Christianity's earliest creed was three words long: Jesus is Lord
Before councils drafted long statements of belief, the apostle Paul recorded the shortest possible one: Jesus is Lord. Creeds later grew into elaborate summaries recited in church, yet whole traditions, from the Amish to the Quakers, refuse to use any creed at all, insisting on the Bible or direct experience instead.
A creed is a statement summarising the core beliefs a community shares. The English word comes from the Latin credo, I believe, the first word of both the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed in Latin. An older name for such a text is symbol, from the Greek symbolon, meaning a token or watchword. The idea extends beyond Christianity: the Islamic concept of ʿaqīdah, literally a bond or tie, is usually translated as creed.
Christian creeds appear very early. A passage in 1 Corinthians 15 about Jesus' death and resurrection is dated by most biblical scholars to within five years of the crucifixion, probably from the Jerusalem community. The Nicene Creed was first drawn up in 325 to affirm Christ's divinity against Arianism and revised in 381 to cover the whole Trinity; accepting it remains a test of orthodoxy for many churches. The Apostles' Creed grew from the shorter Old Roman Creed, itself built on baptismal questions arranged in three parts. The Athanasian Creed was the first to state the equality of the three persons explicitly, and unusually adds condemnations of anyone who disagrees.
Creeds kept arriving. Pope Pius IV issued one in 1565 summing up the Council of Trent, and in 1960 the Maasai of East Africa worked with Holy Ghost missionaries on a creed expressing Christian essentials in Maasai terms. Protestant churches usually preferred longer confessions of faith, such as the Augsburg Confession of 1530 by Luther and Melanchthon, which marked the break with Rome. Some left room for doubt: a 1646 Baptist confession admits its authors know only in part and would thank anyone who could show them their errors from scripture.
Non-creedal groups push back altogether. Anabaptists of the Radical Reformation adopted the slogan no creed but the Bible, one reason they were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike. Quakers hold that no written formula can replace shared connection with God, Restorationists say no creed but Christ, and Jehovah's Witnesses contrast reciting creeds with doing what Jesus said.
Source: Creed
