Modern Historical Sistematical Observations On Filioque Addition

Summary: Today, oecumenical debates regarding the difficult problem of the procession of
the Holy Spirit cannot make progress in the absence of un understanding of the authentic
essence of the Filioque addition. In this respect, the orthodox perception is marked by several
prejudices dating back to the period of unionistic efforts precious to the fall of Byzantium.
One of them is that at the 3rd Council in Toledo (589) the Spanish Church is said to have
combated/withstood the arianism of Recared’s visigots by attributing a participation in the act
of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father to the Son. Having no historical
justification in the dispute between the patristic Church and the great Arian heresy, the above
mentioned prejudice has lately affected not only the orthodox perception of the problem, but
also the efforts of some Western theologians with good intensions who attempted to propose
so-called give-and take solutions meant to bring to terms the Western filioquist triadology,
oriented according to the order of the processions, with our monopatrist Byzantine Orthodox
one, which rejects any causal participation of the Son in the act of the procession of the Holy
Spirit. In order to make corrections to these prejudices and offer to the oecumenical debates –
at least to those in Romania – a better chance than they have had so far, the present exposition
attempts a historically correct interpretation of the signification which the Latin refutation of
Arianism had at its origins in the problem of the procession of the Holy Spirit, by identifying
the precise meaning of the proposition of the procession of the Holy Spirit a Pare Filioque
against the visigots’ pneumatology. The thesis of the present study will demonstrate therefore
that what the Latin Church in Toledo promoted at the councils in Toledo, especially at the 3rd,
in 589, was not the order of processions, but the divine nature of the Holy Spirit, that is the
idea that the One who proceeds from the Son is not a creature, but He is the same with the
One who, according to the Scriptures (Jn. 15: 26), proceeds from God-the Father Himself.
Conceding to the Arian thesis according to which the Spirit is brought to existence at the
Father’s command, yet through the actual activity of the Son, the Latin Church only tried to
show that the Father Himself participates in this act effectively, as He is actually the One who
offers this power to His Son. The Latin formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit meant to
withstand the Arianism of Recared’s visigots would have been better understood by the
Eastern theologians if, instead of the phrase that was given at the 3rd Council in Toledo, (589)
it had been formulated: nec a Filio solo procedit Spiritus Sanctus, as the Arians used to teach,
sed a Patre quoque, and as it is understood from Augustine’s writings.

Abstract: …………

Introductory Notes

There is a wide spread opinion according to which the introduction of the Filioque in the text
of the Symbol of Faith at the 3rd Council in Toledo (589) was justified by the association of
the Son to the act of the procession of the Holy Spirit by the Father in order to assign the
status of a hypostasis equal to God–the Father to the Son as well, that is, to liberate Him from
the inferior, subordinate status attributed by arianism. This is the case of the Russian
theologian Sergius Bulgacov who says: The true land of Filioquism, not only theological, but
ecclesiastical and dogmatic, was the Spanish Church, as we all know. While withstanding
Arianism, it wanted to glorify and proclaim the divinity of the Son by attributing Him a
participation in the act of the procession of the Holy Spirit… Bulgakov was obviously making
reference to the Spanish councils in Toledo in the 5th and 6th centuries. The teaching according
to which the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and the Son, is, indeed, for the first
time proclaimed officially in the Symbol of Faith of the First Council at Toledo, in the year
400, in which there appears the phrase: Credimus…in Spiritum quoque Paracletum…ex Patre
Filioque procedentem. A new council in the year 589, in the same city, introduces the formula
right in the text of the Nycea-Constantinople Creed (although some historians argue that the
interpolation appeared much later), thus being established the basis of the great doctrinal
schism between East and West on trinitary terms. We are speaking about the famous Third
Council in Toledo. This Council decreed then against the Arians that anyone who refuses to
believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Spiritus Sanctus a Patre
Filioque procedit), and that He is equally eternal and equal to the Father and the Son, be
anathema.

Another, more recent, author who gives the same meaning