinction between the persons, in that the nature and consequently the power and operation is in the Father not communicated, in the Son communicated by the Father, in the Holy Spirit communicated by both. Thus therefore also spiration ad intra is one, common to the Father and the Son, but communicated by the Father to the Son. Whence, just as the three persons do not create inasmuch as they are distinct, but inasmuch as they are one God and therefore one creator, and so God the Father could not be said, without Gnostic or Arian error, to be a creator only mediated through the Son; so also the Father and the Son, not inasmuch as they are distinct, but inasmuch as they are one in nature under the formal reason of the spirative power or fecund love, breathe the Holy Spirit, and therefore are one spirator; nor consequently is the Father less immediate a principle of the Holy Spirit than the Son.

But if not the spiration itself, one and common, but the distinction and order of the persons is attended to, whose spiration it is, the Father does not breathe the Holy Spirit except with the generation of the Son presupposed. For the Holy Spirit is by a fixed ontological order the third, not together with the Son the second, person, and therefore the Son, eternally begotten, is pre-understood to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. Since therefore by the order of origin the generation of the Son from the Father alone is understood first, with this order attended to, the Son can rightly be said to be « proximately from the first »; and since the Father does not breathe the Holy Spirit except with the communication of the spirative power into the second, begotten person presupposed, therefore again by reason of this order of persons the Holy Spirit can rightly be said to proceed « through him who is proximately from the first » (διὰ τοῦ προσεχοῦς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου). (See the mode of conceiving above th. XXVI. n. I; XXVII; XXIX. n. II.) ⁴

Hence it is understood how ll. cc. the Son is called the middle between the Father and the Holy Spirit, while elsewhere the Holy Spirit is frequently predicated by the Fathers as the middle between the Father and the Son (Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον ἐν μέσῳ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ s. Epiphan. Ancor. n. 8). Namely, if the order of persons is regarded, the Son, the second person, is the middle between the first, from whom He is generated, and the third, which proceeds only with the Son presupposed and from the Father through the Son; and thus the Fathers say, « not the Word through the Spirit, but the Spirit through the Word is conjoined to the Father, because He receives from the Son » Athanas. contr. Arian. or. III. n. 24. But if the one spiration common to the Father and the Son is considered, or the one love of the Father toward the Son and of the Son toward the Father, whose immanent produced term is the Holy Spirit; the subsisting love, that is, the Holy Spirit, can be said and is said by the Fathers to be the middle between the Father and the Son, and in the same sense is called by Augustine and the other Fathers « the unity of both » (above p. 366. 367. 455), by St. Bernard « the common kiss » of the Father and the Son, « unperturbable peace, firm glue » (above p. 364), and « that which proceeds from both, the indissoluble bond of the Trinity » s. Bernard. in Pentec. serm. 3. n. 2.

II. In Scripture and the Fathers there are many names of the Son of God relative to the Father, by which indeed His origin from the Father is directly signified and the mode of origin through generation is co-signified; thus He is called the Word, Wisdom, figure (χαρακτήρ), image, power, splendor of the Father. There are other names by which the mode of procession through generation is directly and expressly signified, as the names themselves, Son, only-begotten, generation. But now all those former names are transferred by the Fathers, namely the Greek ones, to signify the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son, where it is manifest and is indicated by the Fathers themselves that only the direct signification of origin is retained, the signification of the mode of origin being set aside. Since this cannot be done in the names mentioned in the second place, therefore they remain proper to the second, begotten person alone, and are never used to express the relation of the Holy Spirit.

a) The Fathers teach as a general principle: « the Spirit has such an order and such a nature toward the Son as the Son has toward the Father » ⁵ Athanas. ep. I. ad Serap. n. 21.; Basil. cont. Eunom. l. V. T. I. p. 304.

b) Then in particular, excepting, as I said, the names of Son, begotten, only-begotten, which remain proper to the second person from the peculiar mode of procession through generation, all the remaining appellations designating the relation of origin of the Son to the Father, or the procession of the Son from the Father, the same Greek Fathers take up to express the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son.

The Son is the Word, the expressed mind (ὁ νοῦς) and reason of the Father (above p. 165. sqq.); likewise the Holy Spirit is called by Sts. Basil and Cyril the Word of the Son, the mind of the Son (above p. 410. 430).

The Son is the image of the Father, the figure (χαρακτήρ) of His substance; in turn the Holy Spirit is called by Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Cyril the image of the Son, the natural image, the seal of the nature of the Son, the form of the Son ⁶ (above p. 409. 427. 447. 471).

The Son is the splendor of the Father, light from light; the Holy Spirit is the splendor of the Son, the third light (p. 427. 473). Likewise the Son is the face of the Father as the expression of the same; in turn the Holy Spirit is called the face of the Son (Cyrill. in Io. p. 787. see Petav. VIII. c. 7. n. 6. 7). The Son is called the Wisdom and power of the Father: the Holy Spirit is called by Athanasius (ad Serap. I. n. 25.), Cyril (dialog. VII. p. 593) the Spirit of wisdom and power, as it were the odor from the flower, the living power of the living Son. The Son, both in Sap. VII. 25 and by the Fathers (above p. 289), is described as « the vapor (ἀτμίς) of the power of God and a certain emanation of clarity »; likewise by Cyril (Thesaur. p. 338) the Holy Spirit is said to proceed « from the essence of the Son as a vapor from water » (ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Υἱοῦ ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕδατος ἀτμίς).

Of the relation of the consubstantial Son to the Father as to His principle, that saying of Christ is understood by very many Fathers: the Father is greater than I (Io. XIV. 28). « He did not say, He is better than I.... but greater, not by any magnitude or time, but on account of the nativity from the Father Himself » Athanas. contr. Arian. or. I. n. 58. But the same Athanasius in the same sense of origin ibid. n. 50 declares the Son greater than the Holy Spirit. Before the Jews, he says, Christ, speaking as the Son of man, indicated the Holy Spirit greater than Himself, considered according to His humanity; but « showing to His disciples His divinity and majesty, signifying that He was no longer less than the Holy Spirit, but greater and equal ⁷ He gave the Holy Spirit, and said: receive the Holy Spirit ».

Certainly when these things are said to express the order of the Son to the Father, no one doubts that the relation of origin is signified and the procession of the Son from the Father; therefore when the Greek Fathers transfer all the same things to describe the order of the Holy Spirit to the Son, they can signify nothing other than the procession from the Son.

c) Hence also the Eunomians and the other Arians objected, and the Fathers themselves ask, if all these things are said no less truly of the relation of the Spirit to the Son than of the relation of the Son to the Father, why is not the Holy Spirit the Son of the Son? Which indeed even the question itself would be absurd, unless the heretics had understood, and the Fathers had held ratified and fixed, the catholic doctrine in this sense, that the Son is the principle of the Holy Spirit. This the Fathers also render most manifest in their response; for they do not answer by denying the supposition, namely that the Son is the principle of the Holy Spirit; but rather they insist that the reason why He is not the Son of the Son is certainly not from a defect of procession, « not that the Spirit is not from God through the Son, as the Word of the Son and the image of the Son » Basil. above p. 430.; « not begotten, not called by the name of Son, but nevertheless the Holy Spirit is from the same essence of the Father and of the Son » Epiphan. Ancor. n. 7. 8.; « the Holy Spirit is from the Father through the Son, yet not in the manner of filiation » Damasc. ep. ad Iordan. n. 28 (cf. Athanas. ad Serap. I. n. 25.; Gregor. Naz. or. 31. al. 37. n. 7-9): but they say that either no other reason is to be given for this thing than that in Scripture and in the whole of revelation the proceeding Spirit is not called Son; or they give the reason, because He proceeds not from one but from two, but a son of two is not given even in human affairs (as Augustine usually disputes); or they say generally that besides generation there exists another mode of procession, and because the Spirit proceeds by this other and not by the mode of filiation, therefore He is not, nor is He called, the Son of the Son ll. cc.

« When the Arians and the Semiarian Pneumatomachi affirmed that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father by communication of the divine essence, but is a creature produced by the Son or through the Son, 1° the holy Doctors of the Church, whether individually one by one or in Councils, had directly to declare the procession from the Father and to deny that production through the Son which the heretics introduced; both of which heads being demonstrated, they not only do not deny the procession from the Son as from the Father by communication of the divine nature, but they assume this procession from the Son as a corollary to be conceded even by the adversaries. Wherefore 2° the doctrine of Theodorus Mopsuestenus and of Theodoretus also seems, as regards this head, to be explained in a catholic sense, where, in opposition to the Macedonian sense, they deny that the Holy Spirit has existence from the Son or through the Son. »

I. Some time after the Council of Nicaea, many withdrew from the Arian faction expressly denying the divinity of the Son, without however wishing to embrace the catholic faith defined at the Council; they said that they confessed the Son to be true God, similar in substance to the Father (ὁμοιούσιον); yet they refused to call Him consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father. From these Semiarians arose the Pneumatomachi, called also Macedonians after their leader, who transferred the explicit and direct attack upon the mystery of the most holy Trinity to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. They conceded that the Son is begotten of the Father and therefore is God of God; they denied that the Holy Spirit is from the Father by substantial procession, and therefore denied that He is God; but they taught that the principle of the Holy Spirit is the Son by a creative production. Without circumlocution Eusebius had already proposed this opinion. « Indeed He alone can be called the one God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ; the Son, however, is the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father; but the Paraclete Spirit is neither God nor Son, since He did not receive generation from the Father equally as the Son; but He is one of those things which were made through the Son, since all things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made » De eccles. theol. l. III. c. 6. Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and of Nazianzus and the other Fathers of the IV and V centuries accuse this same heresy. « They pretend to profess the faith defined at Nicaea by the Fathers, but in reality they deny it, perverting the token of consubstantiality (τὸ ὁμοούσιον), and the same men blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, while they say that He is a creature and a thing made, produced through the Son » (καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ γεγενῆσθαι) Athan. ad Iovin. Imp. n. 1. Surely the opinion of the Arians themselves about the Holy Spirit was the same, with this sole difference, that they said in open words « a creature of the unbegotten is the Son, but the Paraclete of the only-begotten » (Eunomius apud Basil. l. II. n. 33). To Eunomius Basil answers, among other things: « no power (ἐνέργεια) of the Son is divided from the Father, nor is there anything of reality in the Son that is alien to the Father; for all things, he himself says, mine are yours and yours are mine; how then does (Eunomius) attribute the cause of the Spirit to the only-begotten alone? » ib. n. 24. See Ambros. de Spir. Sanct. l. I. c. 2; Damasum Pontif. ep. ad Paulin. n. 3. ed. Coustant. p. 511. 518; Philast. haeres. 67. 68.

In this doctrine of the heretics three things can be distinguished. Namely, a) the Holy Spirit is not from the Father, and therefore He is not God; b) the Holy Spirit is from the Son, or, which they hold for the same thing, He is through the Son; c) He is from the Son by creation. The heretics directly and chiefly intended the first head; they assumed the second as clear from the Scriptures and admitted by the Catholics themselves; but that it might agree with the heresy, they understood it in a distorted sense of the procession of the Spirit from the Son by creation, which we call the third head of the heresy. The opposite manner of exposition and of defense of the catholic faith had to be accommodated to the proper reason of the errors. What the Fathers chiefly and primarily regarded in that controversy was the demonstration of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the demonstration of the procession from the substance of the Father. The second head, that the Spirit is from the Son, the holy Doctors never simply denied; but rather from this common principle they inferred that the Spirit, because He is from the Son, is also from the Father. But the sense in which the catholic Doctors and in which the heretics understood the procession from the Son is most diverse. The Catholics, in the faith of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, saw that the procession from the Son is not by creation but from the substance of the Son, and they understood this procession to be equally from the substance of the Father as of the Son, which is one; the heretics, on the contrary, in the denial of the procession from the Father excluded the procession from the substance of the Son, and included the procession from the Son by creation.

We say therefore that this, as far as concerns the present, was the state of the question and the manner of disputing against the Pneumatomachi. The holy Fathers always assert the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son (in the generic signification, that the Spirit is from the Son) as a dogma and a principle common to both parties (cf. Bessarion. orat. dogm. Hard. Concil. T. IX. p. 343). From there, however, for the exposition of the catholic faith and the refutation of the double error, by which the heretics taught that the Spirit is not from the Father, and is from the Son by creation, the holy Doctors proceed in three ways.

1°. From the common principle, that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, they infer and demonstrate that He necessarily also proceeds from the Father, both from the inborn order of relations, because the Son Himself is from the Father, and from the explicit doctrine of Scripture, because just as the Spirit is called the Spirit of the Son, so He is called the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of God. This argumentation is everywhere obvious among the Fathers, the principal defenders of catholic doctrine in that controversy: Athanasius, Basil, the Nyssen, Cyril. Lest we heap up testimonies, let only those things be recalled to memory which we cited in the previous theses. « The Father's is the Spirit, who has been called the Son's, since the Son Himself says: the Spirit of truth, (i. e. of the Son, according to Athanasius and many other Fathers), who proceeds from the Father » Athan. ad Serap. ep. 3. n. 1. « He is said to proceed from the Father, because He shines forth from the Word, which is conceded to be from the Father » id. ad Serap. ep. 1. n. 20. « The Word of God indeed is the Son, but the Word of the Son is the Spirit... and since the Word is of the Son, accordingly it is of God (the Father) » Basil. contra Eunom. V. p. 304. « The Holy Spirit is said both to be from the Father, and is confirmed by testimony to be from the Son; for if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not His: therefore the Spirit is from God and is the Spirit of God » Greg. Nyss. serm. III. in or. domin. « As the Spirit is proper to the Son, naturally existing in Him and proceeding through Him, so also is He the Father's » Cyrill. in Io. p. 910. etc. Moreover, that they may convince that the mode of procession is by communication of nature, not by creation, besides the procession of the Spirit from the Son they assume another principle conceded by the Semiarians, that the Son proceeds from the Father not by creation, but as God of God. This being posited, they show from the Scriptures that the order of the Spirit to the Son is the same as that which is of the Son to the Father, and therefore that the procession of the Spirit from the Son is by communication of nature; if therefore the adversaries truly confess that the Son is God, let them also confess the Holy Spirit to be God. Thus Athanas. ep. I. ad Serap. and Basil, l. V. contr. Eunom. ¹ and elsewhere.

In this whole manner of disputing, solemn to the Fathers, two things are to be noticed as most opportune, if anything could remedy the intolerably sophistical character of the schismatics. First, that what the heretics suppose and the Fathers assume as a principle common and certain among all Christians is the procession of the person of the Holy Spirit from the Son, i. e. that the person of the Spirit itself has existence and being from the Son; there is no question, however, of the gifts, of the mission, of the effects of the Holy Spirit ad extra, which are said to be also from the Son. Nor is the procession also from the Son, or from the substance of the Son, said in that sense alone, that (as the schismatics most absurdly say) the Spirit is consubstantial with the Son; for the Pneumatomachi deny this consubstantiality, but the Catholics demonstrate consubstantiality from the substantial procession as from its reason and cause, in the same way as from the generation of the Son they demonstrate that He is ὁμοούσιον with the Father. The other thing most worthy of notice is that in this long and most serious struggle for the catholic faith against the Pneumatomachi, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son was assumed by the Fathers as most known and not needing polemical demonstration, although for abundance they are wont to confirm and illustrate it from the passages of Sacred Scripture. For they intend to demonstrate directly the procession from the Father, and thence the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and for this demonstration they assume the procession of the Spirit from the Son as a principle more known and conceded in a generic sense by the adversaries themselves.

