by Archpriest Dr. Georgios Lekkas of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium
Pride, according to St John Climacus, “is the ultimate poverty of soul, which only imagines itself to be rich and believes it lives in light while in fact it is in darkness. And not only does this virus prevent one from progressing, but even if someone is high up, it will bring them down.” [Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 22, §24 / Paracletos Monastery, Athens, 2014, in Greek].
When the proud man boasts of the intellectual capacities with which he can supposedly examine as an equal ‘the incomprehensible judgments’ of God [Step 25, §21], he turns his back on the Humble God, with the result that he is unable to sense the fragrance of the Humble Holy Spirit. In contrast, the humble man, according to the Ladder, fearfully avoids questioning the ‘unsearchable mysteries’ of God [Step 25, §11] and lets the Lord inform him of them in secret, according to His will. According to the Ladder, the Holy Humility granted by the Son through the Holy Spirit does not permit anyone infused with it to voice any form of opposition – even dialectical opposition – unless it concerns ‘questions of faith’ [Step 25, §9].
One such fundamental issue of faith, concerning the Procession of the Holy Spirit and the related struggle engaged in by St Gregory Palamas in the 14th century, is briefly discussed below.
According to St Gregory Palamas, the false Latin doctrine concerning the Procession of the Holy Spirit not only from the Father but also from the Son had its origin chiefly in the arrogance of its proponents, who disregarded the Orthodox decrees of the first two Ecumenical Councils and were led to absurd doctrinal positions on the grounds that they supposedly knew better than the participants in the Councils themselves [St Gregory Palamas, Writings, Volume I, Thessaloniki 1988, pp. 79-80 (Greek edition)].
According to the Orthodox doctrinal position of the undivided Church, the Son is mediator only in the creation of created beings and not in the procession of the Holy Spirit. However, the Latins unilaterally asserted that the Father emanates the Holy Spirit indirectly through the Son, while the Son emanates it directly and without any intermediary [pp. 43 and 69].
The excessive confidence of the Latins in their intellectual faculties resulted, according to Palamas, in the introduction of a diarchy within the Holy Trinity, since according to them both the Father and the Son are the origin of the Holy Spirit [p. 58]. Indeed they not only introduced a diarchy but also confused the Hypostases of the Father and the Son, by asserting that the Son is also Father of the Holy Spirit [pp. 51 and 63].
St Gregory reminds us, however, that the unity of the Holy Trinity is due, according to the unchanging doctrinal position of the undivided Church, both to the single Essence of the Three Persons and to the acknowledgement of the single origin of the Holy Trinity, which is the Hypostasis of the Father [p. 39].
St Gregory Palamas asserts that by equating the intra-Trinitarian procession of the Holy Spirit with its sending forth into creation, the Latins effectively make the Holy Spirit into a creature. [p. 99: ” The Latins, therefore, by saying that the procession of the divine Spirit is by absolute necessity also His sending forth, fashion the Spirit into a creature.”].
Thus St Gregory maintains that the Latins reproduced the Arian heresy, for while the Arians asserted that the Son and Logos of God is a creature, the Latins are necessarily led to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is a creature just like the rest of creation [p. 132].
The Arians departed from the correct faith by regarding the Son as the work of the Father’s will, and the Latins made the same error regarding the Holy Spirit. That is, they considered the Holy Spirit to be the work of the will of the Father and the Son, and not a ‘work of nature’ as Athanasius the Great maintained in his conflict with the Arians [p. 98]. Indeed, as St Gregory reminds us, Athanasius asserts that the Father begets the Son of the same substance ‘by nature’ and not ‘by will’, and also emanates the Holy Spirit of the same substance ‘by nature’ and not ‘by will’. This is because the natural begetting of the Son and the natural procession of the Spirit are superior to the creation of the world by will [pp. 98-99].
Even if we do not accept that the Holy Spirit is a creature, once we accept, as the Latins do, the Son as the second principle of the Holy Trinity, we are forced, as Palamas proved, to accept the Holy Spirit as the third principle within the Holy Trinity, which in this case must give birth to the Son together with the Father! [p. 100]. That is, whether we accept the Holy Spirit as a creature or as the third principle of the Holy Trinity, what is certain is that the Latins’ error necessarily leads to polytheism and dissolves the unity of the Holy Trinity [p. 39: ‘it opens the door to the polytheistic delusion’].
