The Apostles' Creed was not written by the apostles, though it captures essentially what they professed.

Similarly, the Nicene Creed (the one sung at Latin Masses) was not composed at the Council of Nicea. It captures of "mind" of the Council.

The origin of the Apostles' Creed was the liturgy of baptism, both in terms of preparation and in terms of the ritual of baptism itself.

The Creed was utilised in question-and-answer fashion to elicit the responses of the catechumens. The format was Trinitarian: Do you believe in God the Father?/ do you believe in the Jesus Christ the Son?/ do you believe in the Holy Spirit? - the format we still use today in baptismal ceremonies or in the renewal of baptismal vows.

The Creed was also a vademecum (portable summary) of the faith for the unlettered. They could memorise it easily and take it all to heart.

The Creed is very economical in form, comprised of very carefully chosen words, 75 in the Latin of the Apostles' Creed, and 162 in the Latin of the Nicene Creed.

The rudiments of the Creed are found in the Scriptures. Creeds distilled and summarised the essentials. They were the way Christian gave account of what they believed before the canonical writings, the New Testament, began to emerge.

In the Acts of the Apostles, for instance, when the Ethiopian eunuch makes his confession of faith, all he says is: " I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God " (Acts 8:37 ).

Article 1 : " I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator or heaven and earth ."

The word credo very likely comes from Latin roots via Sanskrit: "c or dare " - "to give one's heart." Thus to "believe" in God is to give one's heart to God. It's not purely a rational adherence to God, but a personal surrender. It is to believe "in", to give oneself to God.

One trusts or believes in someone because of some quality . I believe in God because I believe that He is trustworthy, that it is entirely fitting to give one's heart to Him. This shows the two fundamental dimensions of belief: "in" and "that". The "in" dimension is the personal, self-surrendering, trusting side of faith. The "that" dimension is the "substance" side, the "what" of belief.

St Paul given us in 1 Corinthians an excellent example of the "substance" dimension: " I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died. that he was buried. that he was raised. tha t he appeared ."

Of the two dimensions the "in" is more important. It is this dimensions that makes faith living faith.

The first "substance" area of belief is "God." What I believe in is "God."

Belief in God is not belief in one thing (God) alongside other things, which I may also believe in. "Believe" here is a unique act. God is not something, but the reality or mystery behind and beyond all things. Belief in God is belief in infinite being sustaining everything.

The major difficulties for belief today stem from the culture of secularism. This is not the atheism we once called militant (communism). It is everyday, more de facto atheism. The world is just what it seems and only that. Another world feels implausible and unreal.

The subject of belief is "I", the individual person, not "We". Both the Apostles' and the Nicene creeds begin with Credo not Credimus . The reason, of course, is that no one can believe for anybody else. I can say and know that I believe. You must say it for yourself. Thus "We believe" is really sociological statement or sociological declaration rather than faith.

The "God" believed in is " the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth ." We do not believe in a generic God, but a God of unlimited potency and sovereignty, of everything from "a to z," and of whatever may be yet discovered in the universe.

But if God transcends all sexual reference - God is neither male nor female - why is God called Father ? The Bible also has feminine metaphors, which show that the maternal nature of God is also valued. But the dominant metaphors are masculine.

Part of the answer lies in the understanding of human procreation when the Bible was written. An undeveloped biology credited the male with a greater role in procreation than the female.

His seed contained the life force; her womb was only the nurturing context. His role was dominantly active; hers essentially passive. There was no sense of female contribution to the development of the seed other than context.

Sociologically also, males had power and education, without equal opportunity for females. Thus, if God was "sovereign" and "all-powerful," God inevitably had to be male.

Overall, the rich female metaphors for God are still to be appropriated, though their day may have already dawned.

Article 2: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord

Jesus is the short from of Yehoshua ( Joshua), meaning He who saves. Jesus, however, is also an ordinary inhabitant of a particular town in Galilee , called Nazareth , during the time of the Roman occupation of Judaea . He was an itinerant preacher and healer, who proclaimed the coming of God's Kingdom.

Jesus is also the Son, who calls Yahweh his father, Abba . The "and" of the second article is not to be read disjunctively as a separation of the Father who is not the Son, from the Son who is not the Father. Faith is in Father and Son conjunctively. Their relation is the only distinction between them.

" Christ " is not Jesus' surname. The " Christ " of "Jesus Christ" means the "anointed" one. The sacramental gesture in the Bible that corresponded to divine election was the laying on of hands and the anointing of the head with oil. Grace was rubbed into the chosen one, as it were, whose body was to be vehicle of God's will on earth.

" Jesus Christ " thus means " Jesus the chosen of God, " the vehicle of the Holy One. In the phrase you have the union of person and role . Jesus is messiah and saviour; Christ is anointed vessel and chosen instrument.

Jesus is uniquely the Son, not one of the many holy men of Israel who were called "sons of God". The sonship of these other sons is essentially derivative. It "resembles" the sonship of Jesus. In Jesus sonship means the fullest correspondence.

The Nicene Creed would clarify this further by adding " light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, one in being with the Father etc."

The clarification arose under challenge from the Arian controversy in the 4th century. Arius had said that Jesus was subordinate to the Father, only a son, not uniquely the Son.

Jesus is also "our Lord". For the Hebrews the word for the ineffable mystery of God was the tetragrammaton YHWH, something which was never pronounced. We do not know what its vowels were.

When the Scriptures were read aloud, the scribes rendered Adonai for YHWH. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, then rendered Kurios (Greek for "Lord") for Adonai.