The Apostles’ Creed, like all creeds, is a formal summary of salient points in the tradition—in the paradosis, what is handed over in the spirit from the Apostles to the end of time. Though it was not drawn up by the Apostles it does represent a systematic elaboration of the trinitarian formulae and clauses found in the Epistles of St Paul. The evidence suggests that in the primitive Church the creeds take shape first in association with the interrogations which are part of the baptismal rite, and secondly in the catechetical instructions. Be that as it may, there is no evidence for fixed official creeds till the turn of the second century when the Roman Creed was formulated as a declaratory creed for catechumens—this is the creed which, with some modifications, we know as the Apostles’ Creed. This creed follows a basic trinitarian pattern—the first article treating of God the Father, the second to the seventh with God the Son, and the eighth to the twelfth with God the Holy Spirit.

Simple though the creed is in language and structure as compared with the creeds for bishops characteristic of the fourth century, each article states a mystery of faith—it is, says St Thomas, the task of an article of a creed to give guidance to the mind of the faithful on points where there are distinguishable reasons for asserting that faith here carries us beyond reason. Hence it is clear that creed-saying is an activity of faith and that the creeds are concerned to direct the faithful mind to supernatural truth.