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Saturday 10 July 2010

Nicene Creed (homoousian creed)

Christianity is Triune (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost) and therefore must express the Word, Sacraments and Creation and it must include a homoousian creed. (The spelling must be right!)

The implications build Christianity, the Gospel message. It gives hope and a purpose for our justification (or Christ's death and ressurection is for nothing but a fire and life insurance scam). Salvation is physical as well as spiritual and eminates out of ones core and touches everything and everyone around. If the Spirit dwells in a place there is liberty.  The implications are far reaching not limited. "No man, when he hath lighted a candle,  putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a  candlestick, that they which come in may see  the light.  The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye  is single, thy whole body also is full of  light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.   Take heed therefore that the light which  is in thee be not darkness.  If thy whole body therefore be full of  light, having no part dark, the whole  shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give  thee light. St Luke 11:32-36

Verse 1Joy to the world! the Lord is come;Let earth receive her King;Let every heart prepare him room,And heaven and nature sing,And heaven and nature sing,And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.Verse 2Joy to the Earth! the Saviour reigns;Let men their songs employ;While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plainsRepeat the sounding joy,Repeat the sounding joy,Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.Verse 3No more let sins and sorrows grow,Nor thorns infest the ground;He comes to make His blessings flowFar as the curse is found,Far as the curse is found,Far as, far as, the curse is found.Verse 4He rules the world with truth and grace,And makes the nations proveThe glories of His righteousness,And wonders of His love,And wonders of His love,And wonders, wonders, of His love.
 WIKI:
  • Homoiousianism which maintained that the Son was  "like in substance" but not necessarily to be identified with the  essence of the Father.
  • Homoianism which  declared that the Son was similar to God the father, without reference  to substance or essence. Some supporters of Homoian formulae also  supported one of the other descriptions. Other Homoians declared that  God the father was so incomparable and ineffably transcendent that even the ideas of  likeness, similarity or identity in substance or  essence with the subordinate Son and the Holy  Spirit were heretical and not justified by the Gospels. They held  that the Father was like the Son in some sense but that even to  speak of ousia was impertinent speculation.
  • Heteroousianism (including Anomoeanism)  which held that God the father and the son were different in substance  and/or attributes.




First Council of Nicea (325) First Council of Constantinople (381)
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of  all things visible and invisible. We 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 Son of God, begotten of the Father  [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God],  Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one  substance with the Father; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten  of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of  very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;
By whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth]; by whom all things were made;
Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate  and was made man; 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;
He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and 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;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the  quick and the dead;

whose kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Ghost. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth  from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped  and glorified, who spake by the prophets.

In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we  acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the  resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
[But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was  not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of  another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or  'changeable,' or 'alterable'—they are condemned by the holy catholic and  apostolic Church.]



Orthodox Anglicanism:

For the Church has authoritatively set forth scriptural doctrine in the two great Creeds of Christendom: the Apostles’ Creed historically associated as the Baptismal Confession, and the Nicene Creed as the Eucharistic Confession—the veritable “Symbol of the Faith.” Orthodox Anglicans believe the Creeds. As the Eighth Article of Religion states, “they may be proved by the most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” We thus believe in a literal Virgin Birth, a real death suffered by our Lord, a real Bodily Resurrection, the Lord’s Ascension witnessed by the Apostles, and we await His glorious return as our Judge. The authority of the Church dogmatically set forth the Creeds, and the doctrine the Creeds propounded was made binding for all Christians at all times.



On the other hand, can you see how a rejection of Holy Scripture leads, inevitably, to a rejection also of the Creeds? There are two ways in which portions of Christendom have rejected the Creeds, and thereby separated themselves from the historic faith. The first is the common Protestant habit of replacing the Creeds by “Affirmations”—platitudes to which individuals temporarily subscribe assent. They are the latest attempt to formulate the faith in a way acceptable to liberal social activists who control so much of the governing structures of mainline Protestantism.



The second way the Creeds are rejected is by subtly shifting the wording of them to allow theological ambiguity. This is more insidious form of creedal sleight-of-hand began with the Roman Communion’s attempt to promote modern language equivalents to the ancient liturgy after the days of the Second Vatican Council. Although these first efforts were no doubt sincere, the result has been to promote “fuzzy” theology ending finally in open heresy. A sample of this mid-sixties madness is found in a sermon preached by Episcopal Church Bishop James Pike in St. Louis, in 1964: “The fact is that we are in the midst of a theological revolution. Many of us feel that it is urgent that we rethink and restate the unchanging gospel in terms which are relevant to our day and to the people we would have hear it; not hesitating to abandon or reinterpret concepts, words, images, and myths developed in past centuries when men were operating under different world views and different philosophical structures.”



The outcome of this is apparent in the changes made in the Nicene Creed regarding the Incarnation and the miraculous Virgin Birth of our Lord. The orthodox American Book of Common Prayer states that our Lord “came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” The Episcopal Church’s Prayer Book of 1979, following the lead of Rome, states our Lord “came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” The former statement asserts that only one man in human history has ever been incarnate by the Holy Ghost: our Lord Jesus Christ. The latter statement differs not only in order but also in kind. It could be said that every human being is conceived by the power of God, and all children are the incarnation—the embodiment—of their parents. Thus, the change in the Creed only hints at a vague role for the divinity in the birth of Jesus, while retaining much of the cadence of the old Creed, and even use of the word “incarnate,” though in a different sense than that taught by the Fathers of the Church. One can stay in the pews (or keep one’s job at the church) and still confess the new “creed,” while remaining in unbelief.

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