Why the Church Needs Creeds and Confessions

Baptists have historically been a creedal people

Among Matthew Barrett’s criticisms of the Southern Baptist Convention, the new Anglican theologian noted that some Southern Baptists rejected adopting the Nicene Creed at the 2024 SBC annual convention by citing the slogan, “no creed but the Bible.” While some Baptists have held a “no creed but the Bible” position, the rejection of creeds has not been the predominant view among Baptists historically. Baptists have relied on creeds and confessions as summaries of orthodox theology since the movement’s beginning. Furthermore, while the Nicene Creed has not been widely adopted by Baptist churches, all major Baptist creeds and confessions expound Nicene Trinitarian theology by implementing language directly from Nicea as well as from the Church’s other major ecumenical creeds. Nicene Trinitarianism has defined orthodoxy for Baptists just as it has for other traditions that explicitly use the Nicene Creed.

The slogan, “no creed but the Bible” has a recent history. On Thursday, August 6, 1801, somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people (estimates vary) gathered around the Cane Ridge Meetinghouse in Bourbon County, Kentucky, for a week-long “camp meeting” that would become the seminal event of what came to be called the “Great Revival.” Ministers from several denominations preached and led singing around stumps and in meadows over consecutive days, and hundreds of people professed faith in Christ. Churches in Kentucky swelled over the next several years as similar revivals spread across the other sixteen states that then comprised the United States of America.

With revival excitement in the air, many wondered if Christ was nearing his return. Because people were responding to preaching that emphasized the simple gospel message, many were ready to deemphasize historical Christian doctrine altogether. Doctrinal distinctions were seen as divisive. A new slogan emerged that celebrated the individual’s ability to read and interpret his or her own Bible individually: “No creed but the Bible.” With doctrinal divisions out of the way, real unity seemed within reach.

That sense of unity, however, was short-lived. From the spirit of “no creed but the Bible,” countless sects and denominations arose as charismatic leaders drew followers behind their own unique interpretations of Scripture. Out of the Great Revival, a free-for-all emerged, and American religious culture became more splintered than ever. The revival’s anti-creedalism led not to unity, but to its opposite, as individual Christians became creeds unto themselves.

The historic creeds and confessions of the church were replaced by new unwritten creeds of individual Christians often making it up as they went along. Rejecting the form of the faith handed down and preserved through generations, individual experience increasingly became the authoritative guide for articulating the Christian faith and interpreting the Bible.

We are living today in the shadow of that movement. Creeds and confessions seem like ancient relics from distant ages. Looking back for wisdom and guidance is not valued in the digital age where everything new competes for our attention and immediate gratification is promised. Any practice that constrains the will of the autonomous individual is frowned upon. Even among Christians, living faithfully within a tradition seems like some kind of violation of authentic selfhood.

But I believe we need creeds and confessions today more than ever, and I want to share four brief reasons why.

First, everyone already has a creed. As great as it sounds, no one consistently lives by “no creed but the Bible.” All of us bring assumptions to the Bible that guide our interpretation of it even if those assumptions are not written down. A creed or confession is simply a historic community’s summary of what they believe the Bible teaches on the most fundamental Christian doctrines. Creeds and confessions never replace the Bible, but they root us in a specific time-tested interpretive tradition of the Bible. As Particular Baptist theologian and pastor Andrew Fuller wrote, “The man who has no creed has no belief.”

Second, creeds and confessions preserve truth. Immediately after the age of the apostles and the conclusion of the writings that would become the New Testament, new heresies sprung up. Some taught that physical matter was evil and denied that Christ was truly human. He only appeared to be so, they claimed. Within a few generations, orthodox Christians were gathering in councils to clarify what the Bible taught in response to these false teachings and others. They realized that such doctrinal errors, if allowed to prevail, would wreak havoc in the church, and they responded with brilliant theological formulations derived from biblical teaching. Those creeds have helped us preserve essential truths for nearly two thousand years.

Third, creeds and confessions keep us anchored in truth through changing historical circumstances and fleeting personal changes. As Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are a-changin.” Indeed, the times are always changing. But we have a Savior who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). C.S. Lewis once commended the study of history because we are unable to study the future and we need something to which to compare the present. He wrote that the historian is “in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.” Creeds and confessions keep us grounded in the truth “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). They connect us to Christians throughout history who have confessed the same unchanging truths we confess today.

Finally, creeds and confessions preserve proper unity. This claim may seem strange because we often assume falsely that doctrine divides. But think about what happens when a group of Christians come together in a church and say, “This is what we believe together.” Creeds and confessions allow us to build fellowship on a foundation of truth on which we all agree. In this age, we are not going to agree with all Christians on every point of doctrine, but creeds and confessions allow us to locate a tradition that best represents what we believe the Bible teaches and unify with others based on mutual commitment to the truths being confessed.

I use “proper” unity because I believe that in the absence of creeds, Christians will attempt to unify around something else. Tragically, when theological creeds are rejected, a shallow and unstable unity often emerges around secondary issues like politics and obscure theological hobbyhorses. Anti-creedalism is the breeding ground for the kind of fundamentalism that exalts second- and third-order issues to primacy. And, perhaps surprisingly, this anti-creedal fundamentalism can come from both the theological left and right, since both sides are often motivated by the exaltation of personal preferences over God-revealed truth. Creeds protect proper unity by building consensus around the most important issues that could potentially divide churches. When used, creeds and confessions stabilize churches, creating freedom to explore and debate because we can assume agreement on the essentials.