And the Son?

The Shield of the Trinity diagram

“Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

Revelation 22:1

The Nicene Creed as recited in the West declares that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” — in Latin, one word: Filioque. That word does not appear in the creed as the councils framed it, and the Orthodox East has never accepted it. Around it has gathered nine centuries of division; it stood near the head of the grievances of 1054 and remains the doctrinal item most often named when Orthodox Christians explain what separates them from Rome.

This is the one page in this section whose opponent is not Protestant. The site’s page on the visible Church acknowledged that the Orthodox hold real succession and real sacraments and that their dispute with Rome is of another kind — this page is that dispute, taken seriously. The Orthodox panel states both halves of the objection in their proper order: the procedural offense first — a common creed altered by one part of the Church — and the theology of the Father’s monarchy behind it.

The Catholic panel answers with concessions the polemics forget — Rome herself resisted the insertion for two centuries — and with the defined doctrine, which condemns the very two-sources theology the East fears; with the Scriptures both sides share; with the bridge a Greek saint built before the schism existed; and with one standing fact: churches in full communion with Rome recite the creed today without the clause, with Rome’s blessing.

I invite your engagement with me on these questions. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Eastern Orthodox View

The Orthodox objection to the Filioque is routinely misstated by Western Christians as a quibble over a preposition. It is two objections, in a deliberate order — and the first has nothing to do with the theology of the Holy Spirit at all.

The procedural offense comes first. The creed of 381 was the work of an ecumenical council — the common possession of the whole Church, East and West, sealed by the Council of Ephesus in 431, which forbade the composition of any other creed. The West altered that common text unilaterally. The clause arose in seventh-century Spain, spread through the Frankish empire under Charlemagne’s pressure, and entered the creed at Rome in 1014 — without an ecumenical council, without the East being asked, and at the urging of a German emperor. Whatever the doctrine’s merits, a creed sealed by the whole Church was changed by part of it. If Rome may edit the Church’s common confession alone, what in principle may she not edit alone? The Filioque, on this reading, is not first a heresy. It is a symptom — the papal claims acting on the most sacred common text Christians possess.1

The theological objection guards the Father’s monarchy. In the Eastern grammar of the Trinity the Father is the sole fountainhead of the Godhead: the Son is begotten of Him, the Spirit proceeds from Him, and the one God is one precisely because both derive from the one Father. The Lord’s own words are exact: the Spirit of truth “who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26). He did not say “and from me,” and the Church of the councils did not presume to add what He omitted. To the Eastern ear, “from the Father and the Son” must mean one of two errors: two sources in God, which divides the divine unity, or a blurring of the personal distinction between Father and Son, since what belongs to the Father as Father is here given also to the Son.2

“Through the Son” is not “from the Son.” The Greek Fathers did speak of the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son, and the East confesses it gladly — in the Spirit’s mission to the world, and in whatever sense the Fathers intended within the eternal life of God. But the creed’s verb, ekporeuesthai, names origination from an ultimate source, and of that there is one: the Father. Photius pressed the point in the ninth century, and the synod of Constantinople in 879 — which Rome’s own legates attended — confirmed the creed against any addition. The West’s later refinements (“as from one principle”) answer a charge; they do not license the word.3

And the burden of proof runs one way. The East did not change anything. She recites today the creed as the councils wrote it, guards the vocabulary the Fathers fixed, and asks of Rome only what Rome once asked of herself — for Pope Leo III refused this very addition, and hung the creed unaltered on silver shields at St. Peter’s to keep it so. The innovating party owes the explanation. Nine centuries of Western argument that the change is harmless has never quite answered the prior question: by what right was it made?4

Endnotes
  1. Council of Ephesus (431), canon 7; the insertion at Rome in 1014 under Benedict VIII, at the urging of Emperor Henry II, is common historical ground and is conceded in the Catholic panel. ↩
  2. John 15:26, RSV. The monarchy of the Father is the organizing principle of the Cappadocian doctrine of the Trinity and remains the stated ground of the Orthodox objection. ↩
  3. The synod of Constantinople of 879–880, under Photius; its standing is itself disputed between the communions, which is part of the argument. ↩
  4. Leo III’s silver shields, engraved with the creed without the clause, are reported in the Liber Pontificalis and were appealed to on both sides of the later controversy. ↩

Catholic View

The Catholic answer begins with two concessions the polemics of nine centuries have obscured. The procedural grievance is partly just: the clause entered the creed without the East, and Rome herself resisted it — Pope Leo III approved the doctrine but refused the addition, hanging the creed unaltered on silver shields at St. Peter’s, and Rome held that line for two centuries before yielding in 1014. And the Eastern instinct the objection guards is sound: the Father is the source without source, and any doctrine that made two fountainheads in God would be heresy. The dispute worth having is whether the Filioque, as the Catholic Church actually defines it, says what the objection fears.

