No Creed But Christ? Protestants and "Catholic" Creeds

I’ll never forget the first time my wife and I worshiped in a Presbyterian church. I was raised in independent Bible-churches where it was a given that we believed the Bible, but Roman Catholics relied on tradition. We affirmed “no creed but Christ,” which ironically is a creed in is own right—albeit a short creed. I knew of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, but thought of these as relics of the past, which functioned as an end run around the authority of Scripture. This is why, I suspected, that Roman Catholics recited them. You can imagine how we were taken aback when the Presbyterian faithful recited the Apostles’ Creed with great gusto, including the line which, at the time, I could not bring myself to repeat, “one holy catholic and apostolic church.”


I soon learned that many Protestants still recite these ancient creeds. In fact, these creeds serve an important purpose in many of those churches whose roots are deeply planted in the Reformation, and committed to the full authority of Scripture. The Heidelberg Catechism even utilizes the Apostles’ Creed as a basic summary of those things which every Christian must believe. If you were to ask, “what is it that defines Christianity?” my answer now would be “the definition of Christianity is given us in the Creed.”


Question 22 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What, then, is necessary for a Christian to believe?” Answer: “All that is promised us in the Gospel, which the articles of our catholic, undoubted Christian faith teach us in summary.” The articles of our “catholic, undoubted Christian faith” are then unpacked in the following questions and answers (Heidelberg Catechism, Q & A 22-58). This “unpacking” amounts to an exposition of the various doctrines set forth in the Creed by demonstrating their biblical basis. Protestants do not believe that creeds, confessions, and catechisms are infallible–that can only be said of Scripture. But Protestants who utilize these documents do believe that creeds, confessions, and catechisms are authoritative insofar as they accurately summarize the teaching of Scripture, which is their primary purpose.
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No Creed But Christ? Protestants and "Catholic" Creeds — The Riddleblog (kimriddlebarger.com)
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