A substantially shorter version of this essay was presented on November 17 at the annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Forth Woth, Texas where I was invited to present a paper on the subject. H

istorically, Anglicanism is a reforming movement in the Western Catholic Church. Anglicans are notoriously divided by partisan disagreements between low-church Evangelicals and high-church Anglo-Catholics, but the primary differences concern what needs to be reformed and to what extent. Historically, Anglicans have retained characteristics of Western Catholicism that other Reformation churches have also retained, but also practices that other Reformation churches have not: a written liturgy as found in the Book of Common Prayer and its various versions; the reading of the Scriptures in worship through a prescribed lectionary; despite disagreements about the theological mechanics of “how” they do so, a realist doctrine of the sacraments as “means of grace”; the wearing of at least some vestments by clergy while leading worship; an episcopal polity; the designation of ordained clergy as “priests.” To outsiders of any Evangelical tradition with the exception of Lutherans, Anglican worship services appear to be very Catholic. From the beginning, Anglicans have also had a fondness for the patristic church, leading at least some Anglicans to express sympathy toward Eastern Orthodoxy as a preferable alternative conversation partner to Roman Catholicism.

As a creedal church, Anglicans have retained three historic creeds: the Apostles’ Creed recited at baptisms and Morning and Evening Prayer, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed recited at every celebration of the Eucharist, and the Athanasian Creed or Quicunque Vult. The version of the Nicene Creed found in the historic Books of Common Prayer contains the filioque, as does the Athanasian Creed. In addition, the filioque appears in the Litany:

O God the holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father, and the Son: have mercy upon us miserable sinners.

In the historic Ordinal or rite of ordination:

Come Holy Ghost, Eternal God, proceeding from above,
Both from the Father, and the Son, the God of peace and love.
Visit our minds, into our hearts thy heavenly grace inspire.

As well as in the 39 Articles, the closest thing to an Anglican confessional statement.

The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.

Despite breaking communion with Rome, Anglicans have retained the filioque.

The filioque was not an issue of disagreement at the time of the Reformation, but neither does it seem to have been discussed. Thomas Cranmer, the primary author of the Book of Common Prayer, does not seem to have mentioned it in any of his writings. The earliest reference of which I am aware is found in John Jewel’s 1562 Apology of the Church of England:

We believe that the Holy Ghost, who is the third person in the Holy Trinity, is very God: not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding from both the Father and the Son, by a certain mean unknown unto men, and unspeakable.¹

Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the closest thing to a definitive theological text for Anglicans, has the following:

“The Lord our God is but one God.” In which indivisible unity notwithstanding we adore the Father as being altogether of himself, we glorify that consubstantial Word which is the Son, we bless and magnify that co-essential Spirit eternally proceeding from both which is the Holy Ghost. Seeing therefore the Father is of none, the Son is of the Father and the Spirit is of both, they are by these their several properties really distinguishable each from other. For the substance of God with this property to be of none doth make the Person of the Father; the very selfsame substance in number with this property to be of the Father maketh the Person of the Son; the same substance having added unto it the property of proceeding from the other two maketh the Person of the Holy Ghost. So that in every Person there is implied both the substance of God which is one, and also that property which causeth the same person really and truly to differ from the other two. Every person hath his own subsistence which no other besides hath, although there be others besides that are of the same substance. As no man but Peter can be the person which Peter is, yet Paul hath the selfsame nature which Peter hath. Again, angels have every of them the nature of pure and invisible spirits, but every angel is not that angel which appeared in a dream to Joseph.²

Note that Hooker includes elements from both Cappadocian and Augustinian theology here. From the Cappadocians, Hooker includes the distinction between persons as individuals (corresponding to Cappadocian hypostasis), and nature as universal (corresponding to Cappadocian ousia). With Augustine, Hooker states that God is a single substance, while also agreeing that the persons are distinguished from one another by relations of origin, what Hooker designates as “properties”: The Father is distinguished as having his origin from none; the Son is distinguished as having his origin from the Father; the Spirit is distinguished as having his origin from the Father and the Son. With Thomas Aquinas, Hooker uses the word “subsistence” to refer to each of the three persons. I intend to return to this Hooker citation later.

There was some discussion of the filioque in the formative period of Anglicanism, from about the time of Richard Hooker through the end of the seventeenth century. Major figures in the discussion include: William Sherlock, John Pearson, Edward Stillingfleet, William Laud, John Cosin, Isaac Barrow, William Beveredge, John Bamhall. The following is a short summary of that discussion.

