The Western view is more reasonable because it has a lot more theological and philosophical explanatory power, whereas the Eastern view lacks this explanatory power. Since the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is begotten by the Father how do we distinguish them? One might say that they have different contingent relational properties such as the Spirit is the one who sanctifies the church or that the Son is the one who purchases our redemption, etc. The problem is that these relational properties are contingent and as a result they just happen to be the case but they don’t have to be the case. They do not tell us anything essential about the Son or the Spirit, they are only accidental relation properties. So for example, in a possible world W* where there is no creation what do we really know about the differentiation between the persons of the Trinity, specifically the Son and the Spirit? Nothing! And that seems like a very strange and odd thing to say about the persons of the Trinity in whom we are supposed to know and love. The East recognizes that there is a difference between "procession" and "being begotten", but how can they explain this? They would say that at least they are both coming from the Father in the sense that their personhood is being sustained from all eternity past. But the question that has to be asked is: Where is the difference between these persons? They could say that it is just mysterious and the causation must be different but we just don’t know how to reasonably distinguish them. This view seems completely ineffable.
The West, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be in hot water on this score. For we can say that the difference between "being begotten" and "proceeding from" is that being begotten is from one necessary causal relation whereas proceeding is two necessary causal relations (since of course the Spirit presumably comes from the Father and the Son).
P1: All Three members of the trinity are necessarily and essentially (N+E) distinguishable in every possible world.
P2: There is a possible world W* were God did not create.
P3: In W* the persons of the trinity can be distinguished by having different necessary and essential casual relations between each other.
P4: The traditional Trinitarian causal relations plus the insertion of the Filioque explains the N+E distinctions between the members in a possible world W*
C: Hence, the Flilique is more reasonable than not.
Thus if one wants to have more explanatory power in their Trinitarian theology and philosophy, they ought to adopt the western view of the Trinity (namely, the filioque).
"The thesis of this post is to demonstrate that under Western philosophical presuppositions the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son is more reasonable than not."
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to harp on and on about something I have already said elsewhere, but . . . this is exactly the problem. No Orthodox person will dispute that the merit of the Filioque is demonstrable under what you (rather misleadingly, in my opinion) call "Western philosophical presuppositions". In fact, one of the main complaints of the Orthodox is that the Filioque rests upon these philosophical presuppositions, rather than being grounded in Scripture and Tradition.
Without regard to the above, I have a few other things to say about your post:
1) You ask how we should distinguish between the members of the Holy Trinity, implying, it seems, that the Trinity turns into a simple One without the Filioque. Confusion and indistinguishability of the Persons leads to a perceived collapse.
I think, however, that there needs to be some further discussion of what persons are for your argument - or for any other argument - to go through. At the very least, it would be nice to see your assumptions about persons made explicit so that we can all know what is motivating your thoughts about them. Perhaps a short blog post on the subject?
2) Have you, by any chance, interacted with any of St. Photios the Great's arguments against the Filioque? Krause discusses them in a couple of post on Well of Questions. If interested, you can find them at the following urls:
http://wellofquestions.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/game-set-match/
http://wellofquestions.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/more-st-photius-on-the-filioque/
I don't mean to harp on and on about something I have already said elsewhere, but . . . this is exactly the problem. No Orthodox person will dispute that the merit of the Filioque is demonstrable under what you (rather misleadingly, in my opinion) call "Western philosophical presuppositions". In fact, one of the main complaints of the Orthodox is that the Filioque rests upon these philosophical presuppositions, rather than being grounded in Scripture and Tradition.
ReplyDeleteResponse: I think all of these philosophical presuppositions are obviously reasonable to those of us who have not succumbed to some sort of eastern traditional that is anti-dialectical. These Western presuppositions are as follows: 1) The persons of the trinity have properties that are necessary and essential, 2) theories with more explanatory scope and power are to be preferred rather than theories that lack this, 3) we can use possible world speech, 4 persons are not nominalistically predicated of.
All of these western presuppositions seem pretty reasonable to me and thus I would think if anyone rejects them they are being simply unreasonable. This is a great deal of the reason why I do not even consider or take seriously the eastern position because by it’s inherent nature it is anti-dialectical. Basically, even if there was some valid and sound (which there is not) church authority argument I would rather go with the Western Catholic tradition than the eastern.
Without regard to the above, I have a few other things to say about your post:
1) You ask how we should distinguish between the members of the Holy Trinity, implying, it seems, that the Trinity turns into a simple One without the Filioque. Confusion and indistinguishability of the Persons leads to a perceived collapse.
Response: No, my post was not assuming divine simplicity. You have misunderstood it. There could be distinguishability but the problem is we have no way theoretically to distinguish them without the Filique.
