Bishop Robert Barron’s What Christians Believe offers a clear and compelling walk through the Nicene Creed, line by line. Formulated at Nicaea (325) and expanded at Constantinople (381), the Creed distills centuries of reflection on the biblical witness to Jesus. It arose in response to theological confusion, offering the Church’s authoritative guide for speaking truthfully about Christ. As Barron writes, “If you want to tell the Christian story correctly, you must follow this template” (34).
Chapter 1: I Believe
The Creed opens with the phrase “I believe,” which Bishop Barron calls an “eloquent ambiguity” because the original Greek reads pisteuomen (“we believe”), while the Latin tradition maintains Credo (“I believe”) (6). This dual expression reveals both the communal and personal dimensions of faith: belief is nurtured within the Church’s life, yet it demands a personal, free response to divine revelation.
Faith, Barron insists, is not naïve or anti-intellectual; rather, it is a relational act, where the will moves the intellect to assent out of love and encounter—more like trusting a person than computing abstract data. This dynamic is deepened by the phrase “in one God,” where the word “in” implies not just static assent, but a movement toward God—a journey, not a destination. Creedal statements, then, are not terminal doctrines but, as Barron writes, “guides, guardrails, indicators on the side of the road” (10), directing the believer deeper into the mystery.
This “God” Christians believe in is not one being among others, but the unconditioned, self-sufficient source of all that exists. Barron, following Aquinas and Vatican I, affirms that God’s existence is knowable by reason, through pathways such as the intelligibility of the cosmos, moral obligation, mystical experience, and the contingency of creation. The “mystical fact of the universe’s radical intelligibility,” Barron notes, points to a divine mind; as Ratzinger writes, the cosmos is intelligible only because “a great intelligence embedded intelligibility into the world”—hence the biblical vision of creation through the Word (14).
To profess belief in one God is to deny the ultimacy of any created power. Drawing on Deuteronomy and Aquinas, Barron explains that God is actus purus—pure actuality—utterly distinct from and noncompetitive with creation (16). Like the burning bush, God illumines without consuming, offering not domination but divine nearness. Faith in this unconditioned, radiant God grounds and propels the entire Christian life.
Chapter 2: The Father Almighty
The Nicene Creed proclaims belief in “God, the Father almighty,” a phrase that has a twofold meaning: (1) God’s relation to creation—the one who lovingly brings forth and sustains all that is; (2) God’s eternal relation to the Son within the Trinity.
In regards to creation, central to this affirmation is that God’s creative act is not born of necessity but is an overflow of divine generosity: “God creates purely as an act of love” (18). This reflects the classical principle bonum diffusivum sui—“the good diffuses itself”—and reveals a God who gives without gain. Following Aquinas, Barron clarifies that true love is “to will the good of the other,” and creation itself is the perfect expression of such self-giving love. “God plus the world is not more perfect than God alone,” Barron notes, echoing the Eucharistic preface which affirms that our praise adds nothing to God’s greatness (18). The only proper human response is gratitude, seeing creation not as earned but as gift.
Going further, Barron draws on Aquinas to explain that creation is not merely a past event but a continuous act: “God sustains the universe the way a singer sustains a song” (20). This vision implies that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, and that all creatures are ontological siblings, constantly receiving their being from the same divine source. This metaphysical insight grounds a radical ethic of love: if even our enemies are sustained by divine love, then loving the enemy is not merely moral, but ontological.
Addressing the problem of evil—“perhaps the most vexing theological issue of all”—Barron follows Augustine in describing evil as a privation of being, not a substance in itself. Our inability to understand how God permits evil only to bring about greater good, Barron writes, “but awaken in us a certain humility before the purposes of God” (20).
Finally, the Creed’s affirmation of God as “Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible” encompasses both the physical universe and the spiritual realm, which together reflect divine intelligibility and radiance. Even the most ordinary things, Barron writes, “body forth an aspect of the divine perfection” (25).
Chapter 3: The Son
I. The Son of God
The profession—“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ” is, as Bishop Barron writes, “the watershed, a point of demarcation” in the Creed, because “distinctively Christian faith begins and ends with a particular person, Jesus from Nazareth, recognized to be the Son of God” (26). While Jews, Muslims, and even secular seekers may affirm belief in God, this confession of Jesus as Lord decisively marks Christian faith. The name Jesus means “Yahweh saves,” which affirms both God’s goodness and humanity’s need for salvation: “Jesus is, in his very person, the salving of the wound caused by false praise” (28). Original sin, Barron explains, is fundamentally misdirected worship—turning from the Creator to creatures—which leads to spiritual and social disorder. Because “the compromised will is the problem,” we cannot save ourselves. We need a Savior “whose power has to come radically from without the fallen situation, but at the same time it has to enter fully into it” (28).
The Creed next speaks of Jesus as “the only begotten Son of God.” While Scripture uses the phrase “sons of God” for angels, kings, and prophets, Jesus is uniquely begotten at an ontological level, a qualitatively different sonship: “Jesus consistently speaks and acts in the very person of the God of Israel” (32). Unlike Moses or David, who act on God’s behalf, Jesus claims divine prerogatives: forgiving sins, placing his authority above the Torah, and addressing His Father as “Abba.” In Matthew’s Gospel, he says, “You have heard it said, but I say…,” thus “assuming the authority of God himself” (33). The Creed’s affirmation of divine sonship does not suggest an adoptive or subordinate status: “Son and sent in no way imply ontological inferiority to the Father and Sender” (33). Jesus shares in the very essence of God.
The next line—“God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God”—directly counters the Arian heresy, which denied Christ’s full divinity. “‘Born of the Father before all ages’ was designed specifically to counter the rallying cry ‘There was a time when he was not’” (35). The Son is not a creature, but proceeds eternally from the Father as “true God from true God.” Citing St. Athanasius, Barron explains: “What is begotten entirely participates in that from which it comes, whereas what is made only imperfectly participates in its source” (36). The Son is “light from light,” as wetness is from water or radiance from fire. The phrase “begotten, not made” is decisive: “He proceeds not as the product of the free choice of the Father but as a necessary accompaniment, as light comes from the sun or as wetness follows from the nature of a fountain” (36). If Jesus were made, he would require salvation himself. Instead, “the consistent claim of the Church is that Jesus is not in need of salvation but is instead the source of salvation” (36). The Church thus proclaims each Sunday this vital truth: that Jesus is eternally begotten, fully divine, and the necessary condition of our redemption.
“Consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made” is the climax of Nicene Christology. Jesus is not merely like God—he is God, of the same substance (homoousios) with the Father. Barron calls this “perhaps the most famous and controversial word in the Nicene Creed” (38). The Church affirms both divine unity and Trinitarian distinction, avoiding the twin errors of tritheism and modalism. This balance was later deepened by the Cappadocian Fathers and St. Augustine, who identified an analogy of the Trinity in the structure of the human mind: mind (Father), self-knowledge (Son), and self-love (Holy Spirit) (40). The claim that the Son is homoousios with the Father is not abstract metaphysics—it has deep implications: “To remark… a play of relationality in the very heart of God is to make a metaphysical claim of extraordinary reach and power… it means that something like ‘being toward another’ belongs to the very essence of God” (40). And because God is love, we are called to imitate this divine self-gift. “The radicality of [Jesus’] program of love is grounded in his Father’s manner of being” (41).
Part II: The Son of Man
For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: This phrase answers the central question: why the Incarnation? The New Testament offers a “marvelous variety” of images: liberation, ransom, justification, shalom, and above all, grace—“each one expressing, in a unique way, the experience of coming into contact with Jesus” (42). These metaphors draw from Israel’s Scriptures: the Exodus, the prophets, and the election of Israel as unmerited grace. The phrase “for us men and for our salvation” marks a decisive turn: “What is at stake… is salvation—soteria in the original Greek… not just the clarification of concepts” (43). Jesus doesn’t merely inform; he heals and transforms. “The Creed turns subjective at this juncture… it treats of what matters most” (43). To say he “came down from heaven” is not spatial but metaphysical: “Heaven is… a symbol for the transcendence of God… his moral manner of being” (44). The Savior must come from outside the dysfunction of sin to liberate those caught within it.
