On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit and the Epitomes

St. Photios’ language in the Mystagogy differs considerably from the usual Patristic Greek in that it harks back to more classical forms in both vocabulary and syntax. His style is more difficult than that of St. Basil’s, which was on the border-line between Classical and Patristic Greek, or even that of St. Gregory Nazianzen. As an erudite man, however, St. Photios could match his style to any audience; and for the Mystagogy, a theological treatise directed to learned men, he adopted a formal and academic style that makes effective use of the nuances of vocabulary. The work is straight-forward enough, except for a professorial love of parenthetical asides and interjections; and these asides, the lengthy sentences, and the frequent near pleonasms give the Mystagogy more the flavor of a lecture than of a treatise. By comparison, the Epitome is simpler and more direct in that it was destined for more popular distribution.

Although an accurate translation was our first goal, we certainly wished it to be readable. The idiomatic style did not permit a word for word translation, but we have been as faithful to the text as was commensurate with intelligibility. We avoided using neologisms or terms which sound too odd, even though they might be more accurate or easier to handle, e.g., supergood, theomachy, superessential, and ecumene. The exception is the use of strictly theological terms sanctioned by definitions whose vocabulary is not open to personal preference.

Other complications in producing a smooth translation for modern readers were the convolute and long periods and the many parenthencal remarks. We broke up many of the long sentences and simplified the syntax. In order to achieve a less choppy reading, we moved the longer parentheses to the end of the train of thought and so reduced the number of interruptions. Still, enough remains for the reader to capture the flavor of the original.

As to the Old Testament references, we utilized the Septuagint because it is the text ratified and used by the Fathers, the Ecumenical Councils, and St. Photios himself. Moreover, if any scriptural text is official in the Orthodox Church, it is the Septuagint. Scholars now admit that it alone represents the best and most coherent version and text of the Old Testament extant since the Jewish Council of Jamneia formed the Masoretic version from inferior texts. Since the Masoretlc version was more in line with Rabbinical beliefs, all other texts were destroyed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, however, which had been buried and forgotten before the council of Jamneia (ca. A.D. 90) and so escaped Rabbinical destruction, bear witness to the excellence of the Septuagint and ot the flaws of the Masoretic version. Subsequent labors of the Jewish schools found expression in the version of Aquila (A.D. 126), an apostate Christian whose translation was published to rival and to discredit the Septuagint. This version, moreover, often altogether sacrificed the sense for a literal rendering of the Hebrew. Finally, the Septuagint is stamped by the approval of our Lord and His apostles. Consequently, we have retained the Septuagint spelling, and some names differ from the customary English form, e.g., Esaias instead of Isaiah, Noë instead of Noah, Cham instead of Ham, and Jesus of Navi instead of Joshua of Nun.

Our translation of the Mystagogy and its Epitome is based on the text published in Migne Patrologia Graeca, 102, 280-400, which correlates the principal manuscripts. The original Greek is appended to the present translation on page 151.

That, even as the Son is proclaimed by the Sacred Oracles
to be begotten of the Father alone,
so also is the Holy Spirit proclaimed by theology to proceed from this same and only cause.
He is, however, said to be of the Son,
since he is of one essence with Him
and is sent through Him.

Scattered here and there in many lengthy dissertations, arguments can be found which overturn the arrogance of those contentious men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because your great and God-loving zeal has asked that those arguments be gathered into a conspectus and an outline, the accomplishment of this request will by no means be unworthy of your desire and godly love if divine providence looks upon us favorably.

More than anything else, a pronouncement of the Lord opposes them like a sharp and inescapable arrow that strikes and destroys every wild beast and fox as though with a thunderbolt. Which pronouncement? That which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Son Himself delivers His mystical teaching that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. But do you still seek for another initiator into the Mysteries to make you perfect—in reality, to consummate your impiety—and do you propagate the myth that the Spirit proceeds from the Son? If you did not cower when seizing the dogmas of our common Savior and Creator and Lawgiver with a violence that yields only to your insanity, what else could another person seek with which utterly to rebuke your impious zeal? If you despise the laws of the Lord, what godly man will not execrate your opinion? But what else can raise you from your fall? What other method of healing will cure your mortal wound? A wound not dealt by the word of the Savior but inflicted by your own self-wrought sickness, which out of disobedience strives contumaciously to change the medicine of the Lord’s doctrine into an unspeakably deadly poison. Nay, rather, it is a wound dealt by that sword which has been delivered to us as a defense against our enemies, a wound delt to one who sought to desert through the battle lines and enlist with the foe. For although you have been struck down by the two-edged sword of the Spirit, we, however, cannot display less love and eagerness for our common Master; and so far as arguments from that sacred strategy which arms us do rouse us to battle, we shall not permit you to be unconcerned about escaping wounds.

For if both the Son and the Holy Spirit are produced from one and the same cause, namely, the Father (even though the Spirit is by procession while the Son is by begetting); and if, as that blasphemy proclaims, the Son in turn produces the Spirit, then why not assert the cognate myth, for reasons of consistency, that the Spirit produces the Son? For both came forth with equal rank from that cause; so if the Son supplemented the function of cause for the Spirit, but not the Spirit for the Son, would not the preservation of the identity of rank require that each serve equally as cause for the other?

Otherwise—if indeed, the Son is not separated from the ineffable simplicity of the Father, but the Spirit is ascribed to a dual cause and undergoes a dual projection—will not composition be the result? Will it not be blasphemously asserted that the equally honored Spirit is less than the Son? O tongue bold in impiety! Will not the simplicity of the Trinity have its own proper quality corrupted?

Who of our sacred and renowned fathers had said that the Spirit proceeds from the Son? Which council, established and made eminent by ecumenical acknowledgment, has proclaimed it? Indeed, which God-called assembly of priests and high priests inspired by the All-holy Spirit has not condemned this notion even before it appeared? For they, having been initiated into the Father’s Spirit according to the Master’s mystagogy, proclaimed clearly and emphatically that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. And indeed, they subjected all who did not believe so to the anathema for being scorners of the Catholic and Apostolic Church; for in times past, they foresaw with prophetic eyes this newly spawned godlessness, and they condemned it in script and words and thought, along with the previous manifold apostasies. Of the Ecumenical Councils, the Second directly dogmatized that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; the Third received this teaching in succession; the Fourth confirmed it; the Fifth was established in the same opinion; the Sixth preached the same; the Seventh sealed it splendidly with contests; in each Council is seen the open and clear proclamation of piety and of the doctrine that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, not from the Son. What godless herd taught you otherwise? Who of those who contravene the Master’s ordinances has led you to fall into such lawless beliefs?

But at this point, it is appropriate to investigate their impious obduracy which opposes God. For if all things that are common to the undifferentiated, inseparable, simple, and singular community [of the Trinity] [sic] belong to the Spirit and the Father, they belong also to the Son. Likewise also, it is impossible not to acknowledge that whatever is seen to exist in the Spirit and the Son exists also in the Father. No, nor is it possible to deprive the Spirit of what is common to both the Son and the Father. Understand that I speak of the kingdom, the goodness, the transcendence of essence, the power beyond all understanding, the sempiternity, the incorporeity, and of a myriad corresponding appellations [sic] through which the divinity, which theology proclaims as surpassing divinity, is delivered from on high to the pious. If, therefore, these things are thus understood, no Christian would be carried off by any contentious inclination. But this new heresy teaches a common procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son; if it were so, the Spirit would also share in His own procession (What teaching has ever had more impious effrontery!), and He would be in part producer and in part be produced, in part the cause and in part the caused, in short, another great array of blasphemies against God.

Let us assume that the Spirit does proceed from the Son. What, then, has He gained which He did not already possess in His procession from the Father? For if it were possible for the Spirit to receive something and to declare what was gained, was He not imperfect without it? Certainly He would have been so had He received some increment. In addition, there would ensue problems of duality and of composition, which infringe upon the simple and uncompounded nature. But then, if He received no increment, what is the purpose of this procession which is not able to add anything?

Take heed to this also in your reasoning: If the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Son, might not some other condition be conceived, in which the Spirit would preserve for Himself the privilege of producing another [person] [sic] and would not repudiate the dignity of giving existence to an identical nature?

Consider this also: If the Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father, proceeds also from the Son, what would prevent the immutability of the hypostatic properties from necessarily foundering? Oh, intemperant mind, drunk with impiety! And the Father (may He be gracious unto us, and may the blasphemy return upon the heads of those who originated it) would survive as a mere name, since the property which characterizes Him would now be common, and the two hypostases of the God-head [sic] would coalesce into one person. And thus Sabellios, or rather some other semi-Sabellian monster, would again sprout up among us.

Not even the begetting of the Son, which is now considered and suggested in order to avoid the wicked absurdity, will make tolerable that outrage of the Father’s property, I mean the property of being the cause of procession. When this property of His is mingled and fused with the unique character of the Son, as the fables of the ungodly would have it, then there in turn occurs a severing and a division and a separation of the inseparable; for if the Father surrenders and is displaced from one of His own characteristic properties, yet that property is preserved uncompounded, will they not be forced to admit that if He does possess the property, He will be divided by the innovation in it? But it is dreadful that we have reached this point under the direction of their blasphemy.

Leaving aside the aforementioned, if one admits of two causes in the divinely sovereign and superessential Trinity, where then is the much hymned and God-befitting majesty of the monarchy? Will not the godlessness of polytheism be riotously introduced? Under the guise of Christianity, will not the superstition of Greek error reassert itself among those who dare to say such things?

Again, if two causes are imposed upon the monarchy of the Trinity, then according to the same reasoning, why should not a third one emerge? For once the beginningless principle, which transcends all principles, is cast down from its throne by these impious ones and is cleaved into a duality, the principle will proceed more vehemently to be severed into a trinity, since in the supersubstantial, inseparable, and simple nature of the divinity, the triad is more manifest than the dyad, and, indeed, is also more in harmony with the properties.

Can Christian ears tolerate such things? They who dare so to blaspheme, do they not arouse in Christians both wrath and grief, feelings that are generally unconjoined? Wrath, because they adopted such foolishness; grief, because they by themselves have slidden headlong into destruction; for piety, even if wroth, does not lay aside pity for its fellow man.

It will not be difficult to perceive the magnitude of the ungodliness in the following. If the Son also is established as principle and cause, after the unoriginate and paternal principle and consubstantial cause, how can one avoid saying that there are two distinct principles in the Trinity, the one being unoriginate and therein having its foundation, the other simultaneously being both originated and originating, being altered along with the difference of the relations?

If the Father is cause of the persons produced from Him not by reason of nature, but by reason of the hypostasis; and until now, if no one has preached the impious doctrine that the Son’s hypostasis consists of the principle of the Father’s hypostasis (for not even the monstrous Sabellios taught the impious doctrine of the fatherhood of the Son), then there can be no way in which the Son is cause of any person in the Trinity.

Nor must the fact be overlooked that this impious teaching divides in two even the hypostasis of the Father; or in any case, certainly legislates that the person of the Son subsumes some part of the Father’s hypostasis. For if, as was said, the Father is the cause of the Persons issuing from Him by reason of the hypostasis and not by reason of nature, and if the Son is also the cause of the Spirit, as the enemies of God proclaim, then it must be conceded that either the Son shares in the Father’s hypostasis, from which He receives the property of being the cause, or the Son supplements the person of the Father; and this last is tantamount to audaciously saying that before this supplementation, the Father was defective. Since the Son is become a part of the Father, the awesome mystery of the Trinity is truncated into a duality.

And there is a great multitude of other tares which could sprout from that evil seeding, which was first sowed, as it seems, not while these deranged men were sleeping, but while they waked so as to slay men’s souls and while they sought how to adulterate that noble and salutary seed from above; at such a time did the enemy of our race come upon them and thickly seeded their wretched souls. For indeed, anything which is in actual fact apprehended as a proper characteristic of something when it is predicated of two other things, and it is truly asserted concerning one of the two, but definitely not concerning the other, then the two are shown to be of a different nature; for example, laughter is properly a characteristic of man. Now if the property of being leader of the people of Israel happens to belong to Jesus of Navi, but it in no way belongs to the archangel of the Lord’s host who appeared to him, it plainly follows that the leader of the people is not considered to be of the same nature as the archangel, nor indeed to be consubstantial with him. Whoever pursues this method in all other matters shall find the like perception developing clearly and without difficulty. So if this method is applicable everywhere and preserves the same sense, then if the procession of the Spirit is proclaimed to be a property of the Father and this property, according to heretical wantonness, is also asserted of the Son, but not of the Spirit—let what follows fall upon the heads of them who introduced such great evils for up to now, such slander was unthinkable. If they say that the procession of the Spirit is not a distinctive property of the Father, then clearly, it also will not belong to the Son since it does not belong to the Spirit. Let those who impudently say anything tell us[:] how can that which is not a distinctive property of any of the Three, yet is also not common to all, have a place in any one of the hypostases of the divine sovereignty?

Similar to the aforementioned is this argument: if the property of the Father is transposed to become the property of the Son, then clearly the property of the Son could also be transposed to become that of the Father. For once this godless prating takes the path of wanting change and transposition in the characteristic properties of the hypostases, then it will even have the Father—O depth of impiety!—undergoing birth when the Son is being begotten. They who are audacious in everything, it seems, ought not to refrain from such an insufferable attack upon God.

Categorically we state: aside from distinctively characteristic properties, whenever some property is truly possessed by any hypostasis distinct from the one first possessing it, then the property shared by those hypostases is referred to the definition of the nature in order that the hypostatic dignity would not be joined to that property. Therefore, if effrontery confers upon the Son the property which distinguished the Father since the beginning, then the logical consequence would be to completely resolve the Father’s hypostasis back into the nature, thereby extirpating the cause of the divine hypostases. Let presumption see, despite itself, to what conclusion that doctrine hated by God arrives at, for the lovers of falsehood have raged against the characteristic properties.

Yes, one will say, but when the Savior mystically instructed His disciples, He said, “The Spirit shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you” [John 16:14]. From whom would you hide that you have recourse to the Savior’s words, not to find an advocate, but to defame insolently with contradiction even the Master Himself, the everflowing source of truth? So wanton indeed is your tongue to dare everything and, laying hold of the inapprehensible, you fabricate and invent opinions. The very fashioner and provider of our race Himself now teaches that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, in no wise adding that He also proceeds from Himself. He mystically initiates us into the theology that just as the unique cause of the Son’s begetting is the Father, so also is He the unique cause of the procession of the Spirit; but, according to you, He has by deep silence withdrawn the former mystagogy because now says “He shall receive of Mine.” But since He had progressed to a second initiation, He certainly ought to have brought to mind the former and to conjoin the two which so greatly differ from each other in meaning. However, He does not do what was proper to do, but instead He displaces the procession of the Spirit from the Father with procession from Himself. How can you escape being liable to judgment since your seditious discordance disrupts the enhypostatic and unalterable Truth?

Although your audacity did not hinder you from attempting that which even children know is impossible, yet certainly now, if you had not done so before, you must comprehend that nothing opposes your insanity so splendidly as those very same words of the Master and Savior. For if He had said “He shall receive of Me,” not even so is your fabrication proven, although the deception might have had some excuse. Never, no, never can the understanding infer that receiving from someone for the sake of another necessity is identical with receiving existence by procession; indeed they are far from being so. Since the Savior foresaw the magnitude of this great impiety, He did not speak such words in order that the wickedness of the evil one might not despoil many through you. Instead of accusing the Master, why do you not flee for pardon to the Master’s love for man and open the ears of your heart to his teaching?

The Savior did not say “He shall receive of Me [έξ έμοῦ],” but “He shall receive of Mine [ἐκ τοῦ έμοῦ].” For He Who came to teach all to be in concord through truth knew very well how to preserve blameless concord with Himself. “He shall receive of Mine”: there is a vast difference between “of Mine” and “of Me,” even though the difference is only a small word. For the expression “of Me” implies the speaker of the phrase, while “of Mine,” at all events, introduces another person besides the speaker. From Whom else could it be that He receives the Spirit if not from the Father? Even contending with God, they fabricate nothing else; for it could never be from another Son certainly, and never from the receiving Spirit. Do you see how you have not even reached the level of a child? For even children who have just begun attending school know that the expression “of me” implies him who utters the phrase, while “of mine” reveals another person, united with bonds of kinship to the speaker. In any case, it is a different hypostasis to which the phrase refers and to which the understanding of the hearers is unerringly carried. So now, if you really chose to be pious instead of impious, your pretext would become an opportunity for your repentance and not at all an occasion for opposing God.

What then? Before blaspheming, was it not your duty to seek to know these things if nothing else? Things which even children know? Were you not afraid—and indeed, you are active to hide the crime—thus to malign and falsify without restraint the words of the Master? Do you not blush to aver that the Master proclaims those things which neither the sequence of the words nor the integrity of the mind permit? Clearly He did not say “of Me.” Although you do not change the words, yet by subterfuge you commit the crime of changing “of Mine” to “of Me,” and by this maneuver, you accuse the Savior of teaching that which you believe. You distinctly slander Him of these three things: that He said what He did not say; that He did not say what He did say; and that He professed a meaning of the passage which He not only did not express, but which, on the contrary, is obviously opposed to His own mystagogy. Fourthly, you insinuate that He contradicts Himself. How and in what way? He said, “He shall receive of Mine.” He did not say “of Me.” But you maintain that He taught what the words “of Me” signify to you; therefore, what He did say, you abrogate, but what He did not say, you confirm as if He had said it. You proclaim that He delivered as doctrine to His disciples an interpretation of words He never spoke and a teaching known to have never been uttered by His immaculate lips. The enhypostatic wisdom of God, as mystagogue, teaches that the Spirit proceeds from the Father; but you, rushing forward zealously as if to accuse Him of disagreeing with Himself, you cry out an altered teaching: that the Spirit proceeds from Him. Thus you depart from the prior theology by reason of your recent theology, and even the latter becomes paltry to you and retains no authority. For once the theology of grace is driven out from under grace, it will never find abiding certitude.

It is time to hear from the beginning both the sequence of the Lord’s oracles and their meaning expounded from the sense of the words; for by them, not less, but the more, is the presumption of impiety pilloried. After He said “I go unto the Father,” [John 14:28] further down, he appends to His words, “But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.” [John 16:6-7] A little further He says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you.” [John 16:12-15] Are not these words the sacred and divinely spoken oracles? Do they not grant clear understanding of the mystery of piety? Do they not manifest the reason the Savior deemed it right to speak them? Does He not maintain unadulterated the original mystagogy and subdue all slander and excise every pretext for ungodliness? For when He observed that the disciples had lost heart because in their presence He announced His bodily separation from them and His departure to the Father, when He saw them sinking into dejection, He lifts them up and encourages them with the truth. First, He asserts that it is expedient for them that He depart; then He interprets how it is expedient: “For if I go not away” He says, “the Comforter will not come unto you.” [John 16:7] Such words evidently stimulate them to exalt the majesty of the Spirit, as does the passage “. . . but ye cannot bear them now.” So when can they bear them? “When the Spirit of truth is come; for He will guide you into all truth.” [John 16:12] Here again is revealed another, wondrous dimension of the Spirit that induces the disciples to ponder and rouses their understanding to soar to an ineffable height, where the dignity of the Spirit is superlatively resplendent before them.

What then? It is probable that they who had been here exalted would reason concerning the Spirit somewhat like this: “When Thou wast present, O Teacher, Thou didst not strengthen us to bear the burden of the ineffable. But when the Comforter shall come, He will prepare us to be better and stronger in order to bear that knowledge easily. Whereas Thou didst partially reveal the truth unto us, He will guide us into all truth. After Thy mystagogy, we have need of yet further truth and wisdom and power; but when He hath come, He will grant us measureless enjoyment of them all. If Thou, the enhypostatic Wisdom and Truth, teachest these things, we are obliged not to doubt but to vouchsafe the Spirit an even greater honor and glory.”

After the Savior introduced the lofty doctrines concerning the Spirit to the disciples, at one and the same time, both doing away with their faint-heartedness and theologizing truly concerning the Spirit, it was only human if their minds were in a turmoil of unlawful thoughts. How grim it is when the soul is consumed with grief and when judgment is muddled by the murk of this state; then that which is for salvation is distorted and becomes baneful. Therefore, as best physician of both body and soul, He prescribes the saving medicine beforehand, so that, inasmuch as the Spirit grants greater gifts, they would not apprehend the Spirit as being superior to the Son, nor would they admit any thought which would insult nature and sunder the equal hypostases into inequality.

If such thoughts did not oppress, trouble, or upset the disciples (perhaps it would be more respectful to acknowledge that this sacred choir was superior to such confusion and trouble), nonetheless, the inventor of wickedness, the artisan who invests what is better with the illusion of the worse, would have made many the prey of his ruse and would have sowed a heretical belief in men’s souls. As befits God, our Savior quickly disperses that very sowing and abashes that same artisan by the onslaught of His words: “For He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak.” [John 16:13] Now concerning Himself He had said, “for all things I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.” [John 15:15] It is as though He had said, “Both of Us have received from the Father the power to teach and enlighten your minds.” [John 17:4] Wherefore, since He proceeded to say concerning the Father “I have glorified Thee on the earth,” and since the Father also glorifies the Son, for He said, “I have both glorified and will glorify again,” [John 12:28] the Son now glorifies the Spirit by the aforementioned lofty words appropriate to God. Thus a little later He appends “He shall glorify me.” [John 16:14] Everywhere He preserves the consubstantiality, the identity of the nature, and the dignity of equal rank unadulterated. One could say that it is a common property of the supremely glorified Trinity that transcends essence to be glorified one by the other in ineffable arrangement. The Son glorifies the Father, but the Father also glorifies the Son and the Spirit; for thence, indeed, the wealth of graces issue to the Spirit. However, the Spirit glorifies the Father, for “He searcheth”—rather He knows—the deep things of God” [1 Cor. 2:10] and, so far as human nature permits, He reveals these things to them who have prepared themselves as fitting receptacles for the effulgence of the knowledge of God. As has been said, the Son now glorifies the Spirit and the Spirit the Son; and just as the kingdom and the power and the dominion are common to them, so also is the glory, not only that glory offered up by us, but also that which they receive one from another.

