ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY
ANGLICAN CHURCH
(Reformed Episcopal / ACNA)
Pearland / Houston
What We Believe
What We Believe
The Testimony of Scripture
One Bible
Two Testaments
In an age of unbelief, it is particularly important to make clear the Church’s dependence on the Holy Scriptures as the rule of faith and life. The Reformed Episcopal Church confesses the continuity of the Scriptures around the themes of God’s grace and the redemption of mankind by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. We reject the “dumbing down” of the Bible, either through skeptical liberalism that would remove any sense of the supernatural, or from those who see the Bible as nothing but a collection of proof-texts. The Bible is the story of God’s covenant with mankind, worked out by the death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because Holy Scripture is the “breath of God” (II Tim. 3:16) we set it above both tradition and reason, without rejecting either.
Because there are those who set the Old Testament aside as either no longer applicable, or as too harsh in our “enlightened” society, it is also important for our Church to make clear the need for both testaments if we are to understand what God has done, and what he would have us do. The structure of the Bible is (a) the prophecy of God’s redemption in Christ, (b) the fact of Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, and (c) the interpretation of the fact by the chosen spokesmen of the Church, the Apostles. The Bible speaks of the Church built upon “the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone.”
The Testimony of the Historic Church
The Three Creeds
The three Creeds of the Church, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, have served the Church through the centuries as a simple, articulate, and time-tested summary of the belief of the Church. Christians must confess the truth “as it is in Jesus.”
The First Five Centuries
By this we mean the life of the Church from the Apostles to Gregory the Great. While not compelled to follow all aspects of life from those centuries, we nevertheless see it as the forming ground for how the Church would work and live. In addition, we hold to the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion as expressions of prayer, worship, and doctrine.
The Four Councils
The first four ecumenical Councils of the Church (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon) stand as truly representative of the whole Church. These Councils settled fundamental questions on the nature of the Trinity and the person and work of Jesus Christ.