It is in the Nicean-Constantinopolitan Creed that we find a more elaborated statementabout the ‘third Person of the Holy Trinity’ – “And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets. The context of this serious discussion on the Holy Spirit wasMacedonianism,a 4th century Christian heresy that denied the full personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit attaininig the name Pneumatomachians, the “spirit fighters”
In the Nicean Constantinople Creed, the expression ‘the Lord, the Giver of Life, establishes the fact that that Holy Spirit is Perfectly God. Athanasius of Alexandria writes: “The spirit is not called the Son in the scriptures, but is called the holy spirit and the spirit of God. […] So since the Spirit is not called the Son, the Spirit is not the Son […] For this reason, in the Trinity, in the Father, in the Son and in the Spirit, the Spirit is unique […]” (Epistles to Serapion, III,3,4). In the Cappadocian Fathers, we find the perfecction of the doctrine of Holy Spirit. St. Basil the Great testifies about Holy Spirit: “He existed […] He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages”(On Holy Spirit, 49).
Through the expression ‘Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified’, the council of Constantinople clarifies that the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son derives from conglorification and conveneration. The liturgical aspect becomes very important here. St. Basil testifies: “the Holy Spirit cannot be divided from the Father and the Son in worship. If you remain outside the Spirit, you cannot worship at all; and if you are ‘in’ Him you cannot separate Him from God”
The expression ‘Who spoke by the prophets’ establishes that the Holy Spirit had been active in Old Testament period also. St. Athanasius states: “Since the Word is in the prophets, they prophesied thanks to the Spirit as written and indicated, the heavens have been fortified by the word of the Lord and all their power comes from the Spirit of his mouth” (Epistles to Serapion, III,3,4).
And finally regarding the ‘Procession of The Holy Spirit’ there has been a difference of presentation between the East and the West. The Cappadocian Fathers stood for ‘procession from the Father, through the Son.’ St. Basil the Great states: “through the one Son, He (the Holy Spirit) is joined to the Father”(On Holy Spirit 45). Gregory Nazianzen adds: “The Spirit is truly the Spirit proceeding from the Father, not by filiation, for it is not by generation, but by ekporeusin”(Discourse 39,12). Besides, Maximus the Confessor (580-662) also holds the same idea: “By nature the Holy Spirit in His being takes substantially His origin from the Father through the Son who is begotten.”
It was with St. Augustine of Hyppo that the concept a procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (filioque) became common:“Neither can we say that the Holy Spirit does not also proceed from the Son, for the same Spirit is not without reason said to be the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. Nor do I see what else He intended to signify, when He breathed on the face of the disciples, and said, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost‘. For that bodily breathing, proceeding from the body with the feeling of bodily touching, was not the substance of the Holy Spirit, but a declaration by a fitting sign, that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son […] That then which the Lord says -Whom I will send unto you from the Father, – shows the Spirit to be both of the Father and of the Son; because, also, when He had said, Whom the Father will send, He added also, in my name. Yet He did not say, Whom the Father will send from me, as He said, Whom I will send unto you from the Father,- showing, namely, that the Father is the beginning (principium) of the whole divinity, or if it is better so expressed, deity. He, therefore, who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, is referred back to Him from whom the Son was born (natus)” (De Trinitate Book IV, Ch. 20)
Consequently, in the Council of Toledo (local council in 589), Filioque was adapted in order to show that the Spirit is not inferior to the Father and He is one substance with the Father and Son. In 9th Century, Charlemagne pressurized the Pope to make it part of the creed in the West. But Pope Leo III (795-816) stood against it. Creed in the original form without filioque was engraved in silver shields in Greek and Latin in St. Peter’s. Pope Benedict VIII, in 11th Century, surrendered to the demand of emperor Henry II that creed with filioque is to be sung at his coronation in Rome. The Council of Lyons of 1274 established that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from Father and Son not as two principles or sources but one source. Council of Florense i 1438 concluded that the Latin expression ‘and from the Son’ and the Greek term ‘ from the Father through the Son’ mean the same.
Pope St. John Paul II on 25th March 1981 while commemorating the councils of Constantinople I and Ephesus stated that “the Creed of Constantinople is still the expression of common faith of Church and of Christianity.” And the Pontifical Council for Promoting Unity on September 1995 made a clarification of the Greek and the Latin Traditions: filioque is to be clarified in the sense that the Father is the source of the whole Trinity, the one origin of the Son and the Spirit. The Spirit takes His origin from the Father alone in a principal, proper and immedite manner.Even Augustine has actually confessed that the origin of the Spirit is from the Father as the Principle (Principaliter)
Rev. Dr. Alex Sebastian Kollamkalam
