A Notice

The editors at the Catholic University of America Press are asking me to take down the “work-in-progress” edition of Bekkos’s On the Union and Peace of the Churches of Old and New Rome, and I will do so within the next few days, probably by this Sunday, April 7, 2024. Until then, it can be ordered for $20 at the following link:

On the Union and Peace of the Churches of Old and New Rome

Below is a poster that was made to advertise my public lecture at Hillsdale College last month. There were actually two talks, a public one and a private one that took place in the context of a theology class; both of them went well, but unfortunately neither of them was recorded.

On the Nestorian antecedents of a Photian argument

At Mystagogy §93, Photius writes:

“Therefore, in so far as He is man, Christ is anointed by the Spirit; and since the Spirit anoints Christ, He is called the Spirit of Christ. But you say, ‘Because He is called the Spirit of Christ, He certainly also proceeds from Christ.’ Accordingly, the Spirit of Christ will not come forth from Him because He is God, but because He is man; consequently, the Spirit will not have been existent from the beginning and together with the Father before the ages, but only from the time when the Son assumed human substance.”

(Holy Resurrection Monastery tr., p. 115)

In the last chapter of his point-by-point refutation of Photius’s Mystagogy, John Bekkos criticizes this argument; he says that, if Photius denies that the Spirit is from Christ, as eternal from eternal, neither will he say that Christ’s passion is the passion of God, nor his blood the blood of God…. (Refutatio Photiani libri de Spiritu Sancto 34; PG 141, 861B-864B). In other words, he rejects Photius’s argument as smacking of Nestorianism.

I think Bekkos has an important insight here. Nestorius was an extreme representative of Antiochene theology, which, like Photius four and a half centuries later, opposed the teaching that the Son of God is in any sense a source of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit. We see here how that opposition is grounded in christology.

The Nestorian view borders on something like this: the temporal Christ can only send the Spirit’s temporal gifts, cannot be a source of the eternal Spirit himself to believers. St. Cyril of Alexandria would answer that the temporal Christ is the eternal Son, and that, in whatever spiritual gifts the temporal Christ bestows, the eternal Spirit is hypostatically present. The unity of theology and economy is founded upon the unity of Christ’s person. For Nestorius, if I read him correctly, Christ’s temporal acts can only be acts of the temporal πρόσωπον, not the eternal one (I may be wrong in supposing that he says this, but this is doubtless how Cyril read him). In any case, a sharp division must be drawn, for the Antiochene theology, between acts whose subject is the human Christ and acts whose subject is the divine Christ.

(Perhaps there is some reason for the Antiochene position. Christ slept; Christ ate; Christ, in the garden, felt dread at the prospect of being crucified; Christ suffered and died. Traditionally, these actions are seen as revelatory, not of his divine nature, but of his human one. Doubtless Cyril would agree; but he would nonetheless insist that they are all actions of the same divine person who rose from the dead and existed with the Father from all eternity.)

For Cyril, it is the eternal Son who is the subject of the temporal Christ’s actions. Because of this, the temporal Christ’s breathing upon his disciples is revelatory of the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. To make a sharp differentiation between theology and economy here is not only to miss Cyril’s point; it is to risk compromising the unity of Christ. Just as, when Christ suffers, it is the eternal, impassible Son who suffers, so Christ’s breathing is a breathing from the eternal Son. A breathing of the eternal Spirit, not just of temporal gifts.

A recognition of this undermines some recent readings of Cyril, e.g., that of André de Halleux (“Cyrille, Théodoret et le «Filioque»,” RHE 74 [1979], 597-625), who claims that Cyril’s language about the relationship of Christ to the Spirit, because it is stated in a christological context, has no bearing upon the question of the Spirit’s eternal origination. It seems, rather, that St. Cyril normally understood economy and theology to go together, for the reasons stated above: the oneness of Christ’s person implies that Christ’s temporal acts—at least, such acts as touch upon another divine person—are revelatory of his eternal relationships. So, if Cyril on many occasions speaks of the Holy Spirit as being from the Father and the Son and, in one place, implies that being through the Son and being from the Son are equivalent in meaning (De adoratione I, PG 68, 148A), it is a subterfuge and sleight of hand to allege that these statements have no implications for Cyril’s views on the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession. To argue thus is to read Cyril as an Antiochene theologian, or as having no basic disagreement with writers like Theodoret—something which de Halleux explicitly maintains, disingenuously in my view.

Nikephoros Blemmydes: Oration I on the Holy Spirit (to Jacob, Archbishop of Bulgaria), §§ 1-12

The following translation is a work in progress. I am offering here only the first twelve paragraphs of this oration; later, I will add other sections, and will eventually, for ease of access, publish the whole thing as a page on the side bar of this blog. I began translating Blemmydes during the depths of the recent covid lockdowns; his influence upon Bekkos is indisputable, although there is a large debate over the question of whether Bekkos read him correctly. According to Pachymeres, Blemmydes’s two Orations on the Holy Spirit, written in the 1250’s, were given to Bekkos to read while he was in prison in 1273, when his answer opposing Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos’s plans for union with Rome incurred the wrath of the latter. These orations evidently played a large role in changing Bekkos’s mind and shaping his views about the procession of the Holy Spirit and about the legitimacy of the emperor’s proposed ecclesiastical union.

Blemmydes is a complex writer, and his comments at the beginning of this discourse might well lead one to think that he expresses his views on the subject at hand with some guardedness. For, on the one hand, he states very explicitly that the Latin teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit, the teaching that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, is wrong and even a heresy; on the other hand, he both states that the teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son is a common teaching of the Fathers which none of them denied and that “from the Son” and “through the Son” are linguistically interchangeable. One should also observe that Blemmydes devotes some attention to the meaning of the patristic expression that the Spirit “appears through the Son”; Blemmydes explicitly says that “appears” implies existence (note the very end of this translation: “‘to appear’ and ‘to proceed’ mean the same thing”). At any rate, I am not convinced, as are some contemporary commentators (e.g., M. Stavrou, Th. Alexopoulos, D. Makarov), that Bekkos thoroughly misread Blemmydes, and that the most authentic and accurate interpretation of Blemmydes’ pneumatological thought was that which was given by Gregory of Cyprus, with his doctrine of an eternal, non-hypostatic, non-existential manifestation of the Spirit through or from the Son.

I translated the following from Laemmer’s 1864 edition, which is readily available online (the bracketed numbers give Laemmer’s pagination, with links to the pages). Later, I consulted Michel Stavrou’s recent Sources Chrétiennes edition of the discourse: Nicéphore Blemmydès: Oeuvres Théologiques, Tome II (Paris 2013), pp. 74-153. In the enumeration of paragraphs, I follow Laemmer, who himself is reprinting the 1652 edition of Leo Allatius (which can be read here).

Note: Early in this discourse, Blemmydes makes extended quotations from two earlier works, the Sacred Arsenal of Andronikos Kamateros and the Dialogues of Nicetas of Maroneia. Both of these works have now appeared in critical editions by Alessandra Bucossi, which unfortunately are not available to me.

One further comment: Because Blemmydes is a very subtle writer, and may possibly be observing some distinction in his use of different terms for “from,” I have tried here to reflect this usage by consistently translating the Greek word ἐκ as “out of,” reserving “from” for other words like παρά. Although this results in occasionally unidiomatic English, it seemed to me worth doing, for the sake of accuracy.

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From the most holy and most philosophical among monastics, the presbyter Sir Nikephoros Blemmydes, to Jacob, Archbishop of Bulgaria: First Oration, demonstrating through patristic texts the theological teaching that the Holy Spirit is through the Son and from the Son

[L108]

There is an ailment which afflicts me, which I shall relate; for in fact my address is directed to a sacred healer, and to as many as share with him the same science. I shall speak freely to the wise, and no fear shall cause me to hide my train of thought; for either a confirmation or a correction would be brought to the things I am about to say by your irreproachable judgment. But I hesitate [L109] when speaking to the unwise, and especially when I make some pronouncement concerning God; for I fear that they will misconstrue it, and will, for this reason, view my discourse with some dangerous suspicion. And if the unwise should also possess a love of contention, in that case I am utterly reluctant and hesitant to speak. For just as no one should give heed to a man who speaks about divine things boastfully and without due consideration (for it is necessary that theology be handled with fear, so that precarious matters be not pushed towards destruction), in a similar way one should oppose and dismiss anyone who hears a matter just for the sake of arguing against it, and with naysaying as his sole aim. For acrimony, an evil joy, muddies and mixes up the truth. Moreover, if many tongues agree in making the same point, how would they not, in their multitude, appear to prevail over one that says something different? And again, if some of them are in positions of authority, how would it go well with someone who, for the truth’s sake, contradicts them, and that openly?

2. Given that my attitude and feelings on these matters are such, and since the present address is directed towards wise men who seek and pursue the peace which is in Christ, I shall speak freely and openly concerning the proposed matter of inquiry. And this is, whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, [L110] or is instead directly from the Father, not through the Son. Now the fact that many of our august teachers handed down the first of these as a tradition, but none of them the second, I suppose will be acknowledged by every man familiar with the sacred writers, who is guided by them in uprightness. And it is no less than this about which we have already made some preliminary remarks in three epistles.

3. But while the lack of a clear occurrence of this expression in the gospels is taken by many people as a ready excuse for opposing it, this absence by no means implies that the dogma is unacceptable; the high [L111] credibility of those who have asserted it in their theological statements proves this. For, as the Theologian states in his Invectives, “we are not permitted to disbelieve the things said by godbearing men, but we must take their trustworthiness as a demonstration stronger than any rational or antirational power.” For the same one who inspired the evangelists inspired also the rest of the divine teachers, and the writings of the saints are utterances of God.

➔ Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 4.102; PG 35, 637 B.

