On the Filioque

The Filioque is good, actually

In light of recent news concerning a Lutheran-Orthodox Common Statement on the Filioque, I will post a re-written version of a blogpost I wrote a few years ago, where I gave a defence of the Filioque. As a Lutheran, I am bound to it, as it is in the Lutheran confessions, both in the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, as found in The Book of Concord.¹

As you probably know, in the Western version of the Nicene Creed (or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), a change was made in the article on the Holy Spirit. Translated into English, the Greek text, says that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father” (Gk. ek toû patròs ekporeuómenon). In later Western or Latin editions, which is the basis for most of the Western churches, including (most) Anglican and Lutheran ones, this was altered to say that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (Lt. qui ex patre filioque procedit).² This is known as the Filioque controversy. Some Greeks have said that this means that these traditions teach that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from two different principles. That, however, is not the case. In this post, I will try to explain why I think the Filioque is not just acceptable but actually necessary to properly articulate the relationship between the Son and the Spirit.

The interpretation of the Filioque in Western Christianity has always been (and remains) that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. Latin Christianity – whether Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. – holds that the Spirit proceeds from one principle, not two, namely the Father. In the formulation made at the Council of Florence in the 15th century, it says (my emphasis):

The Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration. We declare that when holy doctors and fathers say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, this bears the sense that thereby also the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause, and according to the Latins as principle of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, just like the Father. We define also that the explanation of those words “and from the Son” was licitly and reasonably added to the creed for the sake of declaring the truth and from imminent need.³

This was not uncontroversial, but it is important to note what is actually being said. The traditional western approach does not state that the Father and the Son are two distinct principles but that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son “from one principle and a single spiration.” The Father is the one principle from whom the Spirit proceeds, but He does so through the Son (which is why in the West, some have maintained the use of ‘principle’ for Christ, though a secondary one, as the one through whom the Spirit proceeds). And this can be found also in the aforementioned common statement (scroll down for the text in pdf):

Moreover, we both affirm that in our Trinitarian doctrine the Father is the cause (αἴτiος) of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. The Orthodox understand that the Filioque was often meant to underline the relationship between the Son and the Spirit and the Lutherans are aware that in the Orthodox tradition the Spirit is sometimes conceived as proceeding (ἐκπορευόμενον) through the Son.

The Orthodox will not change the text of the Creed, but they acknowledge that when we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, this implies that He does so through the Son. As far as I know, there are no definite theological differences between the two positions. But why is it important?

Well, if the Spirit does not proceed through the Son, there is no relation between the Spirit and the Son. And that is highly problematic. Being begotten of and proceeding from the Father is their relation to the Father, not the relation between them. Given divine simplicity, the relations are what constitutes personhood in the godhead, and if the Spirit does not proceed through the Son, the Son would either be ontologically subordinate to the Father and the Spirit or we would have to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is polytheistic, not monotheistic. The Filioque helps us understand the relations in the Godhead. The doctrine is important in that it shows us that the Spirit is not subordinate to either the Father or the Son but also that the Son is not subordinate to the Father (or the Holy Spirit).

And that is why the Filioque is good, actually, and why I will keep confessing it.

1. For the respective creeds, with introductions, see The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds., Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000), 20-21, 22-25 and Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vollständige neuedition, ed., Irene Dingel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 45-60. It should be noted that as a Lutheran priest in the Church of Norway, I am, as in the Church of Denmark, not bound to the entirety of the Book of Concord, but only these five confessions: the three ecumenical creeds (the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed), Confessio Augustana, and Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. See Arve Brunvoll and Kjell Olav Sannes, Vedkjenningsskriftene til Den norske kyrkja (Oslo: Lunde, 2017); Peder Nørgaard-Højen, Den danske folkekirkes bekendelsesskrifter, two vols., Danish, Latin, and German (Frederiksberg: Eksistensen, 2001-2002).

2. The Book of Concord, eds., Kolb and Wengert, 23; Die Bekenntnisschriften, ed., Dingel, 49.

3. Laetentur Caeli, in Norman Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, I (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 526, quoted in Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 170. The holy doctors and fathers in question are discussed by Siecienski in chapters 2-4 (pp.33-86).