Sola Scriptura and the Creeds
The Shape of Sola Scriptura by Dr. Keith A. Mathison
If sola scriptura is true, the Scripture is to be interpreted by the Church within the hermeneutical context of the regula fidei or rule of faith. This rule of faith has found written expression in the ecumenical creeds of the Church. The Nicene Creed and the definition of Chalcedon are the creedal confessions of all orthodox Christians and serve as the doctrinal boundaries of orthodox Christianity. Several questions remain, however. What is the relationship between these creeds and the Scripture? What is the purpose of creeds in the Church?
There is a tendency within the Church to run to extremes, and this tendency manifests itself clearly when the creeds of the Church are discussed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that modern Evangelicalism is anti-creedal. This is largely due to the effects of solo scriptura, but for whatever reason this anti-creedalism exists, it is a dangerous error. The simple truth of the matter is that creeds are inevitable. The question is not whether one will have a creed. The only question is which creed will one have—the Christian creed or a creed of one’s own devising?
Part of the Evangelical aversion to creeds comes from misunderstanding exactly what a creed is. The English word “creed” comes from the Latin credo which simply means “I believe.” This is why a creed is inevitable. If a Christian has any belief about what Scripture teaches, he has a creed whether he uses that word or not. Even the statement, “No creed but Christ” is itself a creed. It is simply another way of saying, “I believe there should be no creeds,” or, “My creed is that there should be no creeds.” The denial of creeds is simply a self-contradiction.
The most common objection to creeds is that they undermine the authority of Scripture. Ken Gentry cites a book in which the necessity of creeds is vehemently denied.
In one book leveling a critical assault on creedalism we find the following statement: “To arrive at truth we must dismiss religious prejudices from heart to mind. We must let God speak for himself.… To let God be true means to let God have the say as to what is the truth that sets men free. It means to accept his word, the Bible, as the truth. Our appeal is to the Bible for truth.” The same writer spurns creeds as “man-made traditions,” “the precepts of men,” and “opinions.”1
Evangelicals who adhere to solo scriptura have no trouble asserting these same type of arguments almost verbatim, but it is interesting to note the source from which these statements come. They come from a publication of the Jehovah’s Witnesses entitled Let God be True.2
The truth of the matter is that a proper concept of creeds does not result in the subordination of Scripture regardless of whether the accusation comes from Evangelicals or cultists. There is a significant difference between the Scriptures and the ecumenical creeds. Scripture alone is God-breathed. Because of this, Scripture alone is inherently infallible. Scripture alone, being the very Word of the living God, has the absolute and final authority of God Himself. The creeds are not God-breathed. This fact alone subordinates their authority to that of Scripture. The creeds were written by fallible and noninspired councils of the Church. Scripture’s authority is absolute—because it is the Word of God. The authority of the creeds is derivative—because they are the Church’s summaries of the Word of God.
One of the difficulties that confuses discussion of creedal authority is the failure to distinguish between infallibility and inerrancy. As already pointed out, infallibility demands inerrancy, but fallibility does not demand errancy. One who is infallible cannot make an error, but it is not true to say that one who is fallible must make an error. Fallibility only means the possibility of error—not the necessity of error. The confusion arises because sola scriptura assumes that these ecumenical creedal statements are without error. In other words, it assumes that the doctrinal statements in the Nicene Creed and the definition of Chalcedon are true. We would not confess them if we believed them to be false and erroneous.
Evangelical and cultic advocates of solo scriptura assume that an actual instance of inerrancy demands infallibility on the part of the one or ones who did not make an error—in this case several Church councils. This assumption, however, is simply not necessary. An inerrant creed does not require an infallible Church. Any fallible human being or group of human beings can produce a factually inerrant statement. Advocates of sola scriptura do not believe these creeds to be without error because of a belief in ecclesiastical infallibility. We believe them to be inerrant for the same reason we believe the table of contents of Scripture to be inerrant—because of the corporate testimony of the Holy Spirit to Christ’s people.
