(taken from monergism.com)
“I do want to make the point here that Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not, therefore, subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true.”
– Carl Trueman
Creeds help Christians make sense of the Bible by highlighting what is important and summarizing its essential message. In an age of individualism and skeletal creeds or barebone statements of belief, the rich tradition of corporate confessions of faith also provides a vital link to the church of ages past and the saints of all ages.
[Note: when the historic creeds (Apostles’ , Nicene, Chalcedonian, Athenasian) were written, the church had not yet split. As such, these creeds are adhered to by ALL Christians – Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant. When you see the word “catholic” in a creed, understand that this is not meaning “Roman Catholic”, as that distinction hadn’t even been created yet. It simply means universal, worldwide, or broad/general. When we say the lower-cased word “catholic” in a creed, it means we belong to the global church of Christ, not just some local or regional sect, whether based in Rome or Plainfield.]