Note: This is a fairly long post. During my second pass of edits I stumbled upon a book by one David E Dean called Non-Creedalism: Our Heritage and Hope, a short book which serves to more concisely sum up a lot of what I’ve tried to lay out here in the context of his denomination. The e-book is a $1 and can be read in one sitting.
On Creeds, Statements of Faith, and Systematics
Let’s cut to the chase. Creeds, statements of faith, systematics and the like:
- Locks you into outdated, stultifying, and man-made propositions
- Disorients a Christian with regards to seeing clearly, cultivating virtue, transforming into a more Christ-like version of yourself, and nurturing believing-loyalty to God
- Boils down to affirming freeze-dried, disambiguated statements (to establish a single grammatical or semantic interpretation) from other men so that you can parrot them back
- Provides “easy” answers to hard, complex, and ephemeral issues (the epistemic/mental equivalent of fast-food)
- Wrongly focuses on rigid conclusions rather than useful, wise, accurate, and Christ-orienting processes and methodologies (alternate example: compliance to beliefs about how large Judo mats should be or what Judo “is” rather than practices that can make someone a skilled practitioner of the art)
Creeds for Combat?
When it comes to creeds and confessions, from my cursory research, a lot of them arises from some sort of novel “theological threat” to tightly held doctrine (read: disambiguated predigested conclusions by other men) that invokes “fight-or-flight” mode. My gut intuition tells me that the bishopric and royalty were mostly the ones driven to this as I suspect the layperson in Europe was probably more concerned about their families, food, being in good standing with their land-lord, and not dying.
However, there is nothing in Scripture that sees or values creeds as a way to combat theological “threats”. Paul says to mark divisive and offensive men, reject their works, and don’t associate with them. He doesn’t say “quick, make a creed and get everyone to memorize it”.
One would think we’d see creeds in 2 Timothy, the letter in which he knows he’s about to die (and a pastoral letter at that!), but he didn’t need to write down nor seem to care what God was or if baptism should be done by immersion or sprinkling.
And before anyone says it, yes, anything in Scripture could be counted as a “creed” or “creedal statement”. To say that they’re merely summaries of Scripture, however, is underselling it since many actual creeds de jure involve the church anathematizing a person who doesn’t at least verbally affirm the statements signed off by men who are not ordained apostles. These are binding ecclesial documents with a whiff of the bureaucratic born out of religio-political tensions. They aren’t cliff-notes, and certainly not analagous to a father training up his child in the way of Christ in love.
Delineating Genuine Christians
Here is a quotation from something I have heard/read at one point in time:
Another motivation that creeds have been written is to delineate who is a genuine biblical Christian versus who is not.
To which we can see what Scripture, specifically John’s material, has to say on the matter:
Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. – 1 John 2:3
He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. – 1 John 2:4
But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. – 1 John 2:5
If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. – 1 John 2:29
By this the children of God and the children of the devil are revealed: Everyone who does not practice righteousness—the one who does not love his fellow Christian—is not of God. – 1 John 3:10
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. – 1 John 3:14
Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. – 1 John 3:15
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. – 1 John 3:18-19
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. – 1 John 4:1-3
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. – 1 John 4:7
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:34-35
Okay John we get it already (and there’s probably a lot more that I skipped over)! Well, I guess that repetition didn’t exactly land on the early churches since very quickly they began to use man-made and unbiblical metrics to gauge “genuine believers”.
…And let’s throw in Matthew 7 for good measure:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
I mean it’s pretty clear that works, conduct, behavior, and fruits are the litmus test.
And all that besides, these statements of faith and the positions of churches claim that the Bible is true and God is one, yet we have between 30,000 to 45,000 Protestant denominations that disagree over what the Bible “teaches”. So claiming “we have the Truth!” is a moot point. The issue is with regards to our grasp and apprehension of said Truth. Our perspective is limited and our grasp of it is tenuous and constantly needs to be updated and modified as we interact honestly and genuinely with both Scripture (the sacred writings) and life (our experiences).
Hence the need to edify and build one another up per Eph. 4.
What do Creeds Breed?
In this last section, let’s discuss what creeds and confessions can potentially breed, especially by those who are possessed by any sort of ideology. This will still be “high-level”, but in my next post we’ll examine perhaps the most well-known Christian creed and see what sort of things unfolded in its formulation and what fruits it bore.
Creeds Breeds arrogance
And the arrogance here need not be the sort that manifests itself as a person lording it over other people or looking down at others, but rather of the epistemic or intellectual variety; the kind of arrogance that states things as certain or factual without having an basis or grounds for such belief.
This coincides with Single-Verse Theology: the mind-set that the Scriptures are simply a list of freeze-dried statements that we can put into our man-made boxes of strict categories. Context and what the authors intended for their audience ends up taking a back seat; verses only exist to service some doctrine that we already have a pre-installed mapping for.
