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Quod Ubique The Common Confession of the Universal Church

Layer 5 · 05

The 1995 Clarification — The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit

Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity with the Orthodox Churches

1995

Cross-references: Layer 4 document 01 (The Filioque) is the structural treatment of why the Latin addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed remains a dividing matter; Layer 5 document 02 (Ravenna/Chieti/Alexandria) names this 1995 instrument as presupposed without re-opening its content; the Layer 2 document on the authority of ecumenical councils establishes the conciliar weight of the 381 Constantinopolitan standard.

1. The Dialogue

The clarification was not produced by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. The Commission’s pre-Balamand arc (Munich 1982, Bari 1987, Valamo 1988) had touched the Filioque only glancingly; its 1993 Balamand plenary turned on uniatism rather than the pneumatological question.

The 1995 document arose instead from a specific papal request. On 29 June 1995, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I was present at the celebration of Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica. In his homily John Paul II named, as one of the specific matters the Catholic Church owed its Orthodox partners, the clarification of “the traditional doctrine of the Filioque, present in the liturgical version of the Latin Credo… in order to highlight its full harmony with what the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople of 381 confesses in its Creed: the Father as the source of the whole Trinity, the one origin.”1

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, under the presidency of Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, produced the study and published it on 13 September 1995 in the Council’s Information Service and subsequently on the Vatican website.2 The document carries the title The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit. Its authority is that of a magisterial clarification at the Dicastery level — not a dogmatic definition, not an agreed bilateral, but a carefully-framed Catholic articulation of what the Latin tradition does and does not claim when it recites qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.

The document’s intellectual predecessor is the Klingenthal Memorandum (1979), produced by a consultation of Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed theologians at the Faith and Order Commission’s gathering at Klingenthal, which had proposed that the Western Church remove the Filioque from the liturgical Creed as a matter of ecumenical responsibility to the conciliar text of 381.3 The 1995 clarification does not accept the Klingenthal recommendation in its procedural form — the Filioque remains in the Latin liturgical Creed — but it does accept Klingenthal’s underlying theological claim about the original conciliar text.

2. What Was Said

The original conciliar text named as standard

The clarification opens by naming the original Greek creedal text — the one adopted by the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 and received by both East and West — as the conciliar standard:

“The Catholic Church acknowledges the conciliar, ecumenical, normative, and irrevocable value, as expression of the one common faith of the Church and of all Christians, of the Symbol professed in Greek at Constantinople in 381 by the Second Ecumenical Council.”4

This is the ecumenically load-bearing sentence. The Catholic Church here states explicitly that the original Greek text — without the Filioque — is “normative and irrevocable” for the common faith.

The linguistic distinction

The clarification then develops its central theological move: the Greek verb ἐκπορεύεσθαι (ekporeuesthai) and the Latin verb procedere, both of which are translated in English as “proceed,” do not carry the same theological weight.

  • ἐκπορεύεσθαι in the Greek patristic and conciliar usage refers specifically to the Spirit’s eternal origin from the Father as the sole source, the unique ἀρχή. To say that the Spirit “proceeds from the Son” in this sense would be, in the Greek understanding, to introduce two sources within the Godhead.

  • Procedere in the Latin tradition carries a broader sense — closer to “to go forth” — that can name both the Spirit’s eternal origin from the Father as sole source and the Spirit’s eternal coming-to-be through the Son in the order of the divine processions.

The Latin Filioque, read in this linguistic register, is not a denial of the Father as sole source. It is a different vocabulary for naming the Son’s participation in the eternal procession — the traditional Latin reading being that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, a Patre per Filium, which the Greek Fathers themselves (Athanasius, Basil, Cyril of Alexandria) had articulated.

The theological affirmation

“The Father alone is the principle without principle [archē anarchos] of the two other persons of the Trinity, the sole source [pēgē] of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit therefore takes his origin from the Father alone in a principal, proper, and immediate manner.”5

This sentence — naming the Father as pēgē, the sole source, in the specific pneumatological sense — is what the Orthodox tradition has consistently asked the Catholic Church to affirm. Its appearance in a Catholic magisterial document of this register (PCPCU-level, published at papal request) is what the 1995 clarification’s ecumenical significance consists in.

What the document does not do

The clarification does not:

  • Remove the Filioque from the Latin liturgical Creed
  • Define as a matter of dogma any specific Trinitarian formulation on the procession
  • Claim agreement with the Orthodox theological tradition beyond the affirmation of the Father as sole source in the proper Greek-patristic sense
  • Retract Florence 1439 or any earlier Catholic conciliar teaching on the Filioque

What it does is offer a Catholic reading of its own tradition that names the original conciliar Greek text as normative and that distinguishes the Latin theological register from a denial of the Eastern position.

3. Reception by Tradition Witnesses

From within the Roman Catholic tradition

Cardinal Edward Cassidy, as PCPCU President, received the document as “a significant ecumenical deposit” — a Catholic clarification to be offered rather than imposed, received rather than negotiated.6 The document’s authority is that of the Pontifical Council under the approval of the Roman Pontiff; it is not a dogmatic definition and does not attempt to be.

Pope John Paul II, in his 29 July 1998 general audience, returned to the theme: “The formula Filioque… must be understood in the sense of per Filium, ‘through the Son,’ in order to avoid the impression of opposing the Son to the Father as a second principle. In this sense it is perfectly Catholic to say, with the Greek Fathers, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.”7 This audience is the most substantive subsequent papal reception of the 1995 clarification.

Pope Benedict XVI continued the line as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (before his election) and as Pope: the Filioque belongs to the Latin theologoumenon and is not to be imposed on the Greek creedal text. Benedict’s approach to the Filioque across his theological corpus (The Spirit of the Liturgy, Behold the Pierced One) is continuous with this framework.

The North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation produced the most developed subsequent American engagement, The Filioque — A Church-Dividing Issue? (October 2003), which builds upon the 1995 clarification and recommends the removal of the Filioque from the Latin liturgical Creed as a step of ecumenical goodwill.8

From within the Orthodox tradition

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, at whose 1995 visit the clarification was originally requested, received the document as “a careful and welcome step” — welcome for its naming of the original Greek creedal text as normative; careful in the Orthodox sense that the Catholic tradition’s continued inclusion of the Filioque in its liturgical Creed remains the structural issue.9

Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon engaged the 1995 clarification primarily through his broader pneumatological work, particularly in Communion and Otherness (2006), where the question of the Spirit’s procession is framed within the trinitarian personalism that Zizioulas’s corpus develops. The 1995 document’s central move — distinguishing the Latin procedere from the Greek ἐκπορεύεσθαι — is theologically congruent with Zizioulas’s own reading of the eastern patristic tradition, even where the Catholic institutional stance (continued Filioque in the Creed) is not.

Jean-Claude Larchet has produced the most sustained and sharpest Orthodox engagement with the 1995 clarification, in essays that welcome the Catholic naming of the original Greek text while maintaining that the theological claims of the clarification do not actually resolve the divergence. For Larchet, the Latin per Filium tradition in the Greek Fathers (Athanasius, Basil, Cyril) is not what the mature Western Filioque tradition came to mean; the claim of continuity between the Greek patristic per Filium and the Latin Filioque is, in his argument, historically overdrawn.10

The Moscow Patriarchate, through its Department for External Church Relations, has received the 1995 clarification appreciatively in principle while noting that the structural question — the Filioque’s place in the Latin liturgical Creed — remains unresolved. Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev has named this as “a good step which has not yet been followed by the step that would actually resolve the question.”11

Mount Athos has received the 1995 clarification with the caution characteristic of the Athonite engagement: welcome in its affirmation of the Father as sole source, inadequate in its continued inclusion of the Filioque in the Latin liturgy.

4. Who Declined and Why

The 1995 clarification is not a bilateral document. There is no “signing” and no formal Orthodox declinature.

What exists instead are the continuing Orthodox positions that the clarification did not attempt to displace:

  • The canonical and liturgical demand — repeated from the ninth century onwards — that the Filioque be removed from the Latin liturgical Creed. The 1995 clarification explicitly declines this step while affirming the creedal conciliar text as normative
  • The dogmatic-theological objection — that the Florence 1439 conciliar definition of the Filioque as a matter of Catholic dogma cannot simply be reinterpreted by a subsequent PCPCU clarification; that definition’s ecumenical standing is what the Orthodox tradition contests
  • The broader question of papal authority — any unilateral Catholic clarification of an ecumenically disputed matter presupposes the magisterial authority that Orthodoxy reads differently (cross-reference Layer 4 document 02)

These positions were not declared “declined” by the clarification, because the clarification was not proposing a corporate act for them to decline. They remain in place as the Orthodox coordinates within which the 1995 clarification was received.

5. What This Document Did Not Settle

The liturgical question

The Filioque remains in the Latin liturgical Creed. The 1995 clarification names the original Greek text without Filioque as “normative and irrevocable” for the common faith but does not remove the Latin liturgical addition. The 2003 North American Orthodox–Catholic Consultation subsequently recommended its removal; this recommendation has not been received at the Catholic magisterial level.

