The Filioque in the Original Greek?
St. Epiphanius of Salamis and the "Nicene-Constantinopolitan" creed.
Although it’s widely believed that the Second Ecumenical Council, Constantinople 381, created the second half of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, this likely isn’t true. Rather, Nathaniel McCallim has pointed out that the first time we see a complete version of that creed is about seven years prior, in the writings of St. Epiphanius of Salamis.1 As Philip Schaff documents,2 Epiphanius’ creed of 374 has agreement with both the original Nicene creed, and the later “Constantinopolitan creed,” and it includes the infamous clause about the procession the Holy Spirit “from the Father.” This is significant because, in historical debates between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, we’re often told that the creed needs to be interpreted in the theological context of the fathers who originally professed it. As such, if St. Epiphanius is the earliest patristic witness to the creedal formula, “I believe in the Holy Spirit… who proceeds from the Father,” then his Trinitarian theology should be our starting point when trying to understand that clause of the creed, and whether or not “Filioque” was a faithful addition thereto.
Lucky for us, St. Epiphanius not only wrote extensively about Trinitarian theology, but he also explicitly touched on the subject of the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession. In his work, Ancoratus, for example, the Saint wrote the following:
We do not say gods: [we say] God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and not gods. For there is no polytheism in God. But through the three names, the one divinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit [is indicated]. And there are not two sons: for the one Son is Only-begotten, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit that is holy, the “Spirit of God” always existing with the Father and Son, not alien from God, but being from God, “proceeding from the Father” and “receiving from the Son.” But the Only-begotten Son is incomprehensible, and the Spirit is incomprehensible, and from God, not alien from the Father and the Son. He is not a coalescence of the Father and the Son. But the Trinity is always of the same ousia, neither another ousia besides the divinity, nor another divinity besides the ousia, but the same divinity and from the same divinity, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
St. Epiphanius, Ancoratus, 6.9.
In this passage, St. Epiphanius is defending the Trinity against the charge of polytheism. He insists that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three gods, but rather only one God, because they are all “the same divinity and from the same divinity.” This context is important to keep in mind because Epiphanius goes on to make a very interesting claim about the Holy Spirit. According to this eastern father, the Spirit is “not alien from God,” but rather “from God, ‘proceeding from the Father’ and ‘receiving from the Son.’” The entire point of this statement is to explain how the Holy Spirit is related to the eternal Godhead: the Spirit is eternally “from God,” and thus, He eternally is God, because He “proceeds from the Father and receives from the Son.” This has little to do with the temporal missions of the divine persons, but everything to do with their eternal relations to one another. This is why, before affirming that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father” and “receives from the Son,” St. Epiphanius says that “the one Son is Only-begotten” of the Father. He’s talking about the hypostatic properties of the divine persons, and how these properties demonstrate the oneness of the Godhead.
In the same work, Epiphanius makes it even more explicit that the Holy Spirit’s procession “from the Father” and reception “from the Son” refers to His hypostatic origination:
Each of the names is mononymic, not having a duplication. For the Father is Father and has no parallel, nor is he joined together with another father, so that there may not be two gods. And the Son is only-begotten, true God from true God, not having the name of Father, nor being alien from the Father, but existing as Son of the Father. He is only-begotten, that the “Son” may be mononymic; and he is God from God, in order that Father and Son may be called one God. And the Holy Spirit is one-of-a-kind, not having the name of “Son,” nor having the name of “Father,” but thus called Holy Spirit, not alien from the Father. For the Only-begotten himself says: “The Spirit of the Father,” and “the one proceeding from the Father,” and “he will receive from what is mine,” in order that he may not be believed alien from the Father and the Son, but of the same ousia, the same divinity, divine Spirit, the “Spirit of truth,” the “Spirit of God,” the Spirit “Paraclete,” called mononymically, not having a parallel, not being equated with some other spirit, not called by the name of the Son or being named with the naming of the Father, in order that the mononymic names may not be homonymic, except “God” in the Father, “God” in the Son, in the Holy Spirit, “of God” and “God.” For the “Spirit of God,” both Spirit of the Father and Spirit of the Son, is not according to some synthesis, as soul and body are in us, but is in the midst of Father and Son, from the Father and the Son, third in naming. For it says, “Going forth, baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
St. Epiphanius, Ancoratus, 8.1-7.
According to the Saint, “the Son is only-begotten, true God from true God,” which means that He is eternally “of the Father.” Epiphanius highlights this “in order” to show “that Father and Son may be called one God.” In other words, in St. Epiphanius’ Trinitarian theology, the hypostatic procession of the Son from the Father alone is what grounds the Father and the Son as one God.
With that understood, consider Epiphanius’ teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit. In this eastern father’s mind, just as the Son is called “God” because He is begotten “of the Father,” so too is the Spirit called “God” because He is “both the Spirit of the Father and Spirit of the Son.” Epiphanius even says that the reason why the Spirit is “third in naming” in the Trinity is because He is, eternally, “from the Father and the Son.” Why would the Spirit’s temporal mission from the Father and the Son have anything to do with His eternal “rank” as third in the Trinity? That wouldn’t make sense. Remember that, as in our previous passage, the entire context of these statements is about how the eternal relations of the Trinity demonstrate the oneness of the Godhead. If the Son’s eternal procession from the Father entails His oneness with Him, then the Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father and the Son entails His oneness with them. That’s the most straightforward reading of these texts. Also notice that, like our previous passage, Epiphanius cites both John 15:6, “the Spirit… who proceeds from the Father,” and John 16:15, “the Spirit will receive from [the Son],” in order to ground his teaching in Scripture. For St. Epiphanius, both of these biblical passages affirm the Spirit’s hypostatic origination from the Father and the Son, and thus the Spirit’s consubstantiality with the Father and the Son.
