a. The Purpose for Creeds
[08/14/20]
Well, this is going to be a much larger undertaking than I had initially thought, but I think it’s worth some time to explore more completely. We have established that Scripture, the Word of God, is to be the only binding rule of faith for the Christian. But we have also observed that Scripture can lead reasonable men in good faith to arrive at distinctly different conclusions on certain aspects of the rule of faith. Let’s be clear. This is not some new problem that was introduced by the advent of Protestantism. It was there pretty much from the outset. There always have been, and no doubt always will be those who propose new and novel understandings of what the Bible teaches. Some of these may be of value. Most of them are somewhere between folly and outright heresy.
I observed in the preceding section that there is room for a pretty wide range of disagreement within the bounds of sound, biblical faith. But, if it is acceptable that men of good conscience have been led to conclude different things on some of the deeper points of doctrine and faith, we are back at the question of where we draw the line? How do we discern whether these differences are secondary, or so severe as to demark one set of beliefs as describing what is no longer Christianity? What is our measure to be? Well, to be clear, that measure is still to be the Word of God, but within that measure, we are to observe what is critical, and what may be accounted a matter of conscience, a matter of opinion. Typically, the line is drawn to encompass those matters of the faith which pertain to salvation. That is to say, on those points of doctrine which, to disbelieve is to reject the plan of salvation set forth in Scripture, centered on Jesus and indeed resting wholly upon His Person and His work, we may brook no debate. On matters pertaining to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, we must likewise draw a line. For if this is our rule of faith, our court of final appeal, if you will, it had best be accounted utterly reliable. If we cannot agree upon that, then we have no firm basis upon which to judge anything at all.
[08/15/20]
I should also observe that creeds are not some post-apostolic development any more than debates on matters of doctrine or incursions by false teaching were post-apostolic developments. Both are in evidence within the record of the New Testament. Arguably, the fundamental reason for just about most, if not all of the epistles is countering those false teachers, and because this was such a profound and common issue as the Church grew, it’s hardly surprising that brief statements encapsulating the most fundamental points of faith – those beyond all permissibility of disagreement – came into use. We have some evidence of that in Paul’s writings, or at least hints of it. Writing to the church in Ephesus, he says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6). I don’t know that we can declare with absolute certainty that Paul is quoting an early creed here, but it has the style and cadence, picking up at ‘one Lord’. It is a quick synopsis of that unity of the Spirit which the believer is called to endeavor to preserve (Eph 4:3).
Perhaps clearer evidence of these early creeds is to be found in his letter to Timothy. Indeed, the passage in question is said to be the ‘common confession’. “And by common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1Ti 3:16). There it is: A short, succinct declaration of the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus our Lord. It upholds His humanity and His godhead alike. It declares His mission amongst all the nations, and His Lordship over all, in that He was taken up in glory. This is not, by any stretch, a detailed proclamation on His Majesty and Lordship, but a quick and easily remembered distillation. I suspect we could argue successfully that herein the later authors of such creeds found their template.
b. The Apostles’ Creed
While at one time considered to have been promulgated by the Apostles directly, the evidence suggests that the Apostles’ Creed is not their direct work, although its statements certainly reflect the true, Apostolic message of Christ. There is strong evidence for the antiquity of this creed, albeit in varied form, and also solid evidence of its use as a recitation in the church, although only at baptisms in the earliest use. This, I pick up from Buck’s Theological Dictionary, which is proving a rather useful reference.
The creed itself is brief, and worth quoting in full, at least in the form in which it has passed down to us. “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell: The third day he rose again from the dead: He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: I believe in the Holy Ghost: I believe in the holy catholic church: The communion of saints: the forgiveness of sins: The resurrection of the body: And the life everlasting. Amen.”
