Three days ago, the Vatican published the Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIV, In Unitate Fidei (On the 1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea), in anticipation of his visit to Turkey beginning tomorrow, November 27. Headlines and news stories have focused on Leo’s considering removing the filioque from the Western version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (what Catholics call simply, The Nicene Creed) in an effort to stoke the fires of ecumenism and possible unity between Eastern and Western Christianity.

In his Apostolic Letter, after giving a history lesson to the backdrop of the First Council of Nicaea, which took place in 325, Pope Leo reiterates the common Christian faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior. He then speaks of the important witness of Christian unity, especially in consideration of the divisions and conflicts in the world today. It is important that Christians be united and serve as an instrument of unity and peace. The critical paragraph that is getting the most attention, which appears as the third paragraph of section 12, is as follows:

“In order to carry out this ministry [of unity and peace] credibly, we must walk together to reach unity and reconciliation among all Christians. The Nicene Creed can be the basis and reference point for this journey. It offers us a model of true unity in legitimate diversity. Unity in the Trinity, Trinity in Unity, because unity without multiplicity is tyranny, multiplicity without unity is fragmentation. The Trinitarian dynamic is not a dualistic and exclusive ‘either/or,’ but rather a decisive bond, ‘both/and.’ The Holy Spirit is the bond of unity whom we worship together with the Father and the Son. We must therefore leave behind theological controversies that have lost their raison d’être in order to develop a common understanding and even more, a common prayer to the Holy Spirit, so that he may gather us all together in one faith and one love.”

Nothing in In Unitate Fidei says that it is Leo’s intention to remove the filioque from the Western version of the Creed. So, why the speculation? First, at a September ecumenical service recognizing the martyrs of the 21st century, and that included Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant Christians, the Creed was recited without the inclusion of the filioque. And, in In Unitates Fidei, Leo references the part of the Creed that expresses our faith in the Holy Spirit without the filioque. Whether that justifies the speculation that Leo intends to remove the filioque from the Western version of the Creed or not, I’ll leave to you. But what is the filioque, and why is it surrounded by such controversy?

In the early fourth century, the Church was experiencing relief from the persecutions she had suffered for her first three centuries. Constantine and Licinius had promulgated the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared that Christianity would now be tolerated in the Roman Empire. As such, priests and bishops had the leisure to reflect deeply on the truths of the faith. One of those priests was Arius of the Diocese of Alexandria in Egypt. Speculating on the faith of the Church in Christ, and desiring to make the faith more appealing to the pagans of the upper classes of the empire and the army, Arius developed a Christology that denied the divinity of Christ. Christ, Arius taught, was not eternal God, but was a creation of the Father. Because of His life lived in obedience to the Father, Jesus did attain divinity but, as the motto of the Arians proclaimed, “There was a time when he [Christ] was not.” Alexander, Arius’ bishop, condemned Arius’ Christology and demanded that he stop teaching the heresy. Arius, who had become very popular in the empire because of his teachings, refused. Arianism quickly became a source of contention and division in the empire.

Wanting unity in his empire, and seeing the Christian faith as a potential instrument for achieving that unity, Constantine called for the bishops of the Church to meet in council at Nicaea, a town in Turkey that was conveniently centrally located and also not far from Constantine’s new capital, Constantinople. He demanded that the bishops resolve the matter, and quickly. The emperor even paid travel expenses to ensure that the bishops would attend. 318 of them did so and, in the summer of 325, the First Council of Nicaea opened, presided over by Hosius of Cordoba, one of the few Western bishops to attend. The Council Fathers gave Arius the opportunity to make the case for his Christology, but ultimately they voted overwhelmingly (316-2) to condemn his teaching and send him into exile. It’s important to remember that the Council Fathers at Nicaea did not vote on Jesus’ divinity. The divinity of Christ was already the orthodox doctrine of the Church from the beginning. What the Council Fathers did was condemn Arius’ doctrine because it contradicted settled orthodoxy. As part of the deliberations, and in hopes of clarifying the principles of Catholic faith, the Council Fathers developed a Creed. That Creed delineated the foundational articles of Christian faith, including faith in the Holy Spirit. The Creed composed by the Council Fathers of Nicaea simply professed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

The First Council of Nicaea hardly solved the matter. Arius continued to teach his doctrine, and Constantine himself came under the sway of bishops and others who did not agree with the Council’s decision to condemn Arius. In fact, when Constantine was baptized on his deathbed, it was an Arian bishop who administered the sacrament. The Arian controversy continued for centuries after the main actors at Nicaea were dead. At one point, upwards of eighty percent of bishops in the East were Arians. In 381, to reaffirm the faith of Nicaea, another Council was called, which met in Constantinople itself. The First Council of Constantinople added a bit to the Creed of Nicaea, including on what the Church professes to believe about the Holy Spirit. Constantinople added to the Creed that the Church believes “in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.” This was the official Creed of the Church, East and West, for the next six and one-half centuries.

Later in the fourth century, there was some discussion on the procession of the Holy Spirit, but nothing that came close to changing the language of the Creed. However, in sixth century Spain, Arianism raised its inglorious head once more. No one knows who was the first to add it, or exactly when it was added, but the Church in Spain added the filioque to its recitation of the Creed. Filioque means “and the Son,” and it was added to express the Spanish Church’s faith in what is called the “double procession,” that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son.” The Church in Spain added the filioque to combat Arianism, to affirm that the Father and the Son are co-equal. Given that the Father and the Son are co-equal, if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, then He must also proceed from the Son.

