Pneumatological heresy

[Tom Cook]

I recently attended an Anglican children's Mass. The main theme of the sermon was 'The Holy Spirit' and there was an attempt to explain trinitarian theology to the children using multimedia and a powerpoint presentation.

The main theological metaphor used for the Holy Spirit was that He is the result of the superabundance of love between the Father and the Son. To my ears, this seemed to downplay the Holy Spirit's hypostatic reality, reducing Him to a kind of spiritual epiphenomenon.

Am I wrong? Is what I heard perhaps a direct result of the filioque, or is this way of understanding the Holy Spirit also a part of Orthodox tradition?

More generally, whereas the Ecumenical Councils seemed to be very concerned with defining the nature of Christ and His relationship to the Father, there doesn't seem to be nearly as much said about the nature of the Holy Spirit. Were there no prominent pneumatological heresies during the time of the Great Councils?

[Andreas Moran]

Much has been revealed to us about the Son and very little about the Holy Spirit, and the Creed reflects this. The Greek word 'pneuma' tells us little about Him. So, He is almost entirely outside our perception or deduction and apophatic theology applies to Him par excellence. And yet without Him there would be nothing because all three Persons act in unison - otherwise there would be a lack of perfection. God always acts as a Trinity. I don't think it is un-Orthodox to speak of the Holy Spirit as the love of God. Creation (immaterial and material) was created from love. Creation is by the will of the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit of Trinitarian love. What is said in the Creed is augmented by our prayer, 'Heavenly King . . . ' from which we know that He is our Paraclete, treasury of all good things and the Giver of Life in creation. We cannot conceive how the Holy Spirit 'proceeds' from the Father but the word does mean that the Holy Spirit is, we might say, the outflowing love of the Father: God is love. Thus, I think we can say that the Holy Spirit is the Father's love. The Father wills; the Son, as the Word, expresses the will, and the Holy Spirit, as the Giver of Life, completes the act and, being everywhere present and filling all things, he, as it were, from love animates and governs Creation.

I hope this makes some sense!

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

The main theological metaphor used for the Holy Spirit was that He is the result of the superabundance of love between the Father and the Son. To my ears, this seemed to downplay the Holy Spirit's hypostatic reality, reducing Him to a kind of spiritual epiphenomenon.

I also am uneasy with this way of explaining the Trinitarian relationship. It makes it sound as if the Father and Son have a priority of origin to the Holy Spirit.

It also downplays the hypostatic relation between the Three Divine Persons. The Holy Spirit as uniquely proceeding from the Father refers to the unique character of the relationship between the Father & the Holy Spirit. It also refers to the personal priority of the Father since He is the origin of both the Holy Spirit and the Son.



More generally, whereas the Ecumenical Councils seemed to be very concerned with defining the nature of Christ and His relationship to the Father, there doesn't seem to be nearly as much said about the nature of the Holy Spirit. Were there no prominent pneumatological heresies during the time of the Great Councils?

St Gregory the Theologian devoted a lot of his energy to insisting on the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. Many resisted such an idea. Eventually however it was upheld by the 2nd Ecumenical Council in 381.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Owen Jones]

The Episcopal Church is winging it. Theology, such as it is, in the Episcopal Church today is a soup of New Age, Neo-Marxist, deconstructionist, mythological, and gestalt psychological jargon.

[Andreas Moran]

The Holy Spirit as uniquely proceeding from the Father refers to the unique character of the relationship between the Father & the Holy Spirit. It also refers to the personal priority of the Father since He is the origin of both the Holy Spirit and the Son.

Thank you for this - it says much more clearly what I was trying to say.

[Effie Ganatsios]

I once read this very simple explanation to help children understand the trinity. The following metaphor can be used.

Water can be three things, and still be the same.

Ice, water and steam.

Very simple but this would appeal to a child's mind and enable him to understand a little before the more serious explanations are given.

Effie

[Tom Cook]

The Episcopal Church is winging it. Theology, such as it is, in the Episcopal Church today is a soup of New Age, Neo-Marxist, deconstructionist, mythological, and gestalt psychological jargon.

Yes, in general I would agree. Anglicanism is a bit like the parson's egg - it's better in some parts than others. Some factions seem to be at least doctrinally small 'o' orthodox, whereas other factions are completely off the map. This lack of consistency is really the whole problem. You never quite know what you're going to get.

I've actually heard a similar idea about the Holy Spirit being an overflowing of the love between Father and Son in a Roman Catholic setting, so I assumed it was characteristic of Western Christianity as a whole. The trinitarian pyramid on one of the slides shown at the children's Mass I attended was definitely post-filioque - pointing downwards, with Father and Son at the top two corners and the Holy Spirit at the bottom corner.

