Who said anything about following creeds and not the Bible? I have to concur with needlenose (great post n_n, BTW!) - the creeds and confessions are a useful means of codifying and focusing in on key Biblical doctrines, and by extension are very useful in matters of church membership (covenants) or forming definitions of heresy. I would never suggest they are a substitute for Scripture, nor would I suffer accusations that they are fabrications of doctrine. Creeds are excellent summaries of where Scripture speaks to certain subjects, and exist as historic documents as to who took what side in prior ecclesiastical/doctrinal disputes. IMO they were wisely formed to "redeem the time" (Eph. 5:16) when testing or investigating the confessions of a professing believer.
A refusal to use a creed/confession/doctrinal statement of some kind, means that every time you want to investigate a brother's doctrine you must go through the Bible with that individual - all of it - and see how they agree with your reading, point-for-point, of:
66 books
1,189 chapters
31,373 verses
775,693 words
...in the Authorized Version, of course. Will they agree with your beliefs and doctrines point-for-point? How much error will you permit, before separating yourself from them? By refusing to profess/acknowledge a creed, or publish/profess an "articles of faith" / "doctrinal statement", the believer and his/her church functionally accomplishes five things:
- rejecting a priori every prior study and/or codification of doctrine formulated by any church body at every point in church history.
- practicing (if not outright believing and teaching) that Wisdom ended when special revelation and supernatural gifts did, dismissing any wisdom acquired by any bible-believing Christian in church history, contrary to Proverbs 2:6-9,
- allowing minor points of doctrine (eschatology, worship forms and practices, ecclesiastical government forms, etc) to be granted equal status with major points of doctrine (the Trinity, nature of salvation, etc),
- leave the door open for doctrinal stances to shift unknowingly from moment to moment, congregation to congregation, pastor to pastor, or even from week to week,
- willfully sequesters yourself from examination and correction by any congregation, visitors, friends, fellow believers and unbelievers, preventing all from discovering your full doctrinal beliefs without forcing a long, arduous and mandatory investigation.
That should be framed and hung, brother.
Just about any church has "creeds" in some sort or fashion. Whenever we've investigated churches to attend we often review their "statement of faith". These are nothing other than a simplified "creed". I'm sure Full Court's church has a statement of faith.
The problem today is that many of these "statement of faith" are so wide and so loose they don't mean a whole heck of a lot in trying to figure out what a church believes. I would suggest that FC read through the London Baptist Confession of Faith, a creed that is just about forgotten by the Baptists.