RamistThomist
Puritanboard Assessor
Pneuma and breath are nouns. We're looking for verbs to describe the modes of origination, and once you put breath into theological Latin, it becomes spiration.
Essence vs. substance in WSC / Baptist Catechism
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Augustine wrote in Latin and used the Latin verb for breathe - "spiro". "Spirate" is an English coinage with very sparse attribution over the centuries patterned after other verbs formed from Latin participles, which duplicates older "spire". Both "spire" and "spirate" mean literally to breathe. But again, what does a Latin verb meaning to breathe capture theologically that the English verb does not?
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πνεῦμα-πνέω, spiritus-spiro, breath-breathe. Each noun has a corresponding verb in each language. All the nouns mean breath. All the verbs mean to breathe. I'm just trying to understand how "spirate" is more technically accurate in English than "breathe".
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RamistThomist
Puritanboard Assessor
It might not be more technically accurate, but for better or worse, it is the received trinitarian tradition. I'm not saying you're wrong to insist on breath or ruach. I kind of like it myself, but spiration/Augustine is the tradition and the historic view.
Apparently Nehemiah Coxe hadn't received that tradition when he wrote that "the relative properly of the Holy Spirit is to be breathed, or to proceed from the Father and the Son" in 1677.
I don't get the back-and-forth on this. To be "breathed forth" is to be spirated. The latter comes from the Latin while the former is more English. Theologians tend to use Latin terms. Even "relative" in Coxe's quote is from Latin.
I agree they mean the same, which is why I don't think Coxe earned any technical correction for his usage of "breathed". I personally don't favor unnecessary Latinisms when English words not only suffice but have historical currency in the same sense, but there's nothing wrong with "spirated" or "spired".
RamistThomist
Puritanboard Assessor
He's saying the same thing that Augustine and Aquinas are saying. He's just using different words.
Christodulus
Puritan Board Freshman
I find that to be a very strange question, to be honest, and I don’t think there is really a difference here because spirate I understand to be the Latin equivalent of the Germanic “breathe”. It is typically used in modern English editions of scholastic texts, probably because it corresponds exactly to the underlying Latin. For example, Francis Turretin says “The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son by spiration; for generation and spiration are communicative of the essence to the term of personality.” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, topic 3 question 27), and likewise Thomas Aquinas “In respect of each of these processions two opposite relations arise; one of which is the relation of the person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself. The procession of the Word is called generation in the proper sense of the term, whereby it is applied to living things. Now the relation of the principle of generation in perfect living beings is called paternity; and the relation of the one proceeding from the principle is called filiation. But the procession of Love has no proper name of its own, and so neither have the ensuing relations a proper name of their own. The relation of the principle of this procession is called spiration; and the relation of the person proceeding is called procession: although these two names belong to the processions or origins themselves, and not to the relations.” (Summa Theologica, part 1 question 28 article 4)
The reason I mentioned it in the first place was not because of the word, but because the relation was altogether absent by any word in the formulation of Nehemiah Coxe quoted by our brother above.
Were you not implying there was a difference when you said that "breathed" should technically be "spirated"? There is no difference as far as I'm aware, and no one else here has suggested there is one. As for the choice of wording in modern translations of ancient Latin theological works, I don't think the mere fact that a certain word is used in a modern translation technically invalidates historical usage of other synonymous words in that context, especially when the word in question has not often been used with this sense in English literature before.
The quote from Coxe that was shared said "the relative property of the Holy Spirit is to be breathed".
How is the relation of the Spirit to the Father through spiration/breathing absent in this formulation? If the issue is not the word "breathed", do you object to the way he calls it a relative property instead of a relation?
No Other Name
Puritan Board Senior
Simply not true.
In Reformed dogmatics, the "proprietas relativa" (relative property) and the "relatio" (relation) are essentially synonymous when it comes to distinguishing the divine persons. You will find Turretin, Owen, and Ames using these concepts interchangeably to describe the incommunicable attributes that distinguish the Father, Son, and Spirit.
The relative property is exactly what establishes the relation. When Coxe says, "The relative property of the Holy Spirit is to be breathed," he is articulating passive spiration perfectly.
It seems like you are demanding Coxe use a very specific technical vocabulary, and assuming that because he didn't, he lacked the theological category entirely. But the category is right there in his use of "relative properties".
The relation is not in any way "altogether absent". Coxe has the ontology perfectly intact; he is just writing an English polemic for his pastors and his churches, and not a Latin textbook for the publishers in Geneva.
No Other Name
Puritan Board Senior
Wait. I do recall being frustrated when people threw statements out without backing it up so I follow up here:
In The Marrow of Theology, Book 1, Chapter 5 ("The Subsistence of God"), Ames writes precisely this:
Coxe wasn't making up new, less-precise vocabulary. He was quoting Ames word-for-word.
Let's pull Turretin off the shelf. In Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Topic 3, Question 27), Turretin explicitly equates the properties with the relations. Turretin writes that the divine persons are distinguished not by their essence (which is one), but by their "personal properties" (proprietates personales), which he explicitly defines as "relations" (relationes).
Turretin teaches that in God, an incommunicable property is a relation. Therefore, when Coxe (and Ames) use the English phrase "relative property," they are progenitors of Turretin’s precise theological concept: the property that constitutes the relation of origin (again, a phrase directly stated by Coxe).
Owen says this also in his Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, but I am having a hard time tracking it down in my Kindle.
In The Marrow of Theology, Book 1, Chapter 5 ("The Subsistence of God"), Ames writes precisely this:
Coxe wasn't making up new, less-precise vocabulary. He was quoting Ames word-for-word.
