3. Reformed Baptist Distinctives: Creedal

Reformed Rookie

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

4. Reformed Baptist Distinctives: Confessional

00:02

So, the first distinction is creedal.

00:11

We hold to the historic creeds of the Catholic Church, like the Apostles' Creed, the

00:16

Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Now, first you might get upset that I used the term

00:23

Catholic. The word Catholic means universal. We are not Roman Catholic.

00:29

I call them Romanists because they are not the Catholic Church. They are the Romanist Church. They departed from the faith, not us.

00:37

There's nothing in the Scriptures about purgatory. There's nothing in the Scriptures about worship of Mary. There's nothing in the

00:43

Scriptures about the bodily ascension of Mary into heaven and all these other things that they add, the teaching magisterium of the

00:50

Church being infallible. These are all things they add to the Scriptures. So we hold to, we are the

00:55

Catholic Church. Don't give them the benefit of saying that they are the Catholic Church. We are. They've departed from the faith.

01:01

So we hold to the creeds, the historic creeds of the Church, and we recite the Apostles' Creed the first Sunday of every month.

01:08

The term creed is derived from the Latin word meaning, I believe, credo. Creeds are considered authoritative pronouncements that set forth the central article or tenets of the historic

01:19

Christian faith. They are what you must believe in order to be orthodox. In order to be an orthodox

01:26

Christian, you must hold to the creeds of the Church. The creeds of the Church are not infallible, but they are correct inasmuch as they reflect the infallible teaching of the

01:39

Scriptures. The creeds were written with several purposes in mind.

01:44

First, they corrected various heresies, profound doctrinal deviations from Scripture that had arisen at the time.

01:50

The Athanasian Creed was written in response to Arianism. That's what Jehovah's Witnesses believe, that Jesus is not

01:57

God. He's just a man given authority by God. So the creeds actually were written sometimes in response to doctrinal levers that were being put forth in the

02:07

Church. Second, the creeds affirm essential Christian truths.

02:13

The Athanasian Creed, which I just cited, affirms the truth of the Trinity, Christ's incarnation,

02:19

His resurrection, ascension, His second coming, and final judgment. Creeds therefore have an appropriate and critical use both in Christian instruction as well as in worship services.

02:29

Creeds also help us to identify what is essential doctrine from peripheral doctrines. There are secondary doctrines that are not essential to salvation.

02:37

We're going to talk about one of them, which is baptism. We baptize believers, Presbyterians and other denominations,

02:44

Lutherans baptize babies. That's not an essential Christian doctrine, okay?