The filioque is a dogma of the Catholic Church. Filioque literally means “and the Son,” and refers to the Catholic statement: The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. A related term is per filium, which means “through the Son,” as in “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.” The Catholic position is that filioque and per filium are the same truths, but the different wording places different emphasis on the relation of the Father and the Son in regards to the Holy Spirit’s procession. The filioque emphasizes the Son’s role with the Father in the Spirit’s procession, with per filium focusing on the hypostatic origin of the Spirit from the Father.
The Church speaks of the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession, that is, the Spirit has its hypostatic origin with the Father, but then proceeds through the Son. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains,
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 [per filium]. 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.[1]
This concept of communion can be understood from the writing of Saint Augustine: “But the Son is begotten from the Father: and the Holy Spirit proceeds principally from the Father, and without any intervening rendering of time itself, the Holy Spirit proceeds commutatively from both.”[2] He also said, “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father as principle (principaliter) and, through the latter’s timeless gift to the Son, from the Father and the Son in communion (communiter).”[3]
The Father is the sole source of the Spirit. It should not be understood that the Spirit derives its hypostatic origin also from the Son.
In contrast to Catholics are the Eastern Orthodox who historically rejected the truth of the filioque on two grounds: the validity of adding the filioque to the Nicene-Constantinople creed and the validity of the statement itself.
The Greek Fathers, when speaking of the Holy Spirit’s hypostatic origin from the Father, would use the verb ekporévomai (proceeds). In the Greek tradition, this verb came to be used explicitly in reference to the hypostatic origin of the Spirit from the Father, meaning it could not also be with reference to the Son’s role in the procession of the Spirit. In its most basic form in the Nicene-Constantinople creed, we read, “the Holy Spirit proceeds (ekporévomai) from the Father.”
Some Eastern Orthodox positions were that Scripture cannot be used to support the filioque, for references to the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Son can only be interpreted in the temporal economic sense because Scripture does not use the Greek verb for proceeds (ἐκπορεύομαι, ekporévomai) with the Son. For example, John 15:26 uses this verb but without mention of the Son in the procession: “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds (ἐκπορεύεται, ekporévetai) from the Father, he will bear witness to me.”
However, there is a specific verse that uses this verb in Revelation: “Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing (ἐκπορευόμενον, ekporevómenon) from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”[4] The throne of God is the Father,[5] the Lamb is Jesus,[6] and the river of the water of life is the Holy Spirit. Saint Jerome commented on this, stating: “One river comes forth from the throne of God – the grace of the Holy Spirit – and this grace of the Holy Spirit is found in the river of the Sacred Scriptures.[7] Saint Ambrose also supported this view:
153. And this, again, is not a trivial matter that we read that a river goes forth from the throne of God. For you read the words of the Evangelist John to this purport: “And He showed me a river of living water, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street thereof, and on either side, was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruits, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of all nations.” Revelation 22:1-2
154. This is certainly the River proceeding from the throne of God, that is, the Holy Spirit, Whom he drinks who believes in Christ, as He Himself says: “If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believes in Me, as says the Scripture, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spoke He of the Spirit.” John 7:37-38 Therefore the river is the Spirit.[8]
The Orthodox Study Bible is also in agreement with this interpretation: “22:1 The river of water of life manifests the Giver of Life, the Holy Spirit.”[9]
Revelation 22:1 is therefore a clear pronouncement of the filioque. Reworded, it reads: “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
This verse is important because, contra Eastern Orthodox, ekporévomai can be used theologically in a manner that does not univocally refer to an ultimate source. In other words, ekporévomai can be used to signify the filioque doctrine.
