The Nicene Creed’s place in the Mass has contributed to its vast cultural legacy, as the creed has been recited in worship around the world for centuries. The creed is also recited whenever Masses by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and other composers are performed in concert halls. In this music, today’s most secularized audiences continue to … Read more
Recent research indicates that Gen Z is undergoing a mass exodus from the church and traditional Christianity. For instance, Lifeway Research found in 2017 that 66% of regular church-going teens left the church after graduating high school, and this percentage has remained steady. In 2024, Barna Research shows that only 16% of Gen Z members … Read more
This paper offers rarely seen evidence for the early theological foundations of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity by examining a 4th-century Greek inscription of King Ezana of Axum, Ethiopia’s first Christian ruler. This inscription provides the earliest internal documentary evidence for Ethiopia’s alignment with Nicene orthodoxy and its rejection of Arianism. The Greek syntax and Trinitarian formula … Read more
Sometimes, Evangelicals struggle with the divine processions for various exegetical or metaphysical reasons. I argue that the Filioque clause of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) is theologically necessary for safeguarding the identities of all three Trinitarian Persons, and not just the Holy Spirit’s, as it renders all of their eternal relations as unique, identity-making relations. First, … Read more
Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a seminal essay—“Creed or Chaos?”—that later become a lead chapter in her book with the same title (1949). A subsequent edition (1995) carries the subtitle: “Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster; Or, Why It Really Does Matter What You Believe.” While appreciating Sayers’s basic concern for preserving historic Christian … Read more
It is no understatement to claim that the filioque is one of the most divisive issues in the history of Christianity. However, for Protestant Christians, particularly those within what Richard Muller calls the “Reformed Orthodoxy,” the filioque has been the default understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit. In this paper, I will argue … Read more
The Council of Nicaea (325) is the first of the seven ecumenical councils through which the rule of faith was expounded. While the creed produced at Nicaea was expanded upon at the Council of Constantinople (381), this paper will argue that the evolution that the Nicene Creed underwent at the Council of Constantinople (381) was … Read more
An important but underrecognized aspect of the reception of Nicaea I (325) at subsequent ecumenical councils is the fifth-century concept of the “sufficiency of Nicaea.” The Acts of Ephesus I (431) contain a decree (the so-called Canon 7.00 of Ephesus) that prohibits anyone from writing a different creed as a rival to the one promulgated … Read more
Frédéric Manns affirms that Justin Martyr’s conception of the nature of the Old Testament differed from that of the Jewish community. Jewish groups held to a three-level hierarchy of decreasing authority: Law, Prophets, and Writings. In contrast, Justin Martyr held to the entire OT as equally authoritative with all of it prophetically pointing to Christ. … Read more
William Perkins was one of the best-selling and most influential English divines of the Elizabethan era (1558-1603). While certain topics in Perkins’s corpus like predestination and conscience have received extensive attention from scholars, his use of creeds and church history has seen little dedicated discussion. A few exceptions to this paucity include one unpublished dissertation … Read more