2°. The other manner of disputing is this, that the Fathers, while indeed deliberately demonstrating the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, about which the question directly was, at the same time join the procession from the Son as included in it and easily to be understood from it. To the argument of the heretics, that the Holy Spirit is either the Son of God or a creature, we have heard the response of St. Basil. « Why is the Spirit not called the Son of the Son? Not because He is not from God through the Son, but lest the Trinity be thought an infinite multitude (in which there would be Sons from Sons).... For this reason the Apostle openly indeed preached that He is from God, since we have received the Spirit who is from God; and that He shone forth through the Son He made manifest, by naming Him the Spirit of the Son just as also of God, and by calling Him the mind of Christ as the Spirit of God » Basil. contr. Eunom. V. p. 305. « Since the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it is manifest that He is of the divine essence, proceeding essentially in it and from it » Cyrill. Thesaur. p. 345. But to this point almost all the testimonies cited could be brought, where we set forth the express doctrine of the Fathers.

3°. In that state of the question which we have described, especially when the aim of the Church was not to refute by arguing but only authentically to condemn the errors by the direct opposition of catholic doctrine, as in the creeds and definitions of Councils, there was no need of an explicit declaration of the procession from the Son; but rather the direct opposition required only the profession of the double head denied by the Pneumatomachi: namely, the profession of the procession from the Father, and of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Thus the second ecumenical Council, celebrated in the year 381 against the Pneumatomachi, in the profession of the Nicene creed « we believe.... and in the Holy Spirit », declared by this other formula directly opposed to that double error: « we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together adored and together glorified, who has spoken through the Prophets », or, retaining the Greek construction, as Dionysius Exiguus translates: « we believe... and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, proceeding from the Father, with the Father and the Son to be adored and to be glorified, who has spoken through the holy Prophets » ²

The Fathers therefore in this creed³ against the first head of the heretics — that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father — explicitly define the dogma: « who proceeds from the Father ». To the other twofold head — that the Spirit proceeds from the Son and proceeds as created — they oppose only the profession of His divinity: « in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped together »; by this very fact, therefore, the other part — the procession from the Son, I mean, to which they set nothing contrary — they accept as most true, provided the procession is understood in a manner befitting God (θεοπρεπής), as s. Cyril speaks (in Ioan. p. 929). The matter is manifest, if one attends to the character of the heresy to which the creed is opposed. We described it a little before from the testimonies of the Fathers, and in the same way the Patriarch John Beccus declares it. The question of the schismatics was: « why did the holy Fathers of the II Council, explaining the sacred Nicene creed, expressly set down the divinity of the Holy Spirit, but about His procession said what is consonant with the Gospel: who proceeds from the Father; and did not add also that, from the Son? » Beccus answers after many other things: « the truest cause why the holy Fathers in the procession of the Holy Spirit did not add the Son is this, that the heretics (those very ones, indeed, against whom the creed is opposed) said and thought that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son alone » (This sense of the heretics Beccus then proves from the testimony of s. Basil and of Justin, Bishop of Sicily). Therefore the heretics asserted that the Spirit is from the Son and not from the Father. But the holy Fathers explicitly proclaimed in the creed that which the heretics denied, saying: « who proceeds from the Father; for that He proceeds from the Son the heretics conceded, nor was there controversy with them on this point » (Becc. in dictis SS. inter opusc. aurea p. 155. sqq.).

Moreover, that in the profession of the procession from the Father there was understood also the procession from the Son, in that the Father and the Son are one by spiration, sufficiently stands from the doctrine and testimonies of the Fathers which we have adduced. Indeed, we learn from Epiphanius that to the Constantinopolitan creed itself a fuller explanation was wont to be added in many Churches of the East, in which explicit mention was made that the Holy Spirit, just as He proceeds from the Father, so also is to be believed to be from the Son. For after the formula of the creed has been set forth, which we have said to be the same as the Constantinopolitan, Epiphanius adduces another a little more explicit (cf. Tract. de Incarnatione th. XVII.), about which he speaks thus. « You (in the Church of the Suedrans of Pamphylia) and we and all orthodox Bishops and, in sum, the whole holy Catholic Church, against the onrushing heresies, in agreement with the faith of those holy Fathers (he means the Nicenes) set forth a little before, we thus enjoin, especially upon those approaching the holy laver, that they profess and say: We believe in one God » etc. In this creed now the Constantinopolitan profession about the Holy Spirit is thus declared: « and we believe in the Holy Spirit, who spoke in the law, and preached in the prophets, and descended to the Jordan, speaks in the Apostles, dwells in the Saints. And thus indeed we believe in Him, namely that He is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the perfect Spirit, the Paraclete Spirit, uncreated, who proceeds from the Father, and receives and is believed to be from the Son »⁴ Ancorat. n. 121. p. 124. In what sense the Spirit is said to receive from the Son according to Io. XVI. 14. 15., the other clause declares: that He is believed to be from the Son, ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ πιστευόμενον⁵. Here therefore, in a creed which in the IV century in the East was destined for the instruction of catechumens and the confirmation of the faithful against the arts of the heretics and was employed in many Churches, we have an express declaration: the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and is believed to be from the Son by revealed faith, to be professed by all. Moreover, this profession is in a creed which is exhibited as the fuller and, without controversies, received explanation of the simpler formula: who proceeds from the Father; in this very formula, therefore, both pastors and faithful understood the procession from the Son not as excluded but as included, and expressly professed it.

II. The character of the controversy having now been set forth, and the manner of disputing of the holy Fathers against the Pneumatomachi considered in accordance with it, this seems to be the proper place for examining whether, and in what sense, in the age of that flourishing heresy some ecclesiastical writers denied that the Holy Spirit proceeds from or is from the Son. Up to the VIII century there is no trace of such a denial in any monument which should not, on other grounds, be regarded as heretical or suspect both by the Photians and by the Catholics. Those are nevertheless named who first denied the procession from the Son: Theodorus of Mopsuestia and his disciples Nestorius and Theodoretus, when the latter was championing the cause of Nestorius against s. Cyril. We could indeed, without detriment, concede these first beginnings and this birth to the Photian heresy; for neither by the authority of men whose very names, or at least whose writings, have been branded with the anathema of the whole Church, nor from the silence of the Church when such a denial was first heard, will the common sense and consensus ever be weakened, which both at that very time and in the preceding and subsequent age most manifestly stands from the entire manner of speaking and disputing of the holy Fathers in the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son as to the Father. The silence of the Church, on the hypothesis of which we speak, would be reduced to this one point: that while the whole attention and contention of the Fathers and Councils was directed solely to proscribing the heresy denying the incarnation of the Word and the hypostatic unity of the God-man, an error thrown in incidentally on an entirely other dogma — about which no controversy had yet been heard, and therefore no special inquiry had been instituted — was then transmitted by the Fathers without direct attack and explicit condemnation, lest the attention be diverted from the principal object, which the adversaries would have most wished, to something else. It is therefore not some necessity for the defense of Catholic doctrine, nor a dogmatic reason, but the truth to be drawn out in the history of dogmas, or rather of heresies, that leads us to examine the sense in which those three, or rather two, writers of the V century denied that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son or through the Son. Since, however, most weighty and indeed many men think altogether that Theodorus, and consequently Nestorius and Theodoretus (at least as long as he favored Nestorius), preformed that heresy which Photius afterwards spread abroad and strengthened in his faction, we wish all that we are going to say in this part of theological history to be subjected, by way of a question, to the examination and judgment of the readers.

1°. That this was the opinion of Theodorus and Nestorius⁶ is drawn from no other source than the creed which, brought to the Council of Ephesus by the priest Charisius, was condemned by this very council and afterwards by other councils and Fathers, by name, on account of the Nestorian heresy about the incarnation of the Word contained in it. That profession had Theodorus as its author; by Nestorius, however, and his followers it was used to propagate their heresy, about which matter we have said enough in Tract. de Incarnat. th. XXIV. Moreover, in the first part of the creed, which, treating of the Trinity, pertains to the present question, the context runs thus. First there is a brief exposition of the faith about the Father and the Son, entirely orthodox; then follows a much more prolix and manifestly polemical declaration about the Holy Spirit in this manner. « And (we believe) in the Holy Spirit, who is from the substance of God, yet is not the Son; but He is God existing in essence, inasmuch as He is of the same essence of which God and the Father is, from whom He is according to essence; for we, he says (the Apostle), have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, separating (the Apostle) Him from the whole creation and joining Him to God, from whom He is according to essence in a manner peculiar to Himself and diverse from all creatures, which we believe to be from God not according to essence but by the causality of creation; and we neither believe Him to be the Son, nor to have received existence through the Son⁷. But we profess the Father perfect in person, and the Son likewise, and in like manner the Holy Spirit⁸, with the doctrine of piety retained, that we believe the Father and the Son and in like manner the Holy Spirit not to be three differing essences, but one to be acknowledged by the identity of the Godhead » (Conc. Mansi T. IV. p. 1348).

In this exposition everyone sees that the author of the creed had before his eyes and directly attacked the doctrine of the Pneumatomachi of that age. They denied, as we showed a little before, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, and therefore at the same time denied His divinity; this twofold head, just as the holy Fathers had vindicated it, so also Theodorus in the first place proposes and most strongly urges. Indeed, lest any doubt about the scope of the creed in this part remain, there is evidently seen in it the very own and peculiar manner of arguing of the Pneumatomachi. We have seen this manner of peculiar sophism described by s. Basil. The Holy Spirit, they said, if He is from the substance of God, by that very fact He is the Son; but if, as the Catholics themselves confess, He is not the Son, it remains that He be a creature. To this very dilemma the creed of which we treat opposes the Catholic doctrine in the same sentences and almost the same words which Basil contr. Eunom. l. V. l. c., Gregory Naz. or. 31. (al. 37) n. 7-11. and others used. The other peculiar manner of arguing, to which Origen gave occasion (above p. 446), those heretics deduced from the words of Io. I. 3: « all things were made through him », among which all things they said the Holy Spirit also was comprehended. Thus report Basil contra Eunom. V. p. 308., Ambrose, Philastrius, Damasus in the places cited at the beginning of this thesis. An example of this argumentation you have in Eusebius at the place which we cited there. The Holy Spirit therefore, they said, like all other things created by the Son, received existence through the Son. But now he who sets down the simply contradictory of this proposition: the Holy Spirit did not receive existence through the Son — he no longer universally denies the procession of the Spirit from the Son, but only denies the reception of existence in the sense of the adversaries, i.e. production by creation. Since therefore this first part of the creed, but especially the profession about the Holy Spirit, from its whole conformation and from the peculiar manner of its enunciations evidently regards the Eunomian and Semiarian heresy and is directly opposed to it; there is no reason why this last clause should be understood otherwise than as the contradictory of the heresy against which it is directed; and so as denying the reception of existence in the way in which the Pneumatomachi affirmed it, not however in that sense in which all the Fathers of this age, in this same controversy against the heretics, supposed and most expressly taught the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. Not without reason, therefore, Emmanuel Calecas (Bibl. Max. PP. T. XXVI. p. 409) judged in this chapter about the Holy Spirit that creed to be orthodox, of which he himself thought Nestorius to be the author; nor, except by neglecting the state of the question and the manner of disputing most common to the Fathers of the IV and V centuries against the Pneumatomachi, could Garnerius call Calecas' interpretation violent (Opp. Marii Mercatoris T. II. p. 256). That Theodorus, whom elsewhere (in Tract. de Incarnat. th. XXIV.) we demonstrated with the greatest certainty to be the author of this creed, was orthodox in the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son — now after the publication of his commentaries on the epistles of Paul, Card. Mai feels and contends this to be plainly established, although he himself judges the creed of which we treat to be heretical in this very doctrine and therefore to be disowned by Theodorus (Card. Mai Spicileg. Roman. T. IV. p. 525). On Rom. VIII. 11. Theodorus comments thus. « If anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not his... but if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you... First saying (the Apostle) the Spirit of Christ, again he says: the Spirit of him who raised Christ dwells in you, proceeding from Christ to the Father, manifestly teaching nothing other than this, that from the Son also the Spirit is not alien from the paternal Godhead⁹; and those (the Son and the Spirit of the Son) to whom there is one virtue, to these altogether also the essence with the Father is coeternal. For fittingly indeed he says that, with the Holy Spirit dwelling and sin mortified, rewards are set before those who contend, of which the first and greatest is the resurrection from the dead ». I do not indeed affirm that by these words it is immediately and expressly enunciated: the Spirit is from the Son, although the most eminent editor seems to have understood the place thus, since he subjoins this note: « note the testimony sufficiently evident, as I hope, of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, especially if there be compared another of Nyssenus edited by me, Script. Vet. T. VII. p. 6. » But to refute the Pneumatomachi, whose doctrine we know from the foregoing, Theodorus argues thus: Paul teaches that the Spirit of the Son, by this very fact that He is of the Son, is also the Spirit of the Father (proceeding from Christ to the Father). But the Spirit is of the Son because He is from the Son, as the Pneumatomachi concede and contend; He is, however, from the Son in such a way that He is one virtue, and accordingly one essence, which is proved because the Spirit inhabits the just and is the cause of the remission of sin and of the glorious resurrection. But now Paul teaches that the Spirit is of the Father in the same way in which He is of the Son. Therefore, just as He is of the Son because He is from the Son in unity of virtue and essence, so He is from the Father in unity of virtue and essence, since otherwise, with the adversaries the Pneumatomachi conceding, there is one virtue and essence of the Father and of the Son. Therefore, having regard to the doctrine which Theodorus attacks, the sense of the words: « Paul manifestly teaches that from the Son also the Spirit is not alien from the paternal Godhead » is ultimately reduced to this: from the Son, who is not alien from the paternal Godhead and whose Spirit He is, the Spirit has it that He Himself also is not alien from the paternal Godhead, ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα οὐκ ἀλλότριον τῆς πατρικῆς θεότητός ἐστι. In this same way we saw above (p. 505. 506) that also the holy Fathers of that age assume the procession from the Son as an argument by which they demonstrate, against the Pneumatomachi, the procession from the Father and the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Justly, therefore, Card. Mai could infer from this place the agreement of Theodorus with the Fathers fighting against the Pneumatomachi.

I do not, however, conceal that others dissent from this interpretation, whether of the most eminent Mai or ours, among whom is the most eminent Card. Hergenroether (Photius T. I. p. 687).

