Be-Ware of Kallistos, Sometimes Wrong

Why Was the Filioque Added to the Nicene Creed?
Imperial Legacy | 11 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asI6TAAJQtk

Context, video quote:

"the Filioque was formerly 3:24 adopted at the Third Council of Toledo 3:26 in 589 AD, a pivotal event in Spanish 3:29 ecclesiastical history this Council not 3:32 only ratified the phrase but also marked 3:34 the Visigothic monarchy's conversion to 3:36 Catholicism"

My initial comment

3:26 No.

I have looked up the acts in Latin.

At the Third Council, the Nicene Creed was recited as an obvious preliminary, as already pre-existing, and it involved the Filioque.

At another lower key expression, the Creed against Priscillianists, one can say the Filioque was formally adopted, because the Council was adopting that specific Creed. And it was at the FIRST Council of Toledo.

Dialogue

Benedictus*

@ablarod948

You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts. What you say here is simply not true.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@ablarod948 or Benedictus, I very much am entitled to objective facts, which I have to the best of my ability verified.

YOU are not entitled to YOUR own facts, and neither was Kallistos Ware.

As I recall the book, he never bothered to tell us in what canon of that council it is supposed to have formally ratified the addition.

I have looked up the acts, I think the site was "documentatio catholica" or some such thing, and I know Latin well enough to skim through the beginnings of the canons to see what they are about, even if it would fatigue me to read it through.

There is no canon about adding the filioque. However, in the opening ceremony of a council, it is normal to recite the Nicene Creed, they did, and it was WITH the filioque.

I also happen to know that the FIRST Council of Toledo made a polemic creed against Priscillianism. It is very possible that they would have condemned Palamas as Priscillianist, because of "uncreated energies".

Praeter hanc nullam credimus divinam esse naturam, vel angeli vel spiritus, vel virtutis alicuius quae Deus esse credatur.
y fuera de Ella no creemos en la divinidad de ninguna otra naturaleza, ni del ángel, ni del espíritu, ni de ningún poder que se crea ser Dios.

I translated:

Beyond this we believe no nature to be divine, whether angels whether spirits, whether of some virtue that would be believed to be God.

Virtus could be the correct Latin for energeia.

Now, before this we had the explanation of the Trinity, and the passage on the Holy Spirit goes as follows:

Spiritum quoque Paraclitum esse, qui nec Pater sit ipse nec Filius, sed a Patre Filioque procedens.
que el Espíritu es el Paráclito, el cual ni es el Padre ni es el Hijo, sino que procede del Padre y del Hijo

I translated:

There is also the Holy Ghost, who himself is neither Father nor Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son.

The site where I found the acts of the First Council of Toledo (well before the Visigoths) is "filosofia [dot] org" and you extend it with "/cod/c0397t01.htm"**

I don't know whether Kallistos Ware had read an extract on this decision, but mistaken it for the third, and a decision, at the first, it was, formally indeed taken under the heading:

Incipiunt regulae fidei catholicae contra omnes haereses et quam maxime contra Priscillianos, quam episcopi Terraconenses, Kartaginenses, Lusitani et Baetici fecerunt, et cum praecepto papae urbis Leonis ad Balconium episcopum Galliciae transmiserunt. Ipsi etiam et supra scribta viginti canonum capitula statuerunt in concilio Toletano

Comienzan los artículos de la fe católica contra todas las herejías, y sobre todo contra los Priscilianos, que fueron redactados por los obispos Cartaginenses, Tarraconenses, Lusitanos y Béticos, y enviados con el precepto del papa romano León, a Balconio obispo de Galicia. Son también los mismos que redactaron los veinte cánones anteriores en el concilio Toledano

I translated it as:

Begin the rules of the catholic faith against all heresies and especially against Priscillianism that the bishops of [the Hispanies] Tarraconense, Cartaginense, Baetica and Lusitania made and sent, by order of the Pope of the City Leo to bishop Balconius of Galicia.

You can argue, if you want, that Filioque was added inadvertently to the Nicene Creed from the Toledan Rules of the Catholic Faith. Or you can argue that the Filioque was taken away in the Greek by the time of the Fourth Council, but preserved in Spain. You cannot argue that Toledo III took a formal decision to add it, since that is just not true.

Notes.

* Empty channel:

** Concilio de Toledo I
https://www.filosofia.org/cod/c0397t01.htm