Chapter Three: Apostolic Christianity

The sections in Chapter Three are:

• The Gnostic Controversies
• Who Should Lead?
• The Invention of Heresy
• Who is the Creator?
• Who is Jesus?
• Defining Apostolic Teaching
• Redefining Leadership

My highlights from Chapter Three:

• In this chapter we will trace the internal growth of Christianity throughout the second century, from the first generation of far-flung missionary groups to a united international body at the beginning of the third century.
• In antiquity the trustworthiness of a teacher was often linked to knowing who that teacher’s teachers had been.
• Another important early source for our knowledge of leadership in second-century Christianity is the Didache, a church manual that includes moral guidelines for Christian life, liturgical rubrics for baptism and eucharist, and instructions for discerning authentic leadership.
• Gnosticism saw the world in terms of polar opposites—light and dark, spirit and matter, good and evil. Because they believed God was wholly transcendent, material creation had happened by accident; it was the work of a lower, evil god. Thus, for Gnostic Christians Jesus had little need of a physical nature: he had appeared in the flesh only to rescue souls trapped in the physical world.
• Christians invented the distinction between “orthodoxy”—right belief—and “heresy,” defined as a wrong or harmful teaching. In contrast to Greco-Roman or Jewish thought, where truth was continually rediscovered and honed through discussion, orthodox Christians proclaimed one ancient, unchanging belief.
• Since the discovery of Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, popular scholars such as Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels, have romanticized Gnostics as courageous free thinkers in comparison to more “dogmatic” Christians, but this draws theological lines too sharply.
• Our legacy from orthodox Christians as they debated the issue of Jesus’ humanity with the Gnostic members of their communities is the belief that the story of salvation in history extends from Genesis through Exodus to the incarnation to Easter.
• Whatever the Gnostics may have taught, orthodox Christians followed the Greek and Roman philosophers in insisting on a doctrine of free will and human moral self-determination. Humans are created free in the image of a free and powerful God; they are not puppets, but are responsible for their choices.
• In contrast to the Gnostic language of election and rest, Irenaeus and Origen urged spiritual effort and growth so that all creation could progress into this union with God through the active grace of Christ. Not only human intellectual or spiritual natures would be healed and transformed through the Incarnation, but physical natures would be transformed as well.
• In addition to these questions of leadership and theology, consistency of belief across and within the communities of faith was also a pressing issue for Christians in the second century.
• The choice of what could be considered the “true” scriptures was an important part of establishing apostolic tradition.
• Irenaeus argued for the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and coined the terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” to distinguish the two types of scripture.
• The first list of New Testament books corresponding to those in our Bible was not completed until almost two hundred years later by Athanasius of Alexandria in 367. Significantly, he also included a prohibition against reading apocryphal works in private.
• The rule of faith in the second century was not a creed as such, but rather a short summary of the gospel: God as one and creator, the Father of Jesus Christ; Christ as born of a virgin, who died and was resurrected and who is expected to return; and the Holy Spirit as continually active in the prophets and in the community.
• If an essential part of the Gnostic conflict was an argument over the credentials of apostolic leadership, the “Montanist” or New Prophecy controversy continued this debate at a critical time. The conflict forced the church to define clerical and scriptural authority even more sharply.
• The sharp distinctions that second-century theologians made between orthodoxy and heresy began to limit the number and range of interpretations that were permitted, which meant that the clergy inevitably became the sole guardians of tradition, thus weakening the traditional community roles of charismatic prophets and spiritual teachers.
• While the Gnostics are often portrayed as independent philosophical teachers in conflict with the clergy, I think the evidence suggests that the controversy was in fact a contest between competing teachers with different visions of Christianity.

Questions for Discussion

1. Read through the Apostles’ Creed (BCP 53/96), which is based on an early rule of faith. What does it say about God? Jesus? What does it not say? Why?
2. Over the years the church has debated again and again the question of orthodox belief versus heresy. How do you discern what is true in your faith? How does your own experience, your reading of scripture, or the tradition of the church fit into this process? 
3. One of the ways the early church discerned orthodox beliefs was to ask whether a teacher was in line with the apostles. How do you decide which church leaders today are in agreement with “apostolic tradition”? Does it matter to you if they are?

