The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit

Photius’s mature dogmatic treatise against the Filioque (c. 884–886), the classical Orthodox statement of the case that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. This file sets out its central arguments: the monarchy of the Father as the sole cause and principle in the Trinity; the charge that the double procession introduces two causes into the Godhead and so destroys the divine unity; the distinction between the eternal procession of the Spirit and his temporal sending through the Son; the appeal to Scripture, the councils, and the Fathers; and Photius’s notably charitable handling of the Western Fathers who seemed to teach otherwise.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

The Work and Its Setting

The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (Greek Peri tēs tou Hagiou Pneumatos mystagōgias) is Photius’s most sustained theological work and the fullest dogmatic case any Greek Father had yet made against the Latin Filioque. It was composed late in his life, in his second patriarchate or shortly after, on the standard dating between the end of 884 and about 886 — internal references (to Pope Hadrian III, who reigned May 884 to summer 885, and to roughly thirty years since the Roman defense of the unaltered Creed under Leo III) fix it within these years (study of the text in Towards a Critical Edition of Photius’ Mystagogy, Studia Orientalia Christiana 19/1 [2015]). The Greek text is printed in Patrologia Graeca 102, the treatise proper at columns 279–401, with prefatory and annotative matter beginning earlier in the volume; it is conventionally cited from PG 102 and is divided into eighty-nine numbered sections in the received numbering followed by the standard English translation of Joseph P. Farrell (The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit [1987]). Scholars note that the work is a composite, edited text — it alternates between addressing an inquirer and refuting the Latin position — and that no fully critical edition had yet stabilized its text as of recent assessment, so section citations are given to the PG/Farrell numbering rather than to a critical edition (Studia Orientalia Christiana 19/1 [2015]).

From the Father Alone

The dogmatic core is stated at the outset and returned to throughout: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (ek monou tou Patros). As the Son is begotten of the Father alone, so the Spirit proceeds from one and the same single cause, the Father; the Second Ecumenical Council, Photius insists, “directly dogmatised that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father” — from the Father, and from no one else (Photius, Mystagogy §§2, 5, 46 [PG 102]; trans. Farrell). The phrase “from the Father alone” is the banner of the whole treatise and of the Orthodox case after it.

This is not, for Photius, an arbitrary insistence on one preposition over another. It follows from the structure of Trinitarian theology as the Greek Fathers had received it. In the one God there are three persons, and what distinguishes the persons is their relations of origin: the Father is unbegotten and is the source; the Son is begotten of the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Father alone is unoriginate; he alone is the cause (aitia) and principle (archē) within the Godhead, the single fountainhead from whom the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds. This is the doctrine of the monarchy of the Father — the teaching that the unity of the Godhead is grounded not in an impersonal common substance but in the one person of the Father, the sole source of the other two (Photius, Mystagogy §§11, 14; trans. Farrell; on the doctrine, J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974], ch. on the Triadic theology).

The weight Photius places on the monarchy is the weight the whole Cappadocian tradition had placed there: for the Greek Fathers the oneness of God is secured not first by the shared nature but by the one person of the Father, from whom the Son and the Spirit each derive (Photius, Mystagogy §§11, 15; trans. Farrell; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]). The Latin tendency — as later Eastern theology would diagnose it — was to locate the unity rather in the common ousia, where it becomes natural to say that whatever belongs to the Father as God belongs also to the Son, the spiration of the Spirit included (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church [1957], the chapter on the procession). Photius’s “from the Father alone” is therefore the guard set over the monarchy against just this shift of the ground of unity from the person of the Father to the bare nature (Photius, Mystagogy §§11, 14, 36; trans. Farrell).

