ECT PneumaPsucheSoma and AMR Discuss Trinitarianism
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1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
I had a feeling you would explain the temporality of heaven and the cosmos so I left it alone.
But couldn't help but confess my Lord when it seemed appropriate.
Peace Bro.
1Mind1Spirit
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Cross Reference
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You have muddied the waters so badly no one can tell whether you are for it or against it ___ whatever it is. Take a hint.
:darwinsm:
Pot ... meet Kettle.
That said, sometimes what a guy is thinking is difficult to express even in the best of circumstances.
"No one" might be a little presumptuous, don't you think?
Arsenios
Well-known member
Got it, Thanks!
Created Sempiternity is a redundant term, because there is no such thing as uncreated sempiternity... Methinks it was your desire to be utterly clear that led to overexplanation in your formulaic which led to the muddling of my synaptical cross-pollenizations...
Jes' sayin'...
So I really cannot wait for you to read Lossky, who addresses exactly this issue in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church which you mentioned having ordered... You are right when you assert that the Fathers did not establish a separate term for the kind or quality of time in which the Saints take their Joy and which will be fulfilled in the Age to Come... We simply do with it what we do with so much in matters theologic, and call it Mystery... We tend to avoid (over-) explaining with fallen human words things which we have not been given in explanation by God to us...
The PLACE of man created in the IMAGE of God in the COSMOS is BOTH eternal and temporal... The HOW of this is not known to us, except insofar as we experience time differently when we have encounters with God that are in union with Him... It is this combination of God and creation, time and eternity, in Man that is the New Creation that we are entered into in Christ Jesus when we are Baptized into Christ...
Against this, we claim no knowledge of the A-TEMPORALITY of God's Essence... We DO know our own fallen experience of sequential time, and we do know in part, in an earnest, of Eternal Life in the Marriage of the Lamb to man insofar as this has been given to us... And to each according to the Gift of God, which is in accordance with the purity of heart we attain in repentance from sin and earthly concerns... We simply know that we experience a radical and holy and blessed change in the quality of time while IN this active state of union with God... It is these encounters which even if they happen but once for 10 seconds (or sometimes even less) to a person transform the lives of those whom they have touched...
We dare not try to explain the time that such transformational encounters introduce to us... We regard it as a great Mystery that permits little explaining, as does the virgin birth of Christ... To say that God can overcome nature but gives account without explanation...
Arsenios
Arsenios
Well-known member
You have just explained why it is that we are baptized INTO Christ...
THERE is WHERE we LIVE...
Christ in Heaven...
The Body of Christ on earth...
A Body is TANGIBLE...
Arsenios
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PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
It may seem redundant because it's necessary to re-categorize it from the common misconception that it's sempiternity rather than eternity. That's the fault of the Patristics, who never delineated the distinction.
Eternity = uncreated. God only.
Sempiternity (Everlastingness) = created. ALL invisible and visible initial creation; heaven and the cosmos.
Temporality = the cosmos earth age that onset with Edenic spiritual death and sin.
Orthodoxy combines the first two, presenting the last as creation and claiming heaven was also created but without accounting for it.
Methinks it was your desire to be utterly clear that led to overexplanation in your formulaic which led to the muddling of my synaptical cross-pollenizations...
Jes' sayin'...
No, you're still not getting it completely.
I'm quite sure he doesn't, but we'll see. This isn't compatible with belated post-procession/post-creation multiple hypostases, which is impossible without a multi-minded God and unison speaking to create triplicate creation.
That's yet another issue I've not gotten to. You're confusing what I've said so far and you're still not recognizing the basic created heavenly realm where the angels dwell.
And that mystery is overwrought and has led to the West's many foundations and tangents of error. It's not mystery when I can illustrate and apologetically delineate it with a white board.
The only mystery is God's unknowable transcendent essence. He has expressed everything else if we will but hear, and it isn't the construct of the three-hypostasis formulaic.
God is a transcendent hypostasis underlying an ousia with a physis, and a glorious radiant prosopon is His Self-Phaino (Self-Existence) as He shines.
Unless He speaks/breathes it forth by His Logos and Pneuma, there is no creation. There is nothing (no thing) else but God, and His hypostasis is the only foundational underlying substantial objective reality as existence for existence. His Rhema IS His hypostasis, for there was nothing else to think and speak about that had phaino. His phaino is what gives ALL creation phaino.
