Today we remember two great Patriarchs of Alexandria, St Athanasius, the champion of the Homoousios, and St Cyril, the champion of the Theotokos. St Athanasius, born A.D. 275 to pious parents, was from his youth a disciple of the great ascetic St Anthony. When he was still just a deacon, he became embroiled in controversy with Arius, an older man, eminent priest and much-admired preacher, over Arius’s teaching that the Logos was Son of God only in a metaphorical sense. According to Arius, although not a creature in the same sense as the rest of creation, he nevertheless was a creature, created by God before all time, and in turn the creator of this world. St Athanasius insisted that the Logos was ‘homoousios,’ of the same essence as God the Father and coeternal with him, True God of True God. St Athanasius as deacon accompanied his Patriarch, St Alexander, to the Council of Nicæa in 325 and there was a leader of those who defended the true Divinity of the Son. When St Alexander died, the people of Alexandria chose St Athanasius as their Patriarch. Despite repeated exiles at the hands of Arian emperors, he spent the rest of his life until his rebirth into eternal life on 2 May 373 in the defence of the Nicene faith. St Cyril of Alexandria lived almost a century after St Athanasius. He became bishop of Alexandria in A.D. 412 in succession to his uncle Theophilus, and was reborn into eternal life in 444. When Nestorius became bishop of Constantinople c. 428, St Cyril rebutted his heretical teachings that Jesus was not two natures but rather two persons, and that the Virgin Mary was the mother of the human person only, so that ‘Mother of God’ was merely a figurative description. St Cyril, in his Paschal Encyclical of 429, declared that the title by which the faithful had always known the Virgin Mary, ‘Theotokos,’ ‘She who bore God,’ was a literal, not figurative, description. The Emperor Theodosius II summoned the Council of Ephesus, which met in June and July 431 at the Church of St Mary in Ephesus, condemned Nestorius and proclaimed ‘Theotokos’ as the literal title of the Virgin. This led to the Nestorian schism, affecting especially the church in Persia. Hence, today we remember the vindication of the one divine essence in Christ, the Homoousios, and of the two natures, human and divine, in the Incarnation by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, truly the Mother of God.
Today is the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the 7th Œcumenical Council. The feast is kept each year on the Sunday falling on 11 October or next after. The Council, which was convoked by the Empress Irene and presided over by St Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, met at Nicæa in Bithynia, 24 September–13 October 787. It anathematised the impious and ignorant men who refused to honour the holy icons and accused the Church of idolatry for requiring their veneration, who had persecuted the faithful, especially the pious monks, for over seventy years under the iconoclast emperors Leo the Isaurian and Constantine V Copronymus. At the conclusion of the Council, the Holy Fathers declared, ‘Just as representations of the holy and life-giving Cross, so should the venerable holy images, as well the image of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, as the images of our immaculate sovereign Lady the Mother of God, of the holy Angels and of all the Saints, whether represented in paint, mosaic or any other appropriate material, be placed in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and boards and in the streets … But as incense and candles are offered in honour of the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, of the holy Gospels and of the other sacred things [whose veneration the iconoclasts had permitted], so we do the same in honour of the holy icons, according to the pious custom of the elders. For the ‘honour paid to the image goes up to its prototype’ [quoting St Basil, On the Holy Spirit, cap. 18, para. 45] and whoever venerates an icon thereby venerates the hypostasis who is represented by it. By so doing, we maintain the teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church which has proclaimed the Gospel from one end of the world to the other.’ The Synaxarion says, ‘The second Council of Nicæa is the seventh and last Ecumenical Council recognized by the Orthodox Church. This does not mean that there may not be ecumenical Councils in the future, although, in holding the seventh place, the Council of Nicæa has taken upon itself the symbol of perfection and completion represented by this number in holy Scripture [as in the seven days of Creation]. It closes the era of the great dogmatic disputes which enabled the Church to describe, in definitions excluding ambiguity, the bounds of the holy Orthodox faith. From that time, every heresy that appears can be related to one or other of the errors that the Church, assembled in universal Councils, has anathematized from the first until the second Council of Nicæa.’ (Both quotations above from Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion, Ormylia, Chalkidike: Convent of the Annunciation, 1998, I, 368–369.) The Gospel reading for the Feast is, appropriately, Jesus’s parable of the Sower in Luke 8: 5–15: ‘A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold … ‘Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.’
