I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN.
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I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
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If these two creeds–known as the Apostles’ and the Nicene–be examined as to their place in comparative religious ideas and literature, it will be at once apparent that the faith that they proclaim is not Greek, speculative, philosophical, but historical, biblical, Semitic, eschatological, a faith that does not make general propositions about the nature of God, but that looks back to certain events in history wherein God has acted and that looks forward to God’s own consummation of these acts “for us men and for our salvation.” In the light of early Christian history the character of the Creeds is indeed very striking. Christianity has entered the Hellenic atmosphere, it has used the Greek tongue, its theologians have largely been Greeks–and yet its Creeds show that it has baptized its Greek adherents into a Messianic faith in a God who reveals Himself through acts in history. The biblical Gospel has overcome the speculative mind. And the simple, pictorial language of “he came down,” “he ascended,” is not the language of a time or of a school of thought, but the inescapable language of the human race and of common life. Language less “mythological” in form is less permanent. A creed that substituted for these pictorial phrases the language of “modern thought” or of any scheme of thought would be the Creed of an ephemeral scholasticism , and not the Creed of a Gospel before which all scholasticisms must bow.
The Gospel and the Catholic Church by Michael Ramsey<>
