Introduction

The Apostles’ Creed is one of the oldest ancient church creeds. Along with the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, the Apostles’ Creed is one of three ancient church creeds that the Reformed Protestant Churches receive. Confessing the Apostles’ Creed to be the truth of the word of God, the Reformed church receives the creed as settled and binding. Proof of this can be found in Belgic Confession article 9 and Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 7, questions and answers 22 and 23.

Glowing commentary has been given concerning the Apostles’ Creed. According to church historian and theologian Philip Schaff, the Apostles’ Creed “is the Creed of creeds, as the Lord’s Prayer is the Prayer of prayers.” And the Apostles’ Creed “clusters around Christ as the central article of our faith.”¹

While there were various creeds in production during the ante-Nicene period, the substance of those creeds remained similar to one another, so that Tertullian could say that the regula fidei (rule of faith) in the early church period was

una omnino, sola immobilis et irreformabilis…[or] altogether one, sole, immovable, and irreformable namely to believe in one God Almighty, the Maker of the world, and his Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, on the third day raised again from the dead, received into the heavens, sitting now at the right hand of the Father, coming to judge the quick and the dead, through the resurrection of the flesh.²

The Apostles’ Creed prevailed as the ancient symbolum or symbol, that is, “a sign of recognition among catholic Christians in distinction from unbelievers and heretics.”³ The word symbol comes from a Greek word that refers to military affairs. It is a word that was used to denote a sign by which soldiers were to know each other and to distinguish between friend and foe. One writer suggests that

the creed in this respect was called symbolum, in allusion to a military custom, that as soldiers were known by signs, tokens, words, and the like, so true and real Christians were evidenced and distinguished from all others by this mark or symbol of the creed.⁴

This function of the Apostles’ Creed as a symbol of the early church informs us of the general role that creeds have had and continue to have in the history of the new testament church. Creeds, as succinct summaries of the Christian faith, are essential to preserving the unity of the church in the truth by making the distinction between the truth as taught in the sacred scriptures and every lie and false doctrine that militates against that truth.

Additionally, we confess that the Apostles’ Creed is our holy, catholic, and undoubted Christian faith. The word “catholic,” which makes its appearance in the creed in connection with the holy, catholic church, is a reference to the catholicity of the church, not to the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. According to the ancient sense of the word, catholicity simply refers to a thing being universal. Therefore, the faith of the Apostles’ Creed is the faith of all God’s elect people who have ever lived and every true church of Jesus Christ as she is manifested in every time, place, and circumstance in history. It is the faith of the universal church of Jesus Christ that has been confessed throughout every age and will be confessed unto the new and everlasting age at the end of all things.

History and Tradition

While there are some fascinating theories regarding the origin of the Apostles’ Creed, the exact time and place that the creed was produced in its current form are unknown. One of the more popular theories concerning the production of the Apostles’ Creed is that on the tenth day after Christ’s ascension into heaven, during Pentecost, the twelve apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit each provided an article, and all the articles were combined into the Apostles’ Creed. This theory and others that seek to ascribe apostolic authorship to the creed are simply legends and myths.

Against the creed having apostolic authorship, I will briefly provide the following proofs. First, the closest statement of faith resembling the Apostles’ Creed did not appear until around AD 400. In fact, the final phrasing of the creed was not attested until about the eighth century. Second, if the apostles were the real authors of the creed, it seems utterly inconceivable that God would not have inspired Luke to record that fact in the book of Acts. Third, if the apostles were the real authors of the creed, it is likewise inconceivable that the innumerable councils and synods of the Christian church that have convened since the end of the apostolic age would not have ascribed apostolic authorship to the creed.⁵

The Apostles’ Creed is so called not because the apostles were the authors but because the creed provides a summary of the truth of sacred scripture as was taught and delivered unto us by the apostles. The several articles of the Apostles’ Creed present the most fundamental truths of the Christian faith. This is acknowledged by the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 7:

Q. 22. What then is necessary for a Christian to believe?

A. All things promised us in the gospel, which the articles of our catholic undoubted Christian faith briefly teach us. (Confessions and Church Order, 91)

Of course, what then follows in answer 23 are the several articles of the Apostles’ Creed. Then the Catechism proceeds to explain each article of the creed in turn, further emphasizing the importance for all true Christians to believe each article.

