Energetic Procession

“For just as God is both beyond all things and in all things — for He Who only truly is, is the essence of all things, and while He is whole in all things He does not cease to be whole beyond all things, whole in the world, whole around the world, whole in the sensible creature, whole in the intelligible creature, whole creating the universe, whole created in the universe, whole in the whole of the universe and whole in its parts, since He is both the whole and the part, just as He is neither the whole nor the part — in the same way human nature in its own world (in its own subsistence) in its own universe and in its invisible and visible parts is whole in itself, and whole in its whole, and whole in its parts, and its parts are whole in themselves and whole in the whole.”

-John Scotus Eriugena Periphyseon, IV.759a-b

The Orthodox View

“Moreover, we have from the letter written by the same Saint Maximus to the priest Marinus concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, where he implies that the Greeks tried, in vain, to make a case against us, since we do not say that the Son is a cause or principle of the Holy Spirit, as they assert. But, not incognizant of the unity of substance between Father and the Son, as he proceeds from the Father, we confess that he proceeds from the Son, understanding processionem, of course, as “mission.” Interpreting piously, he instructs those skilled in both languages to peace, while he teaches both us and the Greeks that in one sense the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son and in another sense he does not proceed, showing the difficulty of expressing the idiosyncrasies of one language in another.”

–Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Anastasius Ad Ioannem Diaconum, PL 129, 560-61

“It is from the person [substantia] of the Father that the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds.”

– John Scotus Erigena, De Divisione Naturae, PL 122, 613

Note: John follows the older Latin understanding of substantia is hypostasis and essentia is ousia which is why I translate substantia as “person” here.

The view of the Heterodox

“The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father because he flows from his substance…and just as the Son received his substance from the Father by being begotten, so also he received from the Father the ability to send the Spirit of Truth from himself through proceeding…For just as the Father and the Son are of one substance, so too by procession from both did the Holy Spirit receive his consubstantial existence.”

–Ratramnus of Corbie, Contra Graecorum Opposita Romanam Ecclesiam Inflamantium, PL 121, 229

Ratramnus’ assumption that there is only one manner of coming forth from the Father echoing his presupposition on absolute divine simplicity:

“Therefore if the Son proceeds from God the Father and the Holy Spirit also proceeds, what will keep the Arians silent, not blaspheming that the Holy Spirit is also the Son of the Father.”

– Ibid., PL 121, 247

O Only-begotten Son and Word of God,

Thou Who are Immortal, yet didst deign

for our salvation to be incarnate through

the most holy Lady and Ever-Virgin

Mary, and without change didst become

Man and wast crucified, trampling upon

death by death, do Thou, O Christ our

God, Who are one of the Holy Trinity and

art glorified, together with the Father

and the Holy Spirit, save us.

- St. Justinian the Great, Emperor and Saint

Dear Readers,

As you know the blog the past month or so has been rather slow. This has been for a number of reasons.

First I judged it to be best to skip out on blogging during Lent. It freed up some time to spend with my family and gave me a bit of perspective. Sometimes you need to get away from something to see it more clearly.

Second, I have a paper forthcoming for publication and another one under review which along with my teaching duties has consumed a fair amount of my time. 

Third, I have been embroiled in an academic fracas since another person that I thought was a friend of mine, and a professing Christian, (I suppose thankfully that they aren’t Orthodox) turned out to be plagiarizing my most important work. For academic and legal reasons I am not able to write about this openly. But a word to the wise, if you are in academia, I wouldn’t share any of your best (or original) ideas in seminar with anyone. In my opinion, unless it is in print, formally published and unless there is verbatium copying, you simply can’t win, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. It doesn’t matter what a given policy states in terms of class presentations, colloquia or whatever. If it isn’t in print, you’ve lost. As I have learned this is the unspoken “gnosis” among academics. Silly me, I thought integrity mattered. The will to power crops up in the oddest of places. (See Time Bandits)

Consequently, I won’t be airing some of the cutting edge stuff or things I am kicking around, here anymore or any of my papers even though I have a copyright listed at the header of the blog. It just isn’t sufficient protection against intellectual theft. So until material is accepted for publication, I need to be silent as a trappist church mouse.

