Alpha & Omega Ministries Apologetics Blog
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Confessing the Faith and Guarding the Flock
12/10/2008 - Jeff Downs
Below is a paper I recently finished for an Ancient Church History course at GPTS. A PDF file (perhaps a bit more readable) can be downloaded by clicking here.====
The Apostles Creed is one of old the earliest1 confessions of the Christian Church. The
doctrines avowed in this creed were clarified and expanded upon during the early centuries of the
Church, in subsequent creeds. For example, the Nicene Creed produced in A.D. 325, addresses
whether Jesus is God in the same way as the Father. In A.D. 381, the Council of Constantinople
attended to the issue of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Decades after these and other councils
assembled, in the mid-1600’s the Westminster Assembly gathered and produced the Westminster
Confession and Catechisms. As it is with the earlier creeds, the Westminster Standards are (for
the most part) affirmations of various biblical teachings. Week after week, churches around the
world use one or more of these documents to affirm, not only the faith of individual members,
but are vocalized in unison to affirm the unity of the Church.
Creeds were not unique to the early church nor the 17th century. In fact we find creedal
statements throughout both the Old and New Testaments.2 The most well known creed in the
Old Testament is found in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear O Israel!, the Lord is our God, the Lord is
one!...” Moses, with reference to this creed, addressing the people states that they “shall be on
your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit
in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And
you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And
you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (6:6-9). A New Testament example,
which made its way into the Apostle’s Creed, is Paul’s statement in 1Cor. 15:3 “for I delivered to you as of first
importance what I also receive, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried,
and that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures (emphasis mine).” ...
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13:58:08 - Category: Pastoral Theology - Link to this article -
Hebrew 1 from London
12/03/2008 - James White
00:01:00 - Category: Pastoral Theology - Link to this article -
Back to Emmaus
12/01/2008 - James White
My morning sermon from the Trinity Road Chapel in London on the tremendous words of Jesus after His resurrection.
00:01:00 - Category: Pastoral Theology - Link to this article -
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