Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present

John H. Leith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351528542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Christianity has always been a "creedal" religion in that it has always been theological. It was rooted in the theological tradition of ancient Israel, which was unifi ed by its historical credos and declaratory affi rmations of faith. No pre-theological era has been discovered in the New Testament or in the history of the Christian community. From the beginning Christianity has been theological, involving men in theological refl ection and calling them to declarations of faith. A non-theological Christianity has simply never endured, although such has been attempted, for instance, by individual seers in the sixteenth century and also by collaborators with totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century.

The creeds presented here range from the ancient faith of the Hebrews and the creed-like formulas of the New Testament to the Barmen declaration of 1934 (framed by the Christians in Germany who faced the threat of Nazism) and the Batak Creed of 1951 (in which Indonesian Christians gave authentic expression to their religious belief in the idiom of their own culture. All the creeds are in some sense "offi cial, " and every major division of Christendom is represented, including the Younger Churches. The volume ends with the messages of the most important assemblies dealing with the Ecumenical Movement.

This single volume, containing all the major theological affi rmations of the Christian community, is a source book for the study of Christian theology. It comprises a record of the Church's interpretation of the Bible in the past and an authoritative guide to its interpretation on the present. Indeed, it is a guide to an understanding of the Christian interpretation of life.

Reformed Creeds

The designation “Reformed” refers to those Reformation churches that have their source in the work of Zwingli and Calvin. In one sense all Reformation churches are Reformed, but the term is applied more strictly to the churches that are related to Zwingli and Calvin because they were more radical in the reform of the Church according to the Word of God than were the Lutherans.

Reformed Protestantism has been prolific in the production of creeds. More than sixty creeds would qualify as Reformed, though no number can be exact since the boundaries that distinguish Reformed creeds have never been precisely fixed. The Reformed creeds were produced over a wide geographical area and over a very considerable period of time. Hence the Reformed creeds exhibit a variety that is the nemesis of all those who would write the theology of the Reformed confessions. All that is possible in this regard is a study in comparative symbols or an introduction to the theology of Reformed confessions.

The great variety of Reformed confessions is not simply an accident of history and geography but is rooted in Reformed theology, which was vigorously opposed to all idolatry, including the idolatry of creeds. All creeds are subordinate to the Word of God, and no one creed can presume to be the creed. Hence the Reformed theologians found safety in many creeds. Bullinger and Judae are said to have signed the First Helvetic Confession with this comment:

We wish in no way to prescribe for all churches through these articles a single rule of faith. For we acknowledge no other rule of faith than Holy Scripture. We agree with whoever agrees with this, although he uses different expressions from our Confession. For we should have regard for the fact itself and for the truth, not for the words. We grant to everyone the freedom to use his own expressions which are suitable for his church and will make use of this freedom ourselves, at the same time defending the true sense of this Confession against distortions.¹

Reformed creeds prior to 1650 include the following:

Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles of Religion (1523)

The Ten Conclusions of Berne (1528)

The Confession to Charles V (Zwingli, 1530)

The Confession to Francis I (Zwingli, 1531)

The Tetrapolitan Confession (1530)

Confession of Basel (1534)

First Helvetic Confession (1536)

Calvin’s Catechisms (1537 and 1541)

Confession of Geneva (1537)

The Zurich Consensus (1549)

Gallican Confession (1559)

The Scots Confession (1560)

The Belgic Confession (1561)

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)

The Second Helvetic Confession (1566)

The Canons of Dort (1619)

The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (1643-47)

Barth, Peter, Opera Selecta, Joannis Calvini (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1926).

Dunlop, William, A Collection of Confessions of Faith, Catechisms, Directories, Books of Discipline, etc., of Public Authority in the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh: 1719, 1722).

Hall, Peter, The Harmony of Protestant Confessions (London: John F. Shaw, 1842). The origin of the Harmony was the desire to meet the objection that Protestants were divided and to exhibit the same unity of confession as the Lutherans did in the Book of Concord. Plans for one confession fell through, and the compilation of a harmony was taken as a substitute. The task was intrusted to Beza, Daneau, and Salnar. See introduction to Hall’s Harmony for further details. For role of Beza see Théodore de Bèze by Paul-F. Geisendorf (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1949) pp. 337 ff.

