The Doctrinal Core I: The Filioque and Papal Primacy

Beneath the schism’s long history lie two doctrines: the Filioque — the Western addition to the Creed teaching the Spirit’s procession “from the Father and the Son” — and the Roman claims of universal jurisdiction and papal infallibility, defined at Vatican I. This file states each in Rome’s own terms from Rome’s own texts, and states the Orthodox confession as the teaching of the Church: doctrines she has examined and not received. It expands and defers to the hub articles The Filioque Controversy and Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Filioque

Rome’s position, in its own terms. The Latin church confesses that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Filioque) “as from one principle and by a single spiration” — so defined at Lyons II (1274) and again at Florence in the decree Laetentur Caeli (1439), which adds that the Fathers who said the Spirit proceeds “through the Son” meant the same thing, and that the addition to the Creed was licitly and reasonably made (Second Council of Lyons, 1274, Constitution on the Trinity; Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli, 6 July 1439; both in Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, London/Washington, 1990). The doctrine’s Latin patristic pedigree runs through Augustine’s De Trinitate (the Spirit as the mutual love of Father and Son, proceeding from both, though “principally” from the Father: Augustine, De Trinitate 15.26.47) and Anselm and Aquinas’ systematization (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 36); its modern authoritative statement is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church §§246–248, which presents the Latin and Greek traditions as complementary. In 1995 the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued a clarification conceding the normative character of the original Greek text of the Creed and the distinction between the Spirit’s eternal ekporeusis from the Father alone and his processio in the Latin sense (“The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit,” L’Osservatore Romano, 13 September 1995; analyzed in Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, final chapters).

The Church’s confession. The Orthodox Church confesses, with the Creed of the Second Ecumenical Council, that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26: “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father”), and she has examined the Filioque — at the council of 879–880, in Photius’ Mystagogy, at Blachernae 1285, in the hesychast councils’ theology, at Florence through St. Mark of Ephesus, and in the encyclicals of 1848 and 1895 — and not received it (Photius, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, PG 102; the Tomus of Blachernae 1285 in Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, rev. ed., Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997; Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848, §5). Her objection is double, and both parts are dogmatic, not sentimental:

  1. Trinitarian. The Father alone is the cause (aitia) and fountainhead of the Godhead; the Spirit’s mode of origin (ekporeusis) is from the Father alone, as the Son’s begottenness is from the Father alone. To make the Son co-cause of the Spirit’s hypostatic being either fuses the persons of Father and Son into a single principle or introduces two principles into the Godhead; either way the monarchy of the Father — the grammar of the Cappadocian doctrine of God — is broken (Photius, Mystagogy, PG 102; the Cappadocian and Maximian background in Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010, chs. 1–4; Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957, ch. 3; the full statement at Pneumatology and The Filioque Controversy). The Orthodox tradition can and does say the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son in the order of manifestation and gift — Gregory II of Cyprus’ “eternal manifestation” (Tomus of 1285) and St. Maximus’ Letter to Marinus (PG 91) show the tradition’s own precision here — but manifestation is not causation, and the Florentine equation of the two is exactly what Blachernae had already excluded (Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, 1997; Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010, on Maximus and on 1285).
  2. Canonical-ecclesiological. Even were the doctrine patient of an orthodox reading, the unilateral interpolation of the ecumenical Creed violates the conciliar prohibition of composing “another faith” (Ephesus, 431, Canon 7) and the Horos of 879–880, and asserts in act the very claim at issue: that one see may alter what the Ecumenical Councils fixed for the whole Church (Ephesus Canon 7 [trans. NPNF II/14]; the Horos of 879–880, see The Council of 879–880; Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed., Penguin, 1993, ch. 3, stating the double objection).

The two objections converge: the Filioque in the Creed is the papal claim in miniature. This is why the Church has never treated the 1995 Roman clarification, welcome as its concessions are, as resolving the matter: the addition remains in the Creed of the Latin rite, and Lyons and Florence remain, in Rome’s own reckoning, ecumenical definitions (Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010, concluding assessment; see What Divides and What Reunion Requires).

Papal Primacy and Infallibility

Rome’s position, in its own terms. The First Vatican Council (1870), Pastor Aeternus, defines: that Christ conferred on Peter a true primacy of jurisdiction; that this primacy passes by divine institution to the Roman Pontiff; that the pope holds “full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church,” ordinary and immediate, over each and all churches and faithful (ch. 3); and that when he speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals he “possesses that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to be endowed,” and such definitions are “irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church” (ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae) (Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 1870, chs. 3–4, in Tanner, Decrees, 1990). Vatican II (Lumen Gentium 22–25, 1964) set the episcopal college around the pope without diminishing these definitions, and the Catechism §§880–896 restates them. Modern Catholic scholarship itself documents the historical development of these claims — Schatz’s Papal Primacy is candid that the first-millennium church knew nothing of ordinary universal jurisdiction (Schatz, Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996) — while maintaining the dogma as a legitimate development; John Paul II’s Ut Unum Sint (1995) §§88–96 invited a search for a new exercise of the primacy without surrender of its essence.

