The Filioque: A Brief History
A. Edward Siecienski
I. Introduction
If we accept Maximus’ Letter to Marinus as authentic,1 then we must acknowledge that the dispute about the filioque is among the oldest ongoing debates in Christendom – older even than the question of papal primacy and predating the Reformation by close to a millennium. Over the centuries Greeks and Latins have written literally hundreds of volumes arguing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from ‘The Father alone’ or from the ‘Father and the Son’, maintaining that the opposing view was the worst kind of heresy to be avoided at all costs. Vladimir Lossky called the Latin doctrine of the filioque the ‘ sole dogmatic grounds for the separation of East and West’2 and Alexei Khomiakov once described the addition of the filioque to the creed of the Roman Church as an act of ‘moral fratricide’.3 Even today the filioque remains a stumbling block to the restoration of full communion between Christian East and West, despite the great progress that has been made by Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox scholars engaged in the ecumenical movement.
Before examining the work of twenty-first-century scholars on the filioque, the editor of this volume thought it would be helpful (dare I say, necessary) to examine briefly how the debate has progressed up to this point.4 After all, some of Christianity’s greatest minds, as well as some of her most vitriolic polemicists, have written on the subject of the procession – recognizing, integrating and even critiquing their contributions is an integral part of the modern-day ecumenical task. Contextualizing the modern-day debate this way might enable us to see how far we have come and how far we still need to go.
II. The debate begins (646–1054)
There is little doubt that by the seventh century Christian East and West had begun to speak about the procession of the Holy Spirit using different, although not necessarily contradictory, concepts and categories.5 This is to some degree understandable – the biblical references to the Holy Spirit, especially in relation to the Father and the Son, are capable of varied interpretations.6 Very often the authors of the New Testament did not express themselves with a great deal of precision when it came to the Trinity7 and various ‘ movements ’ of Trinitarian revelation in the New Testament, if read without reference to the others, could lend themselves to diverse, and even incompatible, understandings of relationships within the Trinity.8
The Greek fathers, led by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus, emphasized the notion that the hypostasis of the Father was defined by his unique role as unoriginate cause of the Son and Spirit, the former by generation and the latter by procession (ἐκπορεύεσθαι).9 While other fathers, chiefly Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria, also spoke of the Spirit’s eternal relationship to the Son (moving through him from the Father),10 the Greek tradition remained content with repeating the creedal affirmation of Nicea Constantinople (381) – itself derived from the Scriptures (Jn 15.26) – that the Holy Spirit ‘ proceeds from the Father’.11 Later the East would maintain that Canon 7 of the Council of Ephesus, which forbade anyone ‘ to produce or write or compose any other creed’ explicitly prohibited any alterations to this creed, whether by a single figure (e.g., the pope) or by another ecumenical council.12
Among the Western fathers, especially those who wrote after Augustine, greater emphasis was placed on the Spirit’s role as the mutual love proceeding from both the Father and the Son.13 More willing than the East to draw conclusions about the immanent Trinity from the revelation of God in history, the Latin fathers read texts such as Jn 20.22 as explicit testimony that the Spirit also proceeded from the Son.14 As the Arian crisis continued, Latin authors also felt it necessary to affirm that everything the Father has belongs also to the Son, including (so they believed) the ability to spirate the Holy Spirit. For these reasons, by the eighth century the filioque found itself inserted in the creed of several local councils in the West,15 with many authors simply assuming the doctrine to be both apostolic and ecumenical.16
The first evidence we have that the filioque had become a problematic issue between East and West is the Letter to Marinus written by Maximus the Confessor during the pontificate of Theodore I (c. 645/46).17 Apparently Pope Theodore had included the filioque in his synodal letter to Constantinople, occasioning an angry response from the Monothelite hierarchy there. Maximus defended the pope’s inclusion of the filioque, writing that in using the expression ‘ they (i.e., the Romans) do not make the Son the cause of the Spirit for they know that the Father is the one cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession (ἐκπόρευσιν), but they show the progression (προϊέναι) through him and thus the unity of the essence’.18
