Maurice Wiles - The Making of Christian Doctrine

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THE MAKING OFCHRISTIAN DOCTRINE


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THE MAKINGOF CHRISTIANDOCTRINEA STUDY IN THE P R I N C I P L E S OF

EARLY DO CTR INAL DEVE LOPM ENTBY

MAURICE WILESRegius Professor of Divinity,University of Oxford

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C AMB R IDGE UNIVE R SIT Y PR E SSCAMBRIDGE

LONDON NEW YORK MELBOURNE


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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, DelhiCambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New Yorkwww.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521068031 Cambridge University Press 1967

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the writtenpermission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1967First paperback edition 1975Reprinted 1978Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2008

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British LibraryLibrary of Congress Catalogue C ard Num ber: 67-10081

ISBN 978-0-521-06803-1 hardbackISBN 978-0-521-09962-2 paperback


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CONTENTSList of Abbreviations page vii

1 Th e Development of Doctrine: TheNature of the Problem i2 Motives for Development in the

Patristic Age 183 Scripture as a Source of Doctrine 414 Lex Orandi 625 Soteriology 946 T he Form of the Argum ents 1137 The Assimilation of New Ideas 1418 Tow ards a Doctrine of Development 159

Index 182


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ABBREVIATIONSThe following standard abbreviations have been used:C.Q.R. Church Qiiarterly ReviewE .T . English translationJ.E.H. Journal of Ecclesiastical HistoryJ. T.S. Journal of Theological StudiesP.G. Patrologia Graeca,J.-P. MigneP.L. Patrologia Latina,J.-P. Migne

Cursus CompletuSy ed.Cursus CompletuSy ed.

R.H.E. Revue d'Histoire EcclesiastiqueR.S.R. Recherches de ScienceThe following abbreviationshave been used in the notes:Ap. Const.Athanasius , Or. Con. Ar.

De. Inc.Ep{p).adSer.

pseudo-Athanasius, Con. Apoll.Basil, Adv. Eun.

De Spir. San.Ep{p).

Chrysostom, Horn, injoh.Clement of Alexandria, Paid.Strom.

Religieusefor patristic referencesApostolic ConstitutionsOrationes Contra Aria-

nosDe IncarnationeEpistola(e) ad Serapio-nemDe Incarnatione contra

ApollinaremAdversus EunomiumDe Spiritu SanctoEpistle{s)Homiliae in JohannemPaidagogosStromateis

V ll


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ABBREVIATIONSCyprian, De Un. Cath. Eccl.Cyril of Jerusa lem , Cat.Eusebius , H.E.Gregory of Nazianzus, Or.Gregory of Nyssa, Con. Eun.

Or. Cat.Hermas , M .Hippolytus , Haer.Irenaeus, Adv. Haer.Just in Martyr , Apol.

Dial.Origen, Con. Cel.

Comm.jfn.Matt. Comm. Ser.DeOr.De Princ.Philostorgius, H.E.

Tertul l ian, Adv. Jud.De Praescr.Adv. Prax.De Res. Cam .

Theodore t , H.E.

De Unitate CatholicaeEcclesiaeCatechesesHistoria EcclesiasticaOrationesContra EunomiumOratio Catechetica

Magna1Shepherd* of Hermas,Mandates

Refutatio OmniumHaeresium

Adversus HaeresesApologiaDialogos cum TryphoneContra CelsumCommentarium in jfoh-

annemComm ent ariorum in

Matthaeum SeriesDe OrationeDe PrincipiisHistoria EcclesiasticaAdversus JudaeosDe PraescriptioneAdversus PraxeamDe Resurrectione CarnisHistoria Ecclesiastica


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THE DEVELOPMENT OFDOCTRINE: THE NATUREOF THE PROBLEMDR O WEN CH AD W I CK , in his book FromI Bossuet to Newman, has provided a superbhistorical survey of the material [relatingto the question of doctrinal development] but noAnglican theologian seems to have thought theproblem itself worthy of his attention.'1 So writesDr Mascall, charging not only my Cambridgecolleagues who contributed to Soundings butAnglican theologians at large with this sin ofomission. It is no disrespect to Dr Chadwick'sscholarship to say that I find little cause for sur-prise that his historical researches should not havegiven rise to much modern theological discussionof the question of doctrinal development. The his-torical story is full of fascination. One reads andone admires; one admires not only the narrator ofthe story but also the characters within it; one ad-mires the broad sweep of their intellectual con-victions and the detailed subtlety of their individualreasonings. But it is like reading a debate about

1 E. L . M ascall, Up and Down in Adria (1963), p. 13.


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEthe movements of the planets before the inventionof the telescope. The general problems with whichthey were concerned are real problems; but the par-ticular problems to which they addressed themselvesso vigorously are not ours; and, more emphaticallystill, the way in which they approached them is notand cannot be ours. And so it is only in the mostgeneral manner that the historical treatment pointson to the theological. The study of doctrinal develop-ment is a study of importance; but the debates ofthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries must notbe expected to throw any great light on the roadwe have to tread in pursuit of it at the presenttime.The most obvious of all divisions concerning thenature of doctrinal development in the life of theChurch lies between those who consider all suchdevelopment as has received the accredited sanc-tion of the Church to be wholly true and those whobelieve it to include an element of error. Newmanand his opponents within the Roman church stoodon the same side of that dividing line. They werein full agreement that the development of doctrinewithin the Roman church was wholly and infalliblytrue. The issue that divided them was whetherthat development was to be described in purelylogical or in at least partly historical term s. Onthe one hand stood the claim that in doctrinaldefinition the Church was simply making explicit


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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINEwhat implicitly she had always known and pro-fessed; on the other hand stood the assertion thatthe process of doctrinal definition involved thediscovery of truths of which the Church had notpreviously been fully conscious. If we ask what thedifference between these two views amounts to inpractice, the question is not easily answered. As thefinal paragraph of Dr Chadwick's book suggests,the questions which we want to ask of both sides arein large measure semantic ones.1 To the one partywe want to press questions about the nature of theimplicit but apparently unexplored beliefs of theprimitive Church of which they speak. In w hatsense of the word 'logical' can the kind of develop-ment of doctrine of which we know from historybe described as exclusively logical? And to theother group we want to press similar questionsabout the nature of those unconscious inklings ofbelief in the primitive Church which only rise tothe level of consciousness at a later stage. In whatsense of the word 'n ew ' can there be genuinely newinsights which are nevertheless not new revela-tions? These, as Dr Chadwick suggests, are thequestions to which his historical inquiry mostnaturally gives rise. But it is only if we share theunderlying assumption which was common groundto both Newman and his opponents that these willseem the most valuable starting-points for an

1 O. Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman (1957), p . 195.


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEattempt to deal theologically with the question ofthe development of doctrine.Within the Roman Catholic church, that basicassumption still exists. There, therefore, thedebate continues along the same lines, and thequestions which Dr Chadwick poses are questionsof vital theological concern. It is not my purposeto try to carry Dr Chadwick's historical investiga-tion on up to the present time. Nevertheless, thecontinuing debate among Roman Catholic schol-ars has brought to the fore one particular issuewhich does seem to be of paramount importancefor any approach to this problem. If the depositof faith be regarded as existing in the form ofcertain basic propositions, it is clearly impossible(if one accepts historical evidence as relevant atall) to escape the claim that the later formulationsof dogma cannot be reached by a process ofdeductive logic from the original propositions andmust contain an element of novelty. For this andmany other reasons, scholars are increasingly proneto define the deposit of faith in broader terms. Itis the rnysterium, the person of Christ and hisredemptive work, where principles other than thoseof deductive logic must be used.1 ' Revelation isnot the communication of a definite number ofpropositions . . . but an historical dialogue between1 H. de Lubac, 'Le probleme du developpement du dogme', R.S.R. xxxv(1948), 154-8.


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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINEGod and man in which something happens.'1 Thisemphasis is not an entirely new one. As DrChadwick points out, its importanceand itsdifficultyemerges clearly enough from a studyof Newman himself and of the obscurity attachingto his conception of Christian revelation as an ideaimpressed upon the corporate mind of the Church.

2But it means that any debate about developmentmay have to concern itself not so much with theactual process of development as with the nature ofthat from which the development is believed tohave sprung. You cannot discuss intelligently theprocess of development unless you are agreedabout the nature of the given starting-point fromwhich that development begins. There is not muchevidence of any such agreement among theologiansat the present time.

But even within the restricting confines of theview that holds all officially sanctioned develop-ments of doctrine to be wholly and unqualifiedlytrue, it is doubtful whether this distinction betweena purely logical understanding of doctrinal develop-ment and a broader, more historical understand-ing is the most important distinction that canbe drawn. It certainly represents an importantdifference about the way in which doctrinaldecisions have been reached in the past. It also1 K. Rahner, 'T h e Development of Dogm a' , in Theological Investiga-tions (1961), 1, 48 . z O. Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newm an^ p. 149.3 Cf. H. de Lubac, R.S.R. xxxv, 153.

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEhas significant implications for the way in whichthe Church should set about the process of deter-mining any future defining of doctrine. But it doesnot directly affect our attitude towards doctrinesalready defined. It is therefore worth noting thatthere is another division of outlook with regardto the development of doctrine, still from withinthe ranks of those who would hold such develop-ment to be wholly true, which has a more directbearing on our present attitude to the doctrineswhich have emerged from that process. Thissecond, and in many ways more important,distinction lies between those who would regardthe development of doctrine that has actuallytaken place in the Church as a necessary processand those who would be content to describe it inless absolutist terms as legitimate and valuable.This distinction is not identical with the one wehave been discussing so far. It would be perfectlypossible, for example, for someone who held astrongly historical theory of development either toregard that development as one absolutely necessaryfor the life of the Church or to give to it a lesser,though still positive, role in the divine economy.

The distinction that I am drawing here can beillustrated from the realm of church order, inparticular from the emergence of the episcopate.There are of course those who regard that develop-ment as a perversion. But even from within the

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINEranks of those who would see it as a true develop-ment there is scope for important variation of out-look. Some will see the episcopate as alreadyconsciously embodied and expressed in the personsof the apostles. Others will look upon it as a newbut entirely valid development from the clearlydistinguishable stage of apostolic ministry. Thisrepresents a significant difference in the under-standing of the past, bu t it is not the most importantdistinction in this sphere. More fundamental isthe distinction between those who regard theepiscopate as absolutely necessary to the life of theChurch (and these will include some who hold itto be a genuinely new development of the post-apostolic age as well as those who see it as havingbeen a feature of the Church from the verybeginning) and those who do not so regard it. Th isdistinction is the more important because it hasobvious implications in terms of present action,which the other distinction does not have. Thosewho hold it to be a necessary development will seekto ensure its continuation in every situation thatmay arise. Those who consider it to have been atrue and valuable development at the time but nota necessary one will rather ask how the functionswhich it fulfilled in its day can be properly fulfilledin our own. In this sense it is possible to holdsomething to have been a true development w ithoutregarding it as eternally immutable.


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEIt might be argued in reply that the distinctionwhich I have been drawing could only be appliedto the realm of order but not to the realm of belief.It is not difficult to accept that a type of institutionor a set of practices which were a wholly rightand valuable development in one situation might

not automatically be right and valuable in another.But can the same thing be said with regard todoctrine ? If a doctrine is a wholly true develop-ment in one situation, must it not be equally truein all situations ? Admittedly, change of environ-ment cannot alter the truth value of a doctrinalstatement, provided the words in which it isexpressed retain their meaning unchanged. Butthat proviso is more significant than it sounds atfirst hearing. Not all statements are statements ofthe same kind. One does not need to deny allobjectivity to doctrinal statements to claim thatthey are not statements of the most straightforwardkind, capable of verification in direct senseexperience. There is a complexity about the logicof doctrinal statements which means that they havetheir meaning only in relation to a total world-viewof God and his relation to the world. And tha ttotal world-view is emphatically subject to change indiffering ages. It therefore seems inescapable thatwhat Cardinal Mercier regarded as a powerful objec-tion to TyrrelPs modernism ought to be accepted as asimple statement of fact c the dogmas of the Church

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE.. .change their sense, if not necessarily their ex-pression, with the ages to which they are addressed'.1It may fairly be argued in reply that such achange of sense still leaves the truth of the olddoctrinal statement unaffected, for its truth orfalsity can only be assessed in terms of its ownworld-view. The answer may be allowed and ourpoint put in another way. A 'true' doctrinalstatement (though the phrase is less simple thanappears on the surface) can, it may be admitted,never lose its truth, but it can lose its relevance.A statement whose truth or falsity can be deter-mined only in terms of a world-view that is deadand gone can hardly be a statement of directrelevance to subsequent ages; 'old formulas', toquote Loisy, 'conceived in another intellectualatmosphere no longer say what needs to be saidor no longer say it suitably'.2 And it wouldcertainly be somewhat odd to assert that a doc-trine was irrelevant, yet necessary, in the life of theChurch . It does not therefore seem unreasonableto assert that some doctrines, like some institutions,may have been a true development and yet notnecessary in the life of the Church outside thesituation within which they were developed.

This question is no purely theoretical question.To insist upon the necessity of such doctrines1 G. Tyrrell, Mediaevalism (1908), p. 10.2 A. Loisy, VEvangile et VEglise (5th edn, 1930), p. 206 (E.T.: TheGospel and the Church (1908), p. 216).


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEwould be more than just a harmless anachronism.It could have a seriously inhibiting effect upon theproper task of succeeding generations.1 To give butone example, Christian theology today is beingworked out in an increasingly wide range of languagesand cultures. We have to ask the question, W hat is theproper course of doctrinal development in Africanand Asiatic countries? If, for example, it be agreedthat the doctrinal developments enshrined in thedecision of the Council of Chalcedon with its clearenunciation of Christ as one person in two naturesare necessary to the life of the Church, then theymust be fully studied and used as the basis for anyfurther development of doctrine in all parts of theworld. If, on the other hand, while still regarded asa true development of Christian doctrine, they areunderstood as the Church's self-expression withinthe terms of a particular limited cultural system, thentheir role today will be seen in a very different guise.In that case the task of a modern African theologianwill be seen not so much as building on the founda-tions of Chalcedon but rather as repeating thework of the early centuries within a new idiom.It is possible to regard Aristotle as having provideda valuable tool in the hands of the Church's theo-logians in the past without regarding that tool asindispensable for ever in the Church's execution1 Cf. J. N . Sanders, ' Th e M eaning and Authority of the New Te sta -ment ', in Soundings (1962), p. 127.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINEof the dogm atic task. And this who le discussionhas implications nearer home than Africa.

But the real difference between the approach tothis subject which I believe to be called for todayand that of men like Newman a century ago is am uch m ore radical one. It is an unreadiness toaccept in advance that doctrinal development, evenwithin the narrowly prescribed limits of, forexample, the early conciliar decisions most gener-ally acceptable to Anglicans, can be assumed withconfidence to have been wholly true in directionand in conclusion. The change which has takenplace in the approach to Scripture during the sameperiod pro vides a clear and close parallel. Fe wnowadays are prepared to claim that the divineinspiration of Scripture can only be asserted inter m s of its absolute infallibility. I t is tru e th at itcan, not unreasonably, be argued that there is ana priori case in favour of such infallibility. I t isclaimed, for example, by Geldenhuys that

cthe factas such that Jesus possesses supreme divine

authority . . . gives us the assurance that the Lordof all authority w ould have seen to it that . . . anadequate and completely reliable account o f . . . Hislife and work was written and preserved for theages to come' . 1 But when he asserts that this'follows logically' from the once--for-all nature ofthe revelation of God in Christ, we must demur.

1 J. N. Geldenhuys, Supreme Authority (1953), p. 43.II


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEIt does not follow logically. We might haveexpected God to provide such a revelation, butwhether he has in fact done so is somethingto be determined on empirical grounds. Suchan empirical approach to Scripture rules outdecisively any question of its infallibility. But inruling out the infallibility of Scripture, it does notrule out the possibility of regarding it as somethinggiven by God with a positive role as a means ofdivine grace. The evidence suggests to us not adivinely guaranteed infallibility, but rather theoutcome of an interaction of the divine Spirit withfallible human beings. And when once empiricismhas led us to this point, it is perhaps not unjusti-fiable to claim that such a conception fits bestwith the whole way in which God deals with us asresponsible and responsive human beings. Weought not, after all, to be too surprised at thedisappointment of any a priori expectations of aninfallible record that we may have entertained.In the same way Newman claimed in the courseof his antecedent arguments on behalf of develop-ments in Christian doctrine that an infallibledeveloping authority is to be expected.1 He wasready to admit, to the dismay of some of hisCatholic contemporaries, that this antecedentexpectation can properly be tested against the factsof historical evidence. But his historicism was

1 Doctrine of Development (1845), pp. 114 = (1878), pp. 75 ff.1 2


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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINErigidly restrainedso much so in fact that manycritics have denied its existence altogether.1 Whenthe method of historical inquiry is applied with thesame kind of rigour as has been used in the case ofthe study of Scripture, the results would seem to besimilar. Newman's infallible developing authoritybecomes as difficult to m aintain as the infallibility ofScripture. The historical processes of doctrinaldevelopment seem as unlikely to lead to infallibledecisions as the oral transmission of gospel materialto lead to an infallible record of the life of Jesus. Theelement of human fallibility is present in the bishopsand theologians of the early Church as evidently as itis in the persons of the apostles and evangelists. Wehave as much reason in the one case as in the otherto believe either that that fallibility was totally sup-pressed or that it was incapable of reflecting enoughof the inspiration of the divine Spirit to provide uswith valuable guidance for the Church's life.

