О святом Вселенском шестом соборе

The Holy Ecumenical Council of the Sixth (the third of those held in Constantinople) took place in 680 A.D. during the reign of Constantine Pogonatus, a descendant of Heraclius, in the hall of the imperial palace called Trulla; The council owns 18 acts (Synodikon. T. 2. P. 527). It gathered 170 fathers, according to Photius, Nicephorus, Nile and Anonymous, or 389, according to others. They were led by: George of Constantinople; presbyters Theodore and Sergius, together with deacon John, are representatives of Pope Agathon; monk Peter, representing the bishop of Alexandria; Presbyter George, representative of the Bishop of Jerusalem. Also present were three bishops representing the Western Fathers who were meeting in Rome at that time. This Council condemned Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, the patriarchs of Constantinople, Honorius of Rome [174], Cyrus of Alexandria, Theodore, who was either the bishop of Paran, according to Zonaras and Balsamon, or came from Paran, according to Leo II, the Pope of Rome (about which the latter writes to the emperor); Macarius of Antioch together with his disciple Stephen and Polychronius, an old man with an infant mind. They all dared to propose the dogma that in Christ there is one will and one action. The present Council, on the contrary, established the dogma that our Lord Jesus Christ, after the Incarnation, has in one Person both two natures, two natural wills and two natural actions [175], that is, the Divine will and action and the human will and action, inseparable and at the same time unfused. After all, neither the Divinity nor humanity - the two natures of Christ - lost their will and action after the union. And if the properties of natures, which are will and action, were abolished, then the natures themselves would inevitably be abolished along with them, since any nature arises and exists together with its natural properties and cannot arise without them. So, to put it briefly, the present Council established the dogma that “in the Hypostasis of the God-man Word, each of the forms (μορφή) accomplished with the participation of the other that which was characteristic of it, namely: the Word does that which is characteristic of the Word, and the body fulfills that which is characteristic of the body.” Exactly the same dogma, set out in the Epistle of Leo, was previously established by the IV Ecumenical Council 176. Indeed, it was not characteristic of the same action, as the wisest Photius says, to raise the lame and become weary from the journey, to raise Lazarus and weep for him, but also not to the same will was characteristic of asking for the cup of death to pass, and at the same time calling it one’s glory and desiring the unwanted. The first was the action of the Divine, and the second - of humanity, and, accordingly, the first will was the will of humanity, and the second - of the Divinity. This Council also did not issue rules. The Latins, as they say, use every means possible, trying to justify their great pontiff - I’m talking about Pope Honorius. It is unbearable for them to hear that the one who is recognized as infallible by them is an unholy heretic, moreover, anathematized by the Ecumenical Council. Therefore, these insolent people sometimes dare to assert that this Ecumenical Council sinned because it did not thoroughly investigate the case of Honorius, but condemned it without research; and sometimes - as if Honorius reasoned about one will only in relation to the humanity of Christ, since all the powers of the soul were subordinate to the ruling mind of Christ and in His humanity there was not one wisdom of the flesh and another wisdom of the spirit (i.e., divided wisdom, as in other people); and sometimes they say many other absurdities and empty words. To all this it must be answered that one Ecumenical Council, which is the real Sixth, serves as a sufficient counterbalance to many thousands of Latins and that its choice and decision, as infallible, are preferable to all the shaky and erroneous inventions of the Latins. But why am I talking about one Council? One should even name two or three Councils, and not one, but two and three popes together. Not only the VI Ecumenical Council, but also the VII Ecumenical Council also condemned Honorius in the 6th Act, and the Council that took place after that, called the Eighth by the Latins, condemned him in the 10th Act. Moreover, Leo II, a little later than the VI Ecumenical Council, along with the acts of the VI Ecumenical Council, recognized the condemnation of Honorius, writing about this to the emperor: “We anathematize the inventors of the new error Theodore of Parano and Honorius, who not only did not enlighten this apostolic Church by teaching the Apostolic Tradition, but also allowed the immaculate Church to be defamed with blasphemous preaching.” Like him, Adrian II says that the Roman throne is not subject to trial unless it is a matter of heresy, and Honorius is anathematized precisely for this reason. So Pope Agathon, in his letter to Pogonatus, testifies that Honorius is a heretic. How, after this, can one say that all the fathers of so many Councils and, moreover, Popes Leo, Hadrian and Agathon were so blind that they unjustly condemned the one whom the Latins themselves recognize as righteous?! And how could the representatives of the Pope who were present at the Council remain silent if the Council had condemned Honorius unjustly, and why did they not object to the decision of the Council? How could the most pious Emperor Constantine, a friend of the Roman Church, tolerate this? After all, he, being present at the Council, sealed the Council with the seal of his royal ring, so that no one could add or take anything away! So, God is true, true, who spoke through this Ecumenical Council, and every man and every idle talk of opponents is vain and false, according to the words of the Apostle (see Rom. 3:4.). One of our contemporary, a great and wisest teacher, offered the papists a witty dilemma about Honorius: Honorius was either a heretic or he was not. If there was, then there is a pope who sinned in matters of faith. If he was not a heretic, then Popes Leo and Adrian sinned in matters of faith, who unjustly condemned him and anathematized him as a heretic. Therefore, one way or another, the mythical infallibility of the pope in matters of faith is reduced to nothing. I’m not talking about the fact that Pope Marcellinus was an idolater, Liverius an Arian (in fairness, it should be noted that although Pope Liverius, unable to bear the difficult conditions of exile to Thrace, signed the 2nd or 3rd Sirmian formula, Arian in content, and Pope Marcellinus may have made a sacrifice to idols during the persecution of Diocletian (information about this is not entirely reliable), but subsequently both brought ardent repentance and shone with holiness. Their names are included in the calendar of the Orthodox Church), Anastasius II promoted the Arians and many other popes sinned in the faith. The two wills and two actions of Christ should be called natural, and not hypostatic. If we called them hypostatic, we would be forced to recognize three wills and actions in the Holy Trinity, since there are Three Hypostases in It. But just as they say that the Holy Trinity has one will and action (and so it is, since She has one nature), so we say about Christ that He has two wills and two actions, since Hero has two natures, of which and in which, or better yet, which He Himself is. Excellently, sublimely and theologically most accurately, the divine John of Damascus speaks about the two inseparable and at the same time unfused wills and actions of Christ: “Christ, being one Hypostasis of two natures, Divine and human, does one thing divinely, and the other humanly, One and the same desired and accomplished the divine and the divinely human. Even if He desired the divine as God and the human as Man, He desired the divine not only as God, but the human not only as Man: God, having become a man, that is, becoming human, by natural divine will and action as God and Man simultaneously desired and accomplished the human, since it was characteristic of Him as a Man to desire and accomplish the human. He desires and accomplishes what is characteristic of each nature in its communication with another, while the Divine acts autocratically and sovereignly through His humanity, and humanity is autocratic in everything... (probably obeys. - St. N.) His divine will and desires exactly what the divine will desires, thanks to the unity of the Hypostasis” (from the book “Treatise on Right Thought,” dictated by John of Damascus and handed over by Bishop Aelia to Peter, Metropolitan of Damascus) (Ioan. Damasc. De recta sent. 4 // PG 94, 1429AB.). ASO // TLG 5000/003. 2.1.1. 14.27–29.