The Western Trinity

Every civilization is the outgrowth of one religion or another.  It is the same with Western civilization, which is sprung from the Western Trinity.  This is not the true Holy Trinity of Orthodox Christianity.  Rather, it is its corruption:  The Father and the Son together generating the Holy Spirit, according to the Roman Catholic Church’s version of the Nicene Creed, and entrenched further in the Western soul by the Council of Florence (1438).

This is problematic.  For a characteristic of God is either common to all Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, or it is possessed by only One of the Persons as His unique attribute.  For an ensample, the Father alone possesses the attribute of begetting, for He begets eternally the Son of God, which quality neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit possess.  Contrariwise, all Persons of the Holy Trinity possess the attribute of love, for God is Love (I John 4:8).

Since in the Western Trinity the Father and the Son share the attribute of generating the Holy Spirit, the Spirit too, if He is of equal dignity with the Father and the Son, should share this attribute, thus generating another Person from Himself.  But in Western theology, the Holy Spirit is said not to possess this attribute.  Thus His equal dignity with the Father and the Son, His divinity, His Personhood, is rejected.  He becomes merely an outward force or power that the Roman Pope and his clergy bestow on whomsoever they will; not the inward Giver of life and gifts, equal to the Father and to the Son, Who unites and guides the Church to the virtues, perfection, and holiness.

In Protestant theology, the Spirit does not fare much better, with many sects holding tightly to the Roman Catholic view of the Holy Spirit.  One instance of this:

http://www.keepthefilioque.com/2013/10/acna-keeps-the-filioque-clause/

So what does all this come to?  Why bother about it all?  Because it is a key to understanding why the Western nations have come to the point of spiritual death, apostasy, nihilism, and violence. 

The Christian has for himself the goal of acquiring the full measure of the Holy Spirit through purification of his body and soul.  Through this mystical inner union with the living Holy Spirit, he attains heaven on earth, in his heart: peace, Light, contentment, gentleness, love, and all the rest. 

St Seraphim of Sarov’s ‘Conversation with Motovilov’ is a very good introduction to this subject:

http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/wonderful.aspx

But having rejected the right understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Western nations, in their attempt to attain the Holy Spirit, find only impersonal forces and not the personal love of the Spirit; darkness, coldness, and emptiness inside.  Thus they turn outward, seeking other-worldly consolation through this-worldly pleasures and goods.  But there will never be enough of these to slake their desire for God.  Thus, they turn more and more to raw power, to domination and abuse of man and the creation to satisfy their untamed passions: wars, colonialism, sexual perversion, emotionalism, industrialism, genetic engineering.

This is not true of all Western peoples at all times; there have been, are, and likely always will be exceptions of varying degrees, for God is full of mercy.  However, that it has been the general drift of Western civilization since at least the time of Charlemagne cannot be gainsaid.

The Holy Spirit, having become in Western theology an outward power, a lifeless force, so the West was destined to become a civilization which worshiped death and the exercise of outward power.

None of this is written with the intention that all Western nations reject every part of their culture and import a foreign one from an Orthodox country like Romania or Russia.  There are works the post-Schism West may be rightly proud of: Chaucer’s, Shakespeare’s, Bach’s, Tolkien’s, and others'.

Rather, it is for the sake of each Western nation knowing and becoming fully itself that this is written.  For no man will know much about himself while he is in chains and in the dark.  The same is true of nations.  And the Western nations right now stumble about in the darkness of false teaching, slaves of their passions and lusts, while believing themselves to be the freest, most clear-sighted of all men.  In this condition, they cannot develop the unique characteristics God has given them, but will instead be instruments under the control of the devil and his demons.

In the light of Orthodoxy, England developed her wonderful native literature, illuminated manuscripts, blessed kings, common law tradition, and so on.  In Ireland, scholarship and the beauty of saintly monasticism.  And so it went in other Western countries until the rejection of their original Orthodox Faith for a new gospel, the gospel of Rationalism, Gnosis/Knowledge, Power, which is at the heart of Roman Catholic and Protestant dogma.

But the South and the other Western nations are not condemned forever to this death-dealing gospel.  They may still repent and return to the Orthodox Church. 

But they must hurry, for the days are evil.