What is to be observed here? It is a particularly fitting confession to be made by the one who would be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, for it swiftly encapsulates deep truths as to who it is the believer has believed. We have the Trinity proclaimed, if not specifically as the Trinity, then certainly in His Persons. We see the Father in His sovereign power as Creator, the Son – His Son – as our Lord, our King. We see the Holy Spirit as fully involved in the central drama of redemption and necessary to our belief. But the clear focus is upon Jesus, the Son of God, the appointed Messiah. The virgin birth is given prime notice, and the evidences of His humanity. He was born of a virgin, but very much a man among men. He suffered as a man, died as a man, and most shocking of all, rose from death as a man. But His ascension to and enthronement in heaven proclaims just as forcefully His deity. He is God. He is sovereign, and as sovereign God will sit as judge over all humanity. Observe there is no escaping judgment in death. Quick or dead, judgment awaits. Only with this established does it get to matters of the church militant, which is declared both holy and universal, which lies at the root of ‘catholic’ as it pertained then. Recall that this is written before there was a Roman Catholic church to consider. There was only the church, or in its smaller contingents, the church in this or that location. And here’s the message: We’re all one. It hews back to Paul’s confession: One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God over all. Finally, there is a quick listing of those covenant promises given us: Forgiveness of sin and resurrection to eternal life.
There it is. I’ve managed to expand it to nearly three times its length in describing the message it declares, but you can see how, for the baptismal candidate, especially where baptism was effectively the seal of membership in this holy catholic church, this was a declaration of note. It’s not quite a covenant statement, but it’s close. It gives verbal assent to the catechism learned prior to baptism. It offers a quick means of proclaiming the most central truths of the faith, and sets them, I dare say, in rather good order as to importance. There is, as I said, the sovereignty of God, most clearly evidenced in the Person of the Father. There is the clear emphasis on the Son, and plain evidence given for His humanity and His divinity alike. There is the Spirit proclaimed, if His role is not particularly developed, the central means of grace in the church, and the universality of communion among believers. Then, and only then, is there notice given to the benefits. I really like that those are saved for last, for they are as icing on the cake of belief
[08/16/20]
That might seem a somewhat perverse or counterintuitive thing to say, that the benefits of our covenant relationship with God are more a bonus than a central matter, but I do think that is how it should be viewed. Forgiveness of sins, resurrection, an eternal life have their primary value in that they set us in the full and immediate presence of this God in Whom we have believed. It is readily observed, even in this brief creed, that both the believer and the unbeliever will be brought into His presence, for He comes to judge the quick and the dead. The judge would have no need to render judgment if it were only the believers that He came to judge. Forgiveness would be a given, and therefore the court would know its justice satisfied before things got started. Likewise, eternal life must apply to believer and unbeliever alike, else bringing them back from death to face judgment would leave nothing by way of punishment to address remaining injustice. Dead is dead, after all. What’s left to inflict? Well, the answer is: eternity without parole, without hope of coming into the grace of God; without hope of an and to the punishment brought on by sin. It remains for the dead in sin to discover just how deadly real death is. They, too, must have a body suited to eternity so as to bear their just punishment.
None of these things, then, are necessarily a great boon in themselves. They are a blessing to the believer because he has believed. The real gain in all this is knowing God as He truly is. It is in being rendered able to worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is in finally gaining a real sense of His place and ours in the great scheme of things. To borrow a rather annoying line from recent years, it is the joy of truly knowing ourselves on the right side of history, for we have come to know that history, our story, is His story, and it is indeed beautiful. The Maker of heaven and earth has conquered sin and death, and called us His own. Glory to God in the highest!
c. The Nicene Creed
The Nicene Creed, one result of the First Council of Nice, expands somewhat upon the Apostle’s Creed. It begins with what hoped to be a clear declaration. “I believe in one God.” There is no multiplicity here, though we speak of Father, Son, and Spirit. The truth of Scripture holds. Behold, the Lord your God, He is One (Dt 6:4)! I say it hoped to be clear, but I could see where a certain confusion might remain when they add, “And in one Lord Jesus Christ.” But they move swiftly to remove any thought that this was a second entity, for He is immediately declared not only the Son of God, but “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.”
One can see in the emphasis of this proclamation of Jesus exactly what the issues were that had required a council to address. It wasn’t just the emperor’s decree that made this needful. It was once more the incursion of false teachers with false beliefs. Be it supposed that these were in fact men of good heart, seeking truth as best they may, and it changes nothing as to the result of their search. They had latched onto and been teaching a false view of the Son as merely the epitome of the created order, but not truly God Incarnate. This assault on the Person of the Son could not be allowed to succeed, else the very root of Christian faith is poisoned.
