The question of the
“Provident” Trinity’s affiliation to the eternal Trinity was also
related to the Filioque issue. The following observations on this
point are basic ones. First of all, the Fathers had stressed that
the essence of God is altogether inconceivable, unthinkable and
incomprehensible, and, for the Fathers of the East, it is also
without participation, that is, one cannot participate in the
essence of God. According to the West, the Scholastics and
Aquinatus, it is possible to participate in the essence of
God. Therefore, from this aspect, we can discern the difference
between “theology” and “Providence (oikonomia)”. If “theology” were to concern
itself only with the essence of God, then there would have been no
problem, because, the essence of God is something incomprehensible
and as such, we would have no theology on the essence of God.
But theology, as a field of
reference to God as He is throughout eternity, is juxtaposed to
Providence (oikonomia), which preoccupied itself with the Trinity - the Triadic
form of God’s existence. Therefore, we cannot say that here we have
an absolute opposition, and that we have nothing to say; We can
speak of the persons of the Holy Trinity, and not only can we speak
of them, but – more importantly – we can participate in the life
of the three Persons. It is the life that God has precisely
invited us to participate in, through our theosis: our participation
in the life of the Trinity, by partaking of the filial, loving
association between the Father and the Son. And that is what
Christ did: he brought to this world, to us, this relationship
between the Father and the Son. And He said to us “now you are
also a part of this relationship, and my Father shall acknowledge
you as His sons”. This is the ultimate gift of adoption. It is
thus, that we enter the Triadic life of God.
Here, there is no room for
negation. One must be careful here, because lately, we have begun
to flirt somewhat excessively with Negation, as Lossky for example
did. There are very many dangers in this theory of Negation. With
regard to the essence of God, there is no doubt whatsoever that we
have Negation. Nobody can talk about the essence of God. But to
confess our faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that
is not Negation; we know that God is Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. With regard to the persons, we have affirmation;
and it is not only a logical and intellectual affirmation because we
have confessed it as such; it is a participation, an existential
participation, in which we partake of these personal associations of
God. With the Holy Trinity, there is no room for negation, except
perhaps during the use of analogies, none of which are befitting the
Holy Trinity. When we wish to describe the Trinity with human
analogies, the analogies will inevitably stop somewhere, as in the
analogy of the three (separate) persons etc.
Since we can, therefore, make
mention of God per se with regard to His Triadic existence and not
His essence, then the question is posed as to whether our reference
to the Trinity in God’s eternal existence is supported by, or rather
reveals, the same relations and the same attributes that are
revealed in ‘Providence (oikonomia)’. Let us take Augustine for example. When he
gives a definite hypostatic attribute to the Logos by naming Him
“God’s Knowledge”, then whenever the Logos reveals Himself within
the ‘providing’ Trinity, within ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, He must, above all,
reveal Himself with this hypostatic attribute of His, namely
Knowledge. In other words, this will be the revelation or the
cognitive means by which we may reach God. And in fact, during the
2nd and moreso in the 3rd century, the meaning
of Logos was conveyed in this sense. The Son’s relating to the
Logos in the Gospel of John, gave rise to Justin and a number of
other contemporary writers to see in the Person of Christ the
cognitive means by which we could reach God. That is why he placed
all philosophers within this “seminal” logos as he named it: They
are all participants of expression, therefore the attribute of the
Son is a revelatory means for the cognizance of God. At the same
time, the Holy Spirit manifests itself with other attributes, such
as the attribute of communion, hence the Holy Spirit presents God as
a communion.
Now, whether the Holy Spirit
and the Logos have these attributes in Their hypostases eternally,
or they take them on for our sake during ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, is a delicate
and very significant issue. The Greek Fathers avoided giving
definite hypostatic attributes to the Persons of the Holy Trinity,
because if they did what Augustine did by giving hypostatic
attributes, we would then have to say that whatever God is in His
eternal existence (for example that He is the Logos), this would
also apply during ‘Providence (oikonomia)’. In this way, we would arrive at a
compulsory ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, because if the Son were the Logos of God, or
the cognizance of God, then this cognizance must also permeate
‘Providence (oikonomia)’, in order for God to be recognized. He would perforce
have to be carried over to ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, through the Son. In
Mediaeval times, the question had been posed as to whether any other
of the Persons of the Holy Trinity could become incarnate. The
answer given by some was that this was possible; there was no
logical necessity for the Son alone to become incarnate. Other
contemporaries (and more recently Rahner and other western
theologians) claimed that only the Son could have become incarnate,
because He alone is the Logos Who makes God known. Within God
Himself eternally, God recognizes Himself through the Son – the
Logos. Therefore if God wants to make Himself known to us as well,
in Providence, He must again use this instrument of knowledge that
He has, i.e., the Logos. This choice is subsequently a compulsory
one that incarnates the Logos. It is not free.