Which is bad exegesis.
We should always be questioning our assumptions that we bring to the text, and be aware of multiple perspectives so that we can perhaps catch some assumptions that we weren’t aware of at all. It’s a laborious process, one that involves both the hard task of learning and the harder task of unlearning.
Yet people crave certainty for their minds like sugar for their bodies. They want quick and easy answers by deferring to authority figures, historical figures, moralistic finger-wagging.
“Well Pelagius/Arius/the Catholics/the Anabaptists/the Orthodox/(insert-boogey-man-here) believed that and The Church™ roundly and soundly proved them to be disgusting heretics. You’re not…like one of them are you?”
Which is bad exegesis.
And yet people crave and are fine with such answers because it satisfies an itch and requires them not to think clearly about the Scriptures, but to simply make a mental assent to the Men-We-Approve. Not only that, but we feel more moral in doing so. We may even use that finger-wagging on others. It’s so easy, it’s almost…fleshly.
But complete epistemic certainty is not what God wants. Yes, He reveals a lot that couldn’t otherwise be grokked from nature or our consciences, but He doesn’t list out every single thing to answer every single question every single human being from every single corner of the world and history could ever have.
Because having a complete map isn’t the point, nor is it possible. He wants us to have confidence in Him (count all the passages that refer to “believing on Him” or “trust in Him”), and part of that confidence is knowing when you’re at your epistemic limit of ever knowing some thing with 100% certainty and just say “I don’t know” or “I have a 70% confidence margin on this, but hey who knows. Maybe a year from now I’ll grow and my perspective on this will change, I mean it’s happened before, why not again?”
Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other. – 1 Cor 4:6
Who has ascended into heaven, or descended?
Who has gathered the wind in His fists?
Who has bound the waters in a garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is His name, and what is His Son’s name,
If you know?Every word of God is pure;
He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
Do not add to His words,
Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar. – Prov 30
You are not obligated to have “a take” on everything or have a “Theory of Everything” to explain away all the things for every domain and claim “We have all the answers!”. Were you there when the Earth was made? Were you caught up to the third Heaven and know its secrets?
“Ah yes, but you see Grime Knight, if we don’t adhere to XYZ, why, it leaves the door open to saying that the Son isn’t divine or that the Father is something else or that…or that… Surely there’d be chaos and confusion and the problem would be worse than it is now!”
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the Lord and depart from evil.
It will be health to your flesh,
And strength to your bones. – Prov 3
it’s more noble to reserve judgment on something rather than jumping on the bandwagon so you can be in line with the Giants of the Faith™.
The Scriptures are not there to have you parrot statements about things and use as proof-texts for a “theory of everything” (aliens, demons, suffering, illness, AI, war, economy, politics, cosmology, the nature of God, the nature of the trinity, baptism, etc.). We don’t know what goes on in our own bodies, why we got ill, why some relationships blew up, or even what the dog is allergic to, but we seem disproportionally arrogant to claim we have the answers to every problem in every domain, especially in those domains that we simply can’t know about or directly examine like the heavenly realm(s) or what God is apart from what the Scriptures say.
Creeds Breeds Ignorance
Hey, ever heard of the Rumsfeld Matrix? You might know it by the phrases that make up the quadrants like “your known knowns” or “your unknown knowns”. It’s a very useful little model when it comes to risk management and uncertainty analysis. Notice that I said “useful” and not “the only way you should model risk/uncertainty”. This isn’t a creed after all.
Let’s quickly break down how each of these quadrants suffer as a result of holding to or “optimizing for” creeds and confessions:
Known-knowns
You idolize the stuff in this quadrant of your knowledge-base. I see this typically in younger Christians with above average intelligence and zeal. They’re on fire for the Lord and want to know everything there is to know about Christianity, and latch onto systematic theologies and statements and creeds. This creates the illusion of growth and transformation: you know more buzz-words, jargon, poly-syllabic words that only those of a certain caliber will ever get. Everything is ordered. Everything is accounted for. You feel like you’re conquering the terrain of reality and pushing back against the shadow of ambiguity and uncertainty with the light of these well-ordered systems that everyone agrees with (well, everyone that’s approved for you to agree with or those that you happen to like).
Yet what happens is you begin to cut off multiple perspectives and refuse to modify or question your own, and when someone or some group does question it, regardless of tone, you feel in your body that you’re being attacked. You go into fight-or-flight mode. It feels personal, because all along you’ve been attaching your identity, your ego, to these doctrines. Rather than seeing them as potentially useful lens worth considering for a time, it becomes a part of yourself that you must guard and keep sacrosanct.
