05/4/18

Christology at Chalcedon

The Council of Chalcedon; in the public domain

Christological debate over whether Jesus, as God incarnate, had two natures (divine and human) or only one nature continued after the Council of Ephesus in 431. Nestorianism, rejected at the Council, had said Christ had two distinct natures. But there were still two legitimate views on the natures of Christ, the Antiochene view and that held by the School of Alexandria. The Antiochene view was that Jesus possessed two natures—human and divine—that were distinct from each other, yet intimately connected. Theodoret of Cyrrhus explained this as the Word uniting Himself with flesh by clothing Himself with it and making it perfect through suffering.

Cyril and the School of Alexandria emphasized the divinity of Christ and insisted on the unity of His person, saying: “There is one nature of God the Word incarnate, but worshipped with his flesh as one worship.” They saw their stress on the unity of the incarnate Word as an important defense of the Nicene Creed and refutation of Arianism. But this stress on the unity of the nature of Christ led to Monophysitism, a doctrine holding that the incarnate Christ had only one nature, not two.

The term Monophysitism appeared in the aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to describe all those who rejected the Council’s Definition that the incarnate Christ was one Person in two Natures. Even thought he did not articulate the Monophsysite view precisely, its seeds were present in Cyril of Alexandria’s polemic against Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus. See “Christological Conflict at Ephesus.” According to the New Dictionary of Theology: “Although safeguarding the unity of Christ’s person, the Alexandrian approach led to Monophysitism, which appealed to Cyril as its theological mentor.”

Eutyches was an avid opponent of Nestorius and supported Cyril of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus. His vehement opposition to Nestorianism led him to an equally extreme view of Monophysitism, which resulted in Eutyches being condemned as a heretic himself. While Nestorius emphasized the distinction of the divine and human natures of Christ almost to the point of saying there were two persons—divine and human—Eutyches inverted the assertion to the opposite extreme. He held the human nature and divine nature of Christ were combined into a unique, single nature without alteration, absorption or confusion: the incarnate Word. See the following illustration of Eutyches’ view of Christ’s nature.

Eutyches was reacting to Nestorianism and leaning towards Apollinarianism. Confronted with whether he confessed two natures in the incarnate Christ, he declared “our Lord to have become out of two natures before the union. But I confess one nature after the union.” Eutyches conceived of Christ as a mingling of two natures. “In the union the divine had major share, the humanity being merged with deity as a drop of honey mingled in the ocean.” Although this was consistent with Cyril’s position, Eutyches went further, denying that Christ was consubstantial with humanity. He was trying to stress the uniqueness of Christ, not deny his full manhood.

He was accused of heresy by Domnus II of Antioch and Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, at a synod presided over by Flavian at Constantinople in 448. Eutyches was deposed from his priestly office and excommunicated. But he had political connections, as he was the godfather of an influential person at the court of Theodosius II. In 449 at the Second Council of Ephesus, later know as the Robber Council, Dionscorus reinstated Eutyches as a priest, believing he had repented of his beliefs. “Eusebius, Domnus and Flavian, his chief opponents, were deposed.”

Meanwhile, Emperor Theodosius II died when he fell from his horse in 450. He was succeeded by Marcian, who was a supporter of the Antiochene two natures view. Marcian agreed to convene the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to settle the debate over Jesus’ incarnate nature(s). The imperial goal was to establish a single faith throughout the Eastern Roman Empire. Instead, it ended up further dividing the church when it adopted the Antiochene view that Jesus had two distinct natures. There were only two papal legates and two North African bishops in attendance. The Western Roman Empire under Valentian at the time was preoccupied with Attila the Hun’s invasion of Gaul in 451.

If the Council of Chalcedon was to succeed, the imperial commissioners knew it had to produce a formulary that everyone would be required to sign and they made their intentions clear. But the majority of the bishops didn’t think a new creed was needed and they successfully resisted the imperial pressure to formulate one. They wanted to simply affirm “the exposition of the orthodox and irreproachable faith set forth” at the Council of Nicea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381. The decisions of the 449 Second Council of Ephesus were annulled; Nestorianism and Eutychianism were condemned. After repeating the 325 Nicea and Constantinopolitan formulations of the Nicene Creed, they said:

This wise and salutary Creed, therefore, derived from divine grace suffices for the perfect acknowledgement and confirmation of godliness; for concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, its teaching is complete, and to those who accept it faithfully it sets forth in addition the Incarnation of the Lord.

The Council then formulated a confession of faith, which is known as the Definition of Chalcedon. Christ was declared to be one Person in two Natures. The Divine nature was of the same substance as the Father, the human of the same substance as us. The two were “united unconfusedly, unchangeably, invisibly, inseparably.” Although its purpose was to define the limits of legitimate theological speculation on the natures of Christ rather than make an exact and final statement of a theological position, it was not universally accepted and controversy continued for the next two centuries over Monophysitism.

In opposition to Nestorius, Chalcedon affirmed the Virgin Mary as theotokos, Mother of God. The intent was to assert the true divinity of Christ, not exalt the Virgin Mary. The Eastern Church reacted negatively to the Chalcedon definition of the incarnation. Nestorians were forced further East, beyond the Roman Empire. Monophysites, who were supporters of Cyril and the Eastern Church, fought the definition and were regarded as Nestorians because of their opposition. Despite the division it caused in the East, the Definition of Chalcedon became the standard view of the incarnation in the Western church:

Wherefore, following the holy Fathers, we all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same consisting of a reasonable soul and a body, of one substance with the Father as touching the Godhead, the same of one substance with us as touching the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin; begotten of the Father before the ages as touching the Godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born from the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, as touching the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved, and concurring into one Person and one subsistence (πόστασις), not as if Christ were parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as the Prophets from the beginning spoke concerning him, and our Lord Jesus Christ instructed us, and the Creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.These things, therefore, having been formulated by us with all possible exactness and care, the holy ecumenical council decrees, that it is unlawful for anyone to produce another faith, whether by writing, or composing, or holding, or teaching others.

The Definition of Chalcedon sought to put boundaries on the speculation about Christology. Reaching back to Nicea, it confirmed the Son is consubstantial with the Father; He is like the Father. Turning then to the humanity of Jesus, it affirmed He is consubstantial with us; He is like us (human) in every way. It went on to say there was a simple unity in the Son, in Jesus. Don’t confuse, mix, separate, deny or separate the two natures.

You can listen to 20-minute YouTube lecture on the Council of Chalcedon by Ryan Reeves, an Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

04/24/18

Christological Conflict at Ephesus

In the public domain. Nestorius envisoned by Romeyn de Hooghe in Hiistory of the Church and Heretics, 1688

When Sisinnius the Patriarch of Constantinople died, the Emperor Theodosius II decided not to appoint anyone from the rival factions in Constantinople. Instead, he appointed an outsider, Nestorius, who had been living as a priest and monk in the monastery of Euprepius near Antioch. He had a reputation for asceticism, orthodoxy and eloquent sermons. According to Socrates Scholasticus, during his ordination sermon on April 10th, 428, Nestorius addressed the Emperor, saying: “Give me, my prince, the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven as a recompense. Assist me in destroying heretics, and I will assist you in vanquishing the Persians.” He attempted to make good on his promise but would be deposed from his office in three years as a heretic himself.

Five days after his ordination Nestorius demolished a chapel where Arians (whose beliefs had been anathematized at the 325 Council of Nicea) worshipped. Outraged by this, the Arians set their demolished chapel on fire, which resulted in burning many adjacent buildings to the ground. From that time Nestorius was seen as a firebrand. “For he could not rest, but seeking every means of harassing those who embraced not his own sentiments, he continually disturbed the public tranquility.” He antagonized Memnon, the bishop of Ephesus, by pursuing heretics into Ephesian ecclesiastical districts. Socrates Scholastiicus’ astute observation was: “Nestorius indeed acted contrary to the usage of the Church, and caused himself to be hated in other ways also.”

Around this time, an associate Nestorius brought with him from Antioch, a presbyter names Anastasius, preached a sermon and said: “Let no one call Mary Theotókos [mother of God], for Mary was but a woman, and it is impossible that God should be born of a woman.” These words caused a great turmoil among both the laity and the clergy, who saw Anastasius as separating the humanity of Christ from his divinity. Seeking to support his friend and associate, Nestorius preached several sermons also rejecting the epithet Theotókos. The resultant discussion divided the church “and resembled the struggle of combatants in the dark, all parties uttering the most confused and contradictory assertions.” Nestorius was understood to be asserting “the blasphemous dogma that the Lord is a mere man.”

It was the opinion of Socrates Scholastiicus that Nestorius was “an unlearned man” who seemed to be terrorized by the term Theotókos. “The fact is, the causeless alarm he manifested on this subject just exposed his extreme ignorance: for being a man of natural fluency as a speaker, he was considered well educated, but in reality he was disgracefully illiterate.” Socrates noted how Nestorius seemed ignorant of 1 John 4:2-3, thinking that he did not need to “give his attention to the ancients.” This failure to know the Scriptures led to his downfall, as he and his followers mutilated the passage in their attempts to separate the manhood of Christ from his deity. “This idle contention of his has produced no slight ferment in the religious world.”

