CHALCEDON TO THE REFORMATION

The Deity of the Spirit was now fully and permanently established, but there still remained the important and mysterious question of His precise relation to the Father and the Son. The term ' Generation ' was used to describe the relation of the Son to the Father, and the term ' Procession ' was employed to denote the relation of the Spirit, but the question was whether this eternal ' Procession ' or ' Forthcoming ' was from the Son as well as from the Father.

The problem was Western, not Eastern, just as the question of the Deity was Eastern, not Western. This attitude indicates a difference which is explained by the conditions of the two Churches. The Eastern was faced with those who tended to regard the Spirit as inferior to the Son, because brought into human life through the Son's mediation. In order, therefore, to protect the full Deity of the Spirit, it was considered essential to represent Him as proceeding solely from the Father as the fountain (πηγή) of the Godhead. The Western Church, on the other hand, starting with the essential unity of the Son and the Father, desired to protect and preserve the truth that the Spirit is as much the Spirit of the Son as He is of the Father. Otherwise there could be no equality. This is the doctrine of Procession, and was expressed by saying that the Spirit ' proceeded ' from the Father and the Son. Not that the Greek writers were absolutely silent on the Procession from the Son, for it is found in both Didymus and Epiphanius.1 Bat it is in the West that the doctrine is made distinct, mainly by Hilary of Poitiers, but chiefly by Augustine. It was the profound influence of the latter that almost wholly led to the endorsement of the doctrine by the Western Church.

The acceptance of the Augustinian doctrine of the Procession as a permanent part of Western doctrine is usually associated with the Council of Toledo in Spain, 589. It was the incorporation of the doctrine into the Creed that led to its permanent acceptance in the West.

' Two causes co-operated to render the Spanish clergy painfully alive to the importance of a fuller symbolical statement of the Catholic doctrine. Priscillianism disturbed the peace of the Church in Spain, from the end of the 4th century to the end of the 6th; and amongst its other errors Priscilhanism revived the Sabelhan view of the Trinity (Aug. c. Priscill. 4), and, as it seems, confounded the Persons of the Son and the Spirit (Oros. Comm. ad Aug. 2). Further, at the beginning of the 5th century, the invasion of the Visigoths brought in a deluge of the worst form of Arianism, including the Eunomian doctrine of the creation of the Spirit by the Son. These attacks upon the truth compelled the Spanish Church to formulate her faith in a series of confessions which abound in the most precise dogmatism upon the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.'2

At Toledo the authority of the first four Councils was acknowledged, and the Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople rehearsed, and it is curious and mysterious that in this rehearsal the Synod imagined that the Latin Creed, which it repeated faithfully, represented the Greek original. It is a matter of discussion how the words ' And the Son ' came into the Creed. Some have thought this was due to a marginal gloss. Dr. Burn adduces evidence from important Spanish MSS. to prove that the Council never added the words at all, that they are due to the blunder of a copyist of the Toledo text of the Constantinopolitan Creed.3 In any case, the interpolation did not cause suspicion, but was repeated in Synod after Synod as the orthodox doctrine. It has often seemed surprising that the Council of Toledo should lay such stress on the point, and yet profess to keep the text of the Creed pure, but it would seem as though increasing error was already rendering further dogmatic definition necessary for proper interpretation.

' If the Holy Ghost is worshipped with the Father and the Son, such honour can only be rightly paid on the ground that He is coessential and coequal, as the Son has been acknowledged to be at the cost of the long Arian controversy. Therefore the Toledan Fathers were only drawing out what seemed to them latent in the Creed.'4

In reply to the argument that the Spanish Church acted in this way by reason of its controversy with Arianism and its intense desire to avoid attributing to the Father what the Son possessed. Dr. Burn says:

' It is more probable that without much reflection they were simply loyal to what had been a marked characteristic of Western teaching since the time of St. Augustine. It is important to make this fact quite plain. Eastern and Western thinkers started from two different points of view. Therein lies the justification for the age-long quarrel on this subject, which can never be composed until justice is done to the sincerity of both parties.'5

It is important and essential to distinguish between the doctrine of the Procession and its insertion in the Creed. There can be no doubt that however and whenever it was inserted, the addition was unwarranted, because it never received proper ecumenical authority. It was apparently due to the great influence of Gregory the Great that the Latin Church at last came to accept Augustine's doctrine of the Procession.6 And yet it was a long time before the addition became part of the Roman version of the Constantinopolitan Creed.7

