At our decidedly Baptist Church I've been leading several of our adult classes through a study of the Apostles' Creed - a wonderfully enriching study, if I may say so myself. But, perhaps not unsurprisingly, I've had to begin each time by offering an apology - not saying "I'm sorry" - but apology in the classic sense of the word: providing a defense of why we should do such a study.
You see, unlike other branches of the Church, Evangelicals in general and Baptists in particular do not give much if any attention to the creeds of the Church. This was not always the case, but certainly since the days of Charles Finney's revivalism large branches of evangelicalism have pulled away from, if not discarded altogether, use of the creeds in worship and discipleship.
But is this true? It doesn't seem to have bothered the reformers themselves as they were great advocates of the creeds and crafted many confessions of faith as part of their work of reform. This is because they understood that creeds should not be considered a source of authority on par with the Bible, but as a summary of what we believe the Bible to teach. While creeds cannot bind the conscience of the worshiper, they help in summarizing the essentials of the faith.
I often hear Baptists insist that we're "non-creedal," but I wonder if they know what that means. At best it is another way of saying sola scriptura; at worst it implies we don't believe anything! After all, that's what the word creed means -something believed. Is it true that we don't believe anything? Maybe that's true for some, but certainly not all.
If you ask a Baptist what he believes he'll say, "I believe what the Bible teaches." But it's immediately apparent that such a position is not sufficient. Why? Because even Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists believe that - not to mention Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Muslims! All alike (at least profess to) anchor their belief in the Bible. And while he would consider those in the first three groups part of the Body of Christ (though misguided - say - in their view of baptism!); he certainly would not consider those in the final three groups in any way part of the Church.
So the Baptist then proceeds to spell out, in contrast to these, what he believes the Bible to teach: salvation by grace through faith; inspiration and authority of the scriptures; believer baptism, etc. In other words, it is very evident that he does have a creed! It may not be written down but it exists nonetheless. And in an ecumenical discussion it soon becomes plain who is a Christian, who is a Baptist and who isn't. His creed summarizes what he believes the Bible teaches and it identifies him from others who believe differently or not at all.
The problem with such private, unwritten creeds is that they are not available for scrutiny. They can easily become stunted and provincial, even malformed - like the person (or church) obsessed with a certain scheme of eschatology who is able to sketch that out to the nth degree, but who can articulate little else about the doctrinal foundations of the Christian faith. Such a creed obscures the true richness of the faith and isolates rather than unites.
Ideally, the creeds spell out for us "the faith once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 1:3). They state what the Church has held together throughout the centuries and creates a unity that works across denominations, cultures, and any other barriers that inevitably divide the Church.
