Epistula ad Liberium

Of our holy father Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, a copy of what he wrote to Liberius, Archbishop of Rome, that the God Logos assumed a perfect man for our salvation. One God, deathless, invisible, intangible; "for God is Spirit," this one is uncontainable, having no place where he is not. His Logos is deathless, wisdom imperishable, invisible, called his firstborn son, co-worker, without beginning, intangible, "having neither beginning of days nor expecting an end of life." "Through him all things came to be, and without him not one thing came to be." This one who fashioned man; this one who showed the ark, how it was to be made; this one who gave the promise to Abraham; this one who descended to save the people, who gave the law to Moses; this one "the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob," "the one who spoke in the prophets," the one who established the old and the new covenant; the one who "in the last days" took mortal flesh from a virgin, not himself being mortal, weak not himself being weak, owed to death not himself being owed, visible not himself being visible; she was hung not he, she was buried not he, she endured all human sufferings as a human not he; but that one is the power of God, that is, God. The one who loosed the indissoluble bonds of Hades and abolished the power of the devil ascended whence he also descended; having raised that which was buried, he presented it to the Father, having freed from death that which death held. In this we understand the Father—for one and the same in divinity, in power, in essence, in hypostasis, in glory, in the name of God—and the Son himself in the Father.

This one, after taking on flesh, was called Jesus, inasmuch as he was also a man, that is, he assumed a man in himself, "in whom the whole fullness of the divinity dwells bodily." We hold this one not separated from the Father or the Holy Spirit, nor do we say that the Father descended and became in a man. Thus one almighty God is believed by us. And for this reason our faith is in one God, Father almighty, and in his Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; and these are from the unity of one divinity, one power, one hypostasis, one essence, one doxology, one lordship, one kingdom, one image of the consubstantial Trinity, "through whom all things were made." Thus we also believe in the resurrection of the flesh, that is, "of our body" according to the holy scriptures, with its corruptible and mortal being transformed into incorruption and immortality by God. Amen.