So, the Nicene Creed, like the Apostles’ Creed before it, expends the greatest portion of its message on proclaiming the Person of the Son in some detail. He was begotten, not made – no created being Him, but God of God and with God from all eternity. He is ‘of one substance with the Father’ and the instrumental means of creation. As Paul would observe, “But when He says, ‘All things are put in subjection,’ it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him” (1Co 15:27). This is of a piece. The Creator cannot Himself have been created, for ‘all things’ is in this case, inclusive of the whole of creation without exclusion. As the Nicene Creed insists, ‘all things visible and invisible’.
The creed proceeds, as did the Apostles’ Creed, to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord; observing not that he was born of a virgin by the Spirit, but ‘was incarnate’ of a virgin by the Spirit, ‘and was made a man’. That’s actually about it for His earthly life. The keys to His life on earth are its endpoints: The birth and the death. That matter of being incarnate is an interesting choice of terminology and quite deliberate. He was given bodily form and substance rather than being brought into being by birth. He already had being before becoming incarnate. Yes, this is rather a strange thing for us to conceive of, and we mustn’t suppose that this same idea applies to man generally. It does not, though there have been those false systems of belief that have attempted to posit otherwise.
“He suffered and was buried.” That is also a rather curious turn of phrase deliberately made. I’m actually somewhat surprised to see it left so vague, and this may have given cause for later creeds to adjust the language somewhat. But there is ever a bit of reticence in man when it comes to speaking of death, isn’t there, even when it speaks of death in so transitory and vanquished a perspective. But the message here is that He did indeed suffer in His humiliation and crucifixion. Those lashings that preceded His execution were keenly felt. The nails that pierced hand and foot caused real agony to a real body then hoisted up on a real cross to hang in agony. But that’s not the endpoint here. “The third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father.” Death is experienced, but death is conquered. This death is transcended in resurrection, and resurrection makes way for ascension.
Here, the Creed arrives at what it means to have this one Lord Jesus Christ, for He is enthroned in heaven, at the right hand of the Father Almighty, and His ‘kingdom shall have no end’. This is Who we proclaim as Christians. He is God of God, and Lord of all. And as ruler of all, He has had a hand in the Spirit, “the Lord and Giver of Life,” proceeding. The Creed leaves no room for doubt as to this third Person of the Trinity. He, too, is worshiped and glorified. Further, He is demarked as the one who spoke by the prophets. His Person is left far less developed than the Son, yet His criticality to the life of faith is made plain.
It's actually rather interesting, isn’t it? We tend to leave the matter of Life with Christ, Who says, “I AM the Life.” And He is, of course. But how is it that His Life is transmitted to the believer? In the first instance, we might look to that act of commissioning undertaken by Jesus for His Apostles. “Jesus therefore said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (Jn 20:21-22). This is a scene that takes place between His resurrection and His ascension. But it is something of a clear picture of that ‘proceeding’ of which the Creed speaks. This is not the arrival of the Holy Spirit into earthly being, for He has been present throughout, there at the outset, together with Father and Son as Creation came into being out of the void.
From John’s account, this would appear to have been an earlier event than that commonly associated with the full presence of the Spirit coming to the Apostles that we associate with Acts 2. But there, too, there is that sense of proceeding from Father and Son, and also the significance of marking out this little group as particularly significant. I think it would be quite reasonable to suggest that this marked them out as the effective equivalents of the prophets – men through whom the Holy Spirit spoke.
Finally, the creed turns to the unity and sanctity of the church, and then, to the significance of membership in the same. Let me speak to that first – the unity of the church. The council that produced this creed arose precisely because the unity of the church was being tested, as it would be time and again, and had been already time and again. From the outset, there were those who thought differently. There were those who would keep the church purely Jewish, and no doubt, there were also those who would thoroughly exclude the Jews. How that was to work when the founding fathers, as it were, were themselves Jews to the man, I don’t know, but still, it didn’t take long after their passing for movements of such a mindset to arise amongst the Gentile church.
