Metropolitan Kallistos on the filioque

The filioque has been a topic which has separated Eastern Christianity from Western Christianity. It played a major role in the Schism of 1054 between the Latin West and the Greek East. Many have expressed their views. Here Metropolitan Kallistos Ware expresses, laconically, this serious issue, a theology defended by most faithful of the Western Church and attacked by the whole Orthodox Church. Bishop Kallistos explains,

“In the Latin West, it is usually held that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and from the Son”; and the word filioque (“and from the Son”) has been added to the Latin text of the Creed. Orthodoxy not only regards the filioque as an unauthorized addition – for it was inserted into the Creed without the consent of the Christian East – but it also considers that the doctrine of the “double procession”, as commonly expounded, is theologically inexact and spiritually harmful. According to the Greek Fathers of the fourth century, whom the Orthodox Church follows to this day, the Father is the sole source and ground of unity in the Godhead. To make the Son a source as well as the Father, or in combination with him, is to risk confusing the distinctive characteristics of the persons”[1].

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[1] Ware, Kallistos, The Orthodox Way, (New York, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), p. 32