Chapter 5…

I am quite behind in summarizing these chapters, as I am already in to volume 2 of The Christian Tradition: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom. However, I intend on catching up soon. I find that the little time that I do have to write or reflect on these books is spent reading more of them. I suppose I would rather read them than write about them. But, as I first mentioned, I am doing this for my benefit to help me digest what I am reading. Although I am only hitting some high bullet points in each chapter (there is so much more to Pelikan’s insights than what I am including) it is fun to go back and read my notes on each chapter. Anyway, I should finish up The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition soon. Now, on to chapter 5.

Chapter 5: The Person of the God Man

“The dogma of the Trinity was developed as the church’s response to a question about the identity of Jesus Christ. Was he, or was he not, equal in his divine existence with the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth? The answer of orthodox Christian doctrine to that question was the confession that he was “from the ousia of the Father” and “homoousios with the Father.”

When the creed of Nicea was formalized, the question of Christ was whether or not he was preexistent or not. Now, a few decades later, the theme is not preexistence, but incarnation. Who is Christ in the flesh? “Not the relation of God to God is now at issue, but the relation of God to man in the person of the earthly Christ, who dwelt among men.”

This is an important question on several levels. One such level is baptism. If we are baptized into Christ, are we then baptized into a man or into God? The question of the fleshly Christ as compared to the divine Christ was necessary in order to reconcile the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ – in other words, the church needed to wrap these two apparent natures of Jesus into one person so that the doctrine of baptism was not into a creature, but a creator (deity).

Another level was the traditional understanding of the absoluteness and impassibility of the divine nature. The church had already decided that Christ was divine (the question of preexistence at Nicea answered this dilemma), but if Christ is also human, then the fact that he has emotion and pain (weeping, the trial and the cross, etc.) is one that has to be seriously dealt with. “This attribute of being ancient and unchangeable could not be set aside even in the incarnation. Although he was said to suffer in the flesh, impassibility continued to be characteristic of him insofar as he was God. He was incapable of suffering but took on a flesh that could suffer, so that the suffering of his flesh could be said to be his own. But then the question was: ‘In what sense does not [the impassible Logos] himself suffer?’ Cyril replied that it was ‘by suffering in his own flesh, but not in the nature of his deity,’ in a manner that transcended all reason and all language.”

Keeping Christ as a single-minded, single-being (in regards to incarnation) and not schizophrenic was the danger incurred by this line of questioning. In other words, it was very easy for some to say that at some time Jesus acted only in his divinity and at other times he acted only in his humanity – a schizophrenic Christ. It was very important for the church to decide how Jesus was unified in natures (divine and human) yet keeping those natures distinct. Christ had to be both divine and human at the same time and at all times.

One other dilemma the church faced in dealing with Christology was that of worship. “Was the humanity of the Logos, too, the object of worship?” Certainly “anthropolatry” could not be accepted – so how would the church again, decide how Jesus was to be worshiped. The church could not say that they were worshipping only the divinity of Jesus for that is not who he is in whole and the church could not be allowed to separate the natures (for he would cease to be Jesus the Christ if they did so). “Any worship of the incarnate one that separated his humanity from his divinity would be equivalent to replacing the divine Triad by a tetrad of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the man Jesus.”

Of special note in this discussion is the name given to Mary, the mother of Jesus – theotokos, God-bearer. “Mary had served as proof for the reality of the humanity of Jesus: he had truly been born of a human mother and therefore was a man.”

“Athanasius himself – found in this title (theotokos) an apt formula for their belief that in the incarnation deity and humanity were united so closely that, by what came to be known as ‘the communication of properties,’ neither birth nor crucifixion nor salvation could be attributed to one nature without the other.”

Much of what is written above was considered presuppositions of Christology. Because Christ was already agreed upon to be God, the church presupposed that he was absolute (ancient – has always been), impassible (unchanging and unaffected by external forces), Creator and Lord, of the same essence as the Father and Spirit, etc. However, despite these presuppositions, many questions about his humanity created big dilemmas regarding his divinity. What about the crucifixion – did God die on the cross? Is that acceptable? Did God need to be strengthened by angels in the garden? Is that acceptable? So on, and so on.

