The wider context: three presuppositions (Romanides)

Speaker 1 0:01

let's take a look at the wider context of St Augustine's theology, in which we can place and appreciate a little better what he says about the mystery of the Holy Trinity and indeed about other matters as well. So I just want to begin by saying that, according to Fr John Romanides, st Augustine seems to hold three basic presuppositions which the post-Augustinians repeated and hardened. Make note of that because, as I'm sure you're aware, it's always dicey dealing with the followers of, you know, they do tend to harden the positions of their so-called master. So what is the first of these basic presuppositions? Well, in a lecture to his fellow North African bishops on the Creed this was in 393, st Augustine gave this lecture Now, that's 12 years after the Second Ecumenical Council in 381, and it's about 350 years after Pentecost. So in his De Fide et Symbolo, section 19, saint Augustine makes the following statement With respect to the Holy Spirit, there has not been yet, on the part of learned and distinguished investigators of the Scriptures, a discussion of the subject full enough or careful enough to make it possible for us to obtain an intelligent conception of what constitutes his special individuality, his proprium.

Pentecost not conceptual: “All the Truth”

Second Ecumenical Council (381)

Speaker 1 2:06

It's quite a sentence. There has not been yet, on the part of learned and distinguished investigators of the Scriptures, a discussion of the subject full enough or careful enough to make it possible for us to obtain an intelligent conception, an intelligent conception of what constitutes his special individuality, his proprium. Now this is 350 years after Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit revealed the divinity of Christ, where all the truth was given. It will lead you into all the truth, and that truth is not a concept, because we know, as Christians, that the truth is Jesus Christ. But the fathers of the second ecumenical council in 381, as well as the fathers who followed them, of course, did not believe that this question had not been settled.

Speaker 1 3:17

So the use in the creed of the term procession as meaning the manner of existence of the Holy Spirit from the Father refers specifically to his special individuality, specifically to his proprium. The Father is the cause. The Son and the Spirit are caused. The difference between the ones caused is that the former is caused by generation and the latter by procession and not by generation. In any case, st Augustine spent many years trying to solve this non-existent problem concerning the individuality of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1 4:07

Secondly, saint Augustine identifies the Holy Spirit with the divinity quote which the Greeks designate theodis, Very important term theodis, divinitas in Latin divinity. Sometimes, of course, it's translated as Godhead, and he explains this by saying that the theodis is the love between the Father and the Son. Those parties oppose this opinion, who think that the said communion, which we call either Godhead or love or charity, is not a substance, is not a substantia. Moreover, they require the Holy Spirit to be set forth to them according to substance. Neither do they take it to have been otherwise impossible.

Speaker 1 5:08

This is not a clear passage, but it's obvious that St Augustine did not understand the work of the Cappadocian fathers. On the one hand, they reject the idea that the Holy Spirit can be the common energies of the Father and Son, known as theodis or love, since these are not an essence or an hypostasis, whereas the Holy Spirit is an hypostasis. The Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council required that the Holy Spirit be identified neither with a common energy nor with the common essence of the Father and Son. In other words, the Holy Spirit is an individual hypostasis with individual characteristics or properties, idioditas, not shared by the other hypostases, but he does share fully everything that the Father and Son have in common, namely the essence, the divine essence and all uncreated energies and powers. The Holy Spirit is an individuality who is not that which is common between the Father and Son, but has in common everything the Father and Son have in common. I'll repeat that because it's important. The Holy Spirit is an individuality who is not that which is in common between the Father and the Son, who is not. That which is in common between the Father and the Son is not what the Father and Son have in common. He has in common everything that the Father and Son have in common.

Speaker 1 7:16

St Augustine rejected the distinction between what the persons are and what they have. What the persons are and what they have, even though this is a biblical distinction and identified with God, is what he has. In other words, not only did he not understand the distinction between the common essence and energies of the Holy Trinity on the one hand essence and energies of the Holy Trinity on the one hand, and the incommunicable individualities of the divine hypostases on the other, but he also failed to grasp that there is a difference between the common divine essence and the common divine love and divinity. He never understood why a distinction was made in the Greek language between usia and hypostasis, plural in God, but he insisted that the distinction must be accepted as a matter of faith and rendered into Latin as una essentia and tres substantiae. Well, that's De Trinitate 5, 8, 10, and 7, 4, 7,. Una essentia and tres substantiae. So what is he doing here? He's confusing the common essence and energies with the modes of being, and he's confusing the divine essence with the energy.

