University of Birmingham
The philosophy of filioque
Effingham, Nikk
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10.1017/S0034412518000264
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Effingham, N 2018, 'The philosophy of filioque', Religious Studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412518000264
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The philosophy of
filioque
NIKK EFFINGHAM
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT
nikk.effingham@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper offers a model of the Trinity dealing with various objections to the filioque
clause. I deal with three worries: the problem of double procession; the problem of the Father’s
omnipotence; worries about the Spirit’s subordination. The model has two main commitments:
(i) relations like proceeding, begetting, generation etc. are causal relations; (ii) each Divine Person
is caused by the other two Divine Persons. The model also allows for the Father’s elevation over
and above the Spirit and the Son. I end by discussing some problems for this revisionary
scheme.
1
It is particularly a la mode to marry contemporary metaphysics with issues in the philosophy of
religion. Setting aside whether this current fashion can be justified, this paper investigates just
such a model of the Trinity allowing for the filioque clause (i.e. allowing for the Spirit to proceed
from the Father and the Son). The first section introduces the details of filioque, as well as some
difficulties levelled against it. Next I introduce the two components of the model: that the
relations between the Divine Persons are causal (which solves some of the problems introduced
in the first section) and that each Divine Person is caused to exist by the other two (which solves
the remaining problem of the Spirit being subordinated to the Father and the Son). I then extend
the model to show how it can nevertheless allow for the Father being, in some sense, ‘elevated’
compared to the other two Divine Persons. I end by discussing the problematic, revisionary,
components of the model.
The proposed model depends upon the possibility of backwards causation and time travel. That
said, throughout I assume that time travel is metaphysically possible. I don’t deny that if time
travel (and associated phenomena like backwards causation, causal loops, bootstrapped objects
etc.) were metaphysically impossible, then the model of the Trinity presented here would not
work. Important as this assumption is, I won’t defend it because time travel’s metaphysical
possibility has been widely defended/endorsed elsewhere.
2
Given the extensive endorsement of
its possibility, it seems fruitful to investigate the Trinity based upon such an assumption
(something which I’ve done elsewhere––see Effingham (2015); see also Leftow (2004)).
Filioque
The Nicene Creed reads:
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty […] And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the
only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God,
Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance
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with the Father, by whom all things were made. […] And I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son […]
The final clause of the quote is the filioque clause (Latin for ‘and [from] the son’). A 6
th
century
addition to the original 325 AD Nicene Creed, it was the popularised public culprit for the 1054
AD split between the Western Church and the Eastern Church. The Western Church endorsed
the clause; the Eastern Church vigorously opposed it. The growing divide between them became
ever more entrenched and irresolvable, leading to the split. Much of the criticism of filioque
concerned the theological justifications for its inclusion, as well as worries that the history of the
debate was being warped. I take no stand on such issues in this paper and am interested only in
the purely philosophical criticisms levelled against filioque. That said, focus on three such
objections levelled by the Eastern Church.
Objection One: Filioque involves ‘double procession’ whereby the Spirit proceeds twice and in
two distinct spirations (one from the Father and another, separate, spiration from the Son).
Objection Two: The filioque clause posits something superfluous. Why cannot the procession be
from the Father alone given that the Father is omnipotent? Indeed, if the Father can’t proceed
the Spirit alone, surely that threatens His omnipotence? Photius of Constantinople (in the
Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs) raises these concerns:
If his [i.e., the Spirit’s] procession from the Father is perfect and complete––and it is
perfect, because he is perfect God from perfect God––then why is there also
procession from the Son? [quoted in Siecienski 2010: 101]
(Others, e.g. Theodore Mouzalon, follow up on this sentiment (Siecienski (2010: 141).)
Objection Three: Filioque subordinates the Spirit to the Son. Photius of Constantinople’s
Encyclical again contains this objection:
By the teaching of the procession from the Son also, the Father and the Son end up
being closer to each other than the Father and the Spirit, since the Son possesses not
only the Father’s nature but also the property of his person. (Quoted in Siecienski
(2010: 101).)
This third objection challenges the supposed equality of the Divine Persons––that is, it
challenges:
EQUALITY: The Divine Persons are all equal.
The next section deals with the first two objections. The third objection is a bigger hurdle,
which receives a section of its own.
The Divine Physics
The Genus of Divine Physical Relations
The Son is generated from the Father. The Son is begotten from the Father. The Spirit is
spirated jointly by the Father and the Son. Neither generated nor begotten, the Spirit proceeds
from the two. The underlined words pick out the different relations between the different Divine
Persons; call them the ‘divine physical relations’. It is part of the proposed model that these
relations are causal relations. So generation, spiration etc. are different species of the causal genus
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in the same way that that pushing, pulling, gravitational attraction, electromagnetic repulsion etc.
are species of the causal genus; whilst they are different relations, they are the same kind of
relation.
That the relations are causal was not an entirely uncommon view amongst the Greeks
(Siecienski (2010: 47)) (and it was also the view of many others e.g. Gregory of Nazianzus, John
Damascus, and Anselm of Havelberg inter alia (Siecienski (2010: 41, 90, 121-22)). Further, one of
the main alternatives to thinking that the relations are causal is to think they are some sort of
metaphysical dependency relation; if, like myself, you believe metaphysical dependency is a type
of causation (Schaffer (2016); Wilson (Forthcoming)) the divine physical relations will be causal
anyhow.
I’ll canvass two objections to the divine physical relations being causal.
