In this respect, confessions help fulfill the church's role as a witness to the world by proclaiming the truths of the gospel. In the present era of religious decline, creeds are especially valuable to the testimony of any denomination. Presbyterian denominations have generally adopted the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, or the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism. The confessional standards are objective standards. By this characteristic, they point to the objective nature of God's revelation in the Bible.
Creeds provide a defense against the shifting fads of theological liberalism.
They also protect the church from mystical desires to exchange the objective authority of scripture for the subjective authority of inward impulses. Far too often, people mistakenly regard their inward feelings as the leading of the Spirit, even when their feelings contravene biblical revelation. Confessions direct men to the principles of scripture, by which all opinions and actions should be judged. The confession of a church functions as a safeguard. The teachers of a church should never proclaim any doctrine contrary to the creedal statements of the church.