No Creed but the Bible? — the quick version

The situation

What this is about

The Nicene Creed is the one statement of belief that nearly every Christian tradition shares. It was written at Nicaea in 325, finished at Constantinople in 381, and has been said or sung in church every Sunday for well over a thousand years. In 2025, on its 1,700th anniversary, the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople stood in the ruins at Nicaea and said it together.

Some churches today do not use it. There are really two views about that.

The historic view

Say publicly what you believeThe Bible is the only final authority, and the creed is not a second Bible. But every church has to decide what the Bible means on the big questions, and on who God is, the whole Church has already said it, carefully, after a long fight. A church should say so openly, so that members can check what they are taught and the next pastor is bound by it.

The newer view

No creed but the BibleCreeds are written by fallible people and have been used to divide Christians. The Bible never tells us to adopt one. If we hold fast to Scripture, we will hold fast to the truth the creeds were trying to protect, without needing fourth-century vocabulary.

Three things should be said straight away, because they are true and the rest of this page assumes them.

Most churches that say “no creed but the Bible” believe everything the creed says. They just do not use it. That is very different from rejecting what it says.
Plenty of good churches never recite the creed. Many Presbyterian and Baptist churches hold detailed confessions that say the same thing, and simply do not say the creed aloud.
Both sides agree the Bible is the final authority. The Reformers said so in so many words, and received the creed anyway.

So the question is narrower than it looks: when a church sets the creed aside, what exactly has it set aside — and who decides what it believes instead?

What this page is not doing

It is not deciding whether any church, or anyone in it, is Christian; that is outside this page, as it was in Dossier 10. It names no living person and no local church. Where it mentions modern groups that reject the creed’s teaching, it quotes their own published statements. Everyday examples are written by this page as illustrations and labelled that way. It is not advice about joining or leaving a church.

One

The short answer

The creed was written because Bible words alone could not settle an argument about the Bible. Arius, a popular preacher in Alexandria, taught that the Son of God was God’s first and greatest creation. He quoted Scripture fluently. When the bishops tried to answer him with Bible phrases, his party agreed to every one — with a private meaning. An eyewitness says they were seen “whispering to each other and winking with their eyes”. So the bishops chose a word Arius could not sign: the Son is of one substance with the Father.
It was not simply forced on the Church by an emperor. For most of the next fifty years the emperors favoured the other side. Of one council in 359, Jerome wrote: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” The creed survived because ordinary churches kept confessing it when it was costly.
Almost everyone received it. Catholic and Orthodox churches sing it every week. Lutherans put it at the front of their book of confessions. The Church of England says it “ought thoroughly to be received and believed”. The Dutch, French and Swiss Reformed confessions all accept it by name. Even an English Baptist confession of 1678 did.
The Reformers did not think “Scripture alone” meant throwing it out. The first Protestant confession, in 1530, begins by saying the decision of Nicaea is “true and to be believed without any doubting”. The Lutherans put it perfectly: Scripture is “the only judge”; the creeds are “not judges … but only a testimony” to how Scripture has been understood.
The slogan has a birthday. “No creed but the Bible” comes from the American frontier revival movement of 1804–1809. The leading figure at its founding later described the Trinity as “unscriptural” and taught that the Son “was not eternally begotten” — very close to Arius. His movement corrected him, and its churches are Trinitarian today; but they were corrected by strong teachers, not by a document.
Having no creed does not mean having no interpretation. Every church decides who to baptize, what communion means, who can preach, and what the Bible says about God. Those decisions are its creed. The only question is whether they are written down where a member can read them and point to them — or kept in the pastor’s head, where they change when he does.
The old errors do come back. Groups today teach that Jesus was God’s first creation, or that Father, Son and Spirit are one person in three roles, or that the Son did not exist before Bethlehem — and they say so in their own published statements. In a 2022 survey, 73 per cent of American evangelicals agreed that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God”, while over 90 per cent also agreed God is three persons. They are not Arians. They just were never shown the fence.
Every group that rejects the creed’s teaching has a written creed of its own. The real choice has never been creed or Bible. It has been one creed or another.