In the course of the debate about the fallibilityof Scripture there was a stage at which manyhoped that a satisfactory compromise solutionwould be reached. The Old Testament might besubject to the most radical criticism without dem ur;the epistles could be allowed to be the products offallible men who were children of their own age;even in the case of the gospels the narrative sectionsmight be admitted to contain secondary accretions.

1 Cf. O. Chad wick, From Bossuet to Newman, p. 194.


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEBut the words of Jesus, it was thought, could standout unsullied and untouched by all such arguments.Thereby, it was hoped, the inescapable evidenceof critical scholarship and the spiritual requirementof a hard core of infallible revelation would both besatisfied. But it was not to be. The isolation of thewords of Jesus as a section of the scriptural recordwhich could remain unaffected by the winds ofcritical scholarship blowing all around them wasan impossible concept. It is not surprising thatattempts of a similar kind should have been made inthefieldof doctrinal development. Most scholars willreadily admit that much of the work of the Fathersproceeds by the normal and fallible means ofconceptual argument and leads to conclusions ofvarying degrees of probability. This they see asessentially private interpretation of the originaldeposit of faith; but they will not allow it to be thewhole story. In the official dogmas of the Churchthere must be propositions of faith which are freefrom this subjective and relativistic uncertainty.But the position is fundamentally the same as inthe case of the Scriptures. The official dogmas ofthe faith are too closely related to the whole patternof patristic thought for any such isolation to bepossible. There is no more ground for regardingsuch a radical distinction as tenable in the caseof doctrinal development than there was in thecase of scriptural infallibility.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINEIn the case of the study of Scripture we havegone a long way towards accepting the implicationsof such critical and empirical study. It was oftena painful process; but few of us would want to goback to the security of the old fundamentalism. Weknow well enough that we have to study the early

history of doctrinal development in the samespirit. Up to a point that is what we do. But I donot think we have fully faced the implications ofour approach for our attitude to the creeds andother early formulations of doctrinal belief. As faras they are concerned we are still in the painfulperiod of reappraisal and readjustment.We ought not, therefore, to begin with any pre-conceived theory concerning the pattern of doc-trinal development. We can only proceed by apatient study of the historical evidence. We musttrace out as carefully as we can the way in whichdoctrinal belief actually did develop. To do that

with any thoroughness and depth of understandingis a many-sided study, in which light must besought from a wide range of contributory fields.I do not in this book intend to say anything aboutsuch non-theological factors as imperial favour,ecclesiastical rivalries, or personal ambition. Allthese did have an extremely important part to playin the actual story of development. In my judge-ment they were mainly influential in determiningwhich doctrines were accepted by what groups of

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEpeople at a particular time. I do not believe thatin the long run they exerted any comparablysignificant influence on the determination of theactual developing content of doctrinal belief itself.And it is that which is my primary concern. Ihave chosen rather, therefore, to begin with a studyof the motives in the life of the Church whichgave rise to such a development of thought. Ipropose next to consider some of the grounds uponwhich doctrinal argument was consciously basedand in the light of which decisions were reached,to try to understand the reasons which led to thepreference of one doctrine over another. Finally,in addition to motive and ground, I propose toconsider the way in which new beliefs wereexpressed and related to the existing corpus ofbeliefs. All this must be done in the first instancewith as full and as sympathetic an understandingas we can achieve of the thought-world of the earlycenturies. We must not too quickly impose aliencriteria of judgement from the comparative detach-ment of our modern world. Nevertheless, in thelong run something very like that is just what wehave to do. If we are concerned not merely withthe history of doctrinal development but withevaluating that doctrine for ourselves in the lightof its historical process of development, we mustraise questions about the truth and falsity of thearguments used in that process and the results

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINEachieved by it. And this we can only do from oneposition and with one set of criteria: that is, fromthe position of our contemporary world and withthe criteria that seem to us appropriate to thesubject-matter under review. We need, therefore,to be on the look-out for features in the story ofdevelopment which, by virtue of their logicalform, might tend to throw doubt upon the validityof the conclusions that stem from them.Whether the picture which will emerge from sucha study is one that will present a sufficiently coherentpattern to merit the title'A doctrine of developm ent'is not a question that can be decided in advance.We must be prepared to find that elements of awholly fortuitous kind may have played a very sig-nificant part in the development which has actuallytaken place and that the resultant doctrinal picturemay have to be adjudged a curious mixture of tru thand error. We stand, after all, in the midst of a con-tinuing process; it may be that whatever pattern ofdevelopment does exist can only be seen withclarity when the process is complete.1 But even if atthe end of our study we are still unable to formulateany intellectually or aesthetically satisfying theoryof development, it cannot but serve to throw somelight upon the proper attitude to be taken towardsdoctrinal affirmations at the present time.1 Cf. K. Rahner, 'The Development of Dogma', p. 41: l T h e perfectedlaw of dogmatic development however may only be laid down whenthe whole unique process has reached its term.'


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTIN THE PATRISTIC AGETHE basic distinction in the whole realm ofhuman thought is that between the self andthe not-self. It is here that the baby beginsas he takes his first steps in human reasoningfirst steps which may be the start of a road leadingto the highest pinnacles of philosophical reflexion.So the Christian Church from the very start of herlife found herself forced to articulate her beliefsand practices over against the non-Christian en-vironment in which she was set. In the courseof distinguishing between the self and the not-selfthe baby pays particular attention to those thingswhich appear to stand somewhere on the border-land between the twothe extremities of his body,his fingers and toes, and the gloves and sockswhich he finds so closely associated with them . Soalso with the Church: it was those who stood onthe borderland between her and the distinctivelynon-Christian environment outside who demandedthe closest attention. It was in grappling with theheretic, the would-be Christian whom she wasunwilling to recognize, that the Church was forced

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M O T I V E S F O R D E V E L O P M E N Tto articulate her beliefs with an ever-increasingmeasure of precision. It is only as the child grows upthat he begins to indulge in reasoning as a consciousactivity undertaken for its own sake in comparativedetachment from the stimulus of immediate need.The analogy is adm ittedly fanciful. But it maybe allowed to indicate three outstanding motivesby which the Church was led on along the pathof doctrinal development. These can be defined epi-grammatically as the Church 's self-understandingin relation to those outside, in relation to thosehalf outside and half inside her borders, and finallyin relation to herself. First was the apologeticmotive, the need to express Christian truth in aform that would meet the requirements and answerthe objections of the surrounding world. Secondly,there was the problem of heresy, the problem ofthose who, standing to a greater or lesser degreewithin the fold of the C hurch, yet defined the tenetsof the faith in a manner which seemed to themajority wrong-headed and dangerously mis-leading. Thirdly (though never in isolation fromthe other two, since no thought is unrelated to itsenvironment), there was the natural desire of someChristians to think out and to think through theimplications of their faith as deeply and as fullyas possible. We must consider in turn the way inwhich each of these three factors operated in thelife of the Church.

