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Welcome!
Greetings in the name of our Lord, Jesus The Christ! Welcome to our homepage. American Orthodoxy goes back to 1927, when the Russian Orthodox Church established a work in the US to be the Canonical Church for the United States. From that history, many churches have sprung. We are one of the branches of Orthodoxy. |
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More About Orthodoxy
"As the prophets beheld, as the Apostles have taught, as the Church has received, as the Teachers have dogmatised, as the Universe has agreed, as Grace has shown forth, as Truth has revealed, as falsehood has been dissolved, as Wisdom has presented, as Christ awarded, thus we declare; thus we assert, thus we preach Christ our true God, and honour His Saints in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in Churches, in Holy Icons; on the one hand worshiping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord; and on the other hand honouring as true servants of the same Lord of all and accordingly offering them veneration.
"This is the Faith of the Apostles, this is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this is the Faith which has established the Universe!"(Troparion from the Sunday of Orthodoxy) |
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I Believe
God the FatherI believe in God the Father, Who is without beginning, indescribable,
incomprehensible, Who is beyond every created essence, Whose essence is
known only to Himself, to His Son and the Holy Spirit; as it says in the
Holy Scriptures, upon Him even the Seraphim dare not gaze.
I believe and confess that God the Father never became the likeness of any
material form nor was He ever incarnate. In the theophanies (appearances of
God) of the Old Testament, as our Holy Fathers bear witness, it was not God
the Father Who appeared, but rather it was always our Saviour, the Second
Person of the Holy Trinity (i.e., the Word or Logos, the Angel of the Lord,
the Lord God of Sabaoth, the Angel of Great Counsel, the Ancient of Days)
Who revealed Himself to the prophets and seers of the Old Testament.
Likewise, in the New Testament, God the Father never appeared but bore
witness to His Son on several occasions solely by a voice that was heard
from Heaven. It is for this reason that our Saviour said, "No man hath seen
God at any time; the Only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father,
He hath declared Him," (John 1:18) and "Not that any man hath seen the
Father, save He Who is of God, He hath seen the Father" (John6:46). In
addition, Acts Four, Five and Six of the Seventh Ecumenical Council state
that the Holy Trinity cannot be portrayed iconographically since He is
without from and invisible. Therefore, God the Father is not depicted in the
holy icons.
I believe that He is the cause of all things as well as the end purpose of
all things. From Him all visible and invisible creatures have their
beginning and there was a time when they did not exist. He created the
universe out of absolutely nothing. The earth too had a beginning and man
was created by God's love. The creation of man and of the universe was not
out of necessity. Creation is the work of the free and unconditional will of
the Creator. If He had so wished, He need not have created us; the absence
of creation would not have been a privation for Him. The creature's love is
not one that gives Him satisfaction. God has no need to be satisfied. He
needs nothing. God's love cannot be compared to human love, even as His
other attributes such as paternity, justice, goodness cannot be compared to
their human counterparts. God's love is a love that constitutes a mystery
unfathomable to man's reason or intellect. God has no "emotions" which might
create passion, suffering, need or necessity in Him. Nevertheless, although
the nature of divine love remains incomprehensible and inexplicable to human
reason, this love is real and genuine and I confess, in agreement with
Scripture, that God is love.
The Holy Trinity
I believe, confess and worship the Holy Trinity. I worship the One, Holy,
Indivisible, Consubstantial, Life-Creating and Most Holy Trinity. In the
Trinity I worship three persons-three hypostases-that of the Father, that of
the Son and that of the Holy Spirit. I do not confuse the persons of the
Most Holy Trinity. I do not believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit are, as it were, three masks of a single person. None of the persons
is alienated from the others, but each has the fullness of the Three
together.
The Incarnation
I believe that from the moment of His conception in the virginal womb, Jesus
Christ was one person, yet having two natures. From His conception, He was
God and Man before birth, during birth and after birth.