What is also significant is that the economic procession and eternal procession are synonymous. This is so because the text of Revelation weaves this ontological description within a literal temporal location, that is, the New Earth. It is an expression of the economic Trinity that reflects the immanent theological Trinity. Philip Schaff writes, “The Latins reply that the procession and the mission are parallel processes, the one ad intra, the other ad extra,” and “The temporal mission of the Spirit is a reflection of his eternal procession.”[10]
Eastern Orthodox have attempted to interpret this passage as referring solely to the economy, rather than the eternal procession. But Peter Gilbert writes:
As for how the Orthodox interpret Revelation 22:1, … in John Bekkos’s day, people like George Moschabar were claiming that the passage had to refer, not to the Spirit in his eternal hypostastic nature, but solely to the eschatological gift of the Spirit, or rather, to the Spirit’s gifts. John Bekkos didn’t buy that interpretation; he pointed out that the verse uses the very word, ἐκπορεύεσθαι (“to proceed”), that people like Moschabar usually claim is a unique, technical term for indicating the Spirit’s eternal, hypostatic origination. In other words, he charged Moschabar with inconsistency, using ἐκπορεύεσθαι as a technical theological term when he feels like it (at John 15:26) and denying the technical theological use of the term when he doesn’t feel like it (at Rev 22:1).[11]
As noted by Nick’s Catholic Blog regarding an explanation by Nathaniel McCallum:
the 381 Creed (and others) most certainly have Revelation ch22 in mind when speaking on the Holy Spirit, but the statements are more to emphasize divinity rather than differentiate Persons. Consider that we see the 381 saying we believe in the Holy Spirit, Who is (a) Lord, and (b) Giver of Life, and (c) Who proceeds from the Father [and Son], and (d) with Father and Son is adored. Each of these statements emphasize that the Holy Spirit is “Lord,” and not so much concerned about distinguishing the Persons. The language of “giver of life” in Greek is only found in Rev 22. The Greek term “proceeding” from Father (and Son) is found exactly in Rev 22:1 (and in a different form in John 15:26). The adoring alongside the Father and Son comes from Rev 22, where John bows to the angel and is told by the angel “do not worship me, instead worship God”. Revelation 22 is about highlighting the divinity of the Holy Spirit.[12]
The reason that the filioque is also worded “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son” is because the Holy Spirit is third in order, which means the Son cannot be excluded from a role in the Spirit’s procession, even though He is not the principal, which lies solely with the Father. The Greek Father St. Epiphanius agrees that the Holy Spirit is third in order of the Trinity: “He is from the Father and the Son, being third in denomination.”[13]
The First Council of Nicaea made no decrees concerning the filioque. However, at the council St. Leontius declared, “the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and is proper to the Son and gushes forth from him.”[14]
The earliest creed to contain the filioque comes from the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon of the Church of Persia in the year 410. The creed states, “We acknowledge the living and holy Spirit, the living Paraclete, who [is] from the Father and the Son.”[15]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
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, 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). The introduction of the filioque into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed by the Latin liturgy constitutes moreover, even today, a point of disagreement with the Orthodox Churches.[16]
This confession of 447 was Leo’s letter to Turribius, Bishop of Asturia. In it he states:
And so under the first head is shown what unholy views they hold about the Divine Trinity: they affirm that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one and the same, as if the same God were named now Father, now Son, and now Holy Ghost: and as if He who begot were not one, He who was begotten, another, and He who proceeded from both, yet another; but an undivided unity must be understood, spoken of under three names, indeed, but not consisting of three persons. This species of blasphemy they borrowed from Sabellius, whose followers were rightly called Patripassians also: because if the Son is identical with the Father, the Son’s cross is the Father’s passion (patris-passio): and the Father took on Himself all that the Son took in the form of a slave, and in obedience to the Father. Which without doubt is contrary to the Catholic faith, which acknowledges the Trinity of the Godhead to be of one essence (ὁμοούσιον) in such a way that it believes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost indivisible without confusion, eternal without time, equal without difference: because it is not the same person but the same essence which fills the Unity in Trinity.[17]
Various local councils included the filioque. For example, the Council of Toledo in 400 declared: “The Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is himself neither the Father, nor the Son, but proceeds from the Father [proceeding from the Father and the Son]. Therefore the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, the Paraclete is not begotten, but proceeding from the Father [and the Son].”[18]
There was also the Council of Toledo in 589, which inserted the filioque into the Nicene-Constantinople Creed.[19] This was a regional council; therefore, it was not proclaimed through all the Church, but meant to solve a regional dispute. The context of this council was to resolve the Arian crisis which was proliferating in Spain. There were Arians who denied that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. To rectify this heresy, the council proclaimed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Life-Giver, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, He is worshipped and glorified.” Subsequent Councils of Toledo professed this Creed, and it soon became a common part of the faith in the West.
