REFORMED WITNESS
February 1992
Arguments in Favor of Creeds
From The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions (1824) pp.5-11
by Samuel Miller
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By a creed, or confession of faith, I mean an exhibition, in human language, of those great doctrines which are believed by the framers of it to be taught in the holy scriptures; and which are drawn out in regular order, for the purpose of ascertaining how far those who wish to unite in church fellowship are really agreed in the fundamental principles of Christianity. Creeds and confessions do not claim to be in themselves laws of Christ's house, or legislative enactments, by which any set of opinions are constituted truths, and which require, on that account, to be received as truths among the members of his family. They only profess to be summaries, extracted from the scriptures, of a few of those great gospel doctrines which are taught by Christ himself; and which those who make the summary in each particular case concur in deeming important, and agree to make the test of their religious union. They have no idea that, in forming this summary, they make anything truth that was not truth before; or that they thereby contract an obligation to believe what they were not bound by the authority of Christ to believe before. But they simply consider it as a list of the leading truths which the Bible teaches, which, of course, all men ought to believe, because the Bible does teach them; and which a certain portion of the visible church catholic agree in considering as a formula, by means of which they may know and understand one another.
Now, I affirm that the adoption of such a creed is not only lawful and expedient, but also indispensably necessary to the harmony and purity of the visible church. For the establishment of this position, let me request your attention to the following considerations.
1. Without a creed explicitly adopted, it is not easy to see how the ministers and members of any particular church, and more especially a large denomination of Christians, can maintain unity among themselves.
If every Christian were a mere insulated individual, who inquired, felt, and acted for himself alone, no creed of human formation would be necessary for his advancement in knowledge, comfort, or holiness. With the Bible in his closet, and with his eyes opened to see the "wondrous things" which it contains (Ps. 119:18), he would have all that was needful for his edification. But the case is far otherwise. The church is a society: a society which, however extended, is "one body in Christ," and all who compose it, "members one of another" (Rom. 12:5). Nor is this society merely required to be one in name, or to recognize a mere theoretical union; but also carefully to maintain "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3). They are exhorted to "stand fast in one spirit, with one mind" (Phil. 1:27). They are commanded all to "speak the same thing," and to be "of one accord, of one mind'' (1 Cor. 1:10; Phil. 2:2). And this "unity of spirit" is as essential to the comfort and edification of those who are joined together in church fellowship, as it is to a compliance with the command of their Master. "How can two walk together unless they be agreed?" (cf. Amos 3:3).
Can a body of worshippers, composed of Calvinists, Arminians, Pelagians, Arians, and Socinians, all pray, and preach, and commune together profitably and comfortably, each retaining the sentiments, feelings, and language appropriate to his denomination? This would indeed make the house of God a miserable Babel. What! Can those who believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be God, equal with the Father, and worship him accordingly, and those who consider all such worship as abominable idolatry; those who cordially renounce all dependence on their own works or merit for justification before God, relying entirely on his rich grace, "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:24), and those who pronounce all such reliance fanatical, and man's own righteousness the sole ground of hope; can persons who cherish these irreconcilably opposite sentiments and feelings on the most important of all subjects, unite with edification in the same prayers, listen from sabbath to sabbath to the same instructions, and sit together in comfort at the same sacramental table? As well might Jews and Christians worship together in the same temple. They must either be perfectly indifferent to the great subjects on which they are thus divided, or all their intercourse must be productive of jarring and distress. Such a discordant assembly might talk about church fellowship; but that they should really enjoy that fellowship which the Bible describes as so precious, and which the pious so much delight to cultivate, is impossible just as impossible as "that righteousness should have fellowship with unrighteousness," or "light hold communion with darkness, or Christ maintain concord with Belial" (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14-15).
Holding these things to be self-evident, how, I ask, is any church to guard itself from that baleful discord, that perpetual strife of feeling, if not of words and conduct, which must ensue, when it is made up of such heterogeneous materials? Nay, how is a church to avoid the guilt of harboring in its bosom, and of countenancing by its fellowship, the worst heresies that ever disgraced the Christian name? It is not enough, for attaining this object, that all who are admitted profess to agree in receiving the Bible; for many who call themselves Christians, and profess to take the Bible for their guide, hold opinions, and speak a language as foreign, nay, as opposite, to the opinions and language of many others, who equally claim to be Christians, and equally profess to receive the Bible, as the east is to the west. Of those who agree in this general profession, the greater part acknowledge as of divine authority the whole sacred canon, as we receive it; while others would throw out whole chapters, and some a number of entire books from the volume of God's revealed will. The orthodox maintain the plenary inspiration of the scriptures; while some who insist that they are Christians, deny their inspiration altogether. In short, there are multitudes who, professing to believe the Bible, and to take it for their guide, reject every fundamental doctrine which it contains. So it was in the beginning as well as now.
