Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2010.00523.x
ijst_523 382..403
MATTHEW BAKER*
An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the Karl Barth Society of
North America session at the American Academy of Religion in Montreal (2009). Many
thanks to Dr George Hunsinger.
2 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, III (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), pp. 2046;
Andr de Halleux, Towards an Ecumenical Agreement on the Procession of the Holy
Spirit, in Lukas Vischer, ed., Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections
on the Filioque Controversy (London: SPCK, 1981), pp. 824; also, The Filioque: A
Church-Dividing Issue?, An Agreed Statement of the North American OrthodoxCatholic Theological Consultation, St Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 48 (2004),
p. 122.
3 Cf. Christopher Seitz, ed., Nicene Christianity: the Future for a New Ecumenism (Grand
Rapids: Brazos, 2001), pp. 46, 164, 184; George Hendry, The Holy Spirit in Christian
Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), pp. 4552.
4 Vischer, Spirit of God, p. 113: Alasdair Heron, summarizing Hendry.
2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
383
Barths filioque
As Dietrich Ritschl observes, the basic theological-epistemological thesis in Karl
Barths dogmatics is the ultimate abolition of the distinction between the immanent
and economic Trinity.6 This presupposition is the root of Barths trinitarianism: as
God reveals himself as Trinity, so he is eternally in himself. It also undergirds Barths
insistence on the filioque:
God in his revelation cannot be bracketed by an only, as though somewhere
behind His revelation there stood another reality of God . . . In connexion with
the specific doctrine of the Holy Spirit this means that He is the Spirit of both the
Father and the Son not just in His work ad extra and upon us, but that to all
eternity no limit or reservation is possible here . . . The Eastern doctrine does
not contest the fact that this is so in revelation. But it does not read off from
revelation its statements about the being of God antecedently in Himself.7
Thus, the filioque follows directly upon the identity principle.
This principle is reflected also in Barths use of the Augustinian notion of the
vinculum amoris: only if the Holy Spirit is the relation of love between Father and
5
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1: The Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1975) (hereafter CD I/1), p. 479.
6 Dietrich Ritschl, Historical Development and the Implications of the Filioque
Controversy, in Vischer, Spirit of God, p. 56. Ritschls characterization is accepted here
in a limited sense; it is not intended to attribute to Barth the full-blown Arianizing and
Hegelianizing claim that God constitutes his own being by way of the economy. As
indicated precisely by the phrase antecedently in Himself, although epistemologically
accessible only by way of the economy, Barths filioque hinges upon the reality of an
ontologically prior immanent trinitarian taxis, whose economic form is manifested in a
relation of irreversible, one-way identity with its immanent prototype.
7 Barth, CD I/1, pp. 47980.
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Matthew Baker
Son can he be the donum of divine love to creatures. But, Barth avers, This whole
insight and outlook is lost when the immanent Filioque is denied:
If the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Son only in revelation and for faith, if He is only
the Spirit of the Father in eternity . . . , then the fellowship of the Spirit between
God and man is without objective ground or content . . . a purely temporal truth,
with no eternal basis . . . Does this not mean an emptying of revelation?8
Most crucially, then, the filioque ensures mans filial adoption an objective, eternal
ground in God.
Barths concern with the objective reflects two other related principles at work
in his defense of the filioque: his Christocentrism and his rejection of independent
natural theology. Barth insists that knowledge of God is mediated only in and
through Jesus Christ. Between the human spirit and the Spirit of God, an infinite
difference is observed.9 The Holy Spirits work is distinct, but closely bound to that
of Christ: If revelation is given objectively in Christ, the Spirit is the agent of its
reception in men, who would otherwise be unable to apprehend Christ as Word. This
is tied to Barths doctrine of election developed in CD II/2. As Barth states already
in CD I/2:
It is grounded from all eternity in God that no man cometh to the Father except
through the Son, because the Spirit by whom the Father draws His children to
Himself is also from all eternity the Spirit of the Son, because by His Spirit the
Father does not call anyone except to His Son.10
As Spirit of the Son, the Spirit communicates no other content than the Fathers Son
and Word a truth Barth believes must necessitate the filioque.
" ! or per filium as
Thus, Barth rejects the patristic formula of di! !
inadequate, if yoked to the doctrine of the Spirits origination from the Father alone
" ! does not
# m$nou !
& ). Barth admits honestly that di! !