Heppe, Heinrich, Ursprung und Geschichte der Bezeichnungen “reformierte” und “lutherische” Kirche (Gotha: 1859).

Müller, E. F. K., Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche (Lipsiae: 1840).

Niemeyer, H. A., Collectio Confessionum in Ecclesüs Reformatis (Lipsiae: Iulii Klinkhardti, 1840).

Niesel, Wilhelm, Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, A. G. Zollikon, 1938).

Schaff, Philip, Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877).

THE TEN CONCLUSIONS OF BERNE (1528)

The early Protestants in Switzerland delighted in disputations with their Catholic adversaries. In these disputations (e.g., Basel, 1524; Rive, 1535; Lausanne, 1536) the issues at stake in the Protestant revolt were set forth with singular clarity. The Ten Conclusions, written by Berthold Haller and Francis Kolb and revised by Zwingli, are typical and were debated at Berne in 1528.

Source: German and Latin texts may be found in Creeds of Christendom by Philip Schaff (New York: Harper & Bros., 1919), Vol. III, pp. 208-10.

THE TEN CONCLUSIONS

1. The holy Christian Church, whose only Head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, and abides in the same, and listens not to the voice of a stranger.

2. The Church of Christ makes no laws or commandments apart from the Word of God; hence all human traditions are not binding upon us except so far as they are grounded upon or prescribed in the Word of God.

3. Christ is the only wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. For this reason it is a denial of Christ to confess any other means of salvation or satisfaction for sin.

4. It cannot be shown from Holy Scripture that the body and blood of Christ are substantially and corporeally received in the bread of the Eucharist.

5. The mass, as it is now celebrated, in which Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and the dead is contrary to Scripture, a blasphemy against the most holy sacrifice, passion, and death of Christ and on account of its abuse, an abomination to God.

6. As Christ alone died for us, so he is also to be adored as the only Mediator and Advocate between God the Father and us. For this reason it is contrary to the basis of the Word of God to direct worship to be offered to other mediators beyond the present life.

7. Scripture does not tell us there is any place beyond this life in which souls are purged. Therefore all services for the dead, vigils, masses, processions, anniversaries, lights, candles, and other such things are vain.

8. It is contrary to the Word of God, contained in the books of the Old and New Testaments, to make images for use in worship. For this reason they are to be abolished, if they are set up as objects of worship.

9. Marriage is not forbidden in Scripture to any class of men, but is commanded and permitted to all in order to avoid fornication and unchastity.

10. Since according to Scripture an open fornicator must be excommunicated, it follows that fornication or impure celibacy are more pernicious to the clergy than to any other class on account of the scandal.

THE SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION (1566)

(CONFESSION AND SIMPLE EXPOSITION OF THE TRUE FAITH AND CATHOLIC ARTICLES OF THE PURE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.)

This confession was first written in 1561 as a personal confession and testament of Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s son-in-law and successor in Zurich. It was made public in 1566 when Frederick III of the Palatinate, needing to justify his Reformed faith, asked Bullinger to provide an exposition of the faith. At the same time the Swiss churches felt a need for a common confession. Frederick was highly pleased with Bullinger’s Confession and the Swiss churches ratified it with a few minor changes. It was published in Zurich, March 12, 1566.

The Second Helvetic Confession appeared when the Reformed Churches were established and had reached theological maturity but before they came under the dominating influence of scholasticism. It is moderate in tone, catholic in outlook, and closely related to Christian experience. In this it is similar to the Scots Confession of 1560. On the other hand it lacks the precision of the Belgic or Westminster Confessions. One interesting aspect of the creed is the attention that is given to worship, church order, especially the ministry, and the ordering of life in marriage.

The Second Helvetic Confession was widely accepted and can justly claim to be the most universal of Reformed creeds.

