Creeds and confessions: A biblical basis

Creeds and confessions have a deep legacy in church history. Across two thousand years, we can track how the church has sought to guard apostolic teaching, particularly in seasons when heresy demanded that believers articulate their convictions with precision and clarity. But historical pattern, however useful, does not establish biblical warrant. The question that must be answered is, does the Bible offer any basis for creeds and confessions?

A pattern rather than a command

There is no eleventh commandment reading, “You shall write creeds and confessions.” Nor is there a prohibition against doing so. In this sense, creeds occupy a category similar to a church covenant: Nothing in Scripture explicitly mandates such a document, yet a covenant summarises, in the church’s own words, what Scripture teaches a member’s life should look like. Creeds and confessions function the same way—as summaries of a larger body of biblical teaching, not additions to it.

This has obvious practical value. Rather than answering “what do you believe?” by handing someone a Bible, a creed offers a concise, faithful summary, which exists not in contradiction to Scripture but in service of it.

We might also build an argument from the way that God inspired Scripture. While creeds do not rise to the same level of Scripture, it is significant that God instructed his truth to be written rather than left to oral tradition or memory. This lends some support to the practice of recording what we believe.

Scripture seems to recognise a fixed standard of teaching. Paul writes about “the standard of teaching to which you were committed” (Romans 6:17) and of “the pattern of the sound words” (2 Timothy 1:13). This appears to assume a fixed, transmissible standard of teaching that could be taught and to which believers could submit.

While the words “creed” and “confession” never appear in Scripture (at least in the sense in which we are using them here), the Bible itself repeatedly commends the use of fixed, authoritative summaries of doctrine. Writing and using creeds is not a departure from biblical religion but an outworking of it.

The Old Testament pattern

The Shema is perhaps the most famous creed in the Old Testament: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:3–4). Jesus cited this text when he was asked about the greatest command. It assumes an essentially creedal form—a fixed, memorable articulation of belief. Verse 4 is not a statement about the Trinity but about the exclusivity of Israel’s worship: There is only one God, who alone may be worshipped. From that confession flows an ethical demand: love expressed with the whole heart, soul, and might.

The text continues:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

(Deuteronomy 6:6–8)

The words were meant to be recited, taught, and kept constantly in mind. This is far more than a general encouragement to “know God.” It is a command to fix specific words in the heart and to hand them on.

We find this in practice in Exodus 12:26–27. There, during the institution of Passover, Moses gave this instruction: “And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’”

Here God, through Moses, commands that the Passover ritual be accompanied by an explanation, in words, of what it means. While Scripture offers the substance rather than a rigid script, and while parents therefore had some liberty in how to implement this instruction, the substance itself was fixed and must be passed on. Parents must not offer their own interpretation of historical events but faithfully recount what actually happened.

These two text point to the necessity of words to articulate belief. Shared faith is not merely a shared feeling but shared, fixed content that can be spoken, taught, and confirmed.

Parents must remember this as they raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Creeds and confessions (and, indeed, catechisms) serve that responsibility practically. They guard against a constant churn of novel ideas, and equip parents who may not have the theological training to construct careful doctrinal explanations from scratch. A good catechism functions, in effect, as a family Bible lesson already worked out—linked to Scripture, ready to be read, explained, and kept in front of children. These reinforce at home what is taught at church, and vice versa.

The New Testament pattern

At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples how people were identifying him. After they answered with a variety of proposals, he pressed them personally: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Peter did not express personal feelings about Christ’s significance or articulate a vague sense of belief. He gave a fixed, declarative confession—clear, specific, and stateable.

Romans 10:8–10 hold confession and belief together: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Heart belief and oral confession go together. The confession “Jesus is Lord” is not just any form of words but a specific declaration representing what the confessor believes inwardly. Confession, in this sense, means shared acknowledgement. To confess with others is to declare “We affirm the same truth.” In one sense, confession is an acknowledgement of sin; here, it is an acknowledgement of truth about Jesus Christ.

