On the Christology of the Scythian Monks

The Chapters of John Maxentius Compiled Against the Nestorians and the Pelagians for the Satisfaction of the Brothers

1. If anyone does not confess that in our Lord Jesus Christ there are two natures (that is divinity and humanity) united, or if he confesses one incarnate nature of God the Word but does not mean this is in the sense of two united in one subsistence or person (according to what the venerable synod of Chalcedon has handed down to us), let him be anathema.

2. If anyone does not confess that the holy Mary is properly and truly the Bearer of God, but if he instead attributes this title to her only according to a great honor and in name because he believes she bore a man who is said to be God only according to grace, rather than believing that she bore God incarnate and made man, let him be anathema.

3. If anyone does not confess that there has been a union of substances and natures according to which the Word was united to a human nature while remaining God by nature, but if he instead confesses that the union was one of subsistence or person or as a kind of illustration or according to favor or good will, let him be anathema.

4. If anyone does not consent to confess that Christ who suffered for us in the flesh is “one of the Trinity” even with his own flesh (although according to that flesh itself he is not of the substance of the Trinity but is the same as us), let him be anathema.

5. If anyone does not confess that the child whom the holy Virgin Mary bore is by nature God, and that through Him all things were made – visible and invisible things, heavenly and earthly things – and that He is the Maker of all, “Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Father of the coming age,” let him be anathema.

6. If anyone says that Christ has suffered in the flesh but does not consent to say that God has truly suffered in the flesh (which is precisely what it means to say that Christ suffered in the flesh), let him be anathema.

7. If anyone says, “God was not made Christ, but the Christ was made God,” let him be anathema.

8. If anyone does not confess that there have been two births of the one Son of God (since God the Word was indeed born from the Father before the ages, and the same one was born from His mother in the last times), let him be anathema.

9. If anyone does not confess that after the Incarnation Christ is a compound, let him be anathema.

10. If anyone says that sin is natural, and in a mindless way ascribes the source of sin to the Creator of natures, let him be anathema.

11. If anyone does not confess that original sin has entered the world through the transgression of Adam (according to voice of the Apostle when he says: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so it passed to all men, because in him all have sinned”), let him be anathema.

12. Similarly, we anathematize every opinion of Pelagius and Celestius and of all who think like them. We accept all the actions that have been taken against them by the prelates of the Apostolic See (namely, Innocent, Boniface, Zosimus, Celestine, and Leo), as well as the writings against them by Atticus, bishop of Constantinople, and Augustine (and the) bishops of the African Province.