1. One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church
Whereas the Reformation created a distinct break with Roman Catholicism concerning salvation, religious authority, and the church, it does not follow that the Reformers’ system of thought was brand new. Nor does it mean that all theological and spiritual development prior to the Reformation unilaterally confirms the position of Roman Catholicism at the time of the Reformation. The progress of doctrinal development is too complex and dynamic to encourage such confidence. The doctrines of Christ’s person and work belong to all Christians, and the foundation for the Reformation’s understanding of salvation was laid in patristic Christology.
The early church established its life and thought through adherence to the doctrine of the sole authority of Scripture and protected that principle vigorously against the attempts of heretics to move Christians away from biblical doctrine. The early church confession of the truth was born out of a willingness to suffer for the truth. Evangelicals have shared, and must continue to share, that stewardship.
ESSAY 1
ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, APOSTOLIC CHURCH
Thomas J. Nettles
It was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday at Crossroads Church, a Southern Baptist church in Libertyville, Illinois, a village about thirty-five miles north of Chicago. The church has a mixture of transplanted Southerners, Midwesterners, Northerners, and Easterners from denominational backgrounds ranging from Baptist, Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Evangelical Free, Bible church, Mormon, and Roman Catholic.
Present to make a few informative remarks about life alternatives to abortion was an energetic, yet humble and earnest, young woman representing several organizations in Lake County. She introduced herself as “a member of St. JosepII’s” (the large Roman Catholic church in town) and said,“our Scripture reading this morning was, ‘Behold, I am come to do your will, O God.’” She said that, although she was naturally shy, this thought had given her courage, and she had come to our congregation with that purpose in mind. After outlining how we could use and contribute to several programs in which she was involved, she departed from her outlined speech and said with a moving sincerity, “I know that I am not supposed to be sectarian in my presentations, but I think you will understand. These problems I’m describing would not even exist if our society would simply believe and practice the commandments, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and ‘Thou shalt not commit adulteiy. ’ ”
Though there were many things she could have said that our congregation would have disagreed with, and though several of our members formerly had been at St. JosepII’s, none of us disagreed with her motive for speaking or with her theological foundation for being active in supporting the ministry of life. Personally I felt at one with her on this issue.
AN UNEASY DISHARMONY
That personal experience is a microcosm of the present evangelical-Ro-man Catholic coexistence. We have so much in common in a world that is increasingly post-Christian and virtually neopagan in its morality and worldview. Evangelicals often find allies among Catholics in their neighborhood
on many moral issues, in a belief in divine revelation, the reality of the fall of humanity and its connection with Adam, the Trinity, and the “character value” of church attendance. Catholics and Protestants alike are often more divided within their own ranks on foundational Christian issues than the conservatives in each group are against each other.
Contemporary experience gives new slant to the way evangelicals discuss Roman Catholic theological heritage. Evangelicals should recognize that some structures and current practices of local congregations give at least an implicit place of prominence to the necessity of trusting Christ alone for salvation. Within Roman Catholicism many individuals are experiencing the power of the saving grace of Christ just as surely as within evangelical protestantism.
Whenever God grants saving faith, it is the same. It always embraces God’s righteousness and approves His way of justifying sinners as seen in the completed work of Christ. Peter wrote to “those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours” (2 Peter 1:1). Peter’s faith was not superior in quality to that of the humblest saint in the churches to which he wrote. Wherever our God grants faith He does it by the righteousness of Christ, and it is of the same quality and value as apostolic faith. Saving faith for an evangelical is not different from saving faith for a Roman Catholic.
Nor would we claim that all the members of evangelical churches understand the gospel of justification or have ever experienced its reality. One of the great laments of most evangelical pastors concerns the chronic absenteeism and lack of spiritual evidences on the part of 50 percent of the congregation. Some of this exists because evangelicals have developed a superstitious ritualism in evangelism that rivals the doctrine of Penance or the use of indulgences in creating carnal and false security. On a recent trip to the Ukraine one evangelistic mission reported 3,500 professions of faith. It appears that the majority of these were tallied by counting the number of raised hands. One of the Ukrainians told the group’s leader, “We did not all raise our hands, but if you would come back to teach the Bible every week I am certain that we all would.”
At an evangelistic rally in Texas a young girl walked the aisle during a postsermon altar call, explaining that she was doing it on behalf of a friend. Her Mend had been to the rally the year before and had became a Christian some months after that. Having recently died of cystic fibrosis, however, she was not able to attend this one. But, before she died, her Mend assured her that she would would “walk down the aisle to make public her decision” in her place at the next conference. This was probably more a sentimental gesture than a superstitious ritual, but many evangelicals have “walked the aisle” thinking that simply by doing so they have ensured their salvation. These extrabiblical activities have been used as a substitute for true gospel preaching on many occasions in evangelical practice, and the results have been no less devastating than the false gospel embodied in the sacramental system of Rome.
Given that admission, we are quick to say that the errors in evangelical practice do not ameliorate the doctrinal errors of Roman Catholicism. The evangelical error generally occurs through ignorance and the lack of theological consistency; the Roman error is institutionalized and creedalized. The evangelical error comes in spite of a confessional history to the contrary; the Roman error purposefully canonized a historical aberration at the sixteenth-century Council of Trent and has maintained it since.
BUILDING UP THE BODY OF CHRIST
The scriptural pattern for this development was described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 3 and expanded in Ephesians 4. As a wise masterbuilder Paul laid a foundation. That foundation was—and is—Christ. Others built on the foundation with materials either worthy or unworthy of the majesty and strength of the foundation.
The history of the church has followed that pattern. Christians in the first centuries laid the foundation in confessional precision. The doctrine of God in particular relation to the person of Christ received intense attention and resulted in a crescendo of affirmations, unpacking in a brilliant display of theological tenacity the biblical treasures of Christ’s deity and humanity and the ineffable wonder of the One God in His three-personed eternal existence. Our grasp of who He is was always tied to what He came to do. As the Creed of Nicea (a.d. 323), in harmony with Luke 19:10 and John 3:16 and 12:47, states, “on account of our salvation” the one who was essentially God was made also man. Salvation never receded from the picture in early church history, but, unlike the issue of Christology, it did not receive a clear definitive formulation. Already, on top of the foundation, worthy and unworthy materials were becoming part of the construction.
Irenaeus’s development of the concept of recapitulation was powerful, and, though manageable as a part of different Soneriological schemes, its dependence (xi Christ’s human obedience clearly harmonizes with the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Tertullian’s traducianism in anthropology virtually demands the monergism of reformation thought, but his Soneriology was disorganized and shows little coherent development. The distinction between venial and mortal sins was prominent in his thinking. Augustine’s profound understanding of sin and grace exposed and corrected several erroneous tendencies of the patristic period, which were exaggerated and systematized by Pelagius. Pelagianism, after conciliar rejection at Ephesus in a.d. 431, could not appear under its own name any longer, but it continued in disguise as a particular emphasis of Augustinianism.
The subsequent centuries of Christian thought moved in and out between these types of materials until the crisis of the Reformation began to sort out with finality the dross from the precious metal. The Reformers rediscovered Augustine; they also expanded and clarified his teaching by means of heavy exposure to biblical exposition. The Soneriology that emphasized justification as a forensic, declaratory, imputative act of God consistent with all aspects of the obedience of Christ emerged as a corrective to the semi-Pela-gianism into which much scholastic thought had fallen.1
Rome refused to recognize the validity of the theological insights of the Reformers and called a council, not to discuss the issues openly but to issue a series of dogmas and anathemas. The pope served as an oracle, not as a clear exemplar of apostolic commitment to biblical doctrine. Calvin responded, “The proclamation of the Council is entitled to no more weight than the cry of an auctioneer.”2 He summarized the grave concerns of the Reformers concerning the conciliar method of treating the serious theological issues that were at stake.
Can anyone still be so stupid as to think of seeking any alleviation of our evils from a council? We complain that the whole doctrine of godliness is adulterated by impious dogmas; that the whole worship of God is vitiated by foul and dis-graceful superstitions; that the pure institution of the sacraments has been supplanted by horrible sacrilege; . . . that poor souls, which ought to have been ruled by the doctrine of Christ, are oppressed by cruel bondage; . . . that the grace of Christ not only lies half-buried, but is partly torn to pieces, partly altogether extinguished. All these complaints, which we have made for many years, and in published books, and which we make in our daily sermons, we are prepared to prove well founded, whenever a freedom of utterance is given.
. . . Still, lest the Christian world might lay aside dissension, and unite in holy concord, a Council is summoned. Ought not its members to have discussed controverted points before they prejudged either themselves or others? They allow nothing of the kind. Nay, should any one have attempted to change one tittle of their customs, they hold him as already condemned.3
The Reformers sought to remove what they saw as wood, hay, and stubble from the foundation of Christ. The Roman response at Trent was not according to Christ or the early church. Establishing a parity of authority between oral tradition and Scripture contradicts the structure of authority and method reflected in the writings of Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and others.
Wherever gold, jewels, and precious stones appear, they claim our loyalty, celebration, and embrace. Wherever dross scums the surface or chaff chokes the air, they deserve our rejection and sometimes call for our mourning. Sometimes the impurity is harmless, sometimes it is damning; sometimes it is merely an idiosyncrasy, sometimes it is heresy. Sometimes there is much of both jewels and dross in any one individual or era. The worth and beauty of Christ have no more noble expression than in the words of Bernard’s “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee.” Few things, however, match the thick darkness of his (mis)understanding of the nature of Christian “mission” than that seen in his advocacy of the Second Crusade. The church is indebted to Calvin’s exegetical powers and his coherent presentation of reformation thought, but it certainly must shrink from his approval of the death of Michael Servetus. All that accords with the foundation constitutes the form of the true church—that which defines what “unity in the faith” is and what the “knowledge of the Son of God” is. This is the heritage of everyone who is a Christian.
