The Repudiation of the Filioque Addition

The dogmatic-canonical achievement of the council of 879–880: its solemn reaffirmation of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed and its anathema against any who would add to, subtract from, or alter it. This file sets out the horos of the council, the Orthodox Church’s reception of it as a conciliar repudiation of the Filioque addition, and the Western qualification — reported in its own terms — that the canon forbade alteration of the Creed without naming or condemning the Filioque doctrine as such.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

The Horos on the Creed

Among the acts of the council of 879–880 (see The Council of Union) the most consequential for the later history of the Churches was its definition — its horos — concerning the Creed. The council solemnly received and confirmed the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in its original form, the form fixed by the first two Ecumenical Councils, and pronounced an anathema against anyone who should presume to compose another confession of faith, or to add to, take from, or alter the Creed of the Fathers (the horos of 879–880, in the acta, Mansi; Dvornik, The Photian Schism [1948]; Siecienski, The Filioque [2010]). The form of the definition is significant: it does not merely commend the Creed but binds it with an anathema, casting the prohibition of change in the gravest conciliar terms the Church possessed, and it frames the prohibition in the language of the earlier councils — Ephesus and Chalcedon had likewise forbidden the framing of “another faith” — so that 879–880 presents itself not as legislating a new rule but as renewing an ancient one (the horos of 879–880, in Mansi; Dvornik, The Photian Schism [1948]). With the legates of Pope John VIII present and assenting, the council thus reasserted, in the strongest conciliar terms, the inviolability of the Creed as the common possession of the whole Church, East and West — and did so, by the standard reading of the acta, with no protest from the Roman party at the table (Dvornik 1948).

The force of this for the Filioque controversy is plain on its face. The Filioque is precisely an addition to this Creed — the insertion of “and the Son” into the article on the procession of the Holy Spirit, the very addition Photius had denounced in the Encyclical of 867 and would expound against in the Mystagogy (see The Encyclical of 867 and The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit). A conciliar anathema against altering the Creed, issued with papal assent, reads naturally as a condemnation of the Filioque interpolation. The timing sharpens the point: the council sat barely a dozen years after the Frankish missionaries had carried the interpolated Creed into Bulgaria and after the synod of 867 had first condemned it, so that the prohibition was framed at the very moment the addition had become a public and contested fact of Church life, and could hardly have been heard by those present as innocent of it (Dvornik, The Photian Schism [1948]; Siecienski, The Filioque [2010]). Whether the council intended to reach the addition or only reaffirmed an old rule is the question the two readings divide on; that the rule it reaffirmed covers the addition is not in dispute.

The Orthodox Reading

The Orthodox tradition has consistently understood the horos of 879–880 as a conciliar repudiation of the Filioque addition — and, by extension, as an Eastern-and-Western (since the Roman legates assented) ratification of the principle that the Latin interpolation was unlawful. On this reading the council did, with the West present and consenting, what the Filioque controversy required: it shut the door on tampering with the Creed, and so condemned in advance and in principle the very addition that the Frankish missionaries had carried into Bulgaria and that Rome would later adopt (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]; Dvornik 1948; OrthodoxWiki, “Eighth Ecumenical Council”; the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs). The Orthodox reading draws part of its force from the setting: the horos was issued at the very council that reconciled Photius with Rome, in the years just after the Filioque had been carried into Bulgaria, and with the case against the addition fresh and public, so that the prohibition of change cannot, on this view, be read as innocent of the controversy it so exactly answers (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]; Dvornik 1948). For Orthodox theology this is one of the chief grounds for reckoning 879–880 a genuine and authoritative council, and indeed for many the true Eighth Ecumenical Council: it settled, in Photius’s own lifetime and with Roman participation, the principle at the heart of the dogmatic dispute, and it did so by the mouth of a council the Roman legates joined — making the later Western insertion, in Orthodox eyes, a breach of a rule the Roman Church had itself once subscribed (Meyendorff 1974; the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs).

The Western Qualification

The Roman Catholic and much of the modern scholarly reading enters a real qualification, and the methodology requires it to be stated plainly. Its hinge is a distinction between the text of the Creed and the doctrine of the procession. On this view the council’s anathema falls on anyone who would alter the wording of the Symbol — a discipline of the text — and leaves wholly untouched the theological question of whether the Spirit proceeds also from the Son; a Latin could in principle subscribe the horos, refusing to change the Greek Creed, while continuing to hold the double procession as true doctrine and even to confess it in the West’s own liturgical use (Siecienski, The Filioque [2010]). The reading is reinforced by the fact that the horos, as it stands in the acta, nowhere names the Filioque or the double procession, but speaks in the general terms of the older councils against framing “another faith” — language aimed, on the Western account, at the practice of interpolation rather than at any particular doctrine (Siecienski 2010).

