03 November 2011

Patristic Quote of the Day

We treat the profession of faith [the Creed] as the origin and mother of doxology. -- St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, par. 68.

5 comments:

Chris said...

Which means it should be said in its original form, sans filioque.

William Weedon said...

Chris,

I've always said that the Creed ought never have been altered the way it was; but it was, and living in the Western Church we have a long and unbroken use to deal with. What I DO insist on is that it is not heretical; just susceptible to grave misunderstandings and canonically illegitimate.

Dcn Latif Haki Gaba SSP said...

I take these beautiful words of Basil to mean that there is an inextricable relationship between praise and confession, between worship and doctrine (as the Quicumque Vult makes rather explicit), that the Creed has a strong doxological and devotional dimension (as does theology per se), and a wonderful reminder that the Church of former ages didn't merely read the words of the Creed from a book on Sunday morning (with its all important footnotes), but prayed them, and meant them with every fiber of their being.

Chris said...

Fr. Weedon,

You CAN'T have it both ways. You can't say that it should have been changed like it was and then insist it should have been changed to reflect what you think of, though very wrongly, as truth.

Why do you think Orthodox theologians just do a face palm when Lutherans admit that it was wrongly changed but then defend the theology of the change?

The filioque is heresy. It cannot mean "through the Son" since ex and per are two completely different prepositions, one indicating source, the other indicating motion.

William Weedon said...

Chris,

Of course it could be both ways: a canonical error - emending a Creed of the universal church unilaterally; and yet the emendation not being a theological error. There are MANY Western Christians who recognize this, and unless I am much mistaken, even St. Maximos defended filioque as not heretical when understood correctly. To me the key is that "all that the Father has is mine." That means that the Father gives the Son everything except the begetting of the Son. Hence the Son shares in the procession, but not as unoriginal source of the Spirit but as originate source, since He has it from the Father. And this mirrors the "economic" experience of the Spirit: for we receive the Spirit from the Son who gives Him to us from the Father. But we're not going to solve the centuries long quarrel on a blog! My plea is to recognize that those who theologically disagree with you on this are not idiots; have a grounding for what they teach in both the Scriptures AND in solid tradition reaching well back into the undivided Church. If it wasn't Church dividing then; it oughtn't be now.