The Council of Hatfield (680) taught the filioque when it declared: “… we glorify God the Father, who is without beginning, and His only-begotten Son, begotten of the Father before all worlds, and the Holy Spirit ineffably proceeding from the Father and the Son, as proclaimed by all the holy Apostles, prophets, and teachers whom we have already mentioned.”[20]
Marcus Plested writes:
Frankish monks in Jerusalem had encountered Greek objections to the addition and this prompted the canonization of the addition and the doctrine at the Council of Aachen (809). While a desire to combat resurgent christological adoptionism was certainly in the background here, there is no doubt but that the council served Charlemagne’s broader policy of confrontation with the Eastern Roman Empire. Rome would have none of it: Pope Leo III unequivocally condemned the addition of the phrase to the ancient creed, while recognizing the legitimacy of the doctrine it represented. He caused the uninterpolated creed to be inscribed on silver plates and displayed in St. Peter’s. Rome adopted the addition only in the early 11th century. Competition in the Bulgarian mission field in the 9th century stirred further polemic, with St. Photius condemning both the addition and the doctrine it conveyed, proposing instead an uncompromising monopatrism (the Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father alone). Other eastern theologians, such as St. Maximus the Confessor and St. John of Damascus, have affirmed the underlying harmony of the trinitarian doctrine of east and west through some sort of doctrine evoking a per filium formula (“through the Son,” dia tou uiou). Patriarch Gregory of Cyprus nuanced this approach with his understanding of the eternal “shining forth” of the Spirit through the Son. This is a position embraced by St. Gregory Palamas, who allowed for filioque language within the immanent Godhead while firmly rejecting the doctrine in respect of the divine origination. The reunion council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–9) saw a partial concession to Orthodox sensibilities in equating the Latin filioque with the Greek dia tou uiou and the affirmation of procession “As if from one principle.”[21]
Canon VII of the Council of Ephesus reads: “When these things had been read, the holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicæa.”[22] It cannot be said that the addition of the filioque to the Nicene-Constantinople Creed is invalid because of Canon VII, for this only applied to the Nicene Creed. Dr. Richard Price gives a scholarly assessment of the creed:
There was no sense in the church of the fourth and fifth centuries that the wording of the creed was sacrosanct and could only be changed by conciliar degree. The creed we all use – the so-called Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed – was almost certainly not issued by the second ecumenical council…. Variant versions of the Nicene Creed that preserved the key clauses about Christ’s divinity and consubstantiality with the Father were accepted without any need for conciliar approval…. The canon of Ephesus insisting on the original Nicene Creed is constantly cited by the Eastern Orthodox, but it doesn’t help their case. If it bans the addition of the Filioque, it also bans the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. In fact, it was not with the exact wording of the creed, but with the impropriety of using a wholly different formula in the reception of converts.[23]
Further, Saint Maximus attributes Papal authority trumping councils. When he notes how if even the weak stand up for the faith while under attack,
how much more in the case of the clergy and Church of the Romans, which from old until now presides over all the churches which are under the sun? Having surely received this canonically, as well as from councils and the apostles, as from the princes of the latter [i.e., Peter & Paul], and being numbered in their company, she is subject to no writings or issues in synodal documents, on account of the eminence of her pontificate even as in all these things all are equally subject to her according to sacerdotal law.[24]
Siecienski writes of the opinion of Pope Leo III, whose opinion on modifying the creed differed from Price’s assessment:
the pope [Leo III] stated his position clearly: the filioque is undoubtedly orthodox, and it is among those truths necessary for salvation, for “it is forbidden not to believe such a great mystery of faith.” Yet Leo was clear that “we do not presume in our reading or teaching to add anything to the creed by insertion” since that was forbidden by councils.[25]
“The first recorded use of the interpolated creed in Rome occurred on February 14, 1014.”[26] This was approved by Pope Benedict VIII, and was officially incorporated into the Roman liturgy. Some individuals thought the filioque was originally part of the creed and the East removed it (i.e., Cardinal Humbert). After the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent Latin occupation of Constantinople, the inhabitants were forced to recite the interpolated creed.[27]
The Fourth Lateran Council stated: “The Father is from no one, the Son from the Father only, and the Holy Spirit equally from both.”[28]
The Second Council of Lyons declared:
We profess faithfully and devotedly that the holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but as from one principle; not by two spirations, but by one single spiration. This the holy Roman church, mother and mistress of all the faithful, has till now professed, preached and taught; this she firmly holds, preaches, professes and teaches; this is the unchangeable and true belief of the orthodox fathers and doctors, Latin and Greek alike. But because some, on account of ignorance of the said indisputable truth, have fallen into various errors, we, wishing to close the way to such errors, with the approval of the sacred council, condemn and reprove all who presume to deny that the holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, or rashly to assert that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from two principles and not as from one.[29]
John Duns Scotus commented on the debate, writing:
On this question the Greeks disagree with the Latins. I have found, however, in a note of Lincoln [i.e. Robert Grosseteste] . . . that the Greeks really did not disagree with the Latins, because the opinion of the Greeks is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. In this way, therefore, two wise men, one Greek and the other Latin, not lovers of proper speech but of divine zeal, would perhaps find the disagreement not to be real, but one of words, for otherwise either the Latins or the Greeks would be heretics. But who wishes to say that Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Damascene, Chrysostom and many other excellent doctors are heretics; and for the other part that Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Hilary, etc., who were the most excellent Latin doctors, are heretics? Perhaps modern Greeks have added to the aforesaid article from their obstinacy what the preceding doctors have not said or understood. This must be held, therefore, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, because the Church declares this. . . . . . one must say that many things were transmitted explicitly in the later creeds that were contained implicitly in the first ones. Hence, heresies were the occasion of expressing and explaining truths, and therefore, in the first creed it was not necessary to explain, because then there was no heresy. Afterwards, however, there was, and a new creed followed, and with as much authority as those before had. Hence there is no corruption of the first creed, but an explanation; nor did we make another creed, but a new one from it.[30]
The Council of Florence is cited by the Eastern Orthodox as heretical, especially due to the inclusion of the filioque. The sixth session of the Council of Florence reads:
For when Latins and Greeks came together in this holy synod, they all strove that, among other things, the article about the procession of the holy Spirit should be discussed with the utmost care and assiduous investigation. Texts were produced from divine scriptures and many authorities of eastern and western holy doctors, some saying the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, others saying the procession is from the Father through the Son. All were aiming at the same meaning in different words. The Greeks asserted that when they claim that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, they do not intend to exclude the Son; but because it seemed to them that the Latins assert that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from two principles and two spirations, they refrained from saying that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Latins asserted that they say the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son not with the intention of excluding the Father from being the source and principle of all deity, that is of the Son and of the holy Spirit, nor to imply that the Son does not receive from the Father, because the holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, nor that they posit two principles or two spirations; but they assert that there is only one principle and a single spiration of the holy Spirit, as they have asserted hitherto. Since, then, one and the same meaning resulted from all this, they unanimously agreed and consented to the following holy and God-pleasing union, in the same sense and with one mind.
In the name of the holy Trinity, Father, Son and holy Spirit, we define, with the approval of this holy universal council of Florence, that the following truth of faith shall be believed and accepted by all Christians and thus shall all profess it: that the holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration. We declare that when holy doctors and fathers say that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, this bears the sense that thereby also the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause, and according to the Latins as principle of the subsistence of the holy Spirit, just like the Father.
And since the Father gave to his only-begotten Son in begetting him everything the Father has, except to be the Father, so the Son has eternally from the Father, by whom he was eternally begotten, this also, namely that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.
We define also that the explanation of those words “and from the Son” was licitly and reasonably added to the creed for the sake of declaring the truth and from imminent need.[31]
The Greek rejection of this formulation of the filioque is due to how the Greeks and Latins use the word “cause” differently. The Greeks traditionally used cause as synonymous with “source”, while the Latins used cause equivocally, i.e., the Son can be considered a type of secondary cause, not in that He is a literal “cause” of the Holy Spirit, but in that He participates in the spiration of the Holy Spirit, the ultimate cause or hypostatic origin of which is the Father.
The statement from this formulation “according to the Greeks indeed as cause,” is not meant to be interpreted as claiming the Greek Church Fathers claimed the Son was a cause of the Spirit, which they did not. Rather, it is in reference to the Greeks at the council.
