A Brief Commentary On Peter Lombard’s Discussion of the Filioque. Part II.

Part I

Distinction XI.[1]

Chapter 2 (38)

1. THAT THE GREEKS AGREE WITH US AS TO THE MEANING, EVEN THOUGH THEY DIFFER IN REGARD TO THE WORDS. But it is not be known that the Greeks confess the Holy Spirit to be of the Son, just as he is of the Father, because the Apostle too says: The Spirit of the Son, and Truth affirms in the Gospel: The Spirit of truth. But since for the Holy Spirit to be of the Father and of the Son is nothing else than to be from the Father and the Son, in this too they seem to agree in the same understanding of faith with us, even though they disagree as to the words.

Words actually point to something, they actually mean something when used. However, because of the changeable nature of words, and even, the way the same word can mean different things at the same time, there is always a kind of ambiguity which lies behind the word. A word is something positive, but its positive content comes from the apophatic nature of words: the content value of a word comes from all the possibilities which the word eliminates. Thus, if someone talks about apes, anything which is not a large primate that lacks a tail is eliminated from the possible meaning of the speaker. There are many options, many possibilities, involved once such an elimination has been done, allowing for potential confusion but also a potential richness because of the large range of meanings one can produce from a statement about apes.

Thus, words can be and most often are, equivocal. “One must know that in the matter of equivocal terms there are three things to be asked: whether the term is equivocal, how many meanings it has, and of which of these it is a question.”[2] Just because they can be, we must be sure they are, and if so, we must look to the range of meanings and see how that range can be ascertained. Then, we must try to discern what, within that range of meaning, one intends with a given word. We must rely upon words for communication, and such communication does allow for a transfer of knowledge, but because of the nature of words themselves, that transfer of knowledge is not univocal; it will always go from one person to another, with all kinds of new ideas brought into the equation and many notions the speaker wants to bring up being lost by their audience.

Thus different words can be used to lead different audiences to the same meaning, while the same word can be, and often is, used to lead different audiences to different conclusions because of the differing way the audiences understand the word. For this reason, when speaking, it is important to know one’s audience, so as to use the words which best promotes one’s desired outcome. On the other hand, it is easy for misunderstanding to happen as a result of words; people can mean the same thing, and try to get at the same idea through different avenues, and misunderstand each other because of the way they interpret individual words. For this reason, when engaging a particular text, it is important to know one’s context, and the audience in question, so that one can better engage the text and understand the point of it instead of reading into it the point one wants to bring out of it. This, of course, is not easy; one must grasp the spirit behind the speech, and of course, once the author is not there to comment upon it, one can only approximate as to what the spirit was and use that to interpret a given text.  For this reason it is important to follow the spirit and not the letter of the text, but it is quite difficult to get to the spirit, making some level of misinterpretation likely.

Peter Lombard points this out by stating that the Greeks and the Latins fundamentally agree on the procession of the Spirit, even if the Greeks and Latins misunderstand each other because of the differing words they use. This means that neither the Greeks nor the Latins are heretical, for both hold to the same faith. However, they have a difficult time in understanding the semantic content of each other’s words, of seeing where such content intersects.  The Greeks understand their own tradition, the Latins their own, and the words used differ to get to the same point, but, in the cross-cultural divide, the meaning of each other’s statements gets lost in translation. Once one misunderstands the spirit of a given text, it is easy to misconstrue the word which is best to be used when translating it for a different context. This confusion has caused grave harm, but if one is willing to see that the Greeks and Latins could and did hold communion together and they did so while using the same words being used today, then it should be easy to see it is not an issue of faith which separates the two, but the legalistic approach to texts which strives to limit the way one can discuss the truth in only one fashion.

