Bishop Robert Barron's the Creed

In the fourth century, intense deliberations over theological questions gave rise to the Nicene Creed. This formal statement of faith is the foundation for both Eastern and Western Christianity, and to this day, most Christians around the world would subscribe to it. In our age of secularism, skepticism, and disaffiliation, we should attend to the most basic issue first: What does it mean to believe in God?

At five years old, Thomas Aquinas is said to have posed to his catechism teacher the question of all questions: “But master, what is God?” The Creed gives us a succinct but inexhaustible answer. The one God, unlike any other being in the cosmos, is fully actual and unconditioned. Furthermore, God is Father: he generates, cherishes, and directs all things. And God is Creator—the noncontingent source of all contingent reality.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ.” With these words of the Creed, we come to the heart of the matter, for all of distinctively Christian faith begins and ends with a particular person: Yeshua from Nazareth, the only begotten Son of the God of Israel—“Light from Light, true God from true God.” This proclamation—no less shocking nearly two thousand years later—draws us into the depths of the divine life and into the mystery of the Incarnation.

What matters most about Jesus? The Creed centers not on his ministry, his teachings, his miracles, or his words, but on the great drama of the Paschal Mystery: the Son of God’s descent into godforsakenness; his suffering, his death, his Resurrection and Ascension. The risen and ascended Christ, the Creed tells us, is King of the universe, ruler of the Church, and judge of all. And one day, he will fully inaugurate his eternal kingdom.

Following a Trinitarian structure, the Creed moves from the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit, the Spiritus Sanctus, “the holy breath.” The Spirit is not a “what” but a “who”—the same God of Israel we adore and glorify—and he is Zoopoeion (giver of life), who has spoken through the prophets. From the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly life, this life-giving power of the God of Israel filled him with fire and wisdom. And this same Spirit Jesus now gives generously to his People.

It seems altogether appropriate that we should express our faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But is it not at least questionable, even idolatrous, to be professing belief in the Church? That we do profess this in the Creed signals perhaps the most fundamental truth about the Mystical Body: that it is a sacrament of Christ, that it participates in his divinity. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church offers forgiveness, calls us out of the world, and invites us toward the life of the world to come.