Although there are no signs that the procession was the immediate cause for further tension between Rome and Constantinople, by the late eighth century, events had conspired to turn the filioque into a genuinely Church-dividing issue. At the Synod of Gentilly (767), convened to resolve the iconoclast debate, discussion of the Spirit’s procession apparently occurred, although we have no knowledge of what was actually said.19 Twenty years later, responding to Patriarch Tarsus ’ confession at Nicea (787) that the Holy Spirit proceeded ‘ from the Father through the Son,’ Theodulf of Orleans in the Opus Caroli Regis attacked the East for their refusal to confess the true faith – that is, that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son.20 Eager to contrast their orthodoxy with the faith of the allegedly heretical Byzantines, the Carolingians made the filioque a cornerstone of their anti-Arian polemic. Affirmed at the Councils of Frankfurt (794) and Friuli (797), the filioque became central to the Frankish faith, even if Rome remained more hesitant about altering the creed to allow its inclusion. When monks in Jerusalem protested against this practice of reciting the filioque in the creed (as was being done at the imperial chapel in Aachen) Pope Leo III was forced to intervene. Responding to the Council of Aachen (809), Leo argued that while the filioque was theologically correct, he could ‘ not prefer himself to the fathers’ and alter the ancient creed.21
For this reason ‘ out of the love he bore for the orthodox faith’,22 Leo placed two silver shields in Rome containing the un-interpolated creed in both Greek and Latin, commanding the Franks to remove the filioque, recommending ‘that gradually... the custom of singing the Creed be dispensed with’.23
Undeterred by the pope’s actions, the Franks continued to profess the filioque, bringing their creed with them as they began preaching among the Bulgars. When Patriarch Photius of Constantinople became aware of this ‘novel’ teaching he responded quickly, setting out the arguments against the filioque that would become the basis for Orthodox objections for centuries to come. Following the Cappadocian logic, he emphasized that causality belonged to the Father alone, and thus the Son could in no way be considered a source or cause of the Spirit’s hypostasis since ‘if the Son participates in the quality or property of the Father’s own person, then the Son and the Spirit lose their own personal distinctions . . . and one falls into semi-Sabellianism’.24 The Franks, represented by such men as Ratramnus and Aeneas of Paris, responded to these charges by reminding the East of the biblical and patristic roots of the doctrine, stressing that since Jesus possessed ‘ all that the Father has ’ (Jn 16.15), this must include the Father’s ability to generate the Spirit. Although a few voices in the West tried to reconcile the views of the two sides (e.g., Anastasius Bibliothecarius and John Scotus Erigena), by the time the so-called Photian Schism was resolved in 86925 a clear dialectic had been established that would endure for the next several centuries – either the Spirit proceeded from the Father alone as the East believed, or from the Father and the Son as the West professed.
By 1014 the growing power of the Ottonians finally forced the pope to accept the filioque in the creed in Rome, forever joining the legitimacy of the addition to the pope’s right to decide the faith of the universal Church.26 By 1054 the events that brought about the ‘Great Schism’ merely confirmed the filioque’s place as the chief theological issue separating East and West – Cardinal Humbert accusing the Constantinopolitans of heresy by omitting it,27 and Patriarch Michael Cerularius calling it ‘ an artifice of the devil’ that must be condemned.28
III. The debate continues (1054–1874)
In the centuries that followed, Western scholastics, such as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas, built upon the arguments of earlier generations to bolster the case for the Spirit’s procession from both the Father and Son. Among their chief arguments was that within the consubstantial Trinity the only difference between Father, Son and Spirit was their relation to the other persons, and that this relationship must necessarily be one of origin.29 Thus to establish an eternal relation between the Son and the Spirit (which was necessary to distinguish them) ‘ we must conclude that it is necessary to say that either the Son is from the Holy Ghost; which no one says; or that the Holy Ghost is from the Son, as we [i.e., the Latins] confess’.30 Countering the charge that the filioque introduced two principles into the Godhead, thus challenging the Father’s monarchy, the scholastics claimed that ‘ when we say that he is from the Father and the Son, (it) is not from two sources but one’,31 and for this reason it was better to say that ‘the Father and Son are two spirating ... but not two spirators’; not two principles or causes, but one.32
The Greeks remained unconvinced by this argument, maintaining that procession could either be the act of a hypostasis or of the divine substance shared by all three persons. If the former, then it must be single hypostasis in order to avoid the idea, shunned by both sides, that there was more than one principle within the Godhead.33 If the latter, the consubstantial Spirit would then be responsible for his own existence, which (as the Mystagogia had argued centuries earlier) was absurd.34
The Crusades (1098–1291), inspired in large part by the desire of Pope Urban II to bring East and West closer together, instead had the unfortunate effect of consummating the schism that had grown up between them. The Fourth Crusade (1204) and the subsequent sack/takeover of Constantinople fostered an anti-Latin feeling among the Byzantines that came to equate acceptance of any Western practice (e.g., the inclusion of the filioque) as a sort of ethnic betrayal.35 Dialogues between East and West usually ended acrimoniously, and even those Byzantines with some sympathy for the Latin position (e.g., Nikephorus Blemmydes) never went as far as accepting the filioque as orthodox.36