“‘He shall glorify Me.’ This does not mean that having offered glory to the Comforter, I have declared Him to be greater than I; nor does it mean that I surpass Him in honor because I said ‘He shall glorify Me.’ ‘He shall glorify Me’ signifies that the more you perceive His eminence, the more you will be able through Him to view My glory.  And just as I taught you the things I heard from the Father, so will He take of Mine and illuminate you.” Everywhere, he mystically teaches equality of honor, everywhere, the terms greater or lesser are excluded: in equal measure, the font every gushing graces [sic]; in equal measure, the eternal issuing forth from the Father; in equal measure, the consubstantiality and identity of nature.

Then when He says “He shall receive,” He explicitly proclaims the reason why He shall receive. He certainly does not say in order for the Spirit to proceed or to receive subsistence (pay attention, O man, to the words of the Master). But why shall the Spirit receive? Why? So that “He will show you things to come.” Although He had said these words previously, He confirms it by saying again “He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you”; then revealing more clearly the significance of the words “He shall receive of Mine,” He quickly adds, “all things that the Father hath are Mine,” so that when the Spirit receives the things that are Mine, He receives from the Father. However, He did not leave off here in unfolding this doctrine. He reveals and confirms it yet more perfectly by saying, “therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine”; because the things that are Mine are in the Father. The Spirit takes from the Father, for truly the things of the Father are Mine. So He all but shouts that when I say “of Mine,” you must lift your thoughts to My Father and not turn aside to any other. I have left nothing unrefuted that your imaginations can use as a pretext to suborn you to some other interpretation, especially because I said to you beforehand “All things that the Father hath are Mine.”

What is more luminous than these pure oracles? What could point out more distinctly that the words “He shall receive of Mine” refer to the person of the Father? So with sacred words it is preached that the Spirit receives the operation of granting graces from the Father as cause; with those graces, He strengthens the disciples to bear with a constant and unswerving mind the knowledge of things to come, He renders them without any difficulty beholders of things unseen; and, what is more, they become doers of works that surpass understanding. Is not every pretext for your impiety eliminated on every side? Will you still dare to contrive slander or falsehood against the truth, and to conspire against your own salvation?

But as for me, still will I not exclude you from my solicitude, whether to reprove and to rebuke and to cast You yet lower if you persist in being uncured, or, if you look for healing, to bring you medicine from the very chalice of truth in order to allay the pain and to purge the disease. Oh, what could one tell you! For if the procession of the Spirit from the Father is perfect—perfect, because perfect God proceeds from perfect God—what could procession from the Son possibly contribute? For if He has contributed something, it must also be declared what He has contributed; but if it is not possible to think or to speak of some increment within the divine hypostasis of the Spirit, why then are you determined to insult the Son and the Spirit with your falsehoods, and certainly with Them and before Them, to insult the Father?

Furthermore, if the procession of the Spirit from the Father is recognized as being the hypostatic property of the Spirit, the begetting of the Son from the Father is the Son’s hypostatic property; and if, according to their babble, the Spirit proceeds also from the Son, then, the Spirit is differentiated from the Father by more properties than the Son. Both issue forth from the Father, and even if the One issues forth by begetting and the Other by procession, nonetheless, one of two modes equally separates Them from the hypostasis of the Father; but here the Spirit is differentiated by a second distinction arising from the dual procession. If more distinctions differentiate the Spirit from the Father than differentiate the Son from the Father, then the Son would be nearer to the Father’s essence, and the Spirit, equal in honor, will be blasphemed as being inferior to the Son in pertaining to consubstantial kinship with the Father, by virtue of the two properties which separate the Spirit. Thus the rabidness of Macedonios against the Spirit will again spring forth; however, the revival will also recall the defeat of his ungodliness.

If only the Spirit has the characteristic of being referred to diverse origins, does it not follow that only the Spirit is referred to a multiple origin?

Moreover, if these people who dare everything have innovated a communion solely between the Father and the Son in certain things, then they have excluded the Spirit from these things. But the Father is joined in communion with the Son by essence and not by any one of the hypostatical properties. Consequently, they exile the consubstantial Spirit from kinship according to essence with the Father.

The Spirit proceeds from the Son. But is this procession the same as that from the Father, or is it opposed to it? If it is the same, will not the hypostatical properties which alone differentiate the three worshipful persons of the Trinity be eradicated? But if procession from the Son is opposed to procession from the Father, how will not all those like Manes and Marcion rejoice on account of this blasphemous statement, and pour out again their miserable babble against the Father and the Son?

With reference to what has been said, all that is not common to the whole, omnipotent, consubstantial, and supranatural Trinity must appertain to only one of the three; since the spiration of the Spirit is not common to the three, then it belongs to only one of the three. The innovators must elect one of these alternatives. If they affirm that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, then why do they not renounce the innovative mystagogy so cherished by them? Or if they contend that He proceeds from the Son, then why do they not have the courage to vomit forth all their poison frankly from the start, rather than emitting it in part? When they broached their dogma of the Son being the spirator of the Spirit, they ought to have professed that they also exclude the Father from the spiration, if they were really convinced of the truth of their impious teaching. Doubtless, they might also find it logical to alter and to transpose the begetting and the procession, and to concoct the notion that the Son is not begotten from the Father but the Father from the Son. Not only would they surpass the impious of all ages, but they would be reprehended as raving more than the insane.

Moreover, if the Son is begotten of the Father, and if the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it would not be an innovation in respect of the Spirit if another should proceed from Him. In accord with their mad opinion, therefore, not three, but four hypostases could be inferred, or rather an infinitude, because the fourth could produce another, and that one yet another, until they would surpass even pagan polytheism.

But it is possible to utter this sort of argument against them. If the Son received all that He possesses from the Father, thence also would He gain the faculty of being the cause of the procession of the Spirit. But whence this favoritism in which the Son is distinguished as a cause of the procession of the Spirit, while the Spirit is deprived of equal prerogatives? For the Spirit has equality of honor, since He came forth with equal rank and honor from the same essence.

So be it: the Father is cause and the Son is also a cause. Then Whom will these insufferable arbitrators judge to be more the cause? If they judge the Father to be more the cause, then would they not consider that contrived honoring of the Son to be adventitious, spurious, and insolent, especially since the Son possesses thereby as much or even more authority than the Father? But if they judge it to be the Son—alas for the more grievous audacity! It was not enough for them that they chose the impiety of dividing the Father’s property of being cause and then had Him share it with the Son, but they would expropriate even more and would substitute the Son for the Father as cause of the Spirit.

Do you say that the Son, since He comes forth from the Father by begetting, obtained from Him the power of also producing another person of the same nature? When the Son produced the Spirit Who is of the same nature, why, then, did He not also impart the same power and honor that He received, so that the Spirit too might be adorned with a consubstantial hypostasis as issue? And indeed, if for nothing else but that He might attain closer imitation of the Father, it would be incumbent upon the Son to preserve the likeness by similar operations.

I should also not let this absurdity remain silent. The Master’s words mystically instruct us to consider the Begetter greater than the Begotten, although not by nature—away with the thought! the [sic] Trinity is consubstantial—but inasmuch as He is cause; and the choir of our sacred fathers, having been initiated by these words, teaches the same. The divine oracles nowhere state that the Son is greater than the Spirit by reason of being cause, nor has any pious mind up to the present ever been detected to have thought so. But the tongue of the enemies of God not only makes the Son greater than the Spirit by reason of being His cause, but it also renders the Spirit more distant from the Father.

In addition, if the Son is cause of the Spirit, would He not be an emergent second cause in the supranatural principle (transcending all principle) of the Trinity? Was this causation contrived for the disparagement not only of the first principle, but also of Him for Whom it was devised to honor? For if no advantage accrues to Him or to anyone, and no pretext can be found for it, will it not rather disparage the Son? Is not the outrage more wicked when called an honor? Since the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and lacks naught, can this contrived cause of theirs provide any other emission or existence?

Is not the Spirit divided into two by them? The one part proceeds from the Father, the true and first cause (for He is uncaused), and the other part from a secondary, derived cause (for the Son is caused). Thus this heresy does not only flaunt the Spirit’s difference and distinction in rank, relation, and cause, but it dares to debase our religion from a Trinity to a Quaternity. Indeed, no effort is neglected to malign everything in the transcendently good Trinity and Creator of all!

And so, if the Son is the cause of the Spirit, and the Father is the cause of both, there will be found a cause in the perfect and perfecting Trinity which is excluded from the principle and first cause of perfection; it will be either imperfect and divided in two, or it will be composite, a synthesis of imperfect and perfect. One may see ancient mythology playfully inventing centaurs when speaking of generation and decay. But the enemies of God, when speaking of eternal and unchanging matters, tremble not to speak seriously of absurdities such as a cause either sundered or amalgamated from cause and caused; and in neither of the two cases can they escape imperfection. Even if each pretends to battle with the other—for such are the harvests of that impious sowing—nonetheless they both lead to the same crime of imperfection.

Leaving aside what we have said, if the Spirit is one, transcendently and properly one, just as both the Father and the Son are each absolutely and supraconceptually one, then how can that duality of causes not be labeled as both monstrous and impossible?

For these and other similar reasons, therefore, even if belatedly, you ought to become aware of your impieties, and to be united in belief with the Catholic and Apostolic Church instead of with this gravely deluded superstition. You ought to be initiated with purity into piety and inquire how to believe with your whole mind and with resolute understanding that each person of the consubstantial and divine Trinity is inexpressibly conjoined to the other in an inseparable communion of nature. But by reason of the hypostases, each preserves His individual, characteristic properties immutable. This distinction allows no room for confusion—away with the thought. For on the one hand, the communion of nature does not permit any severance or division, and on the other, the properties which distinguish each of the three are never mingled into any fusion. And just as the Son is begotten of the Father and continues immutable, preserving in Himself the dignity of sonship, just so does the All-holy Spirit proceed from the Father and remain unchanged, preserving in Himself the property of procession. Just as the Spirit, who in proceeding from the uncaused Father does not assume the divine operation of any other begetting or procession, nor does He violate by some alteration His own procession, just so, by the same analogy, would the Son, Who is begotten of the uncaused Father, never undertake the divine operation of originating another person, either by begetting or by procession, nor would He suffer another relationship to be introduced that would debase the privilege of sonship.

