Bad Things Christians Say #1: Deeds not Creeds

 

A Creed is simply a statement of faith. Another way I have heard "deeds not creeds" stated is, "I would rather see a sermon than hear one." This is quite simply works righteousness and confusion of Law and Gospel. Faith comes by hearing the word (Romans 10:17), not by seeing good works done.

“The Bible can no more be any man's Creed, than the stars can be any man's astronomy. The stars furnish the rule of the astronomer's faith: the Principia of Newton may be the Confession of his faith. If a man were examined as a candidate for the chair of astronomy in a university, and were asked, "What is your astronomical system?" and were to answer, “I accept the teaching of the stars," the reply would be, "You may think you do--so does the man who is sure that the stars move round the world, and that they are not orbs, but 'gimlet-holes to let the glory through.' We wish to know what you hold the teachings of the stars to be? Do you receive, as in harmony with then, the results reached by Copernicus, by Galileo, by Kepler, by Newton, La Place, and Herschel, or do you think the world one great flat, and the sun and moon mere pendants to it?" “Gentlemen," replies the independent investigator, "the theories of those astronomers are human systems--man-made theories. I go out every night on the hills, and look at the stars, as God made them, through a hole in my blanket, with my own good eyes, not with a man-made telescope, or fettered by a man-made theory; and I believe in the stars and in what they teach me: but if I were to say, or write what they teach, that would be a human creed--and I am opposed to all creeds." “Very well," reply the examiners, "we wish you joy in the possession of a good pair of eyes, and feel it unnecessary to go any further. If you are unwilling to confess your faith, we will not tax your conscience with the inconsistency of teaching that faith, nor tax our own with the hazard of authorizing you to set forth in the name of the stars your own ignorant assumptions about them."” -Charles Porterfield Krauth

“The true church is gathered not around Scripture but around the rightly understood, the purely and correctly interpreted Bible.” -Herman Sasse

An old Issues Etc. on the topic: This is works over faith

http://issuesetc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Things-Christians-Say.pdf