HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
CHAPTER XII:
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC
THEOLOGY IN CONFLICT WITH HERESY.
§ 137. Catholic Orthodoxy.
I. Sources: The
doctrinal and polemical writings of the ante-Nicene fathers, especially Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus,
Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement Of Alex., and Origen.
II. Literature: The
relevant sections in the works on Doctrine History by Petravius, MĂĽnscher, Neander, Giesler, Baur, Hagenbach, Shedd,
Nitzsch, Harnack (first vol. 1886; 2d ed. 1888).
Jos. Schwane (R.C.):
Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit. Münster, 1862.
Edm. De Pressensé: Heresy and Christian Doctrine, transl. by Annie Harwood. Lond.
1873.
The special
literature see below. Comp. also the Lit. in Ch. XIII.
By the wide-spread errors
described in the preceding chapter, the church was challenged to a mighty
intellectual combat, from which she came forth victorious, according to the
promise of her Lord, that the Holy Spirit should guide her into the whole
truth. To the subjective, baseless, and ever-changing speculations, dreams, and
fictions of the heretics, she opposed the substantial, solid realities of the
divine revelation. Christian theology grew, indeed, as by inward necessity,
from the demand of faith for knowledge. But heresy, Gnosticism in particular,
gave it a powerful impulse from without, and came as a fertilizing
thunder-storm upon the field. The church possessed the truth from the
beginning, in the experience of faith, and in the Holy Scriptures, which she
handed down with scrupulous fidelity from generation to generation. But now
came the task of developing the substance of the Christian truth in theoretical
form 934fortifying it on all sides, and presenting it in clear
light before the understanding. Thus the Christian polemic and dogmatic
theology, or the church’s logical apprehension of the doctrines of salvation,
unfolded itself in this conflict with heresy; as the apologetic literature and
martyrdom had arisen through Jewish and heathen persecution.
From this time forth the
distinction between catholic and heretical, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the faith
of the church and dissenting private opinion, became steadily more prominent.
Every doctrine which agreed with the holy scriptures and the faith of the
church, was received as catholic; that is, universal, and exclusive.935 Whatever deviated materially from this standard, every arbitrary
notion, framed by this or that individual, every distortion or corruption of
the revealed doctrines of Christianity, every departure from the public
sentiment of the church, was considered heresy..936
Almost all the church fathers
came out against the contemporary heresies, with arguments from scripture, with
the tradition of the church, and with rational demonstration, proving them
inwardly inconsistent and absurd.
But in doing this, while they
are one in spirit and purpose, they pursue two very different courses,
determined by the differences between the Greek and Roman nationality, and by
peculiarities of mental organization and the appointment of Providence. The
Greek theology, above all the Alexandrian, represented by Clement and Origen,
is predominantly idealistic and speculative, dealing with the objective
doctrines of God, the incarnation, the trinity, and christology; endeavoring to
supplant the false gnosis by a true knowledge, an orthodox philosophy, resting
on the Christian pistis. It was strongly influenced by Platonic speculation in
the Logos doctrine. The Latin theology, particularly the North African, whose
most distinguished representatives are Tertullian and Cyprian, is more
realistic and practical, concerned with the doctrines of human nature and of
salvation, and more directly hostile to Gnosticism and philosophy. With this is
connected the fact, that the Greek fathers were first philosophers; the Latin
were mostly lawyers and statesmen; the former reached the Christian faith in
the way of speculation, the latter in the spirit of practical morality.
Characteristically, too, the Greek church built mainly upon the apostle John,
pre-eminently the contemplative "divine;" the Latin upon Peter, the
practical leader of the church. While Clement of Alexandria and Origen often
wander away into cloudy, almost Gnostic speculation, and threaten to resolve
the real substance of the Christian ideas into thin spiritualism, Tertullian
sets himself implacably against Gnosticism and the heathen philosophy upon
which it rests. "What fellowship," he asks, "is there between
Athens and Jerusalem, the academy and the church, heretics and
Christians?" But this difference
was only relative. With all their spiritualism, the Alexandrians still
committed themselves to a striking literalism; while, in spite of his aversion
to philosophy, Tertullian labored with profound speculative ideas which came to
their full birth in Augustin.
Irenaeus, who sprang from the
Eastern church, and used the Greek language, but labored in the West, holds a
kind of mediating position between the two branches of the church, and may be
taken as, on the whole, the most moderate and sound representative of
ecclesiastical orthodoxy in the ante-Nicene period. He is as decided against
Gnosticism as Tertullian, without overlooking the speculative want betrayed in
that system. His refutation of the Gnosis, 937written between 177 and 192, is
the leading polemic work of the second century. In the first book of this work
Irenaeus gives a full account of the Valentinian system of Gnosis; in the
second book be begins his refutation in philosophical and logical style; in the
third, he brings against the system the catholic tradition and the holy, scriptures,
and vindicates the orthodox doctrine of the unity of God, the creation of the
world, the incarnation of the Logos, against the docetic denial of the true
humanity of Christ and the Ebionitic denial of his true divinity; in the fourth
book he further fortifies the same doctrines, and, against the antinomianism of
the school of Marcion, demonstrates the unity of the Old and New Testaments; in
the fifth and last book he presents his views on eschatology, particularly on
the resurrection of the body_so offensive to the Gnostic spiritualism_and at
the close treats of Antichrist, the end of the world, the intermediate state,
and the millennium.
His disciple Hippolytus gives
us, in the "Philosophumena," a still fuller account,
in many respects, of the early heresies, and traces them up to, their sources
in the heathen systems of philosophy, but does not go so deep into the
exposition of the catholic doctrines of the church.
The leading effort in this
polemic literature was, of course, to develop and establish positively the
Christian truth; which is, at the same time, to refute most effectually the
opposite error. The object was, particularly, to settle the doctrines of the
rule of faith, the incarnation of God, and the true divinity and true humanity
of Christ. In this effort the mind of the church, under the constant guidance
of the divine word and the apostolic tradition, steered with unerring instinct
between the threatening cliffs. Yet no little indefiniteness and obscurity
still prevailed in the scientific apprehension and statement of these points.
In this stormy time, too, there were as yet no general councils to, settle
doctrinal controversy by the voice of the whole church. The dogmas of the
trinity and the person of Christ, did not reach maturity and final symbolical
definition until the following period, or the Nicene age.
Notes
on Heresy.
The term heresy is
derived from ai{resi" which means originally either capture
(from aiJrevw), or election, choice (from
aiJrevomai), and assumed the additional idea of arbitrary
opposition to public opinion and authority. In the N. Test. it designates a
chosen way of life, a school or sect or party, not necessarily in a bad sense,
and is applied to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even the Christians as a
Jewish sect (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5; 28:22); then it signifies
discord, arising from difference of opinion (Gal. 5:20; 1 Cor. 11:19); and
lastly error (2 Pet. 2:1, aiJrevsei"
ajpwleiva"
destructive heresies, or sects of perdition). This passage comes nearest to the
ecclesiastical definition. The term heretic (aiJretiko;" a[nqrwpo") occurs only once, Tit 3:10, and means a factious man,
a sectary, a partisan, rather than an errorist.
Constantine the Great still
speaks of the Christian church as a sect, hJ ai{resi" hJ kaqolikhv, hJ aJgiwtavth ai{resi" (in a letter to Chrestus,
bishop of Syracuse, in Euseb, H. E. X. c. 5, § 21 and 22, in Heinichen’s
ed. I, 491). But after him church and sect became opposites, the former term
being confined to the one ruling body, the latter to dissenting minorities.
The fathers commonly use heresy
of false teaching, in opposition to Catholic doctrine, and schism of
a breach of discipline, in opposition to Catholic government. The ancient
heresiologists_mostly uncritical, credulous, and bigoted, though honest and
pious, zealots for a narrow orthodoxy_unreasonably multiplied the heresies by
extending them beyond the limits of Christianity, and counting all
modifications and variations separately. Philastrius or Philastrus, bishop. of
Brescia or Brixia (d. 387), in his Liber de Haeresibus, numbered 28
Jewish and 128 Christian heresies; Epiphanius of Cyprus (d. 403), in his Panavrion. 80 heresies in all, 20 before and 60 after Christ;
Augustin (d. 430), 88 Christian heresies, including Pelagianism;
Proedestinatus, 90, including Pelagianism and Nestorianism. (Pope Pius IX.
condemned 80 modern heresies, in his Syllabus of Errors, 1864.) Augustin says that it is "altogether
impossible, or at any rate most difficult" to define heresy, and wisely
adds that the spirit in which error is held, rather than error itself,
constitutes heresy. There are innocent as well as guilty errors. Moreover, a
great many people are better than their creed or no-creed, and a great many are
worse than their creed, however orthodox it may be. The severest words of our
Lord were directed against the hypocritical orthodoxy of the Pharisees. In the
course of time heresy was defined to be a religious error held in wilful and
persistent opposition to the truth after it has been defined and declared by
the church in an authoritative manner, or "pertinax defensio dogmatis ecclesiae
universalis judicio condemnati." Speculations on open questions of theology are
no heresies Origen was no heretic in his age, but was condemned long after his
death.
