The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?
An Agreed Statement of the
North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation
Saint Paul's College, Washington, DC
October 25, 2003
From 1999 until 2003, the North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation has
focused its discussions on an issue that has been identified, for more than
twelve centuries, as one of the root causes of division between our Churches:
our divergent ways of conceiving and speaking about the origin of the Holy
Spirit within the inner life of the triune God. Although both of our
traditions profess "the faith of Nicaea" as the normative expression of our
understanding of God and God's involvement in his creation, and take as the
classical statement of that faith the revised version of the Nicene creed
associated with the First Council of Constantinople of 381, most Catholics and
other Western Christians have used, since at least the late sixth century, a
Latin version of that Creed, which adds to its confession that the Holy Spirit
"proceeds from the Father" the word Filioque: "and from the Son". For
most Western Christians, this term continues to be a part of the central
formulation of their faith, a formulation proclaimed in the liturgy and used as
the basis of catechesis and theological reflection. It is, for Catholics and
most Protestants, simply a part of the ordinary teaching of the Church, and as
such, integral to their understanding of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Yet
since at least the late eighth century, the presence of this term in the
Western version of the Creed has been a source of scandal for Eastern
Christians, both because of the Trinitarian theology it expresses, and because
it had been adopted by a growing number of Churches in the West into the
canonical formulation of a received ecumenical council without corresponding
ecumenical agreement. As the medieval rift between Eastern and Western
Christians grew more serious, the theology associated with the term Filioque,
and the issues of Church structure and authority raised by its adoption,
grew into a symbol of difference, a classic token of what each side of divided
Christendom has found lacking or distorted in the other.
Our common study of this question has involved our Consultation in much
shared research, prayerful reflection and intense discussion. It is our hope
that many of the papers produced by our members during this process will be
published together, as the scholarly context for our common statement. A
subject as complicated as this, from both the historical and the theological
point of view, calls for detailed explanation if the real issues are to be
clearly seen. Our discussions and our common statement will not, by themselves,
put an end to centuries of disagreement among our Churches. We do hope, however,
that they will contribute to the growth of mutual understanding and respect,
and that in God's time our Churches will no longer find a cause for separation
in the way we think and speak about the origin of that Spirit, whose fruit is
love and peace (see Gal 5.22).
I. The Holy Spirit in the Scriptures
In the Old Testament "the spirit of God" or "the spirit of the Lord" is
presented less as a divine person than as a manifestation of God's creative
power — God's "breath" (ruach YHWH) - forming the world as an ordered
and habitable place for his people, and raising up individuals to lead his
people in the way of holiness. In the opening verses of Genesis, the spirit of
God "moves over the face of the waters" to bring order out of chaos (Gen 1.2).
In the historical narratives of Israel, it is the same spirit that "stirs" in
the leaders of the people (Jud 13.25: Samson), makes kings and military
chieftains into prophets (I Sam 10.9-12; 19.18-24: Saul and David), and enables
prophets to "bring good news to the afflicted" (Is 61.1; cf. 42.1; II Kg 2.9).
The Lord tells Moses he has "filled" Bezalel the craftsman "with the spirit of
God," to enable him to fashion all the furnishings of the tabernacle according
to God's design (Ex 31.3). In some passages, the "holy spirit" (Ps 51.13) or
"good spirit" (Ps 143.10) of the Lord seems to signify his guiding presence
within individuals and the whole nation, cleansing their own spirits (Ps. 51.12-
14) and helping them to keep his commandments, but "grieved" by their sin (Is
63.10). In the prophet Ezekiel's mighty vision of the restoration of
Israel from the death of defeat and exile, the "breath" returning to the
people's desiccated corpses becomes an image of the action of God's own breath
creating the nation anew: "I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live..
." (Ezek 37.14).
In the New Testament writings, the Holy Spirit of God (pneuma Theou)
is usually spoken of in a more personal way, and is inextricably connected with
the person and mission of Jesus. Matthew and Luke make it clear that Mary
conceives Jesus in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, who "overshadows"
her (Mt 1.18, 20; Lk 1.35). All four Gospels testify that John the Baptist —
who himself was "filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb" (Lk 1.15)
— witnessed the descent of the same Spirit on Jesus, in a visible manifestation
of God's power and election, when Jesus was baptized (Mt 3.16; Mk 1.10; Lk 3.22;
Jn 1.33). The Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to struggle with the
devil (Mt 4.1; Lk 4.1), fills him with prophetic power at the start of his
mission (Lk 4.18-21), and manifests himself in Jesus' exorcisms (Mt 12.28, 32).
John the Baptist identified the mission of Jesus as "baptizing" his disciples
"with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Mt 3.11; Lk 3.16; cf. Jn 1.33), a
prophecy fulfilled in the great events of Pentecost (Acts 1.5), when the
disciples were "clothed with power from on high" (Lk 24.49; Acts 1.8). In the
narrative of Acts, it is the Holy Spirit who continues to unify the community
(4.31-32), who enables Stephen to bear witness to Jesus with his life (8.55),
and whose charismatic presence among believing pagans makes it clear that they,
too, are called to baptism in Christ (10.47).
In his farewell discourse in the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of the Holy
Spirit as one who will continue his own work in the world, after he has
returned to the Father. He is "the Spirit of truth," who will act as "another
advocate (parakletos)" to teach and guide his disciples (14.16-17),
reminding them of all Jesus himself has taught (14.26). In this section of the
Gospel, Jesus gives us a clearer sense of the relationship between this
"advocate," himself, and his Father. Jesus promises to send him "from the
Father," as "the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father" (15.26); and the
truth that he teaches will be the truth Jesus has revealed in his own person
(see 1,14; 14.6): "He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare
it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take
what is mine and declare it to you." (16.14-15)
The Epistle to the Hebrews represents the Spirit simply as
speaking in the Scriptures, with his own voice (Heb 3.7; 9.8). In Paul's
letters, the Holy Spirit of God is identified as the one who has finally
"defined" Jesus as "Son of God in power" by acting as the agent of his
resurrection (Rom 1.4; 8.11). It is this same Spirit, communicated now to us,
who conforms us to the risen Lord, giving us hope for resurrection and life (
Rom 8.11), making us also children and heirs of God (Rom 8.14-17), and forming
our words and even our inarticulate groaning into a prayer that expresses hope
(Rom 8.23-27). "And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us."
