What Christians Believe
The Articles of Faith

Traditional Teachings

Now, it is reasonable to wonder why the church felt it was necessary to preserve its traditional teachings. Wasn't it enough simply to preserve the Bible, and to let the Bible speak for itself?

Well, there's a need to formulate concise, clear statements on what the church believes, especially because there are false teachers who teach things that aren't in line with what the apostles taught and what the Bible teaches. And so, especially in response to these false teachings, the church needed to formulate a clear summary statement on what it believed. [Dr. K. Erik Thoennes]

The church had the Scriptures as the basis of its faith, but of course, the Scriptures were very long and literacy was very limited. So, it was best for the church to summarize basic doctrines in one creed in order for people to understand and comprehend the faith without having to read the entire Bible. [Dr. Riad Kassis, translation]

The Apostle's Creed was especially valuable, even necessary in early church history because the Canon of Scripture was not formally listed until around A.D. 397. So what was the authoritative faith of the church? It was summarized in the Apostles' Creed. But at that time we had the Bible. So, why should we continue to have the creed? Because we can't require people to understand the whole Bible before we accept them as Christians. The Apostles' Creed still summarizes the essential teachings of the Bible in a simple way. And for this reason, it must continue to be used even now. [Dr. Paul Chang, translation]

False teachers created many problems in the church. Some even denied central aspects of the gospel itself. In response to these circumstances, godly Christian leaders created short summaries of the central teachings of Scripture so that all Christians would know and affirm the basic content of the faith. Listen to the way Origen described the problem in another section of the Preface to his work On First Principles:

There are many who think they hold the opinions of Christ, and yet some of these think differently from their predecessors, yet as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.

Notice what Origen said here. He did not say that the teaching of the church was infallible, or that it would always be perfect. Rather he said that the teaching of the church was to be accepted as true, as or because it had been transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles and preserved until his own day. In other words, in Origen's day, the teaching of the church was still an accurate summary of Christ's words in Scripture. And for this reason, the church in his day was able to use it as a "standard" or "rule of faith" for testing doctrines. But the ultimate authority rested in the New Testament, not in the contemporary church.

We might illustrate this idea by thinking of a chain made of several links. The early church wanted to hold fast to the teachings of Christ, which could be found in Scripture. This makes Christ the first link. The apostles had direct contact with Christ, and were taught directly by him. So, their teachings are the second link in the chain. The apostles then preserved their knowledge of Christ in Scripture, making Scripture the third link in the chain. Each of these three links was perfect and infallible because it was superintended by the Holy Spirit.

But the fourth link, the traditional teachings of the church, was different. The transmission of these customs was not infallible; the Holy Spirit did not guarantee that they would be kept free from error. In fact, as we have already seen, the customs of some churches were contradicted by the customs of others.

Some of these teachings pertained to minor matters of practice — things that Scripture does not directly address. But other traditions summarized the original meaning of Scripture, especially with regard to major articles of faith, like those listed in the Apostles' Creed.

When it came to these central beliefs, the traditions had been confirmed by many church leaders in many places throughout the ages. Moreover, they could be verified by direct appeals to Scripture. This is why Origen felt confident in setting forth the church's traditional teachings as a rule of faith.

Nevertheless, this link was not infallible. It was always possible for the churches, for its councils, and for individual Christians, to make mistakes. Listen to the words that Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in the third century, wrote in his Epistle 73 against the doctrines held by Stephen, Bishop of Rome:

Nor ought custom, which had crept in among some, to prevent the truth from prevailing and conquering; for custom without truth is the antiquity of error.

Cyprian's point was that some ancient Christian views and practices were not rooted in the truth handed to us from the apostles. Instead, they were "the antiquity of error" — errors that had crept into the church a long time ago. In fact, it was precisely this problem of human fallibility that made it important for the church to record its rule of faith in written form. Origen and other early church fathers wrote down the church's rule of faith to make sure that Christians throughout the world would be able to compare their doctrines to the traditional ones. Church councils also recorded traditional teachings so that their judgments would inform Christians in different places and times.

In all cases, the goal of preserving the church's traditional teachings was to ensure that the churches did not stray from the original meaning of Scripture, in order that believers would rightly understand the teachings of the apostles, in order that they would firmly grasp and live by the words of Christ.

The Bible is a very big book, and so you can't in one sense just let it speak for itself, you need to give a good summary of it. Even within the New Testament there are major challenges to the doctrine of who Christ is. And you can see the apostles trying to argue and to say "no, this is the truth." And that issue continues into the second century A.D. Some major challenges to the doctrine of who Jesus is, and to the nature of the Bible. And so they had to summarize the biblical faith as pithily, as shortly as they could do. And that gave rise to the Apostles' Creed. The important thing to remember is they're not actually trying to add to the Bible, they're trying to elucidate and to draw out its meaning. [Dr. Peter Walker]

As Basil wrote in his work On the Holy Spirit in A.D. 374:

What our fathers said, the same say we … But we do not rest only on the fact that such is the tradition of the fathers; for they too followed the sense of Scripture.

Now, we should mention that in guarding its traditional teachings, the early church was not terribly worried about minor points of doctrine. They were focused on central, fundamental beliefs and practices. This is clear from the kinds of arguments they made in their writings, and from the kinds of things they listed in their written rules of faith.

For example, they wrote against Docetists, who denied the humanity of Christ. They wrote against Gnostics, who believed that the God of the Old Testament was evil, and who permitted all sorts of fleshly sins. And they wrote against many other false teachings that challenged the basic tenets of Scripture.

Having talked about Scripture and the church's traditional teachings, we are ready to look at how the Apostles' Creed summarized the church's traditional teachings for individual believers.