The Framework of Christian Faith

Trinity School is a Christian school. Trinity aspires to be a place where children learn that God is at the heart of all that we are and do, that we do not belong to ourselves but to God, that the chief purpose of our lives is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. At Trinity, we aim to set our children out upon a journey of learning about God and the world he has made, with the hope that they will enter into a personal relationship with God through Christ, and follow the path of discipleship and vocation wherever God leads.

As a Christian school, Trinity seeks to be evangelical, orthodox, and ecumenical. We are a nondenominational, Board-governed school, with over 40 churches represented in the student body. Parents are not required to subscribe doctrinally to our statement of faith, although everyone in the Trinity School community is expected to support the school’s Christian mission. We welcome into the Trinity School community those families from differing theological traditions or from secular backgrounds who respect and support the school’s mission and policies.

As an evangelical school, we recognize and accept the authority of the Scriptures and the doctrine that salvation is found in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. The evangelical tradition has always affirmed that a personal and transforming relationship with God through Jesus Christ is essential to the Christian life. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ, applied through the work of the Holy Spirit, has the power to save from both the guilt and power of sin and to remake a person, enabling him or her to live the blessed life forever in God’s holy presence. Upon this foundation alone is real and lasting character and virtue built, and by such faith will our school’s leaders model true discipleship for the students.

When we claim that Trinity is an orthodox school, we affirm that there are ideas and doctrines that are correct, right, and true. Orthodoxy holds that the gospel has a specific factual and theological content (I Corinthians 15:1–11; Galatians 1:6–9; I Timothy 6:3), and that the Scriptures, the inspired word of God, tell us all that we need to know about God and how we should relate to Him. This clearly presents a challenge to the intellectual and moral relativism of our age.

Beginning with the first seven Councils of the Church, the Scriptures have been interpreted to affirm Trinitarian and Christological truths apart from which the redemption of humanity is impossible. Trinity’s doctrinal statement below is a summary of these basic Christian tenets. All Board members, teachers, and staff must unreservedly affirm and support the following doctrinal commitments:

We believe in:

• The only true God, the almighty Creator of all things, existing eternally in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—full of love and glory.
  
  
• The unique divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible.
  
  
• The value and dignity of all people: created in God’s image to live in love and holiness, but alienated from God and each other because of our sin and guilt, and justly subject to God’s wrath.
  
  
• Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, who lived as a perfect example, who assumed the judgment due sinners by dying in our place, and who was bodily raised from the dead and ascended as Savior and Lord.
  
  
• Justification by God’s grace to all who repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
  
  
• The indwelling presence and transforming power of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all believers a new life and new calling to obedient service.
  
  
• The unity of all believers in Jesus Christ, manifest in worshiping and witnessing churches making disciples throughout the world.
  
  
• The victorious reign and future personal return of Jesus Christ, who will judge all people with justice and mercy, giving over the unrepentant to eternal condemnation but receiving the redeemed into eternal life.

Trinity’s Board, faculty, and staff are committed to the Triune God, and to the basic tenets of Christianity as expressed by the orthodox and evangelical traditions. We share a common vision to create at our school a Christian community characterized by a living and culturally engaging faith. Teachers, staff, and Board members must demonstrate a vibrant faith consisting of true knowledge of God and of personal trust in the Lord Jesus. They must be able to give a clear testimony of their faith in Christ and must be exemplary Christian role models in every area of their lives.

Rooted in these evangelical and orthodox traditions, Trinity aspires also to be an ecumenical school, one that furthers the cooperation and unity of the church as the Body of Christ. While acknowledging the existence of denominational differences in theology and practice, we emphasize those truths that Christians have believed in common for centuries, across boundaries of time, place, race, and culture. We are excited to be involved in an endeavor that has the potential to bring together Christians of many different traditions and racial and ethnic groups to grow together in our knowledge of God and his world, and to train our children in his ways and give them the tools to think from a thoroughly Christian perspective about every subject and issue in a way that transcends denominationalism.

Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill
4011 Pickett Road, Durham, NC 27705
919.402.8262 voice + 919.402.0762 fax