I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, visible to all and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, who was born of the Father before all ages; Light from Light, true God from true God, born, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father, to Whom all things were.
For our sake, man and our salvation came down from heaven, and became incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human.
Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried.
And he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.
And ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father.
And again the coming one will be judged with glory by the living and the dead, His Kingdom will have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Life-Giving One, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke the prophets.
Into one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
I drink the resurrection of the dead,
And the life of the next century. Amen.
Visible to everyone and invisible - everything visible and invisible, that is, the visible (material) and invisible (spiritual) world. Before all ages - before all time, before the beginning of time. It was from Him that everything came into existence, from Whom everything came, the whole world came into existence. Incarnated - becoming a true man. For us - for us. According to the Scripture - as it was foretold in the Scripture. At the right hand - on the right hand. And again the one who is to come - and who will come again. Who is to be worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, equally with the Father and the Son. The prophets who spoke - who spoke through the prophets. One baptism is one baptism in life. The life of the future century - another, eternal life.
The Creed is a brief and precise statement of the basic truths of the Christian faith, which every Orthodox Christian needs to know. In the short and precise words of the Creed we confess, that is, we openly declare what we believe. No one, believing differently, diverging in anything from the Creed, has the right to call himself an Orthodox Christian. And the Symbol arose precisely in the fight against heresies, against wrong opinions about God and the world. The symbol was compiled and approved at the 1st (Nicene, 325) and 2nd (Constantinople, 381) Ecumenical Councils (therefore it is also called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed).
So, the Creed is a brief statement of the foundations of the Christian faith, the main Christian dogmas, the framework beyond which is non-Orthodoxy.
But this “list” of dogmas is constructed in the first person, personally:
I believe in one God the Father...
And in one Lord Jesus Christ...
and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord...
into one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church.
I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
I hope for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century.
Amen (truly so!).
The Creed is the personal confession of faith of an Orthodox Christian. This is a confession of what and with what we live or should live, the most important thing in life, in the world. This is what God tells us through the Church and what we confess before God and people. Therefore, the Creed is also prayer, a conversation between the soul and God and God with the soul.
As a prayer, the Creed is very difficult: every time you pronounce (at least mentally) these truths, you must consciously accept them into your heart and strive to live by them. But this is a compass, without which you will lose your way on the road leading to life, and you must consult this compass at least daily. That is why it is included in the daily cell rule. It is also included in the shortest prayer rule for the laity, taught to us by St. Seraphim. You can't live a day without it.
Each word of the Creed is extremely deep and capacious; Brief explanations cannot go into this depth (which is why none are given in this book). The explanation of the Creed forms the main part - “On Faith” - of the Long Christian Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow, a book that every Orthodox Christian should know well.
+ Saint Theophan the Recluse in his letters gave advice on how to overcome doubts about the truths of faith. These lines have a direct bearing on the role of the Creed in our spiritual life and show what prayerful perception of it should be.
“Imagine the truth and pray about it; during prayer, rotate it in your mind and compose prayers from it. The moment will come when this truth will enter the heart and embrace the entire being of the soul, feeding it and making it happy. This is the affinity of the soul with the truth; after this, doubts can no longer shake her. They may come to memory, but they are far from the soul, like talking or stomping behind a wall.”
“In order to carry out the truth in the heart, this is how you need to do it!.. Take some truth and understand more fully in your consciousness how it is confessed, and then pray to the Lord, may He write it in the heart as it is confessed... Our prayers all come from dogmas. The Lord came to earth for our salvation. Confessing this truth, pray: “Lord! Just as then, walking on earth, you healed all sorts of ailments, cleansed lepers, gave sight to the blind, now come to me and enlighten the eyes of my mind, and take away the leprosy of sins from me.” This is true in relation to all truth. When all the truths fall into the heart, then all doubts will end. They themselves will bounce off like arrows from someone who is covered in armor. This means, in other words, is to taste the truth, rejoice in it, remember it with consolation and sweetness, and turn it around in the mind with warmth and warmth. Help you, Lord, to achieve this!”
* The word symbol has several meanings; This was the case in the Greek language, from which this word came, and in Russian. This word is especially rich in philosophical understanding (hundreds of volumes of books have been written about the symbol in its philosophical meaning). Here are different definitions from different dictionaries: something that serves as a conventional sign of a concept; in science - the same as a sign; in art, in a broad sense, a symbol is an image in the aspect of its iconicity and a sign endowed with all the organicity and inexhaustibility of the image; the complete picture, the essence in a few words or signs. The original Greek word means: joint, crossing, connection, fusion, meeting, articulation. This also meant an identification mark by which one could recognize each other more accurately than by a password: a coin or bone was split into two halves; if the presented half completely matched yours, it was clear that this was the right person in front of you.