I'm currently reading Robert Letham's well done work, "The Holy Trinity". (Yes, yes, he's alive and I'm reading it - OK, yes, there are some good books written by non-dead guys.) :P

We are in Augustine's dealing with the relationship of the Trinity at page 188.

Augustine teaches:

The Spirit proceeds from the Father in principaliter, but in common with both the Father and Son.

That's confusing to some extent. here is his clarification:

Augustine carefully safeguards the place of the Father as the sole origin of the Holy Spirit. (PL 42:908-10). He does not assert that the Spirit proceeds from two sources, as if two parents. (Photius will allege that this is how the procession of the Spirit works, but Augustine does not allow for this.) The Father does not give the Spirit to the Son to pass on.; instead, he gives his own life to the Son, which includes the outpouring of the Spirit. In this way the Holy Spirit is eternally and simultaneously given by the Father and Son together.

Here is the "but": if the Spirit proceeds from the Father in principaliter, but in common with both the Father and Son, we are back to this confusion. The only way I can think to get around this, where the Scriptures demonstrate that the Father and the Son send the Spirit, is not to talk about this in "person" but in "substance." We are talking, then, about the "substance" of the Godhead and their eternal existence, not the personalities of the Father, Son and Spirit. But if we do that, then there seems to be a problem with assigning the same language that Jesus assigns this question when he says that the Father sends the Spirit and the Son sends the Spirit.

If the Father is "the beginning" (principium) of the Trinity, then any procession or begetting goes back to the Father.

Is this, then, simply speaking, "relationally?"

What do you think of this? Do you think this (Augustine) is confusing?

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C. Matthew McMahon, Ph.D. (Pot hole Digger)
John 5:39, "...search the Scriptures..."

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Yes, I think Augustine is a bit confusing on that point. I think he was very excellent for his time, but still had some minor, latent unitarian tendencies. (Please take that statement in the lightest form possible . . . I do think Augustine was Trinitarian; I just am saying that perhaps his terminology and formulation of it wasn't fully mature.)

I just finished reading a book on the Doctrine of God by Gerald Bray, a contemporary Anglican. I thought he dealt very well with the issue of the Father supposedly being the "fountainhead" of the Trinity, as well as the issue of the double-procession of the Holy Spirit.

Bray does a great job of showing how the Reformers perfected the Trinitarianism of Augustine, taking it to the "next level", so to speak. They kept all the good stuff, but polished the doctrine to get rid of some of Augustine's difficulties.

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[b]Joseph M. Gleason[/b]
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I need to go back and re-read The Doctrine of God by Herman Bavinck. Otherwise I just get too confused on the subject.

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Meg
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This paragraph made sense to me. Everything else was confusing.

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