And by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary: Here, Barron reflects on the two agents of the Incarnation: the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. The Spirit is the ruach Yahweh, God’s creative power, present at creation, empowering prophets, and descending on Jesus at his baptism. So “it is hardly surprising that the ruach Yahweh is intimately involved in the enfleshment of the Son of God” (45). Mary’s virginity, confirmed in Luke and Matthew, underscores the divine initiative in Christ’s conception: “Though human cooperation… is required, the Incarnation would not have happened without a gracious divine initiative” (46). Virginity also signals a new creation and Mary’s total consecration to God. Symbolically, Mary becomes the New Ark, bearing God’s presence in her womb. At Cana, she also speaks for Israel itself, interceding for salvation: “They have no wine” (48). Her fiat echoes the long hope of the patriarchs and prophets.
He became man: Barron focuses here on the central mystery of Incarnation: God the Son takes on human nature. This does not mean God “turned into” flesh, which would imply change. Rather, Christ possesses both divine and human natures “without confusion or change, without division or separation” (Chalcedon). His humanity is the icon (eikon) of the invisible God (49). Like an icon, it is not a mere image but a participatory window into divinity. This humanity is fully intellectual, volitional, and free—not a passive shell. Against monothelitism, the Church affirmed Jesus had two wills, human and divine, “coexisting noncompetitively” (51). Because God is not one being among others but ipsum esse, he can unite with human nature “without undermining his own nature or compromising the creature that he becomes” (52). The goal of this union is divinization. As the Fathers taught: Deus fit homo ut homo fieret Deus—“God became man that man might become God” (53). This is not pantheism, but mystical participation in the divine life, and it constitutes “the most dramatic humanism the world has ever known” (53).
Part III: The Descent
Crucified under Pontius Pilate: This phrase anchors the Christian faith in real, historical time. As Barron explains, “No one wonders who the local magistrate was when Hercules cleaned the Augean stables,” but Christians name Pontius Pilate because “the terrible death of Jesus was not a mere tragedy” but “the very heart of the matter” (54–55). The cross is not incidental to Christianity—it is its center. Pilate’s inclusion is also “a taunt to the powers of the world,” a declaration that Roman cruelty has been overwhelmed by divine love (61). Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as a rival king, humble and poor, whose army of angels defeats the violence of Caesar through nonviolence, mercy, and forgiveness. “True world-conquering power is associated with humility, love, nonviolence, and poverty,” Barron notes, “not with the qualities valued by a fallen world” (55).
Suffered death: To say “he suffered death” is to confront the full shame and horror of crucifixion. Barron reminds us that in the Roman world, crucifixion was “so terrible…that Cicero would refer to it only by means of a tortured circumlocution” (57). And for Jews, “anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse” (Deut. 21:23). Yet Jesus’ followers proclaimed this crucified man as Lord. Why? Barron presents two central models: Christus Victor and sacrificial atonement. In the first, Jesus confronts the full weight of evil and sin, absorbing it with divine love. “He responded by swallowing [the dark powers] up in the ever greater, ever more powerful, divine mercy” (59). In the second model, drawn from Scripture and the Temple tradition, Jesus’ death is a sacrifice of reparation—“This is my body…This cup…is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19–20). Anselm’s classic account holds that sin creates a weight (pondus peccati) that must be healed, not merely forgiven with a wave of the hand (64). “God is ‘offended’ by sin…in the sense that he hates and wants to eliminate whatever harms his beloved creatures” (64).
And was buried: The phrase “and was buried” testifies to Jesus’ real death, not a swoon. As Barron puts it, “To affirm…that Jesus was buried is to affirm that he was truly dead” (66). Balthasar reflects on Christ’s “Todsein Gottes”—the “being dead” of God—marking the extreme depth of the Incarnation. The image of Holbein’s ghastly corpse underscores the realism and scandal of Christian faith: “a superficial faith might be wrecked by coming into contact with Christ truly dead and buried” (67). Yet this descent continues, as the Apostles’ Creed says, into hell (Sheol). Jesus reaches even those “at the furthest possible remove from the mercy of God” (67). Barron emphasizes the power of 1 Peter 3:18–20, which reveals Jesus proclaiming the Gospel to “the spirits in prison.” Because he is divine, what happened in Jesus “has a ramification across all of space and time,” offering hope to every soul, even the most forgotten (67).
Part IV: The Rise
The claim that Jesus “rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” stands, as Barron insists, at the very center of the Christian faith. “If Jesus did not rise, everything in Christian theology, philosophy, social action, art, spirituality, and morality loses its raison d’être” (68). Without the Resurrection, Christianity collapses into myth or moral symbolism. Barron even claims, “90% of the Creed craters in upon itself if Resurrection faith disappears” (69). This is why any attempt to reduce the Resurrection to metaphor or vague spiritual renewal—what Barron calls the temptation to “de-mythologize”—undermines everything. If Christ did not truly rise, then his claims to speak and act in the person of God are false, and “all talk of Incarnation is negated… the dogma of the Trinity falls away… [and] it makes no sense to refer to the Church or to its sacraments” (69).
To explain what the Resurrection is, Barron first clarifies what it is not. It is not Jewish Sheol, nor Platonic immortality of the soul, nor Roman apotheosis, nor metempsychosis. Rather, it is a unique, earth-shattering event: “What some Jews expected of all the righteous dead at the end of time has happened to this singular figure… within time” (71). The risen Jesus is both the same crucified Lord and mysteriously transformed. “Though the risen Christ is… the same Jesus… in another sense, he is transformed, strange, not entirely of this world” (72). This tension between identity and transformation is mirrored in the Gospels: “They worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matt. 28:17), and “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering” (Luke 24:41). Christian Resurrection faith is grounded in two essential elements: the post-Resurrection appearances and the empty tomb. “Without the apparitions… Resurrection faith would never have emerged” (72), and without the tomb, the appearances alone would have been dismissed as hallucinations. “There is no reasonable ground for doubting the consistent Gospel assertion that the site of his burial was well known” (72).
The Resurrection has profound implications. First, it confirms Jesus’ divine identity: “Having seen their crucified Lord alive again, how could the disciples doubt that he was the One Sent, the unique Son of the Father?” (73). Second, it provides the lens for interpreting the Cross: the apparent defeat becomes the triumph of divine mercy—Jesus returns not with vengeance, but with shalom. Third, it proclaims Christ’s kingship: Pilate’s inscription, “King of the Jews,” once ironic, becomes a first proclamation of the Gospel. Fourth, the Resurrection shows that the sacrifice of the Cross has been accepted: “What appears in the Resurrection of Jesus are the fruits of that reparation” (75). Finally, it reveals God’s intention to redeem all creation: “God has not given up on his creation… He intends to bring all of it… to a glorious state of being” (76). Jesus is the “first fruits” of this new creation (1 Cor. 15:20). Matter, as Barron puts it, matters: the Resurrection is not a violation of nature but its fulfillment. In the thought of Flannery O’Connor, Christ’s glorified body is “a proleptic breakthrough… of what God purposes for his creation—both spiritual and material—at the end of time” (76).
The Creed’s affirmation that Christ “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father” marks the culmination of the Incarnate Word’s earthly mission and his return to the glory he shared with the Father from the beginning. Bishop Barron frames this mystery through the exitus-reditus pattern: “He came down… and he went back up,” bringing with him “the humanity that he came down to embrace… for deification” (76). While the biblical accounts of the Ascension are terse and varied (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9), they are rich in theological symbolism. Christ’s ascent does not signify absence, but enthronement: he now reigns from a higher vantage point, directing the mission of the Church across all time and space: “He has journeyed to a higher point of vantage where he can see the entire field of battle and direct operations more efficaciously” (78). To say he is “seated at the right hand of the Father” is not to suggest rest, but royal authority and liturgical priesthood. Indeed, Christ’s departure “clears space” for the saints (principle of non-competitiveness again); if he remained physically present, his embodied nearness would eclipse the participation of others in his mission (78). The Ascension thus inaugurates the age of the Church—the age in which His mystical body continues his redemptive work. Yet the Ascension is not only a political enthronement; it is also a liturgical ascent. Christ, the great High Priest, has passed “through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14) into the true sanctuary, where he offers the one perfect sacrifice—his own blood—for the salvation of the world (Heb. 9:12–14). Barron emphasizes this heavenly dimension of worship: Jesus is now “the Lamb standing as if slain” (Rev. 5:6), at the heart of the eternal liturgy. Earthly liturgy participates in this heavenly praise whenever we join in the Sanctus with the angels and saints—“May our voices… join with [the angels] in one chorus of exultant praise” (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8). In this way, the Ascension unites Christ’s kingship and priesthood, his cosmic governance and intimate intercession, revealing that the Lord who ascended now rules and sanctifies from beyond the veil.
The Creed then looks forward to the Second Coming: Christ will “come again in glory.” Barron describes this as a “second exitus”: not a departure from the world, but a final, transformative return to draw “all things to himself” (83). The goal is not escape from earth, but the marriage of heaven and earth, as foretold in Revelation 21 and Romans 8. This cosmic renewal centers on the very particular person of Jesus: “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created,” “hold together,” and are reconciled (Col. 1:15–20; Eph. 1:8–10). The Resurrected Jesus—transfigured yet recognizable—offers a foretaste of the new creation. The world will be the same, yet elevated: “as a sphere is to a circle…raised literally to a new dimension.”
The Creed then affirms that Christ will come “to judge the living and the dead.” Barron calls this perhaps the most culturally offensive line in the modern West. We recoil from judgment, craving inclusivity and self-justification. Yet judgment is inevitable. As Barron writes, “To set one’s face is, necessarily, to set one’s back,” and even advocates of radical inclusion often fiercely judge those who differ (85). Properly understood, divine judgment is a source of vindication and comfort. God’s judgment is not arbitrary but the measure of the true, the good, and the beautiful in their properly unconditioned form (85). Without it, values collapse, and raw power dominates. Jesus’ return as Judge assures us that injustice will be addressed, even that which history has obscured. As Barron writes, “All of these injustices ‘cry out to heaven for vengeance’,” and only God—outside of time and perfectly just—can rightly judge all things (87). Because Christ himself endured the greatest injustice in his Crucifixion, his enthronement as Judge becomes the final setting-right of all wrongs.
Finally, the Creed proclaims: “and his kingdom will have no end.” This is not mere poetic flourish—it signals the eternal fulfillment of all things in Christ’s reign. Barron writes that “history is neither pointless nor circular…[but] moving…toward a fulfillment beyond what any philosopher or seer could imagine: the kingdom without end” (88). Heaven and earth are joined, not dissolved. The end of history is not annihilation or stasis, but eternal Sabbath rest, the savoring of the supreme good in union with the Triune God. As Barron concludes, the right worship of Christ is not merely vertical—it is also the model for right order on earth: a political, social, and spiritual communion that begins now and stretches into eternity.
Chapter 4: The Holy Spirit
I Believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life
The Nicene Creed culminates in a confession of faith in the third Person of the Trinity: “I Believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life.” Though often less elaborated than the Father and the Son, the Spirit is fully divine—a “who” and not a “what”—and is central to the entire economy of salvation (89). From the beginning, the Spiritus Sanctus breathes life: hovering over the waters of creation (Gen 1:2), raising Ezekiel’s dry bones (Ezek 37), and renewing the earth (Ps 104:30). As Barron notes, “the word ruach is used 378 times” in the Old Testament as the source of physical, moral, and spiritual vitality (89).
The New Testament intensifies this revelation. The Spirit overshadows Mary (Luke 1:35), descends on Christ at baptism (John 1:33), and is breathed forth by the risen Lord (John 20:22). At Pentecost, the Spirit descends in fire and wind, stirring the disciples into a missionary Church. From this moment, “He guides, bears witness, prays, teaches, speaks, converts, lifts up, inspires, and directs” (90). As Barron writes, the Spirit is “the principal actor in the life of the early Church, always keeping in mind the principle of noncompetitiveness, so that his activity in no way obviates or interrupts the real activity of the disciples of Jesus. Therefore, we might sum up as follows: the Holy Spirit is the creative, life-giving power of the God of Israel that was involved in a completely unique way with Jesus from the very beginning of his earthly life, which filled him with fire and wisdom, which animated his ministry, and which he was able to give, after his Resurrection, generously to his Church” (91).
Who Proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son Is Adored and Glorified
The Creed goes deeper: the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son”. This eternal procession is not an act of utility but of perfect love—what Fulton Sheen called the “sigh of love” (92). Since “the Father and the Son share one divine essence,” their mutual love is fully divine, not contingent or self-interested: “neither can experience self-interest, either direct or indirect. Thus, their shared willing is the purest love possible, the very essence of love” (92). Thus, the Spirit is not a divine “function” but God Himself, and is rightly “who with the Father and the Son Is Adored and Glorified.”
