There is nothing in a Christian’s life that will ever usurp the salvation Christ Jesus bestowed upon us. As members of the body of Christ, also known as Christianity, we believe there’s a set parameter of what defines Christianity. And because everyone is unique you can expect there will be differences. Those differences however, don’t divide us as a body; rather, they give insight into the personalities of His creation.
With those differences also comes the understanding we know our place and fully accept that Jesus is Emmanuel, God in the flesh. Overall there are a handful of set dogmas accepted and well approved within all Christian denominations, i.e. God is one God in three persons, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God and God is spirit. We also believe that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of man, raised on the third day securing eternal life for us, the Holy Spirit resides inside each and every believer, and man can’t earn salvation.
All these things were discussed in numerous councils from 100 – 550 AD.
These councils of the early church fathers gathered from all over the world to discuss and ratify basic statements of faith for the Christian faith. Knowing they all had their own customs, their own traditions didn’t deter these epic men of faith and instead of Christianity dissolving in to thin air as Mormonism and other “isms” like to claim, the body came together.
This was done through nothing less than the Holy Spirit’s power working in the lives of each person. They met and wrote the creeds for a few reasons, but the top two reasons were to give Christians worldwide a definitive outline for the meaning of Christianity and to denounce false teachers like Marcion, Arius, the Gnostics and Montanism. Also see our article in response to the Church’s recent claim that they’re Christians.
We’re listing the creeds one by one, but for future reference you’ll be able to find them all in one page over on the right side widget area. You’ll also notice we’ve only listed the three main Christian creeds herem but CARM, Blue Letter Bible and Bible Study Tools all have great references for other creeds in addition to the Reformation Confessions.
We’re doing this so we can see how history played out and how God Almighty worked in the lives of His creation just as He promised in Matthew 16:18 – the gates of hell won’t prevail against His church. I can assure you that as a Mormon I had no clue these things had even been written and it wasn’t until after I left Mormonism did I fully understand what the LDS Church had done and why.
The most important thing to remember is that these creeds, nor any of the confessions, override or replace the authority of Scripture.
Also note: when the word “catholic” is used it’s not in reference to the Roman Catholic Church. The word “catholic” means universal and was used in this genre as referring to the whole body of Christ.
We retrieved our definition of a creed from dictionary.com and Bible Study Tools.
Dictionary.com
“An authoritative, formulated statement of the chief articles of Christian belief, as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, or the Athanasian Creed.”
“Creeds are authoritative summaries of the principal articles of faith of various churches or bodies of believers. Since doctrines are subject to elaboration and interpretation that cause differences of opinion detailed creeds become necessary to emphasize the differences between the tenets of schismatic branches. They also serve as formulations of belief when liturgical usage, as in the administration of baptism, requires a profession of faith.”
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