Theology

About Creeds

The Ecumenical creeds is an umbrella term used in the Western Church to refer to the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed and, less commonly, the Athanasian Creed. The ecumenical creeds are also known as the Universal creeds. These creeds are accepted by almost all mainstream Christian denominations in the West, including Reformed churches, the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican churches and Lutheran churches. Many Methodist churches accept the Nicene Creed and Apostles' Creed. The Eastern Orthodox Church accepts the Nicene Creed but does not use the Apostles' Creed or the Athanasian Creed.


A creed is a summary or statement of what one believes. It originates from the Latin credo meaning "I believe." The purpose of a creed is to act as a yardstick of correct belief. A creed is an epitome of what is required for orthodoxy, not a full definition. It was hoped that by memorizing this summary of the faith, lay people without extensive theological training could still recognize deviations from orthodox doctrines based on the Bible as interpreted in the Christian tradition. The term ecumenical can refer to efforts by Christians of different church traditions to develop closer relationships and better understandings. The term is also often used to refer to efforts toward the visible and organic unity of different Christian churches in some form.

Source: Wikipedia 


We believe in the one true, living God.


Sovereign over creation


Humanity is the greatest creation, and


He gave us the capacity to love and reason. 

The Apostles Creed

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenical_creeds


All Creeds


Apostles' Creed
Creed of Nicaea
Nicene Creed
Chalcedonian Creed
Athanasian Creed
The Didache
The Creed of Aristides of Athens
The Creed of Cyprian of Carthage
The Der Balyzeh Papyrus
The Creeds of Arius and Euzoius
The Creed of Alexander of Alexandria
The First Synod of Antioch
The Second Dedication of Antioch
The Baptismal Creed of Jerusalem
The Apostolic Constitutions
World Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith
National Association of Evangelicals
The Unaltered Augsburg Confession,
The Doctrine of the African Orthodox Church
Westminster Confession of Faith
Common Declaration of Pope John Paul II
A New Creed United Church of Canada
The Statement of Faith of the American Baptist Association
The Statement of Beliefs of the North American Baptist Conference
The Orthodox Creed
The Free-will Baptist Confession
The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church
The Church's Unity, World Council of Churches
The Christian Unitarian Creed


We base our theology on "Only One God," as in John 1 and 1 Ephesians 4:5. From various doctrines, methods or styles where those parts are considered the best to our

knowledge that make sense by reason. God is a single power defined as the One or All, composed of everything it has ever created. This supreme energy force does not rule over the Universe; He is the Universe; He is the Universal Christ 

Theology

of the Creationist 

Dr. Hugh Ross

 Biblical cosmology is the biblical writers' conception of the cosmos as an organized, structured entity, including its origin, order, meaning and destiny. The Bible was

formed over many centuries, involving many authors and reflecting shifting patterns of religious belief; consequently, its cosmology is not always consistent. Nor do the biblical texts necessarily represent the beliefs of all Jews or Christians at the time they were put into writing: the majority of those making up the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, in particular, represent the beliefs of only a tiny segment of the ancient Israelite community, the members of a late Judean religious tradition centred in Jerusalem and devoted to the exclusive worship of Yahweh.


The ancient Israelites envisaged a universe of a flat disc-shaped Earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below. Humans inhabited Earth during

life and the underworld after death; there was no way that mortals could enter heaven, and the underworld was morally neutral; only in Hellenistic times (after          c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven. In this period, the older three-level cosmology, in considerable measure, gave way to the Greek concept of a spherical earth suspended in space at the center of several concentric heavens.


The opening words of the Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1:1–26) sum up the biblical editors' view of how the cosmos originated: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"; Yahweh, the God of Israel, was solely responsible for the creation and had no rivals, implying Israel's superiority over all other nations. Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy, concluded that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity. Christianity in turn, adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with the Logos (Word): "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Like Dr. Ross, we, at EMMI, believe in progressive creationism, a view which posits that while the earth is billions of years old, life did not appear by natural forces alone but that a supernatural agent formed different lifeforms in incremental (progressive) stages, and day-age creationism which is an effort to reconcile a literal Genesis account of Creation with modern scientific theories on the age of the Universe, the Earth, life, and humans. Ross rejects the young Earth creationist (YEC) position that the earth is younger than 10,000 years or that the creation "days" of Genesis 1 represent literal 24-hour periods. Ross instead asserts that these days (translated from the Hebrew word yom are historic, distinct, and sequential, but not 24 hours in length nor equal in length. Ross and the RTB team agree with the scientific community that the vast majority of YEC arguments are pseudoscience and that any version of intelligent design is inadequate if it doesn't provide a testable hypothesis which can make verifiable and falsifiable predictions, and if not, it should not be taught in the classroom as science.


(Source: Wikipedia.org)