In the present divided state of
Christendom there are different kinds of orthodoxy and heresy. Orthodoxy is
conformity to a recognized creed or standard of public doctrine; heresy is a wilful
departure from it. The Greek church rejects the Roman dogmas of the papacy, of
the double procession of the Holy Ghost, the immaculate conception of the
Virgin Mary, and the infallibility of the Pope, as heretical, because contrary
to the teaching of the first seven oecumenical councils. The Roman church
anathematized, in the Council of Trent, all the distinctive doctrines of the
Protestant Reformation. Evangelical Protestants on the other hand regard the
unscriptural traditions of the Greek and Roman churches as heretical. Among
Protestant churches again there are minor doctrinal differences, which are held
with various degrees of exclusiveness or liberality according to the degree of
departure from the Roman Catholic church. Luther, for instance, would not
tolerate Zwingli’s view on the Lord’s Supper, while Zwingli was willing to
fraternize with him notwithstanding this difference. The Lutheran Formula of
Concord, and the Calvinistic Synod of Dort rejected and condemned doctrines
which are now held with impunity in orthodox evangelical churches. The danger
of orthodoxy lies in the direction of exclusive and uncharitable bigotry, which
contracts the truth; the danger of liberalism lies in the direction of laxity
and indifferentism, which obliterates the eternal distinction between truth and
error.
The apostles, guided by more
than human wisdom, and endowed with more than ecclesiastical authority, judged
severely of every essential departure from the revealed truth of salvation.
Paul pronounced the anathema on the Judaizing teachers, who made circumcision a
term of true church membership (Gal. 1:8), and calls them sarcastically
"dogs" of the "concision" (Phil. 3:2, blevpete tou;" kuvna" ... th'" katatomh'"). He warned the elders of
Ephesus against "grievous wolves" (luvkoi barei'") who would after his departure enter among them (Acts 20:29); and he
characterizes the speculations of the rising gnosis falsely so called (yeudwvnumo" gnw'si") as "doctrines of
demons" (didaskalivai daimonivwn, 1 Tim. 4:1; Comp. 6:3-20; 2
Tim. 3:1 sqq.; 4:3 sqq.). John warns with equal earnestness and severity
against all false teachers who deny the fact of the incarnation, and calls them
antichrists (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7); and the second Epistle of Peter and the
Epistle of Jude describe the heretics in the darkest colors.
We need not wonder, then, that
the ante-Nicene fathers held the gnostic heretics of their days in the greatest
abhorrence, and called them servants of Satan, beasts in human shape, dealers
in deadly poison, robbers, and pirates. Polycarp (Ad Phil.c. 7),
Ignatius (Ad Smyrn. c. 4), Justin M. (Apol. I. c. 26), Irenaeus (Adv.
Haer. III. 3, 4), Hippolytus, Tertullian, even Clement of Alexandria, and
Origen occupy essentially the same position of uncompromising hostility towards
heresy is the fathers of the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. They regard it as the
tares sown by the devil in the Lord’s field (Matt. 13:3-6 sqq). Hence
Tertullian infers, "That which was first delivered is of the Lord and is
true; whilst that is strange and false which was afterwards introduced" (Praescr.
c. 31: "Ex ipso ordine manifestatur, id esse
dominicum et verum quod sit prius traditum, id autem extraneum et falsum quod
sit posterius inmissum"). There is indeed a necessity for heresies and sects (1 Cor.
11:19), but "woe to that man through whom the offence cometh" (Matt.
18:7). "It was necessary," says Tertullian (ib. 30), "that the
Lord should be betrayed; but woe to the traitor."
Another characteristic feature
of patristic polemics is to trace heresy, to mean motives, such as pride,
disappointed ambition, sensual lust, and avarice. No allowance is made for
different mental constitutions, educational influences, and other causes. There
are, however, a few noble exceptions. Origen and Augustin admit the honesty and
earnestness at least of some teachers of error.
We must notice two important
points of difference between the ante-Nicene and later heresies, and the mode
of punishing heresy.
1. The chief ante-Nicene
heresies were undoubtedly radical perversions of Christian truth and admitted
of no kind of compromise. Ebionism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism were
essentially anti-Christian. The church could not tolerate that medley of pagan
sense and nonsense without endangering its very existence. But Montanists,
Novatians, Donatists, Quartodecimanians, and other sects who differed on minor
points of doctrine or discipline, were judged more mildly, and their baptism
was acknowledged.
2. The punishment of heresy in
the ante-Nicene church was purely ecclesiastical, and consisted in reproof,
deposition, and excommunication. It had no effect on the civil status.
But as soon as church and state
began to be united, temporal punishments, such as confiscation of property,
exile, and death, were added by the civil magistrate with the approval of the
church, in imitation of the Mosaic code, but in violation of the spirit and
example of Christ and the apostles. Constantine opened the way in some edicts
against the Donatists, a.d. 316.
Valentinian I. forbade the public worship of Manichaeans (371). After the
defeat of the Arians by the second Ĺ’cumenical Council, Theodosius the Great
enforced uniformity of belief by legal penalties in fifteen edicts between 381
and 394. Honorius (408), Arcadius, the younger Theodosius, and Justinian (529)
followed in the same path. By these imperial enactments heretics, i.e. open
dissenters from the imperial state-religion, were deprived of all public
offices, of the right of public worship, of receiving or bequeathing properly,
of making binding contracts; they were subjected to fines, banishment,
corporeal punishment, and even death. See the Theos. Code, Book XVI. tit. V. De
Haereticis. The first sentence of death by the sword for heresy was
executed on Priscillian and six of his followers who held Manichaean opinions
(385). The better feeling of Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours protested
against this act, but in vain. Even the great and good St. Augustin, although
he had himself been a heretic for nine years, defended the principle of
religious persecution, on a false exegesis of Cogite eos intrare, Luke 14:23 (Ep. 93 ad Vinc.; Ep. 185 ad Bonif., Retract. II. 5.). Had
he foreseen the crusade against the Albigenses and the horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition, he would have retracted his dangerous opinion. A theocratic or
Erastian state-church theory_whether Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic or
Protestant_makes all offences against the church offences against the state,
and requires their punishment with more or less severity according to the
prevailing degree of zeal for orthodoxy and hatred of heresy. But in the
overruling Providence of God which brings good out of every evil, the bloody
persecution of heretics_one of the darkest chapters in church history_has
produced the sweet fruit of religious liberty. See vol. III. 138-146.
§ 138. The Holy Scriptures and the Canon.
The works on the
Canon by Reuss, Westcott, (6th
ed., 1889), Zahn, (1888). Holtzmann: Kanon u.
Tradition, 1859.
Schaff: Companion to the Greek
Testament and the English Version. N. York and London, 1883; third ed.
1888. Gregory: Prolegomena to
Tischendorf’s 8th ed. of the Greek Test. Lips., 1884. A. Harnack: Das N.
Test. um das jahr 200. Leipz., 1889.
The question of the source and
rule of Christian knowledge lies at the foundation of all theology. We
therefore notice it here before passing to the several doctrines of faith.
1. This source and this rule of
knowledge are the holy scriptures of the Old and New Covenants.938 Here at once arises the inquiry as to the number and arrangement
of the sacred writings, or the canon, in distinction both from the productions
of enlightened but not inspired church teachers, and from the very numerous and
in some cases still extant apocryphal works (Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and
Apocalypses), which were composed in the first four centuries, in the interest
of heresies or for the satisfaction of idle curiosity, and sent forth under the
name of an apostle or other eminent person. These apocrypha, however, did not
all originate with Ebionites and Gnostics; some were merely designed either to
fill chasms in the history of Jesus and the apostles by fictitious stories, or
to glorify Christianity by vaticinia post eventum, in the way of pious fraud at that time freely allowed.
The canon of the Old Testament
descended to the church from the Jews, with the sanction of Christ and the
apostles. The Jewish Apocrypha were included in the Septuagint and passed from
it into Christian versions. The, New Testament canon was gradually formed, on
the model of the Old, in the course of the first four centuries, under the
guidance of the same Spirit, through whose suggestion the several apostolic
books had been prepared. The first trace of it appears in 2 Peter 3:15, where a
collection of Paul’s epistles939 is presumed to exist, and is placed by the side
of "the other scriptures."940 The
apostolic fathers and the earlier apologists commonly appeal, indeed, for the
divinity of Christianity to the Old Testament, to the oral preaching of the
apostles, to the living faith of the Christian churches, the triumphant death
of the martyrs, and the continued miracles. Yet their works contain quotations,
generally without the name of the author, from the most important writings of
the apostles, or at least allusions to those writings, enough to place their
high antiquity and ecclesiastical authority beyond all reasonable doubt.941 The heretical canon of the Gnostic Marcion, of the middle of the
second century, consisting of a mutilated Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’s
epistles, certainly implies the existence of an orthodox canon at that time, as
heresy always presupposes truth, of which it is a caricature.
