Confession of Faith

In the work “Confession of Faith” (18 chapters), supposedly written in 1085, St. Nikita Stifat presents a personal statement of the Orthodox faith, serving both as a dogmatic statement and as evidence of his commitment to the teachings of the Church. He defends the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, emphasizing the unity of God in three unfused and indivisible Hypostases (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), their consubstantiality, co-eternity and sovereignty. The author directly rejects and anathematizes any ideas that distort this unity or trinity. Particular attention is paid to Christology. The Monk Nikita confesses Christ as a perfect God and a perfect man, born of the Father before the ages and of the Virgin Mary in time. He formulates the doctrine of two natures, two wills and two actions in Christ, polemicizing with Docetism (Manichaeans, Valentinians), Nestorianism and Monophysitism (Eutychians). The recognition of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the true Mother of God is central to his Christology. In addition, the treatise touches on such topics as the unity of Baptism, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal kingdom of the righteous and eternal punishment for sinners (rejecting Origen's doctrine of universal restoration). St. Nikita Stifat also speaks of the veneration of holy icons, relics and tombs of those who have fallen asleep for the sake of Christ. 1. He who decides to philosophize about the Divine and human must teach sensibly and correctly, and live with dignity and purity, so that life does not contradict the teaching with rude deeds and actions. Then the word of teaching, free from the shackles of passion, would rush straight to the goal, and the work of life would accompany the word, always in agreement with it and in no way contrary to it. 2. This is how the word should be, and it seems to me that this is not far from the truth. I, wanting to announce my confession to everyone, am afraid of double responsibility, so as not to miss something important in both; After all, I, being deprived through negligence of both a word capable of breaking ill-fated fetters and a holy life, and not despising the visible as worthy of ridicule, I do not know how I will approach the words and the wise words of the Divine Scriptures. But so that we would not be considered detractors of Divine gifts and would not be accused of burying talent out of envy, like foolish slaves, and also because of harmful people who feel the word and hunt in pursuit of expression, I would say, too zealously, frightening those whose words come from a simple and open soul - so we preferred to life the teaching in which we were born and nurtured and achieved such a deep old age, and this is what we invite those who want to learn from us to know. So: 3. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, beginningless and eternal, Creator of everything visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, born impassively and eternally from God and the Father Himself - and we know no other beginning than the Father - and I confess Him as Light from Light and true God from true God, and consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father. And in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds eternally from God the Father, comprehended as Light, and the true God, who abides with the Father and the Son, coeternal and consubstantial with Him and having the same nature, essence and power. 4. I have confessed this from my youth, I believe in the consubstantial Trinity, one-honoured, one-powered and sovereign, constituting one Divinity and Dominion, although the three Persons and Hypostases do not merge and are not mixed into one person. Confessing this Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, I believe in the Trinity in three Hypostases and in the Unity in one essence and in Divinity. Thus I confess one God in three Persons and one Lord. For I do not attribute three dominions to the one Godhead, and I do not know another God apart from three Persons, and I do not know the other three consubstantial Persons of the Trinity apart from the one God, who are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but I believe that the all-holy Trinity does not consist of essences and natures, or of different deities, or three dominions, but of Hypostases and rational and perfect characteristics, each existing hypostatically in itself. And I distinguish Her by Persons, that is, by Hypostases, although She remains indivisible and inseparable in essence, that is, in nature and in Divinity. But I do not think in the Trinity either three deities, or three natures, or three essences, or three gods superior to each other in anything. And I anathematize those who think otherwise. 