8. A Brief Note on the Filioque

Trenham places one more charge at the head of his list of Protestant errors about God. It concerns a single Latin word, filioque, meaning “and the Son.” In the original form of the Nicene Creed, the Holy Spirit is said to proceed “from the Father.” Over several centuries, churches in the West added the words “and the Son,” and the Eastern churches objected strongly, both to the doctrine and to the change in the Creed. The dispute was one of the causes of the separation between East and West.

Trenham regards the addition as the most serious error of the Western church. He calls it the area in which papal innovation was “most grievous and scandalous,” describes the doctrine as “a diabolical and heretical attack upon the Lord God Himself,” and faults the Reformers for keeping it.¹⁰⁶

Why This Section Is Short

It may seem strange to give so little space to what Trenham considers so important. But there is a simple reason. Baptists did not start this dispute. It began among the churches of the East and the West many centuries before there were any Baptists, and the Reformers inherited the Western form of the Creed from the church they were reforming. No Baptist doctrine of salvation, baptism, or the church rests on the filioque. A Baptist reader can examine the question calmly, because nothing he believes about the gospel depends on the answer.

Nor are Protestants of one mind about it. Trenham himself notes that the Mennonite Concept of Cologne of 1591 confessed that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father through the Son,” and he names it as a rare Protestant exception.¹⁰⁷ And in 1976 Anglican and Orthodox theologians, meeting in formal dialogue, agreed that the words should not be in the Creed; two years later the bishops of the Anglican Communion asked their churches to consider removing them.¹⁰⁸

What Scripture Says

Baptists measure every doctrine by Scripture, and this one is no exception. The New Testament says several things about the Spirit’s relation to the Father and the Son. Jesus calls Him “the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26). In the same sentence He says that He Himself will send the Spirit “to you from the Father.” He also speaks of “the Holy Spirit which the Father will send in my Name” (John 14:26), and He tells His disciples, “if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Paul calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of his Son” (Gal. 4:6) and “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9). And Peter says that the risen Christ, “having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit,” poured out the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:33).

A Baptist holds all of these statements together, exactly as Scripture gives them. The Spirit proceeds from the Father. He is sent by the Father and by the Son. He is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of Christ. Beyond these words, Scripture says little about the eternal relations within the Godhead, and a wise reader will be cautious where Scripture is silent. When the subject is the inner life of God Himself, it is better to say less and be sure of it than to say more and be mistaken.

The Book’s History of the Dispute

Readers who wish to study the question further should know that several of the book’s historical claims about it need correction. It says that Augustine taught the doctrine without any earlier support, but Ambrose of Milan, Augustine’s own teacher, had already spoken of the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. It says that a council in 879–880 formally condemned the filioque as heresy, but the council forbade any change to the Creed without naming the doctrine. It presents Pope Leo III as an opponent of the doctrine, when in fact he accepted the doctrine and objected only to adding the words to the Creed.¹⁰⁹ None of these corrections settles the theological question. But they show that the history is less one-sided than the book suggests.

Conclusion

The filioque is a serious question for the churches that have argued over it for more than a thousand years. For a Baptist, it is not the place where the real disagreement with Rock and Sand lies. That disagreement concerns the questions examined in the earlier sections: the authority of Scripture, the nature of the Church, the way a sinner is saved, the security of the believer, and the meaning of baptism. It remains only to draw those threads together.