We Believe in One God

WE THEREFORE believe in one God, who is a single principle without beginning, uncreated, unbegotten, both indestructible and immortal, eternal, uncircumscribed, unlimited, infinitely powerful, simple, uncompounded, incorporeal, without flux, without passion, immutable, changeless, source of goodness and justice, intellectual light, inaccessible, a power unknowable by any standard of measurement, but measured only by His own will—for He can do anything that He wishes—a single principle productive of all created things both visible and invisible, that sustains and preserves all things, exercises providential care over all things, exercises dominion authority, and sovereignty over all things by an everlasting and immortal kingdom, a single principle that contains nothing contrary, that fills all things, that is not contained by anything, but rather itself contains the sum total of all things and sustains them and possesses them beforehand, that pervades all essences without suffering defilement, and transcends all things, and is detached from every essence since it is superessential and beyond beings, beyond the divine, beyond the good, beyond fulness, and is set apart from all principles and classes as a whole, and is superior to every principle and class, since it is more than essence, life, word, and concept; it is light itself, goodness itself, life itself, essence itself, since it does not have its being, or anything in the category of existents, from another, being the source itself of the being of that which exists, of the life of that which lives, of the rationality of that which participates in reason, and is the cause in all things of every good and of their form before their coming to be; it is one essence, one divinity, one power, one will, one energy, one principle, one authority, one dominion, one sovereignty, known and worshipped in three perfect hypostases that are believed in and adored in a single act of worship by the whole of rational creation and that are united without confusion and divided without separation, which is also a paradox. We believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in whom we have also been baptized; for it is thus that the Lord commanded the Apostles to baptize, "baptizing them," He said, "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

From Chapter 8, "On the Holy Trinity," in An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Available for purchase from Eighth Day Books.