The Apostles' Creed

A creed for baptism

The first Christian confessions were short. Paul could put the faith in a sentence: confess Jesus as Lord and "believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead" (Romans 10:9). And Jesus gave the command that shaped every later creed:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Matthew 28:19

Late in the second century Irenaeus summed up the faith the church had received from the apostles: faith in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth; in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10. In Rome this faith was asked at baptism: a church order that many scholars place in early third-century Rome has the candidate asked in turn about the Father, Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and immersed after each answer. That is why the creed has three parts and speaks in the first person.

Scholars call that confession the Old Roman Creed. Its wording is known from a commentary written around 400 by Rufinus of Aquileia, and several familiar phrases are not yet in it: "Maker of heaven and earth," the descent into hell, "catholic," and "the communion of saints." These were added later; the present form appears complete in the writings of a monk, Pirminius, in the early eighth century, and became the West's standard text. The Eastern churches confess the same faith in the Nicene Creed instead.

The name first appears around 390, in a letter from a council at Milan. By then a story was told that the twelve apostles, before scattering to preach, each contributed a clause, and Rufinus passes it on as an old tradition. It is a legend; since the fifteenth century scholars have shown that the creed grew over centuries. Yet the name is true where it matters: the creed holds the apostles' teaching, "the faith entrusted once for all to the saints" (Jude 1:3).

The Father and his only Son

The creed opens, "I believe in God the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth." To believe here is not merely to hold an opinion but to entrust yourself to the one you name. God is first the Father of Jesus Christ, and through him our Father, for "you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship" (Romans 8:15). The Heidelberg Catechism holds "Almighty" and "Father" together: "he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father" Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 26.

"Maker of heaven and earth" answered Marcion and the Gnostic teachers of the second century, who set the God who made the world against the Father of Jesus. The Father of Jesus Christ is the Creator, and what he made is good.

The second part confesses "Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord." Jesus is the name the angel gave, "because He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Christ means the Anointed One, the Messiah. He is the only Son because "Christ alone is the eternal natural Son of God," while we are children of God "by adoption through grace for his sake" Q. 33. And he is our Lord, who bought us with his blood to make us his own Q. 34.

He "was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary"; Ghost is the older English word for Spirit. The eternal Son became truly human without ceasing to be God. The angel told Mary:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

Luke 1:35

His conception was God's own work; his birth was a real human birth: "God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law" (Galatians 4:4). The clause rules out the ideas that Christ only seemed human, or that he was an ordinary man adopted as God's Son later. See Truly God and truly man.

Suffered, died and buried

Besides Jesus, the creed names only two people: Mary and a Roman governor. Pilate is there, first, because the gospel happened in history. Luke dates John the Baptist's ministry to the time "while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea" (Luke 3:1), and the Roman historian Tacitus records that Christ was executed under Pilate Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Second, because an innocent man was condemned by an earthly court. Pilate said, "I find no basis for a charge against this man" (Luke 23:4). The Heidelberg Catechism draws the meaning: he suffered under a judge so "that he, being innocent, might be condemned by the temporal judge, and thereby deliver us from the severe judgment of God to which we were exposed" Q. 38. Augustine says of Jesus' silence before his judges, "His was not a silence of guilt, but of innocence" Augustine. Yet the creed makes no scapegoat: the first Christians prayed that "Herod and Pontius Pilate conspired with the Gentiles and the people of Israel" (Acts 4:27).

He "was crucified, dead, and buried." The law counted one hung on a tree as cursed, so Paul writes, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). He was buried "to show thereby that he was really dead" Q. 41. The creed keeps the order of the oldest summary of the gospel:

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Then comes "he descended into hell." Hell here keeps its older English sense of the world below, the realm of all the dead, not only the place of final punishment; Philip Schaff, whose translation this page gives, glosses it as Hades. The clause is not in the Old Roman Creed and appears in Western creeds from the fourth century; Rufinus thought it meant the same as "buried." Behind it stands Peter's word that Christ "was not abandoned to Hades" (Acts 2:31), hadēs (ᾍδης).

It has been read in more than one way. Many Fathers, and the Orthodox and Catholic churches today, teach that Christ went in his human soul to the realm of the dead, proclaimed his victory and freed the righteous who had died before him, pointing to the words "He also went and preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:19). The Lutheran Formula of Concord confesses that the whole Christ, God and man, went down after his burial, conquered the devil and broke the power of hell.

Calvin, who held the clause to matter greatly for our redemption, read it of the cross: Christ bore in his soul the judgment of God and the anguish of the forsaken, in our place Calvin, Institutes 2.16. When he cried, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46), he was enduring hell. The Heidelberg Catechism makes it a comfort: in my greatest temptations I may be assured that by his anguish, above all on the cross, Christ "has redeemed me from the anguish and torment of hell" Q. 44. The Westminster Larger Catechism reads it as Christ's "continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day" Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 50.

The Reformed churches confess both readings as their own, and they do not compete. On the cross Christ went down into the hell of being forsaken by God; in death he truly lay under death's power until the third day. So those who are his need not fear hell, and do not pass through death alone. "I hold the keys of Death and of Hades," says the risen Lord (Revelation 1:18).

On this page the traditional Korean text, which Korean churches recite in worship, has no descent clause; it moves straight from the burial to the third day. Why it was left out is not clearly recorded; the Korean Catholic version includes it. Both wordings confess that Christ truly died, was buried and rose on the third day. See also Where was Jesus during the three days?

Risen, ascended, coming again

"The third day he rose from the dead." As Paul says, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Firstfruits promise a harvest: his rising is "a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection" Q. 45. As Matthew Henry puts it, "The doctrine of Christ's death and resurrection, is the foundation of Christianity" Matthew Henry.

"He ascended into heaven." The disciples "watched as He was taken up, and a cloud hid Him from their sight" (Acts 1:9). He has not left us behind: our flesh is already in heaven, "a sure pledge that he, as the Head, will also take us, his members, up to himself" Q. 49.

He "sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." The creed echoes a psalm the New Testament quotes again and again:

The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

Psalm 110:1

The right hand is not a place in the sky but the seat of honour and rule. There "He is interceding for us" (Romans 8:34).

"From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." The quick are the living; the apostles preached that "He is the One appointed by God to judge the living and the dead" (Acts 10:42). And the judge is "the self-same One who has before offered himself for me to the judgment of God" Q. 52.

The Spirit, the church and the life to come

"I believe in the Holy Ghost." The trust given to the Father and the Son is given to the Spirit, because he is not a force but "co-eternal God with the Father and the Son" Q. 53. The Nicene Creed of 381 spells this out. Jesus promised that the Father "will give you another Advocate to be with you forever" (John 14:16).

"The holy catholic Church." Catholic comes from the Greek for ‘according to the whole’. The earliest text to speak of the catholic church is a letter of Ignatius of Antioch, around 110: wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8. Cyril of Jerusalem explained that it spreads through the whole world, teaches the whole faith, gathers every kind of person and heals every kind of sin Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 18. The word names no single denomination: the Son of God gathers one church "out of the whole human race, from the beginning to the end of the world" Q. 54. The traditional Korean text says 거룩한 공회, the holy assembly that belongs to all. The church is holy not because its members are flawless but because Christ gave himself for her "to sanctify her" (Ephesians 5:26).

"The communion of saints." The saints are all who belong to Christ. Communion is koinōnia (κοινωνία), as in "the fellowship of the Holy Spirit" (2 Corinthians 13:14). The Heidelberg Catechism sees two sides: believers share in all Christ's treasures and gifts, and each must use their gifts "for the advantage and welfare of other members" Q. 55. Catholic and Orthodox Christians hold that this communion reaches the saints in heaven, whose prayers may be asked; Protestants confess one church in heaven and on earth but pray to God alone.

"The forgiveness of sins." "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses" (Ephesians 1:7). Because of Christ's satisfaction, the catechism confesses, God "will no more remember my sins, neither the sinful nature with which I have to struggle all my life long" Q. 56.

"The resurrection of the body." Christian hope is not the soul's escape but the raising of the whole person. Irenaeus defended this against teachers who denied that the flesh could be saved Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5.

What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.

1 Corinthians 15:42-43

"And the life everlasting. Amen." Eternal life is more than endless time: "this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent" (John 17:3). It begins now: "I now feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy" Q. 58. Amen is the whole heart's yes.

The creed in the church today

The Reformers kept the creed. The Belgic Confession willingly accepts the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian creeds Belgic Confession, Article 9, and the Thirty-Nine Articles say the three creeds "ought thoroughly to be received and believed" Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. 8.

It is used first in worship: many congregations, Korean churches among them, say it together on the Lord's Day, and Anglican Morning and Evening Prayer include it. Each says "I believe," yet all say it with the church of every age. Second, at baptism, where it began: Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran rites still ask in its words whether the candidate believes in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and Reformed and Presbyterian churches often confess it together at a baptism. Third, in teaching. Luther's Small Catechism set it beside the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer for every household Luther, Small Catechism; the Heidelberg Catechism explains it phrase by phrase in questions 23 to 58 Q. 23; the Westminster Assembly printed it with the Shorter Catechism, not as the apostles' own writing but as a brief summary of the faith, agreeable to the Word of God.

The creed does not replace Scripture; it hands us its shape, so that the story of the Father who made us, the Son who died and rose for us, and the Spirit who gathers us becomes our own. "Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you have heard from me, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 1:13). The confessions built on it are introduced in The Reformed confessions.