For this reason the attempts of Emperor Michael to negotiate Church union following his recapture of the imperial capital in 1261 immediately met with fierce resistance. When the Council of Lyons met in 1274 to accept the emperor’s confession of faith and end the schism, there was never a question of discussing the theology of the procession or the addition of the filioque to the creed. Instead, the Byzantine delegation simply accepted the Latin teaching ‘ that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but as from one principle (tantum ab uno principio); not by two spirations, but by one single spiration’.37 Michael’s attempts to enforce the union met with failure, as did the theological efforts of the unionist patriarch, John IX Beccus, who argued that the formulas ‘ from the Father through the Son’ (ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς δἰ Uἱοῦ) and ‘ from the Father and the Son’ (ἐκ τόῦ Πατρὸς καὶ Uἱοῦ) were substantially equivalent.38
Upon the emperor’s death, John Beccus was deposed and the union officially rejected by the new patriarch, Gregory II of Cyprus, who convened the Synod of Blachernae in 1285.39 Gregory clearly rejected the Latin teaching on the filioque, however he believed that one could speak of an eternal relationship between the Son and the Spirit, differentiating (as he did) between the Spirit’s hypostatic existence from the Father alone and his eternal illumination or manifestation (ἀΐδιον ἔκϕανσιν) from the Father through the Son.40
As a succession of emperors continued to dangle the prospect of ecclesial union before the pope in the hope of securing Western aid against the Turks,41 a number of influential Byzantine scholars embraced the writings of Thomas Aquinas (e.g., Demetrius and Prochorus Cydones) and began to argue in favour of such a scheme. While some (e.g., Barlaam of Calabria) thought the filioque need not be a Church-dividing issue (since neither side could genuinely claim to know the ineffable God), others (e.g., Nilus Cabasilas and Gregory Palamas) continued to put forward the traditional arguments against the Latin position.42 Palamas went further than most in using the essence/energy distinction to allow for an eternal relationship between Son and Spirit, teaching that it is the natural powers and energies of God that are poured forth through the Son but not the Spirit’s hypostatic existence.43
In 1437, with the Turks poised to take Constantinople, Emperor John VIII, Patriarch Joseph II and a sizeable delegation of Eastern clergy left the imperial capital in the hopes of finally negotiating ecclesial union with the Latins. Led by such figures as Bessarion, George Scholarius and Mark Eugenicus of Ephesus, the Greek delegates made their way to Ferrara (and later to Florence) to discuss the theological issues separating East and West – purgatory, the role of the Bishop of Rome, azymes and the addition of the filioque to the creed.44 Of the four the filioque was the most debated, with days spent on the liceity of the addition and the meaning of particular patristic texts.45 The majority of the Byzantines, led by Bessarion, Isidore of Kiev and Scholarius, eventually buckled under the weight of the Latins’ patristic evidence, much of which they were encountering for the first time.46 However, Mark of Ephesus remained steadfast in his refusal to accept the authenticity of the Western codices, believing the Latins to be both schismatics and heretics who used spurious and corrupted texts to prove their case.47 On 6 July 1439 the union was celebrated with great solemnity and the Byzantines began their long trip home, but by the time Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Mark’s position had won the day and rejection of the filioque had become central to the defence of the Orthodox faith.48
For the next several centuries very little occurred by way of productive dialogue. Even when the West divided over a host of other theological issues during the Reformation, Protestants and Catholics remained of one mind on the Spirit’s procession from both Father and Son.49 The Roman Catholic Church imposed the teaching on those Eastern churches seeking communion with Rome, although they were (on occasion) willing to permit that the creed be recited without the addition.50 The Orthodox, for their part, continued to regard rejection of the filioque as a pillar of the faith, condemning any as ‘rotten members ’ who did ‘ not confess with heart and mouth . . . that the Holy Spirit proceeds out of only the Father, essentially and hypostatically, as Christ says in the Gospel.’51
IV. The debate enters a new phase (1874–Present)
In 1874 Dr Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger gathered representatives from both East and West together at Bonn to begin discussing the prospects for Church union. Among the initial subjects to be dealt with was the filioque, opening the way for the first constructive dialogue on the issue in several centuries. For their part, many of the Old Catholic and Anglican delegates admitted that the addition to the creed ‘ did not take place in an ecclesiastically legitimate way’, while Eastern delegates (following Gregory of Cyprus and Gregory Palamas) allowed that the Son did indeed have a role in the eternal ἔκλαμψις or ἔκϕανσις of the Spirit.52 Of particular import was the notion, first recognized in Maximus the Confessor’s Letter to Marinus, that the Latin term procedere was a poor translation of ἐκπορeύεσθα ι (which spoke of the Spirit’s hypostatic coming-into-being) and that perhaps the Latin teaching (i.e., ex Patre filioque procedit) should instead convey the idea that the Holy Spirit eternally flows forth (προϊέναι) from/through the Son without making the Son cause of the Spirit’s existence. Several years later Boris Bolotov tried to build upon the consensus reached at Bonn in his ‘Twenty-seven Theses on the Filioque’, arguing that the Latin and Greek understandings of the procession were admittedly diverse, but not necessarily incompatible, and thus both could be maintained as legitimate theologoumena, removing (he hoped) the filioque as a genuinely Church-dividing issue once and for all.53
