The Apostles' Creed (Symbolum Apostolorum): Original Latin, Ecclesiastical Pronunciation, English and Vietnamese Texts, and Commentary on the Twelve Articles

The Creed opens with the first-person singular verb Credo (I believe). Unlike the Nicene Creed, which originally began in the first-person plural in Greek (Pisteuomen, We believe) because it was the collective declaration of bishops assembled in council, the Apostles' Creed retains the personal singular voice of the catechumen standing beside the baptismal font. Both Rufinus of Aquileia and Saint Thomas Aquinas highlight a crucial feature of the Latin syntax: the verb credo followed by the preposition in with the accusative case (in Deum, in Iesum Christum, in Spiritum Sanctum) is reserved exclusively for the Three Divine Persons, signifying personal trust, self-surrender, and movement toward God. From Article IX onward, when speaking of the Church, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the body, the Latin omits the preposition in and uses the direct accusative (sanctam Ecclesiam), distinguishing faith in God himself from belief in the Church as God's work.

The adjective omnipotentem (from omnis, all, and potens, powerful) renders the Greek Παντοκράτορα (Pantokratora, Almighty Ruler of all things). In the seventeenth-century Vietnamese Catholic translation, missionaries and native scholars rendered this as phép tắc vô cùng, meaning boundless power and authority. The clause Creatorem caeli et terrae (Creator of heaven and earth) was not yet present in the fourth-century Old Roman Creed; it entered from Gallican baptismal symbols to affirm creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) against Gnostic and Manichaean dualism, which claimed the material world was fashioned by an evil demiurge.

Article II brings together the four foundational titles of early Christology: Iesus, Christus, Filius unicus, and Dominus. As explained in CCC 430 to 455, Iesus (Jesus) is the Latinized form of the Hebrew name Yehoshua, meaning God saves, expressing his mission to save humanity from sin. Christus (Christ) transliterates the Greek Χριστός (Christos), which translates the Hebrew Mashiach (Messiah), meaning the Anointed One consecrated as King, Priest, and Prophet.

The phrase Filium eius unicum (his only Son) renders the Greek τὸν Υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ (ton Huion autou ton monogene, his only-begotten Son) from John 1:14 and 3:16. Whereas believers become children of God by adoption through grace, Jesus is the only Son by eternal nature. The final title, Dominum nostrum (our Lord, Greek Κύριον ἡμῶν), echoes the earliest Christian confession in Romans 10:9 and Philippians 2:11. Because the Greek Septuagint used Kyrios to translate the unutterable Hebrew Divine Name YHWH, confessing Jesus as Dominus noster recognizes his full divine lordship alongside the Father. Notably, the initial Greek letters of this confession (Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior) form the acrostic ICHTHYS (ἸΧΘΥΣ, fish), the sacred sign inscribed in the Roman catacombs.

In the Old Roman Creed cited by Rufinus, this clause was more compact: qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine (who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary). The Textus Receptus expands it into two balanced participial clauses: conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto (was conceived by the Holy Spirit) and natus ex Maria Virgine (born of the Virgin Mary), closely echoing the Annunciation accounts in Luke 1:35 and Matthew 1:20.

The traditional Vietnamese text renders the first clause with the vivid phrase bởi phép Đức Chúa Thánh Thần mà Người xuống thai (by the power of the Holy Spirit he descended into the womb), capturing the movement of the eternal Word humbling himself to take human flesh without a human father. Doctrinally, the preposition ex in natus ex Maria Virgine (born from or out of the Virgin Mary, rather than merely passing through her as through a channel) was emphasized by the Church Fathers to refute Docetism and Valentinian Gnosticism, which denied that Christ took real human flesh and blood from his mother's body.

Article IV anchors the mystery of redemption in verifiable world history by naming sub Pontio Pilato (under Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judaea from AD 26 to 36 during the reign of Emperor Tiberius). As CCC 572 notes, the Creed mentions Pilate not out of hostility toward a historical official, but to affirm that Jesus is not a timeless mythical figure like the deities of Hellenistic mystery cults; he suffered at a specific place and date recorded in Roman provincial history.