On the other hand, if we avoid
giving a definite content to the attributes of the Persons, and of
course do not relate the Logos as God’s cognitive instrument, then
why should only the Son become incarnate? We have no logical
answer, no compulsory logical argument that could convince anyone
that only the Son could become incarnate, simply because He alone
has that attribute. Instead, we attribute it to freedom, inasmuch as
the Son said, “yes” to the Father freely, and that He took on this
mission ( Providence (oikonomia) ) upon Himself. We are thus moving within a
realm of freedom and not in an atmosphere of logical necessity.
Otherwise, if we were to give a positive content to the hypostatic
attributes, we would necessarily be moving along the lines of
logical need with regard to ‘Providence (oikonomia)’.
When the issue of the Filioque
is expanded on, you shall see how both Augustine and Aquinatus
indeed supported the argument that if the Son and Logos are the
cognizance of God, and the Spirit is the Love of God (note
Augustine’s argument which Thomas repeats), then the Spirit’s origin
must be eternally dependent on the Son also, because (as stressed by
Augustine) cognizance precedes Love; you cannot love something that
you do not recognize. This is a gross mistake, as analyzed in the
relative chapter; at any rate it gives rise to a logical argument, a
logical requisite. If you cannot love something that you do
not know, then God cannot love Himself, without prior cognizance of
Himself through the Son, and this can be so, only if based on the
association between memory and cognizance, which enables, specifies
and realizes the Mind’s cognitive ability, which is God. It is only
on this basis that Love – the Spirit - can be constructed. You can
understand how, in this way, we are dealing only with logical
necessities when we give a positive content or positive attributes
to the hypostases. And, by avoiding to give this definitive content,
the Greek Fathers are simultaneously introducing an air of freedom
to all the important questions such as “why does the Son become
incarnate, and not the Spirit?”
However, this means we cannot
fully relate the Trinity of ‘Providence (oikonomia)’ with the eternal Trinity of
Theology. There is a certain difficulty here. If we do not associate
it, we risk claiming that in ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, God did not give nor did
He show His true Self, but that He was somehow hiding something from
us; that He did not tell us who He actually is. Hence, we cannot say
that the Theological Trinity is one thing and the Providing Trinity
is another. We must state that the Trinity is one and the same.
Then where is the difference?
The difference is that for the Theological Trinity
we cannot say anything definitive as regards the content of the
personaes’ attributes. We have an element of negation here. For the
“Providing” Trinity we have positive things to say about the
attributes of the Persons, but this is only because these Persons
have freely undertaken these kinds of attributes within
Providence. That is, if the Son appears as the
revelation of the Father (he that has seen me has seen the Father),
this does not mean that in the eternal Trinity the Son necessarily
has this function and attribute. If the Spirit appears as love and
communion to us, and as that which creates the bond of love within
the Church, which builds the church etc., it doesn’t mean that
within the Theological Trinity the Holy Spirit has the same
function. Because by the same reasoning, we could say that the
Crucifixion of the Logos is similarly a part of the eternal,
Theological Trinity. Just as the Son undertakes a ministration, an
attribute, a relationship that He did not previously have eternally,
thus the Spirit and all the other attributes of Christ that we see
in Providence are not extensions of the Theological, eternal
Trinity. These are attributes taken on by the Persons freely, for
our sake.
At this point we must make another
important observation, i.e., it is precisely because these
attributes have to do with ‘Providence (oikonomia)’ and not theology,
the
differentiation of these attributes must be limited to ‘Providence
(oikonomia)’
only, and that when we refer to theology, we cannot make
such differentiations, i.e., to say that the One is Love and the
Other is Knowledge. None of these can be said with regard to
theology. So, what does this mean? It means that at the level of
theology, all actions - because they are in fact actions – are
uniform, and simultaneous. They diversify, at the level of
Providence.
Let
us take the Love of God. We cannot say that Love is a
characteristic of only One person. We must say that Love is the
common characteristic of all Persons. Like every other action, it
springs from the Father. “The Love of God and our Father”. It
participates in this action, just as the Son and the Spirit
participate in the one essence and the one action. And the action is
common. Every action coming from God is common to all three
Persons. It is only when we reach the level of ‘Providence
(oikonomia)’ that the
differentiation begins, and the distribution of attributes and
responsibilities. In Theology, we cannot do this at the level of the
eternal God.
This is equally important with
regard the to the unison of God; not from the aspect of essence for
which we can say nothing, but from the aspect of action.
Because as you know, it is by the action of God that He communicates
with us and we with Him. Saint Gregory Palamas made this
distinction between essence and action. It is of course an older
one, it dates back to the Cappadocians, but it was systematized and
exploited further, and the purpose of this distinction was to keep
the essence of God unaffected by ‘Providence (oikonomia)’. That is, God was to
maintain His transcendence, during His actions within Providence.
