It should be noted that among the Greeks there is not always a clear distinction between whether the procession of the Holy Spirit being described is specific to the economy or the eternal manifestation.
Gregory Thaumaturgus (213-270)
“[There is] one Holy Spirit, having substance from God, and who is manifested through the Son; image of the Son, perfect of the perfect; life, the cause of living; holy fountain; sanctity, the dispenser of sanctification; in whom is manifested God the Father who is above all and in all, and God the Son who is through all. Perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty neither divided nor estranged.”[1]
Athanasius (c.296-373)
“For as the Son, who is in the Father and the Father in him, is not a creature but pertains to the essence of the Father (for this you also profess to say); so also it is not lawful to rank with the creatures the Spirit who is in the Son, and the Son in him.”[2]
“For He, as has been said, gives to the Spirit, and whatever the Spirit hath, He hath from the Word.”
Epiphanius (c.310-403)
“The Holy Spirit … is ever with the Father and the Son, and is from God, proceeding from the Father and receiving of the Son.”
“The Spirit is God, from the Father and the Son.”
“[N]either does any know the Spirit but the Father and the Son, the Persons from whom he proceeds and from whom He receives.”
“God … is Life, the Son Life from Life, and the Holy Spirit flows from both; the Father is Light, the Son is Light, the Holy Spirit the third from Father and Son.”
“The Father always existed and the Son always existed, and the Spirit breathes forth from the Father and the Son…”
“[T]he Holy Spirit is neither begotten or created … but of the same substance with the Father and the Son.”
Didymus of Alexandria (313-398)
“Our Lord teaches that the being of the Spirit is derived not from the Spirit Himself, but from the Father and the Son; He goes forth from the Son, proceeding from the Truth; He has no subsistence but that which is given Him by the Son.”
Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390)
“If ever there was a time when the Father was not, then there was a time when the Son was not. If ever there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time when the Spirit was not.”
“I have very carefully considered this matter in my own mind…but I have been unable to discover any thing on earth with which to compare the nature of the Godhead…I picture to myself an eye, a fountain, a river, as others have done before, to see if the first might be analogous to the Father, the second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Ghost….Again I thought of the sun and a ray and light. But here again there was a fear lest people should get an idea of composition in the Uncompounded Nature, such as there is in the Sun and the things that are in the Sun. And in the second place lest we should give Essence to the Father but deny Personality to the Others, and make Them only Powers of God, existing in Him and not Personal.”
Basil (330-379)
“Even if the Holy Spirit is third in diginity and order, why need he be third also in nature? For that he is second to the Son, having his being from him and receiving from him and announcing to us and being completely dependent on him, pious tradition recounts; but that his nature is third we are not taught by the Saints nor can we conclude logically from what has been said.”
“[A]lthough the Holy Spirit is behind the Son in dignity, yet not in nature. We have received that he is numbered third from the Father, the Lord saying in the tradition of baptism….But that he is thrust out to some third nature we have neither learnt nor ever heard.”
“One, moreover, is the Holy Spirit, and we speak of Him singly, conjoined as He is to the one Father through the one Son, and through Himself completing the adorable and blessed Trinity.”
“One, moreover,is the Holy Spirit and we speak of Him singly, conjoined as He is through Himself completing the adorable and blessed Trinity.”
“Thus the way of the knowledge of God lies from One Spirit through the One Son to the One Father, and conversely the natural Goodness and the inherent Holiness and the royal Dignity extend from the Father through the Only-begotten to the Spirit. Thus there is both acknowledgment of the hypostases and the true dogma of the Monarchy is not lost.”
“One Father, one Son, one Holy Spirit must be confessed according to the divine tradition. Not two Fathers, nor two Sons, since the Spirit neither is the Son nor is called. For we do NOT receive anything from the Spirit in the SAME way as the Spirit from the Son; but we receive him (ie. the Spirit) coming to us and sanctifying us, the communication of divinity, the pledge of eternal inheritance, and the first fruits of the eternal good.”
Gregory of Nyssa (335-395)
“For as the Son is bound to the Father, and, while deriving existence from Him, is not substantially after Him, so again the Holy Spirit is in touch with the Only-begotten, Who is conceived of as before the Spirit’s subsistence only in the theoretical light of a cause. Extensions in time find no admittance in the Eternal Life; so that, when we have removed the thought of cause, the Holy Trinity in no single way exhibits discord with itself; and to It is glory due.”