The principal books of the New
Testament, the four Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first
Epistle of Peter, and the first of John, which are designated by Eusebius as
"Homologumena," were in general use in the church after the middle of
the second century, and acknowledged to be apostolic, inspired by the Spirit of
Christ, and therefore authoritative and canonical. This is established by the
testimonies of Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, of the Syriac Peshito (which
omits only Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and the Revelation), the old Latin
Versions (which include all books but 2 Peter, Hebrews, and perhaps James and
the Fragment of Muratori;942 also by the heretics, and the heathen opponent
Celsus_persons and documents which represent in this matter the churches in
Asia Minor, Italy, Gaul, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. We may
therefore call these books the original canon.
Concerning the other seven
books, the "Antilegomena" of Eusebius, viz. the Epistle to the
Hebrews,943 the Apocalypse,944 the second Epistle of Peter, the
second and third Epistles of John, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle of
Jude,_the tradition of the church in the time of Eusebius, the beginning of the
fourth century, still wavered between acceptance and rejection. But of the two
oldest manuscripts of the Greek Testament which date from the age of Eusebius
and Constantine, one_the Sinaitic_contains all the twenty-seven books, and the
other_the Vatican_was probably likewise complete, although the last chapters of
Hebrews (from Heb.11:14), the Pastoral Epistles, Philemon, and Revelation are
lost. There was a second class of Antilegomena, called by Eusebius
"spurious" (novqa), consisting of several
post-apostolic writings, viz. the catholic Epistle of Barnabas, the first
Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Polycarp to the
Philippians, the Shepherd of Hermas, the lost Apocalypse of Peter, and the
Gospel of the Hebrews; which were read at least in some churches but were
afterwards generally separated from the canon. Some of them are even
incorporated in the oldest manuscripts of the Bible, as the Epistle of Barnabas
and a part of the Shepherd of Hermas (both in the original Greek) in the Codex
Sinaiticus, and the first Epistle of Clement of Rome in the Codex Alexandrinus.
The first express definition of
the New Testament canon, in the form in which it has since been universally
retained, comes from two African synods, held in 393 at Hippo, and 397 at
Carthage, in the presence of Augustin, who exerted a commanding influence on
all the theological questions of his age. By that time, at least, the whole
church must have already become nearly unanimous as to the number of the canonical
books; so that there seemed to be no need even of the sanction of a general
council. The Eastern church, at all events, was entirely independent of the
North African in the matter. The Council of Laodicea (363) gives a list of the
books of our New Testament with the exception of the Apocalypse. The last canon
which contains this list, is probably a later addition, yet the
long-established ecclesiastical use of all the books, with some doubts as to
the Apocalypse, is confirmed by the scattered testimonies of all the great
Nicene and post Nicene fathers, as Athanasius (d. 373), Cyril of Jerusalem (d.
386), Gregory of Nazianzum (d. 389), Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403), Chrysostom
(d. 407), etc.945 The name Novum Testamentum,946 also Novum Instrumentum (a juridical term conveying the
idea of legal validity), occurs first in Tertullian, and came into general use
instead of the more correct term New Covenant. The books were currently
divided into two parts, "the Gospel"947 and "the Apostle," and
the Epistles, in the second part, into Catholic or General, and Pauline. The
Catholic canon thus settled remained untouched till the time of the Reformation
when the question of the Apocrypha and of the Antilegomena was reopened and the
science of biblical criticism was born. But the most thorough investigations of
modern times have not been able to unsettle the faith of the church in the New
Testament, nor ever will.
2. As to the origin and
character of the apostolic writings, the church fathers adopted for the New
Testament the somewhat mechanical and magical theory of inspiration applied by
the Jews to the Old; regarding the several books as composed with such
extraordinary aid from the Holy Spirit as secured their freedom from errors
(according to Origen, even from faults of memory). Yet this was not regarded as
excluding the writer’s own activity and individuality. Irenaeus, for example,
sees in Paul a peculiar style, which he attributes to the mighty flow of
thought in his ardent mind. The Alexandrians, however, enlarged the idea of
inspiration to a doubtful breadth. Clement of Alexandria calls the works of
Plato inspired, because they contain truth; and he considers all that is
beautiful and good in history, a breath of the infinite, a tone, which the
divine Logos draws forth from the lyre of the human soul.
As a production of the inspired
organs, of divine revelation, the sacred scriptures, without critical
distinction between the Old and New Covenants, were acknowledged and employed
against heretics as an infallible source of knowledge and an unerring rule of
Christian faith and practice. Irenaeus calls the Gospel a pillar and ground of
the truth. Tertullian demands scripture proof for every doctrine, and declares,
that heretics cannot stand on pure scriptural ground. In Origen’s view nothing
deserves credit which cannot be confirmed by the testimony of scripture.
3. The exposition of the Bible
was at first purely practical, and designed for direct edification. The
controversy with the Gnostics called for a more scientific method. Both the orthodox
and heretics, after the fashion of the rabbinical and Alexandrian Judaism, made
large use of allegorical and mystical interpretation, and not rarely lost
themselves amid the merest fancies and wildest vagaries. The fathers generally,
with a few exceptions, (Chrysostom and Jerome) had scarcely an idea of
grammatical and historical exegesis.
Origen was the first to lay
down, in connection with the allegorical method of the Jewish Platonist, Philo,
a formal theory of interpretation, which he carried out in a long series of
exegetical works remarkable for industry and ingenuity, but meagre in solid
results. He considered the Bible a living organism, consisting of three
elements which answer to the body, soul, and spirit of man, after the Platonic
psychology. Accordingly, he attributed to the scriptures a threefold sense; (1)
a somatic, literal, or historical sense, furnished immediately by the meaning
of the words, but only serving as a veil for a higher idea; (2) a psychic or
moral sense, animating the first, and serving for general edification; (3) a
pneumatic or mystic, and ideal sense, for those who stand on the high ground of
philosophical knowledge. In the application of this theory he shows the same
tendency as Philo, to spiritualize away the letter of scripture, especially
where the plain historical sense seems unworthy, as in the history of David’s
crimes; and instead of simply bringing out the sense of the Bible, be puts into
it all sorts of foreign ideas and irrelevant fancies. But this allegorizing
suited the taste of the age, and, with his fertile mind and imposing learning,
Origen was the exegetical oracle of the early church, till his orthodoxy fell
into disrepute. He is the pioneer, also, in the criticism of the sacred text,
and his "Hexapla" was the first attempt at a Polyglot Bible.
In spite of the numberless
exegetical vagaries and differences in detail, which confute the Tridentine
fiction of a "unanimis consensus patrum," there is still a certain unanimity among the
fathers in their way of drawing the most important articles of faith from the
Scriptures. In their expositions they all follow one dogmatical principle, a
kind of analogia
fidei. This
brings us to tradition.
Notes
on the Canon.
I. The
Statements of Eusebius,
The accounts of Eusebius (d.
340) on the apostolic writings in several passages of his Church History
(especially III. 25; comp. II. 22, 23; III. 3, 24; V. 8; VI. 14, 25) are
somewhat vague and inconsistent, yet upon the whole they give us the best idea
of the state of the canon in the first quarter of the fourth century just
before the Council of Nicaea (325).
He distinguishes four classes of
sacred books of the Christians (H. E. III. 25, in Heinichen’s ed. vol.
I. 130 sqq.; comp. his note in vol. III. 87 sqq.).
1. Homologumena, i.e. such as were universally
acknowledged (oJmologouvmena): 22 Books of the 27 of the N.
T., viz.: 4 Gospels, Acts, 14 Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews), 1 Peter, 1
John, Revelation. He says: "Having arrived at this point, it is proper
that we should give a summary catalogue of the afore-mentioned (III. 24)
writings of the N. T. ( jAnakefalaiwvsasqai
ta;" dhlwqeivsa" th'" kainh'" diaqhvkh" grafav"). First, then, we must place
the sacred quaternion (or quartette, tetraktuvn) of the Gospels, which are
followed by the book of the Acts of the Apostles (hJ tw'n pravxewn tw''n ajpostovlwn grafhv). After this we must reckon the Epistles of
Paul, and next to them we must maintain as genuine (kurwtevon,
the verb. adj. from kurovw, to ratify), the Epistle circulated
as the former of John (th;n feromevnhn jIwavnnou protevran), and in like manner
that of Peter (kai; oJmoivw" th;n Pevtrou
ejpistolhvn). In
addition to these books, if it seem proper (ei[ge faneivh),
we must place the Revelation of John (th;n ajpokavluyin jIwavnnou), concerning which we shall set
forth the different opinions in due course. And these are reckoned among those
which are generally received (ejn
oJmologoumevnoi")."
