# Confession of Faith

- Author: [Acacius of Beroea](https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/authors/acacius-of-beroea/)
- Latin title: *Confessio fidei*
- Date: ca. 431-437 (approximate)
- Source: Eduard Schwartz, ed., Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, tom. 1, vol. 4: Concilium universale Ephesenum, Collectio Casinensis (Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1922-1923)
- Note: Route 3: the Greek original is lost; the source is the ancient Latin translation in the Collectio Casinensis (ACO 1.4, Schwartz 1922-23), translated by Claude with a note; the Latin is never shown.
- Translation: Claude, from the original text, unless a passage says otherwise; each passage below gives the translator
- Editions and translations: Eduard Schwartz, ed., Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum 1.1-1.7 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927-1929)
- Work page: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/acacius-beroea-confessio/
- Passages: 1

## Confession of Faith

- URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/acacius-beroea-confessio/1/#p-1
- Source: Schwartz, ACO 1.4 (1922-23) ACO 1.4:243-245
- Translation: Translated by Claude from Anonymous ancient translator (Latin collection compiled by Rusticus, mid-6th c.)'s Latin translation (ca. 550) of the Latin (the Greek original is lost); neither is shown

Summary: Acacius of Beroea confesses one God in three persons and one Son of God from two natures, passible in the flesh and impassible in the divinity.

### English translation (Claude)

[1] I believe in one God, who is known in three persons, the cause and maker of all things, one substance, everlasting, without beginning, unbegotten, incomprehensible, beyond contemplation, uncircumscribable, unchangeable, immortal, impassible; that is, I say that it is susceptible of suffering neither in itself nor in anything else; for the divine nature is impassible in every respect. I say, indeed, one God, who truly exists as God, and I flee paganism, by which a plurality of gods is introduced. But that he is known in three persons is the overthrow of Judaism; for I confess the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, and the Holy Spirit in God the Son and the Father. And I confess Christ coeternal with the Father according to the divinity, and not less than the Father in the deity, either in substance or in the mode of subsistence; and likewise the Holy Spirit. For I say that the Son was begotten without time and without beginning, and subsists coeverlasting with the Father as the wisdom which is ever from God and the Father. I believe also in the procession of the Holy Spirit, which I do not call a generation, and the generation of the Son I do not call a procession. But when the logic of what is said requires it, I confess one God, not denying the subsistences, but signifying by the name “God” what is common to the consubstantiality; and when I speak of consubstantiality, I do not speak of the consubstantiality of one person, but of three, that is, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For one person is not said to be consubstantial with itself; but this is the distinction of the Son and the Holy Spirit and the Father. Therefore Father and Son and Holy Spirit are a mode of subsistence, or a name of relation, and not simply a signification of substance. The being of the Father, then, is God, but whose he is, is Father; and the being of the Son is God, but whose he is, is Son; so too the Holy Spirit. But their being is the same. So much, according to my ability, be said of the consubstantial Trinity. I will speak also of the becoming man of God the Word for our sake, about which there is the greatest question for us, not only against all heretics but also against those who are thought to be of the household of the faith. I believe, then, that through his own clemency and his great kindness toward the human race it pleased God the Word, at the end of days, to build for himself from the holy virgin Mary a temple which in his foreknowledge was spotless and without any sin. This temple God the Word took for our salvation, to manifest his divinity, and through it he himself purchased our salvation, through his kindness, as I said, and his governance toward us, uniting it to himself inexpressibly and ineffably from the very beginning of its fashioning in the womb; and he deigned that it should be the same Son with him by the union with himself, and should share in all the lordship and honour and glory and power which he who is God the Word has by nature, so that the form of God and the form of the servant belong to one person, one Son, one Lord and Christ. Thus I confess Christ, the Son of God, God and man, one Son from two natures, from passible and impassible, from mortal and immortal, from visible and invisible, from ⟨beginning and⟩ beginningless, from uncircumscribable and circumscribed; who without beginning and everlastingly was begotten of the Father according to the deity, and the same was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary in the last days according to the flesh. But I neither say that the flesh was begotten of God the Father, nor that the divine nature was born of the holy virgin Mary; but according to the divinity he was begotten without beginning of God the Father, and according to the flesh he was brought forth in the last days by the childbearing of the virgin Mary. Thus I confess one Son of God, impassible in the divinity, passible in the humanity; but that temple was not separated from the indwelling divinity either in the sufferings or in the womb, but was united to it from the very conception. Yet I would not say that God the Word was circumscribed together with it; for the divine nature is uncircumscribable. Christ the Son of God, then, was born of the holy Mary, as I said, not in that uncircumscribed nature but in that circumscribed one. For I said above that Christ the Son of God is both uncircumscribable and circumscribed: uncircumscribable according to the divine nature, circumscribed in the human, according to which Christ the Son of God was circumscribed in the manger, in the cradle, on the cross and in the tomb; but in that other he is infinite and uncircumscribable, and he held and holds all things together. I say, then, one from two natures. Christ the Son of God suffers, then, not in the divinity but in the humanity; that is, Christ suffered in the flesh. The nature that was taken suffers; but that which took it remains impassible. Yet God the Word reckons as his own the sufferings of the man who is his temple — I mean … and death and whatever else belongs to the dispensation. He makes them his own while himself undergoing nothing; but because the natures themselves belong to one person, the impassible makes its own what belongs to the passible. Nor yet does the impassible Word of God suffer in making the sufferings his own; but, as I said, he appropriates the sufferings of his flesh. For it is one thing to suffer by the very fact of making the sufferings one's own, and another to make the sufferings one's own. They are, I say, the sufferings not of another Son, but of another nature. For in no way does he suffer who by nature is not susceptible of suffering. [3] Nor did the Word who became flesh undergo a change. For “became” is said in the sense of “took,” as he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant; for this is what the following words mean: “and dwelt among us.” For the distinction of the natures is not destroyed by the unity of the Son; but as the corruptible body is one thing and the immortal soul another, yet from both one man is constituted, so from the mortal nature and the immortal and beginningless nature of God the Word I confess one person of the Son. And because the impassible Word, united to what is passible, did not undergo the experience of suffering, the Son of God is both passible and impassible: passible in the flesh, impassible in the divinity; having a temporal beginning according to the flesh, but without beginning according to the deity. As I hold these things in my own mind, so I have written them down.

