In 1833 the Congregational Union published a Declaration or Confession of Faith, Church Order and Discipline. It was prepared by Dr George Redford of Worcester, and was presented, not as a scholastic or critical confession of faith, but merely such a statement as any intelligent member of the body might offer as containing its leading principles. It deals with the Bible as the final appeal in controversy, the doctrines of God, man, sin, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, “both the Son of man and the Son of God,” the work of the Holy Spirit, justification by faith, the perpetual obligation of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, final judgment, the law of Christian fellowship. The same principles have been lucidly stated in the Evangelical Free Church catechism.
6. Confessions in the Eastern Orthodox Church.—The Eastern Church has no general doctrinal tests beyond the Nicene Creed, but from time to time synods have approved expositions of the faith such as the Athanasian Creed Greek church. (without the words “And the Son”), and the Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church. This was the work of Petrus Mogilas, metropolitan of Kiev, and other theologians. It was written in 1640 in Russian, was translated into Greek, and approved by the council of Jassy and the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. It was affirmed by the council of Jerusalem in 1672, which also affirmed the Confession of Dositheus, patriarch of Jerusalem. Both of these confessions were drawn up to confute the teaching of a remarkable man who had been patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Lucar. He was a student of Western theology, a correspondent of Archbishop Laud, and had travelled in Germany and Switzerland. In 1629 he published a confession in which he attempted to incorporate ideas of the reformers while preserving the leading ideas of Eastern traditional theology. The controversy chiefly turned on the question of the necessity of episcopacy. Dositheus taught that the existence of bishops is as necessary to the Church as “breath to a man and the sun to the world.” Christ is the universal and perpetual Head of the Church, but he exercises his rule by means of “the holy Fathers,” that is, the bishops whom the Holy Ghost has appointed to be in charge of local churches.
Mention may also be made of the longer catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Church compiled by Philaret, metropolitan of Moscow, revised and adopted by the Russian Holy Synod in 1839. The Church is defined as “a divinely-instituted community of men, united by the orthodox faith, the law of God, the hierarchy and the sacraments.”
7. Roman Catholic Formularies.—For our present purpose the distinctive features of Roman Catholicism may be said to be summed up in the decrees of the council of Trent and the creed of Pope Pius IV. The council sat at intervals Roman Catholic. from 1545-1563, but there was a marked divergence between the opinions advocated by prominent members of the council and its final decrees. Cardinal Pole had to leave the council because he advocated the doctrine of justification by faith. Even at the later sessions the cardinal of Lorraine with the French prelates supported the German representatives in requests for the cup for the laity, the permission of the marriage of priests, and the revision of the breviary. Finally the decisions of the council were promulgated in a declaration of XII. articles, usually called the Creed of Pius IV., which reaffirmed the Nicene Creed, and dealt with the preservation of the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures “according to the sense which our Holy Mother Church has held,” the seven sacraments, the offering of the mass, transubstantiation, purgatory, the veneration of saints, relics, images, the efficacy of indulgences, the supremacy of the Roman Church and of the bishop of Rome as vicar of Christ. To this summary of doctrine should be added the dogmas of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin declared in 1854, and of papal infallibility decreed by the Vatican council of 1870.
Conclusion.—In this survey of Christian confessions it has been impossible to do more than barely name many which deserve discussion. This is a subject which has grown in importance and is likely to grow further. The very intensity of that phase of modern thought which declaims fervently against all creeds, and would maintain what George Eliot called “the right of the individual to general haziness,” is likely to draw all Christian thinkers nearer to one another in sympathy through acceptance of the Apostles’ Creed as the common basis of Christian thought. In the words of Hilary of Poitiers, “Faith gathers strength through opposition.”