By the time of this council, which I will consider a bit more in a later section, there were more serious issues stressing the unity of the church. If we wish to look for earthly reasons behind the council, this was a big part of the emperor’s reason for calling upon the clerics to get their act together. If this was to be the state religion, there must be some singular statement of faith that could proclaim said religion. If its own ministers could not agree on what this religion was, well really, what’s the point of it?
But however much the emperor may have been involved in convening that council, the fact remains that it was God’s plan and purpose that called it to order and God’s plan and purpose that oversaw its results, and particularly the development of this new creed, designed as it was to counter the various false understandings of God that had arisen by that point. There were those who questioned the humanity of Christ and those who questioned the divinity of Christ. At this juncture, the larger assault was on His divinity, and so that is more carefully addressed. The sum of it is, for my purpose at any rate, that in order to have a holy, catholic church, it really is rather necessary that we have agreed on the essential being and deity of the church’s God. The Trinity is rendered a necessary belief of the Church, and that includes both the distinction of three Persons and the essential, necessary unity of One God.
This gives me a reasonable point to consider the extent of the power of these creeds. These are not, as we would account the Scriptures, the Word of God. They are not the writings of prophets speaking for the Holy Spirit as He gives utterance. They are not, in that light, binding upon conscience nor upon the practice and liturgy of the Church. They cannot be, for Scripture remains our only rule. But they are nevertheless of great benefit to the Church, for they give definition to those central, backbone beliefs apart from which claims to the mantel of Christian are found to be false claims.
That earlier creed had the benefit of simplicity and brevity. For a populace of limited literacy this was most necessary. They might hear the Scriptures read and expounded upon. They might hear preaching of the Gospels, and might be present to hear the Apostolic Epistles read out; but there were limits, I think, on who could read them for themselves, not to mention limits on access to the written texts. We tend to take both the medium of print and the capacity to read as givens, but they really aren’t now, and they most certainly weren’t then. This was a day when written copies required a human copyist, and the materials required weren’t cheap. You can see clear evidence of this when you find vellums that have been scraped clean and reused. My point is simply this: the idea of a bible in the hands of every believer wasn’t logistically possible, and even if it had been, the Church was drawn largely from the lower ranks of society, and many would have had no benefit from such writings if they had them, for they could not read. So, a simple creed easily memorized was of huge significance.
This creed, being written almost as a test of fitness for the minister, is a bit more developed, less suited to memorization, although not beyond the possibility of memorizing. But the purpose has sharpened. It is here to counteract incursions of false teaching by giving clear definition to true teaching. It is sharpest where it addresses the specifics of the current conflict. As such, it is invaluable in both showing us the shape of Church history, and in defining the bounds of true belief. That boundary which it declares shows its continuity with what precedes it, but we will need to take care that we don’t find in this creed boundaries unintended. As with any historical text, we must have the history in view to properly understand the meaning its authors sought to impart in writing.
d. The Athanasian Creed
[08/17/20]
By the time of the Athanasian Creed, matters had become exceedingly serious. Sharp divisions had arisen in regard to the beliefs of the Church, and it was not at all clear to the eye of flesh that right would in fact prevail. But faith believes; trusts in what is not yet seen, and right did, by the power of God prevail. Athanasius was His chosen man for such a time, and this creed was his man’s chosen message. It makes clear from the outset what is at stake. “Whosever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. […] And the catholic faith is this:” Here, the Trinity is proclaimed explicitly, and set forth in a way leaving no room for doubt. He is “one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” He is distinct in persons but undivided in substance. We might of one essence or being. Father, Son, and Spirit are declared as equal in every regard; all uncreated, all ‘incomprehensible’, which is to say limitless, all eternal, all omnipotent, and all One. “And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” Even the title of Lord, that highest of names, is said to apply equally to all three Persons of the one Trinity.
We arrive at a rather difficult and archaic distinction of Persons. The Father neither made, created, or begotten; the Son not made or created, but begotten; the Spirit, not made, created, or begotten, but proceeding. A brief look around the texts shows that this remained a matter of contention and debate right on into the seventeenth century, and perhaps beyond even that. But the general point is clear enough: He, too, is uncreated, eternal, omnipotent God. The distinctions that pertain to His Person are less clear, but the singularity of essence and substance is clear indeed.
