The Task

Faith as Trust

• Christianity is the grace of meeting the Word of God in a way that compels one to hold on to it despite its dialecticism
• The proclamation of the church deals with the fact that Christians do believe and the way in which they believe
• Belief proceeds from faith (that is, the substance of the belief)
• Stating that it is a belief is objective and gives up what it is that one feels or thinks
• Belief is about being one with the gracious Triune God
• We can only hear the Word of God from God Himself
• Calling Scripture the Word of God is to say that it is a witness to the Word of God
• Calling the proclamation of the Church the Word of God is for us to witness to the Word of God
• Meeting with God is a gracious gift of freedom that we would never even want without Him
• the Word acquires meaning and is established in faith in the gospel
• Faith is about being freed from fear of and deception from all other gods
• Trust is about knowing that God is always with us
• The gospel includes the law: "Because God is for us, we may also be for Him"
• Faith is trust because it is not forced or even ideal but is a reliance that can only happen from permitence
• Faith is despite reason as proved by the men in the Bible
• We would rather give ourselves grace than receive it
• Faith is final and is different from an opinion in that it does not just flip flop

Faith as Knowledge

• The proclamation of the church is truthful language
• The Apostles Creed rests on knowledge and knowledge is created whenever it is said
• Faith is knowledge
• Christianity is an illuminated knowledge not attainable without God's own revelation of Himself
• Christian faith and knowledge meet where the Divine Reason reveals itself
• It is because of humanity's incapacity to know God on his own terms that the human is empowered by his own weakness
• Jesus is the living truth and living knowledge
• Wisdom differs from knowledge in that it also has practice
• Wisdom is empirical knowledge that follows us in folly and itself
• Christians live in the truth of Jesus
• Jesus is the truth with which the world was created and continues and so is the first and ultimate truth
• Christians live out the meaning of life whether they know it or not since they ultimately exist in the truth of the universe

Faith as Confession

• Faith is our confession of God: that he revealed Himself
• God made Himself historical
• One does not have true knowledge, trust, or freedom, without confession
• The church must be able to confess in its one language (the Bible, tradition, reason)
• The church must confess to the world in its own language (politics, society)
• The church must speak and live out its own confession

God in the Highest

• God is unique and not one among many others
• God is so high that He cannot be, has not been, and will not be reduced to a simple definition
• God is so great that He can only be known if He reveals Himself and He has through Jesus
• God cannot be known apart from Jesus
• We cannot put any other gods before God because there are none

God the Father

• The Trinity is not three different types of God's
• The term 'person' in Greek and Latin is not like in English but refers to 'a way of being's
• It is not that God is a divine type of father like ours but that our type of father is corporeal based on Him
• The Son is a re-establishment of the Father and not His creation
• God makes us share in His glory as His sons (in a way other than that in which Jesus is the Son
• Humans can become God's children but are not born His children

God Almighty

• God is known by Himself as power
• Although God is Himself power, power in of itself and apart from God is from the Devil
• God's power is made manifest in the law and in order
• Asking if God's power can make something untrue true is a misunderstanding of power
• True godly power is about ruling in truth  Any power that lies about that is false power

God the Creator

• When God is confessed as creator, creation is assumed
• Creation is not a myth because myths explain things how  They continue on but Genesis presents creation as done
• God cannot be known apart from His works
• God is not the father of the world but the creator of it
• Knowledge of creation is knowledge of God but the world is not a vase that holds natural theology
• God only makes Himself known because He wants to make Himself known by His true Son
• Because Jesus is historical, the world is real and historical
• The Creed does not presuppose the world and then ask if God exists but states that God exists and wonders why He wants all of us to be with Him
• The freedom of the creature is only found in it's representation of the Creator
• God created all things good, so anything bad or evil was not made by God and isn't even a real thing at all

Heaven and Earth

• Heaven is the imperceivable sphere to humans and earth the conceivable sphere
• The heaven and the earth regret to the whole world but that had been represented differently throughout the ages
• The church has combined the contemporary world pictures with the biblical one and just be very careful not to confuse the two
• Heaven and earth refer to man and to his sphere

Jesus Christ

• Neither the Father nor the Spirit can truly be spoken if apart from Jesus
• While the Father is God above man and the Spirit God with man, Jesus is God as man
• Jesus is the word and work of God

