Michael Lofton, from the Reason and Theology podcast, gives us a primer on the words that many people think are the main divider between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Does the question about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and from the son” really divide churches?
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Our guest is Michael Lofton, the proprietor of the podcast Reason and Theology. And one of the things that Michael is well known for is the conversation, the dialogue, the discussion that goes on between the eastern and the western lungs of the church if I could borrow that from Pope John Paul II. And at the heart of all this, I don’t know, I actually have to ask Michael if that’s the right to say at the heart of all of this, but certainly somewhere in the mix of the struggles and the discussions and the debates, I suppose you might say between East and West is that little filioque. And so Michael is here to help us with that. Michael Lofton, thanks for being here with us.
Michael Lofton:
Thanks for having me back on, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Well, let me start there. Is it the heart of everything? This filioque? Is that exaggeration to say it like that?
Michael Lofton:
Depends on who you ask and when in what time period.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Okay. All right.
Michael Lofton:
Here’s the reason why.
Cy Kellett:
That’s such a Jimmy Akin answer. I don’t have a time machine, Michael.
Michael Lofton:
Well, the reason for that though is because originally whenever we have this schism, and I know some people date it to 1054, that’s not necessarily accurate, but there were some tensions around the time of 1054. And believe it or not, it wasn’t the papacy and it wasn’t really the filioque that was the main issue at that time for the tension between East and West. It was the question of azymes, leavened and unleavened bread, that’s what it was. Do we use unleavened bread or leavened bread in the Eucharist? The East says it’s leavened. The West say, “Well, it’s okay to use unleavened as well.” And so that was the main reason. Now, fast forward a little bit to the Council of Florence in the 1400s By that time, the big issue is the filioque and that’s at the forefront.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay. So it does depend on-
Michael Lofton:
It does. And then fast forward even more to the present. Most people will tell you the issue of the filioque is not a main barrier between East and West. That’s true to an extent depending on what the person’s view is on the filioque. So we have to dig a little deeper there. So yeah, it really just depends on the time period.
Cy Kellett:
Well, what would people say is the big issue today?
Michael Lofton:
The papacy.
Cy Kellett:
Ah, okay. All right.
Michael Lofton:
And namely the question of papal supremacy, universal and immediate jurisdiction, and papal infallibility. I think if we could work through those two differences right there, everything else is settled. And to be honest, papal infallibility is actually subsumed underneath papal supremacy because if the pope has supremacy and is able to bind the consciences of the universal church, papal infallibility necessarily follows from that. So it boils down to papal supremacy.
Cy Kellett:
But now we’re going to get into what the word filioque means because I would like a person to be able to listen to this podcast and get the lay of the land, understand what the issues are and who the players are and why each is on the side that they are on. So we’ll get to all that, but I just want to resolve this. So you say it depends on what time period, and we have the leavened or unleavened bread, we have the filioque. Today, we have papal supremacy. It’s not because issues are getting resolved. The filioque and the bread question are still there. Is that correct? Or am I mistaken on that?
Michael Lofton:
They’re there, but they’re so minor and some have said that they’re resolved just depending on who you ask. So some of the East will say, “Look, this issue of leavened or unleavened, this was just silly. That’s not a big deal. That’s resolved.” Whereas others might say otherwise. Same for the filioque. I mean, look at 1848, you have four patriarchs signing off on a letter condemning it as heresy that is the filioque. And here we are a hundred and maybe 40 years later, I forget the exact year of the document that it was released, but roughly over a hundred years later, and now you have Eastern Orthodox saying, “Well, this issue with the filioque, it boils down to a matter of terminology.” So some will say that, others will stick to the older version and say, “No, it’s still heresy and it’s not an issue just of terminology.” So there isn’t just one unified view in the East on this particular perspective.
Cy Kellett:
When you’re married, you got to be careful about spending too much time apart because new problems will arise. Is that what’s happening between the East and the West is that if you have a division over bread and then the longer you stay apart, the more there’s going to problems are going to develop because you’re living two separate lives. Do you think that’s a fair analogy or is that a bad analogy?
Michael Lofton:
I think it’s fair, but I do want to say some of these other concerns such as filioque and papacy, though they may not have been at the forefront initially, they were still there historically as far as tensions. I mean we have tensions between East and West on the question of the filioque dating pretty early. Same for the papacy. We have some tensions there as well. But again, those two things weren’t really seen as the major impetus behind the schism. Whereas now, things have flip flopped and they are seen in azymes and beards and stuff like that are just seen as accidental and irrelevant because believe it or not, the question of whether or not priests can have beards was an issue for some.
Cy Kellett:
I was going to say you just slipped beards in there. I wasn’t going to notice.
Michael Lofton:
I throw the beards in there. Purgatory, beards, and azymes.
Cy Kellett:
Well, I guess we’ll have to do a separate show on the beards, but have we resolved that? I am somewhat concerned about that.
Michael Lofton:
Interestingly enough, Dr. Siecienski, who’s a Eastern Orthodox scholar, he’s written monumental book on the papacy, another one on the filioque, and he just finished one on purgatory, azymes, and beards. So I have not had the chance to read it yet, but I assumed that for him, he doesn’t think that the beards is a deal-breaker just knowing Dr. Siecienski.
Cy Kellett:
I got to say that’s disheartening if beards is a deal-breaker. Maybe that’s because I’m a neophyte in this regard, but I mean, beards shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.
Michael Lofton:
But it wouldn’t matter for us because we both have beards, right?
Cy Kellett:
And well, neither of us is a priest either. We do both have beards. Okay, so let’s get down to the filioque then. Okay, so I was going to do the passage, but I won’t. I’ll let you do that if you want, but the filioque becomes an issue because what? What is it and how did it become an issue?
Michael Lofton:
Yeah, so let’s start with the what is it first. So yeah, you’re right to point out to the Nicene Creed that part where we speak about the Holy Spirit and we say who proceeds from the Father and the Son, the words there and the son in Latin would be filioque, and that is admittedly something that we added to the creed. And the East did not have that tradition of adding that clause. So it did cause some tension whenever they started to see the West with that additional clause in the creed. But what is it, what do we mean by and the son? Might be helpful to just briefly speak about the Trinity to make sense of it. We say that first of all, God is one, right? I mean there’s only one God, we don’t believe in three gods, five gods, a million gods.
There’s only one God. This goes back straight to the Old Testament, the Shema, that every good Jew would recite every day from Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” So we start with the fact that God is one, but then when we speak of God being as one, we can refer to some distinctions, if you will, within God, not divisions, but some distinctions. So for example, we say that the Father is one person of the Holy Trinity, and he is without origin. He does not have his origin in anyone else. The Father is without origin, unbegotten. Whereas we say the Son, the eternal logos, we say he has his origin in the Father, he is begotten. Now, when we say origin here, we’re not speaking in time. He’s not a created being. Jesus is not a creature. This is an eternal origin, an eternal procession if you will.
So he has his origin in the Father. Now we can speak of the Holy Spirit as also having his origin in the Father, but what distinguishes him, the Holy Spirit from the Son, if both of them have their origin and the Father, what differentiates them? What makes them distinct? We say that the Holy Spirit has his origin or source in the Father immediately, but we can also speak of a mediation through the Son. So we might say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. Again, he has this immediate origin in the Father. He’s the ultimate source of his nature.
However, we can say that there’s also a mediatory role through the Son. And so we speak of one aspiration, one principle from the Father and the Son. I know it’s very, very confusing, but it’s number one, it’s testified to in scripture. Number two, it’s testified to in the church fathers and also it’s testified to in reason because if we can’t distinguish the Son from the Holy Spirit, they would seem to be conflated as one person. But this allows us to distinguish between the Son and the Holy Spirit. Does that help to answer the question? I can go into more detail if it doesn’t.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So I do notice one linguistic thing that I would like clarified with you because it seemed to make sense. In this way, it seemed to make sense that it seems reasonable what you say, not that reason would’ve led me to this on my own. But that it seems reasonable what you say. But the one linguistic thing I would like to clarify is you say originates from the Father or in the Father through the Son. And that’s not what the Catholic Church says in the filioque.
Michael Lofton:
You refer to the fact that the Catholic Church says and the Son?
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Michael Lofton:
Yeah. So the catechism refers to the fact that when we say from the Father and the Son, that’s equivalent to saying in the Eastern tradition from the Father through the Son.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay.
Michael Lofton:
So those are analogous, or I’m sorry, those are on the same level. They mean the same thing when properly understood. I do want to maybe unpack that here in a moment, but let me maybe give you an illustration. Let’s put it like this. We can speak of the sun, we can then speak of the rays of light that come from the sun and then the light itself, the radiance from the ray. And so we see the Father as the Son, the eternal logos, the word, the begotten Son as the ray, and then the Holy Spirit as the light, the radiance from that ray.
And we can say the radiance has its ultimate source in the sun, but it’s mediated through that ray of light, if you will. That’s just an analogy obviously that there’s some temporality in that analogy and we don’t believe that this happened in time. We believe that this is something eternal, but it is a decent way to give us an analogy to this. But I do want to say this. When we speak through the Son, when we use the term through the Son, it is the same thing as saying from the Father and the Son if we mean that this is something that happened from all eternity.