The creed moves on to the incarnation, the humanity of Christ Jesus. He is, true faith confesses, at once both God and Man, being of the substance (the essence) of the Father and therefore eternal, and likewise the substance of His mother, and therefore of the world. In Him we have the perfection of both God and Man in true fleshly form. He is ‘of a reasonable soul and human flesh’. In His divinity He is wholly the Father’s equal, yet in His humanity, He is truly inferior to the Father. Now, to avoid any misconception arising on this point, the creed stresses that He is not two, but one. This was not a shift of natures, the spirit of the divine temporarily taking the form of human flesh, or some phantasm. It’s not a question of possession, as would apply to demons. It is God taking into Himself the manhood of humanity. Athanasius thus rather forcefully reverses the false conception of Jesus as only appearing to be a man, or as being God possessing human flesh. It’s rather as if he had said that God was possessed by human flesh, but that would be a misrepresenting of the point. The two are joined in a unity of person, but in such fashion as the divine and human substance are not mixed.
The sum of this is that His suffering was real. His descent into hell was real. His resurrection was real. It is interesting to me that these confessions refuse to speak of Jesus dying. Yet, without death, how can there be a resurrection? One can understand the reticence, for a God who truly died would be a God who changes, and by my definitions laid out way back at the beginning of this whole effort of laying out my beliefs, therefore not God at all. God is eternal. Being eternal, He cannot cease to be and remain God. What happened there on the cross, when Jesus declared, “It is finished!” must be seen to be something distinct. John writes, in recording that final scene, “And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit” (Jn 19:30). Was He laid in a tomb? Why, yes He was. Was He in that place some three days, wrapped on burial clothes in a dark, sealed cavern? Most assuredly. The physical plant, I think we must acknowledge, particularly having been pierced to the heart by Roman spear, was most assuredly rendered nonfunctional.
The spirit, however, the essence of our Lord continued. Looking more closely, Athanasius does not entirely avoid declaring the death of Jesus, but saves reference to it as the necessary condition of resurrection. He rose the third day, but apart from the clause ‘from the dead’, that could simply have been a coma. The possibility is removed. We proceed to the ascension and the assurance of His final return for judgment.
For the believer, there is the result of all this. When he returns, ‘men shall rise again with their bodies; and shall give account of their own works’. Again, a challenging picture to understand, and the exact nature of those bodies is unclear, but from Paul’s depiction, I would have to say they are distinctly different from those we experience now. But all shall be resurrected bodily, and all shall go into an eternal future: “they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.” The creed closes as it opened: This is the faith. It is either believed unto salvation or departed from and assuring that one cannot be saved.
This is a line in the sand, as we are wont to say. If we have longed for a black and white declaration on matters of belief, this is as close as we are likely to get. And that was exactly the point. Deviate from these statements and you are declaring that whatever it is you believe, it is not Christian faith, but some counterfeit. Cross this line and you have entered into heresy. Mind you, we have to bear in mind that many were just as vehement that Athanasius, by insisting on these beliefs was the one who had entered into heresy, but the Church has held, across the intervening centuries, that Athanasius had the right of it. That, I think, must begin to take us into the subsequent topic of councils, so I will save further thoughts on the matter for that section.
e. Later Confessions and Catechisms
[08/18/20]
As the Church continued to develop, so too did her creeds. I would stress, however, that they developed. They grew. They did not shift wholesale or charge off in new directions. In earlier centuries, the trend continued that as new issues arose which threatened to undermine sound faith with false doctrines, the creeds gave answer in a form both satisfying to the theologians of the day and edifying to the general laity.
Somewhere along the way, it seems the clergy lost sight of their purpose of edification, and ministry devolved for a long season into more a means of keeping the lesser sons of nobility gainfully occupied. The laity suffered once more as sheep without a proper shepherd. Of course, they had their true Shepherd in the Lord, but these hired servants were proving not merely ineffectual but downright detrimental to the flock of Christ. This in due season gave rise to Protestantism.
