History
Before the Creeds: A Short History of the Rule of Faith
How the Church first said what it believed.
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For its first two or three generations, the Christian Church had no fixed creed. There was no fixed text a convert memorized, no official wording a council had approved and circulated. And yet the Church was never in any doubt about what it believed. Ask a Christian in Lyons or Carthage or Alexandria around the year 180 what the faith was, and you would have heard — in different words from each, but the same substance from all — one story: the one God who made all things; His Son, Jesus Christ, born, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised, and coming again; and the Holy Spirit poured out on God's people. This shared summary of the apostles' teaching had a name. They called it the rule of faith.
But how far back does it go?
The second-century writers did not invent the rule of faith; they gave a name to something already old. The habit of receiving a fixed summary of the gospel and handing it on intact runs straight back into the New Testament — into its earliest layer. Writing to Corinth around the year 55, Paul reminds the church of the gospel it had "received," and sets it out in a compact, ordered sequence: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, rose on the third day, and appeared to witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3–5). His terms are almost technical: he "delivered" what he had first "received," the language of a deposit passed carefully from hand to hand. Paul is not composing this summary; he is passing on a tradition older than the letter that preserves it.
And it already had the shape the later rule would keep, not a string of abstractions but the story of Jesus, confessed aloud. The New Testament is full of these compact confessions, many of them formulas the apostles are plainly quoting rather than composing: the hymn that runs from Christ's self-emptying to the day every tongue confesses "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:6–11); the fragment handed to Timothy, "manifested in the flesh… taken up in glory" (1 Timothy 3:16); the saving confession "that Jesus is Lord," joined to the belief that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9). The sermons in Acts tell the same story in the same order; and where the later baptismal creeds would leap from Jesus' birth straight to his death, the apostles' preaching still kept the years between, remembering "how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil" (Acts 10:38). That is the very stretch of the gospel the Confession of Allegiance keeps.
It was also, from the first, something to be guarded — and something bounded. Paul charges Timothy to hold "the pattern of sound words" he had heard and to guard "the good deposit" entrusted to him (2 Timothy 1:13–14); Jude presses his readers to contend for "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3): the faith, a known and settled thing, not the whole of what any Christian might believe. Hebrews can even set the "elementary" teaching every convert learns apart from the deeper instruction that comes later (Hebrews 6:1–2). None of this is yet a single fixed creed; the New Testament hands down the raw materials and the instinct, not the finished text. But the instinct is unmistakable, and it is already doing the work the rule of faith would later be named for: a received gospel, confessed at the core and open at the edges, handed on whole and guarded against loss.
So what held the faith together?
The rule of faith (in Latin, regula fidei) was not a document. It was the settled body of teaching that every church had received from the apostles and held in common: the standard by which the Scriptures were read and the faith confessed. A convert learned it before baptism; a believer held it as the pattern of the faith he had received; a teacher measured every new claim against it.
Its work was chiefly to draw a line. The second century was crowded with teachers who claimed the name of Christ while telling a very different story: of a lower god who made the material world, or a Christ who only seemed to have a body, or a secret knowledge available to a chosen few. Against all of them the churches could point to something public and shared: this is what the apostles taught, everywhere, from the beginning, in the open. The rule of faith was the Church's answer to the question, how do we know which Christianity is the real one?
Why did no two writers say it the same way?
Here is the strange and important thing about the rule of faith: everyone insisted it was fixed, and no two people wrote it down the same way. Irenaeus of Lyons declared that the faith is "one and the same" across the whole world, that no eloquent teacher adds to it and no simple believer subtracts from it. Tertullian of Carthage called it "immoveable and irreformable." Yet each states it in his own words; and Tertullian alone gives three noticeably different versions in three different books.
The explanation is that the rule was a body of teaching, not a set of memorized words. It was fixed in substance and free in expression, the way a family can tell the same story countless times without ever settling on one script. This is also why it was so short. It named what the Church could not stop confessing and still be the Church — who God is, who Christ is, what He did, the Spirit given, the hope to come — and there it stopped. A great deal that Christians believed and taught was left out of it, not because those things were unimportant, but because the rule was never meant to be everything. It was meant to be the floor: the foundation on which the whole structure of Christian teaching, and all who stood within it, rested.
