The Drift Toward Credalism
The pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church fought fiercely against
credalism. They rightly saw that the production of a creed would lead
to sterility in the church, to formalism and persecution. These pioneers
had carefully studied the history of the Christian church, and were
fully aware of these hazards.
In volume three of Spiritual Gifts, we have a clear statement
of the rejection of credalism in the early Seventh-day Adventist ranks.
The gifts have been superseded in the popular churches by human creeds.
The object of the gifts, as stated by Paul, was "for the perfecting
of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the
body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith."
These were Heaven's appointed means to secure the unity of the church
. . . . The gifts were given to secure this
state of unity.
But the popular churches have introduced another
means of preserving unity, namely, human creeds. These creeds
secure a sort of unity to each denomination; but they have all proved
inefficient, as appears from the "New Schools" and "Reformed"
of almost every creed-bound denomination under heaven. Hence the many
kinds of Baptist, of Presbyterians, and of Methodists, etc., etc.
--Spiritual Gifts, vol. 3, page 29
It has been our observation that the statements of belief voted in
1932, and variations since, did not take upon themselves the role of
a creed. However, an entirely new situation has arisen with the Twenty-Seven
Statements voted in during the 1980 Dallas General Conference Session.
They are being used as a basis for church discipline, the fourth stage
of the development of credalism. Here is an alarming trend for a church
that stand four-square on the Bible as its only basis of faith and practice,
and strongly espouses the principles of religious liberty.
The above was excerpted from Organizational
Structure and Apostasy, by Colin and Russell Standish, pages 87-93.
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