The Sentence of the Council

Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, as we learn from the parable in the Gospel, gives out talents to each one according to his ability, and at the proper time demands an account of the work each one has done. If the one to whom only a single talent was entrusted is condemned because he did not work with it, but only kept it safe from loss, how much greater and more terrible is the judgment that must fall on the one who not only neglects himself, but even puts a stumbling block and a cause of offense in the way of others? For it is plain to all the faithful that whenever any question arises about the faith, not only is the impious man himself condemned, but also the one who has the power to correct impiety in others and neglects to do it. [a] So we, to whom the ruling of the Lord’s church has been entrusted, fearing the curse that hangs over those who do the Lord’s work carelessly, are hurrying to keep the good seed of faith pure from the weeds of impiety that the enemy is sowing. [c]

We saw that the followers of Nestorius were trying to bring their impiety into the church of God through the impious Theodore, who was bishop of Mopsuestia, and through his impious writings; and also through what Theodoret impiously wrote, and through the wicked letter that Ibas is said to have written to Maris the Persian. Moved by all these things we saw, we rose up to correct what was happening, and we gathered in this royal city, called here by the will of God and the command of the most religious emperor. [d]

Now it happened that the most religious Vigilius, who was staying in this royal city, was present at all the discussions about the Three Chapters, and had often condemned them by word of mouth and in writing. Afterward, nevertheless, he agreed in writing to be present at the council and to examine the Three Chapters together with us, so that a fitting definition of the right faith might be set out by us all. The most pious emperor too, in keeping with what had been agreed between us, urged both him and us to meet together, because it is fitting that the priesthood, after discussing in common, should impose a common faith. For this reason we begged his reverence to keep his written promises; for it was not right that the scandal over these Three Chapters should go any further, and that the church of God should be troubled by it. To this end we reminded him of the great examples the apostles left us, and of the traditions of the fathers. For although the grace of the Holy Spirit abounded in each one of the apostles, so that none of them needed the advice of another to carry out his work, still they were not willing to make a ruling on the question raised at that time about the circumcision of the Gentiles until they had gathered together and confirmed what each of them said by the testimony of the divine Scriptures. [e] And so they reached this decision with one mind, and wrote it to the Gentiles: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no other burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.” [f]

The holy fathers too, who have met from time to time in the four holy councils, followed the example of those of old. They dealt with the heresies and questions that had sprung up by discussing them in common, and settled them by a fixed decree. For it was known for certain that in a common discussion, when the matter in dispute is laid out by each side, the light of truth drives out the darkness of falsehood. Nor is there any other way in which the truth can be made plain when there are discussions about the faith, since each one needs the help of his neighbor. As we read in the Proverbs of Solomon: “A brother helping his brother will be exalted like a walled city, and he will be strong like a well-founded kingdom.” And again in Ecclesiastes he says: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.” [g] So also the Lord himself says: “Truly I tell you that if two of you agree on earth about anything they seek, they will have it from my Father who is in heaven. For wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” [h]

But although he had often been invited by us all, and the most glorious judges had been sent to him by the most religious emperor, he promised to give a judgment on the Three Chapters by himself. When we heard this answer, we kept in mind the apostle’s warning that “each one must give an account of himself to God.” We feared the judgment that hangs over those who cause even one of the least important to stumble, and we knew how much heavier it must be to give offense to so thoroughly Christian an emperor, and to the people, and to all the churches. We remembered too what God said to Paul: “Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one can harm you.” So, having gathered together, we first of all briefly confessed that we hold the faith which our Lord Jesus Christ, the true God, delivered to his holy apostles, and through them to the holy churches, and which those who came after them, the holy fathers and teachers, handed down to the people entrusted to them. [i]

We confessed that we hold, guard, and declare to the holy churches the confession of faith which the three hundred and eighteen holy fathers who gathered at Nicaea set out more at length, and who handed down the holy creed. The 150 who gathered at Constantinople also set out our faith; they followed that same confession of faith and explained it. We hold as well the agreement of the two hundred holy fathers gathered for the same faith at the first Council of Ephesus, and what was defined by the six hundred and thirty gathered at Chalcedon for the one and the same faith, which they both followed and taught. And we confessed that we hold condemned and anathematized all those who from time to time have been condemned or anathematized by the catholic church and by the four councils we have named. When we had made this profession of our faith, we began the examination of the Three Chapters, and first we brought into review the case of Theodore of Mopsuestia. When all the blasphemies contained in his writings had been brought into the open, we marveled at the patience of God, that the tongue and mind that had framed such blasphemies were not at once consumed by the divine fire. We feared the anger of God at the mere reciting of them, since each blasphemy outdid the one before it in the greatness of its impiety and shook the hearer’s mind from its foundations. We would never have allowed the reader of those blasphemies to go on, had we not seen that those who gloried in such blasphemies needed the shame that would come on them when the blasphemies were brought to light. So all of us, moved with indignation by these blasphemies against God, broke out, both during the reading and after it, into denunciations and anathemas against Theodore, as if he were living and present. “O Lord, be merciful,” we cried. “Not even the demons have dared to say such things against you.” [j]

O intolerable tongue! O the depravity of the man! O that high hand he lifted up against his Creator! For the wretched man, who had professed to know the Scriptures, did not remember the words of the prophet Hosea: “Woe to them, for they have fled from me! They have become famous because they were impious toward me. They spoke wicked things against me, and when they had thought them out, they spoke violent things against me. So they will fall into the snare because of the wickedness of their own tongues. Their contempt will turn back into their own bosom, because they have broken my covenant and have acted impiously against my laws.” [k] To these curses the impious Theodore is justly subject. For he rejected the prophecies about Christ, and as far as he had the power, he hurried to destroy the great mystery of God’s plan for our salvation, trying in many ways to show that the divine words are nothing but fables, for the pagans to laugh at. And he scorned the other prophecies spoken against the impious, especially what the divine Habakkuk said about those who teach falsely: “Woe to him who gives his neighbor drink, who puts your bottle to him and makes him drunk, so that you may look on their nakedness.” That is, on their teachings, which are full of darkness and wholly foreign to the light. [l] Why should we add anything more? Anyone can take into his hands the writings of the impious Theodore, or the impious chapters taken from his impious writings that we inserted in our acts, and find the unbelievable foolishness and the detestable things he said. For we are afraid to go further and to call these infamies to mind again.

There was also read to us what the holy fathers had written against him, and his own foolishness, which went beyond that of all the heretics, and also the histories and the imperial laws that set out his impiety from the beginning. After all this, the defenders of his impiety, glorying in the insults he had spoken against his Creator, said that it was not right to anathematize him after his death. We knew the church’s tradition about the impious, that heretics are anathematized even after death. Nevertheless we thought it necessary to examine this point too, and it was found in the acts how various heretics had been anathematized after death. In many ways it became plain to us that those who were saying this cared nothing for the judgment of God, nor for the declarations of the apostles, nor for the tradition of the fathers. We would like to ask them what they have to say to the Lord’s words about himself: “Whoever has believed in him is not judged; but whoever has not believed in him is judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” And what do they say to the apostle’s cry: “Even if we or an angel from heaven were to preach to you a gospel other than the one we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we have said, so now I say again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one you have received, let him be anathema.” [m] For when the Lord says, “He is judged already,” and when the apostle anathematizes even angels if they teach anything other than what we have preached, how can even those who dare everything presume to say that these words apply only to the living? Do they not know, or rather do they not pretend not to know, that the sentence of anathema is nothing other than separation from God? For the impious person, even if no one has anathematized him in words, is nevertheless truly anathematized, since he has separated himself from the true life by his impiety. And what answer do they have for the apostle again, when he says, “Reject a man who is a heretic after a first and a second correction, knowing that such a man is perverse and sins, and is condemned by himself”? [n]