Although this was a promising start, events conspired to prevent immediate action on any of these proposals. Yet the mid-twentieth century saw both a pneumatological and ecumenical renaissance, leading theologians East and West to once again take up the issue of the filioque. In 1978–79 the WCC organized a formal dialogue comprised of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant representatives, whose ‘Klingenthal Memorandum’ suggested (among other things) that ‘ the original form of the third article of the creed, without the filioque, should everywhere be recognized as the normative one and restored.’54
Beginning in 1980 the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches began a series of official theological dialogues to resolve the issues that continued to separate them. Although they did not take on the filioque directly, in 1995 the Vatican issued ‘The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit’, a document aimed at explicating and contextualizing the historic Roman position.55 Generally well-received in the Orthodox world, it was soon followed by the Joint-Statement of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, which (like the earlier Vatican statement) affirmed that from the Catholic perspective ‘ the filioque does not concern the ἐκπόρeυσις of the Spirit issued from the Father as source of the Trinity, but manifests his προϊέναι (processio) in the consubstantial communion of the Father and the Son’.56 Understood in this way, the question was asked whether the East could not recognize the legitimacy of the filioque as an expression of the Spirit’s eternal/ energetic processio, even as Rome was asked to recognize the ‘normative and irrevocable dogmatic value of the Creed of 381 . . . and use the uninterpolated creed in both catechetical and liturgical settings’.57
Much remains to be done before the filioque can finally be removed from the list of genuinely Church-dividing issues. As the history of the doctrine demonstrates, too often in the past have individuals prematurely proclaimed the matter resolved, only to see it re-emerge as a landmine on the road to unity. However, as the other authors of this volume will soon make clear, much is presently being done to move the discussion forward and hasten that day when Christians East and West can truly put the debate behind them and proclaim together their shared faith in the undivided and consubstantial Trinity.
1. For the argument in favour of authenticity see A. E. Siecienski, ‘The Authenticity of Maximus the Confessor’s Letter to Marinus: The Argument from Theological Consistency’, Vigiliae Christianae 61 (2007), pp. 189–227. The opposing view can be found in V. Karayiannis, Maxime le Confesseur: Essence et Energies de Dieu (Paris: Beauchesne, 1993), p. 89; V. Karayiannis, ‘O AGIOS MAXIMOS O OMOLOGHTHS KAI HEKKLHSIA THS KUPROU’, Apostolos Varnavas 53 (1992), pp. 379–98.
2. Vladimir Lossky, ‘The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine’, in In the Image and Likeness of God (ed. J. H. Erickson; Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), p. 71.
3. Alexei Khomiakov quoted in A. Gratieux, A. S. Khomiakov et le Mouvement Slavophile 2 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1939), p. 8.
4. For a more complete history of the doctrine, see A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
5. In an oft-quoted passage, Théodore de Régnon famously contrasted the approaches of Christian East and West on the Trinity: ‘Latin philosophy first considers the nature in itself and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy first considers the agent and afterwards passes through to find the nature’. T. de Régnon, Etudes de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité (Paris: Retaux, 1892), p. 309. Many scholars today would argue that this contrast is, at best, too broad to be useful and, at worst, a distortion of the patristic corpus.
6. In fact, many biblical scholars today question whether the New Testament authors even thought in explicitly Trinitarian terms (i.e., with Father, Son and Spirit each understood as distinct ‘persons’ within God). See, for example, D. Juel, ‘The Trinity in the New Testament’, Theology Today 54 (1997), pp. 312–24. See also A. Wainwright, The Trinity in the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1967); G. S. Hendry, The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965); C. K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit in the Gospel Tradition (New York: Macmillan, 1947); G. T. Montague, The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition (New York: Paulist, 1976); E. Schweitzer, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980); R. Brown, ‘Diverse Views of the Spirit in the New Testament: A Preliminary Contribution of Exegesis to Doctrinal Reflection’, in Biblical Exegesis & Church Doctrine (ed. R. Brown; New York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 101–13.
