The Filioque Controversy THE CATHOLIC ANSWER:
Pulling out your Catechism of the Catholic Church, you explain to Theo that the Catholic Church has always acknowledged the Creed of Constantinople I from AD 381 since Pope Leo I ratified both the Council and the Symbol (the Creed) in AD 451. The addition of the filioque is a development of the Creed that in no way denies the earlier version any more than the development and subsequent change of the Creed between Nicea I and Constantinople I represented a corruption of the Creed then. Moreover, the Catholic Church acknowledges that the Father is the first origin of the Divine Life of the Trinity. As such, the Father is "the principle without principle." We agree with the Orthodox on this point. Together with Theo, you read the CCC 245-248:
The apostolic faith concerning the Spirit was confessed by the second ecumenical council at Constantinople (381): "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father." By this confession, the Church recognizes the Father as "the source and origin of the whole divinity." But the eternal origin of the Spirit is not unconnected with the Son's origin... he is not called the Spirit of the Father alone. . . but the Spirit of both the Father and the Son....
The Latin tradition of the Creed confesses that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque.)" The Council of Florence in 1438 explains: "The Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son; He has His nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration. . And, since the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom He is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son."
The affirmation of the filioque does not appear in the Creed confessed in 381 at Constantinople. But Pope St. Leo I, following an ancient Latin and Alexandrian tradition, had already confessed it dogmatically in 447 (Quam laudabiliter) even before Rome, in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon, came to recognize and receive the Symbol of 381. The use of this formula in the Creed was gradually admitted into the Latin liturgy between the eighth and eleventh centuries.
At the outset the Eastern tradition expresses the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit. By confessing the Spirit as He "who proceeds from the Father," it affirms that he comes from the Father through the Son. The Western tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque). It says this, "legitimately and with good reason," for the eternal order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the Father, as "the principle without principle," is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, He is, with the Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds. This legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.
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What is “Filioque”?
Filioque is the word that was inserted in the Western version of the Nicene Creed to assert the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as from the Father. This was an innovation in the Western Church and done without an Ecumenical Council. It was one of the central issues in the Great Schism of 1054. It is still a difference in doctrine between the East and the West.
Why is this change so significant?
It is precisely because it changes the nature of God. It upsets the balance of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son then it puts the Son in a superior position to the Holy Spirit. Traditional thought about the Trinity is that for any given trait, it must be either common to all Persons of the Trinity or unique to one of them. Thus, Fatherhood is unique to the Father, while begottenness is unique to the Son, and procession unique to the Spirit. Godhood, however, is common to all, as is eternality, uncreatedness, and so forth. Positing that something can be shared by two Persons (i.e., being the source of the Spirit's procession), but not the other, is to elevate those two Persons at the expense of the other. Thus, the balance of unity and diversity is destroyed. Many view that this change undermines the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Thus, with the role Spirit being denigrated, his traditional ministries are effaced or replaced. The Church's unity becomes dependent on an office, spirituality becomes adherence to the letter of the law rather than its spirit, sacraments come to be understood in terms of validity, and a spirit of legalism prevails. This is the orientation that did develop in the Western church.
“It did not come from an anointed servant of the Lord...”
It came from the Church. The Church was founded by Christ. The Church was sent by Christ. It had all the authority it would ever need from Christ to teach the faithful - ....
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This was not my intent
but sense you brought it up...
if this were true, the apostle Peter would have made known the nature of the Godhead!
...and ongoing dispute between the Romans Catholics and the Orthodox which started over 300 AD years later, and after the Christian wars, all through this time there were revisions made to the Trinity along the way until 1438 AD
Excerpt from- The Filioque Controversy
These formulas would probably be acceptable opinions within the realm of catholic orthodoxy, but should they be accepted in a dogmatic Creed? Most Eastern Orthodox would reject any idea of modifying the Creed of 381, sometimes for the wrong reasons1, but also for very good ones.
There are two primary reasons for which the Orthodox insist that the Creed of 381 should not be modified, and these should be carefully considered by Roman Catholics. The first one is that the Creed of Nicea- Constantinople did become the common confession of faith, so much that Pope Leo III had it engraved on two plaques on silver and mounted in Rome.
