Unifying Love

This championship feels different.

Maybe it is the long drought that has finally come to an end, bringing the first NBA championship to New York City since the early 1970s.

Maybe it is the rare situation of the championship team’s best player being a “small guard.”

Maybe it is the underdog story of this “small guard,” Jalen Brunson, given his nearly unrivaled feat of leading his Villanova team to two championships wasn’t enough to earn him a first-round selection before being brutally disrespected by his former team, the Dallas Mavericks.

Maybe it is the unique nature of the Knicks fans, parading the streets in a frenzy weeks before the championship was even won, blessing our timelines with the distinctly humorous chaos that is the NYC fanbase.

While it is likely a combination of the aforementioned factors, another factor cannot be denied: the special bond between Jalen Brunson and his assistant coach, otherwise known as his father Rick Brunson—a former New York Knick himself. There is something especially touching to witness firsthand not just the completion of a lifelong dream but more importantly to witness the joy that comes with celebrating it with the person who pushed and inspired him the most. Jalen Brunson is often vocal about the tough love he received from his father growing up, with much of it being documented.

Thus, while seeing a player reach his ultimate goal through persistence, dedication, and unparalleled focus is commonplace in sports, what isn’t commonplace is to have a front row seat to a story of a father pouring everything into his son—from a coaching perspective—throughout his entire lifetime and to continue doing so into adulthood, while being on the same team and both playing a vital role in helping the organization bring home the gold.

The embrace says it all.

The love between a father and his son is special.

The most pertinent reason why is because it reflects the essence of God.

God can literally be described as an Eternal Father, His Eternal Son, and the Eternal Love shared between the two.

As my fellow theology lovers know, one cannot discuss the Trinity without discussing the Filioque, meaning “and the Son” in Latin.

The Filioque is one of these “controversies” that seems to be irrelevant and can be labeled as a quarrel among theologians in the far off-land of niche Trinitarian theology that has no tangible impact on one’s faith.

There’s a bit of validity to that argument at first glance; after all, those who deny the Filioque nonetheless still believe and worship the Trinity, and that should be good enough right?

I agree to an extent that whether or not the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son practically speaking shouldn’t take up much mental real estate for most Christians because it is most practical to submit to the teachings of the Church, focusing on living a holy and virtuous life through prayer, repentance, almsgiving, and charity towards neighbors.

However, we are in the realm of theology so these “minute” details are important because at the end of the day, every teaching of the Church, no matter how insignificant to our modern sensibilities, must be true because it is logically inconsistent to think the Church can err through simple reasoning. God is a perfectly good Being—Goodness itself—and Christ specifically tells us He is the way, the truth, and the life, so we know that God is truth itself. Thus, the idea that God would contradict His nature by promulgating teachings that are false through His Church is literally unbelievable.

Catholicism is the perfect religion not in a vague or hyperbolic sense but in the most literal sense; the body of Christ cannot bear any imperfections. It is so logically coherent due to the Church’s divine abilities through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, thus there is an epistemological grounding for knowing which doctrines are true, which books are divinely inspired, and who can certainly intercede for us through its canonization process.

All of this is said to assert that one cannot hand wave the Filioque as niche ball knowledge left for the borderline autistic Thomists, but rather we must acknowledge it is a truth that must be affirmed. It is important for truth’s sake, and if you don’t care about what’s true and what isn’t, then this isn’t the right game for you.

However, in addition to knowing it is true through the Church’s guidance, upon closer review, accepting the Filioque actually makes sense.

A lot of sense.

To understand the context of the dispute, we must of course rewind, specifically to the Roman empire.

As we’ve covered several times, the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea occurred in the year of 325 AD, roughly a decade after Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, declaring Christianity legal. The most relevant product of the council was the formulation of the Nicene Creed:

For those who pay attention during Mass, yes, this looks a bit different than the one recited every Sunday. Not only is the last paragraph no longer said, but there is also a bit of an awkward gap after stating belief in the Holy Spirit, mainly because the Arian crisis the council convened to renounce focused on the divinity of Jesus Christ. However, after a small contingent of Christians began to posit that the Holy Spirit was some sort of angelic being that was created, the exact characteristics, that included divinity, of the Holy Spirit was clarified in the creed during the second council in Constantinople, giving us the formulation we recite today:

So close.

According to the creed, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and not from the Father and the Son.

Maybe all roads don’t lead to Rome after all.

There is more to the story, however.

In the 6th century, Spain, although the Arian crisis was formally condemned, was still arduously fighting against it, specifically against the Visigoth rulers that were sympathetic towards the heresy. Thus, the Spanish bishops wanted to show that the Son is not of a lower status than the Father but rather inherits everything from the Father, including the power of spiration of the Holy Spirit. The development of this theology was influenced by St. Augustine’s description of the Holy Spirit as the bond of love shared between the Father and the Son. Also playing an influence was the Athanasian creed, named after the notorious defender of Trinitarian orthodoxy against Arians, St. Athanasius of Alexandria. There are debates as to whether or not he is the authentic author of this creed—with Easterners obviously maintaining he is not—but many attribute the following formulation to him:

Drawing on Sts. Augustine and Athanasius, the Third Council of Toledo of 589 AD (regional not ecumenical) officially formalized the Filioque, marking the visible victory of orthodoxy over the heterodox Arianism that had permeated the Visigoth throne.

From Spain, the concept of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and Son began to spread throughout the West, with most notably the Frankish kingdom led by Charlemagne adopting it. Early in the 9th century, Pope Leo III affirmed it as orthodox doctrine but was hesitant to officially add it to the creed to ensure unity with the East. It would remain this way until the early 11th century, when Henry II, the HRE emperor, came to mass in Rome and quickly noticed the creed didn’t include the Filioque. He petitioned to Pope Benedict VIII for it to be added, and it was granted.

