What Is the Procession of the Holy Spirit?

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. (The Nicene Creed)

The Nicene Creed

This creed originates from the Council of Constantinople (381), which resolved a crisis over the doctrine of the Trinity. Among its distinctive features were its statements about the Holy Spirit, including its reference to the Spirit’s procession from the Father.

It states that the Spirit is “the Lord and Giver of life,” and so shares, with the Father and the Son, in the work of creation. He “spoke by the prophets,” and therefore is the primary Author of Scripture. As comprehensively God, He is to be worshiped and adored together with the Father and the Son in one indivisible act of worship. In short, there is one indivisible God, in three subsistences or persons, who are distinct but not separate.

Amongst this is the reference that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This refers to the relations of the persons in the indivisible Trinity. The Father is the source of the personal subsistence of the Son and the Spirit, while all three are equally and exhaustively the one indivisible God.

How important is this? The following year, the Synod of Rome pronounced on the matter in its synodical letter, leaving no doubt. The Spirit is, with the Father and the Son, “one being, uncreated and of the identical being and eternal trinity.” Its series of anathemas undergird the point. These are pronounced against any who deny, among other things, that the Spirit is from the Father. Such would be a heresy and a deviation from the gospel. A similar anathema was pronounced against any who deny the omniscience and omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, say that the Spirit was created, or deny that all things were made though the Son and the Spirit. In short, the Synod—and the church ever since—considered the deity of the Spirit and His procession from the Father to be at the heart of the gospel and vital to the knowledge of God.

Is the procession of the Holy Spirit biblical?

If you want a proof text, in John 15:26 Jesus states that the Spirit “whom I will send to you from the Father . . . proceeds from the Father.” This entails an eternal relation within the Trinity between the Father and the Spirit. From this, in human history, the Father, together with the Son, sends the Spirit at Pentecost (John 14:16, 21, 23, 26; 15:26; 16:7; Acts 2:29–33). Again, this concerns the relations of the persons of the Trinity; it does not and cannot divide the Trinity.

The procession of the Spirit tells us that He is of the same nature as the Father. It points to a dynamic relation; procession indicates that the Spirit is the Spirit of life (John 6:63; Rom. 8:2, 9–11), even as the Son is life (John 1:4; 11:25–26; 20:31). God is brim-full of life.

However, this doctrine is also ineffable. A constant refrain of the Early Church Fathers was that procession could not be explained. Indeed, in order to understand what is involved, we would need to be God. Rather, it is a truth to be confessed, as it faces us with the inescapable fact that we are creatures. As Calvin wrote in a similar context, it is a mystery to be adored rather than investigated.

The Filioque Controversy

If that were all we needed to say, life would be a lot simpler. However, problems and differences arose not long afterward. While the original Nicene Creed simply stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, the Latin church began adding to the Nicene Creed the word filioque, “and the Son,” claiming that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The creed did not deny this, but it did not explicitly reference the Son.

Since the Greek church held that the Father is the source of the personal subsistences of the Son and the Spirit, to add the word filioque was seen as a threat to the Father’s place in the Trinity. The Latins (the church from which Protestants descend) considered that the Son was one with the Father and that the Father has given all things into the Son’s hand, including being the spirator of the Spirit together with the Father. In their eyes, the Greeks were not giving due accord to the place of the Son in the Trinity, nor appropriate account of the relations between the Spirit and the Son. The Greeks themselves were prepared to confess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son since, for them, the account in the Gospels of Jesus’ baptism was pivotal. However, they balked at the filioque. By 1054, the differences were so sharp that relations between the Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) church were severed.

Was this a needless dispute? At root, it mattered to both sides since it has to do with our understanding of who God is. Doctrine matters, and frequently unhappy consequences follow deviations. However, in recent years there have been a range of attempts to broker an agreement. While some of these are open to criticism, a recognition has grown that the dispute is as much a difference of perspective as of substance.

Does this mean that we should abandon the filioque when we recite the Nicene Creed? I suggest not, for Christ is at the heart of the gospel, while the Spirit’s ministry focuses on Christ, to the glory of the Father.

Conclusion

To some readers, the Nicene Creed itself may be alien. This should change. It is the underlying root of what we believe, for it sums up what Christians have always believed. To jettison the Nicene Creed is to abandon the crystallization of biblical exegesis of the entire Christian church. The Nicene Creed “ought most thoroughly to be received and believed, for [it] may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.”¹