(
imply derivation from the Son: as he observes with reference to Athanasius Ad
" ! is not an
Serapion ( I:20), for the Greek Fathers, the procession di! !
#
# '
'
inadequate, because it does not lead to the thought of the full consubstantial
fellowship between Father and Son as the essence of the Spirit, the prototype of
" ! entails a relatio originis, the Spirit
mans adoptive filiation. Unless di! !
385
loses His mediating position between the Father and the Son and the Father and the
Son lose their mutual connexion in the Spirit. Further, even the unity of God
the Father is called into question if implicitly He is not already the origin of the Spirit
as the Father of the Son.12
Finally, Barth speculates about the results of the Easts rejection of the filioque,
and asks whether its so-called monopatrism might be responsible for an obscuring
of the Sons mediation, resulting in a naturalistic mysticism in which man might
enjoy communion with God in the Spirit apart from Christ.13 As evidence, Barth
points to the Russian theologians and religious philosophers . . . obliterating the
frontiers of philosophy and theology, of reason and revelation, of spirit and nature, of
pistis and sophia.14 Barth does not name these Russians although the mention
of sophia and the period in which Barths remarks were written (1932) lead one to
suspect that Barth may be speaking of the sophiology of Soloviev, Florensky and
Bulgakov.15
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Matthew Baker
(
) and issuing (
) through (di!) or from (
eternity. This relationship, while rendering an Orthodox filioque, in no way
compromises the Spirits origination from the Father alone, for which the Second
#
'
387
388
Matthew Baker
On Barth and Florovsky see: Andrew Blane, ed., Georges Florovsky: Russian
Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press,
1993), pp. 69, 75, 845, 107, 123, 139, 147, 167, 186, 1889, 193, 194, 299, 319;
Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 215; Duncan Reid, Energies of the Spirit: Trinitarian
Models in Eastern Orthodox and Western Theology (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996);
Michael D. Peterson, Georges Florovsky and Karl Barth: The Theological Encounters,
American Theological Library Association Proceedings 47 (1993), pp. 14165; Daniel P.
Payne Barth and Florovsky on the Meaning of Church , Sobornost 26 (2004), pp.
3963; G.O. Mazur, Florovskys Reading of Anhypostasia and Enhypostasia, in
Twenty-Five Year Commemoration to the Life of Georges Florovsky (New York:
Semenenko Foundation, 2005), pp. 26981.
27 George H. Williams, The Neo-Patristic Synthesis of George Florovsky, in Blane,
Georges Florovsky, p. 293.
28 Georges Florovsky, Review of Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism, Church History 26
(1957), p. 181.
29 Vladimir Lossky, The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine,
in In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press,
1974), p. 71.
2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
389
systems, and yet do we really grasp the existential dimension of faith and life?
In any case, because Karsavin persistently assumes that there is absolute
coherence and consistency in all systems, one always moves within the
dimensions of systems [. . . In Lossky also, there] is the same basic assumption
that East and West are in permanent opposition to each other, the same skill in
presenting the inner cohesion of ideas within each particular system, the same
conviction that Filioque is at the root of the whole trouble.30
Florovskys criticism is rooted in a forceful rejection of idealistic, logical-causal and
biologistic approaches to history.31 An opposition to determinism and historical
inevitability runs throughout Florovskys entire corpus: history is not the drama of
immanent Reason projected by Hegel, but an indeterminate agon of acting persons.32
Thus, it is mistaken to conceive the history of doctrine and spirituality in Christian
schism as conforming to the kind of logically consistent patterns which may be found
within the systems of individual thinkers.
Yet Florovskys hesitancy before such radical anti-filioque polemic entails more
than simply commitments in the philosophy of history and ecumenical methodology.
Also at stake is Florovskys ecclesiology. Ecclesiology, insists Florovsky, is a
chapter of Christology.33 However, the Pauline and patristic doctrine of the church
was obscured in later theology, having to be recovered in modern times:
In post-Reformation theology, the Church has been considered more as a body
of believers, coetus fidelium, than as the Corpus Christi. When this approach to
the mystery of the Church is practiced on a sufficiently deep level, it brings
theologians to the Pneumatological conception of the Church. It may be true
that . . . the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been somehow underdeveloped in
Christian tradition . . . yet there is still a strong tendency to overemphasize the
Pneumatological aspect of the doctrine of the Church.34
30
31
32
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Matthew Baker
As examples of this overemphasis, Florovsky cites the early work of Mhler, Die
Einheit in der Kirche, and, in the Russian East, the sobornost ecclesiology developed
by Khomiakov and other Slavophiles.
