No verse contains it, and almost every line of it comes from one. Here is where the creed came from, who really wrote it, and how we say its two hardest lines honestly.
Is the Apostles' Creed in the Bible? Not as a passage you can turn to. No verse contains it and the twelve apostles did not write it, but nearly every line of it summarizes something the New Testament says plainly.
It grew out of the confessions new believers made at baptism in the early centuries, took shape in the church at Rome, and settled into the wording most of us know by the early 700s. It is a faithful map of Scripture, not a piece of Scripture.
That cuts both ways. A creed is not the Bible, so it can be tested. And it is not an invention floating free of the Bible, because its shapers were quoting the apostles line after line.
Homou, together, and legō, to speak. To confess is to say the same thing, to agree out loud with what God has said and what the church has received.
Confession, profession, acknowledgment. Not confessing sins in this case, but declaring what you believe in front of other people.
Timothy made the good confession before many witnesses, and Christ Jesus made His before Pontius Pilate, the same governor the creed names.
Jesus is the high priest of our confession, so hold it fast. Hebrews 10:23 says the same about the confession of our hope.
The New Testament assumes believers have a confession, short enough to say together and firm enough to hold on to.
So the idea of a creed is older than any creed. Short confessions turn up all over the New Testament. “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9, 1 Corinthians 12:3) is the shortest, and in a city where Caesar claimed that title it was not a small thing to say. 1 Timothy 3:16 and Philippians 2:6 to 11 preserve what read like early hymns about Christ.
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”
1 Corinthians 15:3 to 4Paul wrote that in the mid 50s, and he says he received it first, so it was already a fixed summary. Died, buried, raised on the third day. The middle of the Apostles' Creed runs in the same order. The creed did not invent the shape of the gospel. It inherited it.
Many of us assumed the apostles wrote it. The name is a claim about its content, not its authorship.
A second century writing called the Epistle of the Apostles lists faith in the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ the Redeemer, in the Holy Spirit, in the holy church and in the forgiveness of sins.
Irenaeus in Gaul and Tertullian in North Africa summarize the faith in short outlines that run Father, Son, Spirit. Candidates confessed them at baptism.
Marcellus of Ancyra, writing to Julius, bishop of Rome, gives a Greek text of the creed Rome used. Scholars call it the Old Roman Creed or the Old Roman Symbol.
Rufinus of Aquileia explains the creed line by line in Latin and notes where his own church's wording differs from Rome's.
The standard text first appears in a missionary manual by a monk named Pirmin, which Bryan Litfin describes as “datable to the early 700s”.
Litfin, writing in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, notes that the Apostles' Creed “is widely acknowledged to be a later derivative” of that Old Roman Symbol.
Here is where the legend comes in. Rufinus passed on a story he said the forefathers had handed down: before the apostles scattered to preach, they met and composed the creed together, “each contributing his several sentence to one common summary.” By Pirmin's day the story had grown specific. As the Christian History Institute puts it, “Following a tradition common in his day, Pirmin assigns authorship of each part of the creed to a different apostle.”
That is later tradition, not history. Nothing in Acts or the letters describes such a meeting, and phrases like “descended into hell,” “catholic” and “the communion of saints” were not in the Roman creed Marcellus recorded.
Apostolic in content, later in wording, legendary in its authorship story. Its authority is borrowed, the way a map's authority comes from the land it describes.
Notice the skeleton first: Father, Son and Spirit. The creed is Trinitarian from the bones out, one God in three distinct Persons, each fully God, as we show in the Trinity in the Bible.
Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 40:28, 1 Corinthians 8:6. We know the Father by looking at Jesus (John 14:9).
John 3:16, Romans 10:9, Philippians 2:11.
Matthew 1:18 to 25, Luke 1:35. The heart of the incarnation.
Mark 15, 1 Corinthians 15:3 to 4, 1 Timothy 6:13. Pilate's name pins the gospel to a real calendar.
Luke 24:6 to 7, Acts 2:32, 1 Corinthians 15:4. Everything else in the creed stands or falls on the resurrection.
Acts 1:9, Ephesians 1:20 to 22, Hebrews 1:3. Seated means reigning now.
John 14:16 to 17, Acts 2:4, Romans 8:11. Every gift He gives is active today. See who the Holy Spirit is.
Ephesians 4:4 to 6, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Hebrews 12:1. Catholic here means universal.
Acts 2:38, Ephesians 1:7, Colossians 2:13 to 14. See what forgiveness is.
1 Corinthians 15:20, John 11:25 to 26, John 17:3. Eternal life is a gift believers have already (John 5:24).
Two lines are missing from that grid on purpose. They deserve more than a card.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
The traditional English wording says Jesus “descended into hell.” Many churches now say “descended to the dead.” We will not rewrite the creed's text, so here is what the line meant and how we say it.
After the cross Jesus went down into a place of fire, suffered torment there to finish paying for sin, or fought a war in the underworld to take the keys.
Jesus truly died and went where the dead go, the grave, what the Hebrew Bible calls Sheol and the Greek calls Hades. He was not abandoned there (Acts 2:31), and on the third day God raised Him.
The popular reading comes from one English word doing the work of three Bible words. The Latin behind the old wording pointed to the lower places, the world of the departed. It never meant Gehenna, Jesus' own picture of final destruction, and Scripture never puts Him there. Rufinus even noted that the clause was missing from the Roman creed and read it as meaning the same thing as buried.
The fire and the underworld battle are later imagery layered onto a quieter claim: He really died. A Savior who only seemed to die could not meet us in ours.
