St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Filioque

Indeed, it would be a lengthy task to set out in detail from the Scriptures those constructions which are inexactly expressed, in order to prove the statement I have made; where, however, there is a risk of injury to any part of the truth, we no longer find in Scriptural phrases any indiscriminate or indifferent use of words. For this reason Scripture admits the naming of men in the plural, because no one is by such a figure of speech led astray in his conceptions to imagine a multitude of humanities, or supposes that many human natures are indicated by the fact that the name expressive of that nature is used in the plural. But the word God it employs studiously in the singular form only, guarding against introducing the idea of different natures in the Divine essence by the plural signification of Gods. This is the cause why it says, the Lord our God is one Lord Deuteronomy 6:4, and also proclaims the Only-begotten God by the name of Godhead, without dividing the Unity into a dual signification, so as to call the Father and the Son two Gods, although each is proclaimed by the holy writers as God. The Father is God: the Son is God: and yet by the same proclamation God is One, because no difference either of nature or of operation is contemplated in the Godhead. For if (according to the idea of those who have been led astray) the nature of the Holy Trinity were diverse, the number would by consequence be extended to a plurality of Gods, being divided according to the diversity of essence in the subjects. But since the Divine, single, and unchanging nature, that it may be one, rejects all diversity in essence, it does not admit in its own case the signification of multitude; but as it is called one nature, so it is called in the singular by all its other names, God, Good, Holy, Saviour, Just, Judge, and every other Divine name conceivable: whether one says that the names refer to nature or to operation, we shall not dispute the point.

If, however, any one cavils at our argument, on the ground that by not admitting the difference of nature it leads to a mixture and confusion of the Persons, we shall make to such a charge this answer — that while we confess the invariable character of the nature, we do not deny the difference in respect of cause, and that which is caused, by which alone we apprehend that one Person is distinguished from another — by our belief, that is, that one is the Cause, and another is of the Cause; and again in that which is of the Cause we recognize another distinction. For one is directly from the first Cause, and another by that which is directly from the first Cause; so that the attribute of being Only-begotten abides without doubt in the Son, and the interposition (mesiteias) of the Son, while it guards His attribute of being Only-begotten, does not shut out the Spirit from His relation by way of nature to the Father. (On "Not Three Gods" (To Ablabius))

If, then, the Holy Spirit is truly, and not in name only, called Divine both by Scripture and by our Fathers, what ground is left for those who oppose the glory of the Spirit? He is Divine, and absolutely good, and Omnipotent, and wise, and glorious, and eternal; He is everything of this kind that can be named to raise our thoughts to the grandeur of His being. The singleness of the subject of these properties testifies that He does not possess them in a measure only, as if we could imagine that He was one thing in His very substance, but became another by the presence of the aforesaid qualities. That condition is peculiar to those beings who have been given a composite nature; whereas the Holy Spirit is single and simple in every respect equally. This is allowed by all; the man who denies it does not exist. If, then, there is but one simple and single definition of His being, the good which He possesses is not an acquired good; but, whatever He may be besides, He is Himself Goodness, and Wisdom, and Power, and Sanctification, and Righteousness, and Everlastingness, and Imperishability, and every name that is lofty, and elevating above other names. What, then, is the state of mind that leads these men, who do not fear the fearful sentence passed upon the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, to maintain that such a Being does not possess glory? For they clearly put that statement forward; that we ought not to believe that He should be glorified: though I know not for what reason they judge it to be expedient not to confess the true nature of that which is essentially glorious.

Since, then, it has been affirmed, and truly affirmed, that the Spirit is of the Divine Essence, and since in that one word Divine every idea of greatness, as we have said, is involved, it follows that he who grants that Divinity has potentially granted all the rest — the gloriousness, the omnipotence, everything indicative of superiority. It is indeed a monstrous thing to refuse to confess this in the case of the Spirit; monstrous, because of the incongruity, as applied to Him, of the terms which in the list of opposites correspond to the above terms. I mean, if one does not grant gloriousness, one must grant the absence of gloriousness; if one sets aside His power, one must acquiesce in its opposite. So also with regard to honour, and goodness, and any other superiority, if they are not accepted, their opposites must be conceded…

