A Brief Commentary On Peter Lombard’s Discussion of the Filioque. Part III.

Part I

Part II

Distinction XII.[1]

Having explained that the Greek and Latin traditions are fundamentally in agreement on the procession of the Spirit, even if the way they express the procession differs, Peter Lombard begins to explore the procession of the Spirit further. In this distinction, he raises two questions raised about the procession of the Spirit. His responses solidify the claim that the Greeks and Latins agree in spirit if not in letter.

Chapter I (39).

1. WHETHER THE HOLY SPIRIT PROCEEDS FIRST OR MORE FULLY FROM THE FATHER THAN THE SON. Also, the question is raised whether, since the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, he proceeded earlier or more fully from the Father than from the Son.

When dealing with the procession of the Spirit, since it is established that the Spirit can be said to proceed from the Father and through the Son, one can then think the way the Spirit proceeds from the Father is “earlier” than the procession through the Son, because the Spirit starts from the Father. This would also suggest that, because the Spirit is said to proceed through the Son, that the procession through the Son is less than the procession from the Father. 

Both of these explanations would, of course, help keep the monarchy of the Father. They would also explain why the procession through the Son was added later to the creed, because the procession through the Son would not be as fundamental or as important to the Spirit’s hypostasis as the procession from the Father. There is, nonetheless, a significant error in this line of thinking. We find something similar, with a similar kind of error, involved with the heretical response which Peter Lombard reports:

“If the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father, either he proceeded when the Son was already born, or before the Son was born. If he proceeded after the Son was already born, then the Son was born before the Holy Spirit could proceed; therefore the birth of the Son had preceded the procession of the Holy Spirit. But if he proceeded from the Father while the Son was not yet begotten, the Spirit proceeded before the Son had been begotten. “

What we have here is a major misunderstanding of the nature of the Godhead. The Godhead, and the Trinity of persons, are being examined as if the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are temporal events. This might come out of the way the words we use seem to signify temporal change; however, the spirit behind the words is to understand how generation and procession are analogous words to what is going on in the Godhead, with all the difficulty such analogies have. We must not rely upon the letter of the words themselves, but understand whether what it is they are suggesting about the makeup of the Trinity.  That is, while we talk about being begotten in the human sense, we must understand that there is a similarity and fundamental difference about being begotten in the divinity, for the divinity is atemporal and eternal. The person of the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, as a part of the eternal act of God. The procession of the Spirit from the Father and through the Son is itself another part of the eternal act of God. To talk about “before” or “after” for something which is an eternal act is to misunderstand the eternal act itself. There is no before nor any after, there is just the eternal begetting and eternal procession. Thus, St. Athanasius, in explaining the nature of the generation of the Son in the Godhead, said:

Is then the Son’s generation one of human affection? (for this perhaps, as their predecessors , they too will be ready to object in their ignorance;)— in no wise; for God is not as man, nor men as God. Men were created of matter, and that passible; but God is immaterial and incorporeal. And if so be the same terms are used of God and man in divine Scripture, yet the clear-sighted, as Paul enjoins, will study it, and thereby discriminate, and dispose of what is written according to the nature of each subject, and avoid any confusion of sense, so as neither to conceive of the things of God in a human way, nor to ascribe the things of man to God. For this were to mix wine with water , and to place upon the altar strange fire with that which is divine.[2]

The words themselves can confuse us, if we are unwilling to look at and understand them and their nature. But, if we do not stand for a mere literal understanding and use of the words, we can see and understand what God himself is revealing to us about his nature. God is not material, God is not temporal, but within the Godhead are three persons, three hypostases, who have relationships with one another similar to human relationships that we do know and understand. This is not by accident. Human relationships are themselves based upon the relationships found in the Godhead – because we have been made in the image and likeness of God — but because we participate in these relationships in a different modality, their particularization in time and with matter creates something significantly different than their eternal counterparts in the Godhead.

This is the foundation behind Peter Lombard’s own response, a response which comes out of St. Augustine.

