[312] Hefele. Hist. Councils, Vol. IV., p. 230, note.
[313] Hefele. Hist. Councils, Vol. IV., p. 223.
[314] Speech of Ascidas in the V. Session.
[315] Harnack. Hist. of Dogma, Vol. IV., n. 249 (Eng. Trans.).
[316] Ibid., p. 245, note 2.
[317] Ibid., p. 349.
The Anathemas Against Origen.
I.
If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.
II.
If anyone shall say that the creation (teu paragogen) of all reasonable things includes only intelligences (noas) without bodies and altogether immaterial, having neither number nor name, so that there is unity between them all by identity of substance, force and energy, and by their union with and knowledge of God the Word; but that no longer desiring the sight of God, they gave themselves over to worse things, each one following his own inclinations, and that they have taken bodies more or less subtile, and have received names, for among the heavenly Powers there is a difference of names as there is also a difference of bodies; and thence some became and are called Cherubims, others Seraphims, and Principalities, and Powers, and Dominations, and Thrones, and Angels, and as many other heavenly orders as there may be: let him be anathema.
III.
If anyone shall say that the sun, the moon and the stars are also reasonable beings, and that they have only become what they are because they turned towards evil: let him be anathema.
IV.
If anyone shall say that the reasonable creatures in whom the divine love had grown cold have been hidden in gross bodies such as ours, and have been called men, while those who have attained the lowest degree of wickedness have shared cold and obscure bodies and are become and called demons and evil spirits: let him be anathema,.
V.
If anyone shall say that a psychic (psuchiken) condition has come from an angelic or archangelic state, and moreover that a demoniac and a human condition has come from a psychic condition, and that from a human state they may become again angels and demons, and that each order of heavenly virtues is either all from those below or from those above, or from those above and below: let him be anathema.
VI.
If anyone shall say that there is a twofold race of demons, of which the one includes the souls of men and the other the superior spirits who fell to this, and that of all the number of reasonable beings there is but one which has remained unshaken in the love and contemplation of God, and that that spirit is become Christ and the king of all reasonable beings, and that he has created [318] all the bodies which exist in heaven, on earth, and between heaven and earth; and that the world which has in itself elements more ancient than itself, and which exists by themselves, viz.: dryness, damp, heat and cold, and the image (idean) to which it was formed, was so formed, and that the most holy and consubstantial Trinity did not create the world, but that it was created by the working intelligence (Nous demirurgos) which is more ancient than the world, and which communicates to it its being: let him be anathema.
VII.
If anyone shall say that Christ, of whom it is said that he appeared in the form of God, and that he was united before all time with God the Word, and humbled himself in these last days even to humanity, had (according to their expression) pity upon the divers falls which had appeared in the spirits united in the same unity (of which he himself is part), and that to restore them he passed through divers classes, had different bodies and different names, became all to all, an Angel among Angels, a Power among Powers, has clothed himself in the different classes of reasonable beings with a form corresponding to that class, and finally has taken flesh and blood like ours and is become man for men; [if anyone says all this] and does not profess that God the Word humbled himself and became man: let him be anathema.
VIII.
If anyone shall not acknowledge that God the Word, of the same substance with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and who was made flesh and became man, one of the Trinity, is Christ in every sense of the word, but [shall affirm] that he is so only in an inaccurate manner, and because of the abasement (kenosanta), as they call it, of the intelligence (nous); if anyone shall affirm that this intelligence united (sunemmenon ) to God the Word, is the Christ in the true sense of the word, while the Logos is only called Christ because of this union with the intelligence, and e converso that the intelligence is only called God because of the Logos: let him be anathema.
IX.
If anyone shall say that it was not the Divine Logos made man by taking an animated body with a psuche logike and noera, that he descended into hell and ascended into heaven, but shall pretend that it is the Nous which has done this, that Nous of which they say (in an impious fashion) he is Christ properly so called, and that he is become so by the knowledge of the Monad: let him be anathema.
X.
If anyone shall say that after the resurrection the body of the Lord was ethereal, having the form of a sphere, and that such shall be the bodies of all after the resurrection; and that after the Lord himself shall have rejected his true body and after the others who rise shall have rejected theirs, the nature of their bodies shall be annihilated: let him be anathema.
XI.
If anyone shall say that the future judgment signifies the destruction of the body and that the end of the story will be an immaterial psusis, and that thereafter there will no longer be any matter, but only spirit nous): let him be anathema.
XII.
If anyone shall say that the heavenly Powers and all men and the Devil and evil spirits are united with the Word of God in all respects, as the Nous which is by them called Christ and which is in the form of God, and which humbled itself as they say; and [if anyone shall say] that the Kingdom of Christ shall have an end: let him be anathema.
XIII.
If anyone shall say that Christ [i.e., the Nous] is in no wise different from other reasonable beings, neither substantially nor by wisdom nor by his power and might over all things but that all will be placed at the right hand of God, as well as he that is called by them Christ [the Nous], as also they were in the feigned pre-existence of all things: let him be anathema.
XIV.