The seventeenth-century theologians affirmed the doctrine of the filioque, claiming that the doctrine is contained implicitly in Scripture. They agree that the filioque is not explicitly stated in Scripture, but they claim that it is “virtually contained in the Scriptures.”³ They appeal to the apostle Paul’s reference to the Spirit as the “Spirit of Christ,” to John 20:22, when the risen Jesus breathed on the disciples, and said “Receive the Holy Ghost,” as well as to Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit in John’s Last Supper Discourse. The argument is that the Spirit cannot be the Spirit of Christ unless he proceeds from him, and the risen Christ cannot send the Spirit unless the Spirit proceeds from him.⁴

One of Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons contains the words: “For most kindly it is for the Spirit to be inspired, to come per modem spirando [by means of breathing], Flamen, the very breath, as it were proceeding A Patre Filioque. So one breath by another.”⁵ In his Exposition of the Creed, John Pearson wrote, “If . . . the Holy Spirit be called the Spirit of God the Father, because he proceedeth from the Father, it followeth that being called also the Spirit of the Son, he proceedeth also from the Son.”⁶

In an essay written in 1996, William Craig notes that these scriptural verses were taken by all the authors he cites (except for one) as evidence for the procession of the Spirit from the Son.⁷ Donald Allchin suggested in 1981 that this indicates a failure in these authors to distinguish between the temporal mission and the eternal procession of the Spirit.⁸ In addition to Scripture, these seventeenth-century writers also appeal to the church fathers, not only Augustine, but also Ambrose, Hilary, Athanasius, Basil, the two Gregorys, Epiphanius, and Cyril of Alexandria.⁹

The seventeenth-century Anglican authors recognized that there is a dispute about the filioque between the Eastern and Western churches. Archbishop William Laud wrote that, by denying the filioque, the Eastern church had made a “grievous error in Divinity.” Despite this error, Laud claims that the Eastern church is still a “true church.”¹⁰ With the exception of Laud’s reference to the Eastern church’s “grievous error,” the general consensus among these writers seems to have been rather that the Orthodox position is, at bottom, “the same as ours.” The East recognizes the Holy Spirit to be the Spirit of the Son, they embrace the creeds, and they affirm the General Councils of Ephesus, Constantinople, and Chalcedon, “all of which,” John Bamhall wrote, “we readily admit and use daily in our liturgy.”¹¹ William Sherlock suggested that the disagreement between East and West was a mere dispute over language. These seventeenth- century writers also understood the Eastern position to be not that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, but that the Spirit proceeds through or from the Son, which they argued was equivalent to proceeds from the Father and the Son.¹²

A couple of decades ago, Donald Alchin and William Craig, on the one hand, and John C. Bauerschmidt, on the other, disagreed about whether the seventeenth-century theologians thought that the filioque might be suspended. All of the seventeenth-century theologians believed that the filioque was a legitimate implication of the teaching of Scripture. At the same time, John Pearson argued that the addition of the filioque without consultation of the East was “not justifiable.” Nevertheless, he wrote that because the filioque is a “certain truth,” it “may be so used” by those who recognize its truth. Pearson also stated, however, that the schism between East and West would never be ended until the phrase was removed.¹³ So there is a certain ambiguity. On the one hand, all of the seventeenth-century writers agree that the use of the filioque in the Creed by the Western church is a legitimate theological affirmation. On the other hand, at least one seventeenth-century Anglican theologian recognized that the addition created ecumenical difficulties with the Eastern churches.

Dialogues between Anglicans and the Orthodox began during the nineteenth century, and a distinction between doctrinal questions and canonical use begins to appear in these discussions. Two Reunion Conferences in Bonn, Germany in 1874 and 1875 were a joint meeting between Orthodox, Old Catholics (who had rejected papal infallibility), and some Anglicans, and set the standards for later theological conversations. The conferences agreed on the inappropriateness of the addition of the filioque to the Creed, and accepted the teaching of John Damascene that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father through the Son.” The Anglicans agreed that the filioque was introduced illegally; yet for theological reasons, and because of ecclesiastical concerns, they did not agree to remove it from the Creed.¹⁴ The Anglican point of view has not essentially changed since then. From the beginning, Anglicans in these discussions have tended to believe that they already possess an “inner unity with the Orthodox which ought to find its expression in full intercommunion.” The Orthodox to the contrary have continued to insist that doctrinal considerations must come first, and unity can only be achieved along Orthodox lines.¹⁵

Significantly, in response to the Bonn proposals, the leading Anglo-Catholic theologian of the time, Edward Pusey, wrote a 200-page book, On the Clause ‘and the Son’ in Regard to the Eastern Church and the Bonn Conference, perhaps the most complete and detailed study of the filioque ever written by an Anglican thinker. Pusey not only affirmed the filioque, he objected to Orthodox requests to drop it from the Creed, and complained that Orthodox criticisms of the filioque misrepresented the Western position. He also claimed that the filioque was theologically necessary. Without the filioque, the Son and the Holy Spirit would have no relation to one another. He wrote: “The loss of the ‘and the Son’ would to our untheological English mind involve the loss of the doctrine of the Trinity.”¹⁶

The Third Lambeth Conference of 1888 agreed that the filioque was inserted into the Creed without conciliar authority; however, it remains agreeable to Anglican theology and would be difficult to remove.¹⁷ Discussions between Anglicans and the Orthodox in the nineteenth century were few then, and did not really lead anywhere.