I think, however, that there needs to be some further discussion of what persons are for your argument - or for any other argument - to go through. At the very least, it would be nice to see your assumptions about persons made explicit so that we can all know what is motivating your thoughts about them. Perhaps a short blog post on the subject?
Response: I already have, if Mark Krause has not told you. In a private e-mail conversation in which he never responded to me I went to great lengths to explain my view of the persons and the divine essence.
August 7 at 2:09pm
Mark: I'll start by mentioning that I only have short occaisional access to the internet right now because my computer crashed and isn't fully up and running. So right now I'm on a friend's so all that to say that if you send me another response I may not get it promptly.
Nate: I totally understand Mark. Thanks for being prompt this time. I really enjoy your insight on this matter.
Mark: That said, my first question would be: How are you defining substance?
Nate: A haver of a function or a mode of being but not had by a function or a mode of being. Obviously a substance can have more than one mode of being or function and it can have distinguishable properties in that one substance. Obviously there would be such distinctions as God's properties ad intra (the essential and Necessary characteristics of the divine essence or nature) and his properties ad extra (relational contingent properties to the created order and his human nature). The term mode of being is from the Reformed scholastics. A mode of being would be something like the candle and the wax that the candle is formed into are two distinct modes of being. This is heavily dependent on michael rae's view of the trinity as you can probably tell from my language.
Mark: I assume you mean something like essence, in which case there isn't really much conceptual space between substance and nature considering by nature we typically mean essence and the natural energies proper to an instanciation of that essence. Sometimes, nature can simply refer to the essence as well though.
Nate: I would say that a nature is instantiated by a substance in the way I am using the terms. I understand that there has been differing usages in history.
Mark: Second, if you were to say that both person and nature are instantiations of the substance or essence, then you would have to find some way to differentiate between the categories of person and nature because as it stands they seem like the same thing.
Nate: There is a difference between human nature as instantiated in the divine substance and personhood as a nature being instantiated in a substance. Obviously a human nature needs to have at least one person connected to it in order for it to be completely human nature, but personhood as a nature can be connected to more than one nature (this is what happens, I think, in the incarnation). Personhood as I see it is a relation, a will (at least one will, but there could be two), a function/mode of being, and a center of consciousness.
Mark: It's very unclear to me whether you've done anything more than try to throw more terminology into the mix to avoid the problem. These distinctions seem only semantic. You've got to have conceptual content behind the terminology and you've got to make clear how your distinctions really relate to distinct things.
Nate: I see where you are coming from. But I think what I have said above might clear up this muddle that is my speculative theology.
Mark: In the end i gotta say that there's a reason we stick to the terminology of the councils. In the end, you will end up rehashing old heresies cloaked in new terminlogy or you will express orthodoxy in different and confusing terminology.
Nate: I agree in some sense. I open to accepting the eastern view of the trinity (person/nature distinction), but I think it seems very nominalistic, the eastern view of persons. To be honest with you that drives me crazy. But If I am required to logically I guess I will have to hold to it...better that than be a Lutheran Christological heretic. I think that if the eastern view of the trinity/christology is correct I would encourage Protestants to accept it, without necessarily accepting the eastern orthodox faith as a whole.
Mark: But again, in order to fully assess what you're saying, I need to know what you mean by substance, and how you would distinguish between person and nature if they were both instantiations of a substance.
Nate: The distinction between person and nature in my view is that of just different properties of a give nature (personhood and human nature).
Mark: Finally, remember that another reason to use consistent terminlogy is that you will have to assess the Trinitarian consequences of whatever you say in your Christology. That's why the Father's at Chalcedon chose to use a Christological terminlogy consistent with Cappedocian Trinitarian terminology.
Nate: I think that is a good point and I think a lot of people miss it when they are doing their Christology.
Now granted I have made some modifications to it, for example I would now see persons as a center of consciousness with the possession of at least one will.
2) Have you, by any chance, interacted with any of St. Photios the Great's arguments against the Filioque? Krause discusses them in a couple of post on Well of Questions. If interested, you can find them at the following urls:
http://wellofquestions.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/game-set-match/
http://wellofquestions.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/more-st-photius-on-the-filioque/
Response:
With regards to link 1:
“P4: If it’s a personal property, than the Father and the Son share a
unique personal property.”
It is this premise that gave me the idea to write this post! So I have read this one. P4 is obviously false because we do have a way to distinguish the Father and the Son uniquely, namely the Father is not begotten or proceeds from anything.
With regards to link 2:
I would think that the Father and the Son both help cause the Spirit. I have no problem with saying that there are distinctions in the Holy Spirit and that the Father causes half the properties and the Son causes the others. This does not really seem like an argument to me at all when the one of the horns of the dilemma does not seem absurd or irrational.
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ReplyDeleteEve was taken from Adam's side, not begotten from him. Nor was she the 'product' of Adam and his son.
ReplyDelete