The Said and Servant of God

• Jesus Christ must be understood as both Jesus the Jew and Christ the savior of the world together
• Jesus must be understood according to his name since names are revelational
• Israel is nothing without Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ existed within Israel so one must understand Israel to understand Jesus
• Jesus is the direct result of God desiring to work with Israel so the church itself suffers when it strips the Jewish Hebrew Bible background from Jesus
• The existence of Jews today among all the Ancient Near Eastern peoples is proof of the existence of God
• Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Jewish promise and plan
• Our acceptance (or lack of) of Jesus Christ is not despite His Jewishness but precisely in it
• Israel's original mission as God's elect was to proclaim the Word to the world and bring salvation to it
• Israel, however, continually fails and falls into catastrophe after catastrophe and even ends up killing it's own Messiah
• Israel is not superseded but fulfilled by Jesus Christ

God's Only Son

• God's revelation conflicts with the many Revelations of this Earth
• The difference between God's revelation and Earth's many Revelations are that God's true Revelation is one and only begotten son Jesus Christ
• People who criticize the Nicene creeds second article for it not being found in the Bible must understand that there are many problems that Christians must face and argue against with language not found in the Bible but based on the Bible

Our Lord

• The fact that Jesus Christ is Lord means that confessing him is the sovereign decision laid before everyone whether they know it or not
• Existence of God as a human, Jesus Christ, is the existence of humanity itself
• Power in of itself is evil, but the Power of God is Jesus Christ the Lord - True good power
• Humans are only seen through God looking at Jesus Christ are mediator - it is through him that our death is killed and that we are chosen
• The Nicene Creed proclaims Jesus as our corporate Lord just as Jesus taught his disciples to pray to their father corporately
• Referring to Jesus as our Lord is not just saying that he is the lord of the church and the other churches have their own Lords but that we are to proclaim him as Lord to the rest of the world as he is truly the lord of the whole world

The Mystery and the Miracle of Christmas

• The incarnation of Jesus Christ in Mary by the Holy Spirit must be believed by all Christians
• It is Jesus coming down from heaven that is symbolized by a Christian crossing himself
• It is first stated that Jesus is God so that one can know that he is not just man but the truest man as God-man
• The fact that Jesus was made incarnate only by the Holy Spirit proves that His incarnation was not by the Father having relations with Mary as humans do but through a triune process
• God becoming born as a human through a poor woman shows how he exalts the humble

Suffered…

• Jesus' suffering is not found only in His crucifixion and passion but also in His whole life; being born in a stable, hunted down by Herod, and raised up as a refugee
• The first time of the mention of suffering in the confession is that of Jesus' suffering - that is, the first suffering mentioned is when God becomes human - and not at creation
• This is how we can know that the only real suffering was when the righteous God made human suffered
• Therefore, the only truly suffer when we partake in his same suffering
• It is from this that we learned what sin is: sin is the rejection of the grace of God
• Jesus becoming a man meant Jesus taking on the wrath of God that comes with the sinfulness of humanity

Under Pontius Pilate

• Pontius Pilate is a historical character that shows the history of God becoming man
• Pontius Pilate represents the polis, politics, and how he delivers over the righteous man to death and destruction despite knowing that he is righteous but because he wants to hold on to power though he is supposed to judge right and wrong
• Pontius Pilate is a picture of how Jesus gives unto Caesar what is Caesar's by allowing the government to condemn him to death though he knows that their power was given to them by him

Was Crucified, Dead, and Buried, He Descended into Hell

• Christians have always gravitated towards one side or another - the West is emphasized Jesus' crucifixion and the East has emphasized His resurrection - but neither one of them exists apart from the other
• There is no Easter apart from Good Friday but Good Friday would not be good without Easter
• In celebrating Good Friday we are celebrating Easter and should therefore be joyous
• The humiliation of Christ is that he died as God in human flesh
• The real mystery of Easter is that Christ's Resurrection is humanity is exalted to the right hand of the father in the incarnate God
• The reconciliation of God with men is only through God becoming man and reconciling himself with himself as man
• Jesus' crucifixion meant God rejecting Him as crucifixion was the curse of hanging on a tree
• Just as death is the end of all possibilities, Jesus dying on our account is the end of everything
• Burial is what happens to all of us - it is about us going away and eventually being forgotten - it is what Jesus did on our behalf
• How is the total and complete absence of God and godlessness itself
• The paradox of hell is that God goes to hell himself to make us wretches right with God not despite God's righteousness but through his righteousness
• There's no understanding of sin apart from Christ's cross because He only He understood what sin was when He paid for it

