The Trinity and the Filioque in History

The Doctrine of the Trinity has developed over many centuries. Doctrinal clarity often occurs in the process of defending the faith against false teaching. Solutions answer specific challenges, but there is still room for greater clarity. The primary challenge is to describe who God is in Himself (a se). There is One God, who exists eternally in Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. How are these Three related to each other? We understand the processions of the immanent Trinity because God discloses Himself in mission (economy) as recorded in Scripture. What follows is a brief history of the doctrine of the Trinity and the associated filioque controversy. This provides a handy reference for future discussions on these topics.

Irenaeus (137-202), from Lyon, now France, describes the work of the Son and the Spirit as the two hands of the Father—the Word and Wisdom.[1] This triangular description of the Trinity with the Father as King at the apex helpfully describes the Godhead. In mission, the Father sends the Son into the world (incarnation) and pours out His Spirit onto the church. From this observation in mission theologians describe two processions in the divine life—generation and spiration. The Father begets the Son and breaths the Holy Spirit.

Tertullian (c.155-c.220), from Carthage, now Tunisia, coined the term “Trinity,” which is not in Scripture. His definition: “God is one substance in three persons.”[2] Tertullian also enumerated the Godhead. The Father is the 1^st person of the Trinity, the Son is the 2^nd, and the Holy Spirit is the 3^rd. This is consistent with the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19.

Origen (c.185-c.254), from Alexandria, Egypt, described the Trinity using a vertical model. He separated the Trinity from Creation, but described the mission of God proceeding from the Father to the Son, with the Son sending the Spirit. In Origen’s hierarchy, the Father has the greatest glory, the Son lesser. Yet the Son exceeds all other created beings.[3] The Arian crisis and the idea that the Son (and Holy Spirit) are subordinate to the Father claims support in the writings of Origen.

Athanasius (c.296-373), from Alexandria, Egypt, made it clear that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equally God. The famous Trinity shield derives from the Athanasian Creed, excerpted as follows:[4]

We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal and yet they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One Uncreated, and One Incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not Three Almighties but One Almighty.

Athanasius attended the Council of Nicaea in 325, which Emperor Constantine organized to unify the church on the topic of the Trinity. Nicaea is southeast of Constantinople in Anatolian Turkey. The Nicene creed, which is the subject of the filioque controversy is as follows:[5]

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Spirit.

The Council of Constantinople in 381 expanded the Creed to include the below.[6] This creed was ratified at Chalcedon, also near Constantinople, in 451. It did not include the filioque, which was introduced unilaterally (not by church council) in 589 in Toledo, Spain. The filioque is shown in italics.

the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father (and the Son); Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets. And in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Gregory Nazianzen, (c.329-390) was from the Cappadocian region, now west central Turkey. He was Archbishop of Constantinople from 380-381, and friends with fellow Cappadocian Gregory of Nyssa. He battled the Pneumatomachians, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Gregory differentiated between the two processions as follows: “The Spirit is truly the Holy Spirit, in that He proceeds (proion) from the Father, not as a son (uikwς), since He  does not [proceed] by generation (gennhtwς), but by procession (ekporeutwς), if it is possible to create a new term to be clear.”[7]

Rather than employing the triangular model of the Trinity, Gregory places the Holy Spirit horizontally between the Father and the Son, thus affording the Spirit equal status in the Trinity, and not the subordinate role the triangular or vertical diagram might imply. “Inasmuch as He proceeds (ekporeuestai) from the Father, the Spirit is not a creature; inasmuch as He is not begotten, He is not Son; inasmuch as He is in between (meson) the One who is unbegotten and the One who is begotten, He is God.”[8] For Gregory, this horizontal arrangement is relational, not ontological—it does not disturb the monarchy of the Father.[9]

Beeley[10] importantly notes that “Gregory’s doctrine is what a modern might call both theological and spiritual at the same time, integrating in a seamless fabric what have more recently been distinguished as dogmatic and ascetical theology. In other words, Gregory’s doctrine of the Trinity is at every point soteriological; it represents and seeks to promote salvation and life in Christ.”

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) lived primarily in Carthage, Tunisia. His linear description of the Trinity was similar to Gregory of Nazianzus. He named the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Love and positioned Him as the mutual love shared by the Father and the Son. He is Love proceeding. Some point to Augustine as the author of the filioque.

Maximus the Confessor (579-662) of Constantinople (and Carthage and Rome) developed early arguments against the filioque, differentiating God’s actions in economy (mission) from eternal processions. For Maximus, “the Father is the source of life and unity within the godhead and greater as the one cause…of the Son’s generation and the Spirit’s procession, but not greater by nature.” “The Holy Spirit, who comes forth (ekporeuesqai) from the Father, comprehends this eternal relationship, and this reality is expressed by one’s speaking of the Spirit’s flowing forth (proienai) from the Father through the Son.” “This progression through the Son not only applies to the level of economy, but expresses something of the theology and the place of the Spirit in the τάξις.”[11]

Charlemagne and Pope Leo III. Pope Leo III (750-816) crowned Charlemagne (c.747-814) Holy Roman Emperor in 800.[12] In Rome, he was given the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Through negotiation with Muslim leaders, Charlemagne’s forces had responsibility for protecting holy sites in Jerusalem and vicinty. But these Latin soldiers forced Byzantine monks to recite the filioque. The monks appealed to the pope, who agreed not to amend the creed.

Photius (810-891) of Constantinople formed a series of arguments that are foundational to the Orthodox case against the filioque.[13] He did not debate the evidence for the filioque. He debated  the logical consequences of a double procession. Siecienski’s summary is as follows:

1.      If “the Father is one source of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Son another source of the Holy Spirit, the monarchy of the Holy Trinity is transformed into a dual divinity.”

