What do you think of this statement? ‘How great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church… to devout Protestants today! … The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.’ Now take your blood pressure medication, take a deep breath, and please read on.
‘We believe in one holy catholic apostolic church,’ confessed the assembled bishops at Constantinople in 381. It was during this council that resolution was brought to the 4th-century Trinitarian crisis, producing what we now know as the Nicene Creed. The four adjectives are now known as the attributes of the church. This was not an imposition of power by a group of bishops seeking to aggrandise their position and status. Rather it reflects Scriptural teaching.
Paul, in Ephesians 2:11-22, describes the church as holy. It belongs to God, a holy temple in the Lord, indwelt by the Spirit. It is apostolic, founded on the work and writings of the apostles, who were appointed to that office by Christ and given his authority for the foundation of the holy temple. It is catholic, spread throughout the world in every nation under heaven. It is one, for there is but one body of Christ, one army, one people of God. It is formed of Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, across all social strata, reconciled to God in Christ.
