“The greatest problem with the early church was that it was influenced by Greek ways of thinking which have nothing to do with the Bible.”
The above quote expresses a view known as the “Hellenization thesis,” made popular in the 19th century by the theologian Adolf von Harnack. Today there are many Christians who still hold it. It is especially popular among biblical scholars, who contrast the abstract, precise, and timeless musings of the Greek philosophers with the more earthy, holistic, and historical approach of the Old Testament. For anyone with a high view of the Bible, it makes intuitive sense that our theology must be purged of influences that come from anywhere else. It also seems pretty natural to assume that the first Christians were negatively and unconsciously influenced by their surrounding culture.
However, this view contains some problematic assumptions.
First, it assumes that Christianity is untranslatable; that because God originally revealed himself to Jews, we can only think about God using Jewish frames of reference. As I said in my last post, this is an intellectual version of the Judaizing heresy, which forgets that one of the most radical revelations of the New Testament is that the Jewish God is now available to everyone without their having to first become Jewish, either in practice or in thinking.
Second, it assumes that you should only ask the types of questions that the Bible explicitly answers, and that we should be agnostic about anything the Bible doesn’t expressly talk about. The Greeks were interested in different things than the Hebrews; they asked questions about the origin and purpose of everything, about universal principles and laws, about the essence and nature of things both physical and conceptual. Because these questions were more abstract, they turned out to be more translatable for different cultural contexts, and thus more helpful for giving Christianity a common language to stay united at the same time as being culturally diverse.
Don’t get me wrong: I think both recovering the Jewishness of the New Testament and taking the Old Testament extremely seriously as holy Scripture are enormously important. I just don’t think that this project is incompatible with anything the early Church did in its appropriation of Greek philosophy. I don’t believe there is a conflict.
Third, and most importantly, this view assumes that the great thinkers of early Christianity, the Church Fathers, were less intelligent and self-aware than we are today; that they made simple childish blunders which we need to clean up 2,000 years later. In reality, any serious study of the church fathers shows how careful they were in filtering the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, sifting out the parts incompatible with the Bible and keeping the helpful parts. The god of Aristotle and the Christian God are so dramatically different that it is simply impossible for anyone who has studied them to say that the early Christians confused the two. But this didn’t mean that Aristotle’s analysis of four different “causes” for everything, or his development of an ethics of virtue, were equally unbiblical or harmful to the gospel. In short, the first Christians were not stupid; the Bible was their authority and they discerned which parts of their surrounding culture were and weren’t compatible with it. The result is an enrichment of ideas which have proved enormously helpful for Christians to understand their own beliefs better.
We need the same careful judgment today when we encounter different aspects of our own surrounding culture. To uncritically accept everything we read and watch leads to the dilution of our faith, and we lose everything about us that makes us, as Christians, different. But to uncritically reject everything that can’t be found explicitly in the Bible leads to fundamentalism, paranoid suspicion, and a refusal to recognise what is good and Godly in our own culture. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from the way the early church fathers discerned good from bad in the Greeks, always using the message of the Bible as their basis for discernment.
Recommended Reading
Bentley Hart, David. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Eerdmans, 2004. (Page 32 says: “Too often modern theologians erect a disastrous partition between ‘biblical’ faith and theology’s chronic ‘Hellenism’, as if the Bible were never speculative or as if hellenized Judaism did not provide the New Testament with much of its idiom; Hellenism is part of the scriptural texture of revelation, and theology without its peculiar metaphysics is impossible.”)
Boersma, Hans. Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2011. (pages 33-39 discuss this issue)
Davison, Andrew. The Love of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy for Theologians. London : SCM Press, 2013. (Pages 64-67 discusss this issue)
Thiselton, Anthony C. The Hermeneutics of Doctrine. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2007. (page 34ff discusses this issue)
Wilken, Robert Louis. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. New Haven, Conn. ;London: Yale University Press, 2003.
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Thanks for raising the question of Hellenization and cultural translation, Barney. This question about the relationship between form (culturally specific structures) and content (the biblical narrative) is perennially important and needs to be continually revisited and refined.
I’m left with many questions, however. You defend early “Hellenizing” church fathers, saying “the Bible was their authority and they discerned which parts of their surrounding culture were and weren’t compatible with it.” While I wholeheartedly agree that some Greek philosophical concepts were indispensible to the articulation of, say, the doctrine of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, etc., there was anything but unanimity about which parts of Greek philosophy were compatible with scripture, and which parts weren’t. That is, Hellenization seems to come in degrees rather than as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option. How ought we think about those degrees?
