Monday, December 24, 2012

Spiration and filiation

i) One of the traditional motivations for the monarchy of the Father is to supply a unifying principle for the Trinity. This supposedly safeguards monotheism against tritheism. On this view, the Trinity is still one God because the members of the Trinity share the same nature.

One reason the Eastern Orthodox reject double procession (i.e. the filioque clause in Latin/Western editions of the Nicene creed) is that this introduces two constitutive principles into the Trinity, for the Spirit is said to derive from both the Father and the Son. If the Trinity has one than one constitutive principle (i.e. the monarchy of the Father), the result is polytheistic. Or so goes the argument.

ii) On a related note, the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit are treated as individuating principlesto distinguish the three persons. Two take two classic formulations:


The Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son (WCF 2.3)

Q. 10. What are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead?
A. It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son from all eternity (WLC Q/A 10)

It’s striking that the Westminster standards rubberstamp the Nicene formulations at this juncture, despite Calvin’s reservations.

iii) There are, however, some obvious problems with the Nicene argument. To say the Father filiates the Son and spirates the Spirit has no explanatory value, for the claim is, at best, tautologous. All we’ve done is to recast a noun as a verb. This is somewhat obscured by the fact that English sometimes mixes Germanic nouns with Latin verbs. Let’s use the same language for both:

The Father filiates the filius and spirates the spiritus.

Does that explain anything? No. The verb doesn’t add anything to the concept. For the verb belongs to the same word-group as the noun. If you know what the noun means, you know what the verb means, but the verbal description doesn’t contribute anything new to your prior understanding.

It’s like saying a flower flowers, a light lights, or water waters. That doesn’t advance our understanding of the process, for the definition is circular. It leaves us where we started.

So it has no explanatory power. It’s just a pun or play on words. A purely linguistic analogy.

iv) Of course, Nicene proponents to attempt to define generation/filiation and procession/spiration by saying this means the Father conveys his nature, essence, or substance to the Son and Spirit. However, there are problems with that definition:

v) How do they derive “communication of essence” from the concept of filiation? Even if it’s true that when a man begets a son, he conveys his nature to the son, we’re working off a biological metaphor. For it’s also true that when a man begets a son, he impregnates a woman. That’s a necessary element of the same process. So how do Nicene proponents decide which aspects of the metaphor to apply to the Son? How do they determine what’s analogous and what’s disanalogous? To seize on “communication of essence” is arbitrary. The metaphor itself doesn’t single out that particular aspect.

vi) However, let’s grant the conceptual derivation in the case of filiation. By what argument do Nicene advocates derive the same concept from procession or spiration?

Even if a man conveys his essence by begetting, does he convey his essence by exhaling? How do you derive the concept of communicating one’s essence from the concept of procession or spiration?

Is this supposed to be an argument from analogy, in which we  spiration is comparable to filiation? But if it’s an argument from analogy, why define spiration by reference to filiation rather than vice versa?

vii) Roger Beckwith says eternal spiration is


…symbolised, when he proceeds from Christ, by human breath (John 20:22). This is perhaps as near as we can get to a conception of the eternal procession of the Spirit, and if so it is a personal activity… if the very name of the ‘Spirit’ implies being breathed out, as seems probable (Job 27:3; 33:4; Ezek. 37:5f., 14), the idea of proceeding from God is essential to his nature,” R. Beckwith, “The Calvinist Doctrine of the Trinity.” 

But why assume the Spirit is named the “Spirit” (breath, wind) to denote the effect of a process? Surely pneuma and ruach have wider connotations. The Spirit might be called “spirit” because he is invisible. Intangible. A discarnate agent.

Or he might be called “spirit” because he’s the source of life, like the breath of life. Not the effect of respiration, but the cause of respiration.

God animated Adam by breathing life into him (Gen 2:7). Conversely, to die is to expire. The Spirit reanimates the dead (Ezk 37:1-14). Divine CPR.

Or he might be called  “spirit” because, like the wind, he is powerful, unpredictable, untamable (cf. Jn 3:8). Or because he’s both creative and destructive (Cf. Gen 1:2; Ps 104:30; Isa 40:7).

Or he might be called “spirit” to evoke the spoken word. Speech. He inspires the prophets.

Or he might be called “spirit” on analogy with the human soul (1 Cor 2:10-11).