This played right into the hands of his political and theological rival, Cyril, bishop of Alexandria. Cyril wrote a series of letters to Nestorius, urging him to stop preaching against Mary as Theotókos. Cyril said if Nestorius rejected the personal union of Jesus Christ, as confessed in the 325 Creed of Nicea (i.e., “begotten from the Father”; “only-begotten”; “who came down and became incarnate”), “we fall into the error of making two sons.” Cyril charged Nestorius with misinterpreting the Creed of Nicea and urged him “to hold to the universal teaching of both East and West.” But Nestorius would not back down from what he preached. Cyril advised Pope Celestine to condemn the teachings of Nestorius, who agreed saying:

 … If he, Nestorius, persists, an open sentence must be passed on him, for a wound like this, when it affects not one member only, but rends the whole body of the Church, must be cut away at once. . . . And so, appropriating to yourself the authority of our see, and using our position, you shall with resolute severity carry out this sentence, that either he shall within ten days, counted from the day of your notice, condemn in writing this wicked preaching of his, and shall give assurance that he will hold, concerning the birth of Christ our God, the faith which the Roman Church and the Church of your Holiness and universal religion holds; or if he will not do this (your Holiness having at once provided for that Church) he will know that he is in every way removed from our body as not being willing to accept the care lavished on him by those wishing to heal him, and as hastening on a destructive course to his own perdition and to the perdition of all entrusted to him.

But Nestorius has already arranged with the Emperor Theodosius II to assemble a council before the condemnation from the pope arrived. The Emperor Theodosius II (408-50) called for the Council of Ephesus to begin on Pentecost in 431. The Council was held in St. Mary’s Basilica in Ephesus, where the theotókos formula was popular. St. Mary’s was known for its veneration of Mary,

Referring to Mary as Theotókos, meaning “God-bearer” or “Mother of God” had a long and uncontroversial history before the dispute between Nestorius and Cyril. Affirming that Mary gave birth to the human Jesus self evidently meant affirming she gave birth to the divine Jesus. Basil the Great (330-379) expressed this idea in his Letter 360:

According to the blameless faith of the Christians which we have obtained from God, I confess and agree that I believe in one God the Father Almighty; God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost; I adore and worship one God, the Three. I confess to the œconomy of the Son in the flesh, and that the holy Mary, who gave birth to Him according to the flesh, was Mother of God [Theotókos].

In one his letters to Nestorius Cyril said the qualification of the virgin Mary as Theotókos was not a problem because it does not signify the divine nature of the Logos as having a beginning. Rather, it asserts that the incarnation of the Logos needed to assume the human condition through the virgin. In other words, the hypostasis of the Logos makes the divine motherhood of Mary possible because the Son who she carries and is truly born of her in the second person of the Trinity. Cyril said:

The holy fathers do not hesitate to call the holy Virgin Theotókos, not in the sense that the divine nature of the Word took its origin from the holy Virgin, but in the sense that he took His holy body, gifted with a rational soul from her. Yet, because the Word is hypostatically united to this body, one can say that he was truly born according to the flesh. 

Nestorius was opposed to calling Mary the Theotókos because he believed Mary could not be the mother of God since the Trinitarian God is infinite and eternal, “so no human being can be the mother of God.” Nestorius thought affirming Mary as Jesus’ mother could only be applied to the human nature of Jesus, and not the divine person of the Logos. Therefore, it was more appropriate to call Mary anthropotokos, meaning “man-bearer” or Christotokos, meaning “Christ-bearer.” Nestorism made a clear distinction between the human and divine natures in Christ, “denying any real organic union between the man Jesus and the indwelling divine Logos.”

Orthodox believers saw this as saying that while there was one Son and one Christ in two natures, their union was little more than a moral union of two distinct beings. What was missing was the Divine Personality of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria challenged, “If our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how can it be that the Holy Virgin, who gave birth to Him is not the Mother of God?” At stake in this debate was the divinity of Christ. According to David Christie-Murray, if Nestorius’ doctrine had been adopted as orthodox, Christ would have eventually been seen as a mere man, inspired by the indwelling of the divine Logos.

With the support of Memnon, the bishop of Ephesus, Cyril of Alexandria opened the Council on June 22, 431, without waiting for the arrival of the Antiochene (pronounced An-tie-o-kene) Syrian bishops, who formed the party most likely to be supportive of Nestorius. The decision made by Cyril and those who were in attendance was to depose Nestorius from his see in Constantinople and excommunicate him. Nestorians doctrines were condemned. Significantly, the Council of Ephesus did not formulate a new creed. Rather, it reaffirmed the Nicene Creed, stating: “No one shall be permitted to introduce, write, or compose any other faith, besides that which was defined by the holy fathers assembled in the city of Nicea, with the presence of the Holy Ghost.”

When the Syrian bishops arrived four days later, they met with Theodoret, an influential theologian of the time who was a supporter of Antiochene Christology. Along with other representatives at the Council who objected to Cyril’s actions, they held a rival meeting at which they excommunicated Cyril and Memnon.

The ecclesiastical and theological rivalry between Cyril and Nestorius reflected the competing Christologies of the School of Alexandria and Antioch. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church said the Alexandrians emphasized: “In Christ God Himself was living a human life.” They saw the affirmation of this paradoxical self-effacement as evidence of God’s deep love for humanity. The Antiochenes (from Antioch) emphasized how in Christ both humanity and divinity co-operated; and that such a conjunction of human and divine did not encroach upon the reality of either of the two natures.

According to the New Dictionary of Theology, the Catechetical School of Alexandria (or the Didascalium) was an early center for higher Christian learning, founded in the mid-second century under early church leaders such as Clement and Origen. It became a leading center of the allegorical method of biblical interpretation and had a tendency to emphasize the divinity in Christ. Athansius was also associated with the Alexandrian School. Origin provided for the divine nature of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while still making distinctions between the three. “Athansius emphasized their unity as one God.”

Cyril opposed the Antiochene division between the human and divine in Christ by insisting on the unity of his person. The term theotókos had been used in Alexandria to refer to Mary long before Cyril made it a watchword of his opposition to Nestorius. Cyril and the Alexandrians saw their stress on the unity of the incarnate Word as a crucial defense of the Nicene Creed and a refutation of Arianism. “Although safeguarding the unity of Christ’s person, the Alexandrian approach led to Monophysitism, which appealed to Cyril as its chief theological mentor.”

Antiochene theology was associated with the church and School at Antioch whose exegetical methods and theology contrasted with Alexandrian theology. In scriptural exegesis, it placed more emphasis on the literal and historical sense of the text, while still stressing the importance of the deeper, spiritual meaning. It developed largely in reaction to Arianism in the 4th and 5th centuries. In its Christology, it stressed the humanity of Christ and the reality of His moral choices. “To achieve this, and to preserve the impassibility of His Divine nature, the unity of His person was described in a looser way than in Alexandrian theology.” This difference and the mutual suspicion to which it gave rise, was the theological foundation of the controversy. However, Nestorian dogma was more radical than most other Antiochenes were willing to go.

Reconciliation with Cyril and the more moderate Antiochenes was finally effected in 433. The council passed eight canons, in which the Pelagian Celestius and Nestorius were (again) condemned. In its rejection of Nestorianism, the Council gave formal approval to the title Theotókos for Mary. Theodosius II eventually acquiesced to its decision and Nestorius was sent back to his monastery at Antioch. In 435 Theodosius condemned his books and in 436 Nestorius was banished to a monastery Upper Egypt, within the diocese of Cyril, where he died in 351.

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; the New World Encyclopedia entry on “Nestorius;” The Ecclesiastical History by Socrates Scholasticus, the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and Creeds, Councils, Controversies by James Stephenson. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

04/13/18

Origins of the Nicene Creed

Constantine and the bishops of the first Council of Nicea holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. In the public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117976

What we know today as the “Nicene Creed” or “C” was the most influential creedal product to come out of the fourth century. According to Graham Keith in “The Formulation of Creeds in the Early Church,” within a short period of time, it became essentially the only baptismal creed used in all the Eastern churches. And for a time, it was also the baptismal creed for Rome and the Western churches. But ironically, even though it bears the Nicene name, it was not formulated at the Council of Nicea in 325.

Sometimes it is technically called the “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed,” referring to the Council of Constantinople in 381, which was when and where it was formulated. However some scholars have theorized the original text of “C” was actually formulated at the Council of Chalcedon seventy years later in 451, where it said: “At the third session of the Council, on 10 October, the Nicene Creed having been publicly read and acclaimed, the imperial commissioners ordered ‘the faith of the 150 fathers’ to be read out too.”

What was read then at Chalcedon was C. One fact in support of the claim that the Nicene Creed was originally formed at Chalcedon is the glaring silence or lack of reference to C between Council of Constantinople in 381 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451. In all the back-and-forth letter writing and synods and councils, there isn’t any reference to C as there was to “N”, the original creed of Nicea. What seems to be the right explanation for what happened is that the Council of Constantinople did formulate C, but the gathered church leaders did not consider their revisions as composing a new creed.

“The faith of Nicea” was applied at the time before Chalcedon when referring to creeds that were essentially Nicene, but whose wording was sometimes radically different than N. The intent of church leaders gathered at the Council of Constantinople was to confirm the teaching or faith of the Nicene Creed, which it did. The lack of separate references to C from 381 until near 451 may also be understood by the fact that the pristine text of N wasn’t distinguished from C until the Council of Ephesus in 431.

“The whole style of the creed, its graceful balance and smooth flow, convey the impression of a liturgical piece which has emerged naturally in the life and worship of the Christian community” (rather than as the product of an ecclesiastical committee). Therefore C was probably already in existence and use somewhere when the Council took it up, touched it up for their purposes, including “the special heresies it felt itself called upon to refute” and approved it as the Council’s affirmation of “the faith of Nicea.” J.N.D. Kelly speculated it was originally a local baptismal creed from the Antioch or Jerusalem family of creeds.

“Unlike the purely Western Apostles’ Creed, it was admitted as authoritative in the East and the West alike from 451 onward, and it has retained that position, with one significant variation in its text (the addition of the filioque clause), right down to the present day.” It became the baptismal creed of the East and the Eucharistic creed of all Christendom. In the following centuries, there was a growing emphasis on the basic identity of the two creeds, N and C.

Creed of Nicea “N”

Constantinopolitan Creed “C”

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;

We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all the ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into existence, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge living and dead, of Whose kingdom there will be no end;

And in the Holy Spirit.

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father [and the Son], Who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified, Who spoke through the prophets; in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism to the remission of sins; we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and, Before being born He was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or change—these the Catholic Church anathematizes. 

When you compare the two creeds in the above chart, there are some notable omissions in C that are not easy to explain if C was a version of N. These differences are, a) “that is from the substance of the Father”; b) “God from God”; c) “things in heaven and things on earth”; and d) the anathemas.  In the Creedal comparison chart, the phrases from N that were left out of C are in bold italic print. The additions to C not found in N are in bold print. The anathemas of Arianism in the original Creed of Nicea, “N,” were omitted in “C.” There are also various other differences like word order and sentence structure that make it difficult to say C is a modified version of N. So what’s going on here?

Several years before the Council of Constantinople, Basil the Great of Caesarea thought that a needed addition to the Nicene faith would be something elaborating on the Holy Spirit, because it only briefly mentioned Him. Apparently this was because He had not been the subject of any doctrinal disputes in the church by 325. The Arian controversy had kept questions about the status of the Holy Spirit in the background. But by the decade of the 350s, “His true nature and position began to be matters of public discussion.” So when the Council of Constantinople met in 381, one of the issues they intended to address was “To bring the Church’s teaching about the Holy Spirit in line with what was believed about the Son.”

“The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed rebutted the heresies of the Pneumatomachi (who believed the Spirit was a created being; one of the ministering angels) as well as all Arians (who believed the Son/Word/Logos was not coeternal with the Father). It did this simply by affirming divine titles like ‘Lord’ which are used of the Spirit in Scripture, and it dealt with the difficult question of the Spirit’s mode of origin by declaring that ‘He proceeds from the Father’.” It also added the phrase, “whose kingdom shall have no end” at the end of the clause about Jesus Christ in order to counter Marcellus’ teaching. In the prefix to a letter accompanying the text of the “91 Canons of Constantinople,” which was sent to the Emperor Theodosius I, was the following. Theodosius I, who was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire, had summoned the council.

Having then assembled at Constantinople according to the letter of your Piety, we in the first place renewed our mutual regard for each other, and then pronounced some short definitions, ratifying the faith of the Nicene Fathers, and anathematizing the heresies which have sprung up contrary to it. In addition to this we have established certain canons for the right ordering of the Churches, all of which we have subjoined to this our letter. We pray therefore your Clemency, that the decree may be confirmed by the letter of your Piety, that as you have honoured the Church by the letters calling us together, so also you may ratify the conclusion of what has been decreed.That the faith of the 318 Fathers [the original Nicene Creed of 325] who assembled at Nicaea in Bithynia, is not to be made void, but shall continue established; and that every heresy shall be anathematized, and especially that of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, and that of the Arians or Eudoxians, and that of the Semiarians or Pneumatomachi, and that of the Sabellians and Marcellians, and that of the Photinians, and that of the Apollinarians.

The addition of the filioque clause (and from the Son) was favored by Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine (354-430). It was first inserted into C by the Council of Toledo in 589. It became part of the creedal pattern in the Western churches and a matter of contention between the West and the East that persists to the present day. Augustine saw the Trinity as one simple Godhead, who in its essence was Trinity. “The logical development of his thought was that ‘the Holy Spirit proceeded as truly from the Son as from the Father.’” This way of thinking about the Trinity became universally accepted in the West in the 5th and 6th centuries. So the addition of the phrase “and the Son” (filioque) became known as the doctrine of the double procession, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. Starting in the sixth century, C was the declaratory creed used in the Roman baptismal rite until the Apostles’ Creed was adopted several centuries later.

In contrast, the Eastern understanding followed Gregory of Nyssa, who said one of the Persons of the Trinity stood as cause to the other two. Therefore, the Eastern churches would say the Spirit proceeded from the Father through the Son, who was the Father’s instrument or agent.  Philip Schaff, in The Creeds of Christendom said the Greek Church remains as much opposed to the filioque clause today as ever, considering it to be an “unauthorized, heretical, and mischievous innovation.” He noted where the Eastern Patriarchs and other prelates gave no less than fifteen arguments against the filioque in their 1848 reply to “The Epistle of Pius IX.”

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; and The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

04/3/18

Arianism and the Council of Nicea

© Niccolo Talenti | 123rf.com – baptistery of the Arians in Ravenna, Italy

Before the beginning of the 4th century, all creeds and summaries of faith were local ones; even the Old Roman Creed. It was taken for granted they enshrined the faith as it had been handed down from the Apostles. Beginning with the Council of Nicea, synods or gatherings of ecclesiastics began to meet in order to articulate their agreement on matters of faith. These new creeds were intended to have a far wider application than mere local authority.

As one scholar put it, “The old creeds were creeds for catechumens, the new creed was a creed for bishops.” Older creeds were associated with baptismal confessions, while testing orthodoxy was the primary motive in the new type of creed. And the proliferation of heretical sects like the Arians in the third century brought the need for such an ecumenical declaration of orthodox belief to the attention of the Church leaders of the early fourth century. When the ecumenical synod called by Constantine formulated the creed of Nicea, it became the first to rightly claim universal authority.

The opening session of the Nicean Council was on June 19, 325. There were around three hundred bishops and hundreds of lesser clergy and laymen in attendance. One of the most important orthodox influences was a young priest among the lesser clergy from Alexandria named Athanasius.

Soon after he conquered the Eastern provinces, the Emperor Constantine organized the Council to resolve the Arian controversy and consolidate the Church on the widest possible measure of doctrinal unity. He viewed the Church as the spiritual sphere of his empire, and he wanted it to be without conflict as well. Accordingly, the emperor’s opening address focused on the danger of internal strife in the Church, and voiced his longing for peace and unity among the bishops. The bishops in attendance assumed from the beginning the circumstances called for an agreed statement of faith.

At the third session of the Council on October 10th, the drafted creed of Nicea was read aloud to the assembly. Emperor Constantine said it sounded entirely orthodox to him, and he held to exactly the same teaching. He said the bishops in attendance should sign it, and suggested the addition of a single word, homoousios or “consubstantial,” meaning of the same substance (It’s found in the clauses, “from the substance of the Father” and “of one substance with the Father”). The use of the term homoousios was in clear opposition to Arian belief that the Son was alien from the Father’s substance. But the term was also not used in Scripture.

Athanasius, who had a significant influence in the final anti-Arian content of the creed, said the Arians had twisted the original use of scriptural language by saying the Son was “from God,” and He was “the true Power and Image of the Father” to harmonize with their own beliefs. So while the terms were biblical, they could be imputed by the Arians with their own particular meaning if used in the creed. A semi-Arian compromise was suggested, using homoiusion (of like substance), instead of homoousios. But Athanasius recognized there could be no middle term between ‘God’ and ‘not-God.’ He persuaded a considerable majority of the Council to reject both Arian and semi-Arian language in the creedal formulation.

In the end, the Nicene bishops were forced to use the non-scriptural term homoousios in the clauses noted above to be unambiguous as to what they meant, as the Arians had co-opted the Scriptural terms noted above to support their theological beliefs about Christ. Arius and two others chose to be exiled rather than sign their name to the creed. Eusebius of Nicomedia and two others later rescinded their signatures and were sent into exile as well. All the other bishops signed off on the creed of Nicea. The following discussion points to the rationale for using some of the anti-Arian phrases within the creed of Nicea.

Arius said the substances of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different and have no share in each other. Saying Jesus Christ was “true God from true God” denied the Arian claim that only the Father was “true God,” while Arius said:  “Nor is the Word true God.” The next phrase, “begotten not made,” distinguished between begotten and made, which the Arians did not. Saying Jesus was of “one substance with the Father,” asserted the full deity of the Son, thus completely rejecting the Arian position. All the phrases in the anathemas challenged typical Arian catchwords or slogans. See the following chart.

Creed of Nicea

Arius’s Creed

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;

We believe in one God the Father almighty,

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead;

And in the Lord Jesus Christ, his son, the God-logos, Who was begotten from Him before all the ages, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who came down and took flesh and suffered and rose again, ascended to heaven, and will come again to judge living and dead;

And in the Holy Spirit.

And in the Holy Spirit, and in the resurrection of the flesh, and in the life of the coming age, and in the kingdom of heaven, and in one catholic church of God from end to end of the earth.

But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and, Before being born He was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or change—these the Catholic Church anathematizes.

The creed of Nicea went further than Eusebius and other had anticipated it would, not only with the addition of homoousios, but also the anathemas at the end. After saying Jesus Christ was “from the substance of the Father,” and “of one substance with the Father,” the concluding anathemas were seemingly a knockout blow for Arianism. But the creed of Nicea was rarely referred to in the Western Church for a generation after Nicea.

