John 15:26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.”

A long doctrinal debate about the ‘procession of the Holy Spirit’ has centred on this expression.  The idea of the Holy .Spirit’s ‘procession’ from the Father was understood in ontological terms.  To the basic formula the Western church added the ‘filioque’ (‘and the Son’) clause, and this was a point of division between the Eastern and Western branches of the church.  But the context suggests a missional, rather than an ontological, meaning.  Nevertheless, we cannot escape a very high doctrine of the Spirit here (noting also the personal pronoun ‘he’) to go alongside the very high Christology of the Fourth Gospel.  As Carson points out,

‘the elements of a full-blown doctrine of the Trinity crop up repeatedly in the Fourth Gospel.’

A.A. Hodge (Outlines of Theology) says that apart from this one phrase,

‘the Scriptures apply precisely the same predicates to the relation of the Spirit to the Son that they do to his relation to the Father.’

It is well known that the Eastern and Western churches split over two issues: papal authority and the filioque clause.

The Nicene Creed (325) had originally read:

‘I believe… in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and together glorified.’

This is recited unchanged by the east to this day.  But the Western church added ‘and from the Son’ (in Latin, Filioque), so that the Creed now reads ‘who proceeds from the Father and the Son’.  The extra clause is thought to have been added to counter the claims of Arianism.  But it was supported by the teachings of Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine.  It seems to date from the local Council of Toledo (589) and was officially endorsed in in 1017.

The addition was problemmatic to the Eastern Church for two reasons: firstly, it threatened the unity of the church, because it had not been agreed at an ecumenical council; secondly, most Orthodox believe that it does not represent the truth.

According to the Orthodox Study Bible:

‘With respect to God’s working salvation in the world, the Son sends the Holy Spirit from the Father. With respect to the divine nature, the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father alone. In other words, the Holy Spirit receives His eternal existence only from the Father. In conformity with Christ’s words, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed confesses belief “in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.” While the Son is begotten of the Father alone, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone; the source, the Fountainhead, of both Persons is the Father.’

Feinberg (No One Like Him) quotes Alister McGrath, who articulates the Eastern way of thinking as follows:

‘Within this context, it is unthinkable that the Holy Spirit should proceed from the Father and Son. Why? Because it would totally compromise the principle of the Father as the sole origin and source of all divinity. It would amount to affirming that there were two sources of divinity within the one Godhead, with all the internal contradictions and tensions that this would generate. If the Son were to share in the exclusive ability of the Father to be the source of all divinity, this ability would no longer be exclusive. For this reason, the Greek church regarded the western idea of a “double procession” of the Spirit with something approaching stark disbelief.’

So far as this particular verse is concerned, the Spirit is said to ‘proceed’ only from the Father.  But, acceptance of this clause safeguards Nicene orthodoxy regarding the consubstatiality of the Father and the Son.  Moreover, this verse does state that both the Father and the Son send the Spirit, so it is reasonable to infer that the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son.  If this were not so, how could it be that Scripture can speak of ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (Rom 8:9; Gal 4:6; Phil 1:19)? (Bromiley, EDT, art. ‘Filioque’)

Fee (God’s Empowering Presence) notes that the new Testament speaks more of ‘the Spirit of God’ than of ‘the Spririt of Christ’.  Moreover,

‘God is invariably the subject of the verb when Paul speaks of human reception of the Spirit. Thus God “sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” (Gal 4:6), or “gives” us his Spirit (1 Thes 4:8; 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Gal 3:5; Rom 5:5; Eph 1:17), an understanding that in Paul’s case is surely determined by his OT roots, where God “fills with” (Exod 31:3) or “pours out” his Spirit (Joel 2:28), and the “Spirit of God” comes on people for all sorts of extraordinary (“charismatic”) activities (e.g., Num 24:2; Judges 3:10).’

Donald MacLeod (The Person of Christ) suggests that it is very difficult, on the Eastern view, to maintain that the Son is equal to the Father.  John of Damascus, for example, writes in terms that are ‘fatal to the co-equal deity of the Son’:

‘For the Father is without cause and unborn; for he is derived from nothing, but derives from himself his being, nor does he derive a single quality from another. Rather he is himself the beginning and cause of the existence of all things in a definite and natural manner. But the Son is derived from the Father after the manner of generation, and the Holy Spirit likewise is derived from the Father, yet not after the manner of generation, but after that of procession.… All then that the Son and the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being: and unless the Father is, neither the Son nor the Spirit is.’

Graham Cole (He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit) suggests that there may be something more than a robust Trinitarian theology at stake here:

‘Increasingly there are contemporary voices advocating the dropping of filioque theology with the world of other religions in mind. The issue becomes: If the Spirit of God proceeds from the Father only, then there may be a theological argument that this same Spirit may relate adherents of other faiths to the Father without the need of Christology.’

Bruce Ware* (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) wrote this in 2005:

‘The Western church adapted the Nicene Creed to say, in its third article, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son” ( filioque) and not merely that he proceeds from the Father (alone). While I agree fully with this additional language, I believe that this biblical way of speaking, as found in John 15:26, refers to the historical sending of the Spirit at Pentecost and does not refer to any supposed “eternal procession” of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. The conceptions of both the “eternal begetting of the Son” and “eternal procession of the Spirit” seem to me highly speculative and not grounded in biblical teaching. Both the Son as only-begotten and the Spirit as proceeding from the Father (and the Son) refer, in my judgment, to the historical realities of the incarnation and Pentecost, respectively.’

Wayne Grudem* (Systematic Theology), while considering the debate to be over a rather obscure point of doctrine, nevertheless suggests that

‘the Eastern formulation (without the addition of filioque) runs the danger of suggesting an unnatural distance between the Son and the Holy Spirit, leading to the possibility that even in personal worship an emphasis on more mystical, Spirit-inspired experience might be pursued to the neglect of an accompanying rationally understandable adoration of Christ as Lord.’

This does not on its own justify the retention of the filioque clause, but it does suggest that the debate may not be quite so arcane as some suppose.

[*It should be noted that both Ware and Grudem previously declined to affirm the doctrine of the ‘eternal generation of the Son’, but now do affirm it.]