"The Faith Once Delivered To The Saints"

I have problems with the phrase "the faith once delivered to the
saints". My academic training is in church history and I received
this training at an evangelical college and an evangelical seminary:
Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I mention
that so no one will think I have a flaky liberal background. :->

Something that was stressed over and over and over and over again in
my education is that many Christians have a fallacy about orthodoxy,
imagining it as a straight road with no twists or turns straight out
of the mouth of Jesus to our present day and that nothing could be
further from the truth.

Obviously, Jesus spoke truth. The Apostles were pretty darned clear
on what was truth also. And we all know about the reasons for
Apostolic Succession. Yet reading the primary sources, such as the
epistles, the Didache, and just about any other primary source for the
study of the early church reveals that figuring out what was the
content of "the faith once delivered to the saints"..

The Church has met in Council since the days of Acts to figure out
exactly what is "the faith once delivered to the saints". There were
no less than seven ecumenical councils addressing Christology alone.
"The faith once delivered to the saints" was never a neat and tidy
package. The closest the Church ever came to neat and tidy packages
are the Apostles and Nicene Creed. Except for the pesky filoque
clause ( which IMO, the west got wrong and the east got right but
that's neither here nor there) practically all Christians agree on
these tenets as crucial.

Personally, I place great dependence on the Creeds. There is no
sentence in there for which I would not die were that asked of me and
I hope it never is. Unlike Origen, I am in no hurry to be martyred.
If anything is

At the same time, I become very uncomfortable with any debate over
issues not addressed in the Creeds because my study of church history
teaches me that there are some things over which Christians have never
agreed and I doubt they never will. Infant vs adult baptism? Dunked
or sprinkled? I don't care. Jesus commanded us to baptize. He
didn't tell us how to do it. The baptism issue for me devolves to this
question: is a believer baptized or not.

Same thing with Eucharist. How unseemly have been the centuries of
debate of Real Presence or the other Eucharistic concept. Jesus said
"Eat. Drink." The Eucharist question devolves to me to this
question: is a believer eating and drinking or not.

These are just examples of 2 of the many debates that have raged
through Christendom. I daresay they always will. Along the way in our
2000 years, new debates have begun, old ones have quieted down only to
be re-visited.

Yet the Creeds remain. My own feeling is this: if we Christians
concentrate on the Creeds we will have much more in common than
otherwise. My own feeling is that any conversation which invests time
money and energy in anything except feeding the hungry, clothing the
naked, caring for the sick, providing for those unable to provide for
themselves, visiting the prisoners so they do not despair, making
disciples of all nations is a product of too much leisure time which
we would not have if we were out there loving our neighbors as
ourselves.

If anything is "the faith once delivered to the saints" it is the
Creeds. Now can we get on with feeding the hungry, clothing the naked,
caring for the sick, providing for those unable to provide for
themselves, visiting the prisoners so they do not despair, making
disciples of all nations instead of sitting around talking about the
divisive issues?