true doctrine,[1] not only made no complaint against them but even adopted them all for his own people. He has never asked them to adopt our one word, but only not to rail at us for using it. But they further urge — and this is the great point — that by adding the Filioque we have incurred the anathema of a general council. The Council of Ephesus declared that: "No one shall say or write, or compose another faith except that one which was defined by the holy Fathers who were gathered together by the Holy Ghost at Nicaea."[2] This decree makes no difficulty to us at all. During the Arian troubles every one was continually making creeds, every synod, Catholic or Arian, drew up a form to express its faith. The Council of Ephesus accepts the Creed of Nicæa, with its strongly anti-Arian clauses ("God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God") as the final pronouncement of the Church on this matter. No one is to draw up a rival creed, no one is to say or write or compose any symbol opposed to or denying that one. It is the common expression of every council: "If any one presumes to contradict this decision, let him be anathema." It forbids any tampering with what was there defined. It has nothing whatever to do with any further definition on other matters.
But do the Orthodox understand this decree as meaning that no one may add anything to the words of the Creed, even if the addition be quite consistent with what it already defines? Then, indeed, are we all in a bad case, they as much as the Latins, for (and this is the point of the whole question) the Creed that the Council of Ephesus had before it when it made that decree was not our Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol, but the original Creed of Nicæa, to which we have both added no less than eleven clauses.[3] If, then, its anathema affects the Latins because
- ↑ Of course the issue is complicated by the fact that they deny that the Filioque is true doctrine. We have already considered that question. Here we are only concerned with the Pope's right to add it (supposing it true) to his Creed.
- ↑ Act. vi.
- ↑ Compare the original Nicene Creed in Denzinger, No. 17, with the form we (and they) now use, No. 47. See Duchesne: Églisés separées, pp. 77-80, who thinks that the additions to the older form were not even promulgated by the second general council at all, but were added to make a baptismal symbol at Jerusalem between 381 and 451.
