Article 3 : He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary

The third article affirms that Jesus is from God, and that he is also from Mary. The phrasing does not imply that he is half-God and half-man.

It is the Annunciation in Luke that accounts for the choice of words: " Behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son " (Luke 1:31 ). The Nicene Creed states the article's essential meaning in its phrase "true God and true man."

Doctrine about Mary's condition remains a secondary consideration, though the issue is intertwined. Both tradition and Church teaching affirm the "virgin birth", more properly, the "virgin conception ." The doctrine, however, has not been proposed as central to Christianity or crucial to salvation, though it has been celebrated in and out of season.

That Mary is a virgin mother does not prove that Jesus is divine, only that he is a miracle baby. That Mary is not a virgin mother, does not disprove that Jesus is God. Jesus does not cease to be divine, if he were conceived like other children. Belief in Jesus' divinity rests on the testimony of the resurrection.

" Conceived by the Holy Spirit ," however, implies a new beginning, a fresh start, with a new Adam. Just as God's creative spirit hovered over the waters at the dawn of creation, so the Holy Spirit "overshadows" Mary at the pure beginning of a new world.

At the Council of Ephesus in the fifth century, Mary received her most important and decisive title: Theotokos , or "God-bearer." The title was designed to say something more about the one who was borne than the one who did the bearing. It was meant to assert and protect the reality of the Incarnation by insisting on the absolute identity of the eternal Word with Jesus.

As Eamon Duffy writes, "to call Mary the God-bearer was to assert that in her womb God had thrown his lot once and for all with humanity, had joined us, holding nothing back.

Mary was not a pipe through which divine spirit inserted itself into earthly matter, or a container in which the precious spice of the Godhead was temporarily lodged, but the intimate source of the human identity of God himself, giving God incarnate all that a mother gives to her children - blood, bone, nerve and personality.

In her conceiving and childbearing, heaven and earth were wedded beyond any possibility of divorce: a stupendous miracle had occurred which raised human nature to heaven itself."

Article 4 : He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.

From the highest mysteries of Father and Son, the Creed moves downward to incorporate not only the human figure of Mary but that of Pontius Pilate. The mention of Pontius Pilate underlines the fact that the passion of Jesus took place entirely in the public eye. It was an event fully and reliably historical.

The individual stages are carefully listed: crucified, dead, buried. Jesus' crucifixion ended with his death, and his death was sealed by his burial. The steps underscore the fact that the process led to actual death (a fact which heretics like the Gnostics disputed).

Death by crucifixion was a form of capital punishment reserved for criminals of low status, not for Roman citizens and members of the elite. It made an example of those who threatened the Roman social order. First among these were rebellious or runaway slaves.

When Spartacus and his slave army, for example, were finally defeated by Rome , six thousand of them were crucified along the Appian Way , Rome 's major highway, as an example to other slaves.

Other candidates for crucifixion were those who attacked the property of the powerful rich, or those who committed treason by claiming power unauthorised by Rome.

That Jesus was crucified indicates that he was considered a threat to the (Roman imperial) status quo. The Romans had no interest whatever in Jewish theological disputes.

The Creed notes only the process - crucifixion, death, burial. There's no statement of interpretation. The Nicene Creed adds that it was " pro nobis/for our sake. " " For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried."

The whole history of Catholic reflection on the meaning of the suffering and death of Jesus is a long attempt via a variety of theories to give meaning to those words - "for our sake."

The dominant lenses have been those of sacrifice. Among the earlier theories or models of sacrifice has been the idea of ransom from the devil. The victory of Jesus ransomed us from the devil who "owned" us through sin.

This is often referred to as the "classic" theory of the atonement, but it doesn't have much support today, among other reasons because of the notion of God entering into a "transaction" with the devil, involving a "payment," which is Jesus.

A second earlier theory was that of moral influence . Jesus' dying "for us" was the perfect example in human form of God's self-sacrificial love. His example is meant to enkindle in us motivation to a similar love. This theory has much to recommend it.

We are to love, on Jesus' own words, as he has loved us. But there's nothing here of how self-sacrificial love fared in Jesus' own life. There's no reference to any solidarity in life and suffering with us, which is what his incarnation implies.

Thirdly, there was the theory of vicarious satisfaction , according to which, sin caused grave dishonour to God. Jesus offered up his own sinless life to restore God's honour. He made satisfaction for what humans owed God, as God required, but which humans, being humans, were incapable of providing.

Behind this theory lies the quite alien feudal context of relations between a lord and his vassals. Injury to a lord could be remedied only by someone of like, not lower, standing.

What strikes the modern reader is that God on this theory appears more concerned for his own honour than for the suffering of Jesus or the human ruin caused by sin.

There's also the theory of penal substitution . Through his obedience, Jesus fulfilled the terms of the law and exempted sinners from penalties they would otherwise have incurred. On this understanding, he died "for us" means he died "instead of us."

In this theory God seems constrained by a penal code of his own making. Apart from that, the notion of legally condemning the innocent and acquitting the guilty is not something we sanction even in human justice. This is not the same as heroic moral substitution, as with Maximilian Kolbe, for instance. This substitution is purely legal.

The understanding of salvation with the most purchase today sees it as extending over the entire life of Jesus and not only his dramatic last days.

In other words , the Incarnation itself is what saves . We are permanently taken up and saved in the life of Jesus the Saviour. This has always been the major emphasis of Greek Fathers of the Church. Their relevant maxim has been: "What has not been assumed has not been saved."

The human nature assumed by the Word is human nature suffering from sin, fear and distress, conflict, anxiety in the face of death, and separation from God. According to St Gregory of Nazianzen, Jesus "bears all me and mine in himself, that in himself he may exhaust the bad, as fire does wax, or as the sun does the mists of the earth; and that I may partake of his nature by the blending."

Or again: "So he is called man.that by uniting to himself what was condemned, he may release it from condemnation, becoming for all men all that we are except sin - body, soul, mind, and in every part that death reaches..."

Salvation on this understanding means that sin and death are absorbed in Jesus' complete identification with us and in his self-surrender. His entire life is what saves.