Filioque question
Wife and I went to Christmas day service at the local Episcopal church. When we came to the Nicene Creed, I noticed the phrase, "(the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father) and the Son" had been dropped. Now, the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father.
This puts it in line with the Orthodox way of thinking.
I know the filoque phrase has never been approved in an ecumenical council.
Members of the Lutheran World Federation also agree with the Orthodox on this phrase, but our ELCA hymnal still uses it--probably because the current hymnal was approved before the LWF and Orthodox had reached agreement on the phrase.
I bring this up to ask is this common in other communions, or has our local vicar taken some liberty in her rendition of the creed?
This puts it in line with the Orthodox way of thinking.
I know the filoque phrase has never been approved in an ecumenical council.
Members of the Lutheran World Federation also agree with the Orthodox on this phrase, but our ELCA hymnal still uses it--probably because the current hymnal was approved before the LWF and Orthodox had reached agreement on the phrase.
I bring this up to ask is this common in other communions, or has our local vicar taken some liberty in her rendition of the creed?
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It's not as if the Orthodox have taken it away. It was never there in the first place.
I suspect what was going on in the instance you cite, @Gramps49 is that the vicar you mention may - and I can't be sure of this of course - be acting independently or else following some kind of directive within her particular section of the Episcopalian Church.
Some Anglican provinces have dropped the filioque clause. It sounds like some sections within Lutheranism have done the same.
'I would that all the Lord's people would be prophets.'
😉
So no one went rogue. The highest decision-making body in the Episcopal Church is on record in favor of using the Creed without the filioque, and has approved liturgies that have the Creed without the filioque.
And point of order: “Vicars” are not common in the Episcopal Church, and “vicar” is not generally the title of the priest in charge. A priest with charge of a parish is the rector of that parish (or priest-in-charge, if the office of rector is vacant). Generally speaking, and with the possibility of some variation from diocese to diocese, “vicars” are priests in charge of a mission congregation, for which the bishop is the rector.
I am aware what 'vicar' means in a US Episcopalian context. I was being a bit flippant and short-handy. We'll use terms like 'vicar-school' here for seminaries of all kinds, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. My late wife used to talk about 'Orthodox vicars' and 'Baptist vicars' in a mildly jokey way even though she was very well aware of the terms they would actually use.
Meanwhile, @Baptist Trainfan no offence, my friend, but I'm mildly astonished that you don't appear to be aware that the filioque clause was added to the Creed and not part of the original. I know Baptists aren't strictly creedal in the way that the historic Churches are but I would have thought that they'd generally be aware of controversies over this particular clause between the Orthodox and the RCs and other 'Western' Christian bodies.
You are of course right about Baptists (and others) not being strictly credal - but we are "western" rather than "eastern"! (Of course quite a few Baptists in the 18th centuray became Unitarian, but that's another story).
The Episcopal Church resolved in General Convention in 1994 to remove the filioque from the next edition of the book of common prayer. There has not yet been a "next edition", so most TEC services still include it.
The "supplemental liturgical materials" in Enriching our Worship include the Nicene creed with no filioque, so if the church @Gramps49 attended was using one of those for its Christmas service, it would be entirely normal.
Sure, but the way you worded it made it appear that you considered the version with the filioque clause to be the default option ... 😉
And of course some Baptists became Unitarian. It's because you aren't Creedal enough. 😉
Joking aside, the late Douglas McBain used to say that the Baptists were 'inconsistently orthodox'. Christological and Trinitarian controversies erupt from time to time in Baptist circles. They did in Spurgeon's day and they did in the early 1970s. Heck, Christmas Evans the formidable Welsh Baptist preacher spent most of his time combating one form of heresy or another. He even toppled over the line himself at one time but managed to clamber back out.
@Alan29 of course the RCs have retained it. They were the ones who added it in the first place. Evil, wicked, nefarious... 😉
You will find very intemperate language and attitudes among the Orthodox towards the RCC and 'the West' in general on this one. It's almost as if every evil can be traced back to this single source. Forget The Fall. Think filioque clause... 😉
There are, of course, 'Western' voices that call for its removal. As in the example in the OP, 'vicars' or no 'vicars'.
I don't know why we all can't get round a table and thrash it out once and for all.
The same as similar controversies such as those which separate the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox RCs and Protestants, etc etc.
All too many ...
Looking at Resolution 21: Calendar Revision in the last link, I really hope we're not moving away from recognizing canonized saints, but that's a different topic than this thread.
Regarding the references to building bridges with Eastern Orthodox churches, doesn't dropping the filioque do damage to trying to build bridges with the Roman Catholic church?
I'd have to read and compare Rome's arguments for using the filioque clause before no longer saying it myself, whatever the Episcopal liturgy does in some future BCP. I get very nervous about making changes that might be unnecessary--I concur with what Chesterton said about fences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence
I did not know of these things; that does make a difference to me.