(Rom 5.5)
II. Historical Considerations
Throughout the early centuries of the Church, the Latin and Greek traditions
witnessed to the same apostolic faith, but differed in their ways of describing
the relationship among the persons of the Trinity. The difference generally
reflected the various pastoral challenges facing the Church in the West and in
the East. The Nicene Creed (325) bore witness to the faith of the Church as it
was articulated in the face of the Arian heresy, which denied the full divinity
of Christ. In the years following the Council of Nicaea, the Church continued
to be challenged by views questioning both the full divinity and the full
humanity of Christ, as well as the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Against these
challenges, the fathers at the Council of Constantinople (381) affirmed the
faith of Nicaea, and produced an expanded Creed, based on the Nicene but also
adding significantly to it.
Of particular note was this Creed's more extensive affirmation regarding the
Holy Spirit, a passage clearly influenced by Basil of Caesaraea's classic
treatise On the Holy Spirit, which had probably been finished some six
years earlier. The Creed of Constantinople affirmed the faith of the Church in
the divinity of the Spirit by saying: "and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the
Giver of life, who proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Father, who with the
Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the
prophets." Although the text avoided directly calling the Spirit "God," or
affirming (as Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus had done) that the Spirit is
"of the same substance" as the Father and the Son — statements that doubtless
would have sounded extreme to some theologically cautious contemporaries - the
Council clearly intended, by this text, to make a statement of the Church's
faith in the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, especially in opposition to
those who viewed the Spirit as a creature. At the same time, it was not a
concern of the Council to specify the manner of the Spirit's origin, or to
elaborate on the Spirit's particular relationships to the Father and the Son.
The acts of the Council of Constantinople were lost, but the text of its
Creed was quoted and formally acknowledged as binding, along with the Creed of
Nicaea, in the dogmatic statement of the Council of Chalcedon (451). Within
less than a century, this Creed of 381 had come to play a normative role in the
definition of faith, and by the early sixth century was even proclaimed in the
Eucharist in Antioch, Constantinople, and other regions in the East. In
regions of the Western churches, the Creed was also introduced into the
Eucharist, perhaps beginning with the third Council of Toledo in 589. It was
not formally introduced into the Eucharistic liturgy at Rome, however, until
the eleventh century — a point of some importance for the process of official
Western acceptance of the Filioque.
No clear record exists of the process by which the word Filioque was
inserted into the Creed of 381 in the Christian West before the sixth century.
The idea that the Spirit came forth "from the Father through the Son" is
asserted by a number of earlier Latin theologians, as part of their insistence
on the ordered unity of all three persons within the single divine Mystery (e.g.,
Tertullian, Adversus Praxean 4 and 5). Tertullian, writing at the
beginning of the third century, emphasizes that Father, Son and Holy Spirit all
share a single divine substance, quality and power (ibid. 2), which he
conceives of as flowing forth from the Father and being transmitted by the Son
to the Spirit (ibid. 8). Hilary of Poitiers, in the mid-fourth century, in the
same work speaks of the Spirit both as simply being "from the Father" (De
Trinitate 12.56) and as "having the Father and the Son as his source" (
ibid. 2.29); in another passage, Hilary points to John 16.15 (where Jesus
says: "All things that the Father has are mine; therefore I said that [the
Spirit] shall take from what is mine and declare it to you"), and wonders aloud
whether "to receive from the Son is the same thing as to proceed from the
Father" (ibid. 8.20). Ambrose of Milan, writing in the 380s, openly
asserts that the Spirit "proceeds from (procedit a) the Father and the
Son," without ever being separated from either (On the Holy Spirit 1.11.
20). None of these writers, however, makes the Spirit's mode of origin the
object of special reflection; all are concerned, rather, to emphasize the
equality of status of all three divine persons as God, and all acknowledge that
the Father alone is the source of God's eternal being.
The earliest use of Filioque language in a credal context is in the
profession of faith formulated for the Visigoth King Reccared at the local
Council of Toledo in 589. This regional council anathematized those who did not
accept the decrees of the first four Ecumenical Councils (canon 11), as well as
those who did not profess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the
Son (canon 3). It appears that the Spanish bishops and King Reccared believed
at that time that the Greek equivalent of Filioque was part of the
original creed of Constantinople, and apparently understood that its purpose
was to oppose Arianism by affirming the intimate relationship of the Father and
Son. On Reccared's orders, the Creed began to be recited during the Eucharist,
in imitation of the Eastern practice. From Spain, the use of the Creed with the
Filioque spread throughout Gaul.
Nearly a century later, a council of English bishops was held at Hatfield in
680 under the presidency of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, a Byzantine
asked to serve in England by Pope Vitalian. According to the Venerable Bede (
Hist. Eccl. Gent. Angl. 4.15 [17]), this Council explicitly affirmed its
faith as conforming to the five Ecumenical Councils, and also declared that the
Holy Spirit proceeds "in an ineffable way (inenarrabiliter)" from the
Father and the Son.
By the seventh century, three related factors may have contributed to a
growing tendency to include the Filioque in the Creed of 381 in the West,
and to the belief of some Westerners that it was, in fact, part of the original
creed. First, a strong current in the patristic tradition of the West, summed
up in the works of Augustine (354-430), spoke of the Spirit's proceeding from
the Father and the Son. (e.g., On the Trinity 4.29; 15.10, 12, 29, 37;
the significance of this tradition and its terminology will be discussed below.)
Second, throughout the fourth and fifth centuries a number of credal
statements circulated in the Churches, often associated with baptism and
catechesis. The formula of 381 was not considered the only binding expression
of apostolic faith. Within the West, the most widespread of these was the
Apostles' Creed, an early baptismal creed, which contained a simple affirmation
of belief in the Holy Spirit without elaboration. Third, however, and of
particular significance for later Western theology, was the so-called
Athanasian Creed (Quicunque). Thought by Westerners to be composed by
Athanasius of Alexandria, this Creed probably originated in Gaul about 500, and
is cited by Caesarius of Arles (+542). This text was unknown in the East, but
had great influence in the West until modern times. Relying heavily on
Augustine's treatment of the Trinity, it clearly affirmed that the Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son. A central emphasis of this Creed was its
strong anti-Arian Christology: speaking of the Spirit as proceeding from the
Father and the Son implied that the Son was not inferior to the Father
in substance, as the Arians held. The influence of this Creed undoubtedly
supported the use of the Filioque in the Latin version of the Creed of
Constantinople in Western Europe, at least from the sixth century onwards.
The use of the Creed of 381 with the addition of the Filioque became
a matter of controversy towards the end of the eighth century, both in
discussions between the Frankish theologians and the see of Rome and in the
growing rivalry between the Carolingian and Byzantine courts, which both now
claimed to be the legitimate successors of the Roman Empire. In the wake of the
iconoclastic struggle in Byzantium, the Carolingians took this opportunity to
challenge the Orthodoxy of Constantinople, and put particular emphasis upon the
significance of the term Filioque, which they now began to identify as a
touchstone of right Trinitarian faith. An intense political and cultural
rivalry between the Franks and the Byzantines provided the background for the <
i>Filioque debates throughout the eighth and ninth centuries.
