www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy Filioque (Was: Status of Revised Divine Liturgy in 2024)

I argue that dropping for us men makes it a completely different creed as it is not the creed delivered to us from the Fathers. It is a grave error that needs to be corrected. I plan to bring it up to Bishop Artur when he comes to our parish picnic in October. I'll fill you in on how the conversation goes then.

Dropping "men" from the creed is a major theological issue that has been brought up many times before in both East and West. I myself cannot bring myself to say the creed during the Liturgy without add "men."

I think the greater problem has to do with governance because it was a major upheaval to switch the new translation, and it would be a major upheaval to change again. No individual bishop in the Ruthenian church is going to scrap the Teal Terror without support and consent from all the others. Even Bishop Kurt, who reportedly does not like the translation and tolerates the use of older language ("mankind" vs "us all", etc.) has never advocated publicly for replacement or to use the older translations, as far as I am aware.

Maybe the best solution is a grassroots effort. At this point, if a parish used exclusively the older translations, I wonder whether they would be disciplined.

Christ is in our midst!!

EMagnus,

I have read that the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council attached severe anathemas to the Creed so that anyone who ADDED to or SUBTRACTED from it would be condemned forever. How that works out now is above my pay grade, but it calls into question who keeps the Faith passed to us and who does not.

That is also my understanding. What bothers me the most is that there is no theological justification given for removing the word. If you're going to be altering the traditional language of the creed, I think you ought to have some burden to prove that it is theologically necessary to better convey some truth in the original.

Regardless of where you come out on the Filioque, there is at least some theological reasoning given for its addition, not simply stating that it sounds better.

Christ is in our midst!!

I believe this is NO theological justification for adding to the Creed after its final version was made those many centuries ago. Let everyone modify it as he wills and we no longer have a common statement of what we believe today or how we are related to those who have gone before.

My father, no theologian, once told me that "a man is a success if he can face the Lord and confess that he received the Faith, lived it, and passed it along WITHOUT adding to it or subtracting from it."

BTW, the filioque is not the only addition of Charlemagne's theologians. "God from God" in the early sentences about Christ are also their work.

The Filioque was added to the Latin creed by the Third Council of Toledo led by Saint Leander in 589 in Spain, and was later adopted in Gaul during the reign of Saint Clovis and in Britain at the Council of Hatfield in 680 led by Saint Theodore. Personally, I believe that the best thing to do is for us Latins to pray as our Greek and Eastern brothers do, as we have received from our Doctors, without arguing over the other's usage.

Apparently the local Western Councils did not get the memo about the anathemas attached to the Creed so that anyone adding to it was excommunicated.

Regardless of its orthodoxy or heterodoxy the Latin Church did not have the authority to unilaterally alter the creed and Rome MUST return to the actual creed. It is rightly called the Symbol of Faith in the Orthodox/Byzantine Catholic tradition. How can we say we have the same faith when we don't even recite the same creed?

This is double for me as a Ruthenian since our church continues to use an adulterated creed that was altered to appease feminists. Getting rid of "For us men and for our salvation" changed to "For us and for our salvation" all to appease feminists who were triggered that the word "men" was used and it excluded women. Lord have mercy!

"God from God" was in the Nicaean creed but not in the later Constantinopolitan creed.
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Nicene-Constantinopolitan_Creed.

There are many liturgical creeds used by different churches over the years for different circumstances. Why do they all have to be the same?

If the Armenians want to express this in their liturgy, for example:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten, that is of the substance of the Father.
God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father; by Whom all things came into being, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.
Who for us humanity and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, became human, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.
By whom He took body, soul, and mind, and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.
He suffered, was crucified, was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven with the same body, [and] sat at the right hand of the Father.
He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father, to judge the living and the dead; of His kingdom there is no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the uncreate and the perfect; Who spoke through the Law, the prophets, and the Gospels; Who came down upon the Jordan, preached through the apostles, and lived in the saints.
We believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and [Holy] Church; in one baptism with repentance for the remission and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgement of souls and bodies, in the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life.
why is it wrong?

Christ is in our midst!!

Many creeds? The idea for the Nicene Creed was to put everyone on the same page. Different Creed? Different Faith. In that instance, all the fights over Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, and Monothelitism were wastes of time. Everyone can have a Christ of his own making. But wait, that's what happened in the West beginning in 1517.

That also applies to Communion. The Creed is recited before sharing in the Holy Mysteries. Communion means we are of one heart and one mind--in agreement on all points of doctrine--which is why all the Churches of Apostolic origin do not practice open communion. Open communion means that everyone brings his own interpretation to what is happening at the Liturgy and no one is compelled to believe the same as his neighbor.

So one person believes that this is the Body and Blood of Christ. The next that Christ is mixed in with the bread. The third says that this is all a symbol and Christ is not truly present. It means that Christ is divided and His Prayer "that all may be one" doesn't happen.

My brother, you must have heard about ritualistic development. If the ritual of the Mass, which is the most sacred thing we have, has become something so distinct over time in different languages ​​and cultures, what can we say about the creed, which has been translated and proclaimed for the entire Catholic Church. We Latins have the Apostles' Creed, which our Doctors and Fathers say we received from the Apostles, and the Orientals do not recite it. The Armenian Creed is also somewhat distinct from the Greek Creed, and yet they are exactly the same creed. Personally, I believe that the creed is immutable in the substance of its content, not necessarily in the form it is recited, because then we get into questions of linguistics and also of culture. Adding or removing the phrase "Filioque" does not alter, adulterate or corrupt the Creed, so much so that Saint Hilary, Saint Ephrem, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Leo the Great, Saint Epiphanius, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Saint Maximus (who dealt with both the Latin and Greek usages), Saint Faustus, Saint Gennadius, Saint Isidore, Saint Fulgentius, Saint Leander, Saint Theodore, Saint Paulinus, Saint Tarasius, Saint John of Damascus, Saint Gregory Palamas and many other Saints have always reaffirmed the orthodoxy of proclaiming that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the legitimacy of both the Latin and Greek usages. After so many centuries, it is useless to discuss whether such usage is heterodox among the Latins.