Chapter Two: The World of the Early Church

The sections in Chapter Two are:

• Romans, Jews, and Christians
• The Roman World
• Transformations in Jewish Identity
• The First Christian Communities

My highlights from Chapter Two:

• The first Christian missionaries entered a world that was intensely interested in religion.
• In antiquity no division existed between political and religious life, and Roman society was sustained by its traditional piety toward the Greco-Roman gods.
• The vigorous trade and travel of the empire brought a variety of local gods into close contact with each other. For the most part, Roman rulers were tolerant of religions they felt did not threaten their own traditions.
• Platonism expressed the existential tension between the freedom of the mind and the physical constraints of the body. Defining the mind and soul as the superior element, this philosophy sought security and truth in the unchanging spiritual world.
• In the third century the Egyptian philosopher Plotinus taught a more extreme version of this philosophy that became the school of Neo-Platonism.
• Deeply influential on Christian theologians such as Augustine, Plotinus thought that everything originally overflowed from the One, a transcendent first principle. 
• These philosophical teachings had a strong effect on the earliest Christian theologians. The Platonic affirmation of divine perfection and beauty was appealing to many theologians, in spite of certain conflicts with Christian tradition and experience.
• If Platonism provided a way of understanding the mysterious tension between mind and body, Stoicism focused on problems of self-discipline and nature. Rejecting the Platonist’s hierarchy of spirit and matter, Stoic teachers defended the physical unity of all existence.
• Christians adopted the Stoic language of discipline, while also stressing human choice and transformation.
• The last great persecutor of the Christians in 303 was a shrewd and deeply pious general, Diocletian, who divided the empire in two and pushed through radical economic reforms to stabilize society. Ironically, the equally shrewd and pious general who followed him turned out to be the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who believed Christianity could restore peace and stability to the empire. He did not suppress traditional Roman religion, but gave immense wealth and favor to the Christian churches. In the fourth century, Christianity and Roman religion existed side by side until 392, when the emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the sole state religion and closed all pagan temples.
• Using Hebrew scripture as their own, drawing on the vigorous missions of Jews in the first century, and in some cases continuing to keep Jewish law, Christians only gradually pulled away from overt identification with Judaism.
• Given their obscurity and perceived obstinacy, why did the Christian movement grow? Part of the answer seems to lie in the close-knit religious communities created by the message and faith of the first apostles.
• Christians turned away from the traditional religions of the society around them. Conversion exacted a high cost. Committed to monotheism, they would no longer offer sacrifices or prayers to the Roman gods. This refusal isolated them from normal social and economic life, as well as from public worship.
• As Christians gained in numbers, the first sporadic persecutions began.
• As religious outsiders and disbelievers, Christians were convenient scapegoats in any crisis.
• The martyrs were celebrated as those who followed Christ in offering the supreme sacrifice of their lives, while their persecutors were pictured as agents of the devil who sought to destroy the church and thwart God’s will.

Questions for Discussion:

• This chapter describes how the Jesus movement arose out of a melting pot of religions—mystery religions, Judaism, Greek and Roman philosophy, Stoicism, and so on. What is your experience of relations between Christians and other religions? 
• In many parts of the world Christians are still persecuted. Have you ever experienced disapproval or even outright hostility because of your beliefs? 
• What parallels—social, political, economic—do you see between the world of the early church and the world today?

Chapter One: Anglican Identity and Christian Traditions

The sections in Chapter One are:

• Tradition and Traditions
• Anglican Recovery of the Early Church
• Modern Anglican Identity

My highlights from Chapter One:

