The Filioque Controversy

The Filioque (“and the Son”) is the single most important dogmatic disagreement between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity. The original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) confesses that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” The Western Church’s unilateral addition of “and the Son” to the Creed is a doctrine the Orthodox Church has examined and never received: the Church confesses it to be both a Trinitarian heresy (confusing the hypostatic properties of the Father) and a canonical violation (altering a creed fixed by Ecumenical Council). This controversy has been central to the division between East and West for over a millennium.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (ROCOR position noted)

Historical Origins

The Original Creed

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, finalized at the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I, 381) and confirmed at Chalcedon (451), states regarding the Holy Spirit:

“And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father (ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon), who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.”

The verb ekporeuomai (“proceeds”) denotes the Spirit’s eternal origin – His mode of hypostatic existence. The Creed attributes this procession to the Father alone.

The Addition in the West

The Filioque was not part of the original Creed. Its addition occurred gradually in the West:

Visigothic Spain: The Filioque entered the Creed in Spain, in the context of converting the Arian Visigoths to Nicene Christianity, the addition emphasizing the full divinity of the Son (against Arianism) by affirming the Spirit’s procession from both Father and Son. The traditional date is the Third Council of Toledo (589), where King Reccared and the converting Visigoths professed the Creed. [Disputed: the transmitted acts of Toledo III contain the Filioque, and this remains the conventional date (Siecienski, The Filioque, Oxford, 2010); but manuscript evidence indicates the clause may be a later interpolation into those acts – the 1992 critical edition of the Spanish conciliar collection excludes et Filio from Toledo III, and Shawn S. Smith argues the insertion occurred between 589 and Toledo VIII (653), where it is securely attested (“The Insertion of the Filioque into the Nicene Creed and a Letter of Isidore of Seville,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22.2 (2014): 261-286)]
Carolingian Frankish Empire: The Filioque spread through the Frankish church in the 8th-9th centuries. Charlemagne’s theologians at the Council of Aachen (809) advocated for the addition and even accused the Eastern Church of heresy for omitting it; Charlemagne then sent a delegation to Pope Leo III seeking approval of the interpolated Creed (Siecienski, The Filioque, Oxford, 2010).
Rome’s initial resistance: Remarkably, Pope Leo III (d. 816) affirmed the theology of the Filioque but refused to insert it into the Creed. He had the original Creed inscribed in Greek and Latin on silver shields and displayed at St. Peter’s, without the Filioque (Siecienski, The Filioque, Oxford, 2010).
Rome’s adoption: The Filioque was first sung in the Creed at a papal Mass in Rome in 1014, when Pope Benedict VIII acceded to the request of Emperor Henry II on the occasion of his imperial coronation. From this point, it became standard throughout the Western Church (Siecienski, The Filioque, Oxford, 2010).

Photius and the First Major Confrontation

The Photian Controversy (mid-9th century) brought the Filioque to the center of East-West conflict. Patriarch Photius the Great of Constantinople first attacked the addition in his Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs (867) and later wrote the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (c. 885), the foundational Orthodox polemic against the Filioque (Farrell, trans., The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987). Photius argued that the addition was:

Theologically erroneous (introducing two causes in the Trinity)
Canonically impermissible (altering the Creed)
An expression of Western theological innovation without patristic foundation

The Orthodox Theological Objection

The Monarchy of the Father

The central Orthodox objection is that the Filioque undermines the monarchy (monarchia) of the Father – the principle that the Father alone is the sole source (arche), cause (aitia), and principle of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

In Orthodox Trinitarian theology:

The Father is unbegotten (agennetos) and is the sole source of divinity within the Trinity
The Son is eternally begotten (gennetos) of the Father
The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds (ekporeuomenos) from the Father

The distinction between “begetting” and “procession” constitutes the hypostatic properties – the characteristics that distinguish the three Persons from one another. If the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, several problems arise:

Two sources in the Trinity: The Filioque implies that the Spirit has two causes of His existence, undermining the Father’s unique role as sole source. Photius argued this either introduces two principles (duo archae) or collapses the Father and Son into a single principle, confusing their distinct hypostatic properties (Photius, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit §§3-19, in the standard 89-section division; trans. T.R. Valentine).
Subordination of the Spirit: If the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the Spirit is placed in a secondary position relative to both the Father and the Son. This subtly subordinates the Third Person.
Confusion of hypostatic properties: If the Son shares in the spirating (sending forth) of the Spirit, then the property of being “source of the Spirit” is no longer unique to the Father. This confuses the Father’s unique hypostatic identity.
Reciprocity undermined: If the Son causes the Spirit, what is the Spirit’s relation to the Son? The Orthodox maintain that the persons are distinguished only by their relations of origin to the Father, not by relations among themselves.