Source: The translation printed here is a revision of the English translation found in Creeds of Christendom by Philip Schaff (New York: Harper & Bros., 1922). The revision is based upon the Latin text in Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen, edited by W. Niesel (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, A. G. Zollikon), pp. 219-75.

Courvoisier, Jaques, La Confession Helvétique Postérieure, Cahiers Théologiques de l’Actualité Protestante (Paris: Éditions Delachaux & Niestl, S. A., 1944).

Hildebrandt, Walter, and Zimmerman, Rudolph, Bedeutung und Geschichte des Zweiten Helvetischen Bekenntnisses (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1938).

——, Das Zweite Helvetische Bekenntnis (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1938).

A SIMPLE CONFESSION AND EXPOSITION OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH

THE SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION, (1566)

CHAPTER I.—OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE BEING THE TRUE WORD OF GOD.

(CANONICAL SCRIPTURE) We believe and confess the Canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God, and to have sufficient authority of themselves, not of men. For God himself spake to the fathers, prophets, apostles, and still speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures.

And in this Holy Scripture, the universal Church of Christ has all things fully expounded which belong to a saving faith, and also to the framing of a life acceptable to God; and in this respect it is expressly commanded of God that nothing be either put to or taken from the same (Deut. iv. 2; Rev. xxii. 18, 19).

(SCRIPTURE TEACHES FULLY ALL GODLINESS) We judge, therefore, that from these Scriptures are to be taken true wisdom and godliness, the reformation and government of churches; as also instruction in all duties of piety; and, to be short, the confirmation of doctrines, and the confutation of all errors, with all exhortations; according to that word of the Apostle, ‘All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,’ etc. (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). Again, ‘I am writing these instructions for you,’ says the Apostle of Timothy, ‘so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God,’ etc. (1 Tim. iii. 14, 15). (SCRIPTURE IS THE WORD OF GOD) Again, the selfsame Apostle to the Thessalonians: ‘When,’ says he, ‘you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God,’ etc. (1 Thess. ii. 13). For the Lord himself has said in the Gospel, ‘It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you;’ therefore ‘he who hears you hears me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me,’ (Matt. x. 20; Luke x. 16; John xiii. 20).

(THE PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD IS THE WORD OF GOD) Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is preached, and received of the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be feigned nor to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; who, although he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God abides true and good.

Neither do we think that therefore the outward preaching is to be thought as fruitless because the instruction in true religion depends on the inward illumination of the Spirit, or because it is written ‘And no longer shall each man teach his neighbour . . . for they shall all know me’ (Jer. xxxi. 34), and ‘Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth,’ (1 Cor. iii. 7). For albeit ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (John vi. 44), and unless he is inwardly lightened by the Holy Spirit, yet we know undoubtedly that it is the will of God that his word should be preached even outwardly. God could indeed, by his Holy Spirit, or by the ministry of an angel, without the ministry of St. Peter, have taught Cornelius in the Acts; but, nevertheless, he refers him to Peter, of whom the angel speaking says, ‘He shall tell you what you ought to do’ (Acts x. 6).

(INWARD ILLUMINATION DOES NOT ELIMINATE EXTERNAL PREACHING) For he that illuminates inwardly by giving men the Holy Spirit, the self-same, by way of commandment, said unto his disciples, ‘Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mark xvi. 15). And so Paul preached the Word outwardly to Lydia, a purple-seller among the Philippians; but the Lord inwardly opened the woman’s heart (Acts xvi. 14). And the same Paul, upon an elegant gradation, fitly placed in the tenth chapter to the Romans, at last infers, ‘So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ’ (Rom. x. 14-17).

We know, in the meantime, that God can illuminate whom and when he will, even without the external ministry, which is a thing appertaining to his power; but we speak of the usual way of instructing men, delivered unto us from God, both by commandment and examples.

(HERESIES) We therefore detest all the heresies of Artemon, the Manichaeans, the Valentinians, of Cerdon, and the Marcionites, who denied that the Scriptures proceeded from the Holy Spirit; or else received not, or interpolated and corrupted, some of them.