We take 1 Peter 3:18 to 20 and Ephesians 4:9 in did Jesus go to hell, and the words themselves in what Sheol means and is hell in the Bible. So when Sound of Heaven says this line, we say the words as written and mean them the way Peter preached them. Jesus went down into death, and death could not hold Him.
“He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Most churches hear a day still ahead. That is the majority reading, it is how the creed's framers heard it, and sincere people who love Jesus hold it.
We think it misses what the New Testament says about the timing. The phrase “the living and the dead” is lifted straight from the apostles (Acts 10:42, 2 Timothy 4:1, 1 Peter 4:5), and every time they use it, they tie it to their own horizon.
“They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.” “The end of all things is at hand.”
1 Peter 4:5 and 4:7Peter says the Judge is ready. Jesus told the crowd that some standing there would not taste death before they saw the Son of Man coming in His kingdom (Matthew 16:28), and that this generation would not pass away before it all took place (Matthew 24:34). Soon meant soon.
Sound of Heaven holds fulfilled eschatology. We believe Jesus came in judgment within the lifetime of the apostles, exactly when He said He would, and that the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 was the covenantal climax that closed the old age and vindicated Him as King and Judge. See what the second coming is.
So we say this line as written, without changing a word, and read it the way the apostles meant it. It confesses a judgment the Son was appointed to carry out and did carry out, and that He reigns now as Judge of the living and the dead. He is not waiting in the wings. He is seated, which is the line right before this one.
The people who fixed this wording were looking for a coming still ahead of them, and we do not claim they agreed with us. The texts they quoted set the timing, and when a creed and an apostle pull apart, the apostle wins. Some early writers did read these passages as fulfilled, as we trace in church fathers who believed the second coming happened already.
And judgment in the hands of Jesus is not endless torment. Eternal life is His gift. Those who refuse it perish (John 3:16). They do not live forever in pain. That is what we mean by Gehenna.
Where does the creed's phrase “the living and the dead” come from?
The creed borrowed the apostles' own words, so we read the line by their timing. Peter told first century readers the Judge was ready and the end was at hand.
Many people learned this line as a threat. If that is you, look at who the Judge is: the one who was judged in your place and forgave the people nailing Him to a cross.
If this line still sits heavy on you, you do not have to carry it alone. Send us a prayer request and someone will pray with you.
Creeds were built to be said out loud with other people. It is a small picture of the one body in Ephesians 4:4 to 6.
The early creeds guarded against teachers who denied Jesus really came in the flesh. Ask whether a teaching keep Jesus at the center, fully God and fully human, crucified and risen?
Take the grid above and read one clause and its passages a day. In two weeks you will know why each line is there.
The Bible, read through Jesus, is the authority. The creed is a trustworthy summary tested by it.
What it is not is a password. Nobody should be kept from the table for stumbling over a line.
And “catholic” in the creed means universal, the whole church in every place, which is why Protestants say it too. See are Catholics Christian, and with what the church actually is in what is the church.
The creed is not in the Bible, and it does not need to be. It is the early church saying in a few breaths what the apostles spent their lives preaching.
Look at where it spends its words. One line on the Father, one on the Spirit, and the long middle on Jesus: conceived, born, suffered, crucified, died, buried, raised, ascended, seated, judging. That proportion is right. Jesus is the full and final revelation of God, and every line makes sense only when read through Him.
So say it, and say it with the church. When you reach the two hard lines, say them honestly. He really died, and He really reigns as Judge. Both are finished facts, and the Kingdom He rules is here now.
For related ground, see what the Kingdom of God is, the day of the Lord, when is judgement day, and what we believe. If you are on Long Island, come and say it with us. Plan your visit.
The Apostles' Creed is not a Bible passage and the Twelve did not write it, but it is an early and faithful summary of what they preached, and we say every line of it, reading the descent as a real death and the judging of the living and the dead as a judgment Jesus carried out and a throne He holds now.
If one of these lines has troubled you for years, send it to us and somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
No, not as a passage. No single verse contains the creed, and the apostles did not write it as a unit. But nearly every line of it comes from the New Testament. Its sequence of death, burial and resurrection on the third day matches 1 Corinthians 15:3 to 4, and its phrase about judging the living and the dead comes from Acts 10:42, 2 Timothy 4:1 and 1 Peter 4:5. It is a summary of Scripture, not a part of it.
No. That is later tradition. Around AD 400 Rufinus passed on a story that the apostles composed it together before they scattered, and by the 700s a specific line was assigned to each apostle by name. The historical record shows something else. The creed grew out of early baptismal confessions in Rome and the Western churches, its wording kept changing for centuries, and the standard form first appears in the early 700s.
It means Jesus truly died and went where the dead go. The Latin behind the old English wording pointed to the lower places, the world of the departed, what the Hebrew Bible calls Sheol and the New Testament calls Hades. It does not mean Gehenna, and it does not mean Jesus was tormented after the cross. The clause was missing from the early Roman creed, and Rufinus read it as saying the same thing as buried. Peter's point in Acts 2:31 is that He was not abandoned there.
The Apostles' Creed grew out of baptismal confessions in the Western church and stays short and simple. The Nicene Creed came from church councils at Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, written largely to answer teachers who denied that the Son is fully God, so it adds careful language about Jesus being of one being with the Father. Both are Trinitarian and both summarize the same gospel.
Here catholic simply means universal. The line names the one church of Jesus in every place and every century, not a single denomination, which is why Protestant, Catholic and many other Christians all say it. The word was not in the early Roman creed and was added later, but the idea is apostolic: one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Ephesians 4:4 to 5).