A Catholic Primer on the Filioque

Whilst the Filioque is important, it is only one of many things standing between the Orthodox and Catholics. There are many more points of disagreement.

From One Peter Five

By Fr Romano Tommasi, SLD

The Filioque was recorded in early versions of the Nicene Creed.

Many are the claims against the Filioque and they can be confusing. Let’s list some accusations:

1. New Creeds and additions to the Nicene Creed are forbidden in antiquity
2. This is because the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (AD 431) forbade new Creeds
3. The Creed of the undivided church had no Filioque
4. The phrase “and from the Son” in the Creed was added by Rome

For my part, I plan to show:

1. The Roman Church’s present use of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed reflects some of the earliest versions of the Nicene Creed.
2. The Council of Ephesus forbade the composition of new Creeds by private persons to ensure no errors of Arianism for converts
3. The undivided Church knew in different places many additions to the Nicene Creed, accepted by today’s Oriental and Eastern Orthodox
4. Rome never added the Filioque but accepted its orthodoxy just like Churches in the East had done for centuries prior to the onset of monolingualism in Byzantium

1. Additions to the Creed have been forbidden since by an Ecumenical Council?

We first look at facts and then draw conclusions based upon them. Today’s publications and archeological records allow us to say more than at any other time in history about the Nicene Creed. Let’s start with some basic facts that scholars and, probably, most official representatives of the Eastern Churches separated from Rome would agree on:

A. The Nicene Creed is shorter than the Creeds used by all Catholic and Eastern Churches today – today’s Churches add vocabulary and whole phrases after AD 325

B. Phrases added very late to the Nicene Creed, which are inspired by the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (AD 381), principally concern the equality of Holy Spirit to the Father and Son against the heretic Macedonius.

C. These phrases inspired by Constantinople I were officially added to the worldwide Creed after long discussions at the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.

The first thing we notice is that no scholars, historians, or official representatives of Eastern Churches in their negotiations with the Catholic Church are dogmatically committed to reject letters A-C above. Secondly, learned historians of whatever background affirm that Chalcedon is responsible for what we call the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. What does this mean? The answer requires us to understand that Nicaea’s short Creed before it was expanded. That Creed, in the best English version looks like this:

The profession of faith of the 318 fathers

We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten begotten from the Father, that is from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and those in earth; for us humans and for our salvation he came down and became incarnate, became human, suffered and rose up on the third day, went up into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead. And in the holy Spirit.

And those who say “there once was when he was not,” and “before he was begotten he was not,” and that he came to be from things that were not, or from another hypostasis or substance, affirming that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration — these the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes (emphasis added).[1]

I note that the best Greek version (in English translation) has a big difference from both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic recitation at their Eucharistic liturgies or Mass today in: “from the substance of the Father.” This phrase was omitted by post-AD 325 changes. The principle that will easily come to light as we move forward is that later Councils and Apostolic Churches can claim the faith of Nicaea by reciting their official Creeds by respecting anti-Arian language and commitments of Nicaea. Throughout the history of testimonies to the Nicene Creed, councils and Fathers nearly always vary their version by added or omitted words and phrases. These differences are often enough intentional.

