Adolf Harnack · 3 of 25

The Transformation of the Baptismal Confession into the Apostolic Rule of Faith.

A. The Transformation of the Baptismal Confession into the Apostolic Rule of Faith.

It has been explained (vol. I. p. 157) that the idea of the complete identity of what the Churches possessed as Christian communities with the doctrine or regulations of the twelve Apostles can already be shown in the earliest -Christian literature. In the widest sense the expression, κανὼν τῆς παραδόσεως (canon of tradition), originally included all that was traced back to Christ himself through the medium of the Apostles and was of value for the faith and life of the Church, together with everything that was or seemed her inalienable possession, as, for instance, the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. In the narrower sense that canon consisted of the history and words of Jesus. In so far as they formed the content of faith they were the faith itself, that is, the Christian truth; in so far as this faith was to determine the essence of everything Christian, it might be termed κανὼν τῆς πίστεως, κανὼν τῆς ἀληθείας (canon of the faith, canon of the truth). But the very fact that the extent of what was regarded as tradition of the Apostles was quite undetermined ensured the possibility of the highest degree of freedom; it was also still allowable to give expression to Christian inspiration and to the intuition of enthusiasm without any regard to tradition.

We now know that before the violent conflict with Gnosticism short formulated summaries of the faith had already grown out of the missionary practice of the Church (catechising). The shortest formula was that which defined the Christian faith as belief in the Father, Son, and Spirit. It appears to have been universally current in Christendom about the year 150. In the solemn transactions of the Church, therefore especially in baptism, in the great prayer of the , as well as in the exorcism of demons, fixed formulæ were used. They embraced also such articles as contained the most important facts in the history of Jesus. We know definitely that not later than about the middle of the second century (about 140 A.D.) the Roman Church possessed a fixed creed, which every candidate for baptism had to profess; and something similar must also have existed in Smyrna and other Churches of Asia Minor about the year 150, in some cases, even rather earlier. We may suppose that formulæ of similar plan and extent were also found in other provincial Churches about this time. Still it is neither probable that all the then existing communities possessed such creeds, nor that those who used them had formulated them in such a rigid way as the Roman Church had done. The proclamation of the history of Christ predicted in the Old Testament, the κήρυγμα τῆς ἀληθέιας, also accompanied the short baptismal formula without being expressed in set terms.

Words of Jesus and, in general, directions for the Christian life were not, as a rule, admitted into the short formulated creed. In the recently discovered “Teaching of the Apostles” (Διδαχὴ τῶν ἀποστόλων) we have no doubt a notable attempt to fix the rules of Christian life as traced back to Jesus through the medium of the Apostles, and to elevate them into the foundation of the confederation of Christian Churches; but this undertaking, which could not but have led the development of Christianity into other paths, did not succeed. That the formulated creeds did not express the principles of conduct, but the facts on which Christians based their faith, was an unavoidable necessity. Besides, the universal agreement of all earnest and thoughtful minds on the question of Christian morals was practically assured. Objection was not taken to the principles of morality — at least this was not a primary consideration — for there were many Greeks to whom they did not seem foolishness, but to the adoration of Christ as he was represented in tradition and to the Church’s worship of a God, who, as creator of the world and as a speaking and visible being, appeared to the Greeks, with their ideas of a purely spiritual deity, to be interwoven with the world, and who, as the God worshipped by the Jews also, seemed clearly distinct from the Supreme Being. This gave rise to the mockery of the , the theological art of the Gnostics, and the radical reconstruction of tradition as attempted by Marcion. With the freedom that still prevailed Christianity was in danger of being resolved into a motley mass of philosophic speculations or of being completely detached from its original conditions. “It was admitted on all sides that Christianity had its starting-point in certain facts and sayings; but if any and every interpretation of those facts and sayings was possible, if any system of philosophy might be taught into which the words that expressed them might be woven, it is clear that there could be but little cohesion between the members of the Christian communities. The problem arose and pressed for an answer: What should be the basis of Christian union? But the problem was for a time insoluble. For there was no standard and no court of appeal.” From the very beginning, when the differences in the various Churches began to threaten their unity, appeal was probably made to the Apostles’ doctrine, the words of the Lord, tradition, “sound doctrine”, definite facts, such as the reality of the human nature (flesh) of Christ, and the reality of his death and resurrection. In instruction, in exhortations, and above all in opposing erroneous doctrines and moral aberrations, this precept was inculcated from the beginning: ἀπολίπωμεν τὰς κενὰς καὶ ματαίας φροντίδας, καὶ ἔλθωμεν ἐπὶ τὸν ἐυκλεῆ καὶ σεμνὸν τῆς παραδόσεως ἡμῶν κανόνα (“Let us leave off vain and foolish thoughts and betake ourselves to the glorious and august canon of our tradition”). But the very question was: What is sound doctrine? What is the content of tradition? Was the flesh of Christ a reality? etc. There is no doubt that Justin, in opposition to those whom he viewed as pseudo-Christians, insisted on the absolute necessity of acknowledging certain definite traditional facts and made this recognition the standard of orthodoxy. To all appearance it was he who began the great literary struggle for the expulsion of heterodoxy (see his σύνταγμα κατὰ πασῶν τῶν γεγενημένων ἁιρέσεων); but, judging from those writings of his that have been preserved to us, it seems very unlikely that he was already successful in finding a fixed standard for determining orthodox Christianity.

