While there can be no reasonable doubt either that the Christian
churches from the very beginning were in possession of a definite and
formulated symbol, or that this symbol was an amplification of the
trinitarian formula of Baptism, yet we are unable to ascertain with any
degree of certainty what its exact original wording was. There has not
been found in the early Christian writers a single passage recording the
precise form of the baptismal confession or the rule of truth and faith
as used in the earliest churches. This lack of contemporal written
records is accounted for by the fact that the early Christians and
Christian churches refused on principle to impart and transmit their
confession in any other manner than by word of mouth. Such was their
attitude, not because they believed in keeping their creed secret, but
because they viewed the exclusively oral method of impartation as the
most appropriate in a matter which they regarded as an affair of deepest
concern of their hearts.
It is universally admitted, even by those who believe that the apostles
were instrumental in formulating the early Christian Creed, that the
wording of it was not absolutely identical in all Christian
congregations, and that in the course of time various changes and
additions were made. "Tradition," says Tertullian with respect to the
baptismal confession, received from the apostles, "has enlarged it,
custom has confirmed it, faith observes and preserves it." (Zahn, 252.
381.) When, therefore, Tertullian and other ancient writers declare that
the rule of faith received from the apostles is "altogether one,
immovable, and irreformable," they do not at all mean to say that the
phraseology of this symbol was alike everywhere, and that in this
respect no changes whatever had been made, nor that any clauses had been
added. Such variations, additions, and alterations, however, involved a
doctrinal change of the confession no more than the Apology of the
Augsburg Confession implies a doctrinal departure from this symbol. It
remained the same Apostolic Creed, the changes and additions merely
bringing out more fully and clearly its true, original meaning. And this
is the sense in which Tertullian and others emphasize that the rule of
faith is "one, immovable, and irreformable."
The oldest known form of the Apostles' Creed, according to A. Harnack,
is the one used in the church at Rome, even prior to 150 A.D. It was,
however, as late as 337 or 338, when this Creed, which, as the church at
Rome claimed, was brought thither by Peter himself, was for the first
time quoted as a whole by Bishop Marcellus of Ancyra in a letter to
Bishop Julius of Rome, for the purpose of vindicating his orthodoxy.
During the long period intervening, some changes, however, may have
been, and probably were, made also in this Old Roman Symbol, which reads
as follows:--
_Pisteuo eis theon patera pantokratora; kai eis Christon Iesoun [ton]
huion autou ton monogene, ton kupion hemon, ton gennethenta ek
pneumatos hagiou kai Marias tes parthenou, ton epi Pontiou Pilatou
staurothenta kai taphenta, te trite hemera anastanta ek [ton] nekron,
anabanta eis tous ouranous, kathemenon en dexia tou patros, hothen
erchetai krinai zontas kai nekrous; kai eis pneuma hagion, hagian
ekklesian aphesin hamartion, sapkos anastasin._ (Herzog, _R. E._ 1,
744.)