If you do not view that argument justly, I should have to describe you as voluntarily blind. For if the Father spirates the Spirit by reason of nature, i.e., the very nature of the Trinity, then at that very time many other related absurdities would certainly result. What was your motive, then, in inventing the myths of your impiety? For not only would the Son, according to you, be transformed into the spirator of the Spirit, but that same Spirit would be severed and distributed by both the Son’s begetting and His own spiration. It is better to let silence conceal the rest; for even if we do not utter the greater absurdities, they who investigate with intelligence and reverence will clearly understand. Such is the case if anyone should want to devise the absurd theory that the Father spirates the Spirit by reason of nature, and not by reason of His own hypostasis. However, if it is preached that the Father, inasmuch as He is Father, spirates the Spirit, it will not be doubted by the pious. The Son, inasmuch as He is theologized to be the Son, will never introduce an innovation into the dignity of sonship by spirating the Spirit. Neither will He mutilate the Father and transfer to Himself the cause of procession, nor would He ever change His own submissive and changeless begetting. It is not possible that such things would belong to the nature wherein the common sharing is honored; rather, they are hypostatic properties through which theology discerns the distinctions in the Trinity.

So be it. Nonetheless, some say that the heretics declare: “Will you not be convicted of impugning Paul, that herald of the Church and teacher of the whole world, that celestial man, who, being great and truly celestial, proclaimed, ‘God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying Abba, Father’? [Gal. 4:6] Therefore, if Paul, that gnomon of true dogmas, says that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, how can they who acknowledge this mystagogue of heavenly things reject his doctrine”? [sic] But who is it that in every opinion impugns Paul the contemplator of the ineffable? He who is diligent to prove that Paul contradicts his teacher and our common Master, or he who reverently maintains and hymns Paul’s accord with the Master? For if the Master mystically teaches that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, but heresy introduces Paul as dogmatizing that He proceeds from the Son, who would be the traducer? It would be he who ascribes to Paul contradiction of the Master and so renders himself liable to inescapable punishment because of his audacity. Evidently you realized that you must not deprive the preceptor of the whole world of his teacher’s prerogatives, yet you defame that guide of piety as having an infamous opinion instead of honoring him with respect and reverence. But heresy is doing nothing different from its usual. Since it slandered the very Son and Word of God as falling into contradiction, it is only being consistent when it controversially and disputatiously affirms that His genuine servant and disciple gainsays and corrects his teacher.

Where, then, did Paul supposedly say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son? He did say that the Spirit is of the Son—God forbid that He should be considered alien—and together with Paul the Church of God confesses and believes it; but his divinely speaking tongue never stated that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. No! Neither did any of the pious ever write such a thing. Nor would they have permitted this blasphemy to be heard. Truly, far-fetched slander.

Paul, who in the course of his divine preaching proved the expanse of the world to be smaller than his zeal, said “The Spirit of His Son.” Why do you not say the same? Instead, you criminally turn everything topsy-turvy and pervert the word of the preacher; and what is graver, you ascribe your distortion and blasphemy to the utterance of the teacher.

He said, “The Spirit of the Son”; well said, with divine wisdom. But you, why do you distort his utterance and affirm what he never said? You blush not to preach what he had never conceived as though he had supposedly said it. “The Spirit of His Son.” He certainly could never have phrased it better; for the Spirit has a nature identical to the Son’s, and He is of one essence with the Son and possesses the same glory, honor, and dominion. Therefore, when he says: “the Spirit of His Son,” Paul is demonstrating the identity of the nature, and in no wise does he imply the cause of procession. He acknowledges the unity of essence, but incontrovertibly does not proclaim that the Son brings forth a consubstantial hypostasis; indeed, he does not even hint concerning the origin.

What then? Is it not also theologized by everyone that the Father is of the Son? Will you, therefore, reverse the begetting for this reason? If we say that the Father is the Father of the Son, we say it because the Son is consubstantial, not because He has been begotten. But if you want, let it refer to the fact that He has been begotten. Then given the phrase “the Spirit of the Son,” why have you shifted the Spirit into the rank of the caused and effected instead of calling It cause and effector? At all events, since you are possessed by an ardor for impiety, you would be equally as impious if, impelled by the similarity of the phrases, You declared that the Spirit produces the Son, as you are when declaring the opposite, that is, that the Son produces the Spirit. But surely only deception could have fabricated a procession from this starting-point and example. So now, both your illogic is sacrilegious towards God and your sacrilege contends and strives with your excessive capriciousness.

Therefore, the Church preaches both that the Son is of the Father, and that the Father is of the Son, for they are of one essence. Moreover, it is theologized that the Son is begotten of the Father, yet we shall never be misled by the expression: the Father of the Son, and blasphemously presume to theologize the inverse. Thus, whenever we sacredly proclaim that the Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, we categorically imply by these phrases His consubstantiality with each. We know that the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father, because He proceeds from Him; but He is consubstantial with the Son because each of them with equal rank issues forth before the ages from one, indivisible cause. The Spirit is not consubstantial with the Son because He proceeds. God forbid! For neither is the Son consubstantial with the Spirit because of the begetting.

“The Spirit of His Son.” Understand, and let not the divinely wise and saving voice of the preacher of truth prove an occasion of ruinous calamity for you. To return to one’s senses is not laborious, nor is there required a more acute or more vigorous intelligence for penetrating the recondite. “The Spirit of His Son” means one thing, while “The Spirit proceeding of the Father” teaches something else. Let not the similarity of the grammatical cases make your case hopeless. Certainly, many words are similar in sound, yet are not interpreted with a similar meaning, indeed, they are not even close. I should have collected a list of many such expressions, if your recalcitrance had not turned my zeal sluggish.

Though you could be induced to speak fairly, the principles to which you are enslaved will not let you depart from absurdity. Not only is it theologized that the Son is the effulgence of the Father and light of light [Heb. 1:3], but furthermore, He Himself says, “I am the light of the world.” [John 8:12] But the phrase “light of light” shows the consubstantialty of the Son and of the Father, and that fact is a noose knotted together from your own wisdom and opinion and tongue. Even if it be late, still it should not say to put it around your neck; but you would be righteous if you entreated and sought how to escape death by hanging.

The divine Paul, who with the breadth of his evangelical preaching girded the circuit of the world said, “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son.” [Gal. 4:6] If you declare what he said, we shall not bring you to trial; but if you dogmatize what he did not say as if it were what he preached, we shall indict you as truly deserving punishment for impiety. That celestial man said “The Spirit of His Son,” but you, as if you had ascended above the third heaven and with your own ears had heard things more ineffable, you suppress his words as imperfect and exclude them from your faith. Instead of saying “the Spirit of his Son,” you proceed to perfect his imperfection by dogmatizing that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. Alas, the unsurpassed presumption! Fabricating defamations, you are not ashamed to claim as your teacher and advocate him whom you have defamed. That noxious venom of impiety you have so copiously vomited forth truly demonstrates what spirit animates and possesses you.

If you like, I can cite other sacred texts by which the bane of your dementia and madness is pilloried. The All-holy Spirit is sacredly named the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of knowledge [Esaias 11:2], the Spirit of love, the Spirit of a sound mind [II Tim. 1:7], the Spirit of adoption [Rom. 8:15]. He who conjoined the never setting light of truth and the sun’s course and who compassed all the earth with the rays thereof, says, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage to fear, but the Spirit of adoption.” [Rom. 8:5] Again he says, “For He hath not given us the spirit of bondage, but the Spirit of wisdom and love and of a sound mind.” [Cf. II Tim. 1:7] Indeed, the Spirit is also called the Spirit of faith [II Cor. 4:13], and of promise and of power and of revelation [Eph. 1:13, 17], of both counsel and strength, and piety and meekness [Gal. 6:1]. “If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore him [sic] [sic] in the Spirit of meekness.” Thus proclaims Paul, that fiery tongue of the Spirit. Furthermore, the Spirit is called the Spirit of perception, for the oracles say: “Behold I have called by name Beseleel . . . I have filled him with a Spirit of wisdom and knowledge and perception.” [Cf. Exodus 31:2-3] He is called the Spirit of humility; for when bedewed by the fire, the children changed “Nevertheless with a contrite soul and a Spirit of humility let us be accepted.” [Dan. 3:38] He is also called the Spirit of judgment and burning, because of the chastising and purifying power of the Spirit; for Esaias cries, “The Lord shall purge them with the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning.” [Cf. Esaias 4:4] He is also called the Spirit of fullness, for Jeremias, that most sympathetic of prophets, says, “The way of the daughter of my people is not to a holy nor to a pure Spirit of fullness,” [Cf. Jer. 4:12-13] which is to say: not filled with the pure and holy Spirit. Is it for this reason, then, that you become arrogant? Will you blasphemously declare that the All-holy Spirit proceeds from the graces which He distributes and grants? that He derives His existence and procession thence? Beware lest insinuating itself from the right hand, the temptation of impiety persuade and beguile you from your salvation. Indeed, everyone knows that the sacred oracles proclaim the Son to be the Word and Wisdom and Power and Truth of God; but he who has been vouchsafed the mind of Christ knows equally well that not only is the All-holy Spirit said to be of the Son, He is also said to be of the gifts which He has the authority to distribute.

Therefore, your principle will enjoin you, or rather compel you, not only to confess that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, because He is said to be the Spirit of the Son, but also that He proceeds from understanding, from the distributed gifts, and from the myriads of other divine operations and powers of which the All-holy Spirit is glorified as the known source and dispenser, especially from faith and from revelation, from the promise and judgment and understanding. But it is not possible to apply these names wickedly to the Son, even if you very much desired to do so.

I should have much to say if one were to suppose that the Spirit mentioned in these phrases does not refer to the all-holy [sic] and consubstantial Spirit of the Father and of the Son, but rather to the gifts flowing therefrom. The pretext furnished for this supposition is that since the gifts are referred to the Spirit and since the Spirit distributes them, therefore the gifts have assimilated the name of Spirit. Nonetheless, I shall not speak now. Why? Because even if this point is conceded them, their iniquitous reasoning is no less refuted. For since the gifts are said to be of the Spirit, their new principle enjoins them to preach that the Spirit issues from that of which it is named to be the Spirit of. No longer will they say that the Spirit produces those gifts of which it is called the Spirit, but turning things about they will declare that the gift begets and produces the Spirit, for example, that the Spirit proceeds from understanding, or from wisdom or from all the aforementioned gifts. Therefore, one does not receive the Spirit by means of the spiritual gift, nor does the Spirit dispense understanding or wisdom or power or adoption or revelation or faith or piety; rather the contrary: understanding and revelation and piety and faith and a sound mind bring forth the gifts which you like to call spirits, as do in like manner each of the other gifts. If, indeed, you think to call each of the gifts spirit, certainly the multitude of spirits will increase with the number of the gifts, and there will be no difference for you between spirit or gift. If any gift is referred to being of the Spirit, then your belief requires that the Spirit come forth and be produced from that gift. Therefore, will you increase each of the gifts or spirits by severing each one in two so that one portion would be the dispenser and the other the dispensed, the one portion the producer and the other the produced? Then faith would bring forth faith, and understanding again understanding, and perception, perception. How much time one could waste sorting through your nonsense!

But heresy also discredits itself with this reproach. The All-holy Spirit grants gifts to the worthy; but, as it appears, since heresy is not content with anything, it is also not content with His distribution, and so severs the gifts, and reduces them, and divides them into more parts in order to be able to indulge its adherents with ever more numerous and richer gifts. Truly, the agitation and confusion of their minds subverts them so that they overthrow and confound the order and nature of things, and that first sowing of impiety sprouts forth innumerable heresies. Yet we shall not omit the remaining arguments although the aforegoing is sufficient to persuade those who have not entirely given themselves over to impiety, and it is sufficient both to confute those who have chosen shamelessness and to call back from error those who incline to superstition. For they who suffer this malady are either healed of the disease, one by this cure, another by that cure, or they are utterly refuted, yet remain voluntarily unhealed owing to depravity of will.