First Corinthians 8:6 articulates words similar to the Shema. In the context of food offered to idols, Paul writes, “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

“For us” signals that this was not merely Paul’s private opinion but the church’s shared confession. The formulation intentionally echoes Deuteronomy 6:4. Paul was raised reciting the Shema, and here he restates Israel’s confession of the one God while incorporating Jesus Christ as the one Lord through whom all things exist. He is not proposing two gods but expanding Israel’s confession to its fuller, Christ-centred shape, while retaining its essential exclusivity. This pattern recurs elsewhere in Paul. He writes of one body and one bread (1 Corinthians 10), and of one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (Ephesians 4). The confession is corporate, not individualistic. If believers belong to one body, they need one confession, because a shared identity requires a shared, statable content. A Roman Catholic, an Eastern Orthodox believer, and a Dutch Reformed believer might all say they believe “the Bible,” but what they believe about God, his works, and his nature differs. Unity requires more precision than a shared appeal to the same book; it requires agreement on interpretation.

In his reiteration of his gospel articulation to the saints in Corinth, Paul speaks of what he had “received” and “delivered” (1 Corinthians 15:1–4). This language is significant. Paul passed on something he had received—either directly from Christ, from his time being taught following his conversion, or from the other apostles. Regardless, he had received fixed content, from those who came before, and delivered it to those who come after. This is precisely how creeds and confessions function intergenerationally. No believer today received the gospel directly from Christ; we all received it from someone who stewarded and transmitted it “in accordance with the Scriptures.”

Several other New Testament texts are written in a creedal form. The most basic creed is simply, “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3). Philippians 2:5–11 appear to be the words of an early Christ-hymn, tracing Christ’s descent from the glory of heaven to the humility of a servant’s death on the cross, and his subsequent ascent. Colossians 1:15–20 is a dense, exalted description of Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” First Timothy 3:16 might be the most creedal-like declaration of the person and work of Christ:

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.

Once again the word “confess” appears, and once again the pattern of descent and ascent is visible: Christ takes on flesh, is proclaimed and believed, and is taken up in glory.

The pattern of sound words

Paul’s instruction to Timothy to “follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me” is a direct command, given to Timothy and, by implication, to the church of which he was a shepherd. Understanding what it means to “follow the pattern of sound words” is important.

The Greek word translated “pattern” carries the idea of an impression left by pressing something into a soft material, like fingers pressed into clay, or the idea of a stencil—something fixed, according to which further copies are drawn.

The pattern is not equivalent to “the sound words” themselves. Paul does not simply say “follow the word” but “the pattern of sound words.” The pattern is a distilled and structured form drawn from the sound words. Scripture is the original; the pattern is a faithful summary, derived from Scripture, answerable to Scripture, but not itself Scripture. The pattern is dependent on the sound words; it is not another norm alongside Scripture.

A pattern, by its nature, is formative: If we are shaped by a wrong pattern, it will deform us. This is precisely why the pattern must submit to Scripture and be tested against it continually. If the words being taught do not line up with the biblical stencil, they are not “sound words” at all, whatever they are called.

This is why the church needs preachers, exposition, biblical theology, and interpretation, rather than being confined to bare recitation of Bible verses without explanation. Systematic and biblical theology draw a pattern from Scripture to apply it. This must be done carefully and in submission to the text.

Conclusion

Across both Testaments, a consistent thread emerges. From the Shema’s fixed confession of the one God, to the Passover’s mandated explanation, to Peter’s declaration at Caesarea Philippi, to Paul’s confessional formulas in Romans, Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Pastoral Epistles, Scripture time and again commends the fixing of belief into clear, transmissible, authoritative words. The church did not invent this practice out of historical convenience; it inherited the impulse from Scripture itself. Creeds and confessions—rightly formed and continually tested against the Bible—are not a departure from biblical religion but one of its outworkings.