4. But the claim that these writings have been corrupted by the Pneumatomachians is stupid, since the confession that the Holy Spirit is, by way of emanation, from the Father through the Son in no way at all gives support to that heresy; rather, quite the contrary, it both overthrows it and demolishes it. For, by the one teaching, the Spirit is blasphemed [L112] as a creature, but, by the other, the Spirit is proclaimed to be out of the very substance of the Son, and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. And what likelihood would there be that so great mischief should befall, simultaneously, the sacred books of so many of the saints throughout the world, and that thus there should have come about a universal corruption of the writings of the great fathers, and that no one of former times should have made mention of this outrage? No, no, it is not so. Such an idea is the invention of a sick mind.

5. And why is it that all those who, after the schism and the separation, polemicized against the Romans opposed, as far as they were able, the claim that the Spirit is substantially out of the Son, but not at all the claim that he is from the Father through the Son? Rather, indeed, the more learned among them both manifestly promoted this claim and, on the grounds of this, sought to refute the teaching “out of the Son.” And that this is in fact the case we learn from the book The Sacred Arsenal; and that this book was held in high esteem by the experts among the learned men of that time, [L113] and that it was much in demand afterwards, even to the present, and that no one, not even among those who are completely shameless, has ever dared to wag his tongue against it, since it very forcefully opposes the Spirit’s emanation from the Son — all these things the facts themselves clearly proclaim.

In this book, the Romans, following the rules of debate, introduce a saying from the most wise Cyril, presenting it in support of their own dogma; it goes like this:

“The Spirit is in no way changeable, or, if he is so infirm as to change, the mockery will reflect back upon the very divine nature itself, since of the God and Father and, indeed, also of the Son is the Spirit who comes forth substantially out of both, that is, out of the Father through the Son.”

➔ Cyril of Alexandria, De adoratione, I, PG 68, 148 A.

So then, let us carefully observe what reply is made to the Romans.

This blessed father Cyril, cutting off beforehand the many pretexts of our speeches, brought a clarification to the sense of an ambiguous locution. [L114] For, in saying that the Spirit comes forth substantially out of both, he straightway added the clause, “that is, out of the Father, through the Son.” Now, the term “through” included in this supplementary clause [implies] nothing else than that the Spirit comes forth out of the Father, not also out of the Son. For if the latter were the case, there would have been no need for the saint to make such an addition.

In response to this, the men of Rome say:

Then neither are we in error when, in line with this divine father, we say that the Spirit proceeds out of the Father and out of the Son, although we understand and interpret “out of” as standing in place of “through” with reference to the Son.

But (they say, moving on to refute these men) the conjunction “and,” added by you with reference to the Son, does not allow you to say such things; for it plainly demonstrates that, when you say that the Spirit proceeds out of the Father and out of the Son, in whatever sense you take “out of” in the case of the Father, you both understand and speak this term in the same sense in the case of the Son. Therefore, either you are claiming that the same meaning “out of” applies with reference to “both” (that is, to the Father and to the Son) — and how are you not in opposition to the divine father, who expressly takes “out of” as applying to the Father, and “through” as applying to the Son — or else with reference to “both,” you are taking “out of” as equivalent to “through,” and are saying that the Spirit proceeds through the Father and through the Son; and, accordingly, you imply that there is someone else out of whom the Spirit is said to proceed through these two. For since the same preposition is to be employed in one sense in the case of the Father and in another sense in the case of the Son, you are forbidden from taking this unitive conjunction in a violent way, as we said before. For to say or to write, without any conjunction, “out of the Father, out of the Son,” is something you yourselves reject as barbarous and unintelligible.

➔ Andronikos Kamateros, Sacred Arsenal, Monac. gr. 229, f. 25.

So much, then, out of the Sacred Arsenal.

[L115] 6. But another of those who are distinguished and who was himself involved in dialogue with the men of Rome, since he had made it his intention to prove that the statements made by the saints are, according to the truth, in no way opposed to each other, even if they appear to be to those who are inconsiderate, said:

“They would be opposed if, while referring to the same thing, in the same respect and at the same time [cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ.3, 1005b19-20], they were rejected by some of them and approved of by others.” Among such, therefore, is also Christ’s statement that the Spirit proceeds out of the Father (Jn 15:26); and perhaps all [L116] [the patristic texts would take Christ to be] referring [here] to the Father as to the first cause, and attribute the Spirit’s procession to him. And Athanasius the Great spoke in this way:

“The Spirit [is] out of the Father, as proceeding from the Word who is out of the Father.”

[Probably a paraphrase of a text which is cited more fully below, Athanasius, Epistola I ad Serapionem 20, PG 26, 577C – 580A. Same text had been cited by Andronicus Camaterus, Sacrum armamentarium, ch. 1, secs. 72, 73.]

And after the bishop of Nyssa said

“The Son is immediately out of the first, that is to say, the Father,”

he thereupon says:

“the Spirit is through the one who is immediately out of the first.”

➔ Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium quod non sint tres dei, GNO vol. 3,1 p. 56; PG 45, 133 B-C.

The wise Cyril plainly has said “out of both” (namely, the Father and the Son). But, going on to clarify in what sense he said “out of both,” he added, “that is, out of the Father through the Son.”

➔ Cyril of Alexandria, De Adoratione et Cultu in Spiritu et Veritate, lib. I, PG 68, 148A.

As for John of Damascus, who uses the expression “out of the Father” in the sense of out of the primal origin and the first cause, he says that [we do not say] “out of the Son” in the sense of out of the first cause, and he does not prohibit the expression “out of the Son” in the sense of out of him who is immediate, or through him who is immediate. For the preposition “through” (διά) and [L117] the preposition “out of” (ἐκ) have an identical force. And this is both a habitual usage of Scripture itself, and something that was not unknown to the holy fathers.

➔ John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa I.8 (PG 94, 832 B).

If then [one can say that the Spirit is] “out of the Son,” in the sense that he is out of the Father through the Son, and, similarly, [that he is] “out of both,” and [that he is] on the one hand out of the first cause, the Father, and on the other hand out of him who is immediate, the Son, which things are said by Athanasius the Great, by Cyril the Great, and by Gregory of Nyssa, then the wise John would not be contradicting them, but would himself also say that, in this sense, the Spirit is out of the Son. For he himself likewise says that [the Spirit is] through the Son, insofar as [the terms] “through” and “out of” are equivalent. But if someone were to say that [the Spirit] is “out of the Son” as out of the first cause, something which not one of the saints has said, he, too, would speak against this, and with a loud voice.

➔ Nicetas of Maroneia, Sixth Dialogue between a Greek and a Latin on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, ed. V. Giorgetti, pp. 379-381.

So much, then, for these matters.

7. Furthermore, we find many other more recent writers who, while they oppose the teaching “out of the Son,” postulate, in a very noble way, the teaching “through the Son,” in keeping with the account which we provided earlier. For this reason, I fail to understand what is the matter now with some people who do not uphold the Spirit’s coming-forth from the Father through the Son. But let us observe what sort of things Athanasius, worthy of his name (“Immortality”), [L118] teaches the bishop Serapion on this matter, by way of an epistle.

“Just as the Son is an only-begotten offspring, so, too, the Spirit, who is given and sent from the Son, is himself also one and not many, nor one out of many, but a unique, selfsame Spirit. For the sanctifying and illuminating Life of the one living Word, who is the Son, must be one, perfect and complete, being his energy and gift, which indeed is said to proceed out of the Father, since from the Word who is out of the Father it confessedly shines forth and is sent and is given.”

➔ Athanasius, Epistola I ad Serapionem 20, PG 26, 577C – 580A.

8. Some people cling to the expression “shines forth,” and say that it is indicative of manifestation, not of existence: for, they say, the term “proceed” had already indicated existence. So then, since it is on the grounds that the Spirit is manifested from the Word that he is said to proceed from the Father, it would follow that, if there were not this manifestation, he would not be said to proceed out of the Father. What then? Before the coming-into-being of the creation (whether the sensible creation or the noetic one), to which the Holy Spirit had been manifested by the [L119] Word, would the Spirit not have been said to proceed out of the Father? For just as, if someone were to say that man is a sentient being possessing a soul because he is an animal, then, if someone else were to remove the cause, this would simultaneously remove what is inferred from it: in the same manner, if one were to dismiss the hypothesis of these people, then the inference from it, to the extent that it depends thereon, would also be destroyed.

9. And let these people still seek out a reason why the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father; but, as for us, arguing on the basis of the word’s true significance, we shall reason as follows. The Spirit comes forth from the Word, that is, through the Word, out of the Father, just as an illuminating radiance, through [a beam] of light, comes out of the sun. And, since this is the case, and the Word is confessed to be out of the Father, through this [Word] also the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father. And the teacher has employed the term “shine forth,” as corresponding to the illuminating Life. For this reason the saint has also named the Holy Spirit the living and subsisting energy of the Word, knowing as he does that the Word and Son is the subsistent power of God. But since energy is through power, and the power is confessedly out of God, for this reason the energy is out of God. For this is what the teacher [L120] has in mind when he says, “he is said to proceed,” since the procession of the Spirit is said and proclaimed to be out of the Father on account of its reference to the first cause. Therefore, as the energy of the Son and Word of God, the Holy Spirit eternally shines forth from him, which is the same as to say, through him, out of the Father; and as a gift he is naturally both sent and given.

10. But that “manifestation” in theology is indicative of passionless and timeless existence, Basil the Great also shows when he speaks in this way in the second book of his Antirrhetics:

“There similarly exists a presupposition common to all Christians, among those who are truly worthy of this title, concerning the fact that the begotten Son is shone forth out of the unbegotten light.”

➔ Basil, Adv. Eunomium II.25; PG 29, 629 A-B.

And again:

“From a good Father [there shone forth] a good Son, and from the unbegotten there shone forth the eternal light.”

➔ Basil, Adv. Eunomium II.27; PG 29, 636 A.

And Gregory the wise hierarch of the people of Nyssa speaks thus in the first book of his Antirrhetics:

“The Father is understood to be beginningless and unbegotten and always Father. And from him, in an immediate way without interval, [L121] the Only-begotten Son is understood together with the Father. And through him and with him, before any vain and non-subsisting concept interposes through the midst, straightaway the Holy Spirit is conjointly understood, not coming in second place after the Son according to his existence, as though the Son might be thought of without the Spirit, but being from, on the one hand, the God of all things, and having the cause of his being from the same source whence also the Only-begotten is a light, but shining forth through the true Light, he is not cut off from the Father or the Only-begotten by either interval or otherness of nature.”