The East never adopted it and many scholars agree that it wasn’t the actual addition itself that was problematic but more so the fact that the West adopted it without their approval through an ecumenical council.

With the history out of the way, let’s analyze this from a theological perspective.

The East asserts that the Holy Spirit must proceed from the Father alone because this maintains the monarchy of the Father within the Trinity, as He alone must be the source of the other two Persons. Specifically, the Father begets the Son and spirates the Holy Spirit alone, and the Son is not involved with this spiration. The most important reason why the Son being involved in the spiration of the Spirit would cause a “breakdown of the Trinity,” as the YouTube clips always say, is because it appears to give a characteristic to both the Father and the Son that the Holy Spirit doesn’t have. This would be problematic because when it comes to the Trinity, characteristics can either be unique to the divine Persons that makes them distinct from the other Persons or one that is shared because it is common to the divine essence; thus to have a characteristic—spiration of the Holy Spirit—that two Persons have but a third doesn’t is incoherent within Trinitarian theology.

However, the immediate question that must be answered is what is the direct relation between the Son and the Holy Spirit? If both proceed / spirate from the Father alone, then there is only an indirect relation between the two, which is that they both come from the Father relationally. On a similar note, what would be the the differentiating factor between the Son and Spirit? Yes, one took on human flesh and saved humanity, and the other was sent to guide the Church, but in terms of characteristics with regards to their eternal begetting, there would be no differentiating factor between the two divine Persons.

On the flip side, the Filioque settles this, as all three persons have a direct relationship with one another: The Father eternally begets the Son and eternally spirates the Holy Ghost, the Son is eternally begotten by the Father and spirates the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Spirit is eternally spirated from the Father and Son. Hence, with the Filioque, there is an immediate relationship between the Son and Spirit, not just in essence but in relational origins. Not only does the Filioque maintain the unity between all three Persons through ensuring each one is directly related to the other in terms of origination, but also Jesus Christ is specifically the Son who is begotten because He comes from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit proceeds, rather than being begotten, specifically because He proceeds from both. In other words, proceeding and begetting are not arbitrarily assigned to the Son and Spirit respectively, but rather are unique and specific terms because of the different principles involved.

As referenced earlier in the Spanish Arian crisis, another major reason why the Filioque must be true is because Jesus Christ is the perfect image of the Father, and everything that the Father has, the Son must have also. The only exception to this is paternity, as this is incompatible with Christ’s role as the Son, since it would be a logical contradiction for the Son to beget Himself. Since the Son is perfectly like the Father, it is fitting that the Son, along with the Father, make up one principal from which the Holy Spirit proceeds.

To simplify, the Father spirates, and since the Son perfectly resembles the Father, He must spirate also.

Scripture back this up as well:

In the context of guiding the Church through the apostles into truth, it is clear that there’s a concrete relationship between all three persons: all that the Son has, the Father has, and the Holy Spirit receives this through the Son from the Father, in that He (the Father) will give to the Spirit what is the Son’s. Of course, the Holy Spirit is omniscient from the beginning of time, so He cannot gain any knowledge in time and space, thus we naturally conclude what is being received from the Father through the Son is the divine essence.

The preceding chapter provides more evidence as well:

The first rebuttal from the Eastern Christians is that this verse explicitly mentions the Spirit proceeding from the Father but doesn’t mention the Son in the same way. However, this verse aligns much easier with the Filioque, as although Christ doesn’t explicitly mention the Spirit proceeds from Him, it is clear that He plays a role in the spiration, as he proclaims that the “Counselor” will be sent by Christ Himself, albeit “from the Father.”

The next rebuttal is something along the lines of “John 15 shows a temporal procession but not the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession.” In other words, the sending of the Spirit by the Father and Son in this instance depicts the Spirit being sent to the apostles for a specific mission that occurs in time (hence temporal) but does not reflect the Spirit’s relation to the Father and Son from an eternal perspective. While that seems to be a solid argument on its face, the Catholic position is much more sensible; rather than the temporal and eternal procession of the Spirit being completely different, the temporal procession of the Spirit naturally reflects the eternal procession. Thus, the Holy Spirit is sent forth by the Father and the Son to the apostles because the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son eternally.

Hence, through theological analysis and scriptural exegesis, one can reasonably conclude that the Filioque is true. With this being said, there is some sympathy that must be extended to the Eastern Christians. After all, it does seem like “another Western theological innovation” by sneaking in the extra “and the Son” phrase, even though the original council agreed that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

With this in mind, there is a fascinating parallel between the Filioque and justification.

When it comes to justification and justifying it (no pun intended) using scripture, many Christian traditions will read Romans and assert that it is faith alone through which we are saved because Romans repeatedly ties salvation to faith. However, this must be reconciled with not only the letter of St. James, but also other parts in the New Testament that display works’ active role as well. This reconciliation can be done very easily because we know that the faith mentioned in Romans is an active faith working in love, meaning cooperation with God’s will is necessary.

Similarly, at first, it seemed as if the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone, but the important thing to understand here is that this is not actually what the creed says. It is fair to assume that, but it must be reconciled with the fact that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’s understanding of eternal processions grew through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the idea of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the idea that He proceeds from the Father and the Son must be reconciled and it’s easy to do so. If it had said that He proceeds from the Father alone, then it becomes basically impossible to reconcile, but since it doesn’t, it’s actually pretty easy.

Thus, with Father’s Day approaching, let us honor the Father by affirming the truth that all that He has, the Son has as well.

All praise and glory be to the Father, through the Son, in unity with the Holy Spirit now and forever.

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