Creeds or Deeds?

As we saw in my last post, institutions (including in some sense the church) are simply formalized sets of relationships. All the phenomena we see happening in institutions, including the church, are to be found in any relationship between human beings. Thus, it is foolish to think that one can avoid problems by eschewing the “institutional church” and creating some freeform church instead. The problems of institutions are simply the problems of interpersonal relationships.

One of the alleged problems of the “institutional church” is that it has put up boundaries called confessions of faith, which determine who is in and who is out. Wouldn’t it be better to be not so exclusive but allow anybody to hold whatever creed they want to? And if we want to draw lines in the sand, wouldn’t it be better to demand a certain set of common behavior rather than a certain set of beliefs?

We ought to begin by acknowledging that all healthy human relationships establish boundaries. Sane people do not stay friends with someone who is continually trying to murder them or burn down their house—or even just trying to make their lives miserable. Of course, we may wish that such people would change their attitudes and be reconciled with us. We need not repay them with the same hatred that they show us, but we still place some distance between them and us in order to keep ourselves safe. Even in good, healthy relationships we try to respect some boundaries. I have great neighbors on either side of me, but there are still fences between their properties and mine. This allows their dogs to have freedom to run around without digging up my garden or yard. The boundaries actually make the experience better for everyone.

It should not be surprising, then, that the Christian church will have to draw certain boundaries. But what should be the basis of those boundaries? Should we ask people to confess a certain set of teachings or should we ask them to behave in a certain way? The second option has become increasingly popular, as people argue that followers of Jesus should imitate His behavior rather than get bogged down in doctrinal disputes. “Deeds, not creeds” has become their motto. But there is a hidden tyranny in drawing the boundaries based on actions. Since no Christian is perfect and each individual struggles with a different set of sins, there is a tendency to draw the lines in such a way that one’s own sinful tendencies are excused while those of others are emphasized. Of course, our Lord established perfection as the only acceptable criterion; we are to be perfectly holy as God is (Matthew 5:48). Drawing the line to favor one set of sins over against another distorts our Lord’s teachings. For this reason, the Christian church has wisely emphasized the habit of repentance rather than the achievement of a certain level of perfection. When it comes to conduct, it is unrepentance (or the concomitant refusal to recognize the difference between right and wrong) that puts one outside the Christian church rather than the committing of any particular sin.

But if repentance is what separates a true Christian from a false one, then a true Christian must possess the sort of knowledge that could lead to repentance. Moreover, those who would teach others what it means to be a Christian must know enough about the truths of God that would lead their flock to repentance. And since Christian repentance also includes faith in Christ as the Savior, Christians (including their pastors) must know who Christ is and what He has done that we might trust in Him. In short, both Christian lay people and their pastors must have some accurate knowledge about Christ’s teachings.

But there is so much to know! The Scriptures are not a small book and it is impossible to plumb their full depths. Moreover, there are often disagreements between Christians as to how the Scriptures are to be interpreted. Who is the hero of the story—the prodigal son or his father? What are we to make of the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-9)? Is Galatians the first epistle of Paul to be written or is it 1 Thessalonians? How are we to understand Paul’s argument in Galatians when compared to the Council in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15? Who are the “superapostles” who opposed Paul in Corinth and what did they teach? What were Luke’s sources that he consulted in writing the gospel? Christians have not come to an agreement on all these questions and many scholars have even changed their minds over the years on these questions. But Christians have understood that disagreement on these and similar questions do not impair fellowship.

That is because creeds and confessions sort out the major questions from the more trivial ones and emphasize the truths that must be held by all Christians and taught by all pastors. The Apostles’ Creed sums up the most important tenets of the Christian faith in a few words. The Nicene Creed adds a more detailed explanation of Christ’s divinity. These creeds, along with the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, have been the basis of instruction for the laity for centuries. The commandments give a sound ethical basis for Christians; the creed outlines the faith; and the Lord’s Prayer sets a pattern for all prayer. Of course, a lay person may well know more than these things and indeed ought to grow in knowledge, but these things are a minimum. Those who refuse to learn them or accept them cannot be numbered among our Lord’s disciples, for they do not keep His word (John 14:23-24).

Pastors, on the other hand, must be held to a higher standard, just as teachers in general are expected to know more than their students. Teachers, after all, have to know not only the subject being taught, but also the common confusions students are likely to have and the means to overcome them. They are not only to know the very basic items, but be able to explain the subject in depth to any perceptive student who asks the harder questions. Therefore, pastors have been asked to pledge to a deeper confession of the faith than lay people have. In the West it began with the Athanasian Creed, but more recently it has included confessions such as the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord. Those who familiarize themselves with them soon realize that they have as their intention how to teach people to know God rightly, to repent and trust in Christ for their salvation, and to grow in godly living. They answer important questions and help pastors to read the Scriptures with an understanding of what matters. But they do not answer every last ethical or exegetical question.

