To Theodoret of Cyrrhus, on Perseverance in the Faith

Leo the bishop to his beloved brother Theodoret the bishop.

Our brothers and fellow priests, whom the see of blessed Peter sent to the holy council, have returned, and from them, beloved, we have learned of the victory that you and we together have won, with help from on high, over the blasphemy of Nestorius and over the madness of Eutyches. So we make our boast in the Lord, singing with the prophet: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” He has let us suffer no harm in the persons of our brothers. By the irrevocable assent of the whole brotherhood he has confirmed what he had already laid down through our ministry, to show that what was first formulated by the foremost see of Christendom, and then received by the judgment of the whole Christian world, had truly come from himself; so that in this too the members may be at one with the Head. And our cause for rejoicing grows greater here when we see that the more fiercely the enemy attacked Christ’s servants, the more he hurt himself. For so that the assent of the other sees to what the Lord of all has appointed to take precedence over the rest might not seem mere compliance, and so that no other evil suspicion might creep in, some were found to dispute our decisions before they were finally accepted. And while some, stirred up by the author of discord, rush headlong into a war of contradictions, a greater good comes out of his fall under the guiding hand of the Author of all goodness. For the gifts of God’s grace are sweeter to us when they are won with great effort, and unbroken peace usually seems a lesser good than a peace restored by hard labor. Moreover, the Truth itself shines more brightly and is more bravely upheld when what the faith had already taught is afterward confirmed by further inquiry. Further still, the good name of the priestly office gains much in luster where the authority of the highest is preserved without anyone thinking that the liberty of the lower ranks has been infringed in the least. And the outcome of a discussion adds all the more to the glory of God when the debaters exert themselves with confidence to overcome those who contradict them, so that what is shown to be wrong of itself may not seem to have been passed over in a silence that prejudges the case. [a]

Rejoice, then, beloved brother; yes, rejoice in triumph in the only Son of God. Through us he has won the victory for himself, he whose true flesh was denied. Through us and for us he has conquered, in whose cause we have conquered. For the world, this happy day ranks next to the Lord’s coming. The robber is laid low, and there is restored to our age the mystery of the divine Incarnation, which the enemy of mankind was obscuring with his trickery, because the facts would not let him destroy it outright. Indeed, the immortal mystery had perished from the hearts of unbelievers, because so great a salvation is of no use to unbelievers, as the Truth himself said to his disciples: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” The rays of the Sun of Righteousness, which the clouds of Nestorius and Eutyches had obscured throughout the East, have shone out brightly from the West, where it reached its height in the apostles and teachers of the church. And yet we must not believe that even in the East it was ever eclipsed, where noble confessors have been found in your ranks. So when the old enemy was trying once more, through the unrepentant heart of a modern Pharaoh, to blot out the seed of faithful Abraham and the sons of the promise, he grew weary, by God’s mercy, and could harm no one but himself. And in his case the Almighty has worked this wonder too: he has not overwhelmed, along with the founder of the tyranny, those who were his partners in the slaughter of the people of Israel, but has gathered them into his own people. As the Source of all mercy knew to be worthy of himself and possible for himself alone, he has made them conquerors with us, who had been conquered by us. For while the spirit of falsehood is the only true enemy of the human race, there is no doubt that all whom the Truth has won over to his side share in his triumph over that enemy. Surely it is now clear how divinely authorized are these words of our Redeemer, which fit the enemies of the faith so well that no one can doubt they were spoken of them: “You,” he says, “are of your father the devil, and it is your will to fulfill your father’s cravings. He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth, because the truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar and the father of it.” [c]

It is no wonder, then, that those who have accepted a delusion about our nature in the true God agree with their father on these points too. They maintain that what was seen, heard and, by the witness of the gospel, actually touched and handled in the only Son of God did not belong to that to which it was proved to belong, but to an essence co-eternal with the Father and of one substance with him: as if the nature of the Godhead could have been pierced on the cross, as if the Unchangeable could grow from infancy to manhood, or the eternal Wisdom advance in wisdom, or God, who is Spirit, could afterward be filled with the Spirit. In this too their sheer madness betrayed where it came from, because as far as it could it tried to injure everyone. For the man who afflicted you with his persecutions led others astray by driving them to consent to his wickedness. Yes, even us: although he had already wounded us in each one of the brothers (for they are our members), even us he did not spare from a special injury, when with strange, unheard-of and incredible effrontery he tried to strike at their Head. Would that he had come to his senses even after all these outrages, and had not saddened us by his death and eternal damnation! There was no limit of wickedness that he did not reach. It was not enough for him that, sparing neither the living nor the dead, renouncing the truth and allying himself with falsehood, he stained his hands, long since polluted, with the blood of a guiltless catholic priest. And since it is written, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer,” he has actually carried out what he was already said to have done in hating, as if he had never heard this, nor what the Lord says: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” A worthy preacher of the devil’s errors has been found in this Egyptian plunderer. Like the cruelest tyrant the church has ever had, he forced his villainous blasphemies on the reverend brothers through the violence of rioting mobs and the bloodstained hands of soldiers. And since our Redeemer’s voice assures us that the author of murder and of lying is one and the same, this man has carried out both alike, as if these things were written not to be avoided but to be done. So he turns the saving warnings of the Son of God to the completion of his own destruction, and shuts his ears to what the same Lord said: “I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.” [g]