To these and similar question, which are more laborious than fruitful, Augustine provides a response in On the Trinity, book 15, saying, “In the highest Trinity, which is God, there are no intervals of time by which it may be shown, or at least asked, whether the Son was first born of the Father, and afterwards the Holy Spirit proceeded from both of them.” “Can we therefore ask whether the Holy Spirit had already proceeded from the Father when the Son was born, or whether the Spirit had not yet proceeded and, after the birth of the Son, proceeded from both? It is absolutely impossible to raise such questions where nothing is begun in time in order to be completed at a later time And so let him who can understand the begetting of the Son from the Father outside of time also understand the procession of the Holy Spirit from both outside of time.”

The inability to grasp the non-temporal nature of the Godhead is the source of a great number of questions, such as, “What was God doing before he created?” Since God is in eternity in an eternal act, there is no before or after for God, there is no “before he created” just as there is no “after he created.” There is just God’s eternal act which includes, from all eternity, the act of creation. Now this does not mean, in creation, there is no time, and that in creation, there is no beginning or end of time. There is both, and for us, existing as we do in creation, we experience act in a temporal sense. The transcendental, eternal nature of the divine act is something we can understand as being true, but like many things which lie outside of our experience, it is also something which we cannot comprehend. We must, when dealing with our relationship with God, remind ourselves of this eternal act of God, so that when we try to grasp God’s actions with us, we do not confuse them as creating change in God. They might present a change in the way we understand our relation to God, and how that relation affects us, but it is not because of a change in God but a change in us.

To understand this point further, Boethius gives us the following definition of eternity, comparing it to what happens with those who live in time:

Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life, which becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things. For whatever lives in time proceeds in the present from the past into the future, and there is nothing established in time which can embrace the whole space of its life equally, but tomorrow surely it does not yet grasp, while yesterday it has already lost. And in this day to day life you live no more than in that moving and transitory moment.[3]

In time, we do not possess the fullness of ourselves in a given moment, but rather lose something and gain something through change; in the eternal act of God, there is no loss, no change, just the pure, and proper act of God being God. Any before or after, any change in God, would indicate a temporal process for God, and time would possess a power over God. Thus, we must always remember, when dealing with the divine nature, the persons of the Godhead are eternally known in the Father begetting the Son, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son. There is no “before” nor “after” possible for the begetting or the proceeding, there is only the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We nonetheless have the question of the Holy Spirit’s procession and whether or not it can be said to be more from the Father than the Son, which Peter Lombard next addresses:

Chapter 2 (40)

1. HERE IS ADDRESSED THE SECOND QUESTION, NAMELY WHETHER THE SPIRIT HAD PROCEEDED MORE FULLY OR MORE FROM THE FATHER THAN THE SON.

Now, he first answers that the answer is that the Spirit proceeds equally from each; that is, “he does not proceed more or more fully from the Father than from the Son.” But he sees that this can cause confusion. What do we mean by “more fully” or “more from”? Are we denying the special foundation of the Father for the Trinitarian persons? Is the monarchy of the Father being disputed? The answer to this is no; the Spirit is to be said to proceed “principally” from the Father. That is, the Father the principio of the Trinity  — the principle or eternal, unoriginate foundation of the Trinity. For this, Lombard gives us quotes from Augustine and Jerome, to help us understand how the Father is the principle foundation of the Trinity. First, he states:

Nevertheless Augustine, in On the Trinity, book 15, says that the Holy Spirit proceeds principally from the Father: “But it is not without reason that in this Trinity not but the Son is called the Word of God, and not but the Holy Spirit [is called] the Gift of God, and none but God the Father alone is the one from whom the Word is generated and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds.”

Then Lombard quotes Augustine further, explaining what he meant by this:

“I added ‘principally’ for this reason: because we find that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son, but this too the Father gave to the Son, not as to one who already existed, and did not yet have this. But whatever he gave to the only-begotten Word, he gave it in the begetting. He so generated him that the common Gift should also proceed from him, and the Holy Spirit should be the spirit of both.”  — See, how he himself explained how the Holy Spirit proceeds principally from the Father: not because he proceeds earlier or to a greater extent from the Father than from the Son, but that, as he proceeds from the Son, this too the Son has form the Father.