On the contrary the Holy Spirit is, to begin with, because of qualities that are essentially holy, that which the Father, essentially Holy, is; and such as the Only-begotten is, such is the Holy Spirit; then, again, He is so by virtue of life-giving, of imperishability, of unvariableness, of everlastingness, of justice, of wisdom, of rectitude, of sovereignty, of goodness, of power, of capacity to give all good things, and above them all life itself, and by being everywhere, being present in each, filling the earth, residing in the heavens, shed abroad upon supernatural Powers, filling all things according to the deserts of each, Himself remaining full, being with all who are worthy, and yet not parted from the Holy Trinity. He EVER searches the deep things of God, EVER receives from the Son, ever is being sent, and yet not separated, and being glorified, and yet He has always had glory. It is plain, indeed, that one who gives glory to another must be found himself in the possession of superabundant glory; for how could one devoid of glory glorify another? Unless a thing be itself light, how can it display the gracious gift of light? So the power to glorify could never be displayed by one who was not himself glory , and honour, and majesty, and greatness. Now the Spirit does glorify the Father and the Son. Neither does He lie Who says, Them that glorify Me I glorify 1 Samuel 2:30; and I have glorified You, is said by our Lord to the Father; and again He says, Glorify Me with the glory which I had with You before the world was. The Divine Voice answers, I have both glorified, and will glorify again. You see the revolving circle of the glory moving from Like to Like. The Son is glorified by the Spirit; the Father is glorified by the Son; again the Son has His glory from the Father; and the Only-begotten thus becomes the glory of the Spirit. For with what shall the Father be glorified, but with the true glory of the Son: and with what again shall the Son be glorified, but with the majesty of the Spirit? In like manner, again, Faith completes the circle, and glorifies the Son by means of the Spirit, and the Father by means of the Son. (On the Holy Spirit (Against the Followers of Macedonius)) 

But, perhaps, some one among even very religious people will pause over these investigations of ours upon God's eternity, and say that it will be difficult from what we have said for the Faith in the Only-begotten to escape unhurt. Of two unacceptable doctrines, he will say, our account must inevitably be brought into contact with one. Either we shall make out that the Son is Ungenerate, which is absurd; or else we shall deny Him Eternity altogether, a denial which that fraternity of blasphemers make their specialty. For if Eternity is characterized by having no beginning and end, it is inevitable either that we must be impious and deny the Son Eternity, or that we must be led in our secret thoughts about Him into the idea of Ungeneracy. What, then, shall we answer? That if, in conceiving of the Father before the Son on the single score of causation, we inserted any mark of time before the subsistence of the Only-begotten, the belief which we have in the Son's eternity might with reason be said to be endangered. But, as it is, the Eternal nature, equally in the case of the Father's and the Son's life, and, as well, in what we believe about the Holy Ghost, admits not of the thought that it will ever cease to be; for where time is not, the when is annihilated with it. And if the Son, always appearing with the thought of the Father, is always found in the category of existence, what danger is there in owning the Eternity of the Only-begotten, Who has neither beginning of days, nor end of life Hebrews 7:3 . For as He is Light from Light, Life from Life, Good from Good, and Wise, Just, Strong, and all else in the same way, so most certainly is He Eternal from Eternal.

But a lover of controversial wrangling catches up the argument, on the ground that such a sequence would make Him Ungenerate from Ungenerate. Let him, however, cool his combative heart, and insist upon the proper expressions, for in confessing His 'coming from the Father?' he has banished all ideas of Ungeneracy as regards the Only-begotten; and there will be then no danger in pronouncing Him Eternal and yet not Ungenerate. On the one hand, because the existence of the Son is not marked by any intervals of time, and the infinitude of His life flows back before the ages and onward beyond them in an all-pervading tide, He is properly addressed with the title of Eternal; again, on the other hand, because the thought of Him as Son in fact and title gives us the thought of the Father as inalienably joined to it, He thereby stands clear of an ungenerate existence being imputed to Him, while He is always with a Father Who always is, as those inspired words of our Master expressed it, bound by way of generation to His Father's Ungeneracy. Our account of the Holy Ghost will be the same also; the difference is only in the place assigned in order. For as the Son is bound to the Father, and, while deriving existence from Him, is not substantially after Him, so again the Holy Spirit is in touch with the Only-begotten, Who is conceived of as before the Spirit's subsistence only in the theoretical light of a cause (kata ton tes aitias logon). Extensions in time find no admittance in the Eternal Life; so that, when we have removed the thought of cause, the Holy Trinity in no single way exhibits discord with itself; and to It is glory due. (Against Eunomius, Book I, 42. Explanation of 'Ungenerate,' and a 'study' of Eternity.)

