Canon 7 of the III Ecumenical council: its history and reception in the context of the issue of the Immutability of the creed

This publication discusses the history of the origin and reception of the definition of the Third Ecumenical Council on the Creed. This definition, drawn up in connection with the rejection of the statement of faith by Theodore of Mopsuestia, should, according to the plan of St. Cyril of Alexandria, to secure the Nicene Creed the status of the only symbolic text used in Baptism and the admission of heretics into church fellowship. The author shows that, although this rule was drawn up at the Council, it did not receive official approval and was not solemnly promulgated. In this regard, it did not enjoy authority in the Churches of Asia Minor and the Syrian region, where the forms of the Symbol, close to the modern Constantinople Creed, dominated. The article proves that at the Council of Chalcedon (451) a synthesis of various local traditions regarding the practice of reading the Creed was made: the so-called “Statement of the faith of 150 fathers”, traditionally associated with the Council of Constantinople in 381, received universal authority and began to be considered an authentic form of expression of the “Nicene faith”. To both versions of the text, which were henceforth considered one Creed, the Council attached the wording of the Ephesian ban on changing the Creed. At the same time, the concept of the immutability of the "catholic faith" in content was separated from the immutability of the Symbol by letter, with the possible emergence of new formulas (the latter should not have claimed the status of “symbols”). This idea relatively quickly received a reception in the East. In the West, the recognition of the Constantinople version of the text of the Symbol as authoritative occurs only in the 6th century, and initially in Rome. The Roman bishops, on the other hand, held for the longest time the literal inviolability of the Creed, even after the spread of the Filioque in the Latin West.