A few notes on Eastern Orthodoxy (EO) and it’s rejection of the Filioque clause:
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In the late 6th century in the West, traditionally at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, with later spread and formal adoption in the Roman liturgy in 1014.
The original Nicene Creed (325) ended simply with belief “in the Holy Spirit.” The expanded Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed associated with the Council of Constantinople (381) states that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father” (drawing on John 15:26), without “and the Son.”
The Latin word Filioque (“and the Son”) was inserted into Western versions of the creed as an anti-Arian clarification, affirming the full divinity and equality of the Son (so that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son). The traditional first clear appearance in a Western creed is at the Third Council of Toledo (589), when the Visigoths under King Reccared renounced Arianism and accepted Catholic Christianity. Subsequent Toledo synods (e.g., 633, 638, 653) reiterated it, and it spread in Spain, then to the Frankish kingdom and England (e.g., Council of Hatfield in 680).
Some scholars note that manuscript evidence is stronger for the Eighth Council of Toledo (653) as the first unambiguous insertion, and that the 589 reference may involve later interpolation; the exact process of the initial Western addition is not fully documented. There is also an earlier Eastern parallel (a local synod at Seleucia-Ctesiphon/Ctesiphon around 410) that used similar language about the Spirit being “of the Father and the Son,” but this is distinct from the standard Western liturgical insertion into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
Rome long accepted the underlying theology (supported by Latin Fathers such as Augustine) but resisted altering the creed text itself. Pope Leo III (early 9th century) endorsed the doctrine while opposing the addition to the creed. The Filioque was first sung in the Mass at Rome in 1014 under Pope Benedict VIII, at the request of the German king (later emperor) Henry II.
This Western addition became a major point of contention with the Eastern churches (who retained the original form without Filioque), contributing to the East-West Schism, though the deeper issues involved authority, theology of procession, and conciliar canons (notably Ephesus 431) against altering the creed.
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The East-West Schism (also called the Great Schism) is the formal break between the Western (Roman Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) churches, traditionally dated to 1054.
It was not a sudden event but the culmination of centuries of growing divergence in theology, church authority, liturgy, language, and politics. The mutual excommunications of 1054 marked a symbolic watershed, though full alienation deepened later—especially after the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Main Causes
Several interlocking issues drove the split:
The Filioque clause — The Western addition of “and the Son” to the Nicene Creed (the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son). The East rejected both the unilateral change to an ecumenical creed and the theology it expressed, insisting the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (or from the Father through the Son). This remained one of the two most persistent doctrinal disputes.
Papal primacy versus conciliar authority — Rome increasingly claimed universal jurisdiction over the whole Church based on succession from Peter. The East viewed the bishop of Rome as first among equals (primus inter pares) within a system of autocephalous churches guided by the ecumenical councils and the pentarchy (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem). The rise of a more centralized, monarchical papacy in the West clashed with the Eastern model.
Liturgical and disciplinary differences — Use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the Western Eucharist versus leavened bread in the East; mandatory clerical celibacy in the West versus married parish clergy in the East; differences in fasting rules, confirmation practice, and other customs. These were often treated as serious matters of orthodoxy rather than local variation.
Cultural, linguistic, and political factors — Latin West versus Greek East; the shifting center of imperial power to Constantinople; competition over missionary territories (especially among the Slavs); and the coronation of Charlemagne as “Emperor of the Romans” in 800, which the Byzantines saw as a challenge to their continuity with the old Roman Empire.
The Events of 1054
Tensions flared over Latin practices in southern Italy (then under Byzantine influence) and the closing of Latin churches in Constantinople by Patriarch Michael Cerularius. Pope Leo IX sent legates, led by the forceful Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, to Constantinople.
Negotiations failed. On July 16, 1054, Humbert placed a bull of excommunication against Cerularius and his supporters on the altar of Hagia Sophia. A week later the patriarch and a synod responded by excommunicating the legates. (Note that Pope Leo IX had already died by then, so the legates’ authority was technically limited.)
Neither side regarded the break as permanent or total at the time. Communion continued in various places for decades, and earlier temporary schisms had been healed. The rupture hardened over the following centuries.
Aftermath and Later Developments
The Fourth Crusade’s diversion to Constantinople in 1204 and the establishment of a Latin Empire there created deep and lasting bitterness in the East. Attempts at reunion (notably the Councils of Lyon in 1274 and Florence in 1439) ultimately failed, largely because the Eastern churches and peoples rejected the terms.