According to accepted doctrinal revelation in the undivided Church, both the Son and the Holy Spirit have as their exclusive cause the Essence and Person of the unoriginated Father [p. 152]. God the Father is the Father because He begets the Son and emanates the Holy Spirit [p. 34]. According to Basil the Great, as St Gregory Palamas recalls [p. 46], from God the Father, as from a single mouth, comes the Logos/Son and the breath that goes out with Him (= the Holy Spirit). To refute any potential degradation of the Spirit in relation to the Son, Palamas invokes the testimony of St Gregory the Theologian, according to whom God the Father, as the direct and exclusive cause of the two Lights, is both Father of the Son and Emanator of the Spirit [pp. 53 and 129].
The Holy Spirit is therefore no less ‘second’ than the Son and not a third and subordinate cause as the Latins have erroneously claimed [pp. 54 and 67]. More specifically, the Holy Spirit is ‘by nature God’, as is the Son, in that He proceeds ‘from God the Father alone’ [p. 38]. According to the famous and deeply inspired words of St Gregory Palamas, God the Father is ‘divinity without cause and cause of divinity’! [p. 114]. Thus all that the Father has, the Son also has, except for causality, and all that the Son has, the Spirit also has, except for sonship [p. 66], so that every Hypostasis is God and the Three Divine Hypostases together, the one God, the Holy Trinity [p. 40]. Indeed, in St Gregory Palamas’ wonderful summary of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, ‘Know that God is three and one and that the one is the common single cause of the two’ [p. 95].
Palamas faithfully follows St Gregory of Nyssa, who was proclaimed ‘father of the fathers’ at the Second Ecumenical Council, in emphasizing that just as God the Father never exists without the Son, the same is true of the Holy Spirit [pp. 93 and 123]. The procession of the Holy Spirit, St Gregory Palamas reminds us, from the Father alone is therefore not merely a mode of His origin but also a mode of His eternal coexistence with the Father who is without origin [p. 77: ‘proceeding from the Father before the ages and for ever’].
According to St Gregory, the folly of the Latins, the result of their arrogant belief in their intellectual capacities, made them incapable of distinguishing between the procession and the sending forth of the Holy Spirit [p. 151: “For this is also Your [thing], to think [it] the same [way], [both] the sending forth into the world and the mode of existence”]. That the Son was brought into the world by the Father and the Holy Spirit does not in any way mean that the Son was begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit, argues Palamas [p. 97]. According to accepted Orthodox doctrinal revelation, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the World is the result of the common will of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity [pp. 88 and 117], which is not to be confused with the procession ‘by nature’ of the Holy Spirit from God the Father alone [p. 89].
The problem of the Latins when they speak of God is, according to St Gregory, that they not only fail to distinguish between Divine Nature and Divine Will, but that they also fail to distinguish between Divine Hypostasis and Divine Energies [p. 105]. When Christ says to His disciples, explains Palamas, that the words I speak to you are Spirit, He is not referring to the Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, but the divine and life-giving energy with which His words are filled [p. 84]. Consequently, Christ did not bestow the Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit on His disciples, but rather the energies of the Holy Spirit capable of bringing about beneficial salvific effects on the worthy.
The Son and Logos of God is, according to Palamas, the One who bestowed on Creation the energies of the Holy Spirit capable of ensuring both its composition and its preservation, and it is again He Himself who granted to the Church the energies of the Holy Spirit necessary for the constitution and maintenance of the Church as a place for the recreation of the World [pp. 119-120]. In this sense alone, St Gregory argued, the Son and Logos of God is the ‘bestower of the Spirit’ and certainly not His ‘begetter’.
To be precise, man was deprived by the Fall of the divine light which he received at his creation in Paradise and, according to St Gregory, the Son and Logos of God came into the World to restore this loss by re-infusing into man the energies of the Holy Spirit which he was deprived of by his fall [pp. 85-86]. Three times, according to Palamas, the Son and Logos of God granted the Holy Spirit to man [p. 94]. 1. At the creation of man in Paradise 2. When, before His Ascension, He bestowed upon His Disciples the power of the forgiveness of sins of all those who would believe in Him 3. After His Ascension at Pentecost (and also at the Pentecost of every believer, through the conferring of the powers of the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of Chrismation).
