7 Comments
User's avatar
William Daniel's avatar

Well in the quotations you provide, Epiphanios was quite clear on the distinction between 'proceed from' and 'receive of.' However, we should perhaps also consider that Pope Leo III refused Charlemagne's urging to include 'filioque' into the Creed (810), alongside the history of the later 'Photian Controversy,' during which period Rome steadfastly affirmed that the filioque insertion was not acceptable in the Creed. However, Rome only first used it in 1014 in the context of the restoration of Benedict VIII to the Papal throne by German King Henry II - thus for political reasons- and it did not come into general usage in the West until after the 2nd Council of Lyon 1274.

Expand full comment
Benjamin John's avatar

This comment doesn't address any points made by this article.

Expand full comment
Theodore Wilmot's avatar

It seems to me that Epiphanius is making the same distinction as Scripture between 'proceeding' and 'receiving', a distinction later fathers would also be careful to make but which would disappear from Latin theology by the time of the 'dogmatic definitions' of the Councils of Lyon and Ferrara-Florence.

Expand full comment
Benjamin John's avatar

No such disappearance occurred post-Lyons and Florence. Instead, the Latin tradition has always distinguished between the Spirit proceeding "principally" from the Father and "communicatively" from the Son. This is the difference between the Father being "principle without principle," and the Son being "principle with principle." St. Augustine explicates this at length in De Trinitate, and it's explicitly rehearsed at Florence.

Expand full comment
Fr John's avatar

It's rather odd to me that you see this as St Epiphanius accepting the theology of the filioque. It rather clearly isn't but rather is exactly what we would confess, far from the "as from one principle" dogmatization of the filioque in the medieval West.

Expand full comment
Benjamin John's avatar

This is an assertion not an argument.

Expand full comment
William Daniel's avatar

"Was there something more than just ignorance that caused the medieval Latins to believe that the Greeks had removed the Filioque from the creed?"

Perhaps there were other more important reasons that the Easterns had for not including the Filioque in the Symbol of the Faith, and for steadfastly refusing it over the centuries. Certainly Epiphanius' writings were not reason enough to include it.

Expand full comment