But now it has already been shown by the arguments of godly men⁷⁴ that the nature of the Father and the Son is the same, that it is impossible to call by the name of God what is of different nature. For the son of a carpenter is not called a bench, nor would any person in his right mind say that an architect had begot the house; but the names of the Son and the Father signify what is joined together in the same nature. Now it is absolutely necessary, if two are by nature conjoined to one, that they are in no wise different from each other. That is to say, if the Son is by nature united to the Father, and if the Holy Spirit has been shown not to be alien from the nature of the Son on account of the identity of operations, it necessarily follows, I say, that the nature of the Holy Trinity has been shown to be one, though not confused as regards the properties which belong to each Person as His special characteristic, since their special features are not changed into each other. Hence⁷⁵ the characteristic of the Father’s Person⁷⁶ cannot be transferred to the Son or the Spirit, nor, on the other hand, can that of the Son be accommodated to one of the others, or the property of the Spirit be attributed to the Father and the Son. But the incommunicable distinction of the properties is considered in the common nature. It is the characteristic of the Father to exist without cause. This does not apply to the Son and the Spirit; for the Son went out from the Father,⁷⁷ as says the Scripture, and the Spirit proceedeth from God and from the Father. But as the being without cause, which belongs only to the Father, cannot be adapted to the Son and the Spirit, so again the being caused, which is the property of the Son and of the Spirit, cannot, by its very nature, be considered in the Father. On the other hand, the being not ungenerated is common to the Son and the Spirit; hence in order to avoid confusion in the subject, one must again search for the pure difference in the properties, so that what is common be safeguarded, yet what is proper be not mixed. For He is called the Only-Begotten of the Father by the Holy Scripture;⁷⁹ and this term establishes His property for Him. But the Holy Spirit is also said to be from the Father, and is testified to be the Son’s (To de hagion Pneuma kai EK tou Patros [FROM the Father] legetai kai EK tou Hyiou [FROM the Son] einai prosmartyreitai). For it says: If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.⁸⁰ Hence the Spirit that is from God is also Christ’s; but the Son, who is from God, neither is nor is said to be from the Spirit; and this relative sequence is permanent and inconvertible. Hence the sentence cannot properly be resolved and reversed in its meaning so that, as we say the Spirit to be Christ’s, we might also call Christ the Spirit’s. Since, therefore, this individual property distinguishes one from the other with absolute clarity, but as, on the other hand, the identity of action bears witness to the community of nature, the right doctrine about the Divinity is confirmed in both; namely that the Trinity is numbered by the Persons, but that it is not divided into parts of different nature. (St. Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord's Prayer, The Beatitudes (Ancient Christian Writers), No. 18 [The Newman Press, 1954], translated and annotated by Hilda C. Graef, pp. 54-55)

The literary and manuscript evidence shows that the Filioque is a genuine portion of the sermon. In Cardinal Mai's edition of the text, the fragment including the second 'ek' was cited by the Doctrina Patrum de Verbi Incarnatione, which is as early as 700 AD. The Codex Vaticanus Graecus 2066 (7th or 8th century) contains the sermon with this passage as well. Even F. Diekamp showed that the phrases used by St. Grgeory of Nyssa occurred, even sometimes verbatim, in other writings of his, and there were parallels in style and vocabulary. The second 'ek' is even in the oldest Syriac manuscript, which pre-dates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, this objection is not supported by the manuscript evidence. (Opera exegetica In Exodum et Novum Testamentum: Volume 2 De oratione dominica, De beatitudinibus (Gregorii Nysseni Opera, 7/2) (Ancient Greek Edition), edited by Johannes Francis Callahan [Brill, 1992], pp. 8-9)