On the Synods 42–72

Lest the fact that the name of the essence named in the Father and the Son is one, through a not unlike nature, should give the heretics an occasion to proclaim that the unbegettable God, or a part of him, was born of Mary, this was met by the definition of a saving judgment, that he who confesses this should be anathema. For the devout unity of the name, established from the essence of an undiffering nature, has not taken away the person of the begotten essence, so that the substance of a single and solitary God should be understood through the union of the name; since the one name of both essences, that is, one God, is proclaimed on account of the not unlike substance of the undistinguished nature in each. V. "If anyone says that the Son is before Mary according to foreknowledge and predestination, and not born from the Father before the ages and with God, and that all things were made through him: let him be anathema."

Some, about to deny that the God of us all, the Son of God, existed before he was born in a body, yet affirm that he existed according to foreknowledge and predestination, not according to the essence of a subsisting nature: that is, that through the Father's foreknowledge, because he predestined him to exist at some time, namely to be begotten of the Virgin, he was announced to us, rather than that he was born and existed before the ages in the substance of the divine nature; and that all that he himself spoke in the prophets concerning the mysteries of his taking a body and of his passion were said of him by the Father according to foreknowledge. The perversity of this doctrine is therefore condemned, so that the only-begotten Son of God is known to us as born from the Father before the ages, and as founding the ages themselves with all creatures, rather than as predestined to be begotten. VI. "If anyone says that the substance of God expands and contracts: let him be anathema."

To contract and to expand is a bodily passion; but God, who is spirit and breathes where he wills, neither expands nor contracts himself by change of substance. For remaining free, outside the necessity of a bodily nature, he provides from himself what he wills, when he wills, and where he wills. It is impious, then, to ascribe change of substance to the freedom of so great a power. VII. "If anyone says that the expanded substance of God makes the Son, or calls the Son the expansion of his substance: let him be anathema."

The preceding judgment, though it meant to teach that God is unchangeable, prepared the way for this following heresy. For some have dared to extend the unbegettable God, by an expansion of substance, as far as the holy Virgin, so that the expansion, drawn out by a certain stretching of his nature and taking a man, should be called Son; and that it is not the Son, born perfect God before the ages, who afterwards was also born man. The catholic faith therefore condemns all this, in which the Father is said to be changeable and the born Son is denied. VIII. "If anyone calls the Son of God the indwelling and uttered word: let him be anathema."

The heretics, destroying the Son of God as far as lies in them, confess that he is only a word: that is, speech coming forth from the speaker's mouth, the bodiless sound of an unsubstantial voice; so that the Son is a word to God the Father of the same kind as every word is uttered into voice through the nature of speaking implanted in us. All this deceit, then, is under condemnation, which affirms that God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, is like the word of a voice indwelling and uttered. IX. "If anyone says that the Son from Mary is only a man: let him be anathema." We do not proclaim the Son of God from Mary unless we proclaim him both man and God. But lest our proclaiming him God and man should give an occasion for deceit, it at once added: X. "If anyone, saying that God and man was born of Mary, understands thereby the unbegettable God: let him be anathema."

Both the name and the power of the substance are preserved. For since he is under anathema who says that the Son of God from Mary is a man without God, and he is under the same judgment who says that the unbegettable God is in the man, the God who is in the man is not said not to be God; but it is denied that he is the unbegettable God, the Father being distinguished from the Son not by the name of nature, since not by difference of substance, but only by the authority of unbegottenness. XI. "If anyone, hearing 'The Word became flesh', thinks that the Word was changed into flesh, or says that he took flesh by undergoing change: let him be anathema."

The dignity of the divinity is preserved: so that in the Word's becoming flesh, while the Word becomes flesh, he did not lose through the flesh what the Word was, nor was he changed into flesh so as to cease to be the Word; but the Word became flesh so that the flesh might rather begin to be what the Word is. Otherwise, where did the flesh get powers in its works, glory on the mountain, knowledge of the thoughts of human hearts, freedom from fear in the passion, life in death? But God, who knows no change, lost nothing of the goods of his substance by becoming flesh. XII. "If anyone, hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that his deity underwent corruption, or passibility, or change, or diminution, or death: let him be anathema."

