What is the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit?

Each of these errors destroys the Trinity in Unity, the first by denying the Unity of the Essence, the second by denying the Trinity of the Persons. The true and scriptural doctrine of the Trinity steers between these two erroneous extremes, and holds a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Essence. Now, the Lord Jesus, as the eternal Son of the Father, is distinct from Him as His Son, and yet necessarily one with Him as partaking of the same Essence; and the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Father and the Son, is distinct also from those Persons of the Trinity, and yet, as eternally proceeding from both, partakes of their Essence likewise. Thus we have a Trinity of Persons, but a Unity of Essence—One God, but eternally subsisting as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Eternal Sonship gives to the Son a Unity of Essence with the Father, and yet a distinctness of Person; thus, as the Son He is one with the Father (John 10:30), and yet as the Son He is distinct from the Father. So eternal procession from the Father and the Son gives to the Holy Spirit Unity of Essence with the Father and the Son, and yet a distinct Personality. Upon this firm basis the Trinity stands. But if you remove the eternal Sonship of Christ, you also must take away the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit; and by so doing you destroy the Unity of Essence and inter-communion of Nature of Israel’s Triune God. If the denial of the eternal Sonship of Jesus involve such consequences, well may we tremble at such an error as removes the very foundations of revealed truth. All other views of the Sonship of Christ lower His essential and eternal dignity and, however craftily disguised, tend to, and usually end in, Arianism. If His Sonship be not His eternal mode of subsistence, it must, in some way or other, be created Sonship, and what is this but Arian doctrine in its very root and essence? How the Son can be eternally begotten, and how the Holy Spirit can eternally proceed, is a mystery which we cannot understand, much less explain; but we receive it by faith, in the same way as we receive the “great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” If once we begin to reason on these matters, we are lost at the very threshold of our inquiry. To believe, not to speculate; to receive the testimony that God has given of His Son; not to doubt, argue and cavil, is the only sure path, as well as the peculiar blessedness of a child of God.

It is not that the Scriptures fail to teach the Eternal Sonship to the simple believer, but the wording must be twisted round to fit in with the new "thoughts of men which are vain." Such expressions as those quoted above do not describe a supposed isolated act in the past, but an eternal and essential relation existing between the Father and Son (see, e.g., John 5:26); and the "Procession of the Spirit" an eternal relation between Him and the other Divine Persons (John 15:26). It was not a solitary act which supervened, but a condition which necessarily existed in the Divine Being. The Son is necessarily the Brightness (lit. outshining) of the Divine glory, as the photosphere may be regarded as a necessary condition of the Sun's existence.

"I cannot join in this. If there are Persons in the Godhead, as we know there are, are we not to know also that there are relationships between them? Can we dispense with such a thought? Is there not revealed to faith, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit: the Son begotten, and the Spirit proceeding? Indeed there is. The Persons in that glory are not independent, but related. Nor is it beyond our measure to say that the great archetype of love, the blessed model or original of all relative affection, is found in that relationship.

“To come to the point—it is the personal relations or distinctive relative properties which belong to each Person which distinguish Them from one another; as paternity in the First Person, filiation in the Second, and spiration in the Third; or, more plainly, it is begetting Psalm 2:7 which peculiarly belongs to the First, and is never ascribed to the Second and Third, which distinguishes Him from Them both, and gives Him; with great propriety, the Name of the Father; and it is being begotten, that is the personal relation, or relative property of the Second Person, hence called the only begotten of the Father (John 1:14), which distinguishes Him from the First and Third, and gives Him the name of the Son; and the relative property, or personal relation of the Third Person is, that He is breathed by the First and Second Persons; hence called the breath of the Almighty, the breath of the mouth of Jehovah the Father, and the breath of the mouth of Christ the Lord, and which is never said of the other Two Persons, and so distinguishes Him from Them; and very pertinently gives Him the name of the Spirit, or breath” (Job 33:4; Psalm 33:6; 2 Thessalonians 2:8). “Body of Divinity,” Book 1., ch. 28.

The Spirit was given, breathed out, by Jesus risen (John 20). The Holy Ghost then proceeded from Him, and in that way became the Spirit. But will it be thought that He was not "the Spirit" in the Godhead before? Never, by a saint. And so the Son. He was born of the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, and so became Son of God; but, in like manner, shall that affect the thought that He was "the Son" in the Godhead before?

