Canons of the VII Ecumenical Councils

Interpretation.

In view of the fact that at this holy and Ecumenical Council’s meeting there were read both the Creed of the holy and Ecumenical First Council held in Nicaea, and the Creed of Jewish-minded Nestorius, in which his unholy dogmas were set forth and which Charisius the presbyter of Philadelphia brought to the Council, after they had been read, this holy Council issued this Canon decreeing that it is not permissible for anyone to compose and write, or to offer to those converted from any other faith to Orthodoxy another Creed[76] than the Symbol of the Faith denned and decreed by the Holy Fathers who assembled in the city of Nicaea and were enlightened by the Holy Spirit. As for those persons who shall dare to compose any other symbol of faith (or creed), or to present it openly, and to offer it to any of the Greeks and Jews and heretics turning away from faith to recognition and knowledge of the truth, such persons, if they be bishops and clergymen, are to be expelled from their episcopate and clericate, respectively, but if laymen they shall be anathematized. Similarly, too, all those who are discovered to be thinking to themselves or to be teaching others the unholy and heretical dogmas of Nestorius concerning the incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God, contained in the exposition of faith composed by him, but brought to this Council by the presbyter named Charisius, these persons also, I say, if they be bishops and clergymen, are to stand deposed, and expelled from their episcopate and clericate, respectively; but if they be laymen, they are to be anathematized, as we said before.

