What are the Creeds and Confessions
The Bible is rich, deep, and wonderfully unified. Yet it is also long and complex. Over the centuries, the church has sought faithful ways to summarise its central teaching in a clear and ordered form.
Creeds and confessions are one way of doing this.
They help us state plainly what we believe the Bible teaches about God, salvation, the church, and the Christian life. They are not additions to Scripture, but summaries drawn from it.
Why Do We Use Creeds and Confessions?
From the earliest days of the church, believers have confessed their faith together. When Christians were baptised, they confessed what they believed. When error arose, the church responded by carefully articulating biblical truth.
Creeds are short, historic summaries of the Christian faith. Confessions are fuller and more detailed statements of doctrine. Together, they serve the church by:
Guarding biblical truth
Providing clarity in teaching
Promoting unity in shared belief
Helping believers grow in understanding
They give structure to what the Bible teaches, without replacing it.
What Authority Do They Have?
It is important to be clear.
Our creeds and confessions are human documents. They are not inspired. They do not stand above Scripture.
They have what is often called secondary authority. That means they are binding only because, and insofar as, they faithfully summarise the teaching of the Bible.
Scripture alone is our final authority. Every creed and confession must be tested by the Word of God.
The Creeds and Confessions We Hold To
Our church stands within the historic Reformed tradition. We confess the following:
The Ecumenical Creeds
The Apostles’ Creed
The Nicene Creed
The Athanasian Creed
These creeds unite us with the historic Christian church across time and place.
The Reformed Confessions
The Belgic Confession
The Heidelberg Catechism
The Canons of Dort
The Westminster Confession of Faith
These confessions express our understanding of the gospel and the doctrines of grace as taught in Scripture.
Read the Creeds and Confessions
The Westminster Confession of Faith
A comprehensive summary of biblical doctrine. It carefully sets out what Scripture teaches about God, covenant, salvation, the church, and the Christian life.
The Canons of Dort
A clear defence of God’s sovereign grace in salvation. It explains how the Lord saves sinners fully and faithfully, from beginning to end.
The Heidelberg Catechism
A warm and personal teaching guide structured around guilt, grace, and gratitude. It is written in a question-and-answer format to help believers find comfort in Christ.
The Belgic Confession
A pastoral and systematic explanation of core Christian doctrine. It walks through what Scripture teaches about God, salvation, the church, and the Christian life.
The Athanasian Creed
A careful and detailed confession of the Trinity and the person of Christ. It helps us speak rightly about one God in three persons and about Jesus as fully God and fully man.
The Nicene Creed
A fuller statement of the church’s faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, written to defend the truth about who Christ is. It clearly affirms that Jesus is truly God and truly Lord.
Apostles Creed
A brief and ancient summary of the Christian faith, confessing the Triune God and the saving work of Jesus Christ. It unites believers across centuries in a shared declaration of what we believe.