Creeds and confessions are ecclesiastical articulations and defenses of the central doctrines of Scripture. Throughout church history, creeds and confessions have held an important place in the church’s public articulation, presentation, and defense of the teaching of Scripture. During the earthly ministry of Christ, disciples made public confessions of faith. In the early church, ecclesiastical councils addressed theological controversies with carefully constructed creedal formulations. Protestant and Reformed churches drafted and adopted confessional documents to define and articulate the principal truths of Scripture contra doctrinal errors of heretical individuals, sects, and ecclesiastical institutions—focusing especially on the doctrinal and practical errors of the Roman Catholic Church. Besides offering a defense of biblical doctrines that have come under attack by those who would pervert the truth of Scripture, creeds and confessions function in the life of the church in a variety of ways for building up the people of God.
The Christian church has long valued the use of creeds and confessions. Creeds and confessions are doctrinal articulations produced by various councils, assemblies, and synods of the Christian church to propagate and defend the central doctrines of Scripture and the Christian faith. The word creed comes from the Latin credo, which simply means, “I believe.” Creeds and confessions are part of biblical discipleship, for the Lord Jesus calls His people to bear witness to the truth about His person and work. At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus elicited the great confession of faith when He asked His disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” Simon Peter declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:13–16). This is the most foundational of all confessions of faith. Other confessions of faith existed during the Apostolic age. The first Christians, for example, commonly confessed, “Jesus is Lord,” in contradistinction to the common societal confession “Caesar is lord.”
The early church acknowledged the need for creedal statements to refute heterodox views of the doctrine of God and the person of Christ. Some of the most significant councils to produce creedal statements of orthodox beliefs about the doctrine of God and the person of Christ were the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325), the First Council of Constantinople (AD 381) and the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451). The product of the first two of these councils is commonly called the Nicene Creed. The Council of Chalcedon produced the Chalcedonian Definition. These doctrinal formulations have been standards for the Christian church’s articulation and defense of the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead and orthodox views of Christology.
From the beginning, Protestantism was a confessional movement. The Reformers and their successors were committed to a careful, coherent, and clear articulation and defense of biblical truth. They recognized the need for newly drafted confessions of faith and catechisms due to the serious doctrinal errors of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1529, Martin Luther published his Small Catechism, and many Protestant doctrinal and pedagogical statements followed. In the sixteenth century, nearly fifty Protestant confessions were written. The Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards are the most familiar and most widely used Reformed confessions produced during the seventeenth century.
The most recognized creeds and confessions throughout church history are the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed (also called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), the Chalcedonian Definition, the Athanasian Creed, the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563), the Irish Articles (1615), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Canons of Dort (1618–19), the Westminster Confession (1646), the Westminster Larger Catechism, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and the Second London Baptist Confession (1689).
Creeds and confessions are not meant to be comprehensive statements of everything that Scripture reveals. Rather, they are intended to summarize the essential doctrines of Scripture and to refute widespread heresies. We see this exemplified in the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Westminster Assembly was an ecumenical Protestant gathering in which a variety of men from different ecclesiastical backgrounds committed to drafting a faithful summary of the central beliefs of Protestants. Accordingly, the Reformed confessions and catechisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cover such doctrines as Scripture; the doctrine of God; the person and work of Christ; the application of redemption; the church and sacraments; and the last things. *Some of the most important doctrines confessed anew during the Reformation are the sufficiency of Scripture, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, justification by faith alone, and the right worship of God.
Confessions of faith have numerous functions in the life of the visible church. J.I. Packer explained the far-reaching nature of confessions of faith when he wrote:
Their doxological function is to glorify God by setting forth his works of love and putting into words a responsive commitment. Their declarative function is to announce what the communities that espouse them stand for, and so to identify those communities as belonging to Christ’s church, the worldwide fellowship of faith. Their didactic function is to serve as a basis for instruction. Their disciplinary function is to establish the limits of belief within which each confessing body wishes to stay, and so to lay a foundation for whatever forms of doctrinal restriction or direction it may see fit to impose on its clerical and lay members.
The doxological, declarative, didactic, and disciplinary functions of creeds and confessions serve to build up the people of God in their corporate worship and Christian lives.
At the time of the Reformation, there was a proliferation of creeds as the Protestant community found it necessary, in the light and heat of the controversy of that time, to give definitive statements as to what they believed and how their faith differed from the Roman Catholic Church’s theology. Rome itself added her creedal statements at the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century as a response to the Protestant movement. But each Protestant group, such as the Lutherans, the Swiss Reformed, and Scottish Reformed, found it necessary to clarify the truths that they were affirming. This was made necessary, not only because of disagreements within Reformed parties, but also to clarify the Protestant position against frequent misrepresentations set forth by their Roman Catholic antagonists. The seventeenth-century confessional statement known as the Westminster Confession is one of the most precise and comprehensive creedal statements growing out of the Reformation. It is a model of precision and biblical orthodoxy. . . . These later Protestant creeds not only intended to affirm what they regarded as essentials to Christianity, but specifically to clarify the details of the particular religious communion that would use such comprehensive confessions of faith.
R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk magazine
The Nicene Creed was written in order to defend the biblical teaching concerning God against heretics. Any reader of Scripture will notice that it teaches several things quite clearly.
- First, it teaches that there is one and only one true God.
- Second, it teaches that the Father is God.
- Third, it teaches that the Son is God.
- Fourth, it teaches that the Holy Spirit is God.
- Finally, it teaches that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
As both Christians and non-Christians asked how all five of these teachings fit together, occasionally an answer would be proposed that solved the difficulties by rejecting one or more of these biblical doctrines. In the fourth century, a man named Arius “solved” the problem by denying that the Son is God. This created a controversy that lasted for decades. The controversy was dealt with at the Councils of Nicaea (AD 325) and Constantinople (AD 381). The result of these councils is what we know as the Nicene Creed. It is a statement of the church’s belief about the biblical doctrine of God written to defend that belief against the anti-Christian doctrine of Arius and others. It follows the basic outline of the earlier and shorter creedal statements, but it adds specific language to rule out heretical distortions of that content.
Keith A. Mathison
Ligonier.org
