The center of the Christian faith is Jesus Christ. Christ’s life, death, and resurrection form the core of our beliefs and it’s only through His person and work that we are lead to other theological issues. Of course, since Jesus’ actions lie in the distant past and He is no longer physically present to continue His teaching, a problem naturally arises: “How do we know anything about this Man who is the foundation of our spirituality?”
Anticipating this question, Jesus called a community into being. This community (the Church) remained in existence after Christ’s ascension and preserved the knowledge of His ministry in the form of sacred tradition which was handed on to posterity (1 Cor. 11:2). At various points in the first century this oral tradition was written down and thus became written tradition about Jesus. Eventually various examples of the written tradition (various individual books and letters of the New Testament) were brought together to form anthologies in different parts of the Church. This process of anthologizing continued through the third century until, essentially, all Christians affirmed the same basic collection of writings related to Jesus—what we now call the New Testament. This collection of writings presupposed another collection, the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) so both collections were fused to produce the Bible.
Of course the Church’s tradition continued to be promulgated independent of this central written record through teaching, preaching, singing, and so on. And eventually, as traditions are inclined to do, the tradition evolved and diversified, leading to the existence of multiple and contradictory theologies within Christianity. To meet this challenge, Baptists (as with many other Christians) asserted that the written tradition, the Bible, should be privileged over all other instances of the tradition since the Bible is fixed and early whereas other possible authorities are fluid and late. This policy of asserting the Bible over against later examples of the tradition is know as the resort to “biblical authority”, or as it’s sometimes called, the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
While almost all Baptists would affirm the belief in biblical authority, this principle can be understood in a number of ways. Some of these ways are helpful, and some are not. Examples of each approach appear below.
“No Creed but the Bible”
Some interpret the principle of biblical authority as a rejection of all other guiding documents and principles. As such, these groups would consider themselves “anti-creedal” in that they refuse to use creeds (both ancient and modern) to define their identity. The Baptist General Convention of Texas (along with other groups) distanced itself from the SBC on the grounds that the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message sounded like a creed and “Baptists don’t believe in creeds.” Despite the no-nonsense appeal of this position, it suffers from a number of drawbacks. First, the statement “I believe no creed but the Bible” is itself a creed (“creed” coming from credo which means, “I believe”) and is thus an apparent violation of its own principle. Second, all sorts of groups claim to base their faith on the Bible alone only to create widely divergent ideologies (cp. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Lutherans). It seems that at least some summary statement of what the Bible actually says is needed. And third, all churches inevitably produce policies for guiding their operation that are not explicitly biblical (e.g. bylaws, usher rotation charts, etc). Thus the “no creed but the Bible” slogan seems to be self-contradictory, unhelpful, and ultimately impossible.
“Norma Normans”
Historically (and despite sometimes shrill claims to the contrary) Baptists have always been comfortable with creeds. The first Baptist groups known to have existed developed statements of faith (e.g. the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, the Philadelphia Confession of 1742). Some of these confessions, like the Orthodox Creed of 1678, even reproduce the three ancient creeds of Christianity: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. What’s more, the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance, in 1905, began with a group recitation of the Apostles Creed. What then of biblical authority? In this context the Bible is seen as the ultimate standard and one from which summaries can be derived. In so far as these derivative standards accord with the Bible they are legitimate. Still excluded is any belief or practice which contradicts the Bible, the earliest and most reliable standard for Christian faith, either explicitly or in general character.