It is shown completely why the Word, though he became flesh, was not changed into flesh. For although these kinds of sufferings affect the weakness of the flesh, yet God the Word, having become flesh, could not become changeable from himself by suffering. For to suffer and to be changed are not the same thing, since suffering of every kind changes all flesh by sensation, pain, and endurance. But the Word that became flesh, though he subjected himself to suffering, was not changed by a capacity to suffer. For he could suffer, and yet could not be passible; because passibility signifies a weak nature, whereas suffering is the enduring of things inflicted. These, because God is unchangeable, though the Word became flesh, had in him the matter of suffering without the weakness of passibility. And so the nature remains unchangeable even in suffering, because the substance born from an impassible essence does not differ from its author. XIII. "If anyone says that 'Let us make man' was said not by the Father to the Son, but that God spoke to himself: let him be anathema." XIV. "If anyone does not say that it was the Son who was seen by Abraham, but the unbegettable God, or a part of him: let him be anathema." XV. "If anyone says that it was not the Son who wrestled with Jacob as a man, but the unbegettable God, or a part of him: let him be anathema." XVI. "If anyone does not understand 'The Lord rained from the Lord' of the Son and the Father, but says that he rained from himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father."

Because Photinus, against whom they had then assembled, denied these things, they had to be inserted into the creed: lest anyone should dare not to proclaim the Son of God before the Son of the Virgin, and, by the most foolish perversity of heretical madness, should fit all the preceding things that are proper to the Son of God to the unbegettable God, and, while referring them to the Father, deny substance to the Son. Since these points are complete, they leave us no need to interpret. XVII. "If anyone, because 'the Lord from the Lord', says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son, are two gods: let him be anathema. For we do not make the Son equal or comparable to the Father, but understand him as subject. For he did not come down to Sodom without the Father's will, nor did he rain from himself but from the Lord, that is, by the Father's authority; nor does he sit at the right hand of himself, but hears the Father saying, 'Sit at my right hand.'"

Both what precedes and what follows wholly exclude any suspicion that may seem to be in these words, lest a difference of unlike deities be proclaimed in the Lord and the Lord. And in this he is not compared, because it would be impious to speak of two gods; but the Son is not therefore not compared or made equal to the Father in order that he should be believed not to be God himself. For since he is anathema who denies that Christ is God, it cannot seem profane to name two gods together for the purpose of not proclaiming Christ God; since, by the property of natural essence, God is one for this reason: that the only-begotten Son, God, born from the unbegettable God the Father, who is the one God, has from nowhere else than from God that he is God; and since the essence of the begotten does not differ from that of the begetter, the one name of a nature that does not differ cannot but be one. And indeed the Son is not compared or made equal to the Father chiefly in this: that he is subject through the compliance of obedience; that the Lord rained from the Lord, not, as Photinus or Sabellius would have it, from himself, as the Lord from the Lord; that he sat down at the right hand of God when it was said to him that he should sit; that he is sent, that he receives, that in all things he obeys the will of him who sent him. But the subjection of devotion is not a diminution of essence, nor does the duty of religion make the nature degenerate: since, though both the unbegettable Father is God and the only-begotten Son of God is God, yet God is one; and both the subjection and the dignity of the Son are taught, since the Son, in being so named, is subject to that very name which, though it is God the Father's, is yet his own name by nature. Having the name, but the name of him whose Son he is, he becomes subject to the Father both by obedience and by name; yet in such a way that the subjection of the name testifies to the property of a natural and undiffering essence. XVIII. "If anyone says that the Father and the Son are one person: let him be anathema."

Sheer perversity needs no contradiction; and yet the foolish fury of some has broken out so far as to dare to proclaim one person with two names. XIX. "If anyone, calling the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, calls him the unbegettable God: let him be anathema."

The addition of "Paraclete" now makes liable to anathema the proclaiming of the unbegettable God in him. For it is most impious to call him the unbegettable God who was sent by the Son for our comfort. XX. "If anyone does not say, as the Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son, for he said, 'And the Father will send you another Paraclete, whom I will ask': let him be anathema."

We remember that the Paraclete was sent by the Son, and the creed itself set this out at the beginning. But because the Son often said, through the power of an undiffering nature, that his works were the works of the Father, saying, "I do the works of my Father", so too, when about to send the Paraclete, as he often promised, he sometimes said that he would be sent by the Father, since he was accustomed devoutly to refer to the Father all that he did. From this the heretics often seize an occasion to say that the Son himself is the Paraclete; whereas, in saying that he will pray that another Paraclete be sent by the Father, he signifies the difference between the one sent and the one asking. XXI. "If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema."

The folly of heretical fury, not any real question, forced them to put this into writing. For since the name of the Holy Spirit has its own meaning, and the Holy Spirit the Paraclete has the office and order of his own substance, and since the Father and the Son are everywhere proclaimed unchangeable, how is the Holy Spirit asserted to be a part either of the Father or of the Son? But because this too, among other kinds of madness, is commonly put forward by the impious, it had to be rejected by the saints. XXII. "If anyone says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods: let him be anathema."

