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Dual Processions of the Holy Spirit: Development of a Theological Tradition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Daniel J. Nodes
Daniel J. Nodes
Affiliation:
Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota 55104–1284, USA
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Extract

The theology of the Holy Spirit waited through the early Christian centuries until the main doctrines regarding the Trinity and the person of Christ had been forged. Even then pneumatology was introduced ‘by the back door’, in Theodore Campbell's phrase, that of how the Son was placed in the Father, Son and Spirit confession. While prayers to the Spirit were not lacking in the earliest liturgies, still, at Nicea the doctrine ‘had been disposed of in lapidary brevity’, as Jaroslav Pelikan has described the credal line, ‘and we believe in the Holy Spirit’. ‘Nor does there seem to have been a single treatise dealing specifically with the person of the Spirit composed before the second half of the fourth century’. After Nicea, however, controversy concerning the Spirit erupted ‘with a vengeance’, producing the same kind of energy that had accompanied the Christological debates. Pneumatomachi, Tropici, and Macedonians, though losers in the fight for orthodox doctrine on the Spirit's nature, had mounted formidable campaigns, as Arians had done over the relationship of Christ to the Father. But disagreement over the Spirit had an even greater impact than Arian opposition in that the filioque remains a principal difference between the Catholic and Orthodox, and now Catholic and Anglican, creeds.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1999

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References

1 Campbell, Theodore, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Athanasius’, Scottish Journal of Theology 27 (1974): 409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Develofment of Doctrine, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1971), p. 211Google Scholar. Pelikan also points to Gregory of Nazianzus' speculation that the theology of the Spirit waited until a third era, since ‘the Old Testament proclaimed the Father manifestly… the New [Testament] manifested the Son… Now the Spirit himself is resident among us’. See also Theodore Campbell, ‘Thought on the role and nature of the Spirit in the life of the Church had not developed up to the fourth century, due perhaps to the preponderance of reflection on the logos-sophia initiated in early apologists such as Justin Martyr; however, the Spirit was never totally lost sight of in the Church's practical life of liturgical prayer and ritual’ (‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Athanasius’, 409).

3 Again using a phrase of Campbell, ibid.

4 Englezakis, Benedict, ‘Should the Orthodox Speak of a “Temporal Procession” of the Holy Spirit?’ Eastern Churches Review 9 (1977), 92.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 91.

6 Ibid., p. 93.

7 For an effort to develop a new theology of the procession of the Holy Spirit see in particular Schoonenberg, Piet, ‘De Voortkomst van de Heilige Geest: Gedachten naar annleiding van het dispuutover het ‘Filioque’,’ Tijdschrift voor Theologie 23 (1983): 105–124Google Scholar. For the theme of dual processions from a contemporary Orthodoxy perspective see the article by Benedict Englezakis cited above (n. 4).

8 Not all early theologians were comfortable even with the distinction between eternal procession and temporal mission. Marcellus of Ancyra, for example, bishop of Constantinople at the beginning of the fourth century, was concerned that the distinction between the Spirit's procession from the Father and his being sent into the world by the Son divided the person of the Spirit. See Die Fragmente Marcells 67 in Eusebius Werk, vol. 4. (Berlin, 1906, repr. 1972), pp. 197–198Google Scholar. Therefore, ‘he did not distinguish between the eternal or ‘immanent’ proceeding of the Spirit and the temporal or ‘economic’ sending of the spirit’ (Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, p. 212)Google Scholar. But the majority of Eastern bishops did make efforts at such a distinction as a way to acknowledge one and the same Spirit while having a means to answer several problems. They saw the immutable Spirit's entry into mutable creation, the infinite God's presence in finite creation in a distinct manner as spirit, as analogous to the way God was believed to have entered material creation in a distinct way as the incarnate Logos. Early Theologians also labored to explain how the one Spirit was able to come to all of creation but also to individuals and how the Spirit as the gift of God sent into the world can be as great as the giver. But although there was general acknowledgement, based on Scripture (e.g., Jn. 20.22; Lk. 6.19) that the Son sent his Spirit into the world, there was no clear consensus on what that meant, and how that sending differed, if at all, from the gift of the Spirit by the Father. In the history of theological literature, these issues developed into a standard part of the scholastic repertory, were debated throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and figured in the debates between East and West through the whole period.