Charlemagne received a translation of the decisions of the Second Council of
Nicaea (787). The Council had given definitive approval to the ancient practice
of venerating icons. The translation proved to be defective. On the basis of
this defective translation, Charlemagne sent a delegation to Pope Hadrian I
(772-795), to present his concerns. Among the points of objection, Charlemagne's
legates claimed that Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople, at his installation,
did not follow the Nicene faith and profess that the Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son, but confessed rather his procession from the Father
through the Son (Mansi 13.760). The Pope strongly rejected Charlemagne's
protest, showing at length that Tarasius and the Council, on this and other
points, maintained the faith of the Fathers (ibid. 759-810). Following
this exchange of letters, Charlemagne commissioned the so-called Libri
Carolini (791-794), a work written to challenge the positions both of the
iconoclast council of 754 and of the Council of Nicaea of 787 on the veneration
of icons. Again because of poor translations, the Carolingians misunderstood
the actual decision of the latter Council. Within this text, the Carolingian
view of the Filioque also was emphasized again. Arguing that the word
Filioque was part of the Creed of 381, the Libri Carolini reaffirmed
the Latin tradition that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and
rejected as inadequate the teaching that the Spirit proceeds from the Father
through the Son.
While the acts of the local synod of Frankfurt in 794 are not extant, other
records indicate that it was called mainly to counter a form of the heresy of
"Adoptionism" then thought to be on the rise in Spain. The emphasis of a number
of Spanish theologians on the integral humanity of Christ seemed, to the court
theologian Alcuin and others, to imply that the man Jesus was "adopted" by the
Father at his baptism. In the presence of Charlemagne, this council — which
Charlemagne seems to have promoted as "ecumenical" (see Mansi 13.899-906) -
approved the Libri Carolini, affirming, in the context of maintaining
the full divinity of the person of Christ, that the Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son. As in the late sixth century, the Latin formulation of the
Creed, stating that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, was
enlisted to combat a perceived Christological heresy.
Within a few years, another local council, also directed against "Spanish
Adoptionism," was held in Fréjus (Friuli) (796 or 797). At this meeting,
Paulinus of Aquileia (+802), an associate of Alcuin in Charlemagne's court,
defended the use of the Creed with the Filioque as a way of opposing
Adoptionism. Paulinus, in fact, recognized that the Filioque was an
addition to the Creed of 381 but defended the interpolation, claiming that it
contradicted neither the meaning of the creed nor the intention of the Fathers.
The authority in the West of the Council of Fréjus, together with that of
Frankfurt, ensured that the Creed of 381 with the Filioque would be used
in teaching and in the celebration of the Eucharist in churches throughout much
of Europe.
The different liturgical traditions with regard to the Creed came into
contact with each other in early-ninth-century Jerusalem. Western monks, using
the Latin Creed with the added Filioque, were denounced by their Eastern
brethren. Writing to Pope Leo III for guidance, in 808, the Western monks
referred to the practice in Charlemagne's chapel in Aachen as their model. Pope
Leo responded with a letter to "all the churches of the East" in which he
declared his personal belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the
Father and the Son. In that response, the Pope did not distinguish between his
personal understanding and the issue of the legitimacy of the addition to the
Creed, although he would later resist the addition in liturgies celebrated at
Rome.
Taking up the issue of the Jerusalem controversy, Charlemagne asked Theodulf
of Orleans, the principal author of the Libri Carolini, to write a
defense of the use of the word Filioque. Appearing in 809, De Spiritu
Sancto of Theodulf was essentially a compilation of patristic citations
supporting the theology of the Filioque. With this text in hand,
Charlemagne convened a council in Aachen in 809-810 to affirm the doctrine of
the Spirit's proceeding from the Father and the Son, which had been questioned
by Greek theologians. Following this council, Charlemagne sought Pope Leo's
approval of the use of the creed with the Filioque (Mansi 14.23-76). A
meeting between the Pope and a delegation from Charlemagne's council took place
in Rome in 810. While Leo III affirmed the orthodoxy of the term Filioque
, and approved its use in catechesis and personal professions of faith, he
explicitly disapproved its inclusion in the text of the Creed of 381, since the
Fathers of that Council - who were, he observes, no less inspired by the Holy
Spirit than the bishops who had gathered at Aachen - had chosen not to include
it. Pope Leo stipulated that the use of the Creed in the celebration of the
Eucharist was permissible, but not required, and urged that in the interest of
preventing scandal it would be better if the Carolingian court refrained from
including it in the liturgy. Around this time, according to the Liber
Pontificalis, the Pope had two heavy silver shields made and displayed in
St. Peter's, containing the original text of the Creed of 381 in both Greek and
Latin. Despite his directives and this symbolic action, however, the
Carolingians continued to use the Creed with the Filioque during the
Eucharist in their own dioceses.
The Byzantines had little appreciation of the various developments regarding
the Filioque in the West between the sixth and ninth centuries.
Communication grew steadily worse, and their own struggles with monothelitism,
iconoclasm, and the rise of Islam left little time to follow closely
theological developments in the West. However, their interest in the
Filioque became more pronounced in the middle of the 9th century,
when it came to be combined with jurisdictional disputes between Rome and
Constantinople, as well as with the activities of Frankish missionaries in
Bulgaria. When Byzantine missionaries were expelled from Bulgaria by King Boris,
under Western influence, they returned to Constantinople and reported on
Western practices, including the use of the Creed with the Filioque.
Patriarch Photios of Constantinople, in 867, addressed a strongly worded
encyclical to the other Eastern patriarchs, commenting on the political and
ecclesiastical crisis in Bulgaria as well as on the tensions between
Constantinople and Rome. In this letter, Photios denounced the Western
missionaries in Bulgaria and criticized Western liturgical practices.
Most significantly, Patriarch Photios called the addition of the Filioque
in the West a blasphemy, and presented a substantial theological argument
against the view of the Trinity which he believed it depicted. Photios's
opposition to the Filioque was based upon his view that it signifies two
causes in the Trinity, and diminishes the monarchy of the Father. Thus, the
Filioque seemed to him to detract from the distinctive character of each
person of the Trinity, and to confuse their relationships, paradoxically
bearing in itself the seeds of both pagan polytheism and Sabellian modalism (
Mystagogy 9, 11). In his letter of 867, Photios does not, however,
demonstrate any knowledge of the Latin patristic tradition behind the use of
the Filioque in the West. His opposition to the Filioque would
subsequently receive further elaboration in his Letter to the Patriarch of
Aquileia in 883 or 884, as well as in his famous Mystagogy of the Holy
Spirit, written about 886.
