derivation as objectionable or inadmissible, and appealed to the constantly acknowledged unfathomableness of the acts. There remained, then, nothing for them, but to make out the reality and the difference of these processes, as facts, revealed by the Holy Scriptures, and to be adopted on their testimony; and then, to restrict themselves in the explanation of them, to mere definitions of the terms, considered as indicating certain relations, and as compared with other relations.

Accordingly, they distinguish the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost, on the one hand, from creation, and on the other hand, from each other. In creation the divine essence is the cause of something different from itself, which is made from nothing; but in the generation of the Son, the Father is the ground, and in the procession of the Spirit, the Father and Son are the ground (ratio),' of the subsistence of the divine essence in another zoonos inάožews: hence, it is said, the Son and Spirit are not created or made from nothing, but generated and proceeding from the substance of the Father, as God from God, light from light. These two processes, now, are distinguished from one another, ratione principii, since the generation is from the Father alone, but the procession is from the Father and Son; ratione termini, since it is said of the Son only that he is generated, while the Spirit is breathed forth (spiratio); ratione ordinis, since the generation is the first internal personal act, which is preceded by no other but is necessarily followed by a second, while the procession of the Spirit is the second act, which is preceded by the generation, but followed by no third process. Such dis

1 The words ratio and principium, rather than the word causa, are used to designate these acts; for the effect is a something distinct from its cause, while the ground of anything is not separated from that of which it is the ground, but is in it.

2 In the concrete notion of a divine person there are two elements, the notion of the divine essence and also of a particular mode of its subsistence; these personal acts, then, must be referred to both. Hence it is equally erroneous to speak of generation as the production of a second divine nature, or of a second subsistence not having the same nature. In the usual definitions of generatio and spiratio, sufficient care has not always been used to express both points equally we have e. g. the definition "a communication of the divine essence," which would be easily misunderstood as conveying the meaning, that the communication of the divine attributes was the chief thing, whence we have almost inevitably an incorrect conception of the personal subsistence. It were better to define generation, as that act of the Father by which he is the ground of the subsistence of the divine nature under the bypostatic character of the Son; and to define procession in an analogous way.

1847.]

Views of the Greek Church.

29

tinctions as these have been urged, but it need not be shown that they are merely external ones, and necessarily must be so, if, for want of an adequate philosophical view, we cannot or will not make the analogy of our own self-consciousness the basis of our illustrations. Since these distinctions were so formal, one would think that there was the less need of so zealous a discussion of the question, whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone, as we find in the controversies of the Greek and Roman churches.

The motives which originally led the Greek church to hold with exactitude to the Nicene formula, "who proceeded from the Father," and the Western church, particularly the Spanish, to add "and the Son," were not at all opposite to one another; and neither could justly reproach the other with molesting the truth. The Greeks were led to their view, partly by the way in which they were accustomed to maintain the divine monarchy in consistence with the triplicity, since the Father was regarded as “the original, the root and the fountain of divinity,” (dopýr, óíçav xai nŋThe The Deorros); partly by their opposition to the Pneumatomachists, since the latter seemed to exhibit the Spirit as created by the Son and subordinate to him. On the other hand, the Western church, in respect to the divine unity were satisfied by the notion of one identical divine nature in the three Persons; and sought to counteract the Arian subordination of the Son to the Father, by making him equal with the Father also in his relation. to the Holy Ghost. Assuredly, neither could the Occidental church accuse the Greeks of not sufficiently acknowledging the consubstantiality and the divinity of the Son; nor on the other hand could the Eastern church accuse the Western of not holding to the monarchy, and to the divinity of the Spirit.2 Upon a question, therefore, which, however it might be answered, would endanger no article of faith, and which was decided by no direct

'Conf. Neander's Kirchengesch. Bd. II. Abth. II. S. 896-901.

* That the Father is the fountain and original of the whole of deity is a formula always recognized in the Western church: conf, the decretum unionis of the Florentine council, A. D. 1439, in the introduction: "The Latins affirm that they do not say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son with the design of excluding the Father from being the fountain and original (fons ac principium) of the whole of deity, even of the Son and Holy Spirit. On the other hand no one will doubt the perfect congruity of the Greek view with that given in the Athanasian creed, which was originally more occidental, if he but read the passages bearing upon it in the exdoos of John of Damascus (L. 1. ep. 8 seq.).

assertion of the Scripture, there was the less ne cessity of division in the church, in proportion as the parties were agreed, that these relations are inscrutable to man's understanding: and it would of course follow, that any speculative grounds of decision, if such there were, even if they should be more favorable to one hypothesis than to another, ought still to be regarded as of subordinate weight. As to the Scriptures, the Greek church could urge, that in the only passage in which the procession (ixлógevois) of the Spirit is spoken of, (John 15: 26-we will not inquire whether this be its doctrinal sense,) it is derived "from the Father;" while the Latin church could say, that the Spirit is not only sent by the Father, but also by the Son (John 15: 26. 16: 7), and that he is called the Spirit of Christ and of the Son (Rom. 8: 9. Gal. 4: 6), which would allow the inference of a similar relation in respect of his subsistence also. But as the Greeks denied the validity of this inference, since it was not confirmed by the testimony of Scripture, so might the Latins maintain, that the procession from the Son was as little excluded by the procession from the Father, as is the fact that the Spirit is sent by the Son, (which is elsewhere proved,) excluded, because he is in one place (John 14:26) described as sent only by the Father. In this state of the contest, how desirable that the parties should have been satisfied with the mediating formula,-that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. This, although it would not have prevented any one from making additional statements, would not have excluded any view compatible with the formula; but this is just what theological disputants have seldom been able to conclude upon. The Greeks protest against every interpretation. which would make the Son the ground, not merely of the giving but also of the subsistence of the Spirit; they grant that the gene

1 This is the position maintained by the Archbishop Theophanes Prokopoviez in his Tractatus de processione Spiritus Sancti (Gotha 1771), with great thoroughness and acuteness. His chief argument against the Western doctrine is, that it is not based upon Scripture; yet he also applies theological principles. "Vain is the argumentation," he says, "the Son is knowledge, the Holy Spirit is love, therefore the latter is produced by the former. If anything can hence be inferred it is only, that the Son is first in order, and is presupposed by the Holy Spirit, as knowledge is presupposed in order to love." And this is no more than what we concede, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father by (per) the Son, that is, the Son being presupposed.