Barron revisits the filioque controversy, asserting that the theological meaning shared by East and West is fundamentally the same (96). The West says the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; the East, through the Son. Both affirm the Spirit’s co-equality and eternal communion in the Godhead. As Barron remarks: “My personal recommendation is that this controversy, which is at least as much political as theological, should be laid to rest permanently. Both the Orthodox and Catholic traditions believe in the unity of God, the coequality of the Trinitarian persons, and the unoriginated primacy of the Father. In regard to the filioque, the West should say to the East, “What you mean by taking it out, we mean by putting it in,” and the East should say to the West, “What you mean by putting it in, we mean by taking it out.” Then both sides should declare victory and go home” (96).
The Creed affirms that the Spirit “has spoken through the prophets.” Christianity, like Judaism, is a prophetic religion, grounded not in speculation but in divine utterance (98). The prophet, seized by God, is not merely a forecaster but one who “speaks God’s judgment”, exposing injustice and calling the world to repentance. Heschel famously described the prophet as one who “feels the feelings of God”—His passion, delight, anger, and compassion—and speaks out of that divine experience (98). Such prophets often appear upside down to the world. As Chesterton quipped, the fool for Christ stands on his head and sees the world aright precisely because sin has already inverted it. Their mission continues in the New Testament, in the apostles, and even today through saints, mystics, and theologians. John Henry Newman includes such voices in the “prophetic office”, necessary for doctrinal development (100). But prophecy does not stand apart from authority. Barron sees the Church as a communion guided by both charism and discernment—prophecy and institutional oversight. Doctrine arises not from consensus, but “from above,” from the Spirit speaking through the prophets, verified by the refereeing office of bishops and pope. The Spirit is no distant force: he is the living voice of God, active in the Church, ever guiding it into all truth.
Chapter 5: The Church
It may seem strange to profess belief in an institution (“I believe in… the Church”) but the Creed’s use of this word signals that the Church is not merely human—it is Christ’s Mystical Body, the extension of the Incarnation through space and time (101). The Church is an organism, not just an organization. Christ, now glorified, continues His saving mission through this new Body composed of the baptized. This is why persecuting the Church is persecuting Christ Himself (Acts 9:4) and why the Church shares in the Trinitarian life (John 17:20–21). As Barron puts it, “The Church is the prolongation of the Incarnation across space and time” (103).
In this Body, interdependence defines everything: “co-inherence” means each member suffers and rejoices together, grounding practices like intercessory prayer and redemptive suffering. St. Joan of Arc said it best: “Jesus Christ and the Church are just one thing” (104). The Church is animated by the Holy Spirit, just as Adam was vivified by the breath of God (John 20:22). The ekklesia, from ek (out of) and kalein (to call), is a people called from the world—that is, from the kosmos shaped by sin—into divine mission (106). As Barron states, the Church “is indeed called from the world for the world” (107).
The Church is one because it is the Body of the one Christ who draws all into Himself (John 12:32; Eph 1:20–23). True unity is not imperialism but the gathering force of the crucified Lord, who draws people through love, not domination (109). This unity is also assimilative, not monolithic: the Church incorporates diverse cultures, philosophies, and traditions, without losing her identity (110).
The Church is holy because it is the Body of Christ and the temple of the Spirit, not because of the moral excellence of its members. “We hold the treasure of Christ in fragile vessels” (2 Cor 4:7; 113). The Spirit’s holiness is made visible through sacraments, saints, charisms, and doctrine (111). As Barron notes, “Holiness means both set-apartness and wholeness,” uniting the community to God and integrating its members in grace (111).
The Church is Catholic (kata holos) because it embraces all people and all truth. Its mission is not limited by race, language, or nation. “The cross is the matrix of catholicity,” breaking down all divisions and uniting enemies into one body (Eph 2:13–14; 114). Catholicity also means spiritual completeness—Scripture, sacraments, saints, theology, justice, and mysticism are all part of her treasury (115).