Where this page standsMy own view, as opinion: “no creed but the Bible” is a sincere slogan that describes something impossible — a church that reads the Bible without interpreting it. What it actually produces is a church whose interpretation is unwritten, which is not less authoritative than a creed but authoritative in a way nobody can check. A church that believes everything in the creed but never says it would not worry me. A church whose leaders did not know whether they believed it would make me ask who decides what the Bible says there. And a church that rejects what it says is asking me to believe that everyone who read the same Bible for seventeen centuries got God wrong. That needs a great deal more evidence than a slogan.

Two

The first exercise: could Arius sign it?

You are at Nicaea. The bishops are trying to answer Arius using only Bible words. For each phrase, decide whether Arius’s party could agree to it — in their own sense — or whether it shuts them out. Commit before you read the answer.

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Three

What the Reformers said

“No creed but the Bible” is often assumed to be the Reformation’s “Scripture alone” taken to its logical end. The Reformers were asked about this in their own lifetimes, and their answers are on record.

Our Churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of the Council of Nicaea … is true and to be believed without any doubting.

The Augsburg Confession, 1530 — the first Protestant confession, and its first sentence

Wittenberg, 1577

Scripture the judge, creeds the witnessesThe Lutherans: Scripture is “the only judge, rule, and standard”. The creeds “are not judges … but only a testimony and declaration of the faith” — a record of how the Bible has been understood when it was disputed.

Geneva, 1559

The pure meaning of ScriptureCalvin: the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon “we willingly embrace, and reverence as sacred … for they contain nothing but the pure and genuine interpretation of Scripture”.

England, 1571

Proved from ScriptureThe Church of England: the creeds “ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture”.

Calvin also answered the most common objection — that the creed uses words the Bible does not. If you forbid any word that is not in Scripture, he said, you “impose an unjust law — a law which would condemn every interpretation of Scripture that is not composed of other words of Scripture”. That would forbid every sermon.

One honest complication

In 1537 a hostile colleague accused Calvin of heresy and demanded he prove himself by signing one of the ancient creeds. Calvin refused. That is the best evidence from a Reformer for the newer view, and it is worth taking seriously. But the synod examined him and found him orthodox, and he later wrote the sentence above. What the episode shows is that a man could resent a creed being used as a weapon while holding every word it protects.

There was a Reformation-era movement that set the creeds aside and read the Bible fresh. By 1605 it had produced a catechism teaching that Jesus did not exist before he was born. That is why the first Protestant confession had already condemned the ancient errors “old and new”: its authors expected them back.

Four

The second exercise: name the old error

Six things said about God and Christ. Some are ancient, some are from modern published statements, and some were written by this page as examples of everyday church talk and are labelled that way. For each, decide which it is.

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Five

Where the slogan came from

“No creed but the Bible” sounds as old as the Bible. It is about two hundred years old, and its early history is worth knowing.

1719“The Bible carried it by four”

London’s dissenting ministers vote narrowly not to require a declaration that Christ is God. Many who voted that way were orthodox. But over the next century much of English Presbyterianism became Unitarian.

1804Cane Ridge, Kentucky

A group of Presbyterian ministers dissolve their presbytery in a document written as a will: “that the people henceforth take the Bible as the only sure guide to heaven”.

1809The principle, carefully stated

Thomas Campbell: nothing should be required of Christians “but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them, in the Word of God”. He added that it was “the abuse and not the lawful use” of creeds he opposed — more careful than the slogans that followed.

1821The founder drifts

The leading signer at Cane Ridge, Barton Stone, now teaches that the Son “was not eternally begotten; but … he was the first begotten of the Father” — within a few steps of Arius. His movement argues him out of it; its churches are Trinitarian today.

1914–16A movement writes its first creed

A new Pentecostal fellowship begins with no statement of faith. Within two years a dispute over whether God is one person in three roles splits it, and it adopts a written statement on the Trinity. Around a quarter to a third of its ministers leave.

the rehearsal the slogan is born the drift the correction

None of this proves that churches without creeds must go wrong. Many never do. What it shows is how they stay right: by having sound teachers at the right moment. That works for exactly as long as the teachers are sound.

Six

Who decides, when nothing is written down?

Here is the practical heart of it. A written statement of belief does three things for an ordinary member:

He can read it before he joins, instead of having to attend for a year to find out.
He can hold a teacher to it. “Our statement says this; you taught the opposite” is a sentence with somewhere to go.
It binds the next pastor. Without it, a church’s beliefs are whatever its current pastor teaches — and whatever books and conferences he happens to follow.