In keeping with these words, Cyril of blessed memory, in the books he wrote against Theodore, says this: “Those who are in the grip of such terrible crimes are to be avoided, whether they are among the living or not. For we must always flee from what is harmful, and not show partiality, but consider what is pleasing to God.” And again the same Cyril of holy memory, writing to John, bishop of Antioch, and to the synod gathered in that city, about Theodore, who was anathematized together with Nestorius, says this: “So it was necessary to keep a brilliant festival, since every voice that agreed with the blasphemies of Nestorius had been cast out, no matter whose it was. For the sentence went out against all who held these same opinions or had once held them, which is exactly what we and your holiness have said: We anathematize those who say that there are two Sons and two Christs. For the one preached by us and by you, as we have said, is one, Christ, the Son and Lord, the only Son as man, according to the saying of the most learned Paul.” And in his letter to Alexander, Martinian, John, Paregorius, and Maximus, presbyters and monastic fathers, and to those who were living the solitary life with them, he says this: “The holy synod of Ephesus, gathered by the will of God against the false faith of Nestorius, with a just and keen sentence condemned along with him the empty words of those who would afterward embrace, or who had in the past embraced, the same opinions as he, and who presumed to say or write anything of the kind, laying on them an equal condemnation. For it followed naturally that when one man was condemned for such profane emptiness of speech, the sentence should come not against one only, but, so to speak, against every one of their heresies or slanders, which they utter against the pious teachings of Christ, worshiping two Sons, dividing the indivisible, and bringing the crime of man-worship into both heaven and earth. For with us the holy multitude of the spirits above worships one Lord Jesus Christ.” Several letters of Augustine, of most religious memory, who shone out brilliantly among the bishops of Africa, were also read, showing that it was quite right for heretics to be anathematized after death. The other most reverend bishops of Africa have kept this tradition of the church as well. And the holy Roman church too had anathematized certain bishops after their death, even though they had not been accused of any falling away from the faith during their lives. For each of these we have the evidence in our hands. [o]

But the disciples of Theodore and of his impiety, who are so plainly enemies of the truth, have tried to bring forward certain passages of Cyril and of Proclus, of holy memory, as though they had been written in favor of Theodore. So it is fitting to apply to them the words of the prophet when he says: “The ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them; but the wicked will grow weak in them.” For these men take in an evil sense what the holy fathers wrote well and at the right time, and they quote these words to make excuses for their sins. The fathers are not seen to be freeing Theodore from anathema. Rather, they used certain expressions by way of accommodation, for the sake of those who defended Nestorius and his impiety, in order to draw them away from this error, to lead them on to perfection, and to teach them to condemn not only Nestorius, the disciple of the impiety, but also his teacher Theodore. So in these very words of accommodation the fathers show their intention on this point, that Theodore should be anathematized, as we have abundantly shown in our acts from the writings of Cyril and Proclus, of holy memory, on the condemnation of Theodore and his impiety. Such accommodation is found in divine Scripture too. It is plain that Paul the apostle made use of it at the beginning of his ministry with those who had been brought up as Jews, and circumcised Timothy, so that by this accommodation and stooping down to meet them he might lead them on to perfection. But afterward he forbade circumcision, writing this to the Galatians: “Look, I, Paul, tell you that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.” [q]

But we found that the defenders of Theodore had done just what heretics usually do. They cut out certain things the holy fathers had written, set beside them and mixed in certain falsehoods of their own, and tried, by a letter of Cyril of holy memory, as though it were a testimony of the fathers, to free the impious Theodore we have named from anathema. In those very passages the truth was shown when the parts that had been cut off were read in their proper order, and the falsehood was fully exposed by comparison with the true text. But in all these things those who spoke such empty words “trusted in falsehood,” as it is written: “They trust in falsehood and speak emptiness; they conceive grief and bring forth wickedness, weaving the spider’s web.” When we had thus considered Theodore and his impiety, we took care to have read aloud and inserted in our acts a few of the things that Theodoret impiously wrote against the right faith, against the Twelve Chapters of Saint Cyril, and against the first Council of Ephesus, and also certain things he wrote in defense of those impious men, Theodore and Nestorius. This was for the satisfaction of the reader, so that all might know that these writings had been justly cast out and anathematized. In the third place, the letter that Ibas is said to have written to Maris the Persian was brought forward for examination, and we found that it too should be read. When it was read, its impiety was at once plain to all. And it was right to condemn and anathematize the Three Chapters we have named, since even up to this time there had been some question on the subject.