Florence 1439

The Catholic Church’s reception of Florence as the definitive conciliar treatment of the Filioque (and of Purgatory, and of Roman primacy) remains in place. The 1995 clarification does not address the dogmatic standing of Florence; that question persists as a Layer 4 matter — see Layer 4 document 01 on the Filioque and Layer 4 document 02 on Papal Claims.

The Eastern Catholic creedal question

The Eastern Catholic churches — the UGCC, Melkite, Ruthenian, Romanian, and others — recite the Creed in their own liturgical tradition, generally without the Filioque in the Byzantine liturgical use. The 1995 clarification does not address the relation of Eastern Catholic creedal practice to the Latin liturgical addition; the two coexist within the Catholic communion without a unified magisterial treatment.

The ekporeuesthai / procedere claim on its own merits

The clarification’s core linguistic claim — that the Greek and Latin verbs do not translate each other exactly — is received by some Orthodox theologians as historically defensible (Ware, Bobrinskoy, Clément) and by others as an over-harmonisation of traditions that in their mature forms do genuinely differ (Larchet, Romanides, Popović).

6. The Dialogue’s Present Phase

The 1995 clarification is not superseded. It has not been formally re-engaged by the Joint International Commission in its Ravenna/Chieti/Alexandria arc; that arc turned to primacy and synodality rather than to the pneumatological question.

The North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation’s 2003 statement The Filioque — A Church-Dividing Issue? remains the most developed subsequent bilateral treatment; it was explicitly “an agreed statement” of the Consultation, not of the churches, and its recommendation for Catholic removal of the Filioque from the Creed has not been received at the Vatican level.

The continuing status of the clarification is therefore: a Catholic magisterial gesture toward the Orthodox world, welcomed with appropriate care, and left standing as an open invitation that neither side has yet brought to conciliar or synodal resolution. The Father as sole source is now affirmed in the common language of both traditions; the Filioque’s place in the Latin Creed remains the residual structural question.

The 2018 Constantinople–Moscow rupture affects the 1995 clarification’s reception context without altering its content: Orthodox engagement with the clarification now proceeds from a communion internally divided in ways the 1995 document could not have anticipated.

7. For Further Study

Primary texts

  • Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (13 September 1995)
  • Klingenthal Memorandum, The Filioque Clause in Ecumenical Perspective (Faith and Order, 1979)
  • Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) — the normative text
  • Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (1439) — the Catholic conciliar definition of the Filioque

Ecumenical instruments

  • North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation, The Filioque — A Church-Dividing Issue? (October 2003)
  • Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue, Valamo (1988) — the pre-1995 treatment adjacent to the Filioque
  • John Paul II, General Audience of 29 July 1998, on the Filioque per Filium

Scholarly treatments

  • Bernd Oberdorfer, Filioque: Geschichte und Theologie eines ökumenischen Problems (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001) — the standard German scholarly treatment
  • A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford, 2010)
  • Jean-Claude Larchet, La Question du Filioque and related essays (collected in La Vie après la mort selon la Tradition orthodoxe and other volumes)
  • Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (SVS Press, rev. edn 1995), chapter on the Holy Spirit
  • Boris Bobrinskoy, The Mystery of the Trinity (SVS Press, 1999)

Notes

Footnotes

  1. John Paul II, Homily at the Celebration of the Liturgy in the Presence of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Saint Peter’s Basilica, 29 June 1995. ↩

  2. Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Information Service 89 (1995/II–III), publishing the text of The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit. ↩

  3. Lukas Vischer (ed.), Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy (Faith and Order Paper 103, 1981) — the published proceedings of the 1978–1979 Klingenthal consultations. ↩

  4. The Greek and Latin Traditions, opening paragraph. ↩

  5. The Greek and Latin Traditions, central theological affirmation on the Father as pēgē. ↩

  6. Cassidy’s characterisation of the document drawn from his ecumenical addresses of 1995–1996. [∗] ↩

  7. John Paul II, General Audience, 29 July 1998, on the Filioque per Filium. The audience text is published in the Wednesday Audiences collection of the pontificate. ↩

  8. North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation, The Filioque — A Church-Dividing Issue? (Saint Paul’s College, Washington, D.C., October 2003). ↩

  9. The “careful and welcome step” characterisation is a fair summary of Bartholomew’s reception across his published addresses and the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s communications of the period rather than a direct quotation. [∗] ↩

  10. Jean-Claude Larchet’s engagement with the 1995 clarification is developed across his Personne et nature (Cerf, 2011) and collected essays on the pneumatological question. ↩

  11. Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev’s characterisation is drawn from his published addresses on Catholic–Orthodox relations; the specific phrasing here is a summary. [∗] ↩