Lossky summarizes: “The Filioque, by attributing to the Son (as well as the Father) the hypostatic quality of being the source of the Holy Spirit’s procession, confuses the distinctive characteristics of the divine persons, and by extension, undermines the very foundation of personal existence in the Trinity” (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, ch. 3, paraphrase).

The Patristic Foundation

The Orthodox position is supported by the Greek Fathers:

The Cappadocians (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa): consistently attribute the Spirit’s procession to the Father. Gregory the Theologian: “The Holy Ghost is truly Spirit, coming forth from the Father indeed, but not after the manner of the Son, for it is not by Generation but by Procession” (Oration 31.8 [NPNF II/7]).
St. John of Damascus: “We do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son: but yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son… and we confess that He is manifested and imparted to us through the Son” (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, I.8 [NPNF II/9]).
Maximus the Confessor: In his Letter to Marinus (Opusculum 10 [PG 91:136]), Maximus defended the Western Fathers’ use of similar language, arguing they did not mean the same thing as the later Filioque – they confessed “the Father as the one cause of the Son and the Spirit” and meant the Spirit’s mission and manifestation through the Son, not His eternal origin from the Son (Siecienski, The Filioque, Oxford, 2010).

John 15:26

The key scriptural text is John 15:26: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father – the Spirit of truth who proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Father – he will testify on my behalf.”

The Orthodox emphasize:

Christ says the Spirit proceeds from the Father – not “from the Father and from Me”
Christ says “I will send” – this refers to the Spirit’s temporal mission in the economy of salvation, not His eternal procession. The distinction between eternal procession (ekporeusis) and temporal mission (pemptsis / sending) is crucial.

The Western Defense

The Augustinian Tradition

The Western theological tradition draws heavily on St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), whose Trinitarian theology differs in emphasis from the Greek Fathers:

Augustine understood the Trinity primarily through the lens of mutual relations: the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinguished by their relations to one another, not solely by their relations of origin to the Father.
The Holy Spirit is the bond of love (vinculum amoris) between the Father and the Son – He proceeds from their mutual love.
Augustine wrote that “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father principally, the Father giving the procession without any interval of time, yet in common from both” (De Trinitate, XV.26.47 [NPNF I/3]); elsewhere he says the Father and the Son are “one principle” (unum principium) of the Spirit (De Trinitate, V.14.15).
Augustine maintained that the Spirit proceeds from the Father “principally” (principaliter), preserving a kind of asymmetry, but this qualification was often lost in later Western theology.

The Second Council of Lyons (1274)

At the Second Council of Lyons (1274), convened under Pope Gregory X with a delegation of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos seeking union, the Western Church dogmatized the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son “not as from two principles, but as from one principle” (Lyons II, Constitution On the Supreme Trinity and the Catholic Faith). The union of Lyons was imposed in Byzantium by imperial policy, widely resisted by clergy and people, and formally repudiated at the Council of Blachernae (1285) under Patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus (Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, rev. ed., SVS Press, 1997).

The Council of Florence (1439)

The Council of Florence attempted to resolve the dispute, declaring:

“The Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration” (Laetentur Caeli, July 6, 1439).

The Orthodox delegates signed this decree under enormous political pressure: the dying empire was seeking Western military aid against the advancing Ottomans (Constantinople ultimately fell to them in 1453). The union was repudiated by the Orthodox faithful upon the delegates’ return. Mark of Ephesus was the only Eastern bishop present at the signing who refused to sign (Isaiah of Stauropolis avoided signing by leaving beforehand), and he is venerated as a saint for his firmness (Gill, The Council of Florence, Cambridge, 1959; Siecienski, The Filioque, Oxford, 2010). The union is not recognized by the Orthodox Church.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas developed the most sophisticated Western defense of the Filioque, arguing that the persons of the Trinity are distinguished solely by their relations of opposition. If the Spirit did not proceed from the Son, there would be no relation of opposition distinguishing the Son from the Spirit, and they would be indistinguishable (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 36, a. 2).

The Orthodox response is that this argument presupposes a philosophical framework (Aristotelian relations of opposition) that is foreign to the patristic understanding of the Trinity, where the persons are distinguished by their unique relations to the Father as sole source.

The Canonical Objection

Beyond the theological arguments, the Orthodox raise a fundamental canonical objection: the Creed was defined by Ecumenical Councils, and no authority – neither a single bishop, nor a local council, nor even a patriarchate – has the right to alter it unilaterally.

