As I travel around meeting people, one of the most common questions I'm asked is for my Statement of Faith. A brief, even 1 page, description of what I believe.
The question is useful because the person asking the question wants to quickly learn where I stand on the Bible and Jesus.
A simple answer to this question is that I take the whole Bible as inspired in its original languages. But, this does not help the person wanting a quick answer since there are certain essentials in the Bible which this summary statement does not cover.
Of course I eventually learned that Statements of Faith, in general, as well as Church doctrinal statements, in general, have themselves been used as signs of apostacy. Hard to believe, but if you had a Statement of faith, or a Doctrinal statement you were obvious shortening scripture and thus apostate. The basis for this argument is itself scriptural, and comes from Revelation.
Of course I'm not offering my Statement of Faith as additional text, and it is clear that you can't please all the people all the time. Go figure. If you think what I'm offering on this page is scripture, then we got bigger problems that core issues of belief.
Instead of writing my own Statement of Faith, I decided to adopt one as my own. This is easier, and perhaps quicker, because there just are not that many to choose from.
The one I selected as my own was written before they were called Statements of Faith, or even Doctrinal Statements. In the era when this was penned it was called a creed. In fact it was the first creed that was written for the purpose of summarizing Christian belief and it remains the only creed accepted broadly across the Christian world.
Of course by selecting this creed as my own I discriminate based on this creed. Of course discriminating, that is choosing, based on a creed is now considered illegal in certain jurisdictions. Such is the upside down nature of the world today, and why the word Creed is usually shunned for the more common "Statement of Faith" or "Doctrinal Statement."
This creed is the oldest of the Christian creeds, being one of the documents produced by the Council of Nicea in about 325 AD. This creed is the only creed used by the Eastern, Roman, and Protestant branches of Christianity. It was the first attempt to codify, in a one page, easy to memorize form, the basic beliefs of the Christian faith.
What follows is an updated, English language version of that first Christian Creed. Notes on the wording of the creed follow below.
A Contemporary Nicene Creed
I believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For me and for my salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For my sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On day 3 he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom has no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
The word catholic is deliberately not capitalized. This use is not the name of the Catholic Church. This is the standard Protestant use of the word catholic. As used here the word means the universal body of believers in Jesus Christ, including those believers who belong to the Catholic Church. This refers to those people whom Jesus has saved through his blood shed at Calvary.
The upper case Catholic is to the church like IBM was once to the Personal Computer. They picked for themselves a name as generic as possible to take over in the minds of the unaware.
This creed is a good one for the Bible Time project since it points specifically at Jesus' return in glory to judge the living and dead, and because it points at our own bodily resurrection and our eventual home in a "world to come." Bodily resurrection is rarely mentioned in modern Christian circles but it is a central part of the New Covenant. This point wasn't missed in the 4th century.
This creed also makes the point that Jesus' kingdom has no end this is a point often missed in modern Christian debates about the millennium.