Every earnest quest for the truth, every courageous defense of the faith once delivered to the saints, every event that exposes error and strengthens erne’s grasp of true doctrine, every confession (individual or corporate) in which Christ is honored and the powers of this world are scorned, and every act of brotherly love dome in the name of Christ—these belong to all of us. Polycarp’s faithfulness to death, Ignatius’s zeal for unity and truth and warnings against heretics, Justin’s philosophical sophistication subdued to the truth of Jesus, Tertullian’s pugnacious protection of the rule of faith, Irenaeus’s pastoral alertness to the demands of biblical revelation in contrast to Gnostic speculation, Athanasius’s penetrating grasp of the Incarnation, Augustine’s experiential theology of grace, Anselm’s devotional philosophy, and Aquinas’s philosophical devotedness are all cords within the tapestry of Christian testimony in the world. Whether it is doctrine or devotion, if it is true, it claims the Christian. It inheres in the structure of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church that is the pillar and foundation of the truth.
HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION: CHRIST IN THE CREEDS
Evangelicals strongly affirm the creedal conclusions that extend from Nicea to Chalcedon. They are principial elements of Christianity, not because they are conciliar but because they give clear and studied affirmation of the biblical teaching cm the most foundational truth of Christian faith. The confessional history of evangelicalism roars its agreement with the Christological and theological formulations of those early councils and endorses them as its own.
Nicea counteracted Arius’s reductionistic Christology by affirming the “essential Unity of the Father and the Son . . . without destroying the personal distinctness.”4 The creed affirmed that God by eternal nature is Father and, therefore, out of his nature as Father, generates, not creates, the Son. The Son thus shares the same nature as the Father and can be called “true God from true God” maintaining both His deity and eternality as a separate personal subsistence. In addition, His being “made flesh” for our salvation means that He was “made man.” Human nature undiminished in any of its essential properties was His.
A series of reactions in the following generation led alternatingly to antithetical heresies for over a century beyond Nicea until a balanced and biblical formula was adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in a.d. 451. The chief architect of the statement was Leo I, bishop of Rome from 440 to 461. His clarity of thought was of benefit to the whole church. His contribution is not, however, due to his claim of authoritative regulation of church affairs in the West5 but to his insightful Christological vision. His application of the creed of Nicea and of the rule of faith, and the richness of his insights into the implication of scriptural passages concerning Christ, have become the model of clear practical thinking about the Incarnation.
After a discussion of the “common and uniform profession of faith” and the “teaching of the Scriptures,” Leo opened to the Christian world one of the richest caches of verbal jewels ever to grace a Christian pen: “In this preservation, then, of the real quality of both natures, both being united in erne person, lowliness was taken on by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by the immortal.”6
How can one construct a more profound bedrock for the doctrine of penal, substitutionary, propitiatory atonement accomplished once for all than these words of Leo: “And in order to pay the debt of our fallen state, inviolable nature was united to one capable of suffering so that (and this sort of reparation we needed) one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, could die in the one nature and not die in the other.”7 What better preparation could evangelicals have for exposing the errors of kenoticism than Leo’s analysis of the nature of the union between the human and the divine?
In the whole and perfect nature of the true man, then, the true God was born, complete in His own nature, complete in ours. But by ours we mean that which the Creator formed in us at the beginning and which He took upon Himself, to redeem it. That part which the Deceiver added and man, deceived, accepted left no traces in the Saviour. He did not share in our sins just because He undertook to share in our weaknesses. He took on the aspect of servitude without the stain of sin; He added to the humanity but did not lessen the divinity. For that putting off of self whereby He the invisible made Himself visible and as Creator and Lord of all things wished to become one of the mortals was an inclination to mercy, not a failure of power. He who keeping the form of God created man, the same was made man in an aspect of servitude. Both His natures keep their intrinsic quality without defect; and, just as the aspect of God does not remove the aspect of servitude, so also this latter does not lessen the aspect of God.8
Pertinent passages in this letter of Leo could be multiplied. They became immortalized in theological history when they served as the foundation for the symbol of Chalcedon in the following section:
Our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the Selfsame of a rational soul and body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead, the Self-same co-essential with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in these last days, the Self-same co-essential, for us and for our salvation (born) of Mary the Virgin Theotokos as to the Manhood; One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two natures unconfiisedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the property of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis.9
That evangelicals gladly embrace these truths as elements of what the Constantinopolitan Symbol called the “One, holy, catholic, apostolic church” and see them as essential for evangelicalism is demonstrated in its confessional history. Consistent with this doctrinal commitment, the Augsburg Confession, written by Philipp Melanchthon early in the Reformation, began, “We unanimously hold and teach, in accordance with the decree of the Council of Nicea, that there is one divine essence, which is called and which is truly God, and that there are three Persons in this one divine essence, equal in power and alike eternal. ” In its article on “The Son of God” Augsburg affirms Chalcedonian Christology as well as all the Christological elements of the Apostles’ Creed: “It is also taught among us that God the Son became man, born of the virgin Mary, and that the two natures, divine and human, are so inseparably united in one person that there is one Christ, true God and true man, who was truly born, suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried in order to be a sacrifice not only for original sin but also for all other sins and to propitiate God’s wrath.”10
