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Third Edition

An Orthodox Guide
to the
Filioque

If you can keep your cool (alt. head)
while all around are losing theirs ...
...maybe you don't understand the situation.

This witticism could easily be applied to the dispute over the Filioque. A single word added to the Symbol of Faith (usually called the Creed in the West) and translated in English and the Son. Many Christians are tempted to dismiss the Filioque issue as too abstract, too complex, and irrelevant to most Christians. But the issue goes directly to the heart of Who we worship as God, something that should be relevant to every Christian. In this essay, we will explore what the Filioque means, its history, and why it is rejected by Orthodox Christians. We will see that although the Filioque may be abstract, its rejection is altogether down-to-earth and practical.

What is the Filioque?

In the table below, an English translation of the Symbol of Faith as composed by the Second Ecumenical Synod (see the history section for more information) is on the left; an English translation of the Western form is on the right. The words and the Son — the Filioque translated — have been highlighted.

A single word (three in English). The temptation to dismiss it as inconsequential is great, yet,

Since belief in the Trinity lies at the very heart of the Christian faith, a tiny difference in Trinitarian theology is bound to have repercussions upon every aspect of Christian life and thought. (Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, pp. 218-219.)

History demonstrates the Filioque has been anything but inconsequential. It was invented by Western Christianity where it gradually gained acceptance and became the standard. But,

... each time the Greek East confronted the Filioque, there was an energetic reaction. This occured with the alleged Filioque expression of Pope Martin, with the Latin monks on Mount Olivet, and with Photius' reaction to the use of the interpolated Creed in Bulgaria. When the Latin monks wrote to Pope Leo III that the Greeks view that phrase [i.e. the Filioque] which we say as a serious matter, they were not overstating the problem. (Richard Haugh: Photius and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Controversy, p. 161)

For over fourteen centuries, the Filioque has been a significant point of contention.

... the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit has been the sole dogmatic grounds for the separation of East and West. (Vladimir Lossky: In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 71)

The filioque was the primordial cause, the only dogmatic cause, of the breach between East and West. The other doctrinal disputes were but its consequences. (Vladimir Lossky: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 56)

Other dogmatic issues have certainly arisen since the separation, but the Filioque was the only dogmatic difference at the time of the schism. Despite contemporary attempts to dismiss the Filioque as a dispute of the past that has now been resolved, despite the Vatican's Clarification in 1995, serious efforts to produce an agreement have failed. Though the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation has produced agreed statements on many issues, it has been unable to do so with regard to the Filioque, despite over four years of efforts. Since 1999, the Consulation has produced nothing nothing on the Filioque issue except press releases containing the names of attendees, the authors and titles of the papers presented, the location of the meeting, etc. Clearly, the Filioque remains a serious point of contention that divides Christians.

Orthodox Teaching

Background

First, it is necessary to recognise the knowledge revealed by God to His chosen people is too great, too awesome, too beyond the capability of human language to be adequately expressed. This is what Saint John the Theologian and Evangelist means in the close of his Gospel (John 21:25). Even the most exalted human wisdom is inadequate. The early Christians knew this. They knew

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

With Saint Paul, they understood

Did not God make foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God through (its) wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. ... Greeks seek wisdom; but we proclaim Christ Who hath been crucified, ... to Greeks ... foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:20-23) ....
the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God (1 Corinthians 3:19).

Yet, it is through language that humans communicate. In order to share the Good News, in order to lead people to the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to correct misunderstandings, it is necessary to employ language, even though inadequate. The goal must be to seek the best words — even whilst realising their ultimate inadequacy — to explain to others. It is also important to recognise our explanations are not the truth — Truth is a Person: the Lord Jesus Christ — they are merely aids to humans in marking out distortions of God's revelation and the Christian Faith.

Because many people are more comfortable when they understand something, when they can grasp something with their mind, and are uncomfortable relying on faith, there has always been the temptation to fit God's revelation into human thinking, to make it more reasonable according to human ways of thinking. Philosophy, the greatest manmade wisdom, has often been employed by people trying to comprehend the Christian Faith — and has inevitably caused them to distort that faith. That is why the Church Fathers did not employ philosophy. In fact, they consistently opposed it.

Many, especially those who have made philosophy the basis of their knowledge about God, perhaps to justify their own use of philosophy, point to the Fathers' use of philosophical terminology and claim — incorrectly — that the Fathers employed philosophy. But, in truth, such people simply demonstrate their ignorance.

... in "borrowing" language, images, and ideas from the Greek philosophers, [the Fathers] maintained, in this process, views that are wholly at odds with the cosmology and anthropology of the Greek ancients. One might even say that their debt to Hellenistic thought is not so much that of a student to his mentor as that of a sculptor to his stone. The Greek Fathers built with the basic materials of Greek philosophy, but what they produced was different in form and in intent from that philosophy. (The Transformation of Hellenistic Thought on the Cosmos and Man in the Greek Fathers, second paragraph)

All of the philosophers' views were rejected by the Fathers of the Church. ... But the holy Fathers also rejected the method used by the ancient philosophers, their way of arriving at these conclusions, for it leads to erroneous theories about God, man and creation. ... And indeed we observe that all the heretics through the ages used philosophy, whereas the holy Fathers lived heyschasm. ....
If we carefully study the history of the Church, we will find that the heretics were usually supporters of philosophers and followers of their teachings (Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos): The Person in the Orthodox Tradition, pp. 32-37).

The philosophy that was responsible for many of and certainly the most serious of the earliest heresies was Neoplatonism. Founded by Plotinus (his definitive work was the Enneads, compiled by his disciple, Porphyry), Neoplatonism taught a First Principle, an Uncaused Cause known as the One. The One was the source of all being, all will, all activity, all thought, all everything — yet the One was beyond all these things. According to Plotinus, one could ascribe nothing, not even thought, to the One because thinking implies a distinction between thinker and the object of thought and there is no distinction in the One. The One is utterly simple (i.e. the quality or state of being not complex, consisting of no parts). Somehow (it is never really explained), the One, in an overflow of sheer perfection produces an emanation, and thus causality is attributed to the One. But since there are no distinctions within the One, there is no difference between causality and divinity. To cause is to be divine. The first emanation from the One is called Nous which, together with the One, causes the World Soul which is between the Nous and the material world. An important characteristic of Neoplatonism was its opposition between the spiritual realm and the material world: it was an anti-materialistic philosophy.

The First Ecumenical Synod

One product of Neoplatonism was the Arian heresy which viewed the Son's relation to the Father the way Neoplatonism viewed the relation of the Nous to the One. The Son was therefore seen as very nearly the equal of the Father, a little less perfect than the Father, but still divine and transcendent to the material world. The Arians knew the Holy Scriptures well and found many proof texts to support their views (John 14:28, the Father is greater than I, was a favourite). They insisted the very names Father and Son testified the Son was less perfect than the Father. Employing Neoplatonic thinking, they argued the Father's being the cause of the Son was proof of the Father's divinity, and that because the Son did not cause, but was caused, he was not equal to the Father.

When Christians with personal experience of the Living God first encountered Arian teaching, they immediately knew it was incorrect, that it was a distortion of God's revelation and the Christian Faith. They did not engage in a battle of proof texts (which would have proven nothing). They did not need to do so. They recognised the Arian teaching was inconsistent with their personal experience of the Living God. Yet there were many people, especially since Christianity had been legalised, who had recently joined the Church without the personal experience of the Living God that testified to the error of Arianism. Many of these people found the reasonable explanation of Arianism attractive and thus Arianism gained many supporters. The uproar in the empire became so great that Emperor Constantine ordered the leaders of the Christians (the bishops) to gather in an assembly of the oikoumene to resolve the issue. Thus, the First Ecumencial (from oikoumene) Synod or Council met at Nicaea in a.d. 325.

The Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod (First Ecumenical Council) were not recent Christians. They had not embraced the Christian Faith out of expediency. Many bore the scars of earlier persecutions — scars which so moved Emperor Constantine that he caressed their wounds and kissed their empty eye sockets. Having first-hand knowledge of the Living God, personal experience of God, they knew, The Lord is my helper and I will not fear what man shall do to me. These Fathers had the same experiential knowledge that had transformed the Disciples from the fear and timidity that kept them behind locked doors in the Upper Room into powerful preachers of the Good News. This experiential knowledge allowed these Fathers to immediately recognise Arianism to be a distortion of the Christian Faith. Their task was to find terminology that could mark Arianism as a distortion. They borrowed a term from Greek (pagan) philosophy without embracing its manner of thinking: homoousios (literally homo + ousios, same + being/essence, meaning same being or same essence). They rejected an alternate with only an iota of difference: homoiousios (similar being or similar essence, from homoi meaning similar) because the Arians could interpret it in a manner consistent with Arianism. The Fathers would not compromise, a teaching was either consistent or inconsistent with the Church's communal experience of the Living God; they refused to accept an iota of difference and homoousios became the watchword of a correct understanding of the Son. The word homoousios was enshrined in the Symbol of Faith (Creed) produced by the First Ecumenical Synod:

We believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the ousia [being] of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, homoousios [same in being] with the Father, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who for us men and for our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended to the Heavens, and is coming to judge the living and the dead;

And in the Holy Spirit.

And for those who say, There was when He was not, and Before being born He was not, and He came into existence out of nothing, or who pretend the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or ousia [being], or is subject to alteration or change — these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematises.

The temptation to fit the Christian Faith into human thinking was strong and it took a long time for Arianism to be overcome by Orthodoxy. Even as Orthodoxy triumphed in the Roman Empire, Arianism became the faith of the Germanic tribes that were soon to overrun western portions of the empire. As we will see, this was to play an important role in the history of the Filioque.

John 15:26

The Fathers distinguished between the economy of the Holy Trinity (the work of the Holy Trinity in time for the salvation of mankind) and the theology of the Holy Trinity (the eternal existence of the Holy Trinity, outside time). The former was known experientially and the Holy Scriptures testified to it. The latter was beyond the experience of mortals; all that could be known of the theology of the Holy Trinity was what had been directly revealed to mankind and was contained in the Holy Scriptures, especially the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Most of the passages in Holy Scripture that speak of the Holy Spirit testify to His coming into the world (in time and thus explain the economy of the Holy Spirit). The most important passages regarding the Holy Spirit are in the Gospel of John: 14:26, 15:26, and 16:7. Verse 14:26 tells us the Father will send the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son; verse 16:7 tells us the Son will send the Holy Spirit after the Son has gone. These verses testify to the economy of the Holy Spirit inasmuch as the sending of the Holy Spirit upon mankind is an event that takes place in time. They say nothing about the theology of the Holy Spirit, the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit. But John 15:26 does. As the Matthew Henry Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible says, We have more in this verse concerning the Holy Ghost than in any one verse besides in the Bible. Let us take a close look at this verse.

Examining the key words, we find:

In the phrase whom I will send (which modifies the subject the Comforter), Saint John uses πέμπω in the future tense (πέμψω), indicating the sending of the Holy Spirit has not yet happened. Saint John uses this verb, in various forms, frequently (4:34, 5:23, 5:24, 5:30, 5:37, 6:38, 6:39, 6:40, 6:44, 7:16, 7:18, 7:28, 7:33, 8:16, 8:18, 8:26, 8:29, 9:4, 12:44, 12:49, 13:20, 14:24, 14:26, 15:21, 15:26, 16:5, and 16:7).

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 ἐκπορεύεται has the same meaning as πέμψω. Not only are the words etymologically different with distinct meanings, but the phrase who from the Father proceeds uses ἐκπορεύομαι in the present tense (ἐκπορεύεται), 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 ἐκπορεύομαι 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.

Although the New Jerusalem Bible (also a Vatican-approved translation) does a fine, if unusual, translation of the verse, it footnotes issues from and comments: The sending of the Spirit into the world rather than the "eternal" proceeding from the Father within the Trinity. What is most interesting about this comment is that it distinguishes between the sending in time and the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit — but would have the reader believe there is nothing in the Holy Scriptures that tells us about the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit! It simply denies the truth!

Not only does the New American Bible (deliberately?) distort the clear meaning of the Greek text, it also adds a comment to the verse: Comes from the Father: refers to the mission of the Spirit to men, not to the eternal procession of the Spirit. Compare 14:26, where the Father, not Jesus, is said to send the Spirit. Like the New Jerusalem Bible, it simply denies the truth and would have the reader believe the Holy Scriptures say nothing about the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit.

It is not surprising the Vatican-approved translations deny the clear meaning of the text which clearly testifies against the Filioque: denying the Filioque would mean repudiating centuries of Vatican teaching. But what about the Protestant translations? The exalted view of the Bible in Protestantism prevents a translation that distorts as badly as the New American Bible, but because Protestants have tended to uncritically accept their inheritance from the papacy regarding the Filioque with few giving the issue any thought (the few who do mostly follow Augustine), it is not surprising the Protestant translations offer no comments. Thus, the Protestant translations render (as well as can be done in English) the meaning, but (unlike the Vatican-approved translations) make no attempt to deny the verse's meaning.

