Why Orthodoxy

A fully-sourced case, claim by claim, with traceable citations

Chapter 01 of 12 · The case for Orthodoxy

The Creed That Was Never Amended — the Filioque

One sentence — "and the Son" — added to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is the oldest, best-documented, and least-deniable fault line between East and West. This chapter traces the addition from the year 589 to its imposition in Rome in 1014, with primary sources at every step.

The form. This chapter, like every chapter of this site, is set in the form of a scholastic disputed question, the form of St. Thomas Aquinas (utrum … — videtur quod non … — sed contra … — respondeo … — ad primum …). The objections are stated in their strongest form, with their own sources; the sed contra quotes authorities the opposing side itself recognizes; the respondeo is the full determination; the replies answer each objection in order. The reader is asked to hold the site to this form: an objection that is not answered is a lost chapter.

Whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only, as the Creed of Constantinople confesses, or also from the Son — and whether the addition "and the Son" to the Creed was lawfully and irrevocably made.

Objections to the Orthodox position

  1. Obj. 1 — From Scripture. The Lord says, "All things that the Father hath are mine" (John 16:15), and He sends the Spirit from the Father (John 15:26; 16:7). What the Son sends, He in some manner hath; and in the unity of the divine nature all is common save the relations of origin. If the Son is not the principle of the Spirit's procession, the Greek position appears to divide the Trinity into two orders. The Latin addition, whatever its local history, states the faith of Scripture.1
  2. Obj. 2 — From the power of councils. The Church has the authority to confess her faith more fully as error arises: the Council of Constantinople (381) itself enlarged the Creed of Nicaea (325) against Macedonius; the Third Council of Toledo (589) added the filioque against Arianism; and the Council of Florence (1439), with Greek delegates present, received the doctrine — Laetentur Caeli declaring that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son "as from one principle." If the Church could do it at Constantinople, she could do it at Toledo and Florence; the East's refusal is schism.2
  3. Obj. 3 — From the saint common to both churches. St. Maximus the Confessor (d. 662), venerated by both East and West, expressly defended the Latins from the charge of making the Son a cause of the Spirit: he wrote that "they do not make the Son the cause of the Spirit … they know that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit." If the saint whom the East canonized held the Latin usage blameless, the East's continued separation over this doctrine is a schism against its own saint.3
  4. Obj. 4 — From the relations of origin (the strongest Latin argument). St. Thomas Aquinas argues that if the Spirit does not proceed from the Son, no relation of origin distinguishes the Spirit from the Son, both originating from the Father alone — which would yield two Sons, or a Sabellian collapse of persons. Therefore the filioque is not a local custom but the only way to keep three distinct persons in one God. This is the argument the Latin school regards as decisive, and it is stated in the Summa I, q. 36, a. 2, not as a gloss on Scripture but as a necessity of Trinitarian grammar.13

On the contrary

…And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified…

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, sealed at the Second Ecumenical Council, 381 — the words and the Son appear nowhere in it.4

And the Council of Ephesus decreed: "It is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea."5 And Pope Leo III, defending the Latin doctrine, refused nonetheless to change the Creed, and set up in St. Peter's two silver shields bearing the Creed without the addition.6 And the Council of Constantinople (879–880), with the legates of Pope John VIII present, confirmed the Creed without the addition; its Horos, as preserved, defrocks any cleric and anathematizes any layman who falsifies that confession "with illegitimate words, or additions, or subtractions."7 And the four Eastern patriarchs, in the Encyclical of 1848: the addition "exhibits incomparable boldness, acting without authority, and forcibly puts a false stamp upon the Creed, which is the common inheritance of Christianity."8

I answer that

Two distinct questions are here conjoined, and the whole controversy is dark while they are confounded. The first is theological: does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Son as from a cause of His being, or only through the Son, the Father remaining the sole cause? The second is constitutional: may the Creed of the whole Church be amended by the act of one see?

On the second — the constitutional question — the evidence is early, conciliar, and on the side of the East. The Creed in question is the confession sealed by the Second Ecumenical Council and resting under the anathema of Ephesus, canon 7 (431). For six centuries no council of the whole Church added the filioque; the one council that expressly examined the question during the centuries of communion — Constantinople (879–880) — forbade additions and subtractions to that confession. The addition entered through a local council (Toledo, 589), was spread by the Frankish court (the Libri Carolini c. 793, Frankfurt 794, Aachen 809), was resisted at Rome by Leo III — who at the Roman synod of 810 said, "I did give license to sing: but not in singing to add, subtract, nor change anything… we do not presume by reading or teaching to insert anything in the same Creed" — and entered the Roman recitation only in 1014, under Pope Benedict VIII, at the insistence of the German Emperor Henry II: not by council, but by imperial pressure, some two hundred years after Leo's protest and four hundred after Toledo.9 When reunion was attempted, Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439) ratified the addition; Florence's Greek signatories signed, then the East repudiated the union at Jerusalem (1443) and Constantinople (1484).10 And in our own century the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (1995) has said, in words that must be quoted exactly: the Catholic Church "acknowledges the conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value, as expression of the one common faith of the Church… of the Symbol professed in Greek at Constantinople in 381," and that "no profession of faith peculiar to a particular liturgical tradition can contradict this expression of the faith taught and professed by the undivided Church." That is the constitutional concession; it does not require inventing later papal quotations that the documents do not contain.11 A doctrine may be true as theology and still false as a Creed-amendment; the Creed is a constitution, and a constitution is not amended by signature.

