The Nicene Creed was formulated 1,700 years ago in AD 325 at the Council of Nicaea. Later, one clause in it called the Filioque was a cause of division between the Eastern and Western Church. This is the story …
What is the Nicene Creed?
The Creed was first developed 1,700 years at the Council of Nicaea but was finalised at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. As such it is sometimes called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed but usually just as the Nicene Creed. As read in the Church of England, the Creed is:
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
How is it used?
In Latin the first word is Credo (meaning “I believe”) which gives us the English word “Creed.” The Nicene Creed is read regularly in Orthodox every Sunday during Divine Liturgy and by Catholic Churches every Sunday during Mass, and sometimes also on major feast days. Most traditional Lutheran, Anglican and Episcopal churches also recite the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist (Holy Communion) every Sunday.
However, in the free church tradition it is seldom if ever read, although that does not imply that they disagree with it. As a result, the Nicene Creed is well known to Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Lutherans but so well-known beyond. Evangelical Christians emphasise the authority of the Bible alone (sola scriptura), and so they tend to regard creeds like the Nicene Creed as helpful summaries rather than as absolute or binding doctrines.
Evangelical Christians within the historic Christian Churches will be used to saying the Nicene Creed, but for most evangelical Christians it is an important document of Church history which they can agree with, but not one they feel the need to recite on a regular basis.
Filioque Clause
The Nicene Creed is almost the same for the whole Church. However, there is a minor difference, which proved important during the Great Schism. The original Creed had the line “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.” The Eastern Orthodox tradition stops there, and the Western Church added “and the Son,” to read “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” In Latin, the word for “and from the Son” is “filioque” and so the dispute around this clause has been known as the Filioque Controversy.
To most people this seems a pedantic point, whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, or rather from the Father, through the Son. However, it was a point of dispute during the arguments leading up to the Great Schism in 1054, when the Church split into the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) spheres. It was a matter of theology and authority.
Theology
The lines in the Nicene Creed all have a biblical basis. Although it is post-biblical it is a summary of the theology deduced from the Bible. The basis for the statement “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father” comes from two verses a chapter apart in John. The first is in John 14:26 when Jesus says: “…the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (NKJV). The wording in the Creed echoes John 15:36 which reads: “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (NKJV).
History of the Filioque
The Latin word Filioque meaning “and from the Son”, was added to the Latin form of the Creed by the Third Council of Toledo in 589 AD. It was for local use in Spain to combat Arianism, although there is some evidence it was also used earlier in the Church of the East in Persia. The new line in Latin read “Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem: qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.” It was added because Arianists believe that Jesus was not God. The idea of adding the Filioque was to emphasise the Trinity, that the Holy Spirit shares its origin from the Father and the Son, and upholds the full divinity of the Spirit. The clause was a local clarification which gradually spread to other Latin-using churches over the following centuries. In AD 890 Pope Leo III, rejected the idea of officially adding Filioque to the Creed, but it became widespread in the Western Church by the 11th century. In AD 1024 the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict VIII gave it its approval, but he had no authority in the Eastern Church.
Theology of the Filioque
From the perspective of the Eastern Church the Father alone is the source of the Holy Spirit and adding “and the Son” risks subordinating the Spirit as secondary to the Father and the Son. The idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is suggested in Galatians 4:6 where Paul wrote “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts” (NKJV), and in Romans 8:9 “Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His“, Philippians 1:19 where it is called “the Spirit of Jesus Christ”, and Revelation 22:1 where the Holy Spirit referred to as the “pure river of water of life” is talked of “proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” From the Catholic perspective they had not fundamentally altered the Creed but added a biblically justified clarification, which protected the unity of faith and emphasised the Trinity.
Authority
For the Orthodox perspective whether the addition is theologically justified or biblically correct is beside the point. It is not an issue of being correct or not, but rather an issue of tradition, authority, and honour. The point is that the Nicene Creed was agreed at a Church-wide Council in AD 325. The Orthodox perspective is that one section of the Church does not have the right to unilaterally alter what was agreed by all. This leads to unnecessary disputes and division. The question of authority contributed to Church tensions and was one of the factors, but not by any means the only one, which led to the Great Schism of 1054. Although it may seem trivial and pedantic to most evangelicals, the dispute over the Filioque was emblematic of the broader issues of theology and authority between the Eastern and Western Church that led to the Great Schism.
Cultural Differences
It is easy to see both sides in this dispute. It comes down to a matter of emphasis, and also partly reflects the general cultural way of thinking between the western perspective emphasising being correct and right or wrong and the right to individual thinking on the one hand; and the eastern perspective emphasising honour and respecting traditions and collective agreement on the other.
The Filioque Controversy Today
The dispute remains an issue for ecumenical dialogue between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches, although most lay Christians would be oblivious to the issues. Today some Christians will hold hard and fast to the Filioque, while others might be happy to drop it for the sake of unity, arguing along the lines of Romans 12:8 where St Paul encouraged believers to live at peace with everyone, and Romans 14:21, where St Paul says they should avoid anything which is the cause of offending a fellow Christian. The Church of England actually states that an alternative “text of the Nicene Creed, which omits the phrase ‘and the Son’ in the third paragraph, may be used on suitable ecumenical occasions".