Referring once again to the East, the subject did not arise in connection with the fourth, fifth, and sixth Councils. In regard to the last-named, it is suggested that the question was perhaps purposely avoided by the Westerns out of regard for the peace of the Church.8 But in the West the view was making progress, and it is thought probable that England received the doctrine from Augustine himself, who was sent by Gregory the Great. Nothing further occurred in connection with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the East until the time of John of Damascus, at the beginning of the eighth century. He has been rightly described as ' the last great theologian of the Eastern Church,' although he does not seem to have been a constructive theologian, but he is universally regarded as ' the recognised exponent of Greek patristric theology during the first seven centuries.'9 Dr. Swete says that the effort of John of Damascus to systematise Greek theology ' has deserved well of Christendom,' and that

' it may be that when the time comes for the drawing together again of East and West, the writings of the Damascene will supply a starting point for the movement.'10

After Gregory the Great the Middle Ages may be said to set in, and ' scholastic theology gradually takes the place of the patristic type.'11 During this period little or nothing occurred of importance in connection with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Semi-Pelagianism grew and developed in the West, though there were leading men who defended the Augustinian doctrines of grace. St. Bernard is the best representative of the Middle Ages, as anticipative of later and brighter days.

' At the beginning of the twelfth century a new creative epoch entered, and a new outpouring of the Holy Ghost, when religion though still mingled with foreign elements, decidedly revived among the nations. Bernard was the representative of that mystic or pectoral theology which runs through the mediaeval period wherever it shows spiritual elements. The stream of religious thought may be said to have divided in two from this time, the one more scholastic, the other more mystic'12

After Bernard comes the period of Mediaeval Mysticism, when earnest souls were at once disturbed by the consciousness of their own sin and the consciousness of the powerlessness of the organised Church to provide spiritual deliverance. This led to a religion of personal, immediate contact of the soul with God, and the natural result was an emphasis on Christ and the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the very heart of Mysticism lies in fellowship with the personal Saviour, through the Holy Spirit, and this element, though limited to individuals who never broke away from the great Western Church, was undoubtedly a preliminary to, and a great preparation for, the Reformation. With all its limitations and inadequacy. Mysticism represents a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit of God.

At this stage it seems necessary to review the progress of thought, and especially to view it in the light of the New Testament. Three things were settled beyond all question, at least in the Western Church; the Deity of the Son at Nicaea, the Deity of the Spirit at Constantinople, and the Procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son in the Western Creed. But in passing from the simple yet significant experience of the New Testament, it is impossible to avoid the consciousness that the Creeds give us an intellectual and abstract statement of the truth that may easily be regarded as remote from spiritual realities. But the change of emphasis did not really involve any change of essential doctrine. Heresy, as already remarked, necessitated the intellectual, explicit statement of that which was spiritually implicit in the New Testament teaching and experience. It is often urged that the dogmas of the Creed are unwarranted when viewed in the light of the primitive simplicity of New Testament teaching, and it is said that they represent a corruption through the dogmatic strength of Greek philosophy.

' The truth is just the reverse. The novel element in the compound was not philosophy, but the Gospel.... The steps which led to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity are the steps by which the Christian spirit made for itself a home in the existing intellectual environment. However speculative in form, every one of them was due to a practical interest.... Putting ourselves back at the point of view of the men who made the decisions, and imagining ourselves faced with like questions, we should have been obliged to answer them in the same way.'13

It is of course vital to keep in mind the difference between a purely intellectual and even abstract conception, and the warm, vital experience of the believing soul. But there need and should be no contradiction between them, nor will there be if the Creed is regarded as a landmark rather than a goal, and as the explicit statement for the intellect of that which is implicit in the attitude of the believing, Christian soul to his God.

Literature. — Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, pp. 273-355; Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, p. 126; Welldon, The Revelation of the Holy Spirit, ch. V.; ' On the Doctrine of the Procession,' Swete, op. cit. pp. 151, 169; Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 66; Moule, Veni Creator, ch. ii.

1 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, pp. 224, 226.

2 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III. p. 129.

3 The Nicene Creed, p. 40.

4 Burn, op. cit. p. 41.

5 The Nicene Creed, p. 41.

6 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 347.

7 Swete, op. cit. p. 349.

8 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, p. 131.

9 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 280.

10 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 285.

11 Swete, op. cit. p. 350.

12 Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 305.

13 W. A. Brown, Christian Theology in Outline, pp. 143, 145.