What did the confession actually say?
However the words varied, the frame did not. The rule always unfolded in three parts (confessing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), following the pattern of the baptismal command Jesus gave, to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." From the earliest witnesses onward, the confession runs in three movements: the Father who made all things, the Son through whom salvation came, the Spirit poured out on the Church.
But the three parts were never equal in length. The first, on the Father, was usually brief; the third, on the Spirit, briefer still, often a single line. It was the middle article, on the Son, that carried nearly all the weight. Here the confession slowed down and told a story with dates and places in it: born of the virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, buried, risen on the third day, ascended, coming again to judge. The gospel facts about Jesus were the part the Church spelled out in full, and, as it turned out, the part it would spend the next two centuries defending.
If the faith never changed, why did the wording?
If the faith was one and unchanging, why did the confession keep gaining clauses? Because the faith itself never grew — its defenses did. Irenaeus said it exactly: the one who can say much about the faith adds nothing to it, and the one who can say little takes nothing away. The deposit was settled. What changed was only how much of it had to be spelled out, as each new error forced the Church to say plainly what it had always held.
Each added clause was a wall thrown up against a particular lie, at the moment that lie appeared. When some taught that Christ only seemed to have a body and only seemed to suffer, Ignatius of Antioch answered with a drumbeat of a single word — Christ was truly born, truly crucified, truly raised — nailing the faith to real flesh and a real death. When Marcion and the Gnostics taught that the world was made by a lower, inferior god, the confession grew specific: one God, the Creator, Maker of heaven and earth, and the resurrection of the flesh, insisting that the God who made matter would also redeem it. When others blurred the Father and the Son together, Tertullian and Novatian sharpened the words that held them apart.
So the confession did not expand by taking on new beliefs; it expanded by defending old ones, one at a time, as they came under fire. A truth got spelled out precisely when it was both essential and under attack, which is why the identity of God and of Christ, the very things the heretics denied, fill so much of it, while other true things could go unstated. The line itself never moved. It was only traced more heavily wherever someone was trying to rub it out.
How did you confess it?
For most Christians in these centuries, the rule of faith was not something read in a book. It was something spoken in water.
The earliest confessing was a set of questions put to the candidate at baptism. Standing in the water, he was asked: Do you believe in God the Father Almighty? "I believe." Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born… crucified under Pontius Pilate… rose again… will come to judge? "I believe." Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the resurrection of the flesh? "I believe." And on that threefold confession he was baptized.
Over time these baptismal questions hardened into fixed statements a candidate could recite whole: the shift from asking to declaring. One of these declaratory creeds, the Old Roman Creed, is the one that matters most for what came later: a short Roman baptismal confession whose wording is remarkably close to words many churches still say today. It is the direct ancestor of the Apostles' Creed. And like every creed said at baptism, it was spare — pared to what could be confessed from memory, standing in the water. It leapt from the manger straight to the cross, and never paused to name the Scriptures it was drawn from or the water the confessor stood in.
So where was the rest of it?
That spareness was the baptismal creed's nature, not the whole of the faith. When the teachers had room to expound the rule at length in their books, it came out fuller, and several things the baptismal creed passed over were named openly there.
Take the years of Jesus' ministry, which the plain creed skips altogether. Tertullian, setting out the rule in one of his treatises, keeps them in: between the birth and the cross, Christ "preached… the kingdom of heaven" and "worked miracles." That is very nearly the stretch of the gospel the Confession of Allegiance restores when it says Jesus embodied the Kingdom of God: proclaiming good news, healing the sick. Take the Scriptures: Origen, laying out the rule article by article, counts among them the inspiration of Scripture itself, Scripture named as part of the rule, not left as its unspoken ground. Take baptism: Irenaeus, drawing up the faith in his catechism, folds baptism into the confession — "baptism for the remission of sins… the seal of eternal life… the new birth." And where the plain creed closes its account of Christ on the note of coming judgment, Irenaeus's fullest statement of the rule closes on Christ as "Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King," before whom every knee shall bow: the note of allegiance, sounded in the very passage (Philippians 2) the Confession of Allegiance takes as its own.