In bk. III. ch. 3, Eusebius
speaks of "fourteen Epp." of Paul (tou' de; Pauvlou provdhloi kai; safei'" aiJ dekatevssare",) as commonly received, but adds
that "some have rejected the Ep. to the Hebrews, saying that it was
disputed as not being one of Paul’s epistles."
On the Apocalypse, Eusebius
vacillates according as he gives the public belief of the church or his private
opinion. He first counts it among the Homologumena, and then, in the same
passage (III. 25), among the spurious books, but in each case with a qualifying
statement (eij faneivh), leaving the matter to the
judgment of the reader. He rarely quotes the book, and usually as the
"Apocalypse of John," but in one place (III. 39) he intimates that it
was probably written by "the second John," which must mean the
"Presbyter John," so called, as distinct from the Apostle_an opinion
which has found much favor in the Schleiermacher school of critics. Owing to
its mysterious character, the Apocalypse is, even to this day, the most popular
book of the N. T. with a few, and the most unpopular with the many. It is as
well attested as any other book, and the most radical modern critics (Baur,
Renan) admit its apostolic authorship and composition before the destruction of
Jerusalem.
2. Antilegomena, or controverted books, yet
"familiar to most people of the church" (ajntilegovmena, gnwvrima d j o{mw" toi'" polloi'", III. 25). These are five (or seven), viz., one Epistle of James,
one of Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John ("whether they really belong to the
Evangelist or to another John").
To these we may add (although
Eusebius does not do it expressly) the Hebrews and the Apocalypse, the former
as not being generally acknowledged as Pauline, the latter on account of its
supposed chiliasm, which was offensive to Eusebius and the Alexandrian school.
3. Spurious Books (novqa), such as the Acts of Paul, the Revelation of Peter, the Shepherd
(Hermas), the Ep. of Barnabas, the so-called "Doctrines of the Apostles,
" and the Gospel according to the Hebrews." in which those Hebrews
who have accepted Christ take special delight."
To these he adds inconsistently,
as already remarked, the Apocalypse of John." which some, as I said,
reject (h{n tine" ajqetou'sin), while others reckon it among
the books generally received (toi'"
oJmologoumevnoi")." He ought to have numbered it with the Antilegomena.
These novqa, we may
say, correspond to the Apocrypha of the O. T., pious and useful, but not
canonical.
4. Heretical Books. These,
Eusebius says, are worse than spurious books, and must be "set aside as
altogether worthless and impious." Among these be mentions the Gospels of
Peter, and Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew, and John, and of the other
Apostles.
II. Ecclesiastical Definitions of the Canon.
Soon after the middle of the
fourth century, when the church became firmly settled in the Empire, all doubts
as to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and the Antilegomena of the New
ceased, and the acceptance of the Canon in its Catholic shape, which includes
both, became an article of faith. The first Ĺ’cumenical Council of Nicaea did
not settle the canon, as one might expect, but the scriptures were regarded
without controversy as the sure and immovable foundation of the orthodox faith.
In the last (20th or 21st) Canon of the Synod of Gangra, in Asia Minor (about
the middle of the fourth century), it is said: "To speak briefly, we
desire that what has been handed down to us by the divine scriptures and the
Apostolic traditions should be observed in the church." Comp. Hefele, Conciliengesch.
I. 789.
The first Council which
expressly legislated on the number of canonical books is that of Laodicea in
Phrygia, in Asia Minor (held between a.d.
343 and 381, probably about 363). In its last canon (60 or 59), it enumerates
the canonical books of the Old Testament, and then all of the New, with the
exception of the Apocalypse, in the following order:
"And these are the Books of
the New Testament: Four Gospels, according to Matthew, according to Mark,
according to Luke, according to John; Acts of the Apostles; Seven Catholic
Epistles, One of James, Two of Peter, Three of John, One of Jude; Fourteen
Epistles of Paul, One to the Romans, Two to the Corinthians, One to the
Galatians, One to the Ephesians, One to the Philippians, One to the Colossians,
Two to the Thessalonians, One to the Hebrews, Two to Timothy, One to Titus, and
One to Philemon."
This catalogue is omitted in
several manuscripts and versions, and probably is a later insertion from the
writings of Cyril of Jerusalem. Spittler, Herbst, and Westcott deny, Schrökh
and Hefele defend, the Laodicean origin of this catalogue. It resembles that of
the 85th of the Apostolical Canons which likewise omits the Apocalypse, but
inserts two Epistles of Clement and the pseudo-Apostolical Constitutions.
On the Laodicean Council and its
uncertain date see Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, revised ed. vol. I. p. 746 sqq.,
and Westcott, on the Canon of the N. T., second ed., p. 382 sqq.
In the Western church, the third
provincial Council of Carthage (held a.d.
397) gave a full list of the canonical books of both Testaments, which should
be read as divine Scriptures to the exclusion of all others in the churches.
The N. T. books are enumerated in the following order: "Four Books of the
Gospels, One Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Thirteen Epp. of the Apostle
Paul, One Ep. of the same [Apostle] to the Hebrews, Two Epistles of the Apostle
Peter, Three of John, One of James, One of Jude, One Book of the Apocalypse of
John." This canon bad been previously adopted by the African Synod of
Hippo regius, a.d. 393, at which
Augustin, then presbyter, delivered his discourse De Fide et Symbolo. The acts of that Council are
lost, but they were readopted by the third council of Carthage, which consisted
only of forty-three African bishops, and can claim no general authority. (See
Westcott, p. 391, Charteris, p. 20, and Hefele, II. 53 and 68, revised ed.)
Augustin, (who was present at
both Councils), and Jerome (who translated the Latin Bible at the request of
Pope Damasus of Rome) exerted a decisive influence in settling the Canon for
the Latin church.
The Council of Trent (1546)
confirmed the traditional view with an anathema on those who dissent.
"This fatal decree," says Dr. Westcott (p. 426 sq.), "was
ratified by fifty-three prelates, among whom was not one German, not one
scholar distinguished for historical learning, not one who was fitted by
special study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only be
determined by the voice of antiquity."
For the Greek and Roman churches the question of the
Canon is closed, although no strictly oecumenical council representing
the entire church has pronounced on it. But Protestantism claims the liberty of
the ante-Nicene age and the right of renewed investigation into the origin and
history of every book of the Bible. Without this liberty there can be no real
progress in exegetical theology.
§ 139. Catholic Tradition.
Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. Lib. I. c.
9, § 5; I. 10, 1; III. 3, 1, 2; III. 4, 2; IV. 33, 7. Tertull.: De Praescriptionibus Haereticorum; especially c. 13, 14, 17-19, 21, 35, 36, 40, 41; De
Virgin. veland. c. 1; Adv. Prax. c. 2; on the other hand, Adv.
Hermog. c. 22; De Carne Christi, c. 7; De
Resurr. Carnis, c.
3. Novatian: De Trinitate 3; De Regula Fidei.Cyprian: De Unitate Eccl.; and on the other hand, Epist.
74. Origen: De Princip. lib.
I. Praef. § 4-6. Cyril of Jerus.:
Kathchvsei" (written 348).
J. A. Daniel: Theol. Controversen (the
doctrine of the Scriptures as the source of knowledge). Halle, 1843.
J. J. Jacobi: Die
Kirchl. Lehre von d. Tradition u. heil. Schrift in ihrer Entwicketung
dargestellt. Berl.
I. 1847.
Ph. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol.
I. p. 12 sqq.; II. 11-44. Comp. Lit. in the next section.
Besides appealing to the
Scriptures, the fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Tertullian, refer with equal
confidence to the "rule of faith;"948 that is, the common faith of the
church, as orally handed down in the unbroken succession of bishops from Christ
and his apostles to their day, and above all as still living in the original
apostolic churches, like those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome.
Tradition is thus intimately connected with the primitive episcopate. The
latter was the vehicle of the former, and both were looked upon as bulwarks
against heresy.
Irenaeus confronts the secret
tradition of the Gnostics with the open and unadulterated tradition of the
catholic church, and points to all churches, but particularly to Rome, as the
visible centre of the unity of doctrine. All who would know the truth, says he,
can see in the whole church the tradition of the apostles; and we can count the
bishops ordained by the apostles, and their successors down to our time, who
neither taught nor knew any such heresies. Then, by way of example, he cites
the first twelve bishops of the Roman church from Linus to Eleutherus, as
witnesses of the pure apostolic doctrine. He might conceive of a Christianity
without scripture, but he could not imagine a Christianity without living
tradition; and for this opinion he refers to barbarian tribes, who have the
gospel, "sine
charta et atramento," written in their hearts.
