property of being a Son with him.[1] So the Orthodox theologian would set up as a rival thesis to that of the scholastics: "God the Father alone is the source of the Divinity; indeed, if he were not so God would not be one. Wherefore the error of the Latins in this matter fundamentally overturns the truth of the Divine unity."
The question was discussed at the second Council of Lyons in 1274, and at great length at the Council of Florence (1439). The Pope and the Latins began by making a great concession to the Eastern bishops. To say that God the Father is the cause of the other Persons, and that they are caused (ἀιτιατά), certainly sounds wrong to us. It seems like calling them creatures; the essential note of the Divine nature, which is the same in the three Persons, would be expressed by us in the statement that it alone is uncaused. However, the Byzantines held strongly to their expression, it had certainly been used by their Catholic Fathers, and it was recognized that after all they only meant what we say when we call God the Father the principle (principium). So their word was allowed and acknowledged as legitimate in their language. Then the council removed their difficulty about the two "sources" in God by emphasizing strongly that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one source. This had already been defined at Lyons, and it is necessarily involved in the scholastic interpretation of the mystery. The only difference between the Persons is where a relation intervenes between them. But although there is the relation of generation between the first and second Persons, there is no relation between them where they regard the third Person. So in this consideration they become one principle, one source to which the Holy Ghost has the relation of procession. And lastly, since many Easterns objected to saying that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, and since their Fathers, notably St. Basil,[2] had often used
- ↑ This is the reasoning of Kritopoulos, chap. i.: The teaching of the Church. He begins his whole treatise with this chapter, which is all about the procession of the Holy Ghost. The fact is significant. No Catholic would begin a treatise on the faith with a long chapter against the heresy of the Greeks concerning the Filioque.
- ↑ De Spir. scto. viii. 21. M.P.G. xxxii. 106.
