WHY ONE LATIN WORD SPLIT CHRISTIANITY FOR A THOUSAND YEARS

The Filioque controversy centers on a single Latin phrase, "and the Son," that was added to the Nicene Creed by Western churches and became one of the primary theological disputes leading to the Great Schism of 1054 between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The original Nicene Creed was formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and expanded at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. The 381 version stated that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father," without mentioning the Son. This formulation was intended to counter the Macedonian heresy, which denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

The Filioque clause, meaning "and the Son" in Latin, was first added to the Creed at the Third Council of Toledo in Spain in 589 AD. The context was significant: the Visigothic king Reccared had converted from Arianism to Catholic Christianity, and the council sought to establish unity by affirming the Nicene Creed. However, they used a Latin translation that included the phrase stating the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father and the Son."

The addition was likely not considered novel at the time. Spanish churches had been using Latin translations with this phrasing for decades, possibly generations. The Council of Toledo believed they were affirming universal Christian doctrine, unaware that their Latin translation differed from the Greek original.

Several Western Church Fathers, including Tertullian, Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Augustine, taught the theology of the double procession anywhere from 600 to 800 years before the final schism in 1054. Eastern fathers also taught similar concepts, including Didymus the Blind, head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, in his work "The Holy Spirit" written around 380 AD.

The controversy intensified in the ninth century. In 809, the Council of Aachen, convened by Charlemagne, endorsed the Filioque for churches under his sovereignty. Pope Leo III approved the doctrine conveyed by the Filioque but advised omitting the expression from the Creed to maintain unity with the Eastern churches. However, Western churches retained the addition.

The dispute became a major international controversy when Patriarch Photius of Constantinople accused the Western church of heresy for using the Filioque. In 867, a council under Photius's leadership excommunicated Pope Nicholas I for using the Filioque and declared the teaching anathema. The Filioque was formally incorporated into the Latin rite in Rome in 1014 under Pope Benedict VIII.

Eastern Orthodox Christians objected on multiple grounds. They argued that adding the Filioque violated the Council of Ephesus in 431, which prohibited composing new creeds.

The council stated, "It is not permitted to produce or write or compose any other creed except the one which was defined by the holy Fathers who were gathered together in the Holy Spirit at Nicaea."

More fundamentally, Eastern theologians argued that the Filioque undermines the primacy of the Father as the sole source and first principle of the Trinity. In Eastern Orthodox theology, the Father is the one eternal, uncreated origin from whom both the Son and the Holy Spirit derive. If the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, Orthodox theologians contended, this creates confusion about the distinct roles of the Persons of the Trinity and potentially makes the Spirit subordinate to the other two Persons.

Eastern Orthodox theologians, including Photius the Great, Gregory Palamas, and Mark of Ephesus, sometimes called the Three Pillars of Orthodoxy, condemned the addition as heretical. For theologian Vladimir Lossky, the incompatibility was fundamental:

"Whether we like it or not, the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit has been the sole dogmatic grounds of the separation of East and West."

The Catholic Church defended the addition on several grounds. At the Council of Florence in 1438 to 1445, the Church ruled that the words "and the Son" had been validly added to the Creed as a clarification rather than a contradiction of the original teaching. The Church argued that just as the Council of Constantinople in 381 had expanded the original Nicene Creed of 325 by adding material about the Holy Spirit, later clarifications were permissible.

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 had addressed this very issue, stating that Constantinople's additions to the Nicene Creed were permissible because the fathers were "not introducing anything left out by their predecessors, but clarifying their ideas about the Holy Spirit." The Catholic Church applied this same principle to justify the Filioque.

Catholic theology maintains that the Father is the first origin of divine life in the Trinity, and the addition of "and the Son" clarifies that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, emphasizing the consubstantial communion between Father and Son.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The Eastern tradition expresses the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit. The Western tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed."

In recent decades, there have been significant ecumenical efforts regarding the Filioque. In 2003, the North American Orthodox Catholic Theological Consultation issued a statement concluding that the Filioque is no longer a "Church dividing" issue.

Pope Benedict XVI omitted the Filioque while reciting the Creed with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I during the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in Rome. Pope Francis also omitted it during his 2021 pastoral visit to Greece.

In August 2024, the Lutheran World Federation and the Orthodox Church announced an agreement recommending that "the translation of the Greek original without the Filioque be used in the hope that this will contribute to the healing of age old divisions between our communities."

The Catholic Church now encourages Eastern Catholic Churches to omit the Filioque from their recitation of the Creed, even in liturgies that previously included it. The Church acknowledges "the conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value, as expression of the one common faith of the Church and of all Christians, of the Symbol professed in Greek at Constantinople in 381."