Why We Need Confessions and Catechisms: Everyone Has a Creed

Title:
“Why We Need Confessions and Catechisms: Everyone Has a Creed”

Brief Description:
In this inaugural episode of Catechizing Conversations, Cisco introduces the purpose of the podcast and explains why confessions and catechisms are essential for the Christian life. Drawing from the early church, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation, he shows that catechesis is deeply rooted in Christian history—and that every believer already has a creed, whether written or not. Confessions and catechisms provide clarity, unity, protection, and faithful summaries of biblical truth, serving as guardrails that keep the church grounded in Scripture. This episode sets the stage for a series exploring how the church has taught, confessed, and passed on the faith throughout the centuries.

Transcript

Speaker 0:02

Welcome to the very first episode of Catechizing Conversations. I'm Cisco, and in this series, we're going to walk through the confessions and catechisms of the church, those rich, time-tested tools meant to ground Christians in the truth. We'll look at some of the reformed confessions, such as the Westminster Standards and Heidelberg Catechism and others. But before we begin studying any particular catechism together, we need to understand something much more basic. Why would Christians need confessions and catechisms at all? I've been posed that question multiple times. And often people will say, I have my Bible. Why would I need anything else? Well, in this first episode, uh my attempt is to begin to answer that question, biblically, historically, and pastorally. And the first uh point or the first response to that question would be everyone has a creed. The only question is whether it's public. So many Christians would say no creed but the Bible. We've may have heard that in some preaching or teaching or in conversations with fellow believers. But the truth is simple. Everyone already has a creed. And every church already has a confession. Because as soon as someone says, here's what the Bible means, you've entered into the realm of creed and confession. And so the question is not uh, does someone have a confession or creed? But will the creed or confession be public, written, and accountable to scripture, or is it private, unwritten, and impossible to test? Or we can say subjective. But what a public confession does is it's in the light, so it can be examined, it can be corrected, it can be compared with scripture. A private creed cannot be held to anything. It shifts with feelings, it adapts to pressures, it hides behind vague statements. So before we say anything else about this subject of creeds and confessions and catechisms, uh, we have to arrive at this honest starting point. Confessions and catechisms simply put in writing what a church believes the Bible means, so that belief can be openly tested by the Word of God. That is not adding to Scripture, it is being truthful about how we understand Scripture. So again, the only difference is whether our summaries of faith are public and accountable and transparent, or are they private, hidden, and subjective. Now, secondly, we want to emphasize scripture alone, but not scripture by itself. And this may be a challenge to some, but let us think through this point. The reformers in the Protestant Reformation wrestled deeply with the question of authority. Rome taught that only the Pope could infallibly interpret Scripture. And how did the Reformers answer? That, of course, Scripture alone is infallible. The church can err, councils can be in error. Therefore, Scripture must be the final authority, not the only authority, but the ruling one. And so the reformers made some key distinctions that are still used today, and that is scripture is the norming norm. It rules everything. It is fully inspired by God, it is without error, it is authoritative. But the confessions, the catechisms, the creeds, they are normed norms. That is, they must be ruled by scripture. They are under scripture. So whenever we look at any of the confessions or catechisms, they are servants, not masters. They are tools meant to clarify, and in no way meant to replace Scripture. And so they don't compete with Scripture at all. What do they do but summarize Scripture? They summarize what is already there in the Scripture itself. So in that sense, the confessions and catechisms are derivative, servants of Scripture. But it's important for us to know that sola scriptura, one of the five solos, of course, of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura was never meant to be soloscriptura. In fact, we see many errors come about when you just take the Bible and in your own individualized, uh, privatized way interpret it apart from all the other saints and uh churches of the past and even of the current. Now, thirdly, what confessions and catechisms actually are. Catechisms and confessions, again, are public statements of faith. Here is what we believe the Bible teaches. Not more than scripture, not different from scripture, simply the organized, clear meaning of scripture. And you see that uh in the such as the Westminster Confession of Faith, a very organized uh uh systematic that provides the meaning of scripture on various scriptural topics. Now, what is a catechism? A catechism is a teaching tool with brief questions and short answers. And it's very interesting uh historically when we look at the uh catechisms, they were intended initially for children, but also for new believers, and then eventually for whole congregations. And they were designed to train Christians in the faith. It's a reminder for us that God cares not only that we read scripture, but that we understand scripture, and then we can pass it on faithfully to others. Now, catechisms help us to do that. Uh, one of the proud moments for me as a father is when my child, is when he was a young boy, Zion, memorized the entirety of the Westminster shorter catechism. Now, there was a prize attached to that. It was during COVID, and uh his mom and I said that if he did that, he would get a Nintendo Switch, and he did it. But he memorized the entire catechism, and our prayer and hope is that those answers to basic biblical questions