The Apostles' Creed, line by line

You are reading the brief version. Switch the depth control to Complete for the full treatment.

The Apostles' Creed is the shorter and older-in-form of the two great creeds. It was not written by the apostles at a single sitting, despite the legend that each contributed a line. It grew out of the questions put to candidates at baptism in Rome - do you believe in God the Father almighty? Do you believe in Christ Jesus? - and reached its present wording by about the eighth century.

Its shape is Trinitarian, because baptism is: one section for the Father, a long one for the Son, one for the Spirit and what the Spirit does.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Two features are worth noticing straight away. It is almost entirely narrative

• conceived, born, suffered, crucified, died, buried, descended, rose, ascended,

seated, will come. Christianity is a report of things that happened, not a list of principles. And it says I believe, singular, because it began as one person's answer at the font.

The word catholic here means universal or whole, from the Greek kath' holou. It is not a denominational label, and all four traditions say it.

Where it came from

The legend that the twelve apostles each contributed a clause appears by the fourth century and is not history. What is history is more interesting.

From the earliest period, baptism involved questions. The candidate stood in the water and was asked whether he believed in the Father, then in the Son, then in the Spirit, and was immersed after each answer. Hippolytus records this form in Rome around 215, and the questions there are already close to what we say.

By the fourth century the interrogation had been turned into a statement to be learned, recited and handed back - the traditio and redditio symboli, the handing over and giving back of the creed, which is still part of the catechumenate in several traditions. The Latin text stabilised by around 700.

So the Creed is a baptismal document before it is a theological one. That is why it is short, why it is narrative, why it is in the first person singular, and why it leaves out a great deal that a systematic summary would include. It is not trying to teach you everything. It is what you say when you are about to go under the water.

The Father

I believe

The Latin is credo, and the English believe has weakened underneath it. Credo is closer to I give my heart to - it is the word for entrusting yourself, not for estimating a probability. When the Creed says I believe in God, it is not reporting that God's existence seems likely. It is an act of allegiance.

Note also the singular. The Nicene Creed says we believe in its conciliar form, because a council speaks for the Church. The Apostles' Creed says I, because one person is being baptised, and nobody can do that for you.

in God, the Father almighty

Father first, before almighty. The order is deliberate: the power is His fatherhood's power, not the other way round. The God of Scripture is not a raw force who happens to be called Father; He is a Father whose love is not helpless.

Almighty translates omnipotens, itself translating the Greek pantokrator - ruler of all. Not chiefly a claim about how many heavy objects He could lift, but that nothing is outside His governance. Which is precisely why the problem of evil is a problem for Christians: a God who was not almighty would be easier to defend and not worth worshipping.

creator of heaven and earth

Everything that is not God is made by God. Heaven and earth is a Hebrew way of saying the whole of it - visible and invisible, matter and spirit, the angelic and the mineral. The clause rules out any second principle: no eternal matter, no rival power, no evil god. There is the Creator, and there is what He made.

The Son

And in Jesus Christ

Jesus is a name - Yeshua, the Lord saves - given by an angel with a stated reason: for he shall save his people from their sins. Christ is not a surname but a title, the Greek for Messiah, the Anointed. Kings and priests were anointed; He is both.

his only Son, our Lord

Only Son - unigenitus, only-begotten. The Creed distinguishes His sonship from ours. We become sons by adoption and grace; He is Son by nature and eternally.

Our Lord - Kyrios, the word the Greek Old Testament uses to render the divine name. In the Roman empire, Kyrios Kaisar, Caesar is Lord, was the loyalty formula. To say Jesus is Lord was to decline it, and people died for the difference.

