And the Son

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Do the Eastern Catholics bring with them the same understanding of the Trinity as they held in the 1054 split? Once they reunited with the papacy are they reciting the same creed as the Latin Rite?? Just wondering…
 
We do not recite the filioque. We honored St. Gregory Palamas last Sunday and just a few weeks ago we honored St. Photios, both of whom rejected the filioque. Pope John Paul II frequently dropped the filioque from the Creed and there is a growing body of western theologians who say it should be dropped from the west as well.
 
Woodstock said:
We do not recite the filioque. We honored St. Gregory Palamas last Sunday and just a few weeks ago we honored St. Photios, both of whom rejected the filioque. Pope John Paul II frequently dropped the filioque from the Creed and there is a growing body of western theologians who say it should be dropped from the west as well.
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The question is whether or not it has been infallibly defined already…I believe it should never have been added, but since it was, it is more difficult to deal with.

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius:cool:
 
It’s definitely an infallible and Patristic (Eastern and Western) teaching of the Church, but that doesn’t mean that it needs be incorporated into the theological approach of all the Churches. It’s not something taught explicitly in most non-Latin Churches.

Whether it should be in the Latin Creed (it’s not in the others, and not required to be) is another question, but it definitely can’t be denied as heretical by Eastern Catholics without condemning most of their own Communion and many Eastern Fathers.

Peace and God bless!
 
Hi everyone,

Recently, our Chaldean liturgy was revised. We were asked to remove the filioque from our Creed. Chaldean priest Fr. Andy explains the reason as follows:
Q – Why was the Creed changed to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father,” rather than “from the Father and the Son?”

A – This is another instance of the Holy See asking us to “return to our roots.” The original form of the Nicene Creed says that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father.” The phrase “and the Son” was added, in the West, in the following centuries. Though it is quite true to say that the Spirit proceeds from both the “Father and the Son,” the Eastern Church, encouraged by the Holy See, has asked us to return to the original form of the Creed.​

Historically, the Church of the East (East of the Euphrates river, in the Persian empire) never saw the filioque as problematic. You can see this, for example, with regards the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church. This is what was stated in the Joint Statement of 1997:
  1. The procession of the Holy Spirit
    On the Holy Spirit, there was no historical disagreement between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Catholic Church. In both our traditions, efforts were made to avoid neo-Arian influence in the explanation of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: In the Holy Trinity there can be no contradiction to the Monarchy of the Father. The Father alone is the Principle without principle, the sole Cause of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit the relationship between the Father and the Son attains Trinitarian perfection since the Spirit takes his origin from the Father, as the Father of the Son.
The Church of the East had its first Synod in 410 (called the Synod of Mar Isaac). In that Synod, this is how the Creed confessed the Holy Spirit:

“And we confess the living and holy Spirit, the living Paraclete who (is) from the Father and the Son”

So, we see early on how this Creed was a wonderful example of how the Faith can be expressed in different formulations, while at the same time, the fullness of communion is maintained between the Churches.

God bless,

Rony
 
It’s definitely an infallible and Patristic

Popes such as John 8, who followed Nicholas in the 9th century, repudiated filioque.

Which ones are right?
 
Article 1 of the Union of Brest deals with this issue. The Union is the covenant of communion between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Rome and was blessed and ratified by Pope Clement VIII.
1.—Since there is a quarrel between the Romans and Greeks about the procession of the Holy Spirit, which greatly impede unity really for no other reason than that we do not wish to understand one another—we ask that we should not be compelled to any other creed but that we should remain with that which was handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the writings of the holy Greek Doctors, that is, that the Holy Spirit proceeds, not from two sources and not by a double procession, but from one origin, from the Father through the Son.
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This is essentially what St. Basil was proposing in his treatise On the Holy Spirit and is the common Cappadocian formulation. As a Ukrainian Greek Catholic I am bound to this covenant as the basis of communion between my Church and Rome.
FDRLB
 
I guess it is a bit confusing for me. If there is but one principle, how can the Spirit proceed from both the Father AND the Son? How do the Latins define procession?
 
bpbasilphx said:
It’s definitely an infallible and Patristic

Popes such as John 8, who followed Nicholas in the 9th century, repudiated filioque.

Which ones are right?
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They rejected its addition to the Creed, not its validity. That much is basic history. They couldn’t have rejected the teaching without rejecting the Cappadocian Fathers and St. Athanasius, not to mention every single Latin Father. 🙂
I guess it is a bit confusing for me. If there is but one principle, how can the Spirit proceed from both the Father AND the Son? How do the Latins define procession?
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I’ll try to address this one tomorrow if I have time.

Peace and God bless!
 
Dear brother bpbasilphx,
bpbasilphx said:
It’s definitely an infallible and Patristic

Popes such as John 8, who followed Nicholas in the 9th century, repudiated filioque.

Which ones are right?
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I think we need to distinguish between “filioque” and “the use of filioque in the creed.” The former is orthodox properly understood. The latter can be rejected according to one’s Tradition.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
Dear brother Alexius,
Alexius said:
I guess it is a bit confusing for me. If there is but one principle, how can the Spirit proceed from both the Father AND the Son? How do the Latins define procession?
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For starters, take a look at this thread beginning with post#3. There are only 7 posts in the thread, so it is an easy read.🙂

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=218935

And if brother Ghosty has not done so by tomorrow, perhaps I will have a shot at it, if you don’t mind.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
I thank all of you for your replies. I am still a bit confused but I can see the controversy which seems to remain. So, am I to understand that the Eastern Catholic Church remains with the original creed which does not include “and the Son”? And if so, does the Pope recognize this as proper in light of his being the Bishop of Rome??