Peter Lombard suggests what is readily acceptable by the Greeks and the Latins, that the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son and so in some fashion it must come from the Son. This is exactly what the filioque intends. Indeed, this is what St. Anselm says comes out of the filioque. “Let us also consider what happens if we assert the conclusion [that the Spirit proceeds from the Son] to be true. If it is true that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as he does form the Father, it of course follows that the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son as well as the Father, and that the Spirit is given and sent by the Son as well as by the Father, which things divine authority teaches, and absolutely no falsity results.”[3] What St. Anselm is doing here is a typical logical strategy: one assumes the truth of one’s position and see if it relates to and validates known truths or if it contradicts them; if it ends up requiring a denial of some truth, then one can say the position cannot be true, but if it points to the truth, then one can continue to affirm one’s position.

While the Greeks misconstrue the words so as to suggest something contrary to the monarchy of the Father, the Latins point out that their use of the filioque falls under the same semantic meaning as “Spirit of the Son” and so entails an orthodox interpretation of the words. This means, moreover, that the monarchy of the Father is to be preserved as we can find in St Bonaventure’s description of the Father:

Since it is proper to the Father that He be without birth and ungenerated, He is the beginning without a beginning and therefore He is the Father. Innascibility designates Him in a negative manner, and as a consequence it designates Him by the mode of position, because innascibility in the Father posits the source of fullness. The beginning without a beginning designates Him by the mode of position in a negative manner. Being the Father designates Him by the mode of position and relation, properly, completely, and determinately.[4]

Charity is needed, and if the range of possible meanings for different texts can be shown as ones which allow for agreement, one can be seen as proclaiming the same faith; to be sure, some can be better at it and using better methods at pointing to the faith than others, but because of the great transcendental mystery of God, any discussion of God must allow for this if we are not going to end up in bitter fights which separate everyone from each other, a separation which goes against the very desire of Christ who prayed for Christian unity.

2. BY AUTHORITATIVE TEXTS OF THE GREEKS, HE SHOWS THAT THE HOLY SPIRIT PROCEEDS ALSO FROM THE SON. And so it is that some of their Catholic teachers, understanding that the meaning of the above words, by which the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Son and be of the Son, is one and the same, have professed that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son. Hence, Athanasius, in the Symbol of Faith: “The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son; not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding.” See, he plainly says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Now, Peter Lombard tries to demonstrate the unity which lay behind the Greeks and the Latins. However, the texts which he uses to do this, sadly, are not always the best – because some of them are from texts which have been falsely attributed to Greek authors. This, for example, is what we have here. He is using the Athanasian Creed, a text which is not from Athanasius but was assumed to be so by many in the West for centuries. This mistake is important, because it points to the kind of confusion which lay between Greeks and Latins; each had their primary texts in their own languages, which were clear and helpful in their context, but when Greeks or Latins tried to engage each other’s textual traditions, they often got the other’s tradition wrong. In trying to prove one’s side against the other, the Greeks and Latins did not have the textual apparatus needed to properly engage each other and to find those sources which would best serve unity. Nonetheless, this does not make the  point of Lombard wrong, but rather, it shows that he engaged it by mistaken means. We can find sources, like St Maximus the Confessor, who did engage the filioque in patristic times and accepted how the Greeks and Latins did have a unity of faith despite their differing ways of teaching it.[5] Indeed, what he suggested is that the Latins are pointing to the way the Spirit proceeded through (dia) the Son. This, of course, allows for the Spirit proceeding from (ek) the Son, because of what St. Basil said of the words above. Thus, we could use St John of Damascus and his acceptance of this formula to show that the meaning of the Latins is acceptable when understood in this fashion.  He stated: “We also confess that He was manifested and communicated to us through the Son, for ‘He breathed,’ it says, ‘and he said to his disciples: Receive ye the Holy Ghost.’”[6]

3. Didymus, too, their greatest teacher, in the book, On the Holy Spirit, says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son: “The Saviour, who is Truth, says: For he will not speak from his own self, that is, not without me, nor without my authority or the Father’s, because he is inseparable from me and from the Father’s will, because he is not from himself; he is from the Father and me. For this very thing, that he is and speaks, comes to him from the Father and me.” Also: “The Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of wisdom, cannot hear from the Son’s speech anything he does not know because he is the very thing which is being spoken by the Son, namely God proceeding from God, the Spirit of truth proceeding from Truth, the consoler emanating from consolation.”

Now, Peter Lombard brings forward a legitimate Greek source: Didymus the Blind. However, the Greeks would point out the questionable authority Didymus possessed. This is not to discount the value of his words, but to point out that his writings were seen as suspect, and so relying upon him would not be seen as a good enough witness to justify a questionable stand. In this case, there would be little objection to what Didymus had to say, because it confirmed the Holy Spirit as being the Spirit of Christ who was sent out through the Son. What is important here is how Lombard is once again providing an interpretation of the filioque which does not require specific words, but a meaning that the Greeks have long found acceptable. This heightens Lombard’s point about words. We must not be caught up on looking for a word which can be considered right for all times and places, because this is often difficult if not impossible; we need to find the right word which fits the audience, and look for and promote the right belief through the best words possible without confusing the words for the teaching itself.

4. Also, Bishop Cyril, in the Epistle addressed to Nestorius say: “The Spirit is understood per se according to his being the Spirit and not the Son, and yet he is not alien from the Son. For he is called the Spirit of truth, and flows from him as also from the Father.”

Once again, Lombard brings to the forefront a Greek author who has legitimately been seen as teaching a form of the filioque, and in this instance, the source is undisputable as to being authoritative. St. Cyril of Alexandria was the primary father behind the Council of Ephesus and in the rejection of the Nestorian heresy. In his writings he shows that the Spirit comes to us through the Son which is exactly the point and meaning Lombard sees as being necessary as a support for the filioque.  Indeed, Lombard could have quoted Letter 55 (instead of Letter 17 here),a letter in which St Cyril explains the teaching of the Nicene Faith. In it, St Cyril both affirms the monarchy of the Father and the procession of the Spirit through the Son:

After the thrice-blessed Fathers have brought to an end the statement about Christ, they mention the Holy Spirit. For they stated that they believe in him, just as they do in the Father and in the Son. For his is consubstantial with them and he is poured fourth, that is, he proceeds from the fountain of God the Father and he is bestowed on creation through the Son. Wherefore, Christ breathed upon the holy apostles saying, ‘Receive the Spirit.’ Therefore God the Spirit is from God, and not different from the substance which is highest of all, but is from that substance and in it and is its own.[7]

The unquestionable position of St Cyril of Alexandria in the development of Christian doctrine, as well as the unquestionable value his interpretation of the Nicene Creed provides Lombard the best representative of a Greek Father who can be used to defend the filioque (St. Maximus would have been his second best source, but he did not employ Maximus here). We see what, in St Cyril’s words, the procession through the Son indicates, and what, therefore, what Lombard suggests is in agreement with the Latin filioque. The Spirit must be seen as something other than a Son (either a Son of the Father, or a Son of the Son), and the Spirit must be seen as processing from the Father and through the Son. The procession of the Spirit through the Son is the flowing of the Spirit to creation; the economic Trinity reveals to us that there is a procession from the Son, but it is a procession which nonetheless keeps and does not displace the relative position of the Father in the Trinity.

5. John Chrysostom, too, in a homily On the Exposition of the Creed, speaks as follows: “This is the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, who shares out his gifts as he wills.” The same, in another homily: “The Holy Spirit is to be believed to be of the Father and of the Son. We say that this Holy Spirit is coequal to the Father and the Son and proceeds from the Father and the Son. Believe this, lest evil talk corrupt good customs.  — See how we have clear testimonies from the teachers of the Greeks by which it is shown that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And so let every tongue confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

The last figure Lombard tries to quote, St John Chrysostom, would indeed be a formidable source for him to use.  Alas, we have once again, false attributions. But his point has already been made: the faith of the Greeks, with wordage the Greeks are willing to accept, provides and points out the meaning Lombard believes the Latins indicate by the filioque. If properly understood, if understood in the light of these texts, the filioque can thus be shown as acceptable and does not proclaim what the Greeks wrongly ascribe it to mean. The rush to deal with words, to the letter, has left the Greeks and Latins fighting while ignoring the spirit behind their faith.