The Creed, Article 1: One God, the Father Almighty
In brief
The Creed opens where faith itself begins: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth." In a handful of words it confesses that there is one God and not many, that this God is a Father before He is anything else to us, that His power has no limit, and that everything which exists — the seen world and the unseen — is His good handiwork. Every later article rests on this first breath.
One God — and a Father
"I believe in one God" is the confession Israel had already made: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." Against every crowded pantheon of the ancient world, the Church stakes everything on the oneness of God. Yet the very next word turns that oneness personal. He is not a nameless force or a first cause but "the Father" — and in the Trinity the Father is first of all the Father of the eternal Son. When we say "one God, the Father," we are already naming the Person from whom the whole life of God flows: this is the Father whom Article 2 will call the source of the only-begotten Son.
"Almighty" translates a word meaning the all-holding, the One who upholds and rules all things. It is not raw force but the strength of a Father whose power is never separated from His love. To confess Him as Father and Almighty at once is to say that the ultimate reality is not indifferent energy but personal, fatherly care — the ground of Orthodox trust in divine providence.
Maker of all things visible and invisible
"Maker of Heaven and Earth" echoes the Bible's first line: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The Church confesses that God made the world freely and from nothing — creation out of nothing — so that everything that exists is good, willed, and loved, never an accident or a rival power. There is no evil eternal matter here, no dark twin to God; only one Maker and one wholly good creation.
"And of all things visible and invisible" widens the horizon past what eyes can see. The invisible creation is the world of the bodiless powers — the angels and archangels who also came from God's hand. Naming them in the very first article guards a truth the tradition holds dear: the spiritual world is created too, and only God is uncreated. This whole opening confession is unpacked more fully in the Symbol of Faith overview.