2°. Theodoretus seems able to be understood in the same sense. The place which is wont to be adduced, to show that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son was simply denied by Theodoretus, stands in his attack on the anathematisms of Cyril, at anath. IX. Since s. Cyril had there said that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit proper to Jesus Christ, Theodoretus — surely acting iniquitously and sophistically in that whole attack — cast in the suspicion whether Cyril had perhaps, in a Macedonian sense, called the Spirit proper to the Son, namely that He would be not from the Father but from the Son alone, and that in such a way that He would not be of the same essence with the Father and the Son. This his most iniquitous opinion, or rather calumny, Theodoretus himself indicates in the ep. to the monasteries against Cyril (which was recited in the V synod, Act. V.), where, treating of that IX anathematism of Cyril, he says: « but he blasphemes also the Holy Spirit, saying that He does not proceed from the Father according to the voice of the Lord, but that He is from the Son; that is the fruit of the seed of Apollinarius¹⁰, and it approaches indeed the malign culture of Macedonius » Auctuar. Garnerii Opp. Theodoreti T. V. p. 62. With this suspicion already prestructured he attacks the IX anathematism thus: « if indeed he said that the Spirit is proper to the Son and of the same nature with Him and proceeding from the Father, we shall at the same time confess and receive the voice as pious; but if, as having existence from the Son or through the Son¹¹, we shall reject this as blasphemous and impious. For we believe the Lord saying: the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, and the most sacred Paul saying likewise: but we... have received the Spirit who is from God » (Opp. T. IV p. 718). Namely, it will be blasphemous if the Spirit is denied to proceed from the Father, and if He is said to have existence from the Son or through the Son by creation, both of which pertain « to the malign culture of Macedonius ». Elsewhere Theodoretus says more distinctly: « according to the execrable heretics the Holy Spirit was created from God through the Son », διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ δεδημιουργῆσθαι (in Rom. VIII. 11). So also s. Cyril understood the calumny of Theodoretus. For in the apology of this anathematism written against Theodoretus, he insists first of all on the dogma which was directly at issue: that Jesus Christ, God and man, is one hypostasis; His own is the Holy Spirit, through whom, as through His own and not an alien virtue, He wrought miracles. Then a) indignantly he rejects the calumny, as though he himself had ever thought the Holy Spirit not consubstantial with the Father and the Son: « for that the Holy Trinity is consubstantial and of one virtue and operation, we have not learned at length through your discourse, but have been most fully taught from the divinely inspired Scripture ». b) Against the other calumny, as though he himself were suspect with the Macedonians of the denied procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, when he said in the anathematism that the Holy Spirit is proper to the Son Jesus Christ, he answers: « the Holy Spirit is His own (of Jesus Christ the Son), just as He is also indeed of God the Father; for He operates through the Spirit as the Father, so also He Himself (Io. X. 32.; XIV. 10.; Matth. XII. 28).... referring the operation through the Spirit to Himself and to the Father on account of the identity of essence » (Mansi T. V. p. 58). Cyril therefore in those words of Theodoretus: « that the Spirit has existence from the Son or through the Son, we reject as blasphemous », understood nothing other than that a calumny was being set up against him, as though with the Macedonians he had said that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son, and so with the same heretics had denied the Spirit to be consubstantial with the Father and proceeding from the substance of the Father; he did not, however, understand the words of Theodoretus as though he had called the common doctrine of all the Fathers of that and the preceding age about the procession of the Spirit from the Son and through the Son blasphemous. From these things, however, let judgment now be made in passing about the intolerable sophism of the schismatics, who say that Cyril, at the admonition of Theodoretus, departed from the opinion about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. That I may say nothing of the fact that the holy Father, in works written after the calumnies of Theodoretus, most expressly professes the procession from the Father and the Son (see Lequien Damascenic. dissert. I. n. 5. 6): let the apology of the anathematism alone be inspected. He had said that the Holy Spirit is proper to the Son; Theodoretus raises the suspicion lest perhaps he had said it in a sense approaching « the malign culture of Macedonius », namely that the Spirit proceeds from the Son alone and is not consubstantial with the Father and the Son. Cyril in the apology first rejects the calumny of the denied consubstantiality; then among a few clauses he repeats five times what he had said in the anathematism, that the Holy Spirit is proper to Jesus Christ the Son of God; but to repel the suspicion, as though he thought Him to proceed from the Son alone, he adds that the Spirit is proper to the Son in the same way as He is proper to the Father. Where he evidently supposes that even by the adversary it is understood that that proper is said relatively by reason of the procession. Which, for further abundance, Cyril himself expressly declared. After the apology written against Theodoretus before the Council of Ephesus (see Garnerium in Opp. Marii Mercatoris T. II. p. 132), in the Council itself, at the request of the Fathers, he set forth his anathematisms. There, what he had said in anath. IX., that Jesus Christ the Son of God wrought the divine signs (miracles) through the Holy Spirit proper to Him, he thus explains: « the only-begotten Word of God, made man, even thus remained God, and is all that the Father is, with this alone excepted, that He is the Father; and having the Holy Spirit as His own, who is from Him and abides in Him essentially, He wrought the divine signs »¹². The Spirit therefore, says Cyril, is proper to the Son because He is from Him by immanent procession and communication of essence. This, however, he proves from this: that the Son has all things in common with the Father except the sole formal reason of paternity; the Holy Spirit therefore is from the Son as from the Father, inasmuch as of the Father and the Son there is one common power of spiration.

Although, however, the sense which we have shown seems to be that of Theodorus and Theodoretus, we do not for that reason deny that their manner of speaking in this matter is obscure, from which it appears that in their mind there was not yet a clear and distinct notion of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son as from the Father, inasmuch as the Father and the Son are one by spiration. This defect of a deeper understanding of the dogma, however, differs much from its explicit denial, and for that age, where no more subtle polemical inquiry had yet been necessary, could be excused. But at the same time it is manifest how greatly these men — learned indeed, but in other heads at least deviating from sound doctrine by a genius too self-confident — were surpassed by the holy Doctors in secure and limpid faith and in the explanation of the innermost recesses of the mystery of the Holy Trinity in the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son: Athanasius, I mean, Basil, Nyssenus, Epiphanius, Cyril, to say nothing of the Latin Fathers, Hilary, Augustine, Leo, Fulgentius and the rest in succession.

« The Photians, for their doctrine, by which they deny that the Son is with the Father one principle of the Holy Spirit, have absolutely no testimony either of Scripture or of Tradition. Insofar, however, as they attempt to elude the doctrine universal among the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, they avail themselves of manifest quibbles ».

In this thesis we examine the foundations by which the schismatics are wont to confirm their dogma, so that, in comparison with the truth which we have thus far demonstrated, not only may their weakness be understood, but from the very complete emptiness and sophistical character of the arguments to which they have recourse, a greater light may accrue to the Catholic doctrine. From the very nature of the matter there should be a twofold class of arguments; there are required arguments which we may call the one positive and direct, the other polemical. For first, their dogma would have to be demonstrated by them as being in itself and absolutely contained in revelation; then it would have to be demonstrated comparatively with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, i.e., they would have to solve the arguments by which we show the Catholic doctrine to be comprehended in the universal ecclesiastical preaching. In truth, the skirmishes of the schismatics can be reduced to this twofold order. First, therefore, we shall speak of the positive arguments which they use or can use for the demonstration of their dogma, then of the polemical attack by which they assail the foundations of the Catholics.

I. The doctrine in question can be viewed in two ways: a) that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; b) that He proceeds from the Father alone to the exclusion of the Son, so that He does not proceed from the Father and the Son, inasmuch as they are one by the power and act of spiration. Concerning the former there was controversy with the Arian and Semiarian Pneumatomachi, and it is most manifest from the Scriptures, from the definitions of the Councils, from the constant and universal doctrine of the whole of Christian antiquity, from the intimate economy of the Trinity, as it is proposed in revelation. Therefore in this affirmation, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, there is not contained the doctrine which Catholics deny and which would have to be defended by the schismatics as a dogma special to themselves, by which they differ from Catholics; but the doctrine by which they are opposed to Catholics, and which they try to defend by their arguments against Catholics, is far different, namely that which is enunciated in the other member: that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father in such a way that He does not at the same time proceed from the Son. As long, therefore, as they demonstrate only the affirmation that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, their arguments are invincible and common to all Catholics against the Pneumatomachi; but they pertain in no way at all to showing the truth of the doctrine, the defense of which they have undertaken against Catholics. In almost the same way the Arians and the Sabellians demonstrated evidently from the Scriptures that God is one, and that the Father is this one true God; but it was not this affirmation by which they differed from Catholics; rather, the Arians would have had to demonstrate that the Father is the one true God in such a way that the Son is not the same one true God; the Sabellians, however, that the Father is the one true God in such a way that the Son, by this very fact that He is not distinguished by nature, is not distinguished from the Father by hypostasis either.

But indeed 1°. by the fact itself and upon inspecting the disputations of the schismatics it is evident to the very eyes that the whole positive demonstration of their dogma is at length reduced to this one and only thing: that from Scripture, from the definitions of the Councils and the consensus of the Fathers they set forth and embellish the affirmative doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. But this dogma, most attested from the sources of revelation and admitted by all Catholics, neither explicitly enunciates, as is evident of itself, nor implicitly contains in any way that peculiar doctrine by which the schismatics dissent from the Catholic Church. For certainly from this article of faith, that the Father is the principle of the Holy Spirit, it no more follows that the Son is not with the Father one principle of the same Spirit, than from the fact that we believe the Father to be God, we believe Him the creator of heaven and earth, we believe Him to send the Holy Spirit, etc., it would follow that the Son is not with the Father one God and creator of the universe and principle of the mission of the Holy Spirit — which indeed the schismatics themselves cannot deny without Arian heresy.

Indeed, Macarius, who in our age has turned all the arguments of the schismatics to his own use and adorned them in the most effective form he could, in his whole lengthy treatise on the procession of the Holy Spirit has demonstrated absolutely nothing else than this one thing: that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. From the Scriptures (P. 127 sq.) he brings forward, nor can he bring forward, any testimony beyond this: « The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father ». But this was not what had to be demonstrated; rather, a testimony is sought in which it is said that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, of which kind none exists. That, moreover, he afterwards (p. 330 sq.) tries to twist into a foreign sense the texts of Scripture in which it is said that the Spirit receives all things from the Son, is the Spirit of the Son, is sent by the Son just as by the Father — this artifice, even if all things that he invents were conceded, would not constitute a positive demonstration of the Photian dogma, of which we now inquire. For if we conceded that which we have shown to be most false, that the doctrine of the procession of the Spirit from the Son is not contained in the Scriptures, from that it would be wrongly inferred, what Macarius and the Photians generally contend, that this doctrine is not true or revealed; but only this would follow: that from the Scriptures neither the negation, as is evident, nor the affirmation, as on hypothesis and ad hominem we would concede, could be derived; and therefore that Tradition should be consulted, which the Photians too acknowledge as the treasury of revealed doctrine, or at least from their own principles ought to acknowledge. Indeed, since Macarius could not fail to see that the Photian exclusion is utterly destitute of argument from the Scriptures, he attempted the art of demonstration from Tradition, as the doctrine is preserved for us in the monuments of Christian antiquity. Here indeed he often repeats in his own words the thesis to be demonstrated: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. But in the testimonies which over nearly fifty pages (p. 345-390) he heaps together from creeds, Councils, Fathers — although torn from context, sometimes fraudulently truncated, or twisted by a false interpretation into another sense — there is no trace of that procession from the Father alone, for proving which they are adduced; but (if you except three from Damascene, Maximus and Theodoret, concerning the sense of which we have spoken in their places) in all of them only the Catholic thesis is enunciated: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; the Father is the source and principle not only of the Son but also of the Holy Spirit. To propose, moreover, this most certain truth as a proof of the Photian dogma, by which they maintain, against the Catholic profession, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and not from the Son (as the Father and the Son are one) — truly it is the same as what I said a little before, as when the Arians hawked the proof of the truth that the Father is God and God is one as the demonstration of their heresy, by which they denied the Son and the Holy Spirit to be God. The matter is so evident of itself that Macarius and the other Photian theologians seem rather to have wished to impose upon their followers a farrago of citations having nothing to do with the point than to institute a proof. For what indeed would they do, when they promise to prove the consensus of antiquity with their doctrine by testimonies, and no testimonies are available for it, but only for the dogma, by no means controverted, of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father.

Hence also in the Council of Florence, where before the union, with all their forces gathered, the Greeks tried to prove their opinion, Bessarion testifies that the whole force of the demonstration was at length reduced to this one argument, and that no other was available. « We therefore put forward an argument, he says, beginning from the Apostles themselves and all the sacred Councils, and we made use of the sayings of these and of all the Eastern Saints, by which it is shown, not indeed that the Spirit does not proceed from the Son; for we have no saying of this kind, as you yourself know, except that single one of Damascene where he says: We call the Spirit the Spirit of the Son, but we do not say from the Son; but by all the other sayings only this is shown, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, not however that He does not proceed from the Son. Having therefore brought forward these things, we thought we had demonstrated that it is false that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. But the Latins to all these gave one common response: that all things are true, and that they themselves think the same. For they too believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; this indeed is not contrary to their dogma. For this, that He proceeds from the Father, is neither contradictory nor contrary to that, that He proceeds from the Son. For if one of these were either, then with the one affirmed the other would have to be removed; but now nothing hinders both that proceeding from the Father is true, and that proceeding from the Son is true. As if we say that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father, and someone else should say that the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son, and both are true, and neither is repugnant to the other. If therefore the Saints said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or does not proceed from the Son, there could be some reason for saying that we (Catholics) think falsely; but since none has ever said either of these, that which is said to proceed from the Father does not take away the procession from the Son » Bessar. de Spiritu Sancto (opusc. aur. p. 208. 294); cf. Hug. Etherian. l. II. c. 16. sqq.

Now since it is most true that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and in this very thing itself, as we showed in th. XXXIV, the procession also from the Son is implicitly contained — the Son, who, consubstantial with the Father, is one with the Father in all things where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way; therefore the Church could for several centuries profess in the creed, against the Pneumatomachi, the procession from the Father without explicit mention of the procession from the Son, and could permit the same form of the creed to the Greeks in the Council of Florence itself, after they had publicly and authentically declared their faith in the procession from the Father and the Son. Moreover, what is implicit in the twofold dogma (of the procession from the Father, and of the unity of the Son with the Father in all things, paternity and filiation excepted, with the revealed order of persons also assumed), that we have seen to be explicit in the Scriptures themselves and in the Catholic understanding, and declared in the ecclesiastical preaching of the East no less than of the West and sanctioned by a distinct profession. What, therefore, more absurd and more shameless can be imagined, than to wish this whole consensus and profession of the procession from the Father and the Son to be excluded by the most true sentence, indeed, of the procession from the Father, in which that prior and more distinct profession itself is already contained implicitly?

2°. As regards those very few documents, in which alone in some sense it is said that the Spirit does not proceed from the Son, or has not received existence from the Son or through the Son; from them, if all things that the schismatics wish were conceded, nothing else could ever be gathered than these two things: that the beginnings of the Photian heresy were joined with Nestorianism, and that one or another Catholic doctor was in the same error, to whom neither any solemn definition had become known, nor, before a more diligent polemical inquiry, was the sense of the dogma as yet clear enough. Both of these things many Catholic theologians entirely concede; but from these, how, I ask, will the Photians demonstrate the divine Tradition of their dogma? Nay, how could these things weaken or obscure the common consensus of the Eastern and the Western in the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and in that consensus the Catholic tradition and explanation? Moreover, if the matter is treated not through ad hominem concessions but from the truth of the matter, no document at all exists, published before the Photian schism, in which the negation of the procession from the Son would be enunciated in the sense peculiar to the schismatics — at least none which the schismatics themselves ought not to acknowledge from elsewhere as heretical or suspect. Documents of this kind, condemned, in which in some sense it is indeed denied that the Holy Spirit has received existence from the Son or through the Son, or proceeds from the Son, are the creed of Theodorus adopted by the Nestorians, the contradiction of Theodoret against the anathematisms of Cyril, the Monothelites' attack upon the synodal letter of the Roman Pontiff ¹, concerning the value and sense of all of which we have spoken in theses XXXVI. and XXXVIII. What, moreover, is to be judged about the sophistical contortion of the schismatics, when they dare to assert that Cyril and the Council of Ephesus approved in the Photian sense the negation of Theodoret, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is said to have received existence from the Son or through the Son, is evident from what was said p. 517. seqq. Read the little work of Leo Allatius entitled: Vindiciae Synodi Ephes. et S. Cyrill.

