Tag: Early Christian Creeds

05/26/20

From Sheol to Hell

© Steve Estvanik | 123rf.com

After Jonah admitted to the sailors that the tempestuous sea was because he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, they threw him into the sea and it grew quiet again. In his distress from the belly of Sheol, he cried out to the Lord and the Lord answered him (Jonah 2:2). When Jacob wrongly believed that Joseph was killed by a fierce animal, he refused to be comforted by his children, saying he will go down to Sheol in mourning to his son (Genesis 37:34-35). When Isaiah prophesied against the king of Babylon, he said the shades who were leaders of the earth will be roused to greet him, stirred up from Sheol to meet him (Isaiah 14:9). Sheol occurs 65 times in the Old Testament and has a fairly wide range of meanings, which can make it difficult to determine which of its meanings is in view in a given OT passage. Although it clearly refers to some form of the afterlife, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia said nowhere in the OT is Sheol described as a place of torment or punishment for the wicked.

The OT often uses Sheol and “grave” interchangeably, but that is not its only meaning. It can also mean “death” (Genesis 42:38; Psalm 89:48), “the next world” or “the nether world” (Psalm 86:13; Jonah 2:2) and “hell.” The Septuagint renders Sheol by the Greek word hádēs. The breadth of Sheol’s domain is emphasized in passages such as Proverbs 27:20; Isaiah 5:14; Habakkuk 2:5. It is impossible to return from Sheol. It has confining bars and dust (Job 17:16) and a large mouth to receive its inhabitants (Isaiah 5:14).

Not until after 333 BC was Sheol (Hades) conceived of as a place of torment and comfort. “The view of Hades as a place of confinement for the wicked (Revelations 20:13) until their destruction in Gehenna (Matthew 10:28; Revelations. 20:14–15) goes beyond the far more neutral OT usage of Sheol.” According to Desmond Alexander, in the journal Themelios, before that time Sheol, the realm of the dead, was where both the righteous and the wicked shared a common fate.  After the Exile, the Hebrew view of the afterlife underwent various transformations. According to Joachim Jeremias in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, three significant changes occurred.

First, the belief of resurrection gave rise to the sense that the dead would not remain in Sheol forever (Isaiah 26:19). Second, Greek and Persian views of retribution after death led to a division of the underworld into different departments for the righteous and the wicked. According to Josephus, the Pharisees held this belief:

They also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that under the earth [in Sheol] there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again.

And third, The Greek concept of immortality led to the idea that the righteous went directly to heaven, while the wicked descended to Sheol, where they were punished. This belief was evident during the time of Jesus and can be seen in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. When Lazarus died, he was carried by angels to Abraham’s side. When the rich man died, he went to Hades and was in torment (Luke 16:19-31). The depiction of Hades here in Luke corresponds to the average popular view of Jesus’s time.

The New Testament agrees that Hades was at the heart of the earth. The NT also agrees the time in Hades is limited. “Throughout the NT Hades serves only an interim purpose. It receives souls after death, and delivers them up again at the resurrection (Rev. 20:13).” The resurrection is the end of Hades (Revelation 20:14), and is replaced by Gehenna (Revelations 19:20; 20:10, 14f) as the final place of punishment.

Desmond Alexander said the belief that Sheol was the final abode of the wicked was in keeping with the idea that death was punitive rather than natural. “Since mankind was considered to be under divine condemnation the normal consequence of dying was imprisonment in a dark, gloomy region from which no one could ever escape. To go down to Sheol was to suffer a ‘bad’ death.”

An implication of the resurrection is that the righteous remain in the realm of the dead until divinely raised to life again. So therefore, there must be some form of an intermediate state between death and resurrection. If Sheol is understood to be the abode of the wicked alone, the righteous must exist elsewhere prior to their resurrection. “Unfortunately, the Old Testament reveals little regarding the precise nature of the intermediate abode of the righteous.”