In concluding his letter of 867, Photios called for an ecumenical council
that would resolve the issue of the interpolation of the Filioque, as
well as illuminating its theological foundation. A local council was held in
Constantinople in 867, which deposed Pope Nicholas I - an action which
increased tensions between the two sees. In 863, Nicholas himself had refused
to recognize Photios as Patriarch because of his allegedly uncanonical
appointment. With changes in the imperial government, Photios was forced to
resign in 867, and was replaced by Patriarch Ignatius, whom he himself had
replaced in 858. A new council was convened in Constantinople later in 869.
With papal representatives present and with imperial support, this Council
excommunicated Photios, and was subsequently recognized in the Medieval West,
for reasons unrelated to the Filioque or Photios, as the Eighth
Ecumenical Council, although it was never recognized as such in the East.
The relationship between Rome and Constantinople changed when Photios again
became patriarch in 877, following the death of Ignatius. In Rome, Pope
Nicholas had died in 867, and was succeeded by Pope Hadrian II (867-872), who
himself anathematized Photios in 869. His successor, Pope John VIII (872-882),
was willing to recognize Photios as the legitimate Patriarch in Constantinople
under certain conditions, thus clearing the way for a restoration of better
relations. A Council was held in Constantinople in 879-880, in the presence of
representatives from Rome and the other Eastern Patriarchates. This Council,
considered by some modern Orthodox theologians to be ecumenical, suppressed the
decisions of the earlier Council of 869-870, and recognized the status of
Photios as patriarch. It affirmed the ecumenical character of the Council of
787 and its decisions against iconoclasm. There was no extensive discussion of
the Filioque, which was not yet a part of the Creed professed in Rome
itself, and no statement was made by the Council about its theological
justification; yet this Council formally reaffirmed the original text of the
Creed of 381, without the Filioque, and anathematized anyone who would
compose another confession of faith. The Council also spoke of the Roman see in
terms of great respect, and allowed the Papal legates the traditional
prerogatives of presidency, recognizing their right to begin and to close
discussions and to sign documents first. Nevertheless, the documents give no
indication that the bishops present formally recognized any priority of
jurisdiction for the see of Rome, outside of the framework of the Patristic
understanding of the communion of Churches and the sixth-century canonical
theory of the Pentarchy. The difficult question of the competing claims of the
Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople to jurisdiction in Bulgaria was left
to be decided by the Emperor. After the Council, the Filioque continued
to be used in the Creed in parts of Western Europe, despite the intentions of
Pope John VIII, who, like his predecessors, maintained the text sanctioned by
the Council of 381.
A new stage in the history of the controversy was reached in the early
eleventh century. During the synod following the coronation of King Henry II as
Holy Roman Emperor at Rome in 1014, the Creed, including the Filioque,
was sung for the first time at a papal Mass. Because of this action, the
liturgical use of the Creed, with the Filioque, now was generally
assumed in the Latin Church to have the sanction of the papacy. Its inclusion
in the Eucharist, after two centuries of papal resistance of the practice,
reflected a new dominance of the German Emperors over the papacy, as well as
the papacy's growing sense of its own authority, under imperial protection,
within the entire Church, both western and eastern.
The Filioque figured prominently in the tumultuous events of 1054,
when excommunications were exchanged by representatives of the Eastern and
Western Churches meeting in Constantinople. Within the context of his anathemas
against Patriarch Michael I Cerularios of Constantinople and certain of his
advisors, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, the legate of Pope Leo IX, accused
the Byzantines of improperly deleting the Filioque from the Creed, and
criticized other Eastern liturgical practices. In responding to these
accusations, Patriarch Michael recognized that the anathemas of Humbert did not
originate with Leo IX, and cast his own anathemas simply upon the papal
delegation. Leo, in fact, was already dead and his successor had not been
elected. At the same time, Michael condemned the Western use of the Filioque
in the Creed, as well as other Western liturgical practices. This exchange
of limited excommunications did not lead, by itself, to a formal schism between
Rome and Constantinople, despite the views of later historians; it did, however,
deepen the growing estrangement between Constantinople and Rome.
The relationship between the Church of Rome and the Churches of
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were seriously damaged
during the period of the crusades, and especially in the wake of the infamous
Fourth Crusade. In 1204, Western Crusaders sacked the city of Constantinople,
long the commercial and political rival of Venice, and Western politicians and
clergy dominated the life of the city until it was reclaimed by Emperor Michael
VIII Palaiologos in 1261. The installation of Western bishops in the
territories of Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem, who were loyal to Rome
and to the political powers of Western Europe, became a tragically visible new
expression of schism. Even after 1261, Rome supported Latin patriarchs in these
three ancient Eastern sees. For most Eastern Christians, this was a clear sign
that the papacy and its political supporters had little regard for the
legitimacy of their ancient churches.
Despite this growing estrangement, a number of notable attempts were made to
address the issue of the Filioque between the early twelfth and mid-
thirteenth century. The German Emperor Lothair III sent bishop Anselm of
Havelberg to Constantinople in 1136, to negotiate a military alliance with
Emperor John II Comnenos. While he was there, Anselm and Metropolitan
Nicetas of Nicomedia held a series of public discussions about subjects
dividing the Churches, including the Filioque, and concluded that the
differences between the two traditions were not as great as they had thought (
PL 188.1206B — 1210 B). A letter from Orthodox Patriarch Germanos II (1222-1240)
to Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) led to further discussions between Eastern and
Western theologians on the Filioque at Nicaea in 1234. Subsequent
discussions were held in 1253-54, at the initiative of Emperor John III
Vatatzes (1222-1254) and Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254). In spite of these
efforts, the continuing effects of the Fourth Crusade and the threat of the
Turks, along with the jurisdictional claims of the papacy in the East, meant
that these well-intentioned efforts came to no conclusion.
Against this background, a Western council was held in Lyons in 1274 (Lyons II),
after the restoration of Constantinople to Eastern imperial control. Despite
the consequences of the crusades, many Byzantines sought to heal the wounds of
division and looked to the West for support against the growing advances of the
Turks, and Pope Gregory X (1271-1276) enthusiastically hoped for reunion. Among
the topics agreed upon for discussion at the council was the Filioque.
Yet the two Byzantine bishops who were sent as delegates had no real
opportunity to present the Eastern perspective at the Council. The Filioque
was formally approved by the delegates in the final session on July 17, in a
brief constitution which also explicitly condemned those holding other views on
the origin of the Holy Spirit. Already on July 6, in accord with an agreement
previously reached between papal delegates and the Emperor in Constantinople,
the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches was proclaimed, but it was
never received by the Eastern clergy and faithful, or vigorously promoted by
the Popes in the West. In this context it should be noted that in his letter
commemorating the 700th anniversary of this council (1974), Pope
Paul VI recognised this and added that "the Latins chose texts and formulae
expressing an ecclesiology which had been conceived and developed in the West.