Further qualification of term “theotes” (θεότης) needed

“Filioque” becomes a necessity

Speaker 1 9:07

Now, it seems that he's not aware that the people that he's arguing against include the Cappadocians, saint Basil and the other two Gregories, who do not identify the common Theodos and Agape of the Trinity with the common divine essence of the Trinity. So, theodos, we need to qualify Theodis, because it's a difficult term, but let's just say that St Augustine says to see that in the substance of God there is not anything of such a nature as would imply that there in substance is one thing and that which is accident to substance another thing and not substance, whereas whatsoever can be taken to be therein is substance. He's saying there's nothing but substance in God. God is pure substance and making these distinctions doesn't make any sense to him. Usia hypostasis, usia energia this is gobbledygook to him.

Speaker 1 10:39

Now, according to Father John Romanides, once these foundations are laid, then the Holy Spirit as that which is common to the Father and the Son exists by reason of the Father and the Son. So there can be no distinction between the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit and the Father causing the existence of the Holy Spirit. What God is by nature, how the three hypostases exist by nature and what God does by, will become confused. Ussia, hypostasis, energia are all confused. It is a fact that, for Saint Augustine, both generation and procession end up being confused with the divine powers and energies and thereby also end up meaning the same thing. The filioque is a sine qua non for Saint Augustine, it is an absolute prerequisite in order to salvage something of the individuality of the Holy Spirit. So he has to say that God is from no one, the Son is from one, the Holy Spirit must be from two, otherwise, how is this third substance distinguished from the second substance? Because, since generation and procession are the same, there would be no difference between the Spirit and the Son, since they would be both from one. No difference between the Spirit and the Son, since they would be both from one.

Term “theotes” (θεότης) discussed at Council of Constantinople 1351

A word of qualification on “theotes” (θεότης)

Speaker 1 12:36

Now, as I said, to be fair, a lot more has to be said about Theodos, divinity or Godhead, and this became one of the main subjects discussed 1,000 years later, in the third council in Constantinople in 1351, in which St Gregory Palamas's third theological opponent, niciforus Gregoras, argued particularly on this subject. It's very interesting, very telling. And they said that sometimes Theodos can refer to the Osea, to God in his essence, but more often, and it's the majority of the time, it's used to distinguish the energies and operations of God from his essence. And Gregoras tried to accuse Saint Gregory Palamas of diatheism, precisely that he was teaching that there is a superior divinity and an inferior divinity, and so on. It's a long story, but let me say theodis is actually a word that is used yes, it's true what they said in the third council in Constantinople, but it's used in order to emphasize the oneness of God and the oneness of God.

De fide et Symbolo: 3rd presupposition: a speculating Church

Speaker 1 14:19

And the oneness of God does include the single shared essence that is common to all three members of the Most Holy Trinity. Of course it does, but the emphasis in the use of the term theotis is on the energy, which is the natural or essential energy of God. So the energy is never disassociated from the essence of God. It's just that the essence of God is unknowable and even unapproachable, and so the natural energy, the experience of God, the grace of God that we live, that we experience in the church, is the energy of the essence of that which is. It's not some disassociated power that God zaps people with or sends out somewhere far from himself, it's God himself operating in the world. But it's that aspect of God which is communicable, in other words, it can be experienced, because experience means participation, and participation means oneness with, union with, communion with. So we share the life of that God without being swallowed up into the divine substance, and so our hypostatic integrity as images created in the image of God is preserved. So more about that in due course.