The permanence of the communities, however, depended on the discovery of such a standard. They were no longer held together by the conscientia religionis, the unitas disciplinæ, and the fœdus spei. The Gnostics were not solely to blame for that. They rather show us merely the excess of a continuous trans-formation which no community could escape. The gnosis which subjected religion to a critical examination awoke in proportion as religious life from generation to generation lost its warmth and spontaneity. There was a time when the majority of Christians knew themselves to be such, (1) because they had the “Spirit” and found in that an indestructible guarantee of their Christian position, (2) because they observed all the commandments of Jesus (εντολαὶ Ἰησοῦ). But when these guarantees died away, and when at the same time the most diverse doctrines that were threatening to break up the Church were preached in the name of Christianity, the fixing of tradition necessarily became the supreme task. Here, as in every other case, the tradition was not fixed till after it had been to some extent departed from. It was just the Gnostics themselves who took the lead in a fixing process, a plain proof that the setting up of dogmatic formulæ has always been the support of new formations. But the example set by the Gnostics was the very thing that rendered the problem difficult. Where was a beginning to be made? “There is a kind of unconscious logic in the minds of masses of men when great questions are abroad, which some one thinker throws into suitable form.” There could be no doubt that the needful thing was to fix what was “apostolic”, for the one certain thing was that Christianity was based on a divine revelation which had been transmitted through the medium of the Apostles to the Churches of the whole earth. It certainly was not a single individual who hit on the expedient of affirming the fixed forms employed by the Churches in their solemn transactions to be apostolic in the strict sense. It must have come about by a natural process. But the confession of the Father, Son, and Spirit and the kerygma of Jesus Christ had the most prominent place among these forms. The special emphasising of these articles, in opposition to the Gnostic and Marcionite undertakings, may also be viewed as the result of the “common sense” of all those who clung to the belief that the Father of Jesus Christ was the creator of the world, and that the Son of God really appeared in the flesh. But that was not everywhere sufficient, for, even admitting that about the period between 150 and 180 A.D. all the Churches had a fixed creed which they regarded as apostolic in the strict sense — and this cannot be proved, — the most dangerous of all Gnostic schools, viz., those of Valentinus, could recognise this creed, since they already possessed the art of explaining a given text in whatever way they chose. What was needed was an apostolic creed definitely interpreted; for it was only by the aid of a definite interpretation that the creed could be used to repel the Gnostic speculations and the Marcionite conception of Christianity.

In this state of matters the Church of Rome, the proceedings of which are known to us through Irenæus and Tertullian, took, with regard to the fixed Roman baptismal confession ascribed to the Apostles, the following step: The Antignostic interpretation required by the necessities of the times was proclaimed as its self-evident content; the confession, thus explained, was designated as the “Catholic faith” (“fides catholica”), that is the rule of truth for the faith; and its acceptance was made the test of adherence to the Roman Church as well as to the general confederation of Christendom. Irenæus was not the author of this proceeding. How far Rome acted with the cooperation or under the influence of the Church of Asia Minor is a matter that is still obscure, and will probably never be determined with certainty. What the Roman community accomplished practically was theoretically established by Irenæus and Tertullian. The former proclaimed the baptismal confession, definitely interpreted and expressed in an Antignostic form, to be the apostolic rule of truth (regula veritatis), and tried to prove it so. He based his demonstration on the theory that this series of doctrines embodied the faith of the churches founded by the Apostles, and that these communities had always preserved the apostolic teaching unchanged (see under C).

