As a comprehensive definition of standards, or creeds, the following will suffice: A standard, or creed, is an official ecclesiastical statement of what a church believes to be the truth of Holy Scriptures, or the true doctrine concerning salvation. The terms standard, creed, and confession are synonyms, each depicting the same thing from a slightly different aspect. The name standard looks at a creed from the viewpoint of the fact that it serves as a banner, or ensign, identifying and distinguishing the church which formulated and adopted a given creed for both friend and foe. The term creed is derived from the Latin credere, “to be­lieve”. It therefore views a church’s official statement of the truth as at the same time an object of faith, as a statement of the truth of holy Scripture not merely in a cold, dogmatic, purely intellectual sense, but as an statement of that truth as it lives in the hearts of the people of God. And when we employ the term con­fession, we do not refer to something new, but to that same declaration of the truth and object of the faith of the church as it is openly professed in word and walk by the church and by the individual believer. From this it will be evident at once that the forma­tion and maintenance of creeds is, also from a practic­al viewpoint, an important matter. It will also be clear that creeds, rightly understood and maintained, do not lead to dead orthodoxy, nor engender an evil brand of intellectualism or “brain theology”. The very con­trary is true. If only we remember for ourselves, and thus cause the opponents of our creeds and the oppon­ents of all creeds to realize, that our standards are not something to be relegated to the dust-covered ar­chives of the church or to the appendix of our books of praise, perhaps, but that they are indeed our creeds, that which we believe with the heart, and our confes­sions, that which we profess with the mouth,—and let me add that the living church and the earnest be­liever certainly does remember this,—then there is no danger whatsoever of dead orthodoxy and doctrin­al indifference, with their consequent rationalism and apostasy. And let the church, therefore, be warned to take its confessions seriously and with deadly ear­nestness, as though it were a matter of life or death, to maintain and defend its creeds, appreciate them, and thereunto strive to understand and to know them! Especially with regard to the Canons may Reformed people take this warning to heart. For I fear greatly that though there is none of our standards which is so peculiarly Reformed, so specifically our own, yet there is none of our creeds which is so little apprec­iated, so weakly maintained, so very little studied, so steadfastly ignored, and so flagrantly contradicted and trampled underfoot by those who still presume to call themselves Reformed.

The use and benefit of having creeds lies chiefly in the fact that they serve as a means whereby the church, by the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may keep itself strong and pure and well equipped to fight the good fight of faith unto which it is called. Because our creeds serve to define and de­lineate what we believe to be the truth of the Word of God, they serve as a basis of unity and a bond of union for a given group of churches. There can be no real unity, except upon the basis of the truth. Any union on any other basis is false, and will never survive. But our confessions, instead of causing strife and schism, engender a genuine unity. By our confes­sions we say, as it were: “This is the truth. This we believe. And with any who believe as we do, and who will rally to the maintenance and defense of this truth, we are agreed, we are one; with such we will actually unite and have communion and fellowship. And together, in obedience to our calling to shine as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse genera­tion, we will then declare this truth abroad to all the world, and in distinction from the world and from others who claim to have the truth.” Moreover, our creeds serve the purpose of preserving the transmit­ting the truth from generation to generation. That truth, as, under the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, it has been elicited from Scriptures, formu­lated, and systematized, and that too, over against ev­ery form of the lie, which also appeals to Scripture, though falsely,—that truth need not be and may not be discovered anew by each generation. It need not be, because God establishes and calls His church in the line of continued generations, so that each gener­ation grows up and becomes heir to the heritage of the preceding one. And it may not be, because to do so would not only be a waste of effort but also a fla­grant denial of the operation of the Holy Spirit in the church of the past. And for the transmission of this heritage of the truth our confessions serve as a means. Two further benefits of creeds may be mentioned in connection with the immediately pre­ceding. In the first place, our creeds serve as a strong bulwark against the repeated assault of the enemy, both from within and from without, as he comes with the lie as his weapon to destroy the church. With its creeds the church, profiting from the experience of the church in the past (for the lie is not new, though it often comes in a new garb, and many of our creeds have become necessary and have been occasioned ex­actly by the appearance of the lie), is well-equipped to cope with these onslaughts of those who would lead the church to exchange the truth as it is in Jesus for the lie of the devil. Our Canons, as a defense against the Arminian error, are a clear example of this. And in the second place, the various creeds serve as a ready vehicle for the instruction of the church, and especial­ly of the youth of the church. Certainly, if the church is to preserve its heritage, its children and young people must be taught to know and to understand the truth. And what sounder means can be found to in­struct the covenant youth in the truth of the Word of God thoroughly and systematically, and to equip them to cope with the multitudinous winds of doc­trine of our day, than our confessions. Let us there­fore appreciate the heritage preserved for us in our confessions, and give good heed to the voice of our fathers. For in that voice of our fathers is easily de­tected the voice of the Lord our God Himself, as by the Spirit of Christ and through the Holy Scriptures, He speaks to us.

From all this it will be evident that in our creeds we do not at all acknowledge an authority next to that of Holy Scripture, but that in them we exactly acknowledge the authority of the only rule of faith and practice, the infallible Word of God. For this rea­son we do not acknowledge any standard which cannot meet the test of Scripture. For this same reason we stand ready at all times to subject our confessions unconditionally to the final authority of Scripture. And for this reason, in the defense of our standards, we go armed with the Word of God.

Well, therefore, with respect to our creeds may we apply the words of the psalmist: “Walk about Zi­on, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.”

—H.C. Hoeksema

1 Cf., e.g., H. Hoeksema, “The Triple Knowledge,: 1, 9, ff.; and Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom”.