(APOCRYPHA) And yet we do not deny that certain books of the Old Testament were by the ancient authors called Apocryphal, and by others Ecclesiastical; to wit, such as they would have to be read in the churches, but not alleged to avouch or confirm the authority of faith by them. As also Augustine, in his De Civitate Dei, book xviii., chapter 38, makes mention that ‘in the books of the Kings, the names and books of certain prophets are reckoned;’ but he adds that ‘they are not in the canon,’ and that ‘those books which we have suffice unto godliness.’

CHAPTER II.—OF INTERPRETING THE HOLY SCRIPTURES: AND OF FATHERS, COUNCILS, AND TRADITIONS.

(THE TRUE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE) The Apostle Peter has said that ‘no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation’ (2 Pet. i. 20). Therefore we do not allow all kinds of exposition. Whereupon we do not acknowledge that which they call the instinct of the Church of Rome for the true and natural interpretation of the Scriptures; which, forsooth, the defenders of the Romish Church do strive to force all men simply to receive; but we acknowledge only that interpretation of Scriptures for orthodox and genuine which, being taken from the Scriptures themselves (that is, from the spirit of that tongue in which they were written, they being also weighed according to the circumstances and expounded according to the proportion of places, either of like or of unlike, also of more and plainer), accords with the rule of faith and charity, and makes notably for God’s glory and man’s salvation.

(INTERPRETATIONS OF THE HOLY FATHERS) Wherefore we do not despise the interpretations of the holy Greek and Latin fathers, nor reject their disputations and treatises as far as they agree with the Scriptures; but we do modestly dissent from them when they are found to set down things differing from, or altogether contrary to, the Scriptures. Neither do we think that we do them any wrong in this matter; seeing that they all, with one consent, will not have their writings matched with the Canonical Scriptures, but bid us allow of them so far forth as they either agree with them or disagree.

(COUNCILS) And in the same order we also place the decrees and canons of councils.

Wherefore we suffer not ourselves, in controversies about religion or matters of faith, to be pressed with the bare testimonies of fathers or decrees of councils; much less with received customs, or with a large number of those who share the same opinion. (WHO IS THE JUDGE?) Therefore, in controversies of religion or matters of faith, we cannot admit any other judge than God himself, pronouncing by the Holy Scriptures what is true, what is false, what is to be followed, or what to be avoided. So we do not rest but in the judgment of spiritual men, drawn from the Word of God. Certainly Jeremiah and other prophets did vehemently condemn the assemblies of priests gathered against the law of God; and diligently forewarned us that we should not hear the fathers, or tread in their path who, walking in their own inventions, swerved from the law of God (Ezek. xx. 18).

(TRADITIONS OF MEN) We do likewise reject human traditions, which, although they be set out with goodly titles, as though they were divine and apostolical, delivered to the Church by the lively voice of the apostles, and, as it were, by the hands of apostolical men, by means of bish...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• The Creeds and their Role in the Church
• The Bible
• Second-Century Creedal Developments
• Rules of Faith (c. 200)
• The Roman Symbol and the Apostles’ Creed
• Eastern Creeds
• The Creed of Nicaea (325)
• The Constantinopolitan Creed (381)
• The Definition of Chalcedon (451)
• The Council of Orange (529)
• The Second Council of Constantinople (553)
• The Third Council of Constantinople (681)
• The Image Controversy
• Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
• Council of Florence (1438-45)
• Lutheran Confessions
• Reformed Creeds
• The English Reformation
• Anabaptist Confessions
• Protestant Scholasticism
• Theses Theologicae of Robert Barclay (1675)
• Baptist Creeds
• Methodism
• The Cambridge Platform (1648)
• Creeds of Modern Roman Catholicism
• The Confession of Dositheus (1672)
• The Barmen Declaration (1934)
• The Relation of the Church to the War in the Light of the Christian Faith (1943)
• A Creed of the Younger Churches
• The Ecumenical Movement