None of this was hidden or novel. It lived in the fuller statements of the rule (the versions the teachers wrote out when they had space to name things one by one), even where the compressed baptismal creed left it unspoken. So when the Confession of Allegiance names Scripture, keeps the years of Jesus' ministry, and speaks of allegiance to Christ as King, it is not fastening new doctrines onto the old confession. It is drawing the creed's compressions back out to the fuller length the ancient rule already had.
And the creed we say today?
The plain baptismal creed flowed on toward the creed we know today, and it had one more storm to pass through. When Arius of Alexandria began teaching that the Son was only the greatest of creatures — an error the older baptismal creeds could not pin down, since he could recite them and mean something else — the bishops met at Nicaea in 325 and answered him with an instrument the rule had never used: a council's decree, resting on a single word from outside Scripture, enforced by anathema. It answered Arius; it did not replace the rule.
The baptismal line ran on past it unchanged: the Old Roman Creed, gathering a few further phrases over the centuries, settling at last into what we now call the Apostles' Creed, the creed that still stands as the spine of the Confession of Allegiance. It had never taken up Nicaea's technical word, but confessed the Son in the same plain language as before.
It is worth being honest about that line's timeline. The Apostles' Creed was not written by the apostles, and its familiar wording is later than Nicaea, not earlier; several of the lines we now recite entered the text only gradually, some centuries on. What is ancient is not the exact wording but its shape and substance: the same plain, three-part, Christ-centered confession the churches had held in common from the start.
This is our inheritance. Before the Church had settled creeds or gathered councils, it had a slim, shared, baptismal summary of the faith (a naming of the essentials and little more), and it went on confessing that summary, in plain and paraphrasable words, even after it had learned to write the harder kind. A wide range of what those early Christians actually said, in their own words, is gathered below; the wording wanders from one to the next, but the faith beneath it is unmistakably one.
The texts themselves are below.
I.New Testament Summaries of the Gospel
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, and in which you stand firm. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.
Romans 1:3–4
...regarding His Son, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 10:9
...that if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross.
Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
2 Timothy 2:8
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David, as proclaimed by my gospel...
1 Timothy 3:16
By common confession, the mystery of godliness is great:
He appeared in the flesh,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was proclaimed among the nations,
was believed in throughout the world,
was taken up in glory.
II.The Apostolic Proclamation in Acts
Men of Israel, listen to this message: Jesus of Nazareth was a man certified by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know. He was delivered up by God's set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross. But God raised Him from the dead, releasing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep Him in its grip.
David says about Him: 'I saw the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will dwell in hope, because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence.'
Brothers, I can tell you with confidence that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that He would place one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His body see decay.
God has raised this Jesus to life, to which we are all witnesses. Exalted, then, to the right hand of God, He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend into heaven, but he himself says: 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet."'
Therefore let all Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ!"
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and asked Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off—to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself."
And when Peter saw this, he addressed the people: "Men of Israel, why are you surprised by this? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus. You handed Him over and rejected Him before Pilate, even though he had decided to release Him. You rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the Author of life, but God raised Him from the dead, and we are witnesses of this fact.
By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know has been made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through Him that has given him this complete healing in your presence.
And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But in this way God has fulfilled what He foretold through all the prophets, saying that His Christ would suffer. Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus, the Christ, who has been appointed for you. Heaven must take Him in until the time comes for the restoration of all things, which God announced long ago through His holy prophets.
For Moses said, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to Him in everything He tells you. Everyone who does not listen to Him will be completely cut off from among his people.'
Indeed, all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have proclaimed these days. And you are sons of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers when He said to Abraham, 'Through your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed.' When God raised up His Servant, He sent Him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways."
But Peter and the other apostles replied, "We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him to His right hand as Prince and Savior, in order to grant repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him."
Then Peter began to speak: "I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism, but welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right. He has sent this message to the people of Israel, proclaiming the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.
You yourselves know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee with the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him.
We are witnesses of all that He did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. And although they put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree, God raised Him up on the third day and caused Him to be seen— not by all the people, but by the witnesses God had chosen beforehand, by us who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.
And He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the One appointed by God to judge the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about Him that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name."
Paul stood up, motioned with his hand, and began to speak: "Men of Israel and you Gentiles who fear God, listen to me! The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers. He made them into a great people during their stay in Egypt, and with an uplifted arm He led them out of that land. He endured their conduct for about forty years in the wilderness. And having vanquished seven nations in Canaan, He gave their land to His people as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years.