These confessions, then, serve as an appropriate boundary. Those who refuse to repent of their sins and to trust in Christ as the creeds proclaim separate themselves from Christ and His church. Those who refuse to preach Christ as proclaimed in our confessions cannot be permitted to preach in our pulpits or else there could be some real damage done to our souls. To be sure, a person can live and die as a good Christian without having heard of the Apostles’ Creed, just as a pastor may be a genuine Christian without having embraced the Augsburg Confession. But to make sure that future generations know the truth and can preach the truth, creeds and confessions are a real blessing.

The Institutional Church

Many people love to complain about the “institutional church.” They love Jesus. They love the concept of being one of His followers. But they don’t like the notion of organized Christianity or of the structure and rituals that go along with “the church.” They are all for the church as an informal gathering of believers who help each other, but they don’t want to see anything fossilized into the rigid structures called “church” today.

This is in large measure an American perspective, for Americans have been loathe to love any institution, whether it be government or the “ivory tower” of the academy or any other organization. There has been this notion that everything would be all right if we were all allowed to be free individuals interacting with others on an occasional basis. The history of American religion is littered with examples of people turning their backs on organized religion and creating something de novo. It is to be found in the two Great Awakenings, where people turned their backs on historic confessional churches for new denominations. It is even clearer in the various denominations that have arisen on American shores—from the peculiar (such as the Campbellites) to the bizarrely heretical (such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses)—who have written off all previous church history as bunkum and sought to establish a new, purified church, free of all the previous corrupting tendencies of religious life. The pattern continues to this day, with the Emergent Church movement rebelling against the formalization and rigidity of Evangelicalism, which itself had proclaimed to be a liberator of rigid creedal and liturgical churches.

This pattern persists because we Americans prefer real life relationships over institutions, all the while failing to see that institutions are simply a formalized set of relationships. All the evil that is rightly attributed to institutions acting badly can be found in even the most informal of relationships. For example, institutions are known to pass the buck so that no one ends up being accountable, goad its members on to doing evil that none would commit individually, and cover up deplorable evils to preserve its own reputation. Even when not behaving so badly, institutions fall into the trap of maintaining the status quo and encouraging groupthink. But each of these accusations that can be leveled against institutions can also be charged against small, informal relationships. Everybody in a small household is expected to clean up, but nobody does so and instead blames someone else. A few gang members are enough to goad each other on to a life of crime; meanwhile, a mob may be completely disorganized, but can still carry out a lynching that none of its members would do by itself. And the impulse to cover up scandals is not unique to large corporations, churches, or governments; rare is the family that wants to have its dirty linen aired. Moreover, traditionalism is not just the habit of institutions; individuals and families too soon fall into comfortable routines that are only occasionally challenged. Thus, the problems with institutions are those of human relationships in general.

It is naïve then to assume that one can correct institutional problems by abandoning anything that smacks of an institution in the hopes of creating something different. In the end, one would simply be creating what would turn into another institution. Institutional problems are solved by calling people back to the purpose of the institution. A dysfunctional family should not necessarily be abolished; instead, everyone in the family should learn how to do their job better, whether as father, mother, husband, wife, or child, and to do their job in a holy manner. By the same token, when the church struggles as an institution, she can get back on track by recalling her holy calling, not by having her members abolish her or abandon her.

This has the example of the Scriptures behind it. The prophets of the Old Testament excoriated the Israelites who adopted a formalistic or ritualistic approach to the sacrifices. Instead of abolishing the sacrifices, the priesthood, and the temple, they urged the Israelites to do more than go through the motions. In other words, they kept the institutions but challenged them to do more. Our Lord took a similar attitude when He praised the Pharisees for their teaching but warned that His disciples would have to do better than them if they wanted to enter God’s kingdom.

The Lutheran Reformation also proceeded from this same understanding. It did not set out to create a whole new church, but to reform the church as she was by calling her to a more faithful adherence. The Augsburg Confession (especially in Articles 1-21) professed to be teaching no new doctrine and argued that it had church history on its side. It also argued (Articles 22-28) that the Lutheran practice was rooted in a much older and wiser catholic tradition than the Roman practice was. Far from taking an American burn-all-the-churches-down-and-start-over approach, the Lutheran Reformation cherished the church and simply wished to call her back to greater faithfulness.

Yes, the church of today needs renewal. But if we were to look to the approach of the Scriptures—as well as that of the Lutheran Reformation—we would make much better progress than the slash-and-burn method so popular in American Protestantism.