Tertullian finds a universal
antidote for all heresy in his celebrated prescription argument, which cuts off
heretics, at the outset, from every right of appeal to the holy scriptures, on
the ground, that the holy scriptures arose in the church of Christ, were given
to her, and only in her and by her can be rightly understood. He calls
attention also here to the tangible succession, which distinguishes the
catholic church from the arbitrary and ever-changing sects of heretics, and
which in all the principal congregations, especially in the original sects of
the apostles, reaches back without a break from bishop to bishop, to the
apostles themselves, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God.
"Come, now," says he, in his tract on Prescription, "if you
would practise inquiry to more advantage in the matter of your salvation, go
through the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles still
preside, in which their own authentic letters are publicly read, uttering the
voice and representing the face of every one. If Achaia is nearest, you have Corinth.
If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If
you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you live near Italy, you have
Rome, whence also we [of the African church] derive our origin. How happy is
the church, to which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine with their
blood," etc.
To estimate the weight of this
argument, we must remember that these fathers still stood comparatively very
near the apostolic age, and that the succession of bishops in the oldest churches
could be demonstrated by the living memory of two or three generations.
Irenaeus in fact, had been acquainted in his youth with Polycarp, a disciple of
St. John. But for this very reason we must guard against overrating this
testimony, and employing it in behalf of traditions of later origin, not
grounded in the scriptures.
Nor can we suppose that those
fathers ever thought of a blind and slavish subjection of private judgment to
ecclesiastical authority, and to the decision of the bishops of the apostolic
mother churches. The same Irenaeus frankly opposed the Roman bishop Victor.
Tertullian, though he continued essentially orthodox, contested various points
with the catholic church from his later Montanistic position, and laid down,
though at first only in respect to a conventional custom_the veiling of
virgins_the genuine Protestant principle, that the thing to be regarded,
especially in matters of religion, is not custom but truth.949 His pupil, Cyprian, with whom biblical and catholic were almost
interchangeable terms, protested earnestly against the Roman theory of the
validity of heretical baptism, and in this controversy declared, in exact
accordance with Tertullian, that custom without truth was only time-honored
error.950 The
Alexandrians freely fostered all sorts of peculiar views, which were afterwards
rejected as heretical; and though the paravdosi"
ajpostolikhv plays
a prominent part with them, yet this and similar expressions have in their
language a different sense, sometimes meaning simply the holy scriptures. So,
for example, in the well-known passage of Clement: "As if one should be
changed from a man to a beast after the manner of one charmed by Circe; so a
man ceases to be God’s and to continue faithful to the Lord, when he sets
himself up against the church tradition, and flies off to positions of human
caprice."
In the substance of its doctrine
this apostolic tradition agrees with the holy scriptures, and though derived,
as to its form, from the oral preaching of the apostles, is really, as to its
contents, one and the same with there apostolic writings. In this view the
apparent contradictions of the earlier fathers, in ascribing the highest
authority to both scripture and tradition in matters of faith, resolve
themselves. It is one and the same gospel which the apostles preached with
their lips, and then laid down in their writings, and which the church
faithfully hands down by word and writing from one generation to another..951
§ 140. The Rule of Faith and the Apostles’ Creed.
Rufinus (d.
410): Expos. in
Symbolum Apostolorum. In the Append. to Fell’s ed. of Cyprian, 1682; and in Rufini Opera, Migne’s
"Patrologia," Tom. XXI. fol. 335-386.
James Ussher (Prot.
archbishop of Armagh, d. 1655): De Romanae Ecclesiae Symbolo Apostolico vetere, aliisque
fidei formulis.
London, 1647. In his Works, Dublin 1847, vol. VII. p. 297 sqq. Ussher
broke the path for a critical history of the creed on the basis of the oldest
MSS. which he discovered.
John Pearson (Bp.
of Chester, d. 1686): Exposition of the Creed, 1659, in many editions
(revised ed. by Dr. E. Burton, Oxf. 1847; New York 1851). A standard work of
Anglican theology.
Peter King (Lord
Chancellor of England, d. 1733): History of the Apostles’ Creed. Lond.
1702.
Herm. Witsius (Calvinist,
d. at Leyden, 1708): Exercitationes sacrae in Symbolum quod Apostolorum dicitur. Amstel. 1700. Basil. 1739. 4°.
English translation by Fraser. Edinb. 1823, in 2 vols.
Ed. Köllner (Luth.):
Symbolik aller christl. Confessionen. Part I. Hamb. 1837, p. 6-28.
*Aug. Hahn: Bibliothek
der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der apostolischkatholischen [in the new ed. der
alten] Kirche. Breslau,
1842 (pp. 222). Second ed. revised and enlarged by his son, G. Ludwig Hahn. Breslau, 1877 (pp. 300).
J. W. Nevin: The Apostles’ Creed, in
the "Mercersburg Review," 1849. Purely doctrinal.
Pet. Meyers (R.C.): De Symboli Apostolici Titulo,
Origine ei antiquissimis ecclesiae temporibus Auctoritate. Treviris 1849 (pp. 210). A
learned defense of the Apostolic origin of the Creed.
W. W. Harvey: The History and Theology of
the three Creeds (the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian).
Lond. 1854. 2 vols.
*Charles A. Heurtley: Harmonia
Symbolica. Oxford, 1858.
Michel Nicolas:
Le Symbole des apĂ´tres. Essai historie. Paris, 1867. (Sceptical).
*J. Rawson Lumby: The History of the Creeds (ante-Nicene,
Nicene and Athanasian). London, 1873, 2d ed. 1880.
*C. A. Swainson: The Nicene and the
Apostles’ Creed. London, 1875.
*C. P. Caspari: (Prof. in Christiania): Quellen
zur Gesch. des Tauf, symbols und der Glaubensregel. Christiania, 1866-1879. 4 vols,
Contains new researches and discoveries of MSS.
*F. J. A. Hort: Two Dissertations on monogenh;" qeov" and on the "Constantinopolitan
Creed and other Eastern Creeds of the Fourth Century. Cambr. and Lond.
1876. Of great critical value.
F. B. Westcott: The Historic Faith. London,
1883.
Ph. Schaff:
Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 3-42, and II. 10-73. (4th ed. 1884.
In the narrower sense, by
apostolic tradition or the rule of faith (kanw;n th'" pivstew", regula fidei) was understood a doctrinal summary of Christianity, or
a compend of the faith of the church. Such a summary grew out of the necessity
of catechetical instruction and a public confession of candidates for baptism.
It became equivalent to a symbolum, that is, a sign of recognition among
catholic Christians in distinction from unbelievers and heretics. The
confession of Peter (Matt. 16:16 gave the key-note, and the baptismal formula
(Matt. 28:19) furnished the trinitarian frame-work of the earliest creeds or baptismal
confessions of Christendom.
There was at first no prescribed
formula of faith binding upon all believers. Each of the leading churches
framed its creed (in a sort of independent congregational way), according to
its wants, though on the same basis of the baptismal formula, and possibly
after the model of a brief archetype which may have come down from apostolic
days. Hence we have a variety of such rules of faith, or rather fragmentary
accounts of them, longer or shorter, declarative or interrogative, in the
ante-Nicene writers, as Irenaeus of Lyons (180), Tertullian of Carthage (200),
Cyprian of Carthage (250), Novatian of Rome (250), Origen of Alexandria (250),
Gregory Thaumaturgus (270), Lucian of Antioch (300), Eusebius of Caesarea
(325), Marcellus of Ancyra (340), Cyril of Jerusalem (350), Epiphanius of
Cyprus (374), Rufinus of Aquileja (390), and in the Apostolic Constitutions).952 Yet with all the differences in form and extent there is a
substantial agreement, so that Tertullian could say that the regula fidei was "una omnino, sola immobilis et
irreformabilis."
They are variations of the same theme. We may refer for illustration of the
variety and unity to the numerous orthodox and congregational creeds of the
Puritan churches in New England, which are based upon the Westminster
standards.
The Oriental forms are generally
longer, more variable and metaphysical, than the Western, and include a number
of dogmatic terms against heretical doctrines which abounded in the East. They
were all replaced at last by the Nicene Creed (325, 381, and 451), which was
clothed with the authority of oecumenical councils and remains to this day the
fundamental Creed of the Greek Church. Strictly speaking it is the only
oecumenical Creed of Christendom, having been adopted also in the West, though
with a clause (Filioque) which has become a wall of division. We shall
return to it in the next volume.
The Western forms_North African,
Gallican, Italian_are shorter and simpler, have less variety, and show a more
uniform type. They were all merged into the Roman Symbol, which became and
remains to this day the fundamental creed of the Latin Church and her
daughters.