The eternal begetting of the Son has made the Son in the Father’s image, making him share with the Father qualities which make them Father and Son. One of these qualities is the Father’s procession of the Spirit: the Spirit, as the Spirit of love, cannot proceed from the Father without processing through the Son; it would be unimaginable for the Father to generate the Son in any fashion other than for the Son to share in the act of love. The Son’s nature is eternal, but the Son’s personal hypostasis exists as a reflection of the Father, allowing the Son to be the Word of the Father, a revelation of the Father. The Holy Spirit reveals the Father and the Son, but not as a Son:

But one ought to note that the Holy Spirit receives from both the Father and the Son. But on account of this receiving the Holy Spirit cannot be called the image of the Father who receives absolutely nothing from another person, because in this respect there is more dissimilitude than similitude between the one and the other. Therefore, the Holy Spirit cannot rightly be called an image of the Father or of His Son on account of the property in which He is dissimilar to the Father. But if the Holy Spirit is not the son of the Father, then neither can He be called the son of the Son, because the relationship that He has with the Father is the same relationship that He has with the Son.[4]

For this reason, the Spirit’s hypostasis does not itself generate another hypostasis from itself as a way to act like the Father. The Spirit reveals, the Spirit enlightens, the Spirit is the manifestation of love, and a love which unites instead of divides. The Spirit unites the Father and the Son as the gift of each to each, just as the Spirit unites us to the Son, so that in the Son and through the procession of the Spirit through the Son, we can encounter and have communion with the Father.  Wherever the Father is, there is the Spirit, because the Spirit proceeds from the Father Wherever the Son is, there is the Spirit, for the Spirit proceeds through the Son. However, in the Trinity, we must always remember the order of the persons and see how they reveal to us the procession of the Spirit:

The Father in His going out to the Son through generation acquires love in the Holy Spirit through His procession. These two moments of the dialectics of love, sacrifice, and bliss are united in the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit, which are conjoined. The Son in His sacrificial self-humiliation also ‘simultaneously’ receives the Holy Spirit, who proceeds upon Him and from the Father and reposes upon Him, who passes ‘through’ (dia) Him as the reciprocity of love, as answering love, as the ring of love. But the Holy Spirit Himself is hypostatic love. It is not only by Him and in Him that the other hypostases love, but He Himself loves. He Himself is love, comprising the whole path of love: sacrificial self-renunciation, the sacrificialness of love, and its bliss. [5]

Thus far, Peter Lombard has shown that in Augustine, the procession of the Spirit is principally from the Father. It must not be read temporally, nor must this be read as indication of the quality of the procession of the Father or the Son. It is, rather, an examination of the foundation of the procession and how it lies in the personal quality of the Father, a quality which the Father gave to the Son and allows the Son to equally share. To confirm this, he quotes from Jerome:

In the same sense, the Spirit is said to proceed properly from the Father. Hence Jerome in the Exposition of the Catholic Faith and the Nicene Creed says:  “We believe in the Holy Spirit, who properly proceeds from the Father.” Also: “We find in Scripture that the Holy Spirit is true God and properly from the Father.” And also: “The Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit properly and truly from the Father.” See how he plainly says that the Holy Spirit is from the Father and properly proceeds from the Father. – But this is not to be understood as if the Holy Spirit proceeded earlier or more fully from the Father than from the Son, but in the sense that the Father has this from himself and not from another, namely that the Holy Spirit be and proceed from him; but the Son has this not from himself, but from the Father, namely, that the Holy Spirit be and proceed from him.

Here we see Peter Lombard making a significant point, one which again, follows through the monarchial foundation of the Trinity upon the Father: the Holy Spirit properly proceeds from the Father, while the Holy Spirit is said to proceed through the Son because the Son is the express image of the Father. The Father is the principal foundation of the Trinity – the one in which the Son and the Holy Spirit both emerge, while the Son emerges in the image of the Father and so sharing in the procession of the Spirit by the begetting of the Father and not through the Son’s intrinsic hypostatical character.   This can seem to cause confusion, because it seems to suggest that the procession through the Son is secondary to the procession from the Father; however, because we must look at this as not temporal, we can see that it is from the Father through the Son and back to the Father all in one continuous procession which has no time and so no “more” nor” less as the Spirit unites the two in their mutual love. In this way, as Peter Lombard says, we can understand the Holy Spirit is said to be sent from the Father and through the Son.