A single vestige as yet of the impugned procession from the Son before Photius is found at the beginning of the ninth century, but in such a way that from that very contradiction of one fanatical man the agreement of East and West in the common faith appears. The Latin monks dwelling at Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives added to the creed the particle Filioque, as they had heard it sung in the palace chapel of Charles the Great. Indeed a certain Greek monk, John, because of this addition and other discrepant ceremonies in the sacred liturgy, began to stir up tumults against the Latins as heretics in such a way that no light danger threatened the Latins from the unlearned populace; and indeed that Greek monk seems to have attacked not only the insertion in the creed but the dogma itself. The Latins appealed to the Patriarch and to the whole Jerusalem clergy, and to the Pontiff Leo III himself. The priests of Jerusalem wrote them a « charta fidei », and « the archdeacon himself (the Latin monks narrate in their ep. to the Pontiff) ascended with us into the pulpit in holy Constantine (church) and read the charta itself to the people, and we, your servants, anathematized every heresy and all who should say heresy of the holy Apostolic Roman See ». Thence some of the Latins were sent with commendatory letters of Thomas the Patriarch (a Greek, of course) to Leo the Pontiff, from whom they asked « that he would deign to direct a most certain mandate ». Leo wrote a profession of faith « to all the Eastern Churches », in which it is said: « we believe.... the Holy Spirit proceeding equally from the Father and the Son.... the Holy Spirit, full God, proceeding from the Father and the Son » etc. Thus that dispute and the tumults were calmed in the East. From all of which it is manifest that there was no dissension about the dogma itself between the Eastern and the Western Church. In the West, on this occasion, a legation was sent from the Council of Aachen to Leo III the Pontiff for obtaining sanction for the insertion of the particle Filioque in the creed itself, sung during the liturgy, about which matter we shall say something a little later. Concerning those Jerusalem tumults, read Lequien Damasc. I. n. 13-18.

Among the Catholic writers we have seen that there are only two, one of the seventh and the other of the eighth century, who can be brought forward, not that anything may be proved from them against the common consensus of the rest, but that they may be explained and reduced to concord with the others. S. Maximus confesses that from the doctrine of the holy Fathers the procession from the Father and the Son is demonstrated; he declares, however, that the Father is not on that account denied to be the primordial source of the Trinity, and that, having regard to the order of persons, the formula by which the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father and the Son has the same sense as the other, by which He is said to proceed from the Father through the Son (above th. XXXVI. n. II). Alone among all is John Damascene of the eighth century, who used this negative manner of speaking, that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, but in such a way that he constantly taught Him to proceed from the Father through the Son. But what, I ask, would the adversaries gain, if we admitted that s. Damascene erred in this question — no solemn definition as yet preceding or known to him, nor the consensus of all the Western Doctors perceived, nor the opinions of the Eastern Doctors sufficiently compared among themselves — because he attended more to the words materially considered than to the thing itself which is enunciated by those Fathers who more frequently say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son προϊέναι? To wish to seek the demonstration of a dogma from one Doctor against the common doctrine of the rest is absurd; but to wish to insist on the same negation even after the question has been most fully clarified is most shameless and impious. Moreover, from the truth of the matter, that s. Damascene hands on the same doctrine as the rest of the PP., that the Son by the spiration power communicated by the Father is the principle of the Holy Spirit, who therefore proceeds from the Father through the Son, is evident from the clearest words of Damascene himself, and has been demonstrated thereafter by the Catholic Greeks and other theologians (see above l. c.).

II. A notable confirmation of the Catholic dogma will he find, whoever more attentively weighs the arguments by which the schismatics attack it; for all of them not only do not overturn or weaken the Catholic proof, but they are the most open sophisms invented by men who, since they are unwilling to confess their defection from the doctrine of antiquity, try to wrap in darkness with empty fallacies the clear and manifest sense of the words and sentences of Scripture and of the Fathers. You have them faithfully set forth and duly crushed by Hugo Etherianus (Bibl. Max. T. XXII. p. 1201. sqq.); Becco (de process. Spiritus Sancti c. 4. sqq.); de unione Eccles. in Graecia orthod. T. I. p. 164. sqq.; Bessarion (de process. Spiritus Sancti ad Alex. Lascarim, et in orat. dogm.) and by other Greeks, whom Petavius cites (l. VII. cc. 15-18) and much more copiously Em. Hergenroether (in Animadvers. ad mystagog. Photii apud Migne Bibl. PP. Graec. T. CII). All these circumlocutions can be reduced to nearly this sum.

1°. When the PP. teach that the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son and is from both, the schismatics answer one or the other of two things: either that the discourse is not about the eternal procession but about the mission in time, or that not the person but the gifts of the Holy Spirit are said to be from the Father and the Son.

2°. They say that the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father as from a hypostasis, but that He is said not from the hypostasis but from the substance of the Son, ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Υἱοῦ; and that this means nothing else than that the Spirit is consubstantial with the Son. Which they so explain, that by that phrase from the substance of the Son there is not signified the principle of the procession, whence the Holy Spirit is; but as it were a formal cause, that the Spirit is God from the same substance from which the Son is God.

3°. They note more carefully that the Holy Spirit is said by the Greek Fathers not to ἐκπορεύεσθαι, which word properly expresses the notional character of the Holy Spirit, but is said in other words — προϊέναι, ἐκλάμπειν, χεῖσθαι, προχέεσθαι, ἀναβλύζειν to come forth, to shine forth, to appear, to be poured forth, to well up from the Son or through the Son. All these things, they say, are understood not of the internal procession, which is ἐκπόρευσις, but of the gifts of the Holy Spirit or of the mission ad extra.

4°. That which the Greek PP. teach with common consensus, that the Holy Spirit is from the Father through the Son, the schismatics, different ones in different ways, interpret in a fourfold manner. The Holy Spirit is from the Father through the Son, i.e., He proceeds from Him who through the Son, or by the generation of the Son, is the Father; or the Spirit is said to be from the Father through the Son, because the Father formally as Father is immediately referred to the Son, but is referred to the Holy Spirit not as Father but as spirator προβολεύς; and therefore, in naming the Father, our mind first conceives the Son from the Father and then the Holy Spirit from the spirator — and in this sense alone, they say, the Son is said by Nyssen and Basil to be proximately from the Father, but the Spirit not proximately, but through Him who is proximately from the Father and with the Son interposed. If these things do not please, another invention is at hand; for, they say, the particle διὰ per in the divine persons has the same value as cum, and therefore the procession of the Holy Spirit together with the Son from the Father is signified, and the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit. That this is so they seriously prove by the words of s. Basil (de Spiritu Sancto c. 8.) cited by us at p. 484, in which he says that from the manner of speaking of Scripture, that the Father creates through the Son, there is shown « the unity of will ». If you laugh at this too, as indeed it is ridiculous, there remains the last refuge, that place common to the little Greeks, that from the Father through the Son not the person of the Holy Spirit but His gifts are said to proceed.

5°. Further, in the sacred Scriptures, that which Christ Himself teaches, Io. XVI. 14. 15.: The Spirit of truth will receive of mine; this Photius says must be understood: he will receive of my Father (see in Hugo Etherianus l. II. c. 18. in fine et c. 19.; Bessarion. de Spiritu Sancto p. 211; Petav. l. VII. c. 19. n. 1.; Hergenroether Animadv. § II. n. 9). The other, that the Spirit is predicated of the Son just as of the Father, they say pertains nothing to the procession, but signifies only that the Spirit, on account of consubstantiality, is not alien from the Son; or that He is even called the Spirit of the Son because He is sent by the Son in time. The mission, moreover, since it is only a certain operation ad extra, in no way supposes the procession, and therefore the Son is no less predicated in the Scriptures as sent by the Spirit than the Spirit as sent by the Son; nay, in Chrysostom even the Father is said to be sent by the Son and the Holy Spirit.

6°. With these arts of interpretation they join theological arguments from the very nature of the mystery of the Trinity. If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, there are two principles of the Holy Spirit; and so either each principle is perfect — but then there will be two processions and two Holy Spirits proceeding; or, if the procession is one from two principles, the Father alone will not be sufficient, and therefore an imperfect principle, to be supplied by the Son as by a concurrent and partial principle. If, however, the Father and the Son are said to be one principle, they are contracted into one person, and thus the Latins fall into Sabellianism.

Moreover, whatever is in the Trinity is either common or proper, as the matter itself and the Holy Fathers frequently teach. Therefore spiration also is either proper to the Father or common to the three persons, and so according to the doctrine of the Latins the Holy Spirit would proceed from Himself; « and so the Holy Spirit, says Photius, will be at once αἴτιον and αἰτιατόν, which is more monstrous than the very fables of the pagans » (apud Beccum Graec. orthod. I. p. 166).

Moreover, « the Bishop of Nicomedia » ² (with others) exclaims: « if the Son is from the Father, but the Spirit is from the Father and the Son, the Spirit is certainly the grandson of the Father, because even among us a grandson is proximately from him from whom he is descended, through whom as the middle he is derived from the grandfather » (apud Hug. Ether. l. I. c. 17).

Macarius (p. 415) rubs the same things in again with his own words; but he adds another inextricable absurdity, whose sense he himself does not seem to have understood (at least if he wrote it as it stands in the French version, p. 417). The Western doctors, he says, besides the unity of essence and the Trinity of persons « introduce a duality, because they teach that the Father and the Son are one eternal and indivisible principle in relation to the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit Himself is constituted as second, inasmuch as He proceeds from that principle (the Father and the Son as they are one in virtue and act of spiration) » ³ Macarius seems to have wished to bend a little the sophism which Photius fabricated in his Mystagogia n. 12; but by this bending he took away from it every intelligible sense. Photius, as nearly all his followers usually do, supposes that the Catholics admit the Father and the Son as a double principle of the Holy Spirit; « when, he says, that principle without principle and supereminent has already been torn asunder by the impious into a duality, this division will with greater rashness proceed even to a triplicity of principle (namely, the Holy Spirit would be asserted as a third principle), whereas otherwise in the supereminent and indivisible and one nature of the Godhead a triune rather than a duality shines forth » ⁴. He means, namely, that if not only the Father is asserted as principle but the Son is a second principle, from both of whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, there will now be no reason why the Holy Spirit should not be called a third principle, so that just as from two persons a third person, so from three a fourth person, and further still others, should be said to proceed to infinity.

The fullest answer to all these things is contained in what precedes. It suffices to have read the testimonies of Scripture and of the Fathers which we have cited, for it to become evident to anyone that in the first five chapters there is set forth not an interpretation of the testimonies at least probable even in appearance, but an altogether different and contrary doctrine. But what is said in chapter 6 is nothing other than an ignoratio elenchi, that is, deductions from a perverse exposition of the Catholic doctrine.

Wherefore, since there is neither leisure nor need to refute these things at greater length, we shall dispatch the individual chapters very briefly.

To the first. That we may say nothing of the evident doctrine of the Latin Fathers, Epiphanius, Cyril, and the rest of the Greeks in all the places cited in Thesis XXXV manifestly treat of the internal relations of the divine persons, not however of gifts or of mission ad extra, although certainly from the immanent eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son it follows that the mission of the Spirit also is from the Father and the Son, and the created gifts from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then indeed they teach the Holy Spirit Himself, the third divine person, to be from the Son just as from the Father: « light is the Father, light from light the Son, but the Spirit from both, Spirit from Spirit; for God is Spirit » Epiph. « The Holy Spirit, who is in Him and from Him, is proper to the Son, just as this also is understood of God and the Father » Cyril. See the rest there.

To the second. When this definition seemed to suffice to the Nicene Fathers, that the Son is from the Father, the Arians accommodated it to their error, namely, that He is from the Father by creation. Hence, to exclude this heresy, the Fathers established the most efficacious formula, that the Son is from the substance of the Father ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός. Thus, namely, procession is understood through the communication of the essence, and the Son is taught to be consubstantial with the Father. Now indeed that very thing which the Arians taught about the order of the Son to the Father, the Pneumatomachi subsequently repeated about the order of the Holy Spirit to the Son, namely, that the Holy Spirit is from the Son and through the Son by a creative action. To exclude therefore the same error, the holy Fathers expressed the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son by the same formula by which the Council of Nicaea expressed the relation of the Son to the Father. And so they said not only that the Spirit is from the Son, from the Father and the Son, but, to declare the procession through the communication of the same nature and substance, they defined that the Spirit is from the substance of the Son, from the very substance of the Father and the Son ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς οὐσίας Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ. See ll. cc. Without any doubt, therefore, just as by the definition of the generation of the Son from the substance of the Father, so by this other definition of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the substance of the Father and the Son there is expressed both the principle which, namely, the producing person (in generation the Father, in spiration the Father and the Son), and the principle by which, namely, the essence οὐσία, by the communication of which there is both the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit. From this indeed it certainly follows that the cause, as it were formal, by which God is the Holy Spirit, is the very same communicated one nature of the Father and of the Son, which we express in confessing the Holy Spirit consubstantial with the Father and the Son. Read what we have said about the Nicene definition in th. VIII, n. II.

To the third. It is answered: a) with those same words the Fathers use them to express both the generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father. « The Spirit possesses all things sempiternally, as being the Spirit of God and shining forth from God (ἐκλάμπων), having the principle itself as His fountain and springing from it (πηγάζον). Springing from God (πηγαῖον), He is subsistent in Himself » s. Basil. contr. Eunom. l. V, T. I, p. 322. See above p. 428 in the note, cf. Petav. VII, c. 18, n. 7. 8. Then b) the Fathers not only say that the Holy Spirit shines forth, appears, etc. from the Son or through the Son, but in contexts where they manifestly treat of the internal relations they say that He shines forth, appears, etc. from the Father and the Son or from both, where assuredly, just as the shining forth, the flowing out, etc. from the Father is nothing other than the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, so also concerning the Son it cannot be understood otherwise. Thus e. g. Cyril proves that the Holy Spirit is of the divine essence, because « He proceeds (προϊέναι) from the Father and the Son » (above p. 423. 474); Athanasius says that the Holy Spirit is the one sanctifying and illuminating virtue of the only Son, « which is taught to proceed (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) from the Father, because it shines forth (ἐλλάμπει) from the Word, which is confessed to be from the Father » (above p. 427). c) If by these words of flowing out, shining forth, etc. the internal relation of the person of the Holy Spirit is expressed, they necessarily signify the same as procession. But the Fathers themselves most frequently and most clearly declare that they understand an immanent flowing out, when they say that the Spirit shines forth, flows out, goes forth from the Son and through the Son οὐσιωδῶς, κατὰ φύσιν, etc., which we have indicated above p. 438. Indeed they define the very reality of this eternal flowing out, that « essential goodness and holiness according to nature and royal dignity flow out (ἐπιρρεῖ) from the Father through the Only-begotten into the Spirit » Basil.; and in the same sense they say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son in such a way that whatever perfection the Spirit has, He has it from the Son, Athanas. Cyrill. (above p. 414. 415. 424).

To the fourth. The absurdity of all these distortions is understood from what was said in Thesis XXXVI.

To the fifth. The doctrine of Scripture, both in itself and from the explanation of the Fathers, we have sufficiently vindicated in th. XXXII-XXXIV. Concerning Photius' comment, read Bessarion, 1. de Spirit. Sanct., p. 241, where he shows that it is repugnant not only to the manifest context of the discourse of Christ the Lord and to the interpretation of the Fathers, but even to the very words « He will take of mine » ἐκ τοῦ ἐμοῦ λήψεται, considered grammatically alone. In general, concerning the Photian fallacies by which they strive to elude the clear testimonies of the Scriptures, compare also Em. Hergenroether, Animadvers., § II, n. 9 sqq.

