John 5:19-21 and 30 So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. ... I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me."
John 10:30 I and the Father are one.
John 14:9-17 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you."
John 16:12-15 I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
I. Latin theology: inferring eternal causal relations from the economy
The Johannine passages above form the bedrock of Latin Trinitarian theology from its very beginnings all the way through Scholasticism and even today. As Michel René Barnes describes in his magisterial survey, Augustine and Nicene Theology, "the originating logic of Latin Trinitarian theology is anti-monarchian (i.e., anti-modalist), and in that logic the grounds for real distinctions in the Trinity is provided by causal relations and eternal irreducibility, not, as modern readers expect, by a logic built on the ontological difference between 'person' and 'essence' (or 'nature'). Moderns expect Trinitarian theology to develop through a polar logic of 'person' and 'essence,' but Latin Trinitarian theology develops instead through the logic of eternal causal relations and irreducibility." Barnes notes that even the concept of "person" used in Latin theology is "not psychological, but ontological," which Tertullian describes as "a substance [i.e. existence] which is himself" that is "something like Aristotle's first substance."
Barnes goes on to explain how Latin theologians use the visible activities of the Son in the economy to establish these logical principles:
This understanding is based upon the visual or theophanic statements in John 5:17-19 and 14:9-17. The way in which the Son reveals the Father is the very same way in which the Son reveals his own divinity -- by his works (opera). This last sense will prove to be the most important in Latin patristic Trinitarian theology, for a distinctive feature of that theology is the early, and thereafter consistent, articulation of a doctrine of same power (and thus same substance) between the Son and the Father. The argument takes this form: the works that Christ does are evidence of the kind of power that causes them; the works are the products of operations that are uniquely associated with a divine power. Power is substance as cause, and the distinctive causality of a specific substance is contained in (or exists as) its power, for all works arise out of a power and indicate, by their acts, the identity of that power. This account expresses in a technical way the almost common-sense judgment that actions are the manifestations and results of what a thing is: "Fire burns, wind blows," etc.
Barnes notes that this understanding of power is "not quite that of inseparable operations," which will ultimately require further thought on the Holy Spirit as a divine actor, but it is certainly compatible with the idea. Likewise, it does not deal with substance in the sense of ousia so as to show that the Father and the Son are homoouision, although this explanation is perfectly compatible with that concept. Barnes's The Power of God explains how the technical philosophical sense of "power" is used by Gregory of Nyssa to rebut the Eunomian inferences about divine nature, but Latin theology did not require going beyond the "almost common-sense" level in its own analysis of power. That is because Latin theology deals with the activity of concrete subjects (individuals, first substances) along with the cause of their common power, which does not require delving into exactly how this power is derived from nature. This is in turn how Latin theology understands that works (opera) show the relations ("in" or "one") between distinct subjects. In other words, Latin theology is a set of theological rules for reasoning from the economic activity of the Trinity to the (causal relations of) the immanent Trinity.
The polemical context in which these theological rules are deployed is also highly relevant, in particular because the connection between economy and theology considered here is almost completely disconnected from the one that arises in connection with Eunomius. With respect to the differences between the Western Homoian Arians and the Eastern Eunomian Arians, Barnes remarks as follows:
In the East the anti-Nicene consensus on this language [similarity of essence] broke at a Synod in Antioch in 361, with the emergence of a theology that insisted on the doctrinal priority of the difference between the essences or natures of the Father and the Son: thus was born anomian theology, known more popularly as "Eunomian" theology, after its most visible and prolific proponent, Eunomius of Cyzicus. However, "Latin Homoians managed to contain some of the distinctions that resulted in distinct groupings [N.B., homoian, homoiousian, anomian] in the east"*; in particular, Eunomian theology has no play in the West.
* Quote from Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy
This context is critically important, because Eunomian theology explicitly concerned what could be known about nature from the economy. The Latin inference concerning the economy is not based the nature of divine power or on consubstantiality per se but rather on the causal relationship that results in the individual substance's possession of the power. The reason that the works of the Son show that Christ "is in the Father and the Father in [Christ]" is that they show the divine origin of His power in the Father; He does what He sees the Father doing. Likewise, the Holy Spirit speaks on Jesus's behalf, "not ... on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak," showing that the Spirit derives His divine power from the Son who likewise derives His divine power from the Father. St. Augustine goes so far as to say that the Power that goes out from the Son in Lukan passages is the Holy Spirit, using it to show the eternal causal relation between the two. The Latin theological rules for drawing inferences then do not involve reasoning about the nature of the divine power but only on the personal possession of the power from another in the case of the Son and the Spirit. In Latin theology, "power from" equals "substance originates from."
By contrast, Eunomius made claims about the ability to know natures from (economic) activities. This is what the Cappadocians were concerned to refute in their responses to the Eunomian claims. Notably, the Cappadocians pointed out that even the natures of simple things, such as corn, would not be fully comprehended by epinoia (knowledge from activities), much less the incomprehensible divine nature. But such epinoia were nonetheless true signs that the nature was possessed, so that it was valid to reason from power (in the technical philosophical sense) to the possession of nature but not to a comprehensive description. Latin theology did not need to take that next step, because comprehensive knowledge of the divine nature was never asserted in Eunomian fashion in the West. But there was nothing in the Latin theological rules that would have prevented Latin theologians from making the same assertion that the Cappadocians did. In fact, Augustine's explanation of natural signs, as developed further in Scholasticism and contemporary semiotics, essentially results in the same conclusion concerning knowledge about nature.
The reason the distinction here is significant is that the distinction between economy and theology offered by the Cappadocians needs to be understood in the context of knowledge about natures rather than in the context of knowledge about immanent relations generally. In an oft-cited statement from the Fifth Theological Oration, St. Gregory Nazianzus says the following: "What then is Procession? Do you tell me what is the Unbegottenness of the Father, and I will explain to you the physiology of the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Spirit, and we shall both of us be frenzy-stricken for prying into the mystery of God." This is exactly to answer the Eunomian curiosity into the nature of begetting and proceeding. But as to the relational structure, the Theologian has no such qualms, saying "For, tell me, what position will you assign to that which Proceeds, which has started up between the two terms of your division, and is introduced by a better Theologian than you, our Saviour Himself? Or perhaps you have taken that word out of your Gospels for the sake of your Third Testament, The Holy Ghost, which proceeds from the Father; Who, inasmuch as He proceeds from That Source, is no Creature; and inasmuch as He is not Begotten is no Son; and inasmuch as He is between the Unbegotten and the Begotten is God." On the contrary, Gregory says that "we do not admit your first division, which declares that there is no mean between Begotten and Unbegotten." As the mean (meson) between Begotten and Unbegotten, the Spirit relates back to both, which is exactly what the Latin argument for relations from the economy maintains.
Unfortunately, up until Barnes and Ayres, about a century and a half of historical study in this area has dedicated itself to getting this issue wrong, most especially with respect to Augustine. On the Western side, this has primarily been due to anachronistically reading St. Thomas Aquinas as the interpreter par excellence of Western theology. On the Eastern side, it primarily relates to reading St. Photios the Great as the authoritative voice for the Fathers on Trinitarian doctrine. Both men were excellent historians of their respective traditions; neither was perfect in that regard, and both were highly suspect in their interpretation of the Fathers on the other side of the East-West divide. But the hagiographic perception of these figures has been entirely out of perspective with their historical acumen, and people like Barnes, those who are content to do sound historical work without mounting the soapbox for one or another theological position, are rare.
At any rate, among those Thomist hagiographers are two incredibly influential historians: Olivier du Roy and Théodore de Regnon. The former has situated St. Augustine within a Neoplatonist tradition that was (in du Roy's view) perfected into a philosophical synthesis by St. Thomas. The latter attributes to the patristic era some relatively primitive theological beliefs that were (again, naturally) perfected by Scholasticism, which was in turn taken out of context to say that the Latin theology begins with the essence while the Greek theology begins with the Persons. This has had the unfortunate effect of completely misrepresenting both the historical context in which Latin theology developed and what the Latin Fathers actually believed about it.
If we instead refer back to the anti-Homoian, pro-Nicene context of these writings, they exemplify neither an effort to synthesize the philosophia perennis (contra du Roy and other Neo-Thomists) nor an attempt to ground the doctrine of the Trinity in metaphysical concepts (contra de Regnon). They were instead a modest set of theological rules for interpreting Scriptural statements about God. Trying to situate Latin (or for that matter, Cappadocian) teaching in these grand narratives about the role of philosophy in Christianity generally fundamentally misunderstands what they are trying to do, and it has been the Achilles heel of Christian history throughout the modern era.
The only cure is to return to sound historical methodology, and here Barnes provides an excellent guide:
There are, I propose, seven different criteria by which one judges a historical reading (or interpretation) of a text. A given reading is more credible as a work of scholarship in direct proportion to its degree of success in fulfilling these criteria. First, the reading must locate the text (or topic) in its contemporary context, and use that context to unpack the meaning or sense in the text. Second, the reading must identify the presence (or effect) of tradition in the text (or topic) and use that presence to identify the meaning or sense in the text. Third, the reading must identify and place the content of the text in a larger external narrative which supports the reading(s) derived from the previous steps by making such a content possible (or even, happy day, likely). Fourth, the reading must utilize a knowledge of scholarship on the author, text, and topic; the broader and more detailed the engagement with scholarship, the more sophisticated the reading. Fifth, there must be a close reading or exegesis of the text which uncovers the key steps in the author's logic or expression. Sixth, the reading must identify, and show a fluency with, those conceptual idioms that are the key building blocks of the author's logic or expression. Seventh and finally, judgments on the sense of any part (a sentence, a phrase) of the text must relate that sense against the text as a whole (and test out that proposed out against the whole text). Such a relating of the part to the whole is necessary to avoid the danger of a "historical fundamentalism" (akin to "biblical fundamentalism") in which sentences or phrases are interpreted apart from the text within which the words stand. Steps such as these (and there is nothing definitive about this list or the order) are, I would argue, necessary for a credible reading of any theological (or philosophical) text, but it is enough for now to identify with such criteria the credibility of a reading of a text which falls under the rubric of historical theology.