To use an analogy to illustrate the difference between the sending of the Holy Spirit in time from the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit, consider what happens if I give a Rawlings baseball glove to my son. He may tell others he received the glove from me, but the glove's ultimate origin is Rawlings. Similarly, we can say we receive the Holy Spirit from the Son (because the Son sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost), but the Holy Spirit's ultimate origin is the Father.

The Cappadocian Fathers

As Arianism was disappearing, a new heresy arose which denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Immediately, the search began for the best terminology to show this heresy was a distortion of the Christian Faith. Those who accomplished the most towards this goal were the Cappadocian Fathers (Saint Basil the Great, c.330-379; Saint Gregory the Theologian, 329-389; and Saint Gregory of Nyssa, c.340-c.394). Like all the Church Fathers, they eschewed the speculative reasoning of philosophy, they theologised in the manner of the Apostles, not in that of Aristotle (St Gregory the Theologian: Homily 23:12) whilst striving to find the best terminology for expressing the Church's communal experience of the Holy Trinity.

The Cappadocian Fathers confronted the fact that in Greek philosophy there was no concept of person as we understand it today. (In fact, it was the Cappadocian Fathers who worked out the uniquely Christian concept of person we now know.) They worked out the distinction between what a person was (the ousia — the nature or essence) and who a person was (the hypostasis). Working from the Christian belief that each soul was uniquely and freely created by God, they were able to give the concept of person an ontological existence denied by Greek philosophy.

The deeper significance of the identification of "hypostasis" with "person" ... consists in a twofold thesis: (a) The person is no longer an adjunct to a being, a category which we add to a concrete entity once we have first verified its ontological hypostasis. It is itself the hypostasis of the being. (b) Entities no longer trace their being to being itself — that is, being is not an absolute category in itself — but to the person, to precisely that which constitutes being, that is, enables entities to be entities. In other words from an adjunct to a being (a kind of mask) the person becomes the being itself and is simultaneously — a most significant point — the constitutive element (the "principle" or "cause") of beings. (John D. Zizioulas: Being As Communion: Studies in Personhod and the Church, p. 39.)

What the Cappadocian Fathers worked out has become so widespread and widely accepted that it is familiar to us: An ousia is either uncreated (God) or created (by God, a creature). An ousia neither begets nor is begotten. An ousia has no independent existence — there is no naked ousia: an ousia only exists as it is manifested in an hypostasis — there must be an hypostasis to manifest and make known an ousia. There is no impersonal human ousia — there are hypostases such as Adam, Eve, Abraham, and Sarah who manifest human ousia and thus make it knowable.

The hypostasis Adam begot the hypostasis Seth and the hypostasis Abraham begot the hypostasis Isaac; Because the hypostasis known as Adam had a human ousia, the hypostasis known as Seth also had a human ousia; because the hypostasis known as Abraham had a human ousia, the hypostasis known as Isaac also had a human ousia. Likewise, if the hypostasis known as Fido who has a dog ousia begets the hypostasis known as Rover, Rover will also have a dog ousia because that is the ousia of Fido. When an hypostasis is begotten, it has the same ousia as the begetter. This means that, as regards ousia — the essence — all hypostases sharing an ousia are essentially equal: Seth is as human as his father, Adam. It is this fact that gives us the concept that all men are created equal. This is the meaning behind homoousios — the only-begotten Son is essentially equal to the Father: both Father and Son are equally Divine.

In rejecting the teaching of Greek philosophy that God is first and foremost his ousia, the Cappadocian Fathers also rejected the teaching of those attempting to fit Christian teaching to Greek philosophy who taught the impersonal Divine ousia was ontologically prior to God's existence as Trinity and was the source of the unity of the Godhead. Rather, relying on what God had revealed to mankind (especially the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ), the Christian community's shared experience of the Holy Trinity, and the Christian distinction between ousia and hypostasis, The Cappadocian Fathers' teaching was experiential and existential. They rejected attempts to bypass the reality of the person (hypostasis) by means of an intellectual leap directly to the essence/nature (ousia):

In Orthodox theology ... the problem of the energies is put exclusively in terms of existential experience. The experience of the Church is the knowledge of God as an event of personal relationship, and the question raised is one of witness to and defense of that event, the question of how we come to know God, who is neither intelligible nor sensible, nor at all a being among the other beings. The knowledge of God as an event of personal relationship reveals the priority of the truth of the person in the realm of theological knowledge. There is no room for bypassing the reality of the person by means of an intellectual leap directly to the essence: Truth for us is in realities, not in names. The person recapitulates the mode of existence of nature; we know the essence or nature only as the content of the person. (Christos Yannaras: "The Distinction Between Essence and Energies and its Importance for Theology", from St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, vol. 19 [1975], pp. 234-235.)

Regarding the economy of the Holy Trinity, the Cappadocian Fathers taught the Son was sent by the Father, born in time of the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin; they taught the Holy Spirit was sent in time by both the Father and the Son. This was the clear teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ as preserved in the Holy Scriptures and the experience of the Christian community. Regarding the theology of the Holy Trinity, the Cappadocian Fathers taught the Son was caused by the Father apart from time — in Biblical language, the Father eternally begot the Son and the Son was eternally begotten of the Father; they taught the Holy Spirit was caused by the Father apart from time — in Biblical language, the Father eternally gave procession to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit was eternally proceeding of the Father. This was the clear teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ as preserved in the Holy Scriptures (especially John 15:26) and consistent with the Christian understanding of ousia and hypostasis. Since the Father was the cause of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, the ousia of the Father was the ousia of both the Son and the Holy Spirit — in the language of the First Ecumenical Synod, both the Son and the Holy Spirit were homoousios with the Father.

As we recognise unique characteristics of specific human persons to distinguish one from another, the Fathers identified characteristics unique to each of the Divine Persons to distinguish one from another. The Father is neither begotten nor proceeds, but begets and gives procession. The Son neither proceeds nor gives procession; He does not beget, but is eternally begotten. In the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4), the Son became perfect Man whilst remaining perfect God. The Holy Spirit neither begets nor is begotten; He does not give procession, but eternally proceeds and was sent in the fullness of time (Pentecost) to the Church. Yet, just as a human person is more than the sum of his characteristics, the Fathers knew the Divine Persons were more than their characteristics:

The Cappadocian Fathers stress the reality of the personal existence of God and establish their thought of personal life in God the Father, who is Person. ... the Cappadocians never identify the relations, or, for that matter, any other characteristic of the Person, with the Person itself. The Persons are real; they exist not just in relation to each other, but first of all they exist in themselves. (Haugh, pp. 187-188)

Thus, the Cappadocian teaching is always personal and based on the personal knowledge of Christians, the personal encounter with the Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet, they avoided the error of tritheism by emphasising the unity of the Divine Persons. Unlike the pagan-inspired attempts to make an impersonal ousia the source of unity, the Cappadocian Fathers located the unity in the person of the Father:

Among the Greek Fathers the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological principle or "cause" of the being and life of God does not consist in the one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father. The one God is not the one substance but the Father, who is the "cause" both of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. Consequently, the ontological "principle" of God is traced back, once again, to the person. Thus when we say that God "is," we do not bind the personal freedom of God — the being of God is not an ontological "necessity" or a simple "reality" for God — but we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom. In a more analytical way this means that God, as Father and not as substance, perpetually confirms through "being" His free will to exist. And it is precisely His trinitarian existence that constitutes this confirmation: the Father out of love — that is, freely — begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit. If God exists, He exists because the Father exists, that is, He who out of love freely begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit. Thus God as person — as the hypostasis of the Father — makes the one divine substance to be that which it is: the one God. This point is absolutely crucial. For it is precisely with this point that the new philosophical position of the Cappadocian Fathers, and of St Basil in particular, is directly connected. That is to say, the substance never exists in a "naked" state, that is, without hypostasis, without "a mode of existence." And the one divine substance is consequently the being of God only because it has these three modes of existence, which it owes not to the substance but to one person, the Father. Outside the Trinity there is no God, that is, no divine substance, because the ontological "principle" of God is the Father. The personal existence of God (the Father) constitutes His substance, makes it hypostases. The being of God is identified with the person. What therefore is important in trinitarian theology is that God "exists" on account of a person, the Father, and not on account of a substance. (Being As Communion, pp. 40-42.)

By locating the unity of the Holy Trinity in the person of the Father, the Cappadocian Fathers made a clear distinction between the unity of the Holy Trinity from the unity of human beings (whose unity is in the ousia). Lossky explains:

Ousia, in the Trinity, is not an abstract idea of divinity, a rational essence binding three divine individuals, as humanity for example is common to three men. Apophaticism gives it the metalogical depth of an unknowable transcendence; the Bible envelopes it in the glorious radiance of the divine names. As for hypostasis — and it is here, under the influence of Christianity, that a true advancement of thought emerges — it no longer contains anything individual. The individual is part of a species, or rather he is only a part of it: he divides the nature to which he belongs, he is the result of its atomization, so to say. There is nothing of the sort in the Trinity, where every hypostasis assumes in its fullness divine nature. Individuals are at once opposite and repetitive: each possesses its fraction of nature; but indefinitely divided, it is always the same nature, without authentic diversity. The hypostases [of the Holy Trinity], on the other hand, are infinitely united and infinitely different: they are the divine nature, but none possesses it, none breaks it to own it exclusively. It is precisely because each one opens itself to the others, because they share nature without restriction, that the latter is not divided. (Vladimir Lossky: Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, pp. 41-42.)

Since the Father was the only beginning (Greek: μόνο as in the word μονογενοῦς found in John 1:14 and translated only-begotten; αρχή as John 1:1 — In the beginning...), the Cappadocian Fathers taught the monarchy (μοναρχία) of the Father, but this means the only beginning or only source of the Holy Trinity and does not imply any inferiority of the Son or the Holy Spirit.

The teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers regarding the Holy Trinity is probably best summarised by this passage from St Gregory the Theologian:

For us there is One God, for the Godhead is One, and all that proceeds from Him is referred to One, though we believe in Three Persons. For one is not more and another less God; nor is there an earlier and a later. Neither are They divided in will nor divided in power; nor can you find here any of the qualities of divisible things; Rather, the Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate Persons; and there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other. When then we look at the Godhead, or the First Cause, or the Monarchy, that which we perceive is One; but when we look at the Persons in Whom the Godhead dwells ... there are Three Whom we worship. (Oration, 32:14)

St Gregory even anticipated the objection of those entrapped by Greek philosophy who claimed the divine simplicity (undividedness/oneness) of God necessitated the rejection of any idea that the Father's generation of the Son (the begetting) could differ from the Father's generation of the Holy Spirit (the proceeding). The answer for St Gregory was simple: the Lord Jesus Christ had made a distinction between the begetting of the Son and the proceeding of the Holy Spirit and no creature could experience the inner life of the Holy Trinity to know otherwise:

You ask what is the procession of the Holy Spirit? Do you tell me first what is the unbegottenness of the Father, and I will then explain to you the physiology of the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Spirit, and we shall both of us be stricken with madness for prying into the mystery of God. (Oration 32:8)

The Second Ecumenical Synod and Later Ecumenical Synods

The work of the Cappadocian Fathers was endorsed by the Second Ecumenical Synod (also known as the first Synod (Council) of Constantinople) of a.d. 381). The synod renewed condemnations of the Arian heresy, but also faced heresies regarding the Divinity of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to popular belief, the Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Synod did not simply expand the Symbol of Faith from Nicaea. Rather, they created a new Symbol of Faith, incorporating into it many ideas from the previous Synod's Symbol. (A side-by-side comparison of the two Symbols is available.) The Symbol of the Second Ecumenical Synod is found at the top of this page in the Original/Orthodox Form column. This Symbol was consistently endorsed by subsequent Ecumenical Synods, many of who issued anathemas against any who would alter the Symbol of the Second Ecumenical Synod. (Orthodox Christians have maintained the Symbol without change for over seventeen centuries.)

Because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), the first century Christian experience of the Holy Trinity was the same as the fourth century Christian experience, but the latter now had a more developed vocabulary for speaking of the experience — even though all human language is ultimately inadequate to describe the experience of God as Saint John the Theologian and Evangelist testifies (John 21:25).