The starting point for the church was definitely the divine Scriptures. Typically, for Christological purpose, John 1:14 was where everyone began. But, so many places in the Gospels were named as causing problems with various doctrines. For instance, Nestorius had problems with Jesus’ prophecy, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Nestorius called him “double” because Jesus asserted himself as a temple who could be destroyed but also a God that could raise up. Therefore a distinction existed in the functions or abilities of Jesus the divine and Jesus the human. He referred to the temple of his body in the third person and the Logos who raises up in the first. This is but one example of the various dilemmas that the church faced and felt obliged to answer.

So where does that leave us regarding an answer to the question of the divine-human Jesus? The church agreed that there are in fact two natures in Christ. These natures made up the one person – Jesus. There was not a fusion between the natures, but they remained distinct. The human was assumed by the divine and the divine by the human. Leo I had a great deal in articulating the dogma of the two natures in his Tome. “A passible humanity was joined to an impassible divinity, so that Christ would ‘from one element be capable of dying, and from the other be incapable.’ This was the meaning of the stories in the Gospels, all of which, both the evidences of kenosis and the proofs of continuing divine power, had to be accounted for in a Christological doctrine: both the lowliness of the swaddling clothes and the glory of the angels’ song; both the vulnerability to Herod and the adoration of the Magi; both ‘being pierced with nails and opening the gates of Paradise to the faith of the thief’ on the cross.” “Therefore ‘each “form” does that acts which are appropriate to it, in communion with the other, the Logos, that is, performing what is appropriate to it, and the flesh carrying out what is appropriate to the flesh.”

The two councils that contributed to the Christological confession were the Council of Ephesus in 431(which affirmed Nicea as not only Trinitarian but also Christological) and the Council at Chalcedon in 451. I’ll end with the Chalcedonian formula which has been fundamental to Christology in the western, eastern and Syriac traditions of the church (although following its formation, many debates were still being held regarding its validity – about 20 more pages were given to this in chapter 5, but I don’t really want to delve into it. Suffice it to say, this creed sums up orthodox Christology for the most part for all orthodox churches). It reads:

“Following therefore the holy fathers, we confess one and the same our Lord Jesus Christ, and we all teach harmoniously [that he is] the same perfect in godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same of a reasonable soul and body; homoousios with the Father in godhead, and the same homoousios with us in manhood, like us in all things except sin; begotten before ages of the Father in godhead; the same in the last days for us and for our salvation [born] of Mary the Virgin Theotokos in manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, unique; acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation – the difference of the natures being by no means taken away because of the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved, and [each] combining in one person and hypostasis – not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Logos, Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets of old and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us about him, and the symbol of the fathers has handed down to us.”

Chapter 4…

Chapter 4: The Mystery of the Trinity

The central question of the fourth century in the development of doctrine was this: “Is the divine that has appeared on earth and reunited man with God identical with the supreme divine, which rules heaven and earth, or is it a demigod?” Jesus was certainly understood already to be divine and human, but this question and the ensuing debate argued whether or not Jesus was indeed the God of the heavens and earth (read: Creator and supreme being – none being greater, all being beneath), or was he a created demigod. Stated differently, did the creator God step out of heaven and become man, while simultaneously maintaining his lordship over all of Creation, losing nothing of his essence in doing so?

This is the “Mystery of the Trinity.”

Church father, Athanasius – bishop of Alexandria, is the brain behind most of the dogma that became catholic regarding this debate.

The heresy of the debate was primarily docetism which taught that Jesus was certainly God but only appeared to be man. Doceo is greek for “to seem.” Therefore, Jesus only seemed to have a real body and to have suffered a real death. The Gnostics championed this claim because they believed that matter itself was evil and that God could not have entered a material (evil) body. This heresy caused Ignatius to insist that Christ “was really born, and ate and drank, was really persecuted by Pontius Pilate, was really crucified and died…really rose from the dead.” This liturgical response “found its echo in Isaiah 63:9 – “not an intercessor, nor and angel, but the Lord himself” – Christ the Lord was Yahweh.”

Another heresy that ensued in this debate was that of modalism. If Jesus was indeed God, how was this accomplished. What was the method or the mode of incarnation. Modalism taught that there was one being and depending on the time in history, this one would manifest himself as either Father, Son, or Spirit. All three being the same with no distinction at all. An easy way to think about it is schizophrenia – multiple personalities. Sabellius (a heretic) used the analogy of the sun to describe his “trinity.” The sun is “conceived as one essence with three energies – the light-giving, the warming, and the astrological.”

