Confession of Faith and Condemnation of the Barlaamites

¹ …the fountain of the kingly Godhead contemplated in the Son and the Holy Spirit; the sole preexisting cause of the things that have come to be; not the only Creator, but the only one who is truly Father of one Son, and the sole Emitter of one Holy Spirit; ever existing, and ever being Father, and ever being alone both Father and Emitter; greater than the Son and the Spirit in this one respect, as cause, but in all else the same as they and equal in honor; of whom there is one Son, without beginning inasmuch as he is timeless, yet not without beginning inasmuch as he has the Father as his principle and root and fountain; from whom alone, before all the ages, he came forth incorporeally, without flux, impassibly, by begetting, yet was not divided, being God from God—not one thing insofar as he is God and another insofar as he is Son, ever existing, and ever being Son, and Son alone; and ever being toward God without confusion, not a cause and principle of the divinity conceived in the Trinity, as deriving from the Father as from a cause and principle, but a cause and principle of all the things that have come to be, since all things came to be through him; who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but at the consummation of the ages emptied himself, taking the form that is ours, and of the Ever-Virgin Mary, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, was conceived by the law of nature and born, at once God and man; and having truly become man he became like us in all things except sin, remaining what he was, true God, having united without confusion and without change the two natures and wills and energies, and remaining one Son in one hypostasis even after the incarnation, performing all the divine things as God and all the human things as man, and subject to the blameless human passions. Impassible and immortal he is and remains as God, yet willingly suffering in the flesh as man; and crucified and dead and buried, and on the third day risen; who, having appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, and having promised the power from on high, and having commanded them to make disciples of all the nations, and to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and to teach them to observe all that he had enjoined, was himself taken up into heaven, and sat at the right hand of the Father, making our own lump of nature equal in honor and sharing his throne, as sharing his deity, with which lump he shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works. And then, having ascended to the Father, he sent upon his holy disciples and apostles the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father; co-unoriginate with the Father and the Son, as timeless, yet not without beginning, since it too has the Father as root and fountain and cause, not as begotten but as proceeding; for it too came forth from the Father, before all the ages, without flux and impassibly, not by begetting but by procession, being undivided from the Father and the Son, as coming forth from the Father and resting in the Son, having its union without confusion and its division without separation; being God also, and from God, not one thing insofar as it is God and another insofar as it is the Paraclete;

² a Spirit subsisting in its own right, proceeding from the Father and sent through the Son—that is, manifested—itself also a cause of all the things that have come to be, as having been brought to completion in it; the same as, and equal in honor with, the Father and the Son, apart from the unbegottenness and the begetting. And it was sent by the Son to his own disciples—that is, it was manifested. For how otherwise could that which is not separated from him be sent by him? And how otherwise could that which is present everywhere come to me? Therefore it is sent not only by the Son but also by the Father, and through the Son—it which also comes of itself, being manifested. For the sending is a common work—that is, the manifestation of the Spirit. But it is manifested not according to the essence. For no one has either seen or declared the nature of God, but rather it is manifested through the grace and the power and the energy, which is common to Father and Son and Spirit. For proper to each of these is the hypostasis of each, and whatever pertains to it; but common, no less, is the supra-essential essence alone, which is altogether nameless and unmanifested and imparticipable, as being beyond all naming and manifestation and participation; yet common too are the grace and the power and the energy and the splendor, and the kingdom and the incorruptibility, and simply all those things according to which God communicates himself and is named by grace to the holy angels and to men; falling away from his simplicity neither because of the divisible and distinct character of the hypostases, nor because of the divisible and manifold character of the powers and energies. Thus for us there is one almighty God in one Godhead. For neither could there ever be a composition out of perfect hypostases, nor could that which is powerful, when it has a power or powers, ever truly be called composite simply because of its being powerful.

³ Besides these things, we venerate relatively the holy icon of the Son of God, who was circumscribed inasmuch as he became man for our sake, referring the veneration relatively to the prototype; and the precious wood of the cross, and all the symbols of his sufferings, as being divine trophies against the common enemy of our race; and also the saving figure of the precious cross, and the divine churches and places, and the sacred vessels and the God-given oracles, on account of the God who dwells in them. Likewise we venerate also the icons of all the saints, on account of our love for them and for God, whom they truly loved and served, lifting our mind, in the act of veneration, toward the figures the icons represent. We venerate also the very reliquaries of the saints, since the sanctifying grace has not flown away from their most sacred bones; just as neither was the Godhead divided from the Lord’s body in the three-day death.

⁴ We know nothing that is evil according to essence; nor that there is any other principle of evil than the turning aside of rational beings, who have wrongly used the free will given them by God. We cherish all the traditions of the Church, both written and unwritten, and before all the most mystical and all-holy rite

⁵ and communion and synaxis, from which the other rites also receive their perfection, in which, in remembrance of him who emptied himself without being emptied, and took flesh and suffered for us, according to his divine command and his own act, the most divine things are consecrated and made divine—the bread and the cup—and that very life-originating body and blood is effected; and it bestows their ineffable partaking and communion upon those who approach in purity. But all those who do not confess and believe as the Holy Spirit foreannounced through the prophets, as the Lord ordained when he appeared to us manifested in the flesh, as the apostles preached when sent by him, as our Fathers and their successors taught—whether, as men worthy of a curse, they have themselves begun some heresy of their own, or have followed to the end those who wickedly began it—we reject and subject to anathema.

⁶ We receive and embrace the holy and ecumenical councils: that at Nicaea, of the three hundred and eighteen God-bearing Fathers, against the God-fighting Arius, who impiously reduced the Son of God to a creature, and cut the Godhead worshipped in Father and Son and Holy Spirit into created and uncreated; that after it, at Constantinople, of the one hundred and fifty holy Fathers, against Macedonius of Constantinople, who impiously reduced the Holy Spirit to a creature, and likewise cut the one Godhead no less into created and uncreated; that after it, at Ephesus, of the two hundred Fathers, against Nestorius patriarch of Constantinople; the one against Eutyches and Dioscorus, who wrongly dogmatized one nature in Christ; and that after it, at Constantinople, of the one hundred and sixty-five Fathers, against Theodore and Diodore, who held the same opinions as Nestorius and in their writings supported his, and against a certain Origen and Evagrius, who, though men of old, attempted to introduce certain mythical notions into the Church of God; and that after it, in the same city, of the one hundred and seventy Fathers, against Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul, who ruled at Constantinople, who denied in Christ the two energies and two wills corresponding to the two natures; and again that at Nicaea, of the three hundred and sixty-seven Fathers, against the Iconoclasts.

⁷ We embrace also all the holy synods gathered, by the grace of God, at various times or places for the confirmation of piety and of the evangelical way of life; among which are also those convened in this great city, in the renowned church of the Holy Wisdom of God, against Barlaam the Calabrian, and against Akindynos, who came after him holding his views and striving by guile to defend them—men who dogmatize that the common grace of Father, Son, and Spirit, and the light of the age to come, in which the righteous shall shine as the sun, as Christ also foreshowed when he shone upon the mountain, and simply every power and energy of the tri-hypostatic Godhead, and everything that in any way differs from the divine nature, is created; and these too impiously cut the one Godhead into created and uncreated, and call those who piously confess that most divine Light, and every divine power and energy, to be uncreated—since nothing that belongs to God by nature is recent—ditheists and polytheists, just as Jews and Sabellians and Arians also call us. But we reject both these and those, as being truly atheists and polytheists, and cut them off completely from the fullness of the faithful, as the holy catholic and apostolic Church of Christ has done through the Synodal Tome and the Hagioritic Tome, believing in one Godhead, tri-hypostatic and almighty, in no way falling from its unity and simplicity on account of the powers or the hypostases. Upon all these things we await the resurrection of the dead, and the unending life of the age to come. Amen.

⁸ REPORT OF THE HIERARCHS to our most mighty and holy lady and mistress, the Lady Anna Palaiologina.

⁹ Most mighty and holy lady and mistress of ours: We the hierarchs who sit shut up in our cells—the metropolitan of Ephesus, of Cyzicus, of Alania, of Christoupolis, of Apros, of Lopadion—having received from the grace of the all-holy Spirit the yoke of the Gospel, and being bound to set ourselves against the demons, both intelligible and perceptible, who oppose the Gospel of Christ, and to remind your most pious and holy Majesty, and to stir up its love of piety to cast down every height that exalts itself against God, do now remind and report that he who is presently patriarch, having been taken captive by the terrible and irrational passion of avarice, has conducted himself like a hireling in the Church of Christ, gathering silver and gold for his sons and his daughters, contrary to the definitions of the saints and the sacred canons of the holy Church of Christ, shamelessly selling the widowed churches, selling the exarchates, and trafficking in the abbacies, advancing steadily toward the worse, dividing what is just, and judging perversely the ecclesiastical and civil cases that arise, so that in many instances there are even two contradictory written rulings from the same man;

¹⁰ alas, the audacity! Later he did this openly even in the matter of the faith. And what need is there to speak of the sacred treasures? For many of the vessels consecrated to God he fearlessly took away with audacious hand and mind, and—oh, the shame! — for his own gain both broke them up and sold them. And on top of all this, through excessive love of glory he even abandoned the Church of Christ, and made long and burdensome sojourns in the palace. And the great church of God, left unprovided for and uncared for, became a pitiable ruin. And his falsehoods, and his other deceptions and hypocrisies, which he displays each day before those who converse with him—what tongue could recount them? For his mouth does not know the truth, and in him the great dignity of the high priesthood has been rendered worthless. And we, sitting in want and distress, beseech God that he may enter into the heart of your holy Majesty, and that his deeds may be brought to light. Now therefore, as you see, our holy mistress, the wretched man, having fallen into the depth of evils, is truly contemptuous, and, adding lawlessness to lawlessness, has been forsaken by God, and has fallen even from piety itself, and has rolled down into the error of false doctrine, and has made himself liable to written anathemas, having set aside the determinations and decisions in favor of piety made by that synod, over which our thrice-blessed and holy sovereign and emperor also presided; and having proceeded against the piety of those who were then vindicated, though he had been an advocate of the truth they upheld, but now agreeing with the disciples and successors of that Barlaam’s false doctrine. And now, on the one hand, doing away entirely with the divine and creative energies of God, and saying that they do not differ at all from the essence, he dogmatizes that God is essence only—bare and bereft of the providence and justice and goodness concerning him, and of the other glories of the Godhead; and now, on the other hand, representing these creative energies of God to be created—and the very splendor of the divine nature, by which Christ flashed forth upon the mountain—on the pretext that it differs from the essence of God, and cutting the divine into created and uncreated, and overthrowing the right determination opposed to such great and grievous impieties, and ordaining as priests and hierarchs those who hold and write such blasphemies, while persecuting and disowning those who contradict them, and adding too those of like mind, while importuning the emperor—who was plainly in agreement with the monks. We therefore beseech and entreat your holy Majesty that the affairs of the Church and of piety be in no way endangered for the sake of one man, and that a man manifestly condemned. For just as the synod against Arius condemns all Arians who appear at any time whatever, so too the synod against Barlaam condemns all who defend his teachings and fight against those who contradict them. And this man—bare-headed, as the saying goes—by speaking and writing and ordaining and casting his vote, has shown his agreement with those who hold the views of Barlaam; he therefore no longer has any portion with the pious. Let him be driven away from the flock of Christ as a wolf, as a serpent, as a savage lion. But if he requires also a refutation, thinking he has some defense, let him be brought forward to judgment. We beseech, therefore, and beseech again, that the cause of Christianity be no further endangered, for many of the Christians on his account are dying without communion in the undefiled mysteries of Christ, and others do not even enter a church. And many of the priests have ceased even from celebrating the liturgy altogether. These things we report as bound to do, and as intercessors, and as servants, and for the sake of credibility we have signed below with our own signatures. In the month of September, of the fifteenth indiction.

¹¹ It bore also signatures:

¹² The humble metropolitan of Ephesus, Matthew. The humble metropolitan of Cyzicus, Athanasius. The humble metropolitan of all Alania and Soteroupolis, Laurentius. The humble metropolitan of Christoupolis, Macarius. The humble metropolitan of Apros, Chariton. The humble archbishop of Lopadion, Hierotheus.

¹³ The present copy, having been collated with its original and found in all respects to correspond exactly, was signed by me for security: The humble metropolitan of Philadelphia, Macarius.