Viewed historically, this thesis, which preserved Christianity from complete dissolution, is based on two unproved assumptions and on a confusion of ideas. It is not demonstrated that any creed emanated from the Apostles, nor that the Churches they founded always preserved their teaching in its original form; the creed itself, moreover, is confused with its interpretation. Finally, the existence of a fides catholica, in the strict sense of the word, cannot be justly inferred from the essential agreement found in the doctrine of a series of communities. But, on the other hand, the course taken by Irenæus was the only one capable of saving what yet remained of primitive Christianity, and that is its historical . A fides apostolica had to be set up and declared identical with the already existing fides catholica. It had to be made the standard for judging all particular doctrinal opinions, that it might be determined whether they were admissible or not.

The persuasive power with which Irenæus set up the principle of the apostolic “rule of truth,” or of “tradition” or simply of “faith,” was undoubtedly, as far as he himself was concerned, based on the facts that he had already a rigidly formulated creed before him and that he had no doubt as to its interpretation. The rule of truth (also ἡ ὑπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας κηρυσσομένη ἀλήθεια “the truth proclaimed by the Church;” and τὸ τῆς ἀληθέιας σωμάτιον, “the body of the truth”) is the old baptismal confession well known to the communities for which he immediately writes. (See I. 9. 4; οὕτω δέ καὶ ὁ τὸν κανόνα τῆς ἀληθείας ἀκλινῆ ἐν ἑαυτῷ κατέχων ὃν διὰ τοῦ βαπτρίσματος εἴληφε, “in like manner he also who retains immovably in his heart the rule of truth which he received through baptism”); because it is this, it is apostolic, firm and immovable.

By the fixing of the rule of truth, the formulation of which in the case of Irenæus (I. l0. 1, 2) naturally follows the arrangement of the (Roman) baptismal confession, the most important Gnostic theses were at once set aside and their antitheses established as apostolic. In his apostolic rule of truth Irenæus himself already gave prominence to the following doctrines: the unity of God; the identity of the supreme God with the Creator; the identity of the supreme God with the God of the Old Testament; the unity of Jesus Christ as the Son of the God who created the world; the essential divinity of Christ; the of the Son of God; the prediction of the entire history of Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament; the reality of that history; the bodily reception (ἔνσαρκος ἀνάληψις) of Christ into heaven; the visible return of Christ; the resurrection of all flesh (ἀνάστασις πάσης σαρκὸς, πάσης ἀνθρωπότητος), the universal judgment. These dogmas, the antitheses of the Gnostic regulæ, were consequently, as apostolic and therefore also as Catholic, removed beyond all discussion.

Tertullian followed Irenæus in every particular. He also interpreted the (Romish) baptismal confession, represented it, thus explained, as the regula fidei, and transferred to the latter the attributes of the confession, viz., its apostolic origin (or origin from Christ), as well as its fixedness and completeness. Like Irenæus, though still more stringently, he also endeavoured to prove that the formula had descended from Christ, that is, from the Apostles, and was incorrupt. He based his demonstration on the alleged incontestable facts that it contained the faith of those Churches founded by the Apostles, that in these communities a corruption of doctrine was inconceivable, because in them, as could be proved, the Apostles had always had successors, and that the other Churches were in communion with them (see under C). In a more definite way than Irenæus, Tertullian conceives the rule of faith as a rule for the faith, as the law given to faith, also as a “regula doctrinæ” or “doctrina regulæ” (here the creed itself is quite plainly the regula), and even simply as “doctrina” or “institutio”. As to the content of the regula, it was set forth by Tertullian in three passages. It is essentially the same as in Irenæus. But Tertullian already gives prominence within the regula to the creation of the universe out of nothing, the creative instrumentality of the Logos, his origin before all creatures, a definite theory of the Incarnation, the preaching by Christ of a nova lex and a nova promissio regni cœlorum, and finally also the Trinitarian economy of God. Materially, therefore, the advance beyond Irenæus is already very significant. Tertullian’s regula is in point of fact a doctrina. In attempting to bind the communities to this he represents them as schools. The apostolic “lex et doctrina” is to be regarded as inviolable by every Christian. Assent to it decides the Christian character of the individual. Thus the Christian disposition and life come to be a matter which is separate from this and subject to particular conditions. In this way the essence of religion was split up — the most fatal turning-point in the history of Christianity.