• Liturgy, orthodoxy, monasticism, and scripture were all “invented” during these centuries.
• In their search for a catholic and reformed church independent of Rome at the Reformation, Anglicans went back not only to scripture, but to these earliest centuries of the church. Here the reformers found a model for liturgy in the language of the people, a learned and pastoral theology, and the shared authority of councils.
• Anglicans affirmed the priority and authority of scripture, but also recognized the continuing role of the community itself as the guardian and interpreter of scripture. They embraced both scripture and tradition: traditions not explicitly sanctioned in scripture could still be maintained.
• Even when we speak of “apostolic tradition”—the teachings of Jesus that were preached through the earliest missionaries or apostles—we are talking not of a single uniform formula, but of a collection of beliefs and practices. It is a coherent and recognizable collection, but it is not monolithic.
• Ancient Christians thus looked to consistency rather than uniformity in order to define saving belief, both orally and in scripture.... Whereas uniformity requires enforcement, consistency demands discernment.
• When Christians fell into theological disputes, which they seemed to do so much of the time in these small early communities, intense reflection on scripture, interpretation, custom, and practice would take place. Often, there was no clear guidance to be found in scripture or tradition, so theologians had to create interpretations based on exegesis and reason.
• Christian tradition reflected through the prism of history is not a single white light, but a whole spectrum of colors.
• Using the linguistic and historical tools of humanistic scholarship, Anglican apologists studied the early centuries in order to validate their Reformation principles of theological independence, liturgy in the language of the people, and common access to scripture.
• Obedience to scripture through the lens of learning and early church tradition became the foundation of Anglican identity during the Reformation.
• Thus reforming Anglicans embraced those church practices and traditions of the early and medieval church that did not directly contradict scripture, and that made sense in light of the needs and local traditions of an independent English church.
• The early centuries of the church were of critical importance for Anglican liturgical reform. For Thomas Cranmer, the ancient church offered better liturgical models than medieval devotions and practices. Thus, he and the other Anglican reformers believed the Bible and liturgy should be in the vernacular, and accessible to all the people.
• Wishing to include a broad spectrum of Reformation theology in a single prayer book, Cranmer created devotional language that acknowledged, if not encouraged, more than one interpretation.
• The Book of Common Prayer represented a liturgical compromise for a state church, but its development was also a profound theological step. Unity could contain diversity.
• Anchored in the authority of an ancient church that embraced both tradition and scholarship, Anglicans of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could affirm a broad tradition that avoided fundamentalism and affirmed modern historical criticism of the Bible. The present Anglican diversity of Anglo-Catholics, evangelicals, and liberals reflects this mixed inheritance.
• he Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888, found in the Historical Documents section of The Book of Common Prayer, cites the authority of scripture, the witness of the ancient creeds, the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, and the historic episcopate as the basis for Christian unity (BCP 876-877).
• Studies of ancient liturgy also underlay the Liturgical Renewal movement of the twentieth century which sought to restore many of the theological and liturgical understandings of prayer and the sacraments from the early church.
• We are rooted in a common apostolic tradition, yet are torn by conflicting interpretations. In spite of this, the Anglican model of national autonomy in ecclesiastical communion offers at least an opportunity for us to move together as one church into the next century. In this way we offer to other Christians a model of honest debate, faithful discernment, and catholic unity which, ironically, is both deeply ancient and radically new.
• At the Reformation Anglican reformers looked back to the early church for a model of catholicity that acknowledged national autonomy.... Liberty from dogmatic authority as well as veneration of the past has therefore been integral to the Anglican use of tradition since that time. From the Reformation to the present day, scripture and tradition have been lived out in dialogue with critical thinking.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Everyone who studies history is attracted to some periods more than others. In your own view of the history of the church, are some periods more important than others? Which ones, and why?

2. This chapter talks about the appeal that the early church has traditionally held for Anglicans. Which traditions we have inherited from the early church are particularly important to you as an Anglican?

3. Much attention has been focused on diversity and inclusivity in the church today. Lyman notes that “the ‘unity in multiplicity’ of the ancient church offered an authoritative model” for Anglicanism at the time of the Reformation. In what ways do you think that is still true today?

Lyman, Rebecca. Early Christian Traditions (New Church's Teaching Series) (pp. 175-176). Cowley Publications. Kindle Edition. 

Book Study: Early Church Traditions

This is the book we've chosen for our Advent and Beyond Book Study: Early Christian Traditions.

If you're like me, some of your best ideas for discussion don't occur to you until you're driving out of the parking lot, or taking a shower the next morning. I've set up this blog so we can continue our discussion in the time between meetings. I will post the questions provided for each chapter, and any additional points that come up during our discussion, and people may add their thoughts in the comments below.

Many thanks to Pastor Salying for inspiring this book study. When I asked her for suggestions as to ways that I, newly retired, could contribute, she immediately suggested some kind of book study. I'm grateful to her for the inspiration and support. And I'm also grateful that we have Rebecca Lyman as our adjunct priest, who we may call upon from time to time to provide her authoritative insights.

I'm looking forward to deepening our understanding of the early traditions of Christianity among ourselves. Peace to all who wish to join in!