The eighth century Christian experience of the Holy Trinity was still the same. Saint John of Damascus (c.675 - c.749) was clear that the Faith was unchanging:

As knowing all things, therefore, and providing for what is profitable for each, He revealed that which it was to our profit to know; but what we were unable to bear He kept secret. With these things let us be satisfied, and let us abide by them, not removing everlasting boundaries, nor overpassing the divine tradition. (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 1:1)

Thus, it is no surprise that Saint John's writings on the Holy Trinity are very similar to the teachings we have already examined:

(We believe) in one Father, the beginning, and cause of all: begotten of no one: without cause or generation, alone subsisting: creator of all: but Father of one only by nature, His Only-begotten Son and our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and Producer of the most Holy Spirit. ...
Likewise we believe also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life: Who proceedeth from the Father and resteth in the Son: the object of equal adoration and glorification with the Father and Son, since He is co- essential and co-eternal ...
So then in the first sense of the word the three absolutely divine subsistences of the Holy Godhead agree: for they exist as one in essence and uncreate. But with the second signification it is quite otherwise. For the Father alone is ingenerate, no other subsistence having given Him being. And the Son alone is generate, for He was begotten of the Father's essence without beginning and without time. And only the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father's essence, not having been generated but simply proceeding. For this is the doctrine of Holy Scripture. But the nature of the generation and the procession is quite beyond comprehension. ...
All then that the Son and the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being: and unless the Father is, neither the Son nor the Spirit is. ...
Further, it should be understood that we do not speak of the Father as derived from any one, but we speak of Him as the Father of the Son. And we do not speak of the Son as Cause or Father, but we speak of Him both as from the Father, and as the Son of the Father. And we speak likewise of the Holy Spirit as from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father. And we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son: s but yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son. For if any one hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His, saith the divine apostle. And we confess that He is manifested and imparted to us through the Son. (Exposition, 1:8)

And we speak also of the Spirit of the Son, not as through proceeding from Him, but as proceeding through Him from the Father. For the Father alone is cause. (Exposition, 1:12)

In regard to the consubstantial and life-giving Holy Trinity we confess one essence, one will, one operation, one virtue and power and domination, as also one Godhead, three Hypostases or Persons, while preserving the distinction of each Person. (On the Holy Trinity, 1)

The fourteenth century Christian experience of the Holy Trinity was still the same. Saint Gregory Palamas (c.1296 - 1359), wrote similarly:

On the one hand, the Holy Spirit is, together with the Father and the Son, without beginning, since He is eternal; yet, on the other, He is not without beginning, since He also — by way of procession, not by way of generation — has the Father as foundation, source, and cause. He also [like the Son] came forth from the Father before all ages, without change, impassibly, not by generation, but by procession; He is inseparable from the Father and the Son, since He proceeds from the Father, and reposes in the Son; He possesses union without losing His identity, and division without involving separation. He, also, is God from God; He is not different since He is God, yet He is different since He is the Comforter; as Spirit, He possesses hypostatic existence, proceeds from the Father, and is sent — that is, manifested — through the Son; He also is the cause of all created things, since it is in the Spirit that they are perfected. He is identical and equal with the Father and the Son, with the exception of unbegottenness and generation. He was sent — that is, made known — from the Son to His own disciples. By what other means — the Spirit which is inseparable from the Son — could He have been sent? By what other means could He — Who is everywhere — come to me? Wherefore, He is sent not only from the Son, but from the Father and through the Son, and is manifested through Himself.

The experience of the Holy Trinity is still the same today. Thus, a contemporary writer describes the same experience with similar words:

In the life of the Church, God reveals Himself as the hypostasis of being, the personal hypostasis of eternal life, exhaustive expression of the truth of being. It is not the essence of the energy of God which constitutes being, But His personal mode of existence: God as person is the hypostasis of being.

In other words, the Church does not identify the truth of being with God as an objective and abstract first cause of existence and life: God is not a vague supreme being, and impersonal essence which may be approached only through the intellect or the emotions. Nor is He a "prime mover," a blind energy which sets in motion the mechanism of the world; not yet an image of man exalted into an absolute, and infinite magnification of the individual characteristics and psychological demands of the human being. The God of whom the Church has experience is the God who reveals Himself in history as personal existence, as distinctiveness and freedom. God is person, and He speaks with man "face to grace, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex 33:11).

It is precisely as personal existence, as distinctiveness and freedom from any predetermination by essence or nature, that God constitutes being and is the hypostasis of being. When Moses asks the identity of the God whose will he is to proclaim to the Israelites, the answer is "I am He who is" (Ex 3:14. God identifies the truth of existence, the reality of being, with His personal hypostasis. This means that the divine essence or nature is not an ontological reality prior to God's personal existence and determining it: God's being is not an ontological datum, anterior to the distinctiveness and freedom of the divine person. Rather, it is the personal expression of His being. :And when speaking to Moses, God did not say, 'I am essence; but, 'I am He who is'; for He who is, is not from the essence, but the essence is from Him who is. He who is has comprehended within Himself all being."

The identification of being with the personal existence of God — an identification with vital consequences for the truth of man and human morality — explains the revelation of the God of the Church, who is one and at the same time trinitarian. The one God is not one divine nature of essence, but primarily one person: the one person of God the Father. The personal existence of God (the Father) constitutes His essence or being, making it into "hypsostasis": freely and from love He begets the Son and causes the Holy Spirit to proceed. Consequently, being stems not from the essence, which would make it an ontological necessity, but from the person and the freedom of its love which "hypostasizes" being into a personal and trinitarian communion, God the Father's mode of being constitutes existence and life as a fact of love and personal communion.

The identification of being with the freedom of love — of that love which forms being into hypostases — reveals that the truth of the ethos or morality is equivalent to the truth of being. When we speak of the unity and communion of the three divine persons, we are referring to God's mode of being, which is the ethos of divine life. And the ethos of God is identical with His being. When the Christian revelation declares that "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16), it is not referring to one among many properties of God's "behavior," but to what God is as the fulness of trinitarian and personal communion.

Thus love is singled out as the ontological category par excellence, the only possibility for existence, since it is through love that God gives substance to His essence, and constitutes His being. Any other definition of God's ethos with evaluative content is ontologically unfounded: it applies a priori conventional predicates, taken from philosophical thought or social experience, to the mode of divine existence, which is nothing other than personal distinctiveness and the freedom of love. If we accept evaluative definitions of the Godhead, we make the personal distinctives of divine love subordinate to them, and consequently do away with it. Evaluative categories could refer only to nature or essence, but then personal distinctiveness would be subordinated to the necessity imposed by natural definitions, and consequently, once again, it would be non-existant or substantially curtailed. In that case, the person of God would "undergo" whatever happened to the nature. The "accidents" of the nature would be "passions" of the person -- things undergone passively. This is why St Maximus the Confessor affirms of the Godhead: "It is neither beautiful nor good: for these are as it were passions, and conditions and accidents." (Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, pp. 16-18)

Thus, we can see Orthodox Christian teaching has remained the same without innovations. Unfortunately, there were some who chose to follow a different faith.

This is a 'work in progress'. Please feel free to e-mail comments, suggestions, criticisms, arguments, etc.

The History of the Filioque

Neoplatonism and Augustine

Marius Victorinus (c.280 - 365), sometimes called the Augustine before Augustine, was a Neoplatonist. Most of what we know of him comes from Augustine's tribute in the Confessions. Some historical scholars credit Victorinus with the idea of the double procession of the Holy Spirit. It has been demonstrated by Pierre Hadot that behind the trinitarian doctrine of Marius Victorinus lay Porphyry's telescoping of the hierarchically ordered Plotinian hypostases (the One, Nous and Soul). (Neoplatonism and Contemporary Constructions and Deconstructions of Modern Subjectivity) But others insist the crucial idea of the double procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son was strictly [Augustine's] own. (Eugene Webb: Augustine's New Trinity, p. 7) Gennadios of Constantinople, that city's first patriarch after the city's fall in 1453, certainly attributed the invention to Augustine: Augustine was, among the Latins, the first one who built up and shaped this doctrine.

There is no doubt that Victorinus was a major influence on Augustine. Besides the panegyric to Victorinus that he wrote, Augustine regarded Victorinus as an important factor in his conversion to Christianity. In the Confessions, Augustine writes that, after learning from Simplicianus of Victorinus's conversion, I burned to imitate him (8:5:10). Throughout his writings, Augustine frequently quotes from Victorinus' Latin translation of Plotinus' Enneads (the most important writing by the founder of Neoplatonism). Regardless of who invented the double procession — the Filioque — it was Augustine's influence that made the Filioque known in the west.

It is not surprising that Victorinus was a major influence on Augustine. Both, prior to converting to Christianity, had worked as Neoplatonist philosophers. Victorinus' renown was so great that — whilst still living! — he was honoured with a statue in the Forum of Trajan, a very rare tribute. Victorinus, being fluent in Greek, would have had access to the writings of the Greek Church Fathers. Unfortunately, Augustine knew very little Greek and admitted very little of their writings had been translated into Latin:

... these subjects ... cannot easily be found by us in the Latin tongue ... we are not so familiar with the Greek tongue as to be found in any way competent to read and understand therein the books that treat of such topics, in which class of writings, to judge by the little which has been translated for us (On the Trinity 3:1)

Augstine believed Neoplatonism and Christianity were compatible.

For Augustine, the essential part of Platonic doctrines overlapped with the essential part of Christian doctrines... Such, for Augustine, is the essence of Platonism, and such is also the essence of Christianity. As proof, he cites a number of passages from the New Testament, which oppose the visible and invisible world, the flesh and the spirit. What, however, one might ask, is the difference between Christianity and pagan philosophy ? For Augustine, it consists in the fact that Platonism was not able to convert the masses and turn them away from earthly things, in order to orient them toward spiritual things; whereas, since the coming of Christ, people of all conditions have adopted the Christian way of life, so that a true transformation of humanity is under way. If Plato were to come back to earth, he would say "This is what I did not dare to preach to the crowd." Although "blinded by corporeal stains," souls have been able "without the help of philosophical discussions" to return within themselves and look toward their homeland" because God, through the Incarnation, has lowered the authority of divine reason down to the human body. [citation: Augustine, On True Religion, 4:7] From this Augustinian point of view, Christianity has the same content as Platonism (Pierre Hadot: What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 251).

Augustine saw Plotinus as one in whom "Plato lived again," and regarded Plato's thought itself as "the most pure and bright in all philosophy," so profound as to be in almost perfect concordance with the Christian faith. (Richard Tarnas: The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 103)

Augustine correctly suspected that Greek texts contained the correct understanding of the Holy Trinity (I do not doubt that everything is contained [in the Greek texts] that we can profitably seek — On the Trinity 3:preface:1), but lacking translations and unfamiliar with their teaching, he did what he knew: philosophy. Not knowing how to theologise in the manner of the Apostles, Augustine did what he knew and with which he was comfortable: he theologised in the manner of Aristotle, or, to be more precise, in the manner of Plotinus. This was a radical departure from the way of the Church Fathers, and this is widely acknowledged:

[Augustine] is the foundation of everything the West has to say (Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, p. 103).

... as far as it is possible to assign or discover a watershed, this is to be found at the end of the fourth century: on the one side is Augustine, whose writings form the basis of the Latin tradition; on the other, the Greeks who followed the Cappadocian school. (Joan Hussey: Church and Learning in the Byzantine Empire 867-1185, p. 203)

Augustine's teaching marks a distinct epoch in the history of Christian thought and opens a new phase ... each new crisis and each new orientation of thought in the West can be traced back to Augustine. (Eugène Portalié, A Guide to the Thought of St. Augustine, pp. 81-83)

Augustine would eventually transform traditional Christian teaching on freedom, on sexuality, and on sin and redemption for all future generations of Christians. ... cataclysmic transformation in Christian thought (Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 97)

Augustine ... that individual whose effect on Christianity in the West would be uniquely pervasive and enduring. (Tarnas, p. 143)

[Augustine's] approach to the doctrine of the Trinity ... is also coming to be recognized as a distinctly innovative approach which led to a radically original interpretation of that doctrine. (Webb: New Trinity, p. 2)

It is beyond the scope of this essay to examine all the errors in Augustine's trinitarian speculations. We will focus on one aspect particularly pertinent to the Filioque issue: his inability to break away from the Neoplatonic insistence on the utter simplicity of the Divine which led to two important results: (1) confusion between the external existence of the Holy Trinity (the theology of the Holy Trinity) and the work of the Holy Trinity in time for the salvation of mankind (the economy of the Holy Trinity) and (2) the Filioque. Augustine regarded any distinction of the Divine Attributes as mere verbal distinctions and considered them to be identical. Moreover, he identified the Divine Attributes with the being of God:

... to be true is the same as to be, and to be is the same as to be great; therefore to be great is the same as to be true. (On the Trinity, 8:1:2)

He is called in respect to Himself both God and great, and good, and just, and anything else of the kind; and just as to Him to be is the same as to be God, or as to be great, or as to be good, so it is the same thing to Him to be, as to be a person. (On the Trinity, 7:6:11)

Augustine ends up subordinating everything to the essence of God — to the point that he seems to posit existence to the essence separate from the Divine Persons, going so far as to refer to the person of that Holy Trinity! (On the Trinity, 2:10:18) and asks since on account of their ineffable union these three are together one God, why not also one person? (On the Trinity, 7:4:8) Is it any wonder that even a supporter of the Filioque admits that Augustine could be understood as teaching that one could know God in all the fullness of His attributes independently of the three persons? (Portalié, p. 132) Is it a surprise another support of the Filioque admits that Augustine's notion of divine being remained Greek, that is, ultimately pagan? (Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy, p. 61)

Ignoring the fact that an essence has no existence apart from its hypostasis, Augustine adopts the philosophical category of relation. For Augustine,

the origin of the persons of the Trinity therefore is impersonal, having its real basis in the one essence, which is differentiated by its internal relations. The general character of this triadology may be described as a pre-eminence of natural unity over personal trinity, as an ontological primacy of the essence over the hypostases. (Lossky, p. 77)

For Augustine, existence is not in itself personal, for whatever is personal in the Divinity is not absolute but relative. ... It is clear [Augustine] would like to consider "person" as a common element in the Divine nature, reducible to essence.

