Zeal For Truth

Author’s Note: This is part 2 of a 4-part series on tradition. Part 1 here.

As much as orthodoxy is defined by scriptures, so are scriptures defined by orthodoxy. It appears that during the time that Christianity separated from Judaism around the middle of the first century, Jewish scriptures were divided into three sets: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. While the first two had been closed sets of scriptures for approximately 2 centuries, the third set was open for discussion.

The earliest estimate for closing this part is believed to be the meeting at Jamnia in 90 CE [James A Sanders, From Sacred Story to Sacred Text (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987): 12-13]. Sanders mentions that the whole issue was not completely settled until the second century, but that the areas of debate were very minimal:

And the fact that some scattered debate continued into the second century about the canonicity of Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and even Proverbs and Ezekiel, should, in that perspective, properly viewed as minimal in the extreme [Sanders, 13].

Other scholars do not see this meeting as being as conclusive; they suggest a later date some time during the second or third century CE. Regardless of when the Jewish canon was settled, it is certain that Christianity does not begin with a definitive canon of scriptures. While the two religions appeal to the same set of texts, their interpretations of these texts as sacred scriptures can differ radically from each other. In both instances, it is orthodoxy that informs the decision-making process.

Early Christian theology focused on Jesus as the central point of faith and belief. Throughout the writings of the church fathers, it is clear that this is the litmus by which they read Jewish scriptures as their own Christian scriptures. It is important to perceive this difference between Jewish and Christian uses of the same text. An average Jew does not read, for example, the book of Jeremiah the same way a Christian does—and vice versa. For this reason, it will be better to think of the two as completely separate instead of one being a subset of the other.

By the Council of Carthage in 397, church fathers had accepted the Greek Septuagint as the text of their Old Testament; and it differed from the Jewish canon of scriptures. There was little dispute in the church prior to the Reformation on this. During the Reformation, protestants began to reject this difference and reduced the set of texts for their Old Testament to match the Jewish canon [Henri Blocher, “Helpful or Harmful?”, European Journal of Theology 13.2: 82].Throughout all of these decisions, it was the concept of orthodoxy that played the greatest role in determining which texts are truly sacred.

Scriptures have been defined primarily for the justification and creation of orthodoxy, but it has also been defined for the exclusion of other beliefs. As Henderson wrote,

André Suarès has argued that ‘Heresy is the lifeblood of religion. It is faith that made heretics.’ But it might be equally true to say that heretics have made faith, or at least the faith [John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998): 2].

Marcion, for instance, believed that the God of love Paul describes is so radically different from the Jewish God of creation that anything related to this Jewish God was completely worthless. His idea of orthodoxy led him to reject all forms of Jewish scripture and to suggest a canon consisting of Paul’s letters and a single gospel. While his canon most likely did not reflect what most Christians at this time read, church fathers began to react against Marcion’s canon and formulate a more accepted canon. Scholars agree that Marcion’s forming of a canon was the catalyst for Christianity to define a single canon.

The example of Shepherd of Hermas is more to the point. It was well accepted by the earliest fathers, much as Epistle of Barnabas, but it was rejected and then treated as heretical in the matter of three hundred years. It is clear that Shepherd could have been interpreted as presenting an adoptionist [Robert J. Hauck, “The great fast: Christology in the Shepherd of Hermas,” Anglican Theological Review 75.2 (Spring 1993): 197] Christology; this is probably the primary reason it was excluded from the canon and branded heretical: it did not fall in line explicitly enough with the emerging orthodoxy. It is through the debates in the first 400 years of Christianity that settle the issue of what texts are sacred and what beliefs are proper. It is here, through the question of what beliefs are acceptable that texts become scriptures.

Author’s Note: This is part 1 of a 4-part series on tradition adapted from a paper I recently authored.

What is the process surrounding the development of texts into sacred scriptures, particularly in new religious movements? Additionally, what relation, if any, does this process have with the defining of orthodoxy? This series will examine these two movements as a re-imagining of what is nominally considered tradition, “the process of handing something on to another generation and that which is handed on” [Robert Murray, “Tradition and Sacred Texts,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6:1 (Jan 2004): 4]

These two ideas—orthodoxy and scriptures—are codependent concepts that require the other for proper existence. Without a defined orthodoxy, it is nearly impossible to define a set of scriptures. Without a set of scriptures, there cannot be a strong definition of orthodoxy. These two movements interact with each other reciprocally: scriptures define orthodoxy while orthodoxy defines and interprets scriptures. In other words, it is a constant dialogue and interaction between theology and text that provides the context for present and future instances. All of orthodoxy and scripture is embedded in the context of the sum of its previous interactions and dialogues. This series will look at each of these, first from a theoretical perspective, followed by a few case examples. Tradition has the association that it has always been as such, but this article will show that this is only because the interactions between scriptures and orthodoxy force them to be reinterpreted as having always been the case.

