Theology Thursday: No Creed but Christ

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's topic:
Part five (the last one!) in a series on MCC's Restoration Movement faith tradition.

Pastor Brady's thoughts:
We’re concluding our series today on MCC’s faith tradition heritage in the Restoration Movement by looking at the last of the four main mottos of the independent Christian churches:

“No creed by Christ.”

Part of the reason Stone and Campbell left denominationalism and sought to reform and restore the church was because of the perceived authority in many denominational churches not just of the Bible and church leadership but the historical creeds.

A creed is a formal, authoritative statement of beliefs. It’s not just “I think this” or “I’ve always believed that,” it’s an official statement by a group of church leaders that lays out exactly what that group believes, and generally requires alignment with the totality of that statement in order to be included in the church’s fellowship. So, it is formal in that it is agreed-upon by the church’s leaders (sometimes leaders of individual churches, but often the central denominational leaders over an entire association of churches) and presented as the official set of beliefs with no room for dissention or nuance, and it is authoritative in that it is a requirement for membership, inclusion, or even a test of saving faith in some cases.

MCC has a statement of faith, and it is semi-formal in the sense that it was produced by the church’s elders some years ago (though some portion of our eldership changes nearly annually and each subsequent group of elders has only implicitly affirmed its content, with some disagreement on the margins) and summarizes the official doctrinal positions of the church. But it is not authoritative, as professed alignment with these beliefs is not required for baptism, membership, or even eldership. Obviously, we hope our people do agree on these primary doctrines, but we do not require it. Our minimum requirement for membership and leadership is believer’s baptism and confession of faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

As such, our communication of core beliefs is not a creed. The difference is that our statement of faith is merely an articulation of the essential truths of Scripture, as we don’t require agreement or alignment with it in order to worship with us and be considered part of this family.

God’s people - the church - was divided, and it remains divided. In America alone, there are something like 6,000 denominations that consider themselves to be Christian.

One of the main causes of that division according to Stone and Campbell and the churches in the heritage they left is that many of these groups upheld certain creeds about Scripture as as authoritative as Scripture itself, and defined “Christian” only as those who agreed with every word of these creedal statements.

There are several influential creeds in church history, and several versions of many of them as they were argued about and updated and revised especially in those first few hundred years as the early Christians tried to hammer out exactly what it is they believed about all this stuff. The early Christian leaders would get together and have councils where they debated various matters related to the faith.  

The most famous and most influential of the various church creeds is the Nicene Creed. It originated in 325 at the First Council of Nacaea. The First Council of Nicaea was a big deal in the history of the church because it confirmed once and for all that to be a Christian was to believe that Jesus was not just human but the divine Son of God.

Here’s the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same essence as the Father.
     
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and was made human.
         
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried.
The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
         
He will come again with glory
to judge the living and the dead.
His kingdom will never end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life.
He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.
He spoke through the prophets.
     
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and to life in the world to come. Amen.

That’s a pretty good summary of the faith! There are some really beautiful truths there.

The second most famous creed is probably the Apostles Creed from sometime in the 5th century or so. Many churches read these creeds aloud and/or talked about them a lot.

Stone, Campbell, and Restoration Movement churches do not argue that the creeds don’t contain truth or that they aren’t good and valuable summaries of Christian belief, just that they aren’t God-breathed Scripture, and therefore should not be treated with the same esteem or considered to have the same authority over determining who can and can’t be a member of the church.

The Bible is the inspired Word of God; creeds are more like sermons. They’re about the Word of God, and hopefully they contain really deep and accurate truths about God and his Word. But they are summaries or explanations of God’s Word, not God’s Word itself, and so they are not infallible; they could be mistaken either in the actual text (the actual words used) or in emphasis, or formulation, or what they neglect to include, etc.  

Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase that means “Scripture alone” is the infallible authority over our beliefs and our behavior. This is what makes us Protestant, not Catholic, because we believe the church has authority but not ultimate authority over our spiritual lives. The church is led by people and people are sinners and therefore capable of error in judgement and in teaching, so this Restoration Movement motto “No creed but Christ” is another way of saying that only the Bible contains perfect truth. Creeds crafted by humans may be good and valuable and useful and all that, but they are not Scripture, so we should ascribe to them a subordinate position.

At MCC, we actually sing a version of the creed in our worship services every few weeks or so. It’s beautiful and moving, in my opinion. It’s called This I Believe by Hillsong. Check it out.

So it’s not that we should shun the Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed, and it’s not that they can’t help inform our faith and understanding of Scripture, they can. They did for Stone and Campbell too. It’s just that they aren’t the book of Romans or the Gospel of John or any other of the 66 books of the Bible that God somehow helped inspire his human writers to perfectly reveal his character and his will for his creation.

“No creed but Christ” is also a reminder of the principle that kind of underlines all four of these Restoration Movement statements we’ve been studying: Jesus intends for his church to be one, and the most realistic way to promote unity is by reducing the number of non-essential beliefs, practices, and emphases that lead to factions and divisions. God’s family should not be a broken family.

All of these statements are really about unity, because we believe that is the most faithful representation of God’s desire for the body of believers. We can be unified in Christ without being the same on a bunch of other things. We are a unity movement, and MCC is a unity church, or at least that’s our goal.

“Unity” doesn’t always mean agreeing and it doesn’t even always mean getting along, though we should try to. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:18).

Unity means that to the extent we believe each other’s faith is genuine, that our belief and followership of Jesus is true, and that we’ll be worshipping in heaven together for eternity in the next life, then we are brothers and sisters in this life too.

That’s the power of the cross. Jesus didn’t come and die and rise again to save us so we could focus on all the ways in which we’re different and split off into a bunch of different groups that make a bunch of rules meant to exclude everyone who has even slightly different interpretations of the Bible’s teachings. He came to win a people to himself, to heal sinners’ relationships with God and then forge one unified people who come together to worship and participate in each other’s spiritual maturity.

So that’s what we try to be about, too.

"In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, love."
"We are Christians only, but not the only Christians."
"Where Scripture speaks, we speak. Where Scripture is silent, we are silent."
"No creed but Christ."

We’re a Restoration Movement church. We work to restore those outside the faith back into relationship with God, and we work to restore the church as a whole back into one body focused on the core commands in the Bible for Christian teaching and Christian living.

There are pros and cons to all the different ways of doing church. I have a lot of respect and appreciation and try to learn a lot from the various denominations and their emphasis on different aspects of doctrine or church practice or even just the personal spiritual life. But on the whole, I’m a Restoration Movement guy. I don’t think we have it all right, but I think we have it most right, or closer to right than the other approaches.

Since you’re reading this, I’m hoping you think at least most of that is true too. And I hope you come to really love and appreciate this way of doing things, even while you still appreciate whatever other church traditions you have experienced as well.

Almost all of them have something valuable to offer the Kingdom. Almost none of them get it all wrong. And because we’re a unity movement we don’t have to have bad attitudes or disrespect for the denominations or other groups. We can gladly work with them and learn from the truths they teach and model.

I’m thankful MCC is a Restoration Movement church, not because I think we have the only valid approach to faithfulness or spiritual seriousness, but because I believe these ideas and ideals represent the closest thing to Jesus’s intention for his church.

We have, we do, and we will fall short even of our own standards and principles, but they are worth pursuing because they enable the continued realization of MCC’s mission and embody its purpose: to know God and to make Him known.

If God wanted us to do things more, better, or different than what we understand to be revealed through his Word, he would have guided his human writers to communicate his desires for his people differently. But he didn’t; he told us what he told us and showed us what he showed us. So it is to the Bible we turn for instruction and authority on Christian beliefs and practices.

No creed but Christ.

TO KNOW GOD AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.