Did St. Gregory teach the Filioque of the Heretical Papists?
Siecienski in his book "The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy" states:
Code: Select all
"A second reason why Gregory's position on the filioque is still debated concerns Pope Zacharias's Greek translation of the Dialogues. The Latin version clearly affirmed the filioque ("cum enim constet quia Paracletus Spiritus a Patre simper procedat et Filio"), while Zacharias's translation reads "ek tou Patros proerchetai kai en to Yio diamenei" (i.e., speaking not of the Spirit's "procession from," but of his "abiding in," the Son). This Greek version of the Dialogues, which earned Gregory his fame in the East, became the basis for the later Byzantine assertion that Gregory did not support the double procession, regardless of what the Carolingians claimed."
The text disputed over is Book II, Chapter 38, of the Dialogues:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/grego ... k2.htm#C38
St. Gregory in the Latin edition translated into English says:
Code: Select all
" And therefore our Saviour himself, to increase the faith of his disciples, said: If I do not depart, the Comforter will not come unto you: for, seeing certain it is that the comforting Spirit doth always proceed from the Father and the Son, why doth the Son say that he will depart that the Comforter may come, who never is absent from the Son?"
In the Greek edition prepared by Pope St. Zacharias (commemorated March 15), it says in the one section:
Code: Select all
"for, seeing certain it is that the comforting Spirit doth originate [proceed] from the Father and abideth in the Son".
One, it seems the critic would say that supposedly Pope St. Zachary, who knew Latin and Greek (being indeed from a Greek speaking family in Calabria, and whose father, Polychronios, was a Deacon in the Church at Rome), and was the Orthodox Pope of Rome celebrating all the services from Mass to Baptism to the Hours, Ordinations, etc, in Latin, while also knowing Greek as a Greek, responsible for defending Orthodoxy against Iconoclasm, and gave the Church in the Greek-speaking East the Dialogues, didn't know these own native languages of his, and theology enough, to render an accurate translation. That's kind of ridiculous! Instead of the author suggesting some ambiguity because of the Latin, why not the reverse? Indeed, the Septuagint is so valuable not just as the Scripture of the Church, but, because it can also be useful in translation. For example, suppose there is a dispute about what the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7:14, almah, means. Some says, 'virgin', and others say 'young woman, maiden'. Well, the 70 Translators certainly were familiar with Greek. Therefore, they could have used a different word than they did, but, they chose a word in Greek that explicitly implied 'virgin' (parthenos). Therefore, it is the 'translation' which is contained in a comprehensive language which can define terms and ambiguities in one less so.
Therefore, a word like 'procedite', 'procedere', etc, which has an ambiguous meaning in older theological Latin, often has to be clarified. Thus, Pope Pelagius uses the word 'intemporaliter' (eternally) to clarify the exact nature of the Holy Ghost's Procession in his Epistle to King Childerbert in the 500s. However, Pope St. Zachary choose to render the ambiguous Latin word, which could be subject to the same meaning as Procession in relation between the Father and the Holy Ghost, or procession in some other meaning such as sending in time, etc, by the translation he used. However, as time continued, the ambiguous phrase took on an horrible life of its own. The term was wrongly put into the Creed, and the heresy became more and more powerful.
We remember, even at the Council of Florence, when St. Mark of Ephesus put forward the Letter of St. Maximus to Marinus, as a basis for understanding the true doctrine, the Latins, who had been so quick to bring this letter up because of St. Maximus' words, quickly renounced the letter. Why? Because St. Maximus explains what the Romans of that time meant by the phrase, which was diametrically opposed to what the Papists meant by it back then and today. Therefore, there is no reason to suppose that St. Gregory the Great taught that the Holy Ghost Eternally Proceeds from the Father and the Son, or the Double-Procession Heresy. Instead, using an awkward language, he was trying to express the view that, as St. Zacharias translates, that the Holy Ghost Originates Eternally from the Father, and Abides in the Son. Because of the heretical use of these terms, it is impossible to use them as they were originally mean. Indeed. St. Gregory II of Cyrpus at the Council of Blachernae states:
Code: Select all
"And they either infer a double or a single procession of origin, and join the Son to the Father according to this explanation of "cause," both of which are beyond all blasphemy. For there is no other hypostasis in the Trinity except the Father's, from which the existence and essence of the consubstantial [Son and Holy Spirit] is derived. According to the common mind of the Church and the aforementioned saints, the Father is the foundation and the source of the Son and the Spirit, the only source of divinity, and the only cause. If, in fact, it is also said by some of the saints that the Spirit proceeds "through the Son," what is meant here is the eternal manifestation of the Spirit by the Son, not the purely [personal] emanation into being of the Spirit, which has its existence from the Father. Otherwise, this would deprive the Father from being the only cause and the only source of divinity, and would expose the theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus] who says "everything the Father is said to possess, the Son, likewise, possesses except causality" as a dishonest theologian. To these who speak thus, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God."
Therefore, the St. Gregory did not teach the heresy of filioquist double-processionism. The term in the original Latin can be interpreted more fully by the Greek of St. Zacharias to mean that Procession in Latin, being originally a broad term, encompassed many meanings. The Holy Ghost Proceeds from the Father as the Eternal Origin, and the only sense He can be said to 'proceed' from the Son is in the sense of either an Eternal Manifestation, or temporal sending. However, the Papists took this ambiguous phraseology and built an heresy out of it. This is why you should not tamper with the Creed, even if you have 'good intentions' and don't 'mean to teach heresy', something will always come of it, usually and almost invariably bad.
In Christ,
Fr. Enoch