In 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I mutually lifted the 1054 anathemas in a gesture of goodwill. Dialogue has continued since then, though full communion has not been restored. The two remaining core issues are still papal authority and the Filioque.
In short, 1054 is the conventional date for the East-West split, but it was the public climax of a long process of mutual estrangement rather than its sole cause.
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R. J. Rushdoony’s critique of the Eastern Orthodox rejection of the Filioque appears primarily in The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church (1968). He treats the clause not merely as a fine point of Trinitarian theology but as a foundational issue with major consequences for doctrine, culture, and social order.
Core Theological Point
Rushdoony argues that the Western addition of Filioque (“and the Son”) to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was a necessary clarification that eliminated lingering subordinationism. By affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the West declared the full ontological equality of the Father and the Son. The Trinity is one God in three persons, with no subordination of one person to another in substance or being—only in terms of economy or operation.
The East’s rejection of the clause, in his view, left a residual subordinationism intact. The Son is effectively diminished relative to the Father. As a result:
“If the Holy Ghost proceeds only from the Father, then the Holy Ghost… becomes absorbed into nature. The state is man’s true order, and the church is the concentrated area in which the social process of deification occurs… The kenotic Christ of Eastern [Orthodox] thought abandons His deity work in the world.”
In other words, denying the Spirit’s procession from the Son implies the Son is not fully equal to the Father in the eternal relations of the Godhead. This weakens the doctrine of the God-man and shifts emphasis away from the incarnate Christ’s active lordship in history.
Cultural and Political Implications
Rushdoony consistently linked creeds to social order. He saw the Eastern position as producing:
A tendency toward mysticism and a dichotomy between Spirit and doctrine (or Word).
An authoritarian image of communion in which the Father unilaterally “breathes” the Spirit, with the Son and Spirit lacking the reciprocal relationship present in the Western formulation.
Greater amenability to top-down systems of order and government, because the full equality and mutual relations of the persons are underdeveloped.
A weaker cultural resistance to political tyranny, since a diminished Christ leaves a vacuum that the state readily fills.
By contrast, the Western double procession grounds a theology in which the Spirit represents both the Father and the incarnate Son. This, for Rushdoony, supports a more concrete, historical, activist Christian social order oriented toward dominion under the Triune God rather than mystical absorption or statist deification.
Context in Rushdoony’s Thought
This critique fits his broader project: heresies (especially forms of subordinationism) are not abstract errors but have civilizational consequences. He viewed the early councils and creeds as laying the foundations of Western liberty, limited government, and ordered freedom precisely because they secured the full deity and equality of the persons of the Trinity. The Eastern rejection of the Filioque, in his reading, represented a failure to carry that development through consistently.
Rushdoony was writing from a Reformed, theonomic, and Van Tilian presuppositional perspective. He was not engaging the full range of later Orthodox distinctions (e.g., essence-energies, eternal manifestation through the Son versus hypostatic procession from the Father alone). His focus remained on the long-term social outworking of the rejection of double procession as he understood it.
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On Tom Smail’s work:
“There is no way to Pentecost except by Calvary; the Spirit is given from the cross.” Smail insisted that charismatic experience must remain rooted in the cross and in classical Trinitarian doctrine rather than becoming independent or experientialist.
In “The Giving Gift,” Smail engaged the Filioque controversy directly. He accepted the Western concern that the Spirit is closely related to the Son but proposed a revision that avoided simple subordination of the Spirit to the Son. He argued for a mutual relationship: the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son, and the Son is given by the Father in the power of the Spirit. This allowed him to affirm both Eastern and Western insights while emphasizing the full personhood and distinct role of the Holy Spirit.
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Grok on Thomas weinandy:
Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap. (born January 12, 1946, in Delphos, Ohio) is an American Capuchin Franciscan priest and Roman Catholic theologian specializing in Christology, Trinitarian theology, soteriology, and the doctrine of God (particularly divine impassibility).
Background
He entered the Capuchin order in 1966, was ordained in 1972, and earned his doctorate in historical theology from King’s College London in 1975. He has taught at institutions including Georgetown University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and the University of Oxford (where he served as Warden of Greyfriars from 1993 to 2004 and as a lecturer in the Faculty of Theology). He has also served as Executive Director of the Secretariat for Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and is a member of the International Theological Commission.
Key Theological Contributions
Weinandy is best known for:
Trinitarian theology, especially The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (1995). Here he argues that the Father begets the Son in or by the Holy Spirit, and that the Son loves the Father in the same Spirit. This gives the Holy Spirit a more active, constitutive role within the immanent Trinity. Weinandy presents this as more faithful to the New Testament, as correcting inadequacies in both traditional Eastern and Western formulations, and as offering a possible path toward resolving the Filioque controversy in a way that honors the monarchy of the Father while affirming the Spirit’s full personhood and involvement in the Son’s generation.
Divine impassibility and the suffering of Christ, notably in Does God Suffer? (2000), where he defends classical theism while carefully relating it to the genuine human suffering of the incarnate Son.
Christology, including works such as Does God Change? The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, and the multi-volume series Jesus Becoming Jesus (theological interpretations of the Gospels).
His work is marked by a strong engagement with Scripture, the Church Fathers, and classical (especially Thomistic) categories, while seeking to address contemporary theological and ecumenical concerns. In the context of East-West Trinitarian discussions, his proposal on the Spirit’s role in the begetting of the Son is one of the more distinctive late-20th-century Catholic attempts to reframe the Filioque debate.
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My preferred formulation: “The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.”
Grok analyzes:
This expression (dia tou Huiou / per Filium) is a traditional and widely attested patristic formula used by both Eastern and Western Fathers. It is one of the most important expressions in the history of the Filioque debate.
Historical and Patristic Background
Many Greek Fathers employed language of the Spirit coming “through the Son”:
St. Basil the Great speaks of the Spirit being joined to the Father through the Son.
St. Maximus the Confessor explicitly defended the Western use of Filioque by explaining that the Latins understood the Spirit to proceed from the Father through the Son, while still affirming the Father as the sole ultimate cause (aitia).
St. John of Damascus and others also use similar language.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) includes related formulations.
The formula appears frequently in the Greek tradition and is not itself controversial.
Eastern Orthodox Understanding
Orthodox theology generally accepts the phrase but carefully distinguishes levels of meaning:
The hypostatic origin (ekporeusis) of the Spirit is from the Father alone. The Father is the sole uncaused Cause (monarchia of the Father).
“Through the Son” refers primarily to the eternal manifestation or shining forth (ekphansis) of the Spirit, or to the Spirit’s temporal mission in the economy of salvation.
Later Byzantine theologians (e.g., Gregory of Cyprus at the Council of Blachernae in 1285) refined this distinction to protect the monarchy of the Father while still allowing “through the Son” language.
For Orthodoxy, making the Son a co-cause of the Spirit’s existence would compromise the Father’s unique role as source of the Trinity.
Western / Catholic Understanding
Western theology has long treated “from the Father through the Son” as compatible with, and even equivalent in substance to, the Filioque:
Because the Son receives everything from the Father (including the power to spirate the Spirit), the Spirit can be said to proceed from the Father through the Son.
The Council of Florence (1439) explicitly stated that the Fathers’ use of “through the Son” means that the Son is also (with the Father) the cause/principle of the Spirit’s subsistence, though the Father remains the principal source.
Thomas Aquinas explains that the Spirit proceeds from the Father immediately and from the Son mediately, yet from both as from one principle.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (248) describes the Eastern and Western formulations as a “legitimate complementarity” that does not affect the identity of the faith, provided neither side becomes rigid.
Ecumenical Significance
This formula is frequently proposed as a bridge:
It preserves the Father’s monarchy (an Eastern concern).
It affirms a real, eternal involvement of the Son in the Spirit’s coming forth (a Western concern).
Figures such as Maximus the Confessor, and more recent theologians (including some of the work of Tom Smail and Thomas Weinandy in different ways), have seen it as a way to move beyond the classical opposition.
In short, “from the Father through the Son” is ancient, biblical in resonance (cf. the economic pattern of the Spirit being sent by the Father through/in relation to the Son), and remains one of the most promising common expressions in East-West dialogue on the procession of the Holy Spirit. The continuing disagreement lies less in the phrase itself than in precisely what “through” is taken to mean regarding the Spirit’s eternal, hypostatic origin.
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Why does EO reject the Filioque?
Eastern Orthodoxy does not reject the patristic language of the Spirit coming “from the Father through the Son.” Many Greek Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, and others) used precisely that kind of formulation. The rejection of the Filioque is more precise and rests on several interrelated concerns.