To the sixth. In what is said about the common and the proper, there is assumed as granted and as it were as a principle of demonstration that which Catholics deny as heresy and demonstrate the contrary of from Scripture and the whole doctrine of the Fathers, and which the schismatics would wish to demonstrate. A more manifest petition of principle than this cannot be committed. Spiration certainly, even with the schismatics conceding, is not a property constituting a person, otherwise a quaternity of persons would be introduced. But from the nature of the mystery of the Trinity in Scripture and the doctrine of the Fathers, the constituting properties are indeed each of one person only; if, however, the same be affirmed of active spiration, that it is proper to the Father alone, this certainly is the same as saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone; but this very thing would have to be demonstrated by the schismatics. All the chapters of doctrine, therefore, from Scripture and ecclesiastical preaching, by which we have demonstrated the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, or from the Father through the Son, demonstrate in the same way that active spiration is common to the Father and the Son, not however to the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is produced through the very common spiration of the Father and the Son; and the assertion that active spiration is proper to one person alone is as contrary to Scripture and the Fathers as the denial of the procession from the Father and the Son is demonstrated to be contrary to them. If, therefore, property in the strict sense is said of that which is proper to one person, we deny that active spiration is a property; if in a broader sense that is called property which is a relation ad intra and not common to the three persons, spiration can be called a property not constituting nor distinguishing the Father and the Son from each other, but distinguishing both from the third person, of whom they are one principle through the one spiration common to them. Cf. th. XXV, n. I, and the Scholion there, p. 357.

All the remaining things which are produced by the schismatics as theological arguments are founded on ignorance or dissimulation of the true doctrine concerning the distinction and unity between the divine persons. Certainly, if the foundations on which the objection about the two principles, about the imperfection and partition of spiration, about the confusion of the persons of the Father and the Son rests were applied to the operation ad extra, e. g. to creation, or to the mission of the Holy Spirit, which even the schismatics are forced to confess to be one and common to the Father and the Son; if, I say, the Photians applied their principles to these points, they would have to fall either into Sabellianism, lest three principles and three partial and imperfect operations be introduced, or into Arianism or tritheism, lest, with one principle of creation or mission admitted, the persons be confused. Perhaps they will say that the account of the procession of a divine person is one thing, and that of the operations ad extra another. We know that the account is infinitely diverse; but as regards the unity and distinction between the Father and the Son and as regards the perfection of the individual persons it is altogether the same, as Augustine already observed, whether creation or eternal spiration is in question. If the spirating power, by which the Father and the Son are in no way referred to each other, cannot be numerically one and common to both persons without the distinction which is from generation alone being taken away and the persons being confused; or if the spirating power cannot be in two distinct persons without being either imperfect in each, or the persons being divided and there being now two spirators and two principles; absolutely all the same things hold of the creative power or of the virtue of mission. For a numerically one power and action of creation or mission cannot be admitted in distinct persons without the distinction being taken away through that unity; or if the persons remain distinct, it will be imperfect in each, or it will be separated in such a way that there are constituted as many principles of creation or mission as there are persons creating or sending. But since all these things are not only heretical but also wonderfully absurd, in the same way the Photian principles, fabricated to attack the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son as one principle of the same Holy Spirit, are understood to be heretical and absurd.

What is objected next about the grandfather and the grandson is the blasphemy of the Pneumatomachi, most frequently refuted by the Fathers. Just as the Photians, supposing the procession from the Father, say that the Holy Spirit would be a grandson if He proceeded also from the Son; so the Semi-Arian Pneumatomachi, supposing the procession from the Son, inferred that the same would follow, if according to the Catholic doctrine the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Father and from the substance of the Father and the Son, from the Father through the Son. The reason why the Photian and Semi-Arian inference is absurd is clear from all that has been said, and is explained by the Fathers; because, namely, the divine persons are not divided (according to the Arian and tritheistic fiction), as if the Father first begot the Son, and then the Son alone begot the Holy Spirit; but just as the divine persons create the universe with one numerically single creative power, so the Father and the Son with one numerically single spirating power, and therefore as one principle, breathe the Holy Spirit; « neither grandfather nor grandson, but the Holy Spirit is from the same substance of the Father and of the Son » Epiphan., above p. 472.

Finally, in the Macarian trifles about some duality which is said to be introduced by the Catholics besides the unity of essence and the Trinity of persons, you would hesitate in doubt what to answer; so insipid are all these things and destitute of any sense. There is no duality where there is no real distinction, which itself cannot be conceived in the one God except in the relative things by reason of a real procession, namely, between the principle and the one proceeding from the principle. Hence the Father and the Son are really distinct from each other by generation alone, by which the Son proceeds from the Father, but by spiration, by which the Son is not produced, they are not less one than the essence and any absolute attribute or operation ad extra. By this one common spiration, or what is the same, by this one love producing the Holy Spirit, they are the principle of the Spirit Himself, who, proceeding from the Father and the Son as from His principle, is really distinguished by the very relation of procession, but has the same and numerically one essence communicated from the Father and the Son. There is, therefore, one divine essence, uncommunicated in the Father as in the first person, the fountain and primordial principle of the Most Holy Trinity; through generation communicated by the Father in the Son, the second person; by the Father and the Son through one common spiration communicated in the Holy Spirit, the third person; and so there is a non-multipliable unity of essence, and a Trinity of persons. But the duality is none other than that the Son and the Spirit are not persons from themselves but proceeding from their principle, and so there are two processions; and that in the number of three there are certainly contained also two, a duality of which sort I think not even Macarius will deny. St. Gregory of Nyssa expressed all these things excellently. « Just as to be without principle, since it belongs to the Father alone, cannot be fitted to the Son and the Spirit; so conversely to be from a principle, which is proper to the Son and the Spirit, cannot from its very nature be understood in the Father. But since not to be unbegotten (τὸ μὴ ἀγεννήτως εἶναι) is common to the Son and the Spirit, lest any confusion be thought in the subject matter, again it is necessary to find in their (the Son's and the Spirit's) properties the unmixed difference, so that both the common (to be from a principle) may be preserved and the proper (to each) not be confused. For the Only-begotten Son is called from the Father by Sacred Scripture, and in this the sacred doctrine fixes His property; but the Holy Spirit is said to be from the Father and is attested by testimony to be from the Son as well (see th. XXXV, n. III.) ⁵. For if anyone, he says (the Apostle), does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His » Nyss., serm. 3, in orat. domin. It is therefore common to the two persons between themselves, but proper in comparison with the first person, that they are not without principle (ἀγεννήτως); it is necessary, therefore, to find also between these two persons what is proper to each and distinguishing. But Nyssenus knows nothing other than that the Son is from the Father alone, the Holy Spirit not from the Father alone but, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures, from the Father and from the Son ⁶, or (in another more recent reading) the Spirit from the Father and the Spirit of the Son, which from the constant explanation of the Fathers signifies precisely the same (th. XXXII, n. II). This very thing Nyssenus said in other words, « that the Son is pre-understood to the Spirit only by reason of principle, » and therefore is distinguished from the Spirit Himself proceeding only as the principle of the Holy Spirit (see above p. 431). But since the Photians have rejected this relation of principle between the Son and the Spirit, they have repudiated that which from the doctrine of the holy Fathers alone constitutes the unconfused distinction (τὴν ἄμικτον διαφοράν) between the Son and the Spirit, and so from their principles, although they are unwilling to confess it, there follows the contraction of the Trinity into a duality, about which Macarius dares to mutter against the Catholic dogma. Of this confusion of persons we shall speak in the following thesis.

From these things which have just been said and have often been demonstrated elsewhere, the calumnies also of Photius about the two principles, the Father and the Son, remain refuted. For just as the three persons, because they are one by nature, are understood not as three Gods but as one God; so the two persons, whom it is established to be one no less by spiration and by the production of the third person than by nature, are not two principles but are one principle and one spirator in relation to the other person. The third person through this one spiration (principium quo) proceeds from the two persons, who are two, distinct from each other, not by spiration but by generation alone (principium quod); and so both are also distinguished by the same one spiration from the third proceeding.

Finally, as regards the account of principle in the Holy Spirit, about which Photius and perhaps also Macarius speak, we know from revelation that in God there are only two immanent processions. But faith illumined by revelation can seek also some understanding of why in the infinite spirit there can be only one infinite Word proceeding from the paternal mind, and, the generation of the Word being supposed, only one subsisting infinite love proceeding through the one love of the Father and the Son (see th. XXVIII, n. II.).

Truly, the more attentively the proofs for the Photian doctrine are considered — which are finally reduced to the affirmation of the procession from the Father, freely conceded by the Catholics and laboriously defended against the Arians — and the more sincerely the arguments of the schismatics, gathered against the Catholic dogma, are examined — which are all founded partly on dissimulation or manifest distortion of the testimonies from Scripture and tradition, partly on false suppositions and calumnies — the more firmly and the more brightly the Catholic truth stands and presents itself to the eyes of all who are willing to judge without a preconceived obstinacy in an error once imbibed. Hence the Greeks in the ecumenical Council of Florence, as long as they tried to resist the manifest truth, were reduced, as Bessarion testifies, to such straits that they were forced either most foolishly to say that the testimonies of all the Fathers were corrupted, or to accuse their doctrine entirely of error. « The Latins, beginning from another principle, for several continuous days brought forward many and various arguments demonstrating that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, leaning upon Sacred Scripture and from it easily drawing out the subsumptions of the proofs. Finally they brought forward the sayings of the Fathers, by which the truth of this dogma is shown in manifest and express words. They brought forward, however, not only the testimonies of the Western but no less of the Eastern Doctors.... To these we had no answer, except that they were spurious and corrupted by the Latins. They produced our Epiphanius clearly teaching in many places that the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son; we answered that they were adulterated. They read the sentence of the great Basil from the books against Eunomius (1. III. n. 1), of which I spoke before; it seemed to us interpolated. They adduced the doctrine of the Western Saints; our whole apology was that all things were spurious, and nothing else (πᾶσα ἡμῶν ἀπολογία τὸ ψεῦδος, καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον). For many days, therefore, considering and consulting among ourselves what we should answer to these things, we found no answer besides this one. But this in turn, as altogether absurd, seemed to us not good; first, because from the consequents and antecedents it appeared that this was the sense of the doctrine of the Saints; then, since very many and most ancient codices had it so, we could not object against them as interpolated. And besides, since we could show no book, written neither in Greek nor in Latin, which had it otherwise than the Latins had produced, how could we rightly object against them?... We could not bring forward other Saints saying the contrary, in no way did we show the Westerners themselves teaching otherwise elsewhere, least of all could we prove by natural reasons that they had spoken falsely; since, therefore, we saw that no reasonable cause was left to us, for that reason we also fell silent. Nevertheless there were not lacking those for whom another answer was at hand, namely, that the Western Saints had erred, and had been deceived in this. But that this universally overthrows our faith is manifest; for if our faith depends on the doctrine of the Saints (consenting in the doctrine of the faith), but these err about the truth, the faith is overthrown. For that reason, therefore, rightly the union with the Latins followed, and all, compelled by no force, as God is witness, consented. But those who were unwilling to consent were those two, not more ⁷, having suffered no force, remained in their liberty and in their opinion » Bessar., de process. Spiritus Sancti, p. 221 sqq., cf. ibid., p. 207.

« Since, according to the most certain doctrine, there cannot be in divine things a real distinction except according to the relation of principle and of that which proceeds from a principle, the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be distinct persons, unless one proceeded from the other ».

Almost all the Scholastic theologians, on 1. dist. 11. and on S. Th. I. q. 36. a. 2., treat at length, but often not a little obscurely, the question whether the Holy Spirit, if He did not proceed from the Son, would nevertheless be distinguished from Him. Even after the Council of Florence there are not wanting those who answer in the affirmative; but by far the more common and, on theological arguments, true opinion is ¹ , that there is not and cannot be understood to be any distinction between the divine persons, and hence also between the Son and the Holy Spirit, except by reason of principle and of that which proceeds from a principle. The proposed question cannot be understood of objective reality, but of our manner of conceiving and proving; I would almost say, the question is not ontological but dialectical. For in the matter itself it is established by the infallible revelation of the deep things of God, that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son by an intimate and absolute necessity and exigency of the divine nature and life; the Holy Spirit proceeds, I say, also from the Son with the same necessity with which He Himself exists, with which the Son exists, with which the Father exists, with which God is who He is. In this sense, therefore, the answer to the proposed question would be: from the absurd follows the absurd; if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, neither would He exist; nay, neither would the Son exist, because the Word with the same necessity is breathing the Holy Spirit with which the Word is; and if He does not breathe, neither is He the Word. The same must be said of the Father, who begets the Word by communicating the spirating power, and is one principle of the Holy Spirit not otherwise than with the Word, with the same necessity with which the Father is. In this sense, therefore, there could no longer be any question about the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Son, but « the divine entity being changed, all contradictions follow, and every order of things is overthrown », as Pallavicinus speaks (1. VIII. c. 60. n. 449). Thus did those older theologians take this question, who thought it wholly useless and absurd.

But the state of the question is far different. The Photians agree with the Catholics that the Holy Spirit is really distinguished from the Son, but they deny that He proceeds from the Son; and by this very fact they affirm, that besides the relation of origin of one person from another there must be admitted in divine things another reason of real distinction between two persons, namely a diverse mode of procession, so that, although each person proceeds from the Father alone, the one nevertheless proceeds by generation as Son, the other by spiration as Holy Spirit. It is asked, therefore, whether it can be demonstrated either immediately from revelation, or be certainly deduced from those things which are both evidently understood by reason about God and become known by revelation about the divine persons ² , that there is in God no real distinction except through the relation of origin, by which the divine persons are constituted really distinct. If this can be demonstrated, the inference will be true and the consequence evident: the Holy Spirit is a person really distinct not only from the Father but also from the Son; therefore (since the Son does not proceed from the Holy Spirit, as all confess, and according to the internal revealed economy of the Most Holy Trinity), the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son; and hence, from the opposite: if the procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son is denied, the real distinction of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is virtually denied. That proposition, if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, He would not be really distinguished from Him, has the sense which we have called dialectical. Some Catholic theologians, as we have said, deny this, because they think that besides the relation of origin of one person from another there is still another reason of real distinction, namely relations not indeed opposed but diverse and disparate; nevertheless the same men certainly confess what is of faith, that the Holy Spirit is in fact distinguished from the Son also by the relation of origin. The schismatics, on the contrary, both deny that the persons are distinguished by the relation of origin alone, and affirm that the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Son solely by a disparate relation or a diverse mode of proceeding from the Father, and in no way by procession also from the Son. In one word, therefore, that question, whether the Holy Spirit, if He did not proceed from the Son, would nevertheless still be really distinguished from Him, is reduced to this other, more general one: whether the divine persons are really distinguished among themselves solely by the relations of origin, insofar as the one proceeds from the other. Which question is certainly not useless and void of sense, but most opportune both universally for knowing the economy of the Trinity more distinctly, and particularly for understanding the relation between the Son and the Holy Spirit and, if the affirmative answer is proved true, for demonstrating the procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son, as John the theologian used this argument in the Council of Florence, the rest consenting, sess. XVIII., and Bessarion in orat. dogm. c. 6.

Moreover, that the truth is to be held in the manner of a theological principle, that in God all things are one, where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way, which is constituted in the very origin of one person from another (above p. 188), there can be no doubt after all those things which about unity and distinction in God have been demonstrated everywhere in the preceding pages.

