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THE CREEDS
The two statements of faith most commonly used by the Church are the Nicene and Apostle's creed. "Creed" comes from the Latin "Credo" which means "I believe". They are broadly similar , so I will unpack the Nicene creed below and simply make a few additional comments about the Apostle's creed which is at the bottom of this page.
| There is also a creed called the Athanasian creed, which is enormously long and complicated. If you struggle through it with any sort of understanding , award yourself a medal! | |
The Nicene Creed.
This statement of faith was hammered out (and I do mean hammered!) following the Council of Nicaea in 325, just as the Church under the emperor Constantine was emerging from centuries of persecution. You can find out more about the historical background from the Catholic online encyclopedia. It is the creed normally used at Holy Communion.
| THE NICENE CREED | COMMENTS |
| We believe... | This creed is the collective statement of
the Church . It starts with "we" not "I".The
Apostle's creed begins with "I" because it was the creed
recited by each candidate at Baptism. It was their personal
profession of faith.The Nicene creed was the statement of faith made collectively by the whole church at the eucharist.
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| in one God... | Although it will go on to talk about each person of the
Trinity, the creed firmly says that this is one God. The belief in one
God - monotheism - is rather like the belief in the Big Bang. It affirms
a fundamental unity to life. We are all part of each other because we
all "live and move and have our being " in one God. (Acts 17.28) |
| the Father, | God is a loving parent (God is also spoken of in
terms of motherhood - e.g."as one whom his mother comforts, so I
will comfort you." Isaiah 66.13 ). God is not an autocratic lord,
but one whose life and love is invested in his/her children.
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| the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen | God is creator. His/her first act was to bring into
being "heaven and earth, all that is, " and declare it good
and beloved. The material world is not less important than the spiritual
- matter is blessed as well as spirit. It is also the case that there is
more to creation than meets the eye. God makes what is "seen and
unseen".Life is an endless journey of exploration and discovery,
because we are finite beings exploring an infinite God. We cannot know
it all. Most Christians do not believe that God literally made the world in seven days, but rather that this is a way of expressing that God is behind, before, beyond and within all things. |
| We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, | The early Christians were called followers of the Way.
We believe that Jesus shows us a pattern of living which has authority
in our lives. That does not mean taking what he said and did and
slavishly copying it, but instead, putting on his mind, getting into his
way of looking at the world - for example the assumption that the last
will be first, or that even death is not the end of the story. While
there are many great teachers from whom we can learn, it is Jesus to
whom we turn, first and last, for inspiration and guidance.
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| the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. | All this is an attempt by the early Christians to make
it absolutely clear that Jesus was God. He was with the Father from the
beginning (eternally begotten). As the Church struggled to formulate its
belief it tried to hold in tension the conviction that Jesus was both
fully human and fully divine. He felt all that we feel, suffered, was
angry, lonely, desperate as we are . But he was also completely of, in
and from God. It is interesting that we persistently see humanity and
divinity as opposites, when the Bible teaches that we live because God
has created and inspired us (literally breathing into us to give us life
Genesis 2).It would be more logical to assume that full humanity and
full divinity go together. Only someone like Jesus who is so totally
filled with the life of God can be fully human and can show us all that
we can be.
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| For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. | God in Christ becomes flesh, so that we can see, hear and touch him. It is the cooperation of humanity in Mary which makes this possible. Christians believe that God is continually becoming flesh. Wherever people let him become a reality in their love and service of one another God is , in a sense, born again for the world. |
| For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. | The death of Christ is not a myth - it is an actual
historical event , happening in the time of a known Roman Governor. He
really suffered, died and was buried. His death was not an illusion or a
fainting fit. It matters to Christians that Jesus died - he went
everywhere that we have to go. There is nowhere in life or death, where
we cannot see the footprints of God, and know his presence.
