Apostles' Creed

THE APOSTLES' CREED
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son Our Lord,
who was conceived by 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 rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence 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.

WHAT IS THE APOSTLES' CREED?
The Apostles' Creed is a formula of faith containing the fundamental tenets of Christian belief, and is believed to have been composed by the Twelve Apostles. From at least the second century forward, the Creed has been employed by the Church in her baptismal rite.

WHY DO WE PRAY THE APOSTLES' CREED?
We pray the Apostles' Creed because of its great antiquity, believed as it is to have originated from the Apostles themselves. It is important to all Christians because it lists for us the basic tenets of our faith. It affirms our belief in the Blessed Trinity, as well as the Incarnation of Christ through the Virgin Mary. In mentioning Pontius Pilate by name, moreover, it verifies Christ's Crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection as true historical events. Finally, it affirms our belief in the Second Coming, Last Judgment, the authority of the Catholic Church, reality of the communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, and bodily resurrection.

THE APOSTLES' CREED IN SCRIPTURE & TRADITION
While the Apostles' Creed is not found in Scripture, we do find early creedal statements in the New Testament, such as Saint Peter's confession of faith: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16); or Saint Paul's words to the believers in Rome: "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved" (Rom. 10:9-10); or Saint Thomas' simple declaration to Christ: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).

We likewise find creedal statements in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, for example, a disciple of the Apostle John, writing in about 107 A.D., says: "[Our Lord Jesus Christ] is truly of the family of David according to the flesh, and God's Son by the will and power of God, truly born of a Virgin, ... in the time of Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch nailed in the flesh on our behalf, – and we are of the fruit of His divinely blessed passion, – so that by means of His resurrection He might raise aloft a banner for His saints and believers of every age, whether among the Jews or among the Gentiles, united in a single body in His Church" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 1).

There is evidence that the Church used the Apostles' Creed in its baptismal rite as early as the second century, though the earliest written form of the prayer appears in a letter from the synod of Milan to Pope Siricius in 390.

The Apostles' Creed forms the basis for the later Nicene Creed, which was composed by the bishops at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 to combat the heretical teachings of Arius, who denied Christ's divinity.