In February A.D. 313, the emperors Constantine and Licinius, both claiming to be Augustus in the West, while Maximinus Daia was Augustus in the East, met in Milan to forge an alliance, reinforcing it by the marriage of Constantine’s sister Constantia to Licinius. In the course of this meeting they agreed to issue a joint decree ending the great persecution of Galerius that had begun in 303, restoring the property seized from Christians and guaranteeing freedom of worship to everyone in the empire. In the eastern part of the empire, meanwhile, Maximinus Daia continued the persecution. The meeting was cut short after the edict was issued by news that Maximinus Daia had invaded the Balkans. Licinius went to meet him and defeated him at the Battle of Tzirallum near Heraclea in what is now Bulgaria. Licinius then became Augustus in the East, leaving Constantine with undisputed title to the West. The Edict of Milan, March, A.D. 313When I, Constantine Augustus, as well as I, Licinius Augustus, fortunately met near Milan and were considering everything that pertained to the public welfare and security, we thought, among other things which we saw would be for the good of many, those regulations pertaining to the reverence of the Divinity ought certainly to be made first, so that we might grant to the Christians and others full authority to observe that religion which each preferred; whence any Divinity whatsoever in the seat of the heavens may be propitious and kindly disposed to us and all who are placed under our rule. And thus by this wholesome counsel and most upright provision we thought to arrange that no one whatsoever should be denied the opportunity to give his heart to the observance of the Christian religion, of that religion which he should think best for himself, so that the Supreme Deity (to whose worship we freely yield our hearts) may show in all things His usual favour and benevolence. Therefore, your Worship should know that it has pleased us to remove all conditions whatsoever, which were in the rescripts formerly given to you officially, concerning the Christians and now any one of these who wishes to observe the Christian religion may do so freely and openly, without molestation. We thought it fit to commend these things most fully to your care that you may know that we have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship. When you see that this has been granted to them by us, your Worship will know that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made we that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion. Theodosius the Great (347–395; recognised as a saint by the Orthodox) was born in Spain, the son of an army officer of high rank. He himself rose to high rank in the Roman army. Up to the year 378, Gratian was Augustus in the West, with his minor brother Valentinian II as junior emperor. Their uncle Valens was Augustus in the East. On 9 August 378, Valens was killed in battle against the Goths at Adrianople and Gratian thus became emperor of the whole empire. He appointed Thedosius commander of the army in Illyria. Since Valens had no successor, this made Theodosius de facto ruler in the East, and Gratian raised him formally to the imperial dignity as Augustus on 19 January 379. The West was devoted to Nicene orthodoxy while the Arian heresy, promoted by Valens, was rife in the East. To establish orthodoxy throughout the empire and to suppress the Arian heresy, Gratian and Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica on 27 February 380: It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus [Bishop of Rome] and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorise the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since in our judgement they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority that in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict. The edict was directed, not against non-Christians, but against Arian Christians. Theodosius summoned a council to meet at Constantinople in May 381, which was to be the 2nd Œcumenical Council. It reaffirmed the Nicene Creed and clarified the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Arian bishops throughout the East were replaced by orthodox bishops and Arians were expelled from Constantinople. It is often said that the Edict of Thessalonica made Christianity the ‘official religion’ of the Roman Empire but this is misleading. It reflects a modern understanding of the world that had no meaning for people at the time. It is important to remember that, in all traditional societies, religion and government were inextricably intertwined—indeed, it is fair to say that government was a religious function. By the end of the fourth century the religion intertwined with the Empire was Christianity. This situation had developed over the course of a century. It was never ‘officially’ declared and did not need to be—it was simply an obvious fact. Paganism was suppressed because it was the religion that had been traditionally intertwined with Roman government and it was necessary, now that it had become moribund, to disentangle it. As one example, the Olympic Games, which had always been a state function, were last celebrated in 393. Other faiths were not affected. A decree of 29 September 393 in the Codex Theodosianus declared, ‘The Jewish sect is protected by law. No synagogues shall be despoiled, and no regulation may be passed to ban Judaism, even in the name of Christianity.’