As Florovsky clarifies, there can be no opposing the two Pauline formulas, in
Christ and in the Spirit. Rather, the question involves which of the two is given
precedence, in that an unfortunately-chosen starting point may cause a very serious
distortion of the total theological perspective. In truth, our unity in the Sprit is
precisely our incorporation into Christ, which is the ultimate reality of Christian
existence35 an adoptive incorporation, by way of an ordered consubstantiality
which Florovsky indicates with reference to Athanasius Ad Serapion I:
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption in Christ Jesus, the power of Christ (2
Cor. 12:9). By this Spirit we recognize and confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor.
12:3).The operation of the Holy Spirit in the faithful is precisely their
incorporation in Christ, their baptism in the unity of the body (12:13) of Christ.
As St. Athanasius well stated it: Watered by the Spirit, we drink of Christ.36
All this is obscured, however, in romantic ecclesiologies which presume to begin
with pneumatology: here the focus tends rather toward the phenomenon of the
Community, over against the person of the Incarnate Lord continually active and
acting in the Spirit in order to recapitulate all things in himself. Thus, the real peril
of this pneumatological starting-point, Florovsky argues, is that the doctrine of the
Church is in danger of becoming a kind of Charismatic Sociology .37
Florovsky detects a similar, though apparently contrary, error in the Vatican I
papal dogmas. In Florovskys enigmatic expression:
papism . . . shows an exaggeration of the notion of hieratical charism. Here we
find a kind of canonical Montanism. In any case, the Vatican Dogma is not only
a definition and a formula, but also a mystical acknowledgement . . . In this
instance, canonical or historico-dogmatic refutation is therefore not as important
as the profound transfiguration of the very sense of the Church, the return to the
fullness of the Christological vision.38
Although Florovsky does not develop this, there is an inherent similarity between his
diagnoses of Charismatic Sociology and canonical Montanism . In the first, vox
Dei is conflated with vox populi the voice of the Spirit with the religious spirit of
35
36
391
39
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Matthew Baker
the role of the Holy Spirit in the church, nonetheless it has also allowed some
Orthodox theologians to fail to give adequate dogmatic account regarding the Spirit
of the Son.
It is precisely this failure which Florovsky criticizes in Lossky, whose strict
schematization between two economies, of the Son and of the Spirit strangely
echoing the sophiology of Florensky which Lossky opposed risks the implication
that the gift of the Spirit communicates a fullness somehow greater than, and beyond,
the Son. Criticizing the inadequacy of Losskys Christological presuppositions,
Florovsky underscores the truth that
The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son: He will not speak on his own
authority . . . because he will receive of what is mine and declare it to you (John
16:1314). In any case, the Economy of the Spirit should not be so construed
as to limit and reduce the Economy of the Son. . . . The implication seems to
be that only in the Holy Spirit, and not in Christ is the human personality fully
and organically re-established . . . it is misleading to suggest that in the Church,
through the sacraments, our nature enters into union with the Divine nature in
the hypostasis of the Son, the Head of the Mystical Body, and then to add as
something different that each person of the (human) nature must become like
Christ and that this is accomplished in the grace of the Holy Spirit. . . . In
practice, this would imply that Christ is not dynamically present in the Church,
an assumption which may lead to grave errors in the doctrine of the
sacraments.43
Nor are the shortcomings of Losskys scheme limited only to sacramental theology.
In a private letter of 1963, Florovsky draws from these considerations clear
implications for the whole spiritual life:
The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and is sent by Christ from the Father in order
to remind the disciples, those of Christ, or Christians, of Him. Pneumatic should
not be played against Christological . . . The Spirit, and His gifts, can be
acquired only in the name of Christ . . . The Pentecost is the mystery of the
Crucified Lord, Who rose again to send the Paraclete . . . Imitatio Christi is not
just a figure of speech, and it is not a Western phrase. St. Ignatius of Antioch
[Rom, 6:3] regarded himself as a mimetes Christou, with special emphasis on the
sharing of the Cross or the martyrs death.44
Because the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit-bearing saint is none other than
the person mimetically conformed to the image of the incarnate Son. Although
Florovsky does not mention Lossky here, the substance of his argument is continuous
with his criticisms of Losskys theology. It is a failure to account for the bond
43
44
393
between the Spirit and the Son which leads Lossky to the assertion that the
spirituality of the imitation of Christ which is sometimes found in the West is foreign
to Eastern spirituality, as well as to the claim again recalling Florensky that in
the age to come the Spirit, while not having His image in another Hypostasis, will
manifest Himself in deified persons: for the multitude of the saints will be His
image.45 Reacting to the filioque, Lossky has little to say regarding the Spirits
identity as Spirit of the Son even on an economic plane.46 In contrast, Florovskys
reading of the Fathers delivers a more balanced approach.