This Roman symbol is known more
particularly under the honored name of the Apostles’ Creed. For a long
time it was believed (and is still believed by many in the Roman church) to be
the product of the Apostles who prepared it as a summary of their teaching
before parting from Jerusalem (each contributing one of the twelve articles by
higher inspiration).953 This
tradition which took its rise in the fourth century, 954is set aside by the variations
of the ante-Nicene creeds and of the Apostles’ Creed itself. Had the Apostles
composed such a document, it would have been scrupulously handed down without
alteration. The creed which bears this name is undoubtedly a gradual growth. We
have it in two forms.
The earlier form as found in old
manuscripts, 955is much shorter and may possibly go back to the third or
even the second century. It was probably imported from the East, or grew in
Rome, and is substantially identical with the Greek creed of Marcellus of
Ancyra (about 340), inserted in his letter to Pope Julius I. to prove his
orthodoxy, 956and with that contained in the Psalter of King
Aethelstan..957 Greek was
the ruling language of the Roman Church and literature down to the third
century..958
The longer form of the Roman
symbol, or the present received text, does not appear before the sixth or
seventh century. It has several important clauses which were wanting in the
former, as "he descended into hades,"959 the predicate
"catholic" after ecclesiam,960 "the communion of saints,"961 and "the life
everlasting."962 These
additions were gathered from the provincial versions (Gallican and North
African) and incorporated into the older form.
The Apostles’ Creed then, in its
present shape, is post-apostolic; but, in its contents and spirit, truly
apostolic. It embodies the faith of the ante-Nicene church, and is the product
of a secondary inspiration, like the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te deum, which embody the devotions of the same age, and which
likewise cannot be traced to an individual author or authors. It follows the
historical order of revelation of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
beginning with the creation and ending with the resurrection and life eternal.
It clusters around Christ as the central article of our faith. It sets forth
living facts, not abstract dogmas and speaks in the language of the people, not
of the theological school. It confines itself to the fundamental truths, is
simple, brief, and yet comprehensive, and admirably adapted for catechetical
and liturgical use. It still forms a living bond of union between the different
ages and branches of orthodox Christendom, however widely they differ from each
other, and can never be superseded by longer and fuller creeds, however
necessary these are in their place. It has the authority of antiquity and the
dew of perennial youth, beyond any other document of post-apostolic times. It
is the only strictly Ĺ“cumenical Creed of the West, as the Nicene Creed is the
only œcumenical Creed of the East.963 It is the Creed of creeds, as the Lord’s Prayer is the Prayer of
prayers.
Note.
The legendary formulas of the
Apostles’ Creed which appear after the sixth century, distribute the articles
to the several apostles arbitrarily and with some variations. The following is
from one of the pseudo-Augustinian sermons (see Hahn, p. 47 sq.):
"Decimo die post ascensionem
discipulis prae timore Judaeorum congregatis Dominus promissum Paracletum
misit: quo veniente ut candens ferrum inflammati omniumque linguarum peritia
repleti Symbolum composuerunt.
Petrus dixit: Credo in Deum Patrem
omnipotentem_creatorem coeli et terrae.
Andreas dixit: Et in Jesum Christum, Filium
ejus_unicum Dominum nostrum.
Jacobus
dixit: Qui conceptus est de Spiritu
Sancto_natus ex Maria Virgine.
Joannes dixit: Passus sub Pontio
Pilato_crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus.
Thomas dixit: Descendit ad inferna_tertia die
resurrexit a mortuis.
Jacobus dixit: Adscendit ad coelos_sedet ad
dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis.
Philippus dixit: Inde venturus est judicare vivos
et mortuos.
Bartholomaeus dixit: Credo in Spiritum Sanctum.
Matthaeus dixit: Sanctam Ecclesiam
catholicam_Sanctorum communionem.
Simon dixit: Remissionem peccatorum.
Thaddeus dixit: Carnis resurrectionem.
Matthias dixit: Vitam aeternam."
§ 141. Variations of the Apostles’ Creed.
We present two tables which show
the gradual growth of the Apostles’ Creed, and its relation to the Ante-Nicene
rules of faith and the Nicene Creed in its final form.964
II. COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE
APOSTLES’ CREED,
Showing
The Different Stages Of Its Growth To Its Present Form. The Additions Are Shown
In Brackets.
Formula
Marcelli Ancryani
About a.d. 340
Formula
Roma
From the 3rd
or 4th Century
Formula
Aquileiensis
From Rufinus (400)
Formula
Recepta
Since the 6th or
7th Century
(Later additions in
brackets)
The Received Text
Pisteuvw eij" qeo;n
pantakravtora
Credo in Deum Patrem
omnipotentem.
Credo in Deo Patre omnipotente,
[invisibili et
impassibili],
Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem,
[Creatorem coeli et
terrae],
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
[Maker of heaven
and earth].
Kai; eij" Cristo;n jIhsou'n, to;n uiJo;n aujtou' to;n monogenh',
to;n kuvrion hJmw'n,
Et in Christum
Jesum, Filium ejus
unicum, Dominum nostrum;
Et in Christo
Jesu, unico filio
ejus, Domino nostro;
Et in Jesum
Christum, Filium
ejus unicum, Dominum nostrum;
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord;
to;n gennhqevnta ejk
Pneuvmato" aJgivou kai; Mariva" th' " parqevnou,
qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto
et Maria Virgine;
qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto
ex Maria Virgine;
qui [conceptus] est de Spiritu
Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine;
who was [conceived] by the Holy
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;
to;n ejpi; Pontivou Pilavtou staurwqevnta
kai; tafevnta
cruicifixus est sub Pontio
Pilato, et sepultus;
cruicifixus sub Pontio Pilato,
et sepultus;
[passus] sub Pontio Pilato,
cruicifixus, [mortuus], et seupultus;
[suffered] under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified,
[dead], and buried.
[descendit ad inferna];
[descendit ad inferna];
[He descended into Hades];
kai; th'/ trivth/ hJmevra/
ajnastavnta ejk tw'n nekrw'n,
tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;
tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;
tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;
the third day He rose from the
dead;
ajnabavnta eij" tou;"
oujranou;"
ascendit in cœlus;
ascendit in cœlus;
ascendit in coelos;
He ascended into heaven;
kai; kaqhvmenon ejn dexia'/ tou'
patro;",
sedet ad dexteran Patris;
sedet ad dexteram Patris;
sedet ad dexteram Patris
[omnipotentis];
and sitteth on the right hand of
God the Father [Almighty];
o{qen er[cetai krivnein
zw'nta" kai; nekrouv"
inde venturus judicare vivos et
mortuos.
inde venturus est judicare vivos
et mortuos.
inde venturus judicare vivos et
mortuos.
from thence He shall come to
judge the quick and the dead.
Kai; eij" {Agion Pneu'ma
Et in Spiritum
Sanctum;
Et in Spiritu
Sancto.
[Credo] in Spiritum
Sanctum;
[I believe] in the Holy Ghost;
aJgivan ejkklhsivan
Sanctam Ecclesiam;
Sanctam Ecclesiam;
Sanctam Ecclesiam [catholicam],
[Sanctorum communionem];
the holy [catholic] church, [the
communion of saints];
ajfesin aJmartiw'n
remissionem peccatorum;
remissionem peccatorum;
remissionem peccatorum;
the forgiveness of sins;
sarko;" ajnavstasin [zwh;n aijwvnion]
carnis resurrectionem.
[hujus] carnis resurrectionem.
carnis resurrectionem; [vitam
aeternam. Amen].
the resurrection of the body;
[and the life everlasting Amen].
Comparative
Table of the Ante-Nicent Rules of Faith,
as related to the apostles’ creed and the nicene creed.
The Apostles' Creed. (Rome.) About a.d. 340.
Later additions are
in italics.
Irenaeus
(Gaul.) a.d. 170.
Tertullian
(North Africa.) a.d. 200.
Cyprian
(Carthage) a.d. 250.
Novatian
(Rome.) a.d. 250.
Origen
(Alexandria.) a.d. 230.
I believe
We believe
We believe
I believe
We believe
[We believe in]
1. In God the Father Almighty, Maker
of heaven and earth;
1. ... in one God the Father Almighty, who made
heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;
1 ... in one God, the Creator of the world, who produced all out of
nothing ...
1. in God the Father;
1. in God the Father and Almighty Lord;
1. One God, who created and framed every thing…
Who in the last
days sent
2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
2. And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God [our
Lord];
2. And in the Word, his Son, Jesus Christ;
2. in his Son Christ;
2. in the son of God, Christ Jesus, our Lord God;
2. Our Lord, Jesus Christ…born of the Father before
all creation…
3. Who was conceived by
the Holy Ghost born
of the Virgin Mary;
3. Who became flesh [of the
Virgin] for our salvation;
3. Who through the Spirit and
power of God the Father descended into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her
womb, and born of her;
3. born of the Virgin and the
Holy Ghost…
4. suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;
4. and his suffering [under
Pontius Pilate];
4. Was fixed on the cross [under
Pontius Pilate], was dead and buried;
4. suffered in truth, died;
5. He, descended into Hades;
the third day he rose from the dead;
5. and his rising from the dead;
5. rose again the third day;
5. rose from the dead;
6. He ascended into heaven, and
sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
6. and his bodily assumption
into heaven;
6. was taken into heaven and
sitteth at the right hand of God the Father;
6. was taken up…
7. from thence he shall come to
judge the quick and the dead.
7. and his coming from heaven in
the glory of the Father to comprehend all things under one head, ... and to
execute righteous judgment over all.
7. He will come to judge the
quick and the dead.
8. And I believe in the Holy Ghost;
8. And in the Holy Ghost ...
8. And in the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, the
Sanctifier, sent by Christ from the Father.
8. in the Holy Ghost;
8. in the Holy Ghost (promised of old to the Church, and granted in
the appointed and fitting time).
8. the Holy Ghost, united in honor and dignity with the Father
and the Son.
9. the holy Catholic
Church; the communion of saints;
10. the forgiveness of sins;
10. I believe in the forgiveness
of sins,
11. the resurrection of the
body;
11. And that Christ shall come
from heaven to raise all flesh … and to adjudge the impious and unjust ... to
eternal fire,
11. And that Christ will, after
the restoration of the flesh, receive his saints
12. and the life everlasting.965
12. and to give to the just and
holy immortality and eternal glory.
12. into the enjoyment of
eternal life and the promises of heaven, and judge the wicked with eternal
fire.
12. and eternal life through the
holy Church
The Apostles' Creed.
Gregory (Neo-Caesarean.) a.d. 270.
Lucian
(Antioch.) a.d. 300.
Eusebius
(Caesarea, Pal.) a.d. 325.
Cyril
(Jerusalem.) a.d. 350.
Nicæno-Constantinoplitan
Creed. a.d. 325 and
381.
I believe
[We believe in]
[We believe in]
We believe
We believe
We [I] believe
1. in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven
and earth;
1. One God the Father;
1. one God the Father Almighty;
1. in one God the Father Almighty;
1. in one God the Father Almighty;
1.
in
one God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
2. One Lord…God of God, the image and likeness of the Godhead,…the
Wisdom and Power which produces all creation, the true Son of the true Father…
2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten of
the Father before all ages, God of God, Wisdom, Life, Light …
2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten of
the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the
only-begotten Son, the first-born of every creature, begotten of God the Father
before all ages; by whom all things were made;
2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, veru God, by whom all
things were made;
2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; [God of God],
Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one
substance with the Father (oJmoouvsion tw'/
Patriv), by whom
all things were made;
3. who was conceived by
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;
3. who was born of a Virgin,
according to the Scriptures, and became man…
3. who for our salvation was
made flesh and lived among men;
3. who was made flesh and became
man;
3. who, for us men, and for our
salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost
and [of, ex] the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
4. suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;
4. who suffered for us;
4. who suffered;
4. was crucified and was buried;
4. He was crucified for us
under Pontius Pilate, and suffered,
and was buried;
5. He descended into Hades;
the third day be rose from the dead;
5. and rose for us on the third
day;
5. and rose on the third day
5. rose on the third day;
5. and on the third day he rose
again, according to the Scriptures;
6. He ascended into heaven, and
sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, Almighty;
6. And ascended into heaven and
sitteth on the right hand of God the Father;
6. and ascended to the Father;
6. and ascended into heaven, and
sitteth on the right hand of the Father
6. and ascended into heaven, and
sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
7. from thence he shall come to
judge the quick and the dead.
7. and again is coming with
glory and power , to judge the quick and the dead;
7. and will come again with
glory, to judge the quick and the dead.
7. and will come again in glory
to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end;
7. and he shall come again,
with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no
end;
8. And I believe in the Holy Ghost.
8. One Holy Ghost,…the minister of sancitifcation, in whom is
revealed God the Father, who is over all things and through all things, and God
the Son who is through all things _ a perfect Trinity, not divided nor
differing in glory, eternity, and sovereignty…
8. And in the Holy Ghost, given for consolation
and sanctification and perfection to those who believe …
8. We believe also in the Holy Ghost
8. and in one Holy Ghost, the Advocate, who spake in
the Prophets.
8. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver
of life, Who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son, Filioque], who with the
Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the
Prophets
9. the holy Catholic Church;
the communion of saints;
9. and in one baptism of
repentance for the remission on sins;
9. And [I believe] in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;
10. the forgiveness of sins;
10. and in one holy Catholic
Church;
10. we [I] acknowledge
one baptism for the remission of sins;
11. the resurrection of the
body;
11. and in the resurrection of
the flesh;
11. and we [I] look
for the resurrection of the dead;
12. and the life everlasting.
12. and in life everlasting (zwh;n aijwvnion).
12. and the life of the world
to come (zwh;n tou' mevllonto"
aijw'no").
The words in italics
in the last column are additions of the second Ĺ“cumenical Council (381);
words in brackets are Western changes.
§ 142. God and the Creation.
E. Wilh. Möller: Geschichte der
Kosmologie in der griechischen Kirche bis auf Origenes. Halle, 1860. p.
112-188; 474-560. The greater part of this learned work is devoted to the
cosmological theories of the Gnostics.
In exhibiting the several
doctrines of the church, we must ever bear in mind that Christianity entered
the world, not as a logical system but as a divine-hurnan fact; and that the
New Testament is not only a theological text-book for scholars but first and
last a book of life for all believers. The doctrines of salvation, of course,
lie in these facts of salvation, but in a concrete, living, ever fresh, and
popular form. The logical, scientific development of those doctrines from the
word of God and Christian experience is left to the theologians. Hence we must
not be surprised to find in the period before us, even in the most eminent
teachers, a very indefinite and defective knowledge, as yet, of important
articles of faith, whose practical force those teachers felt in their own
hearts and impressed on others, as earnestly as their most orthodox successors.
The centre of Christianity is the divine-human person and the divine-human work
of Christ. From that centre a change passed through the whole circle of
existing religious ideas, in its first principles and its last results,
confirming what was true in the earlier religion, and rejecting the false.
Almost all the creeds of the
first centuries, especially the Apostles’ and the Nicene, begin with confession
of faith in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of the visible
and the invisible. With the defence of this fundamental doctrine laid down in
the very first chapter of the Bible, Irenaeus opens his refutation of the
Gnostic heresies. He would not have believed the Lord himself, if he had
announced any other God than the Creator. He repudiates everything like an a priori construction of the idea of God,
and bases his knowledge wholly on revelation and Christian experience.
We begin with the general idea
of God, which lies at the bottom of all religion. This is refined,
spiritualized, and invigorated by the manifestation in Christ. We perceive the
advance particularly in Tertullian’s view of the irresistible leaning of the
human soul towards God, and towards the only true God. "God will never be
hidden", says he, "God will never fail mankind; he will always be
recognized, always perceived, and seen, when man wishes. God has made all that
we are, and all in which we are, a witness of himself. Thus he proves himself
God, and the one God, by his being known to all; since another must first be
proved. The sense of God is the original dowry of the soul; the same, and no
other, in Egypt, in Syria, and in Pontus; for the God of the Jews all souls
call their God." But nature also testifies of God. It is the work of his
hand, and in itself good; not as the Gnostics taught, a product of matter, or
of the devil, and intrinsically bad. Except as he reveals himself, God is,
according to Irenaeus, absolutely hidden and incomprehensible. But in creation
and redemption he has communicated himself, and can, therefore, not remain
entirely concealed from any man.
Of the various arguments for the
existence of God, we find in this period the beginnings of the cosmological and
physico-theological methods. In the mode of conceiving the divine nature we
observe this difference; while the Alexandrians try to avoid all
anthropomorphic and anthropopathic notions, and insist on the immateriality and
spirituality of God almost to abstraction, Tertullian ascribes to him even
corporeality; though probably, as he considers the non-existent alone
absolutely incorporeal, he intends by corporeality only to denote the
substantiality and concrete personality of the Supreme Being..966
The doctrine of the unity of
God, as the eternal, almighty, omnipresent, just, and holy creator and upholder
of all things, the Christian church inherited from Judaism, and vindicated
against the absurd polytheism of the pagans, and particularly against the
dualism of tile Gnostics, which supposed matter co-eternal with God, and
attributed the creation of the world to the intermediate Demiurge. This dualism
was only another form of polytheism, which excludes absoluteness, and with it
all proper idea of God.
As to creation: Irenaeus and
Tertullian most firmly rejected the hylozoic and demiurgic views of paganism
and Gnosticism, and taught, according to the book of Genesis, that God made the
world, including matter, not, of course, out of any material, but out of
nothing or, to express it positively, out of his free, almighty will, by his
word.967 This free
will of God, a will of love, is the supreme, absolutely unconditioned,
and all-conditioning cause and final reason of all existence, precluding every
idea of physical force or of emanation. Every creature, since it proceeds from
the good and holy God, is in itself, as to its essence, good..968 Evil, therefore, is not an original and substantial. entity, but a
corruption of nature, and hence can be destroyed by the power of redemption.