Today is the feast of St Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium. He was born around A.D. 340 in Cæsarea (modern Kayseri, Turkey) in the province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. He studied rhetoric at Antioch under Libanius, the famous pagan sophist who was also the teacher of St John Chrysostom, and became a barrister in Constantinople. He abandoned the practice of law in the capital, however, and returned to Cappadocia to care for his aged father. His aunt (his father’s sister) was St Nonna, the mother of St Gregory the Theologian. Back in Cappadocia, he came to know the friends of his theologian cousin: St Basil the Great and St Basil’s younger brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, who, together with his cousin, would be known to future generations as the Three Cappadocians, the inspired theologians who gave definitive shape to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He became the disciple of St Basil, who dedicated his treatise, ‘On the Holy Spirit,’ to him. When in 373 St Basil was asked by the citizens of Iconium (modern Konya, Turkey) in Lycaonia, the province just to the west of Cappadocia, to find them a bishop, he proposed Amphilochius, who accepted with humility. In his pastoral office, he relied on the advice of St Basil until the latter’s death in 379. The Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had become Augustus in the East in 379, summoned a council to meet in Constantinople in 381 to restore orthodoxy in the Church against the heresies of Eunomius, bishop of Cyzicus, and Macedonius, who had been Patriarch of Constantinople several decades earlier and who had died in 364. This came to be known as the 2nd Œcumenical Council. Eunomius led the extreme Arian party, holding that the Son was unlike (anomœos) the Father in every way. Macedonius was a semi-Arian whose followers had formed a sect, referred to as the Pneumatomachi, which denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In company with SS. Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa, St Amphilochius attended the council. Together with the other God-bearing fathers present, they reaffirmed the Nicene declaration that the Son is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father. They also affirmed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, joining in the declaration of it as consubstantial with the Father and the Son. At the council, St Amphilochius met St Jerome, who commented, ‘[he] recently read to me a book [St Basil’s?] On the Holy Spirit, arguing that He is God, that He is to be worshipped, and that He is omnipotent.’ (De viris illustribus, cap. 133) He fell asleep in the Lord around the end of the 4th century in his episcopal see.
St Paul the Confessor was born in Thessalonica c. A.D. 300. He was ordained deacon and priest by St Alexander, Archbishop of Constantinople, and was consecrated his successor as archbishop of the city in 340. Like St Alexander, he was a defender of the creed proclaimed by the 1st Œcumenical Council and earned the title of confessor by suffering for his faith at the hands of the authorities. The Emperor Constantius (second son of St Constantine the Great, who reigned 337–361, first as Augustus in the East, then as sole ruler) was a supporter of Arianism and deposed Paul from his see immediately. St Paul took refuge in Rome, where St Athanasius of Alexandria was also in exile. With the support of the pope, Julius I, and the Augustus of the West, Constans, St Constantine the Great’s third son, both saints were restored to their archdioceses, although not for long. With the death in 350 of Constans, who had been a defender of Nicene orthodoxy, Constantius once again unleashed his wrath on St Paul, banishing him to Lesser Armenia. There at some time between 351 and 357 he was killed by an Arian mob as he celebrated the Liturgy, thus adding the title Martyr to that of Confessor.
Joannicus was born in Bithynia in A.D. 754 and died on this day in 846. He was a soldier until he was forty years old but then left the army and devoted his life to asceticism and penitence, at first as a hermit and later as abbot, healer and spiritual guide. He was the founder of many monasteries and became one of the most influential monastics of the 9th century, earning the epithet ‘the Great.’ He was also a fervent defender of the veneration of icons in the midst of the iconoclast persecution of the monks that followed the 7th Œcumenical Council. The Emperor Theophilus, who reigned from 829 to 842, the most fanatical of the iconoclast emperors, beginning to doubt his heresy in the last year of his life, asked St Joannicus’s counsel. The saint replied, ‘Whoever refuses due honour to the images of Christ, of the Mother of God and of the Saints will not be received into the kingdom of heaven, even if he has lived an otherwise blameless life. As those who treat images of the Emperor with disrespect are severely punished, so those who dishonour the image of Christ will be cast into everlasting fire.’ With the restoration of the veneration of icons by the Empress Theodora in 843, St Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople, spent the next years restoring order in the Church, disciplining those of the clergy who had fallen into the iconoclast heresy but showing leniency to those ready to repent. This policy of moderation was unacceptable to some of the more rigid iconophiles, including the monks of the Studium Monastery in Constantinople. St Joannicus, who was a friend of St Methodius’s, therefore came to Constantinople and lent his great influence to the policy of lenience.
