These six convictions animate everything we do. Ultimately, we believe that patient, confident engagement with the gospel and the life of the mind is the ground on which the church can faithfully meet our modern world.
We believe the historic Christian gospel — the life, death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus Christ — is objectively true and the most urgent news in the world. Lantern House is explicitly and unapologetically evangelistic.
We reject the postmodern reduction of truth to preference or power. All truth, wherever found, belongs to God — therefore genuine truth discovered in Scripture or nature sing in perfect harmony.
The modern research university was founded on the conviction that knowledge of ultimate reality is worth pursuing. We aim to re-open that conversation — on campus, in the community, and around the table.
Following Harry Blamires, Francis Schaeffer, and the Reformed tradition, we affirm that Christian truth bears on every domain of human life — art, ethics, politics, beauty, suffering, and human purpose. There is no neutral ground.
Following Bonhoeffer's Life Together and the L'Abri tradition, we believe the most powerful witness is an honest engagement in the context of a community that actually lives as though the gospel were true.
We are not a generic institution that could exist anywhere. We are rooted in Lawrence, in Kansas, in a specific place where the great questions of American civilization have always been fought out first. Place matters.
Lantern House believes that the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon are the only inspired and inerrant Word of God and, therefore, the only infallible rule of faith and practice for the Christian life. In these Scriptures, God has revealed the one gospel by which sinners are reconciled to Himself. Nowhere else can men and women encounter Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Throughout the history of the church, Christians have recognized the importance of summarizing the teachings of Scripture in creeds and confessions. The New Testament itself preserves some of the earliest Christian creedal and confessional formulations of the gospel. A selection of these passages is included below as inspired summaries of the apostolic faith and the foundational truths of Christian orthodoxy.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
With the end of the apostolic age, the canon of Scripture was closed. Yet throughout the history of the church, particularly in times of theological controversy, Christian leaders composed creeds to defend and articulate the orthodox teaching of Scripture. Lantern House affirms the early ecumenical creeds as faithful, though not infallible, summaries of biblical truth. These include the Apostles' Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (A.D. 381), and the Definition of Chalcedon (A.D. 451).
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.I believe Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father; through whom all things were made. Who, for us human beings and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was made flesh by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made a human being; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; and suffered, and was buried; and the third day rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom will have no end. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified; who spoke through the prophets. In one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
We, now, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body; of one substance with the Father with respect to his deity, and of one substance with us with respect to his humanity; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father, with respect to his deity, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer, with respect to his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-Begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.