By altering the common Creed, even without evil or heretical intent, the West created what became a dogmatic difference in the very proclamation of Faith. The Arian menace was soon defeated, and the pastoral need for the filioque had disappeared long before the Great Schism.
The second reason is that the filioque addition goes beyond what was written in the Scriptures and by the honored Fathers of the Second Council.
There can be no doubt that the “Spirit proceeds from the Father” as is taught by our Lord in John 15:26, but this is as far as the Scriptures will go.
Thomas Valentine (EO) offers a reflection worthy of consideration: Unless one asserts that either the Lord Jesus Christ spoke a superfluous repetition or that Saint John distorted the Lord’s words and created a superfluous repetition, it is not possible to claim, as have some supporters of the Filioque, that has the same meaning as . Not only are the words etymologically different with distinct meanings, but the phrase who from the Father proceeds uses in the present tense indicating the proceeding of the Holy Spirit is not a future event, but a present reality having begun in the past and still in progress.
Moreover, the fact that Saint John only uses one other time (5:9) should make the reader-interpeter aware that Saint John may be indicating something special or unusual.
The combination of these facts makes clear that the proceeding of the Holy Spirit is something quite different than the sending of the Holy Spirit. Most English translations of the Holy Scriptures make the distinction between the Son’s promise that he will send the Holy Spirit from the Father and that the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father quite clear. The notable exception is the Vatican-approved New American Bible which badly distorts the passage.
1 A ‘wrong reason’ would be to invoke canon 7 of Ephesus, as Mark Bonocore demonstrates in his previously cited article.
THEOLOGY 333
King James Version
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me
New American Standard
When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me
New International Version
When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.
Young’s Literal Translation
And when the Comforter may come, whom I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth, who from the Father doth come forth, he will testify of me
New Jerusalem Bible
When the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who issues from the Father, he will be my witness.
New American Bible
When the Paraclete comes, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father — and whom I myself will send from the Father — he will bear witness on my behalf. Hence, the reason of the Orthodox insistence that the filioque be removed from the Creed is in fact to foster ecclesial unity and to uphold of Scriptural terminology of the Ecumenical text. 5. Revisionist theology?
There is another valid reason for which Orthodox are loath to concede to an acceptable (or even positive) interpretation of the filioque, and that reason is the great difficulty in reconciling Rome’s insistence that “[the HIS BROKEN BODY 334 Father] is the sole origin (arche, aitia) of the ekporevsis of the Spirit” with the constant affirmation that the Spirit “proceeds by a communication of the same singular essence by one eternal spiration from the Father and the Son as from one principle.” Even though the Vulgate translated ekporevomenon by procedit, the official Clarification explains that in these affirmations, procedit does not means ekporevsis but proienai, so that something different than causal origination is being discussed.
This is a very subtle nuance, often lost on the masses, as we can imagine. The consistent wording of Latin theology is as follows: The Father is from no one; the Son is from the Father only; and the Holy Spirit is from both the Father and the Son equally. The 4th Lateran Council, 1215, A definition against the Albigenses and other heretics [We] confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but as from one; not by two spirations but by one. The 2nd Council of Lyons, 1274, Constitution on the Procession of the Holy Spirit The Father is not begotten; the Son is begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Council of Florence, 1438- 45, Decree for the Jacobites
The Council of Florence in 1438 explains: “The Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son He has his nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration . . . . And, since the Father has through generation given to the only begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, 246 The confusing and objectionable aspect of these dogmatic statements is that the Monarchy of the Father as “sole origin (arche, aitia)” of the Son and Spirit is never mentioned. Roman Catholic theologians assure us that there is a good reason for this: what is being discussed in those documents is not ultimate causality (since the issue is settled), it is the collective or shared dimension of the Spirit’s origin.
As St. Maximos explained, the orthodox filioque is not about the ekporevsis but the proienai. The Eastern Orthodox concern, as we have seen in John Zizioulas, is that “the distinction between and was not made in Latin theology, which used the same term, procedere, to denote both realities.”
This is obvious in popular Roman Catholic defenses of the filioque, where the strong affirmation of the unique causality of the Father is absent and where no mention is made of the difference between and
A typical example is the Catholic Answers tract on the filioque: THEOLOGY 335 Scripture reveals that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The external relationships of the persons of the Trinity mirror their internal relationships. Just as the Father externally sent the Son into the world in time, the Son internally proceeds from the Father in the Trinity.
Just as the Spirit is externally sent into the world by the Son as well as the Father (John 15:26, Acts 2:33), he internally proceeds from both Father and Son in the Trinity. This is why the Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6) and not just the Spirit of the Father (Matt. 10:20).
With such a presentation, it not surprising that the Orthodox reject that version of filioque as confusing and heretical. On the other hand, the recent high-level clarifications are useful and constructive. The Orthodox impression is that historically, “principle” (principium) was presented as equivalent to aitia, and “proceed” (procedit) equivalent to ekporevsis. This seems to have been the intent of the council of Florence, where the Greeks were asked to recognize “the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son as from one “principium” (arche) and from one cause (aitia).”1 As a result, the Latin insistence on the filioque, affirming both the ‘single cause’ and the ‘common or collective cause’ seemed somewhat schizophrenic. It can certainly be admitted that Photios’ simple ‘pyramid scheme,’ which admittedly seems to ignore the unity of Father and Son in the Spirit, did not lead to such acrobatics of theologial nuancing.
6. But what are we talking about? At this point in our study, if the reader has not yet decided to give up on understanding this controversy altogether, we can offer Jaroslav Pelikan’s witty ponderings: If there is a special circle of the inferno described by Dante reserved for historians of theology, the principal homework assigned to that subdivision of hell for at least the first several eons of eternity may well be the thorough study of all the treatises--in Latin, Greek, Church Slavonic, and various modern languages--devoted to the inquiry: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father only, as Eastern Christendom contends, or from both the Father and the Son (ex Patre Filioque), as the Latin Church teaches? Perhaps one reason for the mystery and abstract complexity of this issue is that few people understand what (or better who) the Holy Spirit is all about. In the Book of Acts, we read: 1 CE, Entry: Council of Florence HIS BROKEN BODY 336 Paul said to them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ And they replied, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!’ And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began to speak with tongues and to prophesy.
1 Today’s problem is not that Christians do not know that “there is a Holy Spirit,” the problem is that few would be able to explain who the Spirit is and what he accomplishes. Indeed, very few theologians or apologists who discuss the issue of the filioque engage the question of what we mean by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Augustine (whose ‘work in progress’ De Trinitate was published against his will) was among those who, for better or worse, attempted to understand the trinitarian mystery of the Godhead with imaginative and controversial analogies. I would like to suggest, carefully and without any doctrinal claim, that the scriptural descriptions of the Holy Spirit points to the following definition: The Holy Spirit is the divine-uncreated, hypostasis, power2 and mind that manifests what is true and existing. This definition makes sense when we consider the role of the Holy Spirit at the Lord’s baptism, the epiclesis of St. Basil and the fact that “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
”3 Hence, the “Spirit of Truth” is the revealer of what is true, the One who “knows the deep things of God.”
4 The relationship of the Spirit with God (or the Father, in an absolute sense) and the Word seems clear: the Father is the primordial and causal mind with the purpose and identity of love and communion.
The Word or Son is the expression, the self-aware agent that executes and communicates the Father’s transcendent mind. This is the theology of the New Testament: In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made time and space. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his person, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
5 1 Acts 19:2, 6 2 This is the dynamic and kenotic aspect to the Spirit in the sense that His mission is not to impose His hypostasis but to reveal and glorify what He indwells. See Zechariah 4:14 NJB (Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit' -- says Yahweh Sabaoth) 3 1 Corinthians 12:3
4 1 Corinthians 2:10
5 Hebrew 1:1-3 THEOLOGY 337
This is why the Orthodox and patristic tradition insists, as Fr. Romanides often repeats, that the Angel-Messenger of YHWH is the preincarnate Logos.
The incarnate Word is the spoken mind of the Father who is love and who calls us to communion. But the Word is revealed to other minds as such (Lord and Savior) only by the work of the Holy Spirit.