➔ Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium I, 1 § 378; PG 45, 369.

Again, Basil the Great writes to him concerning the difference between hypostasis and ousia:

“But the Son, knowing through himself and with himself the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, [L122] and shining forth from the unbegotten light alone in an Only-begotten way, has no sharing with the Father with respect to any particularizing characteristic, or [L123] with the Holy Spirit.”

➔ Ps.-Basil (= Gregory of Nyssa), ep. 38.4, 29-34; ed. Courtonne, vol. 1, p. 85.

John the wise Poet in hymns to the most holy Mother of God:

“You, Mother of God, [L124] without conjugal intercourse gave birth to him who shone forth from the incorrupt Father.”

➔ Beginning of the theotokion of the 3rd ode of the canon for Sunday Orthros, 1st plagal mode (or, Tone 5).

[L125] On which the interpreter, held in admiration by many, who is also the first expositor of the sacred canons, says:

“The term ‘who shone forth’ [L126] indicates the supernal, passionless begetting of the Son. For as the brilliance comes forth passionlessly out of the sun, in the same way also the Son has passionlessly been begotten by the Father; and the Poet teaches, through the ‘shining forth,’ the Son’s being eternal and, in this respect, beginningless. For just as a light and the brilliance that comes from it are both simultaneous, in the same way, simultaneously with the thought of the Father, there is the thought also of the Son that accompanies it.”

➔ John Zonaras, an unpublished commentary on the Sunday canons of John of Damascus.

But these things, perhaps, go beyond what is necessary. For wherever a word is seen to admit of a well-considered and well adapted meaning, when taken in one sense, but is suspected of another meaning, one which involves much irrationality and lack of harmony, what need is there to seek any more for an explication of the truth in the latter?

11. But the claim that it is in order that no one should suppose that it is as an origin of the Spirit that the Son manifests the Spirit through his teaching and gives him as one connatural with himself [and] that, for this reason, the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father, is beside the point, but is easy enough to refute. For what kind of suspicion of “origin” would [the terms] “manifest” and “give,” as such, introduce? Or why, given that the Word has [L127] confessedly “appeared out of the Father,” should not all things that the Word possesses be confessedly out of the Father? And why, finally, should the Word be considered an origin of the Spirit? I know that, to such a vain disputer, you yourself might say, “Away with such misrepresentations!” Now as for the fact that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, Basil the Great also asserts this in many places, and in fact also in his Antirrhetics, where he says:

“How then should inseparable things be separated, the Word of God and the Spirit, who is out of God through the Son? If the Spirit is not believed in, then the Word also is not believed in.”

➔ Ps.-Basil, Adv. Eunomium V, PG 29, 737 B.

Concerning this also the most perceptive Epiphanius in his Ancoratus expresses himself in this way:

“Therefore the blessed Peter says to those who were with Ananias, ‘Why has Satan tempted you, that you should lie to the Holy Ghost?’ And he said, ‘You have not lied to a man, but to God.’ There the Spirit, who had been lied to by those who had purloined a portion of the tribute money, is God, out of the Father and the Son.”

➔ Epiphanius, Ancoratus 9, 2-3, ed. Karl Holl, p. 16 (PG 43, 32 C).

And again:

“The Father is Father of a true Son, who is wholly Light, and Son of a true Father, Light [L128] out of Light. Nor is it in the manner of a handiwork or creature that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, a third Light from the Father and the Son. But all other things are by position or opposition or appellation.”

➔ Epiphanius, Ancoratus 71, 2, ed. Holl, p. 88 (PG 43, 148 B).

These things, then, are said by the most perceptive Epiphanius, who employs the phrase “out of the Father and the Son” instead of “out of the Father through the Son.”

Likewise also the most wise Cyril in his Thesaurus is observed to speak in this manner:

“That which the blessed Moses maintained to have been breathed by God into the man, the same thing did Christ, renewing it in us according to his revivification out of the dead, breathe into his own disciples saying, ‘Receive the Spirit,’ so that, having been formed anew into the image that was from the beginning, we might appear conformed with our Creator through the participation of the Spirit. Since therefore the Holy Spirit, when he has come to be in us, shows us to be conformed with God and, again, comes forth out of the Father and the Son, it is manifest that he is of the divine substance, coming forth substantially in it and out of it.”

➔ Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 34; PG 75, 585 A.

He comes forth, he says, out of the Father and the Son, that is, from the Father through the Son. [L129] And that beacon light of the people of Nyssa and of the whole world, in how many different ways does he clearly show that the Holy Spirit is out of the Father through the Son? To begin with, in the first book of his Antirrhetics, he says these things concerning the Spirit:

“Being again joined to the Father in respect of his being uncreated, he is separated in not being, like him, a Father; and, while joined with the Son in respect of being uncreated and in that he has the cause of his existence out of the God of all things, he stands apart, again, in that which is unique to him, in that he exists out of the Father not in an only-begotten way, and in that it is through the Son himself that he has appeared. And again, since the creation exists through the Only-begotten, in order that the Spirit might not be thought to have something in common with it by reason of the fact that he has appeared through the Son, the Spirit is distinguished from the creation in respect of his invariability and unchangeableness and his lack of need of any external goodness.”

➔ Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium I, 1, 280-281, ed. W. Jaeger, vol. I, pp. 108-109 (PG 45, 336).

12. Some people are puzzled about the expression “to appear,” saying, Perhaps it indicates manifestation, not hypostasis. Now in point of fact, even if they had failed to notice that the word is active both in voice and in meaning, they ought to have comprehended the signification of the word on the basis of [L130] other patristic texts, and not to have set themselves up as calumniators of the truth to no purpose. For, to begin with, Basil the Great says these things about the Spirit:

“… possessing in himself nothing extrinsically acquired, but eternally possessing all things as Spirit of God, and as having appeared out of him.”

➔ Basil of Caesarea, Adversus Eunomium PG 29, 772

And the most wise Cyril, concerning Christ:

“We say that the mediator of God and men is compounded, according to the scriptures, of our own humanity, which is possessed by him in his own unique way, and of him who appeared from God as Son according to nature, that is to say, the Only-begotten.”

➔ Cyril of Alexandria, De Incarnatione, PG 75, 1208 CD.

And again:

“The Spirit is proper to the Son, not only inasmuch as he is the Word that has appeared from the Father; but even if he is understood as having become man like us, it is manifest that the Spirit is God, the one who chiefly and naturally [receives] from him as God. But other things, as creatures, have appeared in an improper sense from the one from whom they are said to be, as from a Maker and Creator.”

➔ Cyril of Alexandria, De Incarnatione, PG 75, 1241 B.

So that, plainly, “to appear” is indicative of existence, the Scripture thus narrating concerning the Spirit that,

“just as the creator Word established the heavens, so also [did] the Spirit of God who proceeds from the Father, that is to say, from his mouth.”

➔ Basil of Caesarea, Homilia in Ps. 32; PG 29, 333 B.

And again:

“Nor is the Spirit, having appeared in an ineffable way from an ineffable mouth, foreign to the glory of God.”

➔ Ps-Basil of Caesarea, Homilia de Spiritu Sancto, PG 31, 1433 BC.

Does this not clearly show that, in the case of the Spirit, the words “to appear” and “to proceed” mean the same thing?

Interview with Erick Ybarra

I had a discussion yesterday evening with the Catholic blogger and author Erick Ybarra on his YouTube channel, mostly about John Bekkos. The interview can be watched at the link below.

John Bekkos against Gregory of Cyprus’s view that manifestation does not entail existence

Gregory of Cyprus’s doctrine of an eternal manifestation of the Holy Spirit through or from the Son is viewed by writers like Aristides Papadakis and Michel Stavrou as Orthodoxy’s definitive answer to Western pneumatology. John Bekkos, against whom this doctrine was explicitly formulated, not surprisingly saw it as incoherent. Since the question of the meaning of this doctrine is much discussed these days on online forums, I have translated this passage from John Bekkos’s Refutation of the book of George of Cyprus in hopes of making clearer what are some of his objections to it. The book critiques Gregory of Cyprus’s Exposition of the Tome of Faith against Bekkos; it probably dates to 1286 or 1287; Papadakis (Crisis in Byzantium, p. 143) says it was “written at the Cosmidion [monastery] before [Bekkos] was sent into exile.”

On a different subject: At some point during the past year, WordPress adopted a completely redesigned editor; presumably this was done in order to make posts more readable across different platforms (desktop, tablet, smartphone); however, it has made it much more difficult for me to typeset posts in the way I have previously done, using various fonts and sometimes two columns. I ask readers’ indulgence if the visual aspects of this blog are compromised while I attempt to learn the new system.

Translation of John Bekkos, Refutatio libri Georgii Cyprii 9; PG 141, 877B – 880B.

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9. “For,” he says,

“the text of some of the Fathers which states that the Spirit exists through the Son and from the Son indicates in fact his shining-forth and manifestation thence; for, it may be acknowledged, the Paraclete himself eternally shines forth and is exhibited through the Son, in the same way as the light which, through a ray, shines forth from the sun. On the other hand, this also indicates the furnishing and gift and sending of him to us; but it does not at all indicate that he subsists through the Son and from the Son, and that it is through him and from him that he has existence.”
❖ Gregory of Cyprus, Ἔκθεσις τοῦ τόμου τῆς πίστεως κατὰ τοῦ Βέκκου, PG 142, 240 B-C.

Tell me, all you people, who that has a theological background has ever heard, from anyone who has gone before us, such a notion, that the Holy Spirit’s existing through the Son and from the Son should be taken in such a sense? He admits that the Spirit exists through the Son, he confirms that there is a textual witness which states that the Spirit exists from the Son; and, because he recognizes that the true sense of these texts lends us much aid in support of that peace of the Churches on account of which he has raised implacable war against us, he deems it in no way tolerable if he does not pervert them into an unhallowed sense.

