Theology of the Church, Mentor's Guide, MG03

/ 1 1 9

T H E O L O G Y O F T H E C H U R C H

I. The Marks of the Creedal Standard: the Church according to the Nicene Creed: “We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” The original Nicene Creed was the product of perhaps the first worldwide gathering of Christian bishops at Nicaea in Bithynia (what is now Isnik, Turkey) in the year 325. The teachings of this first gathering were confirmed and extended at a later meeting in 381. The original convocation sought to undermine a heresy called Arianism (which called Jesus’ deity into question, and claimed that he was God’s greatest creation). The meeting also sought to refute the idea that the Holy Spirit was not God (i.e., not of the same substance as the Father). A council of 150 bishops of the Eastern Church were gathered in 381 at Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey), where they confessed again that Jesus was fully God, and extended the first’s councils language to include an explicit paragraph which expressed the deity and work of the Holy Spirit. The second, expanded version of the original 325 Nicene creed is known today as “The Nicene Creed.” Seen to be one of the first truly foundational confessions of Christian belief, this creed is universally acknowledged by all traditions and denominations.

Video Segment 1 Outline

Regarding the Church, the Creed affirms “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” Let’s look briefly at these creedal marks respectively.

4

A. To begin with, according to the Nicene Creed, the Church is one.

page 254 4

1. Notice how this unity is stated in Jesus’ high priestly prayer, John 17.20-23.

2. This insight is reaffirmed by Paul in Eph. 4.4-6.

3. Jesus’s teaching on the oneness: one sheepfold on his people, John 10.14-16.