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| On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. | The creeds do not explain how Christ rose from the
dead. They simply say that he did, and that to do so is consisent with
the Old Testament. I have no idea how such a thing might happen - but
then there is a lot I don't know about the world, so I would not be too
quick to assert that because I didn't understand something, it could
therefore not happen. It is vital to Christian belief, however it is
understood, because it proclaims that what the world sees as failure -
crucifixion on the town dump , beyond the city wall, beyond the "pale"
is not failure at all but a step on the way to fulness of life. Many
people discover that it is only when they give up and die to something ,
that it is possible for new life to emerge. The creed asserts that, following his resurrection he ascended into heaven. The life of Jesus draws a circle , beginning in heaven, coming down to earth , descending into death , then rising and returning into heaven. It is a circle which contains all human life. The Apostle's creed asserts explicitly that Jesus "descended to the dead". Traditionally Holy Saturday - the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday - is held as the day when Jesus released from Hell those who had died. It is a time when desolation and despair are proclaimed to be holy moments - moments in which God can be found. |
| He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. | The second coming of Christ is not given much attention
in Western European thought. Focussing on it is seen as eccentric or
fundamentalist. It has not always been so - for slaves in the Americas ,
it was a vital reassurance that God would right the wrongs of the world.
It kept them going through the torments and injustice of their
situation, inspiring them not to lose hope, but to keep faith with God ,
who would keep faith with them. If we are not so keen on judgement -on God saying what he/she sees and sorting the injustice of the world out - it may be because we, in the relative comfort of Western Europe, know that we would be the ones being judged and needing to change.
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| We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets | The third person of the Trinity is the hardest to talk about, but the one who, in a way, is most present to us. The early Christians experienced the same awareness of the closeness of God when the Spirit came as they had when Jesus was with them. This awareness that they were not alone gave them courage and hope. The Spirit of God is not seen for the first time on the Day of Pentecost , however. It is the Spirit which hovers over the water of chaos at the beginning of creation bringing the world to birth, and who inspires the prophets to speak the word of God. The Spirit is the one who makes God known in the here and now. |
| We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. | God is not restricted to the church . God is not defined or imprisoned by the church. Nonetheless the church is important for Christians. The essence of Christian faith is love , and the church is a good place to learn to love and be loved. It should be open to all, though it sometimes doesn't feel like that - Jesus put prostitutes before religious leaders in importance - and this can make it a very challenging place to be. It is only by sticking with each other that we learn to see past our prejudices and fears to the glory of God in one another. 'Catholic' in this context means 'universal' not Roman Catholic as opposed to Protestant. 'Apostolic' speaks both of the church as standing on the foundations of the apostles - literally those 'sent out' with the message, and as a body which is still 'sent out' into the world with the good news of Christ. |
| We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. | Baptism was for the early Christians a radical step - a renouncing of the patterns of life they had known and the first step on a new journey. It was dangerous to be a Christian and Baptism was not undertaken lightly .While today in the West it is not potentially a fatal move, it is still a comittment to a life changing allegiance to Christ. The creeds assert that it is one baptism - it happens once, not repeatedly - into one church, however divided we are. It has to do with the forgiveness of sin . It acknowledges that we are all caught up in a network of wrongdoing , living in a twisted world, and that we need to be set free from that tangle of sin. Baptism happens once , but the stream of living water into which we are immersed at baptism flows forever, and forgiveness, once accessed is never-ending. Baptism is the eternal promise that 'it will all come out in the wash'. This frees us to live our lives in the confidence that God will never let us go. |
| We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. | The creed is a beginning not an end . What ever we can say about God there is always infinitely more to be said. What we know is dwarfed by what is undiscovered. |
| Amen. | The creed is assented to by all who can say 'Amen' to it - ' indeed. It is so' It ends as it began, with a word which emphasizes its corporate nature. Some parts of it may mean more than others to an individual at a particular time, but we assent to the fact that for someone, somewhere , each part of it has at some time been a life saving truth. How we understand each part of it varies enormously, but the 'difficult bits'are like babies which we must be careful not to throw out with what ever cultural bathwater we are getting rid of at the time. |
The Apostle's Creed
This statement of faith is the oldest creed we have. Click here for more about its background.It is so called because tradition held that it was composed by the Apostles. This is unlikely, but it certainly dates back into the early years of the church. It was originally the statement of faith made by baptism candidates before they went down into the waters of baptism. In an age when keeping written records might have incriminated the followers of this persecuted faith, it was learnt by heart.
It is similar to the Nicene creed, but shorter . It mentions two things which the Nicene creed omits - the descent of Christ to the dead which I comment on above in , and the communion of saints - the sense in which we are always surrounded by those who have believed before us. To a persecuted people the presence of those who had suffered for their faith was a reminder that death did not have the last word.
I believe in God, the Father almighty,BACK TO "FAITH IN A NUTSHELL"
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe 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,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come 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 the life everlasting. Amen.