The most common use of the Apostles’ Creed in the early church was as a baptismal confession. Such a summary of the Christian faith became necessary because of the growing need for catechetical instruction in the churches and for a public confession of faith of adult candidates for baptism. This necessity is simply and clearly comprehended in the Form for the Administration of Baptism to adult persons:

However children of Christian parents (although they understand not this mystery) must be baptized by virtue of the covenant, yet it is not lawful to baptize those who are come to years of discretion except they first be sensible of their sins and make confession both of their repentance and faith in Christ…our Lord Jesus Christ also commanded His disciples to teach all nations, and then to baptize them, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matt. 28, Mark 16), adding this promise: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. According to this rule, the apostles, as appeareth from Acts 2, 10, and 16, baptized none who were of years of discretion but such as made confession of their faith and repentance. Therefore it is not lawful now to baptize any other adult person than such as have been taught the mysteries of holy baptism by the preaching of the gospel, and are able to give an account of their faith by the confession of the mouth. (Confessions and Church Order, 261)

Additional proof that the Reformed tradition recognized the need for a public confession of faith in connection with the sacrament of baptism can be found in Church Order article 59:

Adults are through baptism incorporated into the Christian church, and are accepted as members of the church, and are therefore obliged also to partake of the Lord’s Supper, which they shall promise to do at their baptism. (Confessions and Church Order, 398)

In connection with those same adult members, the Church Order states in article 61,

None shall be admitted to the Lord’s Supper except those who according to the usage of the church with which they unite themselves have made a confession of the Reformed religion. (Confessions and Church Order, 398, emphasis added)

For preparing men and women for baptism, many of the ancient church creeds that were used as baptismal confessions were first written in an interrogatory format. The officebearers in the church used such confessions as tools to examine the confessions of faith of those who presented themselves for baptism by asking crucial questions concerning the most fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. This in part explains the wide variation of baptismal confessions during the period of the early church. While it is undoubtedly possible that the most primitive articles of the Apostles’ Creed were used during the apostolic era, the local churches often added articles to those articles in response to false doctrines and heresies that had sprung up in the church.

Not long after the time of the apostles, and even during that time, there were several heresies that sprung up in the church. Evidence of this can be found in 2 Peter 1:21–2:1:

21. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

1. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

And there is evidence in Jude:

3. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

4. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Local churches made additions to the Apostles’ Creed in response to various heresies as they sprung up in the church. Consequently, those same baptismal confessions became tests of orthodoxy in the churches. The formerly interrogatory creeds gave way to declaratory ones, which were later introduced for recitation in the public worship services of the church. This is an age-old tradition that we still perform today. Creeds were written to defend the sanctity of the Christian faith over against heretics and to establish the church in the necessary truths of the Christian faith. In so doing the churches did not introduce entirely new points of doctrine, but they vindicated and established the existing doctrines of the faith.

Our Catholic, Undoubted, Christian Faith

The Apostles’ Creed, along with other ecumenical creeds of the early church, has a trinitarian format, in which the articles are organized according to the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. The confession of the biblical doctrine of the Trinity as well as the doctrine of the person and natures of Jesus Christ were confessed in many of the early church creeds used for baptism and in public worship services. Some have suggested that the reason for this emphasis in the early church can be found in Christ’s question to his disciples, “Whom say ye that I am?” and in Christ’s command to his disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them according to the baptismal formula in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (Matt. 16:15; 28:19).

Underlying the testimony of the Apostles’ Creed is the confession of the union of Christ’s human and divine natures in the person of the Son of God, or what is referred to in Reformed theology as the hypostatic union (union in the person). Christ is not made, not confused, and is not a composition of human and divine elements. Rather, Christ is the only-begotten Son; and it is the person of the Son of God who was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary. The doctrine of Christ’s humanity and his divinity would be expanded upon in other ecumenical creeds.

It is a very real possibility that the Apostles’ Creed came into its present form partly in response to ancient heresies such as gnosticism. Gnosticism was a type of rationalism that taught that salvation comes through a mysterious and secret knowledge imparted only to a few enlightened persons. The word gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. The gnostics were dualists. They spoke of two separate worlds: a good spiritual world and an evil physical world. The physical world included the creation and man and everything that pertains to the brute creation, which the gnostics viewed as inherently evil. An early form of gnosticism could be what the apostle Paul refers to in Colossians when he speaks concerning those who were subject to ordinances, who had a show of wisdom in will-worship, and who preached “touch not, taste not, handle not” (see Col. 2:18–23).

The gnostics taught that, in contrast to being subject to the physical world, for a man to be saved, he “must be freed from this bondage to the visible world, and its rulers, the planetary spirits” through a mysterious knowledge, which was “a mystical and spiritual enlightenment for the initiated which brings him into communion with the true realm of spiritual realities.”⁶ According to the gnostics, while all men were subject to the physical world, only certain persons possessed the capacity of delivering themselves from it.

