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NASB | Ephesians 4:3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Ephesians 4:3 Make every effort to keep the oneness of the Spirit in the bond of peace [each individual working together to make the whole successful]. |
Subject: Who constitutes the church? |
Bible Note: Hi, Val... People without published creeds and confessions have to reinvent the wheel. That's why the old divines worked so hard to be able to articulate the doctrines, so that outsiders would know precisely what we believed. I tried to summarize the essential doctrines in my user profile. Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot here: Major doctrines would be about the Word (its source, its contents, its authority, its interpretation); about God (His nature, His decrees, His creation, His sovereignty); about man (his nature, the fall, sin); about God's covenant and Christ, the only Mediator); about salvation (including the proper order of its blessings: effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, saving faith, repentance, perseverance, interim state, resurrection, glory); about good works and Christian liberty; about the church (its worship, ordinances, authority, officers); and about civil government. Of course, each of these topics can be decomposed into doctrinal studies themselves. By the way, I'd have not used the phrase "major doctrines." I think that Searcher probably meant "essential doctrines" or we might call them "fundamental doctrines." To the question of what are the essential doctrines, John Piper said, "My principal answer is that the fundamental doctrines are those that grow out from the center of the gospel: Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day. Who is Christ? What happened at the cross? What is the nature of faith? etc. The closer it is towards the center, the more necessary it is for being a Christian, the more fundamental it is." The Augsburg Confession, the Canons of Dort, the Helvitic Confessions, the Belgian Confession, the Westminster Confession, and the Historic Baptist Confessions all make attempts at answering the question of essential doctrine. On the whole, they are incredibly consistent. Of course, unlike today, where we create our essential doctrines out of thin air (i.e., they aren't written down) those fellows all carefully studied and listened to the other scholars while applying the Acts 17:11 principle. In Him, Doc |