[Disputed: whether the council of 879–880 condemned the Filioque as a doctrine, or only forbade alteration of the Creed. The Orthodox reading holds that the council’s anathema against adding to or altering the Creed amounts to a conciliar condemnation of the Filioque interpolation, settled with the assent of the Roman legates (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]; Dvornik, The Photian Schism [1948]; OrthodoxWiki). The Western and much modern scholarship hold that the horos prohibited additions to the text of the Creed in general — reasserting fidelity to the unaltered Symbol — but did not name the Filioque or condemn the doctrine of the double procession as such; on this reading Photius secured the rejection of the interpolation indirectly, through the generic prohibition, while the theological question of the Filioque‘s truth was left untouched and the Western Church’s later use of the addition was not, in Rome’s view, foreclosed by it (Siecienski, The Filioque [2010], who notes that the council “reasserted generic fidelity to Tradition” without naming the doctrine). The factual core both grant is that the council reaffirmed the original Creed and anathematized alteration of it; they differ on whether this constitutes a doctrinal condemnation of the Filioque or only a canonical prohibition of changing the Creed’s text.]

The Settled Principle and the Unsettled Doctrine

The distinction the dispute turns on is worth holding clearly, because it has shaped the whole subsequent argument. The council of 879–880 settled a canonical principle with great force and with Western assent: the Creed of the Ecumenical Councils may not be altered. On the dogmatic question — whether the double procession is true — the council issued no positive definition; it did not say “the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone” as a conciliar dogma, but rather closed the door on changing the Symbol. The two questions are genuinely separable, and keeping them apart explains much that otherwise looks like contradiction in the later history. A church might in principle accept that the wording of the Creed is fixed and inviolable while still believing the doctrine of the double procession to be true — holding, that is, that the Filioque is sound theology wrongly inserted; and conversely a church might reject the doctrine outright on the grounds the Mystagogy sets out, quite apart from any question about the text. The horos speaks decisively to the first question and is silent on the second. This is why the horos could be assented to by John VIII’s legates without Rome’s regarding itself as having condemned its own developing theology of the procession, and why, conversely, the Orthodox could regard the matter as settled in principle — and why the later Latin defense of the addition would turn so largely on disputing the council’s authority and reception rather than on contesting the bare canonical rule itself. The deeper theological dispute — the substance of the Mystagogy — remained, and remains, the dogmatic division between the Churches. What 879–880 achieved, on any reading, was to enshrine the inviolability of the Creed as a shared conciliar commitment in Photius’s own day — and to make the later unilateral insertion of the Filioque by the West, when it came, a breach of a principle that a council attended by Roman legates had affirmed. The argument the East has pressed ever since is not, in the first place, that 879–880 defined the procession, but that it bound both Churches to the unaltered Creed, so that Rome’s eventual adoption of the interpolated text in the eleventh century broke a rule its own legates had once subscribed — a procedural breach prior to, and apart from, the doctrinal quarrel (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]; the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs). The Western reply, consistent with its reading of the horos, is that no council can be held to have foreclosed by a generic canon a doctrine it never named, and that the addition expressed nothing the Latin Church did not already hold as true (Siecienski, The Filioque [2010]). Both replies live on; what neither disputes is the canon’s plain text. This guide reports the Western reply accurately and in its own terms, but it does not stand between the two as an arbiter: the Orthodox Church confesses the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father as the Creed states it, and holds the Filioque to be a teaching she has examined and never received. That is the canon’s enduring weight, and it is Photius’s most durable conciliar legacy.

References

Mansi, J. D. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. 17. The acts and horos of the council of 879–880 on the Creed.
Dvornik, Francis. The Photian Schism: History and Legend. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. On the council’s reaffirmation of the Creed and the assent of John VIII’s legates.
Siecienski, A. Edward. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. On the horos as a generic prohibition of additions rather than a named condemnation of the Filioque doctrine — the Western qualification.
Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. On the Orthodox reading of 879–880 and the Filioque.
Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848); OrthodoxWiki, “Eighth Ecumenical Council.” For the Orthodox understanding of the canon as condemning the Filioque addition.