I was told by Kolokotronis that Augustine did not understand Trinity because he did not know Greek. He did not provide any criticism of Augustine's reasoning beyond that he did not refer to any Greek words. I am hoping to get more from Kolokotronis today.
Where are the Eastern theological methods apparent in the Greed? I ask because I don't know.
The Eastern Theology is that "God" means God the Father. This is apparent in the first line "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty". The Creed then defines the other two Persons of the Trinity ion terms of their point of origin with God. Therefore, the Son is "eternally begotten" and the Ghost is "proceeding".
For Catholics and Protestants, "God" means the God the Trinity.
I was told by Kolokotronis that Augustine did not understand Trinity because he did not know Greek. He did not provide any criticism of Augustine's reasoning beyond that he did not refer to any Greek words. I am hoping to get more from Kolokotronis today.
I'm a bit mystified a to why Augustine is figuring prominently on this thread. Is someone explaining the rise of the Filioque as the result of Augustine's trinitarian theology? Or is it just because Augustine was influential in the West? But so too was Hilary . . .
The Filioque arose from an effort to counter Adoptionism in Spain long after Augustine. No creed at all was recited in the Mass at Rome for centuries. It was the Carolingians, in their effort to show that the Byzantines were illegitimate emperors and that the Carolingians had preserved the true Roman imperium, pressured the popes to add the Nicene Creed with the Mozarabic filioque to the Roman liturgy. For a long time the popes resisted but finally added it, as late as the 11thc, if I am not mistaken. The "because he did not know Greek" is an old canard thrown at Augustine. The Greek struggle over hypostasis and prosopon in the late 300s and 400s could equally be attributed to the fact that they did not know Latin and thus Tertullian's brilliant adding of Christian meaning to what had in Graeco-Roman culture been a rather blank (mask, role in Greek drama, prosopon, persona), empty, impersonal term. It's not simply a matter of knowing or not knowing language.
A very good but little-known effort to reconcile Eastern and Western views on the procession of the Holy Spirit by employing the Hebrew/Greek chabod/doxa as expounded in the Farewell Discourses, particularly Jn 17, is found in Paul M. Quay, S.J., The Mystery Hidden for Ages in God (New York etc.: Peter Lang, 1995), in the first part of the book. He also offers a profound effort to reconcile East and West on original sin, taking account even of what we now know about fetal psychology and the plasticity of the brain as it develops (Quay had a PhD in physics from MIT but also did part of his theological training under De Lubac at Lyons. His book is an effort to apply the patristic spiritual sense of Scripture to the development and growth of spiritual life, first in the OT as we (the Jewish people) crawled back from the horrible abyss of alienation from God produced by the Fall to even be ready for the Incarnation, then, after the Incarnation, the growth in holiness in the Spirit toward theosis, all of it done typologically in accord with the patristic method. It's well worth reading, slowly, ruminatively.