ONE GOD before all, over all, in all, and above everything, do we worship and believe in, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, unconfusedly united and indivisibly divided, the same Unity and Trinity being all-powerful.
The Father is without beginning, not only as being outside time, but also as
being in every way without cause. He alone is the cause, root and source of the Godhead beheld in the Son and the Holy Spirit; He alone is the primary cause of what
has come into being; He is not the Creator alone, but the sole Father of the one Son
and the sole Originator of the one Holy Spirit. He always is, and is always the Father,
and always the sole Father and Originator, greater than the Son and the Spirit, but only
as cause; in all other respects He is the same as Them and equal in honour.
Of Him there is one Son, without beginning, as being outside time, but not
without beginning, as having the Father for origin, root and source, from Whom also
He came forth before all ages incorporeally, immutably, impassibly, and by generation,
but He was not divided from the Father, being God from God; not one thing insofar as
He is God, but another insofar as He is the Son, He always is, and is always the Son, and
always the sole Son. Always being unconfusedly with God (Jn 1:1), He is not the cause
and origin of the Godhead apprehended in the Trinity, since He exists from the cause
and origin of the Father, but He is the cause and origin of all that came into being,since
all things came into being through Him (Jn 1:3), Who, being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. 2:6), but at the end of the ages
emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant for our sakes (Phil. 2:7), and was by the
law of nature both conceived and born of the Ever-Virgin Mary by the goodwill of the
Father and the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, God and Man at the same time; having
become truly incarnate, He was made like us in all things except sin (Heb. 4:15),
remaining what He was, true God, uniting without confusion or change the two
natures, wills and energies, and remaining one Son in a single hypostasis even after the
Incarnation, performing all the divine actions as God and all the human actions as Man,
being subject to the blameless human passions. Being and remaining impassible and
immortal as God, but voluntarily suffering in the flesh as Man, He was crucified, died,
and was buried, and rose again on the third day; He appeared to His disciples after the
resurrection, and when He had promised them the power from on high and exhorted
them to make disciples of all nations, to baptise them 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
commanded (Matt.28:20), He was taken up into heaven and sat at the right hand of
the Father (Mark 16:19), making our mixture equal in honour, enthronement and
divinity, the mixture with which He is going to come in glory to judge the living and the
dead, and to reward each man according to his deeds (Matt. 16:27).
It was then that after ascending to the Father He sent upon His holy disciples
and Apostles the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father. He is co-beginningless
with the Father and the Son as being outside time, but not without beginning, as
Himself also having the Father as root, source and cause, not as generated, but as
proceeding; for He also came forth from the Father before all ages immutably and
impassibly, not by generation, but by procession, being indivisible from the Father and
the Son, as proceeding from the Father and resting in the Son, having union without
confusion and division without division. He is God and is Himself from God, not one
thing insofar as He is God, but another insofar as He is the Paraclete; He is the self-
subsistent Spirit, proceeding from the Father and sent, that is manifested, through the
Son, the cause of all that came into being, since They were perfected in Him; the same
equal in honour with both the Father and the Son, without ingenerateness and
generation. He was sent from the Son to His own disciples, that is, He was manifested.
For how otherwise would He Who is not separated from Him be sent by Him? How
otherwise, pray tell, would He come Who is everywhere? Wherefore, He is sent not only from the Son, but also from the Father and through the Son; and He comes from
Himself when He is being manifested. For the sending, that is the manifestation, of the
Spirit is a common work. He is manifested, not according to essence, for no one has
ever either seen or declared the nature of God, but according to the grace, power and
energy which is common to the Father, the Son and the Spirit. For the hypostasis of
each, and whatever belongs to it, is peculiar to each of these.
Not only is the
superessential Essence, which is entirely nameless, inexpressible and incapable of
participation, since it is above every name, expression and participation, common to
Them all, but also the grace, the power, the energy, the radiance, the kingdom and the
incorruption, and in general everything according to which God communicates and is
united by grace with both holy angels and holy men. Departing from His simplicity
neither on account of the divisibility and difference of the hypostases, nor on account
of the divisibility and variety of powers and energies, we thus have one all-powerful
God in one Godhead. For neither from perfect hypostases, could there ever come
about any composition, nor could what is potential, because it has power or powers,
ever truly be called composite by reason of potentiality itself.
