Emily Hall

How did otherwise faithful Christians who read and revered the Bible attempt to reconcile the gospel with owning enslaved people? And how was I to think of Lottie Moon now that I know she wasn’t a perfect hero?

The Nicene Creed is a statement of faith that Christian leaders first agreed on at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The creed was written in response to a popular heresy about Jesus Christ and the Trinity. It is the only creed affirmed by Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and most Protestant churches. Churches throughout the centuries have recited it as a confession of faith during baptism and the Eucharist.

While the Nicene Creed itself is not in the Bible, it summarizes biblical truths. Many churches still recite the creed in weekly services today, reminding congregations about the foundation of their faith as well as how faith in Jesus unites the global church. Using the creed is still useful today because the heresy it was first designed to fight still exists in the church.

You can read it for yourself below. In brackets is the Filioque statement, which was added after another gathering in 489 A.D.

Photo credit: Unsplash/Johny Vino

Pinpointing the causes and results of the Great Schism of 1054 is like trying to make sense of church infighting today. You’d have to go back decades for context and have a grain of salt on hand while researching different perspectives about what and why things happened.

In the Bible, a concubine was a woman acquired by a man as a secondary wife. Her purpose was to provide a male heir in the case of a barren wife, to provide more children in general to enhance the family’s workforce and wealth, and to satisfy the man’s sexual desires. A concubine was endowed with rights and protections by Hebrew law but was not equal in status to a wife.