Where there’s some confusion is there are some in the Eastern tradition who will say, yes, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, but only in time, not in God Himself eternally, but only in time in so far as God is working with His creation and the mission of salvation and the way the events of creation and salvation unfold. We have maybe a priority with the Father and then the Son and then the Holy Spirit in time they will speak of through the Son in that way. Whereas we as Catholics are saying, well, yeah, that’s true, but that’s a reflection of something that’s already true about God Himself, within God. There’s this eternal flowing forth of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son. So that’s a distinction between what we would call with the imminent trinity within God and the economic trinity within time.
Cy Kellett:
Very interesting. Okay. So I do want to clarify one other historical point. You said that the Nicene Creed, everyone accepts, but that the West added the filioque. So just historically, how did that happen that the filioque got added without consulting somebody-
Michael Lofton:
Sure, sure.
Cy Kellett:
Calling somebody up and I mean you didn’t call people up, but how did that happen in a way that it just took root in the West but the East it did not?
Michael Lofton:
Fascinating question. Yeah. So I mean, originally you have the Nicene Creed with the Council of Nicaea. It’s a little bit of a different version than the one that it all of us recite today, East and West. The Nicene creed that we use really comes from not only Nicaea but also Constantinople I and a few centuries after that, there was a cannon in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 where we said, okay, look, the creed is locked. We’re not to come up with a different creed. We’re to use this creed and we’re not to start using other liturgical creeds. And so from that, some were under the impression that you just couldn’t add anything to the creed because of what Chalcedon was saying. And here we start to have Western Christians who are starting to add this clause into the creed. And one of the reasons why is we were dealing with Arian heretics way after the Council of Nicaea.
Arianism is still around and we’re dealing with it specifically in the territory of Spain. And some of the Spanish bishops added the clause, and the Son, the filioque, to the creed to support the deity of Jesus. Because think of this, if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, that strengthens the prominence of Jesus because he is a principle, if you will, of the Holy Spirit. So it was one of the ways in which we reinforce the deity of the Son, of Jesus, against Arians who were denying the deity of Jesus.
Well, we had this in the West. The East wasn’t really combating this issue by this time. So they’re dealing with other things. So they didn’t necessarily have that need to add that clause to the creed. Well, as centuries progressed, it became more and more prominent in the Western churches to have that added into the creed. So by the time of the end of sixth century, you would have Orthodox scholars admitting that it’s unanimous in the Western tradition at this point, which is important because if you have the entire West teaching something during this era where the Orthodox are saying the West was Orthodox, well, that means it’s not heresy. If the entire West has accepted the filioque clause, it can’t be heresy.
Now, Rome for a long time resisted adding it to the creed. Rome had no problem with the theology of the filioque. It was very clear. Yes, the theology is true, absolutely. But it did resist adding it to the creed. And by the time of 1014, you do start to have Rome giving way to the recitation of the creed with the filioque. And this just caused a lot of tremors with the East because they’re saying, “Look, the filioque, it’s adding to the creed. The creed is locked. You’re not supposed to add anything to the creed.” The Western Church was saying, “No, you’re not supposed to come up with a different creed, but just adding this clause isn’t changing the meaning of the creed. It’s not giving a different creed or something like that.” So from our perspective, it was a perfectly legitimate addition to the creed, whereas the East wanted to say, “No, the East needs to be consulted on this matter. And you guys agreed not to add anything to the creed.”
Especially at the fourth Council of Constantinople, 879. You have a council that met here in Constantinople between East and West. We don’t consider it ecumenical, but some Eastern Orthodox consider it the eighth ecumenical council. And in this council there is a clause there refers to not adding anything to the creed. And they’ll say, “You see? Right there, you guys agreed in 879 not to add anything to the creed. And here you go in 1014, you’re still adding the filioque to the creed. What’s going on?” Well, if you actually look at the council of 879, what we say there is that we would not add anything to the creed unless Satan stirs up some kind of heresy that needs to be responded to. And guess what? That’s exactly what happened. Spanish Arianism was stirred off, and so we added the filioque clause to the creed because Satan stirred off a heresy. And so again, we say that it’s consistent with everything we’ve signed off on.
Cy Kellett:
Well, let me ask you this then. Today, with all the philosophical and theological reflection that has gone on and the conversation between Orthodox and Catholics, is there a theological objection in Catholicism to leaving the filioque out? And is there a theological objection in Orthodoxy to letting other people use it even if we don’t use it? Do you see what I mean? Is there a theological reason why you can’t just accommodate one another on this point?
