Who we are
Aiming Point and Introduction
We would like to show you in this chapter some guide marks of our church through which we relate to the Universal Church.
- The canon of the Holy Scripture
- Patristic
- Synods (Councils)
- Protestant Values
- The Creed from Niceea and Constantinople
The canon of the Holy Scripture
The Holy Scripture represents the Word of God for people, the written shape of the Revelation which materialized itself in a paper (book) that we received as a result of a long historical process not without some trouble. The Scripture is made up of two parts:
- The Old Testament (The Hebrew Scriptures) that joins 39 books;
- The New Testament that includes 27 books
The traditional churches use a version of the Scriptures entitled the “Enriched Bible” or the enlarged canon that also includes a series of non-canonical books in the Old Testament that are considered to have theological and historical value.
The Canon is the list of the books that make up the Holy Scripture. We must mention a fundamental principle related to the adoption of this list: human authors, assisted by the Holy Spirit, wrote the books of the Scriptures and their delimitation from other books was done in Church under the same divine authority and guidance. The Canon of the Old Testament is taken over by the Church from the Jewish tradition. The Canon of the New Testament was established in the IV century. The list of the 27 books of the New Testament is mentioned in the Thirty Ninth Easter Letter belonging to Anastasie the Great from the year 367 and these books will be adopted as canonical books at the Carthage Council in 397.
The Scripture, in the canonical shape that we have today, was not written isolated somewhere, but was the outcome, the result of a divine-human relationship, that was materialized in a period of maturity of the Church when the contents of the Revelation, in its written form, was established. The criteria at the basis of the selection of the books from the canon, were simultaneously the following ones: the author of the book (usually, an apostle), the wide use of the book (acceptance and reading of the book in churches) and the doctrinarian content or teachings contained in the book.
The term of patristic refers to the history and content of the Christian teachings of the Fathers of the Church. These teachings ware substantiated approximately in the first five centuries (according to some authors, till the Chalcedony Council) and was adopted by the entire Church. The main Christian dogmas are finalized in this age of great theological achievements of the Church, thanks to some renown theologians, such as: Atanasie the Great, Vasile the Great, Grigorie de Nazianz, Grigorie de Nyssa, Chiril from Alexandria. The period that followed to that theological impetus is characterized by less achievements, but we can still mention some important moments such as, for example, the moment of the Christological synthesis done by Maxim Marturisitorul (Maxim the Confessant) – VII century.
The Fathers of the Church are remarkable for fighting and dealing with the problems of the Church (both dogmatic, organizational and social problems), holding the Scripture in their hands, offering a model of Christian life that resisted over the time.
Seven ecumenical synods (gatherings of bishops from the entire church of that time) were made in the Church in the first Christian millennium. The synods played an important part in outlining the main Christian dogmas. We mention here three of the most important councils that are generally accepted by all the churches:
- The Council from Niceea (325), where they were discussing about the Arian heresy and they were laying the foundations of the truths from the Holy Trinity. The synod formulated a creed (The Niceea Creed), which would turn into the doctrinaire basis for the next synods.
- The Council from Constantinople (381), where the Holy Trinity dogma was embraced again, especially the knowledge about the Son (they fought against the Apolinaire heresy that denied the rational soul of the man Jesus and believed that the body of Jesus was filled with the Word of God) and the Holy Spirit (they fought against the Macedonie heresy that denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit).
- The Council from Chalcedony (451), where they laid the foundations of the knowledge related to the two natures of Jesus Christ (divine and human).
Maybe the greatest achievement of the Reformation in the Christian life was the fact that it made the Scripture become a part of the human being's every day life, and the Scripture offered a specific way of living. The Protestant communities are structured on a multitude of values that are based on the dimension of the man's personal relationship with God. Man's salvation is viewed in the Protestant (evangelic) vision, as a process that develops as a result of the man's free answer - in the act of the personal faith - to the gift of God (the salvation offered as a gift through Jesus Christ and worked by the Holy Spirit into the human life). This process obviously starts with the conversion (changing the old way of thinking and living) and it is sustained through the spiritual exercise of the dialogue with God and with the fellow men from the believers' community. The Protestant values are rooted in the Holy Scripture; the emphasize is put on the historical life of the Son of God, His personal example of servitude and love.
The Protestantism improved the quality of the spiritual life on the whole, as well as the quality of the social life, by encouraging a personal spiritual life (reading and studying the Scripture, praying, communion of the believers). The life within a community plays a special role in the growth and maturation of the person that has accepted the grace of God. Each person from a community creates and establishes his/her identity as the son of God.
Crezul Niceo-constantinopolitan
We believe in One God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten,
Begotten of the Father before all worlds;
Light of Light, Very God of Very God;
Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father,
by Whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit
and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate,
and suffered and was buried;
And the third day He arose again, according to the Scriptures;
And ascended into Heaven,
and sits at the right hand of the Father;
And He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead,
Whose Kingdom shall have no end.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life,
Who proceeds from the Father,
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
Who spoke by the Prophets;
And we believe in One Holy, Universal and Apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
The way towards the new life:
- The man, created in the God's own image, is born in sin, lives in darkness, in the slavery of sin and death, in helplessness, for his own fault;
- The re-establishment of man from this fall, extremely deep, (the freeing from the slavery) could not be done through his own powers, through a human initiative
- This was the reason why, at the proper time, God took the initiative of redeeming man and sending into His only Son into the world, and he became a real man, embodied by the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary;
- The embodiment of the Son entails taking upon himself our fall and fulfilling the Law of the sin and death by bringing the old Adam to death. Jesus is the grain that was planted, that is, He died in order to defeat death in its own flash, in our fallen nature;
- And the new life will arise from this grain, from the pure Jesus Christ, through His rise from the dead;
- Jesus Christ went to heaven after He rose from the dead and He took with him the new redeemed man (the second Adam) on the right side of God;
- Death is overcome, man has the possibility of not dying; he has the guarantee of not rotting through the man Jesus Christ that rose from the dead and went to heaven;
- The Holy Spirit, the third person from the Holy Trinity, descended to earth after He went to heaven; the Holy Spirit represented the Church, the Body of Christ, in the history;
- The one that believes in Christ (as the embodied Son of God, who died and rose from the dead) receives eternal life and becomes a part of the Church; he receives the power of the new life from Christ through the works of the Holy Spirit;
- In the Church, the person is reborn with the help of the Holy Spirit, in the humanity of the New Adam, of a glorified Jesus;
- The person that was reborn, grows and becomes an adult in the Body of God; he prepares himself for the day when he will reunite with Christ; he is waiting impatiently to see the dimension of the new creation, entirely re-established,where there shall be no death;
- The mission of the Church on earth is to offer an opportunity of revival for the ones that lie in darkness, that is to confess Christ and the power of His resurrection.
(updated: 1 August 2005)
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