The filioque statement was based on what the Greek delegate Bessarion said, commenting on the writings of Maximus: “For, as he says, the Spirit is substantially of the Son, not newly acquired and from without, but rather he possesses it eternally and substantially just like the Father. And thus he [the Son] is the cause, because the Spirit proceeds substantially from the Father through him.”[32] This is where the Latins based the union formula section, “according to the Greeks indeed as cause” from. It is not from the Greek Fathers directly (for they do not explicitly use “cause”), but from Bessarion and the other delegates who agreed to this interpretation. Although it took coercion to finally agree to the union, when Bessarion and other unionists like Isidore of Kiev first heard the formula they immediately agreed to it.[33] It cannot be said that Bessarion accepted the definition solely on his desire for union, for as Joseph Gill made clear, “Bessarion declared that he himself, unless he were completely convinced that the Latin faith was sound, would not have exhorted his hearers to union: he would have preferred death first.”[34]
Bessarion further says of the procession: “It signifies nothing other than that he is manifested through the Son according to Basil the Great, and proceeds through the Son according to Maximus, and proceeds from the Son and has essence from Him according to the Western doctors . . . here it is seen that the three terms are equivalent.”[35]
Previous to the writing of the statement, “according to the Greeks indeed as cause,” the Latins wrote a clear explanation of the understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit:
For even we ourselves would say that the Son is not the primary cause of the Spirit: we assert one cause of the Son and the Spirit, the Father, the one according to generation and the other according to procession; but in order to signify the communion and the equality of the essence we also assert the procession through the Son and clearly confess the inseparability of the substance. For the Son is substantially the Son of the Father and the Holy Spirit substantially is of the Father and the Son. Maximus states that the pronouncements of the holy Roman fathers do not say otherwise, not only Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose but the rest whose books manifestly assert the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son.[36]
In other words, Florence taught that the Father is the source of the hypostasis of the Son and Spirit, but the shared essence of the Persons originates from the Father, is given to the Son, and in turn is given to the Spirit. All of this refers to the immanent Trinity rather than the economic Trinity. Aidan Nichols supports this interpretation based on the work of Jean-Miguel Garrigues, who “upholds the person of the Father as the source of both (consubstantial) communion and (hypostatic) otherness in the Holy Trinity.”[37] Aidan Nichols writes of this interpretation yielding
three senses in which the Father is the source of the Godhead. He is (a) source of the divine nature, (b) source of the consubstantial communion of the persons, and (c) source of the hypostatic diversity of the Son and the Spirit. In sense (b) the Western form of the Creed is the better form; in sense (c) the Greek form is preferable. But these senses are not contradictory; rather, they are complementary.[38]
As explained earlier, this is also the understanding of Augustine, who wrote, “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father as principle (principaliter) and, through the latter’s timeless gift to the Son, from the Father and the Son in communion (communiter).” John Panteleimon Manoussakis in his book For the Unity of All: Contributions to the Theological Dialogue between East and West, finds this as the correct meaning of the procession of the Spirit:
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s double “going forth” (πρόοδος)—one hypostatic from the Father, the other communicative from the Father and the Son—is based, according to one Orthodox scholar of late Byzantine theology, on “the ancient Eastern, Cappadocian, and Palamite distinction between divine essence and divine energies.”[39]
Fr. Christiaan Kappes likewise sees the Florentine statement as being compatible with both Western and Eastern traditions:
Palamas accepted, as is torturously demonstrated word by word Augustine’s filioquism and in his filioque treatise accepted the Son as cause insofar as the essence of the Son is the essential source of the Spirit and therefore the Son is essentially co-causal with the Father but is not personally the source or producer of the Spirit but is essentially him from whom the Spirit also proceeds since all that the Father has is the son’s, essentially.
This solution was affirmed briefly and independently by Aquinas in his treatise on the errors of the Greeks and is exactly the Franciscan position as both Bonaventure and Scotus have been taken to affirm.