I've not had my appendix out. We could do with a filioque-ectomy.
😉
The Orthodox don't 'trade' so we wouldn't concede anything in return, I'm afraid.
We are awkward that way.
That's always been my take
I have no argument with omitting the filioque on the grounds that it veers from what was approved by an ecumenical council and shouldn’t be changed without similar ecumenical approval. But arguments that it’s theologically incorrect don’t convince me; they require a certainty that, as @Alan29 says, seems suspect.
The Orthodox contention, held with varying degrees of vehemence, is that the 'West' had no right to add to the Creed unilaterally and that it subordinates the Holy Spirit in some way. My take, before crossing the Bosphorus was very much as the estimable @Twangist and @Lamb Chopped have articulated.
I've never really brought into the view that use of the clause demonstrates a flawed view of the Trinity provided it is taken to refer to the 'proceeding' of the Holy Spirit in time rather than eternity.
But like our appendix, I'm not sure the filioque clause serves any useful purpose, although its original coinage in Visigothic Spain was made with good intent, to combat Arianism.
It's one of those things that ought in theory be easy to resolve.
In practice ...
I have always thought it means in eternity, eternally proceeding, just as the Son is eternally begotten by the Father. One notion some people have suggested is that the eternal Love between the Father and the Son is Himself also a Person.
This is what I was taught in seminary.
Well and that's one argument against the filioque. The begetting (Father to Son) and the proceeding (Father to Spirit) are eternal. The sending of the Spirit by the Son to mortals is temporal. So there is a very large difference between those former relationships and the latter.
Interesting! I’ve got to think more about that in the morning, when my brain comes back on line.
But doesn't God live in an eternal "now?" So his actions only seem temporal from our standpoint.
Does anybody know what other verses lie behind the Filioque? Or behind the stance of those who reject it? I'm interested in the biblical arguments, naturally, given who I am.
The "eternal now" thing is rather modern and doubtlness not in the minds of the people who wrote the creed. But it's also in some ways dangerous -- it makes everything God does in time part of his eternal nature.
Let's look at it from another pov. The Orthodox have a split between what they call the essence of God and the energies of God. The essence is God's nature, the unchanging quiddity of God. We have no experience with God's essence, but can know somewhat of it through Scripture. The energies are God's presence and working in the spacetime world. So the ancients who conceived of this division would have presumably thought the procession and the begetting to be part of God's essence; the sending of the Spirit to be part of God's energies.
I think the phrase “eternal now” is modern, but the concept it refers to goes at least as far as Boethius, in the Consolation of Philosophy. (About 524 AD.)
I’ve never understood the filoque clause to refer to the sending of the Spirit to mortals.
I think the "eternal now" is just one way of expressing the notion that God is outside time, an idea that goes back to at least Augustine.
In all this I am with those who think that we cannot possibly comprehend God and that anything we say is likely to be more wrong than right once we move beyond what is revealed in Scripture.
I think your statement is more accurate without the last few words starting with "once we move..."
When Eastern monks objected, the Western response was to say that it was a 'clarification' and not an addition.
Pope Leo III rejected the 'filioque' in 811 and this stood till 1014 when pope Benedict VIII gave his approval.
The council of Lyons in 1274 obliged Easter Churches wishing to reunite with Rome to acknowledge the 'filioque' clause as a legitimate expression of faith but has never required such Eastern churches to change their form of the Creed.
Both forms of expression are acceptable within the Catholic Church.
Recent popes, when meeting with Orthodox leaders, have been happy to recite the Nicene Creed without the 'filioque' clause.
Sure, so why don't they drop it then?
What purpose does it serve?
@ChastMastr if you don't understand the filioque clause in a 'temporal' sense, the sending of the Spirit to mortals whether at Pentecost or some other occasion/s - then how do you understand it?
@mousethief has identified the problem the Orthodox have with the clause.
It causes confusion.
And yes, it was the Blessed Augustine who came up with the idea of the Holy Spirit as the 'love' between the Father and the Son personified.
Not one of his brighter ideas. 😉
@Lamb Chopped - scriptural support for the 'filioque' other than the Holy Spirit 'proceeding" to mortals in a temporal sense?
Zilch. Nada. Nowt.
There isn't any.
'Here I stand...' 😉
The same may be said for the use of the word 'transubstantiation' The Council of Trent's use of the word was intended not to explain how the change takes place but rather to provide a term which describes what takes place.
One might also note that many regular Catholic churchgoers of the modern era might hardly be aware of such terms as 'filioque' and 'transubstantiation'.
Ah, the humanity
From bishops?
Come on!
I’m on the opposite side, with the view that how we interpret Scripture is based on Christian Tradition—and also Reason, the “three-legged stool.”