2.      “If [the Spirit’s] procession from the Father is perfect and complete—and it is perfect, because he is perfect God from perfect God—then why is there also procession from the Son.

3.      “If the Son participates in the quality or property of the Father’s own person, then the Son and the Spirit lose their own personal distinctions. Here one falls into semi-Sabellianism.”

4.      “Because the Father is the principle and source, not because of the nature of the divinity but because of the property of his own hypostasis…the Son cannot be a principle or source.”

5.      “By teaching of the procession from the Son also, the Father and the Son end up being closer to each other than the Father’s nature but also the property of his person[i.e., of being a principle or source of the Spirit].”

6.      The procession of the Spirit from the Son makes the Son a father of the Spirit’s being; this “it is impossible to see why the Holy Spirit could not be called a grandson!”

Pope Benedict VIII made the inclusion of the filioque official for the Latin church in 1024. The Great Schism occurred in 1054.

Anselm of Canterbury. (c.1033-1109) was born in France, but lived primarily in England. He defended the filioque in Italy in 1098, around the time of the 1^st Crusade (1096-1099), in which Byzantium called for aid from the Pope, and Pope Urban responded. The reconciliation effort was significant, with the meeting at Bari, in southern Italy, hosting 185 bishops, however little progress was made. Anselm presented many arguments (Anselm, 390-435), including the idea that Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son because they share the same essence.

Sack of Constantinople by the 4^th Crusade occurred in 1204. With Latins in control (until 1261), there were again attempts at reconciliation, but mostly on Latin terms. In 1234, a delegation of Franciscans and Dominicans met with Greeks at Nicaea (near Constantinople). However, the problem proved intractable, the Latins were intransigent, and the Greeks accused the Latins of heresy.[14]

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was influenced by Augustine and Aristotle. He worked in Latin. A Dominican, born in Italy, Aquinas spent considerable time in Paris. His Summa Theologica had tremendous impact on Catholic thought. His description of the Trinity begins with two processions from the Father—the Son and the Spirit. The Father begets the Son or Word from the Intellect. The Father spirates the Spirit or Love from the Will. Aquinas masterfully works through the details of the Trinity and answers many objections. He argues that the Spirit proceeds from the Father causally or immediately. The Spirit proceeds from the Son mediately. Both spirate the Spirit.

Aquinas died enroute to the 2^nd Council of Lyon in 1274, where the filioque was accepted into the creed by the Greek delegation in attendance, but when these Greeks returned home they were treated as traitors. Very little progress has been made on the filioque since that time, with some recent developments from the 20^th century recounted below.

Karl Rahner (1904-1984), a German priest and theologian, wrote that “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa.”[15] Many credit this rule or axiom with reenergizing Trinitarian theology in the 20^th century. For Rahner, the immanent Trinity is God a se, as He is in Himself—in the Divine life, independent of creation. The economic Trinity is God ad extra, at work in the world. This construction updates the traditional terminology of processions and missions, where processions are eternal relations in God, and missions are God’s actions in the world. In the traditional framing, missions reveal processions.

Recently, Thomas Weinandy (1946- ), a U.S. charismatic Catholic priest, further defines the eternal relations in the model of Aquinas, specifically considering the filioque debate. He writes:[16]

Thus, there is within the Trinity a spirituque, in that the Son is begotten by the Father in the love of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit subsists eternally as the Holy Spirit only in relation to the Father and to the Son, for his identity as the Holy Spirit is predicated upon his coming forth from the Father as the one in whom the Father begets the Son in love and as the one in whom the Son, having been begotten in the love of the Spirit, in turn completely gives himself, in the Spirit of love, to the Father as his Son. This is ultimately the basis of the Filioque. Not only does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father as the one in whom the Father loving begets the Son in love, but the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son as the one in whom the Son loves the Father who has begotten him. In proceeding from the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit reciprocally conforms them to love one another in the Spirit of love that he is.

Weinandy expands Augustine’s description of the Spirit as the mutual love between Father and Son by providing a more active description of the Spirit in the generation of the Son. Accordingly, the Father is the loving Father; the Son is the loving Son. The Father is Fatherhood fully in act. The Son is Sonship fully in act. The Spirit is Love fully in act.  Weinandy emphasizes “the persons of the Trinity as being subsistent relations fully in act because this understanding was not adequately developed or clearly stated within either Augustine or Aquinas.”[17]

Language plays an important role in the filioque. The Greek word (see John 15:26) is ἐκπορεύεται. The Vulgate translates this procedit, but this Latin word is less specific than the Greek one. For example, ἀπέστειλεν (“sent” in English, same root as apostle) in John 8:42 is translated processi in Latin. Aquinas did his work in Latin and he does not make a distinction between the Greek words (see ST 27.1, which references John 8:42). Many argue that subtleties between Latin and Greek encumber the filioque disagreement. This is an important note to Bible translators today.

The decision to include the filioque into the creed was a unilateral one, and has its root in Petrine primacy, the assertion that the bishop of Rome is vicar of Christ on earth and he can speak for the church. The East believes the Roman bishop is the first patriarch among many. Today’s détente between East and West frees each side to recite their preferred version of the Creed. East and West are two lungs of the same body. The main source of division is not the filioque but the role of the pope.

Irenically, in 1995, Pope John Paul II met in Rome with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. They attended a Roman Catholic service in which the Nicene-Constantinople creed was sung in Greek with the omission of the filioque.[18] This was an encouraging gesture.

Recently, in 2024, the Lutheran Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church reached agreement on a common statement concerning the filioque.[19]

Image: Sculpture of the Trinity on the tympanum at the 12th-century Basilica of St. Denis near Paris. Sculpture shows the Spirit descending as a dove while the Father sends the Son, the lamb of God, into the disk of the world. Image by D. Watters.