RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Apostle Apostles' Creed
because each of the twelve apostles in a meeting before their separation is said to have contributed a sentence to it, supposes that the history of the symbol did not commence with the end of the fifth century, but that the textus receptus was preceded by another form, the attributes of which were transferred to the new text and supplanted it. This supposition which the very simple contents and the brief, precise form of the symbol suggest, is also sufficiently confirmed by history.
By the investigations of Ussher, and more especially by those of Caspari, it has become evident that between 250 and 460 a symbol
5. Greek was used in the religious service of Text of the the Roman Church, which was highly
Roman esteemed, and to which no additions
Symbol, were permitted; as early as the fourth century this symbol was held to be derived directly from the twelve apostles in the form in which it was used, and it was supposed to have been brought to Rome by Peter. This symbol, the older, shorter Roman (in distinction from the Apostolicum, which is sometimes called the later, longer Roman, because it owes its general authority in the West to Rome), is completely extant in a number of texts (Hahn, §§ 14-20; Caspari, ii. 48; iii. 4, 5, 28-203). In its original Greek text it runs thus:
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" I believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ Jesus, his only-begotten Son, our Lord, born of the Holy Ghost and of Mary, the Virgin, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried; on the third day he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sitteth on the right hand of the Father from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead; and in the Holy Ghost, the holy church, the1 remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh."
The legend that this symbol was composed by the apostles, appears as early as the 6. Earliest Explanatio symboli of Ambrose. The Appearance fact that the writer was aware of of the Leg- its being divided into twelve articles, end of its perhaps indicates that the legend Origin, that each apostle had contributed one of them was already known. But Rufinus, who wrote later, knows only of a common composition of the Roman symbol by the apostles soon after Pentecost and before the separation. This legend he refers to a traditio ma- ]orum. It doubtless existed as early as the beginning of the fourth century. Both Ambrose and Rufinus testify that the wording of this symbol was most scrupulously preserved in the Roman Church. The apostolic origin of this symbol is also attested by Jerome, by the Roman bishops Celestine I- (422-431), Sixtus III. (431-440), and Leo I. (440-461), by Vigilius of Thapsus, and in the bMramentarium Gelasianum (cf. Caspari, ii. 108i',note 78> iiL 94~95; Hahn, § 46, note 163). The fact that Augustine in his eight expositions of the creed follows the Roman symbol, leaves no doubt that in the fourth century and in the first half of the I.-16
fifth the Roman Church made extensive use in the redditio of a symbol identical with the one mentioned above, and allowed of absolutely no additions to it. Ambrose was certainly not the only one to protest against many antiheretical additions. The epistle of Marcellus to Julius shows that between the years 330 and 340 this symbol was the official one in use in Rome; but other testimonies like Novatian's tractate De trinitate (Hahn, § 7) and
7. Age of the fragments from the epistles and the Roman writings of Bishop Dionysius of Rome
Symbol, point with certainty to the middle of the third century. That the shorter Roman symbol as represented in the Epistle of Marcellus and in the Psalterium Mthelstani (Hahn, §16; Caspari, iii. 161-203), was already the predominant one in the Roman Church about the year 250, can by no means be doubted. But here a series of questions arises, the answers to which involve very complicated investigations and combinations: (1) How is the shorter Roman symbol related to the Western symbols which were used, between 250 and 500 (or 800), in the religious services of the provincial churches until they were superseded by the (Gallican) Symbolum apostolicum and the Nicseno-Constantinopolitan creed? (2) How is the shorter Roman symbol related to the longer (i.e., the Apostolicum as it is now known) from the time of Caesarius, and why was it displaced by the latter? (3) When and where did the shorter symbol originate? (4) How is the shorter Roman symbol related to the Eastern, pre-Constantinopolitan symbols? (5) How is the shorter Roman symbol related to the different forms of the rule of faith which are known from the first three centuries? These five questions can be separated only in abstracto. A definite and separate answer to each of them is impossible. In what follows they will be discussed together and only a general answer attempted.
In surveying the very numerous provincial and
private confessions which remain from the Western
Church, belonging to the period from
8. Com- the fourth to the sixth (seventh) parison of century (cf. Hahn, 20-45; Caspari,
Western ii., hi.; Kattenbusch, 59-215, 392 Symbols, sqq.), six important observations may be made: (1) In the choice and arrangement of the single parts the confessions all exhibit the same fundamental type as the shorter Roman symbol. (2) The shorter a Western symbol is, the more closely it approaches the shorter Roman symbol. The shortest symbols of the provincial Churches of the West are almost, if not altogether, identical with it. (3) The later a Western symbol is, the more does it deviate by additions (hardly ever by omissions) from the shorter Roman. These additions are not of a directly polemical nature, but are to be regarded as completions and extensions held to be necessary in the interest of elucidation. Such additions by no means alter the fundamental character of the symbol, since they are not of a speculative dogmatic nature. (4) The majority of the additions which the Western symbols exhibit
Apostles' Creed Apostolic Brethren