First, as for what he says concerning the eternal manifestation through the Son, I am unable to discern if the eternal shining-forth of the Spirit through the Son means anything different than his eternal existence through the Son. Next, even if I should admit a distinction between these terms, I do not regard them as opposed in the way he says they are, in keeping with his own view. For since the chief end he has in view is the unmediated existence of the Spirit from the Father, if the shining-forth of the Spirit through the Son is something other than his existence through the Son — for example, his being bestowed upon us through the Son — then why would the Holy Spirit be thought to shine forth through the Son eternally, if it is not the case that, through the Son, he has existence? If on the one hand, according to the man who teaches these things, the Spirit has been given to us as by means of a servile instrument, then we shall refrain from commenting; but if, on the other hand, it is with the Son naturally mediating this shining-forth or manifestation, and the bestowal and gift and sending, then this natural mediation serves above all other things to confirm his existence from the Father through the Son; and whoever would deny the Spirit’s existence through the Son on account of his innovation concerning the [trinitarian] order, brings about both the removal of [the Trinity’s] very existence and a complete denial of the faith, according to the statement of the great and divine Basil^❖; this is because, according to this hypothesis, all these things are bestowed through the Son in a servile and ministerial way, I mean the bestowal and the gift and the sending and the illumination and the manifestation; and, if anyone wishes to say anything else along these lines, he plainly separates the Son from the Father with respect to substance and nature. Meanwhile, how does it not exceed all irrationality to confess that the Spirit exists through the Son and from the Son, even specifying these things with the term “to exist” along with the terms “naturally” and “substantially,” and at the same time to deny the Spirit’s existence through the Son and from the Son?

❖ Basil of Caesarea, Epistola 52.4; PG 32, 396 C; cited by Bekkos at Epigraph 4:21.

John Bekkos on a text of St. Basil’s

The following is a translation of one of the chapters of John Bekkos’s treatise On the Procession of the Holy Spirit. Bekkos here treats of an important text from Book Two of St. Basil’s early work Against Eunomius (Adv. Eun. II.34); the text is in fact the first patristic text cited by Bekkos in his treatise On the Union and Peace of the Churches of Old and New Rome, at least in its original form (he later made a revision of this work, and the Basil citation was moved to a different place in the narrative). The prominent place given to the citation is no doubt a reflection of the importance, for Bekkos, of the theological principle Basil therein spells out: that any causality ascribed to the Son is referred back to the Father, in such a way that there is no “polyarchy” in God, no division of the ultimate divine source or “monarchy.” For Bekkos, that principle applies both to the economy (God’s dealings with the creation) and to theology in the strict sense, that is, to an understanding of eternal trinitarian relationships. In both cases, Bekkos argues, the Father is able to exercise his causality through the Son, without there being any division of the principle of divine monarchy, rooted in the person of the Father. Bekkos thinks that Basil, in the passage cited, supports this claim.

To be sure, others argued in Bekkos’s own day, and have argued subsequently, that St. Basil is not saying this. They maintain that Basil, in the passage in question, takes Eunomius’s own supposition that the Holy Spirit is a creature of the Son’s as a basis for his refutation of Eunomius’s position, and that his argument cannot be extended back into trinitarian theology properly speaking. Most of Bekkos’s concern, in the chapter translated below, is to refute that counter-claim.

The treatise On the Procession of the Holy Spirit (De processione Spiritus sancti, PG 141, 157B – 276A) was initially conceived by Bekkos as a series of eleven self-contained essays dealing with disputed questions surrounding the interpretation of particular patristic texts; to this series a twelfth chapter was later added, that originally had stood independently. The work dates to the period of Bekkos’s patriarchate (1275-1282); beyond that, it is impossible to specify more precisely the date and occasion of its composition.

Whatever else may be said about the text translated below, I think it shows clearly, as I have argued elsewhere, that Bekkos was no mere “anthologist,” clumsily stringing patristic texts together without any insight into their meaning or regard for their context. Bekkos is a serious reader of the fathers, and he gives below a close reading of Basil’s text, relating the citation in question to what came before and after it, and expounding Basil’s intention in a pretty convincing manner. He points out the obvious, that, if Basil’s aim were specifically to defeat Eunomius’s view that the Holy Spirit is a creature of the Son’s, he could have done so most simply and effectively by telling Eunomius that the Holy Spirit is not from the Son at all. The fact that he doesn’t take this approach, Bekkos says, is a sign that Basil does not feel that that option is open to him; it is not in respect of holding that the Holy Spirit is, in some sense, from the Son that Basil and Eunomius differ. (Both of them, I would claim, are intellectually the great-grandchildren of Origen, and their quarrel is largely framed within the terms of that theological inheritance.) Instead, Basil focuses on Eunomius’s claim that the Holy Spirit is from the Son alone. Towards the end of the chapter, Bekkos makes an astute comment, noting that Basil saw, in Eunomius’s claim about the Spirit being the creature of the Son, an attempt to demean the Son in relation to the Father, to deny to the Son any equality of rank; by contrast, Basil’s connecting of whatever is from the Son back to the Father, the first cause, shows that Father and Son share the same divine nature and rank. Arguably, Bekkos’s exposition illuminates, not only his own thought about the Trinity, but St. Basil’s thought as well. His claim that Adversus Eunomium II.34 shows that Basil saw the Spirit as, in some sense, from the Son is founded on a serious reading of the text, and is not easily dismissed.

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John Bekkos, De processione Spiritus Sancti, ch. 4 (PG 141, 200C – 208C).

Against those who raise doubts as to whether the expression “to be through the Son” carries a reference to the Father 

1. But again, those who are disputatious raise doubts and attempt to contradict the statements of the saints which show that the Spirit is from and out of the Son, and say, “And in what way shall we be able to learn that the phrase ‘from the Son’ carries a reference to the Father?” In reply to this, since we have nothing that better serves to demonstrate the things whereof they demand an explanation than those things which Basil the Great said towards the end of Book Two of his Against Eunomius, we shall here set them forth; they go like this:

“But to whom [200D] of all people is it not apparent, that no activity of the Son is separated from the Father, nor does there exist anything among the things in the Son that is alien from the Father? For, he says, ‘all that are mine are thine, and thine are mine’ (John 17:10). Why then does Eunomius ascribe the cause of the Spirit to the Son alone, and take the making of him as a reproach against his nature? If then, in saying these things, he sets two causes in opposition to each other, he will be the comrade of Mani and Marcion; but if the statement that ‘all things came to be through’ the Son connects existing things to a single cause, it implies a reference back to the first cause. So that, even though we believe that all things were brought into being through the Word of God, nevertheless [201A] we do not deprive the God of the universe of being the cause of all things.”
❖ Basil of Caesarea, Adv. Eunomium, II.34; PG 29b, 652 A-B. 

The reason why we present this passage here in our treatise is to make it clear that “the cause of the Spirit” refers back to the Father, even if the Spirit is said to be “from the Son.” 

2. But again they hound us with objections, and say: “But, so far as can be gathered from the words quoted, Basil the Great did not say these things in a theological sense about the Spirit’s Godhead, so that the text should provide a resolution of the matter in question. But since Eunomius was blaspheming the Spirit, calling him a creature of the Son’s, and saying that he was a creature of the Son’s alone so as to separate him from the Father, for this reason the saint first sets forth the premise that ‘No activity of the Son’s is separated from the Father, nor is there anything, among [201B] those things which exist in the Son, that is foreign to the Father’; then, on this basis, he infers that Eunomius wickedly and clumsily ascribes the cause of the Spirit to the Only-begotten alone, and takes his creation as a reproach against his nature.” When they give such a reply to our teaching, we in turn say: And what do you suppose, gentlemen? Was it really for this reason that the most wicked Eunomius seemed to our father Basil to be saying that the Spirit is from the Son alone, because he said that the Spirit is a creature of the Son’s? And so, for this reason, according to you, the unstated, unambiguous consequence would follow that, if Eunomius had said that the Spirit is from the Son alone while he took him to be, not a creature, but God, then our father Basil would not have [201C] criticized him. For either, according to Eunomius, the Spirit is a creature, and it is on that point that the blasphemy turns, or else, in line with the truth of theology, the Spirit is not a creature; and if it is on account of his doctrine of the Spirit’s creaturehood that Eunomius is to be condemned when he says that the Spirit is from the Son alone, then, manifestly, someone who thinks that the Spirit is God is not to be condemned if he says that he is from the Son alone. And take care lest, in running from the smoke, you fall into the fire. For while you contend that the Spirit is from the Father alone (as though you forget that he is not the Spirit of the Father alone), observe how you oppose Basil in his refutation of Eunomius when, [on your reading,] he affirms the Spirit to be from the Son alone according to his divine substance.

3. For I say once again that if, according to your reading, it was because [201D] Eunomius took the view that the Spirit is a creature that his statement that the Spirit is from the Son alone was denounced, then plainly he would not have been criticized for saying that the Spirit is from the Son alone if he had thought that the Spirit is God; and it fails to occur to those who maintain that the Spirit is from the Father alone that, when their interpretation of this text is extended to its unspoken implications, they end up affirming that the Spirit is from the Son alone. But if the absurdity and contradiction thereby revealed shows plainly that, when Basil the Great takes the heretic Eunomius to task for saying that the Spirit is from the Son alone, it was not because of Eunomius’s opinion about the Spirit’s creaturehood, but, rather, specifically for his claim that the Spirit was from one and from one alone — whether as a creature, as blasphemously alleged by Eunomius, or else [204A] as God (since, in line with true theology, the Holy Spirit is God) — then there remains no pretext of ambiguity: as you can see, the saint appears to be virtually saying to Eunomius that, though in fact the Holy Spirit is, in his divine nature, not from the Son alone, separated from the Father, nevertheless even supposing that the Spirit were a creature of the Son’s, in accordance with your view, Eunomius, you should not even in that case have ascribed the cause of him to the Only-begotten alone and separated him from the Father, on account of the fact that “everything which is made by the Son carries a reference to the Father, the first cause.” And as it has been unambiguously shown that it was not for his view of the Spirit’s creaturehood that Eunomius was taken to task by Basil the Great for saying that the Spirit is from the Son alone, but solely for his claim that the Spirit is from [204B] the Son alone and from no one else, this likewise clearly refutes those who raise doubts as to whether the expression “to be from the Son” carries a reference to the Father. 