Notes

[76] The reason why the Council anathematized those who should undertake to compose another Creed (called in Greek “Symbol of Faith”) is as follows. St. Marcus of Ephesus in the fifth Act of the Council held in Florence says that heretics had composed more than thirty creeds against the doctrine of coessentiality (or homoousianity). One of them, recusant Nestorius, took the opportune occasion to compose a creed of his own, and he was wont to hand it to the Greeks who were joining the Orthodox faith, and to the Jews and heretics who were doing likewise, as is explained in the present Canon. So this Third Council, foreseeing the possibility that this liberty of writing creeds might result in the introduction of some innovation into Orthodoxy, decided to forbid the writing of creeds henceforth other than that of the First and that of the Second Ecumenical Council together (for these two creeds are regarded as one) and their delivery to the public. But it did not forbid the writing of a different creed in general, or, more explicitly speaking, of one that is avowedly heretical. For this had always been forbidden even before the Third Ecumenical Council was held, not only by councils and synods and bishops, but also by every Orthodox Christian. Nor did it forbid heretics a different creed than the (Symbol of) faith of the Bishops who convened in Nicaea, even though this alone is Orthodox. For whatever the law says, the Council necessarily accedes to it. But as for the Orthodox Christians, and not this one or that one, but all of them in general, councils as well as everyone else in general, “to no one,” it says, “is this permissible,” etc. The phrase “no one,” which is one word as written in Greek, is a general and universal adjunct (or amplifier). On this point see also the explanation of the Creed of this Council which divine Cyril makes in his letter to Acacius. But, with an eye to brevity, the Council did not explicitly say: “to no one let it be permissible to compose any other exposition of faith.” Yet, that which in its Canon it neglected to say totidem verbis, this its exarch, which is the same as saying the Council itself, divine Cyril, I mean, in his letter to the Bishop of Melitine elucidates precisely, by saying: “The holy and Ecumenical Council assembled in the city of Ephesus provided that it was necessary to decree that the Church of God must not approve the admission of any exposition of faith other and different than the one really and actually adopted by the thrice-blissful Fathers speaking on behalf of the Holy Spirit.” This passage means that not only must no one compose any other Orthodox Creed than the one of the Nicene Council, but that it is not even at all permissible to offer the same Orthodox Creed itself differently worded or paraphrased, a point which was gallantly admitted and pointed out by divine Marcus of Ephesus and by Bessarion of Nicaea at the Council held in Florence. But what am I saying, “differently worded?” Why, it is not permissible for anyone to change, from the text of the holy Creed, not merely a single word, but even a single syllable. And that this is true, we have the testimony again of that very same divine Cyril himself as a witness. But when I say the name Cyril, I am saying, in effect, the whole Ecumenical Third Council. For he was its Exarch, but rather I should say that it was the Council itself that spoke through the mouth of Cyril. For the latter in writing to John of Antiocheia says verbatim: “We will under no conditions and by no means tolerate the making of the least change by anyone in faith defined, or, in other words, the Symbol of Faith of our holy Fathers who convened in Nicaea, composed at various times. In fact, we will not allow ourselves or others to change a word in the text of it, or even to transgress a single syllable of it.” But, if nobody is permitted to change a single syllable, much less is anyone permitted to add anything to it or to take anything away from it. That is why Pope Agatho at the time of the Sixth Ec. C. in writing to the Emperors of Rome said: “One thing and a fine thing too we prayerfully wish and believe to have a right to expect, and that is that nothing shall be determined of all that has been canonically defined, nor any change made therein, nor anything added thereto, but, on the contrary, that these same (dogmas) shall be preserved intact both in word and in thought.” The Seventh Ecumenical Council says: “We preserve intact the decrees of the Fathers. We anathematize those who add (anything to) or remove (anything) from the Church.” And can it be said that they said one thing and did another in point of reality? No; on the contrary, even in point of reality they actually confirmed their own words by what they did, and none of the Ecumenical Councils following the Third added anything to or removed anything from the common Creed, notwithstanding that they were hard pressed to do so. For the Third Council, although urgently pressed to add these most necessary words, as much more for complete extinction of the Nestorian heresy as for confirmation of the Orthodox belief, the union, I mean, with respect to substance, and the view concerning the Theotokos, yet, in spite of all this temptation, it did not dare to modify the sacred Creed at all, but, instead, contented itself with making a definition of its own and extraneously inserted into it these words and whatever others were needed to explain them. The Fourth Council, again, was faced with the need of adding to the common Creed the doctrine concerning the two natures of the Logos incarnate, on account of the heresy of the Monophysites, yet it did not do this. Likewise even the Fifth Council felt the need of adding something to affirm the everlasting duration of punishment in hell. And the Sixth was urged to add a declaration concerning the two activities (i.e., energies). And the Seventh was likewise hard pressed to add to the Creed an elucidation or approbation of the doctrine of the adoration of the holy icons (i.e., pictures of the saints, etc.), on account of the heretics who entertained contrary beliefs. Yet the Fathers of that Council did not dare to do this, but, instead, they preserved the common Creed free from every innovation. This, too, in spite of the fact these additional features were not really additions of independent thoughts to the Creed as respecting the faith, but were merely developments or expansions of what was already concisely or implicitly embodied in the Creed, and constituted additions of words only. Why, then, did they balk at such suggestions? Assuredly it was because the Councils were so reverently disposed towards the venerability of the Nicene Creed, and towards the definition of the Third Ec. C. which placed under anathema any addition to the Creed whether with respect to points of faith or with respect to words, that is to say. That very same venerability of the Nicene Creed, however, and this same definition of the Third Ec. C. ought, in emulation of the sacred Councils, to have been respected likewise by the Church of the Westerners, which ought not to have added thereto that illegal addition of the expression Filioque (meaning “and out of the Son”), which was enough to provoke a schism, or split of the Westerners and the Easterners and to give rise to a fierce war between them, and to lead to the terrible woes, deserving tears but needlessly ensuing, which are recorded in histories and other books. But the Westerners argue captiously that just as the Second Ec. C. did not sin by adding to the Creed of the First, so must it be admitted that neither did the Church of the Westerners sin by permitting this addition. But it must be said that the likeness or similarity they allege to exist here is altogether imaginery. For the Second Ec. C., possessing the same official status as the First, added, as a matter of fact for the real and main reason that it had not been prohibited or debarred by any previous Council for anyone to add anything to the Creed (though the Council held in Sardica before the Second Ec. C. forbade anyone to propound any faith other than that of the Nicene Council, yet, inasmuch as this Council was a particular and regional council, and in view of the fact that it had spoken with reference to the Arians propounding another faith as against the doctrine of coessentiality, and not with reference to any Orthodox Ecumenical Council, it had no claim to become a teacher of the Second Ecumenical Council, which stood as the representative of the whole