Objection: If the divine physical relations are causal then it implies a temporal ordering amongst
the Trinity for causer must come before causee. Since the Divine Persons did not come into
existence at different times, I must be wrong. (We can find this complaint in early sources, such
as Aquinas’s Summa Theologica 1.q33.a1.2, through to today e.g. Baber (2008: 152).)
Rejoinder: Usually causal relations indicate the presence of temporal relations (e.g. if c causes e
then usually this means that c occurs earlier than e) but this isn’t true by necessity. We can
construct a metaphysical possibility within which one event causes another even though they’re
not temporally related. Given the assumption made in the introduction, cases of backwards
causation are possible. So it’s possible that c causes e and yet c happens after e (for instance, a case
of time travel in which one steps into a time machine in the future and causes the event of
someone stepping out of a time machine in the past). Imagine a variant case of backwards
causation where causation is simultaneous.
3
At some possible world, w
1
, c causes e at time t and c
and e both occur only at t. Given any reasonable principle of recombination, if w
1
exists then
there’s another world, w
2
, which is a qualitative duplicate just of timeslice t from w
1
. Myself and
Melia (2007) have argued that such a world would qualify as a timeless world. Therefore, at w
2
the
causal relations would hold between c and e even though there are no temporal relations. Thus
there can be causation without any temporal ordering or temporal relations.
Objection: Causal relations are relations between events and not things. The Divine Persons, in
not being events, cannot be related by causal relations.
Rejoinder: There is an interesting debate to be had about which things are fundamentally
connected by causal relations and whether facts or events (or what have you) are the fundamental
causal relata. But it’s simply false to say that non-events don’t stand in some sort of (possibly
non-fundamental) causal relation: balls cause windows to smash; the fire’s property of heat causes
the room to heat up; the fact that there’s no oxygen in the room causes people to die. So it’s true
that objects, properties, and facts cause things, even though it might not be fundamentally true
that objects, properties, and facts cause things. No-one ever said that the divine physical
relations, and facts about the Divine Persons and the relations between them, were
metaphysically fundamental facts. Thus I can say with impunity that the Divine Persons cause,
and are caused by, one another. Note that this doesn’t mean that they’re unimportant facts.
When I say that the facts aren’t fundamental I merely mean that they aren’t metaphysically
fundamental (compare: facts about the political situation in Syria are, as of 2018 AD, very
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important, but no such fact is metaphysically fundamental). Nor do I mean that these facts aren’t
in some sense ‘prior’ to the rest of the world (compare: the laws of nature might be thought to be
in some sense prior to the rest of the world even though it’s commonplace to think that facts
about the laws aren’t metaphysically fundamental and are instead explained by, e.g., relations
between universals). Nor does the non-fundamentality of these facts somehow impugn the
Godhead. Just because facts about the Divine Persons aren’t fundamental doesn’t mean that God
or the Divine Persons aren’t themselves fundamental
4
(compare: if electrons are fundamental
then the fact that two electrons are spatially related would be a non-fundamental fact––grounded
in facts about spatiotemporal relations––which is nevertheless solely about fundamental things).
Resolving the problem of the Double Procession
Two problems for filioque can be solved if the divine relations are causal. Consider the first
problem: If the Spirit proceeds from the Son and the Father then this amounts to ‘double
procession’ whereby the Spirit proceeds twice over. It’s not entirely clear why this is problematic,
but I’ll treat solving the problem as a desideratum given that Catholicism explicitly denies double
procession (as made clear by the 1428 Council of Florence, in Laetentur Caeli: Bulla Unionis
Craecorum, and repeated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church).
And that desideratum can easily be met if divine physical relations are causal. Imagine a case of
regular causation whereby I am not strong enough to lift a table and so engage the help of Robert
and Adrian. Together, we lift the table. In that case the causal relation ‘__ lifts __’ takes a plurality
of entities (namely: myself, Robert, and Adrian) as its first relatum. And the plurality lifts the table
even though no given person amongst that plurality lifts the table––it’s misleading to say that
Nikk lifted the table for, at best, I helped to lift the table. A predicate like ‘__ lifts __’ is a
‘collective predicate’, in that it can apply to pluralities/collections without applying to everything
amongst that plurality/collection. If spiration is a causal relation then it can also be collective. So
a plurality of entities can spirate a single thing in a single act of spiration. Just as myself, Robert,
and Adrian lifting a table isn’t three separate liftings, the Father and the Son can spirate the Spirit
without there being two distinct spirations.
Resolving the Problem of the Father’s Ominpotence
The second objection to filioque was that the Father’s omnipotence means that He can spirate
the Spirit without the Son’s help and so either the Son’s role in the spiration is superfluous or
(worse) the Son is required (which offends the Father’s omnipotence).
Again, given that the divine physical relations are causal this worry can be dispatched. Imagine a
master chef baking a cake with his daughter. He has it within him to cook an excellent cake on
his own. This is no impediment to him and his daughter collectively cooking the cake––he is not a
worse chef because of it nor are his cooking skills slighted by working alongside his child. And
the father might have an excellent reason to cook a cake with his daughter even though he could
nevertheless cook it alone (e.g. because it’s a bonding experience). Similarly, then, for God. God
already causes some things alongside other agents even though God could cause them alone. For
instance, God brings about a miracle to aid Jehoshaphat in his war against the Moabites (2 Kings
3: 16-20). Clearly God could defeat the Moabites alone even though the actual fact is that God
and Jehoshaphat collectively defeat the Moabites. This neither threatens God’s omnipotence nor
is it that mind boggling that there might be some value in the act of collective causation which
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