So as soon as finals are over and the grading is done, (after the 15th) watch for some new posts on various topics. These will include a second part on metaethics, the inadequacy of Catholicism and Protestantism replies to the problem of evil, and the eternity of the world. I also plan to address some comments I left standing. And a number of you have made email inquiries that I haven’t been able to get back to, so please be patient.

Since things are not numbered together unless they belong in the same category or possess certain shared characteristics, the theological basis of the claim that there are seven and only seven “sacraments” can only be understood if we know what is being signified by that term. My pre-Orthodox perception was that if “sacrament” in the RC tradition and “Holy Mystery” in Orthodoxy were completely synonymous terms, then the claim that there were only seven such “mystical” acts within the Church plainly contradicted Scripture and Holy Tradition; for this reason I was comforted by the fact that Fr. Thomas Hopko was in agreement with this observation:

The practice of counting the sacraments was adopted in the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholics. It is not an ancient practice of the Church and, in many ways, it tends to be misleading since it appears that there are just seven specific rites which are “sacraments” and that all other aspects of the life of the Church are essentially different from these particular actions. The more ancient and traditional practice of the Orthodox Church is to consider everything which is in and of the Church as sacramental or mystical.

The Church may be defined as the new life in Christ. It is man’s life lived by the Holy Spirit in union with God. All aspects of the new life of the Church participate in the mystery of salvation. In Christ and the Holy Spirit everything which is sinful and dead becomes holy and alive by the power of God the Father. And so in Christ and the Holy Spirit everything in the Church becomes a sacrament, an element of the mystery of the Kingdom of God as it is already being experienced in the life of this world. (The Orthodox Faith, emphasis added)

The definition of sacrament presupposed by the claim that there are only seven is explicated in the Catechism of the Council of Trent:

In order, therefore, to explain more fully the nature of a Sacrament, it should be taught that it is a sensible object which possesses, by divine institution, the power not only of signifying, but also of accomplishing holiness and righteousness. Hence it follows, as everyone can easily see, that the images of the Saints, crosses and the like, although signs of sacred things, cannot be called Sacraments. That such is the nature of a Sacrament is easily proved by the example of all the Sacraments, if we apply to the others what has been already said of Baptism; namely, that the solemn ablution of the body not only signifies, but has power to effect a sacred thing which is wrought interiorly by the operation of the Holy Ghost. (COTC, Introduction to the Sacraments)

Since only those acts that meet the defined criteria as understood within the Augustinian tradition are properly called sacraments, it makes sense that Protestants do not affirm that there are seven sacraments for (1) they possess a different understanding of grace and (2) only signify with that term practices explicitly commanded by God. Certainly the following is conclusive evidence of the fact that there is a considerable lack of correspondence between RC and Orthodox terminologies:

Reply to Objection 6. Holy Water and other consecrated things are not called sacraments, because they do not produce the sacramental effect, which is the receiving of grace.

I trust that I am not the only one who has trouble with the claim that Holy Water is graceless, but the above only confirms my main point, which is that one must be very careful appropriating theological terms from other traditions.

“[G.E.] Moore is as it were the frame of the picture. A great deal has happaned since he wrote, and when we read him again it is startling to see how many of his beliefs are philosophically unstable now. Moore believed that good was a supersensible reality, that it was a mysterious quality, unrepresentable and indefinable, that it was an object of knowledge and (implicitly) that to be able to see it was in some sense to have it.  He thought of the good upon analogy of the beautiful; and he was, in spite of himself, a ‘naturalist’ in that he took goodness to be a real constituent of the world.  We know how severely and in what respects Moore was corrected by his successors. Moore was quite right (it was said) to separate the question ‘What does “good” mean?’ from the question ‘What things are good?’ though he was wrong to answer the second question as well as the first. He was right to say that good was indefinable because of judgments of value depend upon the will and choice of the individual. Moore was wrong (his critics continue) to use the quasi-aesthetic imagery of vision in conceiving of the good.  Such a view, conceiving the good on the analogy of the beautiful, would seem to make possible a contemplative attitude on the part of the moral agent, whereas the point about this person is that he is essentially and inescapably an agent. The image whereby to understand morality, it is argued, is not the image of vision, but the image of movement. Goodness and beauty are not analogous but sharply constrasting ideas. Good must be thought of, not as part of the world, but as a moveable label affixed to the world; for only so can the agent be pictured as responsible and free. And indeed this truth Moore himself half aprpehended when he separated the denotation from the cnotation of ‘good.’ The concept of ‘good’ is not the name of an esoteric object, it is the tool of every rational man. Goodness is not an object of insight or knowledge, it is a function of the will. Thus runs the correction of Moore and let me say with anticipation that on almost every point I agree with Moore and not with his critics.”

Iris Murdoch,  The Sovereignty of the Good, Routledge 1970, 2001, pp. 3-4

Read the rest of this entry »

An electronic version of Joseph Farrell’s extended work, God, History, and Dialectic is now available here for purchase. I’d recommend getting it while you are able.

St. Maximus the Confessor: “Thus, those who say that there is a gnomie in Christ, as this inquiry is demonstrating, are maintaining that he is a mere man, deliberating in a manner like unto us, having ignorance, doubt and opposition, since one only deliberates about something which is doubtful, not concerning what is free of doubt. By nature we have an appetite simply for what by nature is good, but we gain experience of the goal in a particular way, through inquiry and counsel.” [Joseph P. Farrell, Disputation with Pyrrhus, p. 31-32]

“There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” (Prov. 14:12)

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” (Gen. 3:6)

“For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Heb. 5:13-14)

“This heresy [filioque], which has united to itself many innovations, as has been said, appeared about the middle of the seventh century, at first and secretly, and then under various disguises, over the Western Provinces of Europe, until by degrees, creeping along for four or five centuries, it obtained precedence over the ancient orthodoxy of those parts, through the heedlessness of Pastors and the countenance of Princes. Little by little it overspread not only the hitherto orthodox Churches of Spain, but also the German, and French, and Italian Churches, whose orthodoxy at one time was sounded throughout the world, with whom our divine Fathers such as the great Athanasius and heavenly Basil conferred, and whose sympathy and fellowship with us until the seventh Ecumenical Council, preserved unharmed the doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. But in process of time, by envy of the devil, the novelties respecting the sound and orthodox doctrine of the Holy Ghost, the blasphemy of whom shall not be forgiven unto men either in this world or the next, according to the saying of our Lord (Matt. xii. 32), and others that succeeded respecting the divine Mysteries, particularly that of the world-saving Baptism, and the Holy Communion, and the Priesthood, like prodigious births, overspread even Old Rome; and thus sprung, by assumption of special distinctions in the Church as a badge and title, the Papacy. Some of the Bishops of that City, styled Popes, for example Leo III and John VIII, did indeed, as has been said, denounce the innovation, and published the denunciation to the world, the former by those silver plates, the latter by his letter to the holy Photius at the eighth Ecumenical Council, and another to Sphendopulcrus, by the hands of Methodius, Bishop of Moravia. The greater part, however, of their successors, the Popes of Rome, enticed by the antisynodical privileges offered them for the oppression of the Churches of God, and finding in them much worldly advantage, and “much gain,” and conceiving a Monarchy in the Catholic Church and a monopoly of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, changed the ancient worship at will, separating themselves by novelties from the old received Christian Polity. Nor did they cease their endeavors, by lawless projects (as veritable history assures us), to entice the other four Patriarchates into their apostasy from Orthodoxy, and so subject the Catholic Church to the whims and ordinances of men.”

Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848, sec. 6.

Signed, Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.