Michael Lofton:
Yeah. And so you know what? Rome has actually said for the Eastern churches that we don’t have to have it in the creed. So for example, in my church, we don’t recite it in the creed, but we accept the theology of the filioque.
Cy Kellett:
That’s what I’m getting at.
Michael Lofton:
You have to accept the theology, you can’t say, “Oh, well we reject the theology.” No, that’s out of bounds. But Rome doesn’t require us to recite it in the creed and certainly would not require the Eastern Orthodox in a reunified church to recite it in the creed because it wasn’t something that they have in their tradition. So there’s nothing wrong with us just continuing to recite the creed according to our own tradition as long as we recognize the orthodoxy of it. But I do think that… Yeah, go ahead.
Cy Kellett:
It was just seeming to me that from the Orthodox perspective, and one can see their perspective, it seems fairly clear. It does seem to be more of a process objection than a theology objection, at least the way you described it. So I’m wondering if the East sees it that way, that this is a process objection where this was not done correctly, and we have a counselor teaching that we interpret to mean you can’t mess around with this creed, that a process objection seems much easier to just let go than a theological objection.
Michael Lofton:
Certainly if that’s all that it is. Now, historically for the East, it’s been twofold. Number one, you added this to the creed without the East’s consent. And then number two, we believe the theology behind it is deficient or heretical. Now, again, we’ve made a lot of improvements in the last few decades to where some Orthodox were on board with the theology of it not being heretical. They might just say it’s a theological opinion, but it’s within the bounds of Orthodoxy.
Whereas there’s some other diehard Orthodox who would say, “Nope, it’s still heresy.” And then all of the Orthodox are going to say, “And you shouldn’t have added it to the creed.” So we’re still working on the issue of is this heretical or not. I think the issue of not adding it to the creed is fine, but you know what? There are some Orthodox who would still say, “Well, even if you’re saying we in the East don’t have to add it to the creed, that’s still not good enough because you guys are using it in your creed and your Latin church, and you shouldn’t be adding that to the creed.” So some are still going to have a problem with Rome using it in the creed in the Western churches.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Okay. So that’s where we are today. But you do give the sense that it has improved, that we’re not just where we were in 1848.
Michael Lofton:
Right. Yeah. It’s certainly improved. There’s a lot more clergy who are on board with it. Patriarch of Constantinople seems a lot more open to this than in history when it comes to not saying that this is heretical, and you have the monumental metropolitan Callistus ware who looked into this issue for years and finally came to the conclusion that this is an issue of a language problem and is not a theological barrier between us. So you do have plenty of prominent Orthodox who have come out and said, “Yeah, this isn’t something this should divide us.” You also do have some agreements between Orthodox and Catholic bishops. In North America, there is a document written by the bishops of North America and the Eastern Orthodox in America where we agree that neither side should be accusing the other of heresy in the question of the filioque.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay.
Michael Lofton:
So there’s still more work to be done, but there is that kind of agreement. But then you got plenty of Orthodox who just say, “No, those bishops are traitors, and it is still heresy.” So you’ll always have the diehards.
Cy Kellett:
Well, I’ll tell you, when you think about the struggles over liturgy in the Latin right church, that it seems to me that one might come to the theological conclusion in the bishop’s office that both the new order of the mass in the vernacular and the older in Latin are fine, but that doesn’t mean people are going to accept it. So I mean, what if you had a situation where the Orthodox bishops all in all said, “This is fine, let’s move on from this.” That doesn’t mean that Orthodox people are going to accept that.
Michael Lofton:
Exactly. And that’s one of the reasons why we haven’t been able to have reunion, because if you recall, when we had several reunion councils, León’s and also the Council of Florence, we’ve had these reunion councils where on paper we’re reunited. It’s taken home to the laity, to the common Orthodox, and they reject it. And so the signatures of the bishops turned out to be nothing because the people feet on the ground rejected it. So it couldn’t really digest into everyday life. And so this is the reason why the Council of Florence failed. All of the bishops except one signed off on it and they bring it home and the laity don’t accept it.
They had a lot of biases against the Catholic Church, and so they did not accept it, and it failed. And I think that that is going to continue to be the case until there is a significant change on the local ground level. We say that the schism happened from the local level on up and have found its way into the ranks, into the bishops. That’s going to have to be how we reverse this schism. It’s going to have to happen on the local level first. You’re going to have to have enough people on board on the local level before the bishops can really say, “Hey, we’re in communion with one another.” Otherwise, it’s just going to be another Florence.
Cy Kellett:
I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, resolving a theological issue is not the same as healing a division in the church.those are two different things. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have liturgy wars. That’d be over.
