Filioque - Distinguishing the Essence and Person of the Holy Spirit

[hazcompat]

The Philokalia

On Anger

‘Do not let the sun go down upon your anger: and do not make room for the devil' (Eph. 4: 26-27), by which he means: 'Do not make Christ, the Sun of righteousness, set in your hearts by angering him through your assent to evil thoughts, thereby allowing the devil to find room in you because of Christ's departure.' God has spoken of this Sun in the words of His prophet: 'But upon you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings' (Mal. 4:2). If we take Paul's saying literally, it does not permit us to keep our anger even until sunset. What then shall we say about those who, because of the harshness and fury of their impassioned state, not only maintain their anger until the setting of this day's sun, but prolong it for many days? Or about others who do not
express their anger, but keep silent and increase the poison of their rancor to their own destruction? They are unaware that we must avoid anger not only in what we do but also in our thoughts; otherwise our intellect will be darkened by our rancor, cut off from the light of spiritual knowledge and discrimination, and deprived of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
It is for this reason that the Lord commands us to leave our offering before the altar and be reconciled with our brother (cf. Matt. s: 23-24), since our offering will not be acceptable so long as anger and rancor are bottled up within us. The Apostle teaches us the same thing when he tells us to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:17), and to 'pray every where, lifting up holy hands without anger and without quarrelling' (1 Tim. 2:8). We are thus left with the choice either of never praying, and so of disobeying the Apostle's commandment, or of trying earnestly to fulfill his commandment by praying without anger or rancor.
We are often indifferent to our brethren who are distressed or upset, on the grounds that they are in this state through no fault of ours. The Doctor of souls, however, wishing to root out the soul's excuses from the heart, tells us to leave our gift and to be reconciled not only if we happen to be upset by our brother, but also if he is upset by us,
whether justly or unjustly; only when we have healed the breach through our apology should we offer our gift.

peace

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by mardukm

Can you admit that you may not be understanding correctly what the Latins actually taught at Florence?

No. I do not trust anything that came out of that council.

St Mark of Ephesus pray for us.

Originally Posted by mardukm

Well, I'm not a Latin.

You submit to the Latin Church. No?

Originally Posted by mardukm

But you did call the teaching of Florence heresy in a past post

I do not recall that.

Originally Posted by mardukm

it would be easier to remove the misunderstanding instead of the text.

Not at all. If (as you say) the Latins mean the same thing as the Greeks, then it should be inscribed in the same manner as Pope Leo IV. You admitted that the average layman does not...and may never understand this conversation.

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by hazcompat

On Anger

"An Elder said that quarreling delivers man to anger, anger delivers him to blindness, and blindness impels him to perpetrate every evil."
The Desert Fathers

[Hesychios]

Originally Posted by mardukm

... So don't attempt to make this about what the regular Roman Catholic will understand. The regular Orthodox would be just as "confused" as the regular Roman Catholic.

It is in the Creed. The Creed was based upon baptismal affirmations, the kind of things adult converts would say when they are being brought into the church from outside, it had to be unambiguous. Their eternal life in Christ was at stake.

People say this Creed (Credo = I believe) in worship before God as a testimonial of what they actually believe. Is this concept so hard to comprehend?

They say, all together before God, I BELIEVE. Don't you think it should be something they understand, if they are going to swear before God and one another that they believe it? If they misunderstand, and swear before God that they believe something which is in fact wrong, don't you think that is a problem?

Otherwise, what in blue blazes is it doing in the Creed? They might as well say 'Yadda- yadda-ya' for as much it means to them.

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by Hesychios

It is in the Creed. The Creed was based upon baptismal affirmations, the kind of things adult converts would say when they are being brought into the church from outside, it had to be unambiguous. Their eternal life in Christ was at stake.

People say this Creed (Credo = I believe) in worship before God as a testimonial of what they actually believe. Is this concept so hard to comprehend?

They say, all together before God, I BELIEVE. Don't you think it should be something they understand, if they are going to swear before God and one another that they believe it? If they misunderstand, and swear before God that they believe something which is in fact wrong, don't you think that is a problem?

Otherwise, what in blue blazes is it doing in the Creed? They might as well say 'Yadda- yadda-ya' for as much it means to them.

[Vico]

Originally Posted by dcointin

What troubles me about this discussion is the almost total lack of scriptural and patristic argumentation in favor of philosophical speculation about the inner working of the Holy Trinity. A summary of such quotations in context would be far more helpful. Unfortunately I'm not a scholar so I couldn't provide that, but I would welcome anyone more capable to attempt such an effort. In the meantime, I think we can hardly understand the matter better than St. Maximos the Confessor, a saint who is recognized by both the east and west as orthodox, and who understood both Greek and Latin, and live in both the east and the west when the controversy was first flaring. He wrote:

"With regard to the first matter, they (the Romans) have produced the unanimous documentary evidence of the Latin fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the sacred commentary he composed on the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit — they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession; but [they use this expression] in order to manifest the Spirit’s coming-forth (προϊέναι) through him and, in this way, to make clear the unity and identity of the essence….

The Romans have therefore been accused of things of which it is wrong to accuse them, whereas of the things of which the Byzantines have quite rightly been accused (viz., Monothelitism), they have, to date, made no self-defense, because neither have they gotten rid of the things introduced by them.

“But, in accordance with your request, I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending (the synodal letters) has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to doing this. One should also keep in mind that they cannot express their meaning in a language and idiom that are foreign to them as precisely as they can in their own mother-tongue, any more than we can do.”

God help us to follow this saint's example and end this division once and for all.

It would be possible to limit the discussion to the Patristic period. That would mean excluding Photius, Lyons II, Florence, Trent, Palams, Synod of Blachernae, Synod of Jerusalem, since the Patristic Period (the broad one, now the narrow) ends with the Council of Nicea 787 (and excluding Trullo). Using the following instead:

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons
Saint Clement of Alexandria
Some works of Origen of Alexandria
Saint Athanasius of AlexandriaSaint Basil the Great
Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Saint Gretory of Nanzianzus
Saint Cyril of Alexandria
Saint John Chrysostom
Saint Maximus the Confessor of Constantinople
Saint John of Damascus

Saint Ignatius of Antioch
Saint Clement of Rome
Saint Polycarp of Snyrna
Saint Anthony
Saint Pakhom
Saint Ambrose
Tertulian
Saint Cyprian
Saint Hilary
Saint Jerome
Saint Augustine
Saint Gregory the Great