The Two Causes

From the monarchy of the Father follows Photius’s central argument against the Filioque. If the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then there are two sources of the Spirit’s being within the Godhead — two causes, two principles (dyo aitia, dyo archai). And this, Photius argues, is fatal: “if two causes are discerned in the divine and supremely sovereign Trinity,” he asks, “where is the much-hymned and God-befitting Monarchy?” (Photius, Mystagogy §11; trans. Farrell). The Filioque either splits the one cause into two, dissolving the monarchy and the unity of the Godhead into a kind of ditheism of source, or — if the Father and Son are said to act as a single principle in spirating the Spirit — it confounds the very property that distinguishes the Father from the Son, collapsing the persons toward a Sabellian blur (Photius, Mystagogy §14; trans. Farrell). Either way the doctrine fails: it cannot introduce the Son into the procession without either multiplying the principle or confusing the persons.

Photius presses the point with a series of reductions, and their cumulative force is to show that the Filioque can be stated in no way that does not wreck some part of the received doctrine. If the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son because the Son shares the Father’s nature, then — since the Spirit too shares that nature — one would have to say the Spirit also produces something, or that something proceeds from the Spirit, which no one teaches; the Latin premise, that a common property of the divine nature grounds the spirating, turns against itself, for such a ground would belong to all three persons alike, exposing spiration as belonging not to the shared nature but to the person of the Father alone (Photius, Mystagogy §§3, 8, 15; trans. Farrell). And if the Spirit takes his origin from two persons, he would be marked off from the Father by more hypostatic properties than the Son is — an asymmetry that disorders the equality of the persons (Photius, Mystagogy §32; trans. Farrell). The arguments are dialectical and pointed, the work of a mind trained in logic turning its tools on the structure of the Trinity, and they fix the shape of every later Byzantine treatment (Haugh, Photius and the Carolingians [1975], ch. XI).

Procession and Mission

A crucial distinction runs through the treatise and answers the Latins’ strongest exegetical card. The Scriptures do say that the risen Christ “breathed” on the disciples and gave the Spirit (John 20:22), that the Spirit is “the Spirit of the Son,” that the Spirit is sent by the Son into the world. Photius does not deny any of this. He distinguishes the eternal procession (ekporeusis) of the Spirit — his timeless coming-forth as to his very existence, which is from the Father alone — from the temporal mission or sending of the Spirit in the economy of salvation, which may indeed be said to be through the Son and from the Son (Photius, Mystagogy §§20, 29–30; trans. Farrell). The distinction is the hinge on which the whole exegetical contest turns, for nearly every Latin proof-text speaks of the Spirit as given, sent, or poured out — language of the economy — and none of it, Photius insists, reaches up to the timeless relation of origin by which the Spirit is what he is (Photius, Mystagogy §§29–30, 34; trans. Farrell). When the Lord says the Spirit “will receive of mine” (John 16:14), Photius reads this of the Spirit’s reception of the divine operation and the things to be declared in the economy, not of his eternal origin. The scriptural texts the Latins adduce concern the Spirit’s temporal manifestation and sending in time; they do not touch the eternal procession, which the Lord himself fixes on the Father alone: “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26). The asymmetry of the witness is, for Photius, decisive: the one text that speaks expressly of the procession names the Father only, while the texts the Latins press all speak of the giving and sending in the economy (Photius, Mystagogy §§20, 30; trans. Farrell). To read the temporal sending back into the eternal procession is precisely the confusion the Filioque makes (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974], crediting Photius with this distinction as the classic Byzantine response).

Scripture, Councils, and the Fathers

Photius marshals three further witnesses. First, Scripture: the double procession is nowhere taught; the Lord’s own word in John 15:26 names the Father as the one from whom the Spirit proceeds, and “the radiant word of the Lord … stands against you” (Photius, Mystagogy §20; trans. Farrell). Second, the councils: he challenges his opponents to name the synod that defined the double procession, and ranges the ecumenical councils — which forbade any addition to the Creed of Constantinople — against the addition (Photius, Mystagogy §5; trans. Farrell). Third, the consensus of the Fathers, against which a few contrary voices cannot prevail.

It is on this last head that the Mystagogy shows Photius at his most careful — and the point deserves emphasis against the caricature of him as a reckless polemicist. He was aware that certain venerable Western Fathers — Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome — had written in ways that seemed to support a procession from the Son. His response is not to denounce them but to cover them with charity. In the treatise’s most famous image he likens himself to the sons of Noah who walked backward to cover their father’s nakedness rather than gaze on it: “I would then imitate the sons of Noah and cover my father’s shame with silence and gratitude” (Photius, Mystagogy §70 [PG 102]; trans. Farrell, alluding to Genesis 9:23). His principle is that holy Fathers who may have erred in expression, but were not obstinate and did not mean to dogmatize against the Church, should not be charged with impiety; their few words must not be elevated into a doctrine or weighed against the great consensus of the Fathers and the councils (Photius, Mystagogy §§68, 72; trans. Farrell). The Filioque is to be rejected not because Augustine or Ambrose are condemned but because their occasional expressions cannot be made the basis of a dogma the Church never received.

The argument here is one of theological method as much as of substance, and it governs how the East would weigh patristic authority ever after: Photius distinguishes the consensus of the Fathers, which is binding, from the isolated expressions of individual Fathers, however holy, which are not — a doctrine must rest on what the Fathers taught together and the councils confirmed, not on what one or another said in passing, without intending to define (Photius, Mystagogy §§68, 71–72; trans. Farrell). Modern study confirms that this charitable but firm handling of the Western Fathers is among the most characteristic features of the work, distinguishing Photius’s method from the cruder anti-Latin polemic that followed him (Haugh, Photius and the Carolingians [1975], ch. XI; Siecienski, The Filioque [2010], on the Mystagogy’s handling of Augustine and Ambrose).

The Foundational Statement and Its Critics

The Mystagogy became, and has remained, the classical Orthodox dogmatic refutation of the Filioque, the work to which later Eastern theology returns. Vladimir Lossky frames the whole Eastern case in its terms — the monarchy of the Father as the sole personal cause, set against the Latin grounding of unity in the common substance (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church [1957], the chapter on the procession of the Spirit). John Meyendorff credits Photius with the decisive distinction between the eternal procession and the temporal manifestation (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]). Aristeides Papadakis describes Photius’s position as a restatement of the patristic teaching of the monarchy of the Father (Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy [1994], p. 113), and Richard Haugh’s monograph treats the Mystagogy as the culminating Eastern answer to the Carolingian theology that had pressed the addition (Haugh, Photius and the Carolingians [1975], esp. ch. XI).

Modern scholarship also registers a nuance, and honesty requires it. Photius’s strict formula “from the Father alone” excludes even the per Filium, the “through the Son,” for the eternal procession — and in this he states the case more uncompromisingly than St. John of Damascus, who had taught that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father alone, but through the Son” as mediator (John of Damascus, Exact Exposition I.8; see St. John of Damascus). The later Byzantine synthesis — Gregory of Cyprus, and then St. Gregory Palamas — would distinguish the eternal procession of the Spirit’s existence (from the Father alone) from his eternal manifestation or shining-forth through the Son, and is often read as completing and qualifying Photius on exactly this point (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]; see St. Gregory Palamas). Photius thus stands as the foundation of the Orthodox case, with his “Father alone” its most maximal early statement — a foundation the tradition built upon rather than simply repeated.

See Also

References

  • Photius. The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. Trans. Joseph P. Farrell. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987. Cited by section (PG/Farrell numbering, 89 sections); Greek in Patrologia Graeca 102 (treatise proper at PG 102:279–401).
  • Towards a Critical Edition of Photius’ Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. Studia Orientalia Christiana 19/1 (2015). On the date (884–886), the composite character of the text, and the state of the critical edition.
  • Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. London: James Clarke, 1957. The chapter on the procession of the Holy Spirit, framing the Eastern case in Photian terms.
  • Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. On the monarchy of the Father and the procession/manifestation distinction.
  • Papadakis, Aristeides. The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994, p. 113. On Photius and the monarchy of the Father (page via the standard secondary citation; to be confirmed against the volume).
  • Haugh, Richard. Photius and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Controversy. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1975, esp. ch. XI. The standard monograph on Photius and the Carolingian Filioque.
  • John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I.8. For the “from the Father alone, through the Son” formula contrasted with Photius.