The Church’s confession. The Orthodox Church honors the ancient primacy of Rome as first see — presbeia, seniority in honor and in the taxis of the churches, exercised in synodality and answerable to the whole Church — and she has examined the developed papal claims and not received them: not universal ordinary jurisdiction, which contradicts the canonical order of Apostolic Canon 34, Nicaea I Canon 6, and Chalcedon Canon 28; and not personal infallibility, which locates in one bishop what belongs only to the whole Church gathered in council and confirmed in the reception of her body (the canons, trans. NPNF II/14; the conciliar and patristic dossier in Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017; the Orthodox statement in the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848, and the Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895; Meyendorff, ed., The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992). The historical demonstrations — that first-millennium popes erred and were judged (Honorius, anathematized by the Sixth Ecumenical Council), that appeals to Rome functioned canonically and not jurisdictionally, that the East never received the Petrine-jurisdictional exegesis of Matthew 16:18 — are set out in the hub article Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and need not be repeated here (cf. Constantinople III, 680–81, Session 13 and Definition [trans. NPNF II/14]).

The 1848 Encyclical gives the ecclesiological ground in a sentence that has become the classic Orthodox counter-statement to Pastor Aeternus before the fact: “among us, neither Patriarchs nor Councils could ever introduce new teaching, for the protector of religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves” (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848, §17; trans. in Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, 3rd ed., Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982). Infallibility ex sese, non ex consensu Ecclesiae is, for the Orthodox, not an exaggeration of a truth but the inversion of one: the Church’s indefectibility belongs to the whole body animated by the Spirit, expressed in councils and sealed by reception — never to an office holding truth over the body (Meyendorff, ed., The Primacy of Peter, 1992; Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993, chs. 1, 16).

One Core, Not Two

Assessed from within the Church (METHODOLOGY §4.1), the two doctrines are one problem seen from two sides. The Filioque is what happens to the faith when a part of the Church claims authority to define for the whole; the papal claims are that authority made explicit and dogmatized. This is why the Orthodox have consistently refused the diplomatic suggestion that the Filioque might be “merely theological” and the primacy “merely practical”: the Church’s experience — 879–880 healed on the common faith; Lyons and Florence failed on submission — is that the Creed and the Church’s order stand or fall together (see The Council of 879–880, Section 07, and, for the modern dialogue on exactly this nexus, The Official Dialogue). The remaining doctrinal differences — azymes, purgatory, created grace — are treated in the companion file, Azymes, Purgatory, and Created Grace.

See Also

References

  • Second Council of Lyons (1274), Constitution on the Trinity; Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (6 July 1439); Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus (1870); Vatican II, Lumen Gentium (1964). In Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. London/Washington: Sheed & Ward/Georgetown University Press, 1990. (Rome’s definitions in their own terms.)
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§246–248, 880–896. (The modern Roman statement.)
  • Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. “The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit.” L’Osservatore Romano, 13 September 1995. (The Roman clarification.)
  • John Paul II. Ut Unum Sint (1995), §§88–96. (The invitation on the exercise of primacy.)
  • Augustine. De Trinitate 15.26.47; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 36. (The Latin theological lineage.)
  • Photius. Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. PG 102. (The classic Orthodox refutation.)
  • Maximus the Confessor. Letter to Marinus. PG 91. (The Orthodox reading of Latin “through the Son” language.)
  • Papadakis, Aristeides. Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283–1289). Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997. (Blachernae 1285 and the eternal manifestation.)
  • Ephesus (431), Canon 7; Apostolic Canon 34; Nicaea I, Canon 6; Chalcedon, Canon 28; Constantinople III (680–81), Session 13 and Definition. Trans. NPNF II/14. (The canonical and conciliar dossier.)
  • Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848); Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895. Trans. of 1848 in Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, 3rd ed. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982. (The Orthodox counter-statements.)
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; and The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. (The full histories.)
  • Schatz, Klaus. Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996. (Catholic historical candor on the development.)
  • Meyendorff, John, ed. The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992. (The Orthodox theology of primacy.)
  • Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957. Ch. 3. (The monarchy of the Father.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. Chs. 1, 3, 16. (Synthesis.)