Perhaps the most infamous example of Augustine subordination of the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity (patriarch Gennadios Scholarios labelled it an unbearable grossness) is his identification of the Person of the Holy Spirit with the Divine Attribute of love:

[With the Father and the Son] the Holy Spirit too, exists in this same unity of substance and equality. For whether He be the unity of the Father and the Son, or their holiness, or their love, or their unity because He is their love, or their love because He is their holiness, it is clear that He is not one of the two, since it is by Him that the two are joined, by Him that the Begotten is loved by the Begetter, and in turn loves Him who begot Him. ... Therefore the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, is something common both to the Father and Son. But that communion itself is consubstantial and co-eternal; and if it may fitly be called friendship, let it be so called; but it is more aptly called love. (On the Trinity, 6:5:7)

the Trinity that is God; because there also, by the understanding, we behold both Him as it were speaking, and His Word, i.e. the Father and the Son; and then, proceeding thence, the love common to both, namely, the Holy Spirit? (On the Trinity, 15:6:10)

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that whether the Divine Persons have been made merely attributes of the Godhead or the attributes of the Godhead have been made Divine Persons, that both are of little importance to Augustine: only the essence of God seems to have any real meaning. Haugh concludes that

in the final analysis Augustine's analogy of love seems to do serious harm to the Christian doctrine of the Divine Triad. The Father and the Son love each other reciprocally and the Holy Spirit is the expression of this love. Although Augustine does not seem to be aware of it, he has given the Holy Spirit an inferior role, excluding him from the very act of love.

Augustine's enslavement to the idea of utter simplicity in the Godhead compelled him to insist that generation by begetting and generation by processing must be identical, thus meaning if the Son were caused by the Father only and the Holy Spirit were caused by the Father only, Son and Holy Spirit had to be identical!

And here, too, that question comes to light, as it can, which is wont to trouble many, Why the Holy Spirit is not also a son, since He, too, comes forth from the Father, as it is read in the Gospel. (On the Trinity5:14:15)

Augustine's solution of the double procession was a brilliant solution ... to a contrived problem separated from reality and only a figment of his Neoplatonic thinking. Faced with the plain words of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of truth ... proceeds from the Father (John 15:26), Augustine engages in reasoning which Webb calls a tenuous argument that is patently tortuous:

Wherefore let him who can understand the generation of the Son from the Father without time, understand also the procession of the Holy Spirit from both without time. And let him who can understand, in that which the Son says, "As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself," not that the Father gave life to the Son already existing without life, but that He so begat Him apart from time, that the life which the Father gave to the Son by begetting Him is co-eternal with the life of the Father who gave it: let him, I say, understand, that as the Father has in Himself that the Holy Spirit should proceed from Him, so has He given to the Son that the same Holy Spirit should proceed fromHim, and be both apart from time: and that the Holy Spirit is so said to proceed from the Father as that it be understood that His proceeding also from the Son, is a property derived by the Son from the Father. For if the Son has of the Father whatever He has, then certainly He has of the Father, that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from Him. (On the Trinity, 15:26:47)

Joseph P. Farrell, in his brilliant introduction to his translation of Saint Photios the Great's Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit writes:

The whole process seems to defeat itself at every turn. Having made the Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son because the Father and the Son share common attributes, since the essence is simple, the Spirit then becomes an attribute, He defines the essence and, indeed, is the essence, the unity of the Trinity ... Having begun with a definition — simplicity — the process has ended with the same definition, after a dazzling display of sublime, if not confusing, dialectics. It may be useful at this point to anticipate one argument of Saint Photios. If the Holy Spirit is life, proceeding from the Father and the Son, then what should stop one from making the Son take His life from the Spirit, so that the "Son turns out to be the Son, not of the Father only, but also of the Holy Spirit?" [a reference to On the Trinity 15:19:37] But this is "most absurd," [a reference to On the Trinity 15:19:37] because "being the Father is not common to them, so that they should be interchangeably Fathers to one another." [a reference to On the Trinity 7:4:7] What makes these remarks so significant is not so much that they are arguments that Photios employs, but that they came from the lips of Saint Augustine himself. Seeing the logic of his position, he simply repudiated it as being absurdly contradictory to the faith. Saint Augustine, for some reason, sees the obvious implications of his theology at this point, yet for some reason fails to see it at the point of the filioque. (pp. 30-32)

In his Retractions, Augustine admits to working On the Trinity for seventeen years and informs us that it would not have been released except for pressure from his friends. Nevertheless, the Retractions contains no substantive amendments to the work. Perhaps, given more time and/or less pressure, Augustine might have avoided the many errors which plague On the Trinity. Perhaps, had On the Trinity been translated into Greek earlier (it was not translated until the thirteenth century, by the monk Maximos Planudis), corrections might have been made. Unfortunately, the work did see the light of day and stood, uncorrected, until long after it was too late and it resulted in many being led astray. As we will see, Augustine's writings produced a lot of bitter fruit.

The Psuedo-Athanasian Creed and the Council of Toldedo

The so-called Athanasian Creed, forged by an anonymous writer (probably in southern Gaul) and falsely attributed to the great Athanasius in an apparent effort to gain credibility, was first mentioned in a.d. 542 by Caesarius of Arles. It is also known as the Quicumque or the Quicumque Creed from its first word in Latin.

All the ancient creeds, even those in vogue at the time of Augustine and used by him at Milan and in Africa, are drawn up according to the old idea beginning with faith in One God who is the Father. But the Quicumque Creed, based upon Augustinian inspiration, opens by professing faith in the Godhead common to the three persons.

Thus, only a century after Augustine's death, we see his influence in southern Gaul (present-day France). This creed clearly teaches the Filioque: The Holy Spirit is not made, nor created, nor generated, but proceeds from the Father and the Son.

It has been suggested that, at least in some areas, it was soon thought the Filioque the norm and copyists assumed its absence to be an error of omission and inserted it for the sake of accuracy. This might account for the teaching of the double procession in the so-called Athanasian Creed. Richard Haugh writes:

In his opening speech to the council King Reccared declared that "the Holy Spirit also should be confessed by us and taught to proceed from the Father and the Son." (Mansi, 9, 978) ... Then, after professing his acceptance of the first Four Ecumenical Councils, he recites both the Nicene and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creeds, the latter with the Filioque addition. Ironically, even the definitions of the Fourth Ecumenical Council prohibiting any alteration of the Creed were appended to this Spanish council.

   There are twenty-three anathemas declared by this council, the third of which "anathematizes those who do not profess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son." (Mansi, 9, 985) Again ironically, the eleventh anathema is against those who do not accept the decrees of the first Four Ecumenical Councils. (Mansi, 9, 985) By his kingly authority Reccared also decreed that

all the churches of Spain and Gallica, in order to give support to the recent conversion of his people, should observe this rule: that is, at every sacrifice, before receiving the body or blood of Christ, the most holy symbol of the faith should be recited in a loud voice by all, according to the custom of the Eastern Fathers (Mansi, 9, 990)

Of the twenty-three canons issued by this Spanish council the second is noteworthy:

in all the churches of Spain and Gallica, the symbol of the faith of the Council of Constantinople, that is, of the 150 Fathers, be recited according to the form of the Eastern Churches, so that it be chanted in a loud voice by the people before the Lord's prayer is said. (Mansi, 9, 992)

   It is strikingly clear that the Council of Toledo did not consciously alter the Ecumenical Creed. They obviously believed the Filioque was included in the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Filioque, both as doctrine and as found in various creedal statements and professions of faith, had so firmly rooted itself in the Latin West after Augustine that its authenticity and authority were simply taken for granted. (Haugh, pp. 27-29)

Haugh presents strong support for his argument, but his conclusion seems a bit too broad. It may well be that the Filioque was so firmly rooted that its authenticity and authority were simply taken for granted — in some areas of the Latin West, but not throughout the Latin West. After all, the Council of Toledo was a local council held by the King of the Germanic Visigoths to eliminate Arianism in his kingdom. It represented the Iberian peninsula, not the entire Latin West. There is no evidence that the Filioque had become rooted in Rome at this time. Still, one cannot avoid the evidence that, at least amongst the Visigoths, the Filioque had become firmly rooted. Of course, this does not mean the double procession is correct (and Haugh makes no such suggestion), but it does give strong evidence that the error of the Filioque was spreading and becoming entrenched and would mean the Council of Toledo was trying to maintain the Apostolic Faith, not introduce innovations.

Saint Maximos the Confessor and Pope Martin I

There is a fragment of a letter purportedly written by Saint Maximos the Confessor to the priest Marinus is frequently cited by proponents of the Filioque (and by those who wish to deny the judgement of an Ecumenical Synod that Pope Honorius was guilty of heresy). Its authenticity is not certain. According to Haugh, there are three reasons for doubting its authenticity: Saint Maximos elsewhere writes of a letter to Marinus falsely attributed to him, there is no extant synodical letter by Pope Martin I stating the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son as is claimed in this doubtful letter, and the letter in question mentions six councils when only five had been held. (Haugh, p. 32, fn 31) We have no way of knowing whether this letter in question is the one Maximos says was falsely attributed to him and the absence of a synodical letter does not prove it was not written, but the reference to six councils is an extreme problem and suggests the letter may have been written after the Sixth Ecumenical Synod of 680-681, (Saint Maximos died in 662, Pope Martin in 655).

If the letter is authentic, then we have evidence that Pope Martin I wrote a synodical letter that, because it professed the Filioque, had its orthodoxy challenged by Constantinople and Saint Maximos sought to defuse the situation, insisting that the Latins were far from making the Son the cause of the Spirit, for they recognise the Father as the one cause of the Son and of the Spirit; the former by begetting, the latter by procession. The letter in question claims the Latin Filioque was an attempt to express the Spirit's going forth through the Son, that he had admonished the Latins to be more careful in how they expressed the faith, and that he felt confident that Constantinople's reaction would make the Latins more cautious in the future. (Haugh, p. 33)

One ought to consider that if Pope Martin made the mistake of professing the Filioque, Saint Maximos would have had a strong incentive to defend the pope of Old Rome. Having fled to Old Rome to escape persecution from the Monothelite heretics (officially supported by the Empire), it was the only city willing to protect Maximos against the imperial forces. It would not have been in Saint Maximos' interests to turn against Old Rome when it was possible to interpret the statement in an orthodox manner.

If the letter is authentic, we have evidence that as soon as Constantinople received the first indication of the Filioque, it condemend the error. Thus, if the letter is authentic, the oft-repeated claim that the East offered no protest against the Filioque until it was politically expedient to do so, is simply not true. If the letter is not authentic, then the supporters of the Filioque cannot claim Saint Maximos the Confessor defended the Filioque.

If the letter is authentic, then we have a problem reconciling the words of Saint Maximos:

[The Romans] have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of 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 that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence. (Letter to Marinus, PG 91, 136)

with the words of Augustine:

Further, in that Highest Trinity which is God, there are no intervals of time, by which it could be shown, or at least inquired, whether the Son was born of the Father first and then afterwards the Holy Spirit proceeded from both (On the Trinity, 15:26:45)

Wherefore let him who can understand the generation of the Son from the Father without time, understand also the procession of the Holy Spirit from both without time. (On the Trinity, 15:26:47)

Clearly, Augustine taught a double procession of the Holy Spirit outside time. Thus, if the letter is authentic, Saint Maximos may well have been mistaken about the Latin meaning of the Filioque. He certainly did not endorse the Filioque of the double procession taught by Augustine.