Furthermore, in his Panarion, Epiphanius is equally clear about the meaning of these Scripture passages. “The Spirit,” he writes, is “not the Son’s brother, [nor] the Father’s offspring.” Instead, “He proceeds from the Father and receives of the Son and is not different from the Father and the Son, but is of the same essence, of the same Godhead, of the Father and the Son… [a] divine Spirit, Spirit of glory, Spirit of Christ, Spirit of the Father.”3 It’s clear that, every time St. Epiphanius invokes these two Johannine passages about the Spirit “proceeding from the Father” and “receiving of the Son,” he’s doing so not in order to clarify from whom the Spirit proceeds in time, but rather to explicate the eternal relations of the Trinity. Unlike the Son, whose hypostatic property is being “the Father’s offspring,” the Spirit’s hypostatic property is “proceed[ing] from the Father and receiv[ing] of the Son.” Or, as Epiphanius put it in our previous passage, the Spirit’s distinguishing property is that He is “both Spirit of the Father and Spirit of the Son… from the Father and the Son, third in naming.”
This now brings us to the provocative title of my article. Above it was stated that, contrary to popular belief, the Council of Constantinople 381 almost certainly did not come up with what we know as the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed.” Instead, as Epiphanius’ writings testify, this creed was known about a decade before that council, if not longer. This is significant for two reasons. First, since Epiphanius is our first witness to the creedal formula, “I believe in the Holy Spirit… who proceeds from the Father,” the fact that he also accepted the theology of the Filioque, i.e. that the Spirit hypostatically proceeds from the Father and the Son, means that the medieval Greeks were wrong about the original intent of that formula. In its original theological context, the Spirit proceeding “from the Father” cannot be glossed as “from the Father alone,” unless one wishes to say that Epiphanius accepted a creed that contradicted his own beliefs about the Holy Spirit’s hypostatic procession.
Second, as Philip Schaff further documents, this creed wasn’t the only one St. Epiphanius gave us in his work, Ancoratus. Instead, Epiphanius provided two creeds that he believed equally expressed the Nicene faith, the second of which professed the following about the Holy Spirit:
And we believe in the Holy Spirit… a Spirit of God, a perfect Spirit, a Paraclete Spirit, uncreated, proceeding from the Father, and receiving from the Son, and believed.
Taken from Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II, Two Creeds of Epiphanius. A.D. 374. Ancoratus, cap. 119, 120.
As this article has shown above, whenever St. Epiphanius combines John 15:6, “the Spirit… who proceeds from the Father,” and John 16:15, “the Spirit will receive from [the Son],” it’s always in reference to the Holy Spirit’s eternal relation within the Trinity (even if it can refer to more than that at times). Together, for this Saint of both East and West, these passages affirm the Spirit’s hypostatic origination “from the Father” and “from the Son,” and thereby His consubstantiality with them. As such, not only would Epiphanius not have viewed filioque, “and the Son,” as contradictory to the original intent of the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan” creed, but when glossing that version of the creed himself, he too inserted a version of the Filioque!
Taking these facts into consideration, I must admit that while the title of this article is a bit tongue in cheek, it’s not completely. Most students of history are aware that, in the late 4th century, St. Epiphanius accompanied St. Jerome to meet with Pope St. Damasus in Rome about the canonical standing of a certain St. Paulinus of Antioch. Although there’s no evidence that Epiphanius shared his version of “the creed” with his Latin brothers, it’s not much of a stretch. After all, only about one hundred years later, the Latin West would embrace the “Athanasian creed” and the “creed of Damasus,” both of which confess the Filioque in no uncertain terms. Is it possible that the West’s creedal formula, “I believe in the Holy Spirit… who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” was inspired by St. Epiphanius’ second creed that he took from Jerusalem to Rome? Could this be why the Council of Toledo “added” the Filioque to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed in the 6th century, because they genuinely thought it was missing since the Filioque was in every other creed they had? Was there something more than just ignorance that caused the medieval Latins to believe that the Greeks had removed the Filioque from the creed?
Whatever the answers to these questions end up being, I believe they’re well worth asking. The history of the creed and its relation to the doctrine of the Filioque is much more complicated than most people are aware, and our holy father St. Epiphanius of Salamis demonstrates that well. I pray that this article is a worthwhile contribution to an on-going theological dialogue between Eastern and Western Christianity.
Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II, Two Creeds of Epiphanius. A.D. 374. Ancoratus, cap. 119, 120.
St. Epiphanius, Panarion, 62.4.1.
Well in the quotations you provide, Epiphanios was quite clear on the distinction between 'proceed from' and 'receive of.' However, we should perhaps also consider that Pope Leo III refused Charlemagne's urging to include 'filioque' into the Creed (810), alongside the history of the later 'Photian Controversy,' during which period Rome steadfastly affirmed that the filioque insertion was not acceptable in the Creed. However, Rome only first used it in 1014 in the context of the restoration of Benedict VIII to the Papal throne by German King Henry II - thus for political reasons- and it did not come into general usage in the West until after the 2nd Council of Lyon 1274.
It seems to me that Epiphanius is making the same distinction as Scripture between 'proceeding' and 'receiving', a distinction later fathers would also be careful to make but which would disappear from Latin theology by the time of the 'dogmatic definitions' of the Councils of Lyon and Ferrara-Florence.