LUTHERAN Churches are to discourage use of the filioque clause in the Nicene (Niceno-Constantinopolitan) Creed, in an effort to improve relations with Orthodox Christians before the 17th centenary, in 2025, of the issuing of the original Nicene Creed.
“We know the Filioque was inserted in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed by the Latin Church in response to the heresy of Arianism, centuries after the Creed’s composition — the Eastern Church has always protested this,” the Lutheran World Federation said in a statement with Orthodox representatives.
“Valuing this old and most venerable ecumenical Christian text, we suggest that the translation of the Greek original, without the Filioque, be used in the hope that this will contribute to healing age-old divisions between our communities.”
The statement, published last weekend after a meeting in Cairo of the International Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Theological Commission, said that Protestants had “inherited the Creed” with the Latin word filioque, as part of the Latin Church’s tradition, without “considering it problematic”.
Because Lutherans now affirm “the full divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit”, alongside Orthodox Christians, however, adopting the preferred Eastern formula of “through the Son” could assist efforts to “reach further agreement regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit”.
The filioque was not included in the original text confirmed at the First Councils of Nicaea, in 325, and Constantinople, in 381, which agreed that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father”, without the addition of “and the Son”.
It was inserted by Latin Churches in the late sixth century, however, and incorporated into Roman liturgical practice in 1014, contributing to the 1054 Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity.
The issue, viewed as crucial to understanding the doctrine of the Trinity, central to most Christian denominations, has long been debated by the Lutheran-Orthodox Commission, which has also issued agreed texts on scripture, ecclesiology, sacraments, and ministry, since first meeting in Finland in 1981.
The Cairo plenary was co-chaired by Metropolitan Kyrillos (Katerelos), on behalf of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the German Bishop Johann Schneider for the Geneva-based Lutheran World Federation (LWF).
It was attended by Orthodox delegates from Albania, Alexandria, Antioch, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Poland, and Serbia, but not by the Russian Church, which is in bitter dispute with the Ecumenical Patriarchate over Ukraine.
In a press note, the LWF’s assistant general secretary for ecumenical relations, Professor Dirk Lange, welcomed the filioque agreement as “a major step towards one another”, and said that Lutheran moves to retrieve the Creed’s “original version”, based on a “differentiated consensus”, could also “open the way for other Western Churches to move towards reconciliation”.
The LWF said that the text, drafted last year at sessions in Wittenberg and Tallinn, had resulted from “over 40 years of dialogue and ecumenical commitment”, and would be followed by a full declaration at the end of 2024.
“Both sides revisited a sixth-century rewording of the Nicene Creed, and agreed the original Greek text should be encouraged in all Churches,” the Lutheran Federation said.
“Three little words (just one in the original Latin) that have divided Eastern and Western Churches for centuries are at the heart of a new ground-breaking agreement that its authors hope could usher in a new era of reconciliation and mark a significant step on the road towards Christian unity.”
On Monday, however, a leader of Russia’s state-controlled Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Revd Dr Anton Tikhomirov, told the RIA Novosti news agency that the agreement was non-binding and largely symbolic, and would not “lead to a real rapprochement between Lutheran and Orthodox Churches”, which remained divided by “fundamentally different understandings” of Churches and their service to the world.