Chapter 2 of the Westminster Confession affirms the doctrine of the Trinity and provides an abundance of Scripture proofs along with the conciliar language: “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. ” Paragraph 2 of chapter 8 combines the language of Nicea and Chalcedon in its exposition of the “Son of God.” The Son “being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father” in His incarnation took “upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin.” Being conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, He was born “of her substance” with the result that “two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.” This one person is “very God and very man, yet one Christ.”11
The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England speaks of the unity of the Godhead in “three persons, of one substance, power, and eternitie, the father, the sonne, and the holy ghost.” The Son is described in the language of the creeds as “very and eternall God, of one substaunce with the Father” who also “toke man’s nature in the wombe” of Mary, that is “of her substaunce: so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and manhood, were joyned together in one person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christe, very GOD and very man.”12
When the Evangelical Alliance for the United States was founded in 1867, it adopted a nine-point doctrinal statement of the English counterpart and added the following resolution:
Resolved, that in the same spirit we propose no new creed, but taking broad, historical, and Evangelical catholic [!] ground, we solemnly reaffirm and profess our faith in all the doctrines of the inspired word of God, and in the consensus of doctrines as held by all true Christians from the beginning. And we do more especially affirm our belief in the divine-human person and atoning work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the only and sufficient source of salvation, as the heart and soul of Christianity, and as the center of all true Christian union and fellowship.13
THE STRUGGLE FOR TRUTH
A COMMON BUT SEPARATING PRINCIPLE
A principle that undergirds the continuing polemic between Catholic and Protestant is this: Biblical faith can exist only in the presence of truth. For that reason, not only may we embrace these truths, we must embrace the truth wherever found just as surely as we must eschew error and heresy. Belief in anything but the truth is death itself; one cannot breathe in a vacuum or have one’s thirst quenched by “springs without water” (2 Peter 2:17). Genuine believers may have error mixed with the truth by which they are saved, but the error contributes nothing to the vitality of faith; it only weakens it. For this reason Peter was urgent in his assurance that he had not followed cunningly devised fables but was an eyewitness of the events he set forth as the basis of faith (1:16). Even so, Luke takes care that Theophilus may know the “certainty of the things” he had been taught (Luke 1:4). The union of faith and truth is a commitment of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church and was defended vigorously by the Fathers.
To the Fathers, faith and truth were inextricably related to each other. In his Proof of the Apostolic Preaching Irenaeus urges Marcianus, “We must keep strictly, without deviation, the rule of faith, and carry out the commands of God, believing in, and fearing Him, because He is Lord, and loving Him, because He is Father.” He then explained further the relation of truth to faith.
Action, then, is preserved by faith, because unless you believe, says Isaias, you shall not continue; and faith is given by truth, since faith rests upon reality: for we shall believe what really is, as it is, and believing what really is, as it is for ever, keep a firm hold on our assent to it. Since, then it is faith that maintains our salvation, one must take great care of this sustenance, to have a true perception of reality.14
Though the Christological foundation for Romanism and evangelicalism is virtually the same, significant Soteriological disagreements persist. Evangelicals contend that Roman Catholicism refused to embrace the truth of justification during the period when it was most actively and clearly discussed. Instead, Rome opted for a very strong stream of medieval thought, which isolated the efficacy of saving grace to the sacraments and included the sinner’s progressive sanctification by infused grace as an essential element of their definition of justification.
This is both legalistic and antinomian, unbiblical on both counts. It is legalistic in that the sinner’s obedience constitutes a part of his standing justified before God; it is antinomian in that it accepts as meritorious an obedience that falls short of the law’s true demands. It creates, therefore, false issues of conscience on the one hand and false security on the other. Obedience to the truth—and the church is the “pillar and foundation of the truth”—demands that one expose as false and damaging any trust in the sacramental efficacy of the ordinances, the successful completion of penitential satisfaction, or one’s own devotion or merits. These are obnoxious to the completed work of Christ whose perfect righteousness and propitiatory death compose the sole ground of the sinner’s right standing before God.
In the same way, any evangelical idols that provide superstitious strongholds must be destroyed. The quest for truth cannot be a respecter of persons. Not only must evangelicals criticize Rome’s failure to embrace the gospel, they must judge themselves for their failure to implement in its purity the gospel they profess.
AN ENERGETIC QUEST FOR FAITHFULNESS TO TRUTH
Just as the patristic affirmation for the unity between faith and truth is common, so is the existential quest for faithfulness to, and willingness to suffer for, that truth. The reality of our own faith and struggle demands that we go beyond the words as doctrinal abstractions and enter into at least a portion of the ante-Nicene struggle. The particular vocabulary finally cree-dalized culminated a dynamic process. Christological vocabulaiy made cameo appearances in the drama of life and death before the Nicene climax and the Constantinopolitan denouement. We are interested in being a part of not just the conclusions but the faithful stewardship of gifts that developed them. The movement toward Nicene orthodoxy fueled intensity of devotion to the gospel in personal purity, material sacrifice, and aggressive witness. The laborers who bore the toil in the most unclimatable part of the day are the brothers of all who are true believers. Our fellowship is with the truth and with all who have believed it, defended it, and suffered for it in any age.