It is understandable [...] that a unity achieved in this way could not be
accepted completely by the Eastern Christian mind." A little further on, the
Pope, speaking of the future Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, observed: "...it will
take up again other controverted points which Gregory X and the Fathers of
Lyons thought were resolved."
At the Eastern Council of Blachernae (Constantinople) in 1285, in fact, the
decisions of the Council of Lyons and the pro-Latin theology of former
Patriarch John XI Bekkos (1275-1282) were soundly rejected, under the
leadership of Patriarch Gregory II, also known as Gregory of Cyprus (1282-1289).
At the same time, this council produced a significant statement addressing the
theological issue of the Filioque. While firmly rejecting the "double
procession" of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, the statement spoke of
an "eternal manifestation" of the Spirit through the Son. Patriarch
Gregory's language opened the way, at least, towards a deeper, more complex
understanding of the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in both
the East and the West. (see below) This approach was developed further by
Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), in the context of his distinction between the
essence and the energies of the divine persons. Unfortunately, these openings
had little effect on later medieval discussions of the origin of the Spirit, in
either the Eastern or the Western Church. Despite the concern shown by
Byzantine theologians, from the time of Photios, to oppose both the idea of the
Filioque and its addition to the Latin creed, there is no reference to
it in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, a collection containing more than
sixty anathemas representing the doctrinal decisions of Eastern councils
through the fourteenth century.
One more attempt was made, however, to deal with the subject authoritatively
on an ecumenical scale. The Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1445) again
brought together representatives from the Church of Rome and the Churches of
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, to discuss a wide range of
controversial issues, including papal authority and the Filioque. This
Council took place at a time when the Byzantine Empire was gravely threatened
by the Ottomans, and when many in the Greek world regarded military aid from
the West as Constantinople's only hope. Following extensive discussions by
experts from both sides, often centered on the interpretation of patristic
texts, the union of the Churches was declared on July 6, 1439. The Council's
decree of reunion, Laetentur caeli, recognized the legitimacy of the
Western view of the Spirit's eternal procession from the Father and the Son, as
from a single principle and in a single spiration. The Filioque was
presented here as having the same meaning as the position of some early Eastern
Fathers that the Spirit exists or proceeds "through the Son." The Council also
approved a text which spoke of the Pope as having "primacy over the whole world,
" as "head of the whole church and father and teacher of all Christians."
Despite Orthodox participation in these discussions, the decisions of Florence
— like the union decree of Lyons II - were never received by a representative
body of bishops or faithful in the East, and were formally rejected in
Constantinople in 1484.
The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the fracturing effect of the
Protestant Reformation in the West, as well as subsequent Latin missions in the
former Byzantine world and the establishment of Eastern Churches in communion
with Rome, led to a deepening of the schism, accompanied by much polemical
literature on each side. For more than five hundred years, few opportunities
were offered to the Catholic and Orthodox sides for serious discussion of the
Filioque, and of the related issue of the primacy and teaching authority
of the bishop of Rome. Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism entered into a period of
formal isolation from each other, in which each developed a sense of being the
only ecclesiastical body authentically representing the apostolic faith.
For example, this is expressed in Pius IX's encyclical In Suprema Petri Sede
of January 6, 1848, and in Leo XIII's encyclical Praeclara Gratulationis
Publicae of June 20, 1894, as well as the encyclical of the Orthodox
Patriarchs in 1848 and the encyclical of the Patriarchate of Constantinople of
1895, each reacting to the prior papal documents. Ecumenical discussions of the
Filioque between the Orthodox Churches and representatives of the Old
Catholics and Anglicans were held in Germany in 1874-75, and were occasionally
revived during the century that followed, but in general little substantial
progress was made in moving beyond the hardened opposition of traditional
Eastern and Western views.
A new phase in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox
Church began formally with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the Pan-
Orthodox Conferences (1961-1968), which renewed contacts and dialogue. From
that time, a number of theological issues and historical events contributing to
the schism between the churches have begun to receive new attention. In this
context, our own North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation was established
in 1965, and the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue
between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches was established in 1979. Although a
committee of theologians from many different Churches, sponsored by the Faith
and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, studied the Filioque
question in depth in 1978 and 1979, and concluded by issuing the
"Klingenthal Memorandum" (1979), no thorough new joint discussion of the issue
has been undertaken by representatives of our two Churches until our own study.
The first statement of the Joint International Commission (1982), entitled "The
Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the
Trinity," does briefly address the issue of the Filioque, within the
context of an extensive discussion of the relationship of the persons of the
Holy Trinity. The Statement says: "Without wishing to resolve yet the
difficulties which have arisen between the East and the West concerning the
relationship between the Son and the Spirit, we can already say together that
this Spirit, which proceeds from the Father (Jn. 15:26) as the sole source of
the Trinity, and which has become the Spirit of our sonship (Rom. 8:15) since
he is already the Spirit of the Son (Gal.4:6), is communicated to us,
particularly in the Eucharist, by this Son upon whom he reposes in time and
eternity (Jn. 1:32)." (No. 6).
Several other events in recent decades point to a greater willingness on the
part of Rome to recognize the normative character of the original creed of
Constantinople. When Patriarch Dimitrios I visited Rome on December 7,
1987, and again during the visit of Patriarch Bartholomew I to Rome in June
1995, both patriarchs attended a Eucharist celebrated by Pope John Paul II in
St. Peter's Basilica. On both occasions the Pope and Patriarch proclaimed the
Creed in Greek (i.e., without the Filioque). Pope John Paul II and
Romanian Patriarch Teoctist did the same in Romanian at a papal Mass in Rome on
October 13, 2002. The document Dominus Iesus: On the Unicity and Salvific
Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, issued by the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith on August 6, 2000, begins its theological
considerations on the Church's central teaching with the text of the creed of
381, again without the addition of the Filioque. While no interpretation
of these uses of the Creed was offered, these developments suggest a new
awareness on the Catholic side of the unique character of the original Greek
text of the Creed as the most authentic formulation of the faith that unifies
Eastern and Western Christianity.