II. Pointless polemics: Craig Trugia's response to Brian Duong on the filioque
The impetus for writing this post is that the vast majority of polemics in the East-West filioque debate are motivated by bad history based on unreliable methodologies that should simply be corrected. And there is an unfortunate recent example of such an unreliable methodology in Craig Truglia's response to Brian ("dwong") Duong's survey of filioque prooftexts. Obviously, no chain of prooftexts is going to be able to engage in a full-blown analysis at the level Barnes outlines, but dwong does an admirable job of quickly covering the fifth and sixth steps of uncovering the key steps in the author's logic and understanding the conceptual idioms used in the authors in question. But Truglia falsely accuses dwong of failing on the first, second, third, and seventh steps in terms of situating the passages in context. (The fourth point is necessarily omitted for the simple reason that Truglia himself apparently has little to no familiarity with significant secondary scholarship on Augustine and the other Latin Fathers.) Yet in point of fact, dwong has situated the arguments perfectly within the anti-Homoian Latin theological context that Barnes identifies: that the economic relations demonstrate the immanent relations.
Historically, Truglia's go-to move is to read the epistemic economy/theology distinction from the Eunomian controversy into the Latin West, where it clearly doesn't belong. When Truglia mentions the "temporal procession," which might variously be referred to as the "eternal temporal procession" or "eternal energetic procession" (as per Papadakis), the assumption here is that eternal causal relations between the persons cannot be inferred or known from the temporal relations of the economy. But Latin theology is built on the principles of irreducibility and eternal causal relations based on power, and that would be sheerly incoherent if the economy/theology distinction were used in the context of eternal causal relations.
This isn't to say that Latin theologians did not recognize the economy/theology distinction; it is clearly contemplated in the ad intra (immanent) and ad extra (economic) distinction. Rather it is to say that the idea that one could not infer anything about the causal Trinitarian relations from Scriptural passages on the economy would have been unthinkable to Latin theologians. The reason for this confusion is that the Cappadocians' battle with Eunomius took place primarily in the milieu of Neoplatonic philosophy, and du Roy's unfortunately influential error about Latin theology was to wrongly read the Neoplatonic context into Augustine's writings. Thus, Augustine's argument have been seen as anti-Eunomian rather than anti-Homoian, even though Augustine's own writings distinguish Arius himself from Homoian Arians and from Eunomius (a conclusion also documented by Barnes). In some ways, then, Truglia's mistake is understandable; he is simply repeating a historical error that has been replicated among both Western and Eastern scholars, having been only relatively recently debunked by the "new canon" Augustinian scholarship of Barnes and Ayres. But while Barnes and Ayres have only published book-length works relatively recently, their work in this area dates back to the Neo-Palamite renaissance in the nineties, so this is not scholarship of which anyone seriously engaging with Western theology should be unaware. Nor are the works of Fr. Giulio Maspero or Fr. Khaled Anatolios, which reach very similar conclusions, obscure in this area.
Regardless, Truglia erroneously reads the epistemic (anti-Eunomian) economy/theology distinction into the Latin Fathers. From the historical perspective, it is a disastrous mistake. Admittedly, it is a mistake with a very long pedigree in the East, but as I mentioned before, Saints are certainly not infallible historians. This basic misunderstanding of the history, not a legitimate conflict between the sides, is at the heart of the Schism. When I say that East-West polemics are pointless, this is exactly what I mean. Given the now-corrected understanding of Latin theology, what we should be doing is to understand how Florence and Blachernae are based on a misunderstanding, as our respective patriarchs have exhorted us to do. A meaningful response to dwong would be to explain how Blachernae does not contradict the Western patristic theology that dwong has correctly identified. But Truglia instead goes the opposite direction: mischaracterizing Latin theology by falsely contextualizing it with the economy/theology distinction. Let us call this assertion that one cannot infer eternal relations of origin from the economy the "False Rule," as contrasted with the theological rules of inference that Barnes identifies above.
