Are creeds and confessions still useful today? The idea of such things leaves many Baptists with hesitation and suspicion. Today, creeds, confessions, and liturgies are often viewed as restrictive forms of formal religion and tradition—perhaps too Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. But throughout Christian history, these practices have served as longstanding means of protecting orthodoxy and preserving the faith once delivered to the saints.
“Faith That Believes” and “Faith That Is Believed”
There are two ways to conceive of faith: Faith that believes and faith that is believed. The first—faith that believes—is personal and internal. It is what the Scriptures mean when they instruct us to have faith in God. This faith exists in the heart and deals with one’s personal relationship with God.
The second conception of faith—faith that is believed—is objective and widely measured. It is the summary of Christian belief, often referred to as the faith. This is the purpose of creeds, confessions, and statements of faith. They provide concise summaries of how to understand the whole of the Christian faith.
Why Interpretation Needs Guardrails
These two concepts of faith are related. Faith that believes must have an object of faith that is believed. In other words, our faith isn’t vague or abstract; it is built upon a set of doctrines that are convictionally held and clearly articulated. It isn’t enough to say, “I believe the Bible,” without also saying what you believe about the Bible. Or, to put it another way, believing the Bible isn’t just a matter of content but also a matter of interpretation. To say, “I believe the Bible,” doesn’t mean much unless you say what you believe about the Bible (i.e., how you interpret it, apply it, understand it, use it, etc.).
Why not? For at least two reasons. First, Scripture wasn’t written in a vacuum. It was given to God’s people in real historical contexts and continues to address God’s people today. Second, and probably most important, you don’t live in a vacuum. Every reader approaches Scripture from a particular point of view. This is the danger. If we do not interpret the parts of Scripture in light of the whole of Scripture, we will interpret it through our worldview, culture, backgrounds, etc.
For these reasons and more, it is important for the church to consider its method of interpretation. The Bible isn’t open to whatever interpretation you personally prefer. You don’t get to impose your feelings or perspectives on it. What is at stake in our interpretation is a right understanding of God. Our interpretative practices will either lead us to see God as He has revealed Himself, or they will lead us to make up an idol and call it “God” when in fact it is our own perception of Him.
This leaves us with a glaring question: How do we rightly interpret the Bible?
I find this to be one of the most important questions facing the modern church. When everyone has a theory or an idea about a doctrine and can appeal to some portion of Scripture to support it, the issue is no longer simply fidelity to the Bible but of rightly handling the Word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15).
The Rule of Faith
To rightly handle the Bible, there must be some universal guidelines and parameters. Here enters the importance of historic creeds, confessions, and statements of faith—or the rule of faith. These rules of faith summarize the major tenets of the Christian faith in a clear and concise way. They do not replace the Bible, but they help articulate its central message.
Such rules of faith serve as fences of protection. They help readers interpret Scripture in light of the Bible rather than themselves. What we are after is the Bible interpreting the Bible, not the Bible being reshaped by an individual’s preferences, ideas, or assumptions.
How can we say that the Bible interprets the Bible if we need rules of faith like creeds to help keep us on the correct path?
The reason this is true is because our rules of faith themselves come from the Bible. It is a beautiful conundrum that our Bible reading informs our doctrine and our doctrine informs our Bible reading. The more we are exposed to Scripture the more we develop doctrinal convictions. And the more we develop doctrinal convictions the more they mold our interpretation. Therefore, if we begin with commonly held standards of orthodoxy—creeds and confessions from church history—we will start our journey of interpretation from the right place.
The Church’s Role in Interpretation
Here is another very important question: How do we get rules of faith? Who gets to decide what creeds or statements of faith are correct?
This is where the importance of the church enters the discussion. By God’s grace, we are a priesthood of believers (1 Pet. 2:9), each filled with the Holy Spirit who guides us into truth (John 16:13). It is a wonderful gift of God that we have the Bible in our own language, can read it, and can understand it with the Spirit’s help.
However, biblical interpretation isn’t just an individual practice. It should be done by the individual but also in conjunction with the Church. Why? Any student of the Bible will know that when left by themselves, they are more prone to error than when they are held accountable by the collective wisdom, memory, and studiousness of a group of believers. This is not to say that a group cannot get it wrong. It is to say, however, that we are better students of the Bible when we study it in the context of the Christian community, the Church. This is God’s design. So, while you can and should study the Bible as an individual, you must also study it under the accountability of the collective Church.
This is why it is the Church who determines the rules of faith. This is why churches need to take their Statement of Faith seriously. Churches must be wise and not abandon the collective study of Scripture from 2,000 years of church history. They need to help guide their people in biblical interpretation by defining what is the rule of faith—the central components of the Christian faith. The church must care about doctrine, truth, and guiding others according to that truth. This responsibility is not for a select few but for the whole body.
The need is only growing for not only a strong commitment to the Bible’s inerrancy, but also a strong commitment to faithful interpretation. The Bible is not a free-for-all to be read however we feel. There are right ways and wrong ways to approach it. As we work to understand it collectively as a church, we must make clear what is absolutely central—the deity of Christ, the Trinity, justification by faith—and study Scripture as individuals in light of these communal guardrails. Such an approach is God’s design, and it is for our good.
*Much of the underlying information came from Presley, Stephen O. Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church: Recovering an Ancient Vision. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Academic, 2025.