Not long after the meeting in Rome between Pope John Paul II and Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Vatican published the document "The Greek and
Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit" (September 13,
1995). This text was intended to be a new contribution to the dialogue between
our churches on this controversial issue. Among the many observations it makes,
the text says: "The Catholic Church acknowledges the conciliar, ecumenical,
normative and irrevocable value, as the expression of one common faith of the
Church and of all Christians, of the Symbol professed in Greek at
Constantinople in 381 by the Second Ecumenical Council. No confession of faith
peculiar to a particular liturgical tradition can contradict this expression of
faith taught and professed by the undivided Church." Although the
Catholic Church obviously does not consider the Filioque to be a
contradiction of the creed of 381, the significance of this passage in the 1995
Vatican statement should not be minimized. It is in response to this important
document that our own study of the Filioque began in 1999, and we hope
that this present statement will serve to carry further the positive
discussions between our communions that we have experienced ourselves.
III. Theological Reflections
In all discussions about the origin of the Holy Spirit within the Mystery of
God, and about the relationships of Father, Son and Holy Spirit with each other,
the first habit of mind to be cultivated is doubtless a reverent modesty.
Concerning the divine Mystery itself, we can say very little, and our
speculations always risk claiming a degree of clarity and certainty that is
more than their due. As Pseudo-Dionysius reminds us, "No unity or trinity or
number or oneness or fruitfulness, or any other thing that either is a creature
or can be known to any creature, is able to express the Mystery, beyond all
mind and reason, of that transcendent Godhead which in a super-essential way
surpasses all things" (On the Divine Names 13.3). That we do, as
Christians, profess our God, who is radically and indivisibly one, to be the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — three "persons" who can never be
confused with or reduced to one another, and who are all fully and literally
God, singly and in the harmonious whole of their relationships with each other -
is simply a summation of what we have learned from God's self-revelation in
human history, a revelation that has reached its climax in our being able, in
the power of the Holy Spirit, to confess Jesus as the Eternal Father's Word and
Son. Surely our Christian language about God must always be regulated by the
Holy Scriptures, and by the dogmatic tradition of the Church, which interprets
the content of Scripture in a normative way. Yet there always remains the
difficult hermeneutical problem of applying particular Scriptural terms and
texts to the inner life of God, and of knowing when a passage refers simply to
God's action within the "economy" of saving history, or when it should be
understood as referring absolutely to God's being in itself. The division
between our Churches on the Filioque question would probably be less
acute if both sides, through the centuries, had remained more conscious of the
limitations of our knowledge of God.
Secondly, discussion of this difficult subject has often been hampered by
polemical distortions, in which each side has caricatured the position of the
other for the purposes of argument. It is not true, for instance, that
mainstream Orthodox theology conceives of the procession of the Spirit, within
God's eternal being, as simply unaffected by the relationship of the Son to the
Father, or thinks of the Spirit as not "belonging" properly to the Son when the
Spirit is sent forth in history. It is also not true that mainstream Latin
theology has traditionally begun its Trinitarian reflections from an abstract,
unscriptural consideration of the divine substance, or affirms two causes of
the Spirit's hypostatic existence, or means to assign the Holy Spirit a role
subordinate to the Son, either within the Mystery of God or in God's saving
action in history.
We are convinced from our own study that the Eastern and Western theological
traditions have been in substantial agreement, since the patristic period, on a
number of fundamental affirmations about the Holy Trinity that bear on the
Filioque debate:
- both traditions clearly affirm that the Holy Spirit is a
distinct hypostasis or person within the divine Mystery, equal in status to
the Father and the Son, and is not simply a creature or a way of talking about
God's action in creatures;
- although the Creed of 381 does not state it explicitly, both
traditions confess the Holy Spirit to be God, of the same divine substance
(homoousios) as Father and Son;
- both traditions also clearly affirm that the Father is
the primordial source (arché) and ultimate cause (
aitia) of the divine being, and thus of all God's operations: the
"spring" from which both Son and Spirit flow, the "root" of their being and
fruitfulness, the "sun" from which their existence and their activity radiates;
- both traditions affirm that the three hypostases or
persons in God are constituted in their hypostatic existence and
distinguished from one another solely by their relationships of origin,
and not by any other characteristics or activities;
- accordingly, both traditions affirm that all the
operations of God - the activities by which God summons created reality
into being, and forms that reality, for its well-being, into a unified and
ordered cosmos centered on the human creature, who is made in God's image — are
the common work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even though each of them
plays a distinctive role within those operations that is determined by their
relationships to one another.
Nevertheless, the Eastern and Western traditions of reflection on the
Mystery of God have clearly developed categories and conceptions that differ in
substantial ways from one another. These differences cannot simply be explained
away, or be made to seem equivalent by facile argument. We might summarize our
differences as follows:
1) Terminology
The Filioque controversy is first of all a controversy over words. As
a number of recent authors have pointed out, part of the theological
disagreement between our communions seems to be rooted in subtle but
significant differences in the way key terms have been used to refer to the
Spirit's divine origin. The original text of the Creed of 381, in speaking of
the Holy Spirit, characterizes him in terms of John 15.26, as the one "who
proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Father": probably influenced by the
usage of Gregory the Theologian (Or. 31.8), the Council chose to restrict
itself to the Johannine language, slightly altering the Gospel text (changing
to pneuma...ho para tou Patros ekporeuetai to: to pneuma to hagion...
to ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon) in order to emphasize that the "coming
forth" of the Spirit begins "within" the Father's own eternal hypostatic role
as source of the divine Being, and so is best spoken of as a kind of "movement
out of (ek)" him. The underlying connotation of ekporeuesthai
("proceed," "issue forth") and its related noun, ekporeusis ("procession")
, seems to have been that of a "passage outwards" from within some point of
origin. Since the time of the Cappadocian Fathers, at least, Greek theology
almost always restricts the theological use of this term to the coming-forth of
the Spirit from the Father, giving it the status of a technical term for the
relationship of those two divine persons. In contrast, other Greek words, such
as proienai, "go forward," are frequently used by the Eastern Fathers to
refer to the Spirit's saving "mission" in history from the Father and the risen
Lord.
The Latin word procedere, on the other hand, with its related noun
processio, suggests simply "movement forwards," without the added
implication of the starting-point of that movement; thus it is used to
translate a number of other Greek theological terms, including proienai,
and is explicitly taken by Thomas Aquinas to be a general term denoting "origin
of any kind" (Summa Theologiae I, q. 36, a.2), including — in a
Trinitarian context - the Son's generation as well as the breathing-forth of
the Spirit and his mission in time. As a result, both the primordial origin of
the Spirit in the eternal Father and his "coming forth" from the risen Lord
tend to be designated, in Latin, by the same word, procedere, while
Greek theology normally uses two different terms. Although the difference
between the Greek and the Latin traditions of understanding the eternal origin
of the Spirit is more than simply a verbal one, much of the original concern in
the Greek Church over the insertion of the word Filioque into the Latin
translation of the Creed of 381 may well have been due — as Maximus the
Confessor explained (Letter to Marinus: PG 91.133-136) - to a
misunderstanding on both sides of the different ranges of meaning implied in
the Greek and Latin terms for "procession".
