The Next Big Thing vs. the Old Paths:

A Reformation Anglican Critique

Evangelicals are continually chasing after the “next big thing,” whereas Reformation Anglicans rest content in the “old paths” (Jer. 6:16)—the faith once delivered to the saints and confessed in the historic creeds and Reformed confessions of the Church.

Modern American Evangelicalism often moves at the speed of marketing, fueled by conferences, personalities, and spiritual novelties. Its ethos prizes innovation over continuity, emotion over catechesis, and spectacle over sacrament. The driving question becomes, “What’s new?” rather than, “What is true?” In its restless search for relevance, it risks severing itself from the deep roots of the Christian tradition.

The driving question becomes, “What’s new?” rather than, “What is true?”

Reformation Anglicans, by contrast, are not chasing trends but confessing truth. They stand within a historic, public faith grounded in the authority of Scripture (Article VI), expressed in the creeds (Article VIII), and summarized in the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth century. Their life and worship are not driven by novelty but by the enduring patterns of Word and Sacrament that have nourished the Church for centuries.

To be a confessional Anglican is to find joy not in the next big thing but in the same old gospel—ever ancient, ever new.

Why Creeds Matter: Lessons from Carl Trueman

Carl Trueman’s The Creedal Imperative explains why creeds are not optional but essential for the health and identity of the Church. His chapter, “The Foundations of Creedalism,” offers a theological defense that exposes the superficiality of the Evangelical obsession with novelty and self-expression.

God Speaks—Words Are the Means of His Presence

Trueman begins by reminding readers that God’s self-disclosure comes through words. From Genesis 1 onward, God’s speech is the mode of His creative and redemptive activity. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” The spoken Word brings creation, covenant, and salvation into being. A famine of the Word, by contrast, means divine absence (Amos 8:11–12). Creeds therefore participate in this divine pattern: they are faithful verbal articulations by which the Church continues to hear and proclaim the Word of the living God (Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, ch. 2).

Words Are Adequate, Not Inadequate

Trueman rejects the modern suspicion that words fail to capture divine reality. In Scripture, words are not barriers but bridges to God’s presence. He writes that language is “the means by which God is present with his people,” not a human construct to be overcome (Trueman, ch. 2, “The Adequacy of Words”). Evangelicalism’s preference for the visual, emotional, or experiential over the verbal betrays a low theology of revelation—one that fails to grasp that God reveals Himself through speech.

Creeds Anchor the Transmission of Truth

From Moses explaining the Passover to his children, to Paul commanding Timothy to “hold fast the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13), God’s people have always used fixed, verbal summaries to preserve the meaning of His acts. Trueman notes that Israel’s children were not left to “interpret the Passover however they wished” (Trueman, ch. 2, “Words in Service of the Divine”). They were given a set explanation—“It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover”—so that the truth of God’s deliverance would not dissolve into vagueness or sentiment. Creeds are the Church’s continuation of this biblical mandate: faithful words protecting the meaning of God’s saving acts.

Human Nature Is Universal—So the Gospel Is Universal

Trueman argues that because all people share the same created nature and the same fallen condition in Adam, the Church’s message must use stable words that transcend culture and time. “There are horizons of interpretation,” he writes, “but these are bounded by our common humanity and by divine revelation” (Trueman, ch. 2, “Human Nature as a Universal”). The relativism of modern evangelical subcultures, where each generation reinvents its own Christianity, undermines the catholicity of the gospel. Creeds, by contrast, express truths that bind believers across language, culture, and century.

The relativism of modern evangelical subcultures, where each generation reinvents its own Christianity, undermines the catholicity of the gospel.

The Church Is an Institution Entrusted with Teaching

Trueman emphasizes that the New Testament knows nothing of a free-floating, anti-institutional spirituality. The Church is a visible body with officers, boundaries, and public confession. “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord… you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9–10). Elders are ordained to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” and to “guard the good deposit” (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Tit. 1:9; 2 Tim. 1:14). Creedal confession, therefore, is not clerical elitism but the ordinary structure of faithfulness. Evangelical individualism, by contrast, replaces the Church’s common confession with personal opinion and consumer choice (Trueman, ch. 2, “The Church as Institution”).

Evangelical individualism. . . replaces the Church’s common confession with personal opinion and consumer choice (Trueman, ch. 2, “The Church as Institution”).

