2024-08-02 17:55:30
The Lutheran World Federation and the Orthodox Church announced an agreement on the debate surrounding the clause And his son of the Nicene Creed, which caused the split between the Western and Eastern churches more than 1,000 years ago.
Meaning “and the Son” in Latin, And his son it was added to the Nicene Creed during the Middle Ages to make the statement of faith that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both God the Father and the Son.
The dispute over whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the two characters of the Trinity led to the Great Schism of 1054, which divided Christianity into the Western and Eastern Churches.
In a joint statement, the leaders of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Orthodox Church explained that they agreed “to recommend that the translation of the original Greek (without And his son) is used in the hope that it will contribute to the healing of the ancient divisions between our communities and will allow us to confess the faith of the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD).
“A renewed focus on the original wording of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed can encourage renewed theological reflection on the Trinity and the role of the Holy Spirit,” the statement says.
“Furthermore, we both affirm in our Trinitarian doctrine that the Father is the cause (αἴτiος) of the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit,” says Dr. text.
Also known as the Joint Declaration of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the LWF and the Orthodox Church, the declaration is the result of a dialogue initiative that has been started for the past 40 years.
Nicene Creed
The leaders of the LWF and the Orthodox also see the Common Declaration as a “sign of reconciliation” before 2025, which will mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Common Declaration. Council of Nicaea.
Named after Nicaea, an ancient city located in present-day Turkey, the Nicene Creed was first written in 325 and later revised by the Council of Constantinople in 381.
The faith was conceived as a response to Arianism, the heresy of the early church which declared, among other things, that God the Father created Jesus and therefore they were not equal as part of the Trinity.
The filioque clause was first added to the Nicene Creed at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, as a way to further emphasize the equality of God the Father and God the Son.
However, many churches in the East disagreed with the phrase, believing that it did not adequately express the relationship between the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. This, together with concerns about the power that the bishop of Rome was trying to exert over other regional bodies, led to the Great Schism of 1054 AD
In 1999, the LWF signed an agreement with the Roman Catholic Church known as the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”, which sought to resolve the theological differences between the two bodies regarding the nature of justification by faith.
Later signed by representatives of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2017, the Joint Declaration says that Catholics and Protestants “are now able to express a common understanding of our justification by the grace of God through faith in Christ.”
“It does not include everything that both churches teach about justification; it includes a consensus on the basic truths of the doctrine of justification and shows that the remaining differences in its explanation are no longer grounds for doctrinal criticism”, says an excerpt of the statement, in part.
FLM was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Geneva, Sweden. It has reported 150 member churches in almost 100 countries, representing more than 77 million Lutherans, according to information from the portal. The Christian Post.
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