The Eternal Spirit of the Son: Barth,

Florovsky and Torrance on the Filioqueijst_523 382..403

MATTHEW BAKER*
Abstract: This article offers an Orthodox response to Barths defense of
the lioque. Florovskys theology exemplies how Orthodoxy addresses the
concerns underlying Barths lioque without resort to the lioque. Entailed in
the elaboration of Florovskys Christocentric pneumatology is a critique of other
currents in modern Orthodox theology (Florensky, Lossky). Common emphases
are noted between Florovsky and T.F. Torrance regarding the consubstantiality
and propriety of the Spirit to the Son and the signicance of this doctrine for
ecclesial life, suggesting a basis for further ecumenical reintegration.
Twentieth-century Western theology was marked by a rediscovery of the Trinity, as
a mystery of faith present in every dimension of church life.
1
This rediscovery has
served to place EastWest disagreements regarding pneumatology into renewed
attention. Some recent Roman Catholic theologians, such as Congar and de Halleux,
favor the suppression of the lioque interpolation.
2
Others of Protestant background
for example, Colin Gunton, Thomas Smail and George Hendry
3
regard the
doctrine itself as a misstep, an inadequate solution to a genuine problem.
4
* 107 Norman Ave, Cranston, Rhode Island 02910, USA.
1 An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the Karl Barth Society of
North America session at the American Academy of Religion in Montreal (2009). Many
thanks to Dr George Hunsinger.
2 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, III (NewYork: Seabury Press, 1983), pp. 2046;
Andr de Halleux, Towards an Ecumenical Agreement on the Procession of the Holy
Spirit, in Lukas Vischer, ed., Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reections
on the Filioque Controversy (London: SPCK, 1981), pp. 824; also, The Filioque: A
Church-Dividing Issue?, An Agreed Statement of the North American Orthodox-
Catholic Theological Consultation, St Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 48 (2004),
p. 122.
3 Cf. Christopher Seitz, ed., Nicene Christianity: the Future for a New Ecumenism (Grand
Rapids: Brazos, 2001), pp. 46, 164, 184; George Hendry, The Holy Spirit in Christian
Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), pp. 4552.
4 Vischer, Spirit of God, p. 113: Alasdair Heron, summarizing Hendry.
International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 12 Number 4 October 2010
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2010.00523.x
2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
http://fordham.academia.edu/BakerMatthew/Papers/487803/The_Eternal_Spirit_of_the_Son_Barth_Florovsky_and_Torrance_on_the_Filioque
It is some irony that Karl Barth, a theologian of singular importance in this
trinitarian renewal, would allow no such reconsideration. Devoting 15 pages to the
question in Church Dogmatics I/1, Barth states that no less than the whole thrust of
our attempted understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and of the Holy
Trinity hangs upon the lioque.
5
Arguably the most compelling defense of the
lioque produced in recent centuries, Barths arguments deserve more serious
engagement from Orthodox theologians than yet received.
This essay offers a critique of Barths defense from the perspective of Eastern
Orthodox theology. Viewing Barths lioque as a problematic attempt to secure an
account of the Spirits eternal identity as the Spirit of the Son, the second and third
sections consider the treatment of patristic teaching regarding the Spirits propriety
to the Son and the ecclesial signicance of this doctrine in the work of Georges
Florovsky and T.F. Torrance as a sound basis for theological reintegration.
Barths lioque
As Dietrich Ritschl observes, the basic theological-epistemological thesis in Karl
Barths dogmatics is the ultimate abolition of the distinction between the immanent
and economic Trinity.
6
This presupposition is the root of Barths trinitarianism: as
God reveals himself as Trinity, so he is eternally in himself. It also undergirds Barths
insistence on the lioque:
God in his revelation cannot be bracketed by an only, as though somewhere
behind His revelation there stood another reality of God . . . In connexion with
the specic doctrine of the Holy Spirit this means that He is the Spirit of both the
Father and the Son not just in His work ad extra and upon us, but that to all
eternity no limit or reservation is possible here . . . The Eastern doctrine does
not contest the fact that this is so in revelation. But it does not read off from
revelation its statements about the being of God antecedently in Himself.
7
Thus, the lioque follows directly upon the identity principle.
This principle is reected also in Barths use of the Augustinian notion of the
vinculum amoris: only if the Holy Spirit is the relation of love between Father and
5 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1: The Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1975) (hereafter CD I/1), p. 479.
6 Dietrich Ritschl, Historical Development and the Implications of the Filioque
Controversy, in Vischer, Spirit of God, p. 56. Ritschls characterization is accepted here
in a limited sense; it is not intended to attribute to Barth the full-blown Arianizing and
Hegelianizing claim that God constitutes his own being by way of the economy. As
indicated precisely by the phrase antecedently in Himself, although epistemologically
accessible only by way of the economy, Barths lioque hinges upon the reality of an
ontologically prior immanent trinitarian taxis, whose economic form is manifested in a
relation of irreversible, one-way identity with its immanent prototype.
7 Barth, CD I/1, pp. 47980.
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Son can he be the donum of divine love to creatures. But, Barth avers, This whole
insight and outlook is lost when the immanent Filioque is denied:
If the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Son only in revelation and for faith, if He is only
the Spirit of the Father in eternity . . . , then the fellowship of the Spirit between
God and man is without objective ground or content . . . a purely temporal truth,
with no eternal basis . . . Does this not mean an emptying of revelation?
8
Most crucially, then, the lioque ensures mans lial adoption an objective, eternal
ground in God.
Barths concern with the objective reects two other related principles at work
in his defense of the lioque: his Christocentrism and his rejection of independent
natural theology. Barth insists that knowledge of God is mediated only in and
through Jesus Christ. Between the human spirit and the Spirit of God, an innite
difference is observed.
9
The Holy Spirits work is distinct, but closely bound to that
of Christ: If revelation is given objectively in Christ, the Spirit is the agent of its
reception in men, who would otherwise be unable to apprehend Christ as Word. This
is tied to Barths doctrine of election developed in CD II/2. As Barth states already
in CD I/2:
It is grounded from all eternity in God that no man cometh to the Father except
through the Son, because the Spirit by whom the Father draws His children to
Himself is also from all eternity the Spirit of the Son, because by His Spirit the
Father does not call anyone except to His Son.
10
As Spirit of the Son, the Spirit communicates no other content than the Fathers Son
and Word a truth Barth believes must necessitate the lioque.
Thus, Barth rejects the patristic formula of dio `
or per lium as
inadequate, if yoked to the doctrine of the Spirits origination from the Father alone
(
' mnou
` ). Barth admits honestly that dio `
does not
imply derivation from the Son: as he observes with reference to Athanasius Ad
Serapion ( I:20), for the Greek Fathers, the procession dio `
is not an

'
, but an
'

`
lgou, the Father alone being the

' or principle in the strict sense of the word.

