For Bishop Eaton, what Lutherans should believe about the Holy Spirit is not as important as maintaining unity. On the other hand, for the ELCA, maintaining unity is not as important as embracing brand new categories of sexual morality and identity which violate the historic moral teaching of the church and Holy Scripture.

Elizabeth Eaton, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, recently announced that the denomination is dropping the filioque from its liturgy. According to Eaton, the change is part of a 40-year-long quest for better relations with various Eastern Orthodox groups. She called the move a “significant breakthrough” toward “reconciliation” and “healing age-old divisions,” and she rejoiced that the “filioque is no longer church dividing.”  

What Bishop Eaton did not argue is that the change was doctrinally necessary, or that the new position brings the denomination closer to biblical truth. Instead, she appealed to “unity in the body of Christ,” something the ELCA has been willing to violate over many other concerns, especially homosexuality. As pastor and creator of Lutheran satire Hans Fiene wrote on X: 

Things the ELCA will give up to heal divisions with the Orthodox: the filioque. Things the ELCA will not give up to heal divisions with the orthodox: sin.  

The word filioque is Latin for “and the Son,” as in, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This is from the Nicene Creed, a widely accepted summary of Christian doctrine, which emerged from the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 and was finalized at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. The original text read only “who proceeds from the Father.” However, over subsequent generations, Christians in Western Europe included “… and the Son.” Eastern Christians did not. 

Those three words in English, (and just one in Latin) carry enormous theological weight. Though other issues were at play, this was the final straw that led the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch in Constantinople to mutually excommunicate each other in 1054.

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