John 16:12-15 I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.… This does not mean that during all the coming centuries He would go on adding from time to time new truths to the Christian creed by a process of continuous revelation. The faith was, St. Jude says, once for all delivered to the saints. Later ages might explain what the apostles had taught. This, for instance, is what was done by the great council which authoratively adopted the Nicene Creed in order to defend the truth of our Lord's Divinity. But when in that creed we confess that Jesus Christ our Lord is of one substance with the Father, we do not say more than St. John says in the introduction to his Gospel, or St. Paul in the Colossians (Colossians 1:16, 17). In the same way the word "Trinity" is not itself found in Scripture. But the baptismal formula, and many passages in the apostolic writings, especially in the Epistle to the Ephesians, obviously imply it. If therefore doctrines, having no ground in the teaching of the apostles, have been added to the faith, in whatever quarter of Christendom, these do not rest on the same basis as explanations or restatements of truths which the apostles had already taught. They are newly imported and foreign matter, and as such would have been rejected by the early Christian Church. We cannot, therefore, include additional doctrines proposed after the apostolic age under the head of the "many things" which our Lord had to say to His Church. It is not likely, to say the least, that the holiest and wisest of later divines should know more of His will than did St. John or St. Paul. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.WEB: "I have yet many things to tell you, but you can't bear them now. |
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