The
most damning charge against the doctrine is that it changes the words of Christ
Himself: “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” (John
15:26). Jesus did not say, “who proceeds from the father and the Son,” but
only, “who proceeds from the Father.”
The
filioque also violates the perfect balance of Trinitarian theology: instead of
any particular attribute belonging to the divine Nature or the Person, the
filioque grants an attribute to two Persons but not the other. For instance,
unbegottenness belongs only to the Father, begottenness belongs to the Son,
while procession belongs to the Spirit. Likewise, all divine characteristics
(e.g., immortality, perfection, omniscience, etc.) belong to all three Persons.
But if the eternal origin of the Spirit’s spiration belongs to both the Father
and the Son, that subordinates the Spirit in that He does not possess something
that the other two Persons do.
The
addition of the filioque to the Creed, besides being heretical, was also
uncanonical and a sin against the unity of the Church. The Creed as it now
stands was professed and ecumenically ratified at the Second Ecumenical Council
(381). The inviolability of the Creed was confirmed by several popes
anathematizing any changes to it, most especially John VIII, whose legates were
sent to Constantinople in 879-880 specifically to reinstate the deposed
Patriarch St. Photius the Great and to reject the filioque. The council they
participated in there levelled an anathema against any credal changes. Earlier,
as the filioque first came to be used in Rome, Pope Leo III forbade its use and
famously had the original Creed (without the addition) in both Greek and Latin
inscribed on silver tablets at the tomb of St. Peter.
Some
practical implications may be suggested from the theology inherent in the
filioque. Because the Holy Spirit is subordinated by this theology, His ministries
are “quenched” (see I Thess. 5:19) and replaced in certain practical ways in
the prayer life of believers and the administration of church life. Orthodoxy
teaches, for instance, that Church unity and infallibility are both the
ministry of the Spirit, but Rome puts those in the hands of the papacy.
Likewise, a dynamic spiritual life is replaced by legalism (“the letter [of the
law] kills, but the Spirit gives life,” 2 Cor. 3:6), and balanced asceticism
gives way to a fleshy, materialistic spirituality. Despite these suggested
implications, however, it would be difficult to draw a direct causative
relationship between the doctrines and these phenomena. (Andrew Stephen Damick,
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious
Landscape [rev ed.; Chesterton, Ind.: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2017], 71-72)
