Articles
“What's Wrong With Creeds?”
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
2 Timothy 2:15
A creed is a formal statement that summarizes the essence of one’s religious beliefs. The Nicene Creed and Apostles’ Creed are popular examples. Usually, each line in the creed is followed by a Scriptural citation that justifies the statement. People swear by a creed to show their loyalty to what the creed affirms. But ought Christians to use creeds? One obvious problem with creedal formulas is that they may contain error. But even if all the statements in a creed agree with Scripture there are other reasons why we should avoid them.
First, creeds prevent personal discovery. When the Bereans heard Paul preach “they examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” (Acts 17:11) This is the responsibility of each individual (2 Tim. 2:15). We cannot outsource the work of Bible study to anyone else because we have to know why we believe what we believe and be able to support our convictions with God’s word. We must test each teaching by holding it up to the divine standard of God’s word (1 Thess. 5:19-22; 1 Jn. 4:1). Creeds short-circuit the vital process of personal discovery. In our faith, just like in Math class, we must ‘show our work.’ That is, we must be able to support our convictions with reasoned arguments from the Bible to show how we reached our conclusion. Accepting the pre-packaged truth-claims in creeds may lead to intellectual laziness and blind indoctrination further down the road.
Second, creeds deny divine authority. In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Paul claims that Scripture comes from God and is sufficient to equip us for every good work. If there is something we need to know to live the way God intends, we can find it in the Bible (2 Pet. 1:3). If Scripture is all we need, creeds are supplementary at best and subversive at worst. Creeds are tidy statements of belief, the kind the authors of the New Testament are notoriously reluctant to give us. The Bible isn’t written in bullet-points but rather forces us to study the context carefully, string ideas together, and draw the right conclusions. Consider the topic of salvation. There are many passages that deal with it. Therefore, to understand salvation requires us to consider each passage in light of the others. Only those who put forth this effort can respond appropriately.
Third, creeds fix favored interpretations. We have all changed our convictions about a passage or an idea. Honesty and humility demand that there is no teaching in Scripture that does not merit further study. This is not to say God’s will is indiscernible (Eph. 5:17) but is to admit our limitations and fallibility. No Christian has everything figured out; we all have room to grow and mature. But a creedal statement is set in stone, as it were. Once an interpretation makes it into a creed then it is as if the matter has been settled and the issue is now beyond the reach of further study because it has been tested and found to be true. The implication is that you don’t have to test it, you just have to believe it. Therefore, creeds fix favored interpretations. But what if those interpretations are wrong?
Finally, creeds contradict Christ’s attitude. Jesus believed in the absolute authority of God’s word (Mt. 5:17-20) and regularly opposed the religious establishment of his day, contradicting and correcting the accepted rabbinical interpretations of the Law. In Matthew 5:21-48, Jesus gives six antithetical statements which all begin the same way: “you have heard that it was said… but I say to you…” Because God’s word was being distorted by the teachers, either by restricting the Law’s demands or extending the Law’s permissions, Jesus corrected their errors and showed that living in God’s kingdom means obeying God’s word, with all its implications, from the heart. Jesus always appealed straight to God’s word as the sole authority, never to popular views or rabbinical precedents.