Therefore, not even these points should be passed over. If indeed the Son is begotten from the Father, but the Spirit proceeds from the Son, according to their own opinion, will not impiety relegate the Spirit to the position of grandson and turn the tremendous mystery of our theology into protracted nonsense?

You may also see the excess of the ungodliness from the following: If the Father is the proximate cause of the Spirit just as He is that of the Son, then the begetting as well as the procession are immediate; for since the Son is not begotten through some intermediary, so the Spirit likewise proceeds immediately. However, the delirium of the impious asserts that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well, so that the same cause, namely, the Father, would be proclaimed as both the remote and the proximate cause of the Spirit; something which cannot be contrived even in a fluctuating and mutable nature.

Do you see the absurdity of the ungodliness? Observe it herein. It is impossible not to perceive that the Son’s being begotten from the Father simultaneously with the Spirit’s procession from the Father is consistent with sacred theology and the laws of the incorporeal and supernatural essence. Now if the Spirit were to proceed both from the Father and from the Son simultaneously (for a before and after is alien to the sempiternal Trinity), will not the difference of the divine causes result in different hypostases and induce a sundering in the uncloven, simple, and single hypostasis of the Spirit? It is easy to comprehend and to admit the myriad testimonies of the same hypostasis producing simultaneously diverse operations and virtues, especially in things supernatural and exceeding our intellect; but it is absolutely impossible to discover a hypostasis which is referred to differing causes without the hypostasis always bearing within itself the difference of the causes and being sundered by them.

In addition to what has been said, anything belonging to God that is not discerned as existing in the unity and consubstantiality of the omnipotent Trinity plainly belongs to only one of the three persons. Now the procession of the Spirit is no part of the marvelous unity which is contemplated in the Trinity. Procession, therefore, belongs to only one of three persons. Attention should also be given to reasoning of this kind: if the Spirit proceeds from the Son, it will not be earlier or later than when the Son is begotten from the Father. (These adverbs of time [earlier or later] [sic] are inapplicable to the eternal divinity; for when the Son is begotten by the Father, at that same instant, certainly, the Spirit proceeds from the Son.) If, at the same instant that the Son comes forth by begetting, the Son also issues the Holy Spirit by procession, then the originator comes into existence simultaneously with that which is originated. Such is the fruit of their blasphemous sowing. Therefore, while the Son is being begotten, so too would the Spirit, Who then would be both begotten together with the Son and proceeding from Him. The Spirit would be at the same time begotten and proceeding, begotten because He would be coming forth together with the begotten Son, and proceeding because He would be undergoing a dual procession. What can be found more blasphemous or more insane than this?

Consider into what a pit of error and perdition your sophisms and your abuse of the words of scripture have thrust you. You see that those passages, “He shall take of mine,” [John 16:15] and “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son,” [Gal. 4:6] not only furnish no vindication for your blasphemous tongue, but rather refute its rashness and invoke ineluctable judgment. But why spend time upon matters already fully demonstrated when we ought to be refuting the other assertions of their evilly scheming mind?

They oppose Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and some others to the teaching of the Church, for they say that these men taught that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. They say, “One ought not to charge the sacred fathers with the crime of ungodliness. Either one agrees with their opinion because they taught piously and are acknowledged as fathers, or they, together with their teaching, should be rejected as impious because they introduced godless doctrines.” Such things are said by youths who senselessly fear lest anything rash that could be accomplished through their will and zeal escape the achievement of their daring. They were not content with perverting  the Lord’s word and slandering the herald of piety with impiety, but they deem their exploit unfulfilled if they do not find means whereby they might heap contumely upon those whom they honor as fathers. But simple is the word of truth which confounds them and which says, “Take care whither you are going, how long will you plunge your destruction into the vitals of your soul.”

Who is it who really regards as fathers those sacred men whom you bring forward through a contentious love of apostasy as defenders of this ungodliness? Who better sustains their rights as Fathers? He who denies that these men contradict our common Lord in anything, or he who compels them to establish a testimony opposed to the Lord’s word and who distorts with his own quibblings that admirable mystogogy [sic] by which we theologize that the Spirit proceeds from the Father? Is it not evident that heresy attributes the name of Father to those memorable men only in words? For heresy does not begrudge attributing the appellation of father bereft of all honor; but through the deed of this casuistry, heresy of its own will exiles them into the portion of impious and corrupt men, unless these men who dare everything think to glorify the fathers with such prerogatives.

Who is it who says that Ambrose or Augustine or anyone else affirmed things contrary to the Lord’s word? If it is I, I insult your fathers. But if you say it, while I deny it, then you insult them, and I condemn you as a blasphemer of the fathers. But, you retort, they have written so, and their works contain the statement that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. What of it? For if they had been instructed and did not change their opinion, if after just rebukes they were not persuaded (this is again another calumny against your fathers), then you may reckon your own deed and ascribe your own incorrigble [sic] opinion to their doctrine. Although in other things they are of equal stature with the best, what does it have to do with you? For if they have either slipped into some error or been subject to any negligence—for such is the human condition—when they were admonished, they did not contradict, nor were they contumacious when corrected. How will they who bear no resemblance to you help deliver you from ineluctable judgment? Although they were admirable by reason of many other qualities which manifest virtue and piety, they professed your godless error either through ignorance or through negligence. But if they in no manner shared the benefit of your advantages, why do you introduce their human defect as a mandate for your blasphemous belief? By your mandate, you attest that men who have legislated nothing of this sort are open transgressors, and so you demand a penalty for the uttermost blasphemy under the mask of benevolence and love. The results of your attempts do not benefit you. Observe the impious exaggeration and the stupidity of a base mind. They bring the Lord to be their advocate, and they are discovered to be calumniators. They called upon the apostles to plead their cause, and they were detected to have slandered them likewise. They fled in turn to the fathers, but they heap great blasphemy on them instead of honor.

They call them fathers—indeed, they do—not to attribute the honor of fathers to them, but to discover how they might become patricides. They tremble not at the voice of divine Paul, which they turn against their fathers with great wickedness. For he who received the power of binding and loosing—and that binding reaches to the very kingdom of heaven and is both fearful and mighty—he, I say, exclaims with a loud and clear voice: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be anathema.” [Gal. 1:8] He who is so great a man, Paul, the never silent trumpet of the Church, surrenders to anathema those who dare to receive or introduce any doctrine foreign to the Gospel, and he subjects to great curses not only others who have so dared, but he also imposes the same punishment upon himself if he should be found guilty. Even here, he does not curb the threat of this sentence, but he searches heaven itself. If he find an angel with dominion thence over things on earth who evangelizes anything contrary to the Gospel preaching, St. Paul subjects him to similar bonds and consigns him to the devil. As for you who invoke the fathers in order to violate the Lord’s doctrines, to violate the preaching of which the disciples were heralds, to violate all the ecumenical Councils, to violate the piety preached in all the world, do you not shudder or tremble or cower at the threat? But you consider life intolerable unless you make your fathers also partners in this crime. But Paul defers neither to the incorporeal nature, nor to the fact that as pure minds, the angels stand purely and immediately before our common Master: neither of the aforegoing puts him out of countenance, but as regards the anathema, he reduces them to equality with earthly things. By calling Ambrose and Augustine and others fathers—alas, ruinous honor!—and opposing them to the Lord’s mystagogy, do you think to gain a lighter damnation for yourselves or for them? You do not appoint a good reward to your fathers nor requite your forebears well for their nurture. The anathema which falls upon you can not touch those blessed men, since they shared not at all in your sophistries and disobedience and impiety. You, however, bear upon your own shoulders the anathema, because you think to establish your impiety by employing those arguments that your fathers contradict more conspicuously with their distinguished deeds than with any voice.

I do not admit that what you assert was so plainly taught by them, but if they happened to express some such thing, if they happened to fall into something unbecoming, then I would imitate the good sons of Noë and hide my father’s shame, by using silence and gratitude as a cloak. I would not follow Cham’s example, as do you [Gen. 9:18-27]. Rather, you are crueler and more impudent than he, for you publish abroad the shame of those you call your fathers. Now, he fell under the curse, not because he uncovered his father, but because he did not cover him. You, however, both uncover your fathers and vaunt your audacity. He tells the secret to his brothers; you tell yours not to brothers, or to one or two persons, but turning the whole world into a great theatre, you trumpet with all urgency and shamelessness that your fathers are ignominous [sic]. You revel in their shame and delight in their dishonor, and you seek out fellow revelers with whom to make more conspicuous festival of their disgrace and shame. But you did not consider that they were human, and that no one constituted from clay and mutable matter can maintain himself forever superior to a human blunder. Indeed, it happens that a trace of some blemish clings even to the best of men.

Augustine and Jerome said that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. How can one trust or vouch with confidence that their writings have not been maliciously altered after the passage of so much time? For do not think that you are the only one eager for impiety and bold in things not to be dared. Rather, from this very condition of your own mind, consider that nothing hindered the guileful enemy of our race from finding vessels for such a deed.

Augustine and Jerome said these things. But perhaps they spoke out of the necessity of attacking the madness of the pagans or of refuting another heretical opinion or of condescending to the weakness of their hearers, or out of the necessity of any one of the many other reasons that human life daily presents. If such a statement perchance escaped their lips because one or more of the above reasons, why do you make a dogma and law of what was not spoken by them with dogmatic significance and so bring irreparable ruin upon yourself by contentiously enlisting them in your dementia?

That preacher of the whole world, the contemplator of the ineffable who ennobled nature with his manner of life, what did he say when he opposed himself to the Hellenists who were gushing forth a spate of words? He condescended to their infirmity and prepared to bring down their haughty brow. “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, ‘To the Unknown God.’ Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” [Acts 17:23] What then? Will you make dogma those utterances of Paul by which that doctor of the Church captured the wise men of Greece and led them by the hand from impiety to piety? Will you dare to denounce Paul, the caster down of idols, of having preached that same one whom the Greeks were worshipping and naming the unknown god? It would not be remarkable when we consider the operation of your wisdom and the web of your quibbling sophistries. Although that altar was erected to Pan, the city of Athens did not know the name of him whom the altar previously honored and so inscribed upon it: “To the unknown god.” Now because that adroit and heavenly man saw that the heathen were not convinced by the pronouncements of the prophets and the oracles of the Lord, he recalls them from those execrable devotions to the worship of the Creator. He uses the very proclamations of the devil to condemn the devil’s tyranny; from the devil’s citadel, he destroys the dominion of his authority; he cultivates piety amidst impiety and produces for us shoots of salvation out of perdition; from the snare of the devil, he strengthens them to run the course of the Gospel; he makes the summit of apostasy a portal of access through which they can enter into the bridal chamber and immaculate nuptials of Christ: the Church. Just so was that sublime mind, wherein was borne strength from on high, vigorous to wound and to subjugate the enemy by the enemy’s own weapons. What then? Because Paul overcame him with the enemy’s own weapons, will you on that account honor those weapons and call them divine and wield them for your own slaughter? How many like examples can be found in him who wisely disposed all things in the strength of the Spirit!