[Tom Cook]

I once read this very simple explanation to help children understand the trinity. The following metaphor can be used.

Water can be three things, and still be the same.

Ice, water and steam.

Very simple but this would appeal to a child's mind and enable him to understand a little before the more serious explanations are given.

Effie

Thank you Effie. That's a good explanation!

[Tom Cook]

Thank you Andreas and Father Raphael for your replies.

[Herman Blaydoe]

Just a little thought from a little brain, but in that Anglican theology inherits from Roman theology, it would seem possible to this bear of little brain that this idea of the Holy Spirit being the "bond" between the Father and the Son is an unfortunate spawn of the "filioque" and demonstrates why it was such a bad idea to add to the Creed.

If the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father AND from the Son", then this idea (that I believe was also unfortunately espoused by C. S. Lewis) makes the Holy Spirit to be someTHING in common with the Father and the Son, rather than being a Person in His own right. This would seem to be directly related to the wrong-headed theology of dual-procession, without calling it that. Without the filioque, this strangeness goes away, and the proper relationships of the Persons of the Godhead are preserved.

Yes? No?

Herman the Pooh

[Andreas Moran]

Yes? No?

Herman the Pooh

Yes. [Message "too short" without this in brackets!]

[Father David Moser]

I once read this very simple explanation to help children understand the trinity. The following metaphor can be used.

Water can be three things, and still be the same.

Ice, water and steam.



I have used the sam metaphor, and expanded it a little by suggesting that we put ice cubes in a pan of boiling water - we have three things, but all one at the same time and in the same place. Of course if you push the idea too far, you wander into some heretical ideas, but for kids its a good place to start.

Fr David Moser

[Owen Jones]

I would prefer a spiritual/experiential explication of the Trinity, to a materialistic analogy.

Children understand FAthers. They lay down the law. We want to love our fathers, and be close to them, but it's hard. They always have some distance, because they cannot, if they are good fathers, ignore their duty to lay down the law. If we are an orphan, we understand the need to find a father or have a substitute father, because he is so distant from us. We also understand brothers and sisters -- a very different relationship. We admire an older sibling and want to be like him or her. We also, as we grow and develop, want the power to be ourselves, who we truly are, without simply being a rubber stamp of our fathers and mothers. If our parents have properly guided us, and if we do not rebel too much, then we will rightly use that power. We also can begin to understand our own self as a composition of will, intellect and emotions/feelings -- combined with a physical body. God identifies with all of what we are, and can only do that as a Trinity of Persons, of which we are an image, as is the world.

[Matthew Namee]

I once read this very simple explanation to help children understand the trinity. The following metaphor can be used.

Water can be three things, and still be the same.

Ice, water and steam.
Of course, the problem here is that this sounds rather like Sabellianism (though doubtless that is almost never the intention of anyone who uses the analogy). The best example I can think of is a marriage (two persons yet one flesh), but I guess that would be equally foreign to a child.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I have had time since yesterday to go to John Mcguckin's St Gregory of Nazianzus where I remembered there were some helpful explanations about this. Here is one (this refers to St Gregory of Nazianzus):


Causation is synonymous with the father's dynamic communication of the divine nature to the Son, in the act of generating the Son hypostatically. This means that the Father's greatness is particularly and properly the fact the he is the source and origin of the selfsame divine being which He communicates to the Son and the Spirit. However, the fact that th Son and the Spirit have no other being except that which is the father's, means that they cannot be defined as inferior in divinity to their cause. They all have one and the same single nature, that of the Father, and by virtue of that fact are one God, and co-equal. The causality therefore, is not attributable to the Divine Nature, as such, it must be referred to the relation of the hypostases. (p. 295)

There is something in this explanation I like very much because of the way it stresses that the being of the Son and Holy Spirit come from the being of the Father, as Father.

Most often we think in terms of procession from essence probably because humanly this is easier to understand. However the actual reality of the Holy Trinity is best conveyed by pointing to how the personal being of the Son and Holy Spirit is from the personal being of the Father. Rather than making them different instead it makes them distinct. But yet this also, as J Mcguckin points out (we were all taught this in seminary also) is the very reality that makes the Trinity consubstantial.

Perhaps this is what St Gregory meant when he wrote:


And so, Unity, from the beginning moved to Duality, and found its rest in Trinity. ( 3rd Theological Oration- Oration 29).

In Christ- Fr Raphael