In conclusion, Lyons-Florence need not at all exclude this interpretation and in fact may affirm it since Bonaventure and his disciples can be circumstantially argued to be the very authors of the Lyons-Florence formula.[40]
The bull of union with the Syrians issued during the Council of Florence likewise had confusing language regarding the filioque:
the holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration.[41]
It can be admitted that this troublesome language is in error while still accepting the council and the traditional teaching of the filioque the council fathers were attempting to convey, for as Robert Bellarmine writes,
in the very decrees on faith, not the words but only the sense pertains to faith. It is not heretical to say that in canons of Councils some word is superfluous or not correctly placed, except perhaps the decree were formed from the word itself, such as when in the Council of Nicaea they decreed the word ὁμοούσιον must be received, and in Ephesus the word Θεοτόν.[42]
It should also be noted the Greeks were not required to add the filioque to their creed.[43] This was true for other Churches of the East which came into communion with Rome. For example, the first article of the Treaty of Brest of 1596 states:
Since there is a quarrel between the Romans and Greeks about the procession of the Holy Spirit, which greatly impede unity really for no other reason than that we do not wish to understand one another—we ask that we should not be compelled to any other creed but that we should remain with that which was handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the writings of the holy Greek Doctors, that is, that the Holy Spirit proceeds, not from two sources and not by a double procession, but from one origin, from the Father through the Son.[44]
Eastern Catholics do not recite the filioque in the creed, following their tradition.
The Eastern Council of Blachernae in 1285 made a significant confession of faith:
For there is no other hypostasis in the Trinity except the Father’s, from which the existence and essence of the consubstantial [Son and Holy Spirit] is derived. According to the common mind of the Church and the aforementioned Saints, the Father is the foundation and the source of the Son and the Spirit, the only source of divinity, and the only cause. If, in fact, it is also said by some of the Saints that the Spirit proceeds “through the Son,” what is meant here is the eternal manifestation of the Spirit by the Son, not purely [personal] emanation into being of the Spirit, which has its existence from the Father. Otherwise, this would deprive the Father from being the only cause and the only source of divinity, and would expose the Theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus] who says “Everything the Father is said to possess, the Son, likewise, possesses except causality.”[45]
A. Edward Sciecienski writes of the distinctions of procession described by Gregory of Cyprus, who was involved in the Council of Blachernae:
1. Eternal existence: the hypostatic existence of the Spirit is from the Father alone, who is the θεογόνος θεότης.
2. Eternal manifestation: the Spirit’s eternal illumination or manifestation (ἀιδιον ἔκφανσιν) is through the Son, but NOT his hypostatic existence.
3. Temporal manifestation: in the economy of salvation, the Spirit can be said to proceed from the Father and the Son.[46]
These definitions are reconcilable with the theology of the filioque detailed above. The eternal manifestation compliments the teaching of the Son having a communicative role of the essence of the Spirit.
Gregory of Cyprus wrote: “The great Maximus, the holy Tarasius, and even the saintly John knew that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, from whom it subsists with respect to both its hypostasis and cause of being. And at the same time, they acknowledge that the Spirit flows forth, is manifested, shines forth, appears and is made known through the Son.”[47]
Palamas wrote: “Whenever you hear him say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both, because it comes from the Father essentially through the Son, understood reverently that he is teaching that the natural powers and energies of God are poured forth but not the Spirit’s divine hypostasis.”[48] Since Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos understood the essence-energies distinction to be conceptual,[49] ultimately the procession of the energies the Spirit receives derives from God’s essence through the Son from the Father.
As Maximus wrote,
Those of the Queen of cities have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope (Martin I), not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to theology, because it says he says that ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) also from the Son.’
The other has to do with the divine incarnation, because he has written, ‘The Lord, as man, is without original sin.’
With regard to the first matter, they (the Romans) have produced the unanimous documentary evidence of the Latin fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the sacred commentary he composed on the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit — they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession; but [they use this expression] in order to manifest the Spirit’s coming-forth (προϊέναι) through him and, in this way, to make clear the unity and identity of the essence….
The Romans have therefore been accused of things of which it is wrong to accuse them, whereas of the things of which the Byzantines have quite rightly been accused (viz., Monothelitism), they have, to date, made no self-defense, because neither have they gotten rid of the things introduced by them.
