# G3669 - homologia **Strong's:** [G3669](https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g3669/) · BLB lookup **Pronunciation:** hom-ol-og-ee'-ah **Part of speech:** noun, feminine **Etymology:** *homou* (together / same) + *legō* (to say), literally "*saying the same thing as another*"; the *act* or the *content* of agreement-saying. Nominal counterpart of the verb [G3670 *homologeō*](/codex/g3670-homologeo/). **NT occurrences:** 6 ([Heb 3:1](/codex/hebrews-3-1/); [Heb 4:14](/codex/hebrews-4-14/); [Heb 10:23](/codex/hebrews-10-23/); [1 Tim 6:12](/codex/1-timothy-6-12/); [1 Tim 6:13](/codex/1-timothy-6-13/); [2 Cor 9:13](/codex/2-corinthians-9-13/)). ## Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG) 1. **Confession**, the spoken assent to a truth, especially the *public profession of faith in Christ as Lord*; the *content* of what is confessed. 2. **Profession, declaration**, the *act* of openly declaring conviction or allegiance. 3. **Agreement, covenant-saying**, the etymological core; saying-the-same-thing-as-another; in classical-and-Hellenistic Greek the word can name a contract or compact between parties. 4. **Acknowledgment**, public recognition of a person, status, or obligation ([2 Cor 9:13](/codex/2-corinthians-9-13/), the *homologia* of the gospel as the recognized profession of the Corinthian church). The noun is rarer than the verbal *homologeō* but more *technical*: in the NT it functions almost exclusively as a *creedal-confessional* term, naming the public-profession that defines Christian identity. ## Theological force, the public-confession that defines Christian identity *Homologia* names the **content** of Christian confession at the threshold of three NT settings: (a) baptismal-creedal profession, (b) catechetical / pastoral guardianship of the deposited confession, and (c) public-witness under pressure. The noun is *load-bearing* for the early-church doctrine that Christianity is a *confessing-religion*: not private mystical experience, not ethnic-cultural inheritance, but public-verbal-alignment with definite content about Jesus Christ. ### Stream 1, *Homologia* as baptismal-creedal confession The pastoral epistles and Hebrews use *homologia* for the *content of the public confession* made at baptism / catechetical-entry into the church. This is the seedbed of the later baptismal-creed tradition (the Apostles' Creed, the Old Roman Creed, the rule of faith). - **[1 Timothy 6.12-13](/codex/1-timothy-6-12-13/)**, *"fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and didst confess the good confession (hōmologēsas tēn kalēn homologian) in the sight of many witnesses. I charge thee in the sight of God... and of Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession (martyrēsantos tēn kalēn homologian)..."* The Pauline injunction to Timothy frames *the good confession* as something Timothy *made* publicly at his entry into Christian ministry (likely his baptismal / ordination confession), and parallels it with Christ's own *good confession before Pilate*, the *kalē homologia* of Jesus as the model for every subsequent Christian *homologia*. The Pauline framing matters: *homologia* is not invented by the believer but received-and-confessed; the verb in 6:12 (*hōmologēsas*) and the noun (*homologian*) name a public-historical-event in Timothy's life, and the same noun in 6:13 names Christ's own confession before Pilate, the archetype. ### Stream 2, *Homologia* as the deposited confession of the church Hebrews uses *homologia* three times, in each case naming *our confession* as a corporate-ecclesial possession to be held fast: - **[Hebrews 3.1](/codex/hebrews-3-1/)**, *"Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession (tēs homologias hēmōn), even Jesus..."