The Creed, Article 9: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church
In brief
The ninth article is the shortest and one of the most consequential: "In one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." In a handful of words the Creed makes the Church an object of faith — something we believe in, not merely an institution we join. Its four adjectives — one, holy, catholic, apostolic — became the classic marks by which the Church knows itself.
Why the Church is in the Creed at all
It can surprise newcomers that the Creed asks us to believe in the Church at all — the same verb it uses for God. The Church is here because it is not a human club that happened to form around Jesus but the Body of Christ, animated by the Holy Spirit just confessed in the article before. The order is deliberate: the Spirit is the Giver of Life, and the Church is where that life is given. You cannot confess the one without the other.
The article grammatically flows out of Article 8 — "and in the Holy Spirit… in one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" — so the Church is presented as the Spirit's own work. Christ founded it on the confession of Peter with the promise that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).
The four marks
One. There is one Church because there is one Christ with one Body; St. Paul's roll-call leaves no room for competition — "one body, and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:4-6). Unity is not an aspiration the Church works toward but a gift it already has in Christ.
Holy. The Church is holy not because its members are sinless but because its Head is holy and it is filled with the Holy Spirit. It is a hospital for sinners that is nonetheless genuinely holy, because holiness comes from God's presence in it, not from the achievements of its people.
Catholic. The Greek katholikos means "according to the whole" — full, complete, lacking nothing needful for salvation. It points less to geographic spread than to wholeness of faith: the same complete Gospel in every place and time.
Apostolic. The Church is apostolic because it holds the apostles' faith and stands in unbroken continuity with them through apostolic succession — the handing-on of the faith and ministry from the apostles to the bishops of today.
One confession, four windows
The four marks are not four separate qualities but four windows onto one reality. The Church is one because it is apostolic; it is holy because it is catholic — whole with the wholeness of God. Each of these is unfolded further in the entry on the four marks of the Church.
For the worshipper reciting this clause of the Symbol of Faith, the point is personal: to be a Christian is not a solitary relationship with God but membership in a Body that spans heaven and earth, the living and the departed, held together by the one Spirit.