Of course the action of God is
not something that He acquires in order to enact ‘Providence
(oikonomia)’; it is
something that already exists. But in Theology, whih comes before
‘Providence (oikonomia)’, this action is uniform. During ‘Providence
(oikonomia)’, it is
expressed in different ways, without creating any division or
distance or separation of the three Persons.
The three
Persons in Providence
always act in unison, but not all three do the same thing. The
action of God becomes differentiated in the sphere of ‘Providence
(oikonomia)’,
without inducing a separation of the Persons. Where the Father is,
there the Son and the Spirit are; where the Son is, there the Father
and the Spirit are. They cannot part. But, whatever the Father does,
is not what the Son does, etc. All these differentiated actions of
God in ‘Providence (oikonomia)’ do not comprise extensions of differentiation
within he “eternal” Trinity.
Western theology reached the point
of relating ‘provisional’ differentiations to differentiations
within the “eternal” Trinity, that is, with ontological
differentiations. And this is one of the reasons that it has become
theologically trapped in the FILIOQUE as well.
The position of the Hellenic
Fathers automatically creates a radical distinction between theology
and ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, which was assuredly pointed out by
Basil the
Great (who by the way was the one who introduced this, as we have no
similar formulation before him), and we shall briefly outline the
history of this case.
In his work “On the Holy Spirit”,
Basil the Great introduces a glorification text – or rather,
defends a glorification text – which he had introduced in the
Liturgy in his province, which differed to the glorification that
was common at the time, and was of Alexandrian origin. The
Alexandrian form was “Glory to the Father, through the Son, in the
Holy Spirit”. Saint Gregory’s glorification – for which he was
obviously criticized and had to account for, by claiming that it was
a very ancient form – was the following: “Glory to the Father, also
to the Son, and the Holy Spirit”. He replaced the “through” (through
the Son) and the “in” (in the Holy Spirit) with “also” and “and”.
There is a theological expedience
in this replacement, which he expands on, in his work “on the Holy
Spirit”. The expedience is that with the former glorification – the
Alexandrian one – with its use of “through” and “in”, there is an
underlying innuendo of God on the basis of ‘Providence (oikonomia)’. Because it
is precisely in ‘Providence (oikonomia)’ that God appears to us, or, that we
recognize Him in this way: through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.
This way also contains the element of hierarchy, of classification;
i.e. the Son precedes and the Spirit follows. Basil the Great
wrote, for the reason that the “Spirit-militants” whom he wished to
thwart used this “in” (in the Holy Spirit) as a denoting of space,
so that when they said “in Spirit” in the glorification, and given
that “in” presupposes space, the Spirit is therefore understood as
being within creation, inside space, and therefore not within
Divinity. This was a pretext, but essentially, Basil wanted to
say something more. He made this distinction that I mentioned,
between the way in which we refer to God on the basis of
‘Providence (oikonomia)’, and the way in which we refer to God, not on the basis
of ‘Providence (oikonomia)’, but more on the basis of the Eucharist
experience, during Worship. Thus, this form of “though the Son, in
the Holy Spirit” is not necessary when we wish to express the
relations between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Take special
note of this detail, as it is very delicate.
In this way,
Basil the Great
creates a kind of negation, as the prepositions “through” and “in”
have something definite to say about the three Persons, while the
“also” and “and” do not say anything positive. They simply tell us
that the one is alongside the other. In this way, Theology (in the
true sense of the term) is stripped by Basil the Great, of the
associations between the three Persons that is observed in
‘Providence (oikonomia)’. And this is important, because as we shall see when we
discuss the FILIOQUE later on, the Alexandrian Fathers and
especially Saint Cyril of Alexandria, because they were based on
this glorification, had already reached the point of somehow
transferring the FILIOQUE to the eternal existence of God; i.e. the
dependence of the Spirit from the Son, as if the Spirit proceeded
eternally through the Son. We shall see, when we discuss the
FILIOQUE, how this had a certain basis and had been partially
accepted, that the Spirit proceeded through the Son, but it will
require extremely lengthy explanations. Our topic here is to stress
that, according to Basil the Great, the subject of God on the
basis of ‘Providence (oikonomia)’ includes associations of the
Persons that are
not necessarily associations that exist at the level of Theology.
That was why he made these changes to the prepositions in the
glorification. He replaced them with “also” and “and”, as a means
of declaring that while we can say “through” and “in” with regard to
Providence, in Theology there is another way, without the use of
“through” and “in”. Thus, he introduced a deep incision between the
“Providing” Trinity and the “Theological” Trinity, without implying
any other Trinity. The conclusion therefore from the all the above
is that the Holy Trinity that we see in ‘Providence (oikonomia)’ allows us to
give a definitive content to the hypostatic attributes. However, it
is a definitive content that we cannot extend into the “eternal”
Trinity.