On the first — the theological question — the East denies nothing the Latins can claim from the oldest tradition, and the history of the word shows it. The Greek Fathers distinguish, with exactitude, the sending of the Spirit through the Son in the economy (mission, John 15:26; 16:7) from the eternal origin of the Spirit (ekporeusis, John 15:26), which is from the Father alone, the unique principle, the "fountain of divinity," the monarchia for which the Cappadocians contended. The East confesses freely that the Spirit shines forth through the Son (per Filium); what it denies is that the Son is a cause of the Spirit's eternal origin. And this denial is expressly shared by Maximus the Confessor (as Objection 3 itself concedes). Thomas Aquinas, honestly read, does not share it: Summa I, q. 36, a. 4 concludes that "the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Ghost," and a. 2 treats the filioque as necessary to distinguish the persons. What Aquinas does hold, and what the Catechism repeats at §248, is that the Father remains "the principle without principle" and that He is, "with the Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds." §246 quotes Florence verbatim: the Spirit "proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration." The Orthodox quarrel is therefore not with a fiction that Aquinas held the Greek thesis; it is with Florence's definition of the Son as principle, and with putting that definition into the common Creed.12 The theological dispute is narrower than polemic admits and sharper than either side's slogans: the East grants per Filium; the West, even at its most careful, still names the Son a principle. That is why the addition cannot be treated as a harmless local gloss.

The only honest summary is the one the Edwardian Roman concession documents themselves reach: the Creed of 381 stands, in the form the East has never abandoned; and the communion of the churches requires, at minimum, the removal of the unilateral amendment. The Orthodox position is therefore not "the East is right and the West is damned"; it is "the Creed is the common inheritance, the amendment was an act of power, and the Church that never amended it kept the faith of the Councils." A soul required to confess, under anathema, a clause that was imposed — against the protest of a pope, after the anathema of a council, and against the continued confession of the East — must weigh where the constitution of the faith lies.

The chronology that grounds the whole determination is given in the table below. Historians of both communions accept the dates of Toledo, Leo III, and 1014; they still dispute the later standing of the 879–880 Horos and the authenticity of John VIII's so-called "Judas" letter to Photius. The table marks what is agreed and what is contested.

The record in one table

DateEvent
381The Second Ecumenical Council seals the Creed: "who proceedeth from the Father."4
431Ephesus, canon 7: no one may compose "a different faith" (heteran pistin) as a rival to that of Nicaea.5
589Toledo III, a local Spanish council, has the Creed recited with the addition against residual Arianism.9
793–809The Libri Carolini, Frankfurt (794), and Aachen (809) make the addition Frankish policy.9
c. 808–810Pope Leo III defends the doctrine but keeps the Creed unamended, setting up silver shields with the original text in St. Peter's.6
879–880Council of Constantinople, with Pope John VIII's legates, confirms the Creed without the addition and anathematizes every adder.7
1014Rome recites the Creed with the addition for the first time, at Emperor Henry II's insistence, under Benedict VIII.9
1274 / 1439Lyons II and Florence ratify the filioque; the East rejects both.10
1848The four Eastern patriarchs declare the addition a heresy contrary to the Creed, itemizing its history.8
1995The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity acknowledges the 381 Greek Symbol as having "conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value."11

Replies to the objections

  1. Reply to Obj. 1. John 15:26 and 16:15 speak of the sending and of the Son's having — and "all things that the Father hath are mine" (16:15) is uttered concerning the Spirit who "shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine." The Fathers and Thomas alike receive this as economic mission and as the communication of all things from the Father through the Son — not as a second principle of origin. The distinction of the Church of the Seven Councils is the distinction of the Scriptures themselves: the Spirit is "sent" by the Son (John 15:26: "whom I will send unto you from the Father") and "proceeds from the Father" (same verse). The Latins' own masters guard the monarchy of the Father; the addition, placed in the Creed, blurs what its own theology preserves.12
  2. Reply to Obj. 2. Councils indeed explain; they do not amend against the received confession. Constantinople (381) was a council of the whole Church and was received by the whole Church; its enlargement stood under Ephesus' canon 7, which forbade "a different faith" thereafter — and the council of 879–880 expressly enforced that canon against additions, with Rome's own legates present. Toledo was local; Rome's acceptance in 1014 was imperial and contradicted Leo III; Florence was rejected by the East at the first opportunity, exactly as the pre-schism East rejected every other imposition. The history of the addition is not the history of a council; it is the history of power, and the power was Rome's own popes and emperors.9
  3. Reply to Obj. 3. Maximus is quoted in full against the Objection's own purpose. He wrote that the Latins "do not make the Son the cause of the Spirit — they know that the Father is the only cause of the Son and of the Spirit" — which is exactly the Greek position denied by the addition. The common saint of both churches held that the Latin usage, properly understood, is per Filium, not ex Filio; and the Council of Florence, in defining ex Filio, exceeded what even the saint allowed. Maximus is not a witness for the addition; he is a witness that the addition was an overreach, which is why the East could never receive it.3
  4. Reply to Obj. 4. The relational argument proves too much, and the Greek tradition already answers it. Aquinas assumes that the only possible distinction among the persons is a relation of origin of the Western type. The East distinguishes the Spirit from the Son by the mode of origin from the one Father: the Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds — two relations to one cause, not one cause split in two. That is the argument of Photius's Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, the treatise this controversy actually produced, and of Mark of Ephesus at Florence: ekporeusis names origin from a cause, which the Son is not. If the Latin grammar requires a second principle to keep the persons distinct, the grammar has already left the Cappadocian monarchy. The East will not repair a Latin problem by amending the common Creed.13