Indeed, it’s likely that Scripture is exploiting all these polyvalent connotations of pneuma or ruach. It’s a very flexible metaphor.

viii) Finally, how does communication of essence differentiate the Son from the Spirit if the same essence is communicated to both? If you define generation and procession both in terms of communicating the Father’s essence, then it’s the same process. How can the same process yield different results?

And even if you say generation and procession represent different processes, if the same essence is conveyed to both the Son and the Spirit, how does the process have any differential effect? So the Nicene argument fails on its own grounds.

Keep in mind, too, that the Nicene argument has spiraled into extrascriptural speculation. It’s not as if the Bible commits us to these speculations.

9 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Steve,

    In the original Nicene Creed, there is no mention at all about the Holy Spirit's nature and his metaphysical origin or relations with the Father.

    In 381, the Fathers simply recited the exact same word by Jesus that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, do you mind explain how it is extrascriputral? And even in 381, no metaphysical nature is mentioned about the Holy Spirit, the Creed never said the Spirit is homoousios with the Father. St. Basil in his work the Holy Spirit, does not even call the Spirit, "God", even in a qualified sense. (Also mentioned by Gregory's Funeral Orat.)

    It is the Latin teaching that the Holy Spirit is the one true and only living God of the Christian to be extrascriptural and having no support from any antiquity before the Nicene Council.

    Mark

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    1. I've discussed the Filioque in response to Perry Robinson.

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  3. Steve,

    “i) One of the traditional motivations for the monarchy of the Father is to supply a unifying principle for the Trinity.”

    >>>Depends on what you mean by “unifying”.

    “This supposedly safeguards monotheism against tritheism. On this view, the Trinity is still one God because the members of the Trinity share the same nature.”

    >>>Wrong. There is one God because one of the divine persons is auto-theos.

    “ii) On a related note, the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit are treated as individuating principlesto distinguish the three persons. Two take two classic formulations:”

    >>>Depends on what you mean by “distinguish”. At a primordial level we distinguish them by their own numeric natures. Each has its own mind and will. It sounds to me like you are already operating off of the error that only the hypostases of the Son and Spirit were eternally caused. This is an innovation.

    http://eternalpropositions.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/eternal-generation-is-the-hypostasis-of-the-son-alone-generated-or-was-the-sons-being-generated-as-well-in-athanasius/

    “The Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son (WCF 2.3)

    Q. 10. What are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead?
    A. It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son from all eternity (WLC Q/A 10)

    It’s striking that the Westminster standards rubberstamp the Nicene formulations at this juncture, despite Calvin’s reservations.”

    >>>First, they removed the “of the essence” clause, second, they changed the meaning of consubstantial and third they added the filiqoue, none of which are included in the Nicene creed, so the fact you believe they rubberstamped the Nicene formulations reveals your utter ignorance of this issue.

    “iii) There are, however, some obvious problems with the Nicene argument. To say the Father filiates the Son and spirates the Spirit has no explanatory value, for the claim is, at best, tautologous.”

    >>>I have given this issue detailed consideration here:

    http://eternalpropositions.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/on-the-holy-spirit/




    “Does that explain anything? No. The verb doesn’t add anything to the concept. For the verb belongs to the same word-group as the noun. If you know what the noun means, you know what the verb means, but the verbal description doesn’t contribute anything new to your prior understanding.

    So it has no explanatory power. It’s just a pun or play on words. A purely linguistic analogy.”

    >>>The by your own admission you do not believe in any distinction between the divine persons. You are by your own admission a Sabellian.

    “v) How do they derive “communication of essence” from the concept of filiation?”

    >>>Like bears like in the scripture. When a man has a child in scripture that child bears his nature. It has a homoousios body and mind, with the essential being the mind, the image of God.

    “Even if it’s true that when a man begets a son, he conveys his nature to the son, we’re working off a biological metaphor.”

    >>>Not if we make the essential component the mind. I havce already had these conversation Steve. You are like a belligerent child to me. You are out gunned. You are out of your league. Go eat your Wheaties.

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    1. Drake Shelton

      “Depends on what you mean by ‘unifying.’”

      I already explain that in the next sentence. Pay attention.

      “There is one God because one of the divine persons is auto-theos.”

      Which is consistent with unitarianism.

      “At a primordial level we distinguish them by their own numeric natures.”

      So, according to you, the Trinity consists of three distinct natures.

      “It sounds to me like you are already operating off of the error that only the hypostases of the Son and Spirit were eternally caused. This is an innovation.”

      You suffer from seriously deficient reading skills. I deny that causation applies to God in toto.

