Slogans of a Movement: No Creed but Christ

Throughout the past several issues of the Restoration Herald, we have examined the origin and use of many of the slogans that were once very popular in the Restoration Movement. While many of these slogans are seldom used to explain the movement today, there is good reason why they were developed and incorporated as catchphrases for identifying some of the philosophical views of our fellowship of churches. While these slogans were popular phrases used to express the collective thoughts of the Restoration Movement, they were neither creedal statements nor authoritative in nature. In fact, pivotal authority of the movement in its beginning was the Bible with a focus on belief in Christ. With this concluding essay on the slogans of the movement, we will look at the well-known slogan, “No Creed but Christ.”  

Creeds and Authority 

The word creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means “I believe.” Initially a creedal declaration appears to have been little more than a trusted guiding principle or a statement of personal belief. With the onset of the historic creedal pronouncements of Christendom, however, they became something of far greater significance. By the fourth century, creeds became the defining statements of Christian orthodoxy. Those who would not—or could not with a clear conscience—accept the established creeds were deemed heretical. Once Christianity became the exclusive religion of the Roman Empire, these heretics were banished, tortured, or even killed for their refusal to accept these humanly devised formulas of belief and practice. In the centuries that followed the construction of these extra-biblical declarations of faith, the creeds of Christianity grew to such a great significance that even now the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a creed as “a brief authoritative formula of religious belief”i (notice the word authoritative in this definition). 

Among the many influences that led to the emergence of the Second Great Awakening and the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement in America was the anti-authoritarian spirit fostered by the American Revolution. Issues associated with British taxation and mercantilism provoked revolutionary-era colonists to believe they could establish their own national identity without the assistance of a far-off British overlord. Less than two decades later, during the waning years of the eighteenth century, the ferment of that anti-authoritarianism that agitated the revolt against British political rule bled over into the realm of religious thought. Rather than observing denominational lines or the demands of ministers, bishops, and prelates, frontier Americans cast aside their ecclesiastical authorities and defined for themselves the tenets of Christianity as they understood them through their own egalitarian study of Scripture. 

Stone’s Objection to Creeds 

Within such an environment, Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) became a follower of Christ and prepared himself for ministry within the Presbyterian Church. After receiving a license to preach and eventually serving as something of an interim minister with two small Presbyterian churches in north-central Kentucky (the Cane Ridge Church in Bourbon County and the Concord Church in Nicholas County), Stone was invited to be ordained in 1798 and installed as the Presbyterian minister of the united congregations. A pivotal aspect of the Presbyterian ordination at that time, however, was the candidate’s adherence to the denomination’s creed: The Westminster Confession of Faith. 

Through his personal study of Scripture, however, Stone found himself at odds with some of the theological points of the Westminster creed. In his autobiography, Stone wrote, “Knowing that at my ordination I should be required to adopt the Confession of Faith, as the system of doctrines taught in the Bible, I determined to give it a careful examination once more. This was to me almost the beginning of sorrows.” Pulling aside two friends who were leading figures on the ordination committee, Stone expressed his misgivings and suggested that perhaps he should forego the ordination. His colleagues, who tried unsuccessfully to relinquish Stone’s concerns, asked him if there was a degree to which he was willing to accept the creedal statement. “I told them,” Stone wrote, “as far as I saw it consistent with the Word of God.” With an affirmation of the sufficiency of this statement, Stone recounts,  

I went into presbytery, and when the question was proposed, “Do you receive and adopt the Confession of Faith, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Bible?” I answered aloud, so that the whole congregation might hear, “I do, as far as I see it consistent with the word of God.” No objection being made, I was ordained.ii 

In essence, Stone’s statement reflects an objection to the creed and a desire to accept the teachings of the Bible rather than any human-devised codification of authoritative belief. 