Rightly Dividing
Christianity did not begin in a vacuum, nor with its theology fully formed at inception. Its orthodoxy was largely a process of refinement that is most visible in the many creeds that still stand today (e.g., the Nicene Creed). What we do know about the earliest groups of Christians is that they were, at times, wildly divergent with some believing Jesus to be purely divine without any kind of bodily form and others believing Jesus to be strictly human adopted by God later on [See Bart Ehrman, The New Testament (New York: Oxford, 2000) chapter 1 as well as Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (New York: HarperOne, 2005) chapter 6].

Every one of these groups had in mind a particular set of texts as their sacred scriptures which provided the evidence they needed to define what they constructed as orthodoxy—proper belief. There is even enough evidence to suggest that “the proto-heretical, not the proto-orthodox, were in the majority at some points in the early Church” [John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998): 40]. For instance, Arianism at one time was so popular that Jerome remarked that “the world groaned and was amazed that it had become Arian” [Quoted in Henderson, 43-44].

Throughout these events, support was provided by appeal to what was considered sacred scriptures. When Pope Leo I declared the Roman tradition as orthodoxy and focused church authority to the papal office, his support was based on the succession of popes that began with Jesus’ instruction to Peter in the gospels[Henderson, 44], not to the primacy of the Roman See, the influential location of the Roman church, some divine vision, or the popularity of its beliefs in the emerging Christianity.

In the various councils that fought against what became heresies—or more precisely, heterodoxies—creeds were formulated by appeals to scriptures. By the time of these councils, much of Christianity had come to a mostly agreed-upon set of scriptures; only a handful of books were disputed at the fringes [Lee McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995): 206 and Appendix 1.D]. Given an early date of acceptance of the NT canon to be Athanasius’s Easter Letter of 367 and a late date to be the Council of Carthage in 397, much of what is now orthodox belief in Christianity was not finalized until this time or later [The doctrine of the trinity was not fully formed until the second Ecumenical Council (at Constantinople) in 381. Most other issues were not settled until at least the mid-fifth century].

The ability to define orthodoxy requires both an accepted set of scriptures and a motivation to do such. During much of Christianity’s first century, there was not a motivation for creating orthodoxy—something that is for longevity of the religion—because the primary focus was the imminent second coming of Christ. What good is it to discuss and flesh out a set of beliefs that will probably not come to fruition before the end of time. This is similar to the reasoning scholarship believes there were few books in the beginning of Christianity. As just mentioned above, the majority of sacred scriptures were agreed upon relatively early compared to the formation of orthodoxy. The greatest driving force behind the consolidation of belief into orthodoxy came almost exclusively from the proto-orthodox predecessors. In other words, the proponents of what would become orthodoxy wanted to promote their beliefs as orthodox and exclude other beliefs, even if those other beliefs were more common. As John Henderson mentions,

Despite the discovery of some Gnostic heresiology in the Nag Hammadi materials, there remains a “curious scarcity of anti-orthodox polemics in the heretical literature. Although it seems that second-century heretical authors were far more prolific than their orthodox counterparts, they appear uninterested in refuting the orthodox position.” [Henderson, 27]

This is a major factor to consider when analyzing the development of orthodoxy. Too often, it is believed that the battle for orthodoxy was a constant fight between both parties, but it seems that orthodoxy was brought by brute force rather than discussion [Henderson, 46].

The creation of orthodoxy depends upon the existence of an accepted set of sacred scriptures, a canon. It is important that the texts are treated as religiously authoritative and not just edifying. This distinction can be seen most clearly in the acceptance of Epistle of Barnabas. It was originally accepted as canonical by fathers such as Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria, as well as being included in the earliest textual witnesses, including Codex Sinaiticus. Yet, later church fathers such as Athanasius and Rufinus removed it from their list of canonical books while still suggesting it as edifying for the church [McDonald, 271]. Through the use of scriptures, orthodoxy defines its core doctrines as well as those beliefs that are incompatible with them—heterodoxy.