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Date 359
Council Seleucia (in Isauria)
CPG 8589
Greek Text Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Alten Kirche (Breslau: E. Morgenstern, 1897), 206-8.
Ancient Source Athanasius De Synodis, 29; Socrates, HE 2.40; Epiphianus, Pan. Haer. 73.25

We decline not to bring forward the authentic faith published at the Dedication at Antioch; though certainly our fathers at the time met together for a particular subject under investigation. But since ‘coessential’ and ‘like-in-essence,’ have troubled many persons in times past and up to this day, and since moreover some are said recently to have devised the Son’s ‘unlikeness’ to the Father, on their account we reject ‘coessential’ and ‘like-in-essence,’ as alien to the Scriptures, but ‘unlike’ we anathematize, and account all who profess it as aliens from the Church. And we distinctly confess the ‘likeness’ of the Son to the Father, according to the Apostle, who says of the Son, ‘Who is the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15)

And we confess and believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

And we believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, generated from Him impassibly before all the ages, God the Word, God from God, Only-begotten, Light, Life, Truth, Wisdom, Power, through whom all things were made, in the heavens and on the earth, whether visible or invisible. He, as we believe, at the end of the world, for the abolishment of sin, took flesh of the holy virgin, and was made man, and suffered for our sins, and rose again, and was taken up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

We believe also in the Holy Ghost, which our Savior and Lord named Paraclete, having promised to send Him to the disciples after His own departure, as He did send; through whom He sanctifies those in the Church who believe, and are baptized in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

But those who preach anything beside this faith the catholic Church regards as aliens. And that to this faith that is equivalent which was published lately at Sirmium, under sanction of his religiousness the Emperor, is plain to all who read it.

Translation from Athanasius, De Synodis 29 (NPNF2 vol. 4, p. 466)

Adapted by SMT

Last updated: 3-11-2011

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