‘Proceeding from the Father and the Son’ is a technical phrase used by St. Augustine to describe the relationship between the Persons in the Godhead.  The word ‘proceeding’ is used as in John 15:26: ‘When the Advocate 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.’  Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, the Spirit is represented as sent by the Son from the Father.  In fact, He is called ‘the Spirit of Christ’^[1] and ‘of Jesus’,^[2] as well as the Spirit of God,^[3] and He was bestowed by the Son on the Apostles.^[4]  But if in time, historically, we speak of the Holy Spirit as ‘proceeding’ from the Father and the Son, we can only describe His relationship to the Father and the Son in eternity by using the same language.  ‘Just as His temporal mission was from the Father through the Son, just as the Holy Spirit Who descended at Pentecost was the Spirit not only of the Father but of the Son, so within the eternal life of God He received His being not directly from the Father, but mediately through the Son.  The Divine essence was conceived as eternally passing from the Father through the Son into the Spirit.’^[5]  From the time of Tertullian the formula had been ‘proceeding from the Father through the Son’,^[6] but fourth-century writers argued from John 14:16 (‘He – the Spirit – will receive of Mine’) that the Son conjointly with the Father was productive of the Holy Spirit.  Augustine, who believed that what could be predicated of one of the Persons could be predicated of the others, did much to promote this view, which won universal acceptance in the Western Church in the 5th and 6th centuries.  The original form of the Nicene Creed merely had ‘who proceedeth from the Father’, but the words ‘and the Son’ (called the Filioque clause) came to be inserted at an early date in local Latin Creeds.^[7]  The Eastern Church believes that the Father alone is the source or fountain‑head of Deity, and has refused to add the Filioque clause to the Creed.  Eastern theologians say that the Western Church has acted irregularly in doing so, for the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) ordered that no additions should be made to the Creed without the authority of a General Council.  To avoid this criticism the Papacy did not allow the Filioque clause to be inserted in the Creed used in Rome, until about the 11th century, though it had become part of the Creed centuries earlier in Spain, France, Germany, and North Italy.^[8]  The clause has been the subject of much controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches, and is still regarded by some theologians as an important doctrinal barrier to reunion.  If the Western Church were now to drop the Filioque clause it might be regarded as placing the Son in an inferior position.