2) The Substantive Issues.
Clearly two main issues separate the Eastern and Western Churches in their
history of debating the Filioque: one theological, in the strict sense,
and one ecclesiological.
a) Theological:
If "theology" is understood in its Patristic sense, as reflection on God as
Trinity, the theological issue behind this dispute is whether the Son is to be
thought of as playing any role in the origin of the Spirit, as a hypostasis or
divine "person," from the Father, who is the sole ultimate source of the divine
Mystery. The Greek tradition, as we have seen, has generally relied on John 15.
26 and the formulation of the Creed of 381 to assert that all we know of the
Spirit's hypostatic origin is that he "proceeds from the Father," in a way
distinct from, but parallel to, the Son's "generation" from the Father (e.g.,
John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 1.8). However, this same
tradition acknowledges that the "mission" of the Spirit in the world also
involves the Son, who receives the Spirit into his own humanity at his baptism,
breathes the Spirit forth onto the Twelve on the evening of the resurrection,
and sends the Spirit in power into the world, through the charismatic preaching
of the Apostles, at Pentecost. On the other hand, the Latin tradition since
Tertullian has tended to assume that since the order in which the Church
normally names the persons in the Trinity places the Spirit after the Son, he
is to be thought of as coming forth "from" the Father "through" the Son.
Augustine, who in several passages himself insists that the Holy Spirit
"proceeds from the Father," because as God he is not inferior to the Son (De
Fide et Symbolo 9.19; < i>Enchiridion 9.3), develops, in other texts,
his classic understanding that the Spirit also "proceeds" from the Son because
he is, in the course of sacred history, the Spirit and the "gift" of both
Father and Son (e.g., On the Trinity 4.20.29; Tractate on Gospel of
John 99.6-7), the gift that begins in their own eternal exchange of love
(On the Trinity 15.17. 29). In Augustine's view, this involvement of the
Son in the Spirit's procession is not understood to contradict the Father's
role as the single ultimate source of both Son and Spirit, but is itself given
by the Father in generating the Son: "the Holy Spirit, in turn, has this from
the Father himself, that he should also proceed from the Son, just as he
proceeds from the Father" (Tractate on Gospel of John 99.8).
Much of the difference between the early Latin and Greek traditions on this
point is clearly due to the subtle difference of the Latin procedere
from the Greek ekporeuesthai: as we have observed, the Spirit's "coming
forth" is designated in a more general sense by the Latin term, without the
connotation of ultimate origin hinted at by the Greek. The Spirit's
"procession" from the Son, however, is conceived of in Latin theology as a
somewhat different relationship from his "procession" from the Father, even
when — as in the explanations of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas — the relationship
of Father and Son to the Holy Spirit is spoken of as constituting "a single
principle" of the Spirit's origin: even in breathing forth the Spirit together,
according to these later Latin theologians, the Father retains priority, giving
the Son all that he has and making possible all that he does.
Greek theologians, too, have often struggled to find ways of expressing a
sense that the Son, who sends forth the Spirit in time, also plays a mediating
role of some kind in the Spirit's eternal being and activity. Gregory of Nyssa,
for instance, explains that we can only distinguish the hypostases within the
Mystery of God by "believing that one is the cause, the other is from the cause;
and in that which is from the cause, we recognize yet another distinction: one
is immediately from the first one, the other is through him who is immediately
from the first one." It is characteristic of the "mediation" (mesiteia)
of the Son in the origin of the Spirit, he adds, that it both preserves his own
unique role as Son and allows the Spirit to have a "natural relationship" to
the Father. (To Ablabius: GNO III/1, 56.3-10) In the thirteenth century,
the Council of Blachernae (1285), under the leadership of Constantinopolitan
Patriarch Gregory II, took further steps to interpret Patristic texts that
speak of the Spirit's being "through" the Son in a sense consistent with the
Orthodox tradition. The Council proposed in its Tomos that although
Christian faith must maintain that the Holy Spirit receives his existence and
hypostatic identity solely from the Father, who is the single cause of the
divine Being, he "shines from and is manifested eternally through the Son, in
the way that light shines forth and is manifest through the intermediary of the
sun's rays." (trans. A. Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium [St. Vladimir's,
1996] 219) In the following century, Gregory Palamas proposed a similar
interpretation of this relationship in a number of his works; in his
Confession of 1351, for instance, he asserts that the Holy Spirit "has the
Father as foundation, source, and cause," but "reposes in the Son" and "is sent
— that is, manifested — through the Son." (ibid. 194) In terms of the
transcendent divine energy, although not in terms of substance or hypostatic
being, "the Spirit pours itself out from the Father through the Son, and, if
you like, from the Son over all those worthy of it," a communication which may
even be broadly called "procession" (ekporeusis) (Apodeictic Treatise
1: trans. J. Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas [St. Vladimir's,
1974] 231-232).
The Greek and Latin theological traditions clearly remain in some tension
with each other on the fundamental issue of the Spirit's eternal origin as a
distinct divine person. By the Middle Ages, as a result of the influence of
Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, Western theology almost universally conceives of the
identity of each divine person as defined by its "relations of opposition" — in
other words, its mutually defining relations of origin - to the other two, and
concludes that the Holy Spirit would not be hypostatically distinguishable from
the Son if the Spirit "proceeded" from the Father alone. In the Latin
understanding of processio as a general term for "origin," after all, it
can also be said that the Son "proceeds from the Father" by being generated
from him. Eastern theology, drawing on the language of John 15. 26 and the
Creed of 381, continues to understand the language of "procession" (
ekporeusis) as denoting a unique, exclusive, and distinctive causal
relationship between the Spirit and the Father, and generally confines the
Son's role to the "manifestation" and "mission" of the Spirit in the divine
activities of creation and redemption. These differences, though subtle, are
substantial, and the very weight of theological tradition behind both of them
makes them all the more difficult to reconcile theologically with each other.
b) Ecclesiological:
The other issue continually present since the late eighth century in the
debate over the Filioque is that of pastoral and teaching authority in
the Church — more precisely, the issue of the authority of the bishop of Rome
to resolve dogmatic questions in a final way, simply in virtue of his office.