An inspired apostle declares, that some in his day who not only professed to believe the scriptures, but even to "preach Christ" (Phil. 1:15-16) did really preach "another gospel," the teachers of which he charges those to whom he wrote to hold "accursed" (Gal. 1:6-9); and he assures them that there are some "heresies" so deep and radical that they are to be accounted "damnable" (2 Pet. 2:1). Surely those who maintain the true gospel cannot "walk together" in "church fellowship" with those who are "accursed" for preaching "another gospel," and who espouse "damnable heresies," the advocates of which the disciples of Christ are not permitted even to "receive into their houses," or to "bid God speed!" (cf. 2 John 10).
How, then, I ask again, are the members of a church, to take care that they be, according to the divine command, "of one mind," and "of one way?" They may require all who enter their communion to profess a belief in the Bible; nay, they may require this profession to be repeated every day, and yet may be corrupted and divided by every form of the grossest error. Such a profession, it is manifest, ascertains no agreement; is a bond of no real union, a pledge of no spiritual fellowship. It leaves every thing within the range of nominal Christianity, as perfectly undefined, and as much exposed to total discord as before...
The inference, then, plainly is that no church can hope to maintain a homogeneous character; no church can be secure either of purity or peace, for a single year; nay, no church can effectually guard against the highest degrees of corruption and strife, without some test of truth, explicitly agreed upon, and adopted by her in her ecclesiastical capacity: something recorded, something publicly known, something capable of being referred to when most needed, which not merely this or that private member supposes to have been received, but to which the church as such has agreed to adhere, as a bond of union. In other words, a church, in order to maintain the "unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and love" (cf. Eph. 4:2-3), must have a creed a written creed to which she has formally given her assent, and to a conformity to which her ministrations are pledged. As long as such a test is faithfully applied, she cannot fail of being in some good degree united and harmonious. And when nothing of the kind is employed, I see not how she can be expected, without a miracle, to escape all the evils of discord and corruption.
The Confession of Faith (1869), AA. Hodge
A Short History of Creeds and Confessions
...While, however, the Scriptures are from God, the understanding of them belongs to the part of men. Men must interpret to the best of their ability each particular part of Scripture separately, and then combine all that the Scriptures teach upon every subject into a consistent whole, and then adjust their teachings upon different subjects in mutual consistency as parts of a harmonious system. Every student of the Bible must do this; and all make it obvious that they do it, by the terms they use in their prayers and religious discourse, whether they admit or deny the propriety of human creeds and confessions. If they refuse the assistance afforded by the statements of doctrine slowly elaborated and defined by the Church, they must make out their own creed by their own unaided wisdom. The real question is not, as often pretended, between the Word of God and the creed of man, but between the tried and proved faith of the collective body of God's people, and the private judgment and the unassisted wisdom of the repudiator of creeds.
Creeds and confessions, therefore, have been found necessary in all ages and branches of the Church, and, when not abused, have been useful for the following purposes: (1.) To mark, disseminate, and preserve, the attainments made in the knowledge of Christian truth by any branch of the Church in any crisis of its development. (2.) To discriminate the truth from the glosses of false teachers, and to present it in its integrity and due proportions. (3.) To act as the basis of ecclesiastical fellowship among those so nearly agreed as to be able to labour together in harmony. (4.) To be used as instruments in the great work of popular instruction.
From The Standard Bearer, Volume 16 (1939)
by George M. Ophoff
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...The Christian creeds are definite and formal declarations on the part of the church of what she believes to be the truth contained in God's Word. The creed represents an activity that consists in apprehending, through the study of the Scriptures, the truth contained therein, in entering the truth with the mind in order that it may be understood, and in properly expressing what the truth is believed to be. It is this activity that has produced the great creeds of Christendom. Now in declaring what she believed to be the truth, the church sometimes found herself under the necessity of employing terms and phrases that are not found in Holy Writ. One illustration: The Christian creed declares that "God is only one, the one single Essence, in which are three persons, really, truly and eternally distinct, according to their incommunicable properties. This phraseology is not literally found in Scripture. If the church in compos ing her creeds would do nothing more than cite Scripture, that is, reproduce Scripture as to the form of its words, she could not so express what she holds to be the truth as to expose the lie of the false teachers. Consider that such teachers also profess to believe the Scriptures. Hence, what is assailed and denied is not the Scriptures as to the form of their language, but the thought or truth of which this
language, according to the conviction of the church, is the vehicle. The Church therefore in expressing definitely and precisely what it believed to be the truth, has found it necessary to avail itself of terms and phrases not literally contained in Holy Writ.If the creeds of Christendom is meant to be nothing else than a written declaration of what is held to be the truth of God's Word, if the action of which the Christian creed is representative is one consisting in God's believing people searching the Scriptures for the truth contained therein, and thinking their way into the truth in order to qualify themselves to set it forth in language so clear and definite that the lie of the false teacher may be exposed, how can there be any objection to the creed? Must not the Scriptures be searched and the truth be thought into that it may be expressed in proper language? What a strange cry -- this cry: no creed. How can God's believing people turn away from the creed, if the doctrine of which it is the expression, is, according to their firm conviction, the truth of God's Word? With the creed declaring that Christ is true and eternal God, of one essence with the Father and the Holy Ghost, what believer could turn away from the creed? To repudiate the creed would be to deny what is held to be the truth...