But we are not of course to suppose that at the beginning of the third century the actual bond of union between all the Churches was a fixed confession developed into a doctrine, that is, definitely interpreted. This much was gained, as is clear from the treatise de præscriptione and from other evidence, that in the communities with which Tertullian was acquainted, mutual recognition and brotherly intercourse were made to depend on assent to formulæ which virtually coincided with the Roman baptismal confession. Whoever assented to such a formula was regarded as a Christian brother, and was entitled to the salutation of peace, the name of brother, and hospitality. In so far as Christians confined themselves to a doctrinal formula which they, however, strictly applied, the of this practice betokened an advance. The scattered communities now possessed a “lex” to bind them together, quite as certainly as the philosophic schools possessed a bond of union of a real and practical character in the shape of certain briefly formulated doctrines. In virtue of the common apostolic lex of Christians the Catholic Church became a reality, and was at the same time clearly marked off from the heretic sects. But more than this was gained, in so far as the Antignostic interpretation of the formula, and consequently a “doctrine”, was indeed in some measure involved in the lex. The extent to which this was the case depended, of course, on the individual community or its leaders. All Gnostics could not be excluded by the wording of the confession; and, on the other hand, every formulated faith leads to a formulated doctrine, as soon as it is set up as a critical canon. What we observe in Irenæus and Tertullian must have everywhere taken place in a greater or less degree; that is to say, the authority of the confessional formula must have been extended to statements not found in the formula itself.

We can still prove from the works of Clement of Alexandria that a confession claiming to be an apostolic law of faith, ostensibly comprehending the whole essence of Christianity, was not set up in the different provincial Churches at one and the same time. From this it is clearly manifest that at this period the Alexandrian Church neither possessed a baptismal confession similar to that of Rome, nor understood by “regula fidei” and synonymous expressions a collection of beliefs fixed in some fashion and derived from the apostles. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromateis appeals to the holy (divine) Scriptures, to the teaching of the Lord, and to the standard tradition which he designates by a great variety of names, though he never gives its content, because he regards the whole of Christianity in its present condition as needing to be reconstructed by gnosis, and therefore as coming under the head of tradition. In one respect therefore, as compared with Irenæus and Tertullian, he to some extent represents an earlier stand-point; he stands midway between them and Justin. From this author he is chiefly distinguished by the fact that he employs sacred Christian writings as well as the Old Testament, makes the true Gnostic quite as dependent on the former as on the latter and has lost that naïve view of tradition, that is, the complete content of Christianity, which Irenæus and Tertullian still had. As is to be expected, Clement too assigns the ultimate authorship of the tradition to the Apostles; but it is characteristic that he neither does this of such set purpose as Irenæus and Tertullian, nor thinks it necessary to prove that the Church had presented the apostolic tradition intact. But as he did not extract from the tradition a fixed complex of fundamental propositions, so also he failed to recognise the importance of its publicity and catholicity, and rather placed an esoteric alongside of an exoteric tradition. Although, like Irenæus and Tertullian, his attitude is throughout determined by opposition to the Gnostics and Marcion, he supposes it possible to refute them by giving to the Holy Scriptures a scientific exposition which must not oppose the κανὼν τῆς ἐκκλησίας, that is, the Christian common sense, but receives from it only certain guiding rules. But this attitude of Clement would be simply inconceivable if the Alexandrian Church of his time had already employed the fixed standard applied in those of Rome, Carthage and Lyons. Such a standard did not exist; but Clement made no distinction in the yet unsystematised tradition, even between faith and discipline, because as a theologian he was not able to identify himself with any single article of it without hesitation, and because he ascribed to the true Gnostic the ability to fix and guarantee the truth of Christian doctrine.

Origen, although he also attempted to refute the heretics chiefly by a scientific exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, exhibits an attitude which is already more akin to that of Irenæus and Tertullian than to that of Clement. In the preface to his great work, “De principiis,” he prefixed the Church doctrine as a detailed apostolic rule of faith, and in other instances also he appealed to the apostolic teaching. It may be assumed that in the time of Caracalla and Heliogabalus the Alexandrian Christians had also begun to adopt the principles acted upon in Rome and other communities. The Syrian Churches, or at least a part of them, followed still later. There can be no doubt that, from the last decades of the third century onward, one and the same confession, identical not in its wording, but in its main features, prevailed in the great confederation of Churches extending from Spain to the Euphrates and from Egypt to beyond the Alps. It was the basis of the confederation, and therefore also a passport, mark of recognition, etc., for the orthodox Christians. The interpretation of this confession was fixed in certain ground features, that is, in an Antignostic sense. But a definite theological interpretation was also more and more enforced. By the end of the third century there can no longer have been any considerable number of outlying communities where the doctrines of the pre-existence of Christ and the identity of this pre-existent One with the divine Logos were not recognised as the orthodox belief. They may have first become an apostolic confession of faith “ through the Nicene Creed. But even this creed was not adopted all at once.