III.Truglia's False Rule in Augustine
As an example of the False Rule, we can consider Truglia's article "The Council of Florence and a Heretical Filioque" from December 2019. In characterizing Pope Adrian I's defense of Patriarch Tarasius as against the Franks, Truglia asserts that "Pope Adrian I, in keeping with the preceding orthodox explanations of the Filioque, responded defending the temporal, as opposed to eternal, procession of the Spirit from the Son and the consubstantiality of the Spirit as evidenced by such a procession." The problem for Truglia is that Latin theology never made such a distinction; indeed, if that distinction had been made, it would have rendered all of the Latin arguments completely useless as anti-Homoian apologetics in their original context. The following is his citation from Mendham's work on the Seventh Ecumenical Council, where he describes the response to the accusation that Patriarch Tarasius was heretically denying the filioque as follows:
Adrian introduces his learned array as follows: "Tarasius did not of himself invent this dogma, but made his confession as being taught by the doctrine of the holy Fathers, passages of which from our great affection to your most exalted royal dignity we will now lay before you, with all brevity." After which follow his quotations. Passing by those which are irrelevant, those which bear on the subject shall be brought forward; and, first, those passages which verbally make agains the Pope and Tarasius, and for Charlemagne: -- (1). From Augustin (lib. iv. c. 20, de Trinitate) "Nor can we say that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son also; for I do not see what else was intended when, breathing on them, he said -- 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost:' not that the corporeal blast proceeding from a body with powers of touch corporally, was the substance of the Holy Spirit: but a demonstration by a fitting signification that the Son did not proceed from the Father only but from the Son also, Who is there so insane as to say that the Spirit which He gave by breathing upon them was different from that Spirit which He sent forth after His ascension? (2). From Saint Augustine (lib. xv. 26, de Trinitate). And that He proceeds from both may be thus proved: -- The Son Himself saith, 'He proceedeth from the Father;' and, after He had risen again and appeared to His disciples, 'He breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost' that He might show that He proceeded from Him also. (3). From Saint Gregory, the Pope, in his twenty-sixth homily on the holy Gospel: -- Among other things, He says, 'When the Comforter shall come whom I will send unto you.' If 'to be sent' signifies only 'to become incarnate,' then the Holy Spirit could in no sense be said to be sent since He certainly was not incarnate: but His mission is the same with His procession, by which He proceeds from the Father and the Son." The author of the "Caroline Books" could not have found anywhere three quotations better suited to his purpose than these, which Adrian brings forward for his confutation. Infallibility seemed at a low ebb when the Pope wrote this letter. In the quotations which follow, there is an apparent agreement with Tarasius and the Pope against the "Caroline Books." (1). From Saint Athanasius, on Virginity: -- "And in the Holy Spirit, which, existing in the Father and the Son, is sent forth by the Father, is given by the Son." (2). From [Saint] Hilary (liv. vii. de Fide):--"The Spirit of Truth proceeds from the Father, and is sent by the Son, and receives from the Son." (3). From Saint Cyril, on the worship of the Spirit: -- "As He is of God, and essentially at the same time of the Father and of the Son, He is of both -- that is, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father by the Son." (4). Gregory, in his Missal, teaches us to ask that the Spirit may be poured into us, and manifested, and be conformed by his Son Jesus Christ. The support which these passages give is doubtful: none of them deny the procession from the Son, and seem to see little more than is allowed in the chapter from the "Caroline Books," quoted above -- "By the Son, the Spirit appeared in fire upon the Apostles; by the Son is He given to man, &c." -- Adrian's Answer to Charlemagne, page 109, 110.
But this dispute has nothing to do with the distinction between theology and economy, nor does anything in the historical context suggest that it does. Truglia has read the False Rule retroactively into the Latin and Alexandrian Fathers, even though they did not use it that way. What actually happened was that the Carolingians took the mirror image of the Photian approach: anything that did not strictly verbally agree with their formula was viewed as heterodox. This was a misreading of the Eastern tradition in the same way that Photius misread the West, reading a verbal difference as indicating a direct theological conflict. Correcting this misreading, not the assertion of a "temporal, as opposed to eternal, procession" is what Pope Adrian was trying to accomplish. In other words, he was trying to explain why Tarasius did not intended to deny the dogmatic truth of the filioque even though he used different words.
This is clear because the entire Latin tradition for centuries had always viewed causality of power in the economy as indicating causality of origin in eternity. Perhaps the best indication is the citation from Augustine. Barnes, whose recent work includes the essay "Augustine's Last Pneumatology" covering Augustine's very latest work on the Holy Spirit, notes that "Augustine reads virtually all statements about the relations of the Son and Spirit as also signifying their eternal relationship." The Scriptural quotations above are typical; Barnes identifies the same arguments concerning insufflation in de Trinitate in a polemical text specifically on the Holy Spirit: the Ninety-Ninth Tractate on John, which is an extended exegesis of John 16:13. (Interestingly, Augustine also offers his own pneumatological interpretation of the Power going forth from Jesus in Luke 8:46, Luke 24:49, Acts 1:8, and Luke 6:19, all of which are clearly in the economy.) In Augustine's very latest pneumatological work, a treatise against Maximinus, he appeals also to the work of the Spirit in creation, which would be completely ineffective as an anti-Homoian argument if it did not serve to situate the Spirit in the Trinitarian order with the Son. Thus, the idea that Adrian was arguing that the quoted passages above were "temporal, as opposed to eternal" is entirely implausible, and to then say that such a thing is what Augustine himself taught goes beyond implausibility to fantasy. Even Photios himself recognized that it was not possible to give these passages from Augustine an economic interpretation, and Gregory Palamas does not even attempt to do so, instead offering a different eternal interpretation.
But again, historical implausibility, even to the level of fantasy, does not deter Truglia's polemical drive. In his response to dwong, Truglia repeatedly appealed to the False Rule in in a way that is implausible for Latin theology. He starts with Augustine around 2:00, and claims that "when juxtaposed with [dwong's] private interpretation, it teaches the filioque." Truglia also claims that dwong "juxtaposes his own logic onto the text instead of that of the author in the same work" accusing him of making "this interpretive error" repeatedly so as to engage in "partisan eisegesis." This, Truglia contrasts with his own method (a viciously ironic contrast, as it will turn out, as he is trying to exegete via the False Rule a work that Barnes also interpreted in completely opposite fashion).