Today is the 1700th anniversary of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, which took place on Tuesday, 28 October 312. On the eve of the battle, the Emperor Constantine had a vision of the symbol of Christ, and a voice said, ‘In this sign you will conquer.’ He adopted the sign, the Chi-Rho, the intertwined Greek letters signifying ‘Christ,’ as his battle ensign and conquered. This battle, so significant for Constantine and for Christianity, was a part of the complex and confusing history of the Tetrarchy, the system of Roman government at the time. There were four emperors, two Augusti and two Caesars, an Augustus and Caesar acting in the western half of the empire, with its capital at Milan, and an Augustus and Caesar acting in the eastern half of the empire, with its capital at Nicomedia in Bythinia, although all were responsible for the empire as a whole. The Caesars were a sort of junior emperor. The main job of an emperor at the time was to defend the frontiers of the empire against barbarian incursions—and there was more than enough work for four of them. At the beginning of A.D. 305, the Augustus of the West was Maximian and of the East, Diocletian (who had unleashed the great persecution of the Church in 303, still continuing). The Caesar of the West was Constantius, the father of Constantine. The Caesar of the East was Galerius. On 1 May, Maximian and Diocletian retired and Constantius and Galerius were promoted to Augusti. Constantine was disappointed in his hope of becoming Caesar. Instead, Diocletian and Maximian made Severus and Maximinus Daia Caesars of the West and East respectively. Scarcely a year later, on 25 July 306, Constantius died. He was in Britain at the time. On the following day, the army acclaimed Constantine as imperator at York. Severus was promoted to Augustus and Constantine agreed to be Caesar. In 307, the army in Italy acclaimed Maxentius, the son of Maximian, as imperator. Severus was killed and Maxentius assumed the mantle of Augustus but was regarded as a usurper by the other emperors. Constantine now claimed to be Augustus but Galerius attempted to impose his friend Licinius as Augustus of the West. He offered the caesarship to Constantine but Constantine refused it. Constantine and Licinius maintained an uneasy truce, Constantine ruling in Gaul, on the Rhine and in Britain and Licinius ruling on the Danube and in the Balkans. The usurper Maxentius controlled Italy, Spain and North Africa from Rome. In 310, Galerius died and Maximinus Daia succeeded him as August in the East. There would be no more Caesars—the tetrarchy was reduced to a dyarchy. In 312, Maximinus Daia concluded an alliance with Maxentius in an effort to extend his rule to the West. Constantine responded by crossing the Alps and invading Italy in the spring with an army scarcely a quarter the size of Maxentius’s. A successful campaign brought him to Rome by October, and to the battle fought to gain control of the bridge leading across the Tiber about a mile and half north of the city’s Flaminian Gate. Photograph of the Milvian Bridge, taken 29 October 2005 by Anthony Majanlahti, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence. From Wikimedia Commons. ‘Giving thanks to God for this victory that inaugurated a new era of human history, Constantine made a triumphal entry into Rome, which greeted him as its liberator, saviour and benefactor. He immediately had the Sign of the Cross placed high on the principal buildings in the city, and a statue of the Emperor was erected, with him holding the Cross in his hand as a sign of victory and an emblem of the authority he had received from Christ. From that time, Constantine began to receive instruction in the Christian faith and applied himself assiduously to the reading of the Holy Books.’ (Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion (Ormylia, 1998), V, p. 229.) It was the first day of Christendom.
The Feast of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Œcumenical Council is commemorated on the Sunday falling on or after 11 October. The council, which condemned the heresy of iconoclasm, was convoked by the Empress Irene and presided over by St Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople. It met at Nicæa in Bithynia from 24 September to 13 October 787. As it was the second œcumenical council to meet there, it is sometimes called ‘II Nicæa.’ The Emperor Leo III the Isaurian had forbidden the veneration of icons in A.D. 730 and was also opposed to monasticism. His son, the Emperor Constantine V Copronymus, summoned a council in Constantinople in 754 under the presidency of Patriarch Constantine of Constantinople that declared images of Christ to be blasphemous, as his divinity could not be represented, and all images, including those of the Mother of God and the saints, to be pagan and idolatrous. It anathematised the defenders of icons, Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople from 715 until deposed by Leo in 730, John Damascene (c. 675–c. 750) and a monk, George of Cyprus. Following this synod, the persecution of iconophiles and monks redoubled. The Seventh Œcumenical Council confirmed the orthodox teachings of Patriarch Germanus and Saint John Damascene—to claim that the divinity of Christ cannot be iconised is to deny the two Natures in the one Person of the Incarnate Word—and anathematised Anastasius, Constantine and Nicetas, the Patriarchs of Constantinople who had supported iconoclasm. From the Decree of the Council: ‘… we keep unchanged all the ecclesiastical traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or verbally, one of which is the making of pictorial representations, agreeable to the history of the preaching of the Gospel, a tradition useful in many respects, but especially in this, that so the incarnation of the Word of God is shewn forth as real and not merely phantastic … ‘We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church … define with all certitude and accuracy that, just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross [the only sacred image allowed by the iconoclasts], so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honourable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. ‘For, by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence, not indeed that true worship of faith which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented.’ (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, XIV, p. 550.) Unfortunately, the council did not succeed immediately in putting an end to the iconoclast heresy. The Emperor Leo V the Armenian resumed the persecution of the iconophiles in A.D. 814 and it was not until the Empress Theodora restored the veneration of icons on the first Sunday of Lent in 843, ever after the Feast of Orthodoxy, that the heresy was finally expelled from the Church. ‘The second Council of Nicæa is the seventh and last Ecumenical Council recognized by the Orthodox Church … [I]n holding the seventh place, the Council of Nicæa has taken to itself the symbol of perfection and completeness represented by this number in holy Scripture … It closes the era of the great dogmatic disputes which enabled the Church to describe, in definitions excluding all ambiguity, the bounds of the holy Orthodox Faith. From that time, every heresy that appears can be related to one or another of the errors that the Church, assembled in universal Councils, has anathematized from the first until the second Council of Nicæa.’ (Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion (Ormylia, 1998), I, p. 369.) Seventeenth-century icon of the Seventh Œcumenical Council. The holy fathers are assembled in the nave of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Nicæa, with the Gospel book in their midst. The iconostasis behind them bears the customary icons of Christ and the Mother of God to either side of the Royal Doors and above them the Deesis, the icon of the Mother of God and St John the Forerunner praying to Christ. Above the Deesis in turn is the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove. In the town behind the church are laypeople and monastics with icons on their walls. (Icon of the Novodevichy Convent, Moscow. Photograph from Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.) Today, the Sunday closest to 16 July, is the Feast of the Fathers of the First Six Œcumenical Councils. ‘Most glorious art Thou, O Christ our God, since Thou hast established our Holy Fathers as luminaries upon the earth and through them hath instructed us all in the true faith. O Most merciful One, glory be to Thee.’ – Troparion of the Fathers in Tone VIII. ‘The preaching of the Apostles and the dogmas of the Fathers have confirmed the one faith in the Church. In the garment of truth woven by theology from on high, she rightly divides and glorifies the great mystery of piety.’ – Kontakion of the Fathers in Tone VIII. ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the God of our Fathers, and praised and glorified is Thy name unto the ages of ages.’ – Prokeimenon of the Fathers in Tone IV Following the 6th Œcumenical Council, held in Constantinople in A.D. 680–81, the need was first felt to bring together the decrees of all the councils held up to that time. A council was duly convened in 692 by the Emperor Justinian II, and issued 102 canons, summarising the teaching of the Church to that point. The council was held in the same place as the 6th council, in the great domed hall—the Trullo—of the imperial palace, and so came to be called the Council in Trullo. It was not an oecumenical council, although the Eastern church has viewed it as a continuation of the 6th council. A number of the canons were intended to strengthen the Church’s discipline, for example, concerning whether or not clergy could be married. Unfortunately, by highlighting some of the differences in custom between the Eastern and Western churches, this contributed to the already deepening divide between East and West. Evidently today’s feast was established before the 7th Œcumenical Council was held in 787. It seems reasonable to suppose that the dogmatic labours of the Council in Trullo were its inspiration. The first canon of the Council in Trullo recapitulated the teachings of the first six councils: ‘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 … ‘[The First Œcumenical Council] … revealed and declared to us the consubstantiality of the Three Persons comprehended in the Divine Nature … ‘[The 2nd Œcumenical Council] … accepting their decisions with regard to the Holy Ghost in assertion of his godhead … ‘[The 3rd Œcumenical Council] … 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 [Theotokos] … ‘[The 4th Œcumenical Council taught] … that the one Christ, the son of God, is of two natures, and must be glorified in these two natures … [without] division … [or] confusion … ‘[The 5th Œcumenical Council] … 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 [transmigration] of certain bodies and souls … [and] what things were written by Theodoret against the right faith and against the Twelve Chapters of blessed Cyril … ‘[The 6th Œcumenical 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 … ‘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 … For our decrees add nothing to the things previously defined, nor do they take anything away, nor have we any such power.’ Canon I of the Council in Trullo, A.D. 692. [Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series.] Canon CII, the last of the council’s canons, addresses those who will apply them. John McGuckin has commented: ‘The text is an interesting reflection on the “philosophy” of canon law, subordinating it in its scope to the pastoral care and development of the faithful. The legislator is called upon to be a physician [not a judge], knowing when to administer a severe remedy and when to relax a strict regimen, because of the individual needs of each … The great list of regulations end, therefore, in the spirit in which they were begun, with the primacy of pastoral care to the fore and with a profound sense of legislative discretion afforded to the bishops as canonical adjudicators.’ [John A. McGuckin, The Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of a New Civilization, Yonkers, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012, pp. 231–32.]
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