For example, the Armenians (a separated Church by the Monophysite controversy in the decades following AD 450) claim to use in their Eucharistic Liturgy the Creed of Nicaea and yet they have additions like this one: “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the uncreated one, the perfect one.”[2] According, mainly anti-Catholic, self-described Eastern Orthodox apologists claim that the Council of Ephesus (canon 7) allegedly forbade any additions to the Creed. Today in Oriental (Monophysite) Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox (Greco-Slav dissident) Church dialogue, this Creed is not an official issue… Why not? There is here an addition to the Creed (dated to AD 515/516), attributed to St. Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia (he died after Nicaea AD 331-332/337). If it were true that additions to the creed were anathema,) either St. Gregory the Illuminator added to the Creed (contravening a strict reading of Ephesus as Monophysites require, this is sin in itself), or later Armenians added it after the Council of Ephesus (canon 7), which is even worse since the Miaphysite[3] Armenians claim to be faithful to the tradition of Ephesus I (canon 7). This Armenian text admits other lesser developments like: “We also believe in one only catholic and apostolic Church, in one baptism in repentance, in propitiation and remission of sins.”[4]     Now, the Egyptian Miaphysites, or Copts, reject the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), like Armenians, and perplexingly use their main Creed in their liturgy as edited and published at Chalcedon just like we do! We, of course, call this the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. These and other edited and expanded Creeds show a lot of minor differences between themselves, yet today’s Eastern Orthodox (Greco-Slavs) – for example – in many places have official agreements to allow for Oriental Orthodox (Miaphysites) to receive communion in mixed marriages. If, for Eastern Orthodox, an addition to the Creed is allegedly the sticking point historically for problems with the Roman Catholic Church, why is it not so for the Miaphysites (i.e., Oriental Orthodox)? The answer proves to be a selective application of canon 7 to Roman Catholics due more to how we feel about each other today, not on the basis of dogma, metaphysics, or provable history.

2. Only the Condemned Dioscorus took Canon 6 of Ephesus as a Proscriptive

Today’s Oriental Orthodox (Miaphysites or Non-Chalcedonian Churches) all have Creeds that go beyond a strict rule reading of the Council of Ephesus that forbids any new Creeds or tampering with the original Creed of Nicaea (AD 325). So, are we Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholics, all condemned? In answer, let us see so-called Canon 7:

Definition of the faith at Nicaea (So-Called Canon 7)

The synod of Nicaea produced this creed: “We believe, etc.” [here follows the original Nicene Creed as above] It seems fitting that all should assent to this holy creed. It is pious and sufficiently helpful for the whole world. But since some pretend to confess and accept it, while at the same time distorting the force of its expressions to their own opinion and so evading the truth, being sons of error and children of destruction, it has proved necessary to add testimonies from the holy and orthodox fathers that can fill out the meaning they have given to the words and their courage in proclaiming it. All those who have a clear and blameless faith will understand, interpret and proclaim it in this way. When these documents had been read out, the holy synod decreed the following. 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. Any who dare to compose or bring forth or produce another creed for the benefit of those who wish to turn from Hellenism or Judaism or some other heresy to the knowledge of the truth, if they are bishops or clerics they should be deprived of their respective charges and if they are laymen they are to be anathematized. In the same way if any should be discovered, whether bishops, clergy or laity, thinking or teaching the views expressed in his statement by the priest Charisius about the incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God or the disgusting, perverted views of Nestorius, which underlie them, these should be subject to the condemnation of this holy and ecumenical synod (emphasis added).[5]

The wrong way of reading this occurred at the Robber Council of Ephesus II, AD 449. Today’s historians agree that its leader, Archbishop Dioscorus of Alexandria, opposed the slightest addition to the AD 325 Creed. He did not accept Constantinople’s additions to the creed, and many Egyptian bishops agreed with Dioscorus. As nephew to St. Cyril of Alexandria (hero of Ephesus I, AD 431), Dioscorus’s wrong-headed interpretation is enshrined in the minutes and decrees of the latrocinium or thug-synod that took place in AD 449, where physical violence against clergy and calls to torture and burn alive clergy are recorded in the minutes. Today’s Oriental Orthodox do not consider this an Ecumenical Council contrary to what Dioscorus would have wanted. Monophysite allies of Dioscorus supported this interpretation in the sixth century AD, even until the seventh century in Egypt. As no. 1 above, Miaphysite (Oriental Orthodox) Churches of today, although they reject the Tome of Leo, adopt the Creed invented by Chalcedon, or hold communion with sister Churches who recite the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which took some inspiration from Constantinople I’s opposition to Arian Macedonius.