Truglia then surveys Augustine's teaching on divine simplicity, which points out that "the Son is born of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; but the Father is neither born of, nor proceeds from, another." Incredibly, Truglia has completely lost the Scriptural context of the interpretation. John 16:13 is an explanation for how the Son has more to tell the disciples, which He will tell them by means of sending the Spirit. If Truglia's explanation of causality from the Father were to exclude the Spirit's essence coming also from the Son, then Augustine's exegesis of the passage would be senseless, which is an interpretive mistake that Barnes certainly does not make. On the contrary, based on Augustine's argument from divine simplicity, what the Son communicates to the Spirit could be nothing else than the identical essence that the Father communicates to the Spirit, which is the doctrine of the filioque. The fact that Truglia has essentially bulldozed over the key theological point Augustine is making can hardly be called sound historical method. On the contrary, he has proved that dwong (and Barnes, of course) are reading the passage correctly, while nonetheless falsely accusing dwong of quote-mining and eisegesis.
Truglia moves on to de Trin. V and does no better. He invokes the False Rule to claim that Augustine is talking about "the temporal procession to man," which is, again, completely alien to Augustine's thought. It is directly contradictory to Barnes's conclusion based on a comprehensive survey of all of Augustine's works and years of expertise in this specific author -- Augustine makes no such distinction (nor do any Latin pro-Nicene theologians). Truglia, having already admitted that this "sounds like Florence" (which probably should have caused Truglia to rethink his life choices concerning being an apologist), lands what he apparently considers to be the coup de grace in his observation that Augustine analogizes the Trinity as a principle to creation to the Father and the Son as one principle of the Spirit. Truglia is so convinced by the brilliance of this observation that he even makes a cute party girl meme followed by the assertion that anyone who has read the paragraph would conclude that "eternal origins are not even remotely the topic of discussion," again based on his oblivious reliance on the False Rule. Incredibly, Truglia doesn't even quit there, but then turns to de Trin. IV, which points out that the Father is the principium of the deity. He shows all signs of being completely oblivious to the fact that Augustine also clearly distinguishes in the context of eternal origin between being principium principaliter, as the Father is, and communiter, as the Son is so as to be one principium with the Father.
Finally, in response to the same passages against Maximinus and de Trin. XV that Barnes cites, Truglia claims that, despite their explicit causal language, Augustine does not actually mean what Florence says. In other words, despite the fact that Augustine says "the Father begot a Son and, by begetting Him, gave it to Him that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him as well," he cannot possibly mean this. He speciously cites the use of auctor as an instance of the False Rule, which is (again) wrong, but also claims there is another rationale. In addressing that rationale, Truglia thinks there is an even better passage in de Trin. XV.47: "[the] procession from both, without any changeableness of nature, gives to the Holy Spirit essence without beginning of time." (Granted, apart from Truglia's specious use of the False Rule, this passage really isn't any stronger than any of the others, but let's leave that aside: Truglia at least recognizes that this is an eternal relationship.)
So how can this be without proving the "Florentine [sic] filioque," asks Truglia? At this point, Truglia asserts, based on Augustine's statements that the Father is principium and auctor, that Augustine's claim are real but not causal. Again, this reading is completely at odds with Barnes's capacious grasp of the subject matter; Barnes even comments in passing at one point that "the advantage of Augustine's filioque theology was, historically, that it was the stronger description of the Spirit's causal origin than alternative accounts." The real tragedy of Truglia's commitment to polemics at this point is that, if he actually paused even a moment to consider that the East and West might be labeling the same logical relations using different terms, this could actually be a moment of ecumenical breakthrough. But it is not to be.
As I reminder, I previously followed the account of Thomas Ryba in illustrating the reflexive logical relations that Augustine described in de Trinitate. That diagram looked like this:
The point of the psychological analogy here is internal production, i.e., that what is produced by the mind remains within the mind. The psychological model is therefore modeled on the ad intra/ad extra distinction; psychological productions are within the mind and therefore cannot be subject to the economy/theology distinction or Truglia's False Rule. At least as Augustine used the analogy, it wasn't intended to map faculties onto the different Persons, although St. Bonaventure will later utilize a stronger version of the psychological analogy that makes a more direct connection to the mental powers. But the point of reflexivity is that the processions both go out of and rest in or on the Persons. That the psychological analogy was intended to show that activities can all be internal activities of the same mind (which is really an illustration of how the Trinity operates inseparably) is documented in Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity. But Truglia completely loses the thread in his own diagram.
Truglia notes that Vision is "the end and rest of the Will," alleging that this means that the Spirit is proceeding to the Son but not from the Son. In particular, Truglia cites de Trin. XV "the Will proceeds from the human Mind first, in order that that may be sought which, when found, may be called offspring; which offspring being already brought forth or born, that Will is made perfect, resting in this end." Note that in the first place Augustine explicitly disclaims the idea that the existence of the faculties themselves can show relations of origin here; Truglia himself cites the relevant passages: "we can neither call the Will the quasi-offspring of Vision, since it existed before Vision; nor the quasi-parent, since that Vision was not formed and expressed from the Will." The point is that the analogy doesn't hold except with respect to the respective activities, a theme that Augustine constantly repeats in his "analogies" for the Trinity (which Ayres notes he refuses to even call "analogies"). So, as we always should with these psychological analogies, we need to focus on the sequence between the operations to show the eternal causal relations.