The Third Day He Rose Again From the Dead

• And speaking of Jesus pain for our debt, the New Testament authors were referring to Jesus ransoming himself and buying a slave
• In other words, we are freed from our slavery to sin and, according to the law, given a new status of freedom
• The rising again of Jesus is the start of Him as a new human different from the one before His death
• Easter is a pledge of hope but also a present reality
• Easter is about a war one even though the troops are still shooting and haven't heard about the winning

He Ascended Into Heaven, and Sitteth on the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty

• Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father after sending into Heaven begins the new age of the Church
• Jesus is sending into the heavens and being above us there means that He is present everywhere here
• Just as the humiliation of God is found in His incarnation and crucifixion, the resurrection is in the exaltation of man
• As Jesus represents humanity, His exaltation to be with God is about humans being made right with God and being with him
• We cannot understand God's grace without understanding his omnipotence, and vice versa
• Jesus going into the heavens is him beginning an establishment on the Earth
• Christianity is not about repeating the work of Jesus but about reflecting on it and bringing it to all places

The Coming of Jesus Christ the Judge

• Christianity's concept of time is totally different from that of the world's so we must understand the Bible and the Creed
• Christ's work is not in the past but only the sin and the death that He defeated are left in the past and His new creation is now
• Because Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father, all of His work is still present
• Jesus is eternity in history but sin and death are timelessness
• Jesus coming to judge the quick and dead is not about Him taking pleasure in any sinner's condemnation but about Him coming back as the one who Himself recieved the judgement of God Himself
• The biblical concept of a judge is not of one who condemns some and rewards others but one who creates order and restores judgement

I Believe in the Holy Ghost

• The first article of the Creed is about God, the second about God-man, and the third about man
• Man belongs to the Creed
• Because the Second Article speaks of what God did for humanity, the third speaks of how humans are to react to it to God
• To have the Spirit means to have freedom
• The Holy Spirit is a relation of the Word to man
• The Spirit comes from Jesus and so cannot be separated from Him
• The Holy Spirit is not identical with the human spirit but doesn meet with him

The Church, it's Unity, Holiness and Universality

• It is impossible to speak of the Holy Spirit without immediately after mentioning the congregation if the Church since it is it's direct consequence
• We cannot believe in the Church alone but only in context of it's being preceded by the Holy Spirit
• The Christian convocation sets itself apart in that it congregates not based on history nor nature, not agreement and arrangement, but by the guiding of the Spirit
• The Church does not congregate or is built by human hands but comes as under military command - Not fine agreement
• The Creed does not imagine an invisible Cloud-cuckoland invisible church but a church visible and based on the Apostles
• If the Church has no visibility, it is not the Church
• One does not believe in the Church but in the Spirit's work in the Church
• The Catholic church is about people coming together to encounter the Word of God
• Ecumenism does not trivialize differences but unites despite them
• The Catholic church is a church means the history of the church stays the same throughout
• The Nicene Creed adds that the Church is apostolic to define it's other three terms
• The Church can only be ruled by Jesus Christ and humans can only represent him in rulership in the Church
• Because Holy scripture is the witness of the Word, it is the government of the Church and so should be preached and exposited weekly
• The nature of the Church is to proclaim the Word, to administer the sacraments, to have a liturgy, to apply its law, and theology
• The Church's nature is only existent within its identity as an ambassadors that does all of these things for others

The Forgiveness of Sins

• When the Christian looks back, it is to his forgiveness of sins and not to the achievement or experience that comes with the forgiveness of his sins but the forgiveness of his sins in and of itself
• Confessing the forgiveness of sins through baptism is having a symbol to look back on despite our wavering perception

The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting

• The life of the Christian is about looking back on his forgiveness of sins and looking forward to the resurrection of his body
• Resurrection does not mean life continuation but it's completion
• The man that has not experienced death does not know what it is and so does not know what the resurrection is without the Holy Spirit revealing it to him through the Word