4. But if this refutation does not seem sufficiently clear to you, nevertheless, by carefully examining the things which the saint goes on to say following the above-cited passage, you will still be able to comprehend what the argument has already plainly shown you through many cited texts. For after refuting Eunomius, and virtually saying to him that, even if the Spirit were a creature of the Son’s, in accordance with your view, Eunomius, all the same you should not have ascribed the cause of him to the Son alone, on account of the fact that everything created through the Son has reference back to the Father, the first cause, [204C] the saint interjects some remarks concerning the divinity of the Spirit and, desiring to show that, according to his divinity, the Spirit exists from the Father and the Son, as proceeding ineffably from the Father through the Son, he says the following things: 

“And why is it not manifestly dangerous to separate the Spirit from God? since the Apostle has passed this thing down to us in a connected way, at one time calling him ‘of Christ,’ at another time ‘of God,’ where he writes, ‘If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his’ (Rom 8:9), and again, ‘But ye have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God’ (1 Cor 2:12). Again, the Lord calls him the ‘Spirit of Truth’ (Jn 15:26), since he himself is the Truth (Jn 14:6), and he proceeds from the Father (Jn 15:26).”
❖ Basil of Caesarea, Adv. Eunomium, II.34; PG 29b, 652 B-C. 

That is what the saint says, word for word. But [204D] note the phrase, “Why is it not manifestly dangerous to separate the Spirit from God?” For the saint did not say, “Why is it not manifestly dangerous to connect the Spirit to the Son, when he exists neither through him nor from him, but from the Father alone?” But he said, “Why is it not manifestly dangerous to separate the Spirit from God?” such that his entire concern was how he might show the Spirit to be connected to the Father when, according to Eunomius, he was separated from him. And this is clear from the testimonies which he then subjoins from both the Apostle and the Gospels, from which he shows the Spirit to be likewise “of the Son” and “of the Father,” and that it is not the case that, because he is “of the Son,” he is therefore not also “of the Father,” nor that, because he is from the Father, he is therefore not [205A] through the Son or from the Son. For the saint exhibits the gospel statements, both the one which says “the Spirit of Truth” and the one which says “he proceeds from the Father,” as a testimony to the connection about which he has just been speaking, knowing as he does very definitely that, just as the term ἐκπορεύεται (proceeds) is able to shed light upon the natural relationship and affinity of the Spirit with the Father, so also the phrase “Spirit of Truth” is able to shed light upon the natural relationship and affinity of the Spirit with the Son. 

And if anyone may still be doubtful about the equivalence of these expressions, which Basil the Great has presented as a testimony in order to show that the Spirit is jointly of the Son and of the Father, let such a person seek out those passages in Basil the Great’s [205B] writings, in which he is observed to say, “I acknowledge his affinity with the Father, since he ‘proceeds from the Father,’ and likewise with the Son, since I hear, ‘If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.’” And this defense of ours to those who raise doubts as to whether the statement that he is “from the Son” carries a reference back to the Father has now, I trust, been sufficiently given. 

But it is necessary to add those things which are still to be said, as a kind of corollary to those things which have been said already. For since the saint was devoting all his care to demonstrating that the Spirit is not a creature of the Son’s, if in fact he had demonstrated that he is not from the Son at all, he would at the same time have been able to demonstrate that he is also not the Son’s creature. For in the case of that which in no way at all exists from some other thing, what reason could there be for saying that it is its creature? For [205C] Eunomius had no other pretext for saying that the Spirit is the Son’s creature apart from the fact that it was affirmed by the theologians of that time that the Spirit is from the Father through the Son and, for that reason, also from the Son. For it is not as from a first cause and principle that the Spirit is from the Son, but as existing from the Father through the Son.

And if the saint had been able to demonstrate that the Spirit is not from the Son, his argument would not have carried this force alone, that it should be possible to draw the inference that the Spirit is not a creature of the Son’s. But it would also have been possible for some other, deeper inference to be observed there by those who study things closely. For when Eunomius says that the Spirit is a creature of the Son’s and less than the Only-begotten, taking the belittling of the Holy Spirit as something already granted, he uses this as grounds for [205D] demonstrating the lesser nature of the Son, as Basil the Great testifies in a passage occurring a little before the one we earlier examined, where he says the following things:

“Now the Lord says concerning the Paraclete, ‘He shall glorify me’ (Jn 16:14), but the accusatory tongue asserts this to be an obstacle against the Son’s being compared with the Father. For since, he says, the Son is the Spirit’s creator (have mercy on us, Lord, for uttering such a thing), and the latter is of such a kind as to add no dignity to his creator, for this reason neither is the Son worthy of being compared with the Father, on account of the [relative] worthlessness of those things which he has created, and has been deprived of equality of rank.”
❖ Basil of Caesarea, Adv. Eunomium, II.33; PG 29b, 649C.

[208A] This is what the saint says, word for word; and, after parading and presenting Eunomius’s blasphemy — that Eunomius intends, from the Spirit’s being created by the Son, to destroy, on that account, the Son’s equality with the Father — he thereupon adds the oft-cited passage, saying: “But to whom of all people is it not apparent, that no activity of the Son is separated from the Father?” and so on. Since therefore the saint understands that, if Eunomius says that the Spirit has been created by the Son, it is for the purpose of lessening the glory of the Only-begotten, and to obstruct his co-equal honor with the Father, if in fact he were able to prove from the Scriptures that the Spirit does not exist from the Son, what other refutation of Eunomius’s blasphemies would be have found necessary [208B], aside from demonstrating that in no way at all does the Spirit exist from the Son? For had it been demonstrated that the Spirit in no way exists from the Son, such a demonstration would have stopped Eunomius’s accusatory mouth when he says that the [relative] worthlessness of the Spirit, created by the Son, does not allow the Son to be of equal honor with the Father. So useful, then, would it have been for the saint to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit in no way at all exists from the Son, in order to defeat Eunomius’s blasphemies; but since the saint was unable to demonstrate this, he does not dispute Eunomius when the latter says that the Spirit is from the Son, since Basil himself makes this same point clear countless times in his own writings; instead, he disputes this most wicked and ungodly man only on one sole point, that Eunomius claims that the Spirit is from the Son alone. [208C] But given that it is not against the claim that the Holy Spirit is from the Son, but against the claim that the Holy Spirit is from the Son alone that the saint directs his argument, how is it not manifest that he confirms the claim that he is from both? For surely no one will say that, in saying that the Spirit is not from the Son alone, the saint proves that he is from the Father alone; nor ought one to reason that, if the Spirit is not from the Son alone, it therefore follows that he is from the Father alone; but one should understand that he who says that the Spirit is not from the Son alone clearly confirms the claim that he is from both. But if someone wants to demonstrate that the Spirit is from the Father alone, he will have no ready means for such a demonstration if he will not undertake to overthrow entirely the claim that the Spirit is from the Son. For this, and nothing but this, will be able to confirm the claim that the Spirit is from the Father alone.

Comments on Bekkos by Gerhard Podskalsky

Gerhard Podskalsky, Von Photios zu Bessarion: Der Vorrang humanistisch geprägter Theologie in Byzanz und deren bleibende Bedeutung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2003), pp. 40-41.

Aufs äußerste zugespitzt, aber aus zweifellos schmerzhafter Selbstreflexion über relevante Texte der lateinischen und griechischen Patristik in den Monaten der Einkerkerung erwachsen ist die systematische Kritik des Patriarchen Johannes XI. Bekkos an der Hauptthese der “Mystagogie” des Photios. Bekkos geht es um das hohe Gut des kirchlichen Friedens; darum wollte er in seiner Antwort die umstrittene syllogistische Methode der westlichen Scholastik vollständig vermeiden. Tatsächlich bleibt der Ton in seiner abschnittweisen Widerlegung (aus Kirchenvätern und. Hl. Schrift) sehr maßvoll und unpolemisch. Aber bei aller Irenik sah (der inzwischen als Patriarch abgesetzte) Bekkos sich doch gezwungen, auch der Vermittlungsformel seines ihm gegenüber äußerst antipathisch gesonnen und handelnden Nachfolgers, Gregorios II. Kyprios, dem gleichsam “halbierten Photios” (ὁ τῆς ἀρτιφανοῦς αἱρέσεως ἀρχηγός: PG 141, 865B), entschieden entgegenzutreten: in zwei großen Reden werden einzelne, im Wortlaut zitierte Sätze des Zyprioten auseinandergenommen; auch diesmal möchte sich Bekkos der dialektischen Methode enthalten. Die pneumatologische Position des Patriarchen Gregorios II. wird von modernen Autoren des Orthodoxie als “antinomische” bezeichnet; es stellt sich aber die Frage, ob dieses Prädikat nicht einfach ein Dilemma verschleiert, bzw. ob die gleichzeitige Distanz zu Photios wie zu Bekkos metaphysisch-theologisch überhaupt nachvollziehbar ist.