The soteriological consequences of the Latins’ false doctrine of the Filioque are enormous, according to St Gregory. Anyone who claims, he says, that the Holy Spirit owes Its Hypostasis also to the Son is ‘impious’ and ‘outside the Church’ [p. 130] and this is because anyone who advocates the Filioque, the Saint says, ‘forfeits the adoption that the Holy Spirit bestows’ on the Orthodox faithful [p. 49]. Thus, according to Palamas, Latin literature on the Filioque is the work of theologians who, having ‘forfeited the adoption’, do not understand Orthodox teaching on the Holy Spirit in the light of the Holy Spirit and thus misinterpret it [p. 71: ‘not interpreting through the Spirit what is said by the Spirit’].
Herein lies the main difference in theological method between East and West. Latin theology tries, says the Saint, by means of arrogant contemplation to understand what transcends beings, with the result that it projects as the Order of the Life of the Trinity the contents of its condescending philosophical inventions [p. 151]. In contrast, Orthodox theology constitutes the content of divine revelation to theologians with a pure and humble heart. As Palamas characteristically says, following Basil the Great here too, the transcendent order of the Holy Trinity is not proclaimed by the mind but only revealed to it according to how the Triune God Himself wishes to reveal Himself to theologians who have previously been purified of their passions [p. 62]. Not, therefore, from what is below to what is above, but from the above to the above! [p. 143].
Indeed, according to St John Climacus, the Holy Spirit visits some as a flame and purifies them and others – those whom He has already purified – He visits as light and illumines them: ‘It is one thing,’ he writes in his Discourse on Prayer, “to oversee (that is, to supervise) your heart often, and another is to perform the duties of a bishop concerning it. In the first case, the mind resembles a ruler, while in the second, it resembles a bishop who offers rational sacrifices to Christ. And as someone who received the title of “Theologian” [=referring to St Gregory the Theologian], the Holy and Heavenly Fire (meaning the Holy Spirit) visits the former as flame and consumes them, as they still need purification, while it visits the latter as light and illuminates them, as they have reached the measure of perfection.” [Step 28, §52].
According to the Ladder, man learns what Divine Humility is all about only when the Humble God enters into him through His divine energies. The man who has personal experience of the humility of God puts himself beneath all men, even beneath the demons. That is, when the Grace of Holy Humility touches a man, he does not blame the demons for his mistakes, but he feels that he himself feeds and increases the evil of the demons by his mistakes and failures. “Humility is an anonymous grace of the soul, which can be named,” says St John Climacus, “only by those who have experienced it directly. It is unexpressed wealth, the name of God, the gift of God, inasmuch as He says: ‘Learn not from an angel, nor from a man, nor from books, but from me’, that is, through my indwelling and my illumination and my activity in you, ‘that I am meek and humble in heart and mind and spirit’” [Step 25, §3].
The Humble Holy Spirit rests in him who unjustly suffers humiliation and is preserved in him if he also humbles himself [Step 4, §125]. Then there is established in him, according to the Ladder, the meekness which enables him to pray sincerely even for his enemies and without being in the least disturbed by the trouble they cause him. Man then becomes like a rock in a foaming sea which remains immovable in its midst such that all the waves that strike him dissolve upon him [Step 24, §2].
Indeed, according to the Ladder, Holy Humiliation only comes to the Orthodox and more specifically to those who have previously been cleansed of their passions: “It is impossible for flame to come from snow. But it is even more impossible to find [Holy] Humility in the heterodox,” we read in the Ladder, “because this feat belongs only to the faithful and orthodox, and even more so to those of them who have been purified from their passions” [Step 25, §31].
We began this exposition with St John Climacus. Let us therefore conclude with him again: “Once, someone beheld,” writes St John, “the beauty of humility within his heart, and upon being seized by wonder, he asked for the name of her father. She then, with a cheerful and serene smile, replied: ‘Why do you hasten to learn my father’s name, when he is nameless? I will not reveal it to you until you receive God within you.’ To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” [Step 25, §63].
[Given in French, as part of the Adult Catechetical Programme, at the Parish of Sts Silouan and Martin in Saint Gilles, Brussels, on Cheesefare Sunday, 17.3.24, immediately after the Eucharistic Convocation, and in Greek at the Sunday Evening Lent Vespers for the Second Sunday of the Great Lent (St Gregory Palamas Sunday), at the Parish of St Nicholas Schaerbeek, Brussels, 31.3.24.]