If anyone shall say that all reasonable beings will one day be united in one, when the hypostases as well as the numbers and the bodies shall have disappeared, and that the knowledge of the world to come will carry with it the ruin of the worlds, and the rejection of bodies as also the abolition of [all] names, and that there shall be finally an identity of the gnosis and of the hypostasis; moreover, that in this pretended apocatastasis, spirits only will continue to exist, as it was in the feigned pre-existence: let him be anathema.
XV.
If anyone shall say that the life of the spirits (noon) shall be like to the life which was in the beginning while as yet the spirits had not come down or fallen, so that the end and the beginning shall be alike, and that the end shall be the true measure of the beginning: let him be anathema.
[318] The following is Hefele's note (Hist. Councils, Vol. IV., p. 226, note 1): "Paragagein can in no way be translated, as it has hitherto been, by prætergressus or passed over': That Christ has gone over to all corporeity on heaven and earth,' which gives no sense. Paragein means here, like paragoge in the second anathematism, creare, producere, create,' bring into existence.' Suicer, in his Thesaurus, completely overlooked this. Cf. Stephani, s. vv. parago and paragoge."
The Anathematisms of the Emperor Justinian Against Origen. [319]
(Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. v., col. 677.)
I.
Whoever says or thinks that human souls pre-existed, i.e., that they had previously been spirits and holy powers, but that, satiated with the vision of God, they had turned to evil, and in this way the divine love in them had died out (appsugeisas) and they had therefore become souls (psuchas) and had been condemned to punishment in bodies, shall be anathema.
II.
If anyone says or thinks that the soul of the Lord pre-existed and was united with God the Word before the Incarnation and Conception of the Virgin, let him be anathema.
III.
If anyone says or thinks that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was first formed in the womb of the holy Virgin and that afterwards there was united with it God the Word and the pre-existing soul, let him be anathema.
IV.
If anyone says or thinks that the Word of God has become like to all heavenly orders, so that for the cherubim he was a cherub, for the seraphim a seraph: in short, like all the superior powers, let him be anathema.
V.
If anyone says or thinks that, at the resurrection, human bodies will rise spherical in form and unlike our present form, let him be anathema.
VI.
If anyone says that the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the waters that are above heavens, have souls, and are reasonable beings, let him be anathema.
VII.
If anyone says or thinks that Christ the Lord in a future time will be crucified for demons as he was for men, let him be anathema.
VIII.
If anyone says or thinks that the power of God is limited, and that he created as much as he was able to compass, let him be anathema.
IX.
If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration (apokatastasis) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.
Anathema to Origen and to that Adamantius, who set forth these opinions together with his nefarious and execrable and wicked doctrine [320] and to whomsoever there is who thinks thus, or defends these opinions, or in any way hereafter at any time shall presume to protect them.
[319] The reader should carefully study the entire tractate of the Emperor against Origen of which these anathematisms are the conclusion. It is found in Labbe and Cossart, and in many other collections.
[320] The text is, I think corrupt, at all events the Latin and Greek do not agree.
The Decretal Epistle of Pope Vigilius in Confirmation of the Fifth Ecumenical Synod.
Historical Note.
(Fleury. Hist. Eccl., Liv. xxxiii. 52.)
At last the Pope Vigilius resigned himself to the advice of the Council, and six months afterwards wrote a letter to the Patriarch Eutychius, wherein he confesses that he has been wanting in charity in dividing from his brethren. He adds, that one ought not to be ashamed to retract, when one recognises the truth, and brings forward the example of Augustine. He says, that, after having better examined the matter of the Three Chapters, he finds them worthy of condemnation. "We recognize for our brethren and colleagues all those who have condemned them, and annul by this writing all that has been done by us or by others for the defence of the three chapters."
The Decretal Letter of Pope Vigilius.
(The manuscript from which this letter was printed was found in the Royal Library of Paris by Peter de Marca and by him first published, with a Latin translation and with a dissertation. Both of these with the Greek text are found in Labbe and Cossart's Concilia, Tom. V., col. 596 et seqq.; also in Migne's Patr. Lat., Tom. LXIX., col. 121 et seqq. Some doubts have been expressed about its genuineness and Harduin is of opinion that the learned Jesuit, Garnerius, in his notes on the Deacon Leberatus's Breviary, has proved its supposititious character. But the learned have not generally been of this mind but have accepted the letter as genuine.)
Vigilius to his beloved brother Eutychius.
No one is ignorant of the scandals which the enemy of the human race has stirred up in all the world: so that he made each one with a wicked object in view, striving in some way to fulfil his wish to destroy the Church of God spread over the whole world, not only in his own name but even in ours and in those of others to compose diverse things as well in words as in writing; in so much that he attempted to divide us who, together with our brethren and fellow bishops, are stopping in this royal city, and who defend with equal reverence the four synods, and sincerely persist in the one and the same faith of those four synods, by his sophistries and machinations he tried to part from them; so that we ourselves who were and are of the same opinion as they touching the faith, went apart into discord, brotherly love being despised. [321]