Throughout the early twentieth century, various conversations took place between Anglicans and Orthodox. A 1921 document published in England on terms of intercommunion between the Church of England and the Eastern Orthodox Church agreed that mutual acceptance of the teaching of John of Damascus meant that the two churches agreed to “express the same faith.” The document affirms that the addition of the filioque clause was not done in an appropriate manner, that the clause should be omitted in assemblies of both Eastern and Western Christians, but that its use was lawful in Western church services, since the word is used in an orthodox sense.¹⁸

The Joint Doctrinal Commission appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1931 released an Anglican-Orthodox statement that the teaching of John Chrysostom was acceptable to both churches. The Orthodox insisted that the Filioque should be removed from the Creed; the Anglicans continued to insist on its retention. Similar results occurred at a meeting in 1956 in Moscow.¹⁹

The most significant agreed statements concerning the filioque clause appear in the Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue of 1976 (The Moscow Statement) and the Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue of 1984 (The Dublin Agreed Statement). In the Moscow Statement, the Anglican delegates agreed unanimously that the filioque clause should not form part of the Nicene Creed (i.e., the Nicene-Constanopolitan Creed of 381 AD). Archbishop Basil described this as “perhaps the most positive act on which our commission has so far agreed.”²⁰

The Moscow Statement recognized the following three points:

(1) A clear distinction needs to be made between the eternal procession of the Spirit and the temporal mission of the Spirit. Anglicans and Orthodox agreed that the Spirit is sent into the world by the Son as well as the Father. The Document states that biblical texts that speak of both the Father and the Son as “sending” (John 14:25; 15:26) refer only to the mission. Conversely, the filioque concerns only the eternal procession of the Spirit, not the mission.

(2) The Anglicans agreed to omit the filioque from the Creed on historical grounds because it was not part of the text approved at the second ecumenical Council.

(3) The conference left it open whether the filioque could legitimately be affirmed as a theologoumenon. As a result, the Agreed statement speaks only to the addition to the Creed. It does not address the doctrine as such.

The minutes of the discussion make clear that the distinction between “canonical” use and doctrinal affirmation continued to be a source of disagreement between Orthodox and Anglican participants. The Anglicans insisted that there should be a “sharp distinction” between the “canonical error” of the Western addition and “whether the doctrine is good or bad.” They distinguish between a Creed “confessed by all Christians” and an “explication of the faith.”²¹

At least one Orthodox theologian distinguished between the filioque as referring to the “mission” (which was acceptable) and the filioque as referring to “procession” (which was unacceptable). He wanted a statement included to the effect that even outside the Creed, filioque could be used only in reference to the “mission” of the Spirit and not his origin, to which an Anglican theologian replied that not all Anglicans would agree that the filioque would only be acceptable as referring to the “mission” and not the origin of the Spirit. Another Orthodox theologian claimed that it was contradictory for Anglicans to want to keep the filioque, but to reject papal authority.²²

Some of the Anglicans resisted attempts by the Orthodox to condemn the doctrine of the filioque. One later wrote that the Anglicans were surprised that the chief areas of disagreement focused on the differences between the Western and Eastern theological traditions: “The Anglicans found themselves defending St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas more often than Luther or Calvin or Cranmer.”²³

In the Dublin Statement, there was a reaffirmation by both Anglicans and Orthodox that the filioque should not be included in the Nice-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Orthodox continued to say that the filioque was doctrinally unacceptable. In response, the Anglicans stated that the filioque was not a dogma that should be required of all Christians. In agreement with the Orthodox, they called into question the use of the language of the Son as “cause” of the Spirit, and affirmed that the Father is the sole “fount of deity”; at the same time, the Son is associated with the Father as the “principle” of the Spirit. In response to Orthodox concerns, they insisted that in speaking of the Father and the Son as “one principle,” the West is not saying that the Spirit proceeds from an undifferentiated “divine essence” as opposed to the “persons” of the Father and the Son.²⁴

This summary would seem to be the extent of the ecumenical discussion that came out of well over a century of Anglican/Orthodox dialogue. Because its addition to the Creed was considered canonically illegitimate, and for purposes of ecumenism, the Anglicans agreed to drop the filioque from the Creed, but continued to insist that the doctrine of the filioque was acceptable. To the contrary, the Orthodox wanted the filioque removed from the Creed not for purposes of ecumenical agreement, but because they insisted that the doctrine was theologically unacceptable. So the Anglicans agreed to do something that the Orthodox wanted, but not for the reasons the Orthodox wanted it, and the distinction between canonical illegitimacy and doctrinal permissibility that was so important to the Anglicans was one that the Orthodox rejected. Ironically, there was no follow-through on the requests by the Moscow and Dublin Statements to drop the filioque from the Creed. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the American Episcopal Church retained the filioque in the Nicene Creed recited during the Eucharist as did the “Holy Communion Service” in the Church of England’s Common Worship text of 2000. More recently, the “Communion Prayer” in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church of North America has placed the filioque in brackets.

A recent book on the history of the relations between Anglicans and Orthodox states that “Anglicans and Orthodox are no closer to each other now then they were sixty years ago. And they are no closer to resolving their internal differences.”²⁵ By “internal differences,” the author means that Anglicans and Orthodox are as divided among themselves as much as they are from each other, and these internal differences make resolving ecumenical disagreements almost impossible. All of the discussion about the filioque between Anglicans and Orthodox for over a hundred years does not seem to have led anywhere.