Since it is irreligious to profess two gods, because we remember that nowhere has anything but one God been proclaimed, and we proclaim one: how much more is the naming of three gods in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be condemned? Yet because heretics say it, catholics rightly condemn it. XXIII. "If anyone understands what was said, 'I am God the first, and I am God the last, and besides me there is no God', which was said to destroy idols and those who are not gods, as said in a Jewish way to destroy the only-begotten God before the ages: let him be anathema."

When a plurality of gods has been condemned and only one God proclaimed, God the Son of God cannot be denied. Indeed, the genuine property of nature brings it about that the name denied to number is owed to essence, and that "there is no God besides me" cannot take from the Son that he is God; because there is no other God besides him who is from God. And by this word of God the Father he cannot but be God who was born from him in an essence not differing from his own nature. The Jews refer this to a union of God because they do not know the only-begotten God. But when we deny two gods, we abhor a difference of natural essence in the Father and the Son; because "there is no God besides me" destroys the impious opinion of false gods. But when, confessing one God, we also call the Son God, we proclaim nothing different in substance in either under the one name. XXIV. "If anyone says that the Son was made by the will of God as one of the creatures: let him be anathema."

God's will gave substance to all creatures; but a perfect birth from an impassible and unborn substance gave the Son his nature. For all created things are such as God willed them to be; but the Son, born from God, subsists such as God also is. Nor did nature bring forth a nature unlike itself; but, begotten from the substance of God, he brought an essence of will that is according to his origin in nature, not according to the creatures. XXV. "If anyone says that the Son was born against the Father's will: let him be anathema. For the Father was not compelled against his will, or led by natural necessity, to beget the Son when he did not wish; but as soon as he willed, he showed him only-begotten from himself without time and without passion."

Since it was taught that the Son does not subsist by will, as other things do, lest he should have his essence according to will only and not also according to nature, an occasion seemed to be given to the heretics to ascribe to God the Father a necessity of begetting the Son from himself, as though he brought him forth unwillingly under the compulsion of a law of nature. But this condition of passions is not in God the Father: since, in the indescribable and perfect birth of the Son, neither did will alone beget the Son, nor was the essence changed or compelled by the command of a natural law. Nor was a substance sought for the begetting, nor is the nature of the begetter different in the begotten, nor is there a solitude in time of the name of Father; but before all times the Father, from the essence of his nature, impassibly willing, gave the Son the essence of a natural birth. XXVI. "If anyone says that the Son is unbegettable and without beginning, as though saying two without beginning and two unbegettable and two unbegotten, and so makes two gods: let him be anathema. For the head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; and the head, which is the beginning of Christ, is God: for so, to the one without beginning, the beginning of all things, we refer all things through the Son."

To confess the Son unbegettable is most impious. For then God will no longer be one, since the nature of the one unbegettable God requires that one God be proclaimed. Since, then, God is one, there cannot be two unbegettable; since God is one for this reason (though both the Father is God and the Son of God is God), that unbegottenness belongs to one alone. And the Son is God for this reason, that he exists born from the unbegettable essence. The holy faith therefore rejects the proclaiming of an unbegettable Son, so that through the one unbegettable God it may proclaim one God, and may embrace the only-begotten nature, begotten from the unbegettable essence, in the one name of the unbegettable God. For the Son is the head of all things, but the head of the Son is God. And by this order and this confession all things are referred to one God, since all things take their beginning from him to whom he himself is the beginning. XXVII. "And again, confirming the understanding of Christianity, we say: if anyone does not say that Christ, God, the Son of God, subsisted before the ages and served the Father in the perfecting of all things, but says that from the time he was born of Mary he was named Christ and Son and received the beginning of being God: let him be anathema."

The condemnation of the heresy because of which they had assembled had to be concluded with an exposition of the whole faith that it opposed: a heresy that falsely claimed that the Son of God began with the Virgin's childbearing. For this is the principal point of our faith according to the gospel and apostolic teaching: that our Lord Jesus Christ, God and Son of God, is not separated from the Father by confession of honor, by power of might, by difference of substance, or by interval of time.

In many ways, as is understood, the truth has been sought by the counsels and judgments of the bishops, and the reasoning of understanding has been set out in each profession of written faith, each kind of impious preaching being extinguished in turn. For the infinite and immeasurable God could not be understood or shown by brief utterances of human speech. For brevity of words very often deceives both hearers and teachers; and by compressed speech either what is sought cannot be understood, or what is signified rather than narrated is even corrupted, being not established by a complete account. And so the bishops, speaking with the sense of understanding, because of the difficulty of understanding the nature, used both very many definitions and fuller words for teaching, so as both to imbue the minds of their hearers with the truth set out distinctly through many things, and to say nothing else dangerous or obscure about divine things in this manifold clarification of many judgments.

