The Canons of the
Council in Trullo.
(Labbe and Cossart,
Concilia
, Tom. VI., col. 1135
et seqq
.)
Canon I.
That
order is best of all which
makes every word and act begin and end in God. Wherefore that
piety may be clearly set forth by us and that the Church of which
Christ is the foundation may be continually increased and advanced, and
that it may be exalted above the cedars of Lebanon; now therefore we,
by divine grace at the beginning of our decrees, define that the faith
set forth by the God-chosen Apostles who themselves had both seen and
were ministers of the Word, shall be preserved without any innovation,
unchanged and inviolate.
Moreover the faith of the three hundred and eighteen
holy and blessed fathers who were assembled at Nice under Constantine
our Emperor, against the impious Arius, and the gentile diversity of
deity or rather (to speak accurately) multitude of gods taught by him,
who by the unanimous acknowledgment of the faithful revealed and
declared to us the consubstantiality of the Three Persons comprehended
in the Divine Nature, not suffering this faith to lie hidden under the
bushel of ignorance, but openly teaching the faithful to adore with one
worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, confuting and
scattering to the winds the opinion of different grades, and
demolishing and overturning the puerile toyings fabricated out of sand
by the heretics against orthodoxy.
Likewise also we confirm that faith which was set forth
by the one hundred and fifty fathers who in the time of Theodosius the
Elder, our Emperor, assembled in this imperial city, accepting their
decisions with regard to the Holy Ghost in assertion of his godhead,
and expelling the profane Macedonius (together with all previous
enemies of the truth) as one who dared to judge Him to be a servant who
is Lord, and who wished to divide, like a robber, the inseparable
unity, so that there might be no perfect mystery of our faith.
And together with this odious and detestable contender
against the truth, we condemn Apollinaris, priest of the same iniquity,
who impiously belched forth that the Lord assumed a body unendowed with
a soul,
342
thence also inferring that his salvation
wrought for us was imperfect.
Moreover what things were set forth by the two hundred
God-bearing fathers in the city of Ephesus in the days of Theodosius
our Emperor, the son of Arcadius; these doctrines we assent to as the
unbroken strength of piety, teaching that Christ the incarnate Son of
God is one; and declaring that she who bare him without human seed was
the immaculate Ever-Virgin, glorifying her as literally and in very
truth the Mother of God. We condemn as foreign to the divine
scheme the absurd division of Nestorius, who teaches that the one
Christ consists of a man separately and of the Godhead separately and
renews the Jewish impiety.
Moreover we confirm that faith which at Chalcedon, the
Metropolis, was set forth in accordance with orthodoxy by the six
hundred and thirty God-approved fathers in the time of Marcian, who was
our Emperor, which handed down with a great and mighty voice, even unto
the ends of the earth, that the one Christ, the son of God, is of two
natures, and must be glorified
343
in these two
natures, and which cast forth from the sacred precincts of the Church
as a black pestilence to be avoided, Eutyches, babbling stupidly and
inanely, and teaching that the great mystery of the incarnation
(
οἰκονωμίας
)
was perfected in thought only. And together with him also
Nestorius and Dioscorus of whom the former was the defender and
champion of the division, the latter of the confusion [of the two
natures in the one Christ], both of whom fell away from the divergence
of their impiety to a common depth of perdition and denial of God.
Also we recognize as
inspired by the Spirit the pious voices of the one hundred and
sixty-five God-bearing fathers who assembled in this imperial city in
the time of our Emperor Justinian of blessed memory, and we teach them
to those who come after us; for these synodically anathematized and
execrated Theodore of Mopsuestia (the teacher of Nestorius), and
Origen, and Didymus, and Evagrius, all of whom reintroduced feigned
Greek myths, and brought back again the circlings of certain bodies and
souls, and deranged turnings [or transmigrations] to the wanderings or
dreamings of their minds, and impiously insulting the resurrection of
the dead. Moreover [they condemned] what things were written by
Theodoret against the right faith and against the Twelve Chapters of
blessed Cyril, and that letter which is said to have been written by
Ibas.
Also we agree to guard untouched the faith of the Sixth
Holy Synod, which first assembled in this imperial city in the time of
Constantine, our Emperor, of blessed memory, which faith received still
greater confirmation from the fact that the pious Emperor ratified with
his own signet that which was written for the security of future
generations. This council taught that we should openly profess
our faith that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, our true God, there
are two natural wills or volitions and two natural operations; and
condemned by a just sentence those who adulterated the true doctrine
and taught the people that in the one Lord Jesus Christ there is but
one will and one operation; to wit, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of
Alexandria, Honorius of Rome, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, who
were bishops of this God-preserved city; Macarius, who was bishop of
Antioch; Stephen, who was his disciple, and the insane Polychronius,
depriving them henceforth from the communion of the body of Christ our
God.
And, to say so once for all, we decree that the faith
shall stand firm and remain unsullied until the end of the world as
well as the writings divinely handed down and the teachings of all
those who have beautified and adorned the Church of God and were lights
in the world, having embraced the word of life. And we reject and
anathematize those whom they rejected and anathematized, as being
enemies of the truth, and as insane ragers against God, and as lifters
up of iniquity.
But if any one at all shall not observe and embrace the
aforesaid pious decrees, and teach and preach in accordance therewith,
but shall attempt to set himself in opposition thereto, let him be
anathema, according to the decree already promulgated by the approved
holy and blessed Fathers, and let him be cast out and stricken off as
an alien from the number of Christians. For our decrees add
nothing to the things previously defined, nor do they take anything
away, nor have we any such power.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon I.
No innovation upon the faith of the Apostles is to be
allowed. The faith of the Nicene fathers is perfect, which
overthrows through the homousion the doctrines of Arius who introduced
degrees into the Godhead.
The Synod held under Theodosius the great shall be held
inviolate, which deposed Macedonius who asserted that the Holy Ghost
was a servant.
The two hundred who under Theodosius the Younger
assembled at Ephesus are to be revered for they expelled Nestorius who
asserted that the Lord was man and God separately
(
ἰδικῶς
).
Those who assembled at Chalcedon in the time of Marcion
are to be celebrated with eternal remembrance, who deposed Eutyches,
who dared to say that the great mystery was accomplished only in image,
as well as Nestorius and Dioscorus, observing equal things in an
opposite direction.
One hundred and sixty-five were assembled in the
imperial city by Justinian, who anathematized Origen, for teaching
periods
(
περιόδους
)
of bodies and souls, and Theodoret who dared to set himself up to
oppose the Twelve Chapters of Cyril.
At Constantinople a Synod was collected under
Constantine which rejected Honorius of Rome and Sergius, prelate of
Constantinople, for teaching one will and one operation.
Aristenus.
The fifth was held in the time of Justinian the Great at
Constantinople against the crazy (
παράφρονς
)
Origen, Evagrius and Didymus, who remodelled the Greek figments, and
stupidly said that the same bodies they had joined with them would not
rise again; and that Paradise was not subject to the appreciation of
the sense, and that it was not from God, and that Adam was not formed
in flesh, and that there would be an end of punishment, and a
restitution of the devils to their pristine state, and other
innumerable insane blasphemies.
342
Latin reads
“mind or soul.”
343
Latin,
“believed in.”