The requested title of this paper was “An Anglican Perspective on the Filioque Dispute.” As should be clear from the above, there is no distinctively “Anglican Perspective.” Historically, Anglicanism has simply received the Western position that has its roots in Augustine of Hippo. The ecumenical discussions between Anglicans and the Orthodox have largely followed the same patterns that one finds in such discussions between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox or between other Reformation churches and the Orthodox. So the paper might more accurately be titled “An Anglican’s Perspective on the Filioque Dispute.” I will be presenting my own views, but I will make occasional references not only to the seventeenth-century theologians and the Orthodox/Anglican ecumenical dialogues, but also to the writings of some more recent theologians.

My first point, in agreement with the Anglican/Orthodox dialogues, is that it is essential in any discussion of the filioque to distinguish between the economic and immanent Trinity. Despite rhetorical excess, it is clear that Orthodox and Western theologians largely agree concerning the missions of the economic Trinity. Both sides in the discussion agree that, within the context of the economy, both the Father and the Son send the Spirit. Orthodox thinkers in ecumenical dialogues have been willing to use the language of “and the Son,” but only within the context of the missions or the economic Trinity.

Historically the seventeenth-century Anglican writers appealed to the economy as evidence for the filioque, specifically that the Son sent the Spirit, and that the Son “breathed” the Spirit on the apostles. It has also been the case that modern Protestant theologians, particularly Karl Barth, have argued that if the economy is a true revelation of God’s identity, that if the Spirit who brings us into relation to the Father is the Spirit of the Son, then the filioque is necessarily part of the divine mystery.²⁶ Similarly, contemporary Roman Catholic thinkers point to a correspondence between the economic and immanent Trinity as evidence for the filioque. Giles Emery writes: “[T]he economy, in which the Holy Spirit is poured out by the Father and the Son, is the expression of what the Holy Spirit is from all eternity.”²⁷ The Orthodox however tend to respond to such observations by pointing out that if the risen Christ sends the Spirit, the Holy Spirit also sends the Son in that the Spirit is instrumental in Jesus’ virginal conception, and that the Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism.

In this regard, the Anglican/Orthodox dialogues made a good point that the biblical passages that speak of the Father and the Son “sending the Spirit” are references to the economy and need to be distinguished from the question of the eternal procession of the Spirit. To be more specific, the issue of the filioque is an issue that concerns ontology, the inner reality of the Triune God, and the topics that need to be addressed are issues of metaphysics and ontology, not of the economy as such.

Either missing this point or failing to provide an adequate account of the ontology of the Trinity are significant problems in two more recent Anglican discussions of the filioque. Tom Smail’s book The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person discusses the filioque as an answer to the question: “Who gives the gift?” Smail addresses the question by referring to those biblical passages that speak of the economy: John 15:26, 16:7, 20:22. Smail criticizes the Eastern position for not doing justice to the relation of the Spirit to the work of the Son, but he also criticizes the Western position for “downgrading the Spirit” in comparison to the Son, complaining that “it is not enough to say that the Son imparts to the Spirit what he has received from the Father.” The Son also receives from the Spirit in the incarnation, his baptism and resurrection. Smail suggests an alternative to both traditional Eastern and Western models of procession by suggesting not only that “the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son” (one variation of the Eastern position) but that the Son also “comes from the Father through the Spirit.”²⁸ Smail’s discussion concerns the economic missions of the two persons in the history of salvation – both the Son and the Spirit “send” one another for different tasks – but does not adequately address the ontological questions that lie behind the traditional concerns of the filioque. In terms of ontology, what sense would it make to say that the Spirit eternally receives his origin from the Father “through the Son” while the Son simultaneously eternally receives his origin from the Father “through the Spirit”? This would make nonsense of notions of ontological order, of priority and of consequence, and would lead to a perpetual regress in which the Son depends on the Spirit for his origin, while the Spirit depends on the Son for his. One might call this the M.C. Esher model of trinitarian procession.

If Smail does not really get beyond the economy, a failure to deal adequately with the ontology of the Trinity can be found in a book on The Doctrine of God by Anglican Evangelical Gerald Bray, who complains that the Cappadocians “tended to make abstractions of words like ‘begotten’ and ‘proceeding,’ . . . They turned relationships into attributes, and so invented qualities which do not exist.” On the other hand, Bray complains that Augustine of Hippo “was never able to conceive of the persons of the Trinity as having the same depth of reality which belonged to the one nature of God.” Concerning Aquinas, Bray states that his views “can rightly be criticized for being too philosophical, too abstract,” and “too dependent on the primacy of nature over person.” As an alternative to either Cappadocian or Augustinian/Thomist models of the Trinity, Bray turns to John Calvin’s notion that “each of the persons is autotheos, that is, to say, God in his own right” as a “new and better framework.”²⁹ But this results in an intolerable ambiguity. Autotheos can be understood to mean that each of the persons is “God oneself,” truly God, which is orthodox and catholic theology. But authotheos can also be understood in the sense of “God from oneself,” in the sense that each of the persons is self-existent as an individual source of origin. If autotheos is used in the former sense, then there still needs to some account in terms of ontology for how the persons are distinguished from one another; if the latter, the implications would be either Sabellian or tritheist: Sabellian because autotheos without any distinction of origin leaves no way to distinguish one person from another; tritheist because if the persons are not distinguished by relations, and each of three distinct persons has deity simply in himself, there would be three distinct substances or three gods.