The reality of Christ’s personhood as God and man fired the devotion and purity of the Fathers. Polycarp urged young men to be “blameless in all things, caring for purity before everything,” and exhorted virgins to walk in a “blameless and pure conscience” that they might be “well pleasing unto Him in the present world.”15 He commended Ignatius and others who ran “in faith and righteousness” and are in “their due places in the presence of the Lord,” for they “loved not this present world, but him that died for our sakes and was raised by God for us.”16 His prayer for the “patient endurance” and “purity” of his contemporaries was with the confidence that God would Himself grant “a portion among His saints” to all who “shall believe cm our Lord Jesus Christ and cm His Father that raised him from the dead. ”17
His admonitions to others were not empty charades, for Polycarp himself sealed the witness that he commended so strongly in Ignatius forty-five years earlier. When asked to revile Christ to save himself Polycarp replied, “Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” When he offered his final prayer, it was in thanksgiving that his intercession for the martyrs a generation before was now an intercession for himself that he would “receive a portion among the number of martyrs in the cup of Christ unto resurrection of eternal life.”18
On his way to Rome as a prisoner, Ignatius wrote to Polycarp and to six churches. His letters throb with energy and admonition. Interpreters may be divided over the meaning of his strong urgings for union with and obedience to the bishop in each respective congregation. “Let us be careful,” he admonished the Ephesians, “not to resist the bishop, that by our submission we may give ourselves to God.”19 He had said already in a startling but cryptic exhortation that they should glorify Jesus Christ by being perfectly joined together in one submission. In this submission, which he identifies with “submitting yourselves to your bishop and presbytery,” they would “be sanctified in all things.”20
None, however, can read his letters unmoved by his zeal for Christ, a zeal manifested in purity of life and willingness to suffer for the truth. The most prominent theme of the Ignatian correspondence is oneness. This unity expresses itself in God Himself, in the Incarnation, and in the church. In God we see the unity of Father and Son. In the Incarnation we see the unity of Christ’s person and the unified purpose of His passion and resurrection. In the church we see a unity of members with officers and members with each other. All this can be summarized as a unity in the truth.
Early in his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius expressed his desire to write them a separate treatise in order to expound the present economy of God’s plan “relating to the new man Jesus Christ.”21 Though his circumstances never allowed him to expound this in detail, it undergirds the concerns expressed in all his letters. He summarizes his formulation in the phrase, “which consisteth in faith towards Him and in love towards Him, in His passion and resurrection.”22
While he formulated a model to enhance Christian unity and perseverance, Ignatius also anticipated the existential and doctrinal issues that developed Nicene orthodoxy. The central theme of this “new man” is reconciliation, God’s creation of unity in His redeemed community. At the most basic level, the “new man” reflects the unity that exists within the Godhead. The unity of Father and Son, as well as the unity of the apostles with Christ, establishes the foundation upon which the church should strive toward unity. In fact, its unity is a mark of its truthfulness. Ignatius considered that model so compelling that he told the Magnesians that they should make no attempt even to “think anything right for yourselves apart from others,” and they should “be zealous to do all things in godly concord.”23 Nothing should have power to divide them; one should no longer “regard his neighbor after the flesh” (that is, he should consider his neighbor as one with himself in the manifestation of the new man), should study conformity to God and “pay reverence one to another,” and should be united “with the bishop and with them that preside over you as an ensample and a lesson of incorruptibility.”24
In the same spirit Ignatius exhorted the Trallians to submit to their bishop: “For when ye are obedient to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, it is evident to me that ye are living not after men but after Jesus Christ, who died for us, that believing cm His death ye might escape death.’,25 It is as if Ignatius were saying, “Christian faith is not the creative manifestation of religious individualism, but comes by a revelation from outside of us and calls for belief, unity, and submission. We forsake our own way and move into the corporate expression in word, worship, and life of His way.” Consequently,
Let there be one prayer in common, one supplication, one mind, one hope, in love and in joy unWameaWe, which is Jesus Christ, than whom there is nothing better. Hasten to come together all of you, as to one temple, even God; as to one altar even to one Jesus Christ, who came forth from One Father and is with One and departed unto One.26
An even more striking picture of God’s purpose of unity in the “new man” comes from the Incarnation. The Christ is both God and man in one person. Ignatius greets the Ephesians in the name of “Jesus our God.” Jesus Christ is “our inseparable life,” the “only physician, of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and Son of God.”27 The newness of His humanity is in its unity with His deity. He is “one Jesus Christ who after the flesh was of David’s race, who is Son of Man and Son of God. ”28 “One Jesus Christ” is a phrase I take to foreshadow the affirmation of the unity of the person of Christ. He retains undiminished all the attributes of His deity while taking into His person a full human nature. For this reason, “It is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practise Judaism” (not only because as a whole it rejected Christ’s deity, but because it identified itself through racial and ceremonial exclusiveness); Jews may be included in the “one body of His church” joining the Gentiles as “His saints and faithful people,” for an ensign has been set “through His resurrection.”29 Believers who formerly were Jews no longer observed sabbaths but fashioned their lives “after the Lord’s day, on which our life also arose through Him and through His death.”30
The sure demise of wickedness accompanied the Incarnation when “God appeared in the likeness of man unto newness of everlasting life.” Since this has occurred, Ignatius can ask, “Wherefore do we not all walk prudently, receiving the knowledge of God which is Jesus Christ.” And in imitation of Him we are zealous, “vying with each other who shall suffer the greater wrong, who shall be defrauded, who shall, be set at nought. ... In all purity and temperance abide ye in Christ.”31
We have true union with each other only if we have “union with Jesus and with the Father.”32 The Son, preincarnate, pre-Christ, dwelt in the full consciousness of His deity “with the Father before the worlds.” He has now “appeared at the end of time,” individuated as a person in a body located in time and space on earth, having come “forth from One Father.” His spatialization as man diminished neither His own deity nor His union with the Father (“and is with One”); and in His ascension he reestablished that unity on a different basis now as the Christ (“departed unto One”).33 If we receive these truths, our union is with each other, with Christ, and with the Father. Our individuality is heightened and refined and maintained in its purity; yet at the same time it is submitted to other members of the body, united with Christ, and joined with the Father.
