Byzantine theologians opposed the addition, first on the ground that the Western church had no right to change the text of an ecumenical creed unilaterally and, second, because the Filioque clause implied the reduction of the divine persons to mere relations ("the Father and the Son are two in relation to each other, but one in relation to the Spirit").
This effort, as we shall see, helps to explain the pervasiveness in late medieval philosophy of the distinction between so-called real relations (relationes reales) and mere relations of reason (relationes rationis).
For example, by the end of thirteenth century, most philosophers use it to explain the doctrine of creation, saying that creatures are related to God by a real relation, whereas God is related to them by a mere relation of reason (cf. Henninger 1989).
claims straightforwardly that "probable things are truth-like" (probabilia … sunt verisimilia).[7] Other scholastic uses of these words suggest instead a mere relation of frequent mutual implication.
Thus, when a substance acquires a new relation without undergoing any real change this is often explained by saying that the substance acquired a mere relation of reason.[37] Finally, some medieval philosophers use relations of reason to identify a sense in which God can have accidents after all.
This impulse is due to the pessimist's conviction that "evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial arrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy".
At risk is more than mere soured relations, economists and policy makers say.
The accolade was mere public relations hype, but the playful, madcap eatery actually deserved it.
And is it true commitment to gender justice or mere public relations?
These days, they say, the company's vast reservoir of engineering and science know-how is often dismissed as mere public relations.
And at Coca-Cola bottling plants from Bogotá to Beijing, schools of fish swim in water tanks filled with treated wastewater, testament to the firm's commitment to clean all its wastewater by 2010 (it is 84% of the way there).Cynics say such programmes are mere public relations.
