PREFACE For some years the author has been engaged in teaching Symbolics in the Union Theological Seminary. He has made a careful study of all the Symbols of the Christian Church by the use of the best methods of Historical Criticism and Interpretation. There are several theological tendencies in these times. There is the reactionary tendency, which still insists upon the whole doctrine of the Confessions of Faith of the seventeenth century, at the cost of the perpetuation of theological warfare within the Church as well as without. There is the radical tendency, which would do away with all credal statements, and construct an eclectic, syncretistic theology out of a comparative study of all Religions and in the form of recent undigested philosophical speculations. These would give us a merely speculative theology, with no other authority to sustain it than the private opinions of this or that writer or his school of thought, and so set us adrift on a sea of boundless speculation. There is also the wholesome Irenic tendency which seeks to reunite the separated Churches on the basis of the fundamental principles of Historical Christianity, without intruding upon denominational preferences, or private opinion in other matters. These principles of Faith are to be found in the ancient Creeds, the official expression of the Faith of the ancient Church, to which all Churches, which are legitimate descendants of Historical Christianity, adhere. I have endeavored in this volume to give an account of the origin and history of these Creeds in the light of Historical Criticism, and to explain them in accordance with scientific principles of interpretation in the light of the Holy Scriptures upon which they are based, and of the writings of the Christian Fathers of the time of their composition. We must apply the same principles of Criticism and Interpretation to the Creeds as to the Holy Scriptures. We cannot tolerate in the one case, any more than in the other, misinterpretation in the interests of any modern theories whatever. These Creeds have their historic meaning which we must either accept or reject. We cannot honestly accept them in form and reject them in substance. |