Apostles' Creed

“Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

— 2 Timothy 1:13

The Apostles’ Creed is a brief, structured summary of the Christian faith, organized around belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, historically used in the church for baptism and catechesis.¹ Despite its name, it was not written by the apostles themselves; its wording developed gradually over several centuries from earlier local baptismal confessions, and its title reflects its claim to state, not invent, apostolic teaching.¹

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession has no chapter or appendix devoted to the Apostles’ Creed. Unlike the Westminster Assembly’s own catechism, which appended the creed’s text alongside the Lord’s Prayer and Ten Commandments,¹ the 1689 LBCF neither reproduces nor formally adopts it. The confession’s own first chapter states the principle that governs how any such creed should be read: Scripture is “the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.”² A creed’s authority is accordingly derivative rather than independent. The Westminster divines were explicit that they included the Apostles’ Creed “not as though it was composed by the apostles, or ought to be esteemed canonical Scripture, but because it is a brief sum of Christian faith, agreeable to the word of God, and anciently received in the churches of Christ.”¹

Historical Development

The creed’s individual articles are each of Nicene or ante-Nicene origin, but its text as a whole, in the wording now used, cannot be traced earlier than the sixth century.³ It grew out of the gradual comparison and harmonizing of local baptismal creeds used across the Western church, most substantially those of Rome, Aquileia, Milan, Ravenna, Carthage, and Hippo, with the Roman form’s own wording gaining the widest acceptance and absorbing material from the others.¹ Bavinck notes that although the creed does not explicitly distinguish Christ’s humiliation from his exaltation the way later Reformed theology would, “the Apostles’ Creed nonetheless does sketch the order in which Christians of all ages have understood the facts of redemptive history and confessed their faith.”⁴

Objections and Responses

What does the clause “he descended into hell” mean, and is it something Reformed Christians can still affirm? Reformed theologians have historically read this article, following Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism, as referring not to a literal descent to preach to the dead or to proclaim victory over Satan, but to the full depth of suffering Christ endured in bearing the punishment for sin: “the state of death in which Christ existed between his dying and rising again.”⁵ Bavinck argues this reading fits the clause’s place in the creed, between Christ’s burial and his resurrection, a step in his humiliation rather than his exaltation, better than the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox reading (Christ freeing Old Testament saints from a “limbo of the fathers”) or the Lutheran reading (Christ proclaiming victory to Satan), neither of which he finds textually or historically supported.⁵ On this reading, the clause does not add a new event between Christ’s burial and resurrection but states more fully what those surrounding clauses already describe: “Christ descended into hell so that we would not have to go there.”⁵

Related Doctrines

Text of the Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall 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 life everlasting. Amen.

References

Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 7, “Creeds and Confessions,” 112-128. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 1. ↩
Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1, 20, quoted in Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 114. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord: Christ’s Exaltation.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 15, “The Servant Savior: Christ’s Humiliation.” ↩ ↩² ↩³