First and foremost, it was a creed for bishops—formulated to address a doctrinal crisis in the church. It was not initially intended to replace the existing baptismal confessions used within the local churches. Secondly, there was a widespread ignorance of the relevant documents of the Arian controversy in the West, including the creed itself. One probable reason was because the earliest Latin translation of the documents was not done until 355. By 325 there was a Western-Latin, Eastern-Greek language barrier in place within both the Roman Empire and the Church. Another likely reason was because Arius and his beliefs weren’t completely vanquished by the Creed of Nicea.

In 327 Arius and Euzious submitted a creed to Constantine (see the above chart), hoping to be readmitted to the Church. Arius said his creedal statement of faith was based on the Holy Scriptures, where the Lord commanded them to go teach all nations, baptizing them in the three-fold name. “Yet it can scarcely be claimed that his formula was more than distantly related to [then] current baptismal forms.” His creed seems to have been a concoction based on the original 325 creed of Nicea, however it carefully excluded the distinctive teaching of Nicea. Notice how the Christological article and voice is either missing or radically rephrased by Arius in his creed, especially avoiding the confession of being one substance with the Father.

Incredibly, his strategy worked. Constantine accepted his creed and reinstated Arius in the church. Remember what was said earlier about how Constantine (and other Roman emperors after him) wanted a united Church undisrupted by warring theological factions. “So from the first recognition of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine in AD 313, politics and religious orthodoxy [often] went hand in hand.”

Then in 328 Eusebius of Nicomedia was recalled from exile AND became a trusted advisor to Constantine. “The Emperor completely reversed his position.” From then onwards there was a purge conducted against Nicene bishops. The culmination was when Athansius, now bishop of Alexandria, was removed from office and driven from his see in 335. This was the first of five times Athansius would be exiled from his position over the next several decades of political and ecclesiastical turmoil.

Arius died in 336; and Constantine died two years later in 338. For a time, there was peace with the empire as it was divided between Constantine’s three sons. The exiled bishops, including Athanasius, were returned to their sees. But in 339, Eusebius of Nicomedia became the Patriarch of Constantinople, and he again expelled Athanasius from Alexandria. Athansius went to Rome, where he was received and supported by Pope Julius I. After Eusebius of Nicomedia died in 341, Athansius again returned to Alexandria in 346.

Eventually, one of Constantine’s sons, Constantius, became the sole ruler of the Empire in 356. Unfortunately, he was anti-Nicene and imposed those beliefs on all the domains of the now united Empire. Athansius was once again exiled in 356.

In 361 Constantius died and Athansius returned briefly to Alexandria, only to be “sent on his travels” within the year. Yet before his exile in 362, Athansius helped forge a formula at a synod held in Alexandria that said the Godhead contained one substance (substantia) and three persons (persona). “A specific doctrine of the Spirit was also agreed, that he was not a creature and was inseparable from the Father and the Son.” This distinction became a crucial element in the formulation drafted at the second ecumenical synod at Constantinople in 381.

The Emperor who replaced Constantius was known as “Julian the Apostate.” He tolerated all Christian sects, in the hopes that they would destroy one another. Towards that end, he recalled the orthodox bishops from exile, including Athanasius, who returned to Alexandria in 263. Perhaps fortunately for the Church and the Empire, Julian died after reigning for just two years.

Although several different councils or synods were held between 341 and the Council of Constantinople in 381, none were as broadly ecumenical as the Council of Nicea. An historian commented that the imperial transport system was repeatedly disrupted by the bishops traveling to-and-fro from the various synods that were held.

Adding to this theological and political tangle was the emergence of heretical beliefs concerning the Holy Spirit, such as those of the Pneumatomachian. Initially, they did not garner much attention, as the church Fathers were focused on their struggles with the theological, political and ecclesiastical consequences of Arianism.

Orthodox thinking held that if the Son was fully divine, it followed that the Spirit was divine also. The Pneumatomachi (meaning “Spirit Fighters”) denied this. They said there was a lack of evidence for the Spirit’s deity. Further, they saw no warrant for adding another relationship to those of the Father and the Son within the Godhead. They typically saw the Trinity as a hierarchy, allowing the Son to be less than the Father and the Spirit to be created. The Alexandrian synod held by Athansius in 362 was the first to condemn the Pneumatomachi.

Their origin has been attributed to Marcellus bishop of Ancyra, in Galatia, who believed the relationship of Sonship in the Godhead was limited to the Incarnation and would disappear when its purposes were accomplished. Marcellus was one of the bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325 and a strong opponent of Arianism. He seems to have been a life long “frienemy” with Athanasius. But he was accused of Sabellianism, exiled and condemned by a synod in Constantinople in 336. He went to Rome and with the help of Athanasius, he was cleared of  “the falsehood of Sabellius” in 341.

He was again removed from his see in 347 by Constantius and died in exile in 374. Several Eastern creeds formulated in the 340s and 350s contained anti-Marcellan clauses. But the controversy over his doctrines, to a large extent, passed away after his death. However, the Nicene Creed seems to have added the phrase “whose kingdom shall have no end” in order to counter Marcellus’ teaching.

The Arian controversy had kept questions about the status of the Holy Spirit in the background. But some church fathers like Basil the Great of Caesarea had begun to realize a change was needed within the Nicene faith, as the 325 Creed only briefly mentioned the Spirit. This eventually led to the Council of Constantinople in 381 and the formulation of what is the modern Nicene Creed. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

03/23/18

Origins of the New Testament Canon

fragment of the Muratorian canon in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana library, Milan, Italy

In The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger commented how the history of the New Testament canon was a long, continuous process, rather than a series of sporadic events. Although church leaders and even Roman emperors organized councils and synods, during the early centuries of the Church, “the collection of New Testament books took place gradually over many years by the pressure of various kinds of circumstances and influences.” While this was one of the most vital developments in the early days of the Church, it took place almost as if it were an afterthought—with little comment on how, when, and by whom it was birthed. “Nothing is more amazing in the annals of the Christian church than the absence of detailed accounts of so significant a process.” Here is a short summary of how it happened.

The process of canonicity for the New Testament began in the early part of the second century and continued up to the fourth century, when ecumenical creeds, like the Creed of Nicea began to be formulated. Athanasius, who had attended the counsel of Nicea as a young priest, listed the 27 books of the NT canon for the first time in 367 in his “Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle” as the bishop of Alexandria. Within this letter he said:

 . . . Again [after a list of the Old Testament books] it is not tedious to speak of the [books] of the New Testament. These are, the four Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. After these, the Acts of the Apostles and Epistles called Catholic, of the seven apostles: of James, one; of Peter, two; of John, three; after these, one of Jude. In addition, there are fourteen Epistles of Paul the apostle, written in this order: the first, to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians; after these, to the Galatians; next, to the Ephesians; then to the Philippians; then to the Colossians; after these, two of the Thessalonians; and that to the Hebrews; and again two to Timothy; one to Titus; and lastly, that to Philemon. And besides, the Revelation of John.

By 100 AD, all 27 books of the NT were in circulation; and the majority of the writings were in existence twenty to forty years before this. All but Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation were universally accepted, according to NT Scholar F. F. Bruce. He dates the four Gospels as follows: Mark (64 or 65 AD), Luke (before 70 AD, but after Paul’s two year detention in Rome around 60-62 AD), Matthew (shortly after 70 AD). John (90-100 AD). Dating the book of Acts should follow the dating for Luke, between 60/62 and 70 AD. The ten Pauline epistles were written before the end of his first Roman imprisonment as follows: Galatians (48); 1 and 2 Thessalonians (50); 1 and 2 Corinthians (54-56); Romans (57); Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians (around 60). The Pastoral Epistles contain signs of a later date than the other Pauline Epistles (63-65), perhaps during a second imprisonment around 65 AD, leading to his death.

New Testament scholar Donald Gutherie suggested the following dates for the remaining books left undated by Bruce: Hebrews (60-90 AD); 2 Peter (62-64); James (50); 2 John (90-100); 3 John (90-100); Jude (65-80); and Revelation (90-95).

The manuscript evidence for the New Testament documents is embarrassingly abundant. There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (in whole or in part) in existence. The best and most important ones date from around 350 AD: the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. Two other important early MSS are the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century AD) and the Codex Bezae (5th/6th century AD).

In contrast, for Caesar’s Gallic War, there are 9 or 10 good MSS; the oldest from 900 years after Caesar. The History of Thucydides (written 460-400 BC) and the History of Herodotus (written 488-428 BC) are known from about eight MSS, the earliest from 900 AD. “Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are from over 1,300 years later than the originals.” The bottom line: the manuscripts for the New Testament documents are reliable. But how did they come together as canon?

There were several developments, influences and individuals who exerted pressure on the early Church to establish more precisely “which books were authoritative in matters of faith and practice” among the many that claimed to have that authority. The earliest list of New Testament books was drawn up by Marcion around 140 AD. See “Heresy, Canon and the Early Church, Part 2” for more on Marcion and the influence of his and other heresies on the developing NT canon.

Marcion only accepted the authority of the nine Pauline epistles to the churches and Philemon. He also removed and liberally edited any passages where Paul commented favorably on the Law or quoted the Old Testament. He only trusted one of the Gospels—Luke—yet again edited it heavily, removing most of the first four chapters. This was because he rejected the virgin birth of Jesus, as he believed that as a divine being, Jesus could not have been born of a woman.