11
However, Barth rejects this as
inadequate, because it does not lead to the thought of the full consubstantial
fellowship between Father and Son as the essence of the Spirit, the prototype of
mans adoptive liation. Unless dio `
entails a relatio originis, the Spirit
8 Barth, CD I/1, p. 481.
9 Barth, CD I/1, pp. 454, 462. In this regard, Barths lioque is a safeguard against German
nationalist introduction of Volk spirit into the church a connection brought out more
clearly in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London, 19331935 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007),
p. 48.
10 Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2: The Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1956), p. 250.
11 Barth, CD I/1, p. 482.
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384 Matthew Baker
loses His mediating position between the Father and the Son and the Father and the
Son lose their mutual connexion in the Spirit. Further, even the unity of God
the Father is called into question if implicitly He is not already the origin of the Spirit
as the Father of the Son.
12
Finally, Barth speculates about the results of the Easts rejection of the lioque,
and asks whether its so-called monopatrism might be responsible for an obscuring
of the Sons mediation, resulting in a naturalistic mysticism in which man might
enjoy communion with God in the Spirit apart from Christ.
13
As evidence, Barth
points to the Russian theologians and religious philosophers . . . obliterating the
frontiers of philosophy and theology, of reason and revelation, of spirit and nature, of
pistis and sophia.
14
Barth does not name these Russians although the mention
of sophia and the period in which Barths remarks were written (1932) lead one to
suspect that Barth may be speaking of the sophiology of Soloviev, Florensky and
Bulgakov.
15
A critique of Barths position
There are several aspects of Barths lioque which the Orthodox theologian can
appreciate.
16
Barth is concerned to give dogmatic expression to the biblical
teaching that the Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19; cf. Acts 16:17,
Rom. 8:9), the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6), the Spirit of
` (Rom. 8:14).
Rightly does Barth insist that if this is a merely temporal truth, without foundation
in Gods eternal life, the result can only be an emptying of revelation even a
dangerous spiritualism in which the Sons place is exceeded in favor of some other
supposed revelation of the Spirit. With Barth, Orthodoxy agrees that the Spirit
testies to no other word, illumines no other image, than that of Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son.
Whether this necessitates an identity between being and act is another matter.
There are signicant problems with this identity principle. Similar difculties led
Origen to the doctrine of eternal creation, preparing the conundrum that lay behind
the Arian controversy. To this problematic, Athanasius responded with a distinction
12 Barth, CD I/1, p. 482.
13 Cf. Karl Barth, Gttingen Dogmatics I (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 12930.
14 Barth, CD I/1, p. 481.
15 Barth was familiar with Bulgakovs thought, as he cites in CD I/1 (p. 479) an anthology
which included a selection of Bulgakovs work, Svet Nevechernii: Nicolai Buboff
and Hans Ehrenburg, eds., stliches Christentum Dokumente II (Mnchen, 1925),
pp. 195245.
16 In view of Orthodox concerns, it should be noted that Barth insists that the Spirits
procession is not from the one common essence of God (CD I/1, p. 474), denies a grasp
of the difference between begetting and procession (CD I/1, p. 475), is critical of
Augustines psychological analogies (CD I/1, p. 476), rejects double procession (CD
I/1, pp. 4867) and resists the reduction of the Spirit to mere relation (CD I/1, p. 487).
The Eternal Spirit of the Son 385
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between divine
' and qrlhsi or boulhsi: while the Son is generated
according to essence (
`
fusin), creation is a work of providential will
(bouljsew ).
17
The matter is not exactly parallel; yet the sending of the
Spirit is, like creation, an act of the divine will. Without some formal distinction
between being and act, how does Barth avoid introducing the category of time into
God, making revelation an essential and therefore necessary divine attribute?
To refuse identity is not to question the indivisible unity of being and act, nor
is it to drive a dualistic wedge between eternity and time. Here Barth fails to do
justice to the Eastern tradition when he maintains that it entails a reduction of
the Sons mediation to the temporal sphere alone. While this may have been the
Photian shorthand, it is not the theology which best represents the fullness of
Orthodoxy. In fact, the most in-depth Orthodox conciliar response to the lioque
problem, the Tomos of Faith Against John Bekkos composed by Patriarch Gregory
of Cyprus and issued by the Council of Blachernae in 1285 11 years after Lyons
II dogmatized for the West the Spirits procession ex patre lioque tanquam ab uno
principio offers a teaching on the Spirits relation to the Son in quite different
terms.
18
According to Blachernae, the temporal propriety of the Spirit to the Son is
grounded in an eternal manifestation, inherent in Gods providential will. Building
on the same terminology Barth cites from Athanasius Ad Serapion, the Tomos
speaks of the Spirit as energetically manifested (
'
), shining forth
(
'
) and issuing (
) through (dio) or from (
' ) the Son for all
eternity. This relationship, while rendering an Orthodox lioque, in no way
compromises the Spirits origination from the Father alone, for which the Second
Ecumenical Council had reserved the term

'
: while the Spirit has
existence (

) immediately from the Father, he exists (
`
)
through and from the Son.
19
Similarly,
' mnou `
does not exclude association of the Spirit
with the love between the Father and the Son, as Barth maintains. Ironically, it is
Gregory Palamas, whose essence / energy distinction seems to conict sharply with
Barths identity principle, who speaks of the Spirit as the pre-eternal joy of the
Father and the Son and writes:
The Spirit of the Word is like an
of the Father for the mysteriously
begotten Word, and it is the

