Even though the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit was defined at the Council of Florence with the greatest precision, and in a way that took into account the various patristic testimonies on the subject, it continues to be an occasion – some might say a pretext – of divisions within Christendom. This book is a collection of essays written on the subject by members of a variety of Christian confessions. It is the first such collection in English since the publication in 1981 of Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ by the World Council of Churches.
M. Habets, the editor, explains in the opening chapter that the contributors were asked to provide ‘significant theological proposals’ for resolving the disputes that surround the Filioque, and not simply to ‘repeat historical rhetoric’. One can sympathise with the spirit in which this request was made, while disagreeing with the apparent assumption that all the accounts of the procession of the Holy Spirit hitherto given are unsatisfactory.
E. Siecienski, in what is perhaps the most useful chapter of the book, gives an historical overview of the question, condensing his own recent study of the subject. He describes not so much the history of the doctrine as the history of the debate about the doctrine, finishing with the 1995 Vatican Statement on the question. Neither he nor the other authors, however, notes that this Statement lacks magisterial authority, coming as it does from the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. P. Molnar's contribution is a discussion of the thought of T. Torrance, who helped formulate a 1991 agreed statement on the Trinity between the Reformed and Eastern Orthodox churches. He seems to wish to by-pass the Filioque debate by affirming a real order within the Trinity without any divine Person deriving deity from another; which appears to this reviewer to involve a contradiction. He also apparently neglects the distinction between being a ‘principle’ and being a ‘cause’.
D. Guretzki, a Free Church scholar, mentions some gains which he finds in recent ecumenical discussions on the subject. The first is that it has come to be generally agreed that the affirmation and denial of the Filioque are not dogmas but theological opinions; the second is that the Father is the sole principle of the ekporeusis of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Filioque is a dogma for Catholics, having been defined at several ecumenical councils, even though its denial may only be a theologoumenon for Orthodox, having never been defined at an ecumenical council; and to say that the Father is the sole principle of the ekporeusis is either contrary to the Filioque, or else only trivially true. He also writes, bafflingly, that ‘the concept that the procession of the Spirit is a procession equally from the Father, Son and Holy Spirit makes good sense’ (p. 59). T. Alexopoulos, an Orthodox scholar, writes on the theme of the eternal manifestation of the Holy Spirit through the Son. He discusses the occurrence of this language in some of the Greek Fathers, and the use which some mediaeval Byzantine theologians made of it, in their attempts to explain how the Holy Spirit could have an eternal relation to the Son while proceeding from the Father alone. Like those theologians, however, the author seems unable to give a coherent account of what ‘manifestation’ means, and to waver between various explanations: the Son as a condition for the Holy Spirit; the Son as an eternal cause of uncreated charismata; simple consubstantiality between the Son and the Holy Spirit.
B. Ellis's reflections are inspired by the thought of John Calvin. His main claim is to deny that one may legitimately speak about ‘the communication of the divine essence within the Trinity’, even though he agrees that the Holy Spirit proceeds and is God. But it is not clear to this reviewer what he means by procession, or how his definition of the term would, as he apparently thinks, establish a via media in the debate between Catholics and Orthodox. C. Holmes also writes on Calvin. According to him, the despot of Geneva taught that the Son eternally receives the Spirit from the Father, as the pattern for the anointing of His humanity; yet elsewhere he writes that Calvin ‘implies that the Son receives from the Father ‘the faculty of spiration”. It is not clear how these positions are to be reconciled. D. Wilhite, a Baptist, makes a number of blunders in his essay, the most egregious of which is to state that St Augustine thought that one could say that the Son is the Son of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the doctor of Hippo argued that this position was implied by and therefore, being obviously absurd, refuted the suggestion that the Holy Spirit alone was love.
F. Macchia, a Pentecostalist, claims that the Filioque is inconsistent with the mutual dependence on the Son and the Holy Spirit found in the New Testament. This claim shows a lack of a proper distinction between Christ's human and divine natures. Like several other authors, he speaks of the mutual dependence of all the divine persons on each other, without sufficiently distinguishing relation and procession. R. Jenson argues that both sides of the debate have an insufficient idea of Trinitarian relations, and wishes to add to relations of origin, ‘active relations of the Triune goal’. On this view ‘the Spirit differentially liberates the Father for paternal love and the Son for filial love’. The limits of a book review do not allow a critique of these statements. J. Mcdowell, a Presbyterian who refers to the Holy Spirit of God as ‘she’, cultivates opacity. We learn, for example, that ‘suggestions for the cultural embraciveness of the pneumatic’ are liable to ‘distort the envisioning of the eschatological through the provision of masterable systems’. It is not easy to know what he thinks of the Filioque, though he seems to suggest that the dogma would imply that the Holy Spirit Himself would not be God, not being the source of a procession.
K. Tanner, an Episcopalian, laudably wishes to understand the immanent Trinity by means of the economic Trinity, but again, does not distinguish the divinity from the humanity of the Son. So she can write that ‘the Spirit, not just in history but eternally, is the power… behind the Father's begetting of the Son’. When she goes on to declare that the Holy Spirit nevertheless receives ‘shape’ from Son we seem to have a metaphor rather than a thought. T. Weinandy finds fault with St Athanasius and St Thomas Aquinas for holding that the Holy Spirit, unlike the Father and the Son, is not constituted by a personal act of His own. He argues that ‘all three members of the Trinity simultaneously and reciprocally act upon one another’. This appears to introduce passivity into God; and in fact, for St Thomas, only the Father is constituted by a personal act (this is perhaps a point to emphasise in discussions with the Orthodox). M. Habets follows a similar line, expressly saying that each divine person is cause and effect to the others. He remarks that rejecting the view that the Father has no principle is a ‘controversial move’. Indeed it is; and hardly one likely to heal the Eastern schism!
Finally, it is perhaps a sign of the times that the editor found no contributor willing to expound the account of the Holy Spirit's procession that has been peacefully expounded by Catholic theology for many centuries in accordance with the definitions of the councils. While this book will be useful for those who wish to know what people are saying about the Filioque, I cannot recommend it to those who want to understand the doctrine or to know why they should believe it to be true.