Finally, it should be noted that when the letter purportedly from Saint Maximos was presented by the Latins to the Greeks at the Council of Florence, the Greeks suggested it as the basis for an agreement on the issue of the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Latins rejected this proposal, insisting on the double processsion of Augustine.

Charlemagne and the Franks

The Franks, having become the dominant group of Germanic tribes that had overrun the Roman Empire in the West, reached their peak of power under Charlemagne. When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans in 800, the so-called Holy Roman Empire was born and the split from the Roman Empire in the East was cemented. From the Roman's perspective, the pope's action was treason — the Roman Empire had a ruler in the city of New Rome (Constantinople). But, according to the Annals of Lorsch, the pope (and, presumably, Charlemagne) had a different perspective:

Since there was no longer an emperor in the land of the Greeks [sic!] and they all were under the dominion of a woman, it seemed to Pope Leo and to all the fathers who sat in the assembly, as well as to the whole Christian people [sic!], that they should give the name of emperor to the king of the Franks, to Charles, who occupied [Old] Rome, where the Caesars had customarily resided, and also Italy, Gaul, and Germany. Because Almighty God had consented to place these lands under his authority, it seemed right, according to the desire of the whole Christian people [sic!], that Charles should also bear the imperial title. (quoted in Pierre Riché, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe, p. 121)

Obviously, the whole Christian people is a gross exaggeration. Labelling the Romans Greeks was the practise of the Franks in an attempt to justify the claim that their Holy Roman Empire was a reincarnation of the Roman Empire: they could not grant the label Roman to the inhabitants of the Roman Empire — who called themselves Roman, who spoke the Roman language, who lived under Roman law, whose capital was officially New Rome, whose coinage said Roman, etc. — without undermining their claim. Thus, they had to invent the fiction that the Romans were actually Greeks. In this essay, we will avoid the fiction and use the proper names: the Romans lived in the Roman Empire in the East, the Franks lived in the so-called Holy Roman Empire in the West.

Calling the Roman Greeks was but one of the tactics used by Charlemagne and his supporters to justify their so-called Holy Roman Empire. They used religious differences. Under Charlemagne, the council of Frankfurt (a.d. 794) opposed the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod (Nicæa a.d. 787), denied it had been an Ecumenical Synod, condemned Pope Hadrian for his energetic support of it, and rejected giving honour of any kind to images (declaring they were to be used only for decoration and instruction of the illiterate). Also under Charlemagne, the council of Aachen (a.d. 809) insisted that the Filioque was necessary for salvation and mandated its addition to the Creed. Neither Pope Adrian (pope, 772-795) nor Pope Leo III (pope, 795-816) could mount resist the overwhelming military strength of Charlemagne and the Roman Empire was too involved with its own problems to be of assistance. With this background information on Charlemagne and the Franks, let us examine their actions regarding the Filioque. Additional historical information can be found at Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine: An Interplay between Theology and Society

Pope Adrian sent the Acta of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod to Charlemagne who responded with a list of objections. The very first objection deals with the Filioque:

That Tarsius [the Patriarch of Constantinople] is not correct in professing that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father and the Son, according to the faith of the Nicene Creed, but that he proceeds from the Father through the Son.

Pope Adrian responded to the objection:

We have already shown that the divine dogmas of this Council are irreprehensible ... For should anyone say he differs from the Creed of the above-mentioned Council, he risks differing with the Creed of the Six Holy Councils, since these Fathers spoke not according to their own opinions but according to the holy definitions previously laid down. In the acts of the Sixth Holy Council it is written among other things that "this Creed had been sufficient for the perfect knowledge and confirmation of religion."

In response to this rebuke from the pope, the Libri Carolini were composed. On the issue of the Filioque, there were five objections to the teaching of the pope and the Seventh Ecumenical Synod: (1) through the Son is too imprecise, (2) it has been customarily believed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and to teach that the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son made the Holy Spirit a creature since All things were made through Him [the Son] (John 1:3), (3) through the Son was not in the original Creed because the Holy Spirit does not need the help of another to proceed from another, (4) Augustine taught the double procession, and (5) the inner life of the Holy Trinity is too mysterious for mere man to comprehend so the Creed should be left without change. The Libri Carolini were approved by the Council of Frankfurt.

We will fully deal with these objections in the appropriate section of this essay. For now, we will not that the first and fifth objections contradict each other, the fifth objection is historically wrong, the second exhibits the confusion of the eternal and timeless existence of the Persons of the Holy Trinity (the theology of the Holy Trinity) with the work of the Holy Trinity in time for the salvation of mankind (the economy of the Holy Trinity), the third objection anticipates the objection of Saint Photios the Great who insisted that the Father was not so imperfect as to need the assistance of the Son to give procession to the Holy Spirit, and the fourth objection is moot.

Around the year 807, Orthodox monks in the Holy Land, upon hearing Latin (Frankish) monks using the Filioque, strenuously objected, accusing the Latin monks of heresy and labelling their books heretical. The Latin monks, obviously bewildered by these accusations, wrote to Pope Leo III asking for his counsel. The full text of their letter is available. Haugh summarises the letter:

Some noteworthy facts emerge from this controversy. First, there is little doubt that the interpolated Creed had for some years now received "imperial" sanction. Secondly, the Latin monks consider the Filioque as only a liturgical difference, no more important than other liturgical differences between Latins and Greeks. Thirdly, what has quite perplexed the Latin monks is the seriousness with which the Greeks react to the Filioque. Fourthly, their claim that the Rule of St. Benedict contained the Filioque means that the Carolingians had appended either the interpolated Ecumenical Creed or the Athanasian Creed to the Rule of St. Benedict. And fifthly, it is noteworthy that the bond between the Carolingians and the Papacy is so strong that the monks think an attack on Frankish practices is also an attack on the Roman See. (Haugh, pp. 67-68)

To these observations should be added that this proves the falsity of the claim that the Orthodox originally accepted the Filioque, only objecting when it became politically expedient to do so.

In his response to the Latin monks, Pope Leo professes that he personally believes in the double procession of the Holy Spirit, but it is unclear if he gave specific instructions on whether the use of the Filioque were permissible. However, just three years later, meeting with a Frankish delegation (the dialogue was recorded by the head of the delegation and may be read here) the same pope makes it quite clear that adding the Filioque to the Symbol of Faith was illicit. Pope Leo III order the Franks to remove the Filioque, and

He took other measures. He considered the problem so serious that he had "two silver shields" engraved with the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in both Greek and Latin and then placed on each side of the Confession of St. Peter. He did this, according to Anastasius Bibliothecarius, (PL 128, 1238) "for the love he bore to the Orthodox Faith and out of care for its preservation." Photius refers to these shields, even though he mistakenly thought that both shields were engraved in Greek. The existence of these shields is confirmed by the later testimony of Peter Damian, Peter Lombard, and Peter Abelard. Recent historical research has also confirmed the historicity of these shields.

The shields were placed with the notice, that all might know that the Roman Church agreed not with those who altered this common Confession of the Faith by any addition or explanation. The Franks ignored the pope and continued to use the Filioque. Taking the illicit addition to the Symbol of Faith to the Slavs, they set the stage for the next major clash over the Filioque. For further reading about the Filioque issue and the Franks, Richard Haugh's well-researched and well-written book, Photius and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Controversy is highly recommended.

The Mid-Ninth Century

This period is far too complex to adequately cover here. The reader is again referred to the excellent book by Haugh. For an older, but still useful work from a Latin author, see Francis Dvornik's The Photian Schism: History and Legend, first published in 1948, reprinted 1970.

The aftermath of the Iconoclasm in the East resulted in a split between the Moderates (who favoured a tolerant approach with the Iconoclasts) and the Zealots (who desired punishment for the Iconoclasts). Patriarch Ignatius, a Zealot, gradually alienated the wrong people and he was exiled for treason and, after twelve years as patriarch, was forced to resign in 858. He agreed to resign on the condition that he would be succeeded by another Zealot — a condition unacceptable to the Moderates. Photius was selected as a compromise (his iconodule parents had suffered much from the Iconoclasts, his orthodoxy was unquestioned, but he had not aligned with either the Zealots or the Moderates). The historical record shows Photius initially refused because he wanted to continue his academic pursuits and because he realised that a patriarch would have to walk an impossible tightrope between the two parties. In the end, however, others prevailed upon him, convincing him that he was the only candidate acceptable to both sides and thus able to avert a schism.

Not long after becoming patriarch, some of the more extreme Zealots declared they would not recognise Photius and wanted Ignatius returned as patriarch. Despite, Photius' calls for tolerance, Moderates reacted by persecuting the Zealots and full-blown hostilities erupted. In an effort to heal the strife, the emperor convoked a General Synod with invitations to the other patriarchates (Old Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem). Pope Nicholas I of Old Rome saw the General Synod as an opportunity to regain the provinces of Illyricon and southern Italy which, as part of a reorganisation by Emperor Leo III (not to be confused with Pope Leo III) in 733 had been transferred from Old Rome to New Rome (Constantinople). Nicholas instructed his delegates to support Photius only if Illyricon and southern Italy were returned to his control. The General Synod met in 861, but we have no details since its records were destroyed by the Robber Council of 869-870. It is clear, however, that Photius was vindicated, the extreme Zealots were censured, and Illyricon and southern Italy remained in the jurisdiction of New Rome. Unhappy with the results, Nicholas excommunicated his delegates upon their return and convoked a Latin synod (863) which excommunicated Photius.

When Emperor Michael III, replying to Nicholas' letter announcing the excommunication of Photius, informed him his Latin synod had no validity in New Rome because it had not been appointed to judge the issue, Nicholas replied by invoking the forged Donation of Constantine and demanded that Photius and Ignatius both be sent to Old Rome to be judged. The Emperor refused. Attempting to maintain peace, Photius did not respond.

The conversion of Tsar Boris I of Bulgaria (864) set off a competition for who would dominate in Bulgaria between the so-called Holy Roman Empire, the papacy, and the Roman Empire (mis-labelled the Byzantine Empire in most Western histories). It also exacerbated the tensions between Old Rome and New Rome. As Dvornik notes, it was merely a matter of prestige for the so-called Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, but for the Roman Empire, it was a matter of life and death. (Dvornik, p. 94) The Roman emperor Constantine V (741-775) had conducted eight military campaigns against the Bulgars without achieving lasting success, the emperor Nikephorus (802-811) died in battle against the Bulgars, and the emperor Michael I (811-813) died from wounds sustained during war with the Bulgars.

Boris was baptised in New Rome (the Roman Emperor Michael III was his godfather) and Patriarch Photius sent missionaries to Bulgaria. Boris, an astute politician who demonstrated extraordinary skill in playing off those who competed for influence in Bulgaria, desired an autocephalous church and asked to have a patriarch for the church in Bulgaria. When New Rome refused, he turned to the West who sent missionaries. These Western missionaries engaged in practises contrary to the tradition known by the Eastern missionaries (e.g. use of milk and cheese during Lent, fasting on Saturdays, prohibiting married men from being ordained, only allowing bishops to confirm, and, of course, use of the illicit Filioque). Even worse, they taught the Bulgarians condemned the teachings of the Greeks (as they incorrectly called the Romans)! They convinced Boris to expel the Eastern missionaries, who, upon returning to New Rome, reported what had happened. The reaction from Patriarch Photius was swift.

Saint Photius expressed willingness to tolerate differences in practise whilst expressing concern that the neglect of even slight traditions can lead to contempt for all doctrine. But Saint Photius was most emphatic in his condemnation of the Filioque which he called blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, or rather against the entire Holy Trinity. He asks:

Where have you learned this fact which you assert? In what Gospel have you found this word? To what Council belongs such blasphemy? Who will not stop his ears at this enormous blasphemy? It stands in battle, as it were, against the Gospels. It takes up arms against the Holy Councils and falsifies the Blessed Fathers — the great Athanasius; Gregory, hymned as the personification of theology; Basil, that royal robe of the Church; and Chrysostom, the golden mouth of the world, that sea of wisdom. Why should I name this one or that one? This blasphemy, which declares war on God, is armed against all the Holy Prophets together, the Apostles, the priests, martyrs, and even the voice of the Lord Himself. (PG 102, 728-729, nos. 15 & 16, quoted in Haugh, pp. 98-99)

Saint Photius' Encyclical to Five Patriarchs of the East (866), after accusing the pope of (1) inserting Filioque into the Symbol of Faith, (2) improperly interfering in the Church of Bulgaria and attempting to dominate churches outside his jurisdiction, (3) endorsing an improper repetition of the sacrament of Chrismation (Confirmation) on the pretext that Chrismation done by married priests from New Rome was invalid, (4) improperly interfering in disputes outside his jurisdiction, called for an Ecumenical Synod to resolve all problems. Emperor Michael III, the only person authorised to convoke an Ecumenical Synod issued invitations and the Synod met the following year (867).

