Vindicating the Filioque is an exhaustive study with an ecumenical focus

The filioque is one of the oldest theological controversies in the history of Christianity. Catholics of the Latin rite, praying the Creed during Mass, say the following words:

Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem qui ex Patre Filioque procedit…

And (I believe) in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son…

The word filioque means “and from the Son’. This word did not feature in the Creed as originally promulgated at the Councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 but was added in the Latin Church in the late sixth century. The filioque was strongly opposed by many in the East and to this day remains one of the principal sources of tension between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Council of Florence in 1439 defined the filioque, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, as Catholic dogma. The Orthodox Church however, rejects this dogma and continues to hold that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone.

In recent decades some theologians have dismissed this dispute as a quarrel over words; a number of Catholic theologians have come to see the filioque as a barrier to Christian unity and have even called for it to be suppressed.

Fr Thomas Crean, O.P., in this detailed and scholarly book, argues the contrary. He states:

The present work aims to counter all these trends. The dispute about the Filioque is not, and never has been, a mere quarrel about words: it is a disagreement about the most important of all subjects, God himself. According to a phrase sometimes attributed to the Synod of Rheims in 1148, “whatever is in God, is God” …The spiration and procession of the Holy Spirit is God…in consequence, Catholics and Orthodox are not both right about the procession of the Holy Spirit.

Crean continues: “My approach in this book is, I hope, ecumenical in the truest sense, in that I appeal to authorities and to a tradition that are recognized in common by both parties.”

Views of the Fathers 

In putting forward his case, Crean appeals first to the Fathers of the Church. The two principal disputants on the filioque at the Council of Florence, John of Montero and Mark of Ephesus, both accepted the testimony of the Fathers as authoritative. As a result, Crean scours the writings of the Church Fathers in great detail and presents a convincing case that they accepted the filioque. He first cites those Fathers who were involved in opposing the Arian and Macedonian heresies, including Athanasius, Hilary, Basil and the Gregorys of Nazianzen and Nyssa.

Athanasius in his Epistolae ad Serapionem stated:

….as the Son is to the Father, so is the Holy Spirit to the Son.

Athanasius further states:

If the Son, because he is of the Father, is proper to his essence, it must be that the Spirit, who is said to be of God, is in essence proper to the Son.

Crean says that it is clear from Athanasius that “the Son possesses the whole nature of the Father, so the Holy Spirit possesses the whole nature of the Son.”

St Hilary of Poitiers, often called “Hammer of the Arians”, said of the Holy Spirit: “…we are bound to confess Him, proceeding, as He does, from Father and Son”. Hilary, in defending the consubstantiality of Father and Son, quoted Our Lord in saying: “All things whatsoever the Father has, are Mine.” By extension these words also indicate that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father.

Fr Crean concludes from the writings of St Gregory of Nazianzen that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of the one from whom he proceeds, just as the Father is the Father of the one whom he generates, and hence conversely that if he is by nature the Spirit of the Son, he also proceeds from Him.”

Furthermore, St Ambrose in his famous work De Spiritu Sancto, wrote that “The Holy Spirit also, when He proceeds from the Father and the Son…is not separated from the Father nor separated from the Son.”

The Council of Florence

Having established the Patristic basis for the filioque, Crean seeks to counter the claim that the decrees of the Council of Florence, which declared the filioque an article of faith and brought about a brief unification of the Eastern and Western Churches, were in some way invalid and that the council itself was unrepresentative of the whole church.

Fr Crean notes that Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, a leading critic of the council, admits that Florence “was the most representative, as far as its attendance is concerned, in the entire history of Christianity”. Crean goes into considerable detail in examining what is needed for a council to be considered ecumenical and the mechanics of how an ecumenical council works. This, for me, was one of the most interesting parts of the book. Crean states that a majority of the world´s bishops do not need to attend a council in order for it to acquire ecumenicity nor do all the bishops present need to approve its decrees. Crucially, councils also need papal approval. In an interesting history of the early councils of the church, Crean shows that at the Council of Nicaea, of the 318 bishops present only two refused to approve the Creed while three refused to sign the anathemas. At the Council of Ephesus however, while 197 bishops supported the orthodox position, 43 backed Nestorius.

Crean devotes a chapter to refuting the “Byzantine” or “imperio-pentarchic” theory which surmised that an ecumenical council relied for its legitimacy on the support of the five patriarchs (of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria) acting under the governance of the Roman or Byzantine emperor. While Crean admits that the first seven ecumenical councils were called by the emperor, he states that:

His convocation was…material rather than formal; that is, he brought the bishops together so that they might teach the true faith, but did not invest them either as individuals or as a body with magisterial rights.

Crean cites from Church Fathers such as Athanasius and Ambrose in support of this view.

The Council of Florence is, sadly, one of the great tragedies of church history. For here, albeit briefly, unity was obtained between the Eastern and Western churches only to be lost once again following the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. Crean chronicles the story of how this came about showing that both the Byzantine emperor and Patriarch of Constantinople wanted the council to take place. The emperor writing to Pope Martin V stated:

We say that it is necessary for all the holy patriarchs and all the bishops of our provinces to be present…When the sacred council shall have gathered according to the ancient manner and custom of the seven holy general councils of past times, and the truth shall have been sought for without strife, then let whatever…shall be revealed in this holy council by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit be accepted by each side and let the furthest parts of the earth follow. In this way let there be a union of the churches that is firm and unbreakable.

Similarly, the patriarch wrote:

We are writing to your Reverences, with the desire that an ecumenical council be held with all the necessary persons present, according to the ancient manner and custom; that this council should be canonical, free, inviolate, in all ways following the model of the ancient ecumenical councils; and that everything that by God’s help may be unanimously and harmoniously agreed in such a council should be considered as trustworthy, without any doubt or contradiction or dispute.

Both emperor and patriarch supported and promoted the union of the churches brought about by the papal bull Laetentur Caeli of July 6, 1439. On the Latin side, the decree of union was signed by eight cardinals, two patriarchs, eight archbishops, fifty-two bishops, four heads of religious orders, and forty-one abbots. On the Greek side, only two of the bishops present refused to sign while those who did sign represented 25 dioceses across the Byzantine world as well as representatives of all absent patriarchs. Nonetheless, this union was short-lived and subsequent divisions have never been fully healed.

This is a work that demands a particular interest in its subject on behalf of the reader. The book is detailed and scholarly, with lengthy footnotes and useful appendices. The author has a good command of Latin and Greek. Given the tragic disunity that the book describes it is certainly to be hoped that the relevant authorities and theologians would take notice of this book and take inspiration from the example of the Council of Florence to bring about a true unity in the future.

Vindicating the Filioque: The Church Fathers at the Council of Florence
By Fr Thomas Crean, O.P.
Emmaus Academic, 2023
Hardcover, 496 pages

Catholic World Report