But what need is there of examples? He himself says with a clear voice: “unto the Jews I become a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the Law, as under the Law, that I might gain them that are under the Law; to them that are without Law as without Law, (being not without Law to God, but under the Law to Christ) that I might gain them that are without Law.” [I Cor. 9:20-21] Will you then, on that account, restore Judaism, or will you legislate lawlessness instead of the divine and human laws for the conduct of our life and shamelessly—nay rather godlessly—say that such are the commandments and such is the preaching of Paul?

Indeed, in how many of our blessed and holy fathers is it possible to find such things! Look at Clement, the high priest of Rome, and the books which are known from him as Clementine (I do not say write, since ancient report has it that Peter the Coryphaeus commanded that they be written). Consider Dionysios of Alexandria, who from his opposition to Sabellios all but joins hands with Arius. Consider that splendor of sacred-martyrs, Methodios of Patara, who does not reject the belief that the angels had fallen into mortal desire and bodily intercourse, although they are of a bodiless nature and without passions. I shall pass over Pantaenos and Clement, as well as Pierios and Pamphilos and Theognostos, sacred men and teachers of sacred learning, whom we celebrate with great honor and acceptance, especially Pamphilos and Pierios, distinguiished [sic] by the trials of martyrdom. Although we do not accept every one of their statements, we grant them honor for a distinguished life and for their other doctrines. Along with the aforementioned, we shall also pass by the Fathers from the West: Irenaeus, high priest of God, who received the supervision of sacred things in Lugdunum, and his disciple Hippolytus, the martyr among high priests: men wonderful in many respects, though at times some of their writings do not refrain from digressing from exactitude.

Will you then apply your disjunctive premise against all of these men and, with raised brows, say: “Either these men ought to be honored and their writings should not be rejected, or, if we reject some of their words, we should at the same time reject the men themselves”? Will they not more fairly turn your facile argument back upon you, saying: “Why, man, do you join what cannot be joined? If you really call us fathers, why are you not afraid to take up arms against the fathers and, what is graver, against our common Master, the Creator of all? But once you decided to be savage against us, are you not evidently insane when you simultaneously call us fathers and stretch patricidal hands toward us?” How many ways your sophistry can be turned against you! But as we passed by the fathers we named, so also let us forego discussion of these points for the present.

Who does not know that the great Basil, that royal pillar, who preserved piety undefiled in the inner chambers of his soul although he was silent about the divinity of the Spirit? O soul fervid with divine love, but not flaring with an open flame lest it quickly be quenched by that selfsame progress and open splendor! He then, “ordered his words with judgement” [Psalm 111:5] and contrived that piety be proclaimed rather with gradual advances. (When it has been instilled gently into men’s souls, the flame of belief arises more strongly; for the mental eye, especially of the many, is wont to be darkened by a swift and sudden assault of light, just as lightning blurs the sight, especially of those who have weak vision.) For this reason, he is silent, he who more than anyone else was consumed with fervor to preach; yet he maintained silence, so that at a more fitting season he could preach with stronger voice what he had kept silent. One would have to compose a voluminous book if one wished to list the names of all such men and their reasons for often not revealing the flower of truth. Their ultimate consideration was how this flower might bloom more beautifully and how its growth might burgeon, in order that they might gather an abundant harvest. We admire such men for their inspiration which surpasses reason and for their economy wrought in wisdom. But if one should impose such things upon the Church as laws and dogmas, we would consider him an enemy of those saints, a foe of truth, and a destroyer of piety. Since he becomes guilty by himself, we would condemn him with the judgments that he himself provides.

You bring forward the western fathers, rather you wrangle to spill this deep gloom over all the world. But from that very West I shall kindle for you a never setting, noetic light of piety, whose brilliance your darkness cannot resist but must recede. “Ambrose said the Spirit proceeds from the Son”; this turbidity proceeds from your tongue. But the thrice glorious Damascus, coruscating with Orthodoxy, pronounces the contrary, and at once your gloom is dispelled. For by confirming the Second Council, whose dogmas the ends of the world affirm, he professes resplendently that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. “Ambrose and Augustine said” . . . . [sic] Again, more murk pouring forth from your tongue. But Celestine did not say it, did not hear it, did not admit it; but blazing with the light of Orthodoxy, he dissipates the murk of your words.

But why should I be occupied with others? Leo the Great, who showed the sacred charge of Rome even more sacred and was the pillar of the Fourth Council, teaches clearly that the All-holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. He shines forth the same effulgence of Orthodoxy, not only upon the entire West, but also to the bounds of the East through his God-inspired, dogmatic epistles, through the legates who exercised his authority, and through the concord with which he illuminated that great assembly collected by God. Not only that, but if anyone should stand forth to teach a tenet different from the Synod’s doctrine, Leo sentences those of the priestly rank to be deprived of their priesthood, while laics, whether as monastics or adhering to public life, are placed under anathema. Those matters which that God-inspired Council decreed, the divine Leo openly ratified through the sacred men Paschasinus, Lucensius, and Boniface, as one may hear myriads of times from them; indeed, not only from them, but also from him who had sent them. Dispatching synodical letters, Leo himself bears witness and confirms that the speeches, spirit, and decisions of his delegates are not theirs but rather his own. Yet even if there were nothing of this kind, it suffices that they were his representatives at the Council, and that when the Council ended, he professed to abide by its decisions.

But nothing surpasses hearing the sacred words themselves. After an exposition of the faith which the First and the Second Councils established and handed down, the Council says: “Therefore, this wise and salutary Symbol of divine grace is sufficient for full knowledge and confirmation of piety.” It says full, not partial, or requiring any addition or omission. And how is it full? Turn your attention to what follows. It says: “It teaches to perfection concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” How does the Council teach to perfection? It proclaims that the Son is begotten from the Father and that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. And after a little: “On account of those who fight against the Holy Spirit, it ratifies the doctrine concerning the essence of the Holy Spirit handed down to later times by the One Hundred and Fifty Fathers who had gathered in the imperial city.” And how did they determine the doctrine concerning the essence of the Holy Spirit? Obviously, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Therefore, he who teaches a doctrine different from this one abrogates their authority, and he has reached the point in his audacity of confounding and confusing the very essence of the Spirit. Next consider these words: “Because of those who fight against the Holy Spirit.” And who were they? Formerly, they were those who in place of the immaculate oracles proclaimed Macedonios as their teacher. But nowadays, it is they who oppose Christ and His mystagogy. But I have no one to name, so destitute of a head is the godlessness of those who rush to perdition instead of to the Savior. Indeed, these things are pronounced by the Council with a many-tongued voice moved by the Spirit, they are confirmed by all votes, and the all-wise Leo concurs resoundingly. Apply your mind, then, to what follows: Towards the end of the whole section of the acts it says: “The holy and ecumenical Council, therefore, has decreed these things, which have been enacted by us with care and diligence upon every side.” (Manifestly the leader of the Council was Leo, possessing a kingly mind and speech.) What did it decree? “No one is permitted to declare a different faith, that is to say, neither to write it nor to assent to it nor to think it nor to teach it to others. As for those who dare to assent to another faith, that is they proffer or teach or hand down a different Symbol (Creed) to those who wish to return to the knowledge of the truth from paganism or Judaism or any sort of heresy, if they be bishops or clerics, let the bishops be deprived of their diocese and the clerics of their office; but if they be monks or laymen, let them be anathematized.”

See, O blind men, and hear, O deaf men, you who reside in the heretical West and are held by darkness! Gaze attentively towards the perpetually shining light of the Church and regard courageous Leo; rather, give ear to the trumpet of the Spirit, which pronounces these things against you through him. Fear your own father at least, even if you reverence no one else. Rather, through him reverence also the others who found favor with former councils and are enrolled among the distinguished fathers. You ascribe the title of father to Augustine, Jerome, and others resembling them. In so doing, you do well, although not in the purpose for which you invoke them, but because you do not consider it praiseworthy to despise their name of father. And indeed, if your scheming concerning the fathers proceeded no further, it would call for a lesser punishment, inasmuch as your crime was unfulfilled. For to begin an impious purpose but not to bring it to completion curtails the seriousness of the guilt and abates and mitigates the inevitability of punishment. You determined to scare us with the fathers against whom you are insolent. But the choir of fathers whom piety opposes to your scheming are fathers of fathers. For you can not deny that they are the fathers of those whom you consider your fathers; but even if you do deny it, they will not.

Consider the eminent Vigilius, equal in throne and rank of glory with the foregoing. He attended the Fifth Council which is also adorned with holy and ecumenical decrees. Like an unerring rule, he conformed himself to its true dogmas. He voiced agreement in the other matters and, with zeal, matching that of those Fathers before him and of his own time, he proclaimed that the all-holy [sic] and consubstantial Spirit proceeds from the Father; moreover, he, too, subjected to the same bonds of anathema those who chose to promote any other definition of dogma than the unanimous and common faith of the pious.

Consider the noble and good Agatho, who also was adorned with the same manly deeds. Through his deputies, he convened and made illustrious the Sixth Council (which likewise shines with ecumenical rank), being present there, if not in body, in will and in all solicitude. Wherefore he preserved the Symbol (Creed) of our sincere and pure faith without innovation, identical with that of the preceding synods; furthermore, he confirmed the Council by putting under the same ban those who would dare to violate anything dogmatized by it, or rather, things which were dogmatized from the beginning.

But how shall I pass over in silence the high priests of Rome, Gregory and Zacharias, men who were distinguished in virtue, who increased their flock through divinely wise instructions, and, indeed, who shone with the gifts of miracles? For although neither of them assembled at a council accorded ecumenical authority, yet in imitation of them, they taught openly and plainly that the All-holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Gregory flourished not long after the Sixth Council, and Zacharias, a hundred sixty-five years later. These men enshrined the dogma and preaching of the Lord and the fathers inviolate in their soul as though in a pure and immaculate bridal chamber. Thence, through the pious preaching of the former in the Latin tongue and of the latter in the Greek speech, they joined their flock to Christ, the true God and Bridegroom of our souls. As I have said, however, this wise Zacharias, in addition to those very beneficial ones composed as dialogues, made other sacred writings of the sacred Gregory to resound throughout the whole world by means of the trumpet of the Greek language. Towards the end of the second dialogue when Archdeacon Peter, a God-loving man, questioned why the power of miracles is present more in a small portion of saint’s relics than in the whole relic, this Godbearing pair explained that although divine grace was present in both, its operation was rather displayed in the case of a particle. For no one doubts concerning entire relics that they are the bodies of the saints they are said to be, or that miracles can proceed from them by the authority of the victorious souls who together with those bodies sustained trials and labors; but not a few weaker persons insult the particles by doubting whether they belong to those saints to whom they are ascribed, or whether they are endowed with the same grace and power. Therefore, where doubt seemed to obtain, there rather, beyond all hope, the enhypostatic and inexhaustible Font of good things gushes forth miracles more abundantly, both in number and magnitude. When this pair, the one, as I have said, in Latin and the other by translation into Greek, had resolved the aforementioned doubt, along with many others under inquiry, they appended these words a little further on: “The Comforter Spirit proceeds from the Father and abides in the Son.”

