The Bible as the Only Creed
ONE great advantage possessed by the papacy over some Protestant systems of religion, says the New York Times, is the ability to bring itself up to date. Creed-bound bodies compare unfavorably with the papacy in this respect. “There are,” says the Times, “those to whom the papal deliverances seem antiquated and irrelevant. But compare the responsiveness of the papacy to the spirit of the age with the irresponsiveness of the formulated creeds of the Protestant churches, with the thirty-nine ‘Articles of the Christian Faith’ according to the Church of England, expressing views which were not obsolete in the seventeenth century, with the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian Church, expressing views similarly obsolete, and expressing them with such ‘indecent violence of language,’ according to Lord Salisbury’s phrase, that the expression has had just now to be modified in accordance with public opinion, and of course the discrediting of the authority which proclaimed, up to 1903, that unelect infants were necessarily born to be damned, and, in 1903, that this was not necessarily so.” If people would stick to the Bible, making that their only creed, they would not be obliged to reverse themselves, and bring their theology up to date, with many explanations and apologies for their course. The Bible does not reverse itself, and is always up to date; indeed, much of it is history written in advance. The Word of God is the only sure foundation of faith, and he who stands on that foundation will never be put to shame.