CONFESSION OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH
“The Prophets as they saw, the Apostles as they taught, the Church as it received, the Teachers as they dogmatized, the Ecumene as agreed, the grace as it shone, the truth as it was proven, the falsehood as it was cast out, the wisdom as it courageously appeared, …, so we believe,
so we speak.”
The Only-Begotten Son and Word of God the Father, having become the same with us in all ways except in sin, our true Lord Jesus Christ, Who granted to us the light of the knowledge of Him, having taken the Holy Catholic Church as His bride verified her saying “I am with you all the days until the end of the ages”; with the joyful utterance of His Lordly voice He said, “I am the light of the world, he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life”, and “I send to you my peace, I give to you my peace” so that no one may disagree with his neighbor on the matters of faith but that all together may verify and confess the preaching of truth. The Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of America, following the words of the Prophets and the counsel of the Holy Apostles, openly proclaims and spreads the joyful message of the new life and creation of the gospel in Christ with celebration to the entire continent of America, just as the Prophet Isaiah proclaims that “the islands will be consecrated to God”, intimating the Churches from the nations. But “the Churches are not simply the edifices of the temples and their embellishment, but rather the congregation of the pious who therein serve the Divinity with hymns and glorifications”; for this reason, as one body and in one mind we confess and proclaim:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten of the Father; by Whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from the Heavens and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man;
And was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried;
And arose again on the third day according to the Scriptures;
And ascended into the Heavens and sitteth at the right hand of the Father;
And shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end;
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life; Who proceedeth from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the Prophets;
In One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
We confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. Amen.
Following the Holy, God-bearing Fathers and ecumenical teachers of the Church and the Tradition of the most-Holy Catholic Church—for we know that tradition to belong to the very Holy Spirit that resides in the Church—we confess in concordance that:
We worship and believe in one God before all things and over all things and in all things and above all things, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, united without confusion and inseparably distinguished; Itself at once Unity and Trinity. We confess the Father to be unoriginate, not only so far as He is timeless, but also in that He is entirely uncaused. He is the sole cause and root and source of the Godhead of the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is the sole cause of the things which have come into being. He is not the sole Creator, but He is the sole Father of the one Son and projector of the one Holy Spirit. He always exists and always is the Father, and always is sole Father and projector. He is greater than the Son and the Spirit only insofar as He is their cause, but in all other respects He is the same as they and equal in honor.
There is one Son of the Father, unoriginate insofar as He is timeless, but not unoriginate in that He has the Father as His origin and root and source. From the Father alone He came forth before all ages incorporeally, without change, without suffering, by means of generation. He was not separated from the Father, being God from God. He is not different as God from what He is as Son. He always exists and always is Son and only Son and always is with God without confusion. He is not a cause and origin of the Godhead perceived in Trinity, since He as has the Father as His cause and source; but He is cause and source of all things which have come into being, since all things have come into being through Him.
Being in the form of God, in the fullness of the ages He emptied Himself, taking a form like ours from the Ever-Virgin Mary by the good will of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, being conceived in accordance with the law of nature and brought forth, God and man at the same time. Truly made man, He became like us in all respects except in sin, remaining what He was, true God, uniting without confusion or change the two natures and wills and energies, and remaining one Son in one hypostasis even after becoming man. He performed all His divine actions as God and all His human actions as man. He was subject to those human passions which are innocent.
Although He was passionless and immortal and continued to be God, nevertheless He suffered voluntarily in the flesh as man. He was crucified and died and was buried and on the third day rose again. He appeared to his disciples after the resurrection and promised them the power from on high. He bade them make disciples of all the nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to observe and teach whatever He had confided in them. Then He was lifted up into the heaven and took His seat at the right hand of the Father, making our human nature equal in honor and enthroned as equal to God. With the same nature He will come again to judge the living and the dead and to reward each according to his works.
When He had returned to the Father, He sent upon His holy disciples and apostles the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father. The Spirit is unoriginate along with the Father and the Son insofar as He is timeless, but not unoriginate in that He also has the Father as root and source and cause, not however as begotten, but as proceeding. From the Father He also came forth before all the ages without change or suffering, not by generation but by procession. He is inseparable from the Father and the Son, since He came forth from the Father and rests on the Son. He has union with out confusion, and distinction with out separation.
We confess that the Comforter—the Holy Spirit—is true God in that He is God from God. He is not different as God from what He is as Comforter. The Holy Spirit has His own hypostasis, proceeding from the Father and sent by the Son; that is, He is revealed by the Son and is the cause of all things that have come into being, since in Him they are brought to perfection. He is the same and equal to the Father and the Son except that He is neither unbegotten nor begotten.
We confess that He was sent from the Son to His disciples—that is, He was revealed—in that the Comforter is sent from the Father and from the Son and through the Son and is revealed from Him to the created world.
We confess that He was not revealed according to His essence, for no one has ever seen or spoken of the nature of God, but according to the grace and the power and the energy which is common to the Father and the Son and the Spirit. For to the hypostasis of each belong only whatever refer to it; not only is the super-essential essence common to the entire Trinity—which is nameless to all and unrevealed and imparticipable, since it is above every name and appearance and participation—but also the grace and the power and the energy and the radiance and royalty and incorruptibility, and simply everything which God shares with angels and men and by which He is united to them.
God does not lose His simplicity either because of division and distinction of the hypostases or because of the division and diversity of the powers and energies. For this reason we all together confess that there is one omnipotent God in one Godhead. For neither would God be composite on account of the perfect hypostases, nor would the diversity of uncreated energies cause the simplicity of God to be fragmented.
In addition, we venerate the holy icon of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our Savior, that of our immaculate Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, those of the holy angels, those of all the saintly and blessed men and women of God—Whom they desired above all desires and became His lovers and beloved by Him, God-seers, and “Gods by grace” as participants in the divine nature—as well as all the images of the prophetic visions that are rendered according to sacred Tradition. In the veneration of icons we bring our minds to the prototype, that is we bring to our memory and yearning the hypostasis of the one represented, and only thus do we kiss and bring honorary veneration to icons and not true worship, which belongs solely to God. We venerate, moreover, the Honored and Life-giving Wood of the Cross of Christ as well as all the symbols of His passion as they represent divine trophies that brought the defeat of the common enemy of the human race; along with these we venerate the sign of the Life-giving Cross as it is salvific, and the sacred temples, the holy vessels, and the divinely imparted words on account of God’s grace indwelling in them. Likewise we venerate the bodies and relics of the God-bearing saints as vessels and treasuries of sanctifying grace, for the uncreated grace never separated from these sacred bones, just as death did not separate the divinity from the Lord’s body during the three-day death.
We accept all the ecclesiastical traditions, all those that have been written as well as all those that have remained unwritten, and above all the most mystical and all-sacred sacrament and communion and assembly, from which comes the perfection of the other sacraments. For it is in this sacrament that the memory of “Him Who emptied Himself without emptying” and “Who took flesh and suffered on our behalf” is performed and in which the bread and the cup are sanctified and deified and the Lord’s body and blood are completed and the ineffable participation and partaking and communion with the Uncreated Divinity are realized and granted to those that worthily approach.
We reject all those who do not confess as the Holy Spirit spoke through the Prophets, as the Lord uttered when He appeared to us in the flesh, as the Apostles preached when they were sent by Him, as our Fathers and their successors taught us, but who instead follow their own will and view and belief—their own heresy—such men do we reject and proscribe from the Eucharistic Table and Assembly, as ones who are alienated from the true life and body of the catholic Church.