I know that these may be dumb questions but I am always learning. And please note that I do not mean to offend anyone. I’m just looking for clarification. God Bless…teachccd 🙂
 
teachccd,

The Pope is ok with Eastern Catholics for not saying the filioque in the liturgical Creed. For us Chaldean Catholics, Rome encouraged us to drop it from our liturgical Creed.

God bless,

Rony
 
The Latin understanding of “and the Son” is not really what the East was accusing the West of in centuries past. It is really more akin to the Eastern understanding of “through the Son.”

I do agree that it was imprudent to add the Filioque (locally, in Spain at first) to a universal creed, but it was for good reason: the combatting of a specific heresy in Spain. Anyway adding something orthodox to a universal creed isn’t heresy, it’s just imprudent.
 
teachccd said:
I thank all of you for your replies. I am still a bit confused but I can see the controversy which seems to remain. So, am I to understand that the Eastern Catholic Church remains with the original creed which does not include “and the Son”? And if so, does the Pope recognize this as proper in light of his being the Bishop of Rome??

I know that these may be dumb questions but I am always learning. And please note that I do not mean to offend anyone. I’m just looking for clarification. God Bless…teachccd 🙂
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The Pope is fine with it. In fact, when he was “just” Cardinal Ratzinger he used the Creed without the Filioque when addressing a letter (Dominus Iesus: vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html) to the whole Church on behalf of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

No time to address the Filioque issue more tonight. Hopefully tomorrow!

Peace and God bless!
 
ronyodish said:
teachccd,

The Pope is ok with Eastern Catholics for not saying the filioque in the liturgical Creed. For us Chaldean Catholics, Rome encouraged us to drop it from our liturgical Creed.

God bless,

Rony
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Thank you so much. I didn’t know that and again I appreciate all of the replies. God Bless…teachccd 🙂
 
I do agree that it was imprudent to add the Filioque (locally, in Spain at first) to a universal creed, but it was for good reason: the combatting of a specific heresy in Spain. Anyway adding something orthodox to a universal creed isn’t heresy, it’s just imprudent.
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Alexios,

How true is this statement that the Filioque was first added locally in Spain? Was it earlier than 410?

I ask this because as I mentioned earlier, we have a primitive form of the Filioque in the Creed of the Church of the East in the Persian empire in 410. At this Synod of Mar Isaac, the Council of Nicaea was expressed in words the Persian Fathers deemed adequate for their Church of the East.

God bless,

Rony****
 
I guess it is a bit confusing for me. If there is but one principle, how can the Spirit proceed from both the Father AND the Son? How do the Latins define procession?
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I’ll just put this part briefly, since I don’t have too much time and it may not be necessary to go into detail.

A principle, in Latin philosophical and theological language, is “that from which something comes”. So a chair would have at least two principles: the wood, and the designer.

With the Holy Spirit there is only one principle: the Spiration, or breathing forth. This single breathing forth is shared by the Father and the Son so that the Holy Spirit isn’t a composite of two distinct “efforts”, but one single action shared between two Persons.

That being said, the Father and Son don’t have an identical relation to this single procession. The Father alone is the Source of the Spiration, the foundation and “beginning” logically speaking (since it’s an eternal action it can’t have a beginning in terms of time, but can have a “first step” in terms of foundation upon which the whole is instantly and eternally “built”). The Son participates in the Spiration, receiving the action of “breathing forth” at the same “time” He receives the Divine Nature; obviously the Holy Spirit doesn’t receive it since He can’t be the principle of Himself, and likewise He doesn’t receive the Begetting, the principle of the Son, since He is logical “after” the Son, receiving from the Son, and therefore can’t “contribute” to the Son any more than you could contribute to the existence of your parents when they were children.

So the Father alone is the Source of the Holy Spirit, but breathes Him forth in such a way that the Son is united at once and eternally with the procession of the Holy Spirit, albeit in a “secondary” way. This doesn’t mean that the Son “contributes less”, since He’s sharing in a single action, but rather that He is not the Source of that action, and is going along with the Father, so to speak.

Since the procession, or moving forward, of the Holy Spirit is from both the Father and the Son as one single “breath”, it can be said that He proceeds “from the Father and the Son”. The reason this isn’t said in Greek is that the word used for “proceed” in the Greek doesn’t mean “moving forward”, as it does in the Latin, but rather “coming from the source”, and that can ONLY be said of the Father. It’s important to note that the filioque is NOT permitted in the Greek versions of the Creed even in the Catholic Church; it would be an error to say it the way the words are in Greek. Latin, and most other languages, lack the distinction between two different words for “moving forward from” and “coming out of the source”, so it’s not an issue in most other cases.

So the Latin understanding is actually very well described in the thread linked by Mardukm, with St. John of Damascus’ description of the spring (Father), the river (Son), and the sea (Holy Spirit). The spring is the source of the river, and is the only source of all water (Divinity, in this case), but the sea receives water from the river and the spring all at once and in a single “motion” (as from a single principle). The river is not the SOURCE of the sea, but it is an equal and necessary “partner” in the water going to the sea; the spring retains its place as ultimate source of all water without any difficulties or contradictions, and the river doesn’t contribute anything the sea that isn’t received from the spring.

As you can see from the other thread, this understanding is utterly Patristic, even with Eastern Fathers, and that is why it will NOT be rejected by the Catholic Church even if it is agreed that the Filioque addition itself may have been imprudent. It is the orthodox tradition of the Faith that the Person of the Holy Spirit comes forth from the Father, through the Son, in a single eternal “motion” which we call the Spiration.

Hope that helps! Peace and God bless!
 
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