The Creed, Article 10: One Baptism
In brief
The tenth article is the Creed's single sentence about the mysteries: "I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins." Notice the shift to the first person singular — "I acknowledge" — as the confessor claims for himself the new birth he entered at the font. The word "one" is doing quiet but heavy work: baptism, like birth, happens once and is not repeated.
"I acknowledge"
After the great sweep of what God has done — creation, Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, the Spirit, the Church — the Creed suddenly narrows to the first person: "I acknowledge." The Greek verb (homologo) means to confess or to say the same thing, the same word that gives us "homologous." The worshipper is not describing a rite from the outside; he is owning his own baptism, saying with his mouth what happened to his body at the font.
This is the only article that names one of the Holy Mysteries directly, and it is fitting that it is baptism — the mystery of entrance, the door through which a person becomes a member of the very Church confessed in the article before.
"one baptism"
The word "one" echoes St. Paul deliberately: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:5). Baptism is one in two senses. First, it is unrepeatable — like natural birth, it happens a single time and cannot be done over; the Church does not re-baptize those already validly baptized. Second, it is one because there is only one Church into which it grafts us, so a single baptism unites Christians across every place and century.
This clause also quietly closed off certain ancient controversies about whether baptism could or should be repeated in various circumstances. The Creed's answer is settled: one baptism, once, for all who receive it.
"for the remission of sins"
The purpose named here comes straight from the first Christian sermon. On Pentecost, when the crowd asked what they must do, St. Peter answered: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). The Creed simply confesses what the apostles preached.
Orthodox teaching sees baptism as far more than the washing away of past faults, though it is that. It is dying and rising with Christ, a real new birth by water and the Spirit, the beginning of a whole new life. "Remission of sins" is the threshold, not the whole house. Reciting this clause of the Symbol of Faith, each believer confesses that his own new life began not with his own effort but with the mercy of God poured out in the water.