The common statement that confession is good for the soul is considered by the world as a means by which one can clear their guilty conscience and once again feel good about themselves. This concept, however, holds an entirely different perspective for the Christian. Confession is a natural aspect in the life of the believer giving evidence of the new birth that brings faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.
It is not in the sense of confession of sin but confession of faith that is in view here. It is not understood as a clear conscience but a complete submission to God that brings peace to the sinner. Jesus makes it clear in his response to Peter's confession that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God. That confession of faith is the heart and soul of what the church is built on. Jesus is the object of the believer's faith and the church is built upon Him, but it is expanded as the church confesses her faith in the world.
As the Apostle Paul points out in Romans 10:9-10, "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
The act of confessing what one believes concerning God has been a necessary reality expressed in the Old Testament in the expression the "the Lord our God is one God," and was further developed in the New Testament baptismal formula-I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The rise of creeds and confessions is a natural outgrowth of the Christian's need to express and confess his or her faith. The most common of the post-Apostolic confessions is the Apostles' Creed which is known as one of the Ecumenical Creeds of the church. It bears the oldest credentials of the formal creeds of the church. It is recited by the church as a confession of those truths foundational to what the Christian is taught in the Bible about God.
It is helpful to understand that the word "creed" comes from the word "credo", meaning, "I believe." In exploring the origin of the Apostles' Creed, it is important to recognize that the creed presupposes faith. The confession of and by the church flows from the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit that produces the unified faith of the Church . It bears witness to that faith before the world in the evangelistic mission of the church's proclamation of the gospel.
While many of the creeds and confessions were formed as a result of doctrinal controversies addressed by church councils and Synods, the church still has her creeds independent of controversy as a natural fruit of her faith in the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Philip Schaff, in his thorough work on the Creeds of the Church, puts it succinctly, "Where there is faith, there is also profession of faith. As ‘faith without works is dead,' so it may be said also that faith without confession is dead."
Turning our attention to the origin of the Apostles' Creed, it should be seen as arising naturally from the need for the early Christian Church to give expression to what she believed concerning her God and Redeemer.
One might assume from the name that the Apostles' Creed must have been written by the Apostles, but such an assumption would be wrong. B. K. Kuiper in his excellent work, The History of the Church, writes, "The creed that came out of the Church's struggle with Gnosticism and Montanism is known as the Apostles' Creed. It is so called not because it was composed by the apostles, but because it is a summary of the apostles' teaching."
While it may be that the Apostles' Creed was finally compiled in a form similar to what we have today as a result of doctrinal error confronting the church, evidence shows that it originally had its origin as a baptismal confession among the churches in various but similar forms. The common factor was that these early confessions, which were foundational to what became the Apostles' Creed, were Trinitarian in form, confessing God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in conformity to Jesus command in Matthew 28:19. The expressions contained in these baptismal formulas became known as a "Rule of Faith" by which catholicity could be tested. The expression "Rule of Faith" is now commonly assigned to the Word of God.
The earliest form of the Apostles' Creed, in which the churches unified their various expressions into one unified common expression appears sometime around 140 AD, shortly after the Apostolic period of the church came to a close. Thus, it is understood that in its earliest form, a form eventually known as the Old Roman Form, was designed to preserve those elements of the Christian confession that the Apostles had taught were fundamental to the Christian faith.
The form of the Apostles' Creed that the Church today is familiar with and employs in her confession of faith is known as the Received Form. This form is an expanded form of the Old Roman Form common in the early church. The origin of the Received Form is very difficult to trace as the enlarged form did not come into being all at once, but evolved at different times and for various reasons during the sixth century.
The phrases "Maker of heaven and earth," "He descended into hell," the word "catholic" in the article on the church, "the communion of the saints," and "the life everlasting" all appear in the Received Form over the course of the sixth century. All of these phrases, however, can be traced to much earlier origins in other church creeds that paved the way for the phrases to eventually be recognized, gain popularity, and be included in the Apostles' Creed.
Because of the progressive development and later inclusion of some phrases in the Middle Ages there arose some controversy about the use of certain phrases in the creed. Perhaps the most controversial is that of Christ's descent into hell. There was discussion about removing the phrase by the Reformers. The controversy was finally settled and the article rightly defined and explained as addressing our Lord's bearing of God's divine wrath in his soul, literally the suffering of the torments of hell, up to and while upon the cross. This is evidenced in the answer to Heidelberg Catechism question 44.
The employment of such creeds as the Apostles' Creed should not be viewed as adding to the Word of God, but rather as the natural expression of what Scripture teaches is common to the Christian faith concerning the person and work of God. In particular, the Apostles' Creed is not intended to be used so much as a doctrinal statement as it is a profession by the church of a living faith and saving truths.
Editor's Note:
The portion of the Apostles' Creed which reads, "He descended into hell" has a long and storied history. It was not in the older Roman creeds, but appears first in 390 A.D (creed of Aquileia). We find it again in 590 A.D. (Creed of Venantius Fortunatus). The issues surrounding this article are: (1) what is meant by the word "hell" (the spirit-world of the dead, the place of torment, or the suffering of condemnation); (2) the placement of this article (did Christ descend into "hell" before or after His death). The words Sheol and Hades (place of the dead) or Gehenna (place of punishment) are often just translated "hell" in some English Bibles. That leads to some of the confusion. We know that after Jesus died he entered Paradise (Lk. 23:43), so He did not go to the place of burning fire. Because of the controversy surrounding the meaning of this article, the Book of Common Prayer allows this article as optional for the minister to use or not.
The origin of our English word "hell" appears to have a Germanic origin. Otto Thelemann in his book, An Aid to the Heidelberg Catechism (p. 169), tells us that the English word "hell" is derived from the German "Hel" or "Helle", the goddess of the infernal world in German mythology.
The church historian, Phillip Schaff in Vol. 2 of the Creeds of Christendom defines the three different positions commonly held by the Church. Schaff says, "The clause has been explained in three different ways: 1. It is identical with sepultus (Rufinus), or means ‘continued in the state of death and under the power of death' till the resurrection (Westminster divines, WLC #50). This makes it a useless repetition in figurative language. 2. It signifies the intensity of Christ's sufferings on the cross, where he tasted the pain of hell for sinners (Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism, HC #44). This is inconsistent with the order of the clause between death and resurrection. 3. An actual self-manifestation of Christ after the crucifixion to all the departed spirits . . . . As such the descent is a part of the universality of the scheme of redemption, and forms the transition from the state of humiliation to the state of exaltation. This is the historical explanation, according to the belief of the ancient Church, but leaves much room for speculation concerning the object and effect of the descent."
We hold to the explanation given in the Heidelberg Catechism where this article summarizes all the sufferings of Christ, "on the cross and before" in which He bore the curse of condemnation for us. The suffering of hell was finished at His death.
