What Christians Believe
The Articles of Faith

Apostles' Creed

As we have seen, the Apostles' Creed was largely used to confirm that new Christians believed the fundamental teachings of the Bible. In much the same way that modern churches disciple new believers in classes and Bible studies, the early church used creeds to train new believers in the basics of the faith.

Augustine, the famous Bishop of Hippo who lived from A.D. 354 to 430, summarized the value of creeds in a sermon to catechumens, new believers preparing for their baptisms. In this sermon, the creed he had directly in mind was the Nicene Creed, but his words accurately summarize the purpose and use of all sorts of creeds in the early centuries of the church. In A Sermon to the Catechumens: on the Creed, Augustine wrote this:

These words which you have heard are in the Divine Scriptures scattered up and down: but thence gathered and reduced into one, that the memory of slow persons might not be distressed; that every person may be able to say, able to hold, what he believes.

As Augustine indicated here, the central teachings of Christianity are scattered here and there in Scripture. So, the ancient churches summarized Scripture's core doctrines in creeds. This ensured that every believer — even, as he put it, "slow" or uneducated persons — could affirm and hold fast to the fundamental teachings of Scripture.

Of course, since many congregations had different creeds, there was a sense in which they also had different minimum standards of belief. Some churches did not require sufficient understanding on the part of new believers, while others excluded believers who had true faith but lacked advanced theological knowledge. As a result, a person might qualify as a believer in some congregations but not in others. And in light of this disparity, the early church recognized the need for a creed that would be acceptable to every congregation that called itself Christian.

The Apostles' Creed rose to prominence in order to fill this need. It was a short, straightforward statement of beliefs that could and should be understood by all professing Christians.

The Apostle's Creed is actually a narrative summary of the Christian's faith. And it points out the fact that even though we believe that every single word of the Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God, we are in need of a summary to help people understand what the essence of the gospel is. The Apostle's Creed is just that kind of summary. Emerging from so early in the Christian tradition, encapsulating what the apostles taught on the basis of Christ's revelation to them concerning the essence of the faith. "I believe." Everything flows from that. And so, what's so important here is that the Apostle's Creed helps us to say everything we have to say in order to say enough to communicate the gospel. [Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.]

Now that we have spoken of the history of the Apostles' Creed, we are ready to provide an overview of its affirmations. This big picture of what Christians believe can be just as useful today as it was in the early centuries of the church.