TRUTH AND THE HOPE OF SUFFERING
Christians endure persecutions so that unbelievers might be convinced that “there is one God who manifested Himself through Jesus Christ His Son, who is His Word that proceeded from silence, who in all things was well-pleasing unto Him that sent Him.”34 And seeing that He was raised from the dead and through the Spirit He is our only teacher, “How shall we be able to live apart from Him?” It would be vain, then, to forsake such a life by departing from the true teachings about His work. “Be ye fully persuaded concerning the birth and the passion and the resurrection, which took place in the time of the governorship of Pontius Pilate; for these things were truly and certainly done by Jesus Christ our hope.”35
The reality of hope seemed to push itself into the forefront of Ignatius’s correspondence to the Trallians. Having addressed them as “elect and worthy of God” and having reminded them of the “peace in flesh and spirit” that comes through the “passion of Jesus Christ,” he emphasized that Christ Himself “is our hope through our resurrection unto Him.”36
The unity between the historicity of doctrine and the comfort of personal experience is strong in this epistle. He clearly perceives the devastating implications of the Gnostic heresy and voices uncompromising exhortations concerning the churcII’s belief in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. In fact, we learn that much of his concern about the churches’ obedience to the bishop is at bottom a concern for theological integrity. “For when ye are obedient to the bishop as to Jesus Christ,” he wrote, “it is evident to me that ye are living not after men but after Jesus Christ, who died for us, that believing on His death ye might escape death.”37
The context of this urgency, however, is the necessity of maintaining apostolic teaching if we are to have any true hope in this fatal conflict with the world. This obedience, therefore, is “as to the Apostles of Jesus Christ our hope; for if we lived in Him we shall also be found in Him. ” This identification of the bishop with apostolic doctrine, and thus apostolic hope, is reemphasized when Ignatius warns the Trallians against those who mingle heresy with an apparent “show of honesty” as those who administer a “deadly drug with honied wine.” The best guard against such men is to be “inseparable from Jesus Christ and from the bishop and from the ordinances of the Apostles. ” They are to be strengthened by faith (which he identifies with “the flesh of the Lord”) and love (which he identifies with “the Hood of Jesus Christ”).38
THE BISHOP AND TRUTH
Ignatius believed that union with the bishop was for the eternal safety of Christ’s sheep, not because sacramental efficacy exists in such union but because only in that fold may one find the truth of Christ’s incarnation, passion, and resurrection. Without those truths one cannot be saved. He told the Philadelphians, therefore, “As children ... of the truth, shun division and wrong doctrine.” These two adhere to each other. Division—because it places one outside the community of revelation—naturally leads to wrong doctrine. “As many as are of God and of Jesus Christ, they are with the bishop; and as many as shall repent and enter into the unity of the Church, these also shall be of God, that they may be living after Jesus Christ.” One who follows a schismatic does not inherit the kingdom of God, says Ignatius. Why so? Because the only thing that would prompt a break from the church and its bishop was disagreement with apostolic doctrine and “if any man walketh in strange doctrine, he hath no fellowship with the passion.”39
Some of Ignatius’s strongest admonitions for obedience to the bishop occur in his letter to Smyrna, where Polycarp was bishop. “Let no man do aught of things pertaining to the Church apart from the bishop,” Ignatius insisted, and “He that honoreth the bishop is honoured of God; he that doeth aught without the knowledge of the bishop rendereth service to the devil.”40
In addition, he wrote Polycarp not only that men and women should many “with the consent of the bishop” but that he should “let nothing be done without thy consent.”41 These urgings reflect Ignatius’s concept of the church as a separate society in a hostile world, an army of God encamped together always ready for battle with enemy forces, a family seeking to preserve its unity and integrity against those who would destroy it either by force or subtlety.