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEChristians were a third race poised uncomfort-ably between the two more ancient races of Jewand Greek. Both were ready to attackespeciallywith the deadly weapon of ridiculedistinctivelyChristian ideas. The Church was therefore con-tinually being challenged to formulate her con-

victions in a way which would prove less vulnerablein debate.In the New Testament period, Jewish objectionsto Christian claims revolved mainly around thethemes of the Messiahship of Jesus and the con-tinuing validity of the Law. These issues were apart of the background of the life of Jesus himself.From the very beginning, therefore, Christians wereforced to think out carefully the implications ofthe idea of a suffering Messiah and to give somedefinition to the role of the Law in the divine plan.Jewish sources do not show many traces of thecontroversy with Christians in the years imme-diately after the period of the New Testament.Such evidence as there is suggests that the twomain issues at stake were the divinity of Jesus andthe Christian claim to be the true Israel of God.On the first of these two issues the Jewish argumentwas clear and straightforward. Their case restedwith a massive simplicity upon the unity of God, asexpressed, for example, in Isa. xliv.6: 'I am thefirst and the last; beside me there is no G od.5 Anysuggestion of a divine nature attaching to the

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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTperson of Jesus would at once be opposed as in-fringing the divine unity. The Christian had nodesire or intention to be polytheistic or evensimply ditheistic. The Old Testament Scriptures,from which the Jewish insistence on the unity ofGod was drawn, were also the Christian Scriptures.Christian affirmations about the divinity of Christwere therefore necessarily and naturally framed ina way which Christians at least could feel to beconsonant with a full affirmation of the divineunity. But the presence of Jewish controversialistsready to pounce upon any aberration from thenarrow path of a truly monotheistic faith was anadditional stimulus in the same direction.The second great issue was the antiquity andcontinuity of Jewish faith and history. A ' new 'faith could be laughed out of court on the groundof its novelty alone. To counter such attacks theChristian was forced to follow up those clues in theNew Testament which had spoken of the Churchas the Israel of God. This was done in a greatvariety of ways. The familiar motif of the goodnessof the younger son, in contrast to the elder, easilylent itself to an interpretation in terms of thesuperiority of the 'youn ger ' religion of Christianityover the 'older' religion of Judaism. The processindeed is carried by Tertullian right back as far asthe story of Cain and Abel.1 Thus the Christian

1 Adv.Jfud.s.2 1


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEwas encouraged to develop a philosophy of history,an understanding of the Old Testament, whichshowed him and not the Jew as the true inheritorof all that was good in Jewish history and of allthe promises of the Old Testament.But the primary environment of the nascentChristian church was Greek rather than Jewish.And from the Greek side fundamentally similarobjections were raised. The two basic complaintsof the novelty of Christianity and its apparentdesertion of monotheism can be found combinedin a single pungent comment of Celsus. ' If thesemen', he writes, 'worshipped no other God butone, perhaps they would have had a valid argu-ment. . . . But in fact they worship to an extravagantdegree this man who appeared recently, and yetthink it is not inconsistent with monotheism if theyalso worship God's servant.' It is the same twocharges. Christ is one who appeared only recentlya very few years ago, says Celsus in anotherplace; and in worshipping him Christians are eitherbeing guilty of worshipping a man or they areabandoning monotheism. Origen 's reply is a vividexample of a careful doctrinal statement born ofapologetic necessity. 'Therefore,' he writes, 'weworship the Father of tru th and the Son who is thetruth; they are two distinct existences but one inmental unity, in agreement and in identity of will.'1

1 Con. Cel. 8.12 (cf. also ibid. 1. 26).2 2


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTBut the Greek controversialist had many otherweapons in his armoury as well. Plato had wishedto banish Homer and the record of the shamefuldoings of his deities from his ideal republic, andlater Platonism had developed the art of debunkingpopular religion. Much of this development was

well adapted for use against the anthropomorphicideas of the Old Testament and the whole con-ception of a divine incarnation. To talk of Godcoming down to men seemed to Celsus to implyan utterly unworthy conception of the majesty ofGod and to be an offence against a true under-standing of God's eternal changelessness. In replyOrigen declares: cIf the immortal divine Wordassumed both a human body and a human soul, andby so doing appears to Celsus to be subject tochange and remoulding, let him learn that the Wordremains Word in essence. He suffers nothing ofthe experience of the body or the soul.'1 Onceagain we catch a glimpse of a very significant doc-trinal affirmation carefully framed to meet an apolo-getic need.

But the influence of the apologetic motive mustnot be restricted to such instances of explicitdoctrinal affirmations made in reply to specificcriticisms raised by a particular antagonist. Therole of the apologist was not exclusively defensive.His aim was not only to find answers to particular

1 Con. Cel. 4.5 and 4.14-15.23


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEattacks; it was to convince the non-Christian of thetru th of the Christian faith. Some apologists weretempted to believe that their task was best done bycountering scorn with scorn and by answeringridicule with ridicule. But for the most part theirconcern was to commend their faith positively ina way that would seem intellectually respectableand even attractive to a cultured Greek reader.With this objective in view they were keen tostress such points of contact and of similarity asthey could find between their own beliefs and thebest of Greek thought. Greek philosophy, espe-cially Plato, had said much of which they couldapprove. Whether, in line with earlier Jewishapologetic, they explained this as due to borrowingfrom the earlier work of Moses or whether, moregenerously, they attributed it to a partial share inthe divine Logos, or whether indeed, like JustinMartyr, they did both,1 made little difference inthe long run. The important factor was their con-viction that there was a common ground of sharedbelief to which appeal could be made.

The main area of this common ground wasbelief about God. The Christian's belief aboutChrist was something peculiarly his own, based onthe empirical evidence of the incarnation andexperience in the life of the Church. But beliefabout God was rooted in certain common notions

1 Apol. i. 46, 59.24


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENT(the very phrase usedKOIVOCI evvoicais itselfof Stoic origin) implanted in all men and was areal point of contact with the best thought ofthe ancient world. Thus Athenagoras, a Christianphilosopher from Athens who wrote in the secondhalf of the second century, can appeal to Euripides,the Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle, and even theStoics as witnesses to that same unity of Godwhich Christians affirmed.1 At first sight suchappeals might seem to have relatively little doc-trinal importance. To build upon the non-Christian's already existing intimations of divinityis a natural enough form of apologetic. Thereseems little obvious reason why it should influencethe Christian's formulation of his own beliefs. Butin fact its influence was enormous. For theapologist was not arguing simply that the Greeksused the same word cGod' which was also used byChristians; he was arguing that there were pointsof similarity between the idea of God in Christianthought and Greek philosophy. In seeking out andstressing such points of contact between the ideasof the young Christian community and those ofthe long-established schools of Greek philosophy,it was almost inevitable that the former shouldbe significantly influenced by the latter. Havingdescribed the witness of the Greek poets and philo-sophers to the unity of God, Athenagoras moves on

1 Athenagoras, Supplicatio, 5-6.25


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEto that of the Old Testament prophets; the latterhe regards as better witnesses because they weremore directly inspired (breathed upon as by theflute-player on his flute), but he does not drawany distinction between the content of their teach-ing about the basic issue of God's nature and thecontent of the philosophers' teaching.

1Yet it is byno means clear that the affirmation that God is onehas the same meaning when it appears in the courseof Deutero-Isaiah's denial of the reality of theBabylonian gods that it has when it appears in themathematical reflexions of a Pythagoras or a Plato.The doctrinal influence of this apologetic concern

is not immediately evident in the writings of thesecond-century apologists themselves. Their ownunderstanding of the Christian faith is of a com-paratively simple, uncomplicated kind. In generalit seems to be little different from that of most ofthe Apostolic Fathers, men like Clement of Romeand Hermas, who belonged to the precedinggeneration. They give no sign that in themselvesthey felt any great urge to formulate more carefullythe faith which they had received from theirpredecessors. Where they do go beyond them, it isthe apologetic motive that drives them on. But,however unconsciously and unintentionally, theywere in fact giving to Christian thought a neworientation; they had set the foot of the Church

1 Athenagoras, Supplicatio, 7-9.26


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTupon a road which would take her much furtherfrom the thought of the Apostolic Fathers than theapologists themselves could ever have conceived tobe either desirable or possible. The ideas aboutGod implicit in their approach became for theirsuccessors, Clement and Origen, part of the verysubstance of Christian doctrinal thinking. The caseof the divine unity is a clear illustration of thistendency. Athenagoras, as we have seen, failed todistinguish between the mathematical and the pro-phetic conceptions of unity; but he was not himselftheologian enough for the theoretical implicationsof that identification to appear at all fully in hisown writings. But with Clement and Origen amathematical conception of the divine unity is ac-cepted as basic and is integrated as best it can be intotheir schemes of Christian theology. For Clementthe idea of God is to be approached by the mathe-matical principle of abstraction carried to theextreme limit;

1for Origen God is one and altogetheruncompounded, one in the fullest sense that languagecan convey.2

The implications of such ideas for the wholerange of Christian theology can hardly be over-stated. Nothing can be more basic than one's ideaof God. It is not only itself the basic Christiandoctrine; it enters into and affects every otherdoctrine. If Clem ent's approach be accepted, it

1 Strom. 5. 71. 2-3 . 2 Comm. Jn. 1. 20 ; De Princ. 1. 1. 6.27


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEestablishes the negative or apophatic way as thetrue method of theological thinking; if Origen'sdefinition be accepted, traditional trinitarianism isexcluded from the outset. Thus ideas of the divineunity drawn from the schools of Greek philosophycame to play a great part in the development ofdoctrine. That they did so was not exclusively, butit was in large measure, an outcome of the Church'sapologetic concern. A similar story could easilybe told in terms of other attributes of God's being.But the one example will suffice to show howextensive was the influence of the apologeticmotive on doctrinal development. It was not onlya matter of being forced to meet particular objec-tions levelled at Christian teaching. Its effect wasmore far-reaching and more deep-seated than that.It meant that all Christian thinking, and especiallyall Christian thinking about the being and nature ofGod, was influenced, often unconsciously, by philo -sophical ideas current in the Hellenistic world.