In created sempiternity of heaven, God's inherent hypostasis and the co-processed Logos and Pneuma LOOK and FUNCTION like three hypostases, but they are not. They are qualitative hypostatic distinctions in the same manner as our own logos and pneuma are to us as a singular hypostasis.
I may just have to make a video with live illustration on a white board, cuz you're not getting it. Too much cognitive dissonance, and I think you could never embrace the Patristics being wrong on this point and compensating with mystery.
It's in the lexicography of scripture. We HAVE been given the explanation by God to us. Understanding Rhema and phaino/phenomenon versus noumenon goes a LONG way.
Pre-Utterance, all creation was noumenon only in God's mind. That noumenon had to be given phenomenon by God's own inherent Self-Phaino. The phenomenon of creation is thus distinct from God's Self-Phaino as phenomenon. Creation includes both heaven and the cosmos, and is only everlasting (a ray) from its inception, while God is eternal (a line).
There was NO temporality at creation. Heaven (third heaven) and the cosmos (first and second heavens) were both sempiternal (everlasting; having a beginnning but no end). Temporality is the earth aion that onset with Edenic spiritual death and sin, and will end at judgment. Then the cosmos will be sempiternal once again. The entire cosmos "fell" to a greater manner of tangibility, and is the higher throne Satan has set above the Most High. Higher means more tangible and less functional.
It can be known to us. God has expressed it in His Logos from His Rhema.
Agreed, and it can be known and discipled with understanding. We're SUPPOSED to know. What eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor entered into man's heart...HE hath revealed it unto us.
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
Sempiternity cometh not with observation.
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Could be ___ so, what have you learned? _______ that you can remember?
Ask Mr. Religion
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I am closing the thread until I have something to contribute. Just too many sidebars wherein my ability to keep up with additions being made that bear on my own questions is becoming a chore. When other posts are made and PPS weighs in I have to capture that content and then re-evaluate what I have in front of me as relates to my own sprachgefühl, often with much recasting of my planned posts.
PPS, when I post I will contact you via PM for a time when you would like to respond and I will then open the thread for that time period and subsequently close it once more. When and until others can resist chiming in, this seems to be the only way I can participate effectively. Folks, I mean no offense here, but really wanted, per my OP, to have a conversation solely with PPS without having to go through the One-on-One route. Your cooperation is appreciated.
AMR
PPS, when I post I will contact you via PM for a time when you would like to respond and I will then open the thread for that time period and subsequently close it once more. When and until others can resist chiming in, this seems to be the only way I can participate effectively. Folks, I mean no offense here, but really wanted, per my OP, to have a conversation solely with PPS without having to go through the One-on-One route. Your cooperation is appreciated.
AMR
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I am re-opening the thread and want to start with some of my thinking on the topic from the highest levels.
The doctrine of the Trinity is a purely revealed doctrine and the God who is to be worshipped must be worshipped along Trinitarian parameters. We must approach discussion of the most sacred of topics with fear and trembling to avoid falling into grievous error to our eternal peril. Accordingly, the WCF, Chapter 2 is our guide to the teachings of Scripture on the topic:
The basic statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is:
Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
If we look a bit deeper the statement above can be parsed as follows:
1. There is in the divine Being but one indivisible essence (ousia, essentia).
2. In this one divine Being there are three persons or individual subsistences, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. The whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons.
4. The subsistence and operation of the three persons in the divine Being is marked by a certain definite order.
5. There are certain personal attributes by which the three persons are distinguished.
6. The church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the full comprehension of man.
Of the Triune Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if we say anything, we should say:
1. the Father is God,
2. the Son is God,
3. the Holy Spirit is God,
4. the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit,
5. the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit,
6. the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son, and
7. they are not three gods, but one God.
The Athanasian Creed of the church describes the above more fully:
http://tinyurl.com/pma3nzf
Misunderstandings of the Trinity often come from confusing ontology and distinctions with respect to the Godhead. Ontologically, there is no difference between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three, separate, divine essences (or beings). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal, co-participants of the one divine essence. When speaking of the Godhead in formal theological terms, we would properly say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three personal subsistences of the one, divine, essence.
The essence of something is that something’s being. In the Greek, the word is ousia. The word essence has its root in the Latin, to be. When speaking of God, the question arises as to how God’s essence makes its existence known, for God is more than having being or existence. Indeed, God is being , for He declared this to be so to Moses in Exodus 3:14-15. In the Exodus passage (see also John 5:26; Acts 17:24-25) God declares His self-existence (aseity), importing a boundless, ineffable, absolute, and transcendent being.
