The Spirit proceeds from the Father — and, says the West, the Son.
One Latin word, filioque, added to a Greek creed. Spain put it in at Toledo in 589, Rome was singing it by 1014, and Constantinople has never accepted it. Formally it is a question about the inner life of God. Practically it was about who is allowed to edit the creed.
The filioque is the sort of dispute that looks absurd from outside and is not. The creed agreed at Constantinople in 381 says the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Latin-speaking Spain added and the Son at Toledo in 589, probably to shore up the Son's divinity against Arian Visigoths; Charlemagne's court pushed it hard; Rome resisted for two centuries and then gave in. The Greek objection has two parts. The doctrinal one is that making the Spirit proceed from two sources either compromises the Father's uniqueness as origin or subordinates the Spirit. The procedural one is blunter and was always the sharper: an ecumenical council wrote that text, and no patriarch, pope or emperor may amend it alone. The 1054 mutual excommunications were lifted in 1965 and the filioque remains. Rome now omits it when celebrating in Greek, which the Orthodox note without regarding as a settlement.
The same ground, other faiths
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