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary

The incarnation, stated in two clauses. Conceived by the Holy Spirit - this is God's initiative, a new beginning not produced by the old humanity. Born of the Virgin Mary - and truly born, of a particular woman, with a womb and a birth and everything that means. The Creed insists on both: He came from God, and He came out of Israel.

suffered under Pontius Pilate

The Creed skips the entire public ministry. There is nothing between the birth and the suffering - no parables, no miracles, no Sermon on the Mount. This is not disparagement of the ministry; it is the baptismal creed keeping to what must be confessed.

Pontius Pilate anchors it in history. A Roman prefect of Judaea, in office 26-36, attested in Tacitus and Josephus and named on a stone found at Caesarea in

1. The Creed puts a civil servant's name next to the name of God, and the

effect is to say: this is not myth.

Suffered - passus. The verb covers the whole passion, and it matters that God's Son is its subject. The impassible God, in His human nature, suffers.

was crucified, died and was buried

Three verbs where one might do, and each is doing work.

Crucified - the specific death. Rome's punishment for slaves and rebels, designed for maximum shame. Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.

Died - against any suggestion that He merely fainted, or that the divine nature withdrew leaving a shell. He really died.

Buried - a body in a tomb, with witnesses who knew which one. The burial makes the empty tomb a checkable claim.

he descended to the dead

The hardest clause, and the one most often altered in modern translations - he descended into hell is the older English, where hell renders inferna, the underworld or realm of the dead, not the place of damnation.

The traditions understand it variously (see below), but the common core is this: Christ's death was not a pause. He went where the dead are, and He went as conqueror. 1 Peter 3:19 speaks of Him preaching to the spirits in prison; Ephesians 4:9 of His descending to the lower parts of the earth.

On the third day he rose again

Not was raised only but rose - the active voice. Both are scriptural; the Creed's active form guards His divinity. And on the third day, counted inclusively in the Jewish manner: Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday morning.

he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father

Ascended - a real human nature enters the life of God. Seated - the work is finished; a priest who has completed the offering sits down, and Hebrews makes much of the fact that the temple had no chairs. The right hand - the place of authority, not a location.

and will come again to judge the living and the dead

History has an end and it is a Person. The living and the dead - nobody is outside the jurisdiction; death is not an escape from accountability.

That the judge is the crucified one is the whole comfort of the clause. The one who will judge us is the one who was judged for us, and He still has the wounds.

The Holy Spirit and His work

I believe in the Holy Spirit

Brief here, because the Apostles' Creed predates the fourth-century controversies that forced the Nicene Creed to expand. But note that the Spirit is confessed with I believe in - the same formula as the Father and the Son, which is a claim of divinity even without further words.

the holy catholic Church

Holy - not because her members are impressive but because she is set apart and indwelt.

Catholic - from the Greek kath' holou, according to the whole: universal, entire, lacking nothing. Ignatius of Antioch uses it around 107. It is not a denominational term, and all four traditions say it without hesitation. Some Lutheran and Anglican usage says Christian instead in English, translating rather than transliterating.

Church - and note that she is an article of faith. You believe in God and you believe the Church exists and is holy - an object of faith because what she is cannot be read off from what she looks like on a bad Sunday.

the communion of saints

In Latin, communio sanctorum, which can mean either fellowship of the holy people or participation in holy things - the sacraments. Both senses were current and both are true.

The communion crosses death. The Church on earth and the Church in heaven are one body, and the members pray for one another. What follows from that - whether the living may ask the departed to pray - is the disputed question, treated in its own section.

the forgiveness of sins

Placed after the Church and the communion of saints, not before - because in the Creed's logic forgiveness comes through what God does in the Church: baptism first, and then the ministry of absolution.

the resurrection of the body

Not the immortality of the soul. The Latin is carnis resurrectionem - the resurrection of the flesh, which is more blunt than most English translations. This was the clause that made educated Greeks laugh at Paul in Athens, and it is the one the Church has never been willing to trade for respectability.

and life everlasting

Not endless duration but a quality of life - the life of God shared with creatures. The Creed ends where the story ends, with the whole redeemed creation alive in Him.

Where the four traditions stand