It is our considered belief that the foundation of Christian belief is unchanging. These beliefs are set forth in several sources.
First, we acknowledge the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be divinely inspired works, which
convey the timeless truth of God’s love and compassion, of his care and concern
for those who dwell in this world, and of our hope for redemption and
restoration in through the work of Jesus Christ our Lord. Far from emerging in
a void, however, the Scriptures were forged amid the lived experience of
patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and evangelists. They were compiled over
millennia, they speak directly to specific people in specific situations, and
are challenging to understand. We believe it is vital to seek a deep
anthropological, sociological, cultural, and linguistic understanding of the
environments in which the texts were forged, so that our interpretation in a
modern context may be scholastically honest and spiritually faithful to the
truth.
Second, we acknowledge the
Apostolic Tradition handed down to us by the apostles and their earliest
successors to be sources of reliable truth that either illuminate the
Scriptures themselves or provide us with guidance in practices of which
Scripture itself is silent. Saint Paul himself equates the authority of such
Tradition as being on-par with that of Scripture (see 2 Thessalonians 2:15),
and we are obliged to do the same. In a particular way, we acknowledge the role
of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as the ecumenically accepted summary of
the Christian faith, and the guardrails of orthodoxy (right belief) in the
Church. We likewise view the general structure of the liturgical life of the
Church (through the consecration of time through prayer and the celebration of
the Sacraments) as reflecting both orthodoxy and orthopraxis (right practice)
among believers.
Third, we acknowledge the use of
human reason. While not dismissing the notion that baseline human wisdom has
been impacted by the fallen nature of humanity (see 1 Corinthians 3:19), we are
not free to use such a theological truism to deny what is plainly obvious and
objectively provable. Thus, we do not reject reason in our deliberations
concerning matters of God since truth, whatever the source, flows from God.
Finally, we acknowledge that it
our lived experience reveals much to us. Our unique and individual experiences
are where the dictates of scripture, the words of our worship, and the
observations of the world around us come together and confirm or disprove our
belief structure and worldview.
Taken together, the Scriptures,
Tradition, Reason, and Experience come together to form our consciences. For
the vast majority of human beings, the conscience serves as the principal
source of our thoughts, words, and actions, and – assuming proper formation –
should never be dismissed out of hand.
Thus we confess a belief in a
quadrilateral approach to our faith. We hold Scripture as the primary source of
God's revealed truth to us, while likewise embracing the truths that are found
in Tradition, Reason, and Experience.
NOTES
- We accept as authoritative the forty-six book canon of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven book canon of the New Testament that has existed within the Christian Church since the local synods of Rome (382), Hippo (393), and Carthage (397). We acknowledge the existence of a limited number of books outside of this canon which have been included in the Old Testament among the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches.
- We recognize the concerns of some who might question to use of the so-called deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament as opposed to the proto-canon common to the Jewish texts of Scripture. It is our view that the quotation of the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament in the New highlights the fact that the Greek text is normative for the Church in determining the boundaries of Canon.
- It is critical to understand the genres of various books (and even passages within books) of Scripture, as well as the linguistic, cultural, and political environment in which the texts were written in order to properly apply Scripture in any context, and to any topic.
- In addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, we acknowledge the role of the so-called Apostles’ Creed in the life of the Latin Church as the individual baptismal profession of faith, and we retain it as both doctrinal and liturgical texts of authority.