More dangerous proponents of gnosticism, such as Marcion, separated the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New Testament, depicting the God of the Old Testament as a just God and the God of the New Testament as a God of mercy. Marcion and his followers taught that Christians were to reject the Old Testament and its God and that the only true and saving knowledge of God could be gained from the God of the New Testament, who was said to be a God of love and mercy. Because of his gnostic views of the Christian life, Marcion taught that the material world was evil, and he embraced the ascetic life, condemning the eating of meats and sexual intercourse as wicked and belonging to the creator-God of the Old Testament. Additionally, Marcion omitted all passages in the canonical books of the New Testament in which Christ regarded the God of the Old Testament as his Father or bore any relationship to him.

Over against the heresy of gnosticism, the early church in no uncertain terms affirmed the doctrine of the real incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Additionally, the early church defended the bodily resurrection of the saints at the second coming of Christ.

Another heresy that sprang up during the same period was Sabellianism, taught by the heretic Sabellius, who was the father of modalism. The heresy of modalism taught that God is one divine being or person and that one divine person manifests himself in different ways or modes. Modalism, therefore, operated underneath the false pretense that any other view of God was tritheism (the doctrine or belief that the three persons of the Trinity are three distinct gods). Over against this view of God, the earliest creeds, including the Apostles’ Creed and other ecumenical creeds, affirmed and reaffirmed that God is one in being and three in persons. God’s oneness does not deny nor negate his threeness. Likewise, the threeness of God does not deny nor negate God’s oneness.

“He Descended into Hell”

There is some controversy concerning the article in which we confess that our Lord Jesus Christ “descended into hell.” Many have contended that this article ought not to have been so widely received due to its late addition to the creed. Others have thrown off the Apostles’ Creed altogether. Still others have argued about the precise meaning of the phrase “he descended into hell.” The most popular erroneous conception of the phrase is that after Christ suffered and died upon the cross, he went down to the literal place called hell to suffer additional torment and punishment on account of sin. However, this is preposterous because the scriptures teach that Christ overcame death at the cross and delivered us from all the power of the devil at the cross. This is the teaching of Hebrews 2:14–15:

14. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

15. And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Neither is the phrase “descended into hell” a reference to a state of limbo in which the saints of the old dispensation were kept until heaven was at last opened to them by Christ after his death on the cross. Nor is the phrase a reference to Christ’s having descended into hell prior to his resurrection to announce his victory to the spirits in hell. Instead, we must understand the phrase “he descended into hell” to be a reference to Christ’s state of humiliation or to “the lowest and most extreme degree of Christ’s humiliation, by which he humbled himself for us and, indeed, emptied himself completely.”⁷

This is the Calvinistic and Reformed understanding of the phrase, which is attested to in Lord’s Day 16 of the Heidelberg Catechism:

Q. 44. Why is there added, “He descended into hell”?

A. That in my greatest temptations, I may be assured, and wholly comfort myself in this, that my Lord Jesus Christ, by His inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors, and hellish agonies, in which He was plunged during all His sufferings, but especially on the cross, hath delivered me from the anguish and torments of hell. (Confessions and Church Order, 100)

Although I do not wish to spend too much time on it, I believe it is important to address the immensely practical application that the Heidelberg Catechism presents to us. The question that the Catechism asks is, “Why is there added, ‘He descended into hell’?” Notice how the Catechism is not interested in giving a merely dogmatic statement. If that were the case, the Catechism perhaps would answer this way: “That Christ during his whole life long and especially at the cross suffered all the pains, terrors, and hellish agonies that were due to his elect people on account of their sins, thereby to accomplish their deliverance.” Instead, the Catechism says, “That in my greatest temptations, I may be assured…” This gets to the point of Christ’s sufferings. Why did Christ descend into hell at the cross? Why did Christ suffer at all? Christ suffered for my assurance. More specifically, Christ suffered in order that in my greatest temptations I might know that I have been delivered from the sufferings that I deserve on account of my sins.

What do you mean when you recite the words of the Apostles’ Creed each Sunday? This is a deadly serious issue. If you reserve to yourself a place for your works in assuring you that you have fellowship with God, then you are a liar and a hypocrite, and you had better not open your mouth to recite the Apostles’ Creed ever again. If you believe that good works are not at all to be slighted in assuring the soul of its justification before God, then you tear Christ down from his exalted state at God’s right hand and put him back in the grave, crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting him to an open shame. For there remains yet that which you must do to be saved. No. Christ suffered so that I might be assured. Christ was forsaken so that my soul might never be forsaken of God. And I am indeed assured because at the cross Christ declared, “It is finished.” None of my good works can add to that. None of my evil works can take away from that. I am delivered. It is finished.