486 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
John of Damascus, who gave the doctrine of the Greek fathers its scholastic shape, about A. D. 750, one hundred years before the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, maintained that the procession is from the Father alone, but through the Son, as mediator.1 The same formula, Ex Poire per Filium, was used by Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, who presided over the seventh oecumenical Council (787), approved by Pope Hadrian I., and was made the basis for the compromise at the Council of Ferrara (1439), and at the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn (1875). But Photius and the later Eastern contro versialists dropped or rejected the per Filium, as being nearly equivalent to ex Filio or Filioque, or understood it as being applicable only to the mission of the Spirit, and emphasized the exclusiveness of the procession from the Father.2
The arguments for the Greek doctrine are as follows : (a) The words of Christ, John 15 : 26, understood in an ex clusive sense. As this is the only passage of the Bible in which
the Creed ; and the Catholic Church has acknowledged this so decidedly that the third (Ecumenical Council in its seventh canon forbade the composition of any new creed." Then the Catechism quotes the following passage from John of Damascus: "Of the Holy Ghost, we both say that He is from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father; while we nowise say that He is from the Son, but only call Him the Spirit of the Son." (TheoL, lib. 1. c. 11, v.4.)
1 See the doctrine of John of Damascus, with extracts from his writings, stated by Hergenrother, Photius, I. 691 sq. ; and in the proceedings of the Dollinger Conference (Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, II. 553 sq.). Dr. Langen (Old Cath. Prof, in Bonn), in his monograph on John of Damascus (Gotha, 1879, p. 283 sq.), thus sums up the views of this great divine on the proces sion : 1) The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son.
2) He does not proceed from the Son, but from the Father through the Son.
3) He is the image of the Son, as the Son is the image of the Father. 4) He forms the mediation between the Father and the Son, and is through the Son connected with the Father.
2 Langen, I. c. p. 286: "So hat demnaeh die grosse Trennung zwischen Orient und Occident in diesem Lehrstilcke die Folge gehabt, dass die Auffassung des Damasceners, gleichsam in der Mitte stehend, von dem Patriarchen Tarasius amtlich approbirt und vom Papste Hadrian L vertheidigt, weder im Orient noch im Occident zur Oeltung kam. Dort gait sie als zu zweideutig, und hier ward sie als unzureichend befunden"
2 108. ARGUMENTS FOB AND AGAINST THE FILIOQUE. 487
the procession of the Spirit is expressly taught, it is regarded by the Greeks as conclusive.
(6) The supremacy or monarchia of the Father. He is the source and root of the Godhead. The Son and the Spirit are subordinated to him, not indeed in essence or substance (obffi'a), which is one and the same, but in dignity and office. This is the Nicene subordinationism. It is illustrated by the comparison of the Father with the root, the Son with the stem, the Spirit with the fruit, and such analogies as the sun, the ray, and the beam ; the fire, the flame, and the light.
(c) The analogy of the eternal generation of the Son, which is likewise from the Father alone, without the agency of the Spirit.
(d) The authority of the Nicene Creed, and the Greek fathers, especially Atlianasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chryscstom, Theo dore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and John of Damascus. The Antiochean school is clearly on the Greek side ; but the Alexandrian school leaned to the formula through the Son (dea TOL> uioij, per Filium). The Greeks claim all the Greek fathers, and regard Augustin as the inventor of the Latin dog ma of the double procession.
The Latin doctrine is charged with innovation, and with dividing the unity of the Godhead, or establishing two sources of the Deity. But the Latins replied that the procession was from one and the same source common to both the Father and the Son.
2. The LATIN theory of the double procession is defended by the following arguments :
(a) The passages where Christ says that he will send the Spirit from the Father (John 15 : 26; 16: 7); and that the Father will send the Spirit in Christ's name (14: 26); and where he breathes the Spirit on his disciples (20 : 22). The Greeks refer all these passages to the temporal mission of the Spirit, and un derstand the insufflation to be simply a symbolical act or sacra mental sign of the pentecostal effusion which Christ had