Biblical Theology: Past, Present, and Future (II)
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 1 – Fall 2013
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By A. Edward Siecienski. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 355 pages. Hardcover, $49.95.
This work is a result of Siecienski’s extended research based on his dissertation on “Maximus the Confessor’s theology of the procession and its use at the Council of Ferrara-Florence” (vii). The greatest value of this work is that we now have the first monograph that deals with the entire history of the filioque controversy from the second century to the present. Siecienski tries to give a fair presentation of the respective views of the Western and Eastern Churches, although his favor for the Eastern Church and Maximus the Confessor among other Eastern theologians is clearly visible concerning the filioque. Reading this work should assist both the Western and Eastern Churches in understanding why one counterpart Church cannot accept the other one’s traditional position.
The Eastern Church rejects the Western doctrine of the filioque (the process of the Spirit from the Father and from the Son) for the following reasons. First, the filioque destroys the monarchy of the Father by creating two causes (the Father and the Son) within the Trinity. Second, the filioque introduces a semi-Sabellianism by granting a unique personal property of the Father (i.e., generating power) to the Son. Third, the filioque was an illegitimate addition to the Nicene Creed that acknowledged the Spirit’s procession (ἐκπορεύεται) from the Father alone. In response to those critiques, the Western Church has argued, since Augustine, that the filioque does not create two causes in the process of the Spirit or destroy the monarchy of the Father because the Spirit proceeds principally from the Father and from the Son who is eternally with the Father. The Western Church has been very confident about the preservation of a personal distinction between the Father and the Son in the process of the Spirit because the Spirit proceeds from the Father as “origin not of origin” (principium non de principio) and from the Son as “the origin of origin” (principium de principio). Lastly, the filioque is not an arbitrary or illegitimate addition to the Nicene Creed but a more explicit clarification of the procession of the Spirit.
Concerning the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, the historic Eastern Church’s position is that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds (ἐκπορεύεται) from (ἐκ) the Father through (διά) the Son, not from (ἐκ) the Son. The idea “through the Son” acknowledges that the Son has a role in the procession of the Holy Spirit in the immanent Trinity. However, the Son’s involvement in the eternal being of the Spirit does not mean that the Spirit receives his hypostatic being from the Son. Therefore, the Eastern theologians have preserved a theological distinction between “to proceed” (ἐκπορεύεται) and “to come forth” (ἐξέρχομαι). The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father for his hypostatic being and comes from the Son for his manifestation in the intratrintarian relationship. The procession of the Spirit belongs to the personal property of the Father alone. The personal property of the Spirit is caused by his procession from the Father but manifested through the Son because the Father is not merely the Father but always the Father of the Son. Siecienski describes Maximus the Confessor’s position as the most ideal one that could be acceptable to the Western and the Eastern Churches. Siecienski indicates his optimism for a theological reconciliation between the two Churches through Maximus’s view, according to which the Son really participates in the process of the Holy Spirit as the mediator, not as the cause of the procession. Siecienski asserts that Maximus developed what Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria taught, and Palamas’s distinction between the divine essence and the divine energy is a rightful implication of Maximus’s doctrine of the process.
However, Siecienski’s hope for the reunion of the two Churches based on Maximus’s affirmation of the Son’s meaningful role in the process of the Spirit would be neither easy nor soon achieved. The official website of the Vatican (www.vatican. va) still shows that the Roman Catholic Church has no desire to compromise her historical position on the filioque or yield to the teaching of the Eastern Church. Despite recent ecumenical councils between the Eastern Church and Anglicans or the Old Catholics, the Vatican has three rationales for its firm belief in the filioque. First, the Vatican feels that Catholics have a Biblical foundation of the filioque. Like Augustine and Karl Barth, the Vatican sees the reflection of the immanent Trinity in the economic Trinity. In light of John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7, the Vatican depicts the Son as the subject, rather than an instrument, of the procession of the Spirit, whether in eternity or in time. Second, the Vatican reminds the Catholics and others of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Second Council of Lyons (1274), and the Council of Florence (1439) where both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church accepted the procession of the Spirit from the Son, not merely through the Son. Third, the Vatican still sees Ephraim, Athanasius, Basil, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, John Damascene from the East and Tertullian, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine from the West as the supporters of the filioque.
