- Once more, the chief notary resumed the reading
of the minutes. After reading the confession of Eutyches,
Basilius bishop of Seleucia exclaimed that he had not
accepted this Eutychian declaration and that his signature
was forged. Immediately Abba Dioscorus rejoined: “I
know not why Basilius denies his signature when he
knows that he consented to a pure Orthodox teaching”.
At this remark, the bishops unanimously exclaimed
that it was their duty as well as their trust to preserve the
Faith bequeathed to the Church Universal by the Fathers
of Nicea who framed the Constitution – or Creed – of
true Orthodoxy, and to transmit that Faith, pure and intact
from one generation to the other. Wht they said was the
echo of the assertions of Abba Dioscorus who had
repeated before all those present that he firmly upheld the
teachings of Athanasius and Kyrillos. So the bishops
responded to his assertions with the words: “Dioscorus,
Head of the Bishops keeps the Faith”.^47
Having uttered these words, the bishops were
faced with the necessity of setting in a clear-cut manner
their stand in relation to the Eutychian heresy. They
asked Abba Dioscorus to be the first one to declare his
faith in the nature of Christ. He replied: “If a piece of
iron, heated to white heat, be struck on the anvil, it is the
iron which receives the blows and not the white heat, even
though the iron and the white had form one indivisible
whole. And though indivisible, the heat mingles not with
the iron, nor is it fused into it, nor changed by it. This
same is true of the iron, and is in a measure, symbolic of
the incarnation of Our Lord where the divine and the
human natures united without mixing, fusion, nor change,
though neither parted from the other – not even for a
moment or the twinkling of an eye.^48 This unity, the