Of an utmost acuity, but born of undoubtedly painful self-reflection on relevant texts of the Latin and Greek Church Fathers in his months of imprisonment, is the systematic criticism of Patriarch John XI Bekkos on the main thesis of the Mystagogy of Photios. Bekkos is concerned with the high good of ecclesiastical peace; therefore, in his reply he wanted to avoid completely the controversial syllogistic method of Western scholasticism. In fact, the tone of his refutation, based on excerpts (from Fathers of the Church and Holy Scripture), remains very modest and unpolemical. But in spite of all irenicism, Bekkos (now deposed as Patriarch) saw himself compelled likewise to oppose resolutely the mediating formula of his successor, Gregory II of Cyprus, who was extremely inimical to him, and who acted as a “semi-Photios” (ὁ τῆς ἀρτιφανοῦς αἱρέσεως ἀρχηγός: PG 141, 865B): in two great treatises individual statements of the Cypriot, quoted verbatim, are dissected; again, Bekkos wants to abstain from the dialectical method. The pneumatological position of Patriarch Gregory II is described by modern Orthodox authors as “antinomic”; but the question arises as to whether this predicate does not simply conceal a dilemma, or whether the simultaneous distancing from Photios, as well as from Bekkos, is at all metaphysically and theologically comprehensible.

Jugie: On the notion of divine mission

Because I am trying to put together an article on Bekkos and George Moschabar, I have of late been reading Martin Jugie again; he seems to have read virtually everything in Byzantine theological literature. In particular, he has a lot of information, and very definite opinions, on the issue of how far Byzantine writers understood there to be an indwelling of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit in the souls of the just; this is an issue on which John Bekkos and George Moschabar were entirely opposed. Specifically, Bekkos sees it as the clear consensus of Scripture and the Fathers that the Holy Spirit himself — i.e., the person or hypostasis — is given by Christ to the faithful, and he sees this giving as implying something about the eternal, inner-trinitarian relationships of these two persons; Moschabar, by contrast, sees Scripture to use the term “Holy Spirit” in an ambiguous way, sometimes referring to the third person of the Trinity, sometimes to that person’s gift of grace — or, to put it differently, to an “energy” — and he lays it down as a kind of exegetical first principle that, whenever Holy Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit being given or sent or flowing forth from the Son, the “Holy Spirit” referred to is an energy, not the person. In teaching this, I think that Moschabar anticipated, in important ways, the doctrine of Gregory Palamas; in fact, it seems quite likely to me that Palamas was directly influenced by Moschabar’s writings.

Jugie is not an ecumenically sensitive writer; he is a Catholic apologist of the old school, and his references to Orthodox Christians as “Graeco-Russians” are bound to be offensive. Nevertheless, he is a clear thinker, and he backs up his assertions with evidence. As such, his historical judgments deserve serious consideration; it is for this reason that I present him here in English. I do not want to claim that Jugie is giving here a balanced, complete assessment of Orthodox spiritual tradition. But it does seem to me that some of the most important Orthodox writers of the past century, in particular the late Fr. John Meyendorff, were engaged in a tacit debate with Jugie over the significance of St. Gregory Palamas and his theology; if one reads Meyendorff as replying to Jugie, I think it opens one’s eyes as to what is at stake.

I would only add that what is given below is not a complete translation of Jugie’s chapter; I break off at the point where Jugie begins treating of more recent Orthodox writers.

Translated from Martin Jugie, A.A., Theologia Dogmatica Christanorum Orientalium ab Ecclesia Catholica Dissidentium, Tomus II (Paris 1933), pp. 233-242.

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Article 3: On the notion of divine mission and of the relation between eternal procession and temporal mission

The doctrine of the Graeco-Russians on divine missions differs from the doctrine held in common among Catholic theologians in no small way. First of all, among dissident theologians you will not find the subtle distinctions and accurate definitions that are found among ours; for example, they do not clearly distinguish between visible mission and invisible mission; the aim or scope of the missions is not discerned by them with precision. All of their speculation concerning the nature of the missions has had a polemical origin — as though, when they take up the question of divine missions, they had almost solely this end in view, to weaken the force of the argument based upon missions which Catholic theologians employ to prove that the Holy Spirit proceeds and has existence from the Son. In this, Photius himself was their predecessor, not in fact in those writings where his explicit purpose is to treat of the procession of the Holy Spirit, but in his Amphilochian questions nos. 159 and 188, where he seeks to overturn the grounds of the Latins’ argument by teaching that each person of the Trinity, not excepting the Father, both sends the others and by the others is sent, indiscriminately. To establish this point, he appeals to certain texts of Scripture: Isa 48:16, “And now the Lord, and his Spirit, has sent me”; Isa 61 and Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … he has sent me to preach the good news to the poor.” After him, Byzantine theologians commonly held the same view on persons sent and sending, relying upon the same scriptural texts; nor do most of the moderns veer from this position.

Gravely, therefore, do the Graeco-Russians adulterate the notion of mission, insofar as they deny that mission implies a necessary connection with procession ad intra, that it imitates, manifests, and, as it were, reproduces this ad extra. They indeed commonly distinguish a double procession, one kind ad intra, which is from eternity, from which the divine persons are constituted in their hypostatic being; the other kind ad extra, which they call temporal, which is mission itself. The temporal procession is common to the three persons. The terminus ad quem of this procession is that temporal effect produced in creatures, which indeed is common to the three persons, as is any operation ad extra. But as for the terminus a quo, temporal procession or mission signifies a simple external manifestation of the person sent from the person sending. This external manifestation bears no necessary relation to a procession ad intra; it is something altogether accidental and extrinsic, pertaining to the historical order.

Moreover, as regards the form itself of this external manifestation, they do not agree among themselves. Does such a manifestation include a real bestowal of the person sent, made by the person sending to the creature, such that, beyond the gift of grace conferred upon the justified creature, there would be also a communication of an uncreated gift, that is, of a divine person himself, who in a new manner and on new terms would begin to exist within the creature? To this question they do not give one unanimous response. Before the Palamite controversy, most, not all, taught that, in mission, an actual divine person is communicated to the creature. After this controversy, most, not all, have held that a divine person is by no means given or communicated, and they have seen in mission nothing else than an operation common to the three persons, by which grace is communicated to the creature, grace which, according to the system of Palamas expounded above, is pronounced to be uncreated, and is regarded as a sort of eternal and uncreated outpouring from the divine essence. This very operation [or: energy] is a manifestation of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and not just of the person sent or the person sending.

The earliest polemical writers after Photius and Michael Cerularius had no more common pastime than to reproach the Latins with confusing the eternal procession with a temporal procession or mission; nevertheless, most of them did not deny what the Greek fathers teach so plainly, namely, that in mission, besides grace and gifts, an actual divine person is communicated to human beings. See in volume one of this work the words of Nicetas the philosopher (pp. 291-292), Euthymius the patriarch (p. 298), the author of the tract Against the Franks (p. 300), Michael Psellus (p. 303), and especially Theophylact, who properly distinguishes between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s very person. For, in order to overthrow the argument of the Latins that is based upon Christ’s breathing upon his disciples after the resurrection, he wrote the following:

He breathes upon them, then, and gives them the Holy Spirit, not now granting them the perfect gift of the Holy Spirit (for this he was going to give at Pentecost), but rendering them suitable for receiving that Spirit … But after the ascension, when the Spirit himself had descended, and had bestowed upon them the power of miracles and other gifts …. If then he gave the disciples the Spirit when he breathed upon them, how was it that he later said to them, “You will receive power from the Holy Spirit, who will come upon you not many days hence”; or why is it that we believe that, at Pentecost, the Spirit is made to descend, if in fact he gave him on the evening of the day of the resurrection?

[Comment. in Joannem, xx, 19-23, PG 124, 297; Epist. ad Nicolaum, 4, PG 126, 228; In Joan., c. iii, 32-34, PG 123, 1224. Cf. tom. I, pp. 306-307, 309-310.]

During the twelfth century, many polemical writers repeated Theophylact’s words. Thus, for example, Eustratius of Nicaea, Nicholas of Methone, Nicetas of Nicomedia, Michael Glykas; in the thirteenth century, Germanus II. Mystical writers frequently say the same thing concerning the bestowal of the person of the Holy Spirit and the dwelling of the divine persons in the soul of the just, among whom should be mentioned Symeon the New Theologian, who not only teaches that the soul of a holy person is a temple of the Holy Spirit, but, in addition, contends that the soul necessarily is aware of this indwelling, and that it is impossible for anyone to have the persons of the Trinity within himself without intimately experiencing their presence.

Nevertheless, certain polemical writers, even before Palamas, begin already to deny that the person of the Holy Spirit is really given to the soul of the just according to that special mode which accompanies an infusion of charity and grace. If one were to believe them, it is not a divine person, but solely the person’s gifts, which are communicated, and they interpret the term “Spirit,” in those passages of Scripture or of the Fathers which have to do with the sending, giving, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to mean the spiritual gifts themselves. They support their opinion by the testimony of pseudo-Chrysostom who, in a certain discourse On the Holy Spirit, previously cited by Photius himself, says the following:

But if you should hear him say, “I will send you the Holy Spirit,” do not interpret this to mean the godhead: for God is not sent. These are names signifying operation, in that everyone who sends, sends to those places where he is not…. Therefore when he says, “I will send you the Holy Spirit,” he means the gift of the Spirit. And, so that you may learn that the gift is sent, but the Spirit is not sent, the Savior says to the apostles, “Remain in Jerusalem, until you are clothed with power from on high.” The scripture says, “God poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit.” It is not the godhead that is poured out, but the gift. For this reason, so that it might be demonstrated that that which is poured out is not the Holy Spirit, but the grace of the Spirit of God, David says to Christ, “Grace is poured out by your lips.” Grace is poured out, not he who bestows the grace. (PG 52, 825-826.)

In the twelfth century, these words are applauded by Andronicus Camaterus in his Ἱερᾷ Ὁπλοθήκῃ (Sacred Treasury), wherein he means to show that it is not the person of the Spirit but only his charisms that are bestowed upon men. As for Camaterus, John Bekkos refutes him by citing against him, at one time Christ the Savior’s clear words in the gospel, at another time testimonies from other Greek fathers, especially Cyril of Alexandria; the perspicuity of these testimonies is clearer than light. (John Bekkos, In Camateri animadversiones, PG 141, 419-428.) To this same question Bekkos devotes also his eighth Epigraph, which he prefaces with the following notice:

Since some people, when they hear that the Holy Spirit “exists” and “fountains” and “emanates” from the Son, give the strange account that it is not the divine nature of the Spirit which springs forth and fountains from the divine substance and nature of the Son, but rather the spiritual gift which comes to those who are worthy … because they take it that such a gift must be understood as something divided and disjoined from the Spirit’s divine substance, the following patristic citations have been gathered, from which one may apprehend … that it is the Holy Spirit himself, one of the Trinity and he who completes it and who is himself divine nature and perfect God, just like the Father and the Son, who is meant when one says that the Holy Spirit “emanates” and “fountains” and “exists” from the Son.

