This implies that all the Western Fathers, who unanimously accepted the filioque, were all heretics.
How dare - to the Orthodox - the Pope alter what the ecumenical councils said can not be altered!
Ephesus said that it was okay to add explanations to the Creed.
It seems fitting that all should assent to this holy creed. It is pious and sufficiently helpful for the whole world. But since some pretend to confess and accept it, while at the same time distorting the force of its expressions to their own opinion and so evading the truth, being sons of error and children of destruction, it has proved necessary to add testimonies from the holy and orthodox fathers that can fill out the meaning they have given to the words and their courage in proclaiming it.
After the creed was established - yes they were - the Orthodox recognize and honor all Western Pope's and saints up until the schism - after that they are outside the one true church.
Explain the creed all you want - but you can't alter it. It is set in stone - or in silver as Pope Leo III did.
The Nicene Creed is the definitive statement of Christian orthodoxy.
Origins of the Nicene Creed
The Nicene Creed was formulated at the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in AD 325 to combat Arianism, and it was expanded at the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in AD 381 to balance its coverage of the Trinity by including the Holy Spirit. It is the only creed that was promulgated by any of the seven ecumenical councils and thus it is the only creed that is truly ecumenical and universal. In the Orthodox Church, it is the only creed.
The New Testament and the Nicene Creed are deeply entangled with each other. The wording and the concepts in the Nicene Creed come from the New Testament—in fact, one of the most important debates at the Council of Nicea concerned whether it is proper to include a word in the Nicene Creed that does not occur in the New Testament. On the other hand, at the time that the Church issued the official canon of the New Testament, it customarily compared writings to the Nicene Creed to determine if they were orthodox. So you are correct if you say that the Nicene Creed proceeds from the New Testament, and you are correct if you say that the New Testament is certified by the Nicene Creed.
To put it more precisely, the Nicene Creed and the canon of the New Testament were formed together as part of the same process.
The Nicene Council and the Trinity
The Nicene Council did not invent the Trinity, as some people imagine. A full century before the Nicene Council, Tertullian wrote a voluminous explanation and defense of the Trinity and was viewed by his contemporaries as defending the orthodox Christian faith to nonbelievers. A couple of decades before Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus, bishops at opposite ends of the Mediterranean basin, both taught the Trinity. A half century or more before Irenaeus and Clement, we find Trinitarian teachings in the authentic works of Justin Martyr, who died in 157. At the very beginning of the second century, St. Ignatius, a respected bishop, was martyred in his old age. On his way to his martyrdom, he wrote epistles to the churches along the way, making theological statements that are best understood in the context of Trinitarian theology. Finally, the Didache, an ancient manual of church discipline that could possibly date from the middle of the first century, quotes the Trinitarian formula of Matthew 28:19 in its instructions for baptism.
We can trace the dogma of the Trinity straight back to apostolic times. We have it from the pens of bishops and theologians who were charged with preserving and passing on the faith and who lived all over the Mediterranean basin. From this we can only conclude that mainstream theology in the ancient church before the Council of Nicea was Trinitarian.
The filioque Clause
In AD 589, a church council in Toledo, Spain, modified the Nicene Creed so that the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father and the Son. (In Latin, and the Son is filioque, so this is known as the filioque clause.) There may not have been any particular motive for this change, because it looks like something a scribe would do to mend the text. It is also possible that the change was intended to strengthen the defense of the Trinity. The filioque clause spread through the western part of the church. In 796, Paulinus of Aquileia defended the filioque clause at the Synod of Friuli, which indicates that it was opposed, and after about 800 it crept into the liturgy in the Frankish Empire. Some Frankish monks used the filioque clause in their monastery in Jerusalem in 807, but eastern monks disputed it as improper. Because the Frankish monks were from the west, the matter was escalated to the bishop of Rome (Pope Leo III). He approved of the sentiment, but he opposed the change in the wording. Leo arranged for the creed in its original form (without the filioque clause) to be engraved on silver tablets and he had them placed at St. Peter’s tomb. After the split between Rome and Constantinople, the filioque clause became part of the Nicene Creed in the Roman Catholic Church. This happened at the Council of Lyons, in France, in 1274.