will come back in his memory throughout his life. Now, fourthly, we need to look at the deep roots or the early church's catechesis. Catechesis is not a Reformation invention. And now we could mistakenly believe that, especially when we see all the catechisms and confessions that came out of the Reformation. But catechesis is much more older than we assume. The early Christians knew you simply don't hand someone a Bible and say, good luck. Now, when I grew up, often we said, here's a Bible, read the book of John, the Gospel of John. Well, that's good advice. But what a catechism does is it trains new believers in the basic shape of the Christian faith. We see that in some of the early Christian manuals in early second century that taught the commandments, Christian ethics, instructions for baptism in church life. It served exactly the role of a catechism. It was a tool to prepare converts for membership in the church. And then when we see uh the second and fourth centuries in the apostolic tradition, it it becomes even more structured that converts were examined in their lives and their motives when showing interest in coming into the Christian faith. Sometimes those examinations happened for not just weeks or months, but even years. They were taught how Christians worship and pray and live. And these interests in conversion to Christianity were distinct from the faithful until they were fully instructed. And so, what do we see that the early church understood and understood that the faith must be taught? Truth must be formed in people, and that's not going to happen by accident. And so we see this catechesis, this teaching in the faith evident very early in the church. And again, I I want to reiterate what a catechism is to give a sound answer or instruction used to prepare converts for faith in Christ. Now, what we see happen in the Middle Ages as Christianity became a bit more culturally dominant and infant baptism was now more common, those long periods of catechesis for pre-baptism or conversion or membership in a church declined. But something important emerged in the Middle Ages, and that is the question and answer format. And that's where most of us may be familiar with what a catechism is. We see that universities in Europe began to adopt a method of asking and answering questions to clarify truth. So by the time of the Reformation, catechesis already had deep roots in the church, and the question and answer format was very familiar. And then we see that the reformers carried this method forward. And you see that in Luther's small catechism again, referencing the Heidelberg Catechism or the Westminster Shorter Catechism. All of those questions, uh, or questions and answers in those catechisms, that format didn't just appear out of nowhere. They arose from centuries of Christian practice. And so that brings us to the sixth point. During the Reformation, confessing the faith clearly and publicly was very important. Confessions became a way for churches to say, here is the faith we believe scripture teaches, here is what unites us, here is what distinguishes truth from error. Confessions, seventh, capture the meaning of scripture. And this point is vital. Christians are bound not only to the words of Scripture, but to the truth and meaning of Scripture. And if we're only allowed to speak in biblical vocabulary, we would never say the word Trinity, or the person of Christ, or the essence of God, or one God and three persons, or two natures in Christ. And yet we recognize that all of those things are biblical teachings. They summarize everything Scripture says. So confessions work in the same way. They express biblical truth and a clear, faithful, precise language. They give guardrails to the church to give clarity, to avoid danger or confusion or instability. I love that word guardrails when we consider what the confessions and catechisms are. I think of when I took a missionary trip to Haiti and we were on a bus, I would say a very packed bus from uh Port-au-Prince driving to Cape Haitian. It was several hours, I forget how long, but that packed bus uh had people on top of the bus, inside the bus. Some had no windows along the seats, and I remember the driver going along this mountainous area, and we were circling around on these cliffs, and there were no guardrails. I look back and think how we made it, how I made it, how I survived uh that trip from Port-au-Prince to Cape Asian. There were no guardrails on those very dangerous roads. Well, when we think of the confessions of faith, they are guardrails to the church. The guardrails don't replace the road, but they keep us from going over the edge. And this is one of the reasons why we value the confessions, the catechisms that have been passed down to us as a means of protection, as a means for us to have a unity in our faith of what we believe. And now, as we conclude this first episode, building upon that idea that confessions protect, unite, and strengthen the church. They unite in that they connect us to believers across the centuries. They give us a common language and they make our faith public, not private, and not hidden. That's very important. They still teach the church. And I pray that we would, as parents, as teachers, grandparents, help our children memorize the truth. Begin to walk through these rich catechisms and confessions with them, that they may be grounded as new believers, strengthened, and that will help us as a church echo back with faith the clarity and the truth that have been passed down to us. Ultimately, confessions are doxological. They are intended to lead to worship, to help us to say with precision and praise, this is who our God is, this is what He has done, and this is what we believe. Well, in the episodes ahead, I pray that we would have opportunity to walk slowly through some of these catechisms and confessions, um, unpack the background, the rich background of these catechisms that we have and hold to. And ultimately, the goal would be to help us to know our faith, to confess the faith, and pass on the faith with clarity, confidence, and joy. I do thank you for joining me in this first episode. Uh, I look forward by continuing this study together. Until then, may the Lord bless you and keep you.