Michael Lofton:
To be honest, I think the Patriarch of Constantinople would sign off on a reunion right now if he knew that the average Orthodox would back him up and that the other churches would back him up, but he knows that there would be plenty of Orthodox would not back him up. So he doesn’t agree yet to a reunion.
Cy Kellett:
And what’s the point of a reunion that shatters Orthodoxy? We don’t want a shattered Orthodoxy.
Michael Lofton:
Exactly. Exactly. It would be no different than the Eastern Catholic churches that have come into communion with Rome historically already. I mean, if you have a group who says, “Okay, well we’re coming back together,” there’s still going to be plenty of Orthodox who say, “We’re not on board and we’re just going to replace you and create more bishops and replace your city with somebody who is Orthodox,” and it’s just going to be the same as whenever you have an Eastern church entering into union with Rome known as Eastern Catholicism. It’s just going to be no different than that. You’re always going to have a group of people on the Eastern Orthodox side who are not on board and are going to continue a schism unless we can get them on board too.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, okay. And that’s in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
Michael Lofton:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
He’s got ways of doing those things, and we’ll do it in his time, but certainly we are called to cooperate in that and to pray for that. What else? Anything else I should know about the filioque? I feel like I’ve got a grasp of it, but what else should I know about the filioque in this? What I thought maybe was decisive, but I didn’t know about the bread and about purgatory and about beards. I did know about the supremacy of the pope, the controversy, the dispute over that. But what about the filioque? Have I gotten the picture from you?
Michael Lofton:
Yeah, I mean, there’s just so much more to say here, but what I will say is this, is that I think the Orthodox have backed themselves into a corner and put themselves in quite the predicament because they have historically said that this is heresy. And yet, the West very clearly maintained the filioque for a long period of time while the East was in communion with a filioquist West, which means the East was in communion with heretics if this is heresy. That’s a problem for Orthodoxy, because that would then mean that they were in communion with heretics, and that would also mean that the Orthodox West, the West they’re claiming is Orthodox, was in fact in heresy for a long period of time embracing the filioque. That’s a very serious problem whenever they’ve gone to the extent of calling this heresy in 1848.
Cy Kellett:
Just one other thing then, do you think that the way forward is to have more conversations about the papacy? As far as dialogue goes, which to focus our energies, the place to focus them would be on the role of the papacy?
Michael Lofton:
I do. Because if the papacy, we can come to an agreement on that, the filioque follows. It just follows because again, from papal supremacy follows papal infallibility. And if Rome has already accepted the orthodoxy of the filioque for as long as it has, then we can know it’s Orthodox. So in other words, if we solve the papacy issue, everything else is solved, but we could fix the filioque issue and still have a papacy issue.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Michael Lofton:
That’s really… Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That’s divisive on lots of levels because it’s practically divisive as well. It’s not just theologically divisive. It’s practically divisive because it has a question of, well, who’s got authority to say what?
Michael Lofton:
Exactly, and we would say the pope has the authority to determine the Orthodoxy. He also has the authority to add to the creed. We would still defend that he has that authority. The question is, should he? Should he add something to the creed without the consent of the East? Probably not. Can he? Yes. Should he? No.
Cy Kellett:
No. I think your dog agrees with that. He did not like it when you suggested should the pope do this.
Michael Lofton:
But yeah, I think he’s barking at the mailman.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, good. All right. That’s good. That’s a good dog. Well, Michael, I really appreciate it. I do appreciate that you take the time because I think sometimes we can just assume, oh, this is the thing. It happened in 1054, it’s the filioque, and forget all these other subtleties of it. So I appreciate you taking the time to explain the subtleties to us.
Michael Lofton:
Glad to do it. It was an honor.
Cy Kellett:
Michael Lofton, you can find him at Reason and Theology. He’s an associate apologist here at Catholic Answers. And did you see that I got that? No. Affiliate. I got it wrong. I did it again. I was all proud of myself something.
Michael Lofton:
It’s the same thing.
Cy Kellett:
I was all proud of myself for getting it right. This is my filioque. I can’t get this right. I changed it unilaterally and I can’t go back now. The affiliate apologist here at Catholic Answers, and I want to thank you for listening to Catholic Answers Focus as well. If you want to get in touch with us, you can always send us an email. Focus@catholic.com is our email address, focus@catholic.com. If you’d like to support us financially, you can do so by going to givecatholic.com. It does cost a little bit of money to do this. And if you want to help support it, you’ll go to givecatholic.com. And as always, wherever you get this podcast, if you would subscribe, if you would give us that five star review, maybe a few nice words that really helps to grow the podcast. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, Michael Lofton has been our guest. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.