? John of Damasc. de fide orth. 1, 12—not ¿§ avrov but di abrov. More full is Gregory Nyss. c. Eunom. L. I. The same formula is found among the Latins, with the needful explanation. Conf. Thos. Aquin. Summ. 1, qu. 36, art. 3— who follows Hilarius de Trin. L. XII. fin.

1847.]

The Lutheran View.

31

ration of the Son may be regarded as the condition of the procession of the Spirit, but they say, that the Father alone is the ground or cause (attos) of his divinity. The Latin church, on the other hand, agreed with this formula only in the sense, that as the Son has from the Father his subsistence and his divine nature, so too he has this from him, that the Holy Ghost proceeds from him;3 but they do not concede any difference in the mode in which the Father and the Son are the source of the Spirit who proceeds from them. And even the statement in the Florentine formula of union, which has the air of being made to set aside the chief objection of the Greek church-that the Latin church seemed to hold to two principles or sources of the procession; even this statement, which is, that in the procession of the Spirit the Father and the Son are to be regarded as one principle, and that the act itself is one identical act,—is in fact most opposite to the real views of the Greek church; one cannot, therefore, wonder that they indignantly repelled the decree of union.

The Lutheran theologians have remained true in this respect to the doctrinal type of the occidental church; with even more strictness than many of the Scholastics4 they maintained the theorem, that the Holy Spirit proceeds (spiratus est) from the Father and the Son, as from one principle, in one indivisible act. We cannot blame them for this; since this position was so interwoven with the mode of exhibiting the doctrine of the Trinity, that whoever kept the latter could not well depart from the former. Nor can we see, that the inference from the relation in which both the Father and the Son stand to the sending of the Spirit, to that of his like procession from both, is as groundless as it seemed to the Greek church-according to the maxim, princi

This is the meaning of Prokopovicz-when he says (pp. 337-349 of his tractatus) that the Fathers here use per, not for ex but for post; not for indicating the cause but the order—an order not of time, but of conditionality.

John of Damasc. expressly says: póvos yàp airıç ó zarp; in his interpretation of the Homily de sancto sabbatho (II. p. 815, ed, of Lequien) he says: the Spirit is called the Spirit of the Son, because he is by him revealed and imparted to men; not because he had his subsistence from him.

Decret. Unionis concil. Florent.-the essential parts are cited in Gieseler's Chh. Hist. Vol. 2. Pt. 4. p. 541-3: "Since all things which belong to the Father he has given by generation to his only begotten Son, except that he is the Father; this thing also, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, the Son has eternally from the Father." Conf. Aquinas, ubi supra. The idea belongs to Augustin, de Trin. XV. 17. Conf. Petri Lomb. Sentent. I. dist. XII.

• Quenstedt rejects the expression " processio per filium," which even Aqui

nas concedes in a certain sense.

pium missionis in tempore est principium originis in aeterno.1 Yet the theologians of Tübingen, when this subject was discussed in their correspondence with the Patriarch Jeremias,2 might have been more forbearing towards the view of the Greek church, since, as has been remarked, the Scriptures do not decide directly against it, and the rational grounds for the opposite doctrine are not free from objections; while all that the Christian consciousness demands would be satisfied, if it were conceded, that we cannot conceive of the imparting of the Spirit except through the Son. Yet, since that time, the contesting of the Greek doctrine has become a standing article of Protestant polemics.

2. Let us turn now from the personal acts to the personal properties or qualities. The latter flow from the former. As no complete act can be conceived of without subject and object, so the personal acts of generation and procession cannot be otherwise represented. Since it is a universal law of language, that wherever the logical subject is also the grammatical subject, (e. g. the Father generates,) the active is used, and wherever the logical object is the grammatical subject, (e. g. the Son is generated,) the passive is employed; so here, too, as these acts are referred either to their subject or their object, we make a distinction into generatio et spiratio activa et passiva, (thus, Pater generat, Filius generatur;-Pater et Filius spirant, Spiritus S. spiratur); although it should be remarked, that this designation is to be regarded only as a grammatical one, since there cannot be actual passivity in God. (On this account it were perhaps better, instead of the expression generatio et spiratio passiva, to adopt another, often used, generatio et spiratio terminative spectata). The generatio activa, now, is also called paternity, and this is the personal property of the Father; the generatio passiva is called sonship, and is the personal property of the Son; the spiratio passiva is also called procession, and is the personal property of the Holy Spirit; for, it is these very relations which make it necessary to distinguish the persons of the Godhead, and which constitute the idea of these persons. We must make this distinction, because, although God himself is the generating and the generated, although he is both

1 Quenstedt ubi supra. Compare what is said in the fourth section upon the relation of the essential and revealed Trinity.

2 Acta theologor. Wirtemberg. et patriarchae Constantinop. (1584); p. 159— 162 and p. 270–296.

3 To prove this, and especially to show that the apparent exception of intransitive actions is not really such, must be reserved to the logical or metaphysical investigation of these categories.