{"id":1362,"date":"2019-01-12T11:59:47","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2019-01-12T14:54:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T22:54:41","slug":"1362-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/1362-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nicene Creed"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE NICENE CREED<\/span><\/p>\n

1.1 We believe in one God,
\nthe Father, the Almighty,
\nmaker of heaven and earth,
\nof all that is,
\nseen and unseen.<\/p>\n

1.2 We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
\nthe only Son of God,
\neternally begotten of the Father,
\nGod from God, Light from Light,
\ntrue God from true God,
\nbegotten, not made,
\nof one Being with the Father;
\nthrough him all things were made.
\nFor us and for our salvation
\nhe came down from heaven,
\nwas incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
\nand became truly human.
\nFor our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
\nhe suffered death and was buried.
\nOn the third day he rose again
\nin accordance with the Scriptures;
\nhe ascended into heaven
\nand is seated at the right hand of the Father.
\nHe will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
\nand his kingdom will have no end.<\/p>\n

1.3 We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
\nwho proceeds from the Father and the Son,
\nwho with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
\nwho has spoken through the prophets.
\nWe believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
\nWe acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
\nWe look for the resurrection of the dead,
\nand the life of the world to come. Amen.<\/p>\n

\n

The Nicene Creed<\/p>\n

\u00a0 In the first three centuries, the church found itself in a hostile environment. On
\nthe one hand, it grappled with the challenge of relating the language of the gospel,
\ndeveloped in a Hebraic and Jewish-Christian context, to a Graeco-Roman world. On
\nthe other hand, it was threatened not only by persecution, but also by ideas that
\nwere in conflict with the biblical witness.<\/p>\n

In A.D. 312, Constantine won control of the Roman Empire in the battle of
\nMilvian Bridge. Attributing his victory to the intervention of Jesus Christ, he
\nelevated Christianity to favored status in the empire. \u201cOne God, one Lord, one faith,
\none church, one empire, one emperor\u201d became his motto.<\/p>\n

The new emperor soon discovered that \u201cone faith and one church\u201d were
\nfractured by theological disputes, especially conflicting understandings of the
\nnature of Christ, long a point of controversy. Arius, a priest of the church in
\nAlexandria, asserted that the divine Christ, the Word through whom all things have
\ntheir existence, was created by God before the beginning of time. Therefore, the
\ndivinity of Christ was similar to the divinity of God, but not of the same essence.
\nArius was opposed by the bishop, Alexander, together with his associate and
\nsuccessor Athanasius. They affirmed that the divinity of Christ, the Son, is of the
\nsame substance as the divinity of God, the Father. To hold otherwise, they said, was
\nto open the possibility of polytheism, and to imply that knowledge of God in Christ
\nwas not final knowledge of God.<\/p>\n

To counter a widening rift within the church, Constantine convened a council
\nin Nicaea in A.D. 325. A creed reflecting the position of Alexander and Athanasius
\nwas written and signed by a majority of the bishops. Nevertheless, the two parties
\ncontinued to battle each other. In 381, a second council met in Constantinople. It
\nadopted a revised and expanded form of the A.D. 325 creed, now known as the
\nNicene Creed.<\/p>\n

The Nicene Creed is the most ecumenical of creeds. The Presbyterian Church
\n(U.S.A.) joins with Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and most Protestant
\nchurches in affirming it. Nevertheless, in contrast to Eastern Orthodox churches, the
\nwestern churches state that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but
\nfrom the Father and the Son (Latin, filioque). To the eastern churches, saying that
\nthe Holy Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son threatens the distinctiveness of
\nthe person of the Holy Spirit; to the western churches, the filioque guards the unity
\nof the triune God. This issue remains unresolved in the ecumenical dialogue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE NICENE CREED 1.1 We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. 1.2 We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[136,135,134],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confession","tag-creed","tag-nicene","tag-the-nicene-creed"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1380,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions\/1380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}