This book is presented in the spirit of securing and enhancing the Baptist commitment to the exclusive, sufficient, and comprehensive authority of Holy Scripture in matters of faith, practice, cultural engagement, and worldview. It contains several formative and critically important Baptist confessions along with closely related documents which demonstrate the organic nature of confessional development. In addition, those critical early creeds of the first half millennium of the church’s engagement with paganism and heresy are included. These show that to be truly biblical, one must also be creedal.
An Issue of Faith
At the most basic level, every Christian should confess, “I have no creed but the Bible.” The Bible is meant to be believed. In matters of faith dependent upon revealed truth, therefore, the Christian should make no commitment of heart or head to a proposition not founded upon Scripture. In its first chapter, the Second London Confession makes clear this principle before it launches into a discussion of many of the various doctrines of Scripture. “The supream judge by which all controversies of Religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councels, opinions of antient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved.”
Such an exclusive claim does not arise flippantly or in absence of conclusions drawn from reasonable argumentation. Many internal and external evidences have been gathered through the years by believing scholars showing that unbelieving detachment from Scripture is as irrational as it is dangerous. Only one thing, however, sufficiently establishes the immovable conviction that this book alone is authoritative. “Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof,” declares the confession, “is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts” (2LBC, 1.5).
Its Scope
The Bible steps into the world of literature with the bold proclamation, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). In the form of a simple historical narrative, it explains the beginning of all things, asserts the creation of man from the hand of God, tells how evil came to penetrate every place and every soul in the world, describes God’s mysterious and powerful operations of providence, proclaims his purpose of redemption, asserts with candor his immutable decree that establishes the responsibility of all moral beings, and foretells the end of this present order in fire after God has accomplished his foreordained purpose in creation. Scripture closes with a newly purified creation, no longer under the curse but with a restored tree of life yielding fruit in all seasons. A somber warning crowns the close of it all with a curse on any that would enlarge or diminish any of the teaching of the final book, implying the entirety of the biblical corpus (Rev. 22:18–19). All of this narrative is explained by writers who claim authoritative revelation and inspiration for their writings. None of this is told tongue-in-cheek but with the utmost sobriety, and the undercurrent of expectation that its view of these things can be rejected only at the peril of one’s soul. Bold indeed, and if not true, a laughable spectacle of disorderly, shameless rant.
Its Explicit Claims
The Bible explicitly sets itself forth as a book that should be received as “the Word of God,” first spoken by prophets and apostles and then given permanent form in writing (2 Peter 3:1–2). See the confident and bold claims, virtually defiant of any attempt to contradict or doubt them in 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; Joshua 1:7–8; Ezekiel 1:3; 24:1–2; Jeremiah 29 and 36. Paul, Peter, and John align their own writings with authoritative Scripture (1 Cor. 14:37–38; 16:21; 2 Cor. 13:10; Gal. 6:11–12; Eph. 3:1–6; 2 Tim. 1:12–14; 3:10, 14–17; 1 Peter 1:22–25; 2 Peter 1:16–21; 1 John 1:4; 2:1, 7, 12–14, 21, 26; 5:13; Rev. 22:18–19). Since Jesus affirmed—in the middle of a highly complex hermeneutical discussion—that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), we can say that, in a very high and compelling way, “The Bible is a creed.” We can place the word credo before every passage of Scripture rightly interpreted. In that absolute sense we also can say that we have no creed but the Bible.
The Need for Synthesis
Ironically, this very fact calls for the development of closely reasoned syntheses of biblical truths for the purpose of more cogent proclamation of truth and more incisive correction of error. Our stance on the “Bible alone” calls for the development of confessions and creeds, not as independent sources of authority but as robust witnesses to God’s Word and aids toward maintaining a consistent affirmation of the authority, clarity, and sufficiency of Scripture.
How then does a church concede authoritative force to a creedal proposition? How is it to be used in pedagogical and disciplinary ways? If churches, associations, or denominations as a whole are to use their creeds as instruments of ordination, church instruction, and discipline, then some method of demonstrating the biblical character of their propositions must be clearly conceived. Phillip Schaff rightly reminds Christians, that “the Bible has, therefore, a divine and absolute [authority], the Confession only an ecclesiastical and relative, authority.” Additionally, he warns that “any higher view of the authority of symbols is unprotestant and essentially Romanizing.” Having issued that caveat, he proposed, “Confessions, in due subordination to the Bible, are of great value and use.” He called them “summaries of the doctrines of the Bible, aids to its sound understanding, bonds of union among their professors, public standards and guards against false doctrine and practice.”1
Confidence in the biblical authenticity of a creed’s content comes by familiarity with the way each interested party interpreted Scripture. Creeds and confessions help us in consolidating the exegetical options that have characterized disagreements in the history of Christianity. They set forth propositions that are the summation of a particular group’s understanding of what Scripture teaches. The confessional propositions make possible close investigation as to their biblical fidelity and acceptance or rejection on that basis. If the creedal proposition is accepted as an accurate synthesis of biblical truth, that proposition becomes an element of an interpreter’s exegetical principles.
In the very act of creating unity in major areas, however, we also discover the effect of exclusion as a necessary outcome of confessions. The exclusion of error, in fact, is the very thing that prompts creedal construction historically. This is particularly true in the development of Christological orthodoxy in the first five centuries of theological interaction. Most forcibly we find these in the section of anathemas in the Nicene Creed and in the Athanasian Creed.
To Achieve Fullness
The principle of the sole authority of Scripture, therefore, does not contradict the use of confessions. Both in Christian denominations and in the culture at large, it seems in vogue to present faith as an a-theological experience expressive under many different religious rubrics. This kind of perception is not New Testament faith. True saving faith, the Bible kind, exhibits an earnest desire to grasp ever more accurately and clearly revealed truth.
Particularly intriguing and delightful is the biblical focus on the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God. Not one single truth about Christ will be of minor importance to the believer. Rather, it is preparation for sharing in Christ’s afflictions to embrace with fullness of mind and heart all that has been revealed. The believer will fully comply, sometimes in a struggle against opponents, with the Spirit’s intention to “make the Word of God fully known” (Col. 1:25). In Paul’s ministry, the truth was proclaimed by revelation; in our discipleship, the truth transforms our hearts by illumination. We must grasp and believe, however, no less content than Paul spoke and wrote by revelation. The mystery of this salvation by the shedding of the blood of the Son of God, now revealed to the saints, was “hidden for ages and generations” and in that faith we must continue if we would be saved (Col. 1:21–29).
To Achieve Perpetuity and Protection
Naturally, therefore, when challenges to this faith perverted its content, the apostles responded with vigorous polemical correctives, such as Galatians, 2 Peter, or Jude. To counter the tendency to error, a teacher must seek out “faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). Paul’s summary of the hard work of retaining and teaching Christian truth for its perpetuity through the ages amounted to this in summary form: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel” (2 Tim. 2:1–8). How full of rich doctrinal implications is this carefully condensed statement of sound words.
The development of creeds and confessions in the church at large and in Baptist life in particular is to remain true to the charge.
- Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1877), 1:7, 8. ↩︎