      “First, they removed the ‘of the essence’ clause, second, they changed the meaning of consubstantial and third they added the filiqoue, none of which are included in the Nicene creed, so the fact you believe they rubberstamped the Nicene formulations reveals your utter ignorance of this issue.”

      Omissions aren’t retractions. They aren’t quoting the Nicene creed, but incorporating elements thereof.

      Also, there’s more than on edition of the Nicene creed. Try to resist the impulse to be simple-minded.

      “The by your own admission you do not believe in any distinction between the divine persons. You are by your own admission a Sabellian.”

      Another illustration of your chronic inability to respond to opponents on your own terms. Sure the persons are distinguishable. They’re just not distinguishable by the ad hoc individuating principles posited by Nicene subordination.

      “Like bears like in the scripture. When a man has a child in scripture that child bears his nature. It has a homoousios body and mind, with the essential being the mind, the image of God.”

      You’re willy-nilly cherry-picking what aspect of the metaphor you decide is literally applicable. For instance, sons come into being. Sons are the result of a willed action rather than a necessary action. Sons are contingent entities. Sons begin existence as embryos in the mother’s womb. Sons exist in time and space. Prenatal sons depend on umbilical nutrition to gestate.

      This is the problem with your methodology, Drake. You’re not beginning with God’s revelation in Scripture. Rather, you begin with your “semi-Arian” interpretation of Nicene and ante-Nicene theology, then you use that as a cookie-cutter on the Biblical data.

      “Not if we make the essential component the mind.”

      Which, once again, reflects your arbitrary methodology.

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  4. Steve,

    “For it’s also true that when a man begets a son, he impregnates a woman. That’s a necessary element of the same process. So how do Nicene proponents decide which aspects of the metaphor to apply to the Son?”

    >>>First, the physical biological is not the necessary element in human communication of essence. But as we read from Hebrews 7, Levi existed in the loins of Abraham before he was impregnated into his mother.

    “How do they determine what’s analogous and what’s disanalogous?”

    >>>>You are completely frustrating Steve. I have already quoted the section from the Jnorm debate twice to you. So just to bend over even more backwards for you than I already have I will quote from the very portion that I have given you twice now:

    “I understand that not all human activity can be predicated of the divine, however, that does not exclude the proportion that can be predicated of the divine and that is the intellectual activity of man as I have made clear numerous times”

    The intellect of man is the proportion (you want to say analogy but as I have already pointed out that term is ambiguous) of man’s ontology, that can be predicated of the divine and the divine of human with respect to faculty, objects of knowledge, logic and will-the logos by which human and divine ontologically connect.

    And to anticipate the indivisible issue: http://eternalpropositions.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/2321/

    “Even if a man conveys his essence by begetting, does he convey his essence by exhaling?”

    >>>We do not have much on this in scripture. However, when I communicate an idea that I affirm myself as constitutive of my own personhood, to another person, and the other person believes it and therefore becomes personally constituted by this thought as well, I have communicated ontologically without reference to physical biology.

    “Is this supposed to be an argument from analogy, in which we spiration is comparable to filiation? But if it’s an argument from analogy, why define spiration by reference to filiation rather than vice versa?”

    >>>The issue is communication as opposed to creation, thus it has little to do with comparing the son to the HS or Vice versa but identifying the place of origination.

    In Heb 11:3 we read “By faith we understand that the [e]worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

    Here we have the classic passage for creation ex nihilo.

    Created things thus extend from nothing, while the Son and HS are said to come out of the Father.

    “vii) Roger Beckwith says eternal spiration is

    …symbolised, when he proceeds from Christ, by human breath (John 20:22). This is perhaps as near as we can get to a conception of the eternal procession of the Spirit, and if so it is a personal activity… if the very name of the ‘Spirit’ implies being breathed out, as seems probable (Job 27:3; 33:4; Ezek. 37:5f., 14), the idea of proceeding from God is essential to his nature,” R. Beckwith, “The Calvinist Doctrine of the Trinity.” …

    >>>But notice steve, you are focusing on the mode of the activity not the essence of it. The essence of the activity is the issue at hand. Both the Son and Spirit emanate from the Father. That is the essence of the activity. The two modes of those emanations are Eternal Generation and Eternal Procession.

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    1. Drake Shelton

      “First, the physical biological is not the necessary element in human communication of essence. But as we read from Hebrews 7, Levi existed in the loins of Abraham before he was impregnated into his mother.”

      i) Which ignores the qualifying phrase in v9: hos epos eipein.

      ii) The author is referring, not to preexistence, but to the arrow of historical causation, where the future is implicit in the past–inasmuch as grandfathers indirectly cause grandsons via a chain-reaction.

