Early Church Creeds

The word ‘Creed’ is derived from the Latin word credo, meaning ‘I believe’.  A Creed, therefore, is a statement or confession of faith that summarizes a particular set of beliefs. Particularly in the first few hundred years after the death of Christ, the church faced the problem of differing views over such subjects as whether Christ was truly God, whether he had both a human or divine nature, and the personhood and origin of the Holy Spirit. Out of these disputes the church formulated statements of belief, which to this day form an important part of how Christians express their faith.  Each Creed successively addressed further doctrinal questions and thus history witnesses a growth in complexity of creeds from simple Biblical creeds such as “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9) and “that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 3-4) expanding to form much larger creeds such as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.