The filioque was not accepted by the Church in the East. Even in the West, it took a while to catch on. In 809, Pope Leo III affirmed that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son was orthodox Christian teaching. However, he refused to add it to the Creed in deference to the Fathers of the First Council of Constantinople, who declared that the Creed was never to be changed. The addition continued to spread in the West, but it was not until the early eleventh century, in 1014, that Pope Benedict VIII officially added it to the Creed. Even still, the Eastern Church continued to reject the filioque, and the controversy contributed to the break between East and West in 1054.

Since then, East and West have continued to recite their distinct versions of the Creed, the filioque being the only difference between the two. Over the centuries anathemas have flown back and forth on the matter, and there was no serious talk about how to heal the schism between East and West and be reconciled as one Church until the mid-20th century. Certainly, too, the filioque is hardly the only matter that separates East and West.

A major step was taken, however, on December 7, 1965, when Pope St. Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I lifted the mutual excommunications against each other’s churches that had been imposed in 1054. Since then, much discussion has taken place on how East and West might be reconciled, with the filioque considered a major obstacle. It is possible that Pope Leo may consider removing the filioque from the Creed in the West if he believes doing so may geniunely contribute to reconciliation. All acknowledge that the filioque is a later addition to the Creed produced by the First Council of Constantinople. It is also true that the Eastern Rite Churches of the Catholic Church, those in union with Rome (ie: the Greek Catholic Church, the Melkite Catholic Church, the Ruthenian Catholic Church, the Coptic Catholic Church, etc.) do not include the filioque in their recitation of the Creed, and Rome has never required them to do so. What has been required of them is an assent in faith to the dogma behind the filioque, but not its inclusion in the Creed. In that case, removing the filioque may serve to bring greater unity to those Eastern Rite Churches already in union with Rome, of which Roman Catholics know sadly too little.

It’s legitimate to ask, though, if removing the filioque from the Western version of the Creed would contribute to reconciliation between East and West. For it’s not just a question of the words that are said, but of the dogma the words represent. The Catholic Church in recent decades sees the matter as a difference more of semantics than substance. It’s Rome’s position, in other words, that East and West essentially believe the same thing, they only express it differently. The Catholic Church, for instance, believes that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Orthodox Churches believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. Pope St. John Paul the Great regarded this as more of a distinction without a difference. It’s reasonable to ask if the Orthodox feel the same way, and the reasonable answer is no. The same, incidentally, is true of the many points of contention between the two, which is why the Catholic Church regards the Orthodox Churches as being in a state of schism, but not heresy, while the Orthodox Churches regard the Catholic Church as being in state of both schism and heresy. The bottom line is, even if Leo removes the filioque from the Western version of the Creed, it will not achieve reconciliation between East and West. It may be a step toward that, but there would remain many more steps to take.

In any case, what it would not mean is that Pope Leo is a heretic or an apostate. This is the accusation being bandied about by Protestants who hope to exploit the matter to convince Catholics that the pope is not infallible, and of extreme right-wing Catholics who are still fuming over Vatican II. The only way a charge of heresy or apostacy could be legitimately leveled against Leo in this case is if those making the charge regard the Catholics of Western Europe from 381 to 1014 as heretics and apostates, since they also did not include the filioque in their recitation of the Creed (at least not officially). It would also mean that those Christians who belong to Eastern Rite Churches in union with Rome remain heretics and apostates, since they continue to not include the filioque in their recitation of the Creed.

There seems almost an eagerness on the part of some Catholics to assign Leo a political label. Almost immediately after he was elected, charges of his being a socialist or a communist emerged. Among many in the U. S. Church, people are calling Leo “woke” and a continuation of the pontifical direction of Pope Francis, who was seen by too many in the U. S. Church as a false pope, taking the Church into heresy. Francis was accused of insisting that it is okay to be gay and to live a gay lifestyle. That abortion is fine. Same-sex marraige is cool. Women priests are only a matter of time. Mother Earth is to be worshipped instead of God. This was all ridiculous, of course. But there are those who cannot fathom their idea or their image of Church changing, even if their image of the Church represented merely the expression of Church at a particular historical time. In my mind, Francis’ greatest fault was not heresy or apostacy. Francis was neither heretic or apostate. His greatest fault was his lack of clarity. He allowed too many of his teachings to possess a vague quality about them, which confused Catholics and allowed others to manipulate his teachings to their own designs. Hopefully, Pope Leo will avoid that.

If Leo believes that the matter of the filioque is a theological controversy that has lost its raison d’être, then I believe he is sadly mistaken. Out of the gate, the vast majority of Western Catholics reply “No” when asked if removing the filioque is worth it if it means a step toward reconciliation with the East. And why wouldn’t they think so? Western Catholics know precious little about the Orthodox Churches, and don’t necessarily feel the need to be reconciled. Also, to Western minds, it sounds like capitulation. Who wants that, especially when most have little notion of what’s to be gained by capitulating on the matter? For Orthodox Christians, if removing the filioque represents a step Rome is willing to take for the cause of reconciliation, perhaps there are other steps Rome would be willing to take. After all, if both sides have tolerated and survived a thousand years’ of separation, what’s the motive to be reconciled too quickly? Maybe a few more concessions can be wrought. As far as serving as a witness of unity and peace to the world, I suspect few secularists care any more about the matter than most Christians do, East or West. Also, seven out of eight Orthodox Christians in the world are Russian Orthodox. Just my two cents, but I doubt the Patriarch of Moscow is seriously interested in anything that might require or even seem to compromise his authority over his flock. That is, if the filioque is a step toward reconciliation, it’s a small one compared to the matter of papal supremacy.

God bless Pope Leo. God bless the good work he is doing. May East and West be reconciled once again to testify to all that Christ’s Church is one. But as the lady said, “I sure do believe Jesus will come again, but I ain’t waitin’ up nights.”

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.