“One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”
Why does the Nicene Creed confess a belief in the church? And how should the creed shape the ways that we view our churches today?
“Pastor, I’m still going to be a Baptist, no matter what else you try to make me.”
I was shaking people’s hands in the lobby after Sunday morning worship services had ended. Most of the conversations were limited to quick farewells as families left for lunch, so this sudden declaration from a sun-bronzed man with short-cropped hair took me by surprise. Buck had been a beloved member of this church for more than forty years, and I had never heard him speak a negative word in the four years since I became a pastor here.
“What do you mean, Buck?” I asked.
“That thing we read before the baptism,” the older man responded. “It says we’re ‘catholic’ and ‘apostolic.’ But I’m not catholic, and I’m not apostolic. I’m Baptist, and I thought you were too.”
A few months earlier, I had started incorporating historic creeds into our worship services whenever we baptized new believers. This week, a reading of the Nicene Creed had preceded the baptism. I had briefly explained the line that described the church as “one holy catholic and apostolic,” but my explanation was apparently not enough.
“I’m a Baptist, Buck, and that’s not changed. You’re Baptist, and we both know you aren’t changing. But we’re also catholic and apostolic.”
“Well, if we’re catholic, what’s next? Popes and purgatory?”
“That’s Roman Catholic,” I replied. “Neither of us is ever going to be Roman Catholic. We’re ‘catholic’ with a small ‘c.’ That word just means ‘universal’ or ‘concerning the whole.’ Do you think everyone in the whole world who believes the gospel and follows God’s Word is part of Christ’s church, no matter how different they may be?”
“Sure do.”
“Then you’re catholic with a small ‘c.’ Saying we’re catholic is saying that, even though Christians all around the world are different from each other, every Christian is still part of the same church. Do you think we preach the same gospel as the apostles and follow what the apostles wrote in the New Testament?”
“I think we do.”
“I do too. If that’s true, we’re not just catholic. We’re apostolic too.”
Buck thought for a moment. “But we’re still Baptists, aren’t we?”
“Yes, Buck,” I said. “We’re still Baptists. We’re catholic and apostolic Baptists.”
“You’re not going to put that on the sign out front, are you?” he asked.
I smiled and assured him, “No, Buck, we’re not putting that on the sign.”
“Well, I guess it’s okay then. See you next week, pastor.”
That was the first of many conversations I’ve had over the years in different congregations about the line in the Nicene Creed that confesses a belief in “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” Some of these conversations have gone better than others, but most church members eventually understood that I wasn’t trying to turn them into Roman Catholics.
Buck had been a catholic and apostolic Baptist since the day he was baptized, but he never knew that until he read the Nicene Creed for the first time. Once he understood what these words meant, he was fine with being a member of “one holy catholic and apostolic church”—as long as no one put “catholic” or “apostolic” on the sign outside our church building.
Even if these words do require explanations from time to time, church leaders today should not neglect the attributes of the church listed in the Nicene Creed. The precise phrase “one holy catholic and apostolic church” may not be found in the pages of your Bible, but the concepts behind each attribute can be traced to the words of the apostles and the authors of Scripture. To downplay the “one holy apostolic and catholic” character of the church is to disregard a divine truth that the Holy Spirit teaches us through the written Word of God. With that in mind, let’s take a look at this line that’s sometimes neglected in the Nicene Creed.
The Placement of “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” in the Creed
The placement of this phrase in the article that confesses our faith in the Holy Spirit is important and intentional. The church is a living temple in which the Spirit of God works and dwells (1 Cor 3:16; Eph 2:21–22). Thus, in the words of the North African bishop Augustine of Hippo, “the proper sequence of the creed required that the church be subjoined to the Trinity, like a dwelling subjoined to the one dwelling within it, like a temple to its deity or a city to its founder.” The church is a product of God’s Spirit speaking through God’s Word, and the church’s very existence flows from the life and work of the Triune God.
