St. Gregory the Great

The last remark of Maximus the Confessor is also valid for similar expressions of Pope St. Gregory the Great (almost a contemporary of St. Maximus), for example, when he asserts that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the One and the Other (utrorum).98 We also find in St. Gregory the classical assertion that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and takes from the Son (de Patre procedens, et de eo quod est Filii accipiens).99 Some of the statements concerning the procession from the Son are clearly placed in the perspective of oikonomia. Thus, St. Gregory notes that Jesus Christ pours into the hearts of His disciples the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from Him (qui a se procedit).100 Or when he writes that "the sending of the Holy Spirit is a process when He proceeds from the Father and from the Son (missio Spiritus Sancti processio est qua de Patre procedit et Filio)." Likewise, from the perspective of oikonomia, we must understand the famous expression that "it is evident that the Spirit of the Comforter proceeds always from the Father and from the Son (Paraclitus Spiritus a Patre semper procedit et Filio)": the context actually refers to the sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples after Christ's ascension. Further, in another place, St. Gregory points out that that which was sent down upon the Apostles by Christ (and which proceeds from the Father and from the Son) is not the Spirit as a Person, but as energy, more precisely as love: [Christ] says [to His disciples]: "For if I do not go, the Comforter will not come to you" (John 16:7). It is as if He said openly: "If I do not take My Body away from you, I will not show you what the love of the Spirit is".103

Another statement of St. Gregory, often recalled, is that the Holy Spirit is "per substantiam profertur ex [Christo]." But the verb used here means proferre in its usual usage: exposed, manifested, or discovered. It does not mean, therefore, that the Son is the cause of the Spirit in His hypostatic existence, but means, from the perspective of oikonomia, the manifestation of the Spirit in the world through the Son. In the passage under consideration, St. Gregory explains that the Son sends and gives the Spirit, Whom "per substantiam" He has always present in Himself in its entirety (while the saints receive Him only by grace and in part).105 We find here an expression which we have encountered in other Latin Fathers, which is analogous to the formula used by St. Cyril of Alexandria." As St. Such a formulation does not mean that the Son is the Cause of the hypostatic existence of the Spirit, nor that the Spirit as a Person proceeds from the substance of the Son, nor even that He receives from the Son the essence or divine nature, but testifies that the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son in the sense that we have already encountered, and strongly expresses the unity of the nature of the Father. The Son and the Holy Spirit. This is what it means to "manifest" from Christ, "per substantiam": it is not the hypostasis of the Spirit, but the Spirit as the sum total of the goods, actions, or divine energies contained in Him, which the Son also has in Himself, having received them from the Father in order to manifest them and transmit them to men. St. Gregory the Great is presented in this way at once, also among those Latin Fathers whose | the Monk Maximus had in mind in his letter.

Vl. THE EXCLUSION OF BLESSED AUGUSTINE

The Orthodox historian A. Zernikav places blessed. Augustine in the camp of the enemies of the Latin dogma Filioque.107 Indeed, in the works of Bl. There are passages in which the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son is affirmed in a frankly oikonomic sense (the sending of the Holy Spirit into the world and the gift of the Spirit to people). Thus, the Bishop of Hippo writes: "The Holy Spirit is sent to us through (the Son) from the Father and from His own Person. The Spirit of the Father and the Son is sent by Them Two (missus ab utroque).108 He asserts that, since he was given to the apostles as a gift of God, the Holy Spirit must be of origin from the Father and the Son.109 He also notes:

"Why should we not believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, since He is the Spirit of the Son? If He did not come out of Him after His resurrection, appearing to His disciples, He could not have breathed on them, saying to them: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). What does this breath mean, if not that the Holy Ghost went forth from Him?" 110

Certain expressions, however, remain ambiguous concerning the bestowal of grace on men and the imparting of this grace (chiefly life) from the Father and from the Son to the Spirit:

"The Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father in the Son and from the Son to sanctify creation, but He proceeds simultaneously from the one and from the other (simul de utroque procedit): although the Father has granted the Son that the Holy Spirit proceed from the Son as He proceeds from Himself. For we cannot say that the Holy Spirit is not life, since the Father is life and the Son is life. But since the Father has life in Himself, He also granted the Son to have life in Himself; and so He gave the Son that life should proceed from Him, as it proceeds from the Father Himself".111

But even when Blessed Augustine considers the procession of the Holy Spirit from the perspective of the house-building, that is, that which concerns mission, he considers that it corresponds to the pre-eternal procession, and the races, he conceals it.112 Hence the impression that one gets when reading the texts of Blessed Augustine concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit (the text quoted earlier is an excellent example of this) that the economic and theological perspectives are not only indistinguishable for him, but are mixed and combined. It may also seem mixed, on the theological plane, of the pre-eternal procession of the Spirit from the Son with His pre-eternal manifestation through the Son. The hypostatic properties of the Divine Persons with their natural properties also seem to be often confused. The testimony of the well-known assertion that the Spirit is ' the bond of love between the Father and the Son, a statement which could mean (as will be later in ' St. Gregory Palamas) the communication of divine energy from the Father through the Son, in the Spirit, in Blessed Augustine – notwithstanding this expression: 'a Patre bono et Filio bono effusa bonitas' 113 applied to the Spirit, and which may be interpreted in the above sense,  – seems to speak more of the diminution of the Person of the Holy Spirit in favour of an impersonal principle which reveals the common essence, as is proved by the terms most frequently used by the Bishop of Hippo in the context of the description of the Holy Spirit: "societas dilectionis"114, "unitas, caritas amborum"115, "communis caritas Patris et Filii"116, "societas Patri et Filii"117.

In addition, there are numerous expressions which undoubtedly testify to the elaborate doctrine of the proceeding of the Spirit from the Father and from the Son (Blessed Augustine very often uses the expression "procedit ab utroque"), which is very closely related to that which later became the Latin doctrine of the Filioque, and whose direct inspiration it undoubtedly was.