The key canon invoked is Canon 7 of the Council of Ephesus (431) [Disputed: this is sometimes identified as part of the conciliar definition rather than a separately numbered canon; the numbering varies in different canonical collections]:

“The holy synod decreed that it is not permitted to anyone to produce or compose or contrive another faith/creed (hetera pistis) besides the one defined by the holy Fathers who assembled in the city of Nicaea with the Holy Spirit. Those who dare to compose another faith or to present or offer it to those wishing to turn to the knowledge of the truth… if they be bishops or clerics, they shall be deposed; if they be laymen, they shall be anathematized.”

The Orthodox argue that even if the Filioque were theologically correct (which the Church denies), its unilateral insertion into the Creed would still be a canonical violation of the highest order.

The Western response has been that the Filioque is not a “different creed” but a legitimate explication of the original Creed’s meaning. The Orthodox counter that this is precisely the kind of reasoning the canon was designed to prevent.

Modern Ecumenical Dialogue

The Klingenthal Memorandum (1979)

The Klingenthal Memorandum was produced by a consultation of theologians from Eastern and Western traditions convened by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, meeting at Schloss Klingenthal near Strasbourg, France, on October 26-29, 1978 and May 23-27, 1979; the memorandum and accompanying essays were published as Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy, ed. Lukas Vischer, Faith and Order Paper 103 (London: SPCK / Geneva: WCC, 1981). It recommended that:

The Filioque should not be used in the Nicene Creed; the original text should be restored as the shared confession of faith
The theological question of the Spirit’s relation to the Son could be explored apart from the Creed text

The North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation (2003)

The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation produced an agreed statement, “The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?” (October 25, 2003). This document:

Acknowledged that the Filioque was added to the Creed without the authority of an Ecumenical Council
Recommended that Rome restore the original Creed text
Explored the theological question, noting significant convergence between the traditions when precise terminology is used
Distinguished between the Spirit’s eternal procession (from the Father alone) and the Spirit’s relationship to the Son in the economy of salvation

Other Developments

The Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion requested that member churches consider omitting the Filioque (1978, Resolution 35.3) and recommended that future liturgical revisions print the Creed without it (1988, Resolution 6.5), though the recommendation has not been generally implemented
Some Western liturgical revisions have begun printing the Creed without the Filioque
The Roman Catholic Church has never removed the Filioque from the Latin Creed, but at John Paul II’s request the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued a clarification, The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (1995), affirming that “the Father alone is the principle without principle of the Son and the Spirit” in the sense of the original Creed and that the ekporeusis of the Spirit is from the Father alone
When celebrating with Ecumenical Patriarchs, Popes John Paul II (with Dimitrios I in 1987 and Bartholomew I on June 29, 1995) and Benedict XVI recited the Creed in its original Greek, without the Filioque – understood as recognition of the normative 381 text on shared occasions, not a change to the Latin liturgy

ROCOR’s Position

ROCOR maintains a firm rejection of the Filioque as heresy, consistent with the broader Orthodox consensus. This position is articulated with particular emphasis within ROCOR’s theological tradition:

The Filioque is not merely a misunderstanding or a legitimate theological opinion but a heretical distortion of Trinitarian dogma
Its retention by the Western churches is a fundamental obstacle to any genuine reunion
The canonical violation of unilaterally altering the Creed compounds the theological error
ROCOR theologians such as Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky address the Filioque in standard dogmatic treatments, presenting the Orthodox rejection as firm and non-negotiable (Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part I, “The Dogma of the Holy Trinity,” section “On the procession of the Holy Spirit”)

References

Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381)
Canon 7 (or Definition) of the Council of Ephesus (431), trans. NPNF II/14
Third Council of Toledo (589); cf. Shawn S. Smith, “The Insertion of the Filioque into the Nicene Creed and a Letter of Isidore of Seville,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22.2 (2014): 261-286
Second Council of Lyons (1274), Constitution On the Supreme Trinity and the Catholic Faith
Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (July 6, 1439)
St. Photius the Great, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (c. 885), trans. Joseph P. Farrell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987); also the translation of T.R. Valentine
St. Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus (Opusculum 10) [PG 91:136]
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944), ch. 3
Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, trans. Seraphim Rose (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1984)
John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974)
Gregory the Theologian, Oration 31 (Fifth Theological Oration), trans. NPNF II/7
John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I.8, trans. NPNF II/9
Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate V.14.15; XV.26.47, trans. NPNF I/3
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 36
North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, “The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?” (October 25, 2003)
Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy, ed. Lukas Vischer, Faith and Order Paper 103 (London: SPCK / Geneva: WCC, 1981) – includes the Klingenthal Memorandum (1979)
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (1995)
Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959)
Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283-1289), rev. ed. (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1997)
A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)