14.

 Summarize in your own words the Orthodox objections to the Western practice regarding the filioque.

            Michael Whelton, a convert from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodoxy, remarks that:

As far back as I can remember when discussing Church history with friends, I can still hear myself saying, “But the Orthodox are right on [the] filioque.” In fairness, I had to acknowledge that they had a point [Two Paths: Papal Monarchy — Collegial Tradition, p. 89].

Mr. Whelton goes on to state that the unity of the undivided Apostolic Church was expressed in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the recitation of the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith, or Nicene Creed. This Creed, a declaration of faith confessed by the entire Church, belongs to the Church, and one part of the Church does not have the right to change it without the consent of all. Ecumenical Councils produced the Creed, and Ecumenical Councils prohibited any changes in it. Rome was party to all of this. Thus, if Rome wishes to make a change in the Creed, then an Ecumenical Council is the only competent body to deal with it. Only an Ecumenical Council has the right not to alter, but to amplify and explain the decisions reached at an earlier Council. For any part of the Church to tamper unilaterally with the Creed of the Ecumenical Councils could only create enormous divisions. Mr. Whelton correctly notes that the Western Churches' altering the Creed represents an automatic lapse into heresy, and in such a state, no pronouncement by the pope in their favor could ever serve to condone them.

            Regarding the theological issues of the filioque interpolation (also referred to as the Western doctrine of the double procession), its logical consequence would have to be either a ditheism or semi-Sabellianism. (Sabellius was a second-century heretic who spoke of one God with three modes or aspects or manifestations. That is, he falsely taught that the same God appeared as the Father in the Old Testament, as the Son in the New Testament, and as the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. Through this heresy, Sabellius abolished the personal mode of existence of each Person of the Holy Trinity. In other words, he denied that God is three distinct Persons). Since Western theology views the Son as well as the Father as the principle or source of the Godhead, the question arose among the Orthodox if Western theology held that there were two independent and separate sources of the Trinity. As such a concept would amount to a belief in two Gods, the answer is an obvious no. Two reunion councils — those of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1438-39) — were careful to point out that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son “as from one principle” (tanquam ab uno principio et unica spiratione). Although this explanation avoided ditheism, it was still objectionable to the Orthodox in that the Persons of the Father and the Son are not distinct, but are rather merged and confused. Orthodox theology sees the monarchy as the Father's distinct characteristic and that He alone is the principle within the Trinity. In Western theology, the filioque extended the Father's distinct characteristic to the Son as well, and the two Persons became fused into one. This misunderstanding was no more than a very old heresy — “Sabellius reborn, or rather some semi-Sabellian monster,” as St. Photius described it.

            The textbook develops the matter of semi-Sabellianism further. It explains that in Orthodox Trinitarian theology, the principle of unity is a personal one, as opposed to that in the West, which sees its unitary principle in the essence of God. In Latin Scholastic theology, the Persons of the Trinity are overshadowed by a common nature. This Western view conceives God not so much in personal and concrete terms as it does as an essence characterized by various relations. Thomas Aquinas capsulized this way of thinking in his identification of the Persons with the relations. Aquinas had a very barren idea of personality, though, for the relations are not the Persons, but are the personal characteristics of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “Personal characteristics do not constitute the person,” St. Gregory Palamas stated, “but they characterize the person.” While these relations designate the Person, in no way do they exhaust the mystery of each.

            Latin Scholastic theology, with its emphasis on the essence of the Trinity and its neglect of Their Persons, well-nigh turns God into an abstract idea. No longer is He the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in such a system, but He becomes a remote and impersonal being, a God of the philosophers Whose existence must be proved by metaphysical arguments. The medieval Western theologians, in their various attempts at philosophical “proofs” of God's existence, bequeathed to the Western world its essential concern with the question of whether or not God exists. This issue was then taken up by modern secular philosophy and can be seen in thinkers so diverse as Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell, and Rene” Descartes. A very significant part of Western philosophical thought, either directly or peripherally, is dedicated to the question of God's existence. Even today, it is not unusual for an intellect to classify himself as a believer or an atheist (or an agnostic, in the case of the less bold). The way that a Westerner discusses religion and most aspects of theology is largely tied to the question of God's existence.

            To learn of God by questioning His existence is the Western way, but not the Orthodox way. The Orthodox way is to assume the existence of God. Also, what is important is not that man can argue about the Deity, but how man can understand and reach the concrete and personal God, and how he can be united to Him.

            One extremely destructive development of the Latin Church's false Trinitarian theology can be seen in the aftermath of the de-Christianizing Second Vatican Council. At that time, the offering of praise to the Holy Trinity was suppressed. God's name was dropped in many places of the new Mass, and references to any sort of a deity became vague and deistic, calling to mind the delta or grand architect of freemasonry, rather than the One True God, the Holy Trinity.

            (Parenthetically, it is noteworthy that at the same time the Latin Church restrained the worship of the Holy Trinity, Pope John XXIII began to carry atop his pastoral staff a crucifix with broken arms. This same broken cross symbol was devised by satanists in the Middle Ages as a mockery of Christianity, and it has been used by all popes since the Second Vatican Council to show their solidarity with the forerunner forces of the antichrist. Few modern Catholics are aware of this symbolism, but it is explained in detail by a pious English Roman Catholic writer in his book The Broken Cross, which gives other examples as well of the Latin Church's dabbling with diabolical phenomena ever since the 1960s).

            The filioque addition is dangerous and heretical in its confusing the Persons and destroying the proper balance between the unity and diversity of the Godhead. The Trinity's oneness is stressed at the expense of the threeness, and God is conceived not in terms of concrete personality, but in terms of abstract essence.

            In addition, Western theology has in actual fact (if not in theory) subordinated the Holy Spirit to the Son of God. Fr. Victor Potapov notes that even the most cursory glance through Western theological texts is sufficient to convince one as to what an insignificant place Roman Catholic theologians allocate to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world, in the Church, and in the lives of individual Christians.

            The consequences of the filioque — the overemphasis on the unity of God and the subordination of the Holy Spirit — have been instrumental in distorting the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Church, for every false teaching about the Holy Spirit strikes against the dogma concerning the Church. Because of the inattention to-, and lack of understanding of-, the role of the Holy Spirit, the Latin West has come to regard the Church largely as an earthly institution, organized and administered according to the principles of worldly authority and juridical law. And where the West stressed God's unity at the expense of His diversity, so likewise did the concept of Church unity triumph over diversity, the result of which became the complete centralization of the Latin Church and is overemphasis on papal authority.

            East and West's two differing concepts of God are inextricably bound up with two different concepts of the Church. The underlying causes of the Latin Church's breaking away from the ancient Church of Christ in the Great Schism of 1054 — those of papal claims and the filioque — are very much related to one another.