In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers, the hobbits Frodo and Sam attempt to cross a treacherous swamp called the Dead Marshes. Their guide is Gollum, who murderously craves the Ring of Power that Frodo carries. Apparently reformed, Gollum has promised to lead the hobbits to safety, but Sam fears the worst.
“Trust Sméagol!” Gollum urges. “He can take you through the marshes, through the mists, nice thick mists.” As they proceed, the hobbits find it harder and harder to keep to the firmer places without sinking into gurgling mud, and they seem to be surrounded by pale cold lights.
Gollum warns: “Follow Sméagol! Don’t look at lights!”[1] Frodo and Sam must learn to trust him if they want to complete their quest.
Faith too involves personal trust – in God, firstly, but also in the spiritual resources available to calm fears, clarify thought and foster hope. Creeds are among those resources. Yet, “for many moderns, there lurks a dark suspicion that creeds in general hobble the mind’s instinct to range free.”[2] This need not be the case.
For Christians, the creeds articulate biblical doctrines that give substance to a Christian worldview and offer a framework for constructing a personal and congregational mission. They are universal in scope, uniting people of faith despite barriers of culture, time and space.
Creeds are imperfect vehicles but the temptation to improve them should be resisted. Subscribing to a creed or confession does not imply that every phrase is perfectly expressed or that we would use the same vocabulary and style if we were writing it today.[3]
Further, any process of revision should respect the fact that creeds belong to the whole church. Theologian Carl Trueman warns, “churches that have engaged in extensive revision of their confessional standards have generally revised them in a direction that has proved in the long term to be inimical to orthodoxy and the health of the church.”[4]
Southern Baptist minister B. H. Carrol goes further, claiming that the modern cry, “Less creed, more liberty!” is “a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish, and it means more heresy.”[5] Perhaps Carrol is too harsh, but his point is valid: creeds clarify the essential structure of Christian belief and, in a time of radical challenge and rapid change, tradition plays an important stabilising role.
On the other hand, creeds must not supplant Scripture in the life of the church or in personal faith. They are guides, pointing to the truth and its source in Scripture. As Carl Trueman notes, “Classical orthodox Protestantism coined the phrase norming norm to reflect this unique position which Scripture, and Scripture alone, occupies. As the norming norm, the Bible is that by which all other theological statements must be judged as to their truthfulness of content and adequacy of formulation.”[6]
Or, as theologian John Webster argues, creeds “have the authority of a norm which is itself normed… They are subordinate, first and foremost, to the fact that the God of the gospel is free, transcendent presence and not merely the immanent soul of the church… Second, creeds and confessional formulae are subordinate … to Holy Scripture, for it is Scripture, not creed, which is appointed by God as the instrument of his self-communication.”[7]
It is fitting to conclude this series of reflections on creeds and confessions of faith by commending the five-step process of “creedal renewal” with which Luke Timothy Johnson concludes his book on creeds:
- Examine your own faith community’s practice with regard to the creed.
- Devote serious study to the creed: read Scripture in light of the creed, and the creed in light of Scripture.
- Appropriate your understanding of the creed: “Now that we understand what we are saying, do we still want to say it, do we really believe what these words say?”
- Use the creed as a common element in the life of the church and as a rallying point for the church’s prophetic voice within the world.
- Celebrate and defend the creed within and outside the church as “the powerful emblem of identity, a coherent statement of life.”[8]
Over to you.
Dr Rod Benson is Research Support Officer at Moore Theological College, Sydney. He previously pastored four Baptist churches in Queensland and NSW, and served for 12 years as an ethicist with the Tinsley Institute at Morling College.
References
[1] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, Book 4, Chapter 2, “The passage of the marshes,” quoted in Steve Ray & R. Dennis Walters, The Catholic Faith: An Introduction to the Creeds (Gastonia, NC: Tan Books, 2020), 1.
[2] Ray & Walters, 1.
[3] Carl R. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 191f.
[4] Trueman, 194.
[5] Quoted in Tom Nettles, “Missions and creeds,” The Founders Journal 17, September 1994.
[6] Trueman, op. cit., 80.
[7] John Webster, “Confession and confessions,” Toronto Journal of Theology 18 (1), 2002, 176.
[8] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2003), 323f.
Image source: National Geographic
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