The Contemporary Relevance of Christendom's Creeds

Abstract

"A creed, or rule of faith, is a concise statement of what one must believe in order to be a Christian. Certain fathers in the west, beginning with Cyprian, introduced the term ‘symbol’ (i.e., ‘sign’ or ‘instru¬ ment of identification’) to denote those articles of faith that differentiated the Christian from the pagan or Jew. Ostensibly the church’s creedal formulae were grounded in the Word of God. Augustine in his treatise, ‘On the Creed’, defined the Symbol as a brief compendium of divine truths that lie scattered across the pages of Scripture."