The question at once arises. Can the simple historic faith be maintained without adding theological interpretations, those arid wastes of dogma in which the springs of faith and reverence run dry? The answer is No. We cannot ask to be as if through nineteen centuries no one had ever asked a question about the relation of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Father and the Holy Spirit. If we could come back to the Bible and use biblical terms only, as Cyril of Jerusalem wished in his early days, we know from experience that the old errors would reappear in the form of new questions, and that we should have to pass through the dreary wilderness of controversy from implicit to explicit dogma, from “I believe that Jesus is the Lord” to the confession that the Only Begotten Son is “of one substance with the Father.” In the words of Hilary again:
“Faithful souls would be contented with the word of God which bids us: ‘Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ But also we are drawn by the faults of our heretical opponents to do things unlawful, to scale heights inaccessible, to speak out what is unspeakable, to presume where we ought not. And whereas it is by faith alone that we should worship the Father and reverence the Son, and be filled with the Spirit, we are now obliged to strain our weak human language in the utterance of things beyond its scope; forced into this evil procedure by the evil procedure of our foes. Hence what should be matter of silent religious meditation must now needs be imperilled by exposition in words.”
The province of reverent theology is to aid accurate thinking by the use of metaphysical or psychological terms. Its definitions are no more an end in themselves than an analysis of good drinking water, which by itself leaves us thirsty but encourages us to drink. So the Nicene Creed is the analysis of the river of the water of life of which the Sermon on the Mount is a description, flowing on from age to age, freely offered to the thirsty souls of men.
This justification of the ancient creeds carries with it the justification of later confessions so far as they answered questions which would be fatal to religion if they were not answered. As Principal Stewart puts it very clearly: “The answer given is based on the philosophy or science of the period. It does not necessarily form part of the religion itself, but is the best which with the materials at its command, in its own defence and in its love for truth, the religion (and its advocates) can give. But the answers may be superseded by better answers, or they may be rendered unnecessary because the questions are no longer asked. Thus the Calvinism of the 16th and 17th centuries elaborated answers to questions, which if no attempt had been made to answer them, would have perplexed earnest souls and condemned the system; but many parts of the system are now obsolete, because the conditions which suggested the questions which they sought to answer no longer exist or have no longer any interest or importance.”
Literature.—See J. Pearson, Exposition of the Creed (new ed., 1849); A. E. Burn, Introduction to the Creeds (1899), and The Athanasian Creed in vol. iv. of Texts and Studies (1896); H. B. Swete, The Apostles’ Creed (1899); F. Kattenbusch, Das apostolische Symbol (1894-1900); C. A. Heurtley, Harmonia Symbolica (1858): C. P. Caspari, Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols und der Glaubensregel (Christiania, 1866); and Alte und neue Quellen (1879). T. Zahn, Das apostolische Symbolum (1893); C. A. Swainson, The Nicene and Apostles’ Creed (1875); G. D. W. Ommanney, The Athanasian Creed (1897); B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith (1882); J. Jayne, The Athanasian Creed (1905); J. A. Robinson, The Athanasian Creed (1905); E. C. S. Gibson, The Three Creeds (1908); F. J. A. Hort, Two Dissertations (1876); D. Waterland, Crit. Hist. edited by E. King (Oxford, 1870); F. Loofs and A. Harnack articles in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (“Athanasianum” and “Konstantino-politanisches Symbol”) (1896), &c.; K. Künstle, Antipriscilliana (Freiburg i. B., 1905); A. Stewart, Croall Lectures (in the press); S. G. Green, The Christian Creed (1898); P. Hall, Harmony of Protestant Confessions (London, 1842); F. Kattenbusch, Confessionskunde (Freiburg i. B., 1890); Winex’s Confessions of Christendom (Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1865); A. Seeberg, Der Katechismus der Urchristenheit (Leipzig, 1903); F. Wiegand, Die Stellung des apostolischen Symbols (Leipzig, 1899); H. Goodwin, The Foundations of the Creed (London, 1889); T. H. Bindley, The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith (London, 1906); J. Kunze, Das nicänisch-konstantinopolitanische Symbol; S. Baeumer, Das apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis (Mainz, 1893); B. Döxholt, Das Taufsymbol. der alten Kirche (Paderborn, 1898); L. Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole u. Glaubensregeln (Breslau, 1897); A. C. McGiffert, The Apostles’ Creed (Edinburgh, 1902); and F. Loofs, Symbolik (Leipzig, 1902).