The Church is apostolic — founded on the Apostles, and their authority continues through apostolic succession (116). Bishops safeguard the integrity of the Church’s teaching, worship, and mission, ensuring continuity with Christ and His first disciples (117). The Church is not a free-floating spirituality, but a visible communion rooted in Christ’s historical companions.
Here, the Creed shifts to a practice: “I Confess One Baptism for the Forgiveness of Sins.” Baptism is the doorway to the Christian life, the sacrament that configures us to Christ and draws us into the Trinitarian communion (117). It is the moment when a person is cleansed of sin and becomes part of the Mystical Body. “Since divine life is love, sin is repugnant to it,” and therefore must be erased through Baptism (118). Everything in Christian life—liturgy, Scripture, theology, and service—flows from this sacramental beginning.
Chapter 6: The World to Come
Christian faith confronts death not with denial but with bold hope: “And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead.” While science predicts the eventual collapse of the cosmos into entropy, Christians affirm that the Creator will not abandon His creation or allow His beloved creatures to fall into nothingness. As Bishop Barron writes, “we who have professed our faith in God… cannot resign ourselves to this cosmic futility” (120). This hope is not an escape from the body but the renewal of the whole person. The martyrs of 2 Maccabees 7 testify to a just God who will restore even mutilated bodies: “from him I hope to get them back again” (v. 11). Jesus confirms this hope when He says God is “not the God of the dead but of the living.”
To explain bodily resurrection, Barron draws on St. Thomas Aquinas, who argues that the soul is the form of the body (forma corporis)—not a prison, but the animating principle of life. Because it can grasp immaterial truth, the soul survives death but remains oriented to the body. “Disincarnate souls retain an orientation to the flesh” (123), longing for reunion. This resurrection ensures continuity of personal identity. The glorified body, what Paul calls the “spiritual body,” transcends earthly limitations. As Barron puts it, “we look forward to an embodied life on high with God… so new that we must say with Paul: ‘No eye has seen… what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Cor. 2:9).
To conclude, Barron offers three luminous images from Tradition to describe “the life of the world to come: vision, city, and liturgy.
First is the beatific vision—the mind’s final satisfaction in beholding the truth of God. Inspired by Aquinas and Lonergan, Barron explains that this means “to know everything about everything”, not in a totalizing way, but in joyful exploration of the divine mystery (125). Heaven is not static comprehension but unending wonder, made possible by God’s gift of participating in his own knowing.
Second, heaven is a city—the new Jerusalem (Rev 21). This image evokes communion, not isolation: a place of beauty, activity, and vibrant relationship. “Cities are places where enormous crowds come together… for communication and communal living” (126). In this city, sin is no more, and every action is illumined by God’s glory. As Revelation says, “Its temple is the Lord… and the city has no need of sun… for the glory of God is its light” (Rev. 21:22–23). Thus, all of life becomes worship.
Finally, heaven is the eternal liturgy. Not a dull repetition of earthly rituals, but the perfection of right praise. In heaven, all of life is ordered around the love and beauty of God. “We shall live in community, sing in harmony, understand divine truth… and enter ever more deeply into a life of love” (127). Earthly liturgy hints at this glory: purified of boredom or distraction, it becomes a foretaste of heaven, a window into the joyful orthodoxy of the world to come.
Book Review
Bishop Barron has written a luminous catechesis for our time. With his signature blend of Thomistic clarity, biblical depth, and pastoral warmth, What Christians Believe leads readers into the very heart of the Nicene Creed—not as a dry formula, but as the living script of reality.
Each line of the Creed is unpacked with philosophical precision, evangelical zeal, and literary beauty. Barron brings together the Fathers, Aquinas, Scripture, and contemporary thinkers to make the faith not only credible, but captivating.
As Matthew Levering writes in the foreword, “The Nicene Creed, in Barron’s vision, provides the true ‘script’ of the universe’s drama” (5). And this script, grounded in the mystery of the Trinity and the wonder of the Incarnation, leads us to see everything—creation, suffering, salvation, liturgy, and love—in light of the God who is radically transcendent and intimately near.
Whether you are a catechist, convert, seeker, or theologian, this book will ignite your mind and stir your soul. What Christians Believe is a masterpiece of accessible theological wisdom and an invitation to fall in love again with the faith of the Church.
Prodigal Catholic 
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