the Son (this was the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria and John of Damascus); the Latins approach
the Greeks by the admission that the Spirit proceeds chiefly (principaliter) from the Father
(Augustin). But little or nothing is gained by this compromise. The real question is, whether the
Father is the only source of the Deity, and whether the Son and the Spirit are co-ordinate or
subordinate in their dependence on the Father.
- The Greek doctrine in its present shape. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone
( μ ), as the beginning ( ), cause or root ( , , , ), and fountain ( ) of
the Godhead, and not from the Son.^599
John of Damascus, who gave the doctrine of the Greek fathers its scholastic shape, about
a.d. 750, one hundred years before the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, maintained that
the procession is from the Father alone, but through the Son, as mediator.^600 The same formula, Ex
Patre per Filium, was used by Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, who presided over the seventh
oecumenical Council (787), approved by Pope Hadrian I., and was made the basis for the compromise
at the Council of Ferrara (1439), and at the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn (1875). But Photius
and the later Eastern controversialists dropped or rejected the per Filium, as being nearly equivalent
to ex Filio or Filioque, or understood it as being applicable only to the mission of the Spirit, and
emphasized the exclusiveness of the procession from the Father.^601
The arguments for the Greek doctrine are as follows:
(a) The words of Christ, John 15:26, understood in an exclusive sense. As this is the only
passage of the Bible in which the procession of the Spirit is expressly taught, it is regarded by the
Greeks as conclusive.
(b) The supremacy or monarchia of the Father. He is the source and root of the Godhead.
The Son and the Spirit are subordinated to him, not indeed in essence or substance (oujsiva), which
is one and the same, but in dignity and office. This is the Nicene subordinatianism. It is illustrated
(^599) Confessio Orth., Qu. 71 (Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 349 sq.):Διδάσκει[ἡ ἀνατολικὴ ἐκκλησία]πω̑ς τὸ
πνευ̑μα τὸ ἃγιον ἐκπορεύεται ἐκ μόνου του̑ Πατρὸς , ὡς πηγη̑ς καὶ ἀρχη̑ς τη̑ς θυότητος. Then follow the proofs from John
15:26, and the Greek fathers. In the same question, the formulaκαἱ ̀ἐκ̔ του̑̔ υἱου̑̔(Filioque) is rejected as a later adulteration. In
the heat of the controversy, it was even stigmatized as a sin against the Holy Ghost. The Longer Russian Catechism, on the
Eighth Article of the Nicene Creed (in Schaff’s Creeds, etc., II. 481), denies that the doctrine of the single procession admits
of any change or supplement, for the following reasons: " First, because the Orthodox Church repeats the ver y words of Christ,
and his words are doubtless the exact and perfect expression of the truth. Secondly, because the Second Ecumenical Council,
whose chief object was to establish the true doctrine respecting the Holy Spirit, has without doubt sufficiently set forth the same
in the Creed; and the Catholic Church has acknowledged this so decidedly that the third Oecumenical Council in its seventh
canon forbade the composition of any new creed." Then the Catechism quotes the following passage from John of Damascus:
" Of the Holy Ghost, we both say that He is from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father; while we nowise say that He
is from the Son, but only call Him the Spirit of the Son." (Theol., lib. l.c. 11, v. 4.)
(^600) See the doctrine of John of Damascus, with extracts from his writings, stated by Hergenröther, Photius, I. 691 sq.;
and in the proceedings of the Döllinger Conference (Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 553 sq. ). Dr. Langen (Old Cath. Prof.
in Bonn), in his monograph on John of Damascus (Gotha, 1879, p. 283 sq. ), thus sums up the views of this great divine on the
procession: 1) The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son. 2) He does not proceed from the Son, but from
the Father through the Son. 3) He is the image of the Son, as the Son is the image of the Father. 4) He forms the mediation
between the Father and the Son, and is through the Son connected with the Father.
(^601) Langen, l.c. p. 286: "So hat demnach die grosse Trennung zwischen Orient und Occident in diesem Lehrstücke die
Folge gehabt, dass die, Auffassung des Damasceners, gleichsam in der Mitte stehend, von dem Patriarchen Tarasius amtlich
approbirt und vom Papste Hadrian I. vertheidigt, weder im Orient noch im Occident zur Geltung kam. Dort galt sie als zu
zweideutig und hier ward sie als unzureichend befunden."