9 Campbell, , ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Athanasius’, p. 438.Google Scholar

10 Letter to Serapion, 1, 20, trans. Shapland, C.R.B. (London, 1951), pp. 116–117.Google Scholar

11 Campbell, , ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Athanasius’, pp. 434–435 (my emphases).Google Scholar

12 Ambrose's treatise On the Holy Spirit, for example, was composed not to discuss procession as such but to refute Macedonius, the bishop of Constantinople, and his followers, who were accused of subordinating the Holy Spirit to the Son and holding that the Spirit was not entitled to the same divine honors.

13 Spiritus sanctus unus est, qui efferbuit in prophetis, insufilatus est apostolis, copulatus est patri et filio in baptismatis sacramentis' (1, 4, 55). ‘Benedictionum suarum praesulem spiritum deus ipse testetur’ (1, 7, 89). ‘Deus dat spiritum sanctum’ (1, 8, 90). ‘Spiritus quoque sanctus, cum procedit a patre et a filio, non separatur. Non separatur a patre, non separatur a filio’ (1, 11, 120). The phrase that is seen as equivalent to ‘Holy Spirit’ in the Old Testament is ‘spirit of God’.

14 ‘Nec illud mediocre, quod de throno dei exire fluvium legimus. Sic enim habes dicente Iohanne evangelista: ‘Et ostendit mihi flumen aquae vivae splendidum tamquam crystallum procedens de sede dei et agni’… Hic est utique ‘fluvius de dei sede procedens', hoc est spiritus’ (3, 20, 153).

15 De Trinitate, 11, 12–5, 16, 17. Cf. 15, 17, 27: ‘Satis de Patre et Filio, quantum per hoc speculum atque in hoc aenigmate videre potuimus, locuti sumus. Nunc de Spiritu sancto, quantum Deo donante videre conceditur, disserendum est’.

16 ‘Exiit enim, non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus… Quod autem datum est, et ad eum qui dedit refertur, et ad eos quibus dedit’ (De Trinitate 5, 14, 15)

17 ‘Sed si non procedit nisi cum datur, nec pro-cederet utique priusquam esset cui daretur… Nam donum potest esse et antequam detus; donatum autem nisi datum fuerit nullo modo dici potesi’ (ibid. 5, 15, 16).

18 ‘Nec moveat quod Spiritus sanctus cum sit coaeternus Patri et Filio, dicitur tamen aliquid ex tempore, veluti hoc ipsum quod donatum diximus. Nam sempiterne Spiritus donum, temporaliter autem donatum’ (ibid. 5, 16, 17).

19 ‘Nam et si dominus non dicitur, nisi cum habere incipit servum, etiam ista appellatio relativa ex tempore est Deo: non enim sempiterna creatura est, cuius est ille Dominus…. Ecce Dominum esse non sempiternum habet, ne cogamur etiam sempiternam creaturam dicere, quia ille sempiterne non dominaretur, nisi etiam ista sempiterne famularetur’ (ibid. 5, 16, 17).

20 ‘In tantum ergo Donum Dei est, in quantum datur eis quibus datur. Apud se autem Deus est, etsi nemini detur, quia Deus erat Patri et Filio coaeternus antequam cuiquam daretur’ (De Trinitate, 15, 19, 37).

21 Cf. De Trinitate 15, 26, 46.

22 A perennial issue surrounding the analogy of the procession of the Spirit as divine caritas was whether, in what was thought to be a temporal procession, not the Spirit himself was received but only his gifts.