I have spoken about the essence of God above. How does essence make its existence known? If we were in one of my past Jesuit philosophy classes (sigh) we would examine in the abstract how essence individuates with respect to existence and the means of this individuation. Fortunately we are not in one of these classrooms, so we look to Scripture to learn how the essence of God exercises existence, that is, how the essence of God subsists. When something really exists we say this something possesses subsistence. And when we speak of the characteristics of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are speaking about the individuated subsistences of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These subsistences do not divide the essence of God. God’s essence is common to the three subsistences, each possessing the essence as one undivided nature—‘as all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ’, so in the Holy Spirit; and of the Father.
An excursus on some of the common terms:
AMR
The doctrine of the Trinity is a purely revealed doctrine and the God who is to be worshipped must be worshipped along Trinitarian parameters. We must approach discussion of the most sacred of topics with fear and trembling to avoid falling into grievous error to our eternal peril. Accordingly, the WCF, Chapter 2 is our guide to the teachings of Scripture on the topic:
Spoiler
The basic statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is:
Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
If we look a bit deeper the statement above can be parsed as follows:
1. There is in the divine Being but one indivisible essence (ousia, essentia).
2. In this one divine Being there are three persons or individual subsistences, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. The whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons.
4. The subsistence and operation of the three persons in the divine Being is marked by a certain definite order.
5. There are certain personal attributes by which the three persons are distinguished.
6. The church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the full comprehension of man.
Of the Triune Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if we say anything, we should say:
1. the Father is God,
2. the Son is God,
3. the Holy Spirit is God,
4. the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit,
5. the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit,
6. the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son, and
7. they are not three gods, but one God.
The Athanasian Creed of the church describes the above more fully:
http://tinyurl.com/pma3nzf
Misunderstandings of the Trinity often come from confusing ontology and distinctions with respect to the Godhead. Ontologically, there is no difference between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three, separate, divine essences (or beings). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal, co-participants of the one divine essence. When speaking of the Godhead in formal theological terms, we would properly say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three personal subsistences of the one, divine, essence.
The essence of something is that something’s being. In the Greek, the word is ousia. The word essence has its root in the Latin, to be. When speaking of God, the question arises as to how God’s essence makes its existence known, for God is more than having being or existence. Indeed, God is being , for He declared this to be so to Moses in Exodus 3:14-15. In the Exodus passage (see also John 5:26; Acts 17:24-25) God declares His self-existence (aseity), importing a boundless, ineffable, absolute, and transcendent being.
I have spoken about the essence of God above. How does essence make its existence known? If we were in one of my past Jesuit philosophy classes (sigh) we would examine in the abstract how essence individuates with respect to existence and the means of this individuation. Fortunately we are not in one of these classrooms, so we look to Scripture to learn how the essence of God exercises existence, that is, how the essence of God subsists. When something really exists we say this something possesses subsistence. And when we speak of the characteristics of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are speaking about the individuated subsistences of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These subsistences do not divide the essence of God. God’s essence is common to the three subsistences, each possessing the essence as one undivided nature—‘as all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ’, so in the Holy Spirit; and of the Father.
An excursus on some of the common terms:
Spoiler
AMR
What trinity did Jesus worship?
What trinity did Jesus tell his disciples to worship?
Joh 4:21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
Joh 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.
Joh 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
Joh 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
LA
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
This is all, of course, a predominantly textbook modern Western Protestant Filioque Trinity outline. I appreciate that several of your insertions are very helpful to others who are generally oblivious to such details.
For me (besides some Western anomalies and the egregious tritheism-accomodating Filioque), the issues are regarding several key points, and a few definitions to at least eliminate some vagueries.