In summary, the Trinity expresses the idea of message, messenger and revealer, or mind, word and meaning. Within this framework, we can say that the meaning proceeds from the mind and rests in the word, but the meaning truly originates from the mind, and does not depend on the word. Yet, the meaning proceeds from the mind through the word. Even more importantly, this approach does not subordinate the meaning to the word and allows for the symmetry that is often lacking in Western theology: the word also proceeds from the mind according to the meaning1.
The Word and Spirit are intertwined and complementary in their ontology and economy: the Spirit manifested the anointed Word and likewise the Word pours out the Spirit.
This is why the Eastern tradition insists on the invocation of the Holy Spirit after the words of institution are recited. The supremacy of the conscious Father- Mind is thus established, as well as the co-inherence or mutual indwelling (perichoresis) of the Word and Spirit.
Hence, meaning proceeds (ontologically) from the mind only, independently of the word; this is the Photian intuition. Moreover, meaning proceeds from the mind to rest in the word and through the word. If there is a certain collective origination of the meaning from the mind and word, isn’t there also a collective origination of the word from the mind and meaning? This is what the idea of perichoresis suggests.
We should also consider the implications of the gift of tongues on the relationship between meaning and word, spirit and mind. Augustine’s presentation of the Spirit as bond of love between Father and Son was expressed in his Father-Mother-Child analogy, which was used to defend the idea of a principal cause (Father) and a collective origination for the Child-Spirit. Of course, this very problematic analogy would need to be balanced with the more ‘Biblical’ one: Spirit (ruah) is feminine in Hebrew2 1 This is a very Semitic concept.
2 Likewise, sophia is feminine is Greek, and we notice that Irenaeus for instance talked about the Word (Son) and Wisdom (Spirit) of God.
In the New Testament, the Wisdom of God is normally associated with Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:24). This theme of a ‘feminine Spirit’ has been developed and popularized in Roman Catholic circles by Scott Hahn.
See also Acts of Thomas in ANF and the Child would seem to be Jesus, not the Spirit1. In summary, we have to be extremely careful with any terminology or imagery that does not faithfully echo the biblical and patristic presentation. There is also a subtle distinction that - God is merciful! - can only be a daring opinion: if the Spirit manifests God to other minds (us), does He also manifest God to God Himself in a reflexive way? If so, the economy of God to our minds would be analogous to the ontology of God to his own mind, a theologoumenon that cannot be dogmatized in any way.
7. The fear of Arianism Before reaching a conclusion and summary, I would like to mention that the ‘shadow of Arianism’ – and the fear thereof - may be more of a factor than we realize. For whatever reason, what we call the Western tradition has tended to theologize on the opposite extreme of Arianism. As we have mentioned, the early tendencies of the Roman Church were on the Modalistic side, and it is in Reformed / Protestant Western Christianity that we find such aberrations as ‘Oneness’ theology and the triple autotheos of John Calvin.
It is revealing that the issue of Arianism is addressed several times in Mark Bonocore’s extensive Response to Eastern Orthodox Objections. At one point, the Roman Catholic apologist writes: [The filioque] was included in the Creed by the Western fathers at Toledo in order to counter the claims of the 6th Century Spanish (Germanic) Arians. These Arians were of course denying this essential and orthodox truth – that is, the Son’s eternal participation in the Spirit’s procession.
But Arianism2 had nothing to do with the question of the Spirit’s procession: the only truth debated with the Arians was the uncreated nature and eternality of the Logos. What Bonocore calls an “essential and orthodox truth” so dear to the West is in fact a complex and delicate subject of discussion. His Response continues:
It is of course quite disturbing (from the Western perspective) that modern Eastern Orthodox (i.e., Photian) theology comes very close to advocating this same Arian view by refusing to incorporate the Son’s participation in the Spirit’s eternal procession in any way.
1 See, for instance, the last prayer of St. Polycarp: “O Lord God Almighty, Father of thy beloved and blessed Child, Jesus Christ, through Whom we have received full knowledge of thee…” 2 At least in the East. It is possible that the Spanish Arians emphasized other aspects of the Son’s non-eternality.
The Filioque Controversy
