Second Council of Constantinople — Anathemas — Chapter 1: Anathemas I–VII

Chapter 1: Anathemas I–VII

Section 1. I. If anyone will not confess that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have one nature or substance, that they have one power and authority, that there is a consubstantial Trinity, one Deity to be adored in three subsistences or persons: let him be anathema. For there is one God and Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and one Holy Spirit, in whom are all things.

Section 2. II. If anyone will not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, that which is before all ages from the Father, outside time and without a body, and secondly that nativity of these latter days when the Word of God came down from the heavens and was made flesh of holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and ever-virgin, and was born from her: let him be anathema.

Section 3. III. If anyone says that the wonder-working Word of God is one person and the Christ that suffered another, or says that God the Word was with the woman-born Christ, or was in him as one person in another, but that he was not one and the same our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, incarnate and made man, and that his miracles and the sufferings which of his own will he underwent in the flesh were not of the same person: let him be anathema.

Section 4. IV. If anyone says that the union of the Word of God to man was only according to grace or energy, or dignity, or equality of honour, or authority, or relation, or effect, or power, or according to good pleasure, as if God the Word was pleased with man, or approved of him, as the madman Theodore says; or that the union exists according to likeness of name, by which the Nestorians call the Word of God Jesus and Christ, designating the man separately as Christ and as Son, speaking thus clearly of two persons, and only by reason of honour, dignity, and adoration using the pretence of one person and one Christ: let him be anathema.

Section 5. V. If anyone says that the holy, glorious, and ever-virgin Mary is called God-bearer by misuse of language and not truly, or by analogy, as though a mere man was born and not the Word of God made flesh, the birth of a man being referred, as they say, to God the Word as he was with the man who was being born; and if anyone shall slander the Holy Synod of Chalcedon, as though it called the Virgin the God-bearer according to the impious sense of Theodore; or if anyone shall call her man-bearer or Christ-bearer, as if Christ were not God: let him be anathema.

Section 6. VI. If anyone says that the holy, glorious, and ever-virgin Mary is the mother of God in name only and not in truth, or by analogy only, meaning that merely a man was born and not God the Word incarnate, and asserting that the man was referred to the Word because the Word was with him when born — and if anyone slanders the holy Council of Chalcedon as calling the Virgin Mother of God in the impious sense of Theodore — or if anyone calls her mother of a man or mother of Christ, meaning that Christ is not God: let him be anathema.

Section 7. VII. If anyone using the expression 'in two natures' does not confess that our one Lord Jesus Christ is made known in the divinity and in the humanity, so as to indicate by that expression a difference of the natures of which the ineffable union is unconfusedly made, a union in which neither the nature of the Word was changed into the nature of the flesh, nor that of the flesh into that of the Word, for each remained that it was by nature, the union being hypostatic; but shall take the expression with regard to the mystery of Christ in a sense so as to divide the parties: let him be anathema.