The Lengthy Creed

About three years after the events told above, the bishops of the East met again in a synod. They drew up another statement of faith and sent it to those in Italy by the hands of Eudoxius, who was then bishop of Germanicia, Martyrius, and Macedonius, who was bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia. This form of the creed was written at greater length and contained many additions to the ones that had gone before it. It was set out in these words: [a]

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker of all things, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named; and in his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was begotten of the Father before all ages: God from God, Light from Light, through whom all things in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, were made. He is the Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and Life, and true Light. In the last days, for our sake, he was made man and was born of the holy virgin. He was crucified, and died, and was buried, and rose again from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come at the completion of the ages to judge the living and the dead, and to repay everyone according to his works. His kingdom is everlasting and will last to endless ages, for he sits at the right hand of the Father not only in this age but also in the age to come. We believe also in the Holy Spirit, that is, in the Comforter, whom the Lord, as he had promised, sent to his apostles after he ascended into heaven, to teach them and to bring all things to their remembrance. Through him also the souls of those who sincerely believe in him are made holy. [c]

As for those who say that the Son was made out of things that did not exist, or out of another substance and not from God, or that there was a time or an age when he did not exist, the holy catholic church regards them as strangers to it. The holy and catholic church likewise anathematizes those who say that there are three Gods, or that Christ is not God before all ages, or that he is neither the Christ nor the Son of God, or that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same person, or that the Son was not begotten, or that the Father did not beget the Son by his own will or desire.

Nor is it safe to say that the Son had his existence from things that did not exist, since this is nowhere said of him in the divinely inspired Scriptures. Nor are we taught that he had his being from any other substance existing before him besides the Father; we are taught that he was truly begotten of God alone. For the divine word teaches that there is one unbegotten first principle, without beginning: the Father of Christ. Those who rashly say, without warrant from Scripture, that there was a time when he did not exist ought not to imagine any stretch of time before him, but only God, who begot him outside of time; for both times and ages were made through him. Yet it must not be thought that the Son shares with the Father in being without beginning, or shares with him in being unbegotten; for one who shared in being without beginning or unbegotten could not properly have a father at all. But we know that the Father alone, being without beginning and beyond all grasp, has begotten in a way no words can tell and no one can grasp, and that the Son was begotten before the ages. He is not unbegotten like the Father, but has a beginning, namely the Father who begot him; for ‘the head of Christ is God.’

Now although, following the Scriptures, we acknowledge three things or persons, namely the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we do not on that account make three Gods. For we know that there is only one God, complete in himself, unbegotten, without beginning and invisible, the God and Father of the only Son, who alone has his existence from himself and alone gives existence abundantly to all other things. But while we say that there is one God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son, we do not therefore deny that Christ is God before the ages, as the followers of Paul of Samosata do. They say that after his incarnation he was made God by exaltation, being by nature a mere man. We know indeed that he was subject to his God and Father. Nevertheless he was begotten of God, and is by nature true and perfect God. He was not made God afterward out of a man; for our sake he was made man out of God, and he has never ceased to be God.

Moreover, we curse and anathematize those who falsely call him merely the word of God, with no substance of its own, existing only in another, either as a word that is spoken or as a word conceived in the mind; and who claim that before the ages he was not the Christ, the Son of God, the Mediator or the Image of God, but that he became the Christ and the Son of God from the time he took our flesh from the virgin, about four hundred years ago. For they say that Christ’s kingdom had its beginning from that time, and that it will have an end after the completion of all things and the judgment. People like these are the followers of Marcellus and Photinus, the Galatians of Ancyra, who, under the pretext of establishing his sovereignty, set aside, like the Jews, the eternal existence and the Godhead of Christ and the everlasting nature of his kingdom.

But we know him to be not simply God’s word spoken aloud or conceived in the mind, but God, the living Word, existing in himself; Son of God and Christ. He was with his Father before the ages and kept company with him, and served him at the creation of all things, visible and invisible, not merely as one present beside him, but as the Father’s Word with a real being of his own, and God from God. For he is the one to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man in our image and according to our likeness.’ In his own person he appeared to the fathers, gave the law, and spoke through the prophets; and at last, having been made man, he made his Father known to all people, and he reigns to endless ages. Christ has not gained any new rank; we believe that he was perfect from the beginning, and like his Father in all things.

As for those who say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same person, impiously supposing that the three names refer to one and the same thing and person, we rightly expel them from the church. For through the incarnation they make the Father, who is beyond all grasp and cannot suffer, subject to being grasped and to suffering. People of this kind are called Patripassians among the Romans, and Sabellians among us. For we know that the Father who sent remained in the proper nature of his own unchanging Godhead, while Christ, who was sent, carried out the plan of the incarnation.

In the same way, there are those who irreverently say that Christ was begotten not by the will and good pleasure of his Father, and so attribute to God a necessity he did not choose, as if he begot the Son under compulsion. We consider them most impious and strangers to the truth, because they have dared to lay down things about him that do not fit our common ideas of God and are indeed contrary to the sense of the divinely inspired Scripture. For knowing that God is self-sufficient and Lord of himself, we reverently hold that he begot the Son of his own will and pleasure. And while we reverently believe what is said about him, ‘The Lord created me the beginning of his ways on account of his works,’ we do not suppose that he was made in the same way as the creatures or works made by him. For it is impious and contrary to the church’s faith to compare the Creator with the works he created, or to imagine that he came into being in the same way as things of a nature completely different from his own. For the sacred Scriptures teach us that the one and only Son was really and truly begotten.

Nor, when we say that the Son exists of himself, and lives and subsists in the same way as the Father, do we therefore separate him from the Father, as if we pictured them parted by space and distance in a material way. For we believe that they are united with nothing between them and no gap, and that they cannot be separated from each other: the whole Father holding the Son in his bosom, and the whole Son joined to the Father and resting eternally in the Father’s bosom. Believing, therefore, in the altogether perfect and most holy Trinity, and saying that the Father is God and that the Son also is God, we do not acknowledge two Gods, but only one, because of the majesty of the Godhead and the perfect blending and union of the kingdoms. The Father rules over all things universally, and even over the Son himself. The Son is subject to the Father, but apart from him rules over all things that were made after him and through him, and by the Father’s will gives the grace of the Holy Spirit abundantly to the saints. For the sacred Scriptures tell us that this is what the sovereignty Christ exercises consists in.

“Since the publication of our earlier summary, we have been compelled to give this fuller account of the creed. We do it not to satisfy any empty ambition, but to clear ourselves of every strange suspicion about our faith that may exist among those who do not know our real views. We do it also so that the people of the West may know the shameless misrepresentations of the heterodox party, and may also know the church’s view held by the Eastern bishops about Christ, confirmed by the untwisted testimony of the divinely inspired Scriptures, among all whose minds are not perverse.”