But, in accordance with your request, I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending (the synodal letters) has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to doing this. One should also keep in mind that they cannot express their meaning in a language and idiom that are foreign to them as precisely as they can in their own mother-tongue, any more than we can do.[50]
Philip Schaff writes:
John of Damascus, who gave the doctrine of the Greek fathers its scholastic shape, about a.d. 750, one hundred years before the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, maintained that the procession is from the Father alone, but through the Son, as mediator. The same formula, Ex Patre per Filium, was used by Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, who presided over the seventh oecumenical Council (787), approved by Pope Hadrian I., and was made the basis for the compromise at the Council of Ferrara (1439), and at the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn (1875). But Photius and the later Eastern controversialists dropped or rejected the per Filium, as being nearly equivalent to ex Filio or Filioque, or understood it as being applicable only to the mission of the Spirit, and emphasized the exclusiveness of the procession from the Father.[51]
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware summarized the current status of the debate well: “The filioque controversy which has separated us for so many centuries is more than a mere technicality, but it is not insoluble. Qualifying the firm position taken when I wrote The Orthodox Church twenty years ago, I now believe, after further study, that the problem is more in the area of semantics and different emphases than in any basic doctrinal differences.”[52] The different formulations of Augustinian and Cappadocian models result in essentially the same truths. David Bentley Hart writes:
In fact, I would go so far as to claim that the understanding of the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit found in Augustine is not only compatible, but identical, with that of the Cappadocian fathers—including Gregory’s and Basil’s belief that the generation of the Son is directly from the Father, while the procession of the Spirit is from the Father only per Filium (sed, to borrow a phrase, de Patre principaliter). I have no wish to dwell very long upon the matter here, but I might observe that both Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa even distinguish generation and procession within the Trinity in terms primarily of the order of cause: that is, both claim that the procession of the Spirit differs from the generation of the Son principally in that the former occurs through the Son.[53]
[1] CCC 248.
[2] https://shamelessorthodoxy.com/2019/04/14/the-filioque-a-brief-opinion/
[4] Revelation 22:1.
[5] Hebrews 12:2.
[6] John 1:29.
[7] The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume 1, (1-59 On The Psalms) (Detroit: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), Homily 1, 9.
[8] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/34023.htm
[9] Nelson, Thomas. The Orthodox Study Bible, eBook (p. 1749). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
[10] https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xi.iii.html
[11] https://bekkos.wordpress.com/filioque-introduction/
[12] https://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2022/03/Nicaea-and-the-Filioque.html
[13] https://bekkos.wordpress.com/bekkos-epigraph-i/
[14] https://bekkos.wordpress.com/bekkos-epigraph-i/
[15] Richard Price; Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon: Volume 2 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), 193.
[16] CCC 247.
[17] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604015.htm
[18] http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/dwp.htm#a32
[19] https://www.catholicbridge.com/orthodox/catholic-orthodox-filioque-father-son.php
[21] https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/world/the-encyclopedia-of-eastern-orthodox-christianity/117
[22] https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.x.xvi.x.html
[23] https://www.academia.edu/42322658/The_Filioque_Answering_Canonical_objections
[24] Haynes, Daniel. A Saint for East and West: Maximus the Confessor’s Contribution to Eastern and Western Christian Theology (p. 59). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition
[25] Siecienski, 99.
[26] Siecienski, 113.
[27] Siecienski, 125.
[28] https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm
[29] https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum14.htm
[30] https://lyfaber.blogspot.com/2009/04/scotus-on-filioque.html
[31] https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum17.htm
[32] A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 163.
[33] Siecienski, 166.
[34] Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 241.
[35] Siecienski, 163.
[36] Ibid, 165.
[37] Manoussakis, John Panteleimon. For the Unity of All: Contributions to the Theological Dialogue between East and West (p. 18). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
[38] Ibid, 19.
[39] Ibid, 20.
[40] Email correspondence.
[41] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/ecumenical-council-of-florence-1438-1445-1461
[42] Bellarmine, Robert. On Councils: Their Nature and Authority (De Controversiis) (p. 216). Mediatrix Press. Kindle Edition.
[43] Gill, 242-243.
[44] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/reunion-treaty-of-brest-1474
[45] https://sangiulio.org/holy-canons/blachernae/
[46] Siecienski, 141.
[47] Daniel Haynes, A Saint for East and West: Maximus the Confessor’s Contribution to Eastern and Western Christian Theology, 36.
[48] A Saint for East and West, 36.
[50] https://bekkos.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/st-maximus-on-the-filioque/
[51] https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xi.iii.html
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