A Profession of Faith

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, and in his one only-begotten Son, God and Lord our Savior, and in the Holy Spirit, God: not three Gods, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, but we confess that there is one God. Not one God as though solitary; nor that the same one is himself his own Father, and himself also the Son; but that the Father is true, who begot a true Son, as He is God of God, light of light, life from life, perfect from perfect, whole from whole, full from full; not created, but begotten; not out of nothing, but from the Father, of one substance with the Father: but the Holy Spirit, God, not unbegotten, nor begotten; not created, nor made; but of the Father and of the Son, ever in the Father, and coeternal with the Son.

Yet we venerate one God: because from the one Father, the whole that belongs to the Father, the Son, who is God, was born; and in the Father, all that is in Him, He wholly begot in the Son. The Father in begetting the Son did not diminish, nor lose, the fullness of His own deity: but we most surely hold that the whole that the Father is as God, that also is the Son born of Him. Together with the Holy Spirit we most devoutly confess one God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Son of God, through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible: for our salvation He came down from heaven; He who never ceased to be in heaven: born of the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary. The Word made flesh did not lose what He had been, but began to be what He was not.

Not changed, but continuing, He was also born a man, not in appearance, but truly; not aerial, but corporeal; not fantastical, but of flesh; having bones, blood, senses and a soul; thus we understand Him to be both true God and true man: thus we in no way doubt that the true man was also true God. It must be confessed that this same our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified according to the Scriptures, died and was buried according to the Scriptures, rose from the dead on the third day, was taken up into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father; thence we await His coming to judge the living and the dead.

We hold that those cleansed by His death and blood have obtained the remission of sins; that we shall be raised by Him in these same bodies and in the same flesh in which we now exist; just as He Himself, in the same flesh in which He was born and suffered and died, rose again: and that our souls, together with this flesh or these bodies, shall receive from Him either eternal life, the reward of good merit, or the sentence of eternal punishment for sins.