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Must You Affirm the Creeds to Be Christian?

Evangelicals and Catholics often say that rejecting the Nicene and Athanasian creeds means you are not Christian. Is that the Bible’s test?

Bible

They quote this

Bible · Matthew 16:16–17

KJV + NRSVUE

Peter’s confession is the rock — not the Nicene clauses added later.

King James Version

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

NRSVUE

Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.’

How we read it

Peter’s confession is “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Flesh and blood did not reveal it. That is the rock. Nicea is a later attempt to fence that confession in Greek philosophy. We take Peter’s sentence as the password. Creeds can become “teaching for doctrine the commandments of men” (Matt 15:9).

The Bible answers

Bible · Acts 11:26

KJV + NRSVUE

Disciples were called Christians at Antioch. No creed had been written.

King James Version

And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

NRSVUE

and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians.’

Bible · Matthew 15:9

KJV + NRSVUE

Teaching for doctrine the commandments of men is the warning. Creeds can become that.

King James Version

But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

NRSVUE

in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.

Book of Mormon

Also restored

Joseph Smith—History 1:19

The creeds were the Lord’s complaint. That is a New Testament complaint.

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’

Articles of Faith 1:1, 4

Father, Son, Holy Ghost; faith, repentance, baptism. That is the primitive faith.

We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost… We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Ancient witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.

The Didache; earliest baptismal confessions

The oldest Christian manuals confess Father, Son, and Spirit and require repentance, baptism, and a holy life. They do not recast those Three as one undivided, unembodied substance.

Creeds can be useful fences. They become a problem when they are made the definition of the word the Bible already defined. Acts 11, 1 John 4, and Romans 10:9 do not say ‘whosoever shall confess the homoousion.’ They say Jesus is Lord, raised from the dead, come in the flesh.

Faithful answers

Gospel Topics

Are Mormons Christian?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We are not a creedal church. We are a New Testament church restored. Joseph’s First Vision rejected the creeds as commandments of men — the same charge Jesus made in Matthew 15. That is not hatred of other Christians. It is a claim about authority: God did not hand the definition of His Son to a fourth-century imperial council. By Peter’s confession, by John’s test, by the name we take every week at the sacrament table, we are Christians. Critics who move the goalposts to 325 A.D. are admitting the New Testament was not enough for their argument.

Christian is a first-century word. Using a fourth-century creed as the gate is a later political decision, not exegesis.

  • Romans 10:9: confess Jesus as Lord and believe God raised Him. We do.
  • 1 John 4:2: confess Christ come in the flesh. The Book of Mormon is stubborn about the wounds.
  • The Athanasian Creed anathematizes anyone who does not keep it whole. That is a later church claiming a power the apostles did not exercise in those words.
  • Disagreeing with Nicea puts us with a long list of Christians who also found homoousios unbiblical. It does not put us with people who deny Jesus.
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Further reading

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