Paper Category: Creedal Christianity: Celebrating Nicaea

How ad hoc immediacy in the language of Christian belief requires creedal continuity

Our contemporary culture immerses individuals into perpetually changing contexts that require novel responses. Communication increasingly relies on a progression of ad-hoc experiences, where meaning is constructed and interpreted within specific, situated contexts (Mauri 2021, 3). This reliance on ad hoc language requires we create novel features in our language to navigate fragmented contexts. How does … Read more

Meredith G. Kline’s Revision of Nicene Trinitarianism

In God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, Meredith G. Kline proposed an unconventional account of the relational order between the Son and the Holy Spirit. He argued that, in terms of the eternal generation of the Son, there is an inverted order within the Trinity—the procession of the Spirit precedes the filiation of the Son, and, … Read more

Ethiopian Christology and the Nicene Creed: 4th C Greek Inscriptional Evidence from King Ezana

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

Does the Covenant of Redemption Undermine Classical Trinitarianism? No.

This paper demonstrates that the covenant of redemption, or pactum salutis, is consistent with classical Trinitarianism. In order to do so, the paper presents four contemporary evangelical theological challenges to the covenant of redemption with respect to what has been called classical trinitarianism. Whereas some, such as Paul Williamson, have challenged the exegetical foundation, and … Read more

An Analytic Theological Defense of the Filioque

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

Creeds, Doctrines, and Church Cultures: Five Theses Related to Changes in Beliefs

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

Critiquing Protestant Use of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed

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

Constantinople as a Clarification of the Nicene Creed

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