It should not seem at all strange to you, dearest brothers, that creeds have begun to be set out so often; heretical fury imposes this necessity. For so great is the danger of the Eastern churches that it is rare to find either priests or people of this faith (what kind of faith it is, you judge). For through certain men authority has wickedly been given to impiety; and by the exile of bishops, whose cause you know, the strength of the profane has grown. I speak of nothing foreign, nor write of things unknown: I have heard and seen the faults of those present, not of laymen but of bishops. For apart from Bishop Eleusius and a few with him, the greater part of the ten Asian provinces, within which I am staying, truly do not know God. And would that they knew him not at all; for they would be ignorant with readier pardon than they now slander. But the grief of these bishops, not keeping itself within silence, seeks the unity of this faith, which it long since lost through others. For that first creed in the exposition gathered here had this necessity: that at Sirmium, through Ossius, forgetful of his own deeds and words, the doctrine of a new and yet long-festering impiety had broken out. But of him I say nothing; he was kept alive for this reason, that human judgment should not be ignorant of how he had lived before. Everywhere there are scandals, everywhere schisms, everywhere unbelief. Hence it is that some of those who had written otherwise before were compelled to a profession of subscribing the faith. Nor do I complain of the most patient men, the Eastern bishops, who were satisfied, after the will to blaspheme, with at least a profession of compelled faith; for it seems a matter for rejoicing, amid so great a heretical obstinacy of blaspheming bishops, that some of them are received as penitents. But amid all this, O how blessed you are in the Lord and glorious, who, keeping the perfect and apostolic faith in the profession of your conscience, have until now not known written creeds! For you did not need the letter, since you abounded in the Spirit. Nor did you need the service of the hand to write, since what you believed with the heart you professed with the mouth for salvation. Nor did you as bishops need to read what you held as reborn neophytes. But necessity has brought in the custom that creeds be set out, and that they be subscribed when set out. For where the sense of conscience is in danger, there the letter is demanded. Nor indeed does anything prevent writing down what it is salutary to confess.

We confess indeed, always kept innocent by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we write willingly: not two gods but one God; nor do we therefore deny that the Son of God is also God, for he is God from God. Not two unbegettable, because God is one by the authority of unbegottenness; nor do we therefore deny that the Only-begotten is God, for his origin is the unbegettable substance. Not one subsisting being, but a substance not differing. Not one name of God in unlike natures, but a not unlike essence of one name and nature. Not one excelling another in the kind of substance, but one subject to the other by the birth of nature. The Father greater in that he is Father; the Son not less in that he is Son. The difference is in meaning, not in nature. We confess that the Father is not within times, and we do not deny that the Son is co-timeless with the Father. We proclaim the Father in the Son, because the Son has nothing in himself unlike the Father; we confess the Son in the Father, because what the Son is comes from nowhere else. We are not ignorant that their nature is mutual and alike to each other, because it is equal; we do not suppose that they are one person, because they are one; we proclaim them one through the sameness of a not unlike nature in such a way that they are not one person.

I have set out, dearest brothers, as far as the custom of human speech allowed and as far as the Lord, always entreated by me, as he knows, granted me, the conscience of our common faith. And if anything is too little, or rather, since what has been said is too little and almost nothing, remember that it is not understanding but words that I lack. Perhaps I shall reproach my nature for this, yet I shall not reproach my will; and I pardon my nature if it cannot say what it would of God, for whose salvation it is enough to have believed the things of God.

Now, since my faith and yours, as far as I am conscious, is not in danger before God, and I have shown you, as you wished, what creeds were earlier set out by the Eastern bishops, though few (I will repeat it: in proportion to the number of the Eastern churches, this is the faith of few bishops), and I myself have also professed what I think about divine things according to the apostolic teaching, it remains that you should learn, without any suspicion, the things that bring error upon us out of the security of simplicity; for now no room for suspicion in hearing is left. And though I no longer fear being judged by the exposition of the whole faith, yet allow me still to wish not to be judged until everything is complete.

Many of us, dearest brothers, proclaim the one substance of the Father and the Son in such a way that they may seem to proclaim it no more devoutly than impiously. For this word has in itself both the conscience of faith and deceit ready at hand. For if we proclaim one substance according to the property and likeness of nature, so that the likeness does not bring the appearance only but holds the kind, we proclaim one substance religiously, provided we understand one substance as the likeness of property, so that their being one signifies not a solitary being but equals. I say equality, that is, a likeness without difference, so that the likeness is held to be equality; and equality is called one for this reason, that it is equal; but the one in which equality is signified is not to be claimed for a solitary being. One substance, then, will be proclaimed religiously, if it neither destroys the subsisting person nor divides one substance, partitioned, into two: a substance which, from the property of birth and the likeness of nature, is so without difference that it is called one.