So while he strove to cut short the life of Flavian of blessed memory in this present world, he has robbed himself of the light of true life. While he tried to drive you out of your churches, he has cut himself off from fellowship with Christians. While he drags and drives many into agreement with error, he has stabbed his own soul with many wounds, the one convicted offender beyond all, through all and for all, for he was the cause of everyone’s being accused. You, brother, who are nourished on solid food, have little need of such reminders. Yet we must fulfill what belongs to our position, according to the saying of the apostle: “Besides the things that are outside, there is what presses on me daily, my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” So we believe this warning ought to be given especially at the present time. Whenever, by the working of divine grace, we either overwhelm or cleanse those who are outside in the pool of doctrine, let us never depart in anything from the rules of faith that the Godhead of the Holy Spirit brought forward at the Council of Chalcedon. Let us weigh our words with every caution, so as to avoid the two extremes of the new false doctrine. We must no longer speak (God forbid!) as though debating what is doubtful, but with full authority lay down conclusions already reached. For in the letter that we issued from the Apostolic See, which has been ratified by the assent of the whole holy synod, we know that so many divinely authorized witnesses are gathered that no one can have any further doubt, except someone who prefers to wrap himself in the clouds of error. And the proceedings of the synod, both those in which we read the drawing up of the definition of faith and those in which you, brother, zealously supported that letter of the Apostolic See, and above all the address of the whole council to our most religious princes, are confirmed by the testimony of so many fathers of the past that they must persuade anyone, however foolish and stubborn his heart, so long as he is not already joined with the devil in damnation for his wickedness. [m]

So this too is our duty, as a safeguard against the church’s enemies: as far as lies in us, to leave them no occasion to slander us. In acting against the Nestorians or the Eutychians we must never seem to have given way to the other side, but must shun and condemn both enemies of Christ in equal measure. Then, whenever the good of our hearers in any way requires it, we may strike down them and their teachings, with all promptness and clarity, with the anathema they deserve; for if we seem to do this hesitantly or slowly, we may be thought to act against our will. And although the facts themselves are enough to remind your wisdom of this, actual experience has now brought the lesson home. But blessed be our God, whose unconquerable Truth has shown you free from every taint of heresy in the judgment of the Apostolic See. You will repay him due thanks for all these labors if you keep yourself such a defender of the universal church as we have found you and still find you. For the fact that God has scattered every slanderous falsehood we credit to blessed Peter’s wonderful care for us all. After confirming the judgment of his see in defining the faith, he let no sinister charge rest on any of you who have labored with us for the catholic faith, because the Holy Spirit judged that none of those whose faith had now conquered could fail to come out a conqueror. [o]

It remains for us to urge you to keep working together with the Apostolic See, because we have learned that some remnants of the Eutychian and Nestorian error still linger among you. For the victory that Christ our Lord has granted his church, though it increases our confidence, does not yet take away our anxiety altogether; we are not granted leave to sleep, but to work on more calmly. So we wish to be helped in this too by your watchful care: be quick to inform the Apostolic See in regular reports of what progress the Lord’s teaching makes in those regions, so that we may help the priests of that district in whatever way experience suggests. On the matters that were raised at the council so often mentioned, in unlawful opposition to the venerable canons of Nicaea, we have written to our brother and fellow bishop who holds the see of Antioch. We have added the matter you told us of by word of mouth through your delegates, about the unscrupulous conduct of certain monks, and we have laid down strict orders that no one, whether monk or layman, who boasts of some knowledge should presume to preach, except the Lord’s priests. But we wish that letter to come to everyone’s knowledge, for the benefit of the universal church, through our brother and fellow bishop Maximus, already mentioned. For that reason we have not thought fit to add a copy of it to this one, because we have no doubt that our brother and fellow bishop will carry out our orders properly. In another hand: God keep you safe, beloved brother. Dated the 11th of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (in the year 453). [q]