Apostle's Creed | Nicene Creed | Athanasian Creed
Heidelberg Catechism | Belgic Confession | Canons of Dort

An introduction to the universally accepted and professed Ecumenical Creeds of the Church of Jesus Christ

"We have no creed but Christ!" This is a common slogan from the lips of many professing Christians in our day and place in history. But the practice of writing and confessing creeds (from the Latin credo, "I believe") is as old as the Lord's Church herself. Thus we find in both the Old and New Testaments of the holy Scriptures summary statements of the faith of God's covenant people.

The primary confession of the Old Testament is the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." (Deut 6:4). This creed was upon the lips of the ancient people of God as the core belief of their faith. Yahweh alone was God, and the "gods" of the nations, Baal, the ashtoreths, Molech, Chemosh, Dagon, etc. were nothing but man-made idols.

The primary confession of the New Testament is found upon the lips of the Apostle Peter in Matthew 16:16, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." He confessed that our Lord not only as the long ago promised Messiah, the Savior of His people, but also as the very Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Later in the history of the Church the Apostles gave to the churches short creedal formulas such as 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." The Apostle Paul gave the Ephesians what is commonly regarded as a creed in Ephesians 4:4-6. It was professed just before a convert was baptized. It says, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all." Though Paul could not return to Ephesus he gave young Timothy, pastor of the Ephesian church, this poetic confession (at least in Greek) in 1 Timothy 3:16, "And confessedly great is the mystery of piety: who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory" (own translation).

As the post-apostolic Church progressed in evangelism two urgent needs confronted her. First, new converts had to be catechized, or orally instructed in the faith. Second, many heresies had arisen which needed to be confronted. Thus the churches wrote ecumenical ("general/universal") creeds in order to instruct pagan converts and to protect the Church from error. They are called "ecumenical" creeds because nearly all the churches of Christendom accepted them, as do we.