I believe and confess that the Most Holy Virgin Mary, after the image of the
bush that burned and was not consumed, truly received the fire of the
Godhead in Her without being consumed thereby. I believe and confess that
She truly gave of Her own blood and of Her own flesh to the Incarnate Word
and that She fed Him with Her own milk.
I confess that Jesus Christ was, in His Godhead, begotten of the Father
outside of time without assistance of a father. He is without mother in His
divinity, and without father in His manhood.
I believe that through the Incarnation, the Most Holy Virgin Mary became
truly the Theotokos the Mother of God in time. She was a Virgin before,
during and after birth. Even as Jesus Christ arose from the dead despite the
fact that the Jews had sealed His tomb with a stone, and even as He entered
into the midst of His disciples while the doors were shut, so also did He
pass through the virginal womb without destroying the virginity of Mary or
causing Her the travail of birth. Even as the Red Sea remained untrodden
after the passage of Israel, so also did the Virgin remain undefiled after
giving birth to Emmanuel. She is the gate proclaimed by the Prophet Ezekiel
through which God entered into the world "while remaining shut" (Ezekiel 44:2).
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Creeds
THE ATHANASIAN CREED
This creed is named after St. Athanasius, a furm defender of the Christian faith in the fourth century. It was prepared to assist the Church in combating two errors that undermined the Church's teaching. One error denied that God's Son and the Holy Spirit are of one being or Godhead with the Father. The other error denied that Jesus Christ is true God and true man in one person. The Athanasian Creed continues to serve the Church as a standard of the truth. It declares that whoever rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ, as held by the Orthodox throughout the ages, is without the saving faith.
Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold to the true Christian Faith.
Whoever does not keep this faith pure in all points will certainly perish forever.
Now this is the true Christian faith:
We worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God,
without mixing the persons or dividing the divine being.
For each person -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit -- is distinct,
but the deity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
equal in glory and coeternal in majesty.
What the Father is, so is the Son, and so is the Holy Spirit.
The Father is uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated;
The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal;
Any yet they are not three who are eternal, but there is one who is eternal,
just as they are not three who are uncreated, nor three who are infinite,
but there is one who is uncreated and one who is infinite.
In the same way the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, and the Holy Spirit is almighty;
And yet they are not three who are almighty, but there is one who is almighty.
So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God;
And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord;
yet they are not three Lords, but one Lord.
For just as Christian truth compels us to confess each person individually to be God and Lord,
so the true Christian faith forbids us to speak of three Gods or three Lords.
The Father is neither made not created, nor begotten of anyone.
The Son is neither made nor created, but is begotten of the Father alone.
The Holy Spirit is neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeds from the Father.
So there is one Father, not three Fathers;
one Son, not three Sons;
one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.
And within this Trinity none comes before or after;none is greater or inferior,
but all three persons are coequal and coeternal, so that in every way, as stated before,
all three persons are to be worshiped as one God and one God worshiped as three persons.
Whoever wishes to be saved must have this conviction of the Trinity.
It is furthermore necessary for eternal salvation truly to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ also took on human flesh.
Now this is the true Christian faith:
We believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, is both God and Man.
He is God, eternally begotten from the nature of the Father,
and he is man, born in time from the nature of his mother,
fully God, fully man, with rational soul and human flesh,
equal to the Father, as to his deity, less than the Father, as to his humanity;
and though he is both God and Man, Christ is not two persons but one,
one, not by changing the deity into flesh, but by taking the humanity into God;
one, indeed, not by mixture of the natures, but by unity in one person;
for just as the reasonable soul and flesh are one human being, so God and man are one Christ.
Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose the third day from the dead.
He ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty,
and from there he willl come to judge the living and the dead.
At his coming all people will rise again with their own bodies to answer for their personal deeds.
Those who have done good will enter eternal life,
but those who have done evil will go into everlasting fire.
This is the true Christian Faith.
Whoever does not faithfully and firmly believe this cannot be saved
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