THE APOSTLES\u2019 CREED<\/p>\n
I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,<\/p>\n
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by\u00a0the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,\u00a0was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he
\nrose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the\u00a0right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to\u00a0judge the quick and the dead.<\/p>\n
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the\u00a0communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the\u00a0body; and the life everlasting. Amen.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note: The Apostles\u2019 Creed<\/p>\n
Although not written by apostles, the Apostles\u2019 Creed reflects the theological\u00a0formulations of the first century church. The creed\u2019s structure may be based on\u00a0Jesus\u2019 command to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the\u00a0Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In a time when most Christians were illiterate, oral repetition of the Apostles\u2019 Creed, along with the Lord\u2019s Prayer and the Ten\u00a0Commandments, helped preserve and transmit the faith of the western churches.\u00a0The Apostles\u2019 Creed played no role in Eastern Orthodoxy.<\/p>\n
In the early church, Christians confessed that \u201cJesus is Lord\u201d but did not always understand the biblical context of lordship. The views of Marcion, a Christian living in Rome in the second century, further threatened the church\u2019s understanding of Jesus as Lord. Marcion read the Old Testament as referring to a tyrannical God who had created a flawed world. Marcion believed that Jesus revealed, in contrast, a good God of love and mercy. For Marcion, then, Jesus was not the Messiah proclaimed by the prophets, and the Old Testament was not Scripture. Marcion proposed limiting Christian \u201cScripture\u201d to Luke\u2019s gospel (less the birth narrative and other parts that he felt expressed Jewish thinking) and to those letters of Paul that Marcion regarded as anti-Jewish. Marcion\u2019s views developed into a movement that lasted several centuries.<\/p>\n
Around A.D. 180, Roman Christians developed an early form of the Apostles\u2019 Creed to refute Marcion. They affirmed that the God of creation is the Father of Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried and raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where he rules with the Father. They also affirmed belief in the Holy Spirit, the church, and the resurrection of the body.<\/p>\n
Candidates for membership in the church, having undergone a lengthy period\u00a0of moral and doctrinal instruction, were asked at baptism to state what they believed. They responded in the words of this creed.<\/p>\n
The Apostles\u2019 Creed underwent further development. In response to the\u00a0question of readmitting those who had denied the faith during the persecutions of\u00a0the second and third centuries, the church added, \u201cI believe in the forgiveness of\u00a0sins.\u201d In the fourth and fifth centuries, North African Christians debated the\u00a0question of whether the church was an exclusive sect composed of the heroic few or\u00a0an inclusive church of all who confessed Jesus Christ, leading to the addition of\u00a0\u201choly\u201d (belonging to God) and \u201ccatholic\u201d (universal). In Gaul, in the fifth century,\u00a0the phrase \u201che descended into hell\u201d came into the creed. By the eighth century, the\u00a0creed had attained its present form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE APOSTLES\u2019 CREED 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\u00a0the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confession"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gstpc.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}