- The Critical Distinction: Origin vs. Manifestation / Mission
Orthodox theology draws a sharp distinction between two things:
Eternal hypostatic origin (ekporeusis): the Spirit’s very mode of existence / personal subsistence. This is from the Father alone. The verb used in the Creed and in John 15:26 (ekporeuetai) is understood to refer uniquely to this origin from the Father as sole Cause (aitia, arche).
Eternal manifestation / shining forth (ekphansis) or temporal mission: the Spirit is manifested, shines forth, or is sent through the Son. This is fully accepted and is what the Fathers usually meant by “through the Son.”
When the Fathers say the Spirit proceeds “through the Son,” Orthodoxy understands them to be speaking of the second category, not of the Spirit’s hypostatic origin. The Filioque, as interpreted by the West (especially as defined at Lyons II and Florence), is read as making the Son a co-cause or co-principle of the Spirit’s existence itself. That is what is rejected.
Later Byzantine clarification (notably Gregory of Cyprus and the Council of Blachernae in 1285) formalized the language of an “eternal manifestation” of the Spirit through the Son while still insisting that the Spirit’s personal existence comes from the Father alone.
2. The Monarchy of the Father
A central Orthodox principle is the monarchy of the Father: the Father alone is the unique, uncaused source of the Godhead. Both the Son (by generation) and the Spirit (by procession) receive their existence from Him.
If the Son is also a principle of the Spirit’s procession in the same sense, Orthodoxy sees two problems:
It appears to introduce two sources or causes in the Trinity.
It risks confusing the unique hypostatic (personal) properties of the Father and the Son. The personal property of the Father is to be the source; the personal property of the Son is to be begotten. Attributing spiration-as-cause to the Son mixes these properties.
Photius (9th century) sharpened this into the formula “from the Father alone” (ek monou tou Patros) for the eternal procession, while still allowing “through the Son” for the economy and manifestation.
3. Procedural and Ecclesiological Objection
Beyond the theology of procession, Orthodoxy objects to the unilateral insertion of the Filioque into the Creed of an Ecumenical Council (Constantinople 381) without the agreement of the whole Church. Altering a received ecumenical symbol was seen as a serious breach of conciliar order and of the common faith of the undivided Church.
Summary of the Orthodox Position
“From the Father through the Son” → accepted (as manifestation or mission).
“From the Father and the Son” as two co-equal principles of the Spirit’s hypostatic existence → rejected.
The Father remains the sole Cause; the Son is not a second Cause of the Spirit’s personal being.
This is why Orthodoxy can affirm the patristic “through the Son” language while still rejecting the Filioque as it came to be understood and dogmatized in the West. The disagreement is not over whether the Son is involved in the Spirit’s coming, but over the manner and level of that involvement in the eternal life of the Trinity.
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The EO should be considered part of the visible church, albeit a corrupted one (image worship, etc.)
The EO does have subordinationist tendencies, seen in its rejection of the Flioque.
While EOs believe in the deity of the Son, it is hard to understand how the Son is fully equal to the Father if the Spirit only proceeds from the Father.
The mutuality of the Trinity is lost.
The Filioque was added in the West in part to more forcefully reject Arianism.
Rushdoony also points out that EO has a tendency to dichotomize the relationship of the Word/Son to the Spirit.
Rushdoony’s book argues that heretical or distorted theologies have civilization impacts.
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Interestingly, a lot of early Eastern/Greek fathers used the Filioque, or very similar formulations, when discussing the Trinity.
This makes the EO rejection of the Filioque an oddity in church history in a sense – though there is a lot of nuance.
EO’s “official” teaching, as I understand it, claims the Spirit’s procession from or through the Father pertains only to Spirit’s temporal mission, not his eternal origin which is from the Father alone. To put it another way, it is economic, not ontological.
Western theologians insist (rightly, I think) that the economic Trinity reveals the economic Trinity. We can read economic relationships back into the ontology of the Trinity.
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In my judgment, the biggest EO objection to the Filioque is that it was not added at an ecumenical council. It was added at a regional council, so it was at least as much about politics as it was theology. It was not so much the “the Filioque is wrong” (though there were aspects of that_ as it was, “You Westerners added this phrase to an ecumenical creed without our consent or cooperation.”
The myth of a “pristine” early church in which everyone got along well is under a myth.
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