The reference above in canon 7 to the priest Charisius is about somebody who tried to reconcile an old group of heretics (Quartodecimans) by heretical Christology, not with Nicene orthodoxy. The higher principle above allows no innovations in the Creed and a derivative principle is, by extension, nobody can privately avoid Nicaea’s Christology when dispensing a statement of believe for baptism. Scholars and today’s Oriental Orthodox reciting the augmented Creed together lead us to conclude that canon 7 only addresses heretical converts to the faith; they must employ Nicaea’s Creed substantially (if not verbatim), not privately composed Creeds for Christian initiation. The Coptic Church today, representing the most prominent of today’s Oriental Orthodox Churches, chooses not to use the original Nicene Creed but professes our additional Constantinopolitan phrase in their Creed today:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty […]. Yes, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son Together is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke in the prophets.[6]

Why do the Copts (Egyptians) accept the Creed canonized by the Church of Chalcedonians (Session V) with additions (for example, “Holy Spirit the Lord the giver of life, etc.”) since this Creed added doctrinal statements about the Holy Spirit and other minor additions? In answer, it is because Ephesus I, canon 7, is directed against individuals – whether a bishop or a priest or a layman – bypassing Nicaea and composing or adding something personal about Trinitarian doctrine to missionary activity. This is not concerned with the power of the supreme authority in the Church to add to the Creed but with the lack of power among private individuals to speak on behalf of the regional or universal Church.

For the Eastern Orthodox Churches (the Greco-Slav Church), in a similar vein, if Ephesus’s Canon 7, were seriously invoked from AD 431, it prevents the Byzantine liturgy from using the invented Creed of Chalcedon (Session V). But all Chalcedonian Churches use in their liturgies the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of Chalcedon. So, they– like Rome – intrinsically admit that the prohibition of Ephesus, canon 7, is only descriptive of a historical problem where an individual (like Charisius) arrogated to himself changing the Creed. The Holy See, whenever welcoming back Armenians, Copts, or even Syriac and Russo-Greek Churches, happily accepted and accepts their liturgical versions of their Creeds (none of which perfectly agree with one another) because all of them – like Chalcedon – affirm the Trinitarian doctrine in their Creeds to exclude Arianism and Macedonianism.

3. The Filioque in the Original Nicene Creed

The Filioque was recorded in early versions of the Nicene Creed. For example the Persian reception of the Creed (compiled around AD 410) in its collection of canons (precursor to a Code of Canon Law), translates into a Semitic tongue the Nicene (AD 325) Creed thus: “And we confess the living and Holy Spirit, the living Paraclete who is from the Father and the Son, one Trinity, one essence, one will, agreeing with the faith of the 318 bishops that took place in the town of Nicaea.”[7]  About this same time (although the there is some controversy about the dating) Spain received the Nicene faith by a profession of faith using the filioque as follows: “The Spirit also is the Paraclete, who is neither the Father nor the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son.”[8] Finally, we have a Miaphysite witness in far-flung Ethiopia, whose provenance is obscure, but reads as follows (claiming to be the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed): “and we believe in the Holy Spirit, the life-giver, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”[9]

