In the first post in our series for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, I looked at the Arian controversy and the Council’s conclusion on the deity of Christ. In the second post, I looked at the role of Constantine at the Council. Here, I want to look at the further development of the Nicene Creed, particularly with respect to the Holy Spirit.
the Holy Spirit and the Creed
The early church was unclear about the identity of the Holy Spirit. Some church fathers looked on his appearances in the Old Testament as simply the pre-incarnate Christ, an idea that was also compatible with Jesus’ words in the context of the coming of the Holy Spirit: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John14:18).
Tertullian (c.155-c.220) and most of the church fathers, however, clearly argued for a fully Trinitarian understanding of God in keeping with the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism (Mathew 3:16) and the Trinitarian baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19, among other passages. As a result, the Creed adopted by the Council of Nicaea concluded with the phrase, “[I believe] … in the Holy Spirit.”
This was not a particularly strong affirmation of the personhood of the Spirit, so at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the clause was expanded to “[I 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 worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.”
The Filioque
At this point, we need to return to Arianism. After Nicaea, an Arian missionary named Ulfilias had left the Empire and converted the Goths to Arian Christianity. Without going into details, the Visigoths moved into the Roman Empire and eventually established their own kingdom in Spain. This created a situation where the indigenous orthodox Christians were ruled by a foreign Arian military elite.
To counter Arianism in the Visigothic kingdom, the orthodox clerics at the Third Council of Toledo (589) added the word filioque (“and the Son”) to the Creed’s statement on the Holy Spirit, so that the clause then said that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This version of the Creed would be adopted by the Western Church, while the Orthodox Churches maintain the original version of the Creed as adopted by First Council of Constantinople.
The Great Schism
In 1054, representatives of the Papacy excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople for removing the filioque from the Creed and for refusing to acknowledge papal supremacy, an idea that contradicted other decisions of the Council of Nicaea. This was the beginning of the Great Schism that split the Roman Catholic Church from the Eastern Orthodox Churches. In the West, we usually describe this as the Orthodox splitting from Rome, but to be fair, it was really the other way around since Rome was the innovator in the issues that divided the churches.
Analyzing the Filioque
A few observations about the filioque are worth noting, since the issue may have more to do with differences between Latin and Greek than with theology. The Latin verb procedere, to proceed, can translate two different Greek verbs. The one used in the Creed refers to the source of something; it indicates that the Spirit has his origin in the Father. The Latin verb does not translate this Greek verb since that would mean the Spirit has his origin in both the Father and the Son, an idea that Catholic theology rejects.
The other Greek verb that the Latin could translate can refer to either the source or the means of transmission. In other words, with the filioque, the clause could be interpreted to mean that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, a formula that acceptable to both sides.
Even accepting this argument, however, doesn’t solve all the problems with the filioque. The Creed used the first Greek verb, not the second; even though the Latin intends the latter, it is a change in the meaning of the Creed, and one done without the approval of an Ecumenical Council. Still, recognizing the linguistic dimensions of the issue may help foster dialogue across confessional lines and bring the long sundered Eastern and Western branches of Christ’s one Church closer together.
But this raises another question for my fellow Protestants: If we believe in sola scriptura, that Scripture alone is our final theological authority, does the Creed even matter? The answer is a resounding yes, for reasons we’ll look at in the next post in this series.
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