What is the Filioque Controversy within the Nicene Creed?

The Nicene Creed was formulated 1,700 years ago in AD 325 on the Council of Nicaea. Later, one clause in it called the Filioque was a reason behind division between the Eastern and Western Church. This is the story …

What is the Nicene Creed? 

The Creed was first developed 1,700 years on the Council of Nicaea but was finalised on the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. As such it is typically called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed but often just because the Nicene Creed. As read within the Church of England, the Creed is:

“We consider in a single God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that’s, seen and unseen. We consider in a single Lord, Jesus Christ, the one Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of 1 Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he got here down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the fitting hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to guage the living and the dead, and his kingdom can have no end. We consider within the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We consider in a single holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We search for the resurrection of the dead, and the lifetime of the world to return. Amen.” 

How is it used?

In Latin the primary word is Credo (meaning “I feel”) which provides us the English word “Creed.” The Nicene Creed is read frequently in Orthodox every Sunday during Divine Liturgy and by Catholic Churches every Sunday during Mass, and sometimes also on major feast days. Most traditional Lutheran, Anglican and Episcopal churches also recite the Nicene Creed on the Eucharist (Holy Communion) every Sunday. 

However, within the free church tradition it’s seldom if ever read, although that doesn’t imply that they disagree with it. As a result, the Nicene Creed is well-known to Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Lutherans but so well-known beyond. Evangelical Christians emphasise the authority of the Bible alone (sola scriptura), and so they have an inclination to treat creeds just like the Nicene Creed as helpful summaries fairly than as absolute or binding doctrines.

Evangelical Christians throughout the historic Christian Churches will likely be used to saying the Nicene Creed, but for many evangelical Christians it’s a very important document of Church history which they will agree with, but not one they feel the necessity to recite regularly.

Filioque Clause

The Nicene Creed is nearly the identical for the entire Church.  However, there’s a minor difference, which proved necessary through the Great Schism. The original Creed had the road “I feel within the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.”  The Eastern Orthodox tradition stops there, and the Western Church added “and the Son,” to read “I feel within the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”  In Latin, the word for “and from the Son” is “filioque” and so the dispute around this clause has been often known as the Filioque Controversy.

To most individuals this seems a pedantic point, whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, or fairly from the Father, through the Son. However, it was some extent of dispute through the arguments leading as much as the Great Schism in 1054, when the Church split into the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) spheres. It was a matter of theology and authority. 

Theology

The lines within the Nicene Creed all have a biblical basis. Although it’s post-biblical it’s a summary of the theology deduced from the Bible. The basis for the statement “I feel within the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father” comes from two verses a chapter apart in John. The first is in John 14:26 when Jesus says: “…the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and produce to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (NKJV). The wording within the Creed echoes John 15:36 which reads: “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (NKJV).

History of the Filioque

The Latin word Filioque meaning “and from the Son”, was added to the Latin type of the Creed by the Third Council of Toledo in 589 AD.  It was for local use in Spain to combat Arianism, although there’s some evidence it was also used earlier within the Church of the East in Persia. The latest line in Latin read “Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem: qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.” It was added because Arianists consider that Jesus was not God. The idea of adding the Filioque was to stress the Trinity, that the Holy Spirit shares its origin from the Father and the Son, and upholds the complete divinity of the Spirit. The clause was an area clarification which step by step spread to other Latin-using churches over the next centuries. In AD 890 Pope Leo III, rejected the concept of officially adding Filioque to the Creed, nevertheless it became widespread within the Western Church by the eleventh century. In AD 1024 the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict VIII gave it its approval, but he had no authority within the Eastern Church.  

Theology of the Filioque

From the angle of the Eastern Church the Father alone is the source of the Holy Spirit and adding “and the Son” risks subordinating the Spirit as secondary to the Father and the Son. The concept that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is recommended in Galatians 4:6 where Paul wrote “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts” (NKJV), and in Romans 8:9 “Now if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, he just isn’t His“, Philippians 1:19 where it is named “the Spirit of Jesus Christ”, and Revelation 22:1 where the Holy Spirit known as the “pure river of water of life” is talked of “proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” From the Catholic perspective they’d not fundamentally altered the Creed but added a biblically justified clarification, which protected the unity of religion and emphasised the Trinity.

Authority

For the Orthodox perspective whether the addition is theologically justified or biblically correct is inappropriate. It just isn’t a problem of being correct or not, but fairly a problem of tradition, authority, and honour. The point is that the Nicene Creed was agreed at a Church-wide Council in AD 325. The Orthodox perspective is that one section of the Church doesn’t have the fitting to unilaterally alter what was agreed by all. This results in unnecessary disputes and division. The query of authority contributed to Church tensions and was considered one of the aspects, but not by any means the just one, which led to the Great Schism of 1054. Although it could seem trivial and pedantic to most evangelicals, the dispute over the Filioque was emblematic of the broader problems with theology and authority between the Eastern and Western Church that led to the Great Schism.  

Cultural Differences

It is straightforward to see each side on this dispute. It comes right down to a matter of emphasis, and in addition partly reflects the overall cultural way of considering between the western perspective emphasising being correct and right or unsuitable and the fitting to individual considering on the one hand; and the eastern perspective emphasising honour and respecting traditions and collective agreement on the opposite. 

The Filioque Controversy Today

The dispute stays a problem for ecumenical dialogue between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches, although most lay Christians could be oblivious to the problems. Today some Christians will hold hard and fast to the Filioque, while others could be joyful to drop it for the sake of unity, arguing along the lines of Romans 12:8 where St Paul encouraged believers to live at peace with everyone, and Romans 14:21, where St Paul says they need to avoid anything which is the reason behind offending a fellow Christian. The Church of England actually states that an alternate “text of the Nicene Creed, which omits the phrase ‘and the Son’ within the third paragraph, could also be used on suitable ecumenical occasions”.