But if the Father and the Son are said to be of one substance for this reason, that the one subsisting, though under the meaning of two names, is one and alone, then we do not hold in conscience the Son whom we confess in name, if, confessing one substance, we say that one single and solitary being is to himself both Father from himself and Son. Moreover, the occasion of this error at once presents itself, that the Father is understood as divided from himself and as having cut off a part which should be his son. For this is what the heretics contend who proclaim one substance; and the language of our devout confession flatters them greatly, so that, while this word is doubtful through undefined brevity, it serves error. There is besides this a third error: that when the Father and the Son are said to be of one substance, a prior substance is thought to be meant, which the two equals hold between them; and so the word signifies three things: one substance, and two as it were co-heirs of the one substance. For as co-heirs are two, and the inheritance of which the two are co-heirs is prior, so the two equals can seem to be sharers of one prior substance. And so, when one substance of the Father and the Son is proclaimed, it signifies either one subsisting being with two names; or one substance divided, which has made two imperfect substances; or a third, prior substance, taken and assumed by the two, which is called one because the one was cut into two. And where after this is the birth? Where are the Father and the Son understood, if a cutting, or the sharing of a prior substance, rather than the birth of a nature, will proclaim Father and Son?

Amid so many and so grave dangers to the faith, then, brevity of words must be moderated, lest what is understood devoutly be thought to be said impiously, and lest, with a secure and innocent conscience, the language be guilty through a heretical occasion. Let the catholic who is going to say one substance of the Father and the Son not begin from there, nor hold it as the greatest point, as though without it there were no true faith. He will safely say one substance when he has first said: the Father is unbegotten; the Son is born; he subsists from the Father; he is like the Father in power, honor, and nature; he is subject to the Father as to his author; he did not by robbery make himself equal to God, in whose form he remained; he was obedient unto death. He is not from nothing, but is a birth. He is not unbegettable, but co-timeless. He is not the Father, but is the Son from him. He is not some portion, but is whole. He is not himself the author, but is the image: the image of God born from God into God. He is not a creature, but is God. Not another God in the kind of substance, but one God through the essence of an undiffering substance. God is one not in person but in nature, because the one born and the one begetting have nothing in themselves different or unlike. And after this, in saying one substance of the Father and the Son he does not err; or rather, in denying one substance he now sins.

Let no one think, then, that we deny the one substance: its reasoning is shown precisely so that it may not be denied. Let no one think that one substance should be proclaimed in brief and bare speech, if it is to be said religiously that there is one substance. For I do not hear "Christ was born of Mary" unless I also hear "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." I will not hear "Christ hungered" unless, after the forty days' fast, I hear "Man does not live by bread alone." I will not hear "he thirsted" unless I hear "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst." I will not hear "Christ suffered" unless I hear "Now is the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified." I will not hear "he died" unless I hear "he rose." Let us bring forward nothing in isolation from the divine mysteries, to the suspicion of hearers and the occasion of blasphemers. The birth of the Son, his subjection, and the likeness of nature must first be proclaimed, so that it may not be impiously proclaimed that the Father and the Son are of one substance. And I do not understand why that should be proclaimed before everything else as the greatest, chief, and solitary point, which cannot be devoutly proclaimed before everything else, and which it would then be impious to deny after everything else.

The one substance of the Father and the Son, dearest brothers, is not to be denied, but neither is it to be proclaimed without reason. Let it be one substance from the property of a begotten nature; let it not be from a portion, or from a union, or from a sharing. One substance can be devoutly spoken and devoutly left unspoken. You have the birth, you have the likeness. Why do we suspiciously hold to a quarrel over a word, when we do not disagree in understanding the thing? Let us believe and say that there is one substance, but by the property of nature, not to signify an impious union. Let it be one from likeness, not from solitude.

But perhaps likeness may seem to have too little propriety in itself. If so, I ask how I can make one equal to another except through likeness. Or is it not the same thing to be like as to be equal? If I say "one", it carries the suspicion of a solitary being; if I say "like", it carries a comparison without difference. I ask what place "equal" has between "like" and "one", and I ask whether it belongs rather to likeness or to solitude. There is no equality among unlike things, nor is there likeness within one. Or how do "like" and "equal" differ, that "equal" should again be distinguished from "one"? Unlike things, then, are not equal. And what else can like things be but equal, since there is no equality among unlike things?