Unlike the Vatican’s appeal to the Latin fathers, Siecienski acknowledges only Augustine as the Latin theologian who talked about the filioque in a real sense. However, this reviewer is somewhat confused about Siecienski’s final view on Augustine. Siecienski precisely recognizes that Augustine tried to protect the Father’s monarchy in the process of the Spirit in eternity with the adverb “principaliter” (principally). The Spirit proceeds principally from the Father and from the Son. However, Siecienski comes to a surprising conclusion: “Augustine was deliberately attempting to ward off any idea of a ‘double procession’ of the Holy Spirit” (84). The adverb principaliter, according to Siecienski, shows the North African bishop’s denial of the Son’s being the “hypostatic origination” of the Spirit (83). In other words, the bishop of Hippo did not want to teach that the Son is causative somehow in the process of the being of the Spirit from the Father.
This reviewer wants to point out two things. First, Siecienski’s conclusion is self-contradictory, referring to his early evaluation of Augustine: “For Augustine . . . the Spirit, who is the mutual love of Father and Son . . . proceeds, from both. While there are literally dozens of passages, chiefly from De Trinitate, the Tractates on the Gospel of John, and the Contra Maximinum, there could be adduced to demonstrate Augustine’s support for a double procession” (62). Second, Siecienski reads his Eastern theology of the filioque into Augustine’s principaliter. For Augustine, the Son is equal with the Father in their being the source of the Spirit, but the Son is the second only in the hypostatic order of the Trinity. Since the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son simultaneously, there was no time when the Son existed without sending the Spirit from himself. For Augustine, the word “principally” preserves both the Son’s equality with and distinction from the Father.
This book would be more beneficial to its readers if Siecienski could point out how Augustine’s exegesis influenced his theological descendants like Anselm and Aquinas in formulating the classical position of the Western Church on the filioque. Sometimes, Siecienski presents the Latin medieval theologians’ views as their unique contributions to the historical development of the doctrine of the filioque without realizing their exegetical and theological dependence upon Augustine.
In contrast to Siecienski, this reviewer would also argue that the filioque was primarily a Biblical and spiritual issue to Augustine and to the Western Christianity. Augustine taught the filioque not because it was predominantly effectual in defeating Arianism but because it would help Christians worship the triune God properly. Edmund Hill and other Augustinian scholars do not see De Trinitate as a polemic work. Rather, many regard it as Augustine’s instruction for Christian spiritual formation. Like Rahner, Augustine saw the inevitable connection between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity. Unlike Rahner, Augustine rightly rejected the absolute identity of the two Trinities. More than a century before Maximus in the East, Augustine in the West already taught the epistemological priority of the economic Trinity and the ontological priority of the immanent Trinity when discussing a relationship between the two Trinities. In the economy the Son was sent by the Father, and the Father was never sent by the Son. The Father sending the Son in the economy displays the former generating the latter in eternity. Augustine finds parallelism between the Son’s way of being and the Spirit’s way of being both in the economic Trinity and in the immanent Trinity. Therefore, the Father and the Son’s co-sending the Spirit in the economy also displays their co-generating the Spirit in eternity. Augustine could not ignore that the historical activities of the economic Trinity reveal the truth of the immanent Trinity.
Despite this reviewer’s disagreements, this book must be commended for its careful presentation of the historical development of the filioque controversy between the Western and Eastern Churches in their political and social contexts. This book is not for a MDiv student or a pastor. However, a professional researcher or a professor would want to use this book as an invaluable source for his or her work on the filioque.