1°. Indeed, in God, although many perfections and formal reasons can be distinguished among themselves by the consideration of the mind, nevertheless really all things are one without real distinction, except insofar as there is the formal reason of a principle producing ad intra and of that which proceeds from a producing principle; and this is true not only of the absolutes, but also of the relative formal reasons. Thus not only essence, wisdom, goodness etc. are one most simple Being without real distinction, because the one does not really proceed from the other; but also essence, generation, and (active) spiration are in the same way one without real distinction for the same reason, because neither do generation and spiration really proceed from essence, nor does spiration proceed from generation. But the Father under the formal reason of Father is really distinguished from the Son under the formal reason of Son, and indeed solely under this formal reason, insofar as the one is the principle, the other really proceeding in the manner of the begotten from the principle; in all other formalities, however, the Father and the Son are one. In the same way, as is evident, one must think about the unity and distinction of the spirating one and of the one proceeding through spiration.

The foundation of this matter is the divine simplicity, which coincides with the infinite perfection of God (see Tract. de Deo th. XXVII.). Because, namely, the most simple essence of God is the whole fullness of perfect being, we can indeed consider that essence under diverse reasons of perfections and relations, which nevertheless are all the divine essence itself and are in no way really distinguished among themselves, except solely insofar as the procession of one from another is real; under which formal reason of one proceeding relatively to another as to its producing principle, another and another is constituted, yet not another and another thing.

Just as, therefore, the infinity of perfection would be taken away and the perfections would be placed as limited, if the absolute perfections, e. g. wisdom and power, were assumed as really distinct, because then neither would comprehend the whole fullness of perfect being; so no less would the same limitation be introduced, if a real distinction were placed in God between disparate relations, as they call them, i. e. those which are not relations of origin of one from another; for instance, if in the Father generation and spiration, of which the one does not arise from the other, were placed as really distinct from one another. For formalities of this kind are relations only in order to their produced term (generation to the Son, spiration to the Holy Spirit); but compared among themselves, by the very fact that they do not have the reason of principle and of that which proceeds from a principle, they are already not relations to one another but, if it is lawful so to speak, follow the law of absolutes; and so they are really altogether one, just as the divine intellection and volition are one, which is in itself absolute, and relative only to its term produced intrinsically, namely to the Word and to the Holy Spirit.

2°. Hence the holy Fathers, when they declare that there is no real distinction in God except only by reason of relations, always understand relations to one another, namely the relations of principle and of that which proceeds from a principle. « Just as the Son is joined to the Father, having being from Him... so likewise the Holy Spirit depends on the Only-begotten, so that by thought alone, according to the reason of principle, the Son is pre-understood as to the subsistence of the Holy Spirit... and so, the reason of principle being excepted, the Holy Trinity is discerned in itself in nothing (ὥστε τῆς προϋποστάσεως λόγου προεπινοουμένου ἐν μηδενὶ τὴν ἁγίαν Τριάδα πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἀσυμφώνως ἔχειν) Nyss. (above p. 431). In all other things, says Gregory Nazianzen, the divine persons are altogether one, because one is God; but the distinction and the diverse names of the distinct things are solely « from the diversity of the relation to one another » (τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσεως διαφορὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων πεποίηκε) orat. 31. al. 37. n. 9. Augustine and the other Latin Fathers very often inculcate this. « We have said elsewhere, that those things are properly said in that Trinity to pertain distinctly to the individual persons, which are said relatively to one another, as Father and Son and the gift of both, the Holy Spirit... But that which each is said to himself, is said not plurally as three but as one, the Trinity itself » Aug. Trin. VIII. n. 1. Whence also for the relations themselves, by which alone there is there a real distinction, they simply say principle and that which is from a principle, τὸ αἴτιον καὶ τὸ αἰτιατόν. Thus Nyssenus: « confessing the immutable unity of nature, we do not deny the distinction according to that which is principle and from principle (τὴν κατὰ τὸ αἴτιον καὶ αἰτιατὸν διαφοράν), in which alone we admit the one to be distinguished from the other, in that we believe the one indeed to be principle, the other however from principle ». Since moreover both the Son and the Holy Spirit are both from a principle and are not ἀγεννήτως, and this is common to them, by which they would not be distinguished from one another, Gregory likewise places the distinction between them from the relation of origin, because the Son is from the Father alone, the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son or through the Son (sup. p. 494).

Moreover, just as by the name of Son is expressed one who is relative to the Father and thus distinguished from the Father by the relation of origin, in the same way the name of Spirit is relative, as if one said proceeding by spiration (πνοῇ). See th. XXXII. n. II. He is therefore said relatively to be the Spirit of someone, and by this relation, that He is of someone, i. e. proceeding from another by spiration, He is constituted distinct from the other. For this reason also in the Scriptures and among the Fathers those are synonyms: that He is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son, i. e. spirated by the Father and the Son, and that He proceeds from the Father and the Son; as we showed l. c. Whence, unless He were relatively the Spirit of the Son, i. e. spirated by the Son, πνοὴ τοῦ Υἱοῦ, then the Spirit would be something relative solely to the Father, not however to the Son; compared therefore with the Son He would be a spirit in an absolute signification, not relative to the Son Himself. But a spirit said not relatively to the Son is not a person distinct from the Son. For in this hypothesis the proceeding charity would be said to be relative to the Father alone and produced by the Father alone, but in no way would it be relative to the Son or produced by the Son. But this would be really the same and the same person as the wisdom produced or begotten by the Father alone, i. e. with the Word. The person distinct from the Son is only he who in the Scriptures is revealed as the Spirit of the Son, i. e. spirated by the Son, and love produced by the Son through dilection.

These things being so, the real distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit is from nothing else than that the one is the principle, the other proceeding from Him as from his principle. Whoever therefore denies the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, by that very fact takes away the reason of distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, which in divine things is none other than the relation of origin of the one from the other. Just as the Father and the spirator are not two persons but one, because the formal reason of the begetter and of the spirator are not opposed to one another through the origin of the one from the other, and therefore are not really distinguished, as we said a little before; so in the assumed hypothesis the reason of proceeding through generation and through spiration would not be opposed to one another, and therefore neither would they be really distinguished among themselves, and by that very fact they would not be two really distinct proceeding persons, but the person proceeding as the expressed term of intellection and at the same time of volition would be one. Wherefore in this twofold truth, that the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons, and that the distinction between the divine persons is solely from the relations of origin of the one from the other, there is contained implicitly the truth, that the Holy Spirit proceeds as from the Father so also from the Son, and that the Father and the Son by active spiration are really distinguished not from one another but from the Holy Spirit proceeding from them through spiration. The former proposition is explicitly revealed, as the schismatics confess together with us; the latter is demonstrated against them both from the common teaching of the Fathers and from the certain principles about the unity and simplicity of the divine perfection in the persons, which are constituted distinct solely by relations.

3°. The single difficulty needing some illustration is this, that the holy Fathers are wont to trace the distinction of the Son and of the Holy Spirit from the very diverse mode of procession. The Son indeed proceeds by generation, the Holy Spirit by another diverse mode, which can be called spiration or, keeping the name as it were generic, procession. «The difference of the radiation (τὸ διάφορον τῆς ἐκφάνσεως) made the diverse names for them». Naz. or. 31. n. 9. «The Holy Spirit goes forth not as born but as given, and therefore is not called Son, because neither was He born as the Only-begotten». Aug. Trin. V. c. 14. And indeed, the objection which Pallavicinus calls difficult, «in fact passive spiration is distinguished not only from active spiration but also from filiation; therefore, active spiration (in the Son) being removed, a sufficient distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Son would still remain» Pallav. 1. c. n. 454.

But indeed a) The Fathers trace the difference of procession, from which is the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, from this very thing as from the root, that the Son alone proceeds from the alone (μόνος μονογενής), the Holy Spirit however not from the alone but from the Father through the Son. Basil, Gregory Nyss. etc. (see p. 535. note 2). Gregory Nazianzen in that very place which is objected and which we cited a little before, places the «difference of the radiation» in the relation to one another (τὸ διάφορον τῆς ἐκφάνσεως καὶ τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσεως). b) There are two very diverse questions: whether, if the opposition of relation did not stand in the way between the Son and the Holy Spirit, they would nevertheless be really distinguished among themselves; and the other, whether, the procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son being supposed and thus the opposition of relation and the real distinction of the two persons being supposed, each person proceeds in a diverse mode, so that the one is truly the Son of the Father, the other is not the Son of the Son, as the Fathers say (above p. 428. sq.), or the Son of the Father and of the Son. To the former question we have demonstrated that the answer must be negative; to the latter, from the manifest doctrine of Scripture and of the Fathers it is established, and by us long since demonstrated, that the answer is affirmative (th. XXX. XXXI.).

In this latter sense Augustine speaks in the testimony adduced, by which Frassenius wished to prove his thesis. As often as Augustine asks how the divine persons, and hence also the Son and the Holy Spirit, are distinguished among themselves, he always answers, as we said at the beginning, that in divine things there can be no real distinction except from the relation to one another. In the cited place, however, he does not treat of the distinction, but supposes it and even declares that it is from this, that the Spirit proceeds in the manner of a gift, i. e. through dilection, as from the Father so also from the Son. For the question of Augustine there is, whether, although the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as given and not as born, nevertheless the Father and the Son can truly be said to be the principle of the Holy Spirit. He affirms: « it must be confessed, that the Father and the Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit, not two principles; but just as the Father and the Son are one God and, relative to the creature, one creator and one Lord, so relative to the Holy Spirit one principle; but relative to the creature the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one principle, just as one creator and one God ». He then incidentally notes, that for this reason, because He proceeds as given and not as born, the Spirit does not have the account of Son, not as if from this there were per se the reason of distinction from the only Son, but because, the distinction being already supposed, from this mode of procession through dilection it appears why the Spirit does not also Himself have the account of Son and so there are not two Sons.

From these things also the answer to the objection, which was proposed as « difficult », is evident. Passive spiration is really distinguished from filiation solely for this reason, that the opposition of relation intervenes, i. e. because the Spirit is spirated by the Son; for apart from this real procession of one from another no real distinction is given in divine things. In other words: the account of Son (filiation) is identified in the Son with active spiration, and for that reason filiation, insofar as it is at the same time active spiration, is the principle of the procession and is opposed to the account of the spirated or to passive spiration, and therefore the one is really distinguished from the other. But if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, there would be no opposition between the procession in the mode of generation and in the mode of spiration, and therefore there would be no real distinction between these two accounts, just as in the Father generation and active spiration are not really distinguished. See s. Thom. de potent. q. 10. a. 5. and Petav. 1. VII. c. 9.

«It is the innate and perpetual right of the infallible ecclesiastical magisterium to propose Catholic doctrine in formulas and symbols of faith; wherefore it is evident no less from the very nature of the thing than from history, that in the Council of Ephesus and in the subsequent Councils heretical symbols were indeed proscribed, and even private ones were forbidden, which were brought forth to be substituted for the public ones; but absurd is the contention of Mark Eugenicus and his followers, by which, on account of the particle Filioque inserted in the symbol, they wish the Latins, even granted the truth of this profession, to be guilty of violated canons and of a corrupted symbol of faith».

Before the Council of Florence came to the disputation concerning the truth of the procession from the Father and the Son, in the first sessions — fourteen in all (from the II. to the XV.) — celebrated at Ferrara, the Greeks contended most pertinaciously, that it had been a crime to add the particle Filioque in the symbol, whatever might be the case with the dogma itself, and so even if what is declared in those words were true and revealed. Bessarion indeed prudently advised his Greeks, that according to the order which the matters themselves demanded, the truth of the doctrine should first be treated, whether the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from the Father and the Son. For, he said, « once the falsity of the dogma has been shown, the question of not adding it will no longer have a place ». If, however, it were contended in the inverted order, that even granted the truth the addition in the symbol is illicit: « I have shown, he said, the weakness of the proposition, and that it is ridiculous to think, that it is not permitted to add the truth to the symbol » (Bessar. de process. Spiritus Sancti p. 185. 187). They nevertheless persisted in their counsel once adopted; and — what indeed, in a matter so manifest, could not happen otherwise — they were so vanquished, with the same Bessarion as witness (ib. p. 207), « that having nothing to answer, they were struck silent; for what would anyone shamelessly answer against so great a truth? »

The single argument, by which the Greeks had at first persuaded themselves that a thing so incredible could be proved, was the decree of the Council of Ephesus Act. VI. The priest Charisius brought to the Ephesian Fathers, that it might be condemned by them, the symbol of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which, as most manifestly containing the Nestorian heresy, the partisans of Nestorius used, and to which they had ordered the Quartodecimans of Lydia to subscribe (cf. above p. 511 sqq.). The Fathers, when they had heard « the exposition of impious dogmas reduced to the form of a symbol », as Peter, the primicerius of the notaries, called it, pronounced this sentence: « The holy synod defined, that it is permitted to no one to utter or to write or to compose another faith (ἑτέραν πίστιν) besides that defined by the holy Fathers, who were gathered at Nicaea with the Holy Spirit. Those, however, who have dared either to compose another faith, or to utter it, or to offer it to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth.... these, if they are Bishops or Clerics, it decreed to be alien: Bishops from the episcopate, Clerics from the clericate; but if they are laymen, to be subjected to anathema. In like manner also, if any are found, whether Bishops or Clerics or laymen, to hold or to teach those things which are contained in the exposition offered by the priest Charisius concerning the incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God, or the wicked and perverse dogmas of Nestorius, which are also subjoined, let them lie under the sentence of this holy and universal synod: namely, that a Bishop indeed be removed from the episcopate and be deposed; a Cleric likewise fall from the clericate; but if he be a layman, let him also be anathematized, as was said above ». Mansi T. IV. p. 1362.

If we believe the Photians, the Ephesian Fathers had so consecrated and immutably fixed the very words of the Nicene symbol, that they abrogated for the Church herself the right either of proposing the same truths more explicitly in the symbol, or of inserting other truths, however revealed, into the same profession of faith. Let us examine this incredible matter first theologically, then historically.

1°. If the matter is considered theologically and in itself, a) with regard to the determination of the symbol, or of the solemn formula by which the Catholic faith is expressed, some things are of immutable divine right, others are subject to the disposition of the Church. It is of divine right, that nothing be inserted into the symbol of the things to be believed, which is against or beyond the revealed faith. The Church does not herself make the truths of faith, but infallibly guards those revealed by God, explains them, defines them in their true sense against the manifold forms of errors, and proposes them to the faithful as revealed; whence, if into a symbol, which is proposed as some complex of revealed truths to be professed with divine faith, there were inserted as things to be believed not only propositions against the faith, and so heretical, but also beyond the faith, h. e. which are not contained in revelation, by this very fact the faith would be violated.

b) In that very office of guarding, explaining, and more strictly defining the truths of faith is contained the right, and, according to the necessity and opportunity of the matter, the duty of the Church of framing symbols of faith; h. e. of determining, which of the revealed truths, and in what form of words, are to be comprehended and explicitly professed in tesserae of Catholic profession of this kind, in direct opposition against the errors pressing in. This right and duty is innate in the divine magisterium, infallible through the assistance of the Spirit of truth. It belongs, therefore, to the Church no less in the later than in the earlier age, and that from the very nature of the matter in question; not from some disposition or mutable law, but from the divine essential property and native constitution of the Church herself. It is repugnant, therefore, to the nature and character of the divinely instituted magisterium, that by a decree, by which it was forbidden « to utter another faith », the Church should have abrogated for herself the right of proposing to the faithful revealed truths, even those which up to now were not explicitly contained in the symbol, either in a distinct symbol or by inserting them into a pre-existing formula, according to the character of the matters and of the opposed errors. The decree, therefore, prohibiting « to utter another faith », must necessarily be understood either as a decree of faith proscribing symbols alien to the Catholic profession, or in such a way, that the right of determining the formula of the solemn profession of faith is declared to belong not to individuals, but to the universal and supreme magisterium alone in the Church.