| The first is the definition and quantity of hypostasis/es, especially in English. "Person/s" doesn't have anywhere close to the breadth and depth of the Greek term hypostasis, which is irreducible to a single word in English (and would be substance if it were). I'm especially concerned that there is no real valid exegesis for the term hypostasis to be applied to the Son and Holy Spirit. Honest apologists all readily assert that its purely inferential, pointing to that as a valid means for theological apology. But it's more presumptive by default and rote tradition than anything. And it's not revelatory at all in my extensive experience. It's merely a concept and quickly-declared mystery, with little if any knowledge of the actual history or process or true meanings of the formulaic. |
| The second is the procession of the Logos and Pneuma, and those relative to the Divine Utterance for creation. No historical Theology Proper formulaic has ever accounted for the creation of heaven, though most claim to and some individuals have nominally insisted they have (Thomas Aquinas). Ad intra and ad extra are just philosophical band-aids to obscure the fact that the procession of the Logos and Pneuma was external rather than internal. |
| The third (and this relative to the first and second) is the complete omission of consideration for uncreated phenomenon and noumenon; and this in contrast to created phenomena (and noumena). |
| The fourth is the question of exactly how the Logos is the Son. God has literal intellect for expression, which is Logos. So how is that the Son as an individuated hypostasis? And if the Logos is an individuated hypostasis, then what is God's intelligence and expression? |
As for terms and their omission, I'd begin with entity for "person" as ineligible, for an entity is a being by defintion.
There are many other points, but I didn't want to disect your post into a bazillion segments.
| The main issues are above. Hypostasis =/= "Person". Non-inferential exegesis for multiple hypostases. Created heaven. Multi-Phenomenality. Logos as Son. |
All are missing explanations from the Western Filioque Protestant Trinity (which is distinct from both the original Orthodox Eastern Non-Filioque Trinity and the Latin Western Filioque Trinity) and all others.
Many things are pre-supposed with no scriptural support whatsoever; or with presumptive proof-texting based on bias and/or inference.
Personally, I'm simply not much interested in, nor persuaded by, any formulaic that cannot account for the creation of heaven and the appropriate understanding of the Logos and Pneuma procession. And blurring lines between Monotheism and Polytheism is not kosher, which is just the kind of semantics-surfing that comprises the various mainline historical formulaics for the Trinity.
I'm not sure where the discussion will go from here; but explaining explicitly how the Logos is the Son as an individuated hypostasis would be a start. "Hows" are more crucial than "whats", since any "what" can be asserted.
If Logos is merely a title or name, then I don't see much integrity and continuity of terms and definitions; for that would defy linguistics and nominalize God's expression of Himself in/as the eternal Son manifest in flesh.
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just a reminder, we were all asked to keep comments minimal and contributory. with NO ANTI-TRINITY preaching - ok, LA -
Ask Mr. Religion
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Thanks you for the reminder, PJ. I remain hopeful folks will abide.
AMR
AMR
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I provided some acceptable definitions of terms and restrictions therein. It would seem to me that we could work with these and not wrangle on them to move the discussion forward. There is nothing in them, with the qualifications I have stated, that would leave them controversial. Key here is that given my qualified statements about how the words are being used, how is harm being done to the topic? This affords you the opportunity to take my position and, using my own words, bearing in mind my careful qualifications accompanying them, to see how you can fit your position within the same, or show how this cannot be done. Again, here I am asking that with the restrictions I have placed on my own terms, where is the points of quibble?
I do not see, given my discussion above, how ad exra and ad intra are "band aids" or even abstract philosophy when they are confined to the Object of theology proper—God. Procession, spiration, etc., speak to ad extra—eternally proceeding acts. I want to set aside the creation of heaven for the time being to sort out our understanding of the Triune Godhead.
This is a peripheral topic to what I have laid out above. I was hoping we could interact with my post directly and you could show me where you think I have went astray.
I laid some pipe for how I use "hypostasis" which I think is in accordance with the common discussions of the Godhead and the Incarnation. I may be wrong here, but you seem to want to take the discussion antecedent to my own use of the word. Why is it, with the qualifications I have made in the excursus of my previous post, not acceptable to use "hypostasis" along those lines? I understand you see things quite differently, but help me see how my own careful qualifications are unwarranted. I am more than happy to use "subsistence" for "person" and avoid the use of "hypostasis" entirely. Could that work for you?
For example, if I were to ask my previously asked question as "Can I assume you hold that the Holy Spirit is a subsistence?" would your answer be the same? If not how would it differ?
AMR
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Agreed, though subtleties matter; so I'm not being intentionally or overtly pedantic. But semantics IS meaning, so foundational term definitions are of fundamental importance.
As long as it isn't a war based on differing foundational meanings, I concur. But that's often the case, so I want to avoid such a scenario of us talking past one another.