One of the most important documents for the early history of the NT canon is the Muratorian Canon, named after its discoverer, the Italian historian and theological scholar, Ludovico Antonio Muratori. It composition is dated to the latter part of the second century. It is not a canon in the narrow sense of the term; it’s not a bare list of titles. Instead of just cataloguing the books accepted by the Church as authoritative, the Muratorian Canon gives a kind of introduction and commentary for each book.

It listed and discussed the four Gospels, the Book of Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul: Corinthians (1 and 2), Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, Thessalonians (1 and 2), and Romans. Paul also wrote four Epistles to individuals from ‘personal affection,’ but they were later held to be sacred in the esteem of the Church “for the regulation of ecclesiastical discipline.” They were: Philemon, Titus and Timothy (1 and 2).

Next it mentions Jude and two Epistles of John. Speculation is that since the author had already mentioned the First Epistle of John in conjunction with the fourth Gospel, he only mentioned the two smaller ones here. Two apocalypses are mentioned, that of John and that of Peter—“though some of us are not willing that the latter should be read in church.” Books not mentioned include 1 and 2 Peter, James and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea around 314 AD, wrote and revised his work, Ecclesiastical History, several times during the first quarter of the fourth century. He placed the NT books into three categories: 1) those whose authority and authenticity were universally acknowledged; 2) those which all the witnesses were equally agreed in rejecting; and 3) those which were disputed books, yet familiar to most people in the church. In the first category were: the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline Epistles (in which he included Hebrews), 1 Peter and 1 John, and the Apocalypse of John. In the third category were: the Epistles of James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John.

He added that he also felt compelled to list works that were cited by heretics “under the name of the apostles,” including: the gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew and John. “The character of the style is at variance with apostolic usage, and both the thoughts and the purpose of the things that are related in them are so completely out of accord with true orthodoxy that they clearly show themselves to be the fictions of heretics.” These were to be cast aside as “absurd and impious.”

There seemed to be three essential criteria that had to be met for a document to be included in the NT canon: orthodoxy, apostolicity and consensus among the churches.

Orthodoxy was assessed by the “rule of faith” or the canon or rule of truth. Was a given document congruent with the basic Christian tradition recognized as normative by the Church? NT era writings with any claim to be authoritative were judged by the nature of their content. “A book that presents teachings deemed to be out of harmony with such tradition would exclude itself from consideration as authoritative Scripture.”

Apostolicity could mean having a close relationship with an apostle, like Mark with Peter and Luke with Paul—as well as direct apostleship—with John and Paul. With the writer of the Muratorian Canon there is a clear sense of the importance he placed on the qualifications of the NT authors as eyewitnesses or as careful historians.

The third test of authority was its continuous acceptance and usage by the Church. If a book had been accepted by many churches, over a long period of time, it was in a stronger position to be accepted as canon. Hebrews is a good example of this principle. Jerome wrote that it did not matter who the author of the book of Hebrews was, because it was the work of a church-writer and was constantly read in the churches. Augustine said the Christian reader: “will hold fast therefore to this measure in the canonical Scriptures, that he will prefer those that are received by all the Catholic Churches to those which some of them do not receive.”

By the time of Augustine (354-430) the NT canon, as it is given today in the Protestant Bible, was widely accepted. It was Augustine who declared the debate over the canon of Scripture was over. At a series of provincial synods, he voiced the following with regard to the closing of the canon: “Besides the canonical Scriptures, nothing shall be read in church under the name of the divine Scriptures.” In closing, we’ll look at his advice to the Christian reader of the sacred writings. In On Christian Learning, just before he listed the 27 books of the NT canon, he said:

The most skillful interpreter of the sacred writings, then, will be he who in the first place has read them all and retained them in his knowledge, if not yet with full understanding, still with such knowledge as reading gives,—those of them, at least, that are called canonical. For he will read the others with greater safety when built up in the belief of the truth, so that they will not take first possession of a weak mind, nor, cheating it with dangerous falsehoods and delusions, fill it with prejudices adverse to a sound understanding. Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (though this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as equal.

Information on the birth of the New Testament canon discussed here was taken primarily from The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger and The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? By F. F. Bruce. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

03/13/18

Heresy, Canon and the Early Church, Part 2

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By the close of the second century an outline of the New Testament had appeared. While there were some disputes about its fringes, the nucleus of the NT canon had formed. “By the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth century, the great majority of the twenty seven books [of the New Testament] … were almost universally acknowledged to be authoritative,” according to Bruce Metzger. Ironically, this process seems to have been helped along by early heretics of Christian belief like the Gnostics, Marcion and Montanus.

Gnosticism was a syncretistic religion and philosophy that thrived for about four hundred years alongside Christianity. Gnostics stressed salvation through gnõsis (knowledge) that would free the divine spark within elect souls, allowing it to escape from the fallen physical world and return to the realm of light. The physical body was a prison that trapped this “divine spark.”

The extensive literature developed by the Gnostics had a twofold purpose. First, it was to instruct believers about their origins and the structure of the visible world and the worlds above. Second, and most importantly, it was the means by which one could conquer the powers of darkness and return to the realm of the highest God. There were Gnostic “gospels” and other documents such as: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Apocryphon of John, and the Hypostasis of the Archons. These and other Gnostic codices are from the Nag Hammadi library, found near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. The library is estimated to be from around 400 AD.

There are three features that appear to be characteristic of several Gnostic systems. First, there was a philosophical dualism that rejected the visible world, seeing it as alien to the supreme God. Second, there was a belief in a subordinate deity, the Demiurge, who was responsible for the creation of the world. And third, there was a radical distinction between Jesus and the Christ, leading to the Docetic belief that Christ the Redeemer only appeared to be a real human being.

The church countered Gnostic beliefs by stating nothing from their systems was found in the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul. The Gnostics acknowledged this, but claimed their teachings were communicated “only to his most trusted disciples” and not to the general public. For proof, they appealed to a number of their ‘gospels.’ These gospels often dealt with the period between the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, a time that the canonical Gospels say very little. There were also other Gnostic texts in which they claimed the apostles reported what the Lord said to them in secret.

The primary role played by Gnosticism in developing the NT canon was to motivate the true followers of Christ “to ascertain more clearly which books and epistles conveyed the true teaching of the Gospel.” Bruce Metzger said:

It was not easy for the Church to defend herself against Gnosticism. Certain elements in the gospel tradition itself seemed to give verisimilitude to the Gnostics’ claim. . . . One can understand that in defending itself against Gnosticism, a most important problem for the church was to determine what really constituted a true gospel and a genuine apostolic writing. In order to prevent the exploitation of secret traditions, which were practically uncontrollable, the Church had to be careful to accept nothing without the stamp of apostolic guarantee.

But before the Gnostic problem was resolved, there was Marcion, a wealthy Christian ship-owner who arrived in Rome around 140 AD. He became a member of one of the Roman churches and made a few large financial contributions to the Church. At the end of July in 144 he was invited to expound his teachings before the clergy of the Christian congregations in Rome, hoping to win others to his point of view. “The hearing ended in a harsh rejection of Marcion’s views.” He was formally excommunicated and his money returned. But he persisted in attempting to win others to his views and although he died in 160, by the end of the second century his teachings had become a serious threat to the mainstream Christian church.

Marcion believed in two gods—the Supreme God of goodness and the God of justice, who was the Creator and God of the Jews. The deficiencies of the creation point to a deficient god. He rejected the entire Old Testament, refusing to admit it was part of the authoritative Christian Scriptures at all. Jesus was sent as a messenger of the supreme God to offer humanity an escape from the creator-god and his deficient world. Since Jesus was sent by the creator-God, he was not part of creation. He was a divine being who only seemed to be human. What followed from his Christology was that Marcion rejected the virgin birth and taught that Jesus did not suffer and die on the cross; he only appeared to do so.

Marcion believed that Paul alone of the New Testament writers understood the significance of Jesus as the messenger of the Supreme God. He only accepted the authority of the nine Pauline epistles written to the churches and Philemon. He rejected the authority of Paul’s pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus. He also freely removed passages where Paul had commented favorably on the Law or quoted the OT. For example, he deleted Galatians 3:16-4:6 because of its reference to Abraham and his descendents. Marcion only trusted the Gospel of Luke, but again heavily edited it, removing most of the first four chapters, because of his belief Jesus could not have been born of a woman since he was divine.

In addition to making the deletions of all that involved approval of the Old Testament and the creator god of the Jews, Marcion modified the text through transpositions and occasional additions in order to restore what he considered must have been the original sense.

The authority of the four Gospels had reached a consensus and confidence in which documents were the true apostolic writings had placed them alongside the Gospels during the first half of the second century. Marcion’s canon accelerated this crystallization of the church’s canon by forcing orthodox Christians to state more clearly what they already believed. “It was in opposition of to Marcion’s criticism that the Church first became fully conscious of its inheritance of apostolic writings.”

Into the heretical mix of the second century came Montanism, which began in Phrygia around 156. The movement was named after Montanus, who is sometimes said to have been a priest of Cybele, a pagan cult whose activity was also centered in Phyrgia (located in the Western part of modern Turkey). Montanus fell into a trance soon after his conversion and began to speak in tongues. He announced that he was the ‘Paraclete’ Jesus had promised to send in John’s Gospel (14:15-17; 17:7-15). He is reported to have said: “ I am God almighty dwelling in man.” A core belief of this New Prophecy in its earliest form was that the Heavenly Jerusalem would shortly descend from heaven and be located at the little Phyrgian town of Pepuza, about twenty miles northeast of Hieropolis.