Four past participles trace the paschal descent: passus (suffered), crucifixus (crucified), mortuus (died), and sepultus (buried). Where the Old Roman Creed stated simply crucifixus est et sepultus, the Textus Receptus added passus and mortuus to exclude any Docetic claim that Christ only appeared to suffer or merely swooned on the cross without truly dying. The word sepultus confirms the reality of his death, prepares for his descent to the dead and third-day resurrection, and points to the baptismal mystery of Romans 6:4, in which the believer is buried with Christ in Baptism so as to walk in newness of life.

The first clause, descendit ad inferos (sometimes written ad inferna), is one of the most distinctive features of the Apostles' Creed, as it does not appear in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Writing around AD 404, Rufinus of Aquileia observed that this clause was absent from the creeds of Rome and the Eastern churches in his day, though it was already present in the baptismal creed of his own church of Aquileia in northern Italy. The Latin plural noun inferi or inferna (literally those in the lower regions) translates the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades (ᾍδης).

Traditional English renders this as he descended into hell (while the 1975 ecumenical text and modern catechisms often explain it as he descended to the dead), and the Vietnamese Catholic text translates it with theological precision as xuống ngục tổ tông (descended to the abode of the patriarchs). As CCC 632 to 635 explains, in biblical cosmology prior to Christ's Ascension, all the dead, whether righteous or wicked, went down to Sheol. The state of the righteous ancestors of the Old Covenant (such as Abraham, Moses, and David) awaiting the Redeemer was called the Bosom of Abraham or the Limbus Patrum. Christ descended there not to suffer damnation, but as the victorious Savior proclaiming liberation to the just souls awaiting him (1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6). In Eastern Orthodox iconography, this event is depicted as the Anastasis (Resurrection) icon, where Christ tramples down the bronze gates of Hades and grasps Adam and Eve by the wrists to raise them up.

The second clause, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis (on the third day he rose again from the dead), echoes the earliest apostolic kerygma in 1 Corinthians 15:4. The active verb resurrexit underscores that Christ rose by his own divine power together with the power of the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Forty days after his Resurrection, Christ ascendit ad caelos (ascended into the heavens, using the Latin plural caelos after the Hebrew idiom). According to CCC 659 to 664, the Ascension marks the definitive entrance of Christ's humanity into God's heavenly domain: the human nature born of the Virgin Mary and bearing the wounds of the cross now shares in the divine glory, opening the way for the members of his body to follow.

The image sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis (is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty) is drawn directly from Psalm 110:1: The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand. Patristic and scholastic commentators such as Saint John of Damascus and Saint Thomas Aquinas point out that because God is pure spirit without a physical body, the Father's right hand is not a spatial location, but the biblical metaphor for supreme honor, divine majesty, and co-equal royal authority over all creation.

The adverb inde (from there, in older English from thence) links the Ascension in Article VI directly to the Second Coming (Parousia) in Article VII, echoing the words of the two angels in Acts 1:11: This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. The Latin future active periphrastic construction venturus est (is about to come, will come) expresses a certain event toward which salvation history moves.

The phrase iudicare vivos et mortuos (to judge the living and the dead) comes from 2 Timothy 4:1 and 1 Peter 4:5. In its primary literal sense, the living are those still alive on earth at the moment of Christ's final return, while the dead are all generations who have died before that day. Saint Augustine also noted a secondary spiritual sense: the living may refer to the righteous who live in sanctifying grace, and the dead to those spiritually dead in sin.

Opening the third major section of the Creed, the verb Credo in (I believe in) is repeated to mark the transition to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity: Spiritum Sanctum (the Holy Spirit). Whereas the Council of Constantinople in 381 expanded the Nicene Creed with extensive theological clauses against the Macedonian heresy (the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets), the Apostles' Creed preserves the ancient simplicity of the second-century Roman baptismal formula in just four Latin words.

