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Explanation of the creedFollowing John 15:26b, the First Council of Constantinople in 381 modified the statement of the First Council of Nicea in 325 by stating that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father". The First Council of Nicea had not elaborated on the origin of the Holy Spirit. Hence, the Nicene creed is often called "Nicene-Constantinopolitan" or "Niceno-Constantinopolitan." This creed was not officially received until the Council of Ephesus in 431. In thinking about God as Father, Son and Spirit: the Trinity, Christians following Jesus (Matt 28:19), from early times have made some important distinctions. The Son and the Spirit are said to have their eternal origin from the Father; the Son, the eternal Divine Logos (John 1:1) is "generated" ("born" or "begotten") of the Father, while the Spirit "proceeds" from the Father. These statements are made in reference to the being of God, from all eternity, "before all ages" in the words of the Nicene Creed. On the one hand, the Nicene Creed and the Bible do not explicitly say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father; that is, there is no statement that the Spirit's eternal origin is found anywhere but in the Father. However, Christians find implicit evidence for this in other statements about the connection between the Son and the Spirit. For example, the New Testament teaches that the Spirit testifies to the Son (1 Jn 5:6) and is called the "Spirit of Christ" (Rom 8:9;15:5; Phil 1:19; 1 Pet 1:1) and "Spirit of [the] Son" (Gal 4:6). The Son, i.e. Jesus, also says he will "pray to the Father, and he will give you another comforter to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth (John 14:16f.), and Jesus also says that He Himself will send the Spirit (John 16:7). The Church Fathers further explained that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of one "being" ("substantia"/"ousia") and have one common will and activity, with regard to their external actions (actiones ad extra). This tradition continued to be reaffirmed in both East and West, unanimously in medieval times by the Scholastic theologians. (See Scholastic Philosophy). In this second, "economic" sense, the Father is said to send us the Spirit through the Son (Acts 2:33; Titus 3:6). On the other hand, while the New Testament teaches that there is a connection between the Son and the Spirit, the divinity of the Son and the Spirit may not be entirely clear from Scripture alone. Many theologians historically have been unconvinced by the texts, and readily quoted the Scripture in defense of their denials of the Trinity, see Nontrinitarianism. Historical originsAs Johannes Grohe has pointed out, a regional council in Persia in 410 introduced one of the earliest forms of the filioque in the Creed; the council specified that the Spirit proceeds from the Father "and from the Son." Coming from the rich theology of early East Syrian Christianity, this expression in this context is authentically Eastern. Therefore, the filioque cannot be attacked as a solely Western innovation, nor as something created by the Pope. In the West, St. Augustine of Hippo followed Tertullian and Ambrose in teaching that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, though subordinate to neither. His theology, including his theology of the Trinity, was dominant in the West until the Middle Ages. Other Latin fathers also spoke of the Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son. While familiar in the West, this way of speaking was virtually unknown in the Greek-speaking, Eastern Roman Empire. Its first additionIn the Latin-speaking Church, the phrase and the Son (in Latin filioque) was first added to the Nicene Creed at the Synod of Toledo in Spain in 447. The formula was used in a letter from Pope Leo I to the members of that synod, in responds to heresies they were confronting. Primarily, it was added to the Creed in order to oppose the Arian heresy, which taught that the Son was a creature and not God and which was prevalent among the Germanic peoples. At the third synod of Toledo in 589, the ruling Visigoths, who had been Arian Christians, submitted to the Catholic Church. They were obliged to accept the Nicene Creed with the filioque. The Franks and the filioqueAfter the Visigoths, the filoque was also accepted as part of the Creed by the Franks, which under the leadership of Pippin the Younger and his son Charlemagne rose to dominance in the West, with Charlemagne being crowned Emperor in 800. The filioque was widely thought to be an integral part of the Creed — in fact, most thought that the Greek churches, which at that time were under the thumb of successive emperors and dominated by iconoclasm, were in error for omitting it. Contemporary usage was thought to be normative and authentic. Frankish predominance put pressure on Rome to adopt the filoque, which however only occurred after the year 1000. The Photius controversyWithin a couple of generations, in 858, a new situation came to pass. The Byzantine Emperor Michael III removed Patriarch Ignatius I as Patriarch of Constantinople because of a conflict with his Caesar Bardas and that remained close to his mother Theodora who continually interfered in his personal life. The emperor replaced him with a distinguished scholar and a layman, Photius, who was the first Imperial Secretary and Imperial Ambassador to Baghdad. However, Ignatius was exiled to Terebinthos and resigned his position under pressure. Several months later a few of Ignatius' supporters made an appeal to Pope Nicholas through a small delegation of monks. Nicholas saw this as a chance to exert