Florovsky draws attention to Cyril of Alexandrias treatment of the Spirit as
.
)47 to the Son, an expression indicating consubstantiality, and the truth
proper (
that Christ and the Holy Spirit have a relationship which differs from that which
exists between the saints and the Holy Spirit.48 In contrast to Barth, who conflates
#
'
" ! with
#
&
'
!
& !
,49
Cyrils
Florovsky notes that Cyril himself rejected this equation in his response to
Theodoret, who had accused him of teaching that Son was a cause of the Spirit:
To see St. Cyril approaching St. Augustines notion of the procession of Spirit
" ! with St. Augustines filioque would violate the
and to equate St. Cyrils '
logical progression of St. Cyrils thought, and this is directly corroborated by St.
45
46
47
48
49
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1998), pp. 215, 173. For more extensive comparison between
Florovsky and Lossky on this, see Jaroslav Skira, Christ, the Spirit and the Church in
Modern Orthodox Theology (PhD dissertation, University of St Michaels College,
Toronto, 1998).
As Papanikolaou observes, in Losskys theology, The independence of the Holy Spirit,
which Lossky refers to as the economy of the Holy Spirit, is a reaction to the filioque.
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human
Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 1067.
The following is typical of Cyril: The Spirit proceeds from the Father ( & !
#
&
!
' ) and is naturally the Sons own proper Spirit ( .
'
" '
" !
! ), existing in him and issuing from him (
# / ! te
#
! "
# !
"" ' ), In Joannis Evangelium 10, PG 74, 417C.
& #
Georges Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century (Vaduz:
Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 273.
Barth, CD I/1, p. 477; Cyril, Thesaurus, PG 75, 577. As the Vatican clarification on The
Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit acknowledges,
#
'
'
was used to denote the Holy Spirits dependence
the Father alone, whereas
#
'
and
on the Son owing to the common substance . . . distinction between
'
was not made in Latin theology, which used the same term, procedere, to
denote both. John Zizioulas, One Single Source, www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.
org/articles/dogmatics/john_zizioulas_single_source.htm, accessed 3 June 2010.
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Matthew Baker
Cyrils own testimony.50 Likewise, Maximus the Confessors irenic reading of the
West Roman filioque is completely within the compass of the ancient Eastern
tradition, not attributing causal origination, but rather procession through the Son
in order to signify affinity and inseparability of essence.51
" ! in Greek patristic theology
Interpreting the use of the expression di! !
from the Cappadocians to John Damascene, Florovsky insists that this phrase does
not apply only to the economy, but to the divine processions themselves:
One must not limit through the Son only to the fact of the Holy Spirits descent
in time to creation . . . the Son originates directly from the Father, while the
Holy Spirit comes from the Firstwith the mediation of through the One who
" ! mesite0a
came from the Father directly. And this mediation " !
preserves the uniqueness, the Only-Begottenness of the Sonship . . . the Holy
Spirit is the middle between the not-born and the born, and through the Son the
Holy Spirit is united to or attaches to the Father, in the words of St. Basil.52
While distinction must be made, there is no separation between theology and
economy:
The Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son. This means that the procession is
pleasing to God and inscrutably presupposes the eternal birth of the Son. And
the oikonomic order of revelation, crowned by the appearance of the Holy Spirit,
reproduces, as it were, and reflects the ontological order of the Life of the
Trinity, in which the Holy Spirit proceeds like a kind of shining which reveals
the hidden goodness of the Father and proclaims the Logos.53
Here Florovsky appears to take a slight step beyond Gregory of Cyprus. Whereas
" ! to the Spirits energetic
Gregory had reserved the expression di! !
