On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterns

³⁷ Yet to prevent the declaration of one God seeming to affirm that God is a solitary monad without offspring of His own, it immediately condemns the rash suggestion that because God is one, therefore God the Father is one and solitary, having in Himself the name of Father and of Son: since in the Father who begets and the Son who comes to birth one God must be declared to exist on account of the substance of their nature being similar in each. The faith of the saints knows nothing of the Son being incapable of birth: because the nature of the Son only draws its existence from birth. But the nature of the birth is in Him so perfect that He who was born of the substance of God is born also of His purpose and will. For from His will and purpose, not from the process of a corporeal nature, springs the absolute perfection of the essence of God born from the essence of God. It follows that we should now consider that creed which was compiled not long ago when Photinus was deposed from the episcopate.

A copy of the creed composed at Sirmium by the Easterns to oppose Photinus.

38. We believe in one God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and in earth is named.

And in His only Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, through whom all things were made in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible. Who is the Word and Wisdom and Might and Life and true Light: who in the last days for our sake took a body, And was born of the holy Virgin, And was crucified, And was dead and buried: who also rose from the dead on the third day, And ascended into heaven, And sits on the right hand of the Father, And shall come at the end of the world to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom continues without end and remains for perpetual ages. For He shall be sitting at the right hand of the Father not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

And in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete, whom according to His promise He sent to the apostles after He ascended into heaven to teach them and to remind them of all things, through whom also are sanctified the souls of those who believe sincerely in Him.

I. But those who say that the Son is sprung from things non-existent, or from another substance and not from God, and that there was a time or age when He was not, the holy Catholic Church regards as aliens.

II. If any man says that the Father and the Son are two Gods: let him be anathema.

III. And if any man says that God is one, but does not confess that Christ, God the Son of God, ministered to the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema.

IV. And if any man dares to say that the Unborn God, or a part of Him, was born of Mary: let him be anathema.

V. And if any man say that the Son born of Mary was, before born of Mary, Son only according to foreknowledge or predestination, and denies that He was born of the Father before the ages and was with God, and that all things were made through Him: let him be anathema.

VI. If any man says that the substance of God is expanded and contracted: let him be anathema.

VII. If any man says that the expanded substance of God makes the Son; or names Son His supposed expanded substance: let him be anathema.

VIII. If any man says that the Son of God is the internal or uttered Word of God: let him be anathema.

IX. If any man says that the man alone born of Mary is the Son: let him be anathema.

X. If any man though saying that God and Man was born of Mary, understands thereby the Unborn God: let him be anathema.

XI. If any man hearing The Word was made Flesh thinks that the Word was transformed into Flesh, or says that He suffered change in taking Flesh: let him be anathema.

XII. If any man hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that His divinity suffered corruption, or pain, or change, or diminution, or destruction: let him be anathema.

XIII. If any man says Let us make man was not spoken by the Father to the Son, but by God to Himself: let him be anathema.

XIV. If any man says that the Son did not appear to Abraham, but the Unborn God, or a part of Him: let him be anathema.

XV. If any man says that the Son did not wrestle with Jacob as a man, but the Unborn God, or a part of Him: let him be anathema.

XVI. If any man does not understand The Lord rained from the Lord to be spoken of the Father and the Son, but that the Father rained from Himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father.

XVII. If any man says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son are two Gods, because of the aforesaid words: let him be anathema. For we do not make the Son the equal or peer of the Father, but understand the Son to be subject. For He did not come down to Sodom without the Father's will, nor rain from Himself but from the Lord, to wit by the Father's authority; nor does He sit at the Father's right hand by His own authority, but He hears the Father saying. Sit on My right hand.

XVIII. If any man says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one Person: let him be anathema.

XIX. If any man speaking of the Holy Ghost the Paraclete says that He is the Unborn God: let him be anathema.

XX. If any man denies that, as the Lord has taught us, the Paraclete is different from the Son; for He said, And the Father shall send you another Comforter, whom I shall ask: let him be anathema.

XXI. If any man says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema.

XXII. If any man says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three Gods: let him be anathema.

XXIII. If any man after the example of the Jews understands as said for the destruction of the Eternal Only-begotten God the words, I am the first God, and I am the last God, and beside Me there is no God, which were spoken for the destruction of idols and them that are no gods: let him be anathema.

XXIV. If any man says that the Son was made by the will of God, like any object in creation: let him be anathema.

XXV. If any man says that the Son was born against the will of the Father: let him be anathema. For the Father was not forced against His own will, or induced by any necessity of nature to beget the Son: but as soon as He willed, before time and without passion He begot Him of Himself and showed Him forth.

XXVI. If any man says that the Son is incapable of birth and without beginning, saying as though there were two incapable of birth and unborn and without beginning, and makes two Gods: let him be anathema. For the Head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; but the Head or beginning of Christ is God: for so to One who is without beginning and is the beginning of all things, we refer the whole world through Christ.

XXVII. “Once more we strengthen the understanding of Christianity by saying, If any man denies that Christ who is God and Son of God, personally existed before time began and aided the Father in the perfecting of all things; but says that only from the time that He was born of Mary did He gain the name of Christ and Son and a beginning of His deity: let him be anathema.”