But the defenders of these impious men, Theodore and Nestorius, were scheming one way or another to prop up these persons and their impiety. They were saying that this impious letter, which praised and defended Theodore and Nestorius and their impiety, had been received by the holy Council of Chalcedon. So we thought it necessary to show that the holy synod was free of the impiety contained in that letter, so that it might be clear that those who say such things do not do so with the favor of this holy council, but use its name to prop up their own impiety. It was shown in the acts that in earlier times Ibas had been accused because of the very impiety contained in this letter: first by Proclus of holy memory, the bishop of Constantinople, and afterward by Theodosius of pious memory and by Flavian, who was ordained bishop to succeed Proclus; and the examination of the matter was handed over to Photius, bishop of Tyre, and to Eustathius, bishop of the city of Beirut. Afterward the same Ibas was found guilty and was cast out of his bishopric. Since that was the state of the case, how could anyone presume to say that that impious letter was received by the holy Council of Chalcedon, and that the holy Council of Chalcedon agreed with it throughout? Nevertheless, so that those who slander the holy Council of Chalcedon in this way might have no further opportunity to do so, we ordered the decisions of the holy synods to be read, that is, of the first synod of Ephesus and of Chalcedon, concerning the letters of Cyril of blessed memory and of Leo of pious memory, once pope of Old Rome. From these we learned that nothing written by anyone else ought to be received unless it had been proved to agree with the orthodox faith of the holy fathers. So we broke off our proceedings in order to read out as well the definition of the faith set out by the holy Council of Chalcedon, so that we might compare the contents of the letter with this decree. When this was done, it was perfectly clear that what the letter contained was wholly opposed to what the definition contained. For the definition agreed with the one unchanging faith set out by the three hundred and eighteen holy fathers, by the hundred and fifty, and by those who gathered at the first synod of Ephesus. But that impious letter, on the other hand, contained the blasphemies of the heretics Theodore and Nestorius and defended them, and it calls them teachers, while it calls the holy fathers heretics.

And we made this plain to all: we had no intention of passing over the fathers whose opinions were spoken first and second, whom the followers of Theodore and Nestorius cited on their side. Rather, when these and all the others had been read and their contents examined, we found that this same Ibas was not allowed to be received until he had been made to anathematize Nestorius and his impious teachings, which were defended in that letter. The rest of the religious bishops of that holy council did this, and so did those two whose spoken opinions some have tried to use. [u] They kept the same rule in the case of Theodoret, and required him to anathematize the things he was accused of. If, then, they would not allow Ibas to be received in any other way unless he condemned the impiety contained in his letters and signed the definition of faith adopted by the council, how can they try to make out that this impious letter was received by the same holy council? For we are taught: “What fellowship does righteousness have with unrighteousness? And what communion does light have with darkness? And what agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what part does a believer have with an unbeliever? And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols?” [v]

Having thus set out in detail all that we have done, we confess again that we receive the four holy synods, that is, the synod of Nicaea, that of Constantinople, the first of Ephesus, and that of Chalcedon. We have taught, and we teach, all that they defined about the one faith, and we count those who do not receive these things as strangers to the catholic church. Further, together with all the other heretics who have been condemned and anathematized by the four holy synods we have named and by the holy catholic and apostolic church, we condemn and anathematize Theodore, who was bishop of Mopsuestia, and his impious writings; also what Theodoret impiously wrote against the right faith, against the Twelve Chapters of the holy Cyril, and against the first synod of Ephesus; and also what he wrote in defense of Theodore and Nestorius. In addition to these, we also anathematize the impious letter that Ibas is said to have written to Maris the Persian. It denies that God the Word was made flesh from the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary. It accuses Cyril of holy memory, who taught the truth, of being a heretic and of holding the same views as Apollinaris. It blames the first synod of Ephesus for deposing Nestorius without examination and inquiry. It calls the Twelve Chapters of the holy Cyril impious and contrary to the right faith. And it defends Theodore and Nestorius and their impious teachings and writings. So we anathematize the Three Chapters we have named: that is, the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia with his abominable writings, and what Theodoret impiously wrote, and the impious letter said to be by Ibas, together with their defenders, and those who have written or are writing in their defense, or who dare to say that they are correct, and who have defended or are trying to defend their impiety with the names of the holy fathers or of the holy Council of Chalcedon. [w]

With these things settled with complete accuracy, we keep in mind the promises made about the holy church, and who it was that said that the gates of hell would not prevail against her, that is, the deadly tongues of heretics. We remember too what Hosea prophesied about her, saying, “I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you will know the Lord.” And counting the unbridled tongues of the heretics who persisted in their impiety until death, and their most impious writings, together with the devil, the father of lies, we will say to them: “Look, all of you kindle a fire and make the flame of the fire grow strong; you will walk in the light of your fire and of the flame that you kindle.” But we have a command to encourage the people with right teaching and to speak to the heart of Jerusalem, that is, the church of God. So we rightly hurry to sow in righteousness and to reap the fruit of life. And kindling for ourselves the light of knowledge from the holy Scriptures and the teaching of the fathers, we have thought it necessary to sum up in certain chapters both the declaration of the truth and the condemnation of the heretics and of their wickedness.