But the Church was faced not only with opposi-tion and unbelief, whether scornful or sympathetic;she was faced also with what she regarded asdeviation and false belief. The effect of theChurch's apologetic concern on the developmentof doctrine was extensive though often hidden; theeffect of the challenge of heresy was still moreextensive and more upon the surface. The earliest

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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTtheological writers of the Western church arealmost wholly taken up with the answering ofheresy. The whole character of Irenaeus' theologyis determined by his opposition to the Gnosticswith their strongly unhistorical and speculativeapproach towards the faith, while Marcion andPraxeas play an almost equally central role indetermining the tenor of Tertullian's thought. Ifmost of the apologists were ready to seek somecommon ground with their non-Christian readers,one might anticipate that writings directed towardsmen who at least professed some kind of faith inChrist would be even more likely to follow asimilar line. But that is very far from being thecase. A modern writer may declare that a hereticis a brother in Christ because only a Christian canbe a heretic,1 but that is not how the early Churchsaw him. Any Christian flavour attaching to theconcept of the heretic was not regarded as some-thing in his favourrather the reverse. The hereticis like Judas, who called Christ Rabbi and kissedhim;* and as Judas is to be classed with Caiaphasrather than with the apostles, but indeed is worsethan Caiaphas by virtue of the element of treacherywhich attaches to his case, so the heretic is nota straying brother but the deadliest and most1 L. A. Zander, Vision and Action (1952), pp. 101-2 (cited by H. E. W.Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth (195 4), P- 97)-2 Origen, Matt. Com m. Ser. 100; Athanasius, Or. Con. Ar. 3. 28.

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEtreacherous of all opponents. If the note of scornand ridicule is seldom absent for very long fromthe pen of even the more sympathetic apologists,the note of bitter vituperation is hardly ever silentfor a moment in the writings against heresy.But vituperation was never enough. The hereticclaimed to be expressing Christian truth and hisclaim had to be met. In most cases the heretic'saffirmations were on subjects about which themajority had no clearly formulated conviction; inmany cases they were on subjects about which itwas not unreasonable to claim that no clearlyformulated conviction was possible. In answerto Gnostic speculations about the nature of theheavenly realm before the creation of the world,Irenaeus replies that such questions are un-answerable and must be left in the hand of God.The words of the prophet ' Who shall declare hisgeneration?' are evidence of the fruitlessness ofattempting to define the generation of the Logos.

1But such a policy of silence could not be sustainedfor long. It could too easily be interpre ted as anabdication in favour of the heretics. In the yearsafter Irenaeus the Church's scholars did undertaketo discuss at considerable length the true natureof the Son's generation. Indeed, a century and ahalf later, when the Council of Sirmium includedin its statement of the faith the same text from

1 Adv. Haer. 2. 28.30


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTIsaiah which Irenaeus had used with the self-sameintention of excluding all claims to knowledge aboutthe nature of the Son's generation, that statementwas described by Hilary as the Blasphemy ofSirmium, a Compulsory Ignorance Act command-ing men to be ignorant of what they already knew.1

The same story could be repeated many timesover. The orthodox church leader declares thefaith as he knows it and insists that further defini-tion is inappropriate to the nature of the subject.But the mind of man is congenitally unwillingto accept such apparently arbitrary limitations onthe bounds of possible knowledge and under-standing. Some Christians therefore claim to beable to define that aspect of the faith more fully,but do so in a way that proves unacceptable tothe main body of the Church. So, choosing thelesser of two evils, the next generation of churchleaders define with care what their predecessorsin the faith declared to be by nature incapable ofbeing defined. One example will suffice. Cyril ofJerusalem declared in his Catechetical Lecturesdelivered about A.D. 350 that it is enough toacknowledge the identity of the gifts of the Fatherand of the Holy Spirit, but that the nature and thesubstance of that Holy Spirit are not propersubjects of inquiry.2 Ten years later the attentionof Athanasius was called to a group of Egyptian

1 De Synodis, 10. 2 Cat. 16. 24.3 1


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEChristians who, while accepting the full divinityof the Son, spoke disparagingly of the Spirit as acreature; as a result of their errors he found himselfforced to launch out on just such an inquiry intothe nature of the Spirit as Cyril had discouraged,even though he had no clear terminology in whichto discuss his subject-matter with any measureof precision.1 But the Tropici, as this Egyptiangroup were named by Athanasius, were not alone.There were others all over the Eastern world whofollowed a similar line of thought. They readilyacknowledged the Son's divinity but, with varyingdegrees of definiteness, rejected any suggestion ofthe Spirit's godhead. So under pressure of thesePneumatomachoi or Spirit-Fighters, as the orthodoxcalled them, still further exactness of definitionwas felt to be required, and within another twentyyears the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's processionwithin the godhead had been developed by Gregoryof Nazianzus and incorporated in the Creed ofConstantinople of A.D. 381.

Thus the leaders of the Church were forced bythe presence of heretical ideas into an ever-increasing precision of doctrinal teaching. In thewords of Hilary they could say: 'The errors ofheretics and blasphemers force us to deal withunlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speakunutterable words, to trespass on forbidden

1 Cf. Ep. ad Ser. 4. 2-3.32


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTground. Faith ought in silence to fulfil the com-mandments, worshipping the Father, reverencingwith him the Son, abounding in the Holy Spirit,but we must strain the poor resources of ourlanguage to express thoughts too great for words.The error of others compels us to err in daring toembody in human terms truths which ought to behidden in the silent veneration of the heart.'1Thus it was often the heretic who determinedthe general lines along which doctrine shoulddevelop; it was he who chose the ground on whichthe doctrinal battles were to be fought. Fre -quently indeed he chose not only the ground forthe battle bu t also the weapons to be used in it. Togenerations of Christians the description of theSon as 'of one substance' with the Father hasserved as a joyous affirmation of faith in a creedsung at one of the highest moments of Christianworship. Yet that is very far from being the wayin which it found entrance into the vocabulary ofChristian doctrine. Rather it was admitted withreluctance as being the only available means ofexcluding Arianism. Athanasius insists more thanonce that the root of Arian error lies in its replace-ment of the scriptural idea of God as Father withthe philosophical idea of God as unoriginatedbeing. It is the Arians, therefore, he argues, whomade necessary the Church 's use of the unscriptural

1 Hilary, De Trinitate, 2. 2.3 3 3 W MO


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEterm homoousios, the Greek word introduced intothe creed at Nicaea and familiarly rendered inEnglish by the phrase 'of one substance with'.They had used unscriptural language to bring inunscriptural ideas; such ideas could only becountered by language of the same philosophicalkind which gave clear and unequivocal expressionto the true scriptural sense.1What Athanasius claims here seems substantiallyto be justified. Indeed his case can be stated instill more precise and rigorous form. The wordousia (substance or being) has become one of themost fundamental of all theological term s. It doesnot occur in the New Testamentexcept to de-scribe the Fa ther's substance which was squanderedby the prodigal son. It occurs occasionally inwriters before the time of Arius but not with anyprecise or technical meaning. By Origen it canbe used to express either what the Father and theSon have in common or that in respect of whichthey differ.2 Arius seems to be the first to give toit a precise and significant role in his scheme ofthought. He insists with great emphasis that thedistinction between the Father and the Son is oneof ousia. That distinction is basic and fundamentalto all his thought. It is for him the necessarymeans of giving expression to the essential tran-1 De Decretis, 19, 28; Or. Con. Ar. 1. 34 ; Ad Afros, 7.2 Contrast the use of ousia in De Oratione, 15, with that in Comm. jfn.10. 37 .

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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTscendence of the Father over everything else, in-cluding the Son. If that distinction be once granted,he is as ready as anyone else to speak of therevelatory function of the Son as the Father'simage or of the similarity of character and willexisting between Father and Son.1 If this be atall a true description of Arius' position, it is clearthat it could only be countered by some opposingaffirmation concerning the divine ousia. Any otherline of argument would leave Arius' fundamentalposition unaffected. The choice of ousia languageas the terminology in which the Church's doctrineof the godhead was to be worked out was really,therefore, the choice of Arius.But the point can be made more specific still.What is true of ousia language in general seemsalso to be true of the word homoousios in particular.In his letter to Alexander, Arius had described theword as Manichaean, apparently implying that itinvolved a false use of physical categories in thoughtabout the nature of the godhead; moreover,Eusebius of Nicomedia is reported to have usedthe term as a kind of reductio ad absurdum inspeaking of the relation of the Son to the Fatherin a letter produced early on at the Council ofNicaea itself. Ambrose, who records the story ofEusebius, declares that 'the Fathers put this wordin their exposition of the faith because they saw it

1 See my 'In Defence of Arius' , J.T.S. n.s. xm (1962), 345.3 5 3-2


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEdaunted their adversaries'. He may well be right.The most satisfactory explanation of the introduc-tion of the word homoousios into the formulary ofNicaea is that the Arians were thoroughly com-mitted to its rejection in advance. It was not onlyousia language in general but homoousios itself forwhich Arius was ultimately responsible.

1

The influence of heresy on the early developmentof doctrine is so great that it is almost impossibleto exaggerate it. Yet what is almost impossible canstill be done. It would be an exaggeration if wewere to accept as the whole truth Hilary's pictureof the early Fathers as the reluctant theologians.In any community of people there are always somewho will seek naturally and spontaneously todevelop the intellectual and philosophical aspectsof its life. Even though the Church may not haveincluded many wise according to worldly stan-dards, as St Paul admits, and though many ofthe early Christians may have been ignorant, stupidand uneducated, as Celsus accuses them of being,yet there were those among their number forwhom the spirit of inquiry was a living and naturalimpulse.Irenaeus' advocacy of a policy of silence hasmuch to commend it when answering the wilderspeculations of the Gnostics, but not even for him

1 See my *opooOcjios f)|iTv', J.T.S. n.s. xvi (1965), 454-61.36


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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTwas it ever the whole story. Tertullian may arguethat faith is enough, that the Church has nothingin common with the Academy, that one who hasChrist has no need of curiosity, and that inquiryis ruled out once the gospel has come,1 but evenhe is not always true to his own fideist convictions.Though he denounces philosophy as the root ofall heresy, his own debt to Stoic thought is con-siderable. A negative reaction to heresy was neverenough. Even a counter-statement of doctrinalbelief on the ground and in the terms chosen byheresy was not the Church 's last word. There is nosmoke without fire. Even the speculations of theGnostics were more than the idle imaginings ofempty minds. The heretic was concerned with realproblems. In the long run the Christian answer hadto come from those who, whether they admittedit or not, shared the heretic's intellectual concernand sought to answer the same problems in theirown way.Such a spirit is most fully exemplified in thework of Clement and Origen. Clement agrees withTertullian that curiosity as such is no propermotive for the Christian thinker. Intellectualinquiry is one aspect of Christian consecration.Clement's ideal, the Christian Gnostic, is notsimply the Christian intellectual. The knowledgewhich characterizes him is one that has grown

1 De Praescr. 7.37


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEout of faith and is intimately associated withlove. Yet in this knowledge every form of humanreasoning has a part to play. Clement is never tiredof asserting that all tru th is one. He admits thatman's search for truth has sometimes led himastray, but argues that that has been because ithas been carried on without reference to Christor that it has been a result of the distorting andperverting influence of sin. The Christian has noneed to be afraid of inquiry, of the genuine searchfor the truth. The words of Jesus in declaring c Iam the truth' can properly be applied to the truthfor which the philosopher seeks. Thus the spiritof inquiry rightly understood is for Clement noenemy of revelation. It is a right and proper partof that total obedience which man owes to God.

In the preface to his De Principiis Origen de-scribes the role of speculative thought and definesit as having a twofold function. In the first place,it may be used to supply a unified synthesis of thedogmatic utterances of the basic tradition. Toshow in this way the reasonableness of the Christiantru ths as forming a single coherent body of doctrineis a fitting task for the thoughtful Christianindeed it is one imposed on him by Scripture inthe words of Hos. x. 12 (in the Septuagint version):'Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge.'In the second place, the tradition did not set outto be a complete and comprehensive statement of

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MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENTChristian doctrine. It was rather an irreducibleminimum on matters of universal import. Therewere many other subjects not covered by the basictradition. On these it was permissible and in factdesirable to exercise the speculative mind, providedit was always recognized that conclusions on suchmatters must be regarded as tentative and lackingthe definiteness of the basic tradition itself.On another occasion Origen speaks of moraldiscipline as the dull, but necessary, body-buildingbread of life, and of speculation as the wine, whichalso gives nourishment but still more givesenjoyment and exhilaration.1 The image is anexcellent picture of his own attitude and of hisown practice. He regards the spirit of inquiry assomething of positive value; still more patently hefinds in it something of positive enjoyment. If heis himself unquestionably the supreme exampleof such a passion in the early Church, there wereothers who shared it (sometimes indeed uncon-sciously) to a lesser degree. Such a spirit neveroperated in isolation from the external impetusof apologetic or heresy. None of the early Fathersenjoyed the academic seclusion of a modernuniversity lecture-room. The influence of thisspirit in the field of doctrinal development cannottherefore be illustrated as directly as in the othertwo cases. But any account of the motives of that

1 Comm. Jfn. i . 30.39


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEdevelopment which left out altogether the motiveof thinking through the full implications of thefaith for its own sake (or, as Clement would haveput it, for Christ's sake) would be both incompleteand misleading.Uncovering the motives which prompt a manto pursue a particular line of thought does nothingto determine the truth or falsity of his conclusions.This study of the motives which led the Churchalong the road of doctrinal development cannotsettle the question of the validity of the doctrinesthereby developed. The truth or otherwise ofthose doctrines depends upon the validity of thereasoning by which they were determined. It isto that that we must now turn. The value of thisexamination of motives consists in the help thatit can give us in securing a more vivid and moreaccurate understanding of the arguments whichwere used. In that way it can serve to help in -directly in the task of evaluating the achievementof early doctrinal thinking which is our ultimategoal in this study.

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3SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE

OF DOCTRINESC R I P T U R E as a source of Christian doctrineit is tempting for one nurtured in theReformed tradition to change the indefinitearticle into the definite. Is not sola scriptura theground of Christian truth ? Would it not thereforebe truer to speak of Scripture as the source ofChristian doctrine ? However great one's sympathywith the concept of sola scriptura as a dogmaticprinciple, such a change would clearly falsify thefacts with which we are here concerned and wouldalso obscure the primary purpose of this section ofour inquiry. It would falsify the facts because theemergence of the Scriptures and the developmentof doctrine were not successive stages in Christianhistory; in the earliest period of that history thetwo processes went on simultaneously. Scripturein the sense in which we use that word today couldnot be the source of the earliest developments inChristian doctrine for the very obvious reason thatit was not then in existence in its present form tofulfil that role. But the change from speaking ofScripture as a source of Christian doctrine to

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEspeaking of it as the source would also obscure myintention in another way. To speak of it as thesource of Christian doctrine would suggest to ourminds the general content of the biblical revelationas a whole, but I shall be more concerned in thischapter with the influence of the written form uponthe way in which doctrine developed. The basicquestions with which I want to deal are thequestions, What was the effect upon the developmentof doctrine of the fact that the content of therevelation came to be recorded in specific docu-ments? and What was the effect of the particularway in which those documents were regarded andinterpreted ?The Church was never w ithout Scriptures of somekind. In i Cor. xv, Paul reminds his readers of thefundamentals of the gospel which he had preached tothem. These include not merely the bare facts ofChrist's death and resurrection, but also theaffirmation that they had happened 'in accordancewith the Scriptures'. Thus from the very start theOld Testament Scriptures took their place as anessential element in the Christian message to beproclaimed. The substance of the faith was notsimply the facts of Christ's life, death and resur-rection, but those facts understood in the light ofOld Testament Scripture. Thus Scripture, in theform of the Old Testament, was from the veryoutset a significant source of Christian doctrine.

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SCR IPTUR E AS A SOURCE OF D OC TRIN EBut the more specifically Christian content of thefaith, both the historical facts and the pattern oftheir Interpretation, was at first a matter not ofwritten record but rather of oral transmission. Fora long time, even after many of the New Testamentwritings had been written, the method of oraltransmission continued to be regarded as the basicway in which the substance of the Christian gospelwas to be learned and passed on. Papias, bishopof Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the first half of thesecond century, is not unrepresentative of his agein preferring to the written record of books a livingand abiding voice, a continuous chain of remem-bered teaching which could be traced back to 'thecommandments given by the Lord to faith, andreaching us from the Truth himself5.1 The overallpicture to be found in the writings of Justin Martyrand the other apologists contemporary with him isfundamentally similar; their conception of Chris-tianity is the teaching of Jesus spreading its wayaround the world through the medium of thepreaching first of the apostles and then of thosewho came after them.

