Transcript

Hi folks, and welcome back to The Original Church.

Today's question is by request, and it's a little bit advanced, but if you don't know what the filioque is, it's a Latin compound word.

It means, and the son.

Filio is son, que is a suffix you use to mean and, and in this case, Latin doesn't require the word the.

So this is the Latin word behind that part in the creed when we say, in the West, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Now this is controversial because the Nicene Creed that is used in the Eastern traditions is exactly the same as ours, except that it does not have those three words in English and the son, because those words, or their equivalent, are not in the Greek.

So you understand what I'm saying.

The original version of the Nicene Creed does not have this.

The Western Church added it later.

So there are really several questions here.

One, did the concept of the filioque, which is double procession, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, did that concept exist in the original church?

Number two, is it orthodox or is it a heresy?

And number three, was it right or was it wrong for the Western Church to add it to the creed?

Now to answer these questions, I need to clarify a little bit of doctrine and then tell the story.

First the doctrine.

There are actually two doctrines that we need to understand here.

The first is called inseparable operation.

The doctrine of inseparable operation says that all three persons of the Trinity are involved and at work in all divine activity.

We don't have a God of creation and a God of salvation and a God of some, that would be three gods or that would be some other heresy.

No, all three persons of the Trinity work together in all divine activity.

That's inseparable operation.

Now because of this, there's another doctrine that's important.

It's called appropriation.

This says that since the three persons of the Trinity are all one God and all working together, then anything you can say about one person of the Trinity, you can also say about the other two persons or about the Trinity in general.

So because the Father is creator, really all three persons of the Trinity are creator.

The Trinity is creator.

See what I'm saying?

The three persons of the Trinity are one God, so anything you can say about any one person of the Trinity, you have to be able to say also about the other two persons of the Trinity with a couple of very important exceptions because the three persons of the Trinity are not just one person with three names, that would be another heresy.

So there are a few exceptions to the rule of appropriation.

In other words, there are things that make each person of the Trinity unique.

For example, only the Son was incarnate.

Only the Son became human.

The Father did not become human and the Spirit did not become human.

So the incarnation is something that applies in that sense only to the Son.

Well, when it came time to describe what was unique about the Holy Spirit, it was really difficult for the church to clarify this, but they finally came up with the word proceeds.

The Holy Spirit proceeds and all the church fathers would agree that it is right to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, but when they wrote the creed, it only said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, period.

Now I want to make a point that I will come back to in a minute.

Creeds were never meant to say everything we believe.

I mean, they would have to be the length of a set of encyclopedias in order to do that.

So just because something is not in a creed does not mean that we reject it.

Also, even the Nicene Creed was never meant to replace all other creeds.

It is meant to be the standard by which all other creeds are measured, so you can't have a creed that contradicts what's in the Nicene Creed, and it is meant to be the authoritative definition of our common faith, so the Nicene Creed is kind of the gold standard for interpreting the New Testament on the subject of the Trinity.

But it was never assumed that, for example, the Apostles Creed was going to go away just because we had the Nicene Creed.

Okay, now the controversy that gave rise to the creed was the controversy over Arianism, the Arians.

Remember, those were the guys who denied the full divinity of the sun and who separated the father and the son as if the sun was less divine, less powerful, etc. Well, even after the councils of the fourth century, Arianism never really went away completely, and it eventually moved to the west with the help of one of Constantine's sons, who, when he became emperor, was pushing Arianism on the west, and this gave the western church such a hard time in the late fourth century that St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, started writing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son as a way to emphasize the equality of the father and son against Arianism, and then along comes Ambrose's star disciple, St. Augustine.

Augustine, or Augustine, either one's right, Augustine wrote very definitively that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the father and the son, and he based this on two doctrinal concepts.

The first is the fact that in the New Testament, St. Paul says that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of the father and also the spirit of the son.

The second is that doctrine of inseparable operation, that all three persons of the Trinity work together in every divine activity.

So if the father gives or sends the Holy Spirit, then the son must also give or send the Holy Spirit, otherwise the father and the son would be working separately.

Now here I have to make a bit of a disclaimer, two actually.

First, not everything that St. Augustine says is automatically correct just because he says it.

I know he's a doctor of the church, but the church actually rejected some of the things that St. Augustine wrote and taught, we'll have more on that later.

Now I'm not saying that his writing on double procession is a heresy, it's not, but he goes too far, like he always does.

In his argumentation, he overstates a lot of things, and in this as well, he goes a bit too far, even contradicting himself, and that's how I know that I can say he goes too far, because he contradicts himself.

Second, Augustine is really at the very end of the period that we are calling the original church.

In fact, I'm going to argue in a later video that he marks the end of the original church, and perhaps even the beginning of whatever it is that comes next.

But because double procession, the filioque, is in Ambrose before him, we won't say that Augustine invented it, but he did turn it up to 11, if you will.

But anyway, the West clings to this idea of double procession because it successfully refutes Arianism.

