The Definition of Faith

The holy, great, and Ecumenical Synod, following the five holy and Ecumenical Synods, and the holy and approved Fathers, with one voice defines that our Lord Jesus Christ must be confessed to be very God and very man, one of the holy and consubstantial and life-giving Trinity, perfect in Deity and perfect in humanity, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and human body subsisting; consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before all ages according to his Godhead, but in these last days for us men and for our salvation made man of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, strictly and properly the Mother of God according to the flesh; one and the same Christ our Lord, the only-begotten Son, of two natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, inseparably, indivisibly to be recognized, the peculiarities of neither nature being lost by the union, but rather the propriety of each nature being preserved, concurring in one Person and in one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same only-begotten Son of God, the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Defining all this, we likewise declare that in him are two natural wills and two natural operations, indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, inconfusedly, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers. And these two natural wills are not contrary the one to the other (God forbid!), as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows, and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved, but subject to the divine will. As his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent me,” calling his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh was also his own.

We likewise glorify two natural operations, indivisibly, immutably, inconfusedly, inseparably, in the same our Lord Jesus Christ our true God, that is to say, a divine operation and a human operation, according to the teaching of Leo, who most distinctly asserts: “For each form does, in communion with the other, what pertains properly to it, the Word doing that which pertains to the Word, and the flesh that which pertains to the flesh.” We will not admit one natural operation in God and in the creature, as we will not exalt into the divine essence what is created, nor bring down the glory of the divine nature to a place suited to the creature.

We recognize the miracles and the sufferings as of one and the same person, but of one or the other nature of which he is and in which he exists. Preserving therefore the inconfusedness and indivisibility, we make this whole confession, believing our Lord Jesus Christ to be one of the Trinity, and after the incarnation our true God: we say that his two natures shone forth in his one subsistence, in which he both performed the miracles and endured the sufferings through the whole of his life on earth, and this not in appearance only, but in very deed; this by reason of the difference of nature which must be recognized in the same Person, for although joined together, yet each nature wills and does what is proper to it, indivisibly and inconfusedly. Wherefore we confess two wills and two operations, concurring most fitly in him for the salvation of the human race.

These things, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth any different Creed, or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which have now been determined by us — if they be bishops or clerics, let them be deposed; if monks or laymen, let them be anathematized.