This link:
The Council of Florence DID discuss about the lawfulness of adding filioque.
You can read it from this excerpt of Fr Gill’s book (don’t miss two other excerpts from the book). Can’t really be call “excerpt” btw, it’s rather long.
I have the book and read it and it’s nowhere written that the Latin fathers used the argument (as I’ve presented in my initial post). I’m wondering why…
Here the relevant part (but one should really read the whole exchange):
The Greek [Mark Eugenicus] answer to Cesarini’s arguments was in its main lines very simple.
The prohibition refers not to the private professions of faith of individuals but to the symbol of the Church that is used in the Liturgy and as the profession of faith at baptism. So all that the Cardinal had urged about the case of Charisius and the professions of Agatho, Tarasius and any others was beside the point. They were all private, not public. Individuals could write their own professions, but not declare them to be the commonly accepted ones, or employ them in the Liturgy or at baptism. Charisius, Agatho, Tarasius did not do that.
To say that the prohibition forbids only ‘another, i.e. diverse, faith’ is absurd. That was forbidden already from the nature of things.
Eugenicus put his thought into a syllogism. ‘Every symbol should be one and the same with all those who use it: but the exposition of the faith is a symbol. Therefore’. A symbol is an exposition of the faith in words and phrases, and that is what the legislators had in mind when they wrote ‘to put forward, to compose, to put together’. It is true that the prohibition forbids also ‘thinking’ another faith. Manifestly the Fathers had two things in view as their words show. ‘Put forward’ , ‘write’, ‘compose’ clearly refer to writing,** to words**,
to syllables, and to ‘put forward’, ‘write’ or ‘compose’ another faith is forbidden under penalty – obviously here** it is a question of a profession of faith, not just its content**.
‘Think’ implies the inner intention or meaning of a man, and so here the Fathers meant in addition to forbid heretical views, also under pain of censure, to meet cases like that of Eutyches, who claimed to profess the faith of Nicaea but in fact did not hold it.
The mind of the legislators is to be gauged not from what went before but from the circumstances that surrounded the formulation of the prohibition and their letters afterwards. They wished to avoid any other profession like that of the Nestorians, so they forbade any others at all.
That is what Cyril said in his letters and he speaks of syllables. ‘Other faith’ cannot mean ‘different faith’, otherwise there would have been many subsequent symbols, but in fact there are none.
The later Councils did not compose creeds: they added definitions. Nor is it of any avail to bring up the fact that the Council of Constantinople added to the Creed of Nicaea, as that was done before the Council of Ephesus and so before the enactment of the prohibition. Of any alleged prohibition laid down by Nicaea we know nothing. It is not in the Acts of the Council and is disproved by the action of the Fathers who did in fact make a second Creed. The incident of Flavian and Eusebius at Chalcedon proves nothing except the veneration that the Fathers had for the Creed of Nicaea, for no one had added to that Creed and what was condemned was opinions outside of it.
The seventh Council admittedly added to the prohibition ‘to the upsetting of those things which are defined’ but, as the prohibition is itself a definition, that only strengthens our case. Pope Vigilius is a good advocate of the Greek cause, for after he had enumerated in his letter to the Patriarch Eutychius the list of the Councils, he noted that they had ‘accepted’ and ‘confirmed’ the Creed: he did not say that they had ‘expounded’ and ‘clarified’ it.
‘This Symbol, this noble heritage of our Fathers, we demand back from you. Restore it then as you received it.** It may not be enlarged; it may not be diminished. It has been closed and sealed**, and such as dare to innovate in its regard are cast out and those who fashion another in its stead are laid under penalty. The addition of a word seems to you a small matter and of no great consequence. So then to remove it would cost you little or nothing; indeed it would be of the greatest profit, for it would bind together all Christians. But what was done was in truth a big matter and of the greatest consequence, so that we are not at fault in making a great consequence of it. It was added in the exercise of mercy; in the exercise of mercy remove it again so that you may receive to your bosoms brethren torn apart who value fraternal love so highly.’
It is clear from these words of Eugenicus that the arguments of Cesarini had availed nothing to make him change his views, while on the other hand the Cardinal remained unmoved by Mark’s impassioned exhortation and went coldly on with the discussion.
Where did I make such a statement?
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