Our statement of faith is based on Holy Scripture and the Nicene Creed of Constantinople (381 A.D.), which evolved from the Apostles’ Creed and the first council of Nicaea.
I. Doctrine of God
God as Mystery, knowable only by revelation
We believe that God is One. He is in Essence Unknowable. He is Pure Being, non-delimited and boundless; He is ineffable, inconceivable, infinite and The Absolute Subject: I Am.
None can know God but God. Mankind is unable to know God without divine revelation. Theology always begins and ends with God, and not man.
God as unknowable, is non-manifest deity. He is Agnostos Theos, the Unknown God (Acts 17:23).
God as knowable, is manifest deity. He first reveals Himself to Himself, and then to the cosmos through the Logos or Word of God.
God revealed as Trinity
We believe in One God subsisting as three Persons (personae); or as three ways or modes of being (Karl Barth): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Persons are eternally and successively emanating (bullitio, Meister Eckhart) as an eternal Self-revelation.
There are not three I’s in God, as the modern interpretation of the word Persons may imply. God, as a threefold-I, repeats Himself as three distinct Personas, and that each Persona is fully God.
The Persons are concurrently manifest, are consubstantial, co-inhering (Gk. perichoresis), co-eternal, identical and co-equal in the substratum of Being.
The Persons are hierarchical in manifestation, each in order of their procession, office and function, but are co-equal in nature.
The Father
We believe in the Father, the Source of the Son and of the Spirit.
The revelation of the Father, as such, is through the eternal birth of the Son.
He is the Creator, Former, and Maker of all worlds visible, and invisible.
The Son
We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten, the Son of God, begotten of the Father from all eternity.
The Son is begotten, not made: God from God, Light from Light, Truth from Truth.
He is Logos, or Word of God, and as such is the Self-revelation of God.
The Son is consubstantial with the Father.
All creation is by Him and for Him.
Who for our salvation and deification, emptied Himself (Gk. kenosis) of the God-Form, and came down from heaven.
He was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was thus born of her: fully God and fully man.
He suffered crucifixion for us under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried. This was of His own will, in obedience to the Father.
The third day He bodily rose again from the dead, according to the Scriptures.
He ascended, likewise bodily, into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us.
He shall come again to judge the living and the dead.
The Holy Spirit
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.
He rests upon Christ as the Seven Spirits of God, as the Seven Eyes of the Lord.
He is the Breath of the Almighty, by whom the cosmos, is perpetually renewed in existence.
Who proceeds forth from the Father, and is sent by Father and Son, according to the Scriptures.
Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.
He is received as the Second Gift, evidenced by speaking in other tongues, as He gives the utterance.
He manifests nine gifts to edify the Church, and produces nine fruits to mature the believer.
Who spoke by the prophets and apostles, all scriptures being thus God-breathed, and inspired.
The Holy Spirit as divine inhalation, brings us back again into the Source.
II. Doctrine of Salvation
The Gospel of Grace
1. God chose all humanity in His Son, according to the election of grace, from all eternity. As Electing God and Elected Man, Jesus represents the eternal will and works of God toward all.
2. The grace of God is pure, without any admixture of law; salvation is by grace through faith and not by works.
3. God was fully in Christ in saving the world, from His birth to death, from burial to resurrection.
4. There was never a division between the Father and the Son, whilst Jesus suffered and died on the cross.
5. The finished work of the cross is the fulfillment of all divine requirements for judgment and justice.
6. All sin, past, present and future, was present in Christ on the cross, atoned for and forgiven.
7. Mankind is not born in sin, but each chose to go astray after Adam’s example. There is therefore no sin nature, nor is sin a physiological substance inherited from Adam.
8. Christ, the Last Adam, included all of humanity in His incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension. God incarnated, not only as a man, but as humanity.
9. There is nothing we can do to earn or perfect our salvation and sanctification, as all was accomplished in the cross and resurrection of Christ.
10. The finished work of Christ and His resurrection saved all of mankind (metaphysically), but each individual must believe the Gospel in repentance in order to be saved (existentially).
11. With God, we can only be hopeful toward the eventual salvation of all mankind, believing that His mercy extends postmortem.
12. The end of salvation is our deification, God becoming man that man may become God.
The Church
1. There is one holy, universal, apostolic, and mystical Church.
2. The Church is not an organization but an organism, not an institution but an incarnation.
3. Christ identifies the Church as His Body, of His flesh and of His bones; as His Bride, in loving communion with the whole, and with each one.
4. We confess one baptism in many baptisms, publicly declaring our forgiveness, a shared death and resurrection in Christ.
5. Visible and invisible, the Church forms through gift-ministry outward communities which share an inward communion.
Eschatology
1. The return of Christ for His Church in the rapture (Gk. harpadzo), preceding a seven year tribulation, constitutes the resurrection of the living, and the Day of the Lord judgment.
2. The Millennium follows Christ’s Second Advent, when He returns to rule the earth from Jerusalem, through the resurrected and glorified Church of kings and priests.
3. The resurrection of the dead follows the Millennium, at the White Throne Judgment.
4. The hell for unbelieving human spirits, sheol/hades, will be thrown into the hell called Gehenna, or the lake of fire, at the White Throne Judgment.
5. We believe in the Age of Ages (forever and ever) of a new heavens and a new earth, holding out hope for the eventual salvation of all, world without End.
Amen.
Finally, denying blind dogmatism, we walk in communion with all who adhere to Christ as God and to His finished work, in all other matters, we graciously accept our differences.
God’s blessings.