The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

For Catholic readers

The Filioque

Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father, or from the Father and the Son?

  • Dogmatic definitionDefined by an ecumenical council or otherwise confessed by the Church as binding doctrine. Not every sentence a council wrote is a definition: its acts, letters and disciplinary canons are different things.
  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-09-04

What still needs checking (3)
  • Obtain the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the 1995 Pontifical Council clarification, so the Catholic position can be stated in Catholic words rather than summarised.
  • Obtain an OCA or other official Orthodox statement on the Filioque so the Orthodox position carries a tier A or B route rather than resting on the conciliar text alone.
  • Obtain tier D scholarship on the stages by which the addition entered Western use, which this page deliberately does not date precisely.

Report an accuracy issue on this page

One clause, four words in Latin, added to the Creed in the West over several centuries and never accepted in the East. The textual history is not in doubt; what the addition means, and whether it could lawfully be made, is where the disagreement actually sits.

What is held in common

Orthodox and Catholics confess the same Trinity: one God in three persons, the Son eternally begotten of the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeding, all three of one essence and equally to be worshipped. Neither Church holds that the Spirit is a creature, and neither holds that there are two sources of divinity. The Creed of 381 is confessed by both. The disagreement is about four words within it and about who may add them.

The Orthodox position

The Orthodox Church confesses the Creed as the Second Ecumenical Council issued it: the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The objection is twofold, and the two halves are separable.

The first is canonical. A creed promulgated by an ecumenical council is not the property of any local Church, and no part of the Church may alter it alone. Ephesus, fifty years later, forbade bringing forward a rival faith to that of Nicaea.

The second is theological. The Father is the sole principle and cause within the Trinity; to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well is understood to introduce a second cause, or to collapse the distinction between the persons. Whether the Latin procedere carries that sense is a live question, and one on which the two traditions have talked past each other for a long time.

Read the conciliar texts

Where the difference actually lies

The textual history is not disputed by anyone. The Creed as issued in 381 does not contain the clause; Latin usage added it; the East did not receive the addition. Both Churches agree on that much.

What is disputed is whether the addition was a legitimate clarification of something the Fathers already believed, or an unlawful alteration of a conciliar text, and whether the doctrine it expresses is the same doctrine the East confesses in different words or a different doctrine altogether. Those are two separate questions and they have two separate answers on each side.

Not yet stated here: the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church

This site will not tell you what Catholics believe about the Filioque until it can quote the Catholic Church saying it. Summarising another Church's dogma from memory is how caricatures are made, and the Filioque has suffered more than its share of them.

To write this section, a maintainer must obtain and cite:

  • Catechism of the Catholic Church, the articles on the procession of the Holy Spirit
  • The Council of Florence's definition on the procession
  • The 1995 Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity clarification on the Greek and Latin traditions

Why this is empty. A claim about what another Church teaches requires that Church's own authoritative text — tier E in the source policy. No such text has been obtained, so the claim is not made. This gap is the honest state of the evidence, not an oversight.

Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) The Holy Creed Which the 150 Holy Fathers Set Forth annotated edition of conciliar texts The archived text of the Creed of 381. Source record
  2. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Council of Ephesus, Canon VII annotated edition of conciliar texts On bringing forward a different faith. Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.