Finished The Filioque Project

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So..any thoughts?

[jeffpugh]

I didn't know you posted this thread here

Heck, I didn't know when you finished the thing! That's 39 pages is nice... epic in my puny standards!

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I sent you a copy, right SMM?

[jeffpugh]

I think you sent me some rough work a long while back, not the whole thing in it's majesty

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pm me ur email addy again.

I want some feed back guys. All I am getting is love from profs and I want some real feedback.

[CatholicCid]

Bah, no longer giving out possible timelines. Sorry, said I'd have it done a month ago, but we never really even covered the section on the Trinity in my class. I did get to read on it for a paper though.

I'm six pages in and am enjoying it. Will finish it soon hopefully (no timelines though!)...

So far, I do agree with your premise that the filoque confusion seen by the Eastern Church is more so a misunderstanding.
In my unlearnt opinion, I have always seen it as something that the East normally calls the West out on... Attempting to understand a different theological concept verbatum within one's own language.

I do like your comparison of Aquinas' approach to the style of the Cappadocian Fathers.

Before I continue forward, let me make sure I have a handle on theAugustian Love Model. I have read it not too long ago, and I remember reading it because my mind was going to explode with the repeated mention of the word "love".

The Father's perfect thought of Himself is the Son. The Son must exist as a perfect thought can only be truly perfect if it exists. Existance is better then thought. The Father and the Son are equal as the Son is the perfect thought of the Father on Himself, who is perfect. They share a perfect love between each other. This love is the Holy Spirit. As the love proceeds from the Father and the Son, it is equal to the Father and the Son. So the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equal.

Anywhere close?

Edited May 14, 2008 by CatholicCid

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Without looking I think I define it enough in the paper (I did another paper for a previous class where I focused on that, so I cannot remember if I did it there or not)

Frank Sheed has a very good-quick understanding. Let me know if you can find it. If not I will type it up.

[CatholicCid]

Finally got somewhat back on track...

To put it simply, your proposed changes to the Love Model blew my mind. First time I read it, I was walking between places and had to stop. My response was, to quote Jack Sparrow, "Well, that's just maddingly unhelpful." Then I just stopped walking, to the dismay of those behind me , and thought out loud for a bit. I've only reached around page 8, but I spent at least half an hour or more trying to contemplate your suggestions.

First thing I did was refresh my mind on Anselm's ontilogical argument, to make sure he said that a perfect thought must necessarily exist, not that the existance of the thought is better then just the thought (which would mean that the Son being the existence of the perfect thought of the Father of Himself would then hold the existence of the thought be greater then the Father). When I was sure of that, I continued.

Then I read your proposition on shared participation and just froze. What you are suggesting seemed to completely contradict the Augustinian love model entirely. The Lover must have a Loved one to Love, otherwise there can be no love. I've always taken that as the basis of the argument, but then I realized how right you were that it is a linear model! The Lover, Loved, and Love all coexist eternally when applied to the Trinity, so we must consider it not in chronos, but kairos, outside of time.

You seem to be taking the argument in a completely new direction... Normally, the two sides I hear are "Remove the filoque entirely" and "Leave the filoque alone as is". You seem to be suggesting that we need to further consider the filoque, looking more so into the participation of the Holy Spirit in the begatting of the Son with the Father. This does seem to give us a deeper insight into the Holy Spirit, while also reinforming the monarchy of the Father. Looking at the Son's involvement in the procession of the Holy Spirit seems to have put that off balance, so we'll return balance now by looking at the Holy Spirit's involvement with the begatting, not by dropping the filoque, but by developing it further.

At least, that's what I've gotten out of it all so far. I have quite a bit more to go when I can, but I am extremely excited to do so..

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Thank you for the review. I appreciate it. Continue reading and we will discuss it further. I think the arguments "remove the filioque" or "leave it alone" are very unhelpful (as we have seen for the past couple hundred years)

without reviewing my own work, the basic arguments I make are
1.) We developed our christology far more than our pneumatology in the filioque. History shows this. It is what we needed to do at the time, but it stunt the pneumatology. (which is why some eastern people suggest the filioque promotes the son, but leaves the spirit as a distant third. )
2.) Trying to find a way to use the apostolic and post-apostolic/patristic theology from both east and west is the only way to develop a proper theology. My way of doing this was to understand a couple basic arguments/objections from the east and combine that good with what the west has taught.
3.) Understand this is the greatest of mysteries and will always need to be further developed, my suggestion is a way in which east and west can do this together, rather than fighting each other.

I have always struggled with the mystery of God-Time-linear-etc, and ironically it was a great aid in my paper. I had the logic-structure of the paper reviewed by a couple theologians I have incredible respect for (Dr. Hildebrand is a name known here), so I know it is not heretical, it is just something not being done yet in theology.

[DominicanPhilosophy]

I would love to read this also! Sorry I'm so late . . . I spend most my time in the VS.

[CatholicCid]

Could you give me a short translation, if possible, of these two (greek?) words:

ekporeusis
proeinai

Tried to google for them, and best I could find was that they both roughly are forms of 'proceed', so not sure how reliable it is.

Edited July 13, 2008 by CatholicCid

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As I state in the paper, if the Roman teaching body would spend some time and properly understand the difference in those terms it would really, really, really help with the discussion.

In a very brief (almost disrespectful to this issue) the latin understanding and usage of the term makes it seem like the son is a "cause" in being a point of origin. Latin doctrine puts forth an interpretation of procedere as ekporeusis which effectively destroys the monarchia of the Father and results in an understanding of homoousios that is essentially Sabellian.
According to Orthodox theology the Holy Spirit can be said to proceed from the Father through/and the Son according to the term proienai which refers to the (eternal and uncreated) energetic manifestation of the Spirit and/or the sending of the Spirit in the oikonomia.

An interesting thing about this (to quote L_D) is With all due respect: Florence does not use the word aition in reference to the Son and many eastern readers seems incapable of reading these texts outside the confines of Constantinopolitan-Cappadocian-Palamite triadology. They also fail to provide the preceding sentence which declares that "the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son"; this is some key context for understanding what Florence means by "cause". The most important bit of context is the fact that this formulation is primarily addressing the question of whether the filioque, as understood by Rome, makes the Son a distinct cause alongside the Father such that there are two causes of the Holy Spirit (again, "cause" in the Latin sense which does not carry the connotations of aition).

The question of the ekporeusis-proeinai distinction is not a part of the bare context of that quote. If one were to transpose the holistic Western understanding of the filioque to the Eastern theological matrix the Florence statement must be understood as pertaining to the proeinai of the Spirit alone -- this is the only valid interpretive for principium, causa, et cetera, in reference to the Son’s integrality in the single Spiration of the Spirit: from an Orthodox perspective.

[Apotheoun]

For an Eastern Christian perspective on this topic see my paper: [url="http://www.geocities.com/apotheoun/paper17b"][u]The Filioque Controversy[/u][/url]

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you wrote a paper about my paper? (it is the topic of the thread)

[CatholicCid]

His paper is dated before yours, so I believe it is his own view of the filoque controversy as an Eastern Christian

Franciscan University of Steubenville
Independent Study
Dr. Stephen Hildebrand
14 December 2005
(This is an excerpt from my paper entitled: “The Palamite Doctrine of God”)