In 1439, at the Roman Catholic Council of Florence, the Roman Catholic Church invited the Eastern Orthodox Churches and attempted a reunion. The issues were the papacy and the filioque clause. The proposed compromise was that the Roman Catholic Church would reform the papacy so that the Bishop of Rome would be the ‘first among equals’ among the bishops, and the Eastern Orthodox Church would consent to the filioque clause. The Eastern Orthodox reasoned that if the Council of Florence in 1439 had succeeded, it would have been a true Ecumenical Council, and that would have given it the power to amend Canon VII of the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus, which had made the Nicene Creed inalterable. So the Eastern Orthodox were willing to compromise on the filioque clause. However, the Roman Catholics did not compromise on the papacy, so the reunion failed.
Protestants inherited the filioque clause from the Roman Catholic Church, but the Orthodox never accepted this change for scriptural, theological, and procedural reasons. Since Canon VII of the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in AD 431 is still in effect, the Nicene Creed can only be changed by a true Ecumenical Council. After recent consultations with the Orthodox, the US Episcopal Church agreed to drop the filioque clause from the Nicene Creed in their next version of the Book of Common Prayer.
The Importance of the Nicene Creed Today
The Church formulated the Nicene Creed before it selected certain apostolic writings, called them the New Testament, and declared them to be Holy Scripture. Another way of looking at it is that God chose the people who were bound by the Nicene Creed to affirm the contents of the New Testament, thereby endorsing the theology of the creed. The Nicene Creed is therefore a reliable test of our interpretation of the New Testament. If we are at variance with the Nicene Creed, we are in error. So whoever denies the Trinity must also deny the New Testament, and whoever upholds the New Testament as Holy Scripture must also affirm the Trinity.
In the beginning, the Church did not have a formal creed, nor did it have a formal list of the books in the New Testament. Then it formulated the Nicene Creed to express its doctrines and to serve as a test of orthodox teaching. So for a while there was a Church with the Nicene Creed but, even though it used the books of the New Testament as Holy Scripture, it had no official statement saying that they were. After the Church was bound by the Nicene Creed, it made a formal list of the books in the New Testament. Therefore, whoever attempts to reconstruct the ancient Church with an official list of New Testament books but without the Nicene Creed is reconstructing an imaginary church that never existed. This doesn’t mean their church is invalid, it just means that it isn’t a historic reconstruction, because in any part of Church history in which there was an official list of New Testament books, the Nicene Creed was the official expression of faith and the final test of orthodoxy.
The Nicene Creed in Worship
Traditional liturgical worship always includes the Nicene Creed whenever there is Communion. It is a corporate proclamation that corresponds to the Schema (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one” ) in the synagogue liturgy.
For More Insight…
The Nicene Creed was specifically designed to combat Arianism, Manicheanism, Apollinarianism, and Monarchianism (and its variants, Modalism, Patripassianism, and Sabellianism). You can get greater insight into the Nicene Creed by understanding the heresies it was meant to combat. You can also read a timeline comparing the formation of the New Testament canon with the history of the Nicene Creed.
Note that in the creed, the word ‘catholic’ has its dictionary meaning of ‘universal.’
The Text of the Nicene Creed
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried. On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.* With the Father and the Son He is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN.
*Roman Catholics and Protestants add ‘and the Son’ at this point.
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The ecumenical councils are like the ammendment process to the American constitution. Let's say a President one day decided to alter the constitution to make it more "accurate" without going through the ammendment process. That is what the Pope did - he ignored procedure and willed change on teh ecumenical council - when only the ecumenical councils can will change. Why for some reason do Catholics not confront this fact? They brink up this father or that father but ignore the ecumenical councils and their importance. If the Pope can change the ecumenical council's words at will - why can't a protestant do the same? The Catholics opened pandora's box of protestantisim.
gbcdoj - This implies that all the Western Fathers, who unanimously accepted the filioque, were all heretics
Those who accept it and profess it contrary to the Ecumenical Councils are heretics by definition. Those who use it as explanation or as a means of fighting anti-Trinitarian heresies are not.
There is a big, but self-evident difference between the Symbol of Faith of the Church and the explanation of such faith; the two are not identical and are not interchangeable.