Contemporary attempts to bypass the pre-Reformation discussion result in incoherence. I return to an observation from one of the participants in the Anglican/Orthodox ecumenical dialogues, that Anglicans found themselves defending Augustine and Thomas Aquinas more often than Luther or Calvin or Cranmer, and this is not surprising. The disagreement about the filioque precedes the Reformation, and insofar as Anglicans are Western Christians, they have inherited this pre-Reformation tradition. I agree that the crucial Western thinkers in this discussion are Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and it is to Augustine and Aquinas that I think we need to turn. If turning to Aquinas seems odd for a member of a Reformation church, I would point out that Aquinas has had a significant influence on Anglican theology. Richard Hooker was clearly dependent on Aquinas in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and there have been modern Anglican Thomists. I also point to Methodist D. Stephen Long’s book The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy, where Long states that “Protestant traditions inherited Thomas’s answer . . . which was not challenged by the Reformation.”³⁰ In what follows, I will to some extent be following the discussion in Anglo-Catholic theologian Eric L. Mascall’s book The Triune God: An Ecumenical Study, published in 1986.³¹ Mascall depends on Aquinas, but I will turn to more recent interpreters of Aquinas as well.

The first distinction crucial for Aquinas’s theology can be found in Basil of Caesarea, who distinguishes between names that are “common,” for example, the word “human,” which signifies the reality of a human person, and names that are relational, for example, “friend,” which signifies the relation between one human person and another. In language about God, “essence” or ousia, belongs to the first category, that which is common. The names “Father” and “Son” belong to the second, since they signify a relation to another.³²

Aquinas will build on this distinction between the common and the relational by claiming that “perfection” terms such as existence, goodness, and love refer to the one God and are common to all three persons. Even those relational terms that speak of the relationship between God and creation, such as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, while they can be “attributed” to one or the other of the divine persons, are also, properly speaking, “common” terms.³³

The second distinction that will be crucial for Aquinas builds on the first, but pushes it in the direction of ontology: that between the divine simplicity of the One God, and the distinctness of the persons as relations of origin. In his De Trinitate, Augustine wrestled with the question of how to relate the single identity of the one God to the distinction of the persons. Augustine echoes the Cappadocians in their distinction between common terms that apply to the substance of the one God and relational terms that apply to the persons. More specifically, Augustine addresses the problem of how there can be distinctions within the absolutely simple Being of the one God. If the persons are accidents, then the divine simplicity is compromised; if the persons are substances, tritheism follows. Augustine endorses Aristotle’s category of relation in order to distinguish between the divine persons without compromising the simplicity of the one divine substance: the Trinitarian persons are relations of origin.³⁴

Augustine also notes that two sets of relational terms describing the divine persons are reciprocal to one another; The Father is the Father of the Son and the Son is the Son of the Father. Nonetheless, the relational terms describing the Spirit are not reciprocal but rather describe the Spirit’s relation to the other two persons. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, but the Father is not the Father of the Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, but the Son is not the Son of the Spirit.³⁵

Crucial to Aquinas’s own discussion of the Trinity is the correlation between the unity of the simplicity of the divine nature and the plurality and distinction of the divine persons. Aquinas’s discussion of the doctrine of God in the Summa Theologiae has been mistakenly divided into two treatises: the first on the “One God” (de deo uno) and the second “On the Trinity” (de deo trino). Recent interpreters make clear that this is a misreading. Simplicity is not an “attribute” of God to be known by reason alone followed by further description of God as Trinity after reason has finished its task. D. Stephen Long makes the case that Aquinas “uses the treatise on God’s essence to qualify divine Trinity, and the treatise on [Trinitarian] processions to qualify divine essence. . . . The one God who is simple, perfect, immutable, impassible, infinite, and eternal is revealed as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Divine simplicity thus “allows theologians to identify the persons as the essence of God without positing four essences, or making creation a fourth divine hypostasis.” Similarly, “the Triune persons reveal what simplicity means so that it can be applied to God, who is known to have real distinctions, which at first seem to deny simplicity.”³⁶ While divine simplicity is a central affirmation of the Christian tradition, modern discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity and the filioque too often miss the significance of the correlation between the unity of the one simple divine essence and the plurality of persons as crucial for any discussion of the ontology of the Trinity.

Aquinas’s unique contribution to this discussion includes, first, his notion of person as “subsistent relation,” and, second, his notion of oppositional relations. Aquinas’s initial definition of person is taken from Boethius: “A person is an individual substance of a rational nature” (ST 1.29.1 obj 1). The problem with this definition, as Aquinas acknowledges, is that, as it stands, it cannot be applied to the Trinity, since that would imply composition. The Trinitarian persons are not three individual substances (respondeo).³⁷ Aquinas’s solution is to posit that the Trinitarian persons are not three “substances,” but “substantial relations.” Aquinas writes: “The supreme unity and simplicity of God exclude every kind of plurality of absolute things, but not plurality of relations, because relations are predicated relatively; and thus the relations do not import composition in that of which they are predicated” (ST 1.30. ad 3).

Long points out how this works. Simplicity rules out absolute plurality in God, but it does not rule out plural relations: “Because the [divine] persons are subsistent relations, they are not three items, individuals, or things,” but can only be defined in relation to one another. The Son is the Son of the Father; the Father is the Father of the Son; the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son.³⁸ What the East defines as hypostasis and the West as “person,” Aquinas designates as “subsistent relation” and specifically as “relation of origin.”³⁹ In Aquinas’s own words:

Now distinction in God is only by relation of origin . . . while relation in God is not as an accident in a subject, but is the divine essence itself, and so it is subsistent, for the divine essence subsists. . . . Therefore a divine person signifies a relation as subsisting. (ST 1.29.4)

In this regard, it is important to note that Aquinas makes a distinction between “real relations” and “rational” or “logical relations.” “Real relations” have a concrete existence in the reality of things, whether we are thinking about them or not. The Trinitarian persons are “real relations” in the sense that God is eternally and necessarily Trinity. Aquinas will state that the relationship between God and creation is a “real relation” on the part of creation, since created things do not exist apart from their dependence on God, but only a “rational” or “logical relation” on the part of God. This does not mean that creation is not “real” for God or that God does not know or care about created things, but that creation is not a necessary aspect of God’s own Being. If creation were a “real relation” (in Aquinas’s sense), it would be essential to God’s own reality, a fourth member of the Trinity (ST 1.13.7; 1.28.1, 4).⁴⁰

Thus the Father exists as an eternal subsistent relation of “begetting” the Son; the Son exists as an eternal subsistent relation of being begotten by the Father; the Spirit exists as an eternal subsistent relation of procession as the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. The divine persons are not three substances or parts that make up God; nor is the divine essence a fourth being or entity in addition to or behind the persons. Rather, the three persons in mutual relation simply are the one divine essence, and the divine simplicity necessitates an identity between the divine essence and the three persons.⁴¹

A correlative of Aquinas’s notion of subsistent relation is his notion of “oppositional relations” or “relative opposition,” and it is here where we find the heart of his argument for the filioque – the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. The three persons are identical with the one divine essence, and yet distinct from one another. The persons are distinguished by their relations of origin, but also by the opposition in the relationship itself. If the relationships were not opposed, there would be no distinction between the persons (ST 1.28.3).

The Son receives his origin from the Father, and is thus distinguished from the Father while also completely receiving from the Father his share in the divine Being. The Father is Father and not Son as communicating the divine Being to the Son; the Son is Son and not Father as receiving the divine Being from the Father. The Father produces the Son by begetting and the Spirit by procession, but given that begetting and spiration are not opposed, these would not in themselves be enough to distinguish the Son from the Spirit as different persons. If the Spirit is to be distinguished from the Son, there must be something distinct about the manner in which each receives his origin from the Father, but also some relationship of origin between the persons of the Son and the Spirit. As the Son is opposed relationally to the Father, so there must also be some relation of opposition between the Son and the Spirit. Otherwise, there would be two Sons, or, more correctly, only the Father and the One Son. Given, however, that the only relations in God are relations of origin, Aquinas writes, “we must conclude that it is necessary to say that either the Son is from the Holy Spirit, which no one says, or that the Holy Spirit is from the Son, as we confess.” Thus Aquinas insists that the Spirit must proceed from the Son at the same time as he proceeds from the Father, or there would be no way to distinguish the Spirit as a person from the Son as a person (ST 1.36.2).⁴²

So the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not as from two distinct sources but from a single principle. The Spirit proceeds not from God his Father, but from the God who is Father. The Father is the Principle without principle and the Son receives from the Father the faculty that enables him to produce the Spirit in a single act of spiration that is common to Father and Son. Aquinas thus preserves the monarchy of the Father. The Son shares in the Father’s essence and dignity, but the Son does not share in the Father’s paternity nor the Father in the Son’s filiation. The dignity of the Father exists in the Father as the relation of giver, and in the Son by relation of receiver (ST 1.42.4 ad 2).⁴³

This would be an outline of the notion of Trinitarian processions and of the filioque as found in Thomas Aquinas, but it is also one with which I happen to agree. I think it could be called an “Anglican theology of the filioque” to the extent that it agrees with historic Anglicanism better than more recent discussions such as those of Smail or Bray. The neglected emphasis on the simplicity of the divine nature is something that Anglicans historically affirmed. The first Article of the 39 Articles brings together divine simplicity and Triune plurality in a manner consonant with Aquinas:

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

If we look again at the original quotation from Richard Hooker, we note that Hooker affirms that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share the same substance; that the three persons are distinguished from one another by properties of origin: that the Father is of none; the Son is “of the Father”; and the Spirit is distinguished from the Father and the Son as “proceeding from the other two.” Hooker concludes that “in every Person there is implied both the substance of God which is one, and also that property which causeth the same person really and truly to differ from the other two.” Finally, Hooker concludes by designating the persons with the term used by Aquinas: “Every person hath his own subsistence which no other besides hath.” The one element from Aquinas that seems to be missing is the terminology of relation. Hooker acknowledges that the persons are subsistences in the single divine substance, distinguished by origin, but he does not use the actual term “subsistent relation.”

Not only Eastern Orthodox, but also some Western writers (such as Evangelical Anglican Gerald Bray, mentioned above) have criticized the Western position (especially as formulated by Aquinas), and I now turn to respond quickly to the criticisms. The first criticism is that the Western position as developed by Augustine and Aquinas prioritizes the essence of God over the persons, turning God into a “remote and impersonal being,” the “God of the philosophers,” not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware has raised this objection, but the criticism has gained traction in recent decades under the influence of Karl Rahner’s book The Trinity, and we have seen it expressed above by Evangelical Anglican Gerald Bray.⁴⁴ As noted above, recent scholars have made clear that this is a simple misreading of both Augustine and Aquinas.⁴⁵ Again (following Long), the distinction in Aquinas is not one between God’s essence and God’s persons, but between what is common to the Triune persons and what is distinctive of each person. Matthew Levering has written that the point of the distinction between divine unity and divine relations in Aquinas is to make clear that “a plurality of relations does not destroy the divine unity and simplicity. The relations, while they subsist in the divine being, do not derive from the divine being. If they did, they would be related to the divine being as source. . . . The divine being subsists in three distinct modes, but the divine being is not what is related in these distinct modes. The divine being is the same in each Person. What are related are soley the Persons who subsist in the divine being.”⁴⁶ Anglican Eric Mascall has written that the notion of the divine persons as substantial relations prohibits the “view of God as an impersonal divine essence, antecedent to its differentiation into the Persons, . . . There is no God other than the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as subject of the triadic trinitarian relation.”⁴⁷

The second criticism is that Aquinas’s notion of the persons as “relations” is “a very meagre idea of personality.” Relations do not constitute the persons; rather, they are “personal characteristics” of the persons.⁴⁸ This, again, would seem to be a basic misreading of what Aquinas was about. Responding to this criticism, Mascall wrote, “The Persons are not just relations, but substantial relations.”⁴⁹ As noted above, Aquinas’s notion of subsistent relations combines Boethius’ definition of person as knowing and willing with Aristotle’s notion of relations. Mascall pointed out several decades ago that numerous theologians had already found this notion of subsistent relation as helpful for articulating specifically personalist ontologies in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity. I refer to Norris Clarke’s book Person and Being, in which Clarke makes the case that to be a person means to have both an “in itself” (substantival) and “toward another” (relational) dimension. Persons are inherently active, relational, communicative, communal, and receptive.⁵⁰ Far from being impersonal, Aquinas’s notion of person as subsistent relation seems to be a positive development of doctrine with rich resources for a personalist ontology.

Finally, the criticism has been made that the filioque creates two separate sources of Deity in the Godhead, not only denying that the Father is the single archē of the Trinity, but also conflates the persons of the Father and the Son by merging them into one.⁵¹ But this conflation of the persons is precisely what Aquinas’s notion of oppositional relations forbids. The Father continues to be the archē of the Trinity insofar as the Father alone is the “unsourced source,” the “unoriginated originator.” The Son and Spirit are both distinguished from the Father in being “sourced,” but there needs also to be some way of distinguishing the Son from the Spirit. The Son is distinguished from the Father and the Spirit as being the “sourced source” or “originated orignator,” while the Spirit is distinguished from both Father and Son by being the “sourced who does not source,” the “originated non-originator.”

At the same time, it is important to qualify in what sense the Western model understands the Father and Son to be the combined source of the Holy Spirit. Roman Catholic theologian Giles Emery makes some helpful distinctions. First, the Father and Son are not two “different principles” of the Holy Spirit; there is not a “double procession,” but a “single procession by a single act of the Father and the Son.” It is in their unity as persons that the Father and Son bring forth the Holy Spirit: “The principle of the Holy Spirit . . . is the Father and Son in their communion.” At the same time, Emery writes, “it is from the Father that the Son has the power to spirate the Holy Spirit. . . . In begetting the Son, the Father gives him to be, with the Father, the principle of the Holy Spirit.” It is clear then that the Father is the single source of the whole Deity, the “principle without principle.” As Aquinas writes, the Father alone is the “Author” (auctor), and the Holy Spirit is principally from the Father since the Son does not give the Spirit from himself, but from the Father, since everything that the Son does he receives from the Father.⁵²

Finally, what about those issues that continue to divide the Eastern and Western churches? Is there no hope for resolving disagreements? A reading of various essays, dialogues, and studies produced in the last several generations indicates a kind of ecumenical consensus has actually emerged.

First, it is important to distinguish between the canonical regularity of the filioque clause as an insertion into the creed, and the filioque as a doctrine. A general consensus seems to have emerged among Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and others involved in the ecumenical discussion that the insertion of the filioque into the Creed was canonically irregular, and that, as a gesture of charity to the Eastern churches, it should be removed – at least in services at which members of the Eastern church are present, but possibly in future liturgical texts of Western churches.

