Examples of Eastern Orthodox Saints and Theologians Rejecting the Filioque as Heresy

  

The famous 9^th century Patriarch Photius of Constantinople referred to the Filioque as the “crown of all evils” (Epistulae et Amphilochia) a doctrine espoused by “bishops of darkness” (Andrew Louth, Greek East and Latin West: The Church AD 681-1071, 185), a “blasphemous term, which militates against God” (Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts, 235), and even the “summation of all theological error . . . “ (Joseph Farrell, “A Theological Introduction to the Mystagogy of Saint Photios,” in The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, 18) The 11^th century Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople referred to the Filioque as a “blasphemous dogma” and a “machination of the evil one!” (Edict of Michael I and the Synod of Constantinople [1054]) The 13^th century Patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus, later to become Patriarch of Constantinople, referred to it as an “alien doctrine” and a “foreign plague” (Gregory, Exposition of the Tomus of Faith Against Beccus), and proceeded to say that it was for the sole sake of the Filioque that the Latins “were, from the beginning, accused by our Church, and for which the schism occurred” (Tomos of Gregory, PG 142.244D). . . . . the 14^th century theologian Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, “vehemently maintained that the Latin teaching on the Filioque was in error” (A. Ed. Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, 146)). For him, it was “perverse”, “fighting against God,” a “Latin innovation,” and an “evil belief” (Dimitrios Tselengides, "The Theological Presuppositions of the Filioque in the Work of St. Gregory Palamas," in Triune God, 39). The 15^th century theologian Mark of Ephesus also said in his famous Encyclical to All Orthodoxy Christians the following:

 

Run from them as one runs from snakes . . . as from those who have sold and bought Christ . . . For we, along with the Damascene and all the fathers, do not say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son; but they, joining the Latins, say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. (To All Orthodox Christians on the Continent and the Islands, 6-7) (Erick Ybarra, The Filioque: Revisiting the Doctrinal Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox [2022], 1-4)