A Form of Sound Words: The Apostolic Pattern of Teaching

Trueman calls attention to Paul’s phrase “a form of sound words” as the seed of later creedal development. The apostle commands Timothy to preserve and transmit an established body of teaching—what he has “heard from me… in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” That “form” (Greek tupos) implies a definite, recognized pattern of truth. The early creeds (“Jesus is Lord,” “Christ has died, Christ is risen”) and later confessions (Nicene, Athanasian, Augsburg, Westminster, Anglican Formularies) all grow from this apostolic soil. They provide the Church with a vocabulary to name God rightly and guard the gospel faithfully (Trueman, ch. 2, “A Form of Sound Words”).

Abuse Does Not Negate Proper Use

Trueman is responding to a modern objection that says, “Creeds and confessions are dangerous because they lead to lifeless traditionalism, authoritarian control, or doctrinal rigidity.”

Many evangelicals claim that because creeds have been abused in the past—used to silence dissent, suppress reform, or protect corrupt clergy—we should avoid binding doctrinal standards altogether and simply “follow the Bible.” This mindset fits what Trueman elsewhere calls the “anti-institutional, anti-authoritarian” impulse of modern Western culture: people instinctively distrust organized religion, written authority, and fixed forms. Evangelicalism, shaped by that culture, often inherits the same suspicion of formal structures, even when those structures are biblical or necessary for the church’s health.

Trueman concedes the reality of abuse—yes, church institutions and doctrinal statements have sometimes been misused—but he insists that such misuse is not a valid reason to discard them. The proper response is reformation, not abolition.

He argues that virtually every divine gift or institution can be abused:

• Scripture itself can be twisted (as the devil did in the temptation of Christ).
• Preaching can be distorted into manipulation.
• Authority can become tyranny.
• Even the sacraments can be profaned.

Yet we do not abandon preaching, authority, or the sacraments because sinners misuse them; rather, we call for repentance and reform. The same principle applies to creeds and confessions: their occasional abuse is proof of human sin, not of their illegitimacy.

In his words, the very fact that creeds can be twisted “demonstrates their power.” They matter enough that false teachers try to corrupt them. So instead of throwing them out, the Church must continually measure them by Scripture and reform her use of them.

This is precisely the Reformation instinct: when the Church’s structures were corrupted, the Reformers did not destroy them but re-formed them under the authority of Scripture.

This is precisely the Reformation instinct: when the Church’s structures were corrupted, the Reformers did not destroy them but re-formed them under the authority of Scripture. The biblical solution to misuse is not suspicion but reformation.

(Trueman, ch. 2, “Conclusion”).

Scripture Is the Norming Norm

In the final section, Trueman insists that creeds must always be subordinate to Scripture, which alone is the norma normans non normata—the rule that rules all other rules. He concludes memorably:

“The claim to have no creed but the Bible is itself a creed—and one that is not particularly biblical.” (The Creedal Imperative, 54).

In other words, the very rejection of creeds is itself a creed—and a bad one.

Confessional Anglicanism: Creedal by Nature

Reformation Anglicanism stands precisely within this creedal logic. The Church of England’s Formularies—Articles, Prayer Book, and Ordinal—were designed as a public confession of biblical truth. They echo the very pattern Trueman describes:

• Article VI affirms Scripture’s sufficiency.
• Article VIII commands the use of the ancient creeds because they are proved by Scripture.
• Article XXXIV recognizes the Church’s authority to order rites and ceremonies as long as they are consonant with God’s Word.

This means Anglicanism is not a via media between Rome and Geneva but a Reformation Church that is a via media between Wittenberg and Geneva built on Scripture’s authority and the necessity of public, creedal confession.

". . . Anglicanism is not a via media between Rome and Geneva but a Reformation Church that is a via media between Wittenberg and Geneva built on Scripture’s authority and the necessity of public, creedal confession."

To be a Reformation Anglican is to delight not in novelty but in stability; not in self-invention but in the rule of faith; not in “What’s next?” but in “What has been delivered.” The confessional Church is not chasing trends but receiving a trust.

Conclusion

Evangelicals are continually chasing after the “next big thing,” whereas Reformation Anglicans rest content in the “old gospel”—the unchanging Word of God confessed in the creeds and lived in the Church’s worship.

Creeds are not museum relics but living instruments of fidelity.

Creeds are not museum relics but living instruments of fidelity. They guard the mystery of faith, give the Church her grammar of worship, and ensure that every generation receives—not redefines—the truth once delivered to the saints.

In a world allergic to authority and addicted to novelty, the Reformation Anglican answer is refreshingly steady:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty…

Ever ancient, ever new.

Copyright © 2025 John Fonville.