What the West Actually Means

The definition is precise on the very point at issue. Lyons II and Florence: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son not as from two principles but as from one principle, by one spiration. Ott grades the dogma: “The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son as from a Single Principle through a Single Spiration” — de fide. The Father remains the sole source without source; whatever the Son has, including His place in the Spirit’s procession, He has from the Father. Aquinas’s formula runs where the East could almost own it: the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, the Son having it from the Father that the Spirit proceeds through Him. Two-sources theology is not what the West teaches. It is what the West condemns.1

The Scriptures Both Sides Share

The Spirit is “the Spirit of his Son” (Gal. 4:6); the Son sends Him — “whom I shall send to you from the Father” is the first clause of the very verse the East quotes (John 15:26); and the Son’s claim is total: “All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14–15). If the Father’s “all” includes being source of the Spirit, the Son here says that this too is His — from the Father, which is exactly the Latin qualification. The last page of Scripture draws the picture: “the river of the water of life… flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1) — one river, one throne, two named from whom it flows.2

The Bridge the East Built

The Fathers divide by vocabulary, not by faith: the Latins say “from the Father and the Son,” Augustine adding the balancing word the East requires — principally from the Father; the Greeks say “through the Son,” Cyril of Alexandria going as far as any Latin. The decisive witness is Maximus the Confessor, a saint of both calendars, who answered this very controversy in the seventh century: the Latins, he wrote to Marinus, do not make the Son a cause of the Spirit — they know one cause, the Father — and their formula intends what the Greek “through the Son” intends. The East’s own greatest theologian of the age judged the two grammars one faith, before the schism existed.3

Two Verbs, One Mystery

Behind nine centuries of argument sit two verbs. The creed’s Greek ekporeuesthai names origination from an ultimate source — and used with that verb, the East is right: “and the Son” would make two fountainheads, and the Catholic Church would join in refusing it. The Latin procedere is broader, covering any relation of origin; said in Latin, the clause asserts no second source. The Vatican’s 1995 clarification, requested by John Paul II and addressed to the Orthodox, says so in as many words: the Father is the sole principle without principle, and the Filioque neither denies nor rivals the monarchy. And one standing fact says it louder than any document: the Eastern Catholic churches, in full communion with Rome, recite the creed today without the clause — with Rome’s blessing. The word is not required; the faith it protects is.4

Why the West Added It

The clause was born as a defense, not a provocation: Toledo, 589, receiving a converting Arian kingdom — against those who denied the Son’s full divinity, confessing the Spirit’s procession from Him too guarded Christ’s equality with the Father. It spread with that purpose for four centuries before it touched the creed. This does not settle the procedural question, and this page does not pretend it does: who may touch the common creed is really the question of papal authority, argued on the apostolic succession page, and the Filioque could be reconciled tomorrow with that older question still standing. Serious Orthodox voices have themselves moved: Kallistos Ware, who once treated the clause as church-dividing, later judged the problem to lie more in semantics than in basic doctrine — a revision he made in print, and one this page’s whole argument commends.5

The creed confesses the Spirit as Lord and giver of life. A dispute conducted for nine centuries about His procession, largely in His absence, is one both sides should be glad to lay down — and the materials for laying it down were written by a Greek saint thirteen centuries ago.

This is the concise case. The full essay adds the history of the clause’s entry into the creed, the patristic witnesses on both sides, the 1995 clarification’s argument in detail, and complete documentation. It is available as a Word document at the end of this page.

Endnotes
  1. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch (1955; TAN reprint, 1974), quoting Lyons II (1274) and Florence (1439): not as from two principles, but as from one. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 36, a. 3. ↩
  2. Galatians 4:6; John 15:26; John 16:14–15; Acts 2:33; Revelation 22:1, RSV. ↩
  3. Augustine, De Trinitate XV (principaliter); Cyril of Alexandria’s usage and Theodoret’s challenge, from the standard collections; Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus (c. 645–646), summarized rather than quoted — the letter survives in part and translations vary. ↩
  4. Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (1995). ↩
  5. Ware’s revised judgment is summarized rather than quoted, per this site’s practice when a primary text has not been verified; it revises the position of The Orthodox Church (1963). ↩

Summary

One Latin word — Filioque, “and the Son” — has stood between East and West for nine centuries. The Orthodox objection is double, and the procedural half comes first: the common creed of 381 was altered by the West alone, at Rome in 1014, without a council and without the East. The theological half guards the Father’s monarchy: “who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26), with no second source in God.

The concessions are real. Rome herself resisted the insertion for two centuries — Leo III hung the creed unaltered on silver shields at St. Peter’s — and the instinct the East guards is sound: two fountainheads in God would be heresy, and the Catholic Church condemns it too.

The defined doctrine says one principle, not two. Lyons II and Florence: not as from two principles but as from one principle, by one spiration — de fide in Ott’s grading. Whatever the Son has, He has from the Father, including His place in the Spirit’s procession.

Scripture speaks in both directions. The Spirit of his Son (Gal. 4:6); “whom I shall send to you” in the very verse the East quotes; “all that the Father has is mine” (John 16:15); one river flowing “from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1).

The East built the bridge itself. Maximus the Confessor, a saint of both calendars, judged in the seventh century that the Latins make no second cause of the Spirit and that the two grammars intend one faith. The 1995 Vatican clarification says the same in modern terms: the Greek ekporeuesthai and Latin procedere are different verbs, and with the Greek verb the East is right to refuse the clause.

One standing fact outweighs the polemics. The Eastern Catholic churches, in full communion with Rome, recite the creed today without the Filioque — with Rome’s blessing. The word is not required; the faith it protects is.

What remains is not about the Spirit. Who may touch the common creed is the question of papal authority, argued on the apostolic succession page — and it would remain if the Filioque were reconciled tomorrow. On the doctrine itself, serious Orthodox voices have moved toward the judgment this page argues: more semantics than substance. A dispute conducted for nine centuries about the Spirit, largely in His absence, is one both sides should be glad to lay down.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download And the Son? (.docx)