Building the Church

Creeds: Who Is God?

The Faces Of God

Tradition!• What helped the Early Church decide what

teachings and writings were legit?

• Literally means “handing on” or “giving over”

• Means all of Divine Revelation, throughout time: Oral and Written, Old and New Testaments, and Apostolic teachings.

• “It was done by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from His way of life and His works, or whether they had learned it by the prompting of the Holy Spirit” (Dei Verbum, 2, 7)

The Creed

•Statements of FAITH

•FAITH = TRUTH

•Belief is in our Faith

•Before the Scripture Canon was set, a way of expressing and gauging Faith, guiding belief

The Creed: God

•I believe in one God,

•the Father almighty,

•maker of heaven and earth,

•of all things visible and invisible.

The Creed: The Trinity• We believe in one God:

• Father

• Son

• Spirit

• Three distinct persons in One God.

• The doctrine of the Trinity caused, causes, and will cause misunderstanding but it is not ‘made up’.

• Our understanding of God comes to us through Tradition (Scripture and Oral) – the teaching of the Apostles

• Romans 8 is just one example.