Speaker 1 16:05

Finally, I just want to say the third mistake that St Augustine made is the most disturbing. His theological method is speculative. It's based on what one accepts by faith for the purpose of intellectually understanding as much as one's reason allows, by either illumination or ecstatic intuition. But it is a speculation which is transferred from the individual speculating believer to a speculating church which, like an individual, understands the dogmas, the teachings of the church with the passage of time. So the church awaits a discussion Saint Augustine says about the Holy Spirit, full enough or careful enough to make it possible for us to obtain an intelligent conception of what also constitutes his proprium, his special individuality.

The Church is Christ: the Body of Christ: a “theanthropic institution” because of the “Theanthropos”

Confusion of Hierarchy or Clergy with the Church

Speaker 1 17:23

Look, the church, for Saint Augustine, does not have from the beginning a full understanding of the teachings of Christ. For Augustine, christ's promise that he will give to the apostles the gift of the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and who will guide the apostles themselves into all the truth, is transformed into a promise that the Holy Spirit will lead not only the faithful in general into all the truth, but also the church herself into all the truth. Look, the church has the truth from the beginning. The church is Christ. When we say the church is the body of Christ, the church is a theanthropic institution because of the theanthropos, he is God and man and we become members of the church and the apostles are members of the church. The apostles are not the church. We have so many problems, even in our day, because we confuse the hierarchy with the church or we confuse the clergy with the church. The church is Christ and we are members of his body. And no matter how great, how exalted the apostles may be and they are they've established churches right, but the apostles are not the church. They are members of the church.

Vision of Christ is vision of the Truth, the whole Truth - our receptiveness of the Truth depends

Grace of God not a “part” of God

Church still learning - God teaches Church through the world

Speaker 1 19:02

And Saint Augustine confused this and thought that when the Lord said that the Holy Spirit will guide you into all the truth, that the church was going to be guided into all the truth, he is the truth, he's the whole truth. When one sees Christ, one doesn't see a part of Christ, a part of the truth. One sees the whole truth. The vision of Christ in glory, the vision of the resurrected Christ, is the whole truth. And then we, according to the capacity that we have, the receptiveness that we have, receive what we receive, just as when we come into contact with the grace of God. The grace of God is not a part of God. God is fully God. The grace of God is God fully present. Our receptiveness, what capacity we have to receive and to contain, that's another question. But that aside, here the apostles are not the church, and St Augustine thought that they were.

The vision of Christ in glory is Pentecost - Pentecost of each Saint

Speaker 1 20:14

So we have in the West, after St Augustine, the idea that the church is still learning right After 2,000 years of being guided by the Holy Spirit. We know more than St Paul knew. Well. And then you have the mentality of let's be sensitive to what God is teaching us through the world. What is God teaching the church through the world? It's all confusing because we don't understand that the vision of Christ in glory is Pentecost and the vision of Christ in glory, the theosis of each saint, is the personal Pentecost of each saint.

Speaker 1 20:59

So the idea that the Church herself undergoes a process of attaining a deeper and better understanding of her own dogmas, this is the basis of Frankish propaganda for the filioque and it became the basis of Western theology. It became the basis of Western theology. So the filioque is an improvement on what we had before, because we're progressing. We have this idea that theology is conceptual and you go from St Athanasius' homoousion and then you have another concept with the Cappadocians, let's say hypostasis, and then after hypostasis, you have, you know, you have like a history of ideas. Which are these key terms of revelation, which indicate how we are progressing, how revelation is actually progressive in this chronological sense.

Present-day Saints confirm truth of the Bible and Lives of earlier Saints

Appeal

Speaker 1 22:04

So the filioque is an improvement and I'm not saying that this is Saint Augustine, but it's the post-Augustine approach and unfortunately, according to this way of looking at things, the patristic period was superseded by another better, more enlightened period and so on, which we know is nonsense, because we have the Fathers with us today, we have saints with us today and we see that what they bear witness to is what we read in the Bible and what we see in the lives of the earliest saints. So the patristic period is very much with us till this day. We can come back to this and discuss it next time, god willing. Please subscribe to our channel and share with your friends. Click on the notification bell and on the join button below our video and become a friend or reader of the Mount Tabor Academy. Support our drive to introduce the theology and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church to the wider community.