The synod of 867 was attended by about 1000 representatives from throughout the East, including the patriarchates of New Rome (Constantinople), Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Pope Nicholas refused to participate, thinking himself above any council. The synod condemned various Latin practises, condemned the Filioque, and excommunicated Pope Nicholas from the Church. Nicholas died before learning of his excommunication and was replaced by Hadrian II, but not before writing to various Franks asking them to defend the Filioque.

Several different Franks composed responses to the Eastern condemnation of the Filioque. Consistently, these responses rely on Augustine and their belief that the pope of Old Rome was in charge of the entire Church (a belief fostered by forgeries such as the Donation of Constantine) and exhibit an inability to distinguish between the theology of the Holy Trinity and the economy of the Holy Trinity. It is also clear the Franks still thought (despite the previous reprimand from Pope Leo III) the Filioque was part of the original Symbol of Faith and that the East had removed it. (It is unclear why their historical knowledge was so poor.)

It is not known whether these responses, prepared for Pope Nicholas I, ever reached the East. By the time they had been prepared, circumstances had changed.

In September 867, Basil the Macedonian, co-emperor with Michael III, assassinated Michael and took control of government. To gain support from Zealots, Basil deposed Photius and ordered Ignatius re-instated. To create legality, Basil called for a General Synod and invited Pope Hadrian II in attempt to gain support from Old Rome. Under Basil's direction and with the support of Old Rome, this synod met at Constantinople in 869-870, condemned Photius and acquitted both Nicholas and Ignatius. (It was this synod that destroyed the acts of the synod of 861.) Still, the papacy did not get what they really wanted: the synod refused to give Illyricon and southern Italy to Old Rome and the papacy (Pope Hadrian II protested these decisions) and a delegation from Bulgaria were told they were under the jurisdiction of New Rome. Patriarch Ignatius thereupon sent an archbishop to Bulgaria and the Latins were expelled. It should be noted that the attendance of this sham synod — truly a Robber Council — was approximately one tenth the size of the synod of 867 (about 110 participants because most of the invited bishops deliberately stayed away, knowing it would be sham).

By 876, the Emperor Basil, either dissatisfied with Patriarch Ignatius or perceiving the Moderate party as offering greater support, decided to convoke a new Ecumenical Synod to reconsider decisions about Photius (by this time the emperor had brought Photius back from exile, made him the principal teacher of his children, and Photius and Patriarch Ignatius were reconciled). In the hope of gaining new territory, Pope John VIII (Hadrian II had died) agreed to attend and sent delegates with instructions that Bulgaria be placed under his jurisdiction. But before the papal delegates arrived in New Rome, Ignatius died and the overwhelming majority of the Church insisted on and received Photius' return as patriarch. When they arrived, the papal delegates were faced with a situation for which they were totally unprepared.

Recalling the fate of papal delegates who had failed to condemn Photius in 861, the papal delegates abstained from any proceedings until they had received new instructions from Old Rome. Pope John VIII sent new delegates to join the old delegates with a letter instructing that Photius was to be accepted as patriarch by the pope's supremacy over the whole Church on the condition that Illyricon and Bulgaria be placed under Old Rome's jurisdiction (the Empire's military successes in southern Italy made it imprudent to demand this territory), and that Photius make an apology to the synod for his previous conduct. The papal delegates found themselves in a quandary: they were taking heat from the Emperor for their non-participation and from the pope because their non-participation left him without a complete picture of the situation. Recognising the papal demands were unjust and were based on wrong prejudices, the delegates deleted the imperious claims of papal supremacy and the request for Photius' apology from the Greek translation of John VIII's letter rather than continuing their non-participation. (But, on their return to Rome, they blamed Photius for the deletions.) The synod deliberated at Constantinople from 879 to 880. It annulled the synod of 869-870, acquitted Photius of all charges, condemned the addition of the Filioque to the Symbol of Faith, and refused to place both Illyricon and Bulgaria under papal jurisdiction. For additional information about this Ecumenical Synod, see the essay by Fr. George Dion. Dragas on The Eighth Ecumenical Council.

Upon learning of the synod's decisions, John VIII was angry about the deletions from the Greek text, but recognised all the synod's decisions except the ones regarding Illyricon and Bulgaria. Since this Ecumenical Synod was approved by the patriarchates of Old Rome, New Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, it has a much greater claim to being ecumenical than the Robber Council of 869-870. However, because Latin canonists of the twelfth century determined they needed the 22nd canon of the Robber Council of 869-870 to justify papal supremacy, they then began referring to it as the Eighth Ecumenical Council. That has been the claim of the Latins since the twelfth century (but not before) even though historical fact belies the claim. Not surprisingly, Orthodox Christianity rejects the claim.

The Eleventh Century to the Present

The Eleventh Century was a watershed for both the relations between the East and West and for the Filioque. On 14 February 1014, Pope Benedict VIII crowned Henry II emperor of the so-called Holy Roman Empire (sometimes, this Henry is called Henry I because the previous Henry (918-936) was never crowned at Rome and is therefore sometimes regarded as a king who never became emperor). The consensus of scholarly research is that it was at this coronation that the Filioque was first professed at Old Rome. With the papal acquiescene to the Filioquist faith, the West's departure from the Apostolic Faith was complete. Forty years later (1054), the arrogant and hot-headed Cardinal Humbert exceeded his authority and excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople on various grounds, one of which was the historically erroneous claim that the East had removed the Filioque! Twelve years after that (1066), Norman forces, with papal blessing, invaded England, deposed the bishops and replaced them Filioquist bishops loyal to the pope, thus bringing England under papal control.

The Papal Revolution soon followed. Also known as the Gregorian Revolution and the Gregorian Reform, it is usually dated as beginning in 1075 (when Pope Gregory VII penned the revolutionary Dictatus Papae proclaiming absolute papal supremacy) until 1122 (when the Concordat of Worms ended the Investiture Controversy). As a result of this revolution, the papacy became a worldly political institution where legalistic obedience to the pope became the measure of how right with God a person was, and the canons (from the Greek word meaning rule or measure) were transformed from guidelines into canon law. The Papal Revolution extended and cemented the West's departure from the Ancient Faith.

A very good book explaining the Papal Revolution is Harold J. Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, winner of the American Bar Association's 1984 SCRIBES Book Award for the best new book on a legal subject.

From the eleventh century onwards, the papacy consistently proclaimed the Filioquist faith.

The 4th Lateran Council, 1215

A definition against the Albigenses and other heretics

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 2nd Council of Lyons, 1274

Constitution on the Procession of the Holy Spirit

...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 Council of Florence, 1438-45

Decree for the Jacobites

The Father is not begotten; the Son is begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

The Roman Catechism

(The offical Roman Catholic catechism, 1566-1994)

I.8.6. With regard to the words immediately succeeding: "who proceeds from the Father and the Son," the faithful are to be taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds, by eternal procession, from the Father and the Son as from one principle. This is a truth taught to us by the rule of the Church from which the least departure is unwarrantable on the part of Christians.

First Vatican Council, 1869-1870

Dogmatic Constitution on the Principal Mysteries of the Faith

For from all eternity the Father generates the Son, not in producing by emanation another essence equal to his own, but in communicating his own simple essence. And in like manner, the Holy Spirit proceeds, not by a multiplication of the essence, but he proceeds by a communication of the same singular essence by one eternal spiration from the Father and the Son as from one principle.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

(The offical Roman Catholic catechism since 1994)

246. 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."
248. 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).

Unfortunately, because of the Latin understanding of the infallibility of the Church, the Vatican is bound by these past statements and cannot now teach otherwise. It probably went as far as it could towards clarifying the Latin teaching when, it issued the extraordinary essay The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Holy Spirit in L'Osservatore Romano (English translation published in English edition of 20 September 1995). This essay admitted the Orthodox understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit was correct, that its interpretation of John 15:26 was correct, and attempted to justify the Filioque in light of these admissions.

——— Material from Vatican 'clarification' here ———

This is a 'work in progress'. Please feel free to e-mail comments, suggestions, criticisms, arguments, etc.

Arguments Against the Filioque

Many of the arguments against the Filioque should be clear from what has preceded. Thus, much of this will be a summary of foregoing material.

Objection 1 — The Filioque is contrary to Holy Scripture

The Filioque belief is an invention of men without support in any verse of Holy Scripture. In fact, it directly contradicts the words of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 15:26). Those who claim those words do not exclude the Filioque implicitly accuse the Lord Jesus Christ of telling a half-truth, an idea that all true Christians should immediately reject.

The Lord Jesus Christ revealed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Full stop. He says nothing more — and neither should any pious Christian.

Objection 2 — The Filioque exalts human wisdom (especially philosophy), making it equal to or superior to Divine Revelation

The Filioque was conceived by philosophical (specifically Neoplatonic) speculation which placed God in a box of philosophical construction which attempted to limit God to a single way of causing a Divine Person. This mindset so loved philosophical speculation that it rejected the distinction between begetting and proceeding and it ignored the warning of Saint Gregory the Theologian that attempting to comprehend the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit would result in madness for prying into the mystery of God. It regarded the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ as insufficient, preferring human wisdom for an answer to its philosophically-induced inability to distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Objection 3 — The Filioque solves a non-existent problem, whilst creating serious problems

The non-existent problem, the problem which philosophical speculation invented, is escaped by making the Holy Spirit the result of the Father and the Son. It is often explained (following Augustine) as the love between the Father and the Son which is so perfect that it necessarily exists (another philosophical concept) as a Divine Person we call the Holy Spirit. But if the perfect love between the first two Persons of the Godhead produces the third Person, why does not perfect love between the first and and third Persons produce a fourth Person and perfect love between the second and third Persons produce a fifth Person? Why stop with the third Person — or even with a fifth Person? Why should we not continue and posit a perfect love between a fourth Person and the first three that produces three more divine persons and posit a perfect love between a fifth Person and four others that produces four more divine persons? Why not continue ad infinitum and teach an Infinite Number of divine persons? After all, once the process has begun, there is no logical reason to cease.

The Filioquists correctly insist that one cannot go beyond three Divine Persons because Divine Revelation speaks of only three Divine Persons. But the Filioquists fail to explain why one should even begin with the speculation that the perfect love between the Father and Son produce the Holy Spirit since there is nothing in Divine Revelation to suggest such an idea.

Objection 4 — The Filioque confuses the Persons and confuses Person and Essence within the Holy Trinity

This confusion is made clear by posing the following question:

Does the power to proceed the Holy Spirit come from
the Divine Essence common to all,
or from a specific Person?

To answer from the Divine Essence is to face two equally distasteful choices: either the Holy Spirit proceeds Himself or the Holy Spirit is not God. The first is patently ridiculous; the second is clearly outside Christianity. The answer to the above question is clear: the power to proceed the Holy Spirit belongs to a specific Person: the Father. This has been and remains the consistent teaching of the Church.

But, the Filioquist objects, the Father has given everything to the Son, citing John 16:15 (All things that the Father has are Mine). Although admitting this does not really mean all since the Father does not give His Father-ness to the Son, they insist — with no justification other than their philosophical speculations — that it does include the power to proceed the Holy Spirit. By insisting this, the Filioquists demonstrate their confusion between the Divine Essence (what God is) and the Person of the Father (who the Father is). In begetting Seth, Adam gave Seth what he was, his human-ness, but he did not, he could not give Seth his Adam-ness: Adam and Seth are distinct hypostases, distinct persons. The Father and the Son are distinct hypostases, distinct Persons: the Father does not give His Father-ness (who He is), He gives his God-ness (what He is) to the Son. All things that the Father has refers to what God is and indeed it is true that all of what the Father is has been given to the Son — and is also given to the Holy Spirit (something consistently overlooked by Filioquists). The claim that the Father gives the Son the power to proceed the Holy Spirit is a claim that the Father gives who He is to the Son and thus confuses the Persons.

But again the Filioquists object that the Father's Father-ness only refers to the Father's begetting of the Son and does not refer to the proceeding of the Holy Spirit. What? Did the Lord Jesus Christ reveal a name besides Father by which to know the first Person of the Holy Trinity? The answer is clear: Father is the only name of the first Person of the Holy Trinity. Father is as surely the name of the first Person of the Holy Trinity as Adam is the name of the first man. To make Father a mere description is to impersonalise the first Person of the Holy Trinity which, even if consistent with the direction of Augustine's teaching and the belief of the Filioquists, is repugnant to pious Christians. Moreover, the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ contained in Holy Scripture is clear: the Father is the Cause of both the Son (by begetting) and the Holy Spirit (by processing). The Father is not merely the Father of the Son.