I think that's an idealistic simplification, but we'll move forward. I'm quite guarded about this because I'm almost universally misunderstood and misrepresented because others can't/won't get out of their caricature mindset to ascribe a parody of meaning to whatever I say.
It's more about conceptual baggage being taken TO terms and meanings. It's often an issue of "semantical eisegesis".
I do want this to move forward, so it's worth every such attempt. I'll just have to note contrasts in meaning and application along the way.
I'm yet unsure, but anticipate such quibbles since they've never before failed to arise.
The overarching issue is always an inequity in considering a handful of crucial things that are integral to the discussion.
Yes, I know. And communicating that, especially in this venue's format is difficult.
Briefly... opera ad intra presumes much, and it's a means of making the ek-/ex- prefix internal. For such action not to result in exteriorization, it becomes a self-impugning sloppy means of justifying a position that totally disannuls inherent meaning, like the defined application of the ek-/ex- prefix.
This is exaggerated by segregating the Logos/Pneuma procession from the topic of the inception of creation, since creation is the instantiation of all "wheres" for exteriorization relative to action. And it introduces a "where" within God that innately violates any valid notion of Simplicity and Immutability at some point.
Ek-/ex- (as in ekporeuomai/exerchomai) indicates motion. Even appropriately as ecomony from energies of God's essence, "where" is such action going to occur when God created all "where/s"? Is there some eternal void within God into which this eternal procession eternally occurs? Motion out from requires "where/s". That's creation.
What would deter this from being an internal creative act? Why wouldn't that be God creating a Son and Holy Spirit within Himself if we're suspending all normative considerstions of what ek-/ex- means? Such action being external to the Father but not being external to God is absurd, and is just retrospective shallow eisegetics to attempt to validate a preconceived concept of some kind of internality.
And since it's about God's pre-creational eternal ontological existence, I'd say it's very presumptuous to start assigning internal action and motion to a God before He even speaks to create. Again, "where" is action of the eternal begottenness occurring as "from" and "to" for its motion "out of/from"? This requires spatial considerations, and space is "where/s". Ad intra cannot just be a declarative, especially when it's a concept added to explain a position already posited as alleged doctrinal truth.
The eternal begottenness and procession as ad intra also bring unresolvable challenges of the ousia somehow being a fourth "something" apart from the alleged hypostases. And this in addition to the question of whether the ousia "has" the hypostasis/es (Latin/Protestant) or the hypostasis/es "has/have" the ousia (Eastern), which is also quite a huge disparity and consideration, including to translational semantics.
That's a brief example of why I refer to it as a "band-aid". It covers a boo-boo that could be infected and painful if exposed; and I can very thoroughly expose it, but it just gets ignored.
That's the claim. Exactly what are "wheres" within God for such alleged internal motion (particulaly of alleged multiple hypostases from a hypostasis). From "where" to "where" did this alleged internal ek-/ex- "out of/from" occur? I'm normally a bit sarcastic about these things because they're exasperatingly preposterous; but I'm abstaining because of the seriousness and reverence of this topic.
They're integrated, though.
At some point, the contrast between our views demands attention to the subject of the created heaven because it's passively foundational for the standard Trinity formulaic/s, which all presume God is in heaven and merely creating the cosmos. And it also affects opera ad intra/ad extra by your view having explain the paradoxically unexplainable while destroying the very meaning of the ek-/ex- prefix.
Vacating the English term "person/s" for hypostasis is vital. All hypostases are not "persons"; and cannot adequately reflect hypostasis as a noun, though is appropriate as an adjective. And "person" is a term within creation for that which is in His image. God is "other"' so it wouldn't be appropriate to confine Him to such a created term that is reduced from at least utilizing a scriptural and irreducible term.
The problem with using subsistence for hypostasis is that it would be coupled to substance for ousia; then making the "being/essence" the sub-standing instead of the hypostasis which underlies. So the first consideration is to clarify the sub-standing. Is ousia the sub-standing (Latin/Protestant) or is/are the hypostasis/es the sub-standing (Eastern). I am firmly in the Eastern camp (including anti-Filioque) and consider the Latin/Protestant position an egregious error of conflation.
The ousia doesn't "have" the hypostasis/es, the hypostasis/es "has/have" the ousia. The hypostasis is the sub-standing for the ousia, not vice versa. God isn't a "being" in/as three "persons".
My answer would be the same. The Holy Spirit is not an individuated hypostasis, however hypostasis is defined. The plurality is the Multi-Phenomenality, not the Multi-Hypostaticism.