Citations for this chapter

  1. John 15:26; 16:7; 16:15 (KJV): John 16:15. This is the scriptural ground most commonly adduced by Latin theologians for the double procession; see also the Catholic account in the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Filioque": newadvent.org/cathen/06073a.htm.
  2. Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (July 6, 1439), "Decree for the Greeks," defining the Spirit as proceeding from Father and Son "as from one principle": full text uoregon.edu; Denzinger 1300–1308. On the history of the addition: History of the Filioque Controversy.
  3. Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus (PG 91:136), where the saint defends the Latin usage as meaning that the Spirit proceeds "through the Son," the Father alone being cause; discussed in the standard scholarship (A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque [Oxford, 2010], pp. 73–87). The passage is the perennial proof that the Fathers of both communions received per Filium.
  4. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), preserved in the Acts of Chalcedon (451); Greek and English: NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 14, newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm; see also the First Council of Constantinople's acts: newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm.
  5. Council of Ephesus, Canon 7 (431), trans. Percival, NPNF2-14: newadvent.org/fathers/3810.htm.
  6. Leo III's silver shields (c. 808–810): documented by the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, §5.ix ("It was publicly proscribed, at its first promulgation, by two ever-to-be-remembered Popes, Leo III and John VIII," the former "by those silver plates") and §6; English text: Fordham Sourcebook. Corroborated in the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Filioque," and in Siecienski, The Filioque.
  7. Council of Constantinople (879–880), held with the legates of Pope John VIII. The Horos as preserved (Mansi 17:516ff.) defrocks clergy and anathematizes laity who falsify it "with illegitimate words, or additions, or subtractions"; the often-quoted extension to "kings and emperors" is not in that text. Survey: Wikipedia: Council of Constantinople (879); F. Dvornik, The Photian Schism (Cambridge, 1948). Catholic historians still dispute whether John VIII ratified the anti-addition Horos; that dispute is part of the record, not a footnote to be waved away.
  8. Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (May 6, 1848), §5.vii, xi: Fordham Sourcebook; documentary context: Wikipedia.
  9. Toledo III (589); Frankish adoption via the Libri Carolini (c. 793), Frankfurt (794), and Aachen (809); Leo III's 810 refusal to insert the clause; Roman recitation from 1014 under Benedict VIII at Henry II's insistence: Catholic Encyclopedia, "Filioque": newadvent.org/cathen/06073a.htm; History of the Filioque Controversy; USCCB, The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?: usccb.org (PDF).
  10. Second Council of Lyons (1274), profession of Michael VIII (Denzinger 850–861); Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (1439): uoregon.edu. Eastern rejection: Synods of Jerusalem (1443) and Constantinople (1484); the duress of the Greek signatories is documented in the contemporary Greek sources (Sylvester Syropoulos) and acknowledged by Catholic historians; see Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (2nd ed.), pp. 65–69.
  11. Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, The Greek and Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (1995/1996). The wording quoted in the respondeo is the document's own: the 381 Greek Symbol has "conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value" as expression of the one common faith, and no particular liturgical profession may contradict it. English text: christianunity.va; also the North American Orthodox–Catholic consultation, The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue? (2003): usccb.org (PDF). A 2017 papal letter to Bartholomew is sometimes cited for a restoration of the original form; that letter does not mention the Creed, and this site no longer pretends it does.
  12. Catechism of the Catholic Church §246 (Florence: "from both as from one principle"); §248 ("the principle without principle" and "with the Son, the single principle"): vatican.va, §§245–248. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 36, a. 2 (necessity of the filioque for personal distinction), a. 3 (the Son receives from the Father that the Spirit proceeds from Him), a. 4 ("the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Ghost"): newadvent.org/summa/1036.htm.
  13. Aquinas, ST I, q. 36, a. 2: newadvent.org/summa/1036.htm. Photius, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (c. 883–886), trans. J. Farrell (Studion, 1987) — the foundational Eastern treatise, arguing that two processions from two persons collapse the Father's monarchy. Mark of Ephesus's replies at Florence: that ekporeusis names origin from a cause, which the Son is not; see Siecienski, The Filioque, ch. 7, and OrthodoxWiki: Mark of Ephesus.