Let's pull Turretin off the shelf. In Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Topic 3, Question 27), Turretin explicitly equates the properties with the relations. Turretin writes that the divine persons are distinguished not by their essence (which is one), but by their "personal properties" (proprietates personales), which he explicitly defines as "relations" (relationes).
Turretin teaches that in God, an incommunicable property is a relation. Therefore, when Coxe (and Ames) use the English phrase "relative property," they are progenitors of Turretin’s precise theological concept: the property that constitutes the relation of origin (again, a phrase directly stated by Coxe).
Owen says this also in his Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, but I am having a hard time tracking it down in my Kindle.
Christodulus
Puritan Board Freshman
To be breathed and to breathe out are not the same thing. Coxe describes the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, but not of the Father and the Son to the Spirit.
Can you provide an example of the way you would describe the relation of the Father to the Spirit or the relation of the Son to the Spirit as opposed to the relation of the Spirit to the Father and Son? Or can you point to such a description from a writer you think got it right?
When you say there's a difference between breathing and breathing-out, are you getting at something like Augustine's differentiation of the Father's breathing of the spirit (spiratio) and the Son's breathing of the spirit into his disciples (insufflatio)?
No Other Name
Puritan Board Senior
Wait, what? Are you trying so hard to present Coxe as one of the buck-toothed hicks in Rich's earlier parody?
If you are going to hold Coxe to a high scholastic standard, you are going to have to go back yourself to Aquinas and Turretin regarding the difference between relations and personal properties.
While there are four relations (Paternity, Filiation, Active Spiration, Passive Spiration), there are only three distinguishing personal properties. Because Active Spiration (breathing out) is shared by both the Father and the Son, it is not an incommunicable personal property that distinguishes them from one another.
Since Coxe is explicitly listing the "relative properties" that distinguish the three subsistences to combat Collier’s modalism, he rightly lists Begetting, Being Begotten, and Being Breathed (Passive Spiration).
If Coxe had listed Active Spiration as a distinguishing relative property of the Father or the Son, he actually would have made a scholastic error!
By leaving Active Spiration out of the list of distinguishing personal properties, Coxe proves he knows exactly how to apply the orthodox categories. He is being both correct and precise. He isn't missing a category, and his teeth aren't crooked.
Christodulus
Puritan Board Freshman
Actually, what I said is that technically there are four relations of origin in the Godhead. I would not say I was objecting to him at all, I was pointing out the fact one was absent, of which at least some others were clearly confused.
Christodulus
Puritan Board Freshman
I recommend going over the quote from Aquinas I gave earlier because I think it clears up this confusion. There are two opposed relations of origin for both the Son and the Spirit, the relation of the principle and the relation of the person proceeding. Hence, it is not merely that the Son is begotten, but that the Father begets. Spiration as distinct from the Spirit’s procession describes the relation of the principle of the Spirit, i.e. the Father and the Son. And it is necessary that He proceeds from both, because otherwise He would not be distinguished from the Son.
No Other Name
Puritan Board Senior
I understand wanting to see all four relations listed, but insisting on that fourth one here actually subverts the exact point Coxe was making. He was equipping his pastors to distinguish the three persons against a semi-modalist.
Adding a shared property (active spiration) to a list of distinguishing properties would have required a maze of scholastic qualifiers and distinctions that is so unnecessary. It would likely have served only to confuse most if not all the churches he was trying to protect.
So he needs no correction - not even "technically".
DNM300
Puritan Board Freshman
This strikes me as a very odd comment.
Actually I don't think Aquinas clears up the confusion, or at least not within the exerpt you shared - his more complete writing includes the idea that the Spirit is defined by the mutual love between the Father and the Son as we see alluded to in the latter part of the excerpt. So, in terms of mutual love, he can't think of a word to describe the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son other than simply "procession", which he also uses to describe the filiation of the Son from the Father. Not to discount that idea, but I think it is actually more apt to confuse without further elaboration.
Coxe's formulation captures the relations that distinguish each of the persons succinctly and does not confuse the procession of the Son with the procession of the Spirit. By using the terms "begets" and "begotten", he clearly and uniquely establishes the relationship between the Father and Son both in terms of principle and and processor. By using the terminology "to be breathed, or to proceed from the Father and the Son", he clearly and uniquely establishes the relationship between the Spirit and the joint principle of the Father and Son both in terms of processor and principle.
Coxe does not need to introduce the language of generation-qua-paternity and procession-qua-filiation for the relation of Father and Son and then contrast that with generation-qua-spiration and procession-qua-procession for the relation of Father/Son and Spirit to get the point across.
No Other Name
Puritan Board Senior
Duck next time hahahaha
Step back from the content and consider the social dynamics. (A lot of moderating activity requires exactly that.)
This thread gives a clear indication that a defense is being mounted against a perceived attack. That defense will seem odd if you didn't perceive the attack, or if you agreed with it.
There is at least one other major plotline to this thread, and naturally they intertwine a little. But that attack/defense dynamic supplies the context for rendering the comment quite intelligible.
DNM300
Puritan Board Freshman
Keeping in step with the social dynamic is precisely what makes the comment weird to me. I had been reading everything as objective, and matter-of-fact-ly. Even the initial supposed technical correction that occurred pointed at Coxe’s comment. As such, I’m expecting merely objective, matter of fact responses.
To put it another way, I’m my eyes there was no “attack”
No Other Name
Puritan Board Senior
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