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5. We agree that while the Holy Fathers speak of a relationship of the Holy
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Spirit to the Father through the Son, they never hold that the Spirit proceeds
from or through the Son: ‘The Spirit was and is the Son’s as He was and is the
Father’s; for though He proceeds from the Father, yet He is not alien from the
Son; for the Son has all things in common with the Father, as the Lord has
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himself taught us.’ When the Holy Fathers proclaim that the Spirit is ‘from
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the Father and the Son’, or that He progresses (πρόεισι) or flows forth
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(προϰεῖται) from both, they mean the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit. In
Economia, the Holy Spirit is sent from the Father and receives manifestation
from the Son. ‘He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare
it to you.’ ‘He shines forth (ἐκλάμπει) and is sent and given by the Word’;
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‘The Holy Spirit from whom all the abundance of good things gushes up to
creation, depends (ἤρτηται) on the Son, with whom he is indivisibly appre-
hended.’ 11
6. In the relationship between the Holy Trinity and Creation, ‘The Father does
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(κτίζει) all things through the Word in the Holy Spirit.’ ‘Every operation
(ἐνέργεια) which extends from God to the Creation, and is named according to
our variable conceptions of it, has its origin (ἀφορμάται) from the Father, and

5 ‘Through the Son, He (i.e., the Holy Spirit), is joined to the Father’ (Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu
Sancto 18,45; Eng. trans.: Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson, Crestwood, NY:
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, 72). ‘The one (i.e., the Son) is directly from the First and the
other (i.e. the Spirit) is through the one who is directly from the First’ (Gregory of Nyssa, Ad
Ablabium, in Fridericus Mueller, ed., Gregorii Nysseni opera, vol. 3.1: Gregorii Nysseni opera dogmatica
minora, Leiden: Brill, 1958, 56). ‘[The Holy Spirit] is the Spirit of God the Father as well as of the
Son, and comes forth substantially from both, that is from the Father through the Son’ (Cyril of
Alexandria, De adoratione in spiritu et veritate 1, PG 68, 148).
6 Cyril of Alexandria, Apologia XII anathematismorum contra Theodoretum (PG 76, 433).
7 Epiphanius, Ancoratus 9 (PG 43, 32).
8 Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus de sancta et consubstantiali trinitate 34 (PG 75, 585); De fide sanctae et
individuae Trinitatis (PG 77, 105–22).
9 John 16.14.
10 Athanasius, Epistola ad Serapionem 1.20; Eng. trans. Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius, The Early Church
Fathers (New York: Routledge, 2002), 220.
11 Gregory of Nyssa, Letter to Peter 4; Eng. trans. John Behr, The Nicene Faith 2 (Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 419.
12 PG 26, 623; St Athanasius, Third Letter to Serapion, chapter 28, Eng. trans. C. R. B. Shapland,
The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, 134–5.

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