Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART II: T HEOLOGICAL AND M ISSIOLOGICAL P RINCIPLES AND I NSIGHTS • 239

B. The Significance of the Creed: Concise Summary of the Essentials

In the history of the church, the Nicene Creed has been the key statement of what is essential to Christian belief.

1. Augustine [says about the creeds] – Let thing contend with thing, cause with cause, reason with reason on the authority of Scripture, an authority not peculiar to either, but common to all. In this way, councils would be duly respected, and yet the highest place would be given to Scripture, every thing being brought to it as a test. 2. John Calvin - Thus those ancient Councils of Nicea, Constantinople, the first of Ephesus, Chalcedon and the like which were held for refuting errors, we willingly embrace, and reverence as sacred, in so far as relates to the doctrines of faith, for they contain nothing but the pure and genuine interpretation of Scripture , which the holy Fathers with spiritual prudence adopted to crush the enemies of religion who had then arisen ( Institutes IV, ix. 8). 3. John Wesley – John Wesley accorded a fundamental status to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as both “a summary of the biblical faith” and as an interpretive web “for the reading of Scriptures” (Sen-King Tan, “The Doctrine of the Trinity in John Wesley’s Prose and Poetic Works”).

C. World Impact Affirmation of Faith Statement

1. Acknowledgment of the essentials

2. Affirms the “Great Tradition” (ie., theology of the core creedal statements)

3. Asserts the Reformer’s central doctrinal claims

4. Addresses post-Nicea doctrinal issues

5. Anchored in broad evangelical perspective

D. The Power of Inter-denominationality: Peter Meiderlin (Rupertus Meldenius), 17th century Lutheran theologian and pastor