Does the Creed, or Apostolic Symbol, Speak of Mary?

The Apostles’ Creed and the presence of Mary in the profession of faith

Does the Creed, or Apostolic Symbol, speak of Mary?

The Apostolic Symbol is the first and most important testimony of faith in Christian literature, although its Mariological implications remain largely unknown.

Symbol: it came from the Apostles, and each Church preserved a formulary containing brief propositions or articles that brought together, preserved, and set side by side the truths of the faith: Sunbalein = to join with in Greek.

Apostolic, not because the Apostles wrote the formula and handed it over to each of these Churches, but because the traditio apostolica is present in all the emphases, places, and circumstances that, over time, led to the formulation of dogmatic answers to the questions that arose.

When we say Apostolic Symbol, we are speaking of the testimony left to us by Fathers of the Church such as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, and Origen, among others.

Only in the year 325, at the Council of Nicaea, was a common symbol of faith drawn up, as a letter of recognition and a norm for all the Churches: a symbol composed of the ancient apostolic symbols, with dogmatic additions made necessary by the Arian heresy, the Nicene Symbol.

Arianism is the heresy that denied the divinity of Jesus, conceiving of Him as an intermediary between God and man.

At the Council of Constantinople, in 381, the Constantinopolitan Symbol was once again set down in writing, in a form universally accepted by all the Churches; it expanded the earlier one and gave rise to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol.

All the symbols of faith contain an explicit profession of faith in the Incarnation, making explicit Mary’s virginal conception, from the perspective of the history of salvation, which, through the virginal and divine motherhood, guarantees that the Son is God because He is the Only-Begotten of the Father. And this is the first stage of salvation: the Incarnation of the Word.

Among the various symbols, we have emphasized that those originating in the East affirm the generation of Christ “from Mary the Virgin”, saying nothing about the Holy Spirit, because this was implicit in the statement that confessed Mary as the Virgin. If she was Virgin and Mother, this was the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Another of the symbols, also from the Greek East, speaks of the virginal conception, describing it as “from (ek) the Virgin Mary through (dia) the Holy Spirit”, that is, the generation of Christ from the Virgin alone, but through the work of the Holy Spirit. And to underline its uniqueness even further, some symbols would go on to add without male seed.

The Latin formula “qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine”, born by the work of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, has its oldest attestation in Rome, Milan, and North Africa, and focuses on the generation rather than on the conception.

Later, a final group of Western symbols codified the formulas of faith by linking conception and birth to the Holy Spirit and to the Virgin Mary: “qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine”. This formula explains at one and the same time the virginal conception and the real motherhood of Mary.

From these symbols we can conclude that they were preserved and handed down to all the Churches, and that the conception of Christ from the Virgin Mary, by the work of the Holy Spirit, is part of the universal and perpetual faith of the Church.

“who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary”

Roman Symbol, 3rd century

“who became man”

Symbol of Jerusalem, first half of the 4th century

“for our salvation he became incarnate and lived among men”

Symbol of Caesarea in Palestine, late 3rd century

In the symbol of faith of Nicaea, in AD 325, the Virgin Mary is not mentioned, much less the action of the Holy Spirit.

In the text of the formulation of faith of the First Council of Constantinople (381), however, she is mentioned in a soteriological way:

“for us and for our salvation he [the Son] came down from heaven, was incarnate by [de] the Holy Spirit from [ex] the Virgin Mary (parthenon)”

While the Greek text makes it clear that the agents of the Incarnation of the Word are the Spirit and the Virgin Mary, in the Latin text we note the use of the pronoun de for the Holy Spirit. It indicates that He is the “originating cause” of the conception in Mary’s womb, while she offers the “flesh” to Christ. Already here we can see how the Council Fathers were concerned to bring out, on the one hand, the human reality of Christ and, on the other, the mode of the conception, which takes place “without the seed of man”.

The Council of Ephesus (431), for its part, limits itself to recognizing the Ever-Virgin (agion parthenon), relating her to the title of Theotokos.

The Council Fathers had the courage to recognize the Theotokos as:

“the Holy Virgin […], not because the nature of the Logos, that is, His divinity, came into being from the Holy Virgin […], but because the holy body, rationally animated, was begotten of Her, and, the Logos being united to it according to the hypostasis, we say that the Logos was begotten according to the flesh”.

This is also what the Council of Chalcedon (451) recognized. It declared that the birth of the Son of God, true God and true man, took place from (ex) Mary, virgin (parthenon) and Mother of God. The Second Council of Constantinople (553), in its 14 anathemas, would reaffirm this truth. The numbers in which this is affirmed are 2, 6, and 14. In them, Mary is called Ever-Virgin (aeiparthenon).

In all this, the dogma affirmed at the First Lateran Council (1123) is fundamental for our research. It declares that Mary “conceived” and came to “give birth” in a virginal manner to the Son of the Eternal God, Jesus Christ. Here the Council presents the true motherhood of the Theotokos in its “full” integrity. All this has one purpose: to direct the profession of faith to the One who was born of her womb, Jesus. He came into the world in a “prodigious” way, for all the laws of nature are suspended in favor of the virginal integrity of the mother.

We stand before a mysterious “fact” that celebrates the conception and the birth in favor of the integrity of a woman, Mary, who is called Ever-Virgin. This title can “be applied diachronically to every moment of her life, and synchronically to the whole reality of her virginity, for which she is also called αχραντος (flawless, without stain)”. We note that the title Ever-Virgin must be regarded as a “common denominator” that serves to document the truth affirmed and confessed through the virginal conception and the childbirth of Most Holy Mary.

To explore more deeply the presence of Mary in the symbols of faith and in dogmatic theology, consult the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by Saint John Paul II.

Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.