One of the few clues regarding the OT sense of what happens with the righteous after death is the expression ‘to be gathered to one’s people’ (Genesis 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:33; Numbers 27:13; 31:2; Deuteronomy 32:50) or ‘to be gathered to one’s fathers’ (Judges 2:10; 2 Kings 22:20; 2 Chronicles 34:28). These figures of speech do not refer to burial in the grave of the fathers, or an ancestral tomb. Abraham, Aaron and Moses were not united with their father in the grave as Genesis 25:8, Numbers 27:13, and Deuteronomy 32:50 indicate. Death is sometimes described as falling asleep (Psalm 13:3; Daniel 12:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14), whereas the resurrection is described as awakening (2 Kings 4:31; Job 14:12; Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2). This suggests the intermediate state of the righteous is one of tranquility and peace, as in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

Taking these factors into account we may now be in a better position to appreciate the somewhat ambivalent attitude, noted above, of the Old Testament writers towards Sheol. Although all men may have been viewed as initially descending there on dying, the fact that the righteous would subsequently be resurrected, leaving behind the wicked, possibly explains why Sheol is generally presented in quite negative terms. Whereas the righteous would eventually enter into God’s presence the wicked continued to languish in the depths of Sheol. Thus, in spite of the temporary sojourn of the righteous there, Sheol represented for the Hebrews the ultimate and lasting abode of those who were excluded from the divine presence.

Desmond Alexander ended his article with the following conclusions. First, the belief that in pre-Exilic period the Old Testament the Hebrew view afterlife was that it was a natural outcome of man’s mortality, and as a consequence, showed little interest in the afterlife, should be rejected. Second, it seems likely that Sheol frequently represented the nether world, the continuing realm of the ungodly. And thirdly, while the wicked remained in the dark, silent region of Sheol, the righteous lived in the hope that God would deliver them from the power of death and take them to himself, as Psalm 49:15 declares: “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.”

While Sheol is most often translated as “Hades” in the Septuagint, a term that refers to the netherworld in Greek mythology, there are similarities as well as differences. Hades and Sheol are both place people must descend to and both locations are escape proof. But only the wicked descend to Hades (1 Peter 3:19). The torments of Hades, which was later called hell, were not more imaginatively described until postbibilical times.

Evidence for this development is the phrase, “He descended into Hell (Hades),” which is present in the Apostles’ Creed, but missing in the Roman Creed (R). In Early Christian Creeds, J.N.D. Kelly said the belief that Christ spent the interval between his death on the cross and the resurrection in the underworld was commonplace in Christian teaching from the earliest times. Apart from it being within the minds of the New Testament writers, as some have argued, the Descent was specifically mentioned by Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian and others. The first appearance of the phrase in a variant of R was within the Aquilean creed, as follows:

I believe in God the Father almighty, invisible and impassible; And in Christ Jesus, his only Son, our Lord, who was born by the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, he descended to hell, on the third day he rose again from the dead, he ascended to heaven, he sits at the Father’s right hand, thence he will come to judge living and dead; And in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of this flesh.

Kelly said the doctrine of the Descent had nothing to do with pagan mythology. Rather, it was the natural corollary of Judaeo-Christian ideas about the condition of the soul after death. “To say that Jesus Christ had died, or that He had been buried, was equivalent to saying that He has passed to Sheol.” By the time the Descent became an accepted article of the creed, a different set of ideas was associated with it. Rufinius argued that Christ consented to die in order that He might spoil death, which was atoned for in His victorious combat with the Devil in the underworld. “For him, it would appear, the underworld meant hell, and the descent was coming to be viewed as the occasion of the redemption, not just of the patriarchs of old, but of mankind in general.”

The understanding of the afterlife in Sheol developed from a simple sense of the grave or the place where righteous and wicked people went when they died, to the sense of the ultimate place where wicked people were excluded from the divine presence. Passages in the Old Testament indicate the wide range of meanings for Sheol that support this conclusion. After the Exile, the Hebrew view of the afterlife underwent changes. These changes included a growing belief in a resurrection of the righteous, the immortality of the soul, and the distinction between the wicked and righteous, with the wicked receiving punishment and the righteous being rewarded. The translation of the Old Testament into Greek, where the Greek word Hades was substituted for the Hebrew word Sheol in the Septuagint, may have also helped transpose Greek and Persian ideas of the afterlife or Hades onto the OT sense of Sheol.

There were similarities and differences between Hades and Sheol. Although they were both places people must descend to and both locations were escape proof, only the wicked descended to Hades (1 Peter 3:19). The torments of Hades or hell would not happen to the righteous, who were in heaven or in a peaceful intermediate state awaiting their resurrection. The resurrection of Christ added another wrinkle to the distinction, where Christ’s true death meant he himself descended to Hades. While he was there, it was said he overcame death and released the righteous from their imprisonment. In the early days of the church, the Descent became an occasion for the redemption of the righteous and Christ’s victory over the Devil.

Adding the phrase “He descended into hell,” to the Apostles’ Creed was an uncontroversial elaboration of what Christ did between 3 pm Friday and his resurrection Sunday morning. The distance in time and culture from the early church then leads to misunderstanding, as with the disputes around the Contemporary Christian singer Kari Jobe and her song, “Forever.” For further discussion of the descent into Hell, the Roman Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, see “Descent Into Hell,” “Christian, What Do You Believe?” and “The Old Roman Creed.”

03/2/18

Heresy, Canon and the Early Church, Part 1

© Dmytro Demianenko | 123rf.com

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.”

02/20/18

The Birth of Christian Creeds

© Irina Dubovik | 123rf.com – christian symbol fish

In “Legend of the Apostles’ Creed,” I looked at the belief of how the Twelve Apostles agreed upon a standard for their future preaching that came to be known as the Apostles’ Creed. But this legend was just a “pious fiction.” However, there was evidence for “creeds of a looser sort,” lacking the textually determined state of the later confession and creeds. There was even a brief survey of “creedal elements” present in the New Testament. Formal creedal statements seem to have not emerged until the middle of the third century. However, “It is indisputable … that the root of all creeds is the formula of belief pronounced by the baptizand, or pronounced in his hearing and assented by him, before his baptism.”

The reader of the New Testament will continually come across creed-like sayings, which became slogans expressing the new faith. J.N.D. Kelly said in Early Christian Creeds that: “Creeds in the true meaning of the word were yet to come, but the movement towards formulation and fixity was under way.” Particular occasions, like when a candidate sought to be admitted to the Church, called for some kind of assurance of faith; some kind of statement of belief. So catechetical instruction and the baptismal rite itself called for declaring what you believed. Preaching was another occasion that would have lent itself to the formulation of doctrinal sayings.

The day-to-day polemic of the Church, whether against heretics within or pagan foes without, provided another situation [favorable] to the production of creeds. Yet another was supplied by the liturgy; solemn expressions of faith, in the form of hymns, prayers and devotional cries, had a natural place there.

“Jesus is Lord” or “Jesus is the Son of God” were simple, one-clause Christologies that appeared in Scripture as well as baptismal rites. There were also Binitarian (Jesus and God the Father) and Trinitarian (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) summaries of the Christian faith. Binitarian summaries like 2 Timothy 4:1—“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom”— were more common. But there were Trinitarian summaries as well, like 2 Corinthians 13:14 or the baptismal command of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Paul gave what has all the appearance of being a summary of his gospel, drawn up for catechetical instruction or preaching in 1 Corinthian 15:3ff. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures …” Or there is 2 Timothy 2:8, where he said: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel.” There are creed-like passages in: Romans 8:34, 1 Peter 3:18ff, Philippians 2:6-11, and others.

It was, after all, natural and inevitable that the initial proclamation of the gospel should emphasize the distinctively Christian, entirely novel and revolutionary element in the divine revelation. But the framework was there. It was always presupposed; and the firmness with which it was apprehended is evidenced by the extraordinary way in which the Binitarian and Trinitarian patterns wove themselves into the texture of early Christian thinking. In due course, with the development of catechetical teaching and of more systematic, comprehensive instruction in generally, as well as with the evolution of liturgical forms giving fuller expression to the faith, these vital aspects of it came to receive more regular and formal acknowledgement in creeds and semi-creedal summaries. . . . The impulse towards their formulation came from within, not from without; and at the New Testament stage we can observe the process in full swing, with confessions of all three types coexisting and interacting.

Above we noted how creeds emerged from a variety of sources, including preaching, liturgy, hymns prayers, devotionals and above all, baptismal initiation into the Church. In their traditional form, creeds are declaratory; they are short statements, in the first person, asserting belief in a selected group of facts and doctrines. Some declaratory professions of faith must have been part of the baptismal service of the early church. “In fact, it was precisely the need for a formal affirmation of belief to be rehearsed by the catechumen at baptism which instigated the Church to invent creeds in the first place.” Whatever their other uses may have been, “their primary raison d’être, was to serve as solemn affirmations of faith in the context of baptismal initiation.”

The Didache was most likely edited into its present form towards the end of the first century from materials written around 70 AD. The first known copy was not discovered until 1873, although there had been references to it by many ancient writers. It is composed of two parts: the “Two Ways” (1.1–6.2) and a manual of church order and practice (6.3–16.8). The Two Ways is a summary of basic instruction about the Christian life to be taught to those who were preparing for baptism and church membership. “In addition to providing the earliest evidence of a mode of baptism other than immersion, it records the oldest known Christian Eucharistic prayers and a form of the Lord’s Prayer quite similar to that found in the gospel of Matthew.”