Now they first added this to the creed in Spain, then from there it migrated to England, and then from there back to the continent of Europe, and then much later it became the straw that broke the camel's back.

It became the last straw in the break between East and West, and there were accusations of heresy going in both directions that went along with that.

But this really is not a question of orthodoxy versus heresy.

The filioque was being used as an excuse in the 11th century for political reasons behind the split between East and West.

Now I want to be clear about something.

This is not about papal authority.

Notice that the addition of the filioque to the creed started in Spain and worked its way from the outskirts of the Western edge of the known world inward, and the last place to add it to the creed was Rome.

The popes did not want to change the creed, and in fact the popes even said, look, not everything we believe has to be in the creed.

So even though we believe this, we don't have to add it to the creed.

Changing the creed was not a papal mandate.

It came from Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor in the 9th century, who pressured the popes to standardize everything across Europe.

And then Charlemagne shoved it in the face of the Eastern Christians to assert his authority as emperor when there was already an emperor in the East.

So the first thing I would say is that we have to stop calling each other heretics over this.

Our popes and our patriarchs no longer call each other heretics over this issue, so why should we?

And at least one pope has recited the creed without the filioque in ecumenical liturgy with Eastern patriarchs.

So let's please stop the Facebook wars over this issue and accept each other.

And the Nicene Creed does not mandate single procession.

It only says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, which is true.

And even the Eastern fathers would say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

So that's not a single procession only kind of thing, and it doesn't negate double procession.

If you'll allow me to propose a way forward, here's what I believe.

If we look carefully at what Augustine was saying, and allow him to posthumously back away from the overstated parts, he said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father principally, implying that it is only secondarily that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

I think this is exactly what the Eastern fathers were saying when they said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

The real problem is that when it comes to the Son, we have two words to describe his uniqueness among the persons of the Trinity.

The Son is begotten, and the Son is incarnate.

Only the Son is begotten, and only the Son is incarnate.

Two words.

But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we have only that one word, proceeds.

So when we talk about the Son, Jesus Christ, we would say that with regard to the relationship of the Son to the Father, the Son is begotten.

He is begotten from the Father alone.

But when we talk about his relationship to humanity, the Son is incarnate from the Father by the Holy Spirit.

So within the Trinity, the Son's very existence is described by the word begotten, begotten from the Father alone.

And even Augustine says he couldn't be begotten from the Spirit because that would make him the Son of the Spirit, and we don't say that.

When it comes to the sort of external expression of the Son outside of the Trinity, his coming to us is described by the word incarnate.

And in that sense, we can apply the doctrine of inseparable operation, that the incarnation was affected by all three persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father through the Holy Spirit.

But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we don't have two words, we only have the one word.

So when we want to speak of the Holy Spirit's very existence within the Trinity, he proceeds.

When we want to speak of the Holy Spirit as God's gift to the Church, he proceeds.

And so you see, the word proceeds has two meanings, which means the Holy Spirit proceeds in two ways, and that's what's causing the confusion.

Because I think when Easterners insist that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, they mean in his eternal existence and the internal relationship within the Trinity.

In that sense, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and admittedly, Augustine goes farther than saying this, but I think that when he talks about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father alone principally, this is what he's getting at.

On the other hand, when Westerners insist that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, they mean in the sense that the Holy Spirit is a gift to the Church.

And this is where those passages come in where Jesus says that he is sending the Holy Spirit.

So as a gift from God, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

So you see, we have two different definitions of the word proceeds, one that is more or less internal to the Trinity, and that's where I think it's fair to say the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone.

We might call this the Spirit's eternal procession.

And then there's another definition that is more external to the Trinity, which is when we would say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit's procession in time.

And if we don't have that, then we would be contradicting those New Testament passages that talk about the Holy Spirit as being the Spirit of the Son and a gift from Jesus himself.

The point is, if the concept of procession is properly understood, then there's a way in which both the East and the West are right.

We should not be arguing over this.

Now, you can say that the West should not have added it, but don't blame the popes.

And don't make this an issue of papal authority.

Blame Charlemagne and imperial politics.

And it's true that this was a major factor in the split of 1054. But don't blame the doctrine that successfully refutes Arianism.

Blame the pope's ambassador and the patriarch and ecclesiastical politics.

Now, if the pope ever says, hey, we're taking the filioque out of the creed, even though we believe it, you know what, I would be fine with that for the sake of unity.

But as long as it's in there, I'm going to say it.

Because before there were ever creeds written at councils, there were regional creeds.

And so I think it's fair to consider that the Nicene Creed with the filioque in it is the Western version of the Nicene Creed, until the pope says otherwise.

Well, that's the short version of the story of how the original church got the filioque.

It's a very sad thing that this is a factor in dividing us.

Because I don't think it has to.

We can actually look at this, if we decide to see it on more than just a surface level, we can look at this as a way in which both sides have a piece of the truth.

And to say it all together, if you want to put it all together in one, you would say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, which is exactly what the Eastern Fathers did say in the original church.

Thanks for joining me.

See you next time.

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