Who Needs a Creed?

The following article is the editorial from the July 2025 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine. You can purchase the issue here, and subscribe to the magazine for monthly features on Christian life, faith, and doctrine.

If you were to ask the question, ‘Who needs a creed?’ the answer from many would probably be, ‘Not us!’ Such ancient documents are often seen at best as outdated and at worst an irrelevance. That may be the majority view in popular evangelicalism, but that does not mean it is right. The church is always confessing its beliefs whether it realizes it or not. The issue is whether or not they reflect beliefs that are authentically Christian. Let me suggest a number of ways the Apostles’ Creed helps us in our understanding of Christianity that is biblical.

It helps us articulate the Christian faith

The very notion of ‘creed’ immediately suggests the idea of expressing belief. In the barest sense it is an expression of what Christians believe; but historically there was more to it. The Latin verb credo, from which ‘creed’ is derived, carries a more personal sense. Hence several major creeds begin with the words ‘I believe in …’—in the sense of placing confidence in particular truths. The Apostles’ Creed spells out the truths a person must believe in if he or she is to be a Christian.

Martin Luther commends the Apostles’ Creed by saying, ‘Christian truth could not possibly be put into a shorter and clearer statement.’ The challenge it presents to the church in the twenty-first  century is to use it as a framework for expressing these time-honoured truths that are essential to Christian faith in the world of our day.

It provides a tool for teaching the faith

It has been said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that the Apostles’ Creed was the Alpha course of its day. That isn’t far from the truth. Successive generations have come up with their own tools for  presenting the main teachings of the Bible, but the Apostles’ Creed is the mother of them all.

J. I. Packer’s book, I Want to be a Christian (1977), is an example of how the Creed can continue to function in a contemporary church setting as an effective teaching tool. He uses it as a framework for exploring each tenet of faith it contains in such a way as to lead young Christians to see the essence of what it means; but, at the same time, providing pointers for those who want to dig deeper.

At an even simpler level, the practice of memorizing the creed and reciting it publicly still has enormous merit—especially in an age when memorizing anything is deemed passé. In the syllabus of what every child ought to learn by heart, the Apostles’ Creed must take its place alongside the books of the Bible, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer as one of its core components.

The creed is a wonderfully versatile tool for instruction. It has a use with children, seekers, new converts and those who realize that no matter how long we may have been in the faith, familiar truths always have fresh depths to be explored.

It makes us focus on the heart of the faith

There is always a temptation to get lost in the minutiae of what the Bible teaches. Nowhere was this more damaging than in the church at Corinth, and Paul’s response to their distractedness is timeless. He reminds them of what he had taught them in the first place: ‘For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received …’ (1 Cor. 15:3)—here are the core teachings that form the bedrock of the Christian faith.

So, as the Creed spells out the sum of saving knowledge for the early church, it takes us first and foremost to the God of the Bible in all his uniqueness and glory. His uniqueness lies in the fact that he is Trinity, and his greatest glory is seen in the salvation he provides at such extraordinary cost through his own Son. And so today, in an age when evangelical Christianity is rapidly losing its way, the creed brings us back to the heart of both the gospel and the faith: namely, God himself.

It guards the gospel against distortions of the faith

Historically, creeds have had a double function: to serve as both a fence and a foundation. They serve as the latter in that they crystallize the essence of all a person needs to know for life and salvation. In that sense they provide the foundation for what constitutes a true church. The sad reality of course is that the church has been plagued, not merely from without, but more often from within by distortions of that teaching. So, creeds have been formulated to provide a fence to guard the church against such aberrations. The Apostles’ Creed is particularly concerned to secure a fence around the very heart of the gospel.

It shows the need for personal faith

Perhaps the greatest threat of all to the church and the teachings on which she stands in every generation is that of sliding into nominalism. Paul warns Timothy that the Last Days will be characterized by those (in the church) who have a ‘form of godliness’ but who deny its power (2 Tim. 3:5). He warns against such people in the strongest possible terms.

It is a danger that lurks most subtly in the Reformed community where we are inclined to lay great store on scholarship and precision. That can be paradise for the kind of people who Paul is warning about—especially those who delight in controversy. The essence of Christianity that is authentically Reformed is its concern for authentic experience. As Paul says elsewhere, all truth should lead to godliness (Titus 1:1).

The first three words of the Creed embed this conviction at the very centre of the truths it goes on to confess. It is only as we declare our belief in this God and all that he has done that we can actually know him, along with all the benefits he promises in the gospel, through genuine personal faith. That’s why we still need the Creed in our day!

Featured Photo (visible when the article is shared on social media) by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash