We Are All Catholic

When is a Baptist a catholic? When he says all true believers are catholic!

Read what Mark Dever, pastor of Capital Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC says:

 An essential part of the gospel is that it is catholic—that is, the Good News is given to all people. And the church the Holy Spirit creates is catholic.

Putting the matter like this may make some Christians squirm. Many Protestants affirm, either weekly or semi-regularly, the Nicene Creed, proclaiming, "We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church," but many balk at that word, catholic. (That's why in my own congregation, we use the word universal rather than catholic, because the original Greek term katholikos means "whole, entire, universal.")....

.....there is much more to be said than that "catholic" simply means "universal." Let me rehearse all too quickly the history and biblical theology behind the term, why it's included in the great summary of the Christian faith, and how it challenges churches today.

Read it all at the link.

Not the Same Without It

Confused about the doctrine of the Trinity? Then check out Kevin DeYoung's piece entitled The Doctrine of the Trinity: No Christianity Without It:

If any doctrine makes Christianity Christian, then surely it is the doctrine of the Trinity. The three great ecumenical creeds—the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed—are all structured around our three in one God, underlying the essential importance of Trinitarian theology. Augustine once commented about the Trinity that “in no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable.” More recently, Sinclair Ferguson has reflected on “the rather obvious thought that when his disciples were about to have the world collapse in on them, our Lord spent so much time in the Upper Room speaking to them about the mystery of the Trinity. If anything could underline the necessity of Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, that must surely be it!”

Yet, when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, most Christians are poor in their understanding, poorer in their articulation, and poorest of all in seeing any way in which the doctrine matters in real life. One theologian said, tongue in cheek, “The trinity is a matter of five notions or properties, four relations, three persons, two processions, one substance or nature, and no understanding.” All the talk of essence and persons and co-this and co-that seem like theological gobbledy-gook reserved for philosophers and scholars-maybe for thinky bookish types, but certainly not for moms and mechanics and middle-class college students.

So in a few hundred words let me try to explain what the doctrine of the Trinity means, where it is found in the Bible, and why it matters....

Read the whole thing at the link.

Creeds: Living What We Believe

From How the Creeds Helped Me by Winfield Bevins at The Resurgence:

...Christian doctrine is not just for knowing, but for living. The essentials give us a foundation to build our life upon. What we believe about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit shapes and influences how we live and how we see the rest of the world:

• God is the Creator of all things, so I should care for his creation
• Jesus died for my sin, so I must live for Him and share my faith with others
• God created us to live in community, so I need the church

In the end, a creed is not just what we believe but how we live out what we believe.

Not Invented Yesterday

Winfield Bevins, lead pastor of Church of the Outer Banks and author of Grow: Reproducing through Organic Discipleship, has written a soon to be released book called Creed: Connect to the Basic Essentials of the Christian Faith. Creed ties the needs of the changing, current culture to the historic faith of the church by providing the essentials of the faith in an easy-to-understand format.  From a post at The Resurgence:

Christianity wasn’t invented yesterday and the church is much larger than one denomination or nationality. These three standards— the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments— have been used as a sturdy foundation for discipleship and doctrine for nearly two thousand years. If they were essential for the early generation of believers, shouldn’t they be important for us as well? Why should we reinvent the wheel?

I suspect we do because of our obsession of the new. We live in a culture of change where we value everything new. We tend to focus on the “now” or the “moment” at the expense of the “eternal.” But just because something is new doesn’t mean it is better. Likewise, just because something is old doesn’t mean it is useless and outdated.

There is also a web page promoting the book.  Another one for my wish list.

More on "Casts" and Spiritual Formation

Last week I wrote about spiritual disciplines acting like a cast on our souls, for broken souls to heal properly. Been thinking more about that, and asking myself some questions.

Creeds: Can reciting, memorizing and meditating on the ecumenical creeds ( Apostles and Nicene creeds, accepted by just about all Christians) act like a cast on our beliefs? The words of the creed act as a scaffold, forming our thinking: and right theology leads to right worship and living.

Psalms: Does reading, singing and praying through the Psalms act like a cast on our devotions, forming us to worship and communicate with God rightly? Is it any coincidence that the Psalms have been so used for 2,000 years?

Corporate Worship: Can doing the disciplines, the creeds and the psalms together form a community in right Godly worship? Might this be an antidote to the rampant individualism in American Christianity?

Just asking? What do you think?

Nicene Birthday

Saw a post at The Thinklings that the Nicene Creed was born this day in 325.

One of the oldest and most widely used confessions of the universal Christian faith, the Nicene Creed was formulated at a time when the heresy of Arianism threatened orthodox Christianity with the denial of Jesus' deity. Thus the strong Christology in the creed.

Thus, this is a good day to remember and rehearse these words:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

Congratulations Nicene Creed! 1,684 years old and doesn't look a day over 1,000!