The advice contained in the cry No Creed but Christ is plainly this: "Turn from your creed to Scripture. Here search for your Christ. Here you see Him as He is; for the Bible is God's infallible word. Not so the creed." Let us examine this advice. To search the Bible for Christ is to search the Bible for the truth concerning Christ. This search or study having been completed, the searcher would then necessarily have to declare what he believed to be the truth of God's word concerning Christ. This declaration would be his private creed. So we see what he who turns from the fallible creed of the church to the infallible Bible, ends up in doing. He ends up, and this of necessity, in placing in the room of the creed, which he rejected, his own private creed. And what has been gained? Nothing at all. For that private creed is fallible, as truly fallible as the creed of the church that was rejected. It must be this, as it, too, as well as the creed that was set aside, was made by a fallible man. And if this individual were truly a believer, if in turning away from the creed of the church he was not moved by a hatred of the truth, his private creed as to its content would be identical to the content of the creed which he imagined he had forsaken...
... It is evident that the cry "No creed but Christ" is absurd. The term creed stands for truth, thus for the content of saving faith. If, therefore, there need be no creed, faith need have no content. If there need be no creed, there need be no knowledge of Christ and of God for salvation, and the Scriptures can be dispensed with. Even if the pastor, when in the pulpit, would do nothing but read to his hearers from the Bible, he would also then be coming to them with his creed, if he understood and believed what he was reading, So, to say No Creed is to say No Scriptures. Thus in the final instance, it is to say No Christ.
The Confessions in the Light of the Church
From The Standard Bearer, Volume 58 (1982)
by Herman Hanko
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The creeds make us who live today one with the church of the past and give us a place in the company of just men made perfect. The unity of the whole church is a unity of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. As this same truth is confessed throughout all time, it is this truth which binds the church of all ages together into the one body of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a great comfort in this. The truth may be despised and rejected. The company of the faithful may grow smaller. The believer may wonder sometimes if he does not in fact stand alone. But our Confessions assure us that we stand in a noble company of mighty warriors and of faithful men and women and of those who loved not their lives unto death. The company of Augustine and Athanasius, of Gottschalk and Luther, of Calvin and Knox, of Hoeksema a and Ophoff is far to be preferred to that of the insipid theologians of our theologically degenerate times.
These same creeds serve as a basis for further development. In our day, as Johannes Vos has expressed it, we do not need less of the truth, but more. It is theologically stupid and spiritually irresponsible to turn our backs upon the truth, and to seek out new inventions which deny the creedal heritage which our God has given us. Development of the truth is ever the calling and privilege of the church. But that is the development of the great truths of the Confessions. They are given to us as a gift of grace. On their basis we stand. On the heights of their confessional integrity we gaze ever deeper into the riches of the knowledge of the truth of Scripture. Development is truly possible only when we have both feet firmly planted in our creedal heritage.
Our creeds are reason for deep gratitude to God. They are the testimony of the fulfillment of the promise of Christ to be with us always, even unto the end of the world. For in this truth as given by the Spirit, Christ Himself abides with us. They were written in blood and in the heat of the mighty age-old battle for the faith. Shall we spurn the blood of the martyrs which still cries before the throne? Shall we spit out venom upon those who loved not their lives unto death? Shall we retreat from the battle which they, by grace, so courageously fought? God forbid. They are a precious and glorious heritage of the faith of our fathers.
The Importance of Maintaining the Three Forms of Unity
From The Standard Bearer, Volume 43 (1967)
by Jason Kortering
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There is an urgency to maintain the Three Forms of Unity and the Formula of Subscription.
In clear and uncompromising language we must maintain the correct attitude toward the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God. Even as our Reformed fathers championed the Word and based all the doctrines of the church upon that Word, so we must remain biblical in all our theology. What is of man is sin, only that which is of God is true and must be maintained.
Because our Reformed confessions are based upon that Word of God, they are correct in all that they teach. They are relevant to our day. What nonsense to imagine that the God of revelation who is also the God of inspiration would produce in the midst of the church a book, a record that is full of errors. Is the Spirit a liar? Is He a deceiver? God forbid. Because our Reformed confessions are based upon the Bible, they are the truth.
Let's maintain them. Let every office bearer in the Reformed churches that has subscribed to the Formula of Subscription do exactly as he has vowed before God. We need this today as in no other generation . The lie is more subtle now, for the devil crouches at the door as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Antichrist is at hand posing as an angel of light, but being a devil at heart. The line of demarcation is no longer drawn by certain denominations; the call comes to the faithful of all churches that love the truth of the Word of God to join hands against the evil influence that lies within. For this reason we must hold high the banner of the Reformed confessions! We must hold it higher and with less fear than ever before. It will mean persecution; the higher we hold it, the more it will come. Yet, true ecumenism can be accomplished only as the faithful gather beneath that banner. In the face of confusion and doubts, lying and deceit, let the church hold high the clear statement of what she believes to be the truth of the Word of God. Let all who love the Word of God stand in one confession, making great the name of our God, the God who has preserved His church throughout the generations...
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