Standing at the edge of Yosemite’s high country, few hikers would boast that they need no trail or guardrails, only confidence and good intentions. No experienced climber trusts instinct alone in terrain like that. And yet, when it comes to Christian doctrine, many believers say something similar: “We have no creed but the Bible.”
The claim sounds faithful, even humble. But the moment we ask the most basic question (Who is Jesus?) we discover that a confession is unavoidable. The real question, then, is not whether we will confess, but whether our confession follows the well-worn path marked out by Scripture and faithfully walked by the church universal across the centuries.
An Inevitable Confession
Resistance to creeds often arises from a sincere, even pietistic devotion. Many Christians fear that creeds might compete with Scripture. Historically, however, the opposite is true. Creeds were written to defend the authority of Scripture, not to rival it. They summarize the heart of biblical teaching, especially concerning how God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ.
Creeds Do Not Compete with Christ; They Safeguard Him
The historic creeds don’t compete with Christ, they exist to safeguard Him. Hammered out of real theological crisis, they gave the church a common language: words to confess together what Scripture teaches about Christ’s person and work. From the Apostles’ Creed to the Nicene Creed, the church has publicly confessed that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, drawing boundaries around the biblical witness.
History bears this out. In the fourth century, Arius appealed repeatedly to Scripture while denying the Son’s full deity, and it was that very crisis that pressed the church to give formal, creedal expression to what Scripture actually teaches about Christ at Nicaea in 325. The creed did not replace Scripture; it marked the boundaries of its faithful confession.
The same pattern repeated itself after the Reformation. Socinus did not precede the confessions; he opposed them. Writing in the sixteenth century against the Trinity and the atonement, he claimed Scripture’s authority while rejecting the received teaching of the universal church. In both cases, the issue was not a rejection of Scripture, but a refusal to submit private interpretation to the church’s confession of what Scripture teaches. Heresy has always worn the language of biblical fidelity.
This impulse isn’t a preference for simplicity; it is a break from the church’s own history of confessing Christ. When creeds are dismissed wholesale, the church is not guarding Scripture more carefully, but isolating itself from the Spirit’s work in preserving the truth for over two thousand years.
And, sad to say, the so-called Fundamentalists of our day join hands with the liberals on this point with their well-known slogan, “No Creed but the Bible.” They do not seem to realize that this really involves a break with the historical past of the Church, a refusal to profit by the lessons which the Churches of the Reformation passed on as a precious heritage to following generations in their great Creeds and Confessions, and a virtual denial of the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the past history of the Church.1
Berkhof’s warning makes clear that rejecting the church’s creeds does not preserve biblical purity, but cuts the church off from the Spirit-guided wisdom by which Christ’s truth has been confessed and guarded through the ages.
Guardrails, Not Replacements
Interpreting Scripture apart from the church’s creedal witness is like hiking Half Dome while insisting the railings are unnecessary because you trust your footing. Confidence does not eliminate the danger. The guardrails are not there to restrict the climb, but to keep climbers from fatal missteps.
In the same way, creeds do not replace Scripture; they preserve the church from falling into old and deadly heresies by marking the boundaries within which the universal church has confessed Christ. They exist to confess, together, what the church believes Scripture teaches.
The Reformed confessions take exactly this posture. They speak with clarity about their own subordinate authority. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.10) puts it plainly:
The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined…can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.2
Creeds do not rival Scripture, and they cannot improve upon it. They function as guardrails precisely because Scripture alone stands as the final authority. Every confession, council, and theological opinion must be examined by the Word of God and corrected by it.
The Three Forms of Unity, the confessional standards of the continental Reformed churches, speak with equal clarity on this point. The Belgic Confession (Article 7) declares:
Neither may we consider any writings of men, however holy these men may have been, of equal value with those divine Scriptures, nor ought we to consider custom, or the great multitude, or antiquity, or succession of times and persons, or councils, decrees or statutes, as of equal value with the truth of God, since the truth is above all.3
The confession that defends creedal authority simultaneously insists that no creed stands above Scripture. This is the Reformed position: confessions bind because Scripture binds, and for no other reason. And because that has always been true, the church has never had the luxury of confessing nothing. R.C. Sproul captured this historical necessity concisely:
Throughout church history it has been necessary for the church to adopt and embrace creedal statements to clarify the Christian faith and to distinguish true content from error and false representations of the faith.4
Scripture’s Own Pattern of Confession
The practice of confessing the faith did not originate after the apostolic age. Scripture itself provides creedal formulations. The New Testament contains concise summaries of the gospel, particularly in the writings of Paul, where the core content of the Christian faith is set down for preservation and proclamation.