[PG 141, 673. If Philotheos Kokkinos is to be trusted (Contra Gregoram Antirrhet., vi, PG 151, 915-920), George the Cypriot, Patriarch of Constantinople, held the same opinion as Camaterus about the sending of the Holy Spirit — which however does not appear true from his published writings. Gregory was, nevertheless, in a certain respect the precursor of Palamas, by reason of his teaching concerning the eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son. See B. De Rubeis, Dissertatio I in Georgium Cyprium, PG 142, 109-110.]

Gregory Palamas and his disciples apply his teaching about a real distinction between God’s essence and his operation (= energy) to the divine missions in the following manner: Since the divine essence and the divine persons themselves are, of themselves, utterly inaccessible, imparticipable, and incommunicable, the mission of a divine person can be understood only of a common operation of the Trinity, in particular of that operation which has the name grace. Since then this operation, just like all the other operations of God, is something divine, uncreated, and eternal, really distinct, indeed, from the divine nature, but in fact truly inseparable from it, it follows that a mission can, in a certain way, be called an eternal procession (πρόοδον). However, an eternal procession of this kind, which is manifested in time, is solely according to operation, κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, not according to nature, κατὰ τὴν φύσιν, nor according to hypostases or persons, κατὰ τὰς ὑποστάσεις. It has creatures in view, it is ad extra; it does not have in view the persons nor the processions ad intra. Therefore differentiation has to be made between a two-fold eternal procession, one kind according to the subsisting of the persons in the divine essence, the other kind according to an operation of the essence which is common to the three divine persons. Where Scripture says that one person is sent by another, this in no way signifies that the person sent is communicated to the creature, that it indwells the creature in a special manner and on special terms — for this is altogether impossible. Such a mission indicates nothing other than an external and temporal manifestation of that eternal and uncreated operation which is called grace or the gifts of the Spirit, which is in fact common to the three persons, and is communicated to worthy souls, or rather, reaches to them, extends itself to them, like the light of some eternal sun which, at a certain moment in time, illuminates a new region, illuminates new things which earlier lay in darkness.

According to this speculation or conception, the following expressions of Scripture or of the Fathers — “the Holy Spirit is sent by the Son, is put forth, poured forth or shed forth by the Son, is from the Son, shines out from the Son,” etc. — signify in fact a certain eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, but not one ordered to the Spirit’s personal existence. Such a procession occurs solely according to operation, κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, ordered to the sanctification of the creature, or insofar as it is directed towards a terminus ad quem, it can even be said to be a temporal procession. In it is beheld, in truth, a certain showing and manifestation of the three Persons under an aspect whereby the persons are able to be manifested and known, namely by their eternal operation, which extends to the creatures and sanctifies them.

This is the genuine notion of divine mission in Palamite theology. Hear Palamas describing the mission of the Holy Spirit in his Confession of Faith:

The Spirit, subsisting in himself, proceeding from the Father and sent — that is, manifested — through the Son, himself also cause of all the creatures, as indeed it is in him that they have been brought to perfection, [is] himself equal to the Father and the Son except in respect of unbegottenness and begottenness. He was sent by the Son to his disciples — that is, he was manifested. For in what other manner would he have been sent, since he was not separated from him? Or in what other way would he be able to draw near to me, since he is everywhere present? Wherefore he is sent, not only from the Son, but from the Father and through the Son; and he comes being manifested also from himself. For the sending, that is the manifesting, of the Spirit is a common work. But he is manifested, not according to essence (for no one ever has seen or declared God’s nature), but according to grace and power and operation (= energy), which is common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[PG 151, 766 A-B. Cf. the same author’s Homilia viii de fide, PG 151, 100 D.]

In his second treatise On the Procession of the Holy Spirit, against the Latins, he says these things:

The Son gives the Holy Spirit, but according to gift and grace and operation (= energy); he does not give the very person of the Holy Spirit, for this can be received by no one…. To be sent and to be given, when applied to God, means nothing else than to be manifested.

[Λόγος δεύτερος περὶ τῆς ἐκπορεύσεως τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος, Constantinople, 1627, pp. 54, 61: Δίδωσι Πνεῦμα ἅγιον, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν δωρεὰν καὶ τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, οὐκ αὐτὴν τὴν ὑπόστασιν τοῦ παναγίου Πνεύματος· παρ᾽ οὐδενὸς γὰρ αὕτη λαμβάνεσθαι δύναται … Οὐδὲν ἄλλο τὸ πέμπεσθαί τε καὶ δίδοσθαι ἐπὶ Θεοῦ ἢ τὸ φανεροῦσθαι.]

Palamas’s genuine disciples hold the same doctrine. Philotheus Kokkinos expounds it at length in his Antirrheticus vi contra Nicephorum Gregoram (Gregoras, by contrast, teaches that the three persons of the Trinity indwell the soul of the just):

If the three divine hypostases, as you say, indwell every one of those who are worthy of God, then each one of those who are made deiform will possess in himself more than did that divine temple which for our sake, in a manner surpassing reason, the Only-begotten Son of God indwelled, insofar as that [temple] held in itself [only] one of the Trinity, united with it according to hypostasis.” (PG 151, 893 A.) … “The Spirit is participated in, not according to essence, nor according to hypostasis — for this is altogether foreign to theology — but according to the divine charisms and operations (energies)…. From all these things you have been taught that the Holy Spirit inhabits those who are worthy energetically, not hypostatically. That is, his energy, not his hypostasis, dwells in them, and makes them to be temples of God; and through the divine energy and grace they have dwelling in them the whole Spirit. For in each gift (charism) the whole Spirit, as working, is analogically present.” (PG 151, 901 C, 902 C.)

In his Tractatus contra Latinos, Macarius Ancyranus devotes four chapters to the present question; their titles sufficiently express the doctrine defended in them:

Ch. 76: That the Holy Spirit, poured out upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, was not the divine person himself, but his gift and grace and operation, which also is called “Holy Spirit.”

Ch. 77: That the Holy Spirit, a person of the Holy Trinity, is one thing, and his bestowal and grace and power and operation — or rather, the common bestowal and grace and power and operation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is another.

Ch. 78: Concerning the discrepancy which some people find in the prayers of Basil the Great which are read on the day of Pentecost, and that the Spirit poured out at Pentecost was not a person of the Trinity, but his gift and grace: for it is “divided.”

Ch. 79: Moreover, that the Holy Spirit, one person of the Most Holy Trinity, both is always identical with himself, and is invisible and incommunicable to others; and that, just as his gift and grace is called “Holy Spirit,” so also it is called “God,” whenever it is seen and divided and participated in by all.

[Κατὰ Λατίνων. In Dositheus, Τόμος καταλλαγῆς, pp. 132-139:
«Ὅτι τὸ κατὰ τὴν Πεντηκοστὴν ἐκχυθὲν Πνεῦμα ἅγιον εἰς τοὺς ἀποστόλους οὐκ αὐτὸ ἦν τὸ θεαρχικὸν πρόσωπον, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ δωρεὰ καὶ χάρις καὶ ἐνέργεια αὐτοῦ, Πνεῦμα ἅγιον καὶ αὐτὴ λεγομένη.
«Ὅτι ἄλλο Πνεῦμα ἅγιον, τὸ ἓν πρόσωπον τῆς Τριάδος, καὶ ἄλλο ἡ τούτου, μᾶλλον δὲ ἡ κοινὴ Πατρὸς, Υἱοῦ καὶ ἁγίου Πνεύματος δωρεὰ καὶ χάρις καὶ δύναμις καὶ ἐνέργεια.
«Περὶ τῆς δοκούσης τισὶ διαφωνίας ἐν ταῖς κατὰ τὴν Πεντηκοστὴν εὐχαῖς τοῦ μεγάλου Βασιλείου, καὶ ὅτι τὸ κατὰ τὴν Πεντηκοστὴν ἐκχυθὲν Πνεῦμα οὐ τὸ ἓν πρόσωπον τῆς Τριάδος, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ τούτου δωρεὰ καὶ χάρις· αὐτὴ γὰρ καὶ μερίζεται.
«Ἕτι, ὅτι τὸ μὲν Πνεῦμα ἅγιον, τὸ ἓν πρόσωπον τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος, ἀεί τε ταὐτὸν αὐτό ἐστιν ἑαυτῷ, ἀόρατόν τε καὶ πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀκοινώνητον· ἡ δὲ τούτου χάρις καὶ δωρεά, ὡς Πνεῦμα ἅγιον, οὕτω καὶ Θεὸς λεγομένη, ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ ὁρᾶται καὶ μερίζεται καὶ παρὰ πάντων μετέχεται.»]

On this question, Joseph Bryennius plainly agrees with Palamas:

No one of sound mind (he says), whether he thinks the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Son, or from both, holds the opinion that the person of the Spirit takes up his abode among men; for since he is God by nature, not only is he invisible, in this respect, to every created nature, but even to the Cherubim themselves he is by nature imparticipable.

[Λόγος η´ περὶ τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος. Opera omnia, ed. E. Bulgaris, tome 1, Leipzig, 1768, p. 344: «Οὐδεὶς ὑγιαίνων τὰς φρένας δοξάζει τὴν τοῦ Πνεύματος ὑπόστασιν … ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.»]

As for theologians and polemical writers of the modern era, the greatest part of them accept this Palamite view, even those who in other matters contradict the theologian of the hesychasts….