After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, from the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. After removing Saul, He raised up David as their king and testified about him: 'I have found David son of Jesse a man after My own heart; he will carry out My will in its entirety.'
From the descendants of this man, God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as He promised. Before the arrival of Jesus, John preached a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. As John was completing his course, he said, 'Who do you suppose I am? I am not that One. But there is One coming after me whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.'
Brothers, children of Abraham, and you Gentiles who fear God, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent. The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning Him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. And though they found no ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have Him executed. When they had carried out all that was written about Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb.
But God raised Him from the dead, and for many days He was seen by those who had accompanied Him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now His witnesses to our people.
And now we proclaim to you the good news: What God promised our fathers He has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: 'You are My Son; today I have become Your Father.' In fact, God raised Him from the dead, never to see decay. As He has said: 'I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.' So also, He says in another Psalm: 'You will not let Your Holy One see decay.' For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep. His body was buried with his fathers and saw decay. But the One whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.
Therefore let it be known to you, brothers, that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through Him everyone who believes is justified from everything from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.
Watch out, then, that what was spoken by the prophets does not happen to you: 'Look, you scoffers, wonder and perish! For I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you.'"
Then Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.
'For in Him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are His offspring.' Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man's skill and imagination.
Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead."
III.The Fathers and the Early Creeds
From the Letters to the Trallians, Smyrnaeans, and Ephesians. Translation: Roberts–Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1).
Trallians 9
Stop your ears, therefore, when any one speaks to you at variance with Jesus Christ, who was descended from David, and was also of Mary; who was truly born, and ate and drank. He was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate; He was truly crucified, and [truly] died, in the sight of beings in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. He was also truly raised from the dead, His Father quickening Him, even as after the same manner His Father will so raise up us who believe in Him by Christ Jesus, apart from whom we do not possess the true life.
Smyrnaeans 1
...He was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin, was baptized by John... truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, was nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh.
Ephesians 18
For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was born and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water.
Translation: Roberts–Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1).
Chapter 61
For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water... And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings.
Justin adds that the candidate is washed "in the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe," and "in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus."
Translation: Roberts–Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1).
The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father "to gather all things in one," and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow... and that He should execute just judgment towards all...
Irenaeus continues that though languages differ throughout the world:
...the import of the tradition is one and the same... the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little, diminish it.
Translation: J. Armitage Robinson (1920).
Chapter 3
And this is the drawing-up of our faith... First of all it bids us bear in mind that we have received baptism for the remission of sins, in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was incarnate and died and rose again, and in the Holy Spirit of God; and that this baptism is the seal of eternal life, and is the new birth unto God, that we should no longer be the sons of mortal men, but of the eternal and perpetual God.
Chapter 6 — the three articles
[First:] God the Father, not made, not material, invisible; one God, the creator of all things.
[Second:] the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was manifested to the prophets... and who, in the end of the times, for the recapitulation of all things, is become a man among men... to abolish death and show forth life.
[Third:] the Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied, and the fathers learned the things of God, and the righteous were led forth into the way of righteousness; and who in the end of the times was poured out in a new way upon mankind in all the earth, renewing man unto God.
Chapter 100
So then in respect of the three points of our seal error has strayed widely from the truth. For either they reject the Father, or they accept not the Son and speak against the dispensation of His incarnation; or else they receive not the Spirit, that is, they reject prophecy. And of all such must we beware, and shun their ways, if in very truth we desire to be well-pleasing to God and to attain the redemption that is from Him.
Translation: Peter Holmes (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3).
Now, with regard to this rule of faith... it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen "in divers manners" by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; (then) having ascended into the heavens, He sat down at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh.
Tertullian adds: "This rule... was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce."
Translation: S. Thelwall (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4).
The rule of faith, indeed, is altogether one, alone immoveable and irreformable; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right (hand) of the Father, destined to come to judge quick and dead through the resurrection of the flesh as well (as of the spirit). This law of faith being constant, the other succeeding points of discipline and conversation admit the novelty of correction.
Translation: Peter Holmes (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3).
We... believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensation, or οἰκονομία, as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her—being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost.
