BIBLE STUDY-25

Peace Methodist Church 2021. 10. 31.

 

The Apostles’ Creed

 

 

◎ While the New Testament was being formed, the Roman church was developing a formula that would later become the nucleus of our present Apostles’ Creed.

 

◎ Soon the Roman church saw the increasing need to use the catechumen at baptism as a manner of assuring the orthodoxy of the newly baptized.

 

◎ Thus developed a baptismal formular that must have been very similar to that which is quoted by Hippolytus(c.170-c.235) in his Apostolic Tradition:

 

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 from the Virgin Mary?

Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died,

and rose again on the third day living from the dead,

and ascended into the heaven,

and sat down on 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 in the resurrection of the flesh?

 

◎ This baptismal formula was later adapted in order to serve as an affirmation of faith and as the basis and culmination of the catechism.

 

◎ The following text of the creed as it existed in the fourth century has been reconstructed:

 

I believe in God the Father Almighty; and in Christ Jesus his only-begotten son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried, in the third day rose from the dead, ascended unto the heaven, and sat at the right of the Father, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the remission of sins, and the resurrection of the flesh.

 

[Resource: Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, Volume 1.]