If we actually followed Augustine's logic here, then, the vision would be within the mind. And in terms of operation, Vision itself (impressing the mental image of the object) is prior, and the Will proceeds from the Mind (which has the Vision within it) back to itself in turning its attention to the Vision. If Vision were correctly drawn within the Mind, so that the Will directing its attention to the Vision is the Mind directing its Will to itself, we would have the filioque. This is why Barnes and Ayres (and essentially everyone not named Craig Truglia) realize that this real but not causal interpretation of statement in de Trin. and the treatise against Maximinus is unsustainable. The operation producing the Spirit (in an internal psychological sense) presupposes the existence of the Son, and by the causal rule of operations, that means the Son must perform the same operation without personally originating it. This is exactly the causal relationship maintained in Latin theology, since the Son does whatever He sees the Father doing. There is an excellent argument that Latin theology and Eastern theology mean something different by "cause" in this context, but to say that the relation is non-causal in Augustine (or any other Latin theologian) in the conceptual way that it is being used here (principium) is nonsense.
IV. Truglia's False Rule in other Fathers
As I pointed out, Truglia's diagram above is the closest Truglia comes to at least potentially seeing this issue. Perhaps if he had considered that "causality" appears to mean something different in the eternal context to East and West, as opposed to simply relying blindly on the temporal procession/eternal origination distinction, that would have been a productive exercise. But Truglia misses the opportunity; after that, he never comes close. He continues to invoke the False Rules to argue that anti-Homoian Latin sources are talking about the "temporal procession," even though that distinction would be completely senseless as an anti-Homoian argument and completely alien to the logic of Latin theology outlined by Barnes. For someone who makes accusations of eisegesis repeatedly, one would think that the introduction of an entirely alien premise from an entirely different philosophical context might raise at least a yellow flag. With respect to St. Hilary of Poitiers, Truglia at least admits the plausibility of the (correct Florentine) interpretation, while failing to realize the implausibility of his own use of the False Rule.
Truglia's analysis of St. Athanasius does no better. As I've pointed out, the description of the Spirit as "image of the Son" in Ad Serapion is damning for the anti-filioquist position, because even St. Thomas Aquinas affirms that this is the same as Augustine's doctrine of the filioque. But yet again, Truglia assumes that the False Rule, a principle that can't be found anywhere in Athanasius, precludes any inferences about eternal hypostatic causality based on the economy. Athanasius's anti-Arian arguments in particular are not in an anti-Eunomian context, so the application of the False Rule fails just as badly here. Even David Bradshaw in Aristotle East and West recognizes that Athanasius's use of the term "energies," for example, is not the later concept that would be developed by the Cappadocians vis-a-vis the Eunomians, although he unfortunately fails to acknowledge the parallel metaphysical tradition that Athanasius represents. As I have pointed out previously, the metaphysics that Athanasius deploys is essentially identical to the relational metaphysics that Augustine developed. A comparison between Khaled Anatolios's Athanasius and David Meconi's The One Christ is particularly instructive here.
In terms of the specific points of contact, for example, the fact that Athanasius asserts knowledge comes from the Spirit through the Son and is received from the Son is unquestionably an assertion of eternal origin. This is an example of power-based causality that would be comfortable to any Latin theologian, even the pre-Nicene anti-monarchian theology. But in Truglia's mind, the straightforward anti-Arian application is allegedly defeated by the application of the False Rule. Part of the problem is that, with respect to Athanasius's writings, Blachernae similarly retcons "exists through the Son and from the Son" into its own interpretation of manifestation. But as with all of the Roman and Alexandrian Fathers, the concept is not actually in any of them. Truglia, in typical eisegetical fashion following Blachernae, reads this alien distinction of the False Rule into Athanasius. If there is no inference to theology from the economy in this context, Athanasius's anti-Arian argument would be useless; Truglia's "speculative" argument concerning knowledge is completely at odds with the pro-Nicene arguments that Athanasius and Augustine both make. Again, we have to distinguish the polemical purposes of Blachernae from sound historical methodology. Blachernae has clearly gone completely over the top in its historical claims. But that should actually be comforting for people of an irenic bent, because it suggests that there was a misunderstanding of the Latin view that might be reconcilable, as opposed to a direct conflict between the pro-Nicene Latin theology and the doctrine of Blachernae.
Moving on, St. Cyril of Alexandria likewise follows St. Athanasius, including in the use of "image of the Son" language. I concur with Truglia that the passage dwong cited describes a single procession from the Father but that "[the Spirit] is not alien to the Son in terms of his essence." But, after all, the filioque doesn't say anything different from this; that is exactly what the distinction between principaliter and communiter means. Truglia cites Theodoret's accusation as context: "the Holy Spirit is not of the Son, nor derives existence from the Son, but proceeds from the Father, and is properly stated to be of the Son, as being of one substance." Cyril then responds "for [the Spirit] is consubstantial with Them and He is poured forth, that is, He proceeds as from the fountain of God the Father and He is bestowed on creation through the Son." Cyril later says "the Spirit emerges from the substance of God the Fatehr and is poured out on those worthy to receive him through the Word ... since the Father's Spirit is also revealed as the Spirit of the Son, with the Father sending Him or commissioning the Son to bestow Him on the saints, the Son in turn gives Him as His own, because of the identity of substance which binds Him to the Father."