Just as the second article of the Nicene Creed first confesses who Jesus Christ is and then declares what he has done, the third article of the creed states who the Holy Spirit is and then describes what the Holy Spirit has done. “One holy catholic and apostolic church” is, in some sense, what the Holy Spirit does.
The Development of “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” in the Creed
The precise phrase “one holy catholic and apostolic church” did not appear in the creed that the Council of Nicaea confessed in 325. It was not until the Council of Constantinople in 381 that a church council confessed these words together. Despite the absence of this particular line at the Council of Nicaea in 325, the earlier creed hinted at the same understanding of the church that the later creed declared.
The creed of 325 ended with the words “and in the Holy Spirit,” followed by a series of anathemas that rejected Arianism as a system that stood outside the boundaries of Christian belief. These anathemas are rarely recalled today, but they should not be overlooked. The anathemas link the earlier creed of 325 with the later and more familiar version that affirms “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” According to the anathemas at the close of the creed confessed at the Council of Nicaea in 325,
The ones saying “there was a time when he was not” and “before he was made, he was not” and “he was made from nothing” or “he is of another substance or essence” or “the Son of God is changeable or alterable,” they are condemned by the catholic church.
This condemnation makes it clear that, even if the creed of 325 did not include the precise phrase “one holy catholic and apostolic church,” the Council of Nicaea still embraced these attributes as their understanding of the nature of the church. The exclusion of Arians from the church revealed that there is one true church, devoted to holiness and distinct from heretical sects, which brings together authentic believers in the apostolic faith. The anathemas stated implicitly what a later council confessed explicitly.
It is not surprising, then, that Cyril of Jerusalem described the communion of the saints as “one holy catholic church” less than three decades after the Council of Nicaea. By 374, Epiphanius of Salamis was already affirming “one holy catholic and apostolic church” in his church’s confession of faith. And so, when the Council of Constantinople confessed “one holy catholic and apostolic church” in 381, these words were not a recent innovation; they were the confirmation of a familiar and venerable tradition. The ultimate source of this faithful tradition was not the imagination of any human being or even the wisdom of any church council. The words of the creed were a testimony to a longstanding series of truths that can be traced back through faithful witnesses to the very text of Holy Scripture.
The Church Is One
At first glance, the oneness of the church may seem like an absurd ideal. How can there be one church when there are thousands of denominations? And what about the divisions within our local churches? How is it possible to confess our faith in “one holy catholic and apostolic church” when we can’t even live in perfect peace with fellow church members week by week?
If oneness is a struggle in your congregation, it may be comforting to know that your church is far from the first community of Christians to face this challenge. Unity didn’t come easy for churches in the first century A.D. either. When the apostle Paul wrote his epistle to the Ephesians, the church in Ephesus did not appear outwardly to be unified at all. Disagreements between Jewish members and Gentile members had fractured people’s relationships with one another, and some members were struggling to speak the truth with gentleness and humility (Eph 2:11–16; 4:2, 25–26).
Oneness as Present Reality
Paul did not respond to these conflicts by telling the Christians in Ephesus to try harder to be unified. Instead, he reminded them that they were already unified. “There is,” Paul wrote, “one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4–6). In these verses, Paul wove together seven “ones” to reassure the Ephesians that, no matter how fragmented their fellowship seemed, they were still united. The Christians in Ephesus were one body because of the work of one Holy Spirit which produced one hope in one Lord Jesus Christ. This hope was revealed outwardly through one faith and one baptism in submission to one God and Father. Throughout the Scriptures, sevenfold repetitions frequently suggest completion or perfection. By reiterating these seven aspects of the church’s unity, Paul declared the complete and total oneness that Jesus Christ has accomplished in the church.
The unity of the church is not based on the quality of members’ relationships with one another. The church’s oneness is grounded in the character and work of the Triune God. Through the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus, every believer has been adopted into one household and joined together by one Spirit (Eph 2:14–22). That’s why Paul did not order the Ephesians to work harder to be unified. Instead, he urged them to “maintain” the unity God had already accomplished (Eph 4:4). The church’s oneness is not a goal we achieve through what we do; it is a gift we receive because of what God has already done.
