My home Bible-study group asked if I could present something on the Nicene Creed, and what it might mean for us today.
I tried to keep it brief, but failed spectacularly. To cut it down to digestible size, I split my study into three parts ...
The Nicene Creed with commentary
The Nicene Creed - a brief history
The Nicene Creed - reflections
Saturday, May 19, 2012
The Nicene Creed - Reflections
History
Contrary to popular myth, and the
perspectives offered by such movements as the Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses, Constantine did
not use the Council
of Nicea to impose Trinitarianism
on the Empire in AD325. Indeed, it was Arianism that was coerced by
the State under the political machinations of Constantius II in the
following decades, but it ultimately failed because of the dogged faithfulness
of Athanasius
to New Testament scripture.
The language of God
The linguistic formulations of the
Nicene Creed mark something of a watershed in the development of Christian
theology. In previous centuries, the authors of the Bible expressed their
theology by story and type, whereas Nicea expressed its theology in the
language of categories, relationships and prepositions. This perspective of
Nicea persists as the lingua franca of Christian theology. This is no bad
thing, provided the Christian understands that the intent of the Councils and
their Creeds was to point the believer to Christ, and to the scriptures that
faithfully describe Him. I consider myself a Creedal Christian, but I do not
consider the Creeds to be the canonical expression of Christianity. The
canonial expression of Christianity is, uniquely, Jesus Christ. The Creeds, I
believe, do a good job of explaining who He is and in guarding against the more
dangerous misrepresentations of my Lord and God.
What makes heresy dangerous?
When I started my exploration of
theology many years ago, I, like many others, wondered why it could be
considered even remotely important. Surely, the important thing was how I lived
my life. Surely, if I continued in my devotions, God would look after me. The
Councils, I thought, were preoccupied with irrelevant minutiae, like how many
angels could stand on a pin-head.
Like many others, I viewed the
theological debates and creeds as an exercise in boundary-marking; if you could
affirm such-and-such a formulation of words, you were in, but if you couldn’t,
you were out. They were arbitrary rules designed to exclude undesirable
factions from church membership, or so I thought.
However, the more I look at
theology, the more importance I see in it. Fundamentally, theology shapes our
understanding of what it means to be human, and I can think of nothing in the
human experience more profound than that, be it expressed in a religious
context or not.
The theology of Christ goes to
straight the heart of the matter. Jesus Christ is not just the canonical
expression of Christianity, as I noted previously,
He is also the canonical expression of humanity. Whilst showing us what it
means to be truly and wholly God, he also shows us what it is to be truly and
wholly human.
By “canonical expression”, I mean
the prototype, or the archetype; the true “thing” against which one measures
all other expressions of that “thing”. For the Christian, this means following
Christ. What we see Christ do, we aspire to do; what we see Christ being, we
aspire to become. We do not do what we do not see Christ doing, and thus we use
Him as the measuring rod of what we should do and what we should be. In this
context, then, it is paramount that we have a clear picture of who Christ is,
and of our relationship to Him.
It is not enough, though, to simply
use Christ as the measuring rod for what we are and what we do because, as the
scriptures say, He is also our saviour and judge. This understanding of Christ
as our exemplar, creator, saviour and judge is intimately bound with the
understanding of His nature as both fully human and fully divine. These are the
issues that the Bishops took to the Councils, and they transcend
denominational, or even religious boundaries. Athanasius and his colleagues
strenuously argued to preserve the highest regard for both the fully human and
fully divine nature of Christ, and that they were not in conflict.
If Christ’s divinity were
diminished, by Arianism for
example, then our humanity is diminished because something less than God had
entered into and engaged our human existence. Under such a theology, human life
loses it’s value because God has deemed it to be something not worth engaging
in and suffering for. God would only interact with us by simulation or by
proxy. God would not be giving us Himself, undermining the claim that He is
love.
If Christ’s humanity were
diminished, by Docetism for
example, then God would remain distant, unknowable and inaccessible. We would
have to become something other than human to make that vital connection to God.
We would have to dismiss human experience, with all its joys and frustrations,
as irrelevant or meaningless in our attempts to make ourselves into worthy
superhumans. God would not be glorified in the mundanity of human existence.
It is no coincidence that Arianism
typically tends towards a program-oriented religion. In it, Christ might have
shown the way, but he did not become the way, which means that it remains for
us to follow some religious program in an attempt to catch up to him. The
Christian understanding of grace is undermined by the attempt to ascend to
heaven. As is apparent in the mid 4th Century, Arianism usually
degenerates into an undignified free-for-all as various voices promote their
favourite routes up the mountain, to the exclusion of all others. Christ as God
answers this by emphatically stating that God has already come to us – the
reality of heaven has already come down to earth, and our perspective and actions
need to change accordingly.
