The Holy Trinity Pt. 2 – Filioque
Sunday, June 8th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
John 20:19–23
Prayer
Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus who has power to forgive sins. And we thank you on this Pentecost Sunday for the Holy Spirit, who was given to the apostles and their successors so that the church today may bind and loose, remit and retain, as ministers of Christ on earth. We ask for your blessing now as we approach and contemplate the highest of all mysteries, who you are in yourself. Teach us now by the Spirit of Truth, in the name of Jesus, and Amen.
Introduction
Every Lord’s Day in our worship service, after we confess our sins, we arise and confess our common faith. This is an important act of worship, because it says in Romans 10:9-10, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
- And so from the earliest days of the Apostolic Church, it became necessary to confess the Lord Jesus, his full divinity, his perfect humanity, his death and resurrection for sinners, Jew and Gentile alike. It was necessary to confess these truths in such a way that no false Jesus or false gospel could be understood.
- We find in Scripture itself various creed-like statements. Romans 10:9-10 is one example. Another is what Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:16, “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
- You can hear the creed-like rhythm of that confession of faith.
- So creeds became necessary in the church for two main reasons.
- 1) To protect and preserve the truth, and 2) to more quickly and understandably propagate the truth. Especially in a time before everyone had a personal copy of the Bible!
- The earliest heresies in the church said that Jesus was either a created being and therefore not equal to the Father in divinity (what became later known as Arianism), or that he was not really a human being with a nature like ours (we call this Gnosticism or Docetism), or that the Son and Spirit were just God the Father wearing different masks, no real distinction in persons (Sabellianism).
- So even in the New Testament we find various heresies popping up that need to be refuted (much of the New Testament is written to refute such errors). And as time went on, new heresies arose that required new refutations, new articulations of the common faith once received.
- So the creeds did not invent or create new doctrines, they were meant to clarify and make explicit what the Word of God had always taught. The purpose of creeds is to make explicit what is implicit, that is, logically contained within that simple confession that Jesus is Lord.
- And so while it might seem trivial or routine to some that we confess the Nicene Creed every Lord’s Day, it is actually a matter of salvation or damnation that we believe and confess rightly the true Jesus and none other. Because only the true Jesus can save.
- Now this morning we are in part 2 of a short series on The Holy Trinity, and because it is Pentecost Sunday, I want to consider more closely the person of the Holy Spirit. Who He is, and what He does. And so the outline of my sermon is as follows.
Outline
- First, I will give you a brief history lesson on what is called the Filioque controversy, which is about answering the question, Who is the Holy Spirit as unique Divine Person?
- Second, we’ll consider, How is the Holy Spirit’s procession from Father and Son reflected in the life of the church?
- So 1) Who is the Holy Spirit? And 2) How is the Holy Spirit manifest in the church?
#1 – A Church History Lesson
The year is 589 AD. And a church council has been called in Toledo, Spain to address the rise of Arianism and Sabellianism amongst the Spanish Goths.
- Recall that Arianism teaches that Jesus is not consubstantial (of the same nature) with the Father, and it therefore introduced subordination and difference of essence within the Godhead and divided/destroyed the unity of the Trinity. Arianism was the long archenemy of true Christian faith and the reason for which the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), and the Council of Constantinople (381) had convened and written the Nicene Creed. These creeds where in large part written to exclude and refute Arianism, and later Sabellianism.
- Now at this Third Council of Toledo (589), the newly converted Spanish king, King Reccared, said that the Holy Spirit is not only from the Father, but is a Patre Filioque, from the Father and the Son. And this was a doctrine that had long been taught in the Latin West, most famously by St. Augustine and later in the Athanasian Creed. However, it had never been confessed as part of the Nicene Creed.
- This idea that the Holy Spirit is not only from the Father but also Filioque, from the Son, was a way of expressing two important realities: 1) the full divinity of the Son together with the Father, which rejects Arianism, and 2) the distinct identity of the Son and Spirit as really distinct persons within the Godhood, which rejects Sabellianism. We find this doctrine defended from many places of Scripture.
- For example, Jesus says in John 15:26, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”
- And then also in John 16:15, “All things that the Father hath are mine.” And so if the Holy Spirit is from the Father, He by good and necessary consequence has to also be from the Son. Because the only real distinction between Father and Son are their distinct relations of origin. The Father is from none, and the Son is from the Father, and nothing else is really distinct between them than that.
- There are what we call many rational distinctions, many ways of attributing to the Father certain actions in history, but remember because God is One, those distinctions are only in our mind and manner of speaking, they are not in God as He is in Himself.