7. In Johannine and Pauline literature, for example, Christ and the Spirit are often assigned similar functions and even given the same name (e.g., Christ as ‘Paraclete ’ in John, the Holy Spirit as ‘Spirit of Christ’ in Galatians and Romans).
8. Boris Bobrinskoy, The Mystery of the Trinity: Trinitarian Experience and Vision in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition (trans. A. Gythiel; Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999), pp. 63–76.
9. For Gregory, and by extension the whole Eastern tradition, causality was the distinguishing characteristic of the Father’s hypostasis, since, ‘ All that the Father has belongs likewise to the Son except causality’. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 34 (Eng. trans; NPNF 2 7:337). As ‘ the one without beginning’, the Father was distinguished from the Son and the Spirit, who, while still co-eternal and co-equal, each came forth from him, each in their unique manner. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 42.15 in Brian Daley (ed.), Gregory of Nazianzus (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 147.
10. ‘The one (i.e., the Son) is directly from the First and the other (i.e., the Spirit) is through the one who is directly from the First with the result that the Only-begotten remains the Son and does not negate the Spirit’s being from the Father since the middle position of the Son both protects his distinction as Only-begotten and does not exclude the Spirit from his natural relation to the Father’. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, in F. Mueller (ed.), Gregorii Nysseni opera dogmatica minora (vol. 3.1; Leiden: Brill, 1958), p. 56.
11. While long a staple of Orthodox polemics, it should be noted that twentieth-century Johannine scholars (e.g., Rudolf Schnackenburg, Raymond Brown, C. K. Barrett) have argued that the biblical passage was not necessarily addressing the eternal procession of the Spirit, but was used in tandem with the ‘I shall send’ in the next line, establishing a synonymous parallelism. According to Brown, ‘The writer is not speculating about the interior life of God, he is concerned with the disciples in the world’. R. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII–XXI (Anchor Bible Series, 29a; New York: Doubleday, 1970), p. 689.
12. N. Tanner, ‘Canons of the Council of Ephesus’, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (vol. 1; ed. N. Tanner; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), p. 65. Peter L’Huillier acknowledges this as the basis for Orthodox objections against the filioque, but cautions that ‘it is materially impossible to base this condemnation (against the addition of the filioque) on Canon 7 of Ephesus, which did not directly envision some addition but rather the composition of another formula of faith and furthermore concerned the definition of Nicaea’. P. L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical Councils (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), p. 163.
13. ‘For whether he is the unity of both the others or their holiness, or their charity, whether he is their unity because their charity and their charity because their holiness, it is clear that he is not one of the two, since he is that by which the two are joined each to the other, by which the begotten is loved by the one who begets him and in turn loves the begetter’. Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate 6, 5, 7 in: The Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (trans. E. Hill; Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), p. 209.
14. ‘Why, then, should we not believe that the Holy Spirit proceedeth also from the Son, seeing that he is likewise the Spirit of the Son? For did he not so proceed, he could not, when showing himself to his disciples after the resurrection, have breathed upon them, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit”. For what else was signified by such a breathing upon them, but that from Him also the Holy Spirit proceedeth?’ Augustine of Hippo, In Joannis Evangelium Tractatus 99, 16, 7 in: Tractates on the Gospel of John 55–111 (trans. J. Rettig; FC, 90; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), p. 226.
15. Although the filioque was long believed to have first been included in the creed of the Third Council of Toledo (589), twentieth-century scholarship has put this in doubt. We do know that subsequent councils held at Toledo did affirm the filioque, as did the Synod of Merida (666), the Fourth Synod of Braga (675), and the Council of Hatfield (680).
16. The inclusion of the filioque in the so-called Athanasian Creed (the Quicumque Vult), for centuries believed to be the work of the great Alexandrian father but now thought to have been written in the West during the late fifth or early sixth century, gave support to this belief. The creed itself says, ‘The Father was made by no one, neither created nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, neither created nor begotten, but proceeding (Spiritus sanctus a Patre et Filio, non factus nec creatus nec genitus sed procedens). Athanasian Creed in J. Pelikan and V. Hotchkiss (eds), Creeds and Confessions of Faith in Christian Tradition 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 676–7.
17. For the dating of the Letter to Marinus see P. Sherwood, An Annotated Date List of the Works of St. Maximus the Confessor (Rome: Herder, 1952), p. 54.
18. Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum 10, PL 91, p. 136.
