You Better Believe It

Crisis of Confidence: 
Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity
by carl r. trueman
crossway, 216 pages, $27.99

The Nicene Creed:
A Scriptural, Historical, and Theological Commentary
by jared ortiz and daniel a. keating
baker academic, 240 pages, $24.99

Most of us assume that the core doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are as settled for the evangelical churches as they have been for the mainstream of orthodox Christianity since the fourth century. But is this a safe assumption? On June 11, the evangelical theologian William Lane Craig tweeted:

As a Protestant who believes that Scripture alone is our ultimate and final authority, I think even the statements of ecumenical councils have to be brought before Scripture, and I see nothing in Scripture that warrants saying that Christ has two wills.

Craig has explained that he is a monothelite who believes that will is a function of a person, not a ­nature.

In addition to outright denials of classic orthodoxy, one can point to many sloppy formulations of trinitarian doctrine. In 2021, in a case I have discussed before in these ­pages (“The Decline of Nicene Orthodoxy,” January 2022), it emerged that the then-president of the Southern Baptist Convention led a church whose website included a doctrinal statement referring to the three “parts” of God. One might ­also mention the rejection of the doctrine of eternal generation by some evangelicals and the dangerous talk of “eternal functional subordination” of the Son. The prevalence of social trinitarianism and the ­denial of metaphysical attributes such as immutability, simplicity, and impassibility is also widespread among contemporary evangelicals.

So the relationship of evangelicalism to creedal orthodoxy is complicated, to say the least. In June, some delegates at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention proposed adding the Nicene Creed to the SBC’s statement of belief. The change may go through; but one prominent figure, SBC presidential candidate David Allen, cautioned that though the Nicene Creed “generally is a very good creed,” it has “a couple issues of wording.”

Contemporary evang­elicalism originated as a reaction against the rise of theological liberalism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Then called fundamentalism, it emphasized such fundamentals of the faith as the inerrancy of Scripture and the ­reality of miracles, as well as the virgin birth, atoning death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Most denominations in North America split during the early twentieth century, producing breakaway groups that were often decentralized and less self-consciously creedal and confessional. Many independent Bible churches used brief statements of faith designed to include the denominationally homeless. The assumption was that as long as liberal deviations from biblical teaching were opposed and biblical authority upheld, all would be well. In the first few decades, fundamentalism—which came to be known as evangelicalism after World War II—took for granted the trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy summarized in the Creed. As biblicism took hold of the evangelical mind, the assumption was that preaching the Bible would suffice to preserve orthodoxy.

The evangelical reaction against theological liberalism continues to echo. Today, many evangelicals have come to associate the creeds with failed liberal denominations. The denominations that went liberal in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries officially confessed the creeds, but nevertheless departed from orthodoxy. So, the fundamentalists concluded that creeds are ineffective in maintaining orthodoxy and are thus irrelevant. Increasingly, the ecumenical creeds of the first five centuries have receded into the rearview mirror, and the confessional theology of the post-­Reformation Protestant churches have faded from the memory of evangelical theologians.

The biblicism on which evangelicals relied, however, did not protect their churches from absorbing bad metaphysical ideas from the surrounding culture. For instance, as evangelical graduate students entered secular and liberal doctoral programs to obtain PhDs in biblical studies, they adopted methodological naturalism—while attempting to hold to a belief in the supernatural. But methodological naturalism led the discipline of biblical studies in the twentieth century to focus exclusively on human authorial intent. The idea of divine authorial intent, which for the Fathers and medieval doctors had been the primary and authoritative meaning of the text, was mostly lost from view in academic scholarship. Many evangelical biblical studies professors lacked sufficient historical awareness to realize that this manner of reading the ­Bible had, in past centuries, produced Arian and Socinian readings of biblical texts and undermined creedal orthodoxy. This approach may have preserved inerrancy in the modern context, but it was a departure from the approach to biblical interpretation that had produced the creeds.

The evangelicals were right about one thing: The denial of the supernatural by nineteenth-century theological liberals had led to the loss of basic Christological orthodoxy. By the middle of the twentieth century, mainline Protestantism was a theological mess. Then the numerical decline began. In the 1950s, more than half of all Americans belonged to one of the seven mainline Protestant denominations; by 2023, less than 10 percent did. Theological orthodoxy went first; the pews ­emptied in due course.

Meanwhile, evangelicalism became the new mainline, as refugees from heresy-embracing mainline churches sought a home. By the early 1990s, 30 percent of the American population attended an evangelical church. But what will keep evangelicalism from following the pattern of the old mainline, first abandoning orthodoxy and then being abandoned by its members? As of last year, the percentage of Americans attending an evangelical church had dropped to 17 percent.

It is probably too late to turn the good ship Evangelicalism around. Soon the only Protestant churches holding to historic Christian orthodoxy will be those that hold tenaciously to the ecumenical creeds of the first five centuries and adopt the Protestant confessions composed in the post-Reformation period before the acids of Enlightenment rationalism and philosophical naturalism were abroad. Such churches may be small, but at least they will keep the faith through the coming dark ages. Churches with no memory of historical creeds and confessions will be absorbed into neo-pagan, post-Christian “spirituality” and lose their Christian character.

It is for this situation that Carl R. Trueman has written Crisis of Confidence. This book is a reprint of Trueman’s 2012 book, The Creedal Imperative, with a new introduction situating the book in the contemporary context. Trueman argues that holding to long, detailed ­confessions of faith underscores the Church’s central message that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The claim of an unchanging message is itself a serious challenge to the essence of modernity, the dogma that the individual is free to choose for himself what to value. The idea of a church that guides and governs its preaching with doctrines from the seventeenth century, formulated on the basis of a tradition stretching back to the Church Fathers and their interpretation of the Bible, is the very antithesis of modernity. It is so crazy that it just might work.

Trueman lays down four principles. First, human beings “are not free, autonomous creatures defined by external relationships to God and each other.” Rather, we are created in the image of God: Our identity is a gift, not a choice. Second, “the past is important and has things of positive relevance to teach us.” Creeds transmit truth from generation to generation. Third, “language must be an appropriate vehicle for the stable transmission of truth across time and geographical space.” Fourth, “There must be a body or an institution that can authoritatively compose and enforce creeds and confessions.” This body is the Church. In modernity each person is his own church, which amounts to having no church at all.

In discussing the history of the creeds, Trueman argues for their practical inevitability, whether formal or informal. We need norms, expressed in the creeds, in order to determine what counts as genuine biblical teaching. He then argues for the superiority of a written, thought-out creed to an informal, presumed one. He turns to the classical Protestant confessions and shows that they depend on and presuppose the patristic, creedal tradition. He stresses that confessionalism is a matter of the head as well as the heart. Liturgy, for instance, can be enriched by the incorporation of the creeds and confessions. Speaking truthfully—and precisely—about the nature of God, creation, incarnation, salvation, and our Lord’s return allows us to put on the mind of Christ.

How, then, should the Nicene Creed be made accessible to students, pastors, worship leaders, and lay people? A new commentary from Jared ­Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating is, for the most part, a fine example of how to do it. Though academic resources for scholars on the creeds are abundant, books that make the fruit of such scholarship accessible to lay readers are less common. Those that do exist tend to adopt a devotional or sermonic tone and leave out the historical and linguistic information that could help people come to grips with the Creed as a historical document. The Nicene Creed strikes an excellent balance between providing historical and theological detail to help readers understand the Nicene Creed and showing how powerfully the Creed speaks to the existential issues we confront.

Given that next year is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of ­Nicaea, I hope to see the publication of more resources on the entire creedal tradition. I especially hope to see a book that is much like this one, but that identifies creedal orthodoxy more closely with Scripture. Ortiz and Keating follow historians such as Gerhard May who assert that the doctrine of creatioex nihilo is not taught in Scripture and dates from the second or third century. This view has its roots in nineteenth-century German higher criticism, which treated Genesis as a myth in the context of other ancient Near Eastern myths, none of which knew anything of a creation out of nothing. Classical Christian orthodoxy, however, has seen Genesis as correcting the pagan myths on this point and has understood the doctrine of creatioex nihilo to be biblical in origin. Thomas ­Aquinas held that the doctrine cannot be known by reason, but is held because of special revelation.

It is unfortunate that Ortiz and Keating have allowed higher criticism to lure them into saying that creatioex nihilo is not taught in Scripture. Not only do conservative Protestants reject this conclusion; the Council Fathers at Chalcedon in 451 explicitly did as well. They state that the two-natures doctrine they teach is taught in the Old and New Testaments. Many today fail to notice the force of this claim: Chalcedonian Christology claims to be true because it is based on Scripture. In my estimation, this book needs to be more open to the patristic way of interpreting the Bible and less dependent on the modern, liberal, Protestant, higher-critical approach.

Some wag has said that “the largest liberal Protestant denomination in the world today can be found within the Roman Catholic Church.” Obviously, not all Roman Catholic theologians adopt the higher-critical approach. But many, like Ortiz and Keating, seem to me insufficiently critical of it. A better approach to Scripture would be to embrace the historic fourfold sense articulated by Thomas ­Aquinas as he summed up the tradition of biblical interpretation that produced the Creed. This approach would allow them to be clear that the Creed is the true meaning of Scripture, rather than a later development in doctrine.

As a conservative Protestant, I do not see a conflict between the creeds and the principle of sola scriptura, precisely because I believe that the creedal tradition represents the true interpretation of what God teaches in the Bible. This is why Athanasius was able to stand against the world in 360 when an Arian council supported by an Arian emperor asserted error. In his Orations Against the Arians, ­Athanasius refutes false teaching and sustains Nicene orthodoxy with detailed and extensive exegetical arguments. His argument is that “begotten, not made” is a necessary affirmation if we are to read rightly the Bible’s entire testimony about the Son of God. If we fail to do so, we make a hash of Scripture.

Growth in understanding and correction of wrong interpretations are possible, but they have limits. The reason the Nicene Creed needs to be recovered by evangelicals is not merely that it is venerable or widespread or profound. It needs to be recovered because it can be an anchor for a drifting tradition. It contains the true interpretation of the Bible and therefore is of permanent value to a church that confesses scriptural inspiration and authority.

The future of ecumenism is not liberal Roman Catholics and liberal Protestants accommodating modernity together. It is conservative Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants clarifying where they stand together against modernity, while honestly disagreeing on issues relating to sacraments, ecclesiology, Mary, the papacy, and the application of salvation to the believer. These are not small matters, and dialogue will no doubt be difficult. But as we stand together on the trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy defined in the ecumenical creeds, this shared witness to the truth is no small matter either.

Craig A. Carter is research professor of theology at Tyndale University in Toronto.

Image provided by picryl, public domain. Image cropped.