Theology matters, because it
answer’s Christ’s enduring question, “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt
16:15, Mark
8:27, Luke
9:20). The answer to that question also holds the answer to the concomitant
question; “But who do we say that we are?”. These are the questions that are
well worth asking in our quest to understand our existence and place in God’s
good creation.
See also
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-with-commentary.html
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-brief-history.html
See also
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-with-commentary.html
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-brief-history.html
The Nicene Creed – A brief history
The Creed is a statement of faith
that uses particular formulations of words to define what the believer
believes, thus excluding what is considered to be dangerous heresy.
Biblical roots
Proto-creeds, or creed-like formulations
can be found within the Bible
- Deuteronomy 6:4: Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
- Matthew 28:19: … the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit …
- 1 Corinthians 8:6: … yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.
Early baptismal liturgy
By AD200, the Baptismal liturgy in
Rome (as recorded by Apollinaris
Claudius) had developed into a now-familiar pattern by asking the baptismal
candidate the following questions:
- Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?
- Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose again the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended in to heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?
- Do you believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh?
The baptismal candidate would then
affirm his or her faith by answering “Credo”, or “I believe”.
The Council of Nicea (AD325)
The Council of Nicea
was called by the Emporer Constantine in AD325 after his conversion to
Christianity at the Battle of Milvan Bridge (AD312). His Edict of Milan in
AD313 made the empire officially neutral in regard to religious worship, and it
ended the state’s hostilities to the Christian church. It was not until AD380
that Christianity was made the official state religion under the Edict of
Thessalonica.
Among other issues, the Council was
called to answer to Arius, who
threatened to split the church with his teaching that “there was a time when
the Son was not.” Constantine recognized that a schism in the Christian church
would be just one more destabilizing factor in his empire, and he moved to
solve the problem by calling for the Council. The location of Nicea is the
modern-day town of Iznik about 90 km south-east of Istanbul in Turkey.
The Council was attended by a couple
of hundred bishops (the traditional figure of 318 may be an over-estimation).
The vast majority were from the East with less than a dozen from the rest of
the Empire. They were divided into three groups;
- the Arians who believed that Christ was of a different substance to God - heteroousios;
- the Orthodox, who believed that Christ was of the same substance as God – homoousios;
- the Eusebians (after Eusebius of Ceasarea), who believed that Christ was of a similar substance as God – homoiousios.
Incidentally, we are mainly reliant
on Eusebius’ accounts for the historical record. Eusebius would later turn on
key players in the Orthodox camp, notably Athanasius of
Alexandria, who attended Nicea as a young clerk.
There is no question that
Constantine wanted a unified church after the Council of Nicea, but he did not
really care about how it might be achieved; he left that to the Bishops. The
Othordox group prevailed and won over the Eusebians and dismissed the Arian
position, formulating the Nicene Creed in such a way to unambiguously
anathematize it. The Council thus affirmed the view prominent Church fathers
prior to Nicea; that Jesus Christ is fully and wholly divine and deserving of
our worship and obedience as to God alone. Arius was banished, but not
silenced.
The Council of Constantinople (AD381)
In the decades that followed Nicea,
Arianism experienced many victories, and there were periods when the Arian
Bishops constituted the majority of the visible ecclesiastical hierarchy. When
Constantine died in AD337, he was succeeded by his second son, Constantius II, who
supported the Arian faction. Constantius II promoted his semi-Arian agenda
through the Councils of Rimini
(AD358) and Seleucia
(AD359), however the theologians he supported were ultimately discredited and
the malcontents he opposed (Athanasius and others) emerged victorious.
Constantius II is not remembered as a restorer of unity, but as a heretic who
arbitrarily imposed his will on the church.
Athanasius, who had been removed
from his see five times (once by a force of 5,000 soldiers), continued in his
outspoken opposition to Arianism. The Arian faction finally collapsed amid
political infighting and in AD 381 the Council of
Constantinople, under the influence of Athanasius, met and reaffirmed,
without hesitation, the Nicene faith, complete with the homoousious clause and its
Trinitarian formulations. The Athanasian Creed, although attributed to
Athanasius, was probably written some time after his death.
See also
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-with-commentary.html
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-reflections.html
See also
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-with-commentary.html
http://martinofbrisbane.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/nicene-creed-reflections.html
Links
In response to Mormonism “Those
abominable creeds” by Ron Huggins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGgCHRpHLNM
What really happened at Nicea http://www.equip.org/articles/what-really-happened-at-nicea-/
The Nicene Creed with commentary
Nicence
Creed (1)
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Commentary
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1
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I
believe …
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Often rendered “We believe” to
harmonize with the plural of 12. However, the singular is appropriate here
because it is the statement of an individual in the context of a congregation
to affirm identification with the Christian faith-community.
Contrary to atheism and
post-modernism, Christianity asserts that what a person believes makes a
difference. This is true in a practical sense because we do what we do
because of what we believe. We also tend to believe what we believe to
justify what we do, but Christianity has a particular regard for belief
because it orients the individual’s perspective toward an objective, external
truth.
Further, the fact of believing is
not enough. The important thing is what we believe in. Importantly, the
Nicene Creed does not say “I believe in my self, my abilities, my potential”,
but points the believer beyond himself to belief in God.
Luke opens his Gospel by stating
that he has written it so that the reader (Theophilus) may know the truth of
what he believes (Luke
1:1-4).
|
2
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…
in one God …
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Christians, like Jews and Muslims,
believe in only One God. This is an important prelude to the following
statements concerning the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The creed states the assumption of the ancient Shema: Hear O Israel, the
Lord our God is one Lord (Deuteronomy
6:4).
|
3
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…
the Father Almighty,
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Jesus calls God the “Father” and
teaches us to do the same in the “Lord’s Prayer” (Matthew
6:9 etc). Like all words, “Father” cannot fully describe God, but it does
convey the sense of some of God’s attributes, particularly the progenitor,
protector, provider and ultimate authority on all that exists.
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4
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Maker
of heaven and earth,
And
of all things visible and invisible:
|
Includes the entire cosmos, even
the things we cannot detect or comprehend (Genesis
1:1). Orthodox Christianity has always discriminated between God and His
creation. Importantly, God is not bound by the laws and principles that
govern creation; He is the One who sustains these laws.
|
5
|
And
in one Lord Jesus Christ, …
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The Creed applies the title “LORD”
to Jesus Christ, which was applied to YHWH in the Old Testament (see “LORD
God’ in Genesis
2:4 etc). There is only One LORD, not three. Many NT authors freely apply
this appellation to the Son (Mark
16:19, Luke
24:3, John
4:1 etc., Acts
1:21, Acts
2:36 etc., Romans
1:4, James
1:1, Jude
1:4, Revelation
22:20-21)
|
6
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the
only-begotten Son of God,
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The Son is in a unique
relationship with the Father. While others were sons of God in a generic or
derivative sense (see Psalm
2), Jesus is the archetypical, or original Son of God by nature.
The true (canonical) image of God
is given to us in the only-begotten Son, per John
1:18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in
the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (NASB)
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7
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Begotten
of his Father before all worlds,
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Difficult to translate, and
sometimes rendered “Eternally begotten of the Father”. The Son was not
“created” in time, but was brought forth from the Father in eternity, beyond
and outside time. Our prepositional language uses “before”, but the phrase
“before time” is a nonsensical construction. In contrast to the Arian Heresy,
the Son was not begotten in time before the creation of everything else. As
He was begotten beyond time, he truly shares the divine nature of God.
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8
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God
of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God,
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The Arians believed that Jesus
could be called god but not true God. In other words, they believed the Logos
(the
"Word", a popular title for Jesus in early Christian
literature) was the first creation of God, necessary to mediate between the
unknowable distant God (a concept borrowed from Platonic thought) and creation(2).
As a reaction against Arianism, the Nicene Creed strenuously affirms the true
and full divinity of the Son, whilst maintaining the distinctiveness of the
persons of the Father and the Son.
The crucial inference is that (the
true) God is not distant and unknowable, but has been made known to us in the
flesh in the person of His Son. God is fully visible, accessible and
glorified in the Person of His Son.
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9
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Begotten,
not made,
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The creed tells us that just as
when a woman gives birth she does not create a child out of nothing, being
begotten of God, the Son is not created out of nothing. Since the Son's birth
from the Father occurred before time was created, begotten refers to a
permanent relationship as opposed to an event within time, hence the qualifier
that the Son was “begotten”, not “made”.(2)
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10
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Being
of one substance with the Father,
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Homoousia: God the Father and
God the Son are equally divine, united in substance and will. Father and Son
share the same substance or essence of divinity. That is, the Father and Son
both share the qualities and essential nature of God. However, sharing the
same substance does not mean they share identity of person(2).
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11
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By
whom all things were made;
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The Bible tells us that through
The Son, as Word of God, all things have been created. As Logos, the Son is
the agent and artificer of creation. (John
1:1-3, Colossians
1:16).
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12
|
Who
for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven,
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See John
3:16. Sometimes rendered “for all”, but “for all” has been criticized for
implying Universalism. The “us men” refers to the people (male and female)
who are reciting the Creed in faith.
The prepositional language is not
intended to describe a physical downward journey, like the descent of an
elevator, but the putting off of the lofty status and privileges of heaven. Philippians
2:7 describes is as God “emptying” Himself in order to enter human
existence.
|
13
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And
was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man,
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Incarnate means, literally, “in
flesh”. The Creed recognizes the vital role of Mary, and emphasizes the
absence of a human father. God truly became truly and fully human. Contrary
to early heresies such as Docetism, God did not simply don an “earth-suit” to
do some sight-seeing, but fully entered into all the constraints and
frustrations of human existence. (John
1:14, Philippians
2:5-11)
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14
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And
was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
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See Matthew
27:11-55 etc. “Under Pontius Pilate” places Jesus in the real stream of
human history – Christianity is more than metaphysical speculation.
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15
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He
suffered and was buried, And the third day he rose again …
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Jesus truly suffered and died. He
didn’t “dodge the bullet” by swapping places with some unfortunate proxy (per
the Qur’an), nor did he slip off his earth-suit at the critical moment.
Jesus’ resurrection is many things, including triumph over the last enemy,
death itself. Ultimately, the resurrection of Christ (Matthew
28:1-10) is the vindication of God and His unstoppable commitment to
human life.
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16
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…
according to the Scriptures,
|
The “Scriptures” here refers
primarily to the New Testament and enjoins believers to believe its content.
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17
|
And
ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
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Christianity does not teach that
heaven is physically “above” the dome of the sky, but the prepositional
language best describes Jesus’ return to the unseen realm of the divine, in
contrast to His descent in 12. Likewise, he is not now literally sitting next
to the Father, but shares his authority and honour, as implied in our phrase
“right-hand man”.
|
18
|
And
he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead:
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Affirms the belief in the return
of the King, who will judge every person who has or will ever live. All
creation is answerable to its creator, and will affirm that God is just and
true in His judgements. (Matthew
25:31-33 etc.)
|
19
|
Whose
kingdom shall have no end.
|
Despite the efforts of all His
enemies, God’s Kingdom is unassailable. (Psalm
145:13 etc)
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20
|
And
I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Lord and giver of life,
|
The Hebrew concept of “spirit” is
“life-breath”, and it refers to the essential living being of a person that
dwells deep within. God’s essential “life-breath” breaths life to us all in
more ways than one. The Holy Spirit is also called “Lord”. As the Creed has
already affirmed One Lord (2, 5), it also affirms that the Holy Spirit also
shares in the divine nature of God. (Gen
2:7)
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21
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Who
proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
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The addition of the words “… and
the Son” (filioque) caused the Great Schism between the Western (Roman) and
Eastern Churches. Rendering it “from the Father through the Son” may resolve
the controversy, because it retains the monarchy of the Father in the Holy
Trinity.
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22
|
Who
with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
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The Holy Spirit is God, as are the
Father and the Son, and worthy of the same worship due to the Father and the
Son. He is given the same name (singular) as the Father and the Son in the
Great Commission in Matthew
28:19. At the other end of the behavioral scale, sin against the Holy
Spirit is regarded as being worse than sin committed against the Father and
the Son (Matthew
12:31), which was tragically demonstrated in the sudden deaths of Ananias
and Sapphira in Acts
5:1-11.
|
23
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Who
spake by the Prophets.
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The Holy Spirit inspired the
Prophets and the Bible. The role of the Prophet is to speak the Word of God.
Prophesy is much more than predicting future events with the benefit of
divinely inspired foresight; it is about making sense of the immediate
situation in the light of the Word of God (Jeremiah
1:11, 13).
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24
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And
I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church.
|
There is one Church, not many
churches. It is “Catholick” because it is universal, and “Apostolic” because
it is founded on the witness of the apostles. Other renditions include
“Holy”, meaning that the Church is the peculiar possession of God.
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25
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I
acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
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Not several, different Baptisms
for different purposes, and not requiring repetition after sin. God’s
cancellation of my debt of sin encompasses all my sin – past, present and
future. (Acts
2:38)
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26
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And
I look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
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Christian hope does not look
forward to being relieved of the burden of existence, but the joyous,
continued and unending celebration of life, when the cosmos is fully
reconciled to God in Jesus Christ. (Revelation
22:17)
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27
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Amen.
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I tell the truth. I agree. So be
it. Make it so.
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(1)
This version from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer
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