Creeds of Old

As I work on the next project, Creedal Apologetics: An Ancient Tool for Defending and Proclaiming Jesus Christ to the World, I decided to make a "landing page" for the Appendix of my book. This will be filled with various resources to help Christians utilize the Apostles Creed when defending and proclaiming the faith to skeptic and seeker alike. Enjoy.

This is one of the oldest creeds, called The Old Roman Creed, and from it you can see a lot of similarities with the Apostles Creed:

The Interrogatory Creed of Hippolytus (approximately 215AD)

"Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty?"

"Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born 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 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 body?"

He wrote against many heresies in the early church and you can find his writings here.

This creedal statement is from Iranaeus:

…this faith: in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race…”

The Apostles Creed

Crucial to the True Faith are the essentials we believe. How wonderful to have Creeds in the Bible as precedents for the early Church to follow. Through these creeds, we Christians are better equipped to answer for our faith.