Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« 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.