John H. Leith has written in Creeds of the Churches:
Everyone believes in God. Demons do (James 2:19). Atheists do (Rom. 1:18–21). And, of course, Christians do. The historic Christian creeds are simply condensed statements about what the church universal has believed and continues to believe about God. They are not Spirit-inspired or exhaustive summaries, but they do reflect scriptural language and theology, represent historical consensus, and encapsulate the basics of the Christian faith. They are the church’s effort to articulate concisely and coherently what God has revealed to us in Christ through the Bible. As Carl Trueman notes:
No Christian, if asked by a friend what the Bible teaches, is simply going to start reading aloud at Genesis 1:1 and not stop until Revelation 22:21. Instead, when asked by friends what the Bible teaches, we all try to offer a synthesis, a summary of what the Bible says. And as we move from biblical text to theological statement, we offer what is, in terms of content, something akin to a creed or confession.[1]
Thus, creeds are “theological mirrors of the Bible’s fundamental doctrine.”[2] Likewise, “They are the product of many centuries of Bible study by a great company of believers. They are a kind of spiritual ‘road map’ of the teaching of the Bible, already worked out and proved by others before us.”[3] They provide a “concise rending of the Christian story and . . . vision of reality,” being instruments “that can at once define the community of faith and challenge alternative stories and visions of reality.”[4] Therefore, for these reasons and many more, creeds are useful, reliable, and even authoritative truths that every Christian should know and be able to say from the heart. In our ever-more-anti-confessional age (with its many creedless churches), these ancient but timeless documents are essential to Christianity’s stability and spiritual growth. While the postmodern world balks at religious truth as implausible and distasteful, we boast in Christ as “God of God . . . who . . . for our salvation came down from heaven.”
When I was a student at Wheaton College, I attended College Church. My view of the importance of creeds was shaped by Kent Hughes, the Senior Pastor. In an article he wrote on corporate worship, he spoke of why the congregation of College Church regularly recites the Apostles’ Creed:
(1) to affirm the essentials; (2) to emphasize that we are in the stream of historic orthodoxy; and (3) to provide a familiar reference to visitors and new Christians from mainline and Roman Catholic backgrounds. The Nicene Creed is often used during Advent, for the same reasons given above.[5]
Influenced by Kent, when I started a church plant from College Church, I printed this in our Sunday bulletin:
Through a historic creed of the church (e.g., the Apostles’ Creed) or a creedal statement of Scripture (e.g., Phil. 2:1–11; Col. 1:15–20), we join the communion of saints—past and present—as we together affirm some of the essential Christian beliefs (credo is Latin for “I believe”). Also, as we weekly recite various orthodox statements of faith—which have been believed by all Christians everywhere at all times—we renew our minds in the basic truths of God’s revelation to us in Christ, thus combating heretical views about God, man, and salvation.
Others have given fuller rationale for the inclusion of creeds. For example, in his book Why Do We Have Creeds? Burk Parsons answers that question with his “practical ten-point summary of the purpose of creeds in the church.”[6] This list is worth quoting in full. The purpose of creeds is:
To glorify God according to his truth and to enjoy him forever by believing, confessing, and proclaiming our doctrine in accordance with what he has revealed and not according to the superstitions of men, the deceitful schemes of Satan, or the arrogant and presumptuous notions of our own hearts.
To affirm the one true God almighty who has revealed himself to us and whose glorious attributes, gracious laws, and grand story of redemption point us to himself as our only Lord to the end that we might love him rightly and as fully as possible with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.
To guard the unchanging, sound doctrine of Scripture against false teachers and heretics outside the church, and to guard against the vain and false notions of Scripture from within the church as a shining wit- ness of God’s truth to the watching world out of which God calls his elect through the preaching of the gospel and inward call of the Holy Spirit.
To discern truth from doctrinal error and to discern truth from half- truth as we contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints that we might grow up in every way into Christ, who is the living head of the church, who is the way, the truth, the life, and the only way to the Father.
To remain steadfast through the ages until Christ’s return as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of Christ who believe, confess, and pro- claim the pure and unadulterated Word of God and who rightly administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, including our consistent exercise of church admonition, correction, and discipline.
To uphold the life-encompassing doctrine of the inspired and inerrant Word of God as our sole, infallible authority that is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness to the end that every man of God might be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
To maintain freedom for individual Christians as well as the entire church from extra-biblical laws, traditions, and superstitions of men that bind men’s consciences, perplex men’s souls, lead our children astray according to their sin, and bring about man-exalting pride instead of God-exalting humility.
To confirm men according to the church’s doctrinal standard who have been elected to serve as officers of the church as well as to equip, examine, and prove those men who have been called as pastors and elders over the flock of God, and to ascertain their suitability to teach as they feed, care for, and pray with and for the sheep of Christ for whom he gave his life.
To preserve the purity and, thereby, the peace and unity of the church visible as the outward witness of Christ and his elect bride, the church invisible, to the end that we might stand together as one family with one Father, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, unwaveringly according to and because of the truth, never in spite of, disregard for, or ignorance of it.
To fulfill the Great Commission in our united affirmation and proclamation of the one true gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the only power of God unto salvation to all who believe, by making disciples in our homes, churches, communities, and in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all things that our Lord Jesus Christ commanded us.[6]
Each Sunday, as we gather with God’s people in God’s presence, we renew our vision and communal identity. And when we recite one of the historic Christian creeds, we take a few minutes to remind ourselves of our story, one drawn from the great storyline of Scripture itself. We begin by announcing God’s creation and end with his awesome eschatology. And between the start and stop, we announce the gospel: our salvation in the birth, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of the God-man, Jesus Christ. What could be more important than that!? Creeds are central to Christian doxology. What a wise way to spend but two minutes out of our 10,080-minute week.
This resource is part of the series Made Like Him: Reflections on Formation and Gathered Worship. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Notes:
1. The ancient ecumenical creeds and Protestant confessions, as Carl E. Trueman notes, “are often referred to as normed norms or, to use the Latin, norma normata, in contrast with Scripture which is the norming norm, or norma normans.” The Creedal Imperative (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 160.
2. Burk Parsons, Why Do We Have Creeds? Basics of the Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012), 19. “Christianity has always been a ‘creedal’ religion in that it has always been theological. It was rooted in the theological tradition of ancient Israel, which was unified by its historical credos and declaratory affirmations of the faith. No pretheological era has been discovered in the New Testament or in the history of the Christian community. From the beginning Christianity has been theological, involving men in theological reflection and calling them to declarations of faith. A nontheological Christianity has simply never endured.” John H. Leith, Creeds of the Churches, 3rd ed. (Louisville: John Knox, 1982), 1.
3. G. I. Williamson, quoted in ibid., 21.
4. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), viii. In this quote, Johnson is speaking specifically about the Nicene Creed, but in our view, it is applicable to all the early Christian creeds.
5. R. Kent Hughes, “Free Church Worship: The Challenge of Freedom,” in Worship by the Book, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 175.
6. Parsons, Why Do We Have Creeds? 30.
Adapted from The Pastor's Book, Edited by R. Kent Hughes and Douglas Sean O'Donnell © 2015, Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
Douglas Sean O’Donnell is the Senior Vice President of Bible Publishing at Crossway. He previously served as the Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Elgin, IL. as a senior lecturer in Biblical Studies and Practical Theology at Queensland Theological College in Brisbane, Australia. He has authored, edited, and contributed to a number of books, including two children’s books, six commentaries on the Bible, and The Pastor’s Book with R. Kent Hughes. Doug holds a PhD from the University of Aberdeen and is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
