Creeds and Confessions, A Defense, Part 6

6. Generally speaking, the most ardent opposers of creeds and confessions have been latitudinarians, if not heretics.

This is not to say that the use of creeds or confessions has never been opposed by people who were substantially orthodox. But it is to say that such a rejection of the use of creeds and confessions is a relatively recent circumstance. We have no example of it in earlier church history. Neither is this to say that heretics have not formed and maintain their own corrupt creeds. Church history abounds with examples of this as well. But what we are asserting is this, as a general fact the most ardent and loud opponents of creeds have been those who held corrupt opinions. This should not strike us as a fortuitous occurrence. This is exactly what we should expect. This is exactly what the underlying principle should logically develop into.

In the early 19^th century, the loudest opponent of the use of creeds and confessions was the denomination of the Unitarians. Is it any wonder that those who hold doctrines which are demonstrably un-scriptural should refuse to accept a formula which tends to make visible the line of distinction between truth and error? It has often been observed that men are seldom found to oppose creeds until the creeds and become opposed to them.

If we look a little into church history, especially within the last 200 years we find this strikingly exemplified. Whenever we find a group of men beginning to slide away from orthodoxy, they generally try to conceal their fall by speaking against creeds and confessions. And that is because it is these documents that will expose how far they have deviated from sound doctrine.

Creeds and Confessions, A Defense, Part 5

5. The Church's experience in all ages has found creeds and confessions to be indispensable.

Even in the days of the Apostles, there were those who were peddling a 'false gospel.' How did the Church respond to such a situation? Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote that Christians should not be content with a mere profession of belief in Christ, but that teachers should be examined to ascertain whether their doctrine accorded with the “form of sound words,” which he had taught them. Paul adds to this the fearful warning of a curse on the head of anyone who brings a message other than the one they had received from him. 

What we have here is, in effect, an instance – with Divine warrant, I might add – of employing a creed as a test of orthodoxy. A naked profession of belief in God or the Bible was insufficient. It had to be determined in what sense they understood the Gospel. The peculiar situation of the Church in that early age probably required a short and concise confession, but a confession nonetheless. Whether the confession Paul sought agreement with had one article or 100 is irrelevant; the principle is the same.

When we come to the 2^nd Century, in the writings of Irenaeus, or the 3^rd Century, in the writings of Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, we find creeds and confessions occupying a prominent place in the Church as a safe-guard against error. This is especially important when we remember that by this very standard, large swathes of both Tertullian's and Origen's works were ruled unorthodox by their contemporaries and later generations. 

By the time we get to the 4^th Century, the exigencies of the Arian heresy forced the Church to respond at the Council of Nicaea with the Nicene creed, a standard of orthodox Trinitarianism which has stood both the test of time and the ravaging winds of theological innovation.

With Arius, a creed turned out to be an indispensable tool. Arius was exceptionally crafty. It was extremely difficult to pin him down theologically. He almost always resorted to the actually words used in Scripture when pressed for an explanation of his teaching, but it was always evident that something was still awry. Whenever the members of the Council attempted to pin him down on the question of what he believed to Bible to teach, or, in what sense did he understand the language of Scripture, he was found to equivocate and evade the questions put to him. As long as he was permitted to hide behind a veneer of general profession, his errors were not readily apparent. The solution was to draw up a statement of what the Fathers believed to be the Scripture's teaching on the deity of Christ. When Arius was confronted with this and asked to subscribe to it, he was flushed out as the heretic that he was. The Council was proven correct in their judgment of him, for by his refusal to subscribe to the creed, he showed that he understood the Scriptures in an entirely different sense than the rest of Christendom. This has repeatedly been case throughout history. 

Creeds and Confessions, A Defense, Part 4

4. A further argument in favor of creeds and confessions is that they promote the study of Christian doctrine.

The only way in which those who fundamentally differ from each other concerning the doctrines of Scripture can have any harmony in ecclesiastical fellowship is by becoming indifferent to the truth. If Christians are indifferent to the truth will they not then be apt today neglect the study of truth? And if the study of truth is neglected, will not ignorance eventually prevail? The simple fact is this: when men love the truth of the gospel enough to study it, they soon learn to evaluate it adequately. And only then will they be disposed to contend for it against its enemies.