Both of these rights had been violated by Theodore, in whose condemnation this decree was issued; for that symbol was both contrary to the divine faith, and by this very fact also, apart from and against the authority of the Church, it was first composed, and afterwards offered by the Nestorian presbyters to those, who wished to be converted from the heresy of the Quartodecimans. The former — that heretical symbols, namely, be proscribed — was certainly in the direct intention of the Council; for the condemnation immediately regarded the symbol infected with the Nestorian heresy, and consequently the caution and the threat of penalties pertained to symbols akin to it, which would be contrariwise beyond the Nicene faith. But that the apostate Theophanes Prokopowicz says, that this interpretation of the Catholics is ridiculous — truly he himself is to be laughed at. For he says, that things contrary to the faith could not have been prohibited by the Council to be inserted into the symbol, because that was already illicit before and of itself; and because the Church establishes her canons for Catholics, but for heretics she can no more give laws, than to Mohammedans. If Theophanes thought this, all the canons of faith ought to have seemed « ridiculous » to him; for in them heresies and heretics, who are or have been, are always no less condemned, than provision is made for the future by the threat of anathema and of penalties: « if anyone has said (this or that heresy), let him be anathema ». As to what Theophanes then adds, that for Bishops and Clerics corrupting the symbol only the penalty of deposition is threatened, and so they remain members of the Church¹, he could have read in the same words, there in one context, the same deposition established for the followers of the Nestorian heresy. Indeed, in the very sentence against the heresiarch Nestorius the holy synod expressed only the removal from the Episcopate and from the whole sacerdotal college (ἀλλότριον εἶναι τοῦ τε ἐπισκοπικοῦ ἀξιώματος καὶ παντὸς συλλόγου ἱερατικοῦ); and in the denunciation of the sentence to the Clergy and people of CP. the Fathers of the Council simply say: « Nestorius has been removed from the priesthood » (πέπαυται τῆς ἱερωσύνης) Mansi ib. p. 1295. 1303. Doubtless, according to the character of such a case, in the sentence of deposition there was contained also the expulsion from the communion of the faithful, as could easily be shown by very many other examples; and at Ephesus it was expressly declared by the legates of the holy See, especially by Bishop Arcadius in his « interpretation of the deposition » (Mansi ib. p. 1298).

Let it stand, therefore, what we have said: that the Ephesian Fathers intended in the first place to guard against the corruption of the Nicene symbol. In this very thing, however, as a means to the end, the other was included, which we have indicated. For the composition of symbols for public use was forbidden to individuals, whether Bishops or other Clerics or laymen, inasmuch as this matter regarded the integrity of the faith to be protected from the danger of perversion. Hence, with such a danger excluded, the Council without any reproach approved as valid the symbol, which Charisius offered on his own behalf as it were Nicene, to attest his orthodoxy, although in words it did not fully correspond either to the Nicene or to the Constantinopolitan formula² (Hard. T. I. p. 1515).

2°. What we have said is no less evident from the history of the symbols.

a) By the right of authentic teaching inborn in the Church, the Nicene synod itself constituted the symbol of the Catholic faith in direct opposition against the Arian heresy. Just as the Photians contend, that the form of the symbol is fixed, so that it is not lawful even for the Church to profess the true faith in other words; so the Arians, from an equal sophism, complained, that the Nicene Fathers had defined the faith in formulas other than those consigned in sacred Scripture³. The holy Fathers, however, constantly asserted this right and duty of the Church, that she declare and define the revealed faith in tesserae directly opposed against the arising errors. See Athanas. de decret. Nicaen. n. 18-21. 32.

In the II. Council many things were inserted into the Nicene symbol, namely concerning the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachians (above p. 508). Will anyone therefore say, that the Constantinopolitan Fathers, against right and law, put forth « another faith »? On the contrary, it has always been said, that the Nicene faith was explained by the II. synod, and more strictly defined against new errors, and that the symbol thus enlarged was held by the universal Church in the same degree of infallible authority, by which the Nicene itself had been sanctioned.

Here, however, let it be observed, that the symbol, which the Ephesian Fathers sanctioned as to be retained, and to which they opposed the other proscribed symbols, is not the Constantinopolitan but altogether the Nicene: « that it is permitted to no one to utter another faith besides that defined by the holy Fathers, who were gathered at Nicaea with the Holy Spirit ». Hence, if the symbol, of which there was speech at Ephesus, had been inculcated again not only as a positive norm of right faith, as we say; but, materially considered, had been sanctioned as the only legitimate formula, as Macarius and the other Photians try to persuade; in this hypothesis, I say, from the Ephesine decree the Nicene formula alone would henceforth be lawfully to be used, the Constantinopolitan, however, would at least have been excluded and proscribed from public use; nor consequently would it be lawful to profess in the symbol anything else, e. g. about the Holy Spirit, except this one thing: « we believe in the Holy Spirit », as it is in the Nicene. But these things are utterly absurd both in themselves and from the history of the symbols. Absurd, therefore, is the hypothesis of the Photians about the sense of the Ephesine decree.

In the subsequent Councils IV. V. VI. VII., after not only the Nicene and Constantinopolitan symbols, but also the other sanctions of all the antecedent Councils had been recited against the new errors of the Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, Iconoclasts, and after the letters of Cyril, Leo, Agatho, etc. had been adopted, then at last, in relation to all these preceding definitions of faith, in almost the same words which the Ephesine Fathers had used, it is subjoined: « the holy and universal synod defined (Chalcedonensis, Constantinopolitana II. III.), that it is permitted to no one to utter or to write or to compose or to hold another faith, or to teach others. Those, however, who have dared to compose another faith... or to hand over another symbol to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth — these, if they are Bishops or Clerics, Bishops to be alien from the episcopate, Clerics from the clericate; but if they are monks or laymen, them to be anathematized » Hard. T. II. p. 455.; T. III. p. 202. 1402; T. IV. p. 454. 455. The Councils, therefore, under the name of faith comprehend not only the formula of the Nicene or Constantinopolitan symbol, but all the definitions of faith. Wherefore, while they define, that no one dare compose or hold another faith, they cannot be understood in the Photian sense, as if they abrogated for the Church herself the right of conceiving and declaring the true faith in other words; for in this sense the Church would be prohibited not only from putting forth a new symbol, but also from putting forth new definitions of the truth against new errors, which is evidently absurd, and would involve all the Councils in a manifest contradiction, since each of them in this sense would both have written another faith, and have prohibited another to be written. Most certainly, therefore, just as the definition of the subsequent Councils, so also that of the Ephesine, in all things identical, « that no one dare write another faith », pertains in no way to prohibiting the explanation of the faith, whether in the symbol itself or outside the symbol, which is made by the authentic magisterium itself of the Church; but both from the very nature of the Church and the scope of the symbols, and from the manifest contexts of the Councils, in that definition, inasmuch as it is dogmatic and immutable, heretical doctrines are first and directly proscribed; in the second place there is the coercion of the abuse of proposing symbols of faith at the will of individuals, whether Bishops or others, the formulas solemnly sanctioned by the Church and adopted for universal use being neglected and passed over. See in the Council of Florence the demonstration of Card. Julian (Hard. IX. p. 138. sq.).

b) That the immutability of the symbol was decreed by what we have said — not, however, in the Photian sense, nor could it have been decreed in that sense — is most fully confirmed and illustrated from other monuments.

Eutyches, in the Ephesine conciliabulum (the robber council) under Dioscorus, interpreted the decree of the III. Council entirely in the Photian sense; he said, that he remained in the Nicene profession, and that just as it was not lawful to take anything away from it, so neither to add anything to it. « This faith, and the anterior holy and universal synod mentioned here (at Ephesus), whose president was Cyril... confirmed it, and put forth a definition, that he who shall have added anything besides it, or taken anything away (al. adinvenerit, Greek version: τὸν παρὰ ταύτην προστιθέντα τι ἢ ἐπινοοῦντα), or taught, should lie under the condemnations, which were then written ». The same sense in the Chalcedonian Council Dioscorus and his Egyptian Bishops defended: « let no one admit an addition, no one a diminution; what were established at Nicaea, let them be kept ». But the Catholic Bishops cried out against it. « He has lied; there is no such definition, there is no such rule », said Eusebius of Dorylaeum. Diogenes of Cyzicus explained this: « He deceitfully set forth the synod of the holy Fathers; for he received the additions on account of the perverse understanding of Apollinaris and Valentinus and Macedonius and those who are like them » (Mansi VI. p. 631. sq.). This appeal of Dioscorus to the Ephesine decree was constructed against the dogmatic letter of s. Leo, in which they said a new symbol was proposed.

Hence the Chalcedonian Council itself, in its allocution to the emperor Marcian, declared the sense of that Ephesine decree. First the Fathers indicate the complaints of the adversary, who accuses the letter of Leo, « asserting, that it is not lawful for anyone to set forth a faith besides the Fathers, who concordantly came together at Nicaea »⁴. They respond, however, that the Nicene profession is indeed to be held by the law of the Church « as in the principal place », and that it is handed down to catechumens. Moreover, they say, if heretics did not disturb the path of piety by their innovations, « it would be fitting for the sons of the Church to devise nothing more, than what is certainly declared in the symbol ». Against the new errors of the heretics, however, « it is necessary for us to refute their devious inventions too with salutary additions (al. oppositionibus), not as always seeking out something new for piety, as if something were lacking to the faith (al. quod fidei desit), but as devising, against those things which have been innovated by them, those things which are judged salutary »⁵. They show then, that explanations of the truth against new errors were inserted into the symbol itself, vindicated by the definitions of the Councils and the declarations of the holy Fathers. Explanations of this kind, however, were never so absolutely concluded, that new definitions and professions of faith could not be opposed by the Church, the teacher, to new heresies. « If anyone, however, thinks, that those who wish to defend the faith according to their ability ought to stand still up to this point, he will indeed have to promulgate this precept most of all to the heretics, removing them from attacking, not turning the pastors away from protection. For every law restrains the unjust from offences, it does not separate the judges from power⁶. But otherwise let the indocile be taught, that even now it is lawful, when the ambiguity of the question has arisen, that we adapt our confession to the interpretations of the Fathers »⁷ (Mansi VII. p. 455 sqq.).

With the very words by which the Ephesine law is explained in the Council of Florence and by Catholic theologians, Eulogius of Alexandria, the successor of Cyril in the episcopal see in the sixth century, had already gone before — words, I say, preserved for us by Photius himself in his Bibliotheca. The calumny which the followers of Dioscorus brought at Chalcedon against the letter of Leo, the Monophysites afterwards repeated against the synod of Chalcedon itself, « that it (the synod) had set forth a definition, a deed of such a kind having been altogether forbidden by the first synod held at Ephesus ». The Monophysites saw no less than the Catholics that the Council of Chalcedon (as we have shown was afterwards done by other synods) had placed its definitions as explanations of the creed and of authority equal to the creed. Hence Eulogius does not answer the adversaries' objection drawn from the Ephesine decree — as the Photians say, that the Fathers of Chalcedon had changed nothing in the creed, but rather had decreed anew its immutability; rather he places the whole defense against the calumny of the Monophysites in explaining the genuine sense of the Ephesine decree, namely that additions contrary to the Nicene faith were proscribed, but by no means those congruent with the same faith, which both the nature of things and the perpetual tradition and custom of the Church show always to have been licit; were this not so, the Ephesine Fathers would have condemned both the second ecumenical synod and themselves, inasmuch as they too, in professing the creed, added new definitions. « If according to the delirium of these men the (Ephesine) synod forbade another definition to be brought forth altogether, this one before all others passed sentence of condemnation against itself. For in framing this very decree (concerning the immutability of the creed) it defines what nothing before it had defined (i.e., the decree itself would already involve a contradiction). Moreover, its definition is the union according to hypostasis, which the more ancient synods had not defined. Certainly, according to what these men rave, it condemns the synod of the one hundred fifty holy Fathers held at Constantinople (the second ecumenical); for this one, proscribing the Pneumatomachus, fitted to the Nicene definition the doctrine on the divinity of the Holy Spirit by a congruent addition. But if the antecedent Councils are not liable to reproach on account of their additions, neither will the subsequent ones be able to be condemned dissimilarly in like causes. Thus folly confuses and perverts all things. For the Ephesine synod forbade another faith altogether, whose dogmas are contrary to the synod of Nicaea, to be set forth; but the exposition of the genuine dogmas preserved in it (the Nicene synod), such as the time may demand, the synod itself added, and the nature of things as mistress and the tradition of the Church is seen always to cherish this »⁸. Eulog. in Photii Bibl. cod. 230. (Migne, T. CIII. p. 1049). s. Maximus has very similar things against the Monophysite calumniators of the synod of Chalcedon « on account of the words added to the Nicene definition » (Migne T. XCI. p. 258. 259).

c) Indeed, long before the times of Photius we see that the explanation of the Constantinopolitan creed through the added particle Filioque was joined at the same time with the proclamation of the immutable definitions sanctioned in the Ephesine and the subsequent Councils. So certain and ratified was it that a coaptation of this kind of our confession with the interpretations of the Fathers, as the Council of Chalcedon says, is not an addition or subtraction, such as is proscribed in the Councils against heretics.

The « general council » of England, the Hedefeldense, celebrated in the year 680 under Archbishop Theodore (Greek by nation), published a profession of faith, in which besides other things these words are read. « We receive the holy and universal five synods of the blessed and God-acceptable Fathers (each one is enumerated).... and the synod which was held in the city of Rome at the time of the most blessed Pope Martin:.... We receive and glorify our Lord Jesus Christ just as these glorified Him, adding or subtracting nothing.... glorifying God the Father without beginning, and His only-begotten Son generated from the Father before the ages, and the Holy Spirit proceeding ineffably from the Father and the Son, just as those whom we have mentioned above, the holy Apostles and prophets and doctors, preached; and we all subscribe, who with Archbishop Theodore have set forth the catholic faith » Mansi XI. p. 176.

With set purpose, s. Paulinus of Aquileia in the Foroiuliense Council of the year 796 declares the sense of the Ephesine decree, namely that by the name of « addition and diminution », which is proscribed, there is by no means to be understood an insertion also into the creed itself of a further explanation of the Nicene faith, but only the perversion of the faith itself is proscribed. According to this declaration of Paulinus, proved there by a lengthy disputation, the same synod not only adopted the creed with the particle Filioque, as it had long since been accustomed to be recited in the kingdoms of Charles the Great, in which the province of Aquileia was comprised; but also a fuller exposition of the same faith is there added, which, together with the profession twice repeated of the procession from the Father and the Son, is ordered to be retained in its entirety by memory. With incredible impudence Adam Zoernikaw (Czernikow), Theophanes Prokopowicz, Macarius Bulgakow dare to cite s. Paulinus and this Council of his with truncated texts, in order to demonstrate that the Foroiulian Fathers had declared that the insertion of the particle Filioque into the creed of faith is absolutely forbidden by the Ephesine decree. Wherefore it will be worth the effort to have inspected the context itself a little more diligently.