What we see is that the Latin, Syriac, and Ge’ez-speaking Churches knew and were comfortable with the Filioque in their national or regional liturgies after Canon 7 of Ephesus was received. The technical explanation of this has to do with copyists and ancient scholars using methods of copying a preserving the Creeds of their Church whose criteria for choosing a phrase or leaving one out of the Creed are not always clear. What is clear, however, is that all these Creeds were taken as orthodox and Catholic by the millions of worshipers and hierarchy that recited them over the centuries. Furthermore, the Holy See confirmed such Creeds as the supreme authority and last word (recognitio) of professions of faith in regional synods. All of this makes sense for a Roman Catholic view of the Church of Christ. It becomes impossible to reconcile with Dioscorus’s Monophysite views and is also irreconcilable with late Greco-Russian myopic views on whether the Creed can allow for additions or explanations. On a worldwide basis, the largest collection and study of texts of the Creeds to date reasonably demonstrates an openness of regional use of versions of the Nicene or Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed varying in its text in Greek, Latin, and various other languages especially before the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople III (AD 680). After this time, with Cesaro-papism becoming more intense, emperors involved themselves in Creed-management (especially since the anti-papal and so-called Acacian schism in AD 482). We see a fundamentalism about the Creed that develops in the Greco-Russian Church that has not affected the Assyrian Church of the East, the Miaphysite Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church. This newfangled understanding of canon 7 of Ephesus later became the sincere, but self-contradictory, insistence that the Creed can never change (even though the Churches are currently arguing that Scripture can change in its canon and by error!), when we have just shown a few of the ways (among many) that all parts of the Church never received Ephesus canon 7 in this way.

Is there some way, however, to connect Persia, Spain, Ethiopia, and Rome as all affirming Nicaea-Constantinople by the Holy Spirit to proceeding from the Father and the Son? In answer, a possible solution was detected by great Catholic saints and scholars like St. Thomas Aquinas (died AD 1274). Researching the filioque topic in Rome earlier for his On power (De potentia, 10, 4, arg. 24 and ad 24), Aquinas perhaps discovered a Latin source (known as the manuscript: Codex Palatinus) describing the ancient Syriac-Greek church writer Theodore of Mopsuestia as the author of the heretical creed discussed at Ephesus I. Aquinas also knew that the Theodore had contradicted St. Cyril’s of Alexandria’s embrace of the Filioque at the Council. In Rome, Aquinas argued from the Latin minutes from the meeting at Ephesus I that St. Cyril of Alexandria was a champion of the Filioque (today this is still a legitimate position for specialists).

According to the Latin report of a contemporary, Marius Mercator, the ancient theologian Theodore of Mopsuestia had denied the filioque just before the Council of Ephesus, which was designated by Aquinas as the historical point of departure for anti-filioquism (before AD428). Mercator’s accusation is not without doubters today, but still plausible. Marius quoted the following from the heretic Theodore:

And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit, who is the substance or essence of God, who is not the Son: whose essential however is God, as one who is belong to the essence thereof, which is of God the Father, from whom he is according to the essence (…) having  his cause, as is thought, from God, which we consider that he has received neither from the Son nor through the existence of the Son.[10]

As Theodore denied the filioque, Aquinas noticed this innovative Creed was condemned by St. Cyril at Ephesus, which accounts for why St. Cyril explicitly mentioned and embraced the filioque. Aquinas cited from the following text in support of the Latin origins of the doctrine of the Filioque and for its source of entrance into the Creed:

For although the Spirit is in His own subsistence, and His property is understood in the person, according to that which He is the Spirit, and not the Son, yet He is not alien from Him; for He is called the Spirit of truth, and the truth is Christ; whence He proceeds from Him in like manner, as from God the Father.[11]

Using the principle of parsimony, Aquinas’s explanation is currently the best explanation for how the Assyrian Church of the East (Syriac), the Ethiopic Church (Ge’ez), and Spain (Latin) all adopted around this time the Filioque. It had become an issue in the Roman Empire and Syriac Church around AD 400 and was discussed as a burning issue at Ephesus I. The reason why St. Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius contained the statement with such confidence for the Filioque is because there was already a flourishing tradition of using baptismal and conciliar Creeds that contained the Filioque. These local Creeds, after St. Cyril’s Third Letter was attached to the documents of the Third Ecumenical Council, settled the issue: the Filioque was orthodox and the opposite position was Nestorian, as embraced by Nestorius’s putative teacher, Theodore of Mopsuestia.