19. The Acta of the Synod are lost, and the scant references to the proceedings only tell us that the procession of the Spirit was among the issues discussed (‘et quaestio ventilata inter Graecos et Romanos de Trinitate, et utrum Spiritus sanctus sicut procedit a Patre, ita procedat a Filio’). A. Viennensis, Chronicon in Aetates Sex Divisum (PL 123, 125).
20. Ironically, Theodulf rejects the very argument that would persuade generations of Byzantine unionists of the filioque’s orthodoxy – i.e., that the phrases ex Patre per Filium (διὰ τοῦ Υἱόῦ) and ex Patre et Filio (ἐκ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱόῦ) were equivalent. Theodulf believed the per Filium formula was ambiguous and capable of Arian interpretation since ‘ this preposition “through” is placed recklessly in the profession of the great mysteries by those, serving up their fetid cup of Arian errors, who blaspheme and claim the Holy Spirit is a creature created through the Son just like everything else’. Opus Caroli regis contra synodum 3.3 in A. Freeman (ed.), MGH Leges 4 Concilia 2 Suppl. 1: Opus Caroliregis contra synodum (Hanover: HahnscheBuchhandlung, 1998), pp. 346–7.
21. Ratio de symbol fidei inter Leonem III papam et missos Caroli imperatoris, in Harald Willjung (ed.), Das Konzil von Aachen 809, 290 (Richard Haugh, Photius and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Controversy (Belmont: Nordland Publishing Co., 1975)), p. 84.
22. Mystagogia, 88 in Photius of Constantinople, The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery; Astoria: Studion Publishers, 1983), p. 112.
23. These shields remained in place for several centuries and were noted by Anastasius Bibliothecarius (PL 128, 1238), Peter Lombard (PL 142, 552) and Pater Abelard (PL 178, 629). See Vittorio Peri, ‘Il Simbolo Epigrafico di S. Leone III nelle Basiliche Romane dei SS. Pietro e Paolo’, Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 45 (1969), pp. 191–221.
24. Photius of Constantinople, Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs, in Photius, The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery; Astoria: Studion Publishers, 1983), p. 51.
25. In the Horos of the council that recognized Photius and ended the schism, the creed (without the filioque) was read out and a condemnation pronounced against those who ‘impose on it their own invented phrases and put this forth as a common lesson to the faithful or to those who return from some kind of heresy, and display the audacity to falsify completely the antiquity of this sacred and venerable Horos (Rule) with illegitimate words, or additions, or subtractions’. Translated by G. Dragas, ‘The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (879/880) and the Condemnation of the Filioque Addition and Doctrine’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 44 (1999), p. 364.
26. The first recorded use of the interpolated creed in Rome occurred on 14 February 1014 at the insistence of Emperor Henry II (d. 1024). Berno of Reichenau, Libellus de quibusdam Rebus ad Missae Officium Pertinentibus (PL 142, 1060–1).
27. Humbert maintained that the patriarch and his followers ‘like Pneumatomachians or Theoumachians have deleted from the creed the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son’, Excommunicatio qua feriuntur Michael Caerularius atque ejus sectatores, in C. Will (ed.), Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composite extant (Leipzig, 1861), pp. 153–4.
28. Edictum Synodi Constantinopolitanae in C. Will, Acta et scripta, pp. 155–8.
29. See, for example, Anselm of Canterbury, De Processione Spiritus Sancti, in F. S. Schmitt (ed.), Anselmi Opera Omnia (6 vols; Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons, 1938), pp. 2:175–219. English translation: Anselm of Canterbury, ‘On the Procession of the Holy Spirit’, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (ed. B. Davies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 390–434.
30. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.36, art.2 in T. Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1 (trans. English Dominican Fathers; Westminster: Christian Classics, 1981), p. 184.
31. Anselm of Canterbury, De Processione Spiritus Sancti 10 in B. Davies, Anselm of Canterbury, p. 420.
32. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.36, art.4 in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, p. 188.
33. ‘For if we were to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then the Father would be a principle of the Holy Spirit and similarly the Son would be a principle of the Holy Spirit, it would immediately follow for us that there are two principles, and we would fall into poluarcivan, that is, many principles; which is against all reason’. Nicetas of Nicomedia quoted in Anselm of Havelburg, Dialogi, 2, 1 (PL 188, 1165).
34. The Mystagogia had argued that if the ability to spirate a person within the godhead was a property of the divine nature, then the Holy Spirit would be ‘in part producer and in part be produced, in part the cause and in part the caused’. Mystagogia, 6 in Photius, Mystagogy, p. 72.