To this point the Smyrneans were sound in the faith and had resisted doctrinal compromise. God had given them wisdom and had established them in “faith immovable.” They were, figuratively speaking, “nailed on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, in flesh and in spirit. ” The source of their love was the “blood of Christ,” and they had no hesitancy in believing that “He is truly of the race of David according to the flesh, but Son of God by the Divine will and power.” Jesus the Christ was truly born of a virgin, was truly baptized by John, “truly nailed up in the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch,” and was truly raised from the dead. All these things He suffered “for our sakes that we might be saved.” They were established in these truths and in Ignatius’s belief that Jesus Christ “was in the flesh even after the resurrection,” and ate and drank with His disciples in the flesh, “though spiritually he was united with the Father.” They themselves were “so minded.” Nevertheless, he must warn them of the deadly craft of the deniers of Jesus’ flesh.42
More dangerous than the physical persecution and obliteration, which loomed large in his near future, Ignatius feared the insidious activity of heretics creating division and sniping off individuals one by one. These crafty ones had been particularly active in Smyrna, and Ignatius saw greater danger in “wild beasts in human form” who would take the passion of Christ from them, more than the wild beasts of Rome who would inflict the passion of Christ on him.43 They were persuaded neither by “the prophecies nor by the law of Moses, nay nor even to this very hour by the Gospel” that the Christ “was a bearer of flesh.”44 The Smyrneans should pray that they might repent, but Ignatius himself did not even want to recall their names “until they repent and return to the passion, which is our resurrection.”43
The problem of docetic heresy compounded exponentially when the heretics sought to pass themselves off as Christian ministers. Ignatius therefore warns, “Let not office puff up any man,” but be sure to notice their lack of faith and love. Their lack of faith is demonstrated in that they “hold strange doctrine touching the grace of Christ.” Their lack of love is shown in their complete misappropriation of the ministerial office:
They have no care for love, none for the widow, none for the orphan, none for the afflicted, note for the prisoner, none for the hungry or thirsty. They abstain from eucharist and prayer, because they allow not that the eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins, and which the Father of His goodness raised up.46
For that reason the Christians in Smyrna should avoid speaking to them in public or private. Instead, they must study the Scriptures, that is, they should “give heed to the Prophets, and especially to the Gospel, wherein the passion is shown unto us and the resurrection is accomplished.”47 Division is the “beginning of evils,” since it creates isolation from the body and vulnerability to the false teachers. Their increase in faith and love, therefore, depends on their following the bishop.
The same truth stated by Ignatius in his singular focus on the bishop, Irenaeus stated by a larger focus on the apostolic tradition as a whole. Tradition, according to Irenaeus, is identical with Scripture. The power of the gospel was given to the apostles “through whom also we have known the truth.”48 This message that they proclaimed in public they “handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.” The heretics reject a revelation through “written documents,” however, and opt for the communication of truth viva voce. This oral revelation is unique to each heretic; none of their systems conforms to another or to any other system that has gone before. They perversely reject the “tradition” that lives within the apostolic churches and still resounds from the mouth of the bishops.
But if such a thing as an oral tradition of “hidden mysteries” exists, to whom would the apostles have committed it? Irenaeus answers: “They would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the churches themselves.”49
To demonstrate the truth of this as well as the falsity of the heretics, Irenaeus points to “that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.” Irenaeus performs the task of tracing the lineage from the “blessed apostles” and the next in line, Linus, to the current bishop, Eleutherius, the twelfth from the apostles. He says, “For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those faithful men who exist everywhere.”50
Irenaeus points out that the tradition could be established just as surely through Polycarp, who “always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the church has handed down, and which alone are true.” All the Asiatic churches testify to that truth, including Philippi and Ephesus. The latter who had John among them until “the times of Trajan”
stood with all the others including Rome as “a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.”51
Irenaeus’s argument is designed to underline the truth of Scripture and to discourage any departure from what is written. The Scripture is that which is “handed down,” that is, tradition. He appeals to the authority within the churches only because it is more compelling logically and historically to look to the immediate successors, even the appointees, of the apostles to verify what is and is not “the tradition of the apostles.”52 Under the hypothetical condition that the “apostles themselves had not left us writings,” it would be necessary, in that case, “to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches.”53 Since the hypothesis has no real existence and the apostles “did also write the Gospel, in which they recorded the doctrine regarding God, pointing out that our Lord Jesus Christ is the truth, and that no lie is in Him,” Irenaeus proposes that he “revert to the scriptural proof furnished by those apostles” for the exposition of true doctrine.54
To this clearly patristic principle of Sola Scriptura evangelicals gladly agree.
FAITH AND HISTORY
Both Irenaeus and Ignatius wrote as if one’s union with the saving work of Christ cannot be attained without a belief in the separate parts of His historical work. This conviction gives surpassing urgency to guarding those truths. If godless persons say that He suffered “only in semblance,” why was Ignatius in bonds and why did he desire to fight with wild beasts? In short, if what the heretics say is true, “I die in vain.” Maintaining truth in doctrine is the only motive to suffer in this life, that one might live forever before God. So it is with Irenaeus. The relation between confession of Christ as the one who “must suffer many things” and our willingness to take up the cross and follow Christ cannot be broken.55
If Christ has not truly suffered, why should we? Because Christ invites us to Himself through His passion, those who will not be branches of His cross will bear no fruit—rather their fruit is deadly, and the one who eats of it dies eternally.