that the beloved Word and Son of the Father

has for the one who begot him. That

comes from the Father and at the

same time is with the Son and naturally rests on the Son.
20
17 Cf. Athanasius, Contra Arianos, III:30.
18 For translation of the Tomos and commentary, see Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in
Byzantium: the Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus
(12831289) (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1996).
19 Tomus, PG 142, in Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, pp. 1234.
20 Gregory Palamas, Cap. 36, PG 150, 1144AD1145A.
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386 Matthew Baker
Like Blachernae, Palamas speaks of an eternal operation without, however,
reducing the Spirit to an energy common to the persons.
21
Regarding Barths assertion that
'
mnou `
undermines the
Fathers unity, implying that he is not the origin of the Spirit as the Father of
the Son,
22
it must be emphasized that this formula is in no way intended to suggest
that the Spirits procession (
' ) is somehow foreign to the Sons begetting.
Again, the Orthodox teaching is well stated by Palamas: The Spirit has his existence
from the Father of the Son, because he who causes the Spirit to proceed is also
Father . . . it is not from anywhere else, but only from him who also begets the Son.
23
Here the Spirits procession presupposes the paternal identity of its source and,
hence, the Sons generation. Thus, the conjunction of dio `
and
' mnou
` does not at all lead the Spirit to lose his mediating position, nor is the
Fathers unity undermined. On the contrary, one must ask whether Barths lioque
does not imply a pattern in which the Spirit as nexus amoris tends to compete with
an understanding of the divine ousia as koinonia, entailing a dialectic between
Father and Son which necessitates the Spirit to maintain essential unity.
24
But what of Barths criticisms of Russian theology? If Barth is speaking of
Florensky, his criticisms are in part correct. Consider this troubling statement:
As long as history continues, only moments and instants of illumination by the
Spirit are possible . . . In order that this third age may come, we must rst leave
the second age. To enter into the religion of the Spirit, the world must nally
leave the religion of the Son.
25
Here is a pneumatology which, in the name of an extreme chiliasm, suffers a
profound divorce from Christology. Subject to the German idealist inuences
common in the Russian Silver Age, Florenskys triadology echoes that of Joachim of
Fiore, for whom Christ was only the second-to-last word of God, the very last being
the Spirit. Countered by leading Orthodox theologians, condemned by local synods,
Russian sophiology has never found wide acceptance within Orthodoxy. Thus, while
Barths critique marks a welcome corrective to Florenskys example, it is mistaken
to regard Florenskys views as typical of Eastern trinitarianism.
21 As Reinhard Flogaus demonstrates, Palamas is here dependent on Maximus Planudes
Greek translation of Augustines De Trinitate. R. Flogaus, Palamas and Barlaam
Revisited: AReassessment of East and West in the Hesychast Controversy of Fourteenth
Century Byzantium, St Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 42 (1998), pp. 132.
22 Barth, CD I/1, p. 482.
23 Panayiotis Christou, ed., Gregoriou tou Palama: ta panta ta erga, vol. I (Thessaloniki,
1962), p. 46, cited in Vischer, Spirit of God, p. 176.
24 Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian
Fathers, and John Zizioulas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 205.
25 Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997), pp. 823.
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The Spirit of the Son: the witness of Florovsky
A vastly different approach may be gleaned from Georges Florovsky, a leading
opponent of sophiology and arguably the major Orthodox theologian of the twentieth
century. Throughout his dogmatic and ecumenical works, Florovsky insisted on the
priority of Christology for all Christian thought. Florovskys theology reveals an
intense emphasis upon the Spirit of the Son, in many ways addressing the concerns
raised by Barth in his defense of the lioque.
26
As George Williams observes, In Florovskys thought, the Eastern Orthodox
retention of the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan formulation of the doctrine of
the Trinity, without the controversial Western supplement of the Filioque, does not
seem to have functioned signicantly.
27
Florovsky insists the lioque was not the
cause of the schism, and probably the problem could have been settled, in the times
of Photius at least.
28
When placed within the wider context of his thought, however,
the scant references to the lioque found in Florovskys published oeuvre suggest a
more integral perspective.
Florovsky pointedly rejects the view, formulated by the Russian-Polish
medievalist and theologian Lev Karsavin (18821952) and espoused by Vladimir
Lossky,
29
that the theology of the lioque has led to a subordination of the Spirit
which is the source of every profound distortion in Western ecclesiology and spiritual
life. Criticizing the excessive constructivism of Karsavins attempt to derive the
entire system of Roman Catholicism, directly and one-sidedly, from one particular
doctrine, the doctrine of the lioque . . . regarded as vicious heresy, Florovsky
remarks of this method of radical intuitions:
What is relevant is the method itself and the implicit assumption of massive
opposition between East and West . . . We get a brilliant construction of
26 On Barth and Florovsky see: Andrew Blane, ed., Georges Florovsky: Russian
Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press,
1993), pp. 69, 75, 845, 107, 123, 139, 147, 167, 186, 1889, 193, 194, 299, 319;
Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 215; Duncan Reid, Energies of the Spirit: Trinitarian
Models in Eastern Orthodox and Western Theology (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996);
Michael D. Peterson, Georges Florovsky and Karl Barth: The Theological Encounters,
American Theological Library Association Proceedings 47 (1993), pp. 14165; Daniel P.
Payne Barth and Florovsky on the Meaning of Church , Sobornost 26 (2004), pp.
3963; G.O. Mazur, Florovskys Reading of Anhypostasia and Enhypostasia, in
Twenty-Five Year Commemoration to the Life of Georges Florovsky (New York:
Semenenko Foundation, 2005), pp. 26981.
27 George H. Williams, The Neo-Patristic Synthesis of George Florovsky, in Blane,
Georges Florovsky, p. 293.
28 Georges Florovsky, Review of Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism, Church History 26
(1957), p. 181.
29 Vladimir Lossky, The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine,
in In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press,
1974), p. 71.
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388 Matthew Baker
systems, and yet do we really grasp the existential dimension of faith and life?
In any case, because Karsavin persistently assumes that there is absolute
coherence and consistency in all systems, one always moves within the
dimensions of systems [. . . In Lossky also, there] is the same basic assumption
that East and West are in permanent opposition to each other, the same skill in
presenting the inner cohesion of ideas within each particular system, the same
conviction that Filioque is at the root of the whole trouble.
30
Florovskys criticism is rooted in a forceful rejection of idealistic, logical-causal and
biologistic approaches to history.
31
An opposition to determinism and historical
inevitability runs throughout Florovskys entire corpus: history is not the drama of
immanent Reason projected by Hegel, but an indeterminate agon of acting persons.
32
Thus, it is mistaken to conceive the history of doctrine and spirituality in Christian
schism as conforming to the kind of logically consistent patterns which may be found
within the systems of individual thinkers.
Yet Florovskys hesitancy before such radical anti-lioque polemic entails more
than simply commitments in the philosophy of history and ecumenical methodology.
Also at stake is Florovskys ecclesiology. Ecclesiology, insists Florovsky, is a
chapter of Christology.
33
However, the Pauline and patristic doctrine of the church
was obscured in later theology, having to be recovered in modern times:
In post-Reformation theology, the Church has been considered more as a body
of believers, coetus delium, than as the Corpus Christi. When this approach to
the mystery of the Church is practiced on a sufciently deep level, it brings
theologians to the Pneumatological conception of the Church. It may be true
that . . . the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been somehow underdeveloped in
Christian tradition . . . yet there is still a strong tendency to overemphasize the
Pneumatological aspect of the doctrine of the Church.
34
30 Georges Florovsky, Some Contributors to 20th Century Ecumenical Thought, in
Ecumenism II: A Historical Approach (Vaduz: Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1989), p. 211.
31 Georges Florovsky, Evolution und Epigenesis (Zur Problematik der Geschichte), Der
Russische Gedanke 1 (1930), pp. 24052:
der grundstzliche und charakteristische Begriff der Geschichte ist eben
derjenige der Persnlichkeit . . . Die Persnlichkeit ist nicht blo ein Organismus
. . . zwischen der Kausalitt durch die Notwendigkeit und Kausalitt durch die
Freiheit gibt es eine qualitative und wesentliche Inkommensurabilitt. Die Freiheit
ist ein Ri in den kausal-konsekutiven Reihen.
32 See Georges Florovsky, The Patterns of Historical Interpretation, Anglican Theological
Review 50 (1968), pp. 14455; The Predicament of the Christian Historian, in Georges
Florovsky, Christianity and Culture (Belmont, MA: Nordland Press, 1974), pp. 3165;
and the essays in Georges Florovsky, Philosophy: Philosophical Problems and
Movements (Vaduz: Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987).
33 Georges Florovsky, Le corps du Christ vivant, in Jean-Jacques vonAllmen, ed., La Sainte
glise Universelle: Confrontation oecumnique (Paris: Delachaux et Niestl, 1948), p. 12.
34 Georges Florovsky, On the History of Ecclesiology, in Ecumenism II, p. 12.
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As examples of this overemphasis, Florovsky cites the early work of Mhler, Die
Einheit in der Kirche, and, in the Russian East, the sobornost ecclesiology developed
by Khomiakov and other Slavophiles.
As Florovsky claries, there can be no opposing the two Pauline formulas, in
