It has long been observed that churches in the Free Church tradition, with its emphasis on ‘the autonomy of the local church,’ often see little value in creedal affirmations and prefer to ask the question: ‘Where stands it written [in Scripture]?’ In fact, Donald Durnbaugh in his classic ‘The Believers’ Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism’ identifies the Free Church, in part, by its tendency to eschew formal adherence to creeds. So why would ‘non-creedal’ churches celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, especially considering that it is often viewed in the tradition as the beginning of the much-lamented ‘Constantinian model of the church’? Why would those churches known for their anti-catholic and deeply sectarian stance confess the faith by taking up the Nicene Creed?
My paper will argue that though there are strands of the Free Church tradition which have demonstrated an ‘anti-creedal’ and even an ‘anti-tradition’ mentality, there is nothing inherent in the DNA of the tradition to make that necessarily the case, and that in fact there is both church-historical precedent and theological possibility for free churches to take up the creed.
For the church-historical precedent I will seek to defend D. H. Williams’ contention that “certain free church communions demonstrate that there was in their earlier days a greater awareness of just how indebted they were to the catholicism of the early church” and even that “the historic impetus of free church Christianity, on the whole, was not anticreedal” by drawing attention to the ways seventeenth century British Baptists and Congregationalists assumed and built upon, as Emerson and Stamps put it, “the Trinitarian and christological formulae expressed in the ecumenical creeds as the touchstone for Christian orthodoxy.”
For the theological possibility I will argue three points of resonance with Free Church theological convictions. #1: The creed nicely summarizes and synthesizes the testimony of Scripture, providing a ministerial authority that can serve the magisterial authority of Scripture according to the Reformational principle of sola Scriptura. #2: The creed represents the best candidate for a ‘catholic consensus’ that should be compelling to free churches because it represents the judgment of the vast majority of local churches through all times, peoples, and places. #3: The creed can be confessed based on the Free Church first principle that Christ has won freedom for his people (Galatians 5:1), so our churches are free not just to ‘take up and read’ the Bible but to take up and confess the creed.
My hope is that this paper will enable those in the Free Church tradition and beyond to consider how the 1,700th anniversary of Nicaea could provide an opportunity to reconsider their suspicion of the creed and to embrace it as a gift given by God to the church catholic, all that the hope of Congregationalist theologian P. T. Forsyth might come to greater fruition: that “the Free Churches…[might] cultivate a sense of the great Church, so that their freedom might not lose all its greatness.”