Many factors, however, combined to ensure thatin the long run the New Testament writings shouldcome to play an immeasurably bigger part in thedevelopment of Christian doctrine than a study ofmid-second-century Christian authors might lead

1 Euscbius, H.E. 3. 39. 3-4.43


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEone to anticipate. With the passage of time theimportance of the written record as opposed tooral testimony for the transmission of the factsabout Jesus was bound to increase. Justin himselfrecords that the memoirs of the apostles wereincluded in the regular worship of the Churchalongside the reading of the Old TestamentScriptures. Such a practice could not help butenhance their standing in the life of the Churchas a whole. But the vital factor in the growingemphasis on the written records of the NewTestament was the prevalence of Gnosticism.Those who had to deal with the vagaries of Gnosticsecret traditions and apocryphal writings becameincreasingly aware of the importance of well-authenticated written records. Men like Irenaeusdid much to promote the idea of New TestamentScriptures, standing alongside the Old, as a clear-cut entity with commanding authority in the lifeof the Church.Yet Scripture was never for Irenaeus solascriptura^ Scripture as an isolated phenomenon.Just as the apostolic succession of bishops is forhim simply an important focus in the essentialsuccession of the public life of the Church andcould not conceivably be thought of by him assomething that could exist as a chain of episcopivagantes away from the main stream of the Church'slife, so also Scripture does not for him stand as an

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SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE OF DOCTRINEindependent authoritative record on its own.Scripture and tradition go together, not as twodistinct things but as interlocking parts of a singlereality. Irenaeus' insistence upon the two is aninsistence that Scripture is not to be read as anindependent book, whose message is entirely un-known, but as a book whose fundamental themeis already known, because that fundamental themeis the living faith of the Church by which theChristian already lives.But however much Irenaeus may have insistedupon such a close interrelation of Scripture andtradition, the emergence at the close of the secondcentury of a generally recognized set of authorita-tive documents was of immense significance. Thesource of the Christian revelation was God himself.Of that there had never been any doubt. Thetradition which had been handed down in the lifeof the Church had been conceived as deriving fromthe apostles, who had received it from Christ, whoin his turn had received it from God. But as longas, it was a matter of oral tradition there was roomfor a measure of flexibilityroom, indeed, asexperience had shown, for a measure of flexibilitytoo great to be tolerated. So it had proved necessaryfor that revelation to be recorded in authoritativewritings. The author of the revelation was thesame, none other than God Himself. Christianstherefore believed themselves to have within their

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEhands a written record whose ultimate author wasGod. Once such a conviction was firmly estab-lished, Scripture was bound to be the primaryconscious source for all subsequent doctrine.This belief that God was the ultimate author ofall Scripture was independent of any theology ofinspiration, any theory about the method by whichthat authorship had been effected in practice. Thiswas not a subject with which the Fathers were verymuch concerned. Much has been made of thewords of Athenagoras, who speaks of the prophetsas ' lifted in ecstasy above the natural operationsof their minds by the impulses of the divine Sp iri t',and ' of the Spirit making use of them as a flute-playerbreathes into a flute'.1 But the saying refers only tothe Old Testament prophets and is not sufficientlyrepresentative to deserve being described as 'thedominant theory of inspiration' for Scripture as awhole in the thought of the Fathers.2 This kind oflanguage is not commonly used at all of the NewTestament writings,^ and even with regard to theOld Testament prophets other early Christianwriters are to be found explicitly distinguishing thenature of the proph ets ' inspiration from ecstatic ex-periences involving a loss of rational consciousness.41 Supplicatio, 9.2 As by A. M . Ramsey, * T he Authority of the Bible \ in Peake's Commen-tary on the Bible (ed. M. Black, 1962), p. 5.3 R. P. C. Hanson, Tradition in the Early Church (1962), p. 211.4 E.g. Origcn, Con. Cel. 7. 3-4.

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SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE OF DOCTRINEBut all such issues were secondary. The im-portant point, about which no element of doubtwas felt, was that the ultimate author was God andthat therefore, when the true meaning of the textwas once grasped, that meaning was God's and notjust man's. From this basic fact about the ultimate

authorship of Scripture two principles followed,the unity of the whole and the significance of detail,since God can neither be inconsistent with him-self nor do anything without a purpose. Thesetwo principles of expecting consistency and ofpaying attention to detail are sensible and importantprinciples for the guidance of any interpreter, butboth are capable of being seriously overworked. Inthe third and fourth centuries both were seriouslyoverworked. We must consider each of them moreclosely.The point at which the consistency of Scripturewas most obviously open to attack was in terms ofthe evident differences between the Old and NewTestam ents. Christians were under attack on thisscore on two fronts. On the one hand the Jewcould argue that the Old Testament prophecieslooked forward to a glorious and conqueringMessiah, while the New Testament drew a pictureof one who was by contrast weak and utterlyunworthy. On the other hand, when Marcionemphasized the contrast between the two Testa-ments it was in a manner designed to denigrate the

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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEOld. In his eyes the differences between the twowere so great that they must be speaking of twodifferent 'Gods', that of the Old being character-ized by a harsh and punitive justice, that of theNew by love and goodness.From the beginning Christians had believed thatthe Old and the New helped to illuminate andconfirm one another. The facts of Christ's deathand resurrection were only seen as properlyChristian facts when they were seen to be ' accord-ing to the Scriptures'. This was the theme of thefirst Christian sermon. 'This is that which wasspoken by the prophet Joel ...' (Acts ii. 16).Peter insists that the strange happenings ofPentecost could only be understood when seen inrelation to the prophecy of Joel that in the last daysGod would pour out of his Spirit upon all flesh.But similarly the Old Testament is illuminated byits fulfilment in the New. As 2 Peter puts it(i. 16-19), those who have been eye-witnesses ofChrist's majesty have the prophetic word mademore sure; or, as Origen writes, 'before the adventof Christ it was not altogether possible to provideclear proofs of the divine inspiration of the ancientScriptures; but Christ's coming led those whomight suspect the law and the prophets not to bedivine to the clear conviction that they werecomposed by the aid of heavenly grace'.1 Thus the

1 De Princ. 4 . 1 .6 .48


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SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE OF DOCTRINEinterrelation of the two Testaments was a basicaxiom of orthodox thought. One might almostclaim that in the second century it was the primarycriterion in terms of which orthodoxy is to bedefined. When, for example, Clement of Alexandriawishes to defend the authority of Paul against thosewho are doubtful or critical of it, he does so byinsisting that Paul's teaching is in full accord withthat of the Old Testament.1But if this basic axiom was to be successfullymaintained under pressure, it clearly needed to beelaborated and worked out in greater detail. Indeedit could only be done with the comprehensivenessthat the contemporary situation required with theaid of a thorough-going allegorical interpretationof the Old Testament in particular, but also of theNew. Thus and only thus could an unbreakableunity between the two Testaments be achieved; butit was achieved at a heavy price. For the unbreak-able unity thus achieved was a unity without diver-sity, in which the newness of the New Testamentwas obscured, if not denied altogether.The primary outcome of this minimizing of thedifference between the two Testaments was anillegitimate reading back into the Old Testament ofChristian ideas drawn in reality from the New.Such allegorization of the Old Testament has im-portant repercussions for the student of exegesis;

1 Strom. 4.134 . 2.


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEit is relatively unimportant for the student ofdoctrine. But this kind of evening out of thedifferences between the two Testaments did notalways work in the same direction. It could resultnot only in a Christianizing of the Old Testamentbu t also in a Judaizing of the New. Ignatius hadinsisted to those who sought to refute him from thetext of the Old Testament that his one criterionwas Christ, his cross and resurrection; the OldTestament was relevant to the understanding ofChristian doctrine but for that purpose its voicemust address us not directly but only indirectly,passing through the transforming prism of Christhimself.1 But many of those who followed Ignatiusfailed to draw the distinction which he made. Ifthe whole of Scripture be the words of God, thenGod speaks to us through it all equally. Thismeant that for the less allegorically minded inparticular there was always a danger that the voiceof Scripture would speak in Old Testament tonesin a way which m ight lack the distinctively Christiannote. The outstanding example of this kind isthe way in which Paul's teaching about a radicalfreedom from the curse of the law was tamed inorder to make it as wholly consistent as possiblewith the straightforward teaching of the OldTestam ent. Another example, less widely recog-nized but equally far-reaching in its effects, is

1 Philadelphia 8-9.50


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SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE OF DOCTRINECyprian's teaching about the Christian ministry.It is well known that in the discussions about therole and function of the ministry which figure solargely in the short but troubled period of hisepiscopate Cyprian frequently quotes from OldTestament teaching about the Jewish priesthood.A careful study of his writings shows that thesequotations are of much more than purely illustra-tive significance; they are the main ground uponwhich his ideas are based.1The second great principle of interpretation,which also followed directly from the convictionthat God was the ultimate author of all Scripture,was the principle of the significance of detail. InGal. iii. 16 Paul bases an argument for his Christo-logical interpretation of the promise to Abrahamrecorded in Genesis on the fact that the promise isto his 'see d ' (in the singular) rather than to 'se ed s'(in the plural). M uch of the detailed interpretationof the Fathers is in similar vein. The most un-important and unintentional details of the text areregarded as significant and are given great emphasisin the course of interpretation. Exegesis of thiskind is to be found in the discussion of doctrinalmatters as fully as in other contexts. A strikingexample may be cited from the Arian controversy.1 For the evidence on which this judgement is based, see my * TheologicalLegacy of S t Cyprian \Jf.E.H. xiv (1963), 144-7. Cf. a l s 0 S. L. Green-slade,' Scripture and other Doctrinal Norms in Early Theories of theMinistry', jf.T.S. XLIV (1943), 171-6.