Christ and in the Spirit. Rather, the question involves which of the two is given
precedence, in that an unfortunately-chosen starting point may cause a very serious
distortion of the total theological perspective. In truth, our unity in the Sprit is
precisely our incorporation into Christ, which is the ultimate reality of Christian
existence
35
an adoptive incorporation, by way of an ordered consubstantiality
which Florovsky indicates with reference to Athanasius Ad Serapion I:
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption in Christ Jesus, the power of Christ (2
Cor. 12:9). By this Spirit we recognize and confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor.
12:3).The operation of the Holy Spirit in the faithful is precisely their
incorporation in Christ, their baptism in the unity of the body (12:13) of Christ.
As St. Athanasius well stated it: Watered by the Spirit, we drink of Christ.
36
All this is obscured, however, in romantic ecclesiologies which presume to begin
with pneumatology: here the focus tends rather toward the phenomenon of the
Community, over against the person of the Incarnate Lord continually active and
acting in the Spirit in order to recapitulate all things in himself. Thus, the real peril
of this pneumatological starting-point, Florovsky argues, is that the doctrine of the
Church is in danger of becoming a kind of Charismatic Sociology .
37
Florovsky detects a similar, though apparently contrary, error in the Vatican I
papal dogmas. In Florovskys enigmatic expression:
papism . . . shows an exaggeration of the notion of hieratical charism. Here we
nd a kind of canonical Montanism. In any case, the Vatican Dogma is not only
a denition and a formula, but also a mystical acknowledgement . . . In this
instance, canonical or historico-dogmatic refutation is therefore not as important
as the profound transguration of the very sense of the Church, the return to the
fullness of the Christological vision.
38
Although Florovsky does not develop this, there is an inherent similarity between his
diagnoses of Charismatic Sociology and canonical Montanism . In the rst, vox
Dei is conated with vox populi the voice of the Spirit with the religious spirit of
35 Florovsky, On the History of Ecclesiology, pp. 1213.
36 Florovsky, Le corps du Christ vivant, p. 19; my translation. Florovsky makes use of the
same Athanasian text in The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation, The Christian East
13 (1932), pp. 4964.
37 Florovsky, On the History of Ecclesiology, pp. 13, 12. Congar expresses surprise that
an Eastern theologian would critique the West for being insufciently Christocentric in its
pneumatology. Yves Congar, The Word and the Spirit (New York: Continuum, 1986),
p. 1.
38 Georges Florovsky, Rome, the Reformation, and Orthodoxy, in Ecumenism II, p. 57.
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390 Matthew Baker
the community; in the second, there is an exaggerated, all-too-exclusive association
of the Spirit with the magisterium.
Charismatic Sociology and canonical Montanism are rooted in a common
fault. Both exhibit a failure to discern the Spirit as a transcendent, uncreated gift
which, within the economy, belongs properly by nature only to one person: the
Incarnate Son and Mediator. In reality, the Spirit is given to the church, that body
constituted in union with her ascended Lord as totus Christus, as a gift always
exceeding any complete grasp by the churchs members, whether clerical or lay.
39
In
no sense can the Spirit proper to the Son be characterized as the simple and natural
propriety of the hierarchy or of the People of God either individually or as a
numerical unit. The gift of Christs Spirit is an eschatological presence, disallowing
any identication with the religious self-consciousness of believers or the powers of
the clergy. As with Barth, Florovsky underscores this distinction between Holy Spirit
and human spirit with a stricture upon natural theology: God is revealed in the Word,
and only Gods word is revelation. So-called natural theology is no theology.
40
Again, it is the objective christological reference that guards against false mysticism:
The Christology of the Church does not lead us into the misty clouds of vain
speculations or dreamy mysticism. On the contrary, it secures the only proper and
solid ground for theological research.
41
Signicantly, Florovsky nowhere suggests that the distortions of Charismatic
Sociology and canonical Montanism are the result of the lioque. Florovsky
even hints that a proper pneumatology has been left underdeveloped and never
adequately formulated probably because of an over-intensive focus on the lioque
controversy.
42
If this focus has in the past led Western theology to under-appreciate
39 Variant liturgical developments notwithstanding, it is this dogmatic fact that is the
real concern behind the Eastern insistence on the epiclesis. As Lelouvier interprets
Florovsky, Prsent en chacun des deux interlocutors, lEsprit du Christ, tmoin de Dieu
devant lhomme et tmoin de lhomme de Dieu, est le grand acteur des sacrements.
Yves-Nol Lelouvier, Perspectives russes sur lEglise. Un theologien russe: Georges
Florovsky (Paris: ditions du Centurion, 1968), p. 81. Yet, as the Spirit is the Spirit of the
Son, le ministre suprme des sacraments est le Christ Sauveur lui-mme and les
ministres agissent ainsi in persona Christi. Florovsky, Le corps du Christ vivant, pp.
28, 38. Florovskys emphasis on the Spirits propriety to the Son and his critique of
canonical Montanism cohere with his approval of Augustines views regarding the
Spirits work in sacraments beyond the churchs canonical limits. Georges Florovsky,
The Boundaries of the Church, in Ecumenism I: A Doctrinal Approach (Vaduz:
Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1989), especially p. 43; also Georges Florovsky, The Doctrine of
the Church and the Ecumenical Problem, Ecumenical Review 2 (1950), pp. 15261.
40 Florovsky, The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation, p. 52. As with Barth, Florovskys
emphasis on the Spirits propriety to the Word is joined to a rejection of religious
nationalism, particularly of the Slavophile variety: see Georges Florovsky, Ways of
Russian Theology II (Vaduz: Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987).
41 Georges Florovsky, The Church: Her Nature and Task, in Bible, Church, Tradition: An
Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972), p. 68.
42 Florovsky, On the History of Ecclesiology, p. 12.
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the role of the Holy Spirit in the church, nonetheless it has also allowed some
Orthodox theologians to fail to give adequate dogmatic account regarding the Spirit
of the Son.
It is precisely this failure which Florovsky criticizes in Lossky, whose strict
schematization between two economies, of the Son and of the Spirit strangely
echoing the sophiology of Florensky which Lossky opposed risks the implication
that the gift of the Spirit communicates a fullness somehow greater than, and beyond,
the Son. Criticizing the inadequacy of Losskys Christological presuppositions,
Florovsky underscores the truth that
The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son: He will not speak on his own
authority . . . because he will receive of what is mine and declare it to you (John
16:1314). In any case, the Economy of the Spirit should not be so construed
as to limit and reduce the Economy of the Son. . . . The implication seems to
be that only in the Holy Spirit, and not in Christ is the human personality fully
and organically re-established . . . it is misleading to suggest that in the Church,
through the sacraments, our nature enters into union with the Divine nature in
the hypostasis of the Son, the Head of the Mystical Body, and then to add as
something different that each person of the (human) nature must become like
Christ and that this is accomplished in the grace of the Holy Spirit. . . . In
practice, this would imply that Christ is not dynamically present in the Church,
an assumption which may lead to grave errors in the doctrine of the
sacraments.
43
Nor are the shortcomings of Losskys scheme limited only to sacramental theology.
In a private letter of 1963, Florovsky draws from these considerations clear
implications for the whole spiritual life:
The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and is sent by Christ from the Father in order
to remind the disciples, those of Christ, or Christians, of Him. Pneumatic should
not be played against Christological . . . The Spirit, and His gifts, can be
acquired only in the name of Christ . . . The Pentecost is the mystery of the
Crucied Lord, Who rose again to send the Paraclete . . . Imitatio Christi is not
just a gure of speech, and it is not a Western phrase. St. Ignatius of Antioch
[Rom, 6:3] regarded himself as a mimetes Christou, with special emphasis on the
sharing of the Cross or the martyrs death.
44
Because the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit-bearing saint is none other than
the person mimetically conformed to the image of the incarnate Son. Although
Florovsky does not mention Lossky here, the substance of his argument is continuous
with his criticisms of Losskys theology. It is a failure to account for the bond
43 Florovsky, On the History of Ecclesiology, pp. 1516.
44 In Anastassy Brandon Gallaher, Georges Florovsky on Reading the Life of St.
Seraphim, Sobornost 27 (2005), pp. 5870.
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392 Matthew Baker
between the Spirit and the Son which leads Lossky to the assertion that the
spirituality of the imitation of Christ which is sometimes found in the West is foreign
to Eastern spirituality, as well as to the claim again recalling Florensky that in
the age to come the Spirit, while not having His image in another Hypostasis, will
manifest Himself in deied persons: for the multitude of the saints will be His
image.
45
Reacting to the lioque, Lossky has little to say regarding the Spirits
identity as Spirit of the Son even on an economic plane.
46
In contrast, Florovskys
reading of the Fathers delivers a more balanced approach.
Florovsky draws attention to Cyril of Alexandrias treatment of the Spirit as
proper (
)
47
to the Son, an expression indicating consubstantiality, and the truth
that Christ and the Holy Spirit have a relationship which differs from that which
exists between the saints and the Holy Spirit.
48
In contrast to Barth, who conates
Cyrils
'
`
`
`
with