Along with its two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla, Montanism was distinctive in having ecstatic outbursts, speaking in tongues and prophetic utterances. They believed their prophetic ‘oracles’ were revelations of the Holy Spirit and should be regarded as supplementing ‘the ancient scriptures.’ Members of the Montanist sect gathered together and wrote down their pronouncements.

They thought their mission was in the final phase of revelation. Maximilla said: “After me … there will be no more prophecy, but the End.” Montanus’ followers developed ascetic practices and disciplines in the face of what they saw as the growing worldliness of the Church and the impending approach of the end of the world. Their movement spread quickly and was soon found in Rome and North Africa.

At first, the Church didn’t quite know what to do with the Montanists. Eventually the bishops and synods of Asia Minor began to declare the new prophecy of Montanism was the work of demons and they were cut off from the fellowship of the Church. The bishops of Rome, Carthage and the remaining African bishops declared them to be a heretical sect. Hippolytus (170-235), in The Refutation of All Heresies, said the following about the Montanists:

But there are others who themselves are even more heretical in nature (than the foregoing), and are Phrygians by birth. These have been rendered victims of error from being previously captivated by (two) wretched women, called a certain Priscilla and Maximilla, whom they supposed (to be) prophetesses. And they assert that into these the Paraclete Spirit had departed; and antecedently to them, they in like manner consider Montanus as a prophet. And being in possession of an infinite number of their books, (the Phrygians) are overrun with delusion; and they do not judge whatever statements are made by them, according to (the criterion of) reason; nor do they give heed unto those who are competent to decide; but they are heedlessly swept onwards, by the reliance which they place on these (impostors). And they allege that they have learned something more through these, than from law, and prophets, and the Gospels. But they magnify these wretched women above the Apostles and every gift of Grace, so that some of them presume to assert that there is in them a something superior to Christ.

The influence of Montanism on the development of the New Testament was the opposite of that from Marcion’s teaching. Where Marcion motivated the Church to recognize the breadth of its written authoritative writings, the insistence of Montanus on the continuous gift of inspiration and prophecy led the Church to emphasize the final authority of apostolic writings as their rule of faith. See the following map for where to find the founders of early church heresies.

credit: Andre S. Jacobs Scripps College

Despite the clever syncretism of heresies like Gnosticism, Montanism and Marcion, the rule of faith embodied in the Scriptures was not lost. In spite of Marcion, the early Church affirmed the 66 Old Testament books of the Palestinian canon as the Word of God. The claims by Gnostics and Montanists for additional revelation equal to those of the Gospels and the Epistles faded and died as the New Testament canon crystallized. By 100 AD, all 27 books of the NT were already in circulation and the majority of the writings were in existence twenty to forty years before this. All but Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation were universally accepted, according to NT Scholar F. F. Bruce by that time.

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; and The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.” Part 1 of “Heresy, Canon and the Early Church” is linked here.

03/2/18

Heresy, Canon and the Early Church, Part 1

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Christian heresy can be simply understood as a departure from Christian orthodoxy. But it can be difficult at times to define precisely what orthodoxy itself is. In his book, A History of Heresy, David Christie-Murray said: “Heresy is often a conservative reaction, brought about by an attempt to turn back the clock to an imagined early ideal.” A cynic (or relativist) might say that heresy is when a majority considers the opinion of a minority to be unacceptable; and it is powerful enough to punish those they see as heretics.

If we are to avoid a cynical sense of heresy, then we have to believe in orthodoxy that remains true, if only in the mind of God. And there must be a norm of Christian belief ‘on earth’ that reflects this idea and can be “the standard by which a man may be judged a true believer or heretic.” This seems to have been the early thinking on what was called the rule of faith or canon of truth. As the canon of Scripture began to crystallize, the early baptismal creeds sought to be a reflection and expression of this rule of faith contained in the Scriptures and taught by the apostles. Along with Pontius Pilate, we want to ask, what is truth?

There are two fundamentally different approaches to Christian truth. One sees it primarily as a living, growing organism that has to continuously adapt itself to new cultures, civilizations and circumstances. This corresponds generally to the Catholic-Orthodox view. When challenged by the question—by what authority do you claim your doctrines are true—Roman Catholics say that God appointed the Church itself as the supreme authority; the church through the ages is infallible in matters doctrine.

The other, Protestant approach, to Christian truth is a call to return to when the faith was pure, free of dogmatic accrual; when it was simple and obvious. Protestants replaced the infallibility of the Church with the infallibility of the Scriptures. The written Word of God is the final court of appeal, and whatever is not found in the Bible is not binding on believers. Heresy then, from a Protestant perspective, is doctrine or belief not found in the Bible.

The Church itself and any of its doctrines must be judged by Scripture. “The authority of the Bible is greater than that of the Church.” Now we could muddy the waters further with regards to defining heresy, but this will do for our examination of the early Christian creeds. And it seems to be the fundamental premise to which the Church fathers turned as they formulated their early creeds.

The heart of orthodoxy and the assessment of heresy centers on Jesus as God and Savior, together with the rejection of any faith which itself rejects or is inconsistent with the divinity of Christ. “Organically connected with the divinity of Christ is the doctrine of the Trinity.” As you look at the creeds and heresies of the early church, you can see how these essential doctrines were at the heart of most, if not all, of the heresies and creedal expressions of orthodoxy. To an extent, there is some legitimacy to view Christian truth as a living, growing organism as the orthodoxy of the Church was developed and articulated in the creeds. But this does not make the Church itself infallible. It recognizes that the “Word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). What is truth? “Thy Word is Truth” (John 17:17). And God’s Word is available to us in Scripture. Then from a Protestant perspective, canonical Scripture plays a determinative role in sifting what is true from is not true in heresy.

As we look at the Bible we see how God used certain people, historical events, even human culture and its accomplishments—such as the invention of writing—in conjunction with his special revelation through Christ and the Holy Spirit, to reveal Himself and to declare His will to the Church. Christians who confess that the Bible is special revelation, “breathed out” by God (2 Timothy 3:16), acknowledge God’s use of ordinary and extraordinary means to reveal Himself to us. Formal confession of this process exists in several forms; the following is from the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manner, to reveal Himself, and to declare His will unto His Church; (Heb. 1:1) and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.

The Protestant Bible is a “library of books,” with 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament; 66 all together. All the books of Scripture were given “By the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.” The authority of Scripture rests on God (“who is truth itself”) as its author and it should be received as the Word of God. “Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority” of Scripture is from the “inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” And ultimately, “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture in the Scripture itself.”

The crystallization of the Protestant biblical canon was a long process, which technically wasn’t entirely completed until the time of the Protestant Reformation, when the Reformers rejected the view of the Roman Catholic Church that the books of the Apocrypha were inspired. The Apocrypha is a collection of manuscripts written between 400 BC and 27 AD. Reasons for the Protestant denial that these writings were inspired by God include that the New Testament never quotes from any of the apocryphal books. The Catholic response to this is to argue that Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon were also never quoted in the New Testament; and yet we accept them as inspired. However, the inclusion of these five books in the Old Testament canon was never in question, thus weakening the Catholic rejoinder.

A better explanation of the difference comes from an understanding of the history of the Hebrew canon. The rabbis in Palestine after 70 AD recognized a canon of twenty-four books (according to their system of enumeration); it was divided into Law (or Torah), Prophets and Writings. This organization reflected the principle that revelation began with Moses, the author of the Torah, and ended with Ezra. The Apocrypha originated after Ezra; additionally, some of the apocryphal books were composed in Greek. Therefore, they should not be included in this definition of Scripture. “The rabbis claim that the person who brings together more than twenty-four books creates confusion (Midras Qohelet. 12:12) and that one who reads in the outside books will have no place in the world to come (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhadrin 100b).” The Hebrew canon organizes the books of the Old Testament differently than the Protestant Bible does. See the following chart.

However, there are several Septuagint (LXX) manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible that mix apocryphal books with the canonical, prompting the theory there was a wider Alexandrian Canon that included the books of the Apocrypha. The Catholic decision seems to accept the Alexandrian Canon. R. T. Beckworth gave the following explanation for accepting the Palestinian Canon:

The Apocrypha were known in the church from the start, but the further back one goes, the more rarely are they treated as inspired. In the NT itself, one finds Christ acknowledging the Jewish Scriptures, by various of their current titles, and accepting the three sections of the Jewish Canon and the traditional order of its books; one finds Revelation perhaps alluding to their number; and throughout the NT one finds most of the books being referred to individually as having divine authority; but none of the Apocrypha. The only apparent exception is the reference to Enoch in Jude 14f, which may be just an argumentum ad hominem to converts from the apocalyptic school of thought. What evidently happened was this. Christ passed on to his followers, as Holy Scripture, the Bible, which he had received, containing the same books as the Heb. Bible today. The first Christians shared with their Jewish contemporaries a full knowledge of the canonical books. However, the Bible was not yet between two covers: it was a memorized list of scrolls. The breach with Jewish oral tradition (in some matters very necessary), the alienation between Jew and Christian, and the general ignorance of Semitic languages in the church outside Palestine and Syria, led to increasing doubt on the OT Canon among Christians, which was accentuated by the drawing up of new lists of the biblical books, arranged on other principles, and the introduction of new lectionaries. Such doubt about the Canon could only be resolved, and can only be resolved today, in the way it was resolved by Jerome and at the Reformation—by returning to the teaching of the NT, and the Jewish background against which it is to be understood.

