# G1607 - ekporeuomai **Strong's:** [G1607](https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g1607/) · BLB lookup **Pronunciation:** ek-por-yoo'-om-ahee **Part of speech:** verb, middle voice / deponent **Root:** *ek*, "out of", + *poreuomai*, "to go, to travel", so literally "to go out from" **NT occurrences:** about 30 verses, mostly ordinary movement (crowds going out to John, [Matt 3:5](/codex/matthew-3-5/); Jesus going out from Jericho, [Matt 20:29](/codex/matthew-20-29/)), with three theologically weighted clusters treated below *Ekporeuomai* is an ordinary verb of motion that one clause in [John 15:26](/codex/john-15-26/) turned into the most disputed technical term in the doctrine of God. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed took its participle to name the Holy Spirit's eternal mode of origin, and the Greek and Latin churches have divided over what that word can and cannot say ever since. See [Filioque](/codex/filioque/). ## Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG) 1. **To go out, to depart** from a place ([Mark 10:46](/codex/mark-10-46/); [Mark 13:1](/codex/mark-13-1/)) 2. **To come out of** a source, of things issuing from the mouth or the heart ([Matt 15:11](/codex/matthew-15-11/); [Mark 7:21](/codex/mark-7-21/)) 3. **To proceed, to issue forth**, of what originates from someone ([Matt 4:4](/codex/matthew-4-4/); [Rev 1:16](/codex/revelation-1-16/); [Rev 22:1](/codex/revelation-22-1/)) 4. **To spread**, of report or reputation ([Luke 4:37](/codex/luke-4-37/)) The core image is constant: something has a source, and it comes out **from** that source. What the word does *not* by itself specify is whether the going-out is temporal or eternal, or whether it happens once or always. That underdetermination is exactly what the Trinitarian dispute exploits. ## The three weighted clusters ### 1. What comes out of a person, the heart-and-mouth sayings > It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man. ([Matthew 15:11](/codex/matthew-15-11/), NASB95) > For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries. ([Mark 7:21](/codex/mark-7-21/), NASB95) The moral force of the verb is that it names *origin*, not merely location. What comes out of a person reveals what the person is. Compare [Ephesians 4:29](/codex/ephesians-4-29/), where no unwholesome word is to *proceed* from the mouth. ### 2. What proceeds from God > Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. ([Matthew 4:4](/codex/matthew-4-4/), NASB95) > Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb. ([Revelation 22:1](/codex/revelation-22-1/), NASB95) Revelation uses the verb repeatedly for what issues from the throne and from the mouth of the enthroned Christ ([Rev 1:16](/codex/revelation-1-16/); [Rev 4:5](/codex/revelation-4-5/); [Rev 19:15](/codex/revelation-19-15/)), a divine-origin idiom the creedal use inherits. ### 3. The Spirit who proceeds from the Father > When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me. ([John 15:26](/codex/john-15-26/), NASB95) The clause is *ho para tou Patros ekporeuetai*. Two things in it are load-bearing: - The verb is **present indicative**, not aorist. It is not a report of one past sending but of an ongoing or timeless relation, which is why the creed could read it as naming eternal origin rather than a historical mission. - The **preposition shifts** inside the same verse. The Son *sends* the Spirit *para tou Patros*, and the Spirit *proceeds para tou Patros*. The creed of 381 rewrote the phrase with *ek*, *to ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon*, "who proceeds out of the Father", which is a stronger origin-word than *para* ("from alongside"). ## The creedal and *Filioque* use The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) confesses the Spirit as *to ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon*. The Latin West rendered this *qui ex Patre procedit* and later interpolated *Filioque*, "and the Son". The lexical core of the Eastern objection is a translation mismatch: - Greek theology reserved ***ekporeuesthai*** for **origination from the ultimate source**. In the Cappadocian grammar, the Father alone is *aitia*, cause, within the Godhead, so *ekporeuesthai* can take only the Father as its term. To say the Spirit *ekporeuetai* from the Son is, on that usage, a category error rather than a mere overstatement. - Latin ***procedere*** is broader. It translates both *ekporeuesthai* and the looser *proienai*, "to come forth", which Greek writers were willing to use of the Spirit's relation to the Son. Maximus the Confessor made precisely this point in his *Letter to Marinus* (c. 645): the Latins, he argued, were not making the Son a second *aitia*; they were using a verb with a wider range, and their intent was expressible in Greek as *dia tou Huiou*, "through the Son". The 1995 Pontifical Council for Christian Unity document *The Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit* reasons along the same lines. The upshot for the apologist: the *Filioque* dispute is partly, though not entirely, a dispute about the semantic range of one Greek verb against one Latin verb. It is not resolved by lexicography alone, since a real theological question about the Father's *monarchia* remains, but any account of it that skips the lexical layer will misdescribe both sides. The full mapping is at [Filioque](/codex/filioque/). ## Theological force - **Procession is not creation.** The verb names origin *from* a source of the same nature, parallel to the Son's begetting ([gennaō](/codex/g1080-gennao/)) and unlike the making of a creature. This is the pneumatological half of the anti-Arian case and the ground of the Spirit's full deity confessed at Constantinople in 381. - **Procession is not begetting.** The tradition distinguishes the two modes of origin without claiming to explain the difference. Gregory of Nazianzus is candid about the limit: what the difference between generation and procession *is*, he says, we cannot say (*Oration* 31.8). - **Relations of origin distinguish the Persons.** The Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Spirit proceeding. Nothing else distinguishes them, since the essence is one and undivided. See [Relation (Thomist Metaphysics)](/codex/relation-thomist-metaphysics/) and [Monarchical Trinitarianism](/codex/monarchical-trinitarianism/). ## See also - [G1080 - gennao](/codex/g1080-gennao/), to beget, the Son's mode of origin - [G4151 - pneuma](/codex/g4151-pneuma/), Spirit / breath - [G3875 - parakletos](/codex/g3875-parakletos/), Helper, the title in the same [John 15:26](/codex/john-15-26/) clause - [G3776 - ousia](/codex/g3776-ousia/), essence, the term procession does not divide - [Filioque](/codex/filioque/), the East-West dispute this verb carries - [Monarchical Trinitarianism](/codex/monarchical-trinitarianism/), the Father-as-sole-cause grammar - [Pneumatology](/codex/pneumatology/), the doctrine of the Spirit - [Trinity](/codex/trinity/), the master hub ## Notes _Lexical workspace for ekporeuomai._ --- _Scripture quotations taken from the **New American Standard Bible®** (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by **The Lockman Foundation**. Used by permission. All rights reserved. [www.lockman.org](https://www.lockman.org)_