Since the Council of Ephesus (431), the dogmatic tradition of both Eastern and
Western Churches has repeatedly affirmed that the final norm of orthodoxy in
interpreting the Christian Gospel must be "the faith of Nicaea." The
Orthodox tradition sees the normative expression of that faith to be the Creeds
and canons formulated by those Councils that are received by the Apostolic
Churches as "ecumenical": as expressing the continuing and universal Apostolic
faith. The Catholic tradition also accepts conciliar formulations as
dogmatically normative, and attributes a unique importance to the seven
Councils that are accepted as ecumenical by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
However, in recognizing the universal primacy of the bishop of Rome in matters
of faith and of the service of unity, the Catholic tradition accepts the
authority of the Pope to confirm the process of conciliar reception, and to
define what does and does not conflict with the "faith of Nicaea" and the
Apostolic tradition. So while Orthodox theology has regarded the ultimate
approval by the Popes, in the eleventh century, of the use of Filioque
in the Latin Creed as a usurpation of the dogmatic authority proper to
ecumenical Councils alone, Catholic theology has seen it as a legitimate
exercise of his primatial authority to proclaim and clarify the Church's faith.
As our own common study has repeatedly shown, it is precisely at times in which
issues of power and control have been of concern to our Churches that the
question of the Filioque has emerged as a central concern: held out as a
condition for improving relations, or given as a reason for allowing disunity
to continue unhealed.
As in the theological question of the origin of the Holy Spirit discussed
above, this divergence of understanding of the structure and exercise of
authority in the Church is clearly a very serious one: undoubtedly Papal
primacy, with all its implications, remains the root issue behind all the
questions of theology and practice that continue to divide our communions. In
the continuing discussion of the Filioque between our Churches, however,
we have found it helpful to keep these two issues methodologically separate
from one another, and to recognize that the mystery of the relationships among
the persons in God must be approached in a different way from the issue of
whether or not it is proper for the Western Churches to profess the faith of
Nicaea in terms that diverge from the original text of the Creed of 381.
3) Continuing our Reflections
It has often been remarked that the theology of the Holy Spirit is an
underdeveloped region of Christian theological reflection. This seems to hold
true even of the issue of the origin of the Holy Spirit. Although a great
deal has been written about the reasons for and against the theology of the
Filioque since the Carolingian era, most of it has been polemical in nature,
aimed at justifying positions assumed by both sides to be non-negotiable.
Little effort has been made, until modern times, to look for new ways of
expressing and explaining the Biblical and early Christian understanding of the
person and work of the Holy Spirit, which might serve to frame the discussion
in a new way and move all the Churches towards a consensus on essential matters
that would be in continuity with both traditions. Recently, a number of
theologians, from a variety of Churches, have suggested that the time may now
be at hand to return to this question together, in a genuinely ecumenical
spirit, and to seek for new developments in our articulation of the Apostolic
faith that may ultimately win ecumenical Christian reception.
Recognizing its challenges, our Consultation supports such a common
theological enterprise. It is our hope that a serious process of reflection on
the theology of the Holy Spirit, based on the Scriptures and on the whole
tradition of Christian theology, and conducted with an openness to new
formulations and conceptual structures consonant with that tradition, might
help our Churches to discover new depths of common faith and to grow in respect
for the wisdom of our respective forbears. We urge, too, that both our Churches
persist in their efforts to reflect — together and separately — on the theology
of primacy and synodality within the Church's structures of teaching and
pastoral practice, recognizing that here also a continuing openness to
doctrinal and practical development, intimately linked to the Spirit's work in
the community, remains crucially necessary. Gregory Nazianzen reminds us, in
his Fifth Theological Oration on the divinity of the Holy Spirit, that
the Church's slow discovery of the Spirit's true status and identity is simply
part of the "order of theology (taxis tēs theologias)," by which
"lights break upon us gradually" in our understanding of the saving Mystery of
God. (Or. 31.27) Only if we "listen to what the Spirit is saying to the
Churches" (Rev 3.22), will we be able to remain faithful to the Good News
preached by the Apostles, while growing in the understanding of that faith,
which is theology's task.
IV. Recommendations
We are aware that the problem of the theology of the Filioque, and
its use in the Creed, is not simply an issue between the Catholic and Orthodox
communions. Many Protestant Churches, too, drawing on the theological legacy of
the Medieval West, consider the term to represent an integral part of the
orthodox Christian confession. Although dialogue among a number of these
Churches and the Orthodox communion has already touched on the issue, any
future resolution of the disagreement between East and West on the origin of
the Spirit must involve all those communities that profess the Creed of 381 as
a standard of faith. Aware of its limitations, our Consultation nonetheless
makes the following theological and practical recommendations to the members
and the bishops of our own Churches:
1. that our Churches commit themselves to a new and earnest dialogue
concerning the origin and person of the Holy Spirit, drawing on the Holy
Scriptures and on the full riches of the theological traditions of both our
Churches, and to looking for constructive ways of expressing what is central to
our faith on this difficult issue;
2. that all involved in such dialogue expressly
recognize the limitations of our ability to make definitive assertions about
the inner life of God;
3. that in the future, because of the progress in
mutual understanding that has come about in recent decades, Orthodox and
Catholics refrain from labeling as heretical the traditions of the other side
on the subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit;
4. that Orthodox and Catholic theologians
distinguish more clearly between the divinity and hypostatic identity of the
Holy Spirit, which is a received dogma of our Churches, and the manner of the
Spirit's origin, which still awaits full and final ecumenical resolution;
5. that those engaged in dialogue on this issue
distinguish, as far as possible, the theological issues of the origin of the
Holy Spirit from the ecclesiological issues of primacy and doctrinal authority
in the Church, even as we pursue both questions seriously together;
6. that the theological dialogue between our Churches also give careful
consideration to the status of later councils held in both our Churches after
those seven generally received as ecumenical.
7. that the Catholic Church, as a consequence of
the normative and irrevocable dogmatic value of the Creed of 381, use the
original Greek text alone in making translations of that Creed for catechetical
and liturgical use.
8. that the Catholic Church, following a growing theological consensus, and
in particular the statements made by Pope Paul VI, declare that the
condemnation made at the Second Council of Lyons (1274) of those "who presume
to deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son" is
no longer applicable.
We offer these recommendations to our Churches in the conviction, based on
our own intense study and discussion, that our traditions' different ways of
understanding the procession of the Holy Spirit need no longer divide us. We
believe, rather, that our profession of the ancient Creed of Constantinople
must be allowed to become, by our uniform practice and our new attempts at
mutual understanding, the basis for a more conscious unity in the one faith
that all theology simply seeks to clarify and to deepen. Although our
expression of the truth God reveals about his own Being must always remain
limited by the boundaries of human understanding and human words, we believe
that it is the very "Spirit of truth," whom Jesus breathes upon his Church, who
remains with us still, to "guide us into all truth" (John 16.13). We pray that
our Churches' understanding of this Spirit may no longer be a scandal to us, or
an obstacle to unity in Christ, but that the one truth towards which he guides
us may truly be "a bond of peace" (Eph 4.3), for us and for all Christians.