'
,
49
Florovsky notes that Cyril himself rejected this equation in his response to
Theodoret, who had accused him of teaching that Son was a cause of the Spirit:
To see St. Cyril approaching St. Augustines notion of the procession of Spirit
and to equate St. Cyrils `
with St. Augustines lioque would violate the
logical progression of St. Cyrils thought, and this is directly corroborated by St.
45 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1998), pp. 215, 173. For more extensive comparison between
Florovsky and Lossky on this, see Jaroslav Skira, Christ, the Spirit and the Church in
Modern Orthodox Theology (PhD dissertation, University of St Michaels College,
Toronto, 1998).
46 As Papanikolaou observes, in Losskys theology, The independence of the Holy Spirit,
which Lossky refers to as the economy of the Holy Spirit, is a reaction to the lioque.
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human
Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 1067.
47 The following is typical of Cyril: The Spirit proceeds from the Father ( `

`

' ) and is naturally the Sons own proper Spirit (

`
`

), existing in him and issuing from him (

'
'
te
`
` '
'

), In Joannis Evangelium 10, PG 74, 417C.
48 Georges Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century (Vaduz:
Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 273.
49 Barth, CD I/1, p. 477; Cyril, Thesaurus, PG 75, 577. As the Vatican clarication on The
Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit acknowledges,
Cyril never uses
'
for the relationship of the Spirit to the Son (cf.
Commentary on St John, X, 2, PG 74, 910D; Ep 55, PG 77, 316 D, etc.). Even for St
Cyril, the term
'
as distinct from the term proceed (
) can only
characterize a relationship of origin to the principle without principle of the Trinity: the
Father, LOsservatore Romano, 20 September 1995, pp. 3 and 6. Zizioulas remarks: in
the Greek tradition a clear distinction was always made between
' and
, the rst of these two terms denoting exclusively the Spirits derivation from
the Father alone, whereas was used to denote the Holy Spirits dependence
on the Son owing to the common substance . . . distinction between
'
and
was not made in Latin theology, which used the same term, procedere, to
denote both. John Zizioulas, One Single Source, www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.
org/articles/dogmatics/john_zizioulas_single_source.htm, accessed 3 June 2010.
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Cyrils own testimony.
50
Likewise, Maximus the Confessors irenic reading of the
West Roman lioque is completely within the compass of the ancient Eastern
tradition, not attributing causal origination, but rather procession through the Son
in order to signify afnity and inseparability of essence.
51
Interpreting the use of the expression dio `
in Greek patristic theology
from the Cappadocians to John Damascene, Florovsky insists that this phrase does
not apply only to the economy, but to the divine processions themselves:
One must not limit through the Son only to the fact of the Holy Spirits descent
in time to creation . . . the Son originates directly from the Father, while the
Holy Spirit comes fromthe Firstwith the mediation of through the One who
came from the Father directly. And this mediation

`
`
mesiteia
preserves the uniqueness, the Only-Begottenness of the Sonship . . . the Holy
Spirit is the middle between the not-born and the born, and through the Son the
Holy Spirit is united to or attaches to the Father, in the words of St. Basil.
52
While distinction must be made, there is no separation between theology and
economy:
The Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son. This means that the procession is
pleasing to God and inscrutably presupposes the eternal birth of the Son. And
the oikonomic order of revelation, crowned by the appearance of the Holy Spirit,
reproduces, as it were, and reects the ontological order of the Life of the
Trinity, in which the Holy Spirit proceeds like a kind of shining which reveals
the hidden goodness of the Father and proclaims the Logos.
53
Here Florovsky appears to take a slight step beyond Gregory of Cyprus. Whereas
Gregory had reserved the expression dio `
to the Spirits energetic
manifestation (

'
) in eternity and time, Florovsky
approximates the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor, for
whom by nature (fusei) the Holy Spirit in his being (
' ) substantially
( '
) takes his origin (
'
) from the Father through the Son
who is begotten (
` genhqrnto).
54
50 Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century, p. 273.
51 Georges Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century ( Vaduz:
Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 220.
52 Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century, p. 264.
53 Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century, p. 265.
54 Maximus, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, LXIII, PG 90, 672 C; compare with Cyril,
Thesaurus, PG 75, 585 A. Both Cyril and Maximus speak of the procession through the
Son as ousianic, while Gregory of Cyprus apparently limits through the Son to
energetic manifestation. Yet Gregory also speaks of an existing (
`
) through the
Son. Is this to underscore the inseparability of the Spirits essential existence and its
energetic manifestation through or from the Son, while the Spirit originates or receives
existence (
) from the Father alone? If so, Gregorys teaching is closer to
Cyril and Maximus than rst appears.
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394 Matthew Baker
Maintaining the doctrine of the Fathers sole causal monarchy, Florovskys
reading of the Greek Fathers stands nevertheless in agreement with Barth that the
Spirit is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son . . . to all eternity.
55
This is in
rm contradiction to Barths assertion that the Eastern doctrine does not contest
the fact that this is so in revelation, but does not read off from revelation its
statements about the being of God antecedently in Himself.
56
If, in the heat of
controversy with the Frankish proponents of the lioque, Photios employed
the formula
' mnou
` in a manner which cuts brutally between the
plane of the eternal processions and that of the temporal missions,
57
following
the tendency of Antiochenes like Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus
to limit the title Spirit of the Son to history alone, Florovskys synthesis, in
contrast, allows no such wedge to be driven between Deus in se and Deus
revelatus, as Barth maintains follows from the rejection of the lioque. Further,
Florovskys summary of Greek patristic pneumatology does not conrm Barths
claim that without the lioque, the Spirit loses His mediating position between the
Father and the Son.
58
Florovsky shares several concerns which underlie Barths lioque defense: the
unity of theologia and oikonomia, the singularity of Christs mediation as the one
revelation of God, the Christocentric character of the Spirits operation, the
freedom of divine grace in relation to the church, mans adoptive entry into
the love between the Father and the Son, and the radical difference between the
Spirit of God and the human spirit. Disagreement is here concentrated largely at
one point: Barths insistence that this whole insight and outlook is lost when
the immanent Filioque is denied
59
and the sole monarchy of the Father afrmed.
To this assertion, Florovskys theological example provides a disarming
counter-argument.
Where does this leave the lioque? On this, there is some evidence that
Florovsky favored the views of the nineteenth-century Russian theologian Vassily
Bolotov (18541900).
60
Following a threefold distinction between dogmas,
theologoumena and theological opinion, Bolotov concluded that the Filioque, as
a private theological opinion, should not be regarded as an impedimentum dirimens
to the restoration of communion. As Florovsky summarizes Bolotov, the Filioque,
55 Barth, CD I/1, p. 479.
56 Barth, CD I/1, p. 480.
57 Boris Bobrinskoy, The Mystery of the Trinity (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary
Press, 1999), p. 286.
58 Barth, CD I/1, p. 482.
59 Barth, CD I/1, p. 481.
60 V.V. Bolotov, Thesen ber das Filioque von einem russischen Theologe, Revue
internationale de thologie 6 (1898), pp. 681714; Thses sur le Filioque, Istina 17
(1972), pp. 26189. On Bolotov, see Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Part II,
pp. 1489.
The Eternal Spirit of the Son 395
2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
for which the authority of St. Augustine can be quoted, is a permissible theological
opinion, provided it is not regarded as a credendum de de.
61
This viewpoint provided it were Florovskys own would place Florovsky
squarely within a certain mainstream tradition of nineteenth-century Russian
theology, which had tended to regard the lioque as a quasi-canonical problem, due
to an unconciliar interpolation to the ecumenical creed. However, Florovskys
statements claim more for Bolotovs attempt, while likewise resisting any suggestion
of doctrinal minimalism, such as Bolotovs proposal might appear to allow.
Referring to Bolotovs remarkable Thesen ueber Filioque , Florovsky writes:
Bolotov shows there how the two theologoumena, the Eastern and the Western,
can be reconciled in a fair and comprehensive synthesis.
62
Florovskys language
here suggests his own agenda of neo-patristic synthesis simultaneously a program
for Orthodox theological renewal and an ecumenical program aimed at the real
reintegration of the Christian tradition.
63
Such an ecumenical synthesis, Florovsky insists, can never be achieved simply
by arithmetical operations, either by subtraction or by addition of all differences.
64
Nevertheless, in spite of Augustines obvious peculiarities vis--vis Greek patristics,
the Latin doctor has a clear stature within Florovskys envisioned synthesis. As
Florovsky insisted regarding Augustines views regarding sacraments beyond the
churchs canonical boundaries, the Orthodox theologian has every reason to take
61 Georges Florovsky, Russian Orthodox Ecumenism in the Nineteenth Century, in
Ecumenism II, p. 140. Florovsky is reported to have said at Amsterdam in 1948, quentre
les deux Eglises, orthodoxe et catholique, il ny avait au fond quune question, celle du
Pape. Charles Boyer, Le Movement Oecumnique: les Faits le Dialogue (Rome:
Gregorianum, 1976), p. 109. This is consistent with Florovskys own published
comments: The growth of Papal claims for a universal authority and jurisdiction
ultimately wrecked the unity of the Church, in Terms of Communion in the Undivided
Church, in Donald Baillie, ed., Intercommunion (NewYork: Harper, 1952), p. 48. In this
also Florovsky follows Bolotov: What sundered the communion of the one catholic
Church? I answer without question: It was sundered by the Roman papacy, in Thesen
ber das Filioque, quoted in Sergei Bulgakov, The Comforter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2004), p. 144. The lioque thus appears primarily as a canonical-ecclesiological problem;
yet Florovsky regards papal (and Protestant) ecclesiology as reecting a defective
christological vision.
62 Florovsky, Review of Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism, p. 181. In Bolotovs
classication, theological opinions stand in the realm of adiaphora, permissible but
lacking the broad witness of theologoumena (which Bolotov grants to dio tou
`
).
Florovsky equates theologoumena with theological opinion, yet notes with reference
to Bolotov, No theologoumenon can claim more than probability, and no
theologoumenon should be accepted if it has been clearly disavowed by an
authoritative or dogmatic pronouncement of the Church. Georges Florovsky, Creation
and Redemption (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976), p. 315.
63 Georges Florovsky, The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement,
Theology Today 7 (1950), p. 78.
64 Florovsky, The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement, p. 78.
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396 Matthew Baker
into account the theology of St. Augustine in his doctrinal synthesis;
65
Augustine is
a Father of the Church Universal, and we must take his testimony into account, if we
are to attempt a true ecumenical synthesis.
66
That this judgement also included consideration of Augustines trinitarian
theology is evidenced in yet another confrontation with Lossky, in a review
of Losskys Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. As Florovsky observes,
Lossky
connes himself strictly to the Eastern tradition and probably exaggerates the
tension between the East and the West even in the Patristic period. A tension
there obviously existed, as there were tensions inside the Eastern tradition
itself, e.g., betweenAlexandria andAntioch. But the author seems to assume that
the tension between the East and the West, e.g., between the Trinitarian theology
of the Cappadocians and that of Augustine, was of such a sharp and radical
character as to exclude any kind of reconciliation and overarching synthesis.
It would be more accurate to say that such a synthesis has never been
accomplished or even has not been thoroughly attempted. Even if we admit, as
we certainly must, that the Trinitarian theology of Augustine was not well
known in the East, up to the late Middle Ages, Augustines authority had never
been seriously questioned in Byzantium even in the times of Patriarch Photius.
It is therefore unsafe to exclude his contribution from the Patristic heritage of the
Undivided Church. One should be ecumenical rather than simply oriental in
the eld of Patristic studies. One has to take into account the whole wealth of the
Patristic tradition and wrestle impartially with its intrinsic variety and tensions.
67
Florovsky detects no radical opposition between Augustinian and Cappadocian
triadologies. Yet one might ask whether those Orthodox theologians who claim to
follow Florovskys neo-patristic lead have seriously considered Florovskys views in
this regard, or heeded his demand to be ecumenical rather than simply oriental in
65 Florovsky, The Boundaries of the Church, p. 41.
66 Florovsky, The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Problem, p. 156. Mascall
reports the following remark of Florovsky, made at Lincoln Theological College shortly
before World War II: I would say that Augustine is really an Eastern Father. E. Mascall,
Georges Florovsky (18931979), Sobornost 2 (1980), pp. 6970. On Florovskys use of
Augustine see Lelouvier, Perspectives russes sur lEglise; Christoph Knkel, Totus