5 1 4-2


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEThe words of Wisdom in Prov. viii.22, 'The Lordcreated me at the beginning of his work', were animportant proof-text in Arian argumentation. Theywere seen not as a rough prefigurement of Christo-logical tru th bu t as a precise indication of the Son'screated status. Athanasius goes to great length toshow that Arius has misinterpreted the verse, butit never occurs to him to suggest that the text isirrelevant to the determination of the issue at stake.Although it is a text which clearly fits the Ariansystem better than his own, he accepts it as alegitimate test and indulges in the most complexand at times inconsistent exegesis to avoid theArian implications of the words.1 Moreover, heuses the same kind of Old Testament text in thesame kind of way in support of his own case. Hein his turn can cite as evidence of the uncreatednature of the Son the words of Ps. ex. 3: cFromthe dew of the morning I begat thee before themorning star.'

2But although debate about suchscriptural texts played a considerable role in thecourse of the controversy, they did not play adirectly determinative role in the doctrinal con-viction of either side. Arius did not come to believethat the Son was 'created' because he found thatword used of Wisdom in Prov. viii.22; the text

was secondary support for a belief primarily basedon quite other philosophical grounds. Similarly,1 Athanasius, Or. Con. Ar. 2. 18-82. a De Decretis, 13, 21.

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SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE OF DOCTRINEAthanasius did not come to believe that the Son was'begotten' because he found the word used in Ps. ex.The role of Scripture here was rather confirmatory ofa position originally adopted for quite other reasons.That may be to reduce its significance in such cases;it is not to destroy it altogether. For the ability tofind apparently precise and detailed confirmationof one's own convictions in the exact wording ofScripture was not the insincere or artificial produc-tion of an additional weapon for use against one'senemies; it was a genuine and psychologically im-portant reinforcement of one's own beliefs.A similar verdict, that the role of Scripture wassecondary but still significant, applies to the greatmajority of cases where doctrinal argument isapparently based on this kind of appeal to detail.Origen argues that the word 'm a n ' in the words ofJesus, 'Now you seek to kill me, a man who toldyou the truth' (John viii.40), and in the words ofCaiaphas, * It is expedient that one man should diefor the people' (John xi.50), is doctrinally signifi-cant. It is indicative of the fact that it is only thehuman Jesus and not the divine Word who dies.1But his conviction of the need to distinguishsharply here between the humanity and the divinityof Christ is based on his belief in the divineimpassibility, his conviction that suffering cannotproperly be ascribed to God, rather than on the

1 Origen, Comm. Jfn. 28. 18.53


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEparticular form of the scriptural text. Th is is clearlyborne out by the fact that he fully acknowledgesthat Scripture does not always appear to speakwith the doctrinal precision which such a methodof interpretation presupposes. Scripture, indeed,is inconvenient enough to speak on occasion ofthe dying of the Son of God. But this does notlead Origen to abandon his belief in divine im-passibility or his conviction that it is the humanJesus only who dies. In such cases he applies theprinciple of interpretation known as communicatioidiomatum or the sharing of properties, accordingto which it was claimed that in view of the unityexisting between the two natures in the one ChristScripture could in fact apply to one nature what instrict logic referred only to the other.1 Th us, what-ever the actual text of Scripture, Origen was alwaysable to deduce the same doctrinal understandingof Christ's two natures. Apollinarius, who deniedthat Christ had a human mind, used the famousJohannine incarnation text that the Word becameflesh in support of that denial.2 But it is evidentfrom the tenor of his teaching as a whole thatdirectly exegetical arguments of this kind were notthe real grounds of his conviction; the real reasonwhich led him to adopt the position which he tookwas his belief that for the divine Word to be

1 Origen, De Princ. 2. 6. 3.2 E.g. H . Lietzmann, Apollinaris undseine Schule (1904), Frag. 2 (p . 204).54


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SCRIPTURE AS A SOURCE OF DOCTRINEconjoined in one person with a human mind wouldbe psychologically inconceivable and soteriologi-cally disastrous.1 Augustine taught that all mensinned in Adam, and used the Latin text of Rom.v. 12 {in quo om nes peccaverunt: ' in whom all havesinned') in support. This rendering he derivedfrom an earlier Latin commentator, Ambrosiaster,but it simply cannot stand as an interpretation ofthe Greek text. The Greek phrase (eq/ &), whichis literally but unidiomatically translated by theLatin phrase in quo, could not (as the Latin could)bear the meaning cin whom' (A.V. margin); it canonly mean 'because' or 'for that' (A.V.). But ifAugustine had been aware of that fact and hadthereby been deprived of the support of Rom.v. 12, his beliefs about original sin would not havecollapsed altogether. Their real basis lies else-where. In general terms it lies in a true apprehen-sion of the moral solidarity of the human race, ofthe fact that in our moral actions and our moralfailures we are inescapably influenced by oneanother. More specifically it lies in what has beencalled the principle of seminal identity, the prin-ciple that a man is in some real sense embodied inhis ancestors because as seed he is already latentwithin them ; if Levi can be said to have paid tithesto Melchizedek because he was present in the loins ofhis forefather, Abraham, who did so (Heb. vii. 9-10),

1 See pp. 97-8 below.55


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THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINEthen all men can be said to have sinned in Adamsince he is the forefather of all. Once again theprecise exegesis of Rom. v. 12 is secondary sup-port for Augustine's doctrinal belief, not its truefoundation.1One final example may be given where the appealto the wording of Scripture seems possibly to haveplayed a decisive role at a critical moment in thecourse of doctrinal development. The doctrineconcerned is the question whether or not Christpossessed a human soul. It is well known that thisissue became a matter of direct debate only in thelater decades of the fourth century in reaction tothe teaching of Apollinarius. But that was not thebeginning of the story. Tertullian and Origen hadboth clearly affirmed the fact of Christ's humansoul. Origen, indeed, had given to that soul a veryspecial place as the means through which the unionof divine Logos and human flesh was broughtabout. It was for him a kind of middle term whichsoftened the harshness of the direct conjunctionsuggested by the concept of the incarnation of thedivine Word. But to the majority of those whofollowed him in the Eastern church such a con-ception of Christ's human soul seemed to detractfrom the full reality of the incarnation and fromthe unity of Christ's person. T he extreme develop-1 Cf. the judgements of J. F . B ethune-Baker, Early History of ChristianDoctrine (2nd edn , 1920), p . 309, n. 2, and of G. I . Bo nne r, Augustine ofHippo (1963), pp. 372-4- 56


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SCR IPTU RE AS A SOURCE OF D OC TRIN Ement of the ideas implicit in Origen by Paul ofSamosata with his picture of the impersonal divineLogos conjoined to a full human Jesus had adecisive impact on the thinking of the majority.In the light of Paul of Samosata's teaching theycame to feel that there was no place for a humansoul in any adequate understanding of Christ'sperson. This outlook represented the general viewof the Eastern church in the closing years of thefourth century . It was common ground alike toArius and Athanasius and must be recognized assuch for any satisfactory understanding of thenature of the debate between them. None the less,the belief that Christ had a human soul was nevermade the subject of direct attack or official condem -nation, and thereby a way was more easily left openfor its eventual restoration as the formal view of theChurch . We may well ask why it was that if opposi-tion to the idea of Christ's possession of a humansoul was so widespread and so strong, it never cameto the point of overt denial or denunciation.

Two pieces of evidence suggest that at least oneimportant reason was that the text of Scripturespoke of the soul of Christ. In the early years ofthe fourth century Pamphilus composed a work indefence of Origen. On most issues he is thewholehearted champion of Origen against hiscritics, but he seems to regard the objection thatOrigen speaks of Christ's human soul as one of the

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7/27/2019 Maurice Wiles - The Making of Christian Doctrin

Maurice Wiles - The Making of Christian Doctrine

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