recently I've been seeing the resurrection of a pretty outlandish argument against the filio I've heard this many times before but recently it was brought to my attention Again by Ubie petris against the greatest most charitable most nuanced YouTuber the infallible interpreter of the magisterium Michael Lofton and you know I also saw our good friend Mr Orthodox Luigi have a tweet on this as well so I thought it'd be nice to just do a video to kind of shortly address this so what is this weird argument that I keep mentioning this argument is basically meant to counter a very common argument that gets brought forward by Catholic authors often unfortunately Catholic authors are kind of afraid to go in and to discuss what the capid ocian fathers teach or St Cel teaches or even St Maximus or St John of theam Mascus they don't want to treat those authors or antonine authors because they seem not clear enough so what they'll do is he'll basically put an argument like this the argument goes if the Latin fathers taught the filio then the filio is true the Latin fathers taught the filio therefore the filio is true personally I really like this argument but this argument does require a little explaining we have to answer certain questions about indect ability could the entire Latin church after a certain date fall into a heresy how long could they have fallen into a heresy and so on and so forth but even with all this explaining it's not a half bad argument now usually what Orthodox will do is they will concede that the Latin fathers actually aired on the filio way and so saful gentius I would say is aside from St Augustine um is the only other father I will say that uh that probably has a fili oist bent now what they'll do to justify their descent from the Latin view of the filio is they will say that the East didn't teach the filio and then they will point to the central role of the capid doans in the development of trinitarian theology in order to justify a capid ocian Supremacy over some of the Latin fathers yeah when we're considering uh presuppositions I was mentioning earlier the reading one set of fathers in light of the others or reading the other in light of the former seems to me that we should read it seems to me at least when I was thinking of coming to terms with that and you guys can disagree with me if you want but it seems to me that because the capid doans had they were the their theology was the foundation of the trinitarian doctrines of Constantinople ju and right it seems to me that we should be reading the earli Latin fathers before Augustine in light of their theology I agree that's my take no I think I think that's how we should read uh Hillary for example absolutely now ultimately I don't think it's right to point to this East versus West tension on any Doctrine especially as important as the Trinity but this requires a lot of discussion about indect ability which is an issue of ecclesiology not an issue of trinitarian theology so it's not really in my wheelhouse so usually what I'll do to this argument is I'll simply say that the capid oans didn't disagree with St Augustine but there's a different way in which the Orthodox can disagree with this whereas the ordinary way in which Orthodox will respond to this argument is by attacking the major premise that is if the Latin fathers teach the filio then the filio is true on the other hand there's other Orthodox that will attack the minor premise that is that the Latin fathers even taught the filio now it's this argument that I think is quite strange but in another way I actually think this is the more consistent way for orthodox to go about this these Orthodox will legitimately argue that the Latin fathers some actually include St Augustine among them did not teach the Florentine filio but actually taught a version of the filio that is reconcilable with Eastern Orthodox Dogma while I of course think this is a very bad reading of the western fathers I do think this is more sensible for them to actually do and I think there are three important reasons although I can think of a lot more for taking this position but before we continue remember that if you like the show please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com and toist it really helps me out and you get access to more streams articles Etc first we can look at the praise given to the Latin fathers at first Constantinople we further declare that we hold fast to the decrees of the four councils and in every way followed the holy fathers athenus Hillary basil Gregory the Theologian Gregory of Nissa Ambrose theopus John chrysostom of Constantinople Cel Augustin procus Leo and their writings on the true Faith second we could look at the praise given to St Augustine in Eastern Orthodox liturgies which actually especially points to his anti Arian trinitarian writings where he teaches the filio who conf fittingly himm the labors wherewith thou did toil throughout the whole church cutting down ungodly heresies with the sword of thy Corrections denouncing the Aryans casting down the manes exhorting the donatus to return to the Orthodox Faith crushing The Audacity Of pagus and planting Orthodoxy until thou Hast assembled many children in the habitation of the church and instructing and guiding them did lead them to the Mansions of Heaven the third and most important reason has to do with the letter to marinus by Maximus the Confessor the Orthodox will often use this letter to get around directly engaging with the Latin fathers and having to explain all of the texts wherein they teach the filio let's look at the relevant section to the letter of marinus with regard to the first matter they the Romans have produced the unanimous documentary evidence of the Latin fathers and also of St serel of Alexandria from the sacred commentary he composed on the gospel of St John on the basis of these texts they have showed that they have not made the son the cause of the spirit they know in fact that the father is the only cause of the Son and the spirit the one by begetting and the other by procession but they use this expression in order to manifest the spirits coming forth through him and in this way to make clear the unity and identity of the essence the important phrase in this section is that word cause right there when it says they have not made the son the cause of the spirit on the one hand the Greeks will interpret cause in the sense of principle or that from which something flows so really this would be read as the LA do not say that the spirit flows forth from the Sun as from a principal now this would clearly contradict the teaching of the Council of Florence on the other hand the Latins argue that this word cause or IA is in the same sense as the Latin word otor otor basically means the primordial source of something I explained this reading and the reasons why this makes sense in my debate with David ran if you wanted to check that out but basically when you look at the parallel usages from St Maximus I would argue that it makes more sense that the Latin reading is actually the correct reading but that's not important right now what's important is that the Greeks will often simply assume their reading of this text and then say well he says that the Latin authors did not teach the filio therefore the Latin authors did not teach the filio now if by direct engagement with the Latin fathers they see that the Latin fathers didn't teach the filio then they have a problem there either on the one hand they'll have to concede that their reading of the letter to marinos is actually wrong and were right which means that St Maximus is a supporter of the Latin view of the filio or on the other hand they'll have to take the insane view that St Maximus actually didn't know what he was talking about when he reported the view of the Latin fathers and what makes this even more interesting is that he actually says that the Latin fathers agree with st Cel so with our reading Not only would St Maximus be arguing that the Latin fathers agreed with the filio and Not only would St Maximus himself be agreeing with the filio he would also be saying that St Cel agreed with the filio but let me simplify this point to make it a little bit clearer first you have to ask whether the letter to marinus condemns the Florentine view or not if you say yes then you're in trouble since he states that he agrees with the Latin view so in order to preserve this as an argument you'll either have to say that he got the Latin view wrong which would be crazy due to his exposure to Latin theology or you would have to say that the Latin fathers didn't actually agree with Florence so what UB Petrus and some others do is bite the bullet and say that the Latin fathers didn't actually teach the Florentine filio which is an impossible Hill to climb and requires metric tons of cope on the other hand if you are one of those Orthodox who con seeed that the Latin fathers actually didn't teach the filio Quay you're in even more trouble well if the Latin fathers teach the filio Quay according to the mind of Florence and say maximus says that the Latin and Greek fathers agree on this matter and St Max misses defending the fact that the Greek fathers taught the Florentine filio and this is in a situation that the Orthodox want to be in so on this they are trapped between a rock and a hard place this is why I say say that the letter to moros is actually a great argument for the Latin position but now that we have that out of the way let's see what Ubie has to say about this yes these figures believed in a filio but did they believe in the Florentine filio according to Dr sensky whom Lofton brought in as a support the answer is almost certainly not and it would be anacronismo and Mr Lofton who loves to wax poetic about the need for nuance fails to show any of said Nuance so he takes the route of simply stating that when Catholic apologist quote the Latin fathers they are simply assuming hypostatic procession and this of course is fair enough it is within the possible domain of the phrase from the Sun that it means something else than a hypostatic procession this is granted so what we need to do is we actually need to argue about the sense of the passage and how do we do that we look at context we look at parallel usages and we look at the general argument and the way in which the argument progresses now of course when we actually do this we see that they teach the filio and the filio that is defined at Florence but in order to give you a taste to this I would just use one glaringly obvious example that was basically accepted in the entire West and this example is the pseudo aonian Creed the reason that I use the pseudo aian Creed isn't because I think it's from aanus but because of its wide and early acceptance in the Latin West so we can say that this pretty accurately rep represents what the Latin fathers would have affirmed would have believed I think this is much better than giving an example from a single father or from a pope or from a council rather it's giving something that was affirmed universally before the Schism if you want to look at the history of the spread of the usage of the Athan Creed check out J&D Kelly's book The athi Creed ultimately the earliest time that we see the athian Creed used is actually by St cesarias of Arles who was one of the foremost augustinians in the early church a very strong disciple Le of St Augustine and defender of his views on everything and the reason we know that St caesarius used it and St cesarias actually uses it in one of his homilies and assumes that at his time it was a Creed that was known thus the Creed was used in the west since at least the early 6th Century well before the time of St Maximus the Confessor there are actually many cases of 6th Century ecclesiastical use of the Creed by local sins Kelly brings forth this example rared King of the Visigoths included in his allocation to the third Council of Toledo in the year 589 at which he formally renounced aryanism after this point the ath nation Creed ended up being used in the consecration of Bishops and also in the Office of Prime during the daily office if you want to read more about the history definitely read the Kelly book but my point is that it is a very early expression of Latin trinitarian Faith which by the time of St maximist a Confessor would have been a very good representation of the Latin View and it was something that was professed by Latin fathers theologians Bishops councils and even popes during the Pres Schism era so the question that we need to ask is does the athian Creed actually teach that the son is the hypostatic principle of the spirit or is it possible that it teaches something else what I want to do is I want to read the important section and then give some reasons for why the reading is correct now the reason that I'm doing it this way rather than bringing forth a hundred different quotes from the Latin fathers like I could do I want to show you guys how a close and careful reading of one of these texts by the Latin fathers can decisively conclude what type of filio is actually being spoken of so let's get to it the father is made of none neither created nor begotten the son is of the father alone not made nor created but begotten the Holy Ghost is of the father and of the son neither made nor created nor begotten but proceeding first I want you guys to notice something there are three affirmations based on the three persons it starts off each time by denying that they are created or made of course this is the case with all three of them since they are not creatures then after this it tells you what those persons are of so the fathers of none the son is of the father and the spirit is of the father and of the son so it starts off with the father and says that an equivalent terms he has the property of inability that is he is of none then after this it goes on to the son it denies that the son like the father is an aable but actually says that he is begotten of the father so what's the purpose of this passage stated that the son is begotten of the father well the passage is actually telling you what the son is constituted by it's constituted by being begotten that's what it means to be a son before it told you what the sun wasn't the sun wasn't created the sun wasn't made the reason it brings forth that the son is begotten is it wants to tell you what the son is what constitutes the son before it said that the father is of none neither created nor begotten now it wants to tell you what the sun is so obviously when it's using the language of begotten it's clearly speaking about the hypostatic origin of the sun isn't talking in terms of economy it isn't talking in terms of some sort of manifestation it's simply stating the Eternal hypostatic origin of the Sun so this is going to be extremely important when we consider the sense of the third affirmation so it goes on to say that the spirit just like the son of the father neither created nor made but then it denies that he is begotten it's denying that that is his hypostatic origination he is not simply begotten the father like the son is rather there's something else that constitutes him that is that he is of the father and of the son so when we keep in mind what the context is we keep in mind what the parallels are we keep in mind what the purpose is it's very clear when we read the athonian Creed that the athi Creed is affirming the hypostatic origination of the spirit from the father and the son it's not speaking of the working out in economy that wouldn't make any sense in what the purpose of the athian Creed is it's not talking about some sort of manifest sttion that wouldn't make sense of the parallels with the father and the son rather it is simply stating what the spirit is hypostatic there's also a second thing to notice and I kind of mentioned it before and this is basically that the entire passage is not at all about any sort of economic relation of the spirit or of the father or of the son this is not talking about the economy of the persons this is simply talking about what constitutes the persons it went on a long uh exposition of the unity of the persons now it's telling us what distinguishes the persons that's the whole purpose of the passage so it would make absolutely no sense not only from the parallelisms that I went over before but also from the purpose of the passage to randomly start talking about the Eternal manifestation of the spirit and also what makes this reading unlikely is that there's simply an Omission if let's say they did break the parallelism and brought up the Eternal manifestation of the spirit from the father through the son and they put that in those terms they didn't actually tell us what the hypostatic or ination of the spirit is that would be actually emitted in the Creed it would only be telling us about something else so you know one could argue that this is something that's being brought up you know the author might have thought that it was something worthwhile but if he did bring that up he would obviously also State what the hypostatic origination is in their reading it would be something completely missing from the text so from any sort of plain reading of the text with attention to the parallels with attention to the context we can also look in the uh in the reception of the aonian Creed as well if we wanted to but basically it's pretty clear that this is teaching the filio Beyond any sort of Reasonable Doubt and this is the filio which is taught at Florence this is a representation of what the Latin church teaches from very on and very universally well before St Maximus the Confessor wrote about what the Latin church believes so you have to ask yourself the question did Maximus the Confessor get the Latin view wrong if you say no then I have to ask you another question did Maximus the Confessor teach the philio if you say no then you're in a big massive contradiction if you say yes then you can actually not only read St Maximus as understanding what he was commenting on but also read the beautiful Harmony between the eastern and the Western fathers that was saw before us by our Holy Father St Maximus Confessor now I could do the same analysis with other texts from St Hillary St Ambrose St Augustine St ventia isodore you know Pope St Leo Pope St Gregory and so on and so forth I could do all that analysis if I wanted to but what's clear is when you do things like I just did and you look at the contexts the parallels the ordinary usage of terms and so on with all of these Latin fathers they very clearly teach the same thing that is the same filio that was affirmed at the Council of Florence but before I close off this video I want to State something that I've stated a few times before but this is a common method that's used by many many Orthodox apologists Catholic apologists also do things like this but basically it's the mere stating or mere infusion of Doubt into the mind of the hearer they will simply State some sort of narrative that seems plausible on the surface but won't stand up to criticism what the purpose of this narrative is is this narrative is meant to get around a difficult objection but what you guys need to be careful about what you guys have to do so you guys have to be careful not to Simply State these distinctions or to Simply State this narrative you actually have to go into the text themselves or at least demand that the one bringing forth these narratives is going into the text themselves and demonstrating their view from the texts because I can guarantee that there is not a single text from a Latin father especially Latin father after St Augustine that denies unequivocally the Florentine view of the filio and I'd bet my life on that so you have to demand that they do the hard work and they execute passages from St Augustine's day trinitate they execute passages from St fenus anti- arean works or St isidor's etymologies you have to demand that they execute those passages they explain them in context in accordance with the argument in accordance with the common use of terms you can't simply let them State narratives that's not how it works but what you will see is that they often will refuse to do this rather they will simply hide behind a certain reading of St Maximus a confessor's Works which itself is not interpreted due to the ordinary laws of hermeneutics and ultimately they're refusing to do the hard work in order to make a rhetorically effective statement of the matter anyways as always God bless