5. I know the one beginning of the one Deity, one kingdom, one power, strength and action, one council, one will, one dominion and one dominion of one essence and nature in three Persons and Hypostases. I absolutely do not merge three Hypostases and three Persons into one hypostasis or into one person, but I know the perfect God the Father, the perfect God the Son, the perfect God the Holy Spirit, for each Person has the same one, inseparable, complete and perfect Divinity, and, being God, each Person, perceived in itself, constitutes the same thing - only the mind can comprehend the inseparable - the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, God in three [Persons]. 6. For the Father is not another God, and the Son is not another God, and again the Holy Spirit is not another God, for the Father is not another nature, and the Son is not another nature, and again the Holy Spirit is not another nature, but the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, since the three Persons inseparably and without remainder constitute the fullness of the one Divinity and in each of them there is completely Divinity. For the Divinity is indivisible, existing in three Persons in completeness and perfection. The Father, being God, is the Father, and not the Son and not the Holy Spirit. He is in essence what the Spirit is, the Son, and in nature He is Holy. And the Son, being God, is the Son, and not the Father and not the Holy Spirit. The Father by nature proclaims Him and the Holy Spirit by nature sees Him. And the Holy Spirit, being God, is [Spirit] and is not contemplated as the Father, and is not received as the Son. The Father proclaims Him in essence. So, everyone is recognized by their own characteristics. 7. I confess that this Holy Trinity is not only perfect in the perfection of one Godhead, but also super-perfect, super-divine, indivisible, and not separate in glory, kingdom and eternity. In this consubstantial Trinity, I do not know anything created, nothing servile, nothing introduced, which supposedly did not exist before and then appeared, but I confess Her intransformable, unchanging and always equal to Myself from a young age, and I sing, and I honor, and I worship Her. 8. I also believe in one of the same Holy and consubstantial Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten, dispassionately begotten of the Father before all ages and times, the Son of God and the Word of God, who by his grace came to us voluntarily and by the good will of the Father and the Holy Spirit, but was not separated from the womb of the Father who gave birth, who by the Holy Spirit entered the virgin womb of Mary, pure and alien every filth in the body. Soul and thought, incarnate and taking our image, and becoming truly human, eternally comprehended as the true God, timeless and beginning in time. I confess that He did not come ghostly, as the foolish Manichaeans and Valentinians imagine, but in truth and spirit, and I believe that the Son of the Word took on flesh, consubstantial with us, and a rational soul, co-natural with our souls, and a mind completely similar to our mind. 9. In Him I recognize a perfect man, born of the Holy Virgin, purifying like with like, and saving like with like through the incarnation of the Word, I speak at the same time about the flesh, animate and rational, and about the flesh of God the Word, animate and rational. I am convinced that the flesh did not precede the Word by a blink of an eye, but has existed since the union of the natures of the Word. I believe that the Word was incarnate from the pure and immaculate blood of the most holy, ever-pure Mary, truly adopted man, was carried in the virgin womb, was there for the usual period, became like us in all the properties of nature, not bearing sin, and was born as a perfect God and a whole man. And the Virgin who gave birth to Him retained her virginity and purity even after Christmas. I honor Her as the Mother of God, proclaimed so justly and truly, because from Her was born God [the Word], who for our sake, after His first, eternal, natural and ineffable birth from the Father, took a second birth in time. 10. Believing, I worship our Lord Jesus Christ as a perfect God and a perfect man, possessing two natures, two actions, two perfect wills. From two natures He formed the unity of Divinity and humanity, and the natures in the union do not change and are not mixed, just as they are not divided and dissected after the union of images, that is, essences, as the maddened Nestorius and the evil-minded Eutyches talk. I honor one Son the Word, incarnate of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit, and I call His one complex hypostasis, I confess Him in two natures, actions and wills. 11. I also confess two births of the Word, as has already been said, one from God the Father, known to us as timeless and eternal, the other from the all-holy Virgin and Mother of God Mary - recent and in time. As God, the consubstantial Father, I worship Him, and as a Man, consubstantial with us and His Mother, I give Him honor; visible and invisible, created and uncreated, clothed in flesh and incorporeal, tangible and inviolable, describable and indescribable, earthly and supreme, and possessing everything that a dual nature inseparably possesses. 