Thomas Weinandy

Thomas Weinandy?s 1995 The Father?s Spirit of Sonship makes an important contribution to Trinitarian theology. Weinandy?s distinctive contribution is to reconceive the place of the Spirit in the Triune life. This small book has many virtues. Weinandy gives an extensive and compelling biblical argument for his position, and he sees large implications for his thesis, including a path for the resolution of the filioque controversy. Some of the highlights include:

1) The main thrust of his book is to argue that the Father begets the Son through the Spirit, and the Son loves the Father in the same Spirit. Thus, the Spirit is the person who ?persons?Ethe other two persons. He summarizes: ?The Son is begotten by the Father in the Spirit and thus the Spirit simultaneously proceeds from the Father as the one in whom the Son is begotten. The Son, being begotten by the Spirit, simultaneously loves the Father in the same Spirit by which he himself is begotten (is Loved).?E Further, ?The Spirit (of Love) then, who proceeds from the Father as the one in whom the Father begets the Son, both conforms or defines (persons) the Son to be the Son and simultaneously conforms or defines (persons) the Father to be the Father. The Holy Spirit, in proceeding from the Father as the one in whom the Father begets the Son, conforms the Father to be Father for the Son and conforms the Son to be Son for (of) the Father.?E

Later, he expounds on the point somewhat more fully: ?The Son is Son because, having been begotten by the Father in the Spirit of sonship, he loves the Father as the Son. This act of filial love, enacted in the Spirit of sonship, is what makes him the Son. This means that the Father is the Father not only because he begets the Son, but also because, in the begetting of the Son, the Son loves the Father, and so as Son helps constitute the Father as Father. The Father would not be Father unless he had a Son who loved him as Son. Now the cornerstone which holds together this fatherly act of lovingly begetting the Son and this filial act of the Son loving the Father is provided by the action of the Spirit?E(p. 73).

2) Weinandy is critical of both the Western and Eastern tradition of Trinitarian theology. In the West, ?the Holy Spirit as the Love between [Father and Son] does not play an active role, and thus appears less clearly as an acting subject. He has no subjective depth because he has no defining activity as a person.?E Eastern theology does something similar, diminishing ?the active roles of the Son and the Holy Spirit within the inner trinitarian life.?E The linear Eastern view, where the Father begets the Son and the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, undermines the Orthodox emphasis on perichoresis: ?If the movement of the Son and the Holy Spirit is ?out from?Ethe Father, how do they mutually interpenetrate one another??E

At bottom, he believes that both East and West fail to offer a fully satisfactory Trinitarian theology because they are operating on unbiblical philosophical assumptions. Eastern theology is indebted to neoPlatonic ?emanationism,?Ewhich tends either toward subordinationism or tritheism. The Eastern church, he argues, has never fully understood the omoousios, at least in the radical way that Athanasius understood it: For Athanasius, ?The being of the one God is the Father begetting the Son. Thus Athanasius recognized that Nicea?s omoousios shattered, at least implicitly, but nonetheless absolutely, the Platonic principle of emanation. No longer did the whole of the Godhead reside in the Father alone from whom the Son and the Spirit emanated. Rather the Godhead is the Father begetting the Son. For Athanasius the Son is ?inseparable from the essence of the Father, and he and the Father are one . . . the Word is ever in the Father and the Father in the Word.?EHomoousios confirms both the full divinity of the Son, and the unity of God, since ?the Son, being an offspring from the substance, is one by substance, himself and the Father that begot him.?E ?The Son is begotten not from without [by way of emanation] but from the Father.?E The Son is ?proper to and identical with the substance of God and an offspring from it by nature . . . (and) by this fact homoousios with him that begot it.?E While the Father is the Father and the Son is the Son, they are ?one in propriety and peculiarity of nature, and in the identity of the one Godhead.?? By contrast, for the Cappadocians, ?the Father alone still embodied the Godhead and the Son was begotten out of him and the Holy Spirit proceeded out of him . . . . [thus] Platonic emanationism became firmly grafted onto Orthodox Trinitarian thought, and it is present to this day.?E

The West, for its part, grounded its Trinitarian theology in Aristotelian logic, in which something must first be known to be loved. Hence, ?in patterning its conception of the Trinity after Aristotelian epistemology, [the West] maintained that the Spirit proceeded from the will of the Father as his love for the Son only ?after?Ethe Son was begotten and thus known. So, again, the Spirit here could not be perceived as the breath of the Father in whom the Word is spoken.?E This ?after?Eis not temporal, of course, but logical. Weinandy?s point is that Aristotelian epistemology prevented the West from fully reckoning with the Spirit?s active role in the Triune life.

