page_title: Filioque
section_title: First Eastern opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Filioque / History / First Eastern opposition
caption_attribution_description: English: Icon of saint Maximus the Confessor
context_page_description: Filioque is a Latin term added to the original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and which has been the subject of great controversy between Eastern and Western Christianity. It is not in the original text of the Creed, attributed to the First Council of Constantinople, the second ecumenical council, which says that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father", without additions of any kind, such as "and the Son" or "alone".
  In the late 6th century, some Latin Churches added the words "and from the Son" to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit, in what many Eastern Orthodox Christians have at a later stage argued is a violation of Canon VII of the Council of Ephesus, since the words were not included in the text by either the First Council of Nicaea or that of Constantinople. This was incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome in 1014, but was rejected by Eastern Christianity.
  Whether that term Filioque is included, as well as how it is translated and understood, can have important implications for how one understands the doctrine of the Trinity, which is central to the majority of Christian churches.
context_section_description: The first recorded objection by a representative of Eastern Christianity against the Western belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son occurred when Patriarch Paul II of Constantinople (r. 642–653) made accusations against either Pope Theodore I (r. 642–649) or Pope Martin I (r. 649–653) for using the expression. Theodore I excommunicated Paul II in 647 for Monothelitism. In response to the attack by Paul, Maximus the Confessor, a Greek opponent of Monothelitism, declared that it was wrong to condemn the Roman use of "and the Son" because the Romans "have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria [...] On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit – they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession – but that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence." He also indicated that the differences between the Latin and Greek languages were an obstacle to mutual understanding, since "they cannot reproduce their idea in a language and in words that are foreign to them as they can in their mother-tongue, just as we too cannot do".
caption: Maximus the Confessor
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