Christus: Die Theologie Georges V. Florovskys (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1991); Myroslaw Tartaryn, Augustine and Russian Orthodoxy (New York: International
Scholars, 2000), pp. 97118; Will Cohen, Sacraments and the Visible Unity of the
Church, Ecclesiology 4 (2007), pp. 6887; Joseph Famere, Les limites de lglise:
Lapport de Georges Florovsky au dialogue catholique-orthodoxe, Revue thologique de
Louvain 34 (2003), pp. 13754; Tamara Grdzelidze, Using the Principle of Oikonomia
in Ecumenical Discussions: Reections on The Limits of the Church by Georges
Florovsky, Ecumenical Review 56 (2004), pp. 23446.
67 Georges Florovsky, Review of The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, in The
Journal of Religion 38 (1958), p. 207.
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patristics. On the whole, the answer to both questions appears, with few exceptions,
68
negative.
To conclude this consideration of Florovsky: with respect to the origination of
the Spirit, a chasm stands between Barth and the Orthodoxy of Florovsky. At the
same time, a signicant bridge is constructed, in the form of a shared confession of
the Spirit as eternally the Spirit of the Son.
In light of the critical emphases common to Barth and Florovsky, the
problematic tendencies discerned in Florensky, the Slavophiles and Lossky
69
serve to
remind Orthodox theologians of the importance of this biblicalpatristic teaching,
afrmed by Tarasius of Constantinople in the synodikon adopted by the Seventh
Ecumenical Council: I also believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Giver of Life,
who proceeds [
] from the Father through the Son.
70
Yet a testing of Barths
critique against Florovskys synthesis of Greek patristic pneumatology indicates
that, contrary to Barths assertions, this confession of the eternal Spirit of the Son,
with all it entails for the life of the church, in no way necessitates the lioque
defended by Barth.
The synthesis between Eastern and Western triadologies Florovsky believed
possible is a task Florovsky himself never attempted. That Florovskys bauche does,
however, indicate a way forward, addressing the concerns of both sides, is suggested
by the profound consonance between Florovskys views and those of Barths leading
rst-generation interpreter, T.F. Torrance.
Torrance: The Homoousion of the Spirit
According to Torrance, the crucial concern motivating the early Western lioque was
the Athanasian doctrine of the consubstantiality and propriety of the Spirit to the
68 For example, Nicholaos Ludovikos, Ontology Celebrated: Remarks of an Orthodox on
Radical Orthodoxy, in Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider, eds., Encounter between
Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), p. 145:
some of the main aspects of Augustinian Trinitarian theology are very close to those
of the Cappadocian fathers . . . I therefore do not think that we can speak of an
essentialism of Western Trinitarian theology against the personalism of the Eastern
one . . . If we consider at least the case of the Augustinian triadology, we may rather
speak, I think, of two types of personalisms in East and West, depending on how each
of them understands the notion of consubstantiality (
`
).
Also, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Theophany and Indication: Reconciling
Augustinian and Palamite Aesthetics, Modern Theology 26 (2010), pp. 7689; George
Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine
(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2008).
69 On Barth and Lossky see: Alaar Laarts, Doctrines of the Trinity in Eastern and Western
Theologies: A Study with Special Reference to K. Barth and V. Lossky (NewYork: Peter
Lang, 1999).
70 Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century, p. 165.
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398 Matthew Baker
Son. In response to the forms of Arianism encountered in the West, it was of utmost
importance to insist that the Spirit was truly the Spirit of the Son as of the Father, for
unless the Father and the Son were held to be fully equal the doctrine of the
homoousion could hardly be maintained.
71
Ironically, Torrance accuses later Western theology of a departure from the
homoousion of the Spirit which the lioque had been originally designed to uphold.
This departure resulted in two seemingly opposed, but related epistemological errors.
Torrance writes:
One of the major lessons we learn from Athanasius and his attack upon Arians
and semi-Arians alike is that unless we know the Holy Spirit through the
objectivity of the homousion of the Son in whom and by whom our minds are
directed away from ourselves to the one Fountain and Principle of the Godhead,
then we inevitably become engrossed with ourselves, confusing the Holy Spirit
with our own spirits . . . The importance of this for the West can be seen if it is
said, with a little exaggeration, that there has been in it a persistent tendency
to substitute for the lioque an ecclesiaque, the error of Romanism, or a
homineque, the error of Neo-Protestantism. In other words, there has been
a marked failure to distinguish the Holy Spirit from the spirit of the Church or
the spirit of religious man, that is, from the self-consciousness of the Church or
the self-consciousness of the believer.
72
Torrances ecclesiaque and homineque bear striking resemblance to Florovskys
canonical Montanism and Charismatic Sociology. Both indicate distortions
resulting from a loss of a Christocentric vision of the Spirit in the church. As with
canonical Montanism , Torrance associates ecclesiaque especially with the
Vatican I papal dogmas, in which (he argues) the Spirit is regarded as an endowment
dispensed by the churchs hierarchy in the form of created grace.
73
Similarly,
although taking more individualistic form in Schleiermachers pietism, homineque
corresponds closely to Charismatic Sociology: in both, the human spirit is
confounded with the divine.
Canonical Montanism or Charismatic Sociology, ecclesiaque or
homineque for both diagnoses, the question reads thus: Does the church possess
the Spirit or is the church possessed by the Spirit? According to Torrance, the rst,
fatal answer is common to both sides of Western Christianity: In Romanism and
Protestantism alike the Church has domesticated the grace and Spirit of God in its
own spiritual subjectivity instead of being the sphere of the divine freedom where the
71 Thomas Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975),
p. 229.
72 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, pp. 227, 231. Also, T.F. Torrance, The School of
Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church (London: Camelot Press, 1959),
pp. xcixc.
73 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 182.
The Eternal Spirit of the Son 399
2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Lord the Giver of Life is at work as Creator Spirit.
74
The result: modern religious
man is aficted with a deep-seated mental disease, self-obsession and a failure to
distinguish between objective realities and subjective conditions.
75
Much like Florovsky, Torrances response is to reafrm the patristic doctrine of
the Spirits consubstantiality with and propriety to the Son. Here again, Ad Serapion
is the touchstone, Christology the starting point in the ordo theologiae:
Athanasius says, It is natural that I should have spoken and written rst about
the Son of God that from our knowledge of the Son we may be able to have
proper knowledge of the Spirit (Ad Ser. 3.1) . . . this is the only proper
procedure because of the propriety of the Spirit to the Son, and because it is
only in and through the Son or Word that God has revealed himself. The Spirit
does not utter himself but the Word and is known only as he enlightens us
to understand the Word. The Son is the only logos, the only eidos of the
Godhead (see C. Arianos 3.15, and Ad. Ser. 1.19) . . . Nevertheless it is only in
the Spirit that we may know the Son . . . It is from the Son that the Spirit
shines forth (eklampei, Ad Ser. 1.18), and in the Spirit (en Pneumati) that God
is known.
76
In Torrances view, it is this doctrine of the Spirits propriety to the Son
77
and the
inseparable relation of the Spirit to Christ in creation and redemption which must be
conserved, whether the lioque . . . is formally accepted or not.
78
So long as the
Athanasian teaching of the homoousion of the Spirit is maintained, we can forget
about the lioque clause: it was entirely wrong to introduce it into the Ecumenical
Creed without the authority of an Ecumenical Council.
79
74 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, pp. 244, 245.
75 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 231.
76 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, pp. 21415. Torrances essay Spiritus Creator: A
Consideration of the Teaching of St Athanasius and St Basil, found in Theology in
Reconstruction, pp. 20928, seems to have grown out of direct dialogue with Florovsky:
in March 1962, Torrance participated with Florovsky in a patristic study group organized
by the Faith and Order Commission, which had for its focus the pneumatology of
Athanasius and Basil.
77 Propriety to the Son is crucial: cf. T.F. Torrance, Theological Realism, in Brian
Hebblethwaite and Stewart Sutherland, eds., The Philosophical Frontiers of Theology:
Essays Presented to D.M. MacKinnon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
p. 192:
If . . . we operate only with the homoousion of the Spirit, detached from the
homoousion of the Son, we would have no conceptual content in our reference back
to God apart from what we might derive from our own subjective states, and no
objective ground of intelligibility in God to control and to relativize our creaturely
representations and conceptions.
78 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 218. Cf. Torrance, The School of Faith,
pp. xcviixcviii.
79 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 219.
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400 Matthew Baker
To this, one must add that, in contrast to the Cappadocian Fathers whose
theology formed the immediate basis for the creed of Constantinople 381,
80
Torrances panacea urges an abandonment of all causal attribution, entailing a
dynamic substantialism in which arcj and aitia are conceived as referring to
relations or scrsei . . . beyond all origin (
' ), and beyond all cause
(