authority over the affairs in the eastern Church. Pope Nicholas seeing the opportunity to exert leadership, sent legates who took part in a synod in 861 that deposed Ignatius and affirmed Photius' appointment with the condition that some territory be returned to Rome. When he found that all the conditions had not been met Nicholas called his own council in Rome in 863 which deposed and excommunicated Photios claiming that since he was a layman he could not be elevated to this position which was the canon in the Western church. He chose to then recognize Ignatius as the legitimate Patriarch. Recent scholarship has shown that violation of these church laws, together with an attempt to leverage the situation in order to force the Emperor to accept the Pope's claim to sovereignty over the exarchate of Illyria, were the main reasons the Bishop of Rome rejected the appointment of Photius. It must be noted that these laws were only Western and there was no such law in existence in the East. The real issue was the legitimacy of the absolute authority of the Pope over the other Patriarchs. Who could change a creed that had been declared in an Ecummenical council and affirmed by numerous other councils? In 867, Photius with Emperor Michael's support rejected the Pope's assertions. Emperor Michael sent the pope a letter which declared Byzantine belief in their own independence and supremacy and demanded the papal decision against Photius be withdrawn. In 867 a large ecumenical synod was held with over 1,000 in attendance. It excommunicated Nicholas and condemned the pope's claims for primacy, his interference in Bulgaria and the innovative addition of the Filioque. Photius' response cited the filioque as proof that Rome had a habit of overstepping its proper limits. His Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs is neither gentle nor irenic. Later under a new Emperor and the new pope Hadrian II, a new council was held at Constantinople in 869 which condemned Photius and acquitted Ignatius and the recently reposed pope Nicholas I. Photius was exiled and Ignatius reinstated. In the East this was seen as a "packed" council to carry out the emperors bidding. Even Ignatius did not sign the declaration. A few years later Photius was relieved of his exile and became an advisor to Ignatius. In 877, after the death of Ignatius, Photius again resumed office having been recommended by Ignatius and affirmed by canonical council. When Pope John VIII (872-882) became pope, a new council in 879 was held in Constantinople which renounced the previous synods that condemned Photius and the use of the Filioque clause. Pope John did not confess the Filioque heresy and allowed no one to change the Creed. Photius resigned in 886 when Leo VI took over as emperor and put his 16 year old brother Stephen in the Patriarchate. Photius spent the last five years of his life as a monk, in exile in Armenia; he is revered by the Orthodox today as a saint. He was the first important theologian to accuse Rome of innovation in the matter of the filioque. Further East-West controversyIn the ninth century, Pope Leo III agreed with the filioque phrase theologically but was opposed to adopting it in Rome, in part because of his loyalty to the received tradition. He also knew that the Greeks resented the new Roman Empire in the West and Charlemagne in particular; the Pope wanted to preserve Church unity. In fact, Leo III had the traditional text of the Creed, without the filioque, displayed publicly. He had the original text engraved on two silver tablets, at the tomb of St. Peter. In any case, during the time of Pope Leo's leadership, 795–816, there was no Creed at all in the Roman Mass. Later, in 1014, the German Emperor Henry II, of the Holy Roman Empire, visited Rome for his coronation and found that the Creed was not used during the Mass. At his request, Benedict VIII, reigning Pope and Bishop of Rome (1012-1024) added the Creed, as it was received in the West with the filioque, after the Gospel. At this time, the papacy was very weak and very much under the Imperial influence. For the sake of survival, the Pope needed the military support of the Emperor. This was the first time the phrase was used in the Mass at Rome. So, over a 400 year period, dispute over the filioque had not divided the Church definitively; for the most part, in spite of cultural and linguistic conflicts, the Roman and the Byzantine Churches remained in full communion. In 1054, however, the argument contributed to the Great Schism of the East and West. There were many issues involved, in large part based on misunderstandings between Greek and Latin traditions, as well as the irascible temperament of the antagonists. These were Cardinal Humbertus from Rome and Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople. In addition to the actual difference in wording and doctrine in the filioque, a related issue was the right of the Pope to make a change in the Nicene Creed, on his own, apart from an Ecumenical Council. Complicating factorsOne must acknowledge, however, that the filioque was introduced in the West first of all in Spain, then in Gaul, not in Rome, and not by the Pope's initiative. Centuries later, the phrase became something to argue about; for a long time, as mentioned, it was in no way justification for breaking communion. By the same token, it is not accurate to say, as some historians do, that the "Catholic Church" introduced the filioque into the Mass. Eastern Churches, for example, the Maronites, fully part of the Catholic Church, never used the filioque. Moreover, the phrase was in wide use in the West, following the language of many Latin fathers, outside the Mass, especially in Spain and Gaul. Instead, it is more accurate to speak of the filioque as a Latin expression or as an expression found in the Latin Church. In the first millennium, the "Catholic Church" is the only Christian Church of both East and West. For many years after the condemnations of 1054, many Orthodox and Catholics did not think of themselves as being in schism; neither Church, in fact, had excommunicated the other. Many Slavic Christians saw the whole episode as a dispute among individuals. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, O.P., was one of the dominant Scholastic theologians. He dealt explicitly with the processions of the divine persons in his Summa Theologica. Following John Damascene, Cyril of Alexandria, and many other Eastern Fathers, he taught that it is proper to speak of the Spirit as proceeding "through the Son" (per Filium), but he also acknowledged the orthodoxy of the filioque. Using Augustinian language, he also speaks of the Father as the ultimate principle (cause or source) of the deity. In 1274, the Second Council of Lyons said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, in accord with the filioque in the contemporary Latin version of the Nicene Creed. Reconciliation with the East, through this council, did not last. Remembering the crusader's sack of Constantinople in 1204, most Byzantine Christians did not want to be reconciled with the West. In 1283, Patriarch John Beccus, who supported reconciliation with the Latin Church, was forced to abdicate; reunion failed. The aforementioned crusaders had earlier been excommunicated for attacking other Christians (the town of Zara). In 1204, they became embroiled in local Byzantine politics involving a certain claimant to the throne, and ultimately sacked Constantinople and completely destroyed the Byzantine Empire [for a time] before returning home without ever setting foot on Muslim soil. Pope Innocent III had sent the Crusaders a letter, forbidding them to attack Constantinople; after hearing of the sack of the city, he lamented their action and disowned them. Nevertheless, the people of Constantinople had a deep hatred for the people they called the "Latins." For much of the fourteenth century, there were two bishops, each claiming to be Pope, each excommunicating the other. The Western Schism was ultimately resolved at the Council of Constance, but in the meantime the East could hardly seek reconciliation with a Western Church divided among itself. In the middle of the century, about a third of Western Europe died of the Black Death. People were more concerned about the plague than about Church unity. Failing efforts to reunite East and WestAt the Council of Florence, in the fifteenth century, Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, Bishop Joseph, Patriarch of Constantinople and other bishops from the East travelled to northern Italy, in hope of reconciliation with the West and the aid of Roman armies in their conflict with the Ottoman Empire. After extensive discussion, in Ferrara, then in Florence, they acknowledged that some Latin Fathers spoke of the procession of the Spirit differently from the Greek Fathers. Since the consensus of the Fathers was held to be reliable, as a witness to common faith, and since the Byzantine Empire desperately needed the military aid of the West, the Western usage was held not to be a heresy and not a barrier to restoration of full communion. All but one of the Orthodox bishops present, Mark of Ephesus, agreed and signed a decree of union between East and West, Laetentur Coeli in 1439. Mark refused to sign on the grounds that Rome was in both heresy and schism as a result of its acceptance of the filioque and the papal claims of universal jurisdiction over the Church. For his stand, Mark is now venerated as a Saint in Eastern Orthodoxy and is often honored as a pillar of Orthodoxy. Now briefly, officially and publicly, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were in communion. So, the Council of Florence helped establish a fundamental principle: the Church must be one in its faith, its essential beliefs, but may be diverse in its culture, customs and rites. Although theologically the Church had to be uniform, the addition of the Filioque did not seem at the time to violate that uniformity. However, the reconciliation achieved at Florence was soon destroyed. Many Orthodox faithful and bishops, including the Patriarch of Constantinople, rejected the union, and would not ratify it. The emperor indeed had wished to secure the support of the West in the face of the Ottoman danger, and had pressured some Eastern bishops to sign. To many in the East, the agreement of Florence seemed to be an imposition of Scholastic theology and a desperate plea for help. The promised Western armies were too late to prevent the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. From that time onward, the Turks fostered separation from the West, which remained an adversary to Islamic political and military dominance. The Patriarch of Constantinople now had to carry out the will of his Muslim overlord; the Church was no longer free. Although the filioque controversy had been officially resolved for both Orthodox and Catholic, (partly because of the historical situation) the resolution at Florence was neither fully received nor permanently sustained. Eastern Orthodox ChurchTo this day, the Orthodox Church uses the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 without the filioque. Many times, the Eastern Churches have rejected the phrase as an unauthorized interpolation, an example of what they consider to be Western hubris. Even more, they objected to the teaching