Monday, January 01, 2007

The Twelve Anathemas Of St. Cyril Of Alexandria

1) If anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel is in truth God, and that the Holy Virgin is Mother of God, because she bore according to the flesh the Word of God when He became flesh: let him be anathema.

2) If anyone does not confess that the Word of God the Father is united hypostatically to the flesh, and that Christ with His own flesh is one, that is to say, the same one is God and Man at the same time: let him be anathema.

3) If anyone makes in the one Christ a division of hypostases after the union, connecting them only in a conjunction which is according to dignity or even authority and power, and not rather by a coming together which is according to a union of natures: let him be anathema.

4) If anyone apportions between two Persons or even personalities those words contained in the Gospels and Apostolic writings, either those things said about Him by the saints, or by Him about Himself, and applies some of them to the Man understood as if He were on His own apart from the Word of God, and some, as if they were befittting the divinity, to the Word alone of God the Father: let him be anathema.

5) If anyone dare to say that Christ is a God-bearing Man, and not rather that He is God in truth, as Son who is one and by nature, in that the Word became flesh and shared like us flesh and blood: let him be anathema.

6) If anyone says that the Word of God the Father is the God or Master of Christ, and does not rather confess that He is God and Man at the same time, in that the Word was made flesh according to Scripture: let him be anathema.

7) If anyone says that Jesus was energized as a Man by the Word of God, and that He attached the glory of the Only-begotten to Himself as if to another existing apart from the Only-begotten: let him be anathema.

8) If anyone dare to say that it is needful that the Man who was assumed be co-adored with the Word of God, and is to be co-glorified and is to be co-titled God, as if He were one in another -for it is necessary to understand that this is always what is proposed by the syllable c0- and does not rather worship the Emmanuel in one reverence and attach to Him one glorification, insofar as the Word became flesh: let him be anathema.

9) If anyone says that the one Lord Jesus Christ has been glorified by the Spirit, as if through the Spirit He had made use of a power foreign to Himself, and from the Spirit received the ability to work against unclean spirits, and to perform divine signs among men, and does not rather say that the Spirit, through whom He did indeed work His divine signs, is His own: let him be anathema.

10) Divine Scripture says that Christ has been made our High Priest and the Apostle of our confession, and that He offered Himself as an odor of sweetness to the God and Father. If, therefore, anyone says that the Word Himself of God was not made our High Priest and Apostle when He became flesh and Man like us, but that it was another, apart from Him, who was man born of woman; or if anyone says He offered Himself in sacrifice on His own behalf and not rather for us alone, for He had no need of a sacrifice who knew no sin: let him be anathema.

11) If anyone does not confess that the body of the Lord is life-giving and belongs peculiarly to Him that is Word of God the Father, but that it belongs to someone other than Him and is conjoined to Him according to dignity, or that it had only the divine indwelling; and that it was not as we have said, life-giving, because it became the peculiar possession of the Word, who is strong to give life to all: let him be anathema.

12) If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh, and was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, and was made firstborn from the dead, insofar as He is also, as God, life and bestower of life: let him be anathema.

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