Further, the Spirit is called not only the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son, in Galatians 4; the Spirit of Christ, even when speaking in the prophets, 1 Peter 1:11, and Romans 8:9; and of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1:19. He is, indeed, oftener called the Spirit of the Son than the Spirit of the (your) Father. The word procession is never applied to the Son. The Greek Fathers, before the separation from Rome, never use it but in connection with the Father, as it appears; the Latin, from after the Arian controversy, do. Charlemagne raised the question, and Pope Leo said it ought not to be put in the creed. It rather appears, that the dogmatical assertion (the Council of Nice had only, "I believe in the Holy Ghost"; the second, that of Constantinople, added, "proceeding from the Father," without adding "and the Son") first took place in Spain, where Arianism prevailed; but from the fifth century, the Latin Fathers speak of both Father and Son. The Greek held to the terms of scripture. The Council of Ephesus commanded nothing to be added to the creed. Pope Leo not only said to his legates at the French Council, it ought not to be inserted, but, to hinder it, had the creed fixed on at Constantinople, engraved in Greek and Latin on silver plates, and fixed up, without the addition of "and the Son." It was only in the papacy of Nicholas I, in the latter end of the ninth century, that it was regularly inserted. The Greeks objected, and, in what they call the eighth General Council, ordered it to be removed.

The Holy Spirit also now takes a place in the present dispensation that appears to be subordinated, He "proceedeth from the Father" and is "sent" by the Father and the Son. And having come, He does not speak of Himself but whatsoever He hears He speaks. His mission is to "glorify Christ" in receiving the things that are His and showing them unto us. (See John 15: 26; John 16: 13, 14). All such expressions as these appear to give a place of subordination to the Spirit as others appear to do to the Son but it is in appearance only and in respect to the place they have taken and the part they play in carrying out the divine purposes and not in anywise as to the dignity of their Persons. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are coequal in deity and all are one in thought, will and purpose though each has His respective part and sphere of action in the carrying out of the divine purposes.

The Holy Spirit also now takes a place in the present dispensation that appears to be subordinated, He "proceedeth from the Father" and is "sent" by the Father and the Son. And having come, He does not speak of Himself but whatsoever He hears He speaks. His mission is to "glorify Christ" in receiving the things that are His and showing them unto us. (See John 15:26; John 16:13-14). All such expressions as these appear to give a place of subordination to the Spirit as others appear to do to the Son but it is in appearance only and in respect to the place they have taken and the part they play in carrying out the divine purposes and not in anywise as to the dignity of their Persons. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are coequal in deity and all are one in thought, will and purpose though each has His respective part and sphere of action in the carrying out of the divine purposes.

How blessedly the unity of the Godhead shines out in the coming of the Holy Spirit as spoken of by the Lord in John 15:26. The Spirit comes, but He is sent by the Son from the Father to His disciples. Of His own volition the Spirit comes to do what He has deep pleasure in; but even as the Son had come as the Sent One from the Father, so the Spirit delights to come as the Sent One of the Son and the Father.

The revelation of our place and portion with the departed One where He is, and the mode of its communication to us by the Spirit, which proceedeth from the Father and the Son, is as wonderful and peculiar as "the part" itself: "At sundry times and in divers manners God spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, but bath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds." His change of place from earth to heaven, and His exaltation as the Son of man to the right hand of God, as Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, necessitated no less a power and agency than "the Spirit of truth" for its communication to us. He also is the power for our present communion and "part with Christ" in those things which were kept secret from before the foundation of the world, and lay hidden in God till the time appointed. Therefore Jesus said to His disciples, "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." This mission and present ministry of the Holy Ghost, to glorify the Son, and to take of His things and show them to us (that we may have part with Him), is only secondary to the great object and errand of Him that came forth from God, to "make known the Father," and Himself as "the way, the truth, and the life," amongst the children of men. In reality the Christian economy embraces these two ministries, which are essential to present communion with "the departed One" where He now is, with the Father; and finally for the gathering together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him, in whom we have obtained an inheritance, "according to the good pleasure of His will."