Demetra Moniou on George Moschabar: synopsis of her dissertation

There is not much on George Moschabar in English; the following brief sketch of his life may help, in a small way, to remedy that lack. It is translated, somewhat loosely, from the German summary of a recent dissertation in Greek, Δήμητρα Ἰ Μονίου, Γεώργιος Μοσχάμπαρ: Ὁ βασικός ἀντιρρητικός θεολόγος τῆς πρώϊμης παλαιολογείου περιόδου, βίος καί ἔργο (Athens 2009), pp. 368-370. For anyone interested, the dissertation can be read online: see the above link.

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George Moschabar was, without question, an important and gifted author of religious works, who was born most likely between the years 1230 and 1240 and, in the earliest years of his life, must have lived in Islamic territory, as may be inferred from his surname or, rather, his pseudonym.

After this, he left his parents and betook himself to Nicaea, a city which at that time was a popular destination for ambitious youths. There, although of middle class origins, he had the opportunity to receive a higher education alongside Theodore II Laskaris (1254-1258) and to study under the care of renowned, significant figures of his time. He completed his studies in the year 1271. Within ten years, the theologian had made a name for himself as a teacher of the gospel and had begun working actively within the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Concurrently with this, he took a stance favoring the opposition to ecclesiastical union, at a time when the emperor Michael VIII and his patriarch John XI Bekkos were doing everything in their power to implement the Union of the Churches. As officer of Hagia Sophia and a titled official at the Patriarch’s court, Moschabar had no opportunity to uphold his anti-latin positions openly; therefore he confined himself, for the time being, to authoring anonymous circular letters against the Patriarch so as not to have to bear open responsibility for his published opinions.

Later, that is, in the year 1282, when Andronikos II had ascended the imperial throne, the situation in Constantinople changed radically: the opponents of ecclesiastical union emerged from the background and assumed an active role and a decisive, influential position in framing ecclesiastical-political developments. Gregory II the Cypriot (= “Cyprius”) was appointed as new patriarch; he appointed Moschabar as chartophylax of the Great Church and set him at his side as a trusted aide. As a titled official, the theologian now acknowledged his earlier writings as his own and openly pursued his polemic against the Union of the Churches.

Being convinced that the Western Church had perpetrated and supported a fraud, he published numerous dogmatic works: some were newly composed writings, others, reworked editions of the anonymous circular letters he had published previously. Consequently, the literary production of the theologian is found to be very considerable: his works extend to at least 1100 pages in manuscript, preserved in 26 manuscripts in eighteen different libraries. They may be classified as follows: either they appear as chapters, belonging to the branch of theology that is termed “antirrhetic” or refutatory, and having as content those differences which divide the Christian churches (107 in total); or else they appear as dialogues or are composed as Logoi (treatises, discourses) against the Latins. In all cases, they have as their scope the same central recurring theme, that of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father solely and alone.

Parallel to his extensive literary activity, Moschabar not surprisingly took part in the disputes which erupted within the Church, and had a most far-reaching influence among his contemporaries. He participated in the synod of Constantinople and signed the Tome of Blachernae in which John Bekkos, Constantine Meliteniotes and George Metochites were stigmatized and condemned as heretics. Later, oddly enough, he turned against Patriarch Cyprius and even had doubts about the Tome which he himself had signed and thus, as to its contents, had legitimized. Subsequently he took the lead of that group which had arisen within ecclesiastical circles and which maintained the position that Cyprius should be viewed as no less of a heretic than John Bekkos. Among its adherents were Michael Eskammatismenos and John Pentecclesiotes, who sought to support this position and to elaborate its dogmatic significance. Although Cyprius reproached [Moschabar] with organizing a propaganda campaign against him with the aim of removing him from office, nevertheless Emperor Andronikos summoned Cyprius before a tribunal and constrained him to renounce his title to office, after first [agreeing] that the orthodoxy of [Cyprius’s] faith would be clearly affirmed and recognized by a procedure which had been proposed by Moschabar himself, who, last but not least, had also written the text acknowledging the εὐσέβεια [piety] of the former patriarch. This text by Moschabar represents the last testimony that has come down to us concerning the antiunionist theologian.

From the year 1289 onward, other traces of him are lost and his other activities remain hidden from us to this day. We do not know whether he continued composing anti-latin treatises or withdrew from this work entirely. Whatever the activities of the last years of his life may have been, we can take it as certain that Moschabar must have been a remarkable person, who influenced his own era as profoundly as he did subsequent centuries. His works in later years would be continually reused, whether identified as his own or taken as anonymous, in such a way that (not least) many important personalities did not hesitate to adopt them as their own. Maximos Margunios may be taken as a most characteristic example of this — a scholar who, some three hundred years later, would present and publish a dialogue by Moschabar as his own composition. But numerous were those scholars who were capable of appreciating Moschabar’s literary legacy and for whom this legacy served as a model for their own writing.

However scholars may have met with the antiunionist theologian’s texts, the fact is clear that George Moschabar was a significant personality who gave expression to the theology of the thirteenth century against the Union of the Churches and found numerous followers, both during his own lifetime and during the following centuries.

Hegel on “the prevalent indifference to definite dogmas”

I began rereading Hegel this afternoon, after coming across a note in the book Geist oder Energie by Dorothea Wendebourg (Münich 1980). Wendebourg (p. 7) says that the point stressed as an axiom by some modern theologians (Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, et al.) that the only way to a knowledge of God in his eternal being is through God’s self-revelation in his economy, was made by Hegel some two hundred years ago in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3. That axiom is important, not only in itself, but also for the work I am currently doing on Bekkos: in his book Against George Moschabar which I have edited, one of the main criticisms Bekkos makes against his adversary is that the latter, by claiming that grace, or divine energy, is separate from the person of the Holy Spirit and denying that what Christ sends is the Holy Spirit himself, the third person of the Trinity, undercuts the whole basis for our understanding God to be a Trinity. Wendebourg (who has evidently not read this book by Bekkos) makes essentially the same point as Bekkos in a short English summary of her book, titled “From the Cappadocian Fathers to Gregory Palamas: The Defeat of Trinitarian Theology,” in: Elizabeth A. Livingstone, ed., Studia Patristica, vol. XVII, part one (Oxford 1982), pp. 194-198.

Anyway, those who have read Kierkegaard, who criticizes Hegel as a proponent of a soulless historicist approach to faith, may find the following passage from Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion fairly shocking. Although Hegel held an extreme view on the ability of reason to comprehend the truths of faith, he was, on matters of basic Christian dogma, an orthodox Christian. And his criticisms of a purely historical approach to dogma that, because of its indifference to the content of what is studied, remains spiritually dead, still deserve to be taken to heart.

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From J. Glenn Gray, ed., G. W. F. Hegel on Art, Religion, and Philosophy (New York 1970), pp. 163-166.

“Christ still indeed continues to be made the central point of faith, as Mediator, Reconciler, and Redeemer; but what was known as the work of redemption has received a very prosaic and merely psychological signification, so that although the edifying words have been retained, the very thing that was essential in the old doctrine of the Church has been expunged….

“Even though Christ be for many the central point of faith and devotion in the deeper sense, yet Christian life as a whole restricts itself to this devotional bent, and the weighty doctrines of the Trinity, of the resurrection of the body, as also the miracles in the Old and New Testaments, are neglected as matters of indifference, and have lost their importance. The divinity of Christ, dogma, what is peculiar to the Christian religion is set aside, or else reduced to something of merely general nature. It is not only by the Enlightenment that Christianity has been thus treated, but even by pious theologians themselves. These latter join with the men of the Enlightenment in saying that the Trinity was brought into Christian doctrine by the Alexandrian school, by the neo-Platonists. But even if it must be conceded that the fathers of the Church studied Greek philosophy, it is in the first instance a matter of no importance whence that doctrine may have come; the only question is whether it be essentially, inherently, true; but that is a point which is not examined into, and yet that doctrine is the keynote of the Christian religion….

“The strongest indication, however, that the importance of these dogmas has declined, is to be perceived in the fact that they are treated principally in a historical manner, and are regarded in the light of convictions which belong to others, as matters of history, which do not go on in our own mind as such, and which do not concern the needs of our spirit. The real interest here is to find out how the matter stands so far as others are concerned, what part others have played, and centres in this accidental origin and appearance of doctrine. The question as to what is a man’s own personal conviction only excites astonishment. The absolute manner of the origin of these doctrines out of the depth of spirit, and thus the necessity, the truth, which they have for our spirits too, is shoved on one side by this historical treatment. It brings much zeal and erudition to bear on these doctrines. It is not with their essential substance, however, that it is occupied, but with the externalities of the controversies about them, and with the passions which have gathered around this external mode of the origin of truth. Thus theology is by her own act put in a low enough position.

“If the philosophical knowledge of religion is conceived of as something to be reached historically only, then we should have to regard the theologians who have brought it to this point as clerks in a mercantile house, who have only to keep an account of the wealth of strangers, who only act for others without obtaining any property for themselves. They do, indeed, receive salary, but their reward is only to serve, and to register that which is the property of others. Theology of this kind has no longer a place at all within the domain of thought; it has no longer to do with infinite thought in and for itself, but only with it as a finite fact, as opinion, ordinary thought, and so on. History occupies itself with truths which were truths—namely, for others, not with such as would come to be the possession of those who are occupied with them. With the true content, with the knowledge of God, such theologians have no concern. They know as little of God as a blind man sees of a painting, even though he handles the frame. They know how a certain dogma was established by this or that council; what grounds those present at such a council had for establishing it, and how this or that opinion came to predominate. And in all this, it is indeed religion that is in question, and yet it is not religion which here comes under consideration. Much is told us of the history of the painter of the picture, and of the fate of the picture itself, what price it had at different times, into what hands it came, but we are never permitted to see anything of the picture itself.

“It is essential in philosophy and religion, however, that the spirit should itself enter with supreme interest into an inner relation, should not only occupy itself with a thing that is foreign to it, but should draw its content from that which is essential, and should regard itself as worthy of such knowledge. For here man is concerned with the value of his own spirit, and he is not at liberty humbly to remain outside and to wander about at a distance.”