The canon of the Old Testament, for all intensive purposes, was closed by the time Jesus declared: “It is written,” as he was tempted by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:1-4). In The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger said that at first, the teachings of Jesus circulated orally, from hearer to hearer. “Then these narratives were compiled recording the remembered words, along with recollections of his deeds of mercy and healing.” The opening verses to the Gospel of Luke refer to these “pre-Gospel” writings: “Insomuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.”

After many years the limits of the New Testament canon as we know it were set for the first time in a letter written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in 367. Athanasius also had a key role in the formulation of early church creeds (like the Nicene and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creeds); and in challenging the teachings of the array of heresies that sprang up like the weeds as the New Testament canon and the early creeds were being formulated. More on this in Part 2 of “Heresy, Canon and the Early Church.”

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; and The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

02/9/18

Legend of the Apostles’ Creed

© jorisvo | 123rf.com – fresco (1450) depicting the articles of the Apostles’ Creed.

The Apostles’ Creed has been a central part of worship and declaring what individuals and congregations believe about the members of the Trinity since the early centuries of the Christian church. For centuries it was believed that after Pentecost and before the apostles dispersed in the Great Commission, they “mutually agreed upon a standard of their future preaching.” They were said to have developed this standard so that when they were separated, they would not unintentionally vary “in the statements which they should make to those whom they should invite to believe in Christ.” Yet it seems this origins tale for the Apostles’ Creed is just a legend.

The fourth century monk and historian, Rufinus Tryannius wrote a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, probably around 307-309 AD. In his commentary Rufinus related the above origins story for the Creed which was widely believed in the Western Christian church until the 15th century. Each of the apostles, “filled with the Holy Ghost,” were said to have contributed several sentences to the one common summary, which later became known as the Apostles’ Creed. Rufinus said:

Our forefathers have handed down to us the tradition, that, after the Lord’s ascension, when, through the coming of the Holy Ghost, tongues of flame had settled upon each of the Apostles, that they might speak diverse languages, so that no race however foreign, no tongue however barbarous, might be inaccessible to them and beyond their reach, they were commanded by the Lord to go severally to the several nations to preach the word of God. Being on the eve therefore of departing from one another, they first mutually agreed upon a standard of their future preaching, lest haply, when separated, they might in any instance vary in the statements which they should make to those whom they should invite to believe in Christ. Being all therefore met together, and being filled with the Holy Ghost, they composed, as we have said, this brief formulary of their future preaching, each contributing his several sentence to one common summary: and they ordained that the rule thus framed should be given to those who believe.

The Apostles’ Creed itself was present and increasingly became an important summary of confession and belief in the life of the church from at least the time of Rufinus in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. In his 5th century treatise on Christian piety, the Enchiridion, Augustine explained how the Apostles’ Creed was useful in teaching Christian doctrine and in refuting heresies. Along with the Lord’s Prayer, he thought the Creed was a succinct summary of the Christian doctrine and faith.

For you have the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. What can be briefer to hear or to read? What easier to commit to memory? When, as the result of sin, the human race was groaning under a heavy load of misery, and was in urgent need of the divine compassion, one of the prophets, anticipating the time of God’s grace, declared: “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered [Joel 2:32].” Hence the Lord’s Prayer. But the apostle, when, for the purpose of commending this very grace, he had quoted this prophetic testimony, immediately added: “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed [Romans 10:14]?” Hence the Creed. In these two you have those three graces exemplified: faith believes, hope and love pray.

The above legend was an accepted part of the history of the church until the Council of Florence (1438-1445), which attempted a reunification of the Western and Eastern churches. At the beginning of the negotiations, the Western, Latin representatives invoked the Apostles’ Creed. In response, the Eastern Greek representatives said they did not possess and had never seen “this creed of the Apostles.” Moreover, as J.N.D. Kelly quoted Marcus Eugenicus in Early Christian Creeds, “If it had ever existed, the Book of Acts would have spoken of it in its description of the first apostolic synod at Jerusalem, to which you appeal.”

Once the question is squarely faced, the extreme unlikelihood of the Apostles having drafted an official summary of faith scarcely merits discussion. Since the Reformation the theory that they did has been quietly set aside as legendary by practically all scholars, the conservative-minded merely reserving the right to point out that the teaching of the formula known as the Apostles’ Creed reproduces authentically apostolic doctrine.

Kelly went on to say the legend is an example of the tendency of the early Church to “attribute the whole of its doctrinal, liturgical and hierarchical apparatus” to the Twelve Apostles, and through them to Christ himself. He said this could be acknowledged without prejudice to the question of whether 2nd century Church fathers were correct to claim their rule of faith was the same as the faith of the Apostles. If the question was “Did the apostolic Church possess an official, textually determined confession of faith” the answer is no, it did not. However, “creeds of a looser sort,” that lacked the fixed and official character of the later formularies—yet clearly foreshadowing them—were is use early on.

The early Church was a “believing, confessing, preaching Church.” If the Christians of the apostolic age had not seen themselves as possessing a body of distinctive, consciously held beliefs, why would they have separated from Judaism and begun their program of missionary expansion? “Everything goes to show that the infant communities looked upon themselves as the bearers of a unique story of redemption.” The New Testament is a collection of documents written “from faith to faith.”

The Gospels carefully elaborate certain dogmatic beliefs about Jesus, “which they seek to explain and justify.” The other documents “presuppose a background of faith shared by the author and those for whom he is writing.” For all their differences of nuance, the documents of the New Testament “comprise a body of literature which could only have sprung from a community with a strongly marked outlook of its own.”

In light of these considerations it is impossible to overlook the emphasis on the transmission of authoritative doctrine which is to be found everywhere in the New Testament. In the later strata the reference to an inherited corpus of teaching are clear enough. In Jude 3, for example, we read of “the faith once delivered to the saints”; later (verse 20) the author speaks of “your most holy faith”, again using the word in the sense of an accepted body of beliefs.

Further examples given by Kelly were from the Pastoral Epistles, including 1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 1:13; Titus 1:9. Hebrews advises its readers to “hold fast our confession;” without wavering (Hebrews 4:14, 10:23). In 2 Thessalonians 2:15 Paul exhorted his readers to “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either our spoken word or our letter.” In Romans 6:17 Paul referred to the “standard of teaching to which you were committed.”

What we have before us, at any rate in rough outline, is the doctrinal deposit, at the pattern of sound words, which was expounded in the apostolic church since its inauguration and which constituted its distinctive message.

The story that the Twelve met and composed an “Apostles’ Creed” is a pious fiction. But by the 2nd century there was a “rule of faith” or a “canon of truth” believed and taught by the Church, and inherited from the Apostles. It just wasn’t an official, textually set confession of faith or a creed, as with the Apostles’ Creed and others that followed. The content of that rule, in all it essentials, was foreshadowed by the “pattern of teaching” accepted in the apostolic Church. Its essentials were prototypically contained in the New Testament. From the end of the first century to the middle of the third century, there were only creeds in this elastic, nontechnical sense of the term. “That the Church in the apostolic age possessed a creed in the broad sense of a recognized body of teaching may be accepted as demonstrated fact.”

For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

06/26/15

Christian, What Do You Believe?

© Kuna George | 123RF.com

© Kuna George | 123RF.com

One way or another, the Apostles’ Creed has been part of my worship life since I was a child. Growing up in a liturgical church, we recited it every Sunday. I made a commitment to Christ in another liturgically-minded denomination in my twenties and continued reciting it weekly. For a number of years, I recited it as part of my daily prayer time. The current church I am a member of recites it monthly on our communion Sunday. Parallel to my personal experience, the Apostles’ Creed has been part of the worship life of the church since it was young.

The Apostles’ Creed was used in church history much as the Roman Creed was in the time of the early church: as a baptismal confession; as an outline for teaching; as a summary of faith and belief; as an affirmation in worship; and as a guard against heresy. Ambrose and Augustine suggested the repetition of the Apostles’ Creed in daily devotions. Augustine said in his work, The Enchiridion:

For you have the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. What can be briefer to hear or to read? What easier to commit to memory? When, as the result of sin, the human race was groaning under a heavy load of misery, and was in urgent need of the divine compassion, one of the prophets, anticipating the time of God’s grace, declared: “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” Hence the Lord’s Prayer. But the apostle, when, for the purpose of commending this very grace, he had quoted this prophetic testimony, immediately added: “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” Hence the Creed.

Martin Luther identified it as one of three binding summaries of belief. John Calvin divided his Institutes into four parts, corresponding to the Apostles’ Creed, which all Christians were familiar with.

For as the Creed consists of four parts, the first relating to God the Father, the second to the Son, the third to the Holy Spirit, and the fourth to the Church, so the author, in fulfillment of his task, divides his Institutes into four parts, corresponding to those of the Creed.

While each of the above noted uses can be identified at various points in church history, it seems to have been its growing use within the devotional and liturgical life of believers that eventually solidified its position as “the mature flower” of Western creedal development. The local variants of the older Roman Creed were increasingly laid aside in the worship and practice of local churches and replaced by the Apostles’ Creed. Thus the journey from the Roman Creed to the Apostles’ Creed is complex, woven together that of the historical documents and additional creeds of the first few centuries of the church.