Paulinus with his synod treats only the dogmatic question, insofar as the Ephesine decree absolutely proscribes « another exposition of faith », and in this sense he says that not the true explanation of the faith is forbidden — which afterwards the schismatics contended stubbornly even in the Council of Florence, and now Macarius and others contend — but that the decree must be understood of an exposition contrary to the catholic faith. The disciplinary part, however, which after a decade Leo III regarded together with the dogmatic part, Paulinus does not touch; but just as the other bishops and theologians familiar to Charles the Great, so also the Foroiulians acquiesced in the king's desire, who pressed for the recitation of the creed with the explanation Filioque. To the difficulties of the Romans, however, which were disciplinary and not dogmatic, the Foroiulians, like generally the familiars of Charles, responded only from the dogmatic part, in which truly all Catholics agreed, namely that by itself and absolutely neither by the Ephesine nor by any other decree is or can be the insertion of a truth of faith forbidden. Whence their declarations do not indeed avail against the contrary disciplinary usage of the Roman Church of that time, as afterwards Pope Leo explained; but they contain an outstanding exposition of the Ephesine decree against the later absurd interpretations of the Photians.

First Paulinus indicates the opposition of the adversaries, who, appealing to the Ephesine decree, had said that it is not lawful to compose another faith, i.e., another creed, and therefore that the insertion of the particle Filioque is not to be admitted. He responds, however, that by another faith is understood a faith contrary to the truth, of which sort was that of Nestorius and Eutyches, not however an explanation of the truth. This he proves from the insertions made in the creed by the Fathers of the Constantinopolitan Council. Whence he infers that by the same right the explicit profession of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son was added by those who came after.

« Concerning the mystery of the holy and wonderful Trinity I profess that I have promised to speak with a plainer discourse.... On account of the various errors of heretics, to be sure, and the diverse suspicions of certain simple people, I consent to compose or teach not another faith, but that which, handed down by the holy Fathers, all ages have sincerely received. For I know that in certain synodal documents (the Ephesine and Chalcedonian) it has been sanctioned — for refuting indeed the new and manifold heresies, especially on account of the fraudulent and feigned faith of Nestorius or Eutyches, false and pestilential men, of whom I shall not say faith but rather perfidy ⁹ — that it is not lawful for anyone to teach or compose a creed of another faith. But far be it from us, and far be it from every faithful heart, to compose or teach another creed or faith, or one otherwise than they instituted; but according to their sense we have decided to hand over for exposition those things which, on account of the compendious brevity, are understood by the simple less than is fitting, and we have committed to memory to retain it (the exposition of faith) and the very text of the creed, inasmuch as according to the Apostle the man of God may be fit, prepared for every good work.... For truly it is not to add or diminish in the matter of faith those things which have been promulgated well and salubriously by the holy Fathers ¹⁰, to sense rightly according to their sense, and to supply for exposition their subtle genius; but to add or diminish is to sense cunningly against their sacrosanct sense, otherwise than they, with crafty tergiversation, and to compose with confused style a perverse dogma, and thereby to presume with impious mouth rather to chatter boastfully than to teach ».

Hitherto he has said what it is not, and what it is, to compose or teach another faith. There follows the proof from the comparison of the Constantinopolitan creed, which, although increased by explanations, nevertheless has not another faith than the Nicene, whose faith the Constantinopolitan Fathers themselves wished everywhere to remain perpetually inviolate. « For we read the venerable work composed of the sacred faith of very many catholic men and of the worshippers of the Churches of God (the creed), resounding indeed in other words and with a different pen, but they are proved to breathe forth concordantly the same sense and the same understanding of the mind in one document of assertion of the inviolate faith. For if the venerable series of the Nicene creed be reviewed, nothing else about the Holy Spirit will be able to be found promulgated in it, except in this manner: what, then, to this very insertion, both in the formula of the creed, as Paulinus handed it over to be retained in memory, and in the ampler exposition of faith? The apostate Theophanes easily extricates himself, stubbornly affirming to his followers: that all these things are spurious, and interpolated by the Latins! Aided by what argument, what edition, what codex does he assert things so incredible? He has no codex, no edition, no witness; but this one and only argument: because Paulinus a little before had said that it is not lawful to compose a creed of another faith. But had he not at the same time demonstrated by a long disputation that a creed of another faith is only that which contains a perverse dogma? These things are indeed evident in the context of Paulinus, but they are to be studiously concealed from the Photians.

Macarius l. c., as I have said, far surpasses the master Theophanes. Having cut away the troublesome trifles, he settles the whole business with a light hand. Since he does not produce the Latin text of Paulinus, but dresses up his own version, by truncating and changing he turns everything into the contrary sense — in which matter we have already elsewhere admired Macarius as a notable artificer. Everyone sees that the substance of the whole opinion of Paulinus is found in that period in which he explains what is not, and what is, an addition or diminution, which is forbidden by the Ephesine and the other Councils. « For truly it is not in the matter of faith to add or diminish those things which have been promulgated by the holy Fathers — to sense rightly according to their sense, and to supply for exposition their subtle genius (to expound explicitly what they understood implicitly with their subtle genius); but to add or diminish is cunningly.... to compose a perverse dogma ». Now Macarius, not by paraphrase, as is sometimes done by impostors, but entirely as a verbal translation, renders that whole passage thus: « car ajouter ou retrancher quoi que ce soit à ce que les ss. Pères ont légué pieusement (understand: in the creed, as is read immediately before in Macarius), est un act incompatible avec la foi ». You have the Macarian Paulinus! Namely, the first clause « for truly it is not in the matter of faith to add or diminish those things which have been promulgated by the holy Fathers », torn from the context, he translates in his own way, with all the rest of the same period ingeniously suppressed. By these arts the thesis of Macarius is proved: « ainsi dans le Concile d'Italie (sic) Paulin patriarche d'Aquilée rejeta positivement cette addition » (Filioque), and certainly any other absurdity could be proved no less expeditiously.

and in the Holy Spirit, they say, (we believe) ». He shows then that by the very co-numeration with the Father and the Son in the Nicene creed it is sufficiently taught that the Holy Spirit is God, « just as afterwards (it was taught) by the holy Fathers, the one hundred fifty (of the second Council), who testified that the faith of the creed of the Nicene Council remains perpetually inviolate. Yet they supplied, as it were by expounding their sense; and they profess to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, proceeding from the Father, to be adored and conglorified with the Father and the Son. For these things and the rest which follow are not contained in the sacred dogma of the Nicene creed ». Now from the premises Paulinus infers that which he chiefly regarded for its defense: namely, that rightly the explicit declaration of the procession from the Father and the Son had already long since been inserted in many particular Churches, against the heretics who had said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Concerning this dogma, Charles the Great himself, to whom Paulinus sent and as it were dedicated the acts of his synod, and no less the bishops and theologians in his kingdoms, showed themselves quite solicitous, and sometimes they ascribed the contrary heresy, which was at length confirmed by Photius, even to the orthodox Orientals, who professed that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son — all of which is clearly evident from the Caroline Books (l. III. c. 3. et 8), from the book of Alcuin on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, from the letter of Hadrian I to Charles, from those things which shortly after were done in the Council of Aachen and at Rome by the legates of Charles before Pope Leo III. Otherwise, already from the Council of Gentilly of the year 767, in which the legates of Constantine Copronymus the iconoclast had raised questions about this dogma, the faith of the Greeks with respect to this article was held at least suspect in the kingdoms of the Franks.

Paulinus therefore proceeds to this principal chapter for his purpose. « But also afterwards, on account of those heretics, namely, who whisper (doubtless before Photius no clear testimonies stood forth for the existence of this heresy) that the Holy Spirit is of the Father alone and proceeds from the Father alone, it was added: who proceeds from the Father and the Son. And yet these holy Fathers are not to be blamed, as if they had added something or diminished from the faith of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers, because they did not sense diverse things against their sense, but strove to supply their blameless understanding with sound modes (i.e., ways) ».

This is nothing but the legitimate inference from the principles which Paulinus had laid in advance for demonstrating this very thing, supposing namely the truth of the dogma itself inserted into the creed, about which they were certain by universal consent. Nevertheless, to complete the demonstration for the legitimately made insertion — as long, namely, as the question is regarded only dogmatically and not from the disciplinary laws — Paulinus subjoins a lengthy proof of the revealed truth itself, which he draws from the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, by which they are one in spiration no less than in nature and operation; from the symbolic insufflation of the Son upon the Apostles, Io. XX. 22; from the one common mission of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son; from the fact that the Spirit is preached in the Scriptures as of the Son just as of the Father; from the fact that the procession from the Father named in the Scriptures is necessarily understood as the same procession from the Son, just as baptism in the name of Jesus, on account of the consubstantiality of the persons, is understood as baptism in the name of the three persons. Whence he concludes this part of the oration, exclaiming: « how catholicly the holy Fathers, solidly founded in this stability of faith (concerning the consubstantial Father and Son), professed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father! how gloriously too those who confess that He proceeds from the Father and the Son! » (Mansi XIII. p. 833. sqq.). Against the Photians themselves Ratramnus disputed things very similar to these demonstrations of Paulinus, l. II. c. 2.

3°. Someone could perhaps say that in this matter the Photians do not dissent as regards the substance of the thing; for they do not deny that truths of faith can be inserted into the creed by an ecumenical synod. But he who should assert this in general would show that he does not have the disputations of the Greeks in view, namely in the first congregations of the Council of Florence (at Ferrara). For they contended altogether that this is the sense and this the force of the Ephesine decree: that the faculty is taken away from the universal Church itself, whether gathered in a synod or outside it, of adding or changing anything — no less in the creed than in Sacred Scripture — even by way of explanation and with a sense however true and comprised in divine revelation. In this manner, in the third, fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, twelfth congregations, Mark of Ephesus and Bessarion of Nicaea disputed in the name and with the consent of the rest (Mansi T. XXXI. p. 519. 534. 583. 584. 603. 607. 610. 615. 626. 678. 679). « It was established by the (Ephesine) Fathers that no license lies open henceforth to anyone of changing in any way the Nicene creed, which is the same as saying the Constantinopolitan.... Moreover, that license which had lain open up to those times they close off for themselves and for all the rest » (ταύτην τὴν ἄδειαν καὶ ἑαυτῶν ἀφαιροῦνται καὶ πάντων τῶν ἄλλων). And that, he subjoins, the Council demonstrated by the very fact; for on account of this prohibition it did not add to the creed the word θεοτόκος, although quite necessary. Thus Mark l. c. p. 534. Bessarion repeated the same in words even more expressive. « We will that Your Reverence know that by us this faculty is denied to the universal Church and to the synod, even the ecumenical.... We deny it, however, not from ourselves; but we judge that this is denied by the decrees of the Fathers »¹¹. Ibid. p. 610. 626. But if now Macarius, and before him Theophanes Prokopowicz, constrained by the very evidence of the matter and by the arguments of the Catholics, are forced to confess that an ecumenical Council has the power, even after the Ephesine decree, of inserting revealed dogmas into the creed, by this concession of theirs they first of all depart from the doctrine of their predecessors in the schism, as is evident from what has been said; then this confession, thrown in here and there by these authors as if doing something else, contradicts their whole remaining manner of disputing, which is the same and rests on the same arguments as that of their more ancient teachers; finally, with this opinion admitted, they must also confess that the Western Church, from its catholic principles concerning the value of the consent of the Church and concerning the supreme, universal, and infallible authority of the Roman Pontiff in definitions of faith and morals, professes with the best right the dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son in the creed itself. I know that the Photian heretics deny this authority, both of the consent of the catholic Church and of the head of the Church; but if the matter stands thus, then the dispute can be only about the authority of the catholic Church and of its head in definitions of faith in general, but no controversy about the right by which the profession of the procession from the Son was added to the creed. For the Photians themselves must confess that the right of defining dogmas of faith and the right of inserting definitions into the creed itself are one and the same, if that opinion of Macarius and Theophanes which I mentioned is sincere; when therefore it shall be established about that prior right of defining dogmas, it will be established also for the Photians themselves about the right of inserting the same dogmas into the creed. The Greeks in the Council of Florence perceived this connection of things, and therefore saw that, in order to demonstrate the illegitimate insertion of an article however true and defined, there was necessary for them that absurd contention: that for the whole Church, which certainly has the right of defining dogmas, it is nevertheless not lawful to change even one word in a creed once sanctioned and altogether immutable.

4°. The dogmatic question about the insertion of a dogma into the text of the creed, which the Photians ineptly stirred up and of which we have spoken so far, is altogether to be distinguished — and it is wonderfully different from the disciplinary question — although this too is intimately connected with the custody of the deposit: in what circumstances of things, by what authority, the insertion into the formula of the creed of truths of faith, about which there is certain knowledge, can, or sometimes even must, be tolerated, permitted, approved, commanded.

In this matter there is a great distinction between the particular formulas of faith, which for the special circumstances of certain regions and Churches were sometimes prescribed by bishops, either singly or of one or several provinces, and the solemn creeds which, sanctioned by the universal Church, have been received into common use as it were the tokens of faith. Into these latter, with which we are chiefly concerned now — both on account of the special veneration which is owed and has always been had for Christian antiquity, and on account of the universality, in that they are the tokens of the whole Church, and on account of the supreme authority by which they were sanctioned — changes through the insertion of truths of faith which were not previously contained explicitly in them cannot legitimately be introduced except by that same supreme authority to which the universal Church is subject, namely the authority of the Roman Pontiff or of an ecumenical Council, at least assenting and holding ratified a usage already prevailing (cf. S. Th. I. q. 36. a. 2. ad 2). Nevertheless, the transgression of this right by itself — unless perhaps the ecclesiastical authority itself should be denied — will not be a dogmatic error (as the schismatics dreamed), but a violation of discipline, and one more or less grave, according as either a right only implicit in the general hierarchical discipline, or an express law, stood in the way. Indeed, even with the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff neither approving nor expressly permitting, but nevertheless knowingly and tacitly conniving, the custom of insertion could come to be, and in several Churches from the sixth to the ninth century it seems to have come to be a custom legitimate to a certain extent.

How great, however, was the caution with which the addition of the particle Filioque in the Constantinopolitan creed, which is in question, proceeded, history demonstrates. First, in the sixth century that explicit profession was inserted in Spain and in Narbonensian Gaul (supra p. 467); thence it was propagated into the kingdom of the Franks, into Germany, Illyricum, etc. But the Roman Pontiffs indeed constantly taught this faith; the addition, however, in the Constantinopolitan creed itself, although they did not expressly disapprove it, they nevertheless did not admit into the Roman Church. When in the year 809 a Council was held at Aachen on the occasion of the disturbances which had been excited against the profession of the procession from the Son inserted into the creed by a monk of Jerusalem (supra p. 524. note), Charles the Great sent legates to Pope Leo III to obtain the sanction of the addition. But Leo indeed asserted and confirmed this article in the profession of faith itself, sent on the same occasion « to all the Eastern Churches », and before the legates of Charles ¹²; but he would not approve the addition in the solemn and anciently sanctioned creed ¹³, indeed he advised that the usage introduced among the Franks be corrected gradually, as far as could be done without loss to the true doctrine ¹⁴. After, however, the addition of this explanation in the creed had become almost universal throughout the whole West, and at the same time, from Photius after the middle of the ninth century, the contradiction of the schismatics against the dogma itself had brought the necessity or certainly the opportunity of that explicit profession, the Roman Pontiffs by the very fact held it ratified, and adopted it in the Roman and in the whole Latin Church, and sanctioned it with supreme authority. Because this was done not by some solemn decree, but by the usage itself, the time at which the usage first began to be universal is not clearly established, with the opinions of the learned varying between the middle of the ninth century and the eleventh, from Nicholas I to Benedict VIII. See Lequien Damasc. I. n. 28. (who further still prolongs the delay to some successor of Benedict VIII, up to Leo IX, for reasons not very probable); de Rubeis ad vitam Georgii Cyprii dissert. dogm. II. c. 4. n. 5. p. 190. sqq.; c. 5; Em. Hergenroether in suo Photio T. I. p. 705. sqq.