Church. For a regional council and a particular one always gives way to an ecumenical council, but not vice versa). A second reason is that those additions which the Second Ec. C. made to the work of the First were additions merely of words, and did not involve the matter of faith, being rather expansions of thoughts already concisely or implicitly included in the Creed. And what is the evidence for this? The Councils, which accepted the Creed of the First and that of the Second as one single Creed, called only the Nicene Creed; but not so with the words of the Second Council, held in Constantinople, because they were only a development of what was concisely and implicitly contained in the Creed of the First Ec. C.; for the Third Council in the present Canon expressly decreed that no one should be allowed to compose any different faith (or Creed) than that defined by the holy Fathers assembled in the city of Nicaea. And divine Cyril says the same thing in his letter to the Bishop of Antioch. Besides, even the Bishop of Constantinople John, and of Rome Virgilius in writing to Eutychius of Constantinople say but this one thing. And in the fifth convention held in Florence it is written as follows: “These expositions of the faith, or creeds, of the First and Second Councils, or rather the Creed.” That the Fathers of the Second Council expanded rather than added to the Creed of the First is attested by the express statements of many. For the Sixth Ecrmenical C. in its edict states: “The 150 Fathers with the inspiration of the All-holy Spirit construed the Creed called great and venerable, on the subject of the Holy Spirit, since they affirmed It to be a God in what they developed and expanded so as to make the sense stand out more boldly.” And in Justinian’s Novel addressed to Epiphanius of Constantinople Justinian himself says: “on account of the Scriptural testimonies the same lesson (that is to say, the Nicene Creed) was emphasized by the 150 holy Fathers aforesaid when they explained it more clearly.” In addition, St. Gregory the Theologian in his letter to Cledonius says: “We have never at any time preferred anything to the Nicene faith, but, on the contrary, we ourselves are of that faith, with the help of God, and we shall continue to be of that same faith, adding merely the article deficiently expressed therein concerning the Holy Spirit.” Yet, in spite of the fact that these additions of the Second Ec. C. are properly speaking but developments, as has been proved, it would be a gross violation of law for that Council to dare to add such developments if any previous council anticipating this sort of thing had prohibited any addition whatsoever in the Creed with an anathema, as did the Third Ecum. C. Hence by consequence the Westerners’ addition in the Creed is a gross violation of law and is under an anathema, not only because it is an addition that is of a nature contrary to the faith, in that it represents the Son as a caused cause, and introduces two origins into the Godhead, and a multitude of other improprieties; but also because, though supposedly a development, as they would have it appear to be, and merely an addition of words, yet it ought not on any account to have been added to the Creed, owing to the definitions of the Third Council as well as those of succeeding Ecumenical Councils, which command that the common Creed be preserved intact and altogether unchanged, and which place any addition thereinto under anathema. That is why sacred Theophylactus of Bulgaria said in writing a letter to Nicholas Diaconus: “Any innovation in the Symbol of Faith, then, is that greatest mistake, and the very one alluded to by Solomon is saying ‘making them meet under the roof of Hades.’ ” And again: “And to pardon the Westerners, therefore, would be unpardonable if anything pertaining to the dogma be changed by them to the prejudice of the faith of the Fathers, such as that which has been added in the Creed concerning the Holy Spirit, where the danger is exceedingly grave, this being left unconnected.” But, indeed, even Peter of Antioch, too, called the addition the worst of all evils. It was on account of that addition, moreover, which is wrongly chanted along with the Creed in the Church of the Romans, and has to be corrected, that Sergius of Constantinople omitted Pope Sergius IV from the commemoration, and thereupon arose the great chasm between us and the Westerners. But why should I be telling what our own churchmen say? Even John himself the Pope of Rome, who was also present by his legates Pearus, Paul and Eugenius at the Council held during the reign of Emperor Macedon, in the year 879, and accepted that Council’s definition, which runs as follows: “If anyone in defiance of this sacred Creed dare to set forth any other, or to add, or to subtract, or to name a term, or to make an addition, or a subtraction, in this Creed which has been handed down to us, he is condemnable and an alien to every Christian confession. For to subtract, or to add, is to render the confession of ours imperfect which has been looking from above down upon the Holy Trinity to this very day.” Even the Pope himself, I say, having accepted this definition, condemned the addition in the Creed, by saying: “We again are trying to make it plain to Your Reverence, in order that you have complete confidence in us as concerning this article, which was the cause of the scandals that have arisen between the Churches of God, that not only do we not assert this belief that the Spirit proceeds out of the Son, but we even deem those who first did so, emboldened by their madness, transgressors of the divine words, and garblers of the theology of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Fathers, who, after convening in a council, imparted the holy Creed; and we put them in the same class as we do Judas.” But, then, that is not all. Even before this Pope John the Third Council held in Toledo during the reign of King Richard of Spain, A.D. 589, commanded the holy Creed to read without the addition in Spain and France, in precisely the same manner as Emperor Justinian I ordered it to be read before the Lord’s prayer, beginning “Our Father who art in heaven,” in all the churches of the East in the year 545. And Pope Leo III of Rome, in the beginning of the ninth century, when a Council was held in Aquisgrana, and therein John Monachus Hierosolymite was valiantly fighting against the addition in the Creed, upon being asked by Charles the Great what he thought about this matter, not only denounced the addition, but even went so far as to engrave the entire holy Creed without it upon two silver plaques, on the one in Greek, and on the other in Latin, which plaques he deposited in the tombs of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and placed under an anathema those who might dare to add anything to, or to subtract anything from its text, according to Cardinal (Caesar) Baronius and the Jesuit Petrovius. See also the Council held in Florence from its third to its seventeenth session, at which most courageously and gallantly our Greek representatives repudiated and stigmatized this execrable addition, while the Latins stood agasp and speechless.

                We have said all this with reference to the common Symbol of Faith called the Nicene Creed. But for anyone to set forth his own personal belief in a private confession (and let it be supposed to be in the form of a creed of his own), that is not prohibited, since from the beginning and down to this day the Fathers of the Church have been making confessions of what they personally believed, and especially those to Acacius the Bishop of Melitine goes to great lengths in offering apologies in defense of certain bishops of Phoenicia, who had been blamed for making an exposition of their own creed. But this is not all. Even divine Marcus of Ephesus in Florence appears to allow this. Nevertheless, such creeds, by some called personal creeds, converted from a heresy and under suspicion. That is why divine Cyril in his letter must have the following six characteristics: 1) They must not diverge from the common confession. 2) They must not conflict with the common Creed. 3) No one must be baptized in them. 4) They must not be offered to converts from heresies. 5) They must not be presented as the common faith in private lessons. And 6) one must not add anything to or subtract anything from the common Creed and represent it as his own by incorporating it in a creed of his own. (Dositheus, in the Dodecabiblus; and others.)