Folio 81

Council of Ephesus, 431

printed p. 49 · pdf p. 81

absolved? Since God, most ready to succor, inviting to repentance, thus promised: In whatever day, He says, the sinner shall be converted, his sins shall not be imputed to him [cf. Ezech. 33:16]. . . . Since therefore the Lord is the examiner of the heart, penance must not be denied at any time to one who asks for (it). . . .

COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 431

Ecumenical III (against the Nestorians)

The Incarnation1

[From the epistle II of St. Cyril of Alexandria to Nestorius, read and approved in action I]

111a. For we do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and made flesh, nor yet that it was changed into the whole man (composed) of soul and body but rather (we say) that the Word uniting with Himself according to person is a body animated by a rational soul, marvelously and incomprehensibly was made man, and was the Son of man, not according to the will alone or by the assumption of a person alone, and that the different natures were brought together in a real union, but that out of both in one Christ and Son, not because the distinction of natures was destroyed by the union, but rather because the divine nature and the human nature formed one Lord and Christ and Son for us, through a marvelous and mystical concurrence in unity. . . . For in the first place no common man was born of the holy Virgin; then the Word thus descended upon him; but being united from the womb itself he is said to have endured a generation in the flesh in order to appropriate the producing of His own body. Thus [the holy Fathers] did not hesitate to speak of the holy Virgin as the Mother of God.

The Primacy of the Roman Pontiff2

[From the speech of Philip the Roman legate in action III]

112. No one doubts, but rather it has been known to all generations, that the holy and most blessed Peter, chief and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith, the foundation stone of the Catholic church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, and that the power of binding and loosing sins was

  1. ACOec T. I, vol. I, part I, p. 25 f.; cf. ibid., part 2, p. 13; vol. II, p. 38; vol. III, p. 21; vol. V, part I, p. 50; Msi IV 1138; Hrd I 1273; II 115; Hfl II 160, 185. ↩

  2. Msi IV 1295 B f.; Hrd I 1477 B; Hfl II 200 f.; ACOec I, I, 3, 106. ↩