# ' ) in eternity and time, Florovsky
,
'
manifestation (
approximates the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor, for
# ' ) substantially
whom by nature (f*sei) the Holy Spirit in his being ('
#
'
#
! ) takes his origin (
(
) from the Father through the Son
" ! genhq(nto).54
who is begotten ( '
50
51
395
55
56
57
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Matthew Baker
for which the authority of St. Augustine can be quoted, is a permissible theological
opinion, provided it is not regarded as a credendum de fide.61
This viewpoint provided it were Florovskys own would place Florovsky
squarely within a certain mainstream tradition of nineteenth-century Russian
theology, which had tended to regard the filioque as a quasi-canonical problem, due
to an unconciliar interpolation to the ecumenical creed. However, Florovskys
statements claim more for Bolotovs attempt, while likewise resisting any suggestion
of doctrinal minimalism, such as Bolotovs proposal might appear to allow.
Referring to Bolotovs remarkable Thesen ueber Filioque , Florovsky writes:
Bolotov shows there how the two theologoumena, the Eastern and the Western,
can be reconciled in a fair and comprehensive synthesis.62 Florovskys language
here suggests his own agenda of neo-patristic synthesis simultaneously a program
for Orthodox theological renewal and an ecumenical program aimed at the real
reintegration of the Christian tradition.63
Such an ecumenical synthesis, Florovsky insists, can never be achieved simply
by arithmetical operations, either by subtraction or by addition of all differences.64
Nevertheless, in spite of Augustines obvious peculiarities vis--vis Greek patristics,
the Latin doctor has a clear stature within Florovskys envisioned synthesis. As
Florovsky insisted regarding Augustines views regarding sacraments beyond the
churchs canonical boundaries, the Orthodox theologian has every reason to take
61
397
into account the theology of St. Augustine in his doctrinal synthesis;65 Augustine is
a Father of the Church Universal, and we must take his testimony into account, if we
are to attempt a true ecumenical synthesis.66
That this judgement also included consideration of Augustines trinitarian
theology is evidenced in yet another confrontation with Lossky, in a review
of Losskys Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. As Florovsky observes,
Lossky
confines himself strictly to the Eastern tradition and probably exaggerates the
tension between the East and the West even in the Patristic period. A tension
there obviously existed, as there were tensions inside the Eastern tradition
itself, e.g., between Alexandria and Antioch. But the author seems to assume that
the tension between the East and the West, e.g., between the Trinitarian theology
of the Cappadocians and that of Augustine, was of such a sharp and radical
character as to exclude any kind of reconciliation and overarching synthesis.
It would be more accurate to say that such a synthesis has never been
accomplished or even has not been thoroughly attempted. Even if we admit, as
we certainly must, that the Trinitarian theology of Augustine was not well
known in the East, up to the late Middle Ages, Augustines authority had never
been seriously questioned in Byzantium even in the times of Patriarch Photius.
It is therefore unsafe to exclude his contribution from the Patristic heritage of the
Undivided Church. One should be ecumenical rather than simply oriental in
the field of Patristic studies. One has to take into account the whole wealth of the
Patristic tradition and wrestle impartially with its intrinsic variety and tensions.67
Florovsky detects no radical opposition between Augustinian and Cappadocian
triadologies. Yet one might ask whether those Orthodox theologians who claim to
follow Florovskys neo-patristic lead have seriously considered Florovskys views in
this regard, or heeded his demand to be ecumenical rather than simply oriental in
65
66
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Matthew Baker
patristics. On the whole, the answer to both questions appears, with few exceptions,68
negative.
To conclude this consideration of Florovsky: with respect to the origination of
the Spirit, a chasm stands between Barth and the Orthodoxy of Florovsky. At the
same time, a significant bridge is constructed, in the form of a shared confession of
the Spirit as eternally the Spirit of the Son.
In light of the critical emphases common to Barth and Florovsky, the
problematic tendencies discerned in Florensky, the Slavophiles and Lossky69 serve to
remind Orthodox theologians of the importance of this biblicalpatristic teaching,
affirmed by Tarasius of Constantinople in the synodikon adopted by the Seventh
Ecumenical Council: I also believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Giver of Life,
'
] from the Father through the Son.70 Yet a testing of Barths
who proceeds [
critique against Florovskys synthesis of Greek patristic pneumatology indicates
that, contrary to Barths assertions, this confession of the eternal Spirit of the Son,
with all it entails for the life of the church, in no way necessitates the filioque
defended by Barth.
The synthesis between Eastern and Western triadologies Florovsky believed
possible is a task Florovsky himself never attempted. That Florovskys bauche does,
however, indicate a way forward, addressing the concerns of both sides, is suggested
by the profound consonance between Florovskys views and those of Barths leading
first-generation interpreter, T.F. Torrance.