Oneness as Personal Practice
And yet, how do we practically maintain this oneness that God has worked among us? At a personal level, God’s prescription for us is the same set of practices that Paul provided for the church in Ephesus: “humility, gentleness, and patience” (Eph 4:2). When we cultivate habits of humility, gentleness, and patience in our relationships with fellow Christians, we reveal the church’s unity by “bearing with one another in love” (Eph 4:2). Beyond our local churches, these same habits enable us to partner with other churches to the full extent that we are able, as long as those congregations hold to the true gospel and the sure and sufficient truth of God’s Word.
The oneness of the church can be difficult to see amid the fractures of a fallen world. Some separations in the church have been the necessary upshots of heresy or sin while others are the results of inadvertent misunderstandings and interpretative disagreements among faithful Christians. Regardless of the reasons, the right response to these divisions is not despair but hope. Although our shortcomings may obscure the church’s oneness for a time, they can never diminish or destroy the essential unity that the Triune God has enacted among us. Jesus prayed for the oneness of his church (John 17:21), and his prayers never fail.
The Church Is Holy
To confess that the church is holy is to declare that the church is devoted to the character and purposes of God. Holiness is sometimes understood as moral purity or separation from the world, but these definitions only capture part of the point of holiness. Holiness primarily denotes a relationship of devotion. “Holiness is,” in the words of English Puritan Richard Baxter, “nothing else but the habitual and predominant devotion and dedication of soul, and body, and life, and all that we have to God.” Although holiness does produce moral purity and separation from sin, neither purity nor separation is the essence of this attribute of the church. The holiness of the church is the church’s sacrificial dedication to who God is and to what God is doing in the world. Thus the church’s holiness is not expressed by distance from sinners but by devotion to Christ.
Positional Holiness and Progressive Holiness
Throughout the New Testament, the church is identified as holy and yet also called to become holy. The word “saints” means “holy ones.” And so, whenever the apostolic writers referred to Christians in a particular congregation as “saints,” these authors were describing the church as holy (see, e.g., 1 Cor 1:2; 14:33; 2 Cor 1:1; Eph 3:17–21). Yet these same inspired authors also urged Christians to bring “holiness to completion,” to “pursue peace with everyone, and holiness,” and to “be holy” (2 Cor 7:1; Heb 12:14; 1 Pet 1:16). This seeming tension reminds us that, because the church’s members are still awaiting the fulfillment of God’s plan at the end of time, the church simultaneously is holy and yet also must pursue holiness. In theological terms, the church’s holiness is both positional and progressive. Because the church is already united with the holy Christ, every Christian has been placed in a position of holiness. At the same time, the members of the church are also called to progress in holiness by growing more devoted to God’s character and mission. Jesus Christ purchased the church’s holiness on the cross, but his Spirit is also transforming the church’s members in preparation for the day when we will be completely devoted to God’s character and mission for all eternity.
The Hope of Holiness
The apostle Paul launched his letter to the Christians in Ephesus with a reminder that God had selected particular people in eternity past to be made holy in Jesus Christ (Eph 1:4). God regenerated these same individuals and empowered them to grow in holiness through his Spirit (Eph 2:4–5; 4:17–32). At the peak of the argument in the epistle, Paul declared that the revelation of a holy and blameless church would accompany the fulfillment of God’s purposes at the end of time (Eph 5:26–27). To confess our faith in “one holy catholic and apostolic church” is to declare our confidence in the present and future holiness that God himself has guaranteed.