35. Describing the reaction to his unionist efforts at Lyons, George Metochites wrote: ‘Instead of refutative proof, instead of arguments from the Scriptures, what we envoys constantly hear is “You have become a Frank”! Should we who are pro-unionists, simply because we favor union with Rome, be subjected to being called supporters of a foreign nation and not Byzantine patriots?’ George Metochites, ‘Report on the Council’, in Le Bienheureux Innocent Vet son temps (ed. M. H. Laurent; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1947), pp. 419–43.
36. The 1234 debate between a delegation of Franciscans/Dominicans and the Byzantines at Nicea was typical of these exchanges. By the end of the proceedings the Latins stormed out, claiming ‘The Lord Pope and the Roman Church will never abandon a single iota of their faith!’ while the Greeks shouted back ‘It is you who are the heretics!’ G. Golubovich, ‘Disputatio Latinorum et Graecorum’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 12 (1919), pp. 428–70. Blemmydes, whose position seems to have evolved during his debates with the Latins, allowed for an eternal relationship between Son and Spirit (the Spirit having processed through him), although he never accepted the Latin formula as a valid expression of this belief. See N. Blemmydès, Oeuvres théologiques Tome I. (ed. M. Stavrou; trans. M. Stavrou; Paris: les Éd. du Cerf, 2007).
37. ‘Constitutions of the Second Council of Lyons’, in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, p. 314.
38. Among the more significant works by Beccus were the Epigraphae (pp. 141, 613–724), De unione Ecclesiarum veteris et novae Romae, De Processione Spiritus sancti, Refutatio libri Photii de processione Spiritus sancti, and Refutatio libri Georgii Cyprii.
39. For a full portrait of Patriarch Gregory and his contributions to the filioque debate see A. Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283–1289) (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1996); B. Schultze, ‘Patriarch Gregorios von Cypremüber das Filioque’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 51 (1985), pp. 163–87.
40. ‘According the common mind of the Church and the aforementioned saints, the Father is the foundation and the source of the Son and Spirit, and the only source of divinity, and the only cause. If, in fact, it is also said by some of the saints that the Spirit proceeds (ἐκπορeύεσθαι) through the Son, what is meant here is the eternal manifestation (ἔκϕανσιν) of the Spirit by the Son, not the purely personal emanation (πρόοδον) into being of the Spirit, which has existence from the Father alone’, Expositio fidei contra Veccum; pp. 142, pp. 233–46, English translation: Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, p. 220.
41. According to the Byzantine historian Sphrantzes, the Emperor Manuel II had told his son John how best to deal with the growing Turkish threat: ‘Our last resource against the Turks is their fear of our union with the Latins. ... As often as you are threatened by the miscreants, present this danger before their eyes. Propose a council; consult on the means; but ever delay and avoid the convocation of the assembly. . . . The Latins are proud; the Greeks are obstinate; neither party will recede or retract; and the attempts at perfect union will confirm the schism and alienate the churches’. Quoted in E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (vol. 6; New York: Bigelow, Brown & Co., 1845), p. 422.
42. Emmanuel Candel (ed.), Nilus Cabasilas et Theologia S.Thomae de Processione Spiritus Sancti (Vatican City: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 1945). Critical edition with French translation: T. Kislas (ed.), Sur le Saint-Esprit (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2001).
43. ‘Thus the Holy Spirit is of Christ, as of God, both in essence and in energy. According to essence and hypostasis he is of him, but not from him; according to energy, he is both of him and from him’. Gregory Palamas, Logos Apodeiktikos 2, 30; Boris Bobrinsky (ed.), Logoi Apodeiktikoi, in Gregorioutou Palama Syggrammata (ed. Panagiotes Chrestou; vol.1; Thessalonica, 1962), p. 105.
44. Prior to leaving Constantinople the Byzantines had decided to concentrate on the liceity of the addition as opposed to the theology behind it since this was believed to be the root cause of the schism. For most of the Greeks the matter was simple – the Council of Ephesus had prohibited changes to the creed and thus all the Latins need do for the union to proceed was to remove the filioque from the creed. As Mark of Ephesus said in his opening address: ‘This Symbol, this noble heritage of our Fathers, we demand back from you. Restore it then as you received it.... The addition of a word seems to you a small matter and of no great consequence. So then to remove it would cost you nothing; indeed it would be of the greatest profit, for it would bind together all Christians. . . . It [i.e., the filioque] was added in the exercise of mercy; in the exercise of mercy remove it again so that you may receive to your bosoms brethren torn apart who value fraternal love so highly’. J. Gill (ed.), Quae supersunt Actorum Graecorum Concilii Florentini: Res Ferrariae gestae, CF 5.1.1 and 5.2.2 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1953), p. 216. English translation: J. Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 163.
