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“Chalcedonian Definition of Faith - Greek Text with English translation”
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This wise and salutary formula of divine grace sufficed for the perfect
knowledge and confirmation of religion; for it teaches the perfect [doctrine]
concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and sets forth the Incarnation of the
Lord to them that faithfully receive it. But, forasmuch as persons undertaking
to make void the preaching of the truth have through their individual heresies
given rise to empty babblings; some of them daring to corrupt the mystery of the
Lord's incarnation for us and refusing [to use] the name Mother of God in
reference to the Virgin, while others, bringing in a confusion and mixture, and
idly conceiving that the nature of the flesh and of the Godhead is all one,
maintaining that the divine Nature of the Only Begotten is, by mixture, capable
of suffering; therefore this present holy, great, and ecumenical synod, desiring
to exclude every device against the Truth, and teaching that which is unchanged
from the beginning, has at the very outset decreed that the faith of the Three
Hundred and Eighteen Fathers shall be preserved inviolate. And on account of
them that contend against the Holy Ghost, it confirms the doctrine afterwards
delivered concerning the substance of the Spirit by the One Hundred and Fifty
holy Fathers who assembled in the imperial City; which doctrine they declared
unto all men, not as though they were introducing anything that had been lacking
in their predecessors, but in order to explain through written documents their
faith concerning the Holy Ghost against those who were seeking to destroy his
sovereignty. And, on account of those who have taken in hand to corrupt the
mystery of the dispensation [i.e. the Incarnation] and who shamelessly pretend
that he who was born of the holy Virgin Mary was a mere man, it receives the
synodical letters of the Blessed Cyril, Pastor of the Church of Alexandria,
addressed to Nestorius and the Easterns, judging them suitable, for the
refutation of the frenzied folly of Nestorius, and for the instruction of those
who long with holy ardour for a knowledge of the saving symbol. And, for the
confirmation of the orthodox doctrines, it has rightly added to these the letter
of the President of the great and old Rome, the most blessed and holy Archbishop
Leo, which was addressed to Archbishop Flavian of blessed memory, for the
removal of the false doctrines of Eutyches, judging them to be agreeable to the
confession of the great Peter, and as it were a common pillar against
misbelievers. For it opposes those who would rend the mystery of the dispensation
into a Duad of Sons; it repels from the sacred assembly those who dare to say
that the Godhead of the Only Begotten is capable of suffering; it resists those
who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ; it drives away
those who fancy his form of a servant is of an heavenly or some substance other
than that which was taken of us, and it anathematizes those who foolishly talk
of two natures of our Lord before the union, conceiving that after the union
there was only one. Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the
Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same
[Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and
very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with
the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his
manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his
Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us
men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother
of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the
only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly,
immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction
of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of
each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not
separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and
only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time
have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as
the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us. These things, therefore, having
been expressed by us with the greatest accuracy and attention, the holy
Ecumenical Synod defines that no one shall be suffered to bring forward a
different faith, nor to write, nor to put together, nor to excogitate, nor to
teach it to others. But such as dare either to put together another faith, or to
bring forward or to teach or to deliver a different Creed to (those who) wish to
be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles, or Jews or any
heresy whatever, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops
from the Episcopate, and the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or
laics: let them be anathematized. |
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This is the original Greek text of the Chalcedonian Definition
from the Council of Chalcedon in 451
Creed of Chalcedon Greek Text
Chalcedonian Creed in Greek
The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith
Definitio Fidei Apud Concilium Chalcedonense
Bindley The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith