Monday, November 14, 2022

Examples of Gregory of Palamas condemning the Filioque in Apodictic Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit

The following excerpts come from:

 

Gregory of Palamas (1296-1359), Apodictic Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit (trans. Christopher C. Moody; Uncut Mountain Press, 2022)

 

Treatise One, “Preamble”:

 

Once again the subtle serpent and source of vice rears his own head against us, whispering things opposite to the truth. Or rather, since he has been crushed in his head by the Cross of Christ, he makes those who obey his destructive counsels in every generation each take the place of his own head, and similar to a hydra he has sprouted many heads instead of the one, relentlessly speaking utter unrighteousness through them. Thus he attached to his coiled body of the Arians, thus the Apollinarians, thus the Eunomians and Macedonians, thus the host of many others who rant to him, spewing his venom through their speech against the sacred Church. In lieu of fangs, he has used their words and sunk them into the source of piety, as into the root of a plant that had youthfully grown virtue, burdened with the best of fruit; yet he was not able to utterly lay waste to it. For, his fangs were in turn shattered by those who had been bitten by him, meaning, by those who have truly made Christ their own Head.

 

Accordingly, this serpent, which is noetic and, because of this, all the more accursed, the first, middle, and final evil, the wicked one, always feeding off of serpentine and earthly wickedness, the vigilant stalker, tirelessly looking out for the heel, that is to say, deception, the sophist, most resourceful and incomparably ingenious in every opinion obnoxious to God, not having at all forgotten his own evil art, introduces, through the Latins which were obedient to him, innovative expressions concerning God. While these innovations seem to make but a small change, they actually create the occasion for many evils and bring in many things that are subtle, foreign to piety, and logically absurd. In doing this he clearly displayed to all that even the smallest thing is not small in matters concerning God. For if, with each of our arguments, when one fallacious thing has initially been premised many absurdities ensue, how can it not be that, when one uncustomary premise has been made in relation to the common principle of all and to the indemonstrable first principles, from this more absurdities will not irreverently ensue?

 

Into these absurdities the race of the Latins would have also fallen manifestly, had we not stripped away the greatest part of the cacodoxy by contradicting this novel dogma. Indeed, on occasion they recoil to such a degree that they even claim that they are of the same mind as us, disagreeing only in words, lying against themselves on account of their awkwardness. For while we say that the existence of the Holy Spirit is not also from the hypostasis of the Son, they say that He is also from the hypostasis of the Son, making it impossible for us to be united in one concept. For, one is the only-begotten and the existence of the Spirit is one. In any event, since the denial is always the contrary to its affirmation, the one proposition is always false if the other is true, and it is not possible to affirm and deny the very same thing about the same subject and be with the truth. (pp. 57, 59)

 

Treatise Two, 1:

 

Earlier, to the best of our ability, we went through the things that were necessary even to the register of the pious themselves, both for clarification and for confirmation of the correct mindset, and by which in short course the entire impiety of the objecting Latins comes to light, but as for the things which the Latins themselves propose both against us and against piety and by which they claim that they do not innovate at all but think and speak in harmony with the divine words of Christ Himself and not out of harmony at all with those who have theologized according to Christ, we have not yet brought all these things into the light nor refuted them in order. Let us now individually look at what things they assert and that rationales or even scriptural expressions and concepts they used, or rather abused, and so have fallen from the God-chosen (θεολεκτου) confession (ομολογιας) which was handed down from the Fathers. And the most fearful things of all is that they do not desire to return and safely hold on to that from which they have fallen. Instead, likely truly ill-bred men, they are displeased to the highest degree and gainsay those giving their hand, the power of the word of truth leading up to the truth, unto correction. (p. 187)