23 ‘Aut idipsum esse procedere de Patre: ut cum mittit vel dat eum Pater, tunc tantum procedat a Patre, aut hoc esse procedere, quod est de Patre…. At si dicimus duas Spiritus sancti posse nominari processiones: unam, quanto exsistit de Patre; alteram quando datur vel mittitur, non puto hoc esse negandum, si unaquaeque in suo sensu intelligitur’ (De processione Spiritus sancti, chap. 6 [PL 158.296], trans. Hopkins, J. and Richardson, H., Anselm of Canterbury: Trinity, Incarnation, and Redemption: Theological Treatises (New York, 1970), pp. 95–96.Google Scholar

24 Buytaert, E.M. and Mews, C.J., eds., Petri Abaelardi opera theologica, vol. 3, (Turnholt, 1987), p. 15Google Scholar. The Theologia ‘Scholarium’, also known as the Introductio ad theologiam, is considered to contain ‘Abelard's most mature reflections on the nature of the Trinity and of God's action in the world’ (ibid., p. 203).

25 See, e.g. Timeas 34e ff. Anima translatesΨυχ in the version of Calcidius.

26 … eum animam magis quam spiritum appellavit' (Theologia ‘scholarium’, 2, 174; CCL, cont. med. 13, p. 492).

27 Vocet itaque spiritum sanctum Plato animam secundum effectum operum; nos vero dicamus spiritum secundum naturalem suae bonitatis affectum, quem ita ab aeterno habuit ut tune opere eum impleret quando implendum esse provident. Dicat ille animam incepisse secundum effecta; nos vero spiritum in affectu suae bonitatis aeternaliter perseverare. Dicat ille animam incepisse; nos spiritum omnino eternum esse. Sit processio spiritus secundum affectum aeterna, quia scilicet ab aeterno sic volvit; sit processio animae secundum effectum temporalis' (ibid. 2, 176).

28 Utramque spiritus processionem, tam secundum effecta scilicet quam secundum affectum, a sanctis patribus distinctam esse cognovimus. De processione quidem efficaciae Beda in Omelia dominicae primae post Ascensionem ita loquitur: ‘Cum spiritus gratia datur hominibus, profecto mittitur spiritus a patre, mittitur et a filio. Procedit a patre, procedit et a filio, quia et eius missio ipsa processio est qua ex patre procedit et filio’ (ibid. 2, 177).

29 ‘Quid itaque mirum, cum duobus modis spiritum procedere dicamus, si secundum alterum processionis modum dicatur spiritus a nobis, et secundum alterum vocetur anima a philosophis? Illud ergo spiritus aeternaliter, hoc temporaliter habet’. (ibid. 2, 178). The same proof texts from Bede and Augustine are also found in the Summa sententiarum variously attributed to Hildebert of Lavardin, Hugh of St. Victor and Othon de Lucques (PL 171. 1077–78; PL 176, 52A). See Glorieux, P., ‘Pour revaloriser Migne: Tables rectificatives’ Mélanges de Science Religieuse, Cahier Supplémentaire 9 (1952):64, 68Google Scholar. Based on Vernet, Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, art. Hugues, col. 251–257.

30 Diligenter adnotandum est quod gemina est processio Spiritus Sancti: aeterna videlicet, quae ineffabilis est, qua a Patre et Filio ab aeterno processit; et temporalis, qua a Patre et Filio ad sanctificandum creaturam procedit. Et sicut ab aeterno communiter ac simul procedit a Patre et Filio, ita et in tempore communiter et simul ab utroque procedit ad creaturam, non divisim a Patre in Filium et a Filio ad creaturam, Unde Augustinusin XV libro De Trinitate' [myemphasis] (Dist. 14, c.l, a. 1) Sententiae in IV libris distinctae (Grottaferrata, 1971).Google Scholar

31 ‘His verbis aperte ostendit donationem gratiae Spiritus Sancti dici processionem vel missionem eiusdem. Sed cum donatio vel datio non sit nisi temporalis, constat quia et haec processio sive missio temporalis est’ (14, c.l, a.2).

32 The next article addresses the charge that the Spirit himself is not given but only his gifts (dona, data) or his grace (gratia). But he has Aug. De Trin. 15.26.46 and Ambrose De Spir. 1 ch. 4–5 as proof texts to show that it is Spirit himself.