If a professing believer entertains the notion that creeds and confessions are un-scriptural (and therefore unlawful), he is half a step from concluding that all contending for doctrine is useless and even sinful. It is easy to see from this how small the transition is to abandoning of the study of doctrine. The enemies of creeds and confessions assume a principle, which, if carried to its logical conclusion, would discourage all zeal in maintaining the purity of the doctrines of the Gospel. If the pulpiteers of the average church in Evangelicalism had it as a goal to make their hearers indifferent about understanding and studying the fundamental doctrines of Scripture, they could adopt no better plan than to do as they actually do in their rejection of creeds and confessions by crying, “Matters of opinion are between God and a man's own conscience. No one else should meddle with that.” Isn't this just another way of saying, “Believe whatever you want; it doesn't matter anyway.” This, of course means that serious study of the doctrines of Scripture is both a waste of time and not conducive to so-called “unity.” No self-respecting minister would actually assert this, but who cares if his practice works on the same underlying framework? Either the doctrines of Scripture are important and should be studied, or they are not important and need not be studied. If we would have churches with Biblically-literate members, nothing is more conducive to this than a creed or confession of faith, which lays out in an orderly and systematic way the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.

Creeds and Confessions, A Defense, Part 3

3. Creeds and confessions of faith are simply the truth and candor that every Christian church owes to the other churches and to the world around her.

Let us imagine a hypothetical believer, a devout and religious man, who wants to form a deep in spiritual bond to a body of believers of like mind. Before he joins any church, he will want to know something of their faith, their government, and their general character. He will also want to know their doctrine. How will he find any of this out? It will certainly not be by going from church to church within a 50 mile radius of his house trying to ascertain from what he hears from the pulpit what that particular church holds for Bible truth. This would require an impossibly long amount of time and effort which no one can afford. And even supposing he had the time to spend in such an endeavor, he would never hear enough of the doctrine of anyone church to be able to decide what the universal and uniform character of that particular church was. He would have no way of knowing whether what he saw and heard on any given Sunday was standard procedure or a mere fluke.

But supposing that this hypothetical inquirer finds that we have a published creed or confession of faith, which declares how we understand the Scriptures, and further details the great truths which we have agreed to unite in maintaining, he can ascertain in a very short time without even leaving his own living room, what we profess to believe, and how far his views accord with our published confession.

Creeds and confessions therefore, rather than alienating and embittering Christians and churches who think merely alike, in fact make them better acquainted with each other while laying the foundation for mutual confidence in harmony as fellow believers and members of the church of God. Whole denominations exist, whose doctrinal standards are virtually identical, yet no one would know how far they are agreed without these standards being published and subscribed to in a public manner.

The aforementioned hypothetical believer merely presents us with one half of the equation. But the same logic applies with regard to our witness to the world around us. Do not churches and denominations owe the world around them an honest and candid presentation of their beliefs? Surely no one would dispute this. This is precisely what creeds and confessions do.

Creeds and Confessions, A Defense, Part 2

2. Another argument for the importance of creeds and confessions appears from considering what the church was established to be, namely a depository, a guardian, and a witness of the truth.

Scripture represents Christians, collectively as well as individually, as witnesses for God. They are exhorted to contend earnestly for the faith and to hold fast to the form of sound words which they have received and to strive together for the faith of the Gospel.

Surely this implies taking effective measures to distinguish between truth and error. Surely this implies the duty of drawing a line between those who profess to believe the Bible, while in reality denying its essential doctrines, and those who humbly receive the truth.

There is only one way that this can be done. The only way a distinction can be made between those who deny the essential doctrines of Scripture and those who embrace them – while both professing to receive and believe the Bible – is by ascertaining and explicitly declaring how the church understands and interpret the Bible. In other words the church must extract articles of faith from the Scriptures and compared those articles with the professed belief of those whom she suspects to be heretics. But what is this if not a creed or Confession of faith? To this point, Samuel Miller writes, “It does really appear to me that those orthodox brethren, who admit that the church is bound to raise her voice against error, and to 'contend earnestly' for the truth; and yet denounce creeds and confessions, are, in the highest degree inconsistent with themselves.” A truer sentence was never written.

Demanding a church members and her ministers uphold a truth, while refusing to give them the tools to do it, beyond a naked “I believe in the Bible,” is like the Egyptian taskmasters sending the Israelites to their brickwork without supplying down the necessary materials to meet their quota. There really is no other alternative. You must either have “a form of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13), or you can have no security that any two decisions about the faith will be made on the same basis.