After AD 431 the Filioque was even more attractive to adopt into local churches and national churches’ edits of the Nicene or Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed since it was supported by St. Cyril in the context of discussions on a creed. Now the culture of all churches (as we saw, for example, with Armenia above), was to tackle local issues by additions to the Creed for doctrinal reasons. The Filioque was simply another instance of a doctrine that enjoyed St. Cyril’s ecumenical authority and was added onto local Nicene Creeds to support anti-Arian projects, just as many other Churches in communion throughout the empire and outside the empire were doing on similar topics as we showed with the Armenian Church.

4. The Roman Church never added a Filioque but embraced it along with the Original Greek Creed

Is the phrase that the Holy Spirit: “proceeds from the Father and the Son,” an invention? Is it something heretical or new? Sometimes the Greco-Russian Churchmen have claimed this to be the case. This Church has generally had only Greek speakers in a monolingual Church when these accusations first arose. What is more, the first accusations arose during a period of heretical schism, when the Eastern Church of Constantinople was officially Monothelite. Finally, in the years after the first Greek accusations, a notable period of xenophobia reigned under Emperor Justinian II, who also condemned Rome for fasting on Saturdays, using blessed salt in holy water, having obligatorily celibate clergy and for having the image of the lamb of God and art with God the Father. This was a time when the Byzantine empire was on the verge of collapse under Cesaro-papist emperors and there are suspicions that the monolingual Greeks were becoming intolerant of any culture that was then perceived as being foreign. It is this context that might help us understand why an increasing emphasis on an allegedly invariable version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed according to the latest editions of it at the Byzantine capital became absolutized. No archeology, manuscript studies, or historians can support a narrative like this nowadays with facts at our fingertips.

I will now show how the Roman Church found itself always comfortable with the Filioque but very slow to privilege this legitimate adaptation of the Nicen-Constantinopolitan Creed over and above several of its equally acceptable competitors in Rome’s liturgy and archives. Let’s look at a list of famous texts and saints that made all Latin speakers understand that filioque was as natural a doctrine to the Latin Church (at a time when it was united to all other churches) as the papacy. I begin with two famous, if controversial writers, and then move on to orthodox writers and Fathers:

• Tertullian, Adversus Praxeam (AD 213-216; CSEL 47:244): “Notice also the Spirit from the Father and the Son speaking from the perspective of a third person:[12] The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”
• Origen, De incarnatione verbi, chapter 18 (AD 230-240; PL 11:1188):“Divine wisdom, […] is known to God alone, and to His Only-Begotten, by whom all things were created and renewed, and to the Holy Spirit, by whom all things are sanctified, who proceeds from the Father and the Son themselves, to whom be glory for ever and ever.”
• Marius Victorinus, Against Arius, chapter 13(AD 357-358; PL 8:1048A) “Therefore, these two are one from another, the Holy Spirit from the Son, just as the Son is from God, and the Holy Spirit from the Father.”
• St. Victricius of Rouen (AD 396; PL 20:446C): “I said one, because from one, as the Son is from the Father, so the Father is in the Son; but the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son.”
• St. Augustine of Hippo, Epistle 170 (AD 415; PL 30:749): “The Holy Spirit also was not made out of nothing like a creature, but proceeds from the Father and the Son in such a way that he was made neither by the Son nor by the Father.”

These sources all show that from the beginning of Christian literature in Latin, the orthodox writers – and even those whose writings are questionable – held the Filioque. When Rome became aware of the Filioque from St. Cyril, there was nothing surprising. When Spain received the Council of Ephesus, its local creed may have already included it in the early 400s. While the Roman Empire was multilingual (prior to the monolingualism typical of the late-sixth century in the Byzantine Empire), the Filioque was simply not an issue.

To these authors I can add the Gallic writer (France) Arnobius Junior and the famous and controversial verses of Bishop St. Gennadius of Marseille, On Church Dogmas, chapter 1(AD 470-490; PL 58:979): 

We believe that there is one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Father because he has a Son; the Son because he has a Father; the Holy Spirit because he proceeds from the Father and the Son, coeternal with the Father and the Son.

I now bypass the minor N. African figure in Gaul, Julianus Pomerius (died around AD 500). Instead, let’s turn to papal or magisterial teaching on the Filioque after about two centuries of the doctrine in the Latin language. Let us first look at the teaching of Pope Hormisdas vis-à-vis the paradigmatic Cesaro-papist, Justinian the Great in AD 517:

Great is the holy and incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, an undivided Trinity: and yet it is known that it is proper to the Father to beget the Son, proper to the Son of God to be born of the Father equal to the Father, proper to the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son under one substance of the Godhead. (Epistolae 74).[13]

Emperor Justinian, the main theologian of the Byzantine state and (now) an Eastern Orthodox, was so comfortable with the Filioque that he placed the entire Eastern Church under the obligation to sign a profession of faith and obedience to the Roman pope who professed the Filioque (the “Formula of Hormisdas”), and they signed it. And this is considered the moment at which Monophysitism was definitively defeated in the Roman or Byzantine empire. Some years later we find the more enigmatic document of Pope Pelagius I (AD 557):

The Holy Spirit also is omnipotent, equal to both, namely the Father and the Son, coeternal and consubstantial; who, proceeding from the timeless Father, is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. (Profession of Faith; PL 69:409A)

Finally, we turn to Pope St. Gregory the Great (AD 590-595), who as pope revised his monkish commentary on Job thus:

For since it is clear that the Paraclete spirit always proceeds from the Father and the Son, why does the Son say that he will depart, so that he may come who never departs from the Son? (Moralia, book 4, chapter 24; PL 75:1084B)

While Pope St. Gregory’s work is not part of the magisterium, it is important that scholarship has established this pope as the first to transition Rome away from more local creeds (which it never dropped) to prioritize the recitation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (which was handed on officially to converts every year at Lent). Pope St. Gregory died in AD 604. Some few decades later the monolingual Greek Church found itself sponsoring a new heresy, Monenergism that morphed into Monothelitism (the restriction of only the divine will to the God-man). As the heresy arose in the 630s, it coincided with Greek complaints about Latin churches who were using ancient Creeds containing the Filioque. The accusation known to St. Maximus the Confessor – the best and greatest Greek theologian since St. Gregory the Theologian in the late-fourth century – went as follows:

Those of the Queen of cities [Constantinople] have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope [St. Martin I], not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to theology, because it says he says that “the Holy Spirit proceeds (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) also from the Son.” […] […] With regard to the […] matter, they [the Romans] have produced the unanimous documentary evidence of the Latin fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the sacred commentary he composed on the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit — they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession; but [they use this expression] in order to manifest the Spirit’s coming-forth (προϊέναι) through him and, in this way, to make clear the unity and identity of the essence [….] The Romans have therefore been accused of things of which it is wrong to accuse them, whereas of the things of which the Byzantines have quite rightly been accused [viz., Monothelitism], they have, to date, made no self-defense, because neither have they gotten rid of the things introduced by them. […] One should also keep in mind that they cannot express their meaning in a language and idiom that are foreign to them as precisely as they can in their own mother-tongue, any more than we can do.[14]

Maximus shows that what had been a tradition since Hormisdas, namely, to write Byzantine Emperors using the traditional theology of the Filioque has – in a Monothelite context – suddenly become intolerable. St. Maximus confirms what St. Thomas Aquinas later argues, St. Cyril of Alexandria is the ecumenical source of Latin confidence in the doctrine. What is more, Maximus and others in Constantinople still have not convinced all the Monophysites that the more recently invented Creed of Chalcedon (AD 451) is allowed by church law. As Kinzig tells the story:

Maximus the Confessor (died 662) deals with the question of the sufficiency of the Nicene Creed in a debate with Miaphysites, in a – presumably early – work which only survives in fragments, rejecting the claim that Chalcedon had contradicted Nicaea’s Creed and introduced a new faith. The fathers of Nicaea, Maximus argues, established the faith once and for all, whereas Constantinople (and later councils) only defended it ‘in their own words and doctrinal statements’ (διὰ τῶν οἰκείων φωνῶν καὶ δογμάτων) against heretics like Eunomius and Macedonius. This seems to refer to the Tomus of Constantinople rather than the creed (even though he undoubtedly knew the latter). (emphasis added)[15]

The Greek Church of the seventh century found itself in the same position as Roman Catholics who prioritized a Creed with the Filioque since absorbing the Gallican version of the Nicene Creed in AD 1014 at Rome. The earliest case of this version probably came from Byzantine Spain, which established the Filioque for the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed at the Council of Toledo (AD 589). Since the Byzantine reconquest of Spain in the mid-500s, the Greeks managed to hold on to the East Coast of Spain until AD 625. There, they would have known that the Filioque had been added to the Creed, to say nothing of Roman professions of faith. Still, it was Pope St. Martin I that set off the controversy by professing something ancient and normal for the West and the East. Monothelitism was provoked more by Pope St. Martin’s alliance with St. Maximus than by the Filioque since Spain had evoked no reaction since the late sixth century.

In later centuries, Roman Catholic theologians only became truly aware at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (AD 1438-1439) that “and from the Son” definitely had not been part of the original Greek Creed from AD 451. The Latins accepted this from Greeks, although needing convincing, but still defended themselves that the Filioque is an explanation to clarify the dogma of the Trinity. The issue of the Filioque was – since fifth-century creeds – clarifying anti-Arian positions or pro-Nicene positions. Like St. Maximus, local Latin synods defended Nicene orthodoxy by the Filioque. Maximus, too, had to convince Monophysites that Chalcedon did not violate Ephesus I by additions to the Creed, the very argument unwittingly taken over by Metropolitan Archbishop Mark of Ephesus against the Latins at Ferrara-Florence in AD 1438-1439.

The well-known history of the Council of Florence, written by Gill, states the situation thus:

So, in the third session (16 October), with grudging assent of the Latins, Mark Eugenicus had read various excerpts from the first seven General Councils the Nicene Creed together with the prohibition against making “another faith”, both from the Acts of the Council of Ephesus, and some comments on them of Cyril of Alexandria, the protagonist of orthodoxy at that Council, who had written: “In no way do we allow the defined faith to be upset by anyone, that is the Creed of our holy Fathers who once on a time assembled in Nicaea.” Nor indeed do we permit either ourselves or others to change a word of what is laid down there or to transgress even one syllable, mindful of the text: “Do not remove the ancient boundaries which your fathers set” (Proverbs 22:28). For it was not they who spoke but the Spirit of God and Father, who proceeds from him, yet is not alien to the Son in respect of substance.[16]

As it turns out, Mark of Ephesus took up the old interpretation of the enemy of Chalcedon Dioscorus, namely, by claiming Ephesus I and St. Cyril forbade the change of a single word to the Creed of Nicaea. Mark had not realized that Chalcedon invented a new Creed after Ephesus. He had assumed that Constantinople I published the so-called Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in AD 381 and that it was sealed forever by the Council of Ephesus and absorbed everywhere. In reality, the Council of Ephesus never cited or alluded to this newly minted Creed in local Constantinople. St. Cyril and the Egyptians knew only one Creed, which they had quoted, namely, that from AD 325. Mark did not realize it, but he had taken the opposite position of his hero, St. Maximus the Confessor… he had embraced a Monophysite talking point. What was important was the “faith of Nicaea,” not a literalism impossible to observe by hand-copied creeds that had been multiplied, mixed, and added to by all Churches for hundreds of years. Only after the seventh century, in monolingual Byzantium, did concerted efforts lead to a mainly reliable and constant text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan to the exclusion of Nicaea and other competitors. The monopoly of the Chalcedonian Creed – in a fairly stable form – became unique in Byzantium (rife with heresies) and was eventually perceived as an unchangeable rule for all time.

