The Apostles Creed.

Whenever I bring up the Apostles Creed to Christians, I tend to get one of two reactions: Positive and negative.

The positive response tends to come from Christians who grew up in formal, liturgical churches. Most of ’em can recite the creed right along with me… though the version I memorized is the Book of Common Prayer version, and most of ’em tend to know one of the Roman Missal versions. There are minor wording differences, but it’s the same creed.

Third Day and Brandon Heath perform Rich Mullins’ “Creed.” Heath’s YouTube channel

If they didn’t grow up in such churches, or their churches never taught it to ’em, they might still know it. ’Cause they learned it as lyrics from a Rich Mullins song. Or someone else’s cover of that song. Or John Michael Talbot’s song, though that’s lesser-known.

Negative responses typically come from anti-Catholics who get weirded out whenever I dare bring up any form of ancient Christianity their churches never taught. They don’t see the point of creeds. Yet at the very same time, they’ll go on and on about the need for necessary foundational beliefs… which is precisely what creeds are.

The Apostles Creed (often spelled with an apostrophe; it doesn’t need one) is Christianity’s simplest, most basic creed. Here it is… in my translation from the Latin. As far as I can tell, the Latin’s the original.

I believe in God,

the Father, almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

And in Christ Jesus, his only Son, our master.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit;

born from the virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the afterlife.

The third day, he was resurrected from the dead.

He ascended to heaven;

he sits at the almighty Father’s right hand.

From there he will come;

he is judging the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

communion of saints, forgiveness of sins,

bodily resurrection, and eternal life.

Amen.

A creed, like this creed, is a faith statement. Unlike the faith statements drafted by denominations and individual churches, creeds were written long before the Great Schism and denominational divisions—all the way back when Christians still considered ourselves only one church. Whenever preachers tried to pass off innovative ideas and hypotheses as authentic Christianity, and instead created division and disharmony, church leaders throughout the Roman Empire and the world would gather, discuss, check the scriptures, and write creeds to reflect the orthodox point of view. Every true Christian should be able to say the creeds and mean ’em. Only heretics get tripped up by them.

Tradition has it the Apostles Creed is the very oldest of the creeds—even that it was written by the Twelve. It’s certainly old, and consistent with other creeds, but the oldest full copy we have of it comes from St. Permin’s Dicta Abbatis Pirminii/“Sayings of Abbot Permin,” written after 710. It looks far more like it’s a short version of the Nicene Creed—probably drafted by someone who couldn’t remember the full creed, but could remember the basics.

Using the Apostles Creed.

One of the more common Christian mistakes is we believe our beliefs make us Christian: We’re Christian because we have faith. Because we believe all the right things. Because we’re orthodox.

We even get a little of that in Rich Mullins’s song, in the chorus:

And I believe what I believe

Is what makes me what I am

I did not make it

No it is making me

It is the very truth of God

And not the invention of any man

True, what we believe influences who we are. But more importantly, more central to Christianity, is not our beliefs, but whom we follow. What makes us Christian is we follow Jesus. When we intentionally, devoutly follow him, he makes us Christian. Not our belief system; not our orthodoxy. True, when we authentically follow Jesus, our beliefs usually get sorted out and become orthodox. But Jesus is the locomotive pulling the train. Not our beliefs.

Creeds are simply part of this sorting-out process. Again, like Mullins wrote, we don’t make it: We don’t invent our own faith statements, and pick ’n choose some eclectic form of Christianity which suits our prejudices best. Or at least we’re not meant to. Too many Christians do. It’s why they’ll write you the nastiest, vilest things on social media… then when you look up their profile, their bio says, “I believe in God and the bible! Jesus first!” Yeah right.

When we truly follow Jesus, our religion isn’t gonna be our own individualized hodgepodge of beliefs, a reflection of ourselves which we’re trying to pass off as Jesus. It’ll reflect him. It’ll conform to the creeds, instead of ditching them to write our own, new ’n improved faith statements.

Likewise, knowing the creeds doesn’t make us Christian, nor do they make us saved. They only prove we know what true Christians oughta believe. Now we gotta do the good work of believing it, and living it out. When we do, we’re more likely to hand down the stuff previous Christians have always believed—the apostles’ traditions, the scriptures’ truths. We’ll believe God’s a trinity, that Jesus was literally born in a supernatural way, that Jesus literally suffered and died—and rose from the dead, and is really coming back.

We’ll believe Jesus has, and runs, a universal church. Which transcends all our denominations and little local churches. We’ll agree Christians should love our neighbors and enemies, forgive others, and meet regularly for worship and good works. We’ll believe when Jesus returns, he’ll resurrect us, and we’ll live forever with him.

If we don’t, we may still call ourselves Christian—and many do—but we’ll be heretic. We’ll have incorrect beliefs about God which inevitably get in the way of a growing, healthy relationship with him. Beliefs which could even in the way of our salvation.

From time to time I meet people who claim they’re Christian, and orthodox… yet can’t conform to the Apostles Creed. They don’t really believe Jesus was concieved by the Holy Spirit, but by Joseph of Nazareth. They don’t really believe he went to the afterlife when he died; they think he bypassed that and went to heaven (’cause he’s God, right?) and didn’t have a fully authentic human experience. They don’t really think he’s returning; they think the end of the world will destroy humanity all at once, and we’ll all meet Jesus in heaven. They don’t believe Jesus runs any universal church; they only believe in their church, and the rest of us “so-called Christians” are iffy, if not devilish. They often have mighty weird ideas about trinity. Yet they insist they’re still orthodox—because they imagine they get to define orthodoxy.

No they don’t. Jesus does. We follow him—and the creeds, notably the Apostles Creed, help us do that.