[Click here for the companion YouTube video]
QUESTION: The original version of the Nicene Creed (affirmed by the Council of Constantinople in 381) states that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” This is the version of the creed used by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Western churches use a version of the creed that states that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” What are the theological implications, if any, of these different views of procession?
VLADIMIR LOSSKY (1903–1958) was a Russian scholar and Eastern Orthodox theologian, Lossky’s early education took place in St. Petersburg, where he studied Patristic literature and the writings of the early church fathers. The Bolshevik government expelled Lossky’s family in 1922, who then relocated to Paris. Lossky graduated from the Sorbonne in 1927 and soon began to teach dogmatic theology at the St. Dionysius Institute in Paris. Lossky published his masterpiece, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, in 1944 in French, which was then translated into English in 1957. This is considered the first treatment of Eastern Orthodox theology that was accessible to western readers. Its impact cannot be overstated.
EASTERN ORTHODOXY considers the rulings of the first seven ecumenical councils as authoritative. This included the Council of Constantinople in 381, which affirms orthodox trinitarianism. Lossky agrees with this, and this will therefore not be addressed in the readings. Rather, the major distinctions of Eastern Orthodoxy will be addressed, especially as they relate to the Trinity. This includes the inseparability of theology and mysticism; an apophatic approach to theology, that is, the theology of negation; the distinction between divine essence and divine energies. And last, and perhaps most famous, that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father rather than from the Father and the Son.
READING 1 (Theology and Mysticism): The eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by the Church … to put it another way, we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically. Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other. [Mystic Theology, p. 8]
READING 2 (Apophatic Theology): The apophaticism characteristic of the theological thought of the Eastern Church is not an impersonal mysticism, an experience of the absolute, divine nothingness in which both the human person and God as person are swallowed up. The goal to which apophatic theology leads, if, indeed, we may speak of goal or ending when, as here, it is a question of an ascent towards the infinity; this infinite goal is not a nature or an essence, nor is it a person; it is something which transcends all notion both of nature and of person: it is the Trinity … If we speak of processions, of acts, or of inner determinations, these expressions–involving, as they do, the ideas of time, becoming and intention–only to show to what extent our language, indeed our thought, is poor and deficient before the primordial mystery of revelation. Again, we are forced to appeal to apophatic theology in order to rid ourselves of concepts proper to human thought, transforming them into steps by which we may ascend to the contemplation of a reality which the created intelligence cannot contain. [Mystic Theology, pp. 44-46]
READING 3 (Divine Energies): What is the nature of the relationship by which we are able to enter into union with the Holy Trinity? If we were able at a given moment to be united to the very essence of God and to participate in it even in the very least degree, we should not at the moment be what we are, we should be God by nature. God would then no longer be the Trinity … We are unable , therefore, to participate in either the essence or the hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. Nevertheless, the divine promise cannot be an illusion: we are called to participate in the divine nature … This distinction is that between the essence of God, or His nature, properly so-called, which is inaccessible, unknowable and incommunicable; and the energies or divine operations …They are the outpourings of the divine nature which cannot set bounds to itself, for God is more than essence. The energies might be described as that mode of existence of the Trinity which is outside of its inaccessible essence. God thus exists both in His essence and outside of His essence.[Mystic Theology, pp. 69-73]
READING 4 (Procession of the Holy Spirit): The Greeks saw in the formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son a tendency to stress the unity of nature at the expense of the real distinction between the persons … The hypostatic characteristics (paternity, generation, procession), find themselves more or less swallowed up in the nature or essence … The relationships, instead of being characteristics of the hypostases, are identified with them … The Greek Fathers always maintained that the principle of unity in the Trinity is the person of the Father … This is why the East has always opposed the formula of filioque, which seems to impair the monarchy of the Father. [Mystic Theology, pp. 57-58]
Leave a Reply