Why Reformed Theology Needs Confessions

If you—like me—grew up in evangelical Christianity, you probably feel some level of discomfort when people speak about creeds, confessions, and catechisms. Your first instinct may be, “Isn’t that Roman Catholic? We, evangelical, born-again Christians, believe in the Bible alone.” Sadly, many evangelicals have missed something that has been central to the Christian faith throughout history, largely because of a misunderstanding of the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura does not mean that the Bible is the only authority in the Christian life. It means that Scripture is the only infallible authority—the final standard by which every other authority is judged.

The Bible itself teaches that God has established many real authorities: husbands over wives, parents over children, pastors over congregations, and civil rulers over civil society. These authorities are not arbitrary; they are instituted by God and defined by Scripture.

Likewise, within the church, pastors and elders carry authority. Church tradition carries authority. Councils, creeds, and confessions also carry authority. Protestants have never denied this. What Sola Scriptura teaches is that all these authorities must be submitted to Scripture.

This raises an important question: if all these authorities interpret Scripture, and Scripture is above them all, which interpretation of Scripture judges the others? The Reformers answered this with another doctrine: the perspicuity of Scripture—the belief that the Bible is clear enough in what it teaches about salvation and godliness that ordinary believers can understand it through careful reading with the Spirit’s help. Not everything in Scripture is equally clear, but what is clear interprets what is difficult.

This is where healthy confessionalism fits. Creeds and confessions are not meant to replace the Bible or add to it. They are meant to summarize what Scripture clearly teaches, so that the church can confess it together.

So why do we need confessions if the Bible is clear? Because the Bible may be clear, but people are sinful. Individuals and churches can ignore, distort, or deny what Scripture plainly teaches. Confessions help guard the church across generations. They protect against theological drift, personality-driven leadership, and cultural pressure. And they also give us a stable, tested way to teach children and new believers the faith once delivered to the saints.

Confessionalism must also be balanced with a robust doctrine of grace and a covenantal understanding of Scripture. Confessionalism without Calvinism and covenant theology easily hardens into rigidity. Knowledge becomes detached from life, and doctrine becomes an end in itself rather than a servant of the gospel. Confessions do not save anyone; they serve those who have been saved by grace by helping them understand who they are as God’s covenant people. Calvinism reminds us that salvation rests not on human intellectual precision but on God’s sovereign mercy. Covenant theology, in turn, helps believers understand what they have been saved into—a covenant community, a redemptive story, and a life shaped by God’s promises.

We proclaim the gospel. People are converted and baptized. They are brought into God’s covenant family. Confessions then serve as tools to help them grow into that redeemed life.

Finally, confessions must be historical. Not because new confessions can never be written, but because true confessionalism is rooted in what the church has always believed. The question should never be, “What do I think about this doctrine?” but “What have God’s people believed from the beginning?” That was the instinct of the Reformers. They did not invent a new faith; they recovered the old one. To be truly confessional is to be grounded not in the history of your denomination, but in the history of the Christian church.

May God help us contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Nino Marques

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[PS: At Knox Baptist Church, we seek to live out this kind of confessional, covenantal, and gospel-centered faith. We confess the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith and use the Keach Catechism, along with other historic documents, not as replacements for Scripture, but as faithful summaries of what Scripture teaches. You can find these documents on our website, not as ornaments, but as expressions of what we believe, teach, and strive to live together as a church.]