it expressed, as conflicting with biblical and accepted doctrine. They said that for the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son there would have to be two sources in the deity, whereas in the one God there can only be one source of divinity or deity. Western theologians anticipated this objection by saying the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son "as from one principle." The East, however, again objected that this formulation would merge and confuse the persons of the Father and the Son. It was also pointed out that if Father and Son are sources of deity (and only the Holy Spirit is not), it follows that the status of the Spirit is diminished, relative to the Father and the Son, by excluding the Spirit alone as a source of divinity, making the Spirit, rather, a recipient of it — as if the Son and Spirit were both subordinate in their own doctrine. Finally, if one says that the divine essence itself is the source of deity in God, which they took the Latin theologians to say, then (as the Eastern theologians pointed out) another problem is created, a suggestion that the Holy Spirit proceeds from himself, since he is certainly not separate from the divine essence. (By the same reasoning, the Father and Son would also proceed from Themselves. The typical Eastern approach to Triadology avoids this problem by starting with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and considering that the unique divine Essence is the content of these Three, rather than that the Three "proceed" from the Essence.) Both Patriarch Photius in 862 and Patriarch Cerularius in 1054 accused the West of heresy for introducing the filioque in the Creed. In general, except for reconciliatory pauses in 1274 and 1439, at the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence, many Orthodox have repeated the charge of heresy, up to the present day. On the other hand, from the thirteenth century, other Orthodox have pointed out that no ecumenical council ever condemned the entire Western Church and excommunicated its members. Hence, they argued, Latins should not be denied Communion because of the filioque in their Creed. An Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory II, of Cyprus (1241–1290), proposed a different formula which has also been considered as an Orthodox "answer" to the filioque, though it does not have the status of official Orthodox doctrine. Gregory spoke of an eternal manifestation of the Spirit by the Son. In other words, he held that the Son eternally manifests (shows forth) the Holy Spirit. In general, even up to the time of the Council of Florence, the writings of Latin fathers were not widely read in the East; the language was not understood. Hence, the formulation of the filioque, let alone its meaning, was not readily understood in the East. Up to the present, some Western practices are still condemned as heresy by some in the East, disciplinary customs such as mandatory celibacy for priests or the use of pouring water for baptism, rather than triple immersion. When the Pope of Rome visited Greece, some clergy refused to pray with him; others protested publicly against his visit. In Ukraine, when he visited, one Orthodox community held a ceremony of "cursing" for a bishop they considered a heretic. Some Orthodox, too, speak of what they call the "heresy of ecumenism." The Patriarch of Constantinople has accused some monks of Mount Athos, Greece, as being schismatic in spirit, because they consider the entire West to be mired in heresy. Again and again, the filioque is brought up as the first example of heresy. In the recent past, however, several Orthodox theologians have considered the filioque anew, with a view to reconciliation of East and West. Theodore Stylianopoulos, for one, provides an extensive, scholarly overview of the contemporary discussion. A "Father Chrysostom", following Jean-Miguel Garrigues, appeals for common prayer, instead of polemicism. Twenty years after first writing The Orthodox Church, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia says that he has changed his mind; now, he considers the filioque dispute to be primarily semantic. The Moscow patriarchate has said that it does not rebaptize or even chrismate Catholics who become Orthodox; they simply repent and are welcomed. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has said that all that is necessary is resolution of what he calls the "Uniate" problem. Should the conflict over Eastern Catholic Churches in Russia be resolved, the filioque dispute would perhaps not be an obstacle to full reconciliation. For many Orthodox, then, the filioque, while still a matter of conflict, would not impede full communion of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Catholic ChurchIn 1274, at the Second Council of Lyons, the Catholic Church condemned those who "presume to deny" that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In the recent past, many Catholic theologians have written on the filioque, with an ecumenical intention. Yves Congar, O.P., argues that varying formulations may be seen not as contradictory but as complementary. Irenee Dalmais, O.P. points out that East and West have different, yet complementary, pneumatologies, theologies of the Holy Spirit. Avery Dulles, S.J., traces the history of the filioque controversy and weighs pros and cons of several possibilities for reconciliation. Eugene Webb makes use of the pneumatology of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. From an official standpoint, the Catholic Church has not imposed and cannot impose the recitation of the filioque on the East. The Eastern Catholic Churches, for example, the Melkites, Byzantine Catholic, and the Ruthenians do not include the filioque. Others who returned to union with the Catholic Church were not required to include the "and the Son" formula in their recitation of the Creed. The common understanding among the Eastern Catholic Churches is that the filioque is to be understood in a way that is consonant with the Eastern traditions. In many liturgies, when celebrating with bishops from the East, the Pope has recited the Nicene Creed without the filioque. It is certain that Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II regard the text of 381 to be entirely correct on its own merit and that using filioque in Eastern liturgies would not even be appropriate. Of special importance is a recent clarification of the filioque by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. This document was prepared at the specific request of the Bishop of Rome. It is entitled The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit.[1] OverviewIn part, the filioque was originally proposed in order to stress more clearly the connection between the Son and the Spirit, amid a heresy in which the Son was taken as less than the Father because he does not serve as a source of the Holy Spirit. In other words, when the filioque came into use in Spain and Gaul in the West, they were not aware that their language of procession would not translate well back into the Greek. Conversely, from Photius to the Council of Florence, the Latin Fathers were also not acquainted with the linguistic issues. To be more specific, the origins of the filioque in the West are to be found in the writings of certain Church Fathers in the West and especially in the anti-Arian situation of 7th-century Spain. In this context, the filioque was a means to affirm the full divinity of both the Spirit and the Son. It is not just a question of establishing a connection with the Father and his divinity; it is a question of reinforcing the profession of Catholic faith in the fact that both the Son and Spirit share the fullness of God's nature. It is ironic that a similar anti-Arian emphasis also strongly influenced the development of the liturgy in the East, for example, in promoting prayer to "Christ Our God," an expression which also came to find a place in the West. (As Joseph Jungmann, S.J., has shown, this shift in mentality caused a loss in appreciation of the mediating role of Christ in the liturgy, as well as other changes in piety.) In this case, a common adversary, namely, Arianism, had profound, far-reaching effects, in the orthodox reaction in both East and West. As noted, Church politics, authority conflicts, ethnic hostility, linguistic misunderstanding, personal rivalry, and secular motives all combined in various ways to divide East and West. More than once, the filioque dispute was used to reinforce such division. Now, with a growing spirit of charity, in accord with the will of Christ, that there be one flock (Jn 10:16; 17:22), perhaps the filioque dispute will be resolved, so that the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches may be reconciled. Recent discussions and statementsDialogue on this and other subjects is continuing. A little-known sign of shifting Roman Catholic policy in the ongoing story of this controversy can be found in an official Catholic document published on August 6, 2000 and written by Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and assisted by the Congregation's then secretary, Tarcisio Bertone. This document, Dominus Iesus, (Latin for "Lord Jesus"), and subtitled "On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church" contains a remarkable gesture, as in the official Latin text of this document[2] (second paragraph in the first section), the filioque clause is quietly left out without notice or comment. Was this removal an attempt to reach a hand across the theological and historical chasm separating Eastern and Western Churches? This document takes on increased significance with the elevation of one of its authors from cardinal to pope. The filioque clause was the main subject discussed at the 62nd meeting of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, which met at the Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline from June 3 through June 5 2002, for their spring session. As a result of these modern discussions, it has been suggested that the Orthodox could accept an "economic" filioque that states that the Holy Spirit, who originates in the Father alone, was sent to the Church "through the Son" (as the Paraclete), but this is not official Orthodox doctrine. It is what the Greeks call a theologumenon, a theological idea. (Similarly, the late Edward Kilmartin, S.J., proposed as a theologumenon, a "mission" of the Holy Spirit to the Church.) Recently, an important, agreed statement has been made by the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, on October 25, 2003. This document The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?, provides an extensive review of Scripture, history, and theology. Especially critical are the recommendations of this consultation, for example:
In the judgment of the consultation, the question of the filioque is no longer a "Church-dividing" issue, one which would impede full reconciliation and full communion, once again. It is for the bishops of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches to review this work and to make whatever decisions would be appropriate. ReferencesThere is a great deal written on the topic of the filioque; what follows, therefore, is selective. As time goes on, this list will inevitably have to be updated.
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