John the Forerunner, the foremost in grace, declared this sacred doctrine, and by him were the multitude of the faithful initiated, and so piety is discerned as possessing forever the adornment of this doctrine. For he who is affirmed to be little less than superhuman baptized the Font of life and immortality, the Master and Creator of all, the purification of the world in the streams of the Jordan; and seeing the heavens opened—a miracle testified by miracles—he saw the All-holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove [Cf. John 1:32-33]. Upon seeing the unseeable, the very voice of the Word proclaimed: “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and abiding upon Him.” The Spirit then, descending from the Father, abides upon the Son, or, if you wish, in the Son, for a change of prepositions in this passage makes no difference. Also the Prophet Esaias, delivering similar oracles from above and declaring the prophecy in the person of Christ, says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me.” [Esaias 61:2; Luke 4:18] Previously, you heard the illustrious Gregory and Zacharias—for they perchance will be more suited to change your impertinence to respect—you heard them assert that the Spirit abides in the Son. Why did you not immediately return thence to the phrase of Paul in which he says: “The Spirit of His Son”? [Gal. 4:6] So doing, instead of fashioning that monstrous procession, you would have been raised up to understand that because the Spirit abides in the Son, He is fittingly called the Spirit of the Son. The abiding of the Spirit in the Son is not such an abstruse reason or forced argument for His being called the Spirit of the Son. For which comes closer to the meaning given by the apostolic utterance: that the Spirit abides in the Son or that He proceeds from the Son? Indeed, even the very juxtaposition is unseemly. For the Baptist of our common Master trumpets the former, and of old the Prophet Esaias prophesied the same. The Savior Himself, reading this oracle, confirmed it. Consequently, receiving thence this mystical teaching, piety prescribes it for instruction to all the faithful. But you, rising from the murky gates of impiety, you war with God by asserting that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, instead of preaching that the Spirit abides in the Son and upon the Son. He remains in the Son. For this reason is it said that He is of the Son, as well as for the reason I have cited beforehand, viz., that He is of the same nature and divinity and glory and kingdom and virtue. Additionally, if you will, He is of the Son because He anoints Christ. “For the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me,” and also because the conception that transcends reason came to pass when He overshadowed the Virgin, and that ineffable Child came forth without seed. Moreover, He is of the Son because He also sends Christ: “For He hath sent Me to preach the Gospel to the poor.” [Luke 4:18] Therefore, by reason of one or more of the above expressions, how much better and more consistent were it for you to think and to say that He is called the Spirit of the Son and the Spirit of Christ, rather than to discount such cogent and consistent reasons and to try to corrupt the dogmas of the Church with peculiar lies and vacuous imaginings? But let the distinguished Zacharias and Gregory again come forward and be my helpmates in refuting your opinion; for even the most impudent of men have more respect for a refutation made by one’s own kindred.

If Gregory and Zacharias, though so many years distant from one another, did not differ in their views about the procession of the All-holy Spirit, then certainly the intervening sacred choir of primates who supervised in succession the sacerdotal institutions of Rome also professed and nurtured the same faith without any innovation. (For by the extremes are the intermediate readily contained and at the same time limited, thus they are conjoined and take the same direction.) Indeed, if any of the holy men who preceeded [sic] or followed them were found turning aside to another doctrine, it is quite certain that he would have cut himself off from that choir and throne and high priesthood, inasmuch as he had severed himself from their faith. Consequently, the aforementioned choir of holy men did preserve piety their whole life.

But are you ignorant of ancient things and too sluggish to examine the doctrine of your fathers, who were fathers indeed? Recently (the second generation has not yet passed) that eminently celebrated Leo, who also was adorned with miracles, removed all pretext for heresy from everyone; for when expressing the sacred doctrine of our fathers, Latin words often did not precisely, clearly, or aptly fit the sense. The meagreness of that language could not match the breadth of Greek. Consequently, owing to the poverty of a vocabulary that inadequately and imprecisely expounds the meaning of the Greek, many suspected a diversity of faith. It is for this reason that the divinely wise man conceived an idea. (The idea was conceived not only because of what we have just said, but also because of that heresy now openly and unrestrainedly proclaimed, but then only being whispered of in the city of Rome.) He commanded that the Romans too recite the sacred Symbol of the Faith in Greek. By this divinely inspired plan, he supplemented and redressed the inadequacy of Latin and removed from the pious the suspicion of a difference in faith, thereby quickly cutting off at the roots the pollution then burgeoning in the Roman commonwealth. In the city of Rome, therefore, he posted notices and edicts that the sacred Symbol of our Faith be recited in the same Greek tongue with which it had been first proclaimed by the synodical statements and decrees, and that it be recited in Greek even by those who used Latin in the mystic and sacred rites. Not only for Rome did he legislate it, but also throughout all the provinces which deferred to that high priesthood and rule of Rome, he sent sermons and synodical letters that everyone think and do the same; and he insured the immutability of the doctrine by anathemas.

This practice was kept reverently not only during his high priesthood, but also during that of the eminent Benedict, that meek and kindly man who was radiant with ascetical practices and who succeeded him to the high priestly throne. Benedict strove not to be second to him in favoring and strengthening this practice even if he had been ranked second in order of time. But if after them, the aforementioned very pious and useful practice of the Churches was curtailed and subverted by someone feigning reverence with a deceitful tongue, he himself would be aware of it. Such a one would certainly have to mask his true opinion. Although he could not endure that the awesome Symbol of the Faith was on the lips of everyone, he dared not oppose with bared head excellent and God-beloved works. However, it is not my task to recount abysmal crimes circumstantially with names. Indeed, now he knows bitterly the penalty of his murky audacity and miserably is he paying it yonder. But let him cast himself into the place of silence (for like me, he also does not speak, albeit not by his own will). The inspired Leo, however, did not end that good and God-inspired foresight and action with the abovementioned deeds. In the treasury of the chiefs of the apostles, Peter and Paul, hoarded away among the sacred heirlooms from the most ancient times when piety was flourishing, there were two shields, upon which were engraved with Greek letters and words the oft-repeated sacred exposition of our Faith. He deemed it right that these shields be read aloud in the presence of the Roman populace and be exhibited for all to see. Many of those who saw and read them are still among the living.

These men shone thus with piety: they preached that the Spirit proceeds from the Father as did my John also—he is mine because, aside from other reasons, he was more in harmony with us than the others. Our John, then, being manly in mind, was manly also in piety, and manly in hating and subduing every injustice and ungodliness. He was able to prevail not only in the sacred but also in the civil laws and to transform disorder into order. Through his very religious and illustrious legates Paul, Eugenius and Peter, high priests and priests of God who attended our synod, this grace-filled high priest of Rome accepted the Symbol of the Faith as the Catholic Church of God and the high priests of Rome had done before him. He both subscribed and confirmed it by the mind and tongue and sacred hands of those very illustrious and admirable men whom we have mentioned. Moreover, the sacred Adrian, his successor, sent us a synodical letter according to ancient custom, in which he preached the same piety and taught that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Consequently, those sacred and blessed high priests of Rome both believed and taught thus throughout their life, and they remained in the same confession until they passed from this perishable life to the imperishable. Can those diseased with heretical sickness claim that they drank the deadly poison of this great impiety from any of the aforementioned without immediately becoming adversaries of them who triumphantly enlightened the West with Orthodoxy?

But do you still not wish to lay aside this error of yours? Then I shall incant other charms over you, charms taken from the utterances of the Holy Spirit, even though, instead of repenting, you study to imitate the asp that plugs its ears to the voice of the charmers [V. Psalm 57:4-5]. The All-holy Spirit is called the Spirit of God, for the Savior says: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God.” [Matt. 12:28] He is called the Spirit of the Father: “For it is not ye that speak,” the same font of truth again declares, “but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” [Matt. 10:20] He is named the Spirit of God, for Esaias cries out: “And the Spirit of God shall rest upon Him.” [Esaias 11:2] He is called the Spirit which is of God: Paul, that great voiced preacher of right dogmas proclaims, “Ye have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God” [Cf. I Cor. 2:12] and “But if ye be led by the Spirit of God, ye are not in the flesh.” [Cf. Rom. 8:9] He is called the Spirit of the Lord: Esaias cries, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me.” [Esaias 61:1] Again He is called: The Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus Christ, for Paul again initiates us into mysteries saying “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father,” [Gal. 4:6] and “the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus Christ dwell in you,” [Cf. Rom. 8:11] and “Ye are not in the flesh, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” [Gal. 8:9] Observe attentively that the Spirit is called of God, from God the Father; of the Lord; of Him that raised up Christ from the dead; also, the Spirit of the Father. Therefore, when you say: the Spirit of God, or of the Father, or of the Lord, or of Him that raised up Jesus Christ, or the Spirit which is from God, do these terms denote the same thing as signified by the words: “The Spirit proceeds from the Father”? But no one is so foolish or has come to such complete ignorance of these simple words that he cannot easily see at a glance that although each of these terms refers to the same persons, yet in the phrase, “the Spirit proceeds from the Father,” the word Spirit conveys a different meaning from that in the phrase, “the Spirit of God,” or “of the Lord,” or any of the other phrases mentioned. For by the verb, the former declares procession, but the latter phrases by no means do so. Though the latter phrases were uttered because the Spirit proceeds from Him, yet none of the words in these phrases can be interpreted as procession. For to say the Spirit proceeds from the Father is manifestly different from what is signified by the appellations “spirit of God” or “of the Lord” and the like.

Truly, even if each of these phrases did signify procession, this fact would also be in our favor, inasmuch as the divine utterance certainly has declared with the very same words that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. For even if this premise be accepted a myriad of times, i.e., that the sense of these phrases is that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, why is it never once declared that the Spirit proceeds from the Son? Is it impermissible to represent that these words have declared it when they in no way possess such a meaning, and when neither in the divine utterances nor in human and God-bearing words has it ever been stated explicitly that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. The Spirit is consubstantial because He proceeds, He does not proceed because He is consubstantial. Even if the phrases “the Spirit of God” and the like originated primarily and principally by reason of the procession, yet other phrases such as, “Spirit of the Son” or “Spirit of Christ” and the like are attributed to diverse other reasons (e.g., that the Spirit is consubstantial with Him, or that He anoints Him, or that He abides upon Him, or that He is in Him). Therefore, even if we grant that procession is the principal reason why the Spirit is said to be of God and of the Lord and the like, although these locutions do not of themselves declare procession, yet how is it possible to look for procession in the other phrases? Several reasons are postulated why He is praised as the Spirit of the Son and of Christ, and procession need not even be numbered among them.