45. The problem of patristic texts and their use at Florence has been an issue of some study. Issues of ecumenicity (i.e., the Greeks’ knowledge of Latin authors and the Latins’ knowledge of the Greeks), authenticity, translation and methodology plagued the council fathers, preventing a genuinely productive study of the patristic witness. As John Erickson has written: ‘All agreed that we must look to the fathers, but in the absence of a common living tradition, this meant looking to the words of the fathers rather than to their message.... At the council both sides relied on assembling proof-texts, claiming for these isolated words the full message and authority of the fathers. This hardly is the mark of success’. John Erickson, ‘Filioque and the Fathers at the Council of Florence’, in The Challenge of Our Past (ed. John Erickson; Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), p. 162, 166. See also A. Alexakis, ‘The Greek Patristic Testimonia Presented at the Council of Florence (1439) in Support of the Filioque Reconsidered’, Revue Des Études Byzantines 58 (2000), pp. 149–65.
46. ‘It was not the syllogisms ... or the force of arguments that lead me to believe this [i.e., the Latin position], but the plain words of the doctors. For when I saw and heard them, straightaway I put aside all contention and controversy and yielded to the authority of those whose words they were. . . . For I judged that the holy fathers, speaking as they did in the Holy Spirit, could not have departed from the truth and I was grieved that I had not heard their words before’. E. Candal (ed.), CF 7.2: Bessarion Nicaenus, S.R.E. Cardinalis, De Spiritus Sancti processione ad Alexium Lascarin Philanthropinum (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1961), pp. 40–1. English translation: Erickson, Filioque and the Fathers at the Council of Florence, p. 159.
47. Mark claimed he would ‘receive as authentic only those texts that are in accord with the Letter of the divine Maximus [i.e., which denied causality to the Son] and the writings of St. Cyril. All those that are contrary I reject as false’. Syropoulus, Memoirs, 9.7 in V. Laurent (ed.), Les “Mémoires” du Grand Ecclésiarque de l’Église de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le Concile de Florence (1438–1439) (CF, 9; Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1971), pp. 440–2.
48. By the time they returned home in 1440 many of the delegates had already come to regret their signature on the union decree, allegedly claiming: ‘We have betrayed our faith. We have exchanged piety for impiety. We have renounced the pure sacrifice and become azymites’. Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina of Doukas (crit. ed. V. Grecu; Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Romiine, 1958), p. 315. See G. Demacopoulos, ‘The Popular Reception of the Council of Florence in Constantinople (1439–1453)’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 43 (1999), pp. 37–53.
49. Almost all of the early confessions of the Reformation churches contained the filioque in some form. For example, The Belgic Confession (1561): ‘We believe and confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son ... neither made nor created, nor begotten, but only proceeding from the two of them;’ The Second Helvetic Confession (1566): ‘The Holy Spirit truly proceeds from them both . . . and is to be worshipped with both’; The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (1571): ‘The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son’; The Westminster Confession (1647): ‘The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son’.
50. Pope Benedict XIV, in his 1742 bull, Etsi Pastoralis, stated that while ‘the Greeks are bound to believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son . . . they are not bound to proclaim it in the Creed’, later writing in the encyclical Allatae Sunt (promulgated in 1755) that the Catholic Church has ‘sometimes allowed the Orientals and Greeks to say the Creed without this addition . . . (and) at other times this See has insisted on Greeks and Orientals using the addition. It has done this when it had grounds to suspect that they were unwilling to include the addition in the Creed because they shared the false view that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father and the Son or that the Church had no power to add the phrase “and from the Son”’. Benedict XIV, Allae Sunt in C. Carlen (ed.), Papal Encyclicals 1740–1878 (New York: Consortium Press, 1981), p. 65.
51. MS Codex No. 772 of the Monastery of St Panteleimon.
52. H. Reusch, Report of the Union Conferences Held from August 10 to 16, 1875 at Bonn, p. 115.
53. B. Bolotov, ‘Thesen über das Filioque von einem russischen Theologen’, Revue internationale de Théologie 6 (1898), pp. 681–712.
54. The Memorandum and many of the papers presented at Schloss Klingenthal were collected together and published in L. Vischer (ed.), Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy (London: SPCK, 1981).
55. English translation found in ‘The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit’, Catholic International 7 (1996), pp. 36–43.
56. ‘The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue? An Agreed Statement of the North American Orthodox Catholic Theological Consultation (October 25, 2003)’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 48 (2004), pp.93–123.
57. Ibid.
Bibliography
Siecienski, Anthony Edward, “Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the 21st Century (Article), 2014,” pp. 2-19
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