Teaching and learning in the School of Theology and Ministry at Southern
Nazarene University is grounded in and shaped by the sixteen Articles
of Faith of the Church of the Nazarene. The following statements
illustrate commitments and presuppositions that structure and inform
our presentation of the Christian faith.
To read the full Articles of Faith, visit the Church of the Nazarene global website.
The Triune God
In our courses we teach that Christians worship the One God who is
triune-Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Students are taught that the chief
end of all persons is to worship God and to enjoy God all the days of
our lives. Students are taught that the worship of and service to God
is the center of Christian life. All else flows from worship of God.
Wherever possible, we utilize the substance of the Apostles’ Creed, and
the Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds. Christ is presented in our classes
as the author and Lord of His Church.
Theocentric and Christocentric
Our classes affirm the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ. We stress
that, in Christ alone, the Eternal God has been definitively and
finally revealed. Jesus Christ is God incarnate. We make clear that to
be Christocentric is also to be Theocentric. We make clear that Jesus
both is and preached the gospel. He is the Heavenly Father's Good News,
the Gospel of God. We present Jesus as Lord of all, the Savior of the
world who has in the cross and resurrection met and conquered death,
hell, sin and the grave. We also make clear that Jesus was fully and
truly human, that He lived and preached and served in a particular
historical context. We make clear that Christ has put to flight all
powers of evil and that by the Holy Spirit Christ now makes His victory
available to all His disciples. We focus attention on Christ and not on
the disciple. While the individual disciple is very important, we want
to steer students away from the errors of subjectivism, introversion
and isolationism. The New Testament order is first our being "in
Christ" and secondly "Christ in" us.
The Christian Scriptures
We introduce students to the Old and New Testaments. We try to lead them
into a love for the Scriptures. Through our classes we present a
comprehensive picture of the biblical narrative. We introduce students
to the structure of the Bible so that they will not be lost in or
discouraged by the Bible's size and complexity. The doctrine of the
Scriptures that the Church of the Nazarene embraces is our norm. We
teach that the Old and New Testaments inerrantly reveal the will of God
in all things necessary for our salvation. They are authoritative in
all things that relate to faith and Christian practice. "Whatever is
not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith" We
pay attention to the diverse contexts in which the various writings of
Scripture emerged, and to the unique ways in which individual writers
bore witness to divine revelation. For us, the authority of the
Scriptures is soteriological (salvation). The realm in which the
Scriptures are authoritative concerns our salvation. Salvation, of
course, includes both Christian faith and practice. Hence, where the
Scriptures speak on matters of ethics--how the life of Christ is
manifest in the Church and His disciples-- they are authoritative.
The Church
We teach the central importance of the Church as the body of Christ. We
see the Church as the primary context in which one comes to know what
it means to be a Christian. John Wesley's statement that "There is no
holiness but social holiness" is an important theme for SNU’s School of
Theology and Ministry. The koinonia of the Holy Spirit is where one
learns the whole story of God. We show students the major elements of
the history of the Church. We want them to learn that the Body of
Christ has a history from which we can understand more fully what it
means to be Christians today. We want our students to develop an
appreciation for the triumphant saints who have paved the path for us.
The Order of Salvation
The Wesleyan Order of Salvation guides our thinking and teaching. The
reality and meaning of prevenient grace, conviction of sin by the Holy
Spirit, justification by grace through faith alone, regeneration as
initial sanctification, growth in grace, entire sanctification, and
eventual glorification is evident in our classes. We emphasize that all
persons everywhere are called to be Jesus' disciples. We are explicitly
Arminian in this regard. We teach that Christ actually and radically
changes persons who come to him, rather than merely looking at them in
a different way. We believe in real regeneration of the penitent
sinner. We believe that a believer must be crucified with Christ before
he or she can be raised to new life in Christ. Life in Christ is life
in and through the resurrected and reigning Lord. We want students to
understand that Christians live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit draws persons to Christ, witnesses to Him as Christ, is the
Divine agent of justification, regeneration and sanctification, makes
victory over sin normative for Christian life, and promotes life-long
growth in grace. The Holy Spirit enables believers increasingly to love
God with heart, mind, and strength, and to love their neighbors as
themselves. We want to teach students the meaning of entire
sanctification and urge them to make the promise their own. We teach
the primacy of the fruit of the Spirit. All Christians everywhere are
to show the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is normative and singular. The
primary and dependable evidence of the Holy Spirit is His fruit in the
lives of obedient disciples. The gifts of the Spirit are several and
are not uniformly distributed to all members of Christ's Body. The
gifts of the Spirit are given for witness and service in Christ's
Church and in the world. The fruit of the Spirit must always govern
them. We teach the hope of the Second Coming of Christ when He will
consummate His inaugurated Kingdom. The relationship between the
inauguration of the Kingdom of God in Christ's person, and His return
in glory is made clear in our classes. The Second Coming of our Lord is
cause for hope, joyous anticipation and watchfulness among His
disciples. It must never become the subject of fruitless speculation,
scintillating entertainment, a reason for fear among God's people, or a
topic that assumes a life of its own. The soteriology that we embrace
is holistic and firmly grounded in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
Sacraments
We emphasize to
students the essential role of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's
Supper, as formative of the Church’s identity and as means of God’s
grace. We present Baptism as the appropriate public demonstration of
commitment to the community of faith. We teach that the Lord’s Supper
celebrates the central reality of the Incarnation – God the Son come in
human nature.
Christian Service and Witness
We
teach that Christ calls and empowers believers for service in the
Church and in the world. Although God does not call all persons to
ordained Christian ministry, He calls and empowers all persons for
Christian ministry. They have a ministry to exercise before God and for
others. He equips Christians through the gifts of the Spirit. "There
are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of
services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but
it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is
given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (I
Corinthians 12: 4-7 NRSV).
Compassionate Ministry
The
movement of which SNU is a part was born in a revival that joined love
for God and love for persons--with special reference to the poor and
disenfranchised. Phineas Bresee and others insisted that Christian
holiness necessarily included a love for and practice of justice and
mercy. True to his Wesleyan heritage, Bresee thought that Christian
salvation addresses the whole person. Both men thought that the
compassionate Christ who brings good news to the poor, gives light to
those who sit in darkness, and sets captives free is the Christ by whom
Christians should be discipled. The Church of the Nazarene that Phineas
Bresee envisioned was one that would receive careful instructions from
the 25th chapter of Matthew. We teach our students that following Jesus
necessarily includes showing how the gospel is good news for
marginalized people, for victims of abuse, for prisoners and their
families, for the illiterate, for victims of tragedies that threaten to
destroy them, and so forth. Our aim is to present this complete and
holistic understanding of the Gospel of our Lord.