Joseph Gill summarizes accurately too the fact that the Dominican speaker to Archbishop Mark of Ephesus, Bishop Andrew Chrysoberges, argued two basic points against this interpretation: (i.) clarification of the Creed are allowed, (ii.) Ephesus I only prescribed that the same faith of Nicaea need be preserved, not every word. In all this, Bishop Andrew has been proven correct after access nowadays to all the ancient documents necessary to see the varieties of interpolations, deviations, and abbreviations of the Nicene, Nicene-Constantinopolitan, and revised Nicene-Constantinopolitan (at Chalcedon) Creeds. Finally, Bishop Andrew correctly noted that canon 7 forbade private ventures, not ecumenical councils from changing an inherited Creed.[17]

In conclusion, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was always embraced in Greek without the Filioque in Rome’s history and archives, but at the same time it embraced other nations’ version with the Filioque that was nearly as old and equally anti-Arian. It also embraced local Roman Creeds (e.g., the Apostles Creed) and had other official Creeds (e.g., the Athanasian Creed). Rome never obsessed about one Creed as a universal Church in many languages. Armenians keep their version, Slavs theirs, and Greek-speaking Roman Catholics today sing or recite the original Greek version very near that of Chalcedon in AD 451. What is important is that a Creed is orthodox and is not privately published but receives the endorsement of the supreme authority of the Church as an expression of dogmas and the constant teaching of the Fathers when they are unanimous on points of interpretation. The Filioque counts as such a dogma.

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[1] Tanner (ed.), “The profession of faith of the 318 fathers,”in The Ecumenical Councils (Georgetown: Sheed and Ward, 1990), 1:5.

[2] For the text, see Kinzig, A History of Early Christian Creeds (Boston, 2024), 435. All these additions can be seen in detail on any Armenian Apostolic Church website For one example, see https://www.armenianorthodoxtheology.com/post/confession-of-faith.

[3] This term is a self-identifier: Oriental Orthodox (e.g., Copts and Armenians) accept the condemnation of the heresiarch Eutyches and Eutychianism denying Mary’s biological flesh as the flesh from which Jesus was conceived in utero. The “one-nature” identifier only means to emphasize that they accept the formula of the Incarnation as written by St. Cyril in his twelve anathamas against Nestorius.

[4] Brightman, Liturgies Eastern… , 426. (Kinzig, A History, 434)

[5] Tanner (ed.), “Definition of the faith at Nicaea,” in The profession of faith of the 318 fathers, in The Ecumenical Councils, 1:64-65.

[6] See, for example, the Coptic Orthodox Metropolis of the Southern United States: https://suscopts.org/resources/interesting-facts/10/the-nicene-creed.

[7] “Persicum Nicene Creed,” in Wolfram Kinzig (ed.), A History of Early Christian Creeds (Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 421.

[8] “Creed of the First Council of Toledo,” in Wolfram Kinzig (ed.), A History of Early Christian Creeds (Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 551.

[9] Creed “ex Liturgiis Aethiopum depromptum,” in Wolfram Kinzig (ed.), A History of Early Christian Creeds (Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 449.

[10] Marius Mercator, Exemplum: Marius Mercator, Exemplum Expositionis Symboli Transformati, in E. Schwartz (ed.), Pars 2. Cyrilli epistula synodica. Collectio Sichardiana ex Collectione Quesneliana, Collectio Winteriana, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, Concilium Universale Ephesenum I (Berlin 1963), 5:16, 13 (The translation is mine).

[11] Patrologia Latina 77:831B.

[12] This can also be translated as “the spirit speaking as a third person on the Father and Son…”

[13] Patrologia Latina 63:509ff.

[14] Patrologia Graeca 91:134D-136C (for the translation, please see here).

[15] Wolfram Kinzig, A History of Early Christian Creeds (Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 402.

[16] Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1959), 147.

[17] Ibid., 147-156.