Paul reminds the Corinthian church, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,” before summarizing Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3–5). While the gospel itself was revealed to Paul by Christ, this language reflects the faithful transmission of a settled confession already being proclaimed within the apostolic church and recognized in unity among the apostles (Galatians 2:1–2, 9), not the invention of new doctrine.
The faith once delivered to the saints was to be guarded, taught, and handed down (Jude 3).
One Church, One Faith, One Confession
We confess belief in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church (Ephesians 4:4–6). That unity doesn’t arise from doctrinal silence. It arises from shared conviction.
The church’s unity is grounded not in uniformity of personality or nationality, but in our common confession of the foundational truths of the Christian faith. The New Testament repeatedly calls the church to glorify God with one voice and to stand together for the faith of the gospel (Romans 15:6). Creeds make that unity visible. At the same time, they help guard the church against being carried along by every new wind of doctrine.
D. Blair Smith, in his recent study of Reformed confessionalism, puts it this way:
Creeds, confessions, and catechisms, by cultivating a balanced and biblical approach to the Christian faith, enable Christians to recognize deficient and harmful versions of the gospel, of Christ, and of other vital topics.5
The Church’s Responsibility to Confess
The church receives doctrine; it does not invent it. But it is charged to confess it. Berkhof spells the duty out plainly:
The Word of God was given to the Church as a precious deposit of the truth, and the Church is commissioned to guard the truth, to hand it on faithfully from generation to generation, and to defend it against all the forces of unbelief…Furthermore, it must draw up creeds and confessions, in which it formulates its faith, so that the world may know exactly what it believes.6
Creeds and confessions are therefore not academic exercises. They are acts of stewardship, testifying that the church today stands in continuity with the church of yesterday and intends, by God’s grace, to hand the same faith to those who come after.
Why the Reformed Confessions?
Every generation of the church is called to confess the faith in the face of particular errors. Creeds and confessions arise not because the truth changes, but because the points of attack do. When the gospel is threatened, the church must speak with renewed clarity.
In the early centuries, the church was compelled to confess who Christ is against denials of His true deity and true humanity. At the time of the Reformation, the central article under assault was different but no less essential: the doctrine of justification.
Against the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which bound justification to human merit and sacramental dependence, the Reformers were compelled to confess anew that sinners are justified by faith alone, on account of Christ alone, by grace alone.
Within the Reformed churches, this confessional responsibility found expression in a coherent body of catechisms and confessions, including the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of Dort, and the Westminster Standards.
The Reformed confessions do not claim authority apart from Scripture, nor do they seek to add to the faith once delivered to the saints. Rather, they serve the church by bearing witness to the doctrines of grace, preserving gospel clarity for the sake of Christ’s glory and the assurance of His people.
Pilgrims on a Well-Marked Way
Much like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress, the church does not travel alone or without guidance. We walk a path already marked by faithful witnesses who confessed the truth of Christ when the gospel itself was under threat (Hebrews 12:1–2).
Their words remain, not as relics of a bygone age, but as testimony to the faith once delivered and carefully guarded. Creeds and confessions serve the church in every generation by helping us recognize both the path beneath our feet and the dangers that line its edges.
In terrain this beautiful, though unforgiving, guardrails are no insult to the traveler. They are a mercy. Christ gave them to His church so that we might walk the same path the saints have always walked, confessing the same faith, until we arrive at the New Jerusalem where they are already waiting (Revelation 21:1–4).
Footnotes
- Louis Berkhof, Introductory Volume to Systematic Theology, 32.
↩︎ - Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.10.
↩︎ - Belgic Confession, Article 7.
↩︎ - R.C. Sproul, “Norma Normata: A Rule That Is Ruled,” Tabletalk Magazine, April 2008, 5.
↩︎ - D. Blair Smith, Reformed Confessionalism, ed. J. Helopoulos (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2025), 76.
↩︎ - Louis Berkhof, Manual of Christian Doctrine, 301.
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FURTHER STUDY
If this article on creeds and confessions was helpful, we encourage you to read Recovering the Reformed Confession: A Conversation with Dr. R. Scott Clark, an in-depth interview on what it means to be truly confessional today.
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