The Filioquists offer an additional objection that the Son and the Holy Spirit are both Caused, and this thus proves there are attributes within the Holy Trinity that belong to only two Persons without belonging to the Divine Essence. Such a claim initially seems attractive — until one recognises the sloppy thinking behind it. The Son is begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds of the Father. Begetting and proceeding are different. We may not know how they differ, but the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is clear: there is a difference. The pious Christian accepts the Lord Jesus Christ's teaching, recognising his inability as a creature to comprehend the Uncreated. He is of one mind with Saint John of Damascus:

God then, is Infinite and Incomprehensible, and all that is comprehensible about Him is His Infinity and His Incomprehensibility.

Objection 5 — The Filioque subordinates the Holy Spirit

By teaching that there is something (the ability to proceed the Holy Spirit) shared by the Father and the Son but not shared by the Holy Spirit, the Filioquists clearly subordinate the Holy Spirit, making Him less than the Others.

By teaching that the Holy Spirit is the result of perfect love between the Father and the Son, the Filioquists clearly subordinate the Holy Spirit, making Him completely contingent on both Father and Son and having no self-existence.

By teaching that the Father is a Cause (of the Father and of the Son) and the Son is likewise a Cause (of the Holy Spirit), the Filioquists clearly subordinate the Holy Spirit by making Him the only Divine Person who is not a Cause of a Divine Person.

Objection 6 — Adding the Filioque to the Symbol of Faith was irregular and illicit

Even the Latins now admit the addition of the Filioque was done arbitrarily, without consulting the East. Consistently opposed by the Apostolic Sees, its back door entry into Old Rome is seen as evidence of the Germanic conquest of the Apostolic Faith in Old Rome. By this conquest, a belief that was not a part of the Faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all became accepted in the West. Alexei Khomiakov, in The Church Is One makes a poignant observation:

Therefore the pride of reason and of illegal domination, which appropriated to itself, in opposition to the decree of the whole Church (pronounced at the Council of Ephesus), the right to add its private explanations and human hypotheses to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Symbol is in itself an infraction of the sanctity and inviolability of the Church. Just as the very pride of the separate Churches, which dared to change the Symbol of the whole Church without the consent of their brethren, was inspired by a spirit not of love, and was a crime against God and the Church, so also their blind wisdom, which did not comprehend the mysteries of God, was a distortion of the faith; for faith is not preserved where love has grown weak.

Since faith is not preserved where love has grown weak, it is no surprise that those who would claim all authority within the Church (the papacy) have departed from the Apostolic Faith and have embraced distortions of the Christian Faith such as the Filioque.

Responses to Filioquist Arguments

In this section, we will examine the usual arguments presented by supporters of the Filioque. The first part of the section will be an examination of the logical arguments. The second part will look at excerpts taken from Patristic writings that apologists for the Filioque present as proof-texts. Not surprisingly, Augustine and other Western writers are the most frequently cited Patristic sources. But since we have already demonstrated that Augustine is unreliable as an orthodox source of theology of the Holy Trinity, we will not examine his texts in this section. Neither will we examine the texts of those writers who followed in Augustine's footsteps. Rather, we will limit our examination to Eastern writers since apologists for the Filioque think these should be more impressive to Orthodox Christians.

Three warnings about Patristic citations should be noted:

1. Just as it is quite easy to proof-text the Scriptures, it is also quite easy to do the same with Patristic writings. Frequently, such proof-texts are taken out of context and/or misapplied to the topic. One need not look very far to see how various Protestant denominations use proof-texts to support mutually exclusive beliefs.
2. Orthodox Christians do not regard any single person as infallible in matters of dogma. It is not difficult to find instances where the Fathers have been in error about a particular thing. (Of course, if the errors are serious or numerous, the writer does not qualify as a Church Father.) Orthodox Christians seek to find the consensus of the Fathers. In non-dogmatic matters, this may be very difficult to do as the Fathers may have a wide variety of opinions. But, in cases of dogma, it is generally easy to find that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all, i.e. universality, antiquity, and consent. Opinions which are limited to a region (e.g. the West), that have developed after the Apostolic Age, or are not held by the overwhelming majority of Fathers, does not meet the standards for dogma.
3. These texts are presented in English to English speakers. They are translations. Without examining the passage in its original language and in context, it may be easy to misinterpret these texts. If anyone reading this could supply the original Greek for the following passages, this author would be most grateful. (Note: in nearly seven years since the first version of this essay was published, no Filioquist has offered to show that the Greek texts support the Filioque.)

It should be noted that one frequently finds in the writings of the Eastern Fathers the formula the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. This formula is deemed perfectly orthodox by Orthodox Christians. It testifies to the fact that none of the Divine Persons acts apart from the others; they share the one Divine Will.

A common analogy is that as a man, when vocalising a word exudes breath, so the Father, when speaking (begetting) the Word breathes forth the Holy Spirit (the Greek word for breath, πνεῦμα, also means spirit). This analogy demonstrates both the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit and their inseparableness. It also demonstrates that the Son and the Holy Spirit are of the Father and not the Father's creations.

When the Fathers testify that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God as well as the Spirit of Christ, they mean that the Holy Spirit has His eternal and existential origin in the Father whilst being inseparably one with the Son with whom the Holy Spirit is naturally united and of the same essence. In other words, the Holy Spirit has His perfect procession (the phrase is from Saint Cyril of Alexandria) from the Father and is joined to the Son in unity by reason of their shared essence (their homoousious-ness). It is the homoousious-ness of the Three Divine Persons that is being expressed or, as Saint Maximus the Confessor phrases it: the unity and unchangeableness of the Divine Essence.

Apologists for the Filioque frequently assert that proceeds from the Father and the Son is equivalent to proceeds from the Father through the Son. Although and and through may sometimes by synonymous in English (the paperwork must go through the boss usually means that the boss needs to add something such as a signature and thus constitutes an addition, an and), in Greek through (διά) and and (καὶ) are never synonymous. Through (διά) never means a contributory effect; it means a tunnelling or channelling, whereas and (καὶ) usually means a copulative (i.e. a joining together which expresses an addition) and sometimes also a cumulative effect (i.e. an addition which implies an insufficiency on the part of the elements separately). In sum, διά always excludes addition; καὶ always means addition (sometime copulative and sometimes cumulative). The words are mutually exclusive.

ARGUMENT: Therefore Jesus said to them [the disciples] again, Peace to you; just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you. And having said this, He breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:21-22). This verse testifies that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.

RESPONSE: This argument demonstrates the confusion typical of Filioquists in distinguishing between the theology of the Holy Trinity and the economy of the Holy Trinity. This verse testifies to an action done in time; it says nothing about the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit.

ARGUMENT: All things through Him came to be, and without Him came to be not even one thing which has come to be (John 1:3). This is reaffirmed in the Nicene Creed itself which makes clear that the creation is the work of both Father and Son. Indeed, Christians both East and West acknowledge that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in the work of creation (see Genesis 1:1-3).

RESPONSE: This argument has been included because, as incredible as it may seem, it is frequently found in arguments presented in support of the Filioque. Here are some quotes from Latins arguing for the Filioque (self-described as traditionalist and/or conservative):

... the procession into the temporal world must be through the Son (and as such from both simultaneously) because all temporal creation is through the Son, or Logos.

All temporal creation is through the Logos, and all procession in the temporal world is through the Logos, as from one principle. Still, from the Father ultimately who creates all, including the begotten Son.

The point missed in the east is that all creation was through the Logos, and as such the Spirit must come to us through the Logos.

Father and Son as from one principle implies the necessity of the Son, upon which all creation depends, for procession to the temporal world. Ultimately, the question is, does or can the Spirit exist or come forth into the temporal world without participation of the Logos? We say no, because the entirety of temporal creation, it is revealed, is through the Word.

This argument is incredible because John 1:3 (as well as the statement in the Symbol of Faith which repeats the testimony of the verse) teaches that through the Son all creation was created. The Holy Spirit is not a creation, He is eternally God. Any person who teaches that the Holy Spirit is included in those things which came to be as referred to in John 1:3 cannot be regarded as a Christian. Such an argument is in the same category as the claim from the Jehovah's Witnesses that the Son is created as a god.

ARGUMENT: If the dual procession be denied, it is not clear how we are to distinguish between the Word and the Spirit, between the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity. We distinguish between the Father and the Son, even though they are co-eternal and co-equal, and omni-perfect, by virtue of the fact that the One begets and the other is begotten — that is, the being of One is derived from the being of the Other. But if we say that the Son is derived from the Father alone, and that the Spirit is derived from the Father alone, how are the Son and the Spirit different? We may indeed say that it is the Second Person, not the First or the Third, that was made flesh for our salvation in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. But this does not answer the question at hand, for the distinction of the Divine Persons must lie in the nature of the Godhead, not in the relation of God to a universe which He need not have created.

RESPONSE: This argument was taken, verbatim, from a supporter of the Filioque. (It can be found at The Father's House website.) It is, of course, the problem created by a non-Christian, philosophical mindset previously addressed. It is a contrived problem, a figment of philosophical (specifically Neoplatonic) thinking. It is not a problem for one who accepts the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A careful examination of the argument reveals that although it begins discussing that the difference between the Father and the Son is that the One begets and the other is begotten, it changes to a more generic terminology (the being of One is derived from the being of the Other) in order to avoid addressing the difference between begotten of the Father (the Son) and proceeding of the Father (the Holy Spirit) and make it appear there is no difference.

This fallacious argument has been thoroughly destroyed in the foregoing material. Rather than repeating what has been said, let us simply recall the statement of Saint John of Damascus:

We have learned that there is a difference between begetting and procession, but the nature of the difference we in no wise understand.

ARGUMENT: 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).

RESPONSE: There are at least two problems with this argument. First, there is the unsupported assertion that [t]he external relationships of the persons of the Trinity mirror their internal relationships. There is nothing in Holy Scriptures to support this assertion. No Church Father has made such an assertion. It is another human attempt to make God fit into human ways of thinking, another failure to recognise that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so God's ways and thoughts are higher than human ways and thoughts, another failure to recognise that the human wisdom is foolishness with God.

Second, there is the assumption that Spirit of the Son is the same as the Spirit of the Father is meant in an equivalent sense. We will discuss this in the following argument.

ARGUMENT: We find the Holy Spirit referred to as the Spirit of the Son (Galatians 4:6) and the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9, Philippians 1:19). He is also called Spirit of the Father (Matthew 10:20) and the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:11). These citations show the same relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Son as to the Father.

RESPONSE: This argument was taken, verbatim, from a supporter of the Filioque and may be found at the EWTN web site.

The quote from Galatians 4:6 is actually the Spirit of His Son. Romans 8:9 contains both the phrase the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. In Philippians 1:19, the actual phrase is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 10:20, the actual phrase is Spirit of your Father. The writer of the argument did get the citation from 1 Corinthians 2:11 correct.

Because the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity is God, it is appropriate to call Him the Spirit of God. Because the Holy Spirit proceeds (has His eternal origin) from the Father, it is appropriate to call Him the Spirit of the Father. Because the Holy Spirit — in time — descended on and filled the Lord Jesus Christ who had — in time — become the incarnate God-Man, it is appropriate to call Him the Spirit of the Son or the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of Jesus Christ or the Spirit of Christ. But phrases such as the Spirit of Jesus say no more about the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit than the phrase the baseball glove of John says about the origin of the baseball glove (its manufacturer). None of the verses cited in this argument speak of the origin of the Holy Spirit, let alone His eternal, existential origin as does John 15:26.

ARGUMENT: All things that the Father has belong to the Son [John 16:15], and thus the Father's ability to proceed the Holy Spirit is given to the Son.

RESPONSE: This fallacy of this argument was previously shown in Objection 4 of the section labelled Arguments Against the Filioque. It demonstrates the Filioquist confusion between Persons of the Holy Trinity and confusion between the Divine Essence of the Holy Trinity and the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

ARGUMENT: The first distinctive statement about the Holy Spirit that we find in the Creed is that He is the Life-giver. Now, what does it mean to give life? What is the difference between a dead cat and a live one? A dead body may have all the parts that a live one has, but in a live body the parts are interacting, each part carrying out its distinctive function for the good of the whole body. The life of an organism, the spirit of an organism, is the glue that unites the parts into an integrated whole. So, in the Church, it is the Spirit that gives to each member a function to be carried out for the enhanced life of the whole Body of Christ, and gives the gifts necessary for carrying out that function. Not all members receive the same gifts; but, as the Apostle Paul points out to the Corinthians, the one gift available to every member is also the one gift most to be desired, and that is the gift of love, by which the whole body is joined together, all the members being united in love with Christ and with one another. Thus, if anyone asks what is the special activity of the Holy Spirit, we must answer that it is to unite in love. And if it is of the nature of the Spirit to unite things, then we may be sure that He has been carrying out this activity for all eternity. Before there was a Church, before there was physical life of any kind, the Spirit was the bond of love and unity between the Father and the Son. From all eternity, independently of any created being, God is the Lover, the Loved, and the Love itself. And the bond of unity and love that exists between the Father and the Son proceeds from the Father and the Son.