### Scripture references

- John 14:10: allusion, medium confidence
- Gal 6:10: echo, low confidence
- John 2:21: echo, low confidence
- 1 Pet 4:1: allusion, high confidence
- Phil 2:6–7: allusion, high confidence
- John 1:14: quotation, high confidence

### Translation notes

- Translated from the ancient Latin version (Collectio Casinensis, ed. Schwartz, ACO 1.4); the Greek is lost. Lines of Schwartz's apparatus that the OCR ran into the text were left out; words in square brackets that Schwartz deletes (“Cyril of holy memory”) were omitted; his supplement in angle brackets is translated. Section numbers [1] and [3] are as printed (the [2] is lost in the OCR). “I mean … and death” marks a word lost in the scan.
- A Christological confession from the Nestorian controversy (after 431), translated exactly as written; its language (“temple”, “one Son from two natures”, the Word “appropriating” the sufferings of his flesh) is that of the Antiochene party. Allusions: John 14:10; 1 Pet 4:1; Phil 2:6–7; John 1:14; Gal 6:10 (“the household of the faith”).

### Citation (SBL)

Acacius, Conf. 1 (Schwartz, ACO 1.4 (1922-23) ACO 1.4:243-245; trans. Sophia Scriptura from the Latin of Anonymous ancient translator (Latin collection compiled by Rusticus, mid-6th c.), ca. 550, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/acacius-beroea-confessio/1).