The Church Is Catholic
Unlike the words “one” and “holy,” “catholic” never shows up in the pages of Scripture—which is one of the many reasons why the word needs to be well explained in our churches. “Catholic” derives from a Greek term that meant “general” or “universal.” Despite the absence of this precise term in Scripture, the concepts behind the word are woven throughout the biblical texts. Over time, the term came to designate Christian communities that practiced authentic faith in contrast to heretical sects and to describe the beautiful coalescence of different people-groups in the church. In simple terms, catholicity denoted both the distinctiveness and the diversity of God’s people.
The Distinctiveness of the Catholic Church
Less than a century after the resurrection of Jesus, a faithful pastor named Ignatius of Antioch was already deploying the word “catholic” to draw a distinction between the true church and heretical sects that denied the incarnation of Jesus Christ. “Wherever Jesus Christ is,” Ignatius wrote, “there is the catholic church.” Clement of Alexandria emphasized this same aspect of the word “catholic” in the third century when he declared,
Those later heresies, and those that succeeded them in time, were falsified innovations…. They try to break up the one church into many sects. Yet… the ancient catholic church remains one in essence and idea and principle and preeminence, collecting into the unity of one faith… those who were already enlisted in it, those that God foreordained.
Clement’s contrast between the authentic church and heretical sects is deeply biblical. The authors of the New Testament repeatedly warned Christians not to be deceived by new teachings that would separate them from the true church (Gal 1:6–7; Col 2:8; 2 Tim 4:3–4; Heb 13:9; 2 Pet 3:17). The apostle John described how heretics separated themselves from the true church when he wrote, “They went out from from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us” (1 John 2:19).
The Diversity of the Catholic Church
As the church expanded throughout the Roman Empire and beyond, Christians increasingly emphasized another aspect of the word “catholic.” “Catholic” came to denote the diversity of people that God was gathering together through the gospel. Cyril of Jerusalem made this declaration to a group of new Christians in the mid-fourth century:
The church… is called catholic then because it extends over all the world, from one end of the earth to the other; and because it teaches universally and completely one and all the doctrines which ought to come to men’s knowledge, concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly, and because it brings into subjection to godliness the whole race of mankind.
This implication of the word “catholic” is also richly rooted in Scripture. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the revelation that persons from every nation could participate together in the gospel was the mystery that drove the apostle to his knees in praise (Eph 3:4–21). According to Paul, this joining of Gentiles and Jews in the church revealed “God’s multifaceted wisdom” (Eph 3:10). What this text seems to suggest is that a richly varied church reveals the beauty of God’s richly varied wisdom.
Although the church will not be fully united or perfectly holy until the end of time, faithful local churches still seek to make progress in unity and holiness. In the same way, even though the richly varied diversity of the church will not be witnessed in its fullness until the end of time (Rev 6:9), each local church should pursue the full degree of faithful diversity that is conceivable in its context. Here’s how Reformed theologian R.B. Kuiper described the beauty of a diverse congregation:
For us to be one with those who are like us is easy; to be at one with those who are unlike us is possible only if a profound unity underlies surface differences…. Diversity short of sin, instead of detracting from the glory of the church, enhances it. How much more beautiful is a building constructed of stones of different shapes and sizes than is a structure of blocks all of which look alike! As the human body derives its beauty from the variety of its members, so does the body of Christ.
This reality has far-reaching practical implications for the formation of healthy churches today. The church’s catholicity contests the pattern of planting churches that cater to the preferences of one particular demographic category. It also challenges each of us to consider whether or not our church is engaging every culture and ethnicity in our context.
To declare that I am a member of the catholic church is to acknowledge that the church is not exclusively comprised of people who look like me. The church reaches through time to include every believer who has ever lived (Heb 12:1), and the church extends across cultures and continents to include everyone in every place who confesses the name of Jesus (Rev 7:9). Our confession of the church’s catholicity reminds us that the hints of diversity we glimpse here and now are only the faintest glimmers of a more beautiful communion that is yet to come.
The Church Is Apostolic
The fourth and final attribute of the church in the Nicene Creed is “apostolic.” An apostle, in the sense that the term seems to have been intended here, was a witness commissioned by the risen Lord Jesus. The early church exercised the authority that Jesus conferred on the apostles (Matt 16:19; 18:18) by testing the life and doctrine of its members according to the apostles’ commands (1 Cor 5:1–5). Thus Paul reminded the Corinthians that Christ was “speaking in” him (2 Cor 13:3) and Simon Peter urged his readers not to neglect “the command of our Lord and Savior given through your apostles” (2 Pet 3:2).
The Authority of the Apostolic Writings
But how could the church continue to be apostolic after the apostles passed away? In God’s providential design, the apostles did not merely leave behind spoken truths; they left the church with written texts. These texts are known to us today as the New Testament. Every text in the New Testament was written by an apostolic eyewitness or by a close associate of one of these eyewitnesses. To be an apostolic church today is to be faithful to the apostolic writings and to proclaim the same gospel that the apostles preached.
The recognition that the apostles’ teachings are now conveyed through the New Testament is particularly clear in these words from a second-century pastor named Irenaeus of Lyon:
The Lord of all gave his apostles the power of the gospel…. We have learned the plan of salvation from no one else other than through the gospel that has come down to us, which they proclaimed in public at an earlier time and which has been handed down to us in the Scriptures at a later time, to be the foundation and pillar of our faith…. The apostles, like a rich man making a deposit in the bank, generously poured into the hands of the church all things pertaining to the truth, so that everyone—whosoever will—can draw from the church the water of life.
According to another second-century pastor, early Christians received the writings of “Peter and the other apostles” as the words of Jesus Christ himself.
Apostolicity as Submission to Scripture
The message that the apostolic witnesses proclaimed became the text of the New Testament, and these documents serve as the authoritative foundation for the church’s faith. According to these writings from apostolic eyewitnesses and their close companions, Jesus embraced the the truth and authority of the Old Testament as well (Mark 7:13; Luke 24:44; John 10:35). Thus to dismiss the truthfulness of any part of Scripture is to despise the authority of Jesus himself. To affirm the truth of these writings is simply to acknowledge, in the words of Sinclair Ferguson, that “the Father does not lie to his Son. The Son does not lie to the Spirit. The Spirit did not lie to the apostles … and the apostles did not lie to us.”
In every age, there has been a chasm between those who “have bowed to the living God and his Son Jesus Christ—and thus also to the verbal, propositional communication of God's Word, the Scripture—and those who have not.” A church is only apostolic to the extent that the congregation bows without apology to the authority of the written Word of God. If a church compromises the authority of Scripture, that church has destroyed its own apostolic foundation.
The Church Is Not an Afterthought
The affirmation of the church in the Nicene Creed reminds us that the church is not an afterthought in God’s plan. The call of the gospel is inevitably a summons to church, and churchless Christianity is no Christianity at all. Each one of the four characteristics that the creed ascribes to the church is a vital attribute of the gathered people of God. If a church tries to pursue oneness without apostolicity, the church’s oneness will stagger on the shifting sands of human commonality instead of standing on the enduring truth of God’s Word. If a church chases catholicity but neglects holiness, the church may become distinct and diverse, but the distinctiveness and diversity will be distorted because they are not devoted to the glory of God and the purity of his people. When a church practices all four attributes—oneness and holiness, catholicity and apostolicity—that church becomes a living evidence of the presence and power of God in the world.
If you describe your congregation as “one holy catholic and apostolic,” you should be prepared to answer some questions about what each term means, and it’s probably best not to print that phrase on the sign outside your church building. And yet, these truths should not be neglected simply because they need to be explained from time to time. Every faithful member of your congregation is a participant in “one holy catholic and apostolic church,” even if they don’t know it until they hear the Nicene Creed for the first time.
Thank you for this, Timothy. Our pastor is so bothered by the word "catholic" in the Apostles' Creed that he swapped it for "apostolic." But I still say "catholic," every time (the few times we say it, that is).