This week we get Trinitarian. Robyn wants some help sorting out the Filioque question… systematically. But first, we discuss our favorite 3-in-1 products, Jon’s skincare routine, Ryan’s cultural philistinism, Robyn’s backcountry bathing habits, Winston Churchill’s early sense of what binds America and England in common cause, and the Stormy Kromer (Google it). Despite an apropos ghostly interruption, Robyn pivots us to her question (occasioned by differences of liturgical practice among her Anglican fellows): are there good systematic theological reasons to affirm, prefer, or reject the Filioque? Ryan distinguishes the historical, dogmatic, and systematic questions at play in and behind the topic. Ryan walks us through the last of these in some detail. Jon suggests the value of the Filioque for distinguishing the Son and the Spirit systematically. Ryan considers the question with some help from St. Augustine. Jon raises W. Norris Clarke’s question of a “positive perfection of receptivity” in the Son and Ryan responds by considering how begetting and giving might be thought differently. Finally, Ryan notes that none of this yet raises, let alone answers, the question about how there can be procession in a perfectly simple God, and leaves open the question whether the Filioque or per Filium might fit better with certain analogies. Then we read a listener’s Treasures Old and New! (Send us some and we might read yours on the air too).

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Our theme music is “14 Ghosts II” by Nine Inch Nails, available at archive.org/details/nineinchnails_ghosts_I_IV

“14 Ghosts II” is used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. We would like to thank Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails for the use of this track.

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