RESPONSE: This argument was also taken verbatim from a Filioquist. The error of subordinating the Holy Spirit to a bond of love between the Father and the Son has already been addressed. There is a second error in the above argument: equating the Holy Spirit to a member of the Church. The Holy Spirit is God, not a member of the Church. There is also a third, more subtle error in this argument: the idea that life is dependent upon role/purpose. First, the Holy Spirit, being God, is not dependent upon anything for His existence. Second, the gift of life we humans have from the Giver of Life (the Holy Spirit along with the Father and the Son) is a free gift. We live the roles of our life because we first exist. It is not necessary for us to engage in some role in order for us to exist.

ARGUMENT: A creator (e.g. a writer, sculptor, musician, architect, etc.) first conceives of an idea before he is able to give it expression (e.g. a word, statue, composition, building, etc.). The expression does not create the idea; the idea creates the expression. Thus it is that No one knows the Son, except the Father, and no one knows the Father, except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. [Matthew 11:27] Thus theologians say that the Father is aware of Himself only by contemplating His image in the Son. And, just as in any creative act on the part of a human creator, the appreciative and understanding response proceeds not simply from the creative idea but from the creative idea revealed in the creative expression of that idea, so on the level of the Divine Creator, the Holy Spirit proceeds not solely from the Father but from the Father and the Son.

RESPONSE: The first part of this argument is fine. Clearly, idea precedes expression. But one needs to be careful about applying human concepts about human beings to the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity. As soon as one expresses a limitation of any of the Divine Persons (e.g. the Father is aware of Himself only ...) alarms should go off in the mind of any right-thinking Christian. This idea seems more dependent upon human wisdom (philosophy) than upon Divine Revelation. It seems to deny the Father's self-awareness. But if even human creatures possess self-awareness, then to deny this to the Father is a gross blasphemy. Furthermore, it is unclear how the creative process of human beings can apply to the Son or the Holy Spirit Who are not creatures.

Patristic Citations

Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 4:1

I believe that the Spirit proceeds not otherwise than from the Father through the Son.

This is the typical Eastern formula through the Son discussed above.

It should be noted that whenever Tertullian is cited, one must examine from which of the three periods of his life the citation is taken: his Orthodox period, his semi-Montanist (a heresy) period, or his Montanist period. His Against Praxeas is from Tertullian's Montanist period. Since Tertullian died a heretic, he is not deemed a Father of the Church.

Origen, Commentaries on John, 2:6

We believe, however, that there are three persons: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and we believe none to be unbegotten except the Father. We admit, as more pious and true, that all things were produced through the Word, and that the Holy Spirit is the most excellent and the first in order of all that was produced by the Father through Christ.

Like Tertullian, Origen was judged by the Church to be a heretic and is not deemed a Father of the Church. The above is clearly heretical, reducing the Holy Spirit to being the first of creation, i.e. a creature. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit is uncreated God.

Saint Maximus the Confessor, Questions to Thalassium, 63

By nature the Holy Spirit in his being takes substantially his origin from the Father through the Son who is begotten.

This is the typical Eastern formula, through the Son.

Saint Gregory the Wonderworker, Confession of Faith

One God, the Father of the living Word, of subsistent Wisdom and Power, and of the Eternal Image. Perfect Begetter of the Perfect, Father of the only begotten Son. One Lord, Only of Only, God of God, Image and Likeness of the Godhead, Efficient Word, Wisdom comprehending the constitution of the universe, and Power shaping all creation. Genuine Son of Genuine Father, Invisible of Invisible, and Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal, and Eternal of Eternal. And one Holy Spirit, having substance of God, and who is manifested [to men, that is,]* through the Son; Image of the Son, Perfect of the Perfect; Life, the Cause of living; Holy Fountain; Sanctity, the Dispenser of Sanctification; in whom is manifested God the Father, who is above all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all. Perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty neither divided nor estranged.
*(The bracketed phrase above is thought to be a later editorial addition.)

... manifested through the Son means that it is through the Son that the Holy Spirit is presented to men. This has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit's eternal origin. It refers to His temporal origin as is described in John 20:22.

Didymus The Blind, The Holy Spirit, 37

As we have understood discussions . . . about the incorporeal natures, so too it is now to be recognized that the Holy Spirit receives from the Son that which he was of his own nature . . . So too the Son is said to receive from the Father the very things by which he subsists. For neither has the Son anything else except those things given him by the Father, nor has the Holy Spirit any other substance than that given him by the Son.

Didymus the Blind followed Origen in much of his teachings regarding creation. Like Origen, his writings were condemned as heretical. For this reason, he is not a Father and is not regarded as a reliable source for doctrine. This passage appears to be Neoplatonic inasmuch as it appears to echo Augustine's identification of causality as the defining attribute of Divinity. The above presents the Father as the cause of the Son and the Son as the cause of the Holy Spirit, i.e. a plurality of spheres of being, arranged in hierarchical descending order, each sphere of being derived from its superior. If this is an accurate understanding of the above, the passage should be rejected as heretical.

Saint Athanasius, To Serapion of Thmius

Insofar as we understand the special relationship of the Son to the Father, we also understand that the Spirit has this same relationship to the Son. And since the Son says, everything that the Father has is mine [John 16:15], we will discover all these things also in the Spirit. through the Son. And just as the Son was announced by the Father, who said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [Matthew 3:17], so also is the Spirit of the Son; for, as the Apostle says, He has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father! [Galatians 4:6]

We have previously addressed the passage of John 16:15. Announcing obviously is not the equivalent of existential origin. We have also previously addressed the passage of Galatians 4:6 and similar passages that speak of the 'Spirit of the Son'.

Saint Epiphanius of Salamis, The Well-Anchored Man, 8, 75

For the Only-Begotten Himself calls Him 'the Spirit of the Father', and says of Him that 'He proceeds from the Father', and 'will receive of mine', so that He is reckoned as not being foreign to the Father nor to the Son, but is of their same substance, of the same Godhead; He is Spirit divine,... of God, and He is God. For he is Spirit of God, Spirit of the Father and Spirit of the Son, not by some kind of synthesis, like soul and body in us, but in the midst of Father and Son, of the Father and of the Son, a third by appellation. ... The Father always existed and the Son always existed, and the Spirit breathes from the Father and the Son; and neither is the Son created nor is the Spirit created.

Epiphanius of Salamis is regarded as an Orthodox saint primarily for his work as a pastor of his flock. He is not a Father of the Church. Most of the above passage addresses the consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The only phrase that may bear on the Filioque is 'the Spirit breathes from the Father and the Son'. It would be helpful to study the original language. However, since ἐκπορεύεται is conventionally translated as 'proceeds' whereas this passage employs 'breathes', it seems unlikely that ἐκπορεύεται is used. That the Holy Spirit is 'breathed' forth from the Son (see John 20:22) refers to the Holy Spirit's temporal mission into the world, not His eternal origin.

Saint Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion (Breadbox), 62:4

The Spirit is always with the Father and the Son, ... proceeding from the Father and receiving of the Son, not foreign to the Father and the Son, but of the same substance, of the same Godhead, of the Father and the Son, He is with the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit ever subsisting, Spirit divine, Spirit of glory, Spirit of Christ, Spirit of the Father. ... He is third in appellation, equal in divinity, not different as compared to Father and Son, connecting Bond of the Trinity, Ratifying Seal of the Creed.

Like the previous passage from the same saint, the thrust of this passage is the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity. Saint Epiphanius does not assert that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son — only the Father is presented as the source of the Holy Spirit's procession, i.e. the eternal and existential source of the Holy Spirit. Rather, Saint Epiphanius states that the Holy Spirit receives from the Son. Though this passage does not explain what it is that the Holy Spirit receives from the Son, Orthodox teaching is that the Holy Spirit is eternally manifested by the Son. Since it would be proper, therefore, to state that the Holy Spirit receives His eternal manifestation from the Son, there is nothing in this passage to which Orthodox Christians would object.

Saint Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 18:45

Through the Son, who is one, he [the Holy Spirit] is joined to the Father, one is one, and by Himself completes the Blessed Trinity.

This is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'. It ought to be noted that the purpose of Saint Basil the Great's On the Holy Spirit was to demonstrate against the Pneumatomachoi (literally 'Spirit fighters') that the Holy Spirit was a Divine Person within the Holy Trinity. The Pneumatomachoi were anathematised at the Second Ecumenical Synod in 381.

Saint Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 18:47

The goodness of [the divine] nature, the holiness of [that] nature, and the royal dignity reach from the Father through the only-begotten [Son] to the Holy Spirit. Since we confess the persons in this manner, there is no infringing upon the holy dogma of the monarchy.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 1

The Father conveys the notion of unoriginate, unbegotten, and Father always; the only-begotten Son is understood along with the Father, coming from Him but inseparably joined to Him. Through the Son and with the Father, immediately and before any vague and unfounded concept interposes between them, the Holy Spirit is also perceived conjointly.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Letter to Ablabius

While we confess the invariableness of the [Divine] Nature we do not deny the distinction of cause and of caused, by which alone we perceive that one Person is distinguished from another, in our belief that it is one thing to be the cause and another to be from the cause; and in that which is from the cause, we recognize yet another distinction. It is one thing to be directly from the First Cause, and another to be through Him who is directly from the First, so the distinction of being Only-begotten abides undoubtedly in the Son, nor is it doubted that the Spirit is from the Father; for the middle position of the Son is protective of His distinction as Only-begotten, but does not exclude the Spirit from His natural relation to the Father.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son', albeit much more wordy.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Treasury of the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, thesis 34

Since the Holy Spirit when He is in us effects our being conformed to God, and He actually proceeds from the Father and Son, it is abundantly clear that He is of the Divine Essence, in it in essence and proceeding from it.

At first appearance this passage seems to support the Filioque. However, Saint Cyril also taught that the Holy Spirit had His 'perfect procession' from the Father. The writings of Saint Cyril were thoroughly discussed during the Filioque controversy that erupted during the patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyrus (1283-1289). The Synod of Blachernae (1285) concluded that Saint Cyril was addressing the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity rather than the eternal and existential origin of the Holy Spirit.

Interestingly, this same Saint Cyril of Alexandria's interpretation of John 21 is often used against Roman Catholic claims that Saint Peter was made leader over the Apostles. The usual response by Roman Catholics is that the 'solitary phrase of Saint Cyril is of no weight against the overwhelming patristic authority' which stands against him. Of course, the same could be said if indeed this solitary phrase of Saint Cyril supports the Filioque. It would be necessary to examine the original language to be certain.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Letters, 3:4:33

Just as the Son says 'All that the Father has is mine' [John 16:15], so shall we find that through the Son it is all also in the Spirit.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria, The Twelve Anathemas, Error 9

We must not say that the one Lord Jesus Christ has been glorified by the Spirit, in such a way as to suggest that through the Spirit He made use of a power foreign to Himself, and from the Spirit received the ability to work against unclean spirits, and to perform divine signs among men; but must rather say that the Spirit, through whom He did indeed work His divine signs, is his own.

This passage addresses the consubstantiality of the Three Divine Persons.

Saint John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 8

Likewise we believe also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life . . . God existing and addressed along with Father and Son; uncreated, full, creative, all-ruling, all-effecting, all-powerful, of infinite power, Lord of all creation and not under any lord; deifying, not deified; filling, not filled; shared in, not sharing in; sanctifying, not sanctified; the intercessor, receiving the supplications of all; in all things like to the Father and Son; proceeding from the Father and communicated through the Son.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'.

Saint John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 12

And the Holy Spirit is the power of the Father revealing the hidden mysteries of His Divinity, proceeding from the Father through the Son in a manner known to Himself, but different from that of generation.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'.

Saint John of Damascus, Dialogue Against the Manicheans, 5

I say that God is always Father since he has always his Word [the Son] coming from Himself and, through his Word, the Spirit issuing from Him.

Again, this is the typical Eastern formula, 'through the Son'.

Thus, once the the preponderance of Patristic support fot the Filioque is examined, the claims of supporters of the Filioque are shown to be non-existent. Granted, many Latin writers endorsed the Filioque, but they were caught in the wake of Augustine's disproportionate influence on the West.

Conclusion

——— summarise ———

This is a 'work in progress'. Please feel free to e-mail comments, suggestions, criticisms, arguments, etc.

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