Monthly Archives: February 2025

On Alpha

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What is Alpha?

Alpha measures the performance of an investment relative to what was expected based on its beta. Simply, it shows how much an investment has earned beyond the expected return.

  • Positive Alpha: If an investment has a positive alpha, it has outperformed its expected return based on its beta.
  • Negative Alpha: If the investment underperforms its expected return based on its beta, it has a negative alpha.

Slouching Toward Heresy: Early Confessions

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The Christian church makes use of two types of confession of faith.

  1. The symbol set up once for all, and drawn up in the language of the new testament. This is ascribed to the apostles as an authentic summary of scripture. [Cullmann, p 10]

    Cullmann points out an example of this first type is the so called Apostle’s Creed. An example of the next one, below, is the Nicene Creed. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan symbol represents a mixed type, on the one hand containing the anti-Arian formula, but on the other often regarded as apostolic. [Cullmann, referring to Caspari]

  2. The symbol conditioned by circumstances, which transcribes the Biblical Gospel into the language and concepts of a certain period. On the basis of the New Testament, this symbol takes up position over against new problems and heresies unknown in the apostolic age. [Cullmann, p 10]

I would like to point out the New Testament in the 27 book form we see today was compiled by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367 AD, 32 years after the Council of Nicea. So for over 300 years the New Testament did not exist as a bible. It consisted of scattered manuscripts and letters copied and sent around the world from region to region as separate writing. Not all books were accepted. Jude, James, 2 Peter are examples of rejected books in many parts of the world.

So when someone says “I go only by the New Testament” what they are referring to is that which was compiled in 367 AD, translated into Latin, translated into English 1100 years after the fact. [Duvall and Hays, p 499].

And was accepted by the Bishops of the catholic church after 367. Protestantism was far off in the future.

What Cullman is really talking about, and Habermas is evaluating, is having rules of faith and formulas which trace back to the apostles. The purpose was (and is) to dethrone every future tradition in the name of apostolic tradition. Not to set ecclesiastical tradition above scripture. [Cullmann, p. 13], [Habermas, p 143-170]

Is fundamentalism now a new ecclesiastical tradition? Is it slouching towards heresy? Hard to say. But when one gets criticized for affirming the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed because “it is not Baptist belief, Baptists don’t have creeds” one begins to seriously wonder.

So, a reasonable course of action is to study the teachings of the apostles and how these were written down, and how these writings were spread across the world, ending with the compilation of the New Testament in 367 AD.

In decades of attending Baptist churches I have never heard of this. It seems to have been buried and is the best kept secret of the 21st century, as if it is some sort of rotten fruit.

REFERENCES:



Oscar Cullman, The Earliest Christian Confessions, 64 pp., published 1949 and 2018.

Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 304 pp, published 1997.

Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word, 592 pp., published 2020.