Some years later, Stone and a group of fellow ministers were brought up on charges of seceding from the Westminster Confession for their involvement with the great Cane Ridge Revival of 1801. In their Apology for Renouncing the Jurisdiction of the Synod of Kentucky (1804), they explained: 

Through the subtlety of the enemy the Christian church has long been divided into many different sects, and parties. Each have a Creed, Confession of faith, or brief statement of doctrines, as a bond of union among its members, or rather a separating wall between itself, and other societies. This is generally called the standard of such a church. … This sets aside the word of God, or, at least, binds the members of that particular society to understand the Scriptures as stated, and explained in the Creed, on pain of being accounted unsound in the faith, or excommunicated from the church.iii 

A few months later, they disassociated themselves from the Presbyterian church by issuing The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804), which became a foundational document for the Restoration Movement. Amid several clear allusions to anti-creedalism, this document stated, “We will, that the people henceforth take the Bible as the only sure guide to heaven; and as many as are offended with other books, which stand in competition with it, may cast them into the fire if they choose: for it is better to enter into life having one book, than having many to be cast into hell.”iv 

A simple perusal of Stone’s latter sermons and essays contained in The Christian Messenger (1826-1844) reveals a continuing objection to creeds and confessions of faith. For Stone, creeds and confessions of faith were viewed as divisive efforts to replace the simple teachings of the Bible for the basis of our belief in Christ. 

Campbell and Creeds 

While Stone and Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) had several areas of agreement, one of the most profound would have been their consistent objection to the use of creeds. From his earliest days of publishing the Christian Baptist, Campbell clearly maintained an opposition to the use of creeds. In an essay entitled, “Remarks on Confessions of Faith” in the September 1824 edition of the Christian Baptist, Campbell wrote, “I object to all human creeds as terms of communion,” and provided his readers with four reasons for his demurrals. 

First, he explained, is that they insult the “Founder of Christianity.” “For if the New Testament is not so sufficient and suitable as a creed of human contrivance or arrangement, this creed exhibits greater wisdom and benevolence than the New Testament.” 

Secondly, as terms for communion that are “designed to exclude the evil and receive the good,” they foolishly miscalculate their effectiveness. For “men of Christian integrity, will never subscribe or swear to believe that which they do not believe, for the sake of a name, a place, or an office in any church; whereas evil men who want a name, or a place, or an office in any church; will subscribe whether they believe or not.” 

Thirdly, Campbell contends, “They are the sources of division.” 

And, fourthly, he wrote, “They are, in one word, every way wicked—Inasmuch as they have always led to persecution, and have produced enmity, variance, and strife as their legitimate results.” 

“For these and a hundred other reasons,” Campbell went on to state, “I will never subscribe, nor swear to any other confession of my Christian faith, than the New Testament.”v And, as with Stone, Campbell’s resistance to creedalism was a continual expression found in his writings throughout the remainder of his life. 

Conclusion 

For both Stone and Campbell, as well as for most early advocates of the Restoration Movement, a statement of personal faith (such as Isaac Errett’s Our Position, written in 1870) was completely acceptable and understandable. Campbell expressed his own theological views in The Christian System, though he would never define this book as a statement of his theology. Yet as W. E. Garrison wrote in 1900, “the most important and significant point about Alexander Campbell's theology was the use which he made of it. It was not a creed. It was not claimed to be a statement of all truth. It was not the theology of a church. It was simply ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY.”vi 

The great concern these pioneers of the movement had, however, was when human statements of faith became authoritative creeds or covenants demanding uniformity that resulted in the exclusion (and sometimes the execution) of those who could not, generally in good conscience, agree to their creeds. To both Campbell and Stone, the most pivotal and important credo (belief) in all of Christianity must focus on Jesus as Lord and His commands as expressed in Scripture. Considering this, Campbell wrote, “No opinion, creed, or dogma of human invention, shall be with us a term of communion; but obedience to the commands of Jesus will always be, unless we should unhappily renounce the Lord Jesus as our Lord, King, and Lawgiver.”vii