The Church Fathers Library

Library › Anonymous works

Creed of Acacius at Seleucia

Written in 359, in Seleucia ad Calycadnum (now Silifke, Turkey).

The creed that Acacius of Caesarea and his party put forward at the eastern council of 359.

Creed · first written in Greek

Translated by Archibald Robertson (editor) (1892). Athanasius, Select Works and Letters, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 4 (1892); older Oxford translations by J. H. Newman, M. Atkinson and others, revised Public domain. Source and rights

How we know the date and place
Date written sure
Athanasius, De synodis 8-30 (NPNF series 2 vol. 4); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (3rd ed. 1972); Socrates, Church History 2.40
Place written sure
Socrates, Church History 2.39-40; Pleiades https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/648771 (name and coordinates, checked 2026-10-12)

434 words. 1 section.

Creed of Acacius at Seleucia

§ 1

29. After drawing up this, and then becoming dissatisfied, they composed the faith which to their shame they paraded with the Consulate.' And, as is their wont, condemning this also, they caused Martinian the notary to seize it from the parties who had the copies of it [3590] . And having got the Emperor Constantius to put forth an edict against it, they form another dogma afresh, and with the addition of certain expressions, according to their wont, they write thus in Isauria.

We decline [3591] not to bring forward the authentic faith published at the Dedication at Antioch [3592] ; 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' (Col. i. 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 sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and is coming again in glory, to judge quick and dead.

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

But those who preach aught 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.