See you in 2054

I was very pleased to see some old friends this weekend, among them my fellow bloggers Eve Tushnet, The Old Oligarch, Cacciaguida, and Zorak.

We spent a lot of time talking about Church union. Eve and I focused on what Catholics and Orthodox could learn from each other. Catholics, because of their willingness to deal with and even assimilate so much of the outside world, have a wealth of knowledge that would be helpful to apply as the hypothetically re-united Church fights against the spiritual vacuum of modernity. Orthodox, because of their strict adherence to the forms of worship (you cannot find an Orthodox parish where the Divine Liturgy has turned watery, while I've heard many horror stories about parishes where the altar and Presence were just a bit hard to find) have been less vulnerable to internal corruption (Orthodoxy never faced a Reformation or other such horrible schisms and heresies).

That should not apply that Orthodoxy is any less intellectual than Catholicism, though. I had the great pleasure of meeting a graduate student in Byzantine ecclesiastical music, the son of an Orthodox priest as well as a graduate of the seminary. He rattled off quite a few books and authors that I will certainly look at in the coming weeks in an attempt to develop a more sophisticated understanding of my faith. In fact, I'm contemplating taking a year off before law school to study theology at either the Holy Cross seminary Boston or St. Vladimir's in NY.

The Old Oligarch and I argued about the Filioque for a while. I think we agreed that this phrase was a little problematic, and did not exactly clarify the nature of the Trinity. I would maintain that we need not even talk about the generation of the Persons of the Trinity to differentiate them; rather, we can talk about the "function," so to speak, of each Person (Father as Source of Godhead, Son as Redeemer, Holy Spirit as Perfector).

If we do talk about their respective generation, the Filioque falls short. The Old Oligarch explained that, because we cannot quite be sure of the difference between "proceeding from" and "begotten of" (if I understood him correctly) the Son and Holy Spirit blur together. So, to tell the difference between these two Persons of thee Trinity, we appeal to Biblical evidence and come to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and the Son. Now we have a difference between the Son and Holy Spirit, and have a relationship between them apart from the mediation of the Father (in other words, we can now say more than the Holy Spirit relates to the Son through the Father, in that the former proceeds from and the latter is begotten of).

However, the Filioque introduces its own problematic language. Can we really say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son in the same way? I think not. The Old Oligarch and I both agreed that, when most people talk about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Son, the Holy Spirit is being sent from the Father and through the Son (perhaps I'll edit this post later on by finding some Biblical passages, but dinner is in a few minutes). So, what we really need is a third word, apart from proceeding and begetting, to explain how the Holy Spirit "proceeds from" the Son.

If we establish that the Father and the Son are "doing" different things, I think we can clear up the big theological difference between Catholics and Orthodox.

Regardless, I would rather the two sides at least achieved sacramental unity, even before sorting out their theological differences. I find that having attended services at St. Mary's with my Catholic friends, along with trying to receive every week and thus attempting to live a sacramentally satisfying life, puts me in a much better position to think about theology. If I may tweak the saying that Mark Shea is so fond of ("Sin makes you stupid"): if we can pray together and receive together, we can think together.