Without a correct doctrine of creation there can be no true doctrine of
redemption, as all the Gnostic systems show.
Origen’s view of an eternal
creation is peculiar. His thought is not so much that of all endless succession
of new worlds, as that of ever new metamorphoses of the original world,
revealing from the beginning the almighty power, wisdom and goodness of God.
With this is connected his Platonic view of the pre-existence of the soul. He
starts from the idea of an intimate relationship between God and the world and
represents the latter as a necessary revelation of the former. It would be
impious and absurd to maintain that there was a time when God did not show
forth his essential attributes which make up his very being. He was never idle
or quiescent. God’s being is identical with his goodness and love, and his will
is identical with his nature. He must create according to his nature,
and he will create. Hence what is a necessity is at the same time a free
act. Each world has a beginning, and an end which are comprehended in the
divine Providence. But what was before the first world? Origen connects the idea of time with that
of the world, but cannot get beyond the idea of an endless succession of time.
God’s eternity is above time, and yet fills all time. Origen mediates the
transition from God to the world by the eternal generation of the Logos who is
the express image of the Father and through whom God creates first the
spiritual and then the material world. And his generation is itself a continued
process; God always (ajeiv) begets his Son, and never was
without his Son as little as the Son is without the Father.969
§ 143. Man and the Fall.
It was the universal faith of
the church that man was made in the image of God, pure and holy, and fell by
his own guilt and the temptation of Satan who himself fell from his original
state. But the extent of sin and the consequences of the fall were not fully
discussed before the Pelagian controversy in the fifth century. The same is
true of the metaphysical problem concerning the origin of the human soul. Yet
three theories appear already in germ.
Tertullian is the author of traducianism,970 which derives soul and body from
the parents through the process of generation..971 It assumes that God’s creation de nihilo was finished on the sixth day, and that Adam’s soul was
endowed with the power of reproducing itself in individual souls, just as the
first created seed in the vegetable world has the power of reproduction in its
own kind. Most Western divines followed Tertullian in this theory because it
most easily explains the propagation of original sin by generation,972 but it materializes sin which
originates in the mind. Adam had fallen inwardly by doubt and disobedience
before he ate of the forbidden fruit.
The Aristotelian theory of creationism
traces the origin of each individual soul to a direct agency of God and
assumes a subsequent corruption of the soul by its contact with the body, but
destroys the organic unity of soul and body, and derives sin from the material
part. It was advocated by Eastern divines, and by Jerome in the West. Augustin
wavered between the two theories, and the church has never decided the
question.
The third theory, that of pre-existence,
was taught by Origen, as before by Plato and Philo. It assumes the
pre-historic existence and fall of every human being, and thus accounts for
original sin and individual guilt; but as it has no support in scripture or
human consciousness_except in an ideal sense_it was condemned under
Justinian, as one of the Origenistic heresies. Nevertheless it has been revived
from time to time as an isolated speculative opinion.973
The cause of the Christian faith
demanded the assertion both of man’s need of redemption, against Epicurean
levity and Stoical self-sufficiency, and man’s capacity for redemption, against
the Gnostic and Manichaean idea of the intrinsic evil of nature, and against
every form of fatalism.
The Greek fathers, especially
the Alexandrian, are very strenuous for the freedom of the will, as the ground
of the accountability and the whole moral nature of man, and as indispensable
to the distinction of virtue and vice. It was impaired and weakened by the
fall, but not destroyed. In the case of Origen freedom of choice is the main
pillar of his theological system. Irenaeus and Hippolytus cannot conceive of
man without the two inseparable predicates of intelligence and freedom. And
Tertullian asserts expressly, against Marcion and Hermogenes, free will as one
of the innate properties of the soul,974 like its derivation from God,
immortality, instinct of dominion, and power of divination.975 On the other side, however, Irenaeus, by his Pauline doctrine of
the casual connection of the original sin of Adam with the sinfulness of the
whole race, and especially Tertullian, by his view of hereditary sin and its
propagation by generation, looked towards the Augustinian system which the
greatest of the Latin fathers developed in his controversy with the Pelagian
heresy, and which exerted such a powerful influence upon the Reformers, but had
no effect whatever on the Oriental church and was practically disowned in part
by the church of Rome.976
§144. Christ and the Incarnation.
Literature.
*Dionys. Petavius (or Denis Petau, Prof.
of Theol. in Paris, d. 1652): Opus de theologicis dogmatibus, etc. Par. 1644-50, in 5 vols.
fol. Later ed. of Antw. 1700; by Fr. Ant. Zacharia, Venice, 1737 (in 7 vols.
fol); with additions by C. Passaglia, and C. Schrader, Rome, 1857 (incomplete);
find a still later one by J. B. Thomas, Bar le Due, 1863, in 8 vols. Petau was
a thoroughly learned Jesuit and the father of Doctrine History (Dogmengeschichte). In the section De
Trinitate (vol. II.), he has collected most of the passages of the
ante-Nicene and Nicene father, and admits a progressive development of the
doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and of the trinity, for which the Anglican,
G. Bull, severely censures him.
*George Bull (Bishop of St. David’s, d.
1710): Defensio
Fidei Nicaenae de aeterna Divinitate Filii Dei, ex scriptis catholic. doctorum
qui intra tria ecclesiae Christianae secula floruerunt. Oxf. 1685. (Lond. 1703; again
1721; also in Bp. Bull’s complete Works, ed. by Edw. Burton, Oxf. 1827, and
again in 1846 (vol. V., Part I. and II.) English translation in the
"Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology," (Oxford 1851, 2 vols.). Bishop
Bull is still one of the most learned and valuable writers on the early
doctrine of the Trinity, but he reads the ante-Nicene fathers too much through
the glass of the Nicene Creed, and has to explain and to defend the language of
more than one half of his long list of witnesses.
Martini: Gesch. des
Dogmas von der Gottheit Christi in den ersten vier Jahrh. Rost. 1809 (rationalistic).
Ad. Möller
(R.C.): Athanasius der Gr. Mainz. 1827, second ed. 1844 (Bk
1. Der Glaube der Kirche der drei ersten Jahrh. in Betreff
der Trinitaet, etc.,
p. 1-116).
Edw. Burton: Testimonies
of the ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ. Second ed. Oxf. 1829.
*F. C. Baur ((I. 1860): Die
christl. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit u. Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer
geschichtlichen Entwicklung. TĂĽb. 1841-43. 3 vols. (I. p. 129-341). Thoroughly
independent, learned, critical, and philosophical.
G. A. Meier: Die Lehre
von der Trinitaet in ihrer Hist. Entwicklung. Hamb. 1844. 2 Vols. (I. p.
48-l34).
*Isaac A. Dorner: Entwicklungsgeschichte
der Lehre von der Person Christi (1839), 2d ed. Stuttg. u. Berl. 1845-56. 2 vols. (I. pp.
122-747). A masterpiece of exhaustive and conscientious learning, and
penetrating and fair criticism. Engl. translation by W. I. Alexander and D. W.
Simon. Edinb. 1864, 5 vols.
Robr. Is. Wilberforce (first Anglican, then, since 1854, R.C.): The Doctrine of the
Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in its relation to Mankind and to the
Church (more doctrinal than historical). 4th ed. Lond. 1852.
(Ch. V. pp. 93-147.) Republ. from an earlier ed., Philad. 1849.
Ph. Schaff: The Conflict of
Trinitarianism and Unitarianism in the ante-Nicene age, in the "Bibl.
Sacra." Andover, 1858, Oct.
M. F. Sadler: Emmanuel, or, The Incarnation
of the Son of God the Foundation of immutable Truth. London 1867
(Doctrinal).
Henry Parry Liddon (Anglican, Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral): The Divinity of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. (The Bampton Lectures for 1866). London 1867, 9th
ed. 1882. Devout, able, and eloquent.
Ph. Schaff:
Christ and Christianity. N. Y. 1885, p. 45-123. A sketch of the history of
Christology to the present time.
Comp. the relevant
sections in the doctrine-histories of Hagenback,
Thomasius, Harnack, etc.
The Messiahship and Divine
Sonship of Jesus of Nazareth, first confessed by Peter in the name of all the
apostles and the eye-witnesses of the divine glory of his person and his work,
as the most sacred and precious fact of their experience, and after the
resurrection adoringly acknowledged by the sceptical Thomas in that
exclamation, "My Lord and my God!"_is the foundation stone of the
Christian church;977 and the denial of the mystery of the incarnation
is the mark of antichristian heresy.978
The whole theological energy of
the ante-Nicene period concentrated itself, therefore, upon the doctrine of
Christ as the God-man and Redeemer of the world.