'
) a position Torrance claims is a recovery of that of Athanasius, Cyril
and the later Nazianzen.
81
This proposal, which nds precedent in Calvin and,
curiously, Bulgakov,
82
may prove yet highly problematic for further ecumenical
discussion. Torrances treatment of monarchia in particular calls for close
questioning by Orthodox scholars, with a re-examination of relevant patristic
sources.
83
Caveats notwithstanding, the profound agreement between Florovsky and
Torrance regarding the eternal propriety of the Spirit to the Son and the practical
ecclesial importance of this teaching does suggest the possibility of deeper
theological convergence. Though more distinctly Chalcedonian, the basic shape of
Florovskys theology agrees with Torrances call for return to the Athanasian-
Cyrilline axis
84
of patristic Christology as a ground for dogmatic renewal and
ecumenical reconcilation. Here the common reference to Athanasius Ad Serapion as
pneumatological touchstone is especially signicant.
Sharpening this touchstone beyond Torrance, further agreement might be
possible if Reformed theologians would attend to the fundamentally Athanasian
basis of the essence / energy distinction crucial to Orthodox doctrine regarding the
Spirits eternal manifestation. In his essays St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition
of the Fathers (1959) and St. Athanasius and the Concept of Creation (1962),
Florovsky sketched an understanding of the so-called Palamite distinction as
80 Cf. John Romanides, An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics (Rollinsford, NH:
Orthodox Research Institute, 2004), p. 33:
The decisions of the Ecumenical Councils are taken on the basis of Patristic
theology. For this reason, when we examine the Creed of Nicaea or the Creed of
Constantinople, we need to turn to the writings of the Fathers who participated in
these councils . . . in order to understand exactly what these Creeds mean.
81 Thomas Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 239.
82 Like Torrance, Bulgakov places the onus of the lioque impasse on Basil for his
introduction of causal categories: The Comforter, pp. 1326.
83 See John Zizioulas, The Father as Cause: Personhood Generating Otherness, in
Communion and Otherness (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), pp. 11354, although the
radicalization of the person/nature distinction elsewhere pervasive in Zizioulas works
may create its own problems, particularly for anthropology and ethics. For criticisms of
Torrances reading of Gregory Nazianzen, see Christopher A. Beeley, Divine Causality
and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus, Harvard Theological
Review 100 (2007), pp. 199214.
84 Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975),
p. 9; Thomas F. Torrance, ed., Theological Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed
Churches, vol. I (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), pp. x, 11, 14.
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an elaboration upon the Athanasian differentiation between essence and will.
85
Ironically, while Torrance cites both essays positively, admitting a special
indebtedness to the second,
86
he dismisses Palamas theology as dualist
87
and
neglects the presence of this distinction in Athanasius
88
and Cyril. Yet it is, after
all, Cyril whom Palamas quotes when he writes: Nature and energy are not
identical.
89
Precisely here, Torrances apprehension of the Athanasian-Cyrilline
axis requires deepening by Florovskys insights, with more careful return to
primary texts.
This is to pose a challenge to the Orthodox as well. A signicant strand of
Orthodox theology since Lossky has tended to employ Palamas in near-mimicry
of neo-Thomist estimations of Aquinas, as the summation and interpretive lens of the
entire Orthodox tradition. A vulgarised Losskianism,
90
marked by xation with
the energies paradigm and an exaggerated apophaticism which easily transforms
itself into its opposite, threatens to displace the centrality of Christology.
91
Following
Florovsky, Orthodox theologians must learn to re-present the Palamite distinction
for what it is: not an a priori metaphysical principle or a species of vague mysticism,
but a commentary upon the Nicene faith, an intellectual contour of an essentially
Christocentric confession.
92
85 Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, pp. 11619; Georges Florovsky, Aspects of Church
History (Vaduz: Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), pp. 3962.
86 Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, pp. 79, 85 and esp. 86; Thomas F. Torrance, The
Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), pp. 4, 96, 207, and Divine
Meaning (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), pp. 181, 185.
87 Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), p. 38.
88 Athanasius, Contra Arianos, III.30; De Decretis, II, etc.
89 Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, PG lxxv, 312C; Gregory Palamas, Topics of Natural
and Theological Science: One Hundred and Fifty Texts, in G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard
and Kallistos Ware, Philokalia, Vol. IV (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), p. 392.
90 Aidan Nichols, Light from the East (London: Sheed and Ward, 1999), p. 32.
91 Florovsky himself, in Review of The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 208,
criticized Lossky for downplaying the role of intellectual cognition and, more gravely, for
a lack of christological focus:
If one wants, as Lossky obviously does, to develop a system of Christian
philosophy, which is identical with Christian Dogmatics, should he not begin with
Christ? Indeed, what warrant may a Christian theologian have to speak of God,
except the fact that the Only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father has
declared the unfathomable mystery of the Divine Life? Would it not be proper,
therefore, to begin with an opening chapter on the Incarnation and the Person of the
Incarnate, instead of following a rather philosophical order of thought: God,
Creation, Created Being, and Imago Dei, etc., so as to arrive at Christology only in
the middle of the road?
92 Ludovikos, Ontology Celebrated, p. 148, states:
Christ, the only-begotten Logos of the Father, the bearer of his will, takes with him
in his incarnation all the logoi of beings which rest in him and holds them together,
in an ontological, hypostatic mode of existence. By this hypostatic union the logoi or
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402 Matthew Baker
Such return to the fullness of christological vision demands a re-focusing: from
fascination with esoteric peripheries, to the axis of Orthodoxy. This is to follow
Florovskys own stated criterion, that neo-patristic synthesis begin with the central
vision of the Christian faith: Christ Jesus, as God and Redeemer, Humiliated and
Gloried, the Victim and the Victor on the Cross.
93
Theological elaboration must
proceed in the recognition that knowledge of the Trinity is a function
94
of the
knowledge of Christ: as Florovsky cites Theophan the Recluse, Christians
apprehend rst the Person of Christ the Lord, the Son of God Incarnate, and behind
the veil of His esh they behold the Triune God.
95
Only in the confession of the
eternal Spirit of the Son the Spirit who illumines the Son in whom we behold
the one form of God in our humanity can Orthodox theology offer compelling
evangelical witness in both East and West, and the case of distinctions stiffened into
contradictions
96
characterizing the lioque controversy be overcome, in a new act of
ecumenical reintegration.
As this essay has sought to demonstrate, signicant steps towards such
reintegration may already be observed from both sides in the work of Florovsky and
Torrance, with their common emphasis on the Spirits propriety to the Son a
doctrine whose historical force in the East provoked the following comment of
Torrance, perhaps the best summary response to the arguments of Barth:
It is one of the curious features of church history that the Western Church which
had ofcially championed the addition of the lioque clause to the Nicene-
Constantinopolitan Creed hastened in practice to ignore it, whereas the Eastern
Church which decidedly rejected it has tended to uphold the emphases which it
was designed to safeguard without of course ever agreeing to the formal
statement that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father.
97
divine wills are made fully apparent in the esh of Christ (and can be offered to us
by the sacraments). So our participation in the divine energies is simply the way of
our participation in the crucied and resurrected Christ. We thus easily understand
that the question of the logoi or energies is not the fundamental theological crux
regarding our salvation. The hypostasis of the incarnated Son and his relationship to
the Father, which we enter not by nature but by grace (that is by adoption through
baptism and the Eucharist), is our primary theological concern here. Consequently,
that which is given to us is a personal tropos hyparxeos (mode of existence) by grace
and not a participatory essentialist connection between different substances. This
new mode of existence, our adoption by the Father in Christ through the Spirit, is
only realized in this syn-energetic participation in Christs deied human nature.
See also Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, pp. 301 and 1389, n. 80.
93 Georges Florovsky, Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church, in
Aspects of Church History, p. 23.
94 T.F. Torrance, Ecumenism and Rome, Scottish Journal of Theology 37 (1984), p. 59.
95 Florovsky, Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church, p. 23.
96 Florovsky, Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church, p. 29.
97 Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 229.
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