For example, Irenaeus, railing against gnostic heresy, roundly denounces allegorical readings of scripture (which he sees as a gnostic, anti-Jewish reading practice) and reiterates that all of materiality will be redeemed and made incorruptible; that the bodily resurrection of believers will be actual, not figurative, and thus that scripture should be read historically/literally.
“Nothing is capable of being allegorized, but all things are steadfast and true…for as it is God truly who raises up man, so also does man truly rise from the dead, and not allegorically, as I have shown repeatedly. And as he rises actually, so also shall he be actually disciplined beforehand for incorruption…when all things are made new, he shall truly dwell in the city of God” (Against Heresies, Book 5).
Origen, on the other hand, is deeply suspicious of materiality/bodies, insisting that heresies arise from reading scripture according to the letter (the literal) rather than the
spirit (the allegorical), and that allegory is needed in order to discover the hidden forms and figures encased in the vessel of the text. “False apprehension” about the nature of God occurs because, for some, “the holy scripture is not understood by them in its spiritual sense, but according to the sound of the letter” (On First Principles, Book 4).
So, how much Hellenization is too much Hellenization? Is there a way for both Irenaeus and Origen to be right, or must we choose one?
Eva, thanks so much for engaging with this important topic and raising a crucial question!
You’re quite right that there wasn’t a consensus among the Fathers about how much hellenization was too much. Various of them went further than others, as one would expect. However, we do find that the vast majority stay within some careful boundaries, recognising that some things are debatable within the Christian community, whereas others would compromise its essence. I think that’s why the Church has always held some things Origen said at arm’s length, and at one point even condemned some of his writings as heretical. While much of what he said is hugely valuable, there seems to be a feeling that he went too far in some places.
As for the specific disagreement about allegorical readings of Scripture, I would have to look more carefully into the context of what each of them is saying to be sure they truly disagreed with each other. It seems that Irenaeus is concerned to uphold the physical resurrection of the dead, a concern doubtless Origen would have shared. Is it possible that when Irenaeus says “everything is literal” the context dictates that he is only referring to everything which speaks of the resurrection? Just like I might say “everything has gone wrong” and my frame of reference dictates that I’m referring to some things that happened that day, not to global catastrophes.
Likewise, while it is clear that Origen wanted to go beyond the letter to the spirit, is it possible that he is emphasising the need to see all descriptions of God as partially metaphorical, and not ‘literal’? Some of the heresies he’s referring to, I believe, are ones that assign physical attributes to God, like an arm or nostrils, based on what Scripture says.
My guess would be that they are fighting different battles and, if put in the same room, would eventually reach agreement after some initial confusion. But I’m willing to be shown wrong on this!
What are the ‘careful boundaries’ within which all church fathers agreed the ‘essence’ of the faith lies? Could you list them for me?
Point taken about Origen and Irenaeus being concerned with two separate issues in those particular passages. However, if you’re uncomfortable with Origen being used at all in the conversation, one could just as easily substitute Nyssa, who would prove problematically at odds with Irenaeus on questions of the incorruptibility of materiality…
Great questions! I guess I would point to a few simple things:
1. Creatio ex nihilo and the radical infinite separation between creator and creation is something distinctive to Christianity over against hellenism, and something all the church fathers seemed to agree on.
2. God’s freedom to create, rather than creation being a necessary emanation, is another.
3. A much greater respect for materiality as something good created by God, which the doctrine of the resurrection safeguards.
There may be other things – and there are better lists in the bibliography I put at the end.
As for Nyssa disagreeing with Irenaeus on incorruptibility of materiality… you’re quite right to point to some dissention among the fathers. But I don’t see that as a huge surprise or a huge problem. Once we have established that the influence of Plato is neither 100% bad nor 100% good, and once we have established the boundaries within which to play with Plato’s ideas, only then can the fun of debate and discussion begin! On specific issues I would need to listen to a good deal of debate before feeling competent to join in.
Barney, I think you are totally correct about both the need of the early Church and our need today to think critically about what is and is not helpful to the presentation and elaboration of the Bible. I’d like to discuss your third bold sentence, however, because I think it would be mistaken to defend everything the Fathers imported from Greek thinking, even if we accept that 1) using Greek thought is not necessarily wrong and 2) they could not really have done otherwise anyhow. Eva has already brought some of this to light by asking about the varying degrees of Hellenization.
You said that the common Christian position “assumes that the great thinkers of early Christianity, the Church Fathers, were less intelligent and self-aware than we are today.” This is not necessarily so. A wise person who is suspicious