But Truglia uses the False Rule to say that the epistemic economy/theology distinction is in play here, and this isn't what was at issue. Theodoret maintains that any verbal assertion of derived existence must necessarily be opposed to the monarchy of the Father, similar to Photios's assertions in the Mystagogy and the Carolingian counter-assertions against Tarasius. This is likely because Theodoret's own metaphysical concept of qnoma (expressed nature) doesn't recognize natures as distinct abstracts from the concrete expression, similar to the reasons that he has trouble generally understanding the Cyrillian Christology. (N.B., Paul B. Clayton's The Christology of Theodoret of Cyrus is essential reading on this point.) So Truglia sees Cyril as denying an eternal causal relation, while Cyril himself seems to be appealing to exactly the same principaliter/communiter distinction of eternal origin that Augustine does. It's not a question of Theodoret knowing Greek or not; Cyril's response is showing that double procession (literally "from both" in the language of both Cyril and Leo) is not intended to violate the monarchy of the Father, which is associated with "cause" as that term is used in the East. That's not because double procession is economic or energetic, but rather because the basis of the relation is the Son's reception of the essence from the Father, not the Son's possession of the essence of Himself. The idea that Cyril's response to Theodoret is a denial of ab utroque procession, an idea popularized most notably by Edward Siecienski, is an unwarranted inference based on the False Rule. And while I agree with Mikonja Knežević's analysis of Palamas's exegeis of Cyril on this point, it is just as obvious to me that Palamas is flat wrong as a historical matter. It is more likely that Cyril is drawing a distinction to avoid the criticism, not denying the double procession entirely, and the Antiochene theologians seem to have been satisfied with the explanation. In any case, we cannot go back in time to rewrite the texts of authors like Cyril in their original context simply because later historians who are revered as saints interpreted the text wrongly.
This brings me back to a point I raised earlier. Saints on both sides of the schism got not only the other side's Fathers but also their own Fathers wrong as a historical matter. St. Thomas got St. John Damascene and Pseudo-Dionysius wrong. St. Bonaventure got St. John Damascene more or less right, but probably got St. Augustine wrong on the psychological analogy. St. Photios got the entire concept of the filioque in St. Augustine, St. Leo the Great, and St. Gregory the Great wrong. St. Gregory Palamas almost certainly got St. Cyril wrong. St. Mark of Ephesus didn't understand the patristic background of Latin theology. (This is not, however, to say that Eugenikos was completely ignorant of Latin theology either; Fr. Christiaan Kappes has documented his familiarity with Thomas and Scotus.) That brings us to St. Maximus the Confessor, who was probably the last major figure to truly understand the reconcilability of the Eastern and Western views and who was also badly misread by both sides at Florence.
V. The irenic view of St. Maximus
With the discussion of St. Maximus the Confessor, we really come to the question of Florence itself and whether we are going to choose to be polemical or irenic in our interpretation. This is because Pseudo-Dionysius represents an absolute break from the older (and broader) metaphysical tradition outside of the anti-Eunomian Neoplatonic context. After Pseudo-Dionysius, everything was retroactively read in the East in terms of Neoplatonism, which naturally replaced the broader anti-Arian tradition with the more-or-less anti-Eunomian theology of the Cappadocians. As part of this redefinition of the Apostolic tradition, the epistemic economy/theology distinction, Truglia's False Rule, was then read retroactively into the Fathers in a way that erased not only the Latin patristic theology but also the Alexandrian theology of Athanasius and Cyril, the latter of whom was comfortable using theological concepts to navigate the metaphysical differences between the two traditions. At the same time, the West, which was essentially oblivious to both Pseudo-Dionysius and the theological chaos in which his works were written (documented well by Rosemary Arthur in Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist), had completely lost touch with the theological background that led to the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils. There is situated Maximus -- a man steeped in this new Pseudo-Dionysian theology in a truly profound way but likewise intimately familiar with the Augustinian tradition.
Maximus's famous Letter to Marinus was probably the greatest flashpoint in the Florentine battle between East and West. But it shows the beginning of the pointlessly polemical movement in the East resulting from the Pseudo-Dionysian retcon of patristic theology, a tradition that would later be carried on by Photios, by Gregory of Cyprus, and, ultimately, by modern polemicists like Truglia and Siecienski, who end up reading Latin and Alexandria theology according to the False Rule. What is particularly exasperating about these sorts of polemics is that the authors are aware of the original anti-Eunomian context of the economy/theology distinction, but then inexplicably refuse to acknowledge the decontextualization of the rule when it is being used to reinterpret broader anti-Arian writings. This results in imputing interpretations into the earlier patristic writers that simply aren't there.
