A creed is a concise, formal, and authorized confession stating what a church believes and teaches. A creed attempts to summarize "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). It expresses the conviction that "continuity with that faith is the essence of orthodoxy, and discontinuity with it the essence of heresy" (9).
To Believe and Confess
"Creeds and confessions of faith have their origin in a twofold Christian imperative, to believe and to confess what one believes" (35). Faith, in order to shared, must communicate its core convictions. The Apostle Paul quotes the words of the Psalmist - "I believed, and so I spoke" (Psalm 116:10) - to explain to the Corinthians, "we too believe, and so we speak" (2 Corinthians 4:13).
A commitment to confessing one's faith is rooted in the witness of Scripture. "Judaism has, at least in principle, satisfied this confessional imperative with a single creed, the recitation of the confession of The Shema, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one'" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Jesus declared that this ancient commandment held priority over all other commandments (Mark 12:28-30). In 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, Paul modifies the Shema to include Christ.
Creeds Have Biblical Warrant
Jesus and Paul's commitment to Israel's ancient creed proves that the making and preserving of creeds have biblical precedent and biblical approval. "Anyone who, in the name of the New Testament, declares an opposition to the very notion of creeds is obliged to come to terms with the priority--the chronological if not also the logical priority--of creed within the teachings of Jesus himself and of his apostles" (130).
This is proved by the vast amount of creeds and creed-like statements in the New Testament. Other New Testament creeds most likely include Peter's confession to Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?": "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16-18). The textual variant represented by weighty manuscripts and early version of the New Testament in Acts 8:36-37 where Philip has the Ethiopian eunuch say, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God" represents a creedal progression from Peter's confession. 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 preserves an early creed passed on as an inherited tradition to the Apostle Paul. A creed in 1 Timothy 2:5 "incorporates The Shema and then expands it into a Christian rule of faith: There is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind; Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all" (133). Also in 1 Timothy 3:16: "He [or: God] was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory." The kenosis passage in Philippians 2:6-11 is a creed-like formula as is Colossians 1:15-20. The imperative "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" "is not a doctrine, but a liturgical action" (134). All these creeds and confessional formulas are community traditions [paradosis] passed on and expounded. The "faith once and for all delivered [hapax paradotheise] to the saints" is a faith delivered by "tradition [paradosis]. Pelikan notes that "the Greek noun [paradosis] comes from a Greek verb that could, if the verb were not so rare in English, be translated as "to tradition'" (136).
Creeds preserve the truth that there is a "close correlation between these two acts of believing and confessing: "If you confess with you lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved" (Romans 10:9-10). It follows that his confession should be taught - something to be communicated and received on authority.
Clearly, the Christian faith has an objective content. It is "once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). It is a "deposit that needs to be guarded" (1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 1:14). It is not solely the experience of a personal relationship between God and a believer, but an authoritative message that must be received. This does not undermine, but rather, nurtures and supports personal faith. In the words of Miroslav Volf, "Without personal identification with Jesus Christ, cognitive specification of who he is remains empty; without cognitive specification of who Jesus Christ is, however, personal identification with him is blind" (53). Put another way: "Faith and the confession of the faith must always be more than doctrine... But it is equally important to emphasize that confessing the faith can never be less than doctrine" (65). Doctrine "is the particular form that 'faith' or 'beliefs' take when they are articulated or defined" (359)
Confessing the faith also corresponds to the life of Christ who is, in the words of the Savoy Declaration of 1658, "the great and first confessor" (58). This is gleaned from passages such as the following: "Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession" (Hebrews 3:1); "in his testimony before Pontius Pilate he made the good confession" (1 Timothy 6:13); Before Pilate, the apostle Paul says, "For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth" (John 18:37); and Jesus teaches his disciples, "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 10:32-33).
Ultimately, "what is to be 'confessed' as well as what is to be 'believed' is Jesus Christ. That means above all his lordship" (59). For this reason, Paul writes that we "confess with [our] lips that Jesus is Lord" (Romans 10:9).
Creeds Preserve Doctrinal Integrity
The New Testament evidences that, over time, Christian confessions undergo further development. In response to an early form of the Gnostic heresy that separated "Jesus" from "the Christ" it was expanded to, "Every one who believes that Jesus is the Christ [instead of separating Jesus from the Christ] is a child of God" (1 John 5:1) and "Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God" (1 John 4:2-3).
The "overwhelming impression" of a study of creeds and confessions will surely include "their sheer repetitiveness" (7).
Such repetitiveness is, of course, no accident. It is intended to condemn those who 'rashly seek for novelties and expositions of another faith,' and above all to document--even actually to celebrate the continuity of these creeds and confessions of faith not only with the other orthodox creeds and confessions that have preceded them but above all with what is cherished as the authentic apostolic tradition. (7-8)
Some moderns are turned off by the harsh language of denunciation and "anathemas" of some creeds and confessions. However, this underscores their seriousness: "one of the most persistent features of all creeds and confessions of faith... is the utter seriousness with which they treat the issues of Christian doctrine as, quite literally, a matter of life and death, both here in time and hereafter in eternity" (70).