The earliest evidence for the received text for the Apostles’ Creed or “T” is within the text of a Benedictine missionary manual written sometime between 710 and 724 AD. A comparison of the Roman Creed to the Apostles’ Creed calls for speculation that the additions were largely to address theological problems as the church confronted a series of heresies between the mid–second century and early eighth centuries. Such an understanding of its journey would draw upon the differences in a manner something like the following.

Roman Creed Apostles’ Creed
1. I believe in God the Father Almighty 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty [creator of Heaven and Earth]
2. And in Christ Jesus, his only Son, our Lord; 2. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;
3. Who was born by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary; 3. Who was [conceived] by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary;
4. Was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried; 4. [Suffered] under Pontius Pilate, was crucified [dead] and buried [ He descended to Hell (Hades)];
5. The third day he rose from the dead; 5. on the third day rose again from the dead;
6. He ascended into heaven; and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; 6. He ascended into heaven; and sits at the right hand of [God] the Father [Almighty];
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 7. From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.
8. And the Holy Ghost; 8. [I believe] in the Holy Spirit;
9. The Holy Church; 9. The Holy [Catholic] Church [The communion of saints];
10. The forgiveness of sins; 10. The forgiveness of sins;
11. The resurrection of the body (flesh). 11. The resurrection of the body (flesh);
12. [And eternal life] Amen.

Beginning with the Roman Creed, we see that it contains the Trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and confesses belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The addition of  the phrase “Creator of Heaven and Earth” in the Apostles’ Creed to the first article of the Roman Creed rejects the Gnostic belief that creation was the act of a demiurge Christ; and the Manichean dogma that all matter was intrinsically evil.  The addition to article 3 that Jesus Christ was: “[conceived] by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary” explicitly excluded the Ebionite denial in the virgin birth of Christ and the Monarchian denial that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost.

The addition of “I believe” to article 8 adds clarity to the confession of believing in “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” as God, countering the Modalistic or Monarchian conception of God. It seems the attempt to counter Modalism is within the specification in article 6 that the Father is “God Almighty.” The resurrection of the body in article 11 and the addition of article 12 countered Greek and Gnostic prejudice against the corporal body and specified an existence consistent with the “resurrection life” promised by Christ and distinctly different than the “eternal life” of the mystery cults.  Confessing the real birth, suffering, death (by crucifixion), and burial of Christ in articles 3 through 5 countered the Marcion and Docetic belief that such things were unworthy of the true Christ.

The additions of “Catholic” (meaning universal) and “the communion of saints” in article 9 may suggest an attempt to cope with the problem of unity in diversity within the early church. As distinct subcultures of theology and worship developed within the “catholic” church, there was a desire to acknowledge their legitimacy while attempting to exclude heresies, which also sought acceptance. As the body of Christ grew and diversified, the ears were denying they were a part of the body; the body was questioning the continuing function of the stomach. Despite the diversity within the church, if the “Head” of the creed in articles 1 through 8 was believed and confessed, there was a communion of saints within a universal church that existed beyond physical walls, geographic boundaries, theological particulars, and ultimately time itself. This acknowledgement of unity within diversity became an element of the rule of faith itself.

Unquestionably the Apostle’s Creed is a more detailed and theologically mature creedal statement of belief than the Roman Creed. However, it did not develop solely as a response to the various dogmatic concerns as noted above. There is also strong suggestive evidence that The Apostles’ Creed originated outside of Rome and was eventually accepted as the baptismal rite within the Roman church by the ninth century. Presuming the probability of this line of development, the church beyond the local reach of Rome was merely returning to her an enriched, improved statement of the same rule of faith, which she herself had compiled in the second century.

The Apostles’ Creed continues in modern times as the most widely accepted and used creed among Christians. All the individual articles noted above within it originated before the Nicene Creed was formulated—regardless of whether the final revision appeared as late as the early eighth century. And all the articles are in agreement with the New Testament and the teaching of the apostles. Phillip Schaff observed in his day that an attack on the Apostles’ Creed was also an indirect attack upon the New Testament. But he predicted that the Creed would outlive these assaults and continue in the life of the church, sharing in the victory of the Scriptures over all forms of unbelief.

This description of the Apostles’ Creed (and a previous one on the Roman Creed) was compiled from the New Dictionary of Theology (179-181), by Sinclair Ferguson and J. I. Packer; the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (72–73), Walter A. Elwell, editor; The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition  (117), by Jaroslav Pelikan; Early Christian Creeds, by  J. N. D. Kelly; and The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 1, The History of the Creeds, by Phillip Schaff. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”

06/19/15

The Old Roman Creed

© Kayco | stockfresh.com Hill at Sunset in Drazovce, Slovakia

© Kayco | stockfresh.com Hill at Sunset in Drazovce, Slovakia

One of the things that fascinated me about the early church is the historical context within which the early creeds developed. We are fast approaching the anniversary of the second millennial since the death and resurrection of Christ. That distance of time has contributed to the vast majority of Christians being largely ignorant of the history shaping their creeds, if not the creeds themselves. For instance, did you know there was a so-called “Roman Creed” that was the model for many of the creedal statements in the West, including the Apostles’ Creed?

A tradition developed in the early church that soon after Pentecost the apostles, when “filled with the Holy Spirit,” gathered together and drafted a short summary of their beliefs. Allegedly this was done so that if they ever were widely scattered from one another, they would not be preaching different messages in their diaspora. In seems that Rufinius wrote of this gathering in his 404 AD exposition of the Apostles’ Creed.

So they met together in one spot and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, compiled this brief token . . . and they decreed that it should be handed out as standard teaching to believers.

As appealing as it may be to believe in such a gathering, it is highly unlikely that it occurred. An early and telling challenge to its historicity was the observation by Marcus Eugenicus in the fifteenth century that the book of Acts never mentioned it, particularly at the first apostolic council at Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the reality of this event happening some ten days after the Ascension was widely accepted and taught as historical until the fifteenth century.

Although the event itself is fictional, a “rule of faith” believed and taught as early as the second century does seem to have a claim to apostolic origins. There was fluidity evident in the exact wording of orthodox affirmations evident in the various localized confessions of faith. But that variability was not present in the orthodox articles. The ongoing encounter with pagan influences as well as heretical beliefs within the church itself seems to have led to the gradual acceptance of a common creed. But this process was not fully resolved even by the time of the second ecumenical council at Constantinople in 381 AD.

The first early church document to show what appears to be a fixed creed is the Apostolic Tradition written around 200 AD by Hippolytus, a conservative, dissident church leader in Rome. His Tradition seems to have been compiled so “that those who have been rightly instructed may hold fast to the tradition which has continued until now.” The implication here is that an accepted, formal creed or confession of faith existed in the life of the Roman church of that time. It was most likely as a guide to the instruction of catechumens and ultimately for their public confession within the rite of baptism.

While worship, preaching, catechetical instruction, anti–heretical and anti–pagan apologetic efforts all contributed to the need for such expression, the rite of baptism seems to have been the primary circumstance to encourage the development of formal creedal statements. And the available evidence points to the Roman confession or creed as one of the earliest. The original text for the Roman Creed  or “R” as it is conventionally referred to by scholars, seems to have been a three article Trinitarian confession that went something like this:

I believe in God the Father almighty, and in Christ Jesus, his only Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh.

Historical studies have suggested that, in accordance to Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:19, it was formulated as an expression to be declared by converts in the midst of their baptismal rite. Noticeably absent in R is the Christological statement in the current form of the Apostles’ Creed on the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. This declaration was part of the gospel message from the time of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:14–41). And it had reached a fair degree of consistency in the apostolic times of the church, as an expression of belief in the works of Jesus as Christ, Son, and Lord.

The consistency was in the articles of the statement, namely the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and not in the exact wording of the articles themselves. Peter’s counsel to those who heard his words and were under conviction in Acts 2:38, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” suggests a natural association of such a confession with the rite of baptism.

The work of Christ from his birth to his ascension made the forgiveness of sins possible. Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ declared a catechumen’s belief in the reality of that redemption. A formal declaration of what he or she believed about Christ within the rite of baptism is a logical extension of the original formula. Within the writings of early church fathers such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Hippolytus is a ‘rule of faith,’ which was the foundation of teaching provided to catechumens.

A related and important observation is that the inclusion of a Christological statement within a baptismal confession helped to exclude those holding to heretical beliefs. Some examples of early heretical groups are the Ebionites, Gnostics, and Docetics (who regarded the sufferings and human aspects of Christ as only apparent, and not part of a real incarnation). All three of these heretical systems were active around 150 AD, and were apologetic and doctrinal concerns within the church, as evidenced by the existing writings of the pre–Nicene church fathers.

Given these observations, the redaction of R in the third decade of the second century to include an elaboration of the belief in “Christ Jesus,” along the traditional doctrinal lines of the rule of faith, seems to be a natural addition to the original three article confession. As J. N. D. Kelly observed after a careful analysis of each phrase of the Christological statement, “Thus in the whole of this section the Old Roman Creed faithfully reflects the feelings of the primitive Church.”

This description of the Roman Creed (and the forthcoming one on the Apostles’ Creed) was compiled from the New Dictionary of Theology (179-181), by Sinclair Ferguson and J. I. Packer; the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (72–73), Walter A. Elwell, editor; The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition  (117), by Jaroslav Pelikan; Early Christian Creeds, by  J. N. D. Kelly; and The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 1, The History of the Creeds (14–23; 368–434), by Phillip Schaff. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”