Jean Daillé and Eastern Orthodoxy's position on eternal procession

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Reformed Covenanter

Cancelled Commissioner
What do you think of Jean Daillé's attitude towards the Eastern Orthodox?

We confess, That Christian charity is not so active and hot as their zeal: Charity often bears with what it doth not approve of, and rejects nothing, but what it cannot suffer, without hazarding the salvation of our neighbours and our own souls. 'Tis so far from excommunicating (as the Council of Trent doth) Christians for small errors, that I think it would easily bear with in faithful persons that opinion of the Greeks (for which they are so roughly anathematized) touching the procession of the Holy Ghost. For though I grant it is an error to believe, that the H. Ghost proceeded not from the Father and Son, but from the Father only by the Son, yet if you observe 'tis hard (if not impossible) to understand what prejudice this error brings to piety and holy life.

Jean Daillé, An apology for the Reformed churches wherein is shewed the necessity of their separation from the Church of Rome: against those who accuse them of making a schism in Christendom, trans. Thomas Smith (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1653), p. 24.
 
Neither Rome nor the Reformed scholastics were really familiar with some of the Eastern texts (most of which were largely either under Turkish control or written in Old Slavonic).

I appreciate Daille's attitude. They wouldn't reciprocate it, though.

To be technical, as Patriarch Gregory II argued (Crisis in Byzantium), the Son eternally manifests the Spirit. The Spirit energetically proceeds from the Son, but not hypostatically (which is what Rome claimed).
 
Thing is, you can find Fathers who argue for eternal manifestation and you can find Eastern fathers that argue for eternal hypostatic procession. Many bad arguments were made on both sides. The idea that we need the Filioque because it proves the Deity of Christ is probably the worst argument (by the same logic, another being would need to proceed from the HS so he, too, can be God. Extend the process (!) ad infinitum).

On the other hand, I am not sure what eternal manifestation really means and I wouldn't know where to look for it in Scripture.
 
yet if you observe 'tis hard (if not impossible) to understand what prejudice this error brings to piety and holy life.

I suppose it's a question of emphasis: if the economy reflects the ontology, and the Son is clearly central in the economy of redemption, a denial of double procession could conceivably act to diminish how much we emphasize the Son's role in the sending of the Spirit. But people who are paying attention to the Scripture may well not make that mistake in any case.
 
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