Not every one. Some look purely toward the authority and teaching of men.
Then they proceed to either add to it or subtract from it. E.g., the definition of a Christian is not found in any one verse, or subset of verses. It is found by systematically studying and interpreting the entire Bible within a comprehensive framework.
You'll notice I said "Here is ONE biblical definition of a Christian.". If you want me to systematically go through scripture to support what a Christian is than I'm willing to do that. But nowhere will I find that belief in a 4th century creed is a requirement.
Likewise, the nature of the Godhead, the Trinity, and the person and work of Jesus Christ were all worked out by the early church after coming together and seeking the mind of the Holy Spirit as given to the church in Holy Writ.
I don't dispute that this was "worked out" by the traditional early church. What's in dispute is that they worked it out correctly and biblically.
Every sort of heresy, from various forms of Arianism to modalism to Pelagianism, denies some portion of the Bible when it is properly interpreted within the context of the rest of the Bible.
I've noticed that your defense or attack of the subject of this article and the side subject of the trinity involve very little substance, scriptural or otherwise. Your primary tactic seems to be to attack the messengers. You've of course acknowledged that it's difficult to debate someone who questions tradition on these matters so I can sort of understand your tactic.
The creeds serve to state in a comprehensive way what the Bible teaches. They do not share the same authority as the Bible, but tell us plainly what is essential for one to be called a Christian.
If the writings in scripture with the guidance of the holy spirit aren't enough to convict you you're a Christian, then perhaps you're better off sticking with man made creeds.
If you do not believe in the concept of the Trinity as stated in the Bible and articulated by the early church you are not a Christian, pure and simple. You are a heretic.
I'm surely not a traditional Christian. However I am Christ's and that's good enough for me and him.
August 29, 2006 by Jon Blevins.
The biggest problem with the “No creed but Christ” stance can be summed up in a simple formula. No Creeds = Yes Heresy. It’s not heretical to disdain creeds, but it does open the door to any abberant theological view that can be supported by scriptural language. There is a dangerous breadth in our willingness to accept anything that sounds biblical as long as it doesn’t tread on our pet dogmas. Creeds are essential because they expose the errors of false teachers by means of the clarification and condensation of truth. To this end, extra-biblical language is necessary and right.
False teachers are clever. They have a never-ending supply of rhetoric with which to avoid saying something that could get them in trouble while teaching principles that run wholly opposite to scripture. They talk out of both sides of their mouth. For example, a certain liberal pastor was asked point-blank “Do you believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus?” His answer? “Yes, I do.” His meaning? [Clarified in an Easter sermon later that year.] “It is not necessary for us to believe the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, but to understand that by Jesus’ ‘resurrection’ the New Testament affirms that Christ’s teachings will live on.” Here is the fruit of our acceptance of linguistic and doctrinal ambiguity: Marcus Borg: the “Christian” scholar who doesn’t believe the resurrection, Robert Jensen: the “Christian” who doesn’t believe in God.
The Necessity of Creeds Proven By History
The council of Nicea met to evaluate the teachings of Arius. Their response was not merely to rattle off a list of scriptures that refuted the early heretic. Rather, they drafted a statement (a creed) which included necessary extra-biblical language. They were required to clarify the biblical teaching on certain points because the heretical teachings of Arius were founded upon a turn-of-phrase.
The First Council of Nicaea in 325 debated the terms homoousios and homoiousios. The word homoousios means “same substance”, whereas the word homoiousios means “similar substance”. The council affirmed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Godhead) are of the homoousious (same substance). This is the source of the English idiom “differ not by one iota.” Note that the words homoousios and homoiousios differ only by one ‘i’ (or the Greek letter iota). (Wikipedia)Martin Luther, in his German translation of the New Testament, inserted the German word allein (”alone”) after “faith” in Romans 3:28, which reads “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Why did he do this? To clarify the apostle’s point that salvation is by faith, not by works. The Catholic church also affirms that “one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law”, but by this they mean that faith gives one the ability to do those works which are necessary to be saved. The addition of the word “alone” served as a denial of the Roman Catholic understanding of justification.
The fairly recent Evangelicals and Catholics Together document states, “We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ.” This is biblical language. The Roman Catholic does not deny the words of Ephesians 2:8-9, he merely understands them in an unscriptural way. Both evangelicals and Catholics can say “we are justified by grace through faith” and mean totally different things. The protestant means by this “By faith in Christ, I am justified by His work, not my own.” The Catholic means “By faith I am given strength to accomplish my own salvation through good works.” The difference is huge, but the words are the same. Luther therefore wanted it to be clear that salvation is by “faith alone” and not by “works produced by faith”.
The Necessity of Creeds Proven By the Inadequacy of Anti-Confessionalism
The Restoration Movement falls into the trap of doctrinal ambiguity when it becomes necessary to use extra-biblical terms such as “Trinity”. Because of our anti-creedal stance, there is no formal consensus among our fellowship regarding the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. Alexander Campbell struggled in his writing and thinking to explain the doctrine of the Trinity in purely scriptural terminology. He failed. He worked through many different views and at the time of his death, he had arrived at a muddled variant of modalism. For many of us, it is nothing more than pride in our own intellectual abilities and over-confidence in the tradition that tells us we should have “No creed but Christ” that leads us into heresy. Why should any Christian, when confronted with the teaching of scripture, the Nicean & Athanasian creeds and the testimony of two millenia of Trinitarian orthodoxy, have to reexamine and redefine this issue? And yet we do… individually and corporately… again and again and again… rehashing and revisiting the same ancient controversies and heresies on what ought to be a foundational, unifying doctrine!
The Oneness Pentecostals have followed this same “No creed but Christ” will-o’-the-wisp down the road to full-blown heresy. They declare that “Jesus is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. It’s modalism all over again. They see speaking in tongues and declare them necessary for salvation. They see baptism and turn it into a magical formula for salvation. They declare physical healing, not love and good works, to be the fruit of faith. Some of them see snake-handling and poison-drinking in the Bible and declare these to be the signs of the true faithful. This is precisely what happens when there is no clarification of essential doctrine. When our standard for orthodoxy is whether or not a text can be spun a certain way, we have essentially abandoned the faith.
A Call to Orthodoxy
In closing, I want to share with you how one individual has summed up the Church of Christ. Here’s a man on the outside looking in. What does he see?
Classic Campbellite theology…. These folks have borrowed Pelagianism’s denial of original sin, mixed it with baptismal regeneration, anathematized everyone outside of their circle of Campbellite congregations, declared human merit necessary for salvation–and yet they claim they have no creed but Christ.He sees only the ways in which we have broken away from historical orthodoxy and rehashed long-settled controversies. To men like him, whatever good our fellowship may have is lost in the shadows of ambiguity and unorthodoxy that cover much of our doctrine. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Perhaps it’s time we start learning from Christian history instead of trying to ignore it.