68
399
Son. In response to the forms of Arianism encountered in the West, it was of utmost
importance to insist that the Spirit was truly the Spirit of the Son as of the Father, for
unless the Father and the Son were held to be fully equal the doctrine of the
homoousion could hardly be maintained.71
Ironically, Torrance accuses later Western theology of a departure from the
homoousion of the Spirit which the filioque had been originally designed to uphold.
This departure resulted in two seemingly opposed, but related epistemological errors.
Torrance writes:
One of the major lessons we learn from Athanasius and his attack upon Arians
and semi-Arians alike is that unless we know the Holy Spirit through the
objectivity of the homousion of the Son in whom and by whom our minds are
directed away from ourselves to the one Fountain and Principle of the Godhead,
then we inevitably become engrossed with ourselves, confusing the Holy Spirit
with our own spirits . . . The importance of this for the West can be seen if it is
said, with a little exaggeration, that there has been in it a persistent tendency
to substitute for the filioque an ecclesiaque, the error of Romanism, or a
homineque, the error of Neo-Protestantism. In other words, there has been
a marked failure to distinguish the Holy Spirit from the spirit of the Church or
the spirit of religious man, that is, from the self-consciousness of the Church or
the self-consciousness of the believer.72
Torrances ecclesiaque and homineque bear striking resemblance to Florovskys
canonical Montanism and Charismatic Sociology. Both indicate distortions
resulting from a loss of a Christocentric vision of the Spirit in the church. As with
canonical Montanism , Torrance associates ecclesiaque especially with the
Vatican I papal dogmas, in which (he argues) the Spirit is regarded as an endowment
dispensed by the churchs hierarchy in the form of created grace.73 Similarly,
although taking more individualistic form in Schleiermachers pietism, homineque
corresponds closely to Charismatic Sociology: in both, the human spirit is
confounded with the divine.
Canonical Montanism or Charismatic Sociology, ecclesiaque or
homineque for both diagnoses, the question reads thus: Does the church possess
the Spirit or is the church possessed by the Spirit? According to Torrance, the first,
fatal answer is common to both sides of Western Christianity: In Romanism and
Protestantism alike the Church has domesticated the grace and Spirit of God in its
own spiritual subjectivity instead of being the sphere of the divine freedom where the
71
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Matthew Baker
Lord the Giver of Life is at work as Creator Spirit.74 The result: modern religious
man is afflicted with a deep-seated mental disease, self-obsession and a failure to
distinguish between objective realities and subjective conditions.75
Much like Florovsky, Torrances response is to reaffirm the patristic doctrine of
the Spirits consubstantiality with and propriety to the Son. Here again, Ad Serapion
is the touchstone, Christology the starting point in the ordo theologiae:
Athanasius says, It is natural that I should have spoken and written first about
the Son of God that from our knowledge of the Son we may be able to have
proper knowledge of the Spirit (Ad Ser. 3.1) . . . this is the only proper
procedure because of the propriety of the Spirit to the Son, and because it is
only in and through the Son or Word that God has revealed himself. The Spirit
does not utter himself but the Word and is known only as he enlightens us
to understand the Word. The Son is the only logos, the only eidos of the
Godhead (see C. Arianos 3.15, and Ad. Ser. 1.19) . . . Nevertheless it is only in
the Spirit that we may know the Son . . . It is from the Son that the Spirit
shines forth (eklampei, Ad Ser. 1.18), and in the Spirit (en Pneumati) that God
is known.76
In Torrances view, it is this doctrine of the Spirits propriety to the Son77 and the
inseparable relation of the Spirit to Christ in creation and redemption which must be
conserved, whether the filioque . . . is formally accepted or not.78 So long as the
Athanasian teaching of the homoousion of the Spirit is maintained, we can forget
about the filioque clause: it was entirely wrong to introduce it into the Ecumenical
Creed without the authority of an Ecumenical Council.79
401
To this, one must add that, in contrast to the Cappadocian Fathers whose
theology formed the immediate basis for the creed of Constantinople 381,80
Torrances panacea urges an abandonment of all causal attribution, entailing a
dynamic substantialism in which arc+ and ait0a are conceived as referring to
# ' ), and beyond all cause
relations or sc(sei . . . beyond all origin (
#
'
(
) a position Torrance claims is a recovery of that of Athanasius, Cyril
and the later Nazianzen.81 This proposal, which finds precedent in Calvin and,
curiously, Bulgakov,82 may prove yet highly problematic for further ecumenical
discussion. Torrances treatment of monarchia in particular calls for close
questioning by Orthodox scholars, with a re-examination of relevant patristic
sources.83
Caveats notwithstanding, the profound agreement between Florovsky and
Torrance regarding the eternal propriety of the Spirit to the Son and the practical
ecclesial importance of this teaching does suggest the possibility of deeper
theological convergence. Though more distinctly Chalcedonian, the basic shape of
Florovskys theology agrees with Torrances call for return to the AthanasianCyrilline axis84 of patristic Christology as a ground for dogmatic renewal and
ecumenical reconcilation. Here the common reference to Athanasius Ad Serapion as
pneumatological touchstone is especially significant.