Hence Hilary, speaking to God the Father about the Holy Spirit and the Son, in On the Trinity, book 12, says: “In your Holy Spirit, who comes from you and is sent through him.” Also: “The Only-begotten, who was born of you from before all times, abides, so that Your Holy Spirit is from you through him. And even if I cannot perceive this with my comprehension, yet I told it in my consciousness, for in your spiritual matters I am obtuse.” – Also, in the same place: “Preserve, I beg you, this pious faith of mine, so that I may always hold fast to what I professed in the Creed of my rebirth: namely, that I may adore you, the Father, together with your Son, and that I may also be deserving of your Holy Spirit, who is from you through your Only-begotten Son.” See how he plainly says that the Holy Spirit is sent and is from the Father through the Son.  – This is not to be understood as if the Spirit were or were sent by the Father through the Son as an inferior, but that he is from the Father and the Son, and is sent by both; but the Son has this from the Father: that the Holy Spirit is and is sent from him.

Lombard here is using St Hilary’s presentation of the Trinity and the exposition of how the Son sends the Spirit to us as a means of understanding the inner-Trinitarian dynamic. The Holy Spirit is from the Father, sent to us from the Father through the Son. This shows to us the inner-nature of the Trinity: the economic Trinity reveals to us the immanent Trinity. The two are not distinct. To see the procession through the Son in the economy of salvation is to witness the procession of the Son through the Father in the Godhead. “He Who sends manifests His power in that which He sends.”[6] The Son shows us the procession of the Spirit through him by sending Spirit to us. And it is by the Son we, too, share in the Spirit. “Accordingly He receives from the Son, who is both sent by Him, and proceeds from the Father.”[7] If there is any doubt, Hilary says, as to whether or not we can see the same Spirit is from the Father and the Son, he says, “surely to receive from the Son and to receive from the Father will be regarded as one and the same thing.” [8] The same Spirit is to be received from the Son and from the Father. “For when He says that all things whatsoever the Father hath are His, and that for this cause He declared that it must be received from His own, He teaches also that what is received from the Father is yet received from Himself, because all things that the Father hath are His.”[9] The Holy Spirit is received by us from both, showing that from the Father and through the Son, the Spirit proceeds – in the internal life of the Trinity, and in the economy of salvation. Revelation is the way we are to understand the Holy Spirit, and the inner life of the Trinity. Revelation of God in the economy of salvation reveals the truth about God, and must be accepted as true in the Godhead, even if we cannot be said to comprehend all that it entails.

Peter Lombard ends this chapter returning to Augustine, and how Augustine sees the procession of the Spirit through the Son is because the Son’s personal character comes from and is in the image of the Father. The Son, it is shown, does not hold strong to himself, but gives over everything to the Father. The Son’s very being is from the Father, the Son’s teaching is from the Father, the Son’s message is from the Father—and the procession of the Spirit through the Son is from the Father. “If his teaching which he nevertheless said is not his own but the Father’s, is understood here, how much more it is to be understood that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him there, where he says: He proceeds from the Father, so that he might not say ‘he does not proceed from me’? It is from the Father that the Son has his divine being, for he is God from God; from the same Father, the Son has that the Holy Spirit proceed from him too. And it is also from the Father that the Holy Spirit has his procession also from the Son as he proceeds from the Father.”  For it is because the Son is in the image of the Father, and all the Son is, comes from the Father, that the Spirit is said to proceed through the Son and from the Father. “For if the Son has all that he has from the Father, it is also from the Father that the Holy Spirit proceed also from him belongs to the Son.”

After all of this, one might wonder, how did Peter Lombard answer the question as to whether or not the Spirit proceeds more from the Father than the Son? In his answer, Lombard assumes that once one realizes the Son, being in the image of the Father, shares in the work of the Father in the procession of the Spirit, one can see that the Spirit proceeds equally from the two. It is equal. The procession is shown to happen in the same act as in the generation of the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and through the Son in the generation of the Son so that the Son has share in the procession of the Spirit, even if the Spirit principally proceeds from the Father because of the Father’s unoriginate character. We receive the Spirit from the Son, but as Hilary shows us, this means we also receive it equally from the Father. The economy of the Spirit to us shows us the way the Father allows the Son to have an equal share in the procession of the Spirit. However, Lombard’s mode of showing this and dealing with this question presents it in a nuance to deal with the concerns many of the Greeks have had with the filioque. It is to point out that the equal-share of the Son with the Father in the procession does not remove the way the Father is the principal of the procession of the Spirit, the very theological point the Greeks fear the filioque destroys.