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 (τὴυ
παραγωγὴν) of all
reasonable things includes only intelligences (νόας) 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 (ψυχικὴν) 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
created318 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
(ιδέαν)
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 (Νοῦς
δημιρυργός)
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 319restore 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 (κενώσαντα),
as they call it, of the intelligence (νοῦς); if anyone shall affirm that
this intelligence united (συνημμένον
) 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
ψυχὴ῾
λογικὴ and νοερὰ, that he descended into
hell and ascended into heaven, but shall pretend that it is the
Νοῦς which has done this, that
Νοῦς 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 ψύσις, and that thereafter
there will no longer be any matter, but only spirit νοῦς): 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 Νοῦς 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 Νοῦς] 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
Νοῦς], 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 γνῶσις 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 (νοῶν) 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.
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