What Catholics believe, on one page

01The verdict

“Begotten, not made”

The bishops’ answer went straight into a Creed: the Son is “begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father.” Arius’s idea was rejected, flat out.⁴

“God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (gennethenta), not made, being of one substance (homoousion, consubstantialem) with the Father”

Every Sunday, in parishes all over the world, Catholics stand up and say words that come from that Creed. People fought hard for those words. Bishops were exiled over them.

That longer creed, finished at another council in 381, is still shared by all the great Churches of East and West. It’s some of the most common ground Christians have.⁶

But why call it a “Creed”? And why did early Christians call it a “symbol”? Short answer: a broken token.

02The word

Why the Creed is called a “symbol”

In Greek, symbolon meant half of a broken object, like a seal snapped in two. You matched the halves to prove someone was who they said.¹

ImaginePicture it. A stranger knocks on your door and says your friend sent him. You pull out your half of the token. He pulls out his. Click. They fit.

That’s a creed: “a sign of recognition and communion between believers.” It’s also the faith’s greatest hits, all in one place.¹

And the oldest summary is older than any council. It’s right there in the Bible.

03The evidence

Handed on from the start

From the start, the Church passed on the faith in short, memorable lines. Very early she boiled the essentials down, especially for people getting ready for Baptism.¹⁰

You can see one in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He’s not making it up. He’s handing on what he was handed.

“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,”

And these summaries were “not made to accord with human opinions”: they pull together what matters most from the whole Bible.¹⁰

So what’s actually in it? Every creed has the same shape. Three parts.

04The shape

Three parts, one God

The first time anyone says the faith out loud is at Baptism, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”² So every creed goes: the Father who made us, the Son who saved us, the Spirit who makes us holy.³

Small detail, huge deal: it says “the name”, not “the names”, because there’s only one God.¹²

It’s called the Apostles’ Creed because it faithfully sums up what they believed; it’s the ancient baptism creed of the Church in Rome.¹³

Reading it is one thing. Saying it out loud is something else.

05The ending

Saying it is joining in

When you say the Creed and mean it, you’re stepping into friendship with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and with the whole Church that handed it to you.¹⁴ Whoever says “I believe” says “I pledge myself to what we believe.” It’s less like signing a form and more like saying “I do.”¹⁵

Your half of the token, clicking into theirs. Seventeen centuries apart.

Some lines will come easy. Some will stick in your throat. Both are a great place to start.