The Holy Spirit is the same substance/subsistence as the Father. The distinction is regarding phenomenality and noumenality, which is a topic that hasn't historically been broached. That's the problem, and the foundation for all disparity between my formulaic and the variants of "orthodoxy" (though oddly there are several/many of the latter). I represent the 3D of Multi-Phenomenality in contrast to all other formulaics as 2D presentations.
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PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
My anti-Filioque post disappeared with the recent data loss, so I'll repost it in abbreviated form.
Filioque, for other readers who may not know, is Latin for "and the Son"; and it refers to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. The controversy was regarding whether the Holy Spirit proceedeth (ekporeuomai) from the Father or from both Father and Son. And this procession is referred to as "spiration", from which we get such breathing terms as "respiration".
The original understanding, and still currently held by the Easterns, is that the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father. But in the centuries of post-Nicene history, the Latins began promoting the procession/spiration of the Holy Spirit as being from both the Father "and the Son" (Filioque). And it became the integral doctrinal focus surrounding the greater controversy of the Papacy, which the Easterns rejected.
The problematic implications of the Filioque clause are several, but I'll focus on what I consider the main paradox. Though installed as an alleged attempt to ensure equality and mutuality of the alleged multiple hypostases, it introduces a much greater concern of provision for polytheism.
The contention is that it is the mutual love between Father and Son that spirates the Holy Spirit, thereby indicating the Filioque. But the problem is that it only ensures that mutuality of love between Father and Son, and still subordinates the Holy Spirit to them both while introducing a pattern for an infinite pleroma of God-"persons".
If the mutual love of Father and Son spirate the Holy Spirit; then for there to be true equality of the the "persons", the mutual love of the Holy Spirit and the Father would spirate "Person 4" and the mutual love of the Holy Spirit and the Son would spirate "Person 5".
It would then follow that the mutual love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and P4 would spirate P6, P7, and P8. And the mutual love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and P5 would spirate P9, P10, and P11; while the mutual love between P4 and P5 would spirate P12.
This would continue infinitely to spirate an unending pleroma of God-"Persons". So promoting the Filioque based upon mutual love is fallacious.
Ekporeuomai applies only to the Holy Spirit and the Father (John 15:26), though the sending is by both Father and Son. So the issue is simply of appropriate prepositions. The Holy Spirit proceedeth FROM the Father BY/THROUGH/WITH the Son.
No Filioque.
Filioque, for other readers who may not know, is Latin for "and the Son"; and it refers to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. The controversy was regarding whether the Holy Spirit proceedeth (ekporeuomai) from the Father or from both Father and Son. And this procession is referred to as "spiration", from which we get such breathing terms as "respiration".
The original understanding, and still currently held by the Easterns, is that the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father. But in the centuries of post-Nicene history, the Latins began promoting the procession/spiration of the Holy Spirit as being from both the Father "and the Son" (Filioque). And it became the integral doctrinal focus surrounding the greater controversy of the Papacy, which the Easterns rejected.
The problematic implications of the Filioque clause are several, but I'll focus on what I consider the main paradox. Though installed as an alleged attempt to ensure equality and mutuality of the alleged multiple hypostases, it introduces a much greater concern of provision for polytheism.
The contention is that it is the mutual love between Father and Son that spirates the Holy Spirit, thereby indicating the Filioque. But the problem is that it only ensures that mutuality of love between Father and Son, and still subordinates the Holy Spirit to them both while introducing a pattern for an infinite pleroma of God-"persons".
If the mutual love of Father and Son spirate the Holy Spirit; then for there to be true equality of the the "persons", the mutual love of the Holy Spirit and the Father would spirate "Person 4" and the mutual love of the Holy Spirit and the Son would spirate "Person 5".
It would then follow that the mutual love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and P4 would spirate P6, P7, and P8. And the mutual love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and P5 would spirate P9, P10, and P11; while the mutual love between P4 and P5 would spirate P12.
This would continue infinitely to spirate an unending pleroma of God-"Persons". So promoting the Filioque based upon mutual love is fallacious.
Ekporeuomai applies only to the Holy Spirit and the Father (John 15:26), though the sending is by both Father and Son. So the issue is simply of appropriate prepositions. The Holy Spirit proceedeth FROM the Father BY/THROUGH/WITH the Son.
No Filioque.