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 ».