A creed does not stop a church going wrong; plenty of churches have kept the creed on paper and denied it in the pulpit. What it does is make the change visible, because there is something to compare the new teaching with. When nothing is written, the standard moves with the teaching, and nobody can tell.

The illustration nobody correctsWritten as an illustration

In a children’s talk, the Trinity is explained as water, ice and steam — one thing in three forms. Everyone likes it. A generation later it is what the congregation thinks the Trinity is. It is, precisely, the error the creed was written to shut out: one God wearing three masks. Nobody noticed, because there was no sentence in regular use to trip over.

Seven

The third exercise: how serious is it?

“This church doesn’t use the Nicene Creed” can mean three very different things:

Serious

It denies what the creed saysThe Son is created, or God is one person in three roles, or the Spirit is a force. This claims the whole Church got God wrong for seventeen centuries.

Worth asking about

It believes it but won’t write it downThe content is affirmed; creeds are declined on principle. Fine if the church’s own statement says the same thing clearly and binds its teachers. Weak if it does not.

Not a concern

It just doesn’t recite itIts confession says everything the creed says; it simply does not say the creed aloud on Sundays.

Six churches, all made up by this page. Decide which each one is.

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Eight

The fair objections, and what can be said to them

Said against this page

“Truth isn’t decided by majority vote.” Quite right. A doctrine is not true because many people have said it.
“The Reformers said the Church had been wrong for centuries too.” They did, about some things.
“Creeds have divided Christians.” They have. The Nicene Creed itself is at the centre of the split between East and West over two words the West added.
“Our church believes all of it anyway.” Very likely true, and it matters.

What can be said back

Agreed — but it moves the burden. The creed’s age is not proof. It is evidence of how many careful readers of the same Bible, who disagreed about almost everything else, read it the same way on this. Saying they were all wrong is possible. It is also a very large claim.
Look at which way they faced. The Reformers said recent teaching had drifted from the older faith — and opened their first confession with Nicaea to prove they stood inside it. Rejecting Nicaea itself is the opposite claim.
And notice what made that argument possible. East and West can argue about two added words, and in 2025 set them aside to say the creed together, because there is a shared text to go back to. Churches with nothing written down do not disagree less. They just have nothing in common to point at.
Then write it down. That is all the historic view really asks. A church that states the creed’s teaching in its own clear words, and holds its teachers to them, has answered every concern on this page, whatever it calls the document.

What would actually helpIt is very small. A church does not need to recite the Nicene Creed, and does not need to call anything a creed. It needs to say publicly, in writing, what it believes about God and Christ, in words that could not be signed with a wink — and to hold its teachers to them.

Where this page standsThe strongest argument for the creed is the scene at Nicaea: a room full of people who loved the Bible, offering its own words one after another, and watching every one accepted by the people it was meant to answer. That scene is not only in the past. It happens every time a church answers “what do you believe about Christ?” with a single verse. The creed is what the Church wrote the day it learned that.

Nine

Check it yourself

Six things, all short, all free.

1. Athanasius, Defence of the Nicene Definition, sections 19–20. Twenty minutes, free online. The eyewitness account of the bishops trying Bible phrases first, and the whispering and winking. This is the heart of the whole page.
2. The Augsburg Confession, Article 1. Two minutes. The first thing the first Protestant confession says.
3. The Formula of Concord, “Summary Content, Rule, and Norm”. Ten minutes. Eight short paragraphs on Scripture as the only judge and the creeds as witnesses — the best answer to the slogan ever written, by people who agreed with its first half.
4. The Nicene Creed itself, with the paragraph of 325 that is usually left off. Five minutes. Each clause of that paragraph quotes a slogan of Arius’s party. Read it and see which one each phrase of the creed is answering.
5. The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804). Ten minutes, free online. Where the slogan began. It is warmer and more interesting than you might expect.
6. Your own church’s statement of beliefs. Do this one. Twenty minutes. Put it beside the Nicene Creed, line by line. Does it say what the creed says, in words that could not be signed with a wink? Are the teachers bound by it? If it comes back clean, that is worth knowing, and worth saying.

Want the whole thing?

The full dossier puts you in the council chamber phrase by phrase, quotes every Reformation confession on the creed, traces the slogan’s history in detail, sets five ancient errors beside modern published statements, publishes the prompt that produced it, and gives you a seven-question checklist for reading any church’s beliefs.

Read the full dossier → Simple English →