One of more than 50,000 baptisms performed at Saddleback Valley Community Church, California, since its founding in 1980. The baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19 is seen by many as an early credal statement. As a child, I encountered Christianity in the context of various independent churches in Australia and Papua New Guinea. None of those …
Mountains of Scripture (3): Mount Moriah
I have had the privilege of visiting Israel three times. On the first occasion, in 2007, I spent several hours at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, including a tour of the Dome of the Rock, where the Jewish Temple stood during Jesus’ life, until its destruction by Rome in AD 70. Beneath the great gilt …
The first Christian creeds
One of the earliest statements of trust in Jesus is beautifully captured by the author of the Fourth Gospel. In John 9, Jesus encounters a man blind from birth, and heals him. Later, the man shares his personal testimony with the Jewish religious leaders: “I was blind, and now I can see!” (v. 25). Later …
Creeds in the Hebrew Bible
A creed is a concise, formal, public and authoritative statement of key religious beliefs. For Christians, a creed is validated by Scripture, and is a formula “in which the church’s understanding of the gospel is laid bare.”[1] The classic Christian creeds invoke the story of Jesus and the experience of the first Christians, and there …
The danger of dogma
A few years ago, while browsing Dogmatic Theology by W. G. T. Shedd, a friend expressed surprise that such a book was in print today. To be fair, the book was originally published in three volumes from 1888-1894, and the title dates from that period. It seemed somehow out of place in the 2020s. In theology, the word …
iDigress 