If faithfulness to Christ and his message is a mark of commitment and love, then "unfaithfulness to this sum of doctrine amounts to disloyalty toward Christ" (75). This is "the conviction underlying the sharp condemnations of false doctrine in so many creeds and confessions from all the major confessional traditions" (75). The anathemas also have precedent in the Mosaic Law and in Paul's epistles: "Let him be anathema, any one who has no love for the Lord" (1 Corinthians 16:22) and "anathema to anyone who is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received" (Galatians 1:8-9). The former highlights sins against love; the latter doctrinal sins against the faith. Likewise, the author of 1 Timothy condemns "the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge" (1 Timothy 6:20). Paul warns the Romans "to take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties, in opposition to the doctrine which you have been taught" (Romans 16:17). The goal is to be "of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind" (Philippians 2:2).
In light of the preceding, it must be noted: "Although creeds and confessions have so frequently had their origins in polemics and anathema and have also repeatedly been the occasion for still further polemics, it should be recalled that often they have succeeded in becoming instruments of concord as well" (199).
Also supporting this conviction is the desire to maintain and promote "sound doctrine" - "an imperative that believers and confessors understand as a divine command" (1 Timothy 1:10; Titus 1:9; 2:10). Recognizing that
this attitude toward "accuracy" in doctrinal truth claims seems so uncongenial to the spirit of the present day, it may be helpful to invoke the analogy of modern scientific and technological doctrine, where getting things exactly right is the goal, or at least the ideal, and where getting things wrong is seen as potentially dangerous... Presumably, everyone would expect and require pharmacists, at peril of excommunication from their profession, to understand correctly the Latin text of a prescription and then to prepare the dosage in literal obedience to the "authorial intent" of the prescribing physician; for otherwise the patient may "perish." (77)
Though creeds and confessions cover many doctrines, "they do assign the priority over all of these to the doctrine of the Trinity and the related doctrine of the incarnation" (80). The Athanasian Creed formulates this widely held priority. It reads: "Whoever desires to be saved must above all things hold the catholic faith. ... Now this is the catholic faith, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity.... It is necessary, however, to eternal salvation that one should also faithfully believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Pelikan writes, "In one way or another, therefore, each of the first seven church councils can be seen as an attempt to give the church's doctrinal response to the question asked by Jesus Christ in the Gospels: 'Who do you say that I am?'" (80). In the first two ecumenical councils, Jesus' relationship to the Father and the Spirit are hammered out. Building upon this, the next four ecumenical councils work out the relation between the divine nature and human nature within Jesus' person.
Creeds Bring Unity to the Church
Assent to communally authoritative truths of revealed faith is essential to the identity and welfare of a Christian community. In order to fulfill "the great commission" of Christ - "Go and make disciples of all nations" requires a commitment to realize the universal confession, "every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:11).
It is interesting to note that "although there are many historic divisions among churches that have been brought about by disagreements over faith and doctrine, other divisions are primarily the consequence of differences over the proper ordering of the structure of the church and over the forms of its ordained ministry" (93). For example, many "divisions precipitated by the Reformation expressed themselves doctrinally and confessionally ... But the divisions were also institutional, organizational, and political" (108). For this reason, Reformed confessions often "strive, in the name of biblical authority, to differentiate their ecclesiology from that of their Roman Catholic adversaries" (97). This division according to "order" is evident in the fact that "so many of the major Protestant church groups in Great Britain and North America have defined and denominated themselves neither by their liturgy nor by their doctrine nor by their confession (not to say by the name of their founder) but by their polity: Episcopalians... Presbyterians... Congregationalists" (111).
Pelikan also notes that beyond the creeds, a real ground for unity exists in the Lord's Prayer. Unlike creeds or confessions, the words of this prayer can be directly traced back to the person of Christ.
It should not be surprising that the doctrinal differences between the several communions and denominations, which figure so prominently in their other confessions of faith and are frequently the immediate provocation for them, so often become marginal and sometimes become invisible when the sacred text under consideration is not a creed but a prayer, in fact, the prayer of Christ himself. (162)
The development of creeds over time - particularly in regard to the first seven ecumenical councils from Nicaea I in 325 to Nicaea II in 787 - raise the question of continuity and change. This has been a central concern of Christian thought from the beginning. The phrase, "new covenant" affirms "the continuity of the life and message of Jesus Christ with the revelation that had been given to Moses and the prophets as part of the old covenant with Israel" (18-19). "The immediately ensuing battles with Marcion, with the Gnostics, and with the Montanists during the second and third centuries each raised the question of continuity and change in some fundamental way" (20).
Creeds not only communicate doctrinal content and provide the basis for shared confession of faith, but also are liturgical, provoking and expressing praise, confession, adoration, and thanksgiving. Much that is unique to the Christian faith and practice would be lost without the presence of creeds.
The church needs a corporate creed to bind its members together in confessing and practicing a shared faith. We cannot simply devise our own creed. We must confess together a shared faith in order to have a common witness to the life of salvation. Furthermore, confessing the ancient creeds allow us to enter into the faith and practice of the larger church.
Creeds and confessions of faith do claim to be speaking for their entire church, indeed, for "all Christians." In much the same way, not all of the delegates from the thirteen colonies who attended the fateful deliberations that produced the American Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia on 4 July 1776--much less all of the citizens of the colonies, who had sent them there--could have written what Thomas Jefferson wrote. But Jefferson did insist strongly that when he wrote, he was consciously speaking not in his own name but in the name of all. (344)
Quotes excerpted from Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confession of Faith in the Christian Tradition by Jaroslav Pelikan
© Richard J. Vincent, 2008
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