Regarding the Spirit, there was little debate about the nature of the Spirit. The church seemed to use the term “Spirit” as the preexistent divine which was in Christ. Rather, this spawned a debate about what exactly the Logos was. More or less, the decision was dependent upon what discipline someone approached the term. Ignatius understood the Logos to be the spoken word, where as Irenaeus believed Logos should be understood as the divine agent of creation. Others understood Logos in a direct philosophical way – cosmologically usually, but also as the Indwelling Reason of the mind.

In the third quarter of the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity was hammered out. In many ways it was not a christological discussion, but a pneumatological one (of the Spirit). The church decided that the proper term to make the three one was ousia. Therefore, Christ was homoousios (the same in essence) with the Father. The Spirit of God was what accomplished this. However, the church had a term for the oneness of the three, but what would they use to describe the distinction that existed as well? That word was and still is hypostasis. These two terms are very hard to distinguish between, but Basil ultimately parsed out what it meant to be one ousia and three hypostases. Ousia had the connotation of a very general understanding (non-distinct); hypostasis connoted a specific distinction between the three personalities – Father, Son, and Spirit – yet, still brought an idea of relatedness.

Yet, Basil also commented that “what was common to the Three and what was distinctive among them lay beyond speech and comprehension and therefore beyond either analysis or conceptualization.” There you have it, the same apparent cop-out that we all still use in one form or the other even today. The mystery of the Trinity is beautiful – there is a truth in it that boggles the mind and a beauty in it that causes us to say, “Hallelujah.”

Chapter 3…

The Christian Tradition is still great. Sometimes I feel it is eating my lunch – as the saying goes, but I am learning a lot. Most of the content in volume 1 has been subjects with which I am quite familiar. What I like about Pelikan is that he about as unbiased as an author can be when writing on these things. I have found very few opinions expressed – only fact. Therefore, although I know some about the subjects at hand, the knowledge I gained was from a very biased point-of-view. Much of the doctrine and history that I was taught, although factual, were somewhat skewed. I suppose when you are as accomplished as Pelikan, there are not too many with whom you must try and win favor.

Chapter 3: The Faith of the Church Catholic

In response to heretics and their doctrines (heresies), the Church decided it must have a confession. It must state what it believes in order to have a quantifiable way to anathematize someone. So, the church catholic began to meet in what were known as synods and councils to outline what it believed.

To begin, the church decided that all doctrines must be foremost filtered through one idea – apocalypticism.

“Apocalypticism…was the mother of all Christian theologies.” The earliest christology was not expressed in the cool identification of Jesus with the Logos as the rational principle of the universe, but in the fervid vision of the Son of man breaking the power of the demons and ushering in the new aeon with divine judgment and mercy…Each major tenet of primitive Christian belief must be understood in this apocalyptic context: the very charter of orthodoxy, the command of the risen Lord to the apostles to make disciples and to teach them to observe everything that he had commanded, was predicated on the promise and the prophecy that he would be with them until the consummation of the age.

As anyone who has read the New Testament has noticed, not only Jesus himself, but also the apostles (particularly Paul) wrote often of the second coming of the Son of man. Paul emphatically urged his readers to look to the coming of Christ. He spoke of it as if it would happen in his day.

Many of the sacraments and doctrines had a direct relation to the apocalyptic vision. Take for instance baptism and the Eucharist: “Baptism was a radical renunciation of the past and of this world, the breaking through of the kingdom into this present age.” “The eucharistic liturgy was not a compensation for the postponement of the parousia, but a way of celebrating the presence of one who had promised to return.”

However, although the second coming was a primary force of the New Testament, “the apostolic tradition had very little to say about the details of eschatology.” Therefore, many eschatologies in the beginning were not all agreed upon, but many accepted as a valid opinion to keep. Yet, the fathers did decide that if any eschatology denied the creed, it would be labeled heresy and its teacher anathematized; “eschatology that went beyond the creed was tolerated as a private opinion (as in the case of Origenism and Millenarianism.”