But you turned your ears and mind rather to impiety, and when you heard the words the “Spirit of Christ” or “the Spirit of the Son,” you ignored everything which would hinder your fall from divine knowledge, and you ran headlong to what no one had ever been induced to assert. The Spirit is said to proceed from the Father; He is also called the Spirit of the Father, and of God, and the other names to which our discourse has often referred. However, none of these locutions, except the first, signifies procession. He is called the Spirit of the Son and of Christ and similar things, but nowhere is it stated that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. Since, then, procession was never mentioned, is it not totally stupid and erroneous to refer these phrases to what had never been uttered in any way? For even they who are rash in everything will not dare to assert that it is possible to find it stated in the sacred oracles with these very words, that the Spirit proceeds from the Son.

But pay attention to me herein also. The Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ, and it is not difficult to learn from Esaias, or even better, from the Lord’s own voice and reading of Esaias’ words, why He is called so. He said, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me.” [Esaias 61:2; Luke 4:18] He is called the Spirit of the Lord for one reason, and the Spirit of the Son for another. The reason why He is called the Spirit of the Lord is because He is consubstantial, and the anointing is the reason why He is called the Spirit of the Son, although He is still consubstantial. He is the Spirit of Christ [the anointed one] [sic] because He anoints Him. The Truth itself declares, “The Spirit is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me.” The Spirit anoints Christ. How do you understand that, O man? Is He anointed by reason that He partook of flesh and blood and became man, or by reason that He existed from all eternity as God? but [sic] I do not suppose that even you will ever dare to affirm the latter even though you are rash in everything. For the Son is not anointed as God—away with the thought! Therefore, in so far as He is man, Christ is anointed by the Spirit; and since the Spirit anoints Christ, He is called the Spirit of Christ. But you say, “Because He is called the Spirit of Christ, He certainly also proceeds from Christ.” Accordingly, the Spirit of Christ will not come forth from Him because He is God, but because He is man; consequently, the Spirit will not have been existent from the beginning and together with the Father before the ages, but only from the time when the Son assumed human substance.

Turn your mind, and rouse yourself from error, O man, and do not prove your injury and wound resistant to all cure. The Spirit is glorified as the Spirit of Christ because the Spirit anoints Him. Your pernicious precept, however, asserts that He is said to be the Spirit of Christ because He proceeds from Him. But as the discourse has shown, if we reason in accordance with your doctrine, then the Spirit proceeds from Christ not because Christ is God, but because He assumed our substance. If, therefore, the Spirit proceeds from Christ inasmuch as Christ partook of our substance, and He again proceeds from the Son inasmuch as He is God (for such is the bidding of your precept), and if the Spirit of the Son and the Spirit of Christ are really consubstantial, then it would be logically concluded that His human nature is consubstantial with the divinity. For you make the Spirit proceed both before the incarnation and after the incarnation, but you still have not taken away consubstantiality. So, if the Spirit of Christ is consubstantial with the Spirit of the Son, and consubstantial also with the Son’s assumed nature (for you insist that the Spirit proceeds from it), then the divinity of Christ is demonstrated to be consubstantial with His humanity by incontrovertible logic. For the present, I refrain from demonstrating that an identical consideration of these propositions will also conclude that the flesh of Christ is consubstantial with the Father Himself. What could be more godless than this blasphemy or more wretched than this error?

But you still do not wish to perceive over what precipices you are cast and into what pits of the soul’s corruption you are buried, because you are not willing to be convinced by Christ and His disciples, or to conform to the ecumenical councils, or to turn your mind to reasonable instructions drawn from the sacred oracles. Rather, you reproach our common Lord, you speak falsely of the courageous Paul, you incite sedition against the ecumenical and holy Councils, and you calumniate fathers. You banish from your mind and consign to the devil your high priests and fathers who are truly fathers, and you are deaf to the considerations of reason. Indeed, everything that would save you has been drowned in the passion for your unfounded, preconceived opinion. But instead of us, let the psalmist David, the ancestor of God, cry out to you: “Understand then, ye mindless ones among the people; and ye fools, at length be wise,” [Psalm 93:8] lest at any time the common enemy of our race, who has surrounded us with so many snares, carry off your souls like a “ lion, ravenous and roaring” [Psalm 21:13] and “there be none to deliver you.” [Psalm 49:22]

These are the outlines which you had asked for, most reverent and learned of men. But if ever the Lord will return again the captivity of our books and secretaries to us [Psalm 125:1:5], if the All-holy Spirit inspire and permit us, in a short time you will also have the arguments developed by these enemies of the Spirit, rather these raving enemies of the whole, most good, and tri-hypostatic divinity. Certainly, nothing remains therein which they have not blasphemed in their madness. Indeed, not only will you have those whom they cite, from whom they adduce proofs of their utterances, but also their own villainy and deception in these matters; above all, you will have the unimpeachable testimony of our blessed and divinely wise Fathers by which these men are confuted and the doctrine of apostasy is entirely expelled from piety.

Chapters of Patriarch Photios against the followers of old Rome,
showing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone,
and not from the Son.

1. If the Spirit is indeed simple but proceeds from the Father and the Son, then these two would certainly be considered one person, and there would be introduced here a Sabellian fusion, or better to say, a semi-Sabellian fusion.

2. If indeed the Holy Spirit does proceed from the Father and the Son, He would be altogether double and composite. If the Holy Spirit is ascribed to two principles, where will the much hymned monarchy be?

3. If the Father and the Son both originate the Spirit, the Father will be both the direct and indirect originator of the Spirit on account of His proceeding also from the Son.

4. Certainly, if the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father is perfect, then that from the Son is superfluous.

5. If the Son has the property of originating the Spirit like the Father, the property of origination will be common to both. But how will the property be shared in common? If by opposition, will not one destroy the other? For contraries are destructive of one another. If by divergence, then part of the Spirit will proceed in one way and part in another, and He will be composed of unequal parts.

6. If, indeed, both the Son and the Spirit have come forth from one cause, namely the Father, and the Son again originates the Spirit, then the Spirit should also originate the Son. For the Father and Originator brought forth both with equal honor.

7. If, indeed, the Son does share with the Father in originating the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit will also share in it, for all that the Father has in common with the Son, He also has in common with the Holy Spirit. Hence He will be at the same time cause and caused, which thing is more monstrous than the fables of the Greeks.

8. If the Son has the power of origination, but the Spirit is denied it, He is inferior in power to the Son, which was the insanity of Macedonios.

9. They allege as an excuse, however, that Ambrose wrote thus in his treatises concerning the subject, as did also Augustine and Jerome. One must say in defense of these men that perhaps the Pneumatomachians corrupted their writings, or perhaps they spoke according to the tactics used by the great Basil, who for a time refrained from preaching the divinity of the All-holy Spirit, or perhaps they, since they were only human, had been led astray from sound theology; for many great men, like Dionysios of Alexandria, Methodios of Patara and Pierios, Pamphilos, Theognostos, and Irenaeus of Lugdunum with his disciple Hippolytus, have suffered so in certain things.

10. So Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome said what the Romans claim; but the hierarchs of the Seven Councils did not. All the councils in succession confirmed the definition of our faith. The leaders and lights of the Roman church agreed with them without any contradiction and decreed that it was not permitted to add or subtract anything from the aforesaid definition of the faith, and that he who dared to do so should absolutely be cast out of the Church.

11. Divine Gregory the Dialogist, who flourished not long after the Sixth Council, preached and wrote in Latin that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Zacharias, a hundred sixty-five years later, translated the Dialogues into Greek and said “the Comforter Spirit, proceeds from the Father and abides in the Son;” for he had been taught this by the Forerunner, who saw the Spirit descending like a dove and abiding upon Him [John 1:32].

12. Leo and Benedict, great hierarchs of Rome in later times, decreed that the Symbol of Faith be recited in Greek at the sacred rites in Rome and in the other Churches subject to her, lest the inadequacy of Latin furnish an occasion for blasphemy. This Leo, when he had opened the treasury of the apostolic Church of the Romans, brought forth two shields which had been preserved among the other sacred heirlooms and which were engraved with the pious exposition of the Faith in Greek letters and words, and which he ordered to be read before the entire Roman people. Up to the time of the pious patriarch of Constantinople Sergios, the Roman high priests sent confirmatory letters of their belief at the beginning of their high priesthood to all the patriarchal sees, and in these letters they inscribed the Symbol of Faith without any variation.

13. But what need is there to say much? The Son and Master reveals that “the Spirit proceeds from the Father” [John 15:26]; and likewise great Paul declares, saying: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be anathema” [Gal. 1:8]. And who will ask for another teacher unless he be patently insane?

Another portion of the same work from
Vienna MS Gk. Theol. 40

9A. When David said: “By the Spirit of His mouth,” he taught also that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, since he applies the phrase “of His mouth” to the Father, not to the Son, in order that he might destroy by anticipation the blasphemy of those who hold that the Spirit proceeds also from the Son.

10A. In all other cases, procession denotes simple egress, as when it is said in the Psalms: “He went forth, and spake in a like manner.” [Psalm 40:6] But the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father does not signify simply egress, which is accidental, coming to pass and then ceasing, but it is an essential and natural procession, signifying the mode of being and declaring the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, Who Is not by generation, as is the Son, but by procession, in His own proper manner. For the characteristic property of the Son is to be begotten by nature from the Father, but the characteristic property of the Holy Spirit is to proceed by nature from the Father. They differ from each other only thus, namely, in the characteristic property of subsistence, while in other respects they are one in essence, in nature, in dignity, and in power and, to put it simply, one in everything else, both with the Father and with each other. How then do you say that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father and from the Son?” [sic] If as cause, lo, then there are two causes and two principles, Father and Son, and you are advocating a dyarchy rather than a monarchy; but it is not our task to speak about the many absurdities following from this belief. However, if the Spirit proceeds in another way, as if from the mutual linking by reason of their reciprocal indwelling and interchange of the other properties, and, to speak simply, proceeds as if being sent, then you are sound in your understanding. For just as the Father sends the Son, so does the Son send the Spirit. “But when,” He says, “the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me.” Nevertheless, you err in another respect: first, in changing and falsifying through this addition the exposition of faith confirmed by the Seven councils (and no one but you has done it). Secondly, that and, which you interpolate between the two phrases and which we are accustomed to call a conjunction, implies the meaning of equal procession from both the Father and the Son, even though you might understand the procession from the Son in another way, just as we said above. One ought, however, not only to think correctly but also not to scandalize others. For if he who gives scandal to one person has been judged worthy of a fearful punishment, according to the Gospels, what punishment will they deserve who have scandalized almost the entire world?

11A. When God the Son was speaking concerning the Holy Spirit, He said not once, but twice in the course of the same speech that the Holy Spirit is “from the Father.” [John 15:26] Why did He not say “and from Me”? Our opponents reply that he was speaking humbly as a man; but we, quickly answering, convict them at once of a lie. The words: “Whom I will send unto you,” were not spoken as man, but rather as God; for a man does not send God, if the Holy Spirit is indeed God. Therefore, twice He said “from the Father” in order to confirm such a sublime utterance and to stop the mouths of those who in the future would say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. This argument was propounded by the acumen of the very wise emperor, for he used it when he disputed with the bishop of Mediolanum.