Translation: Burton Scott Easton (1934), ch. 21. The authorship, date, and provenance of this text are disputed.
Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?
...
Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose again the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?
...
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh?
To each question the candidate answered, "I believe."
Translation: Frederick Crombie (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4). The work survives chiefly in Rufinus's Latin.
Preface §2
...seeing there are many who think they hold the opinions of Christ, and yet some of these think differently from their predecessors, yet as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.
Preface §4 — First
The particular points clearly delivered in the teaching of the apostles are as follow:—
First, That there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, called all things into being — God from the first creation and foundation of the world — the God of all just men, of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noe, Sere, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets; and that this God in the last days, as He had announced beforehand by His prophets, sent our Lord Jesus Christ to call in the first place Israel to Himself, and in the second place the Gentiles, after the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. This just and good God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself gave the law and the prophets, and the Gospels, being also the God of the apostles and of the Old and New Testaments.
Preface §4 — Secondly
That Jesus Christ Himself, who came (into the world), was born of the Father before all creatures; that, after He had been the servant of the Father in the creation of all things — "For by Him were all things made" — He in the last times, divesting Himself (of His glory), became a man, and was incarnate although God, and while made a man remained the God which He was; that He assumed a body like to our own, differing in this respect only, that it was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit: that this Jesus Christ was truly born, and did truly suffer, and did not endure this death common (to man) in appearance only, but did truly die; that He did truly rise from the dead; and that after His resurrection He conversed with His disciples, and was taken up (into heaven).
Preface §4 — Thirdly
Then, Thirdly, the apostles related that the Holy Spirit was associated in honour and dignity with the Father and the Son. But in His case it is not clearly distinguished whether He is to be regarded as born or innate, or also as a Son of God or not: for these are points which have to be inquired into out of sacred Scripture according to the best of our ability, and which demand careful investigation. And that this Spirit inspired each one of the saints, whether prophets or apostles; and that there was not one Spirit in the men of the old dispensation, and another in those who were inspired at the advent of Christ, is most clearly taught throughout the Churches.
Preface §8 — the Scriptures
Then, finally, that the Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and have a meaning, not such only as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most. For those (words) which are written are the forms of certain mysteries, and the images of divine things. Respecting which there is one opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but to those only on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and knowledge.
Origen also enumerates, among the points delivered by the apostles, articles on the soul, free will, the resurrection, and the existence of opposing spiritual powers.
Translation from the Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5. The treatise expounds the rule clause by clause: the Father (chs. 1–8), the Son (chs. 9–28), and the Holy Spirit (ch. 29).
Chapter 1 — the first article
The Rule of truth requires that we should first of all things believe on God the Father and Lord Omnipotent; that is, the absolutely perfect Founder of all things, who has suspended the heavens in lofty sublimity, has established the earth with its lower mass, has diffused the seas with their fluent moisture, and has distributed all these things, both adorned and supplied with their appropriate and fitting instruments.
Chapter 9 — the second article
The same rule of truth teaches us to believe, after the Father, also on the Son of God, Christ Jesus, the Lord our God, but the Son of God—of that God who is both one and alone, to wit the Founder of all things... For this Jesus Christ... we read of as having been promised in the Old Testament, and we observe to be manifested in the New.
Chapter 29 — the third article
Moreover, the order of reason, and the authority of the faith... admonish us... to believe also on the Holy Spirit, promised of old to the Church, but granted in the appointed and fitting time.
The earliest recoverable form of the declaratory baptismal creed of the Roman church, and the direct ancestor of the Apostles' Creed. Its Greek text is preserved in a letter of Marcellus of Ancyra (c. 340); its Latin in Rufinus of Aquileia (c. 404). Its date and origin are contested. English rendering following Schaff and Rufinus's Latin.
I believe in God the Father Almighty;
and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord, who was born of [from] the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary; who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And in the Holy Ghost; the holy Church; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the flesh; [the life everlasting].
Marcellus's Greek closes with "life everlasting"; Rufinus's Latin omits it.
The received text. Its shape descends from the Old Roman Creed; several phrases entered the wording only gradually, and the text reached its familiar form around the eighth century. Traditional received English, from Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. II.
I believe in God the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ his only (begotten) 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 from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at 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.