It becomes an idol.
And perhaps the worst kind of idol, the kind that has religious or moralistic weight that makes one feel righteous or faux-confident when “attacked”. Hence the very first beatitude in Jesus’ first major public speech in His ministry on the mount:
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matt 5
Your investments in your “doctrines” and man-made systems are what need to be withdrawn. You are not to have them like a dragon hoarding gold. Is it any wonder that Jesus’ main antagonists in the gospels were the religious elite with their ridiculous rules that were used as a “proxy” for following the Mosaic law? How is this any different than those who manufacture these creeds to use a “proxy” for understanding Scripture?
But we are called to know and follow the Way that is Christ.
And such idolatry obscures rather than clarifies. People so stuffed with systematic theology end up sight-reading and never actually look at what the text actually says because they have the habit of reading pre-digested doctrine into all the “buzz words”. A lot of passages no longer need to be reexamined. They’ve extracted all the meaning we possibly could from it, so when they read it, they’re actually not, we’re just glossing over it and inserting into it what’s been downloaded into them, signficantly lowering the chance of seeing any nuance, detail, or need for further inquiry.
See also:
Known-unknowns
These are the kind of stuff in which the problem or domain is recognized, but its exactness or impact isn’t clear. Ideological possession and an insatiable craving for certainty makes it less likely for one to acknowledge the things in this quadrant as we try to have a “theory of everything” despite there being things one couldn’t possibly know…or worse, have “easy” and pat answers for complex topics/issues (especially when it comes to suffering and illness). I again would refer you to take another look at Proverbs 30.
Unknown-knowns
For things in this quadrant you never question how you came about holding or saying them. Oddly enough, this leads to things like the sort of “apologetics” that have as a tagline, “Know why you believe what you believe”. Hey, I was a big fan of this in high school and enjoyed William Lane Craig’s content for what it provided for me at that stage of my growth.
But wait! Why did you believe in something in the first place if you didn’t know why? We don’t straight up buy a car, then later on figure out reasons why we thought it was a wise purchase. Why do that for religious claims?!
If you don’t know why you believe what you believe, one has to wonder how you got into it in the first place and if holding to some doctrinal position was epistemically justified or not.
Unknown-unknowns
The things you’re ignorant of and don’t know you’re ignorant of them. The issue with ideologically possessed is that they are unaware and probably don’t even care that they’re unaware of things in this region. The thing is, what you don’t know that you don’t know won’t appear to cause any ramifications to yourself, your paradigm, or others until it comes roaring out due to, say, a disruptive technology, massive economic shifts, a death of a loved one, the fall of someone you put on a pedestal, or information that you simply cannot ignore that causes a break in your otherwise well-guarded paradigm of how you see the world.
And this break can either afford the person a chance to shed that false paradigm and move towards clarity and truth, or they can double-down and create all kinds of rationalizations and epicycles for why their paradigm is true and the new information is somehow either not true, not relevant, or not deleterious to their paradigm after all.
But all this extra baggage to salvage one’s paradigm, especially one that they’ve egoically identified with, is what we in the software development world would call technical debt, and the more of that you have, the harder and more strenuous it would be for “the system” to do what it’s supposed to do, as well as adapt, change, account for new features, and so on.
Simply put, you do not want to be arrogant or overly-confident with your systematic theology or pronouncement in any creed since any unknown unknowns can come about at any time in your life, or in history in general, and wreck havoc on your epistemic certainty…which is what you shouldn’t be striving for in the first place!
Better and Bespoke Statements
Instead of a statement of faith, why not a statement of wisdom (since Scripture, especially Proverbs, really drills it into the reader), or a statement of love (since love is the bond of perfection and the end of the commandment and is the greatest even among faith and hope)?
Such statements could include the axioms upon which we build our epistemic foundations (e.g. “We believe that God is real, that He doesn’t lie, and that the Scripture is His Word”), but have in place a living list of processes, methodologies, procedures, practices, heuristics, and/or exercises that can be leveraged for the given local body of believers to grow and transform into a more Christ-like version of themselves.
Heck, why not even have a goal in mind to produce actual wise and competent Christians such that they can generate their own statements of faith? And not so that they can become taken by them and declare once for all what the “bounds of Orthodoxy” are (you’d think the Bible itself would be enough), but rather as an exercise. They can file it away in a folder, then next year create another one and see how it compares to last year.
That, I think, would at least make them useful rather than being held to like a security blanket and metastasizing like a cancer.
See also:
Whew. That was a lot. A lot more than I had anticipated to write, and this needs to be split up into multiple posts. So next up I’ll be dealing with how to handle divisive men according to Scripture, and an examination of a very particular, and very popular (if not the most popular) Christian creed.
Cheers.