Our scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians 4:3. “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.”
From the outside, the various Christian churches and traditions may look extremely different. The public worship services look so different. The Christian faith has spread across most of the cultures and regions of the world. Therefore, it has assumed an enormous number of different cultural forms.
Over the centuries, there have been great theological rifts. The first great division was between the eastern Greek and western Roman churches in the eleventh century. They are known today as the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.
The second great schism was within the Western church, between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Nevertheless, all Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians assent together to the great creeds of the first thousand years of church history. These are the Apostles’, Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds. In these creeds, there is the belief of God as three in one.
Belief in the Trinity is profoundly different from the view of the polytheists, non-trinitarian monotheists, and atheists. So, for the purpose of defining Christianity, we go to the belief in the great ecumenical creeds.
They believe that the triune God created the world, that humanity has fallen into sin and evil, that God has returned to rescue in Jesus Christ, that in his death and resurrection Jesus accomplished our salvation for us so we can be received by grace, that he established the church, his people, as the vehicle through which he continues his mission of rescue, reconciliation, and salvation, and that at the end of time, Jesus will return to renew the heaven and the earth, removing all evil, injustice, sin, and death from the world.