*, the confession is *ours* (corporate); Jesus is the High Priest *of* that confession (the One the confession is *about* and the One who guarantees the confession's standing before God). - **[Hebrews 4.14](/codex/hebrews-4-14/)**, *"Having then a great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession (kratōmen tēs homologias)."* The exhortation: do not let go of what we have publicly confessed. - **[Hebrews 10.23](/codex/hebrews-10-23/)**, *"let us hold fast the confession of our hope (tēn homologian tēs elpidos) that it waver not; for he is faithful that promised."* The confession is *of our hope*; the confession is a future-oriented declaration grounded in God's faithfulness. The Hebrews triplet establishes the corporate-deposited-confession model: there is a definite *homologia hēmōn* (*our confession*) that the church receives, holds fast, and refuses to abandon under pressure. This is the seedbed of the later doctrine of the *rule of faith* (*regula fidei*) and the deposited tradition. ### Stream 3, *Homologia* as public-witness under pressure The pastoral context of [1 Tim 6](/codex/1-timothy-6/) makes clear that *homologia* is performed *under pressure*. Timothy's "*good confession*" was made *in the sight of many witnesses*, and Christ's own paradigmatic confession was made *before Pontius Pilate*, the Roman governor about to crucify Him. The *homologia* is constitutively *public* and *costly*: it stakes one's life on the truth of what is confessed. - **[2 Corinthians 9.13](/codex/2-corinthians-9-13/)**, *"seeing that through the proving of you by this ministration they glorify God for the obedience of your confession (hypotagēi tēs homologias hymōn) unto the gospel of Christ..."* Paul uses *homologia* for the Corinthians' *gospel-confession* whose *obedience* is publicly demonstrable through their generosity. The confession is not merely-verbal; it issues in publicly-recognizable practice. ### *Homologia* vs. *homologeō*, noun vs. verb The verbal [*homologeō*](/codex/g3670-homologeo/) (G3670, ~26 NT occurrences) covers the *act of confessing* across a wider semantic range (confession of Christ; confession of sin; agreement / concession; promising; praise). The noun *homologia* is narrower: in all 6 NT uses, it names *the content of the public Christian confession*, not the act or the wider speech-event. The verb-noun pair captures the Christian-confessional logic: the *verb* names *what you do* when you confess; the *noun* names *what you confess to*. Christianity is a confessing-religion with definite content. ## Notable verses ### The good confession (1 Timothy) - **[1 Timothy 6.12-13](/codex/1-timothy-6-12-13/)**, *the good confession* of Timothy + Christ before Pilate as the archetype ### The corporate confession (Hebrews) - **[Hebrews 3.1](/codex/hebrews-3-1/)**, Jesus as the *Apostle and High Priest of our confession* - **[Hebrews 4.14](/codex/hebrews-4-14/)**, *hold fast our confession* - **[Hebrews 10.23](/codex/hebrews-10-23/)**, *the confession of our hope* ### The Corinthian gospel-confession - **[2 Corinthians 9.13](/codex/2-corinthians-9-13/)**, *the obedience of your confession unto the gospel of Christ* ### The companion verbal-confession texts (homologeō) - **[Romans 10.9-10](/codex/romans-10-9-10/)**, the foundational soteriological *confess Jesus as Lord* (the verb, paired with the *believe in the heart*) - **[1 John 4.2-3](/codex/1-john-4-2-3/)**, the Christological test, *every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God* - **[1 John 4.15](/codex/1-john-4-15/)**, *whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him* - **[1 John 2:23](/codex/1-john-2-23/)**, *whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father* - **[1 John 5:1](/codex/1-john-5-1/)**, *whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God* - **[Philippians 2:11](/codex/philippians-2-11/)**, *every tongue should confess (exomologēsētai) that Jesus Christ is Lord* - **[Matthew 