Sharpening this touchstone beyond Torrance, further agreement might be
possible if Reformed theologians would attend to the fundamentally Athanasian
basis of the essence / energy distinction crucial to Orthodox doctrine regarding the
Spirits eternal manifestation. In his essays St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition
of the Fathers (1959) and St. Athanasius and the Concept of Creation (1962),
Florovsky sketched an understanding of the so-called Palamite distinction as
80
81 Thomas Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 239.
82 Like Torrance, Bulgakov places the onus of the filioque impasse on Basil for his
introduction of causal categories: The Comforter, pp. 1326.
83 See John Zizioulas, The Father as Cause: Personhood Generating Otherness, in
Communion and Otherness (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), pp. 11354, although the
radicalization of the person/nature distinction elsewhere pervasive in Zizioulas works
may create its own problems, particularly for anthropology and ethics. For criticisms of
Torrances reading of Gregory Nazianzen, see Christopher A. Beeley, Divine Causality
and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus, Harvard Theological
Review 100 (2007), pp. 199214.
84 Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975),
p. 9; Thomas F. Torrance, ed., Theological Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed
Churches, vol. I (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), pp. x, 11, 14.
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Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, pp. 11619; Georges Florovsky, Aspects of Church
History (Vaduz: Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), pp. 3962.
Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, pp. 79, 85 and esp. 86; Thomas F. Torrance, The
Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), pp. 4, 96, 207, and Divine
Meaning (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), pp. 181, 185.
Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), p. 38.
Athanasius, Contra Arianos, III.30; De Decretis, II, etc.
Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, PG lxxv, 312C; Gregory Palamas, Topics of Natural
and Theological Science: One Hundred and Fifty Texts, in G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard
and Kallistos Ware, Philokalia, Vol. IV (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), p. 392.
Aidan Nichols, Light from the East (London: Sheed and Ward, 1999), p. 32.
Florovsky himself, in Review of The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 208,
criticized Lossky for downplaying the role of intellectual cognition and, more gravely, for
a lack of christological focus:
If one wants, as Lossky obviously does, to develop a system of Christian
philosophy, which is identical with Christian Dogmatics, should he not begin with
Christ? Indeed, what warrant may a Christian theologian have to speak of God,
except the fact that the Only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father has
declared the unfathomable mystery of the Divine Life? Would it not be proper,
therefore, to begin with an opening chapter on the Incarnation and the Person of the
Incarnate, instead of following a rather philosophical order of thought: God,
Creation, Created Being, and Imago Dei, etc., so as to arrive at Christology only in
the middle of the road?
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divine wills are made fully apparent in the flesh of Christ (and can be offered to us
by the sacraments). So our participation in the divine energies is simply the way of
our participation in the crucified and resurrected Christ. We thus easily understand
that the question of the logoi or energies is not the fundamental theological crux
regarding our salvation. The hypostasis of the incarnated Son and his relationship to
the Father, which we enter not by nature but by grace (that is by adoption through
baptism and the Eucharist), is our primary theological concern here. Consequently,
that which is given to us is a personal tropos hyparxeos (mode of existence) by grace
and not a participatory essentialist connection between different substances. This
new mode of existence, our adoption by the Father in Christ through the Spirit, is
only realized in this syn-energetic participation in Christs deified human nature.
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See also Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, pp. 301 and 1389, n. 80.
Georges Florovsky, Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church, in
Aspects of Church History, p. 23.
T.F. Torrance, Ecumenism and Rome, Scottish Journal of Theology 37 (1984), p. 59.
Florovsky, Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church, p. 23.
Florovsky, Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church, p. 29.
Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 229.