In some places this has actually taken place. Speaking from my own personal experience, I consulted with two of my colleagues at Trinity School for Ministry, where I teach. Our New Testament Professor, Grant LeMarquand, was formerly Anglican Bishop of the Horn of Africa in Ethiopia, which is part of the Anglican Diocese of Egypt in Alexandria. Professor LeMarquand told me that in the Anglican Diocese of Egypt, out of respect for the Orthodox and the Coptic churches, the Anglicans do not recite the filioque when they say the Creed. Another friend and colleague is an ordained priest in the Byzantine Catholic Church, one of the Eastern churches in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. He told me that Byzantine Catholics also do not recite the filioque, although they are in communion with the pope as the Bishop of Rome. As I mentioned, the Anglican Church in North America has placed the filioque in brackets in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer.

As far as possible doctrinal agreement between the East and the West, there seem to have been two distinct understandings of the procession of the Spirit among the Orthodox. Photius, patriarch of Constantaniople (d. 897) condemned the filioque and formulated the doctrine of the Spirit from the Father alone – ek monou tou Patros.⁵³ However, there seems to have been an earlier position upheld by writers such as Cyril of Alexandria and John of Damascus that the Spirit comes “through the Son” (dia Huiou).⁵⁴ While Aquinas rejected the Photian position, he pointed to the expression “through the Son” as indicating a fundamental agreement between East and West, even if “some” of the Greeks denied the “procession.”⁵⁵ As noted above, early meetings between Anglicans and Orthodox in 1874, 1875, and 1921 agreed that Anglicans and Orthodox “express the same faith” based on a common acceptance of John Damascene’s position that the Spirit proceeds “through the Son.”

E. L. Mascall pointed to affirmations by Orthodox theologians Dumitrou Staniloae and Joseph Bryennios that, although the Spirit and the Son derive their existence from the distinct acts of generation and procession, every relation between two Persons implies the third Person, that the union between the Son and the Spirit occurs in that the Spirit “shines forth” from the Son. Mascall asks, “When the diligent Western student has reached this point he may well find himself wondering whether anything is left of the filioque controversy.” Mascall points to the Eastern distinction between the promission of the Spirit by the Father and his manifestation by the Son, and asks “Does it really make sense to dispute whether these are two acts or two elements in one act?” Mascall suggests: “It could be argued that, although the procession (which can be understood as including both promission and manifestation) is from the two Persons, its principle, in the absolute, primary and unconditional sense of causal origin, is the Father alone.” He concludes that, “when stripped of their deplorable political aspects,” the differences between the East and West on the filioque are “largely verbal and conceptual . . . and that, where they are substantial, they manifest varieties of insight which are not necessarily incompatible, but, if they are offered and received with sympathy and understanding, may be mutually enriching and edifying.”⁵⁶

On the other hand, it seems to be the case that in more recent ecumenical discussions, the Orthodox have tended to insist more emphatically on the Photian position that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father alone.” In that light, Roman Catholic theologian Yves Congar concludes his masterful study on the problem by stating that we should recognize a unity of Catholic faith on both sides, but also “legitimate difference between two dogmatic expressions of this mystery.” Each expression of the faith is internally consistent, but is impossible in the vocabulary of the other side. Ten centuries of discussion have not reached agreement, and “There is no chance that this goal will be reached in the future. In fact, we may say quite ambiguously that this is not a goal to be pursued.”⁵⁷

It should be evident that after over a century of dialogue, there is no possibility that either the Orthodox or the Western churches are going to change their doctrinal positions. The Roman Catholic Church is not going to change its stance because that church accepts the filioque as dogma. Insofar as Anglicans and other Reformation churches have received the filioque as part of their inheritance, they also are unlikely to change, and Protestant theologians such as Karl Barth have made strong theological arguments in favor of the filioque. Nor should Western theologians be expected simply to drop the filioque. At the same time, the East is not going to budge on its position that the filioque is unacceptable as a doctrine.

Nonetheless, there are more areas of agreement than disagreement between East and West. East and West fundamentally agree in their understandings of the missions of the Triune persons as well as in the dogmatic definition of the Trinity as one substance or ousia and three persons or hypostases. East and West fundamentally agree in their affirmations of Nicene and Chalecdonian faith as well as the normative roles played by patristic theologians such as Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and the Cappadocians in the initial formulation of Trinitarian theology. East and West agree that the Father is the source of the Trinity, the “fountain of divinity.” East and West agree in affirming the distinction between what is common to the divine nature, and what is distinct to the persons. In this regard, it is significant that Western theologians have repeatedly recognized this agreement. Aquinas affirmed that the difference between the Greeks and the Latins had more to do with words than actual meaning.⁵⁸ As discussed above, the seventeenth-century Anglican writers who looked at this issue pointed to common agreement as well. Short of the eschaton, the East and the West are likely never going to agree on the doctrine of the filioque as a formulation of the origin of the Trinitarian persons. There is no reason we should not acknowledge, however, that both East and West equally affirm Trinitarian faith in its essentials.