Most of the early church teachings on eschatology had an already/not yet implication. This is still a very prominent understanding of the apocalyptic vision. A great contemporary theologian who explains it in a very understandable way is George Eldon Ladd. Another author who is more philosophically bent who explains this understanding in a more academic (philosophical: metaphysical) way is Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy.

The Supernatural Order. The primitive church also decided that an order of the supernatural had to be decided upon. Questions that begged to be answered were: Who are the angels? On what level in comparison to God are they? What is to be said of miracles? What about the relation of prayer to providence? Many of the discussions generated from these questions generated new questions regarding man and free will, a personal God, and fatalism.

The Meaning of Salvation. In speaking on salvation, the church threw out many ideas and several stuck. The idea of imitation of God as the end of salvation came from Platonic thought. Imitation was “laden with connotation which it had acquired in Platonic usage, where imitation had come to mean “the process by which the poet or actor assimilates himself…to the person whom he is portraying and thereby extinguishes his own personality for the time being” and where the imitation of God was the ideal.” Many liturgical writings of the fathers speak of Christ’s death as a sacrifice; a term echoed in Old Testament and pagan ideas of worship (an idea we still hold over today – a time in which we no longer even have sacrifices). Tertullian cited pagan worship for “the appropriateness of the idea.”

A major contribution to the meaning of salvation in the early church was Irenaeus’s paraphrase of Matthew 12:29 -

“He [Christ] fought and was victorious; for he was man doing battle for the fathers, and by his obedience utterly abolishing disobedience. For he bound the strong man, liberated the weak, and by destroying sin endowed his creation with salvation.” From these statements of Irenaeus…it is evident that not only the resurrection of Christ, but especially his passion and death belonged to the description of salvation as the victory of Christ over the enemies of man.

By 370, the Western church was teaching that the “atonement [was] a sacrifice and increasingly [was] an act of satisfaction offered by the death of Christ.” The eastern church stayed more along the lines of Irenaeus (quoted above) which assigned the death and resurrection “the triumph celebrated by Christ over the devil and his legions.”

I also like what Clement of Alexandria had to teach. Pelikan describes it as, “The good tutor, the Logo, healed the body and soul, granting restoration of health to the sick and forgiveness to the sinners; and to both he was “the Savior.”"

All in all, Pelikan concludes “that the church could not regard “salvation” as simply a restoration of what had been lost in the first Adam, the original creation; it had to be an incorporation into what had been vouchsafed in the second Adam, a new creation.”

Lastly, Pelikan describes the primitive church’s deliberation about what the means of grace are. They included: the Church, the Scriptures, the priesthood, the sacraments, and the indwelling of the Logos. The rest of this long chapter talked of each of these and how they made grace available to a person. I made many notes in this section and could probably write an entire seminary paper on my opinions of the “means of grace” articulated not only in the early church father’s but also today, but I am going to defer to later post.

I have almost completed the book. It is only seven chapters long, but the book is 400 pages in length. I only have one chapter to go; therefore, chapters 4,5, and 6 are to follow.

Chapter 2…

Still enjoying The Christian Tradition. I am learning a lot; I am un-learning a lot more. The gentleman who recommended the series to me (a philosophy professor in Dallas) described the 5 volumes as the substance. I think he meant that this gets me to the “nitty-gritty” as one might say. I hope so.

Chapter 2: Outside the Mainstream

This chapter has been the most boring thus far. More or less, Pelikan outlines the differences between heresy and schism. He also begins to identify the nuances of some of the first heresies that plagued the church and the reasons certain doctrines were established to combat those heresies.

I liked the section on heresy versus schism. Here are a few quotes:

Irenaeus: heresy is a deviation from the standard of sound doctrine

Augustine: heretics – in holding false opinions regarding God, do injury to the faith itself; as opposed to schismatics – who in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity although they may believe just what we believe

Basil: heretics – men who were altogether broken off and alienated in matters relating to the actual faith; schismatics – men who had separated for some ecclesiastical reasons and questions capable of mutual solution

Another interesting paragraph or two was the idea of the “newness” of the gospel.