For example, Siecienski essentially takes the identical line using the False Rule that Truglia does. After noting that Maximus does strongly affirm the link between theology and economy in the Incarnation (unquestionably a key feature of his Pseudo-Dionysian synthesis), Siencienski then attempts to situate Maximus's own writings on the filioque in the anti-Eunomian context of the Cappadocians. He says:
This thinking was certainly not new to Maximus, and it clearly manifests his reliance on the Cappadocian tradition, despite Gregory of Nazianzus's hesitations about blurring the lines between economy (oikonomia) and theology (theologia) because of the heresy of Eunomius. Maximus, writing long after Gregory's Eunomian opponents had been quieted, adopts and adapts his position so that [as Maximian scholar Lars Thunberg says] "this distinction between theology and economy is strictly upheld ... but at the same time he relates them intimately so that a correspondence is established." While, like Gregory, Maximus was hesitant to develop what later generations would call "natural theology," he allowed the eyes of faith to discern certain "adumbrations" of the Trinity within the natural order. As he wrote in [QT 13], "from beings we believe in God who is, that he exists ... from the wise contemplation of creation receiving the idea of the Holy Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."
Rather than applying the False Rule here, Siecienski could have just taken the Latin theological approach that inference of causal eternal relations is one of the "adumbrations" that might be discerned from the economy and that is does not blur into Eunomian speculation about the nature. Granted, this is "causality" in the Latin sense, principium, not "causality" in the sense that the East uses the term. But Barnes's conclusions necessitate that is truly causal of the hypostasis in this broader sense, in that the Father and the Son are collectively the reason that the Spirit possesses the power of God, just not in the sense of causality that the East customarily uses the term.
But the irenic path is not the one Siecienski takes. He continues (my emphasis in bold):
[I]n speaking about "the Holy Spirit ... belong[ing] to the nature of the Son according to his essence, since he proceeds inexpressibly from the Father through his begotten Son," scholars have long wondered (and often debated) whether Maximus is describing not merely the temporal manifestation of the Spirit, but also his eternal relationship to the Son. This concept brings us back to the idea of "trinitarian order" (taxis) and the recognition found in Maximus and the Eastern fathers that although "originated from the Father, the Spirit comprehends, in his relation to the Father, the relationship between the Father and the Son" [quoting Pierre Piret]. Thus while the Father remains unoriginate cause of the Spirit, he is always Father of the Son, and thus the Spirit comes forth from him in such a way that this eternal relationship to the Son is not excluded. How is this eternal relationship between Spirit and Son then expressed? For Maximus, as it was for many of the Greek Fathers, it is in speaking of the Spirit's procession/progression "through the Son" (dia tou yiou). This can be seen only only in Maximus's Queastiones ad Thalassium 63, but in Quaestiones et dubia 34, where he wrote: "Just as the mind [i.e., the Father] is cause of the Word, so is he also [cause] of the Spirit through the Word. And, just as one cannot say that the Word is of the voice, so too one cannot say that the Son is of the Spirit."
Thus while the Father remained the sole cause of the Spirit's hypostasis (as the one who spirates him), the Spirit, intimately aware of the Father's begetting of the Son, comes forth from the begetter through the begotten as the Spirit eternally manifesting their common nature. This was the important theological truth that both Cyril and Gregory of Nyssa had both hinted at in their writings, and this was the concept that Maximus's Letter to Marinus tried to express with even greater clarity.
Suffice it to say that there is a far more parsimonious interpretation: that Maximus was not trying to full express some hidden theological concept of Cyril and Gregory of Nyssa (which is frankly so well-hidden that it likely doesn't exist) but rather that he was simply aware that there were multiple ways to express the same truth. In other words, Maximus could very easily have given both "a wholehearted endorsement of 'filioquism'" and the "'non-negotiables' for orthodox theology" by the simple expedient of saying that not every causal relationship must be a cause in the Eastern sense.
So what do I mean by "cause in the Eastern sense?" What the Eastern Fathers means by cause is what Latins mean by the combination of the verb "spirate" with the adverb "principaliter." What the Latin Fathers mean by "cause" is the verb "spirate" irrespective of the adverb. If Maximus thought that one had to deny causality of the Son to the point of denying causality in this Latin sense, then it would be an out-and-out denial of Latin theology as Barnes outlines it. Siecienski says that this merely "challenges" the West. That is nonsense. Either it outright denies the West, in which case Maximus was not a competent witness to Latin theology anyway, or Maximus has a far more versatile grasp of how to understand Latin theology than contemporary Orthodox polemicists do.
I will take the latter view, which is the irenic view. Maximus knew full well that the Latins understood causality of the hypostasis of the Spirit from the Father and from the Son and that it meant the same thing that the East meant by from the Father through the Son. Both sides had the same broad understanding of causal relationships, which was never intended to exclude co-causality of the Son in the hypostasis of the Spirit. It simply means that the Son as co-cause was Himself caused to be. In other words, "eternal manifestation" is causality, only a different causal relationship than the Spirit has to the Father. In other words, the Western claim of co-causality does not contradict the Eastern claim of exclusive causality, if "causality" is not read equivocally. The assertion that ekporeusthai is hypostatically causal while proienai is not causal even in the Latin sense, however, remains implausible.
I will provide a lengthier explanation of how I believe that the distinct accounts of causality can be reconciled. But for now, what we need to understand is that the polemical invocation of the False Rule against the West would only serve to render all of Latin theology, as Barnes outlines it, incoherent. If this were what Maximus intended to do (the polemical interpretation), then it would only prove that Maximus was himself not as familiar with Western theology as people think. But my irenic interpretation is that Maximus was sensitive to the fact that the terms "cause" were being used differently and that the Latin use of principium did not deny the monarchy of the Father.
