But a summary statement of Christian belief for the use of catechumens
must have been wanted from very early times, and it is possible that what
St Paul “handed over at the first” to his Corinthian converts (1 Cor.
xv. 3) was nothing else than a primitive form of the Creed. Anyhow,
from whatever source it was derived, a common nucleus was expanded
or modified to meet the needs of different churches and different generations, so that a family likeness existed between all early Creeds, but
identity between none of them.
At the Council of Nicaea the Creed was for the first time given an official and authoritative form, and was at the same time put to a novel use. The baptismal Creed of the church of Palestinian Caesarea, itself a much more technically theological document than any corresponding Creed in the West, was propounded by Eusebius : out of this Creed the Council constructed its own confession of faith, no longer for baptismal and general use, but as the “form of sound words” by acceptance of which the bishops of the churches throughout the world were to exclude the Arian conception of Christianity. The example of the Creed of Nicaea on the orthodox side was followed in the next generation by numerous conciliar formularies expressing one shade or another of opposing belief. When the Nicene cause finally triumphed, the Nicene Creed was received all the world over as the expression of the Catholic Faith ; and the Council of Ephesus condemned as derogatory to it the composition of any new formula, however orthodox.
The Council of Ephesus represented the Alexandrine position; at Constantinople, however, a new Creed was already in use, which was like enough to the Nicene Creed to pass as an expanded form of it, and was destined in the end to annex both its name and fame. This Creed of Constantinople had been developed out of some older Creed, probably that of Jerusalem, by the help of the test phrases of the Nicaenum and of further phrases aimed at the opposite heresies of the semi-Sabellian Marcell us and the semi-Arian Macedonius. It may be supposed that this Creed had been laid before the fathers of the council of 381: for at the Council of Chalcedon, where of course Constantinopolitan influences were dominant, it was recited as the Creed of the 150 fathers of Constantinople, on practically equal terms with the Creed of the 318 fathers of Nicaea. In another fifty years the two Creeds were beginning to be hopelessly confused, at least in the sphere of Constantinople, and the Constantinopolitanum was introduced into the liturgy as the actual Creed of Nicaea. In the course of the sixth century it became not only the liturgical but also the baptismal Creed throughout the East. In the West it never superseded the older baptismal Creeds—except apparently for a time under Byzantine influence in Rome—but as a liturgical Creed it was adopted in Spain on the occasion of the conversion of King Reccared and his Arian Visigoths in 589, and spread thence in the course of time through Gaul and Germany to Rome.
