CH-401 Creeds and Confessions

Christians have always said together what they believe. Read the great creeds and confessions, and learn to use them to teach and guard the faith in your church.

Following Creeds and Confessions, this course reads the creeds of the early church and the confessions of the Reformation churches as documents. For each one you ask what question it answered, what it says and what authority it claims. It ends with how evangelicals learned to work together through short statements of faith, from the Evangelical Alliance of 1846 to the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 and the Statement of Faith of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

What you will study

• What creeds and confessions are for, and how they serve Scripture
• The Apostles' Creed and the early confession at baptism
• The Nicene Creed: Christ, true God from true God
• Chalcedon and the Athanasian Creed: the Trinity and the one Christ, truly God and truly man
• Lutheran, Reformed and Baptist confessions, and the questions that shaped them
• Unity and diversity among the Protestant families
• Evangelical alliances and shared statements of faith, to the Lausanne Covenant
• The Canadian story: the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada

Course materials

• Creeds and Confessions, a WWES textbook
• The Bible