Statement of Faith

Our statement of faith is based on the Nicene Creed of Constantinople (381 A.D.), which evolved from the Apostles’ Creed and the first council of Nicaea. As per my own understanding on these and related themes, I’ve expanded where needed. 

I. Doctrine of God 

God as Mystery, knowable only by revelation

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God is One. He is Unknowable. Pure Being, non-delimited and boundless is He; He is Ineffable, Inconceivable, Infinite and The Absolute Subject.

None can know God but God. And so God reveals Himself: first to Himself, and then to humanity.

God as mystery is Agnostos Theos, the Unknown God (Acts 17:23). Yet, unlike the hidden god of occultism and religion, God as Mystery is declarative in nature. Jesus Christ is the complete revelation of deity.

Mankind has an inability to peer into the divine mysteries as to the nature and workings of God without divine revelation. And so knowledge of God always begins and ends with God, and not man.

God revealed as Trinity

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1. God is One, subsisting as three Persons- or as three ways or modes of being (Karl Barth): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

*modes of being, but not in the sense of the heresy known as Modalism, or Sabellianism, see: Here

2. The Persons are eternally and successively emanating (bullitio of Meister Eckhart) as a perpetual Self-revelation.

3.  There are not three I’s in God, as the word ‘Persons’ may imply. Rather God, as a threefold-I, repeats Himself as three distinct Personas, and that each Persona is fully God.

* on the use of ‘personas’ as an alternative to persons, see: Here.

4. The Three Persons (personas, ways or modes of being) are concurrently manifest, are consubstantial, co-inhering (Gk. perichoresis), co-eternal, identical and co-equal in their substratum of Being.

5. The Persons are hierarchical in manifestation, in terms of the order of their processions, offices and functions, but are co-equal in nature.

The Father

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1. The Father is the Source of the Son and of the Spirit.

2. The revelation of the Father as such is through the eternal birth of the Son.

3. He is the Creator, Former, and Maker of all worlds visible, and invisible.

The Son

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1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father from all eternity.

2. The Son is God from God, Light from Light, Truth from Truth.

3. The Logos is the Self-revelation of God. As in a mirror, the foreknowledge and revelation of all things are in Him.

4. All creation is by Him and for Him.

5. As the Speech of God, He spoke forth all things through Him.

6. The Son as begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.

7. Although being equal with God, for our salvation and deification, emptied Himself (Gk. kenosis) of the God-Form, and came down from heaven.

8. Being incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, He became man.

9. He suffered crucifixion for us under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried. This He did of His own will, in obedience to the Father.

10. The third day He bodily rose again from the dead, according to the Scriptures.

11. He ascended bodily into heaven, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us.

12. Who shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

The Holy Spirit

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1. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life.

2. Who rests upon Christ as the Seven Spirits of God, the Seven Eyes of the Lord.

3. He is the Breath of the Almighty, by whom the cosmos is perpetually renewed in existence.

4. He proceeds forth from the Father, but is sent by the Father and the Son according to the Scriptures.

5. Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

6. He is received as the Second Gift, evidenced by the speaking in of other tongues, as He gives the utterance.

7. He manifests nine gifts to edify the Church, and produces nine fruits to mature the believer. 

8. Who spoke by the prophets of old; by Whom all scripture is God-breathed, and inspired.

9. The Holy Spirit as divine inhalation, brings us back again into the Source.

II. Doctrine of Salvation

The Gospel of Grace

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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

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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

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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.