The Filioque: From the Latins Which Were Obedient to Satan - St. Gregory Palamas

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St. Gregory Palamas wrote two treatises on the procession of the Holy Spirit presenting the Orthodox dogmatic teaching and refutes the Latin heresies, especially that of the “filioque.” Not only do these texts show forth the glory of true theology, of which St. Gregory acquired by God’s revelation to his heart, but they destroy any notion that St. Gregory thought of those in Roman Catholicism as “separated brethren” or still in any way part of the true Church of Christ. Furthermore, he explicitly states that not only do the Orthodox and Roman Catholics use different terminology, they indeed also have different theology. Let the listener be inspired by this brief excerpt from St. Gregory’s Apodicitic Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, now available for the first time in English from Uncut Mountain Press.  

This recording was originally posted on the @OrthodoxEthos channel: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nHPzoOwi2x4&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE 

St. Gregory writes:  

Once again the subtle serpent and source of vice rears his own head against us, whispering things opposite to the truth. Or rather, since he has been crushed in his head by the Cross of Christ, he makes those who obey his destructive counsels in every generation each take the place of his own head, and similar to a hydra he has sprouted many heads instead of the one, relentlessly speaking utter unrighteousness through them. Thus he attached to his coiled body the Arians, thus the Apollinarians, thus the Eunomians and Macedonians, thus the host of many others who ran to him, spewing his venom through their speech against the sacred Church. In lieu of fangs, he has used their words and sunk them into the source of piety, as into the root of a plant that had youthfully grown virtue, burdened with the best of fruit; yet he was not able to utterly lay waste to it. For, his fangs were in turn shattered by those who had been bitten by him, meaning, by those who have truly made Christ their own Head.  

Accordingly, this serpent, which is noetic and, because of this, all the more accursed, the first, middle, and final evil, the wicked one, always feeding off of serpentine and earthly wickedness, the vigilant stalker, tirelessly looking out for the heel,  that is to say, deception, the sophist, most resourceful and incomparably ingenious in every opinion obnoxious to God, not having at all forgotten his own evil art, introduces, through the Latins which were obedient to him, innovative expressions concerning God. While these innovations seem to make but a small change, they actually create the occasion for many evils and bring in many things that are subtle, foreign to piety, and logically absurd. In doing this he clearly displayed to all that even the smallest thing is not small in matters concerning God. For if, with each of our arguments, when one fallacious thing has initially been premised many absurdities ensue, how can it not be that, when one uncustomary premise has been made in relation to the common principle of all and to the indemonstrable first principles, from this more absurdities will not irreverently ensue?