12. I know Him as one and complete, one by hypostasis, that is, by face, and one by natures and their properties - wills and actions, and, of course, each nature in communication with another does what is peculiar to it: the Word does what is appropriate for the Word in communication with the body, participating with it in deeds - sometimes it is glorified by miracles, sometimes it experiences reproach. In Christ I truly confess two natures and essences: Divine and human, unchangeably, indivisibly, also two natural wills and two natural actions, a perfect God and a perfect man, one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, who as God walked on the sea, rebuked the winds, fed thousands of people with five loaves of bread, raised the dead, healed all sorts of ailments, put demons to flight, and as a man experienced hunger and thirst, got tired, suffered and then voluntarily endured crucifixion; as God, He rose three days later in a body subject to corruption, appeared to the disciples and ascended into heaven along with the holy flesh He had assumed and resides on the right side of the Father, from where He rewards everyone according to their deeds, having an endless kingdom and the unlimited power of Divine power. 13. I also confess a single baptism, because in it I was washed from the filth of original sin, and buried in Christ, and sanctified according to the flesh. But my soul is incorporeal and immortal, for God created it rational and divine, retaining its properties forever after death. I also believe in the resurrection of the dead and confess the endless kingdom of the righteous forever and ever and that the punishment of sinners and the demons themselves will last forever and will never end, and that sinners and demons will not return again to their original state, as Origen errs in darkness. 14. This is how I confess, this is how I believe. And I consider those who do not believe and do not think so as enemies of the Orthodox faith of Christians and opponents of the Catholic Apostolic Church, I abhor them and anathematize them, as well as any heresy, which I denounced in more detail in a letter to Leo the Proeder of Arcadiopolis. 15. I also reverence and kiss the most pure and holy image of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Most Pure Mother of God and the Ever-Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Him, and all the saints who have been revealed by the Holy Spirit from ancient times to this day, because images are holy from their prototypes and sanctify those who venerate them. And those who have ever raged against the holy images, and those who still do not venerate them, do not worship them and do not kiss them with all their souls, may they not have a place to lay their heads and no rest prepared for the faithful in the next century. 16. I also kiss the tombs and relics of those who died for the love of God, those who through confession and martyrdom suffered for Christ, those who were glorified by signs, those who served by word and teaching for the benefit of the Church of the faithful, and I rejoice with all of them, so that their sanctification is imprinted on my soul and body. I accept, honor and love their inspired writings and the works of ancient and modern holy teachers of the Church of Christ, in agreement with the Gospel and with the apostolic teaching, since they benefit the soul and contribute to the Gospel of Christ. And I not only do not accept the forged writings of godless heretics as destructive and full of all harm, but together with those who wrote them, I anathematize. 17. Finally, I also confess that I honor the most pure and righteous life, virtuous in actions, true, sanctified, alien to ugliness and carnal uncleanness, enlightened by the word and knowledge of the Divine and human, which the wisdom of God revealed to people for the sake of the general economy and the good of those who contemplate it. I fear and completely reject what is base and unclean, swine-like and dumb in pleasures, insensitive and inhuman in greed, and demonic and proud in arrogance. 18. This is my confession in which I was born. Such is my faith, in which I was baptized, such is the teaching in which I was nourished, with which I lived and reached a ripe old age, for which, speaking words, I would not refuse to shed blood. Together with him, may I, O Christ, my King, part with this life and leave the body, led by Your Spirit to the places of light that You have prepared for those who trust only in You and love You with all their souls, and sacrifice themselves entirely to You in the flame of love and the Spirit. So, parting with my shelter, I will find refuge in the hiddenness of the wings of Your shelter - in the Spirit of joy, bringing the riches of confession to where those celebrating in the Spirit dwell, where my God-bearing fathers rejoice and where God the Father is glorified threefold by countless Powers in You, the only begotten Son, and the Spirit. So be it. Amen. Now and ever and unto ages of ages. You might be interested in: