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What Christians Believe
The Articles of Faith
Purpose
In our day, many Christians are suspicious of creeds, and it isn't difficult to understand why. Although very few people would outspokenly claim that a creed has the same authority as Scripture, sometimes well-meaning Christians treat certain creeds if they were equal to the Bible itself. But no creed should ever be elevated to this level in theory or in practice.
The Bible is our only inspired, infallible rule of faith and practice. Creeds, on the other hand, are fallible teaching tools that summarize our understanding of Scripture. And as we are about to see, the Apostles' Creed was created to help Christians learn and remain true to the teachings of the Bible.
We will investigate the purpose of the Apostles' Creed in three steps. First, we will look at Scripture as the original repository of true doctrine. Second, we will look at the churches' traditional teachings as affirmations of Scripture. And third, we will see that the Apostles' Creed was intended to summarize the churches' traditional understandings of Scripture. Let's begin with the fact that dedicated Christians have always affirmed that Scripture is the basis of our doctrine.