Be ye deaf, therefore, when any man speaketh to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the race of David, who was the Son of Mary, who was truly bom and ate and drank, was duly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven and those cm earth and those under the earth; who moreover was truly raised from the dead, His Father having raised Him, who in the like fashion will so raise us also who believe on Him—His Father, I say, will raise us—in Christ, apart from whom we have not due life.56
Ignatius spoke of his coming death as the “lot which I am eager to attain” in his letter to the Smyrneans. His willingness to suffer for the cause of Christ pulsates more strongly in the letter to the Romans than in any of the other six: “Grant me nothing more than that I be poured out a libation to God, while there is still an altar ready.”57 If they had power to intercede on his behalf, he urged them not to do so. He was quite eager that the wild beasts become his sepulchre. “It is good to die for Jesus Christ rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth.” Passion to be in the presence of Christ elevated his literary art to an intense irony as he contemplated what he hoped was a sure martyrdom.
Him I seek, who died on our behalf; Him I desire, who rose again for our sake. The pangs of a new birth are upon me. Bear with me, brethren. Do not hinder me from living; do not desire my death. Bestow not on the world one who desir-eth to be God’s. . . . Permit me to be an imitator of the passion of my God.58
Whereas some might discuss whether this sort of running after death should be shunned and seen as an evidence of a bit of imbalance, the wonder of Ignatius’s zeal for God must not be lost. On the other hand, perhaps Ignatius here is stating the very heart of Christian faith. His certainty about his future with Christ was so clear, his submission to the passion of Christ in doctrine and experience so thorough, and his vision of the glory of Christ so rapturous that he could say in truth with Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). That too, and maybe that only, is what it means to be one of the elect in the holy, catholic, apostolic church.
Notes
1. For a forceful exposure of this tendency, see Luther’s Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. This was written as part of a formal procedure in the pedagogical structure of the University of Wittenberg. Evidently Luther felt that the issue was still open and could be debated with the possibility of significant alterations being made.
2. John Calvin, “Acts of the Council of Trent: With the Antidote,” in Calvin’s Selected Works, 7 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 3:36.
3. Ibid., 39-40.
4. T. Herbert Bindley, The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, 3d ed., rev. (London: Methuen & Co., 1925), 2.
5. Leo, St. Leo the Great: Letters, trans. Brother Edmund Hun (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1957), 37-47 (Letter 10). Basing his argument on Matthew 16 and John 21, Leo said, “And although the power to bind and loose was given to Peter before the others, still, in an even more special way, the pasturing of the sheep was entrusted to him. Anyone who thinks that the primacy should be denied to Peter cannot in any way lessen the Apostle’s dignity; inflated with the wind of his own pride, he
buries himself in hell.” Significant exegetes prior to Leo give no support to this interpretation; even granting it, Leo would have no objective means of demonstrating that Peter was bishop of Rome or, granting that, that all subsequent bishops inherit his position of authority.
6. Ibid., 95 (Letter 28).
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 96.
9. Bindley, The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, 297.
10. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols, (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969), 3:7, 9.
11. Ibid., 607, 608, 619, 620.
12. Ibid., 488.
13. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, ed. Samuel Macau-ley Jackson, s.v. “Evangelical Alliance.” The exclamation point after “catholic” is added.
14. Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, trans. Joseph P. Smith, S.J. (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1952), 49.
15. J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, eds., The Apostolic Fathers (1891; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 178. This is from Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians. Future references to this volume will contain only the name of the apostolic father, the writing, and the number of the paragraph.
16. Ibid., 9.
17. Ibid., 12.
18. Martyrdom of Polycarp, 14.
19. Ignatius, Ephesians, 5.
20. Ibid., 2.
21. Ibid., 20.
22. Ibid.
23. Ignatius, Magnesians, 6.
24. Ibid.
25. Ignatius, Trallians, 2.
26. Ignatius, Magnesians, 7.
27. Ignatius, Ephesians, “greeting” and 7.
28. Ibid., 20.
29. Ignatius, Smyrna, 6.
30. Ignatius, Magnesians, 9-10.
31. Ignatius, Ephesians, 19, 10.
32. Ignatius, Magnesians, 1.
33. Ibid., 7.
34. Ibid., 8.
35. Ibid., 11.
36. Ignatius, Trallians, “greeting.”
37. Ibid., 2.
38. Ibid., 2, 6, 7, 8.
39. Ignatius, Philadelphians, 3.
40. Ignatius, Smyrnaeans, 8-9.
41. Martyrdom of Poly carp, 4-5.
42. Ignatius, Smyrna, 3.
43. Ibid., 4.
44. Ibid., 5.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 6.
47. Ibid., 7.
48. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, trans. Rev. Alexander Roberts and Rev. W. H. Ram-baut, vol. 5 of Ante-Nicene Christian Library, ed. Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1868), IIΙ. i. 1.
49. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, ΙII. iii. 1.
50. Ibid., ΙII. iii. 2.
51. Ibid., ID. iii. 4.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid, ΙII. iv. 1.
54. Ibid., IIΙ. v. 1.
55. Ibid., ΙII. xviii. 4-5.
56. Ignatius, Trallians, 9.
57. Ignatius, Romans, 2.
58. Ibid., 6.