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
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.
God as non-manifest deity is unknowable.
God as manifest deity is knowable, but only through revelation. His revelation is first to Himself, and then to the cosmos through His Word.
God revealed as Trinity
We believe in One God subsisting as three Personae: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Persons are eternally and successively emanating as an eternal Self-revelation.
There are not three I’s in God, but He, as a threefold-I, repeats Himself as three distinct Personas, and each being 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 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 begetting 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: as divine exhalation, 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 Source.
II. Doctrine of Salvation
The Gospel of Grace
We believe that 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.
Salvation is by grace through faith and not by works. Grace is without any admixture of law.
The law is not abrogated, but by grace we fulfill the law.
The Logos is both gospel and law; gospel preceding law, but within it the law is contained.
God was fully in Christ in saving the world, in His life, death, and resurrection.
There was never a division between the Father and the Son during His crucifixion on the cross.
The finished work of the cross met all divine requirements for judgment and justice toward our sins.
All sins, past, present and future, were in Christ on the cross: and were there atoned for and forgiven.
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 moral condition, nor a physical substance, inherited from Adam.
All of humanity was included in Christ’s death and resurrection. God incarnated, not only as a man, but as humanity.
Christ saved all (metaphysically), but each must now believe the Gospel in repentance in order to be saved (existentially).
We are hopeful toward a universal salvation of all mankind; hopeful, not dogmatic.
We believe that the mercy of God extends towards all postmortem.
The end of salvation is deification, God becoming man that man may become God.
The Church
We believe in one holy, universal, apostolic, and mystical Church.
The Church is not an organization but an organism, not an institution but an incarnation.
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 member.
We confess one baptism in many baptisms, publicly declaring our forgiveness, a shared death and resurrection in Christ.
The Church forms through the gift-ministry of apostles and prophets: outward communities which share an inward communion.
These communities are called churches, and each church is governed locally by a presbytery of three or more elders with their deacons.
Elders are ordained and established within a local church (as a presbytery) by an apostle, or group of apostles and co-workers.
The offices of apostle, prophet, teacher and evangelist are translocal, and that of presbyter (Gk. elder) and deacon are local.
A presbyter is an elder, and this term and office are synonymous with that of pastor and bishop.
Eschatology
We believe that Christ will return for and rapture (Gk. harpadzo) His Church. This is a resurrection and translation of the saints, both living and dead. This belief is ancient and not modern.
The rapture of the Church precedes a seven year tribulation, in which the unbelievers and world governments will be judged.
The Second Advent is when Christ returns bodily to the earth, judges the nations, and sets up His kingdom over the earth.
The Millennium is a literal thousand year reign, in which Christ rules the world from Jerusalem, through a resurrected and glorified Church of kings and priests. The ancient promises of God to the nation of Israel will also be fulfilled at this time.
The resurrection of condemnation for the unbelievers follows the Millennium, at the Great White Throne judgment.
The hell for unbelievers (Heb. sheol or Gk. hades), will be thrown into the lake of fire (Heb. gehenna), during this judgment.
We believe in the Age of Ages wherein are a new heavens and a new earth, holding out hope for a universal salvation, 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.