We don’t say it because it wasn’t in the original Creed. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed adopted by the Ecumenical Councils in 325 and 381 says the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” That’s it. No addition, no qualification. The phrase “and the Son” (filioque in Latin) was added centuries later by Western churches without the consent of an Ecumenical Council, and we’ve never accepted that change.
This isn’t just stubbornness about wording. Three things are at stake here: what we believe about the Holy Trinity, who has authority to change the Church’s faith, and whether the Creed belongs to the whole Church or can be edited locally.
The Theological Problem
Orthodox theology teaches that the Father is the single source within the Trinity. The Son is begotten of the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father. These are the personal properties that distinguish the three Persons while they share one divine essence. The Father’s role as origin isn’t about superiority or rank. It’s about the eternal relationship between the Persons.
When you add “and the Son,” you risk muddying that. If the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son as a single principle, what happens to the Father’s unique role as source? If the Spirit proceeds from the Son in a different sense than from the Father, you’ve introduced a hierarchy or subordination that doesn’t belong there. Either way, you’ve altered the careful balance the Church Fathers worked out to protect both the unity of God’s essence and the distinctness of the three Persons.
Fr. Lawrence Farley of the OCA puts it plainly: the Eastern objection centers on preserving the Spirit’s procession from the Father alone, maintaining what the Fathers called the “monarchy” of the Father. It’s not that the Son has no relationship to the Spirit. Of course he does. But “procession” describes the Spirit’s eternal origin, and that origin is the Father.
The Historical Mess
The filioque started appearing in Spain in the sixth century, partly as a way to combat Arianism, which denied Christ’s full divinity. If you emphasize that the Spirit proceeds from the Son too, you’re underlining that the Son is fully God. Fair enough as a local pastoral move. But it was never approved by an Ecumenical Council. It spread through Western Europe over centuries, and Rome eventually adopted it. By the time Eastern Christians encountered Western Christians reciting a different Creed, both sides were shocked. The West thought the East had deleted something. The East knew the West had added something.
You can imagine the scene. Your family’s been saying the same Creed for six hundred years, the one the whole Church agreed on, and suddenly you meet Christians who’ve inserted a phrase. That’s not how the Church is supposed to work.
The Authority Question
Here’s where it gets ecclesiological. The Creed isn’t the work of one bishop or one region. It’s the faith of the whole Church, hammered out by bishops from across the Christian world meeting in council. The Third Ecumenical Council actually forbade altering the Creed. So when Western churches added the filioque on their own, they violated that conciliar principle. Rome later defended the addition by claiming papal authority to clarify doctrine, but that’s precisely the kind of unilateral authority the East has never recognized.
For us, the Creed isn’t something you edit to win a local argument or clarify a pastoral concern. It’s the common confession of the one Church. Changing it without a council of the whole Church is like rewriting your family’s wedding vows because you think they could be clearer. Maybe your new version is defensible, but it’s not the vow everyone made.
What This Means for You
If you’re coming from a Protestant background, you might wonder why this matters so much. Many Protestant churches don’t even recite the Creed regularly, and when they do, they often use the version with filioque because that’s what they inherited from Western Christianity. You’re not personally responsible for a ninth-century controversy.
But becoming Orthodox means entering into the Church’s faith as the Church has kept it. When you stand in the nave at St. Michael’s and recite the Creed, you’re saying the same words Christians said in Constantinople in 381, in Jerusalem in 500, in Antioch in 800. You’re joining your voice to that unbroken confession. And you’re saying it without the addition that was never agreed upon by the whole Church.
This isn’t about being anti-Western or anti-Catholic. It’s about being faithful to what was handed down. The Creed is a gift, not a rough draft. We guard it carefully because it guards the faith.
If you want to go deeper, Fr. Thomas Hopko’s “The Orthodox Faith” series covers this clearly, and Ancient Faith has several accessible podcasts on the filioque for inquirers. But don’t get lost in the weeds. The heart of it is simple: we say what the Church has always said, and we trust that the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, has been guiding the Church all along.
