Pope St. Leo III considered it a bad translation, forbade its use at Aachen in 809, and put the original Creed on the doors of St. Peter in Greek and Latin with the inscription HAEC LEO POSUI AMORE ET CAUTELA ORTHODOXAE FIDEI» (I, Leo, put here for love and protection of the Orthodox Faith)(VITA LEONIS, LIBER PONTIFICALIS (Ed.Duchene, TII, p.26) Was he being too subtle?
The ECF use ekporeusomai for the one, proinai for the other sense.
If it’s not a material difference, why twist Scripture to support it?-
There is indeed a material difference between those two words. They express two different but equally valid truths about the Trinity.
St. Epiphanius:
“No one knows the Spirit, besides the Father, except the Son, from Whom He proceeds (proienai) and of Whom He receives.” (Panarion, xi, in P.G., XLIII, 35):
orthodox.clara.net/belief.htm
The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son cannot be found in Sacred Scripture. It is a man-made addition.
americancatholicpress.org/Father_%20Gilligan_Filioque_clause_page1.html
< Scripture explicitly says that Christ received the Spirit from the Father and gave it to his Church:
This is the Jesus God has raised up, we are his witnesses. Exalted at God’s right hand, he first received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, then poured this Spirit out on us. This is what you now see and hear. (Acts 2:32-33)
The Spirit comes from God through Jesus Christ:
He saved us through the baptism of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he lavished on us through Jesus Christ our Savior. (Titus 3:5-6) >
If it’s all so unimportant
Follow Pope St. Leo III
AND DROP IT!
< In the ninth century, Pope Leo III agreed with the filioque phrase theologically but was opposed to adopting it in Rome, within the Creed, in part because of his loyalty to the received tradition. (He also knew that the Greeks resented the new Roman Empire in the West and Charlemagne in particular; the Pope wanted to preserve Church unity.) In fact, Leo III had the traditional text of the creed, without the filioque, displayed publicly. He had the original text engraved on two silver tablets, at the tomb of St. Peter. In any case, during the time of Pope Leo’s leadership, 795- 816, there was no creed at all in the Roman Mass. >
iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/history/creed.filioque.txt
< In a council held in Aachen in 809, the Frankish bishops
upheld the FILIOQUE. Pope Leo III (795-816) intervened, and forbade any interpolations or alterations in the Nicene Creed. He ordered the Creed, without the FILIOQUE, to be engraved in Latin and Greek on two silver plates on the wall of St. Peter’s in Rome. By doing so, he avoided a direct confrontation with the East. However, the FILIOQUE continued to gain ground in the West.
Two issues were involved: (1) Does the Holy Ghost in fact proceed
from the Son as well as from the Father? (2) Once a Creed has been adopted by the authority of the Church assembled in a world-wide council of bishops, is it lawful to amend the text of that Creed by any lesser authority than a similar council? Leo saw that it is possible to answer “Yes” to the first question and “No” to the second question without contradiction. However, he seemed to be almost the only one who saw this. Theologians in the West spent most of their time defending an affirmative answer to the first question, and their counterparts in the East were defending a negative answer to the second question. >
