“And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well.”
Every Sunday, Christians throughout the world stand and profess the Creed.
We confess our belief in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Spirit. We profess Christ's Incarnation, His suffering, death, Resurrection, and His coming again in glory.
These words are familiar. We learn them, memorize them, pray them, and pass them on to our children.
But have we ever stopped to ask a remarkably simple question?
Where did we get this from?
Not as an accusation. Not as a challenge to someone's faith. Simply as an honest question about something we have received.
And perhaps the more interesting question is the one that follows:
Who told them?
A Bishop in Ancient Gaul
Nearly eighteen centuries ago, a Christian bishop named Irenaeus was teaching the faith in Lugdunum, a Roman city in Gaul known today as Lyon, France.
He lived long before the great ecumenical councils that would give us the familiar wording of the Nicene Creed.
Yet when we read his writings, particularly Against Heresies, we encounter something remarkably familiar.
Irenaeus professes belief in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets.
He proclaims Christ's birth from the Virgin, His Passion, Resurrection, bodily Ascension, and His return in glory.
This is recognizably the Christian faith we profess today.
And that raises a question worth exploring.
How did a bishop living in second-century Gaul know these things?
Who taught him?
Following the Gospel Backward
Here is where Christian history becomes wonderfully personal.
Irenaeus had been a young man in Smyrna, a city in Asia Minor. There, he listened to the preaching of an elderly bishop named Polycarp.
Polycarp had known the Apostle John and others who had seen the Lord.
And John had known Jesus Christ Himself.
Consider that for a moment.
Jesus taught John.
John passed on the faith to Polycarp.
Polycarp taught the young Irenaeus.
And Irenaeus eventually preached that same Gospel in Gaul.
This was not merely an impressive list of ancient names.
These were real people. They lived in real cities, worshipped in Christian communities, and handed on what they had received.
In fact, Irenaeus later wrote about remembering Polycarp so vividly that he could recall where the bishop sat, how he spoke, and how he described his encounters with John.
The faith had reached Irenaeus not only as information, but through the witness of another human being.
The Gospel had been entrusted to him.
And now he was entrusted with proclaiming it to others.
But Who Brought Christianity to Gaul?
This is where the story becomes even more interesting.
We do not know with certainty the identity of the first missionary who introduced Christianity to Gaul.
Yet by AD 177, Christian communities were already established in Lyon and Vienne. They had clergy, a bishop named Pothinus, and faithful willing to endure persecution and martyrdom.
They were not waiting for someone centuries later to explain who Jesus was.
They already knew His Gospel.
And they were in contact with other Christian communities across the Roman world.
The Christians in Gaul even sent an account of their persecution to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, addressing them as brothers and sisters sharing the same faith and hope.
One can imagine how many ordinary lives were involved in carrying the Gospel that far.
Merchants, travelers, families, teachers, missionaries, priests, and bishops. Not every name has survived.
But the Church they helped establish did.
And when Irenaeus described the Christian faith, he did not speak as though Gaul possessed one Christianity while the churches of Spain, Asia, or Rome possessed another.
He insisted that, although Christians spoke different languages, they had received and preserved the same essential faith.
The Creed Was Not an Invention
This helps us understand why the early creeds matter.
The Apostles' Creed, in the form familiar to us today, developed from the ancient baptismal professions of the Church. The Nicene Creed received its authoritative formulation through the councils of 325 and 381.
Their wording took shape over time.
But the faith they confessed did not suddenly appear in those centuries.
Long before those councils, Christians were already professing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, His death and Resurrection, and the hope of eternal life.
Irenaeus gives us a written witness to that earlier profession.
The creeds were not intended to replace the Gospel or invent a new one.
They gave clear expression to the faith the Church had already received.
And the Church had received that faith from the apostles.
When Someone Claimed a Different Gospel
Irenaeus understood the importance of this question because he lived at a time when various teachers claimed to possess hidden knowledge about Christ.
Some proposed that the public teaching of the Church was only a simple version of Christianity, while a deeper and secret teaching belonged to a select few.
Irenaeus answered by appealing to the faith openly preached in the churches founded by the apostles and preserved by their successors.
His argument invites a straightforward inquiry:
Who taught you this?
Who taught them?
Can this teaching be traced to the apostles?
And does it agree with the faith handed on in the Church?
This was not an attempt to make Christianity into a contest of impressive historical credentials.
It was a matter of recognizing the difference between receiving the Gospel and inventing another one.
The apostles did not proclaim themselves.
They proclaimed Jesus Christ.
And the Church was entrusted with preserving that proclamation.
The Faith We Have Received
St. Paul expressed this pattern long before Irenaeus.
In 1 Corinthians 15:3, Paul speaks of handing on what he himself had received: the proclamation of Christ's saving death and Resurrection.
In 2 Timothy 2:2, we encounter the same principle: what has been heard is entrusted to faithful people capable of teaching others.
And the Catechism explains that the apostles transmitted the Gospel both through their preaching and through inspired writings, leaving bishops as their successors so that this living proclamation would continue.
This is Sacred Tradition.
Not merely old customs. Not simply doing something because it has always been done.
It is the living transmission of the apostolic faith within Christ's Church, inseparably connected to Sacred Scripture.
And the Creed remains one of its most recognizable expressions.
And Now Someone Has Told Us
Perhaps this is the most beautiful part of the whole story.
We can spend our lives studying councils, ancient manuscripts, bishops, missionaries, and the history of Christianity.
These things matter. They help us recognize the continuity of the faith.
But eventually the question reaches us personally.
Who taught us the Creed?
Perhaps a parent. A grandparent. A priest. A catechist. A friend. Perhaps we encountered it only after many years of searching.
Someone handed it on.
And when we stand at Mass and profess our faith, we do not speak in isolation.
We profess the faith of the Church, received across generations, languages, and nations.
The same Jesus Christ proclaimed by the apostles is the One we profess today.
And now we, too, have been entrusted with this faith.
Not to reinvent it.
Not to improve upon Christ.
But to receive it, live it, and faithfully hand it on.
Because before the Creed was our confession, it was someone else's testimony.
And before it was theirs, it was the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Living on Faith — The same faith, received and handed on.
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:3–4; 2 Timothy 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; Acts 2:42.
Further reading: St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I.10, III.3–4; Catechism of the Catholic Church 75–83, 185–197; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V.1, V.20.