this,
condemned both in the Fifth Council held at Constantinople, saying:
"If anyone seeks to introduce into the mystery of the Incarnation two
subsistences or two persons, let him be anathema. For by the
incarnation of one of the Holy Trinity, God the Word, the Holy
Trinity received no augment of person or subsistence." Now
"subsistence" is the same as the subsisting thing, which is proper to
hypostasis, as is plain from Boethius (De Duab. Nat.). Secondly,
because if it is granted that person adds to hypostasis something in
which the union can take place, this something is nothing else than a
property pertaining to dignity; according as it is said by some that
a person is a "hypostasis distinguished by a property pertaining to
dignity." If, therefore, the union took place in the person and not
in the hypostasis, it follows that the union only took place in
regard to some dignity. And this is what Cyril, with the approval of
the Council of Ephesus (part iii, can. 3), condemned in these terms:
"If anyone after the uniting divides the subsistences in the one
Christ, only joining them in a union of dignity or authority or
power, and not rather in a concourse of natural union, let him be
anathema." Thirdly, because to the hypostasis alone are attributed
the operations and the natural properties, and whatever belongs to
the nature in the concrete; for we say that this man reasons, and is
risible, and is a rational animal. So likewise this man is said to be
a suppositum, because he underlies (_supponitur_) whatever belongs to
man and receives its predication. Therefore, if there is any
hypostasis in Christ besides the hypostasis of the Word, it follows
that whatever pertains to man is verified of some other than the
Word, e.g. that He was born of a Virgin, suffered, was crucified, was
buried. And this, too, was condemned with the approval of the Council
of Ephesus (part iii, can. 4) in these words: "If anyone ascribes to
two persons or subsistences such words as are in the evangelical and
apostolic Scriptures, or have been said of Christ by the saints, or
by Himself of Himself, and, moreover, applies some of them to the
man, taken as distinct from the Word of God, and some of them (as if
they could be used of God alone) only to the Word of God the Father,
let him be anathema." Therefore it is plainly a heresy condemned long
since by the Church to say that in Christ there are two hypostases,
or two supposita, or that the unio
|