33 D. 14, a. 1, art l, q. 1–3. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, ed. Mandonnet, P., vol. 1 (Paris, 1929), pp. 316–329.Google Scholar

34 ‘Videtur quod nulla processio Spiritus sancti sit temporalis. Sicut enim generatio est proprietas aeterna Filii secundum quam distinguitur a Patre, ita processio Spiritus sancti est proprietas secundum quam distinguitur a Patre et Filio. Sed generatio Filii non dicitur temporalis nisi secundum naturam assumptam. Cum igitur Spiritus sanctus nullam assumpserit naturam, nec assumet, videtur quod nulla sit eius processio temporalis’ (14.1.1).

35 ‘Poterit ergo processio istius amoris dupliciter considerari: vel secundum quod tendit in obiectum aeternum, et sic dicetur aeterna processio, vel secundum quod procedit ut amor in obiectum creatum; inquantum scilicet per illum amorem, creaturae aliquid a Deo confertur; et sic dicetur processio temporalis ex eo quod ex novitate effectus consurgit nova relatio creaturae ad Deum’ (14, 1, 1).

36 The Scholastic tradition also continues to speak of the origin of both the Son and the Spirit in the Godhead as processions. The internal activity of the Godhead through which the Father generates the Word was variously called the processio intellectualis or processio naturalis. The procession of the spirit is distinguished as a processio per voluntatem. This distinction, while treating an aspect of procession not central to the theme of this paper, is worth observing as another Western tradition developed with considerable influence of Augustine.

37 Giles's intention has been described as attempting ‘to liberate scholastic theology from the textual and systematic structure of Aristotelianism and establish a new humanistic theology based on the texts and philosophy of Plato’ (Massa, Eugenio, I fondamenti metafisici della ≪dignitas hominis≫, e testi inedili di Egidio da Viterbo. [Turin, 1954], p. 3)Google Scholar. Giles thus reveals himself as a Renaissance thinker much influenced by Humanism, who responded with enthusiasm to his age's renewed interest in platonism. He belongs to the generation that immediately followed Ficino and his contemporaries, predecessors who had composed detailed commentaries on the Platonic love dialogues, particularly the Symposium and Phaedrus. Yet he was also a theologian well-versed in Scripture and the patristic and scholastic traditions.

38 Trinkaus, Charles, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1970), p. 527Google Scholar. For a description of Giles's commentary see my ‘Humanism in the Commentary ad mentem Platonis of Giles of Viterbo’, Augustiniana 45 (1995), 285–298.Google Scholar

39 ‘Sane divinus ille Amor ex aliquo semper effertur in aliquid, quod si qua manat ex alio cogitetur Amor, aeterna progressione fluit a Parente ac Filio. Sin vero ut vergit in aliquid prospiciatur, aut qua in id vergit, quod amatur, velut a patre proles, atque ea progressio perpetua est, aut qua in id rapitur, quod ex Amore fit, velut in munera, quae hominibus divinitus tribuuntur. Qui quidem divini Amoris adventus, tam aeternus non est, quam homines, quibus ilia donantur’. All passages from the commentary in this article are taken from distindio 14A and have been edited from three of the five mss. that contain the work: Rome, Vat. Lat. 6325; Naples, BN, VIII F 8; Naples, BN XIV H 71.

40 ‘Neque accessus ille, illaque curatio quicquam in Deo collocat novi nisi ex nostra quadam cogitatione. Sed id in nobis oritur, quod ad aliquid est, in nobisque non eo in amore mutatio fit’.

41 ‘Quemadmodum orientem solem spectantibus, dexter est antarcticus polus, articussinister, quibus rursus occidentem spectantibus contraria ratio fit, efficiturque, et dexter articus et sinister antarticus, ac quamquam immoti semper poli sint qui tamen dexter eratsinister efficitur, non caeli parte, sed spectatoris corpore commutato. Ita sane fit, cum ad bonas hominum mentes, cum ad morbos animorum curandos, ille accedit amor. Ita ad aegrum se confert, ut agitationem ac motum, non amor ille divinus, sed solus aegri animus patiatur’.

42 Giles is working within a well-developed tradition. ‘The identification of pagan deities with metaphysical entities in the Platonic intelligible cosmos goes back at least to Middle Platonism and is reported in Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine’ (Hankins, James, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, vol. 1 [Leiden, 1990], p. 37n).Google Scholar