Brief as it is, Article VIII stands as the fountainhead of the final four articles (the Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting). As CCC 687 to 688 explains, it is the Holy Spirit who gathers the Church, animates the communion of saints, effects the forgiveness of sins through the sacraments, and raises mortal bodies to eternal life.

Where the Old Roman Creed read simply sanctam Ecclesiam (the holy Church), the Textus Receptus added the adjective catholicam (from the Greek καθολική, meaning according to the whole, universal, first used of the Church by Saint Ignatius of Antioch around AD 110). Remarkably, when seventeenth-century missionaries and Vietnamese scholars translated this article into Vietnamese, rather than transliterating catholica, they rendered its meaning directly as Hội Thánh hằng có ở khắp thế này (the Church ever-existing throughout this whole world), capturing both universality across time (hằng có) and universality across space (ở khắp thế này).

The second phrase, sanctorum communionem (the communion of saints), entered the Creed in southern Gaul and the Balkans around the late fourth and early fifth centuries (attested in Saint Nicetas of Remesiana). In Latin grammar, the genitive plural sanctorum can be either masculine, from sancti (holy persons, the faithful and the saints), or neuter, from sancta (holy things, above all the sacraments and the Eucharist). As CCC 948 states, Catholic doctrine embraces both senses together: through sharing in holy things (the Eucharist and sacraments), holy persons across the three states of the Church (the pilgrim Church on earth, the souls being purified in Purgatory, and the blessed in Heaven) are united in a living exchange of spiritual goods and prayers.

The phrase remissionem peccatorum (the forgiveness or remission of sins) belongs to the oldest stratum of the Old Roman Creed. The Latin noun remissio, from remittere, means releasing a debt, pardoning an offense, and setting a captive free. In its original baptismal setting, the catechumen professed this article moments before stepping into the font, declaring faith that Baptism washes away both original sin and all personal sins.

In third-century Rome and North Africa, rigorist movements led by Novatian and the Montanists claimed that the Church had no authority to forgive grave sins committed after Baptism (such as apostasy under persecution). Placing remissionem peccatorum immediately after the article on the Church affirms that the Risen Christ entrusted the ministry of reconciliation to the Apostles and the Church (John 20:22 to 23), exercised first in Baptism and thereafter through the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.

In Article XI, the Latin text uses a striking and concrete noun: carnis resurrectionem, literally the resurrection of the flesh (caro, carnis meaning flesh, rendering the Greek σαρκός ἀνάστασιν of the Old Roman Creed), even more concrete than the phrase resurrection of the dead in the Nicene Creed. Both the traditional English translation (the resurrection of the body) and the Vietnamese text (xác loài người ngày sau sống lại) express this bodily reality.

Rufinus of Aquileia and Saint Jerome explain that the Roman Creed deliberately chose the word carnis (flesh) to leave no room for Platonic or Gnostic evasions. Ancient Platonism viewed the physical body as a prison from which the soul sought permanent escape, while Gnostic teachers claimed that only a purely spiritual element was saved while the material body perished forever. Article XI confesses that God created the human person as a unity of body and soul, that the Word truly became flesh and rose bodily from the tomb, and that at the last day God will raise up and transform this very mortal body into an imperishable spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:42 to 44).

Whereas the fourth-century Old Roman Creed ended at carnis resurrectionem, the final clause vitam aeternam (life everlasting, present early on in North African, Gallican, and Jerusalem creeds) became the twelfth article of the Textus Receptus to state the ultimate goal of the resurrection. As CCC 1020 to 1060 explains, eternal life is not merely an endless continuation of chronological time, but entry into the beatific vision (visio beatifica), face-to-face communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Creed closes with the Hebrew word Amen. As CCC 1061 to 1065 observes, the Creed begins with I believe (Credo) and ends with Amen, and in Hebrew both the verb to believe and the word Amen come from the same three-consonant root A-M-N, signifying firmness, trustworthiness, and steadfast fidelity. By saying Amen at the end of the twelfth article, the believer ratifies and seals the Credo spoken at the start of the first.