3) Weinandy argues for a ?perichoresis of action?E(pp. 78ff). ?While the Son and the Holy Spirit come forth from the Father, yet in the coming forth all three persons become who they are, and they do so precisely in reciprocally interaction upon one another, simultaneously fashioning one another to be who they are and so becoming who they are in themselves.?E His conception highlights the mutual interpenetration of divine action: ?The Father begets the Son in the spiration of the Spirit and so it is the Spirit that makes the Father to be the Father of the Son and makes the Son to be the Son of the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and does so by conforming each to be in relation to the other, and so becomes distinct in himself in his mutual relation to them as the love by which they come to be who they are for one another.?E In contrast to traditional Orthodox conceptions of perichoresis, the Spirit is not reduced to passivity; perichoresis is a dynamic interpenetration effected by the Spirit. For Weinandy, ?the acts of begetting and spiration co-inhere in one another and thus account for why the persons themselves co-inhere. Actually, the persons themselves are the co-inhering acts.?E

4) Weinandy?s view is able, he suggests, to answer the question of the ?second difference.?E Granted that God is plural, Father and Son, what need is there for a ?second difference?Ealongside the difference of Father and Son? What is it that makes the Spirit a distinct person in the Triune fellowship? If the Spirit exists as a distinct subject, why does he not have a distinct name? Why does he have a name, as Augustine pointed out, consisting of descriptions that apply equally well to the other two persons (?holy?Eand ?spirit?E? Weinandy addresses this issue by stating, with Aquinas, that the relations distinguish the persons from one another. He goes further, however, to suggest that the these relations are not merely ?relations of opposition,?Ebut also ?complementary relations,?Eand this complementarity is due to the work of the Spirit. The Spirit, he concludes, does not have a distinct name because ?he subsists precisely as the one in whom the Father and Son are named.?E Only through the Spirit is the Father in complementary relation to the Son, and the Son is subsists in relation to the Father only through the Spirit. ?The Holy Spirit is the hidden or unnamed person or ?who?Ebecause the very nature of his subjectivity as a subsistent relation is to illuminate or, more deeply, to substantiate or person the Father and the Son for one another. It could even be said that the

Holy Spirit is the most personal of the Trinitarian persons, and thus the most relational in his subjectivity, because he is the most translucent and transparent. Through him the Father and Son eternally gaze upon one another in love.?E The Spirit, we might say, is pure relationality.

5) Weinandy believes that his emphasis on the active role of the Spirit in the Trinity can help to resolve East-West differences on the filioque, mainly by liberating Eastern and Western theology from unbiblical philosophical assumptions. He concedes that the East is correct to demand that ?any true understanding of the Trinity must not only preserve but actually advocate the monarchy of the Father as the principal source of the Son and the Holy Spirit.?E If the Father begets the Son in the Spirit, that Eastern concern is preserved: ?the Spirit principally proceeds from the Father. The Spirit must proceed from the one source of the Father because it is only in the process of the Spirit that the Father begets the Son. Not only, then, is the monarchy of the Father brought into relief, but equally the distinct procession of the Spirit from him.?E At the same time, Weinandy?s construction addresses the genuine concerns of the West by showing ?why the Spirit proceeds also from the Son. The Son, being begotten by the Father, is conformed as Son by the Spirit (of sonship) and so the Spirit proceeds from Him as the identical Love for the Father in whom he himself is begotten.?E He quotes FX Durwell: ?If the Spirit is possessed in common [by the Father and Son], in an identical fullness, he is nevertheless possessed differently. For the Father begets in the Spirit, whereas the Son is begotten in the Spirit. The Father is the source flowing into the Son; all is given by the Father and all is possessed in common; nothing distinguishes the Son, except that he is the Son and not the Father, and that he possesses the Spirit by receiving him?Erather than by giving him. Though Weinandy?s construction addresses and meets the concerns of East and West, at the same time his emphasis on the active role of the Spirit means that he transcends the filioque.

I?m not so taken with this section of Weinandy?s book. Why the Father is the ?source?Eof the Son, and the Son not equally the ?source?Eof the Father is not clear to me. In fact, Weinandy?s earlier emphasis on the reciprocity of Father and Son in the Spirit seems at war with the notion of a sole monarchy of the Father.

Still, as I?ve said, this is a stimulating and helpful study, and contains a lot of rich biblical and systematic theology.