Protestantism took many forms even at the outset, but for most, the great desire was not to replace the Roman Catholic church, but to reform her. Neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin had in mind to launch a new religion, nor even to depart the Roman Catholic church. They desired to see that church restored to the truths it had always embraced, and to return to the purpose for which it was established: To edify the people and aid their growth in holiness and worship.
If one looks back again at those earliest confessions, it is clear that these were geared to aid the laity in maintaining a sound grip on the fundamentals of faith in the True God. In periods when heresy ran wild, how needful this was. The problem was that over time, power, politics, and wealth became the guiding principals of the church, and the laity were of concern primarily as a means to those ends. Thus arose contrivances such as soliciting donations to ease the grief of the departed in fictional Limbo, and for that matter, the idea of payment for pardon of sins in the living as well, what became known as indulgences.
Coming out of that period into the time of the Reformation, men of Christian conscience – again Luther and Calvin among the leading examples – addressed a laity rather more accomplished as to letters and very much in need of sound teaching and edification. Thus, the later creeds become more detailed, and take more fully the form of catechisms. That term has fallen out of use in Protestant circles, but the principal remains. What, after all, is the ordinary course of Sunday School but a form of catechism?
I think, too, a deep and abiding concern informed the development of these later confessions. Intentional or not, it was becoming clear that reform of the Church from within was not going to be possible. The desire for it simply was not there in the ruling ranks, and thus, if one desired to worship in spirit and in truth, it would be necessary to develop a new system, a new church in which to worship. Now, the church may have been, of necessity, new in her organization, but the Reformers saw need for it to be true too its origins. Those origins were no longer to be found in the practices of Roman Catholicism, but must high back to those beliefs upon which Roman Catholicism itself had once been founded. They looked to the early fathers, and to Augustine particularly, and rediscovered, as it were, the fundamentals of our faith.
Being effectively at war with the Catholic church, and that is not any great embellishment of the reality of events, they therefore took great pains to spell out in detail what they discovered to be the true faith that defines the Church. I say it was a function of being at war, and it certainly was, for the price of their rebellion could easily be their lives. But I think, too, there was a holy concern behind their efforts. It was for them, and really ought to be for us, a fearsome thing to consider departure from the established faith and practice of the church. This was serious business, and if they were wrong, it was of far greater danger to them than any threatenings of excommunication by the pope, for it would be a far worse excommunication they faced: That of God Himself.
I have noted a few times along the way how these earliest documents of the Protestant denominations, though much later developments than the writings of Calvin, Luther, et al, sought very purposefully to express a unity of faith even where distinctions of practice developed. Synods or local control? Baptism at birth or upon mature confession of faith? These were not small matters, but they were not of salvific import. We could add to the list for our own age; from the significant to the trivial. Women in the pulpit or not? Tongues and prophecy or not? Modern forms of music or strictly hymns? Sadly, we can add other raging debates that really ought not to be debates at all. Inerrant, infallible Scripture or just one holy book among many? Sexual liberalism or sanctity of marriage between one physical original male and one physical original female?
The list goes on. And as the list goes on, it becomes needful to revisit once again these confessions and catechisms, not to rescind their teaching, but to expand upon it to reinforce ancient truths and to address modern controversies. The fact remains, however, that no matter how careful the authoring of such documents, they cannot be accounted equal with Scripture. That was perhaps the foundational error that led to Roman Catholicism’s departure from true faith, as it raised the pope’s random edicts to equal status with Scripture, and that, in spite of those edicts being self-contradictory on occasion. When we find the current pope setting up ancient pagan idols in the Vatican, offering worldly philosophies in place of sound Christian doctrine, and seeking common cause with godless heathens and other religions, it is pretty clear that course correction has not been achieved in that ancient church. It is equally clear that for many a branch of a once proud Protestant tree of churches, the same must be said.
It is one thing to say we ought to have unity in the Church, and we certainly ought. This is the encouragement of Scripture itself, as has been seen along the way in these efforts of mine. But unity does not displace devotion to true faith. It must rather be found within devotion to true faith, and that which will not abide in truth must be recognized as outside the Church, whatever label it may apply to itself. Thus it was when the earliest creeds came into being. Thus it continues today. Thus it no doubt shall continue to be until that day when, as every good confession of faith confirms, our Lord returns to judge the quick and the dead.