10:32-33](/codex/matthew-10-32-33/)**, *whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father* ## Patristic / scholarly note The early-church baptismal-creedal tradition is the immediate downstream development of the NT *homologia* texts. The **Old Roman Creed** (late 2nd century), the basis of the later **Apostles' Creed**, was *the homologia* a baptismal-candidate confessed publicly at the threshold of the church. **Hippolytus** (*Apostolic Tradition* §21, c. AD 215), preserves an early baptismal interrogation in which the candidate confesses faith in the Triune God in answer to three questions. **Tertullian** (*De Spectaculis* §4; *De Baptismo* §6) uses the *renuntiatio + professio* pattern: the candidate renounces Satan and *confesses* Christ. **Cyril of Jerusalem** (*Catechetical Lectures* 5, c. AD 350) frames the catechetical confession as the precise NT-*homologia*: *"now learn perfectly to recite (apostēthizō) the Creed, and to confess (homologēsai) it before the Lord..."* The patristic *regula fidei* tradition (Irenaeus, *Adv. Haer.* 1.10.1; Tertullian, *De Praescriptione* §13; Origen, *De Principiis* preface §4) reads *homologia* as the deposited-content of the apostolic confession against which heresy is measured. Hebrews's *"hold fast our confession"* is read as the dominical-apostolic warrant for the rule-of-faith / canonical-confession tradition. In modern theology, **Karl Barth** (*Church Dogmatics* I.1 §4-5) develops the *confessing-church* doctrine on the back of the NT *homologia*: the church *is* the community of *those-who-confess*, and confession is a constitutive-not-incidental Christian act. **Dietrich Bonhoeffer**'s 1934 *Bethel Confession* and the *Barmen Declaration* are 20th-century deployments of the Hebrews-*homologia* in the face of state-pressure on the church. **[Romans 10:9](/codex/romans-10-9/)** (verbal *homologeō*, the homologia-cognate) is foundational for the Reformation doctrine of *sola fide*: saving faith is publicly-confessed; private-secret-faith is not the NT pattern. **Calvin** (*Institutes* 3.2.30): faith *cannot* remain hidden; it *necessarily* breaks out in confession. ## Verses in this codex _See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here._ Anchors: [Hebrews 3.1](/codex/hebrews-3-1/) / [Hebrews 4.14](/codex/hebrews-4-14/) / [Hebrews 10.23](/codex/hebrews-10-23/) (the corporate-confession triplet), [1 Timothy 6.12-13](/codex/1-timothy-6-12-13/) (the good confession of Timothy + Christ before Pilate), [2 Corinthians 9.13](/codex/2-corinthians-9-13/) (the gospel-confession), [Romans 10.9-10](/codex/romans-10-9-10/) (the verbal-confession partner-text), [1 John 4.2-3](/codex/1-john-4-2-3/) / [1 John 4.15](/codex/1-john-4-15/) (the Christological-confession tests). ## See also - [G3670 - homologeo](/codex/g3670-homologeo/), *homologeō* (to confess), the verbal counterpart - [G3056 - logos](/codex/g3056-logos/), *logos* (word), the *-logia* root - [G3004 - lego](/codex/g3004-lego/), *legō* (to say), the verbal root of the *-logia* compound - *G4100 - pisteuō*, *pisteuō* (to believe), the internal-trust counterpart to public *homologia*; paired in [Romans 10:9-10](/codex/romans-10-9-10/) - *G3141 - martyria*, *martyria* (witness, testimony), adjacent public-declaration term - [Soteriology](/codex/soteriology-salvation/), domain hub (confession as element of saving response) - [Apostles Creed](/codex/apostles-creed/), the downstream baptismal-creedal tradition - [Christs Deity](/codex/christs-deity/), the Christological content of *the good confession* - Passages: [Hebrews 3.1](/codex/hebrews-3-1/), [Hebrews 4.14](/codex/hebrews-4-14/), [Hebrews 10.23](/codex/hebrews-10-23/), [1 Timothy 6.12-13](/codex/1-timothy-6-12-13/), [2 Corinthians 9.13](/codex/2-corinthians-9-13/), [Romans 10.9-10](/codex/romans-10-9-10/), [1 John 4.2-3](/codex/1-john-4-2-3/), [1 John 4.15](/codex/1-john-4-15/)