      “I have already quoted the section from the Jnorm debate twice to you.”

      Which is not an exegetically or philosophically responsible explanation. Your ipse dixit doesn’t make it so. The fact that you’ve cobbled together a position which you think is internally consistent–even if that were the case–doesn’t give us the slightest reason to think your position is correct. Fictions can be internally consistent.

      “However, when I communicate an idea that I affirm myself as constitutive of my own personhood, to another person, and the other person believes it and therefore becomes personally constituted by this thought as well, I have communicated ontologically without reference to physical biology.”

      You didn’t derive that from the concept of exhaling or proceeding. Rather, that’s your Mickey Mouse justification of a foregone conclusion.

      “The issue is communication as opposed to creation, thus it has little to do with comparing the son to the HS or Vice versa but identifying the place of origination.”

      Except for the awkward little fact that generation and procession were invoked as individuating principles, as well a sources of origin.

      “Created things thus extend from nothing, while the Son and HS are said to come out of the Father.”

      The contrast is only as good as the second clause, which assumes what you need to prove.

      “But notice steve, you are focusing on the mode of the activity not the essence of it. The essence of the activity is the issue at hand. Both the Son and Spirit emanate from the Father. That is the essence of the activity. The two modes of those emanations are Eternal Generation and Eternal Procession.”

      Drake, I realize mental concentration isn’t your forte, but try hard. I didn’t focus on anything. Rather, I was quoting Beckwith’s attempt to prooftext eternal generation and eternal procession. That’s all he can offer. You’re interpolating distinctions into his prooftexts that just aren’t there.

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  5. Steve,

    “viii) Finally, how does communication of essence differentiate the Son from the Spirit if the same essence is communicated to both?”

    >>>It is not the same numeric essence. As I pointed out in my blog,

    “Therefore we distinguish the Son and the Spirit:
    1.By the fact that the Scripture demonstrates that they are distinct subjects, thus distinguishing by numeric nature.

    2.By the fact that the Holy Spirit has his own will.

    3.By the gender specific relations they display in the economia.

    4.By sourcing the two persons in different Ideas (“places”) in God’s mind.”

    “If you define generation and procession both in terms of communicating the Father’s essence, then it’s the same process.”

    >>>The same numeric process? The same mode? Your language is to simplistic. I affirm that there are two emanations, with the same generic essence, but differentiated in mode.

    “How can the same process yield different results?”

    >>>It is not the same numeric process.

    “And even if you say generation and procession represent different processes, if the same essence is conveyed to both the Son and the Spirit, how does the process have any differential effect?”

    >>>They don’t represent different processes, they are different processes. Secondly, words don’t represent things if you make this a Jesuit semantic game. Thirdly, it is not the same numeric essence communicated.

    “So the Nicene argument fails on its own grounds.”

    >>>So you are now admitting you reject Nicea. Just admit it. Come out with it. Play the man Steve.

    “Keep in mind, too, that the Nicene argument has spiraled into extrascriptural speculation.”

    >>>By speculation, most anti-clarkians mean logical extension, which I admit to. However, one wonders:

    Where in the Bible is the one God defined as three persons?

    Where in the Bible is the one God defined as a set of attributes?

    Where in the Bible is the one God defined as a set of attributes

    Where in the Bible is the Son said to be of himself?

    Where in the Bible is the Son said to come in his own name doing his own will?

    Where in the Bible is the Son said to be taught of himself and teach his own message?







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    1. Drake Shelton

      “By sourcing the two persons in different Ideas (‘places’) in God’s mind.”

      So you’re claiming the Son and Spirit are initially divine ideas. They take their point of origin in the Father’s mind, as God’s idea of the Son and the Spirit, just as the oak of Mamre begins as a divine idea. At the ideational level, the Son and Spirit aren’t essentially different from divine ideas of rocks, trees, snails, salamanders, and other creatures.

      That’s very unitarian of you.

      “They don’t represent different processes, they are different processes.”

      You lack a command of idiomatic English. Consult a dictionary on different senses of “represent.”

      “Secondly, words don’t represent things if you make this a Jesuit semantic game.”

      The word “dog” represents canine things.

      As for your questionnaire, I’ve exegeted my position at length.

      “You are like a belligerent child to me.”

      The fact that the church and the world don’t share your inflated self-image must be a constant frustration for you.

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