- Aside: This difference between what is really distinct within God, and what is only rationally distinct in our minds, is one of the most important distinctions in all of theology. If you get this confused, you will certainly be dividing the Godhead into different parts or turning the Trinity into three different beings.
- So recall what we said last week, there is no real distinction between the Three Persons and the One Essence, the Three Persons are the One Essence. The only real distinction in God is in how the Persons are distinct in origin. The Father from none. The Son from the Father. And the Spirit from the Father and the Son. In everything else they are the One God acting inseparably.
- Returning to our history lesson. Following St. Augustine and other church fathers, King Recarred used this idea of Filioque to make more explicit the truth contained within the Nicene Creed. However, the emphasis on this doctrine eventually led to a number of churches adding ex Patre Filioque (and the Son) into their recitation of the creed in their worship services. And that’s where major problems start to develop.
- Up to this point in Christendom, the church was united in their confession of the Nicene Creed, both the Latin West and the Greek-speaking East. Moreover, it was agreed upon at the Council of Ephesus (431) that no one church could make additions or changes to the Creed without consent and agreement of the other churches, that is by the mechanism of an ecumenical council.
- So even though the Filioque was a true doctrine and held by theologians in both East and West, still it was a violation of church law to tamper with the creed. Creeds were by definition ecumenical (representative of what the only holy catholic apostolic church believed and confessed).
- Fast forward a couple hundred years and King Charlemagne (Emperor from 768-814 AD) comes to power. And under Charlemagne and what we call the Carolingian Renaissance, Pope Leo of Rome tried to crack down on the use of the Filioque in reciting the Nicene Creed, but the Frankish church basically ignored the Pope’s command and continued to recite it anyway. Especially in their missionary work to the Slavs.
- Fast forward another 200 years and this conflict comes to a head in 1054 with what now call The Great Schism between East and West. And what this schism revolved around was amongst other things, Papal Authority, and whether the Filioque is true.
- The Eastern Church, what we today call the Eastern Orthodox, rejected the Pope’s claim to universal sovereignty. However unfortunately, because the Filioque was a prime example of the Pope throwing his weight around, many looked upon this doctrine as suspect, if not outright heretical. So to this day, now almost 1,000 years later, the Eastern Church (of which there are some 200+ million Christians) still rejects Papal Supremacy, and largely rejects the Filioque.
- Now where we do as Reformed Protestants fit in? Well because the Reformation grew out of the Latin West, the reformers agreed with the East on rejecting the Pope’s supremacy, however, we received and inherited the Western version of the Nicene Creed which has the Filioque added to it. And because this doctrine is thoroughly biblical and logically necessary to distinguish the three persons while maintaining their unity, the Reformed Church to this day confesses and teaches Filioque as the faith once received from Christ and the Apostles.
- So that’s the very short version of how we came to recite every Lord’s Day this version of the Nicene Creed, and not the Eastern version. Because we trace our roots back to Christ and the Apostles through the Latin-Western tradition.
- Now someone might wonder, what is the relevance of all this apparent doctrinal and ecclesiastical hairsplitting?
- Well for starters, the fact that you are here today at a Reformed Presbyterian Church and not a Roman Catholic church hangs on this question of whether the Bishop of Rope has universal jurisdiction over the church. We hold that the Scripture teaches no such thing, while Rome insists on the Pope’s supremacy.
- Secondarily, when it comes to the essentials of the Christian faith, what you must believe to be saved, the creeds of the church are why you take for granted that Jesus is fully God and fully man, and that He is equal to the Father in divinity, and the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person. The creeds act as guardrails to keep your soul from falling into errors and falsehood that would destroy it. And so the stakes cannot really get any higher.
- We remember that warning from St. Augustine in his book on the Trinity, “in no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable.”
- What is at stake in the Filioque controversy is not only the unity of the church and the proper form of church government, but also whether the Trinity is a logical contradiction, or as we believe a coherent mystery of faith. Many people today think of the Trinity as an illogical mixture of Oneness and Threeness. But that is not what we believe. We believe in a real distinction of persons between Father, Son, and Spirit, and a oneness of Essence which each person fully is. There is nothing contradictory in the doctrine of the Trinity.
- And so if knowing the One true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent is eternal life (John 17:3), then no truth is more foundational than the Trinity. Moreover, no truth is more pleasant to contemplate than who God is in Himself.
- This brings us to our second question which is…
#2 – How is the Filioque reflected in the life of the church?
Or to put it another way, How is the Holy Spirit’s procession from the Son manifest? To answer this, I want to give you 5 ways the Holy Spirit effects our salvation.
- 1. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Sonship.
- It says in Romans 8:14-16, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”
- Notice the Trinitarian pattern of our redemption. The Father sends the Son into the world, the Son sends the Spirit at Pentecost, the Spirit indwells us and makes us adopted sons of God, and then the eternal Son of God leads us (now his brothers) back to His Father.
- The internal processions of God are revealed in the external missions of Son and Spirit into the world. And the purpose of those missions is to gather us up into one body in Christ and bring us back to God. There is a coming forth and returning to pattern to our salvation, and that pattern is a participation in God’s Trinitarian life! Our perfection consists in returning to God our source.
- Paul says earlier in Romans 8:9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
- So notice who the Holy Spirit is said to be. He is both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and if you do not have that Spirit, you do not belong to Him. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit that makes us sons of God.
- 2. The Holy Spirit is sent at Pentecost to reprove the world.
- Jesus says in John 16:7-11, prophesying of Pentecost, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.
- So the Son sends the Spirit into the world to reprove and convert it.
- The Spirit will bear witness through the preaching of the apostles that:
- 1. It is sin to refuse to believe in Jesus.
- 2. That Jesus is the righteous one who makes us righteous.
- 3. That Jesus has cast down the devil, so no longer does the prince of this world hold sway.
- The Son sends the Spirit to testify to the truth. And the way the Spirit testifies is through the apostles, through Christian preachers, through the lives of holy saints who have been made holy and righteous by the Spirit of the Son.
- When we get down on our knees every Sunday and silently confess our sins, it is the Holy Spirit who searches our hearts and convicts us concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.
- This is why we pray in confession the words of Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me.”
- We call the Spirit of the Son Holy Spirit because he makes us holy in an invisible/spiritual way. The spirit cleanses us by moving us to confess our sins and forsake them.
- David goes on in Psalm 51:11-13 to describe some of the other effects of the Holy Spirit, “Cast me not away from thy presence; And take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; And uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; And sinners shall be converted unto thee.”
- This brings us to a third and fourth way the Holy Spirit effects our salvation.
- 3. The Holy Spirit fills us with joy.
- Jesus says to his disciples in John 16:22, “And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”
- What is that joy but the Holy Spirit, who even after Jesus returns to heaven sustains the disciples. This is what we find in the book of Acts.
- It says in Acts 5:41-42, after the apostles are beaten in Jerusalem, “And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.”
- Joy-filled Christians cannot help but speak and testify of what Jesus has done for them. And yet because we so often forget the joy of our miraculous conversion, we have to pray again and again Psalm 51:11, “restore to me the joy of thy salvation.”
- It says in Acts 13:52, right after Paul and Barnabas were beaten and kicked out Antioch in Pisidia, “And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost.”
- Because the Spirit lifts our mind to hope in God and in our future resurrection, and in blissful life in a new heavens and new earth, we possess joy even here amidst a world of sorrows.
- It is the Spirit who gives us certainty and assurance of God’s promises, that in this life our Father gives us only good things, and at death it only gets better. This is where joy is found.
- 4. The Holy Spirit fills us with freedom.
- After asking God to restore to us the joy of our salvation, David prays, “and uphold me with thy free spirit.”
- Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
- And Paul says in Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
- Sin is always seeking to enslave us. Sin is always trying to turn us into either legalists or lawbreakers. But Paul says in Galatians 5:4-6, “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”
- The world promises freedom while itself being enslaved. But Christ offers true freedom which is none other than faith working by love, this is the freedom the Spirit works within us.
- In this life Christians have a free will to either obey God or disobey Him. However, this freedom is less than the perfect freedom we shall enjoy in heaven. For when we see God face to face, our desire will be so satisfied, our intellect so flooded with God’s beauty, that sin will become impossible, unthinkable, undoable, un-willable. And yet heaven is not a loss of free will, but the gaining of perfect liberty. Heaven is where we acquire the freedom to have and enjoy what is actually our greatest good, namely God.
- Where the Spirit of the Lord is, and there alone, is freedom.
- 5. The Holy Spirit fills us with peace.
- Jesus says in our sermon text, John 20:21-22, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”
- Peace is the consummation of a life lived in the spirit. And how do you experience this supernatural peace?
- It says in Isaiah 26:3, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on thee: Because he trusteth in thee.”
- And Paul says in Romans 8:6, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”
- Again, notice the Holy Spirit makes us to mind, to think upon God.
- St. Augustine says, “contemplation is the reward of faith.” And what is contemplation? It is the act of gazing upon truth with delight.
- And so Jesus sends the Holy Spirit, he breathes upon the disciples, to make them contemplate Christ when he is no longer physically present. Because it is by the Spirit’s indwelling, that Christ the Son, together with Father, the whole Trinity of Persons makes us into their home. And where God lives and dwells, there we find peace in every season.
- And so I close with words of Romans 15:13, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”
- In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