” If, however, any one cavils at our argument, on the ground that by not admitting the difference of nature it leads to a mixture and confusion of the Persons, we shall make to such a charge this answer;–that while we confess the invariable character of the nature, we do not deny the difference in respect of cause, and that which is caused, by which alone we apprehend that one Person is distinguished from another;-by our belief, that is, that one is the Cause, and another is of the Cause; and again in that which is of the Cause we recognize another distinction. For one is directly from the first Cause, and another by that which is directly from the first Cause; so that the attribute of being Only-begotten abides without doubt in the Son, and the interposition of the Son, while it guards His attribute of being Only-begotten, does not shut out the Spirit from His relation by way of nature to the Father.”
“For the plea will not avail them in their self-defence, that He is delivered by our Lord to His disciples third in order, and that therefore He is estranged from our ideal of Deity. Where in each case activity in working good shows no diminution or variation whatever, how unreasonable it is to suppose the numerical order to be a sign of any diminution or essential variation! It is as if a man were to see a separate flame burning on three torches(and we will suppose that the third flame is caused by that of the first being transmitted to the middle, and then kindling the end torch), and were to maintain that the heat in the first exceeded that of the others; that that next it showed a variation from it in the direction of the less; and that the third could not be called fire at all, though it burnt and shone just like fire, and did everything that fire does. But if there is really no hindrance to the third torch being fire, though it has been kindled from a previous flame, what is the philosophy of these men, who profanely think that they can slight the dignity of the Holy Spirit because He is named by the Divine lips after the Father and the Son?”
“For neither did the Universal God make the universe ‘through the Son,’ as needing any help, nor does the Only-begotten God work all things ‘by the Holy Spirit,’ as having a power that comes short of His design; but the fountain of power is the Father, and the power of the Father is the Son, and the spirit of that power is the Holy Spirit.”
Cyril of Alexandria (376-444)
“Since the Holy Spirit when he is in us effects our being conformed to God, and He actually proceeds from Father and Son, it is abundantly clear that He is of the divine essence, in it in essence and proceeding from it.”
“Inasmuch as the Son is God and is by nature from God, the Spirit is His own, and is both in Him and from Him.”
“He is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son, seeing that He is poured forth in a way of essence from Both or in other words, from the Father through the Son.”
“For he [ie. the Holy Spirit] is called the Spirit of Truth, and Christ is the Truth, and he is poured forth from him [ie. the Son] just as he is also from God the Father.”
Maximus (580-662)
“[T]he Holy Spirit (he writes elsewhere), as He is by nature and in the way of essence [the Spirit] of God the Father, so is He also the Son’s by nature and in the way of essence, since He proceeds from the Father essentially and ineffably through the Son, who is begotten.”
“Those of the Queen of cities have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope (Martin I), not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to theology, because it says he says that ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) also from the Son.’ The other has to do with the divine incarnation, because he has written, ‘The Lord, as man, is without original sin.’ With regard to the first matter, they (the Romans) have produced the unanimous documentary evidence of the Latin fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the sacred commentary he composed on the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit — they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession; but [they use this expression] in order to manifest the Spirit’s coming-forth (προϊέναι) through him and, in this way, to make clear the unity and identity of the essence…. The Romans have therefore been accused of things of which it is wrong to accuse them, whereas of the things of which the Byzantines have quite rightly been accused (viz., Monothelitism), they have, to date, made no self-defense, because neither have they gotten rid of the things introduced by them. But, in accordance with your request, I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending (the synodal letters) has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to doing this. One should also keep in mind that they cannot express their meaning in a language and idiom that are foreign to them as precisely as they can in their own mother-tongue, any more than we can do.”[3]
John Damascene (c.675-749)
“Through the Word, the Father produces the Spirit, who manifests him (dia logou proboleus ekphantorikou Pneumatos). …The Holy Spirit is the power of the Father making secrets of the deity known and proceeding from the Father through the Son in a way that he knows, but which is not begetting…. The Father is source of the Son and the Holy Spirit….The Spirit is not the Son of the Father, he is the Spirit of the Father, as proceeding from him (ekporeuomenon),…but he is also Spirit of the Son, not as (proceeding) from him, but proceeding through him from the Father. Only the Father is cause (aitios).”
“I say that God is always Father since he has always his Word coming from himself, and through his Word, having his Spirit issuing from him.”
“For never was the Father at any time lacking in the Word, nor the Word in the Spirit.”[4]
[1] https://www.catholic.com/tract/filioque
[2] https://www.catholicfidelity.com/the-church-fathers-and-the-filioque-by-joe-gallegos/
[3] https://bekkos.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/st-maximus-on-the-filioque/
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