Should we “Drop the Filioque?” – Kuyperian Commentary.
This almost gave birth to my impending, “Why I Hate The Trinitarian Blogosphere” post, but I don’t have time. Suffice it to say, I find all the argument for the truth of the Filioque completely convincing and the arguments against it unconvincing or just plain indecipherable. If anything I am even more convinced that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son than I was before.
I still would be fine dropping it from the Nicene Creed.
Look, the original affirmation, as included in the original Nicene Creed, was a quotation from Scripture. Inserting an alien clause in that phrase really bothers me. Yes, a Confession can and sometimes should say more than what is in one passage of Scripture. But editing an actual verse is still unnecessary. As a Bible-believing Protestant I can’t think that God is happy with such a procedure.
Secondly, I don’t see why the Western Church had to unilaterally change an Ecumenical creed and then , essentially, pass it off as the ancient creed itself.
As a Presbyterian, I still have the filioque affirmed and required in the tenth Q&A of the Westminster Larger Catechism. That strikes me as about the right place for such a definition at that level. But even if it was put in a creed for congregational worship, I don’t think it should be, or be called, “The Nicene Creed.”
I already believe plenty of things that are not affirmed in the Nicene Creed, and break with other professing Christians over these matters. I don’t need the Nicene Creed to affirm all my particular beliefs, even truths I do not think others should deny or teach against. If I did, it would be a longer document.
So I don’t understand why the fact that the filioque happens to be true, or even important, counts as an argument that it should remain in the Nicene Creed as we recite it in the Western Church.<>
Why, really, do we have to work for change in dropping the Filioque when it won’t amount to a hill of beans difference in improving any relations between Protestants, the East, and Rome? If we have the phrase in our confessions, what’s the problem with having it in our creed especially since it is already there? The creed itself isn’t original to the New Testament era, so should we simply stop using it at all? Why only take out part? It seems to me that advocating a drop of the Filioque for reasons other than thinking it is untrue is both rash and ill-advised.
The larger question for me centers on why we think we need to revise anything in an age where the church is largely in tatters in our age. We couldn’t summon an ecumenical council if we tried so thinking we ought to make ecumenical changes of this order fails on no small amount of chutzpah, does it not?
Wouldn’t we do better to ‘do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God’?
How about replacing “and the Son” with “and is sent by the Son,” which is Biblical (Jn 16:7, Acts 2:33), and avoids both the flat sameness of “the Father and the Son” and the flat omission of the Son?
Who proceedeth from the Father through the Son…