“The keynote of the teaching of Christ had been its newness. Luke 5:37 meant that the content and the form of that teaching had been different from the law of Moses. But if it was valid to use the Old Testament as a Christian book and to find the details of the life and teaching of Jesus prophesied there, one had to ask: “Then what was there new about what the Lord brought to us when he came?” This is why one could not express anything at all about the gospel, or even think about it, or compare it with anything else at all. The ineffable newness of the gospel would be fundamentally compromised if it were represented as having already been present in the Jewish Scriptures.” (italics mine)

Many of the prominent theologians of the day did not know what to do with the Old Testament. It was clearly Jewish, but could it be understood as Christian, as well? Did the OT testify of Christ? Yes. Did the OT communicate the gospel, or was it new with the coming of the Son? A very interesting question it is.

I personally want to say, “Yes, the gospel was communicated in the OT,” but I do believe it was misunderstood.

After that section, Pelikan introduces two of the most important heresies of the early church: Gnosticism and Montanism. Gnosticism is a huge mess and depending on what era of the church you survey, you will find a different manifestation of it. Therefore, I don’t really care to summarize it here (I don’t have the time).

Montanism was very interesting. It looked very similar to Christianity in all of its doctrine accept one – the Paraclete. Montanus more or less claimed that the coming of the Paraclete that Christ had promised had been fulfilled in himself. Another unique identifier of Montanism was the ecstatic and prophetic gifts of the “Paraclete” bestowed upon the montanists. Many members of the church were lead astray by these charismatic manifestations in the montanists; however, Pelikan mentions that “[m]ontanism was obsolete because the church had begun to find its most trustworthy guarantees of the presence and functioning of the Holy Spirit in the threefold apostolic authority taught by Irenaeus rather than in the ecstasy and prophecy that the Paraclete granted to the adherents of Montanism.” The threefold apostolic authority: the apostolic canon, the creation of the apostolic creed, and the establishment of the apostolic episcopate. The church validated its existence by this standard.

The rest of the chapter was basically about what apostolic continuity was. This chapter was very wordy, hence the reason it was pretty boring.

Chapters 3 and 4 to follow.

Chapter 1…

I have been really bad about reviewing each chapter of the books I am reading. I told myself I would so that it might help me remember what I have read a bit better. So here I go.

The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition has been really great so far – very heavy, but great. Simply put, Pelikan is giving an historical context of why the Christian Tradition took shape the way it did – particularly in the way of orthodoxy.

Chapter 1: Preparatio Evangelica

The foundation for Christianity, as religion, was certainly Judaism. However, the immediate de-Judaization of Christianity had to occur. Christianity was instigated by a couple handfuls of orthodox Jews and it needed to unidentify itself with Judaism. The Christian understanding of God was triune, not monotheistic. The Christian understanding of sacrifice was completed in the crucifixion, not in temples with animals. Yet, many of the doctrines from the Hebrew tradition, remained in the Christian tradition. Take for instance the emphasis on the Old Testament (a Christian category) scripture to aid in understanding faith and theology proper. At the same time, some of the doctrines from Judaism that remained should not have remained for they often originated in the first Christian heresies such as Simonian Gnosticism. Others were simply modified such as Justin Martyr’s understanding of the priesthood.

Of further note, Christianity also had a foundation of ancient philosophy to aid its beginnings. Many church theologians and apologists actually adopted or adapted “pagan” philosophical ideas to help develop their understanding of certain things like: the Trinity, the resurrection, eternality, the immortality of the soul (if such a thing existed – the question was up for debate at the time), etc. Of particular note, Clement of Alexandria was one who especially was fond of Platonic and Socratic thought. His doctrine of creation was owed more thanks to Plato than to Moses. So as in Judaism, some doctrines in philosophy were modified to fit the Christian understanding. Plato understood there to be a demiurge of the world that fashioned the “chaotic matter that was preexistent into the world as we know it.” Clement adapted that and said that God is the preexistent demiurge of the world and the chaotic matter. Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy is the perfect example of how a church theologian was able to find the relationship between truth found in philosophy and truth found in faith and the Scriptures. (By the way, I highly recommend Consolation of Philosophy to anyone who is interested in philosophy of religion.)

It seemed that the “seed of reason” – or the preexistent Logos – was embedded in man and allowed these philosophers to learn truth though they knew not nor had faith in the eternal God.

Chapters 2 and 3 to follow.