In response to advocates of solo scriptura who deny the necessity of creeds in the Church, several additional points must be addressed. First, we must note that it is not enough for any individual or church to simply profess belief in the Bible. The Jehovah’s Witness author cited above would profess to believe in the Bible. Samuel Miller explains that such a profession is not enough because “many who call themselves Christians, and profess to take the Bible for their guide, hold opinions, and speak a language as foreign, nay, as opposite, to the opinions and language of many others, who equally claim to be Christians, and equally profess to receive the Bible, as the east is to the west.”3 In other words, “there are multitudes who, professing to believe the Bible, and to take it for their guide, reject every fundamental doctrine which it contains.”4
A second reason why these creeds are absolutely necessary is for the purpose of detecting and removing heresy when it arises in the Church. Solo scriptura cannot accomplish this necessary task because the simple proclamation of adherence to the Bible “would be doing nothing peculiar; nothing distinguishing; nothing which every heretic in Christendom is not ready to do, or rather is not daily doing, as loudly, and as frequently as the most orthodox church.”5 Douglas Wilson observes,
Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly—“Did God say not to eat from any tree?” In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available. In this context, the only man who needs to be more precise than a liar is the man who would catch the liar. This is why people who hate the Bible say they want the language of the Bible, not the language of creeds, and why men who faithfully apply a faithful creed (containing words and language found nowhere in Scripture), are doing exactly what the Bible requires of them. “Thou hast tried them which say” (Rev. 2:2). The nature of the testing can and should include very carefully crafted verbal formulae designed to trip up the dishonest. “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:3).6
Heretics are liars, and the creeds are necessary to detect and remove them from the Church. Solo scriptura cannot even begin to accomplish this necessary task. One of the earliest heresies that arose in the Church was Arianism—a denial of the deity of Christ. As Miller points out, when Arius was brought before the Church, “he was not only as ready as the most orthodox divine present, to profess that he believed the Bible; but he also declared himself willing to adopt, as his own, all the language of the Scriptures, in detail, concerning the person and character of the Redeemer.”7 Arianism was only eradicated when the Church carefully dealt with it in terms of a creed.
An important point that Miller observes about creeds is the fact that “men are seldom opposed to Creeds, until Creeds have become opposed to them.”8 The truth of this has already been noted in connection with the arguments of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The practice continues in our own day in the writings of heretical authors. We are reminded again of the assertions made by proponents of the hyper-preterist heresy such as Ed Stevens, who writes,
Even if the creeds were to clearly and definitively stand against the preterist view (which they don’t), it would not be an overwhelming problem since they have no real authority anyway. They are no more authoritative than our best opinions today, but they are valued because of their antiquity.9
And elsewhere,
We must not take the creeds any more seriously than we do the writings and opinions of men like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the Westminster Assembly, Campbell, Rushdoony, or C.S. Lewis.10
These are the words, not of the apostolic Church, not of the Reformers, but of heretics and apostates attempting to conceal their false doctrine, yet many Evangelicals find nothing in these sentences with which they would object. That is how pervasive the error of solo scriptura is.
If Evangelical Christians would simply reflect upon what statements such as the ones above entail, the error would be very clear. If the creeds are not to be taken any more seriously than the writings of, say, C.S. Lewis, what that necessarily means is that the doctrines of the creeds are not to be taken any more seriously than the doctrines of C.S. Lewis. That places the doctrine of the Trinity on the same level as the doctrinal speculations of C.S. Lewis on the afterlife. It places the doctrines of the creeds on the same level as the doctrines of the heretics. And when they are on the same level, one cannot be used as a standard to rule out the other. That is why heretics reject the authority of creeds. They do not want authoritative doctrinal boundaries pointing out their heresy, so they reject the authority and even the possibility of having such creedal boundaries. And their claims are entirely consistent with solo scriptura.
As foreign as it may sound to individualistic modern Evangelical ears, a church that adheres to sola scriptura is a creedal church. The evangelical denial of real creedal authority is not only self-contradictory and foolish, it is an open invitation to every kind of heresy imaginable. A creedless Church, like a creedless Christian, is a ship tossed to and fro, carried about by every wind of doctrine, compelled to consider every contradictory theological fad and novelty that comes along as long as the one proclaiming it assures his audience that it is simply what the Bible teaches.
Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., “In Defense of Creedalism,” Penpoint, Vol. 9, no. 4 (Dec. 1998).
Ibid.
Samuel Miller, The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions, (Greenville, SC: A Press, 1991 [1839]), 4. Samuel Miller was one of the first professors of theology in the nineteenth century at the then-Reformed Princeton Theological Seminary.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 8.
Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture, (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1998), 193–194.
Miller, op. cit., 13–14.
Ibid., 17.
Ed Stevens, “Creeds and Preterist Orthodoxy,” Unpublished Paper. Emphasis mine.
Ibid.