The baptismal process of the early church was a series of questions asked of the individual, to which they would say: “I believe” before being submerged a series of three times, in a Trinitarian framework. The fourth century treatise by Ambrose, De Sacramentis, consists of six short addresses delivered to the newly baptized, which claimed it followed the Roman models as far as possible. The candidate entered the baptismal font and renounced the devil and his works, the world and its pleasures, and then:

You were questioned, “Dost thou believe in God the Father almighty?” You said, “I believe”, and were immersed, that is were buried. Again you were asked, “Dost thou believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and his cross?” You said: “I believe”, and were immersed. Thus you were buried along with Christ; for he who is buried along with Christ rises again with Him. A third time you were asked, “Dost thou believe also in the Holy Spirit?” You said, “I believe”, and a third time were immersed, so that your threefold confession wiped out the manifold failings of your earlier life.

During the first few centuries of the Church, the only “creeds,” loosely conceived, were ones directly connected with baptism. Yet their roots lay not so much in the rite of baptism, as in the catechetical training, which preceded it. Declaratory creeds were summaries of Christian doctrine “compiled for the benefit of converts undergoing instruction.” They can then be seen as a by-product of “the Church’s fully developed catechetical system.”

Additionally, 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 creed. The content of that rule, in all it essentials, was foreshadowed by the “pattern of teaching” accepted in the apostolic Church. As was noted in “Legend of the Apostles’ Creed,” the early Church was a “believing, confessing, preaching Church,” with a collection of documents (the New Testament) telling “a unique story of redemption.”

As with the time of the New Testament itself, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers did not allude to any formal, official creed. But there was an abundance of “quasi-creedal scraps” which show that the creedal making impulses of the Christian communities were alive and active.” The author of 1 Clement (95/96 AD) echoed the Trinitarian pattern when he inquired of his readers, “Do we not have one God and one Christ and one Spirit of grace which was poured out upon us?” In the Shepherd of Hermas (95-100 BC?), is this comment on the first commandment: “First of all, believe that there is one God who created and finished all things, and made all things out of nothing. He alone is able to contain the whole, but Himself cannot be contained.” The letters of Ignatius have several quasi-creedal scraps, including this Binitarian pattern from To the Magnesians (110 AD): “There is one God who revealed himself through Jesus Christ his Son, who is his Word which came forth from silence.”

With Justin Martyr, we come across for the first time “what can plausibly be taken to be quotations of semi-formal creeds.” Justin converted to Christianity around 130. He was born in Nablus, in Palestinian Syria, and taught Christian philosophy after his conversion in Ephesus and later in Rome, where he opened a Christian school. In 165 he and some of his disciples were denounced as Christians and when they refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, they were scourged and beheaded.

The first thing to note is how deeply the Trinitarian pattern seems to have been reflected in his writings. Here in his first Apology (written In Rome around 150-155 AD), within a discussion on baptism, he said: “To the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” And again when discussing weekly worship: “We bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost.” There is then another passage, again from his first Apology, that seems to be a loose paraphrase of a set, creed-like formula.

What sober-minded man, then, will not acknowledge that we are not atheists, worshipping as we do the Maker of this universe, and declaring, as we have been taught, that He has no need of streams of blood and libations and incense; whom we praise to the utmost of our power by the exercise of prayer and thanksgiving for all things wherewith we are supplied, as we have been taught that the only honour that is worthy of Him is not to consume by fire what He has brought into being for our sustenance, but to use it for ourselves and those who need, and with gratitude to Him to offer thanks by invocations and hymns for our creation, and for all the means of health, and for the various qualities of the different kinds of things, and for the changes of the seasons; and to present before Him petitions for our existing again in incorruption through faith in Him. Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judæa, in the times of Tiberius Cæsar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove.

Kelly said it was difficult to resist the conclusion that Justin knew of “a developed Christological kerygma [an irreducible essence of Christian apostolic preaching], which already enjoyed a measure of fixity.” However, there is no evidence it was “an official declaratory creed used at Rome or in any other church.” Nevertheless, as early as the time of Justin “there was apparently something approaching a settled form for the baptismal questions.” Irenaeus and Tertullian knew of formularies, which seemed to have an official character and a distinctive outline, even if their wording wasn’t always given verbatim.

By the middle of the third century the process of crystallization had gone a very long way: there were (and had been, we may conjecture, for some time) “customary and established words”. The endorsement of the local ecclesiastical authority, it would seem, had been added. The framework of the questions was always and everywhere the Lord’s baptismal command, the candidate being asked three times whether he believed in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Gradually these bare interrogations were expanded.

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.”