In addition, we accord relative veneration to the holy icon of the Son of God,
who is circumscribed as having become incarnate for us, ascribing veneration in
relative manner to the Prototype. We venerate the precious wood of the Cross, and all
the symbols of His sufferings, as being true divine trophies over the common enemy of
our race. In addition to the saving image of the precious Cross, we venerate the divine
churches and places, as well as the sacred vessels and the divinely transmitted
Scriptures, because of the God Who dwells in them. Likewise, we venerate the icons of
all the saints, because of our love for them and for God, whom they truly loved and
served, in our veneration ascribing the meaning to the figures depicted in the icons.
We also venerate the relics of the Saints, since the sanctifying grace of the same has
not departed from their most sacred bones, just as the Godhead was not separated
from the Master's body in His three-day death.
We know of nothing that is essentially evil; nor is there any other origin of evil
than the perversion of rational men, who abuse the freewill given them by God. We
cherish all the ecclesiastical traditions, both written and unwritten, and above all the
most mystical and all-sacred Rite, Communion and Assembly, the source of perfection
for all the other rites, at which, in recollection of Him Who emptied Himself without
emptying and took flesh and suffered on our behalf, according to the divine command
which He Himself fulfils, the most divine consecration of the bread and the cup is
celebrated, in which the life-giving Body and Blood is accomplished. He bestows the
ineffable communion and participation on those who approach in purity. We cast aside
and subject to anathema all those who do not confess and believe as the Holy Spirit
foretold through the prophets, as the Lord decreed when He appeared to us through
the flesh, as the Apostles preached after being sent by Him, as our Fathers and their
successors taught us, but who have started their own heresy or followed to the end
those who have made an evil start.
We accept and salute the Holy Œcumenical Synods:the one in Nicaea, of the
318 God-bearing Fathers, against the God-fighting Arius, who impiously degraded the
Son of God down to the level of a creature and sundered the Godhead that is
worshiped in Father, Son and Holy Spirit into created and uncreated; the one after it in
Constantinople of the 150 holy Fathers, against Macedonius of Constantinople, whoimpiously degraded the Holy Spirit down to the level of a creature and no less than the
latter sundered the one Godhead into created and uncreated; the one after it in
Ephesus of the 200 Fathers, against Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople, who
rejected the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity in Christ, and completely
refused to call Theotokos the Virgin who truly gave birth to God; and the fourth in
Chalcedon of the 630 Fathers, against Eutyches and Dioscorus, who propounded the
evil doctrine of one nature in Christ; and the one after it in Constantinople of the 165
Fathers, against Theodore [of Mopsuestia] and Diodorus,who entertained the same
ideas as Nestorius and commended his ideas in their writings, and against Origen,
Didymus and Evagrius, who were from an older period, but had attempted to infiltrate
the Church of God with certain fables; and the one after it in the same city of the 170
Fathers, against Sergius, Pyrrhus and Paul of Constantinople, who rejected the two
energies and two wills appropriate to the two natures of Christ; and the one in Nicaea
of the 367 Fathers against the Iconoclasts.
We salute also the Holy Synods that were assembled at particular times and in
particular places by the grace of God for the confirmation of true religion and the
evangelical way of life. Among these are the Synods that have been convened in this
great city at the renowned Church of the Holy Wisdom of God, against Barlaam the
Calabrian and Akindynus, who holds the same ideas as him and hastens to avenge him
by treachery. They propound the doctrine that the common grace of Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, and the light of the age to come, in which the righteous will shine like the
sun, as Christ revealed in advance when He shone on Mount Tabor, and in general
every power and energy of the tri-hypostatic Godhead and everything that in any way
differs from the divine nature, is created, and they too impiously sunder the one
Godhead into created and uncreated, calling ditheists and polytheists - as the Jews, the
Sabellians and the Arians call us - those who piously honour the most divine light, and
every divine power and energy, as uncreated, since none of those properties that
belong naturally to God is recent. But we reject both the latter and the former as truly
atheists and polytheists, and we completely cut them off from the pleroma of the
pious, as the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ has done through the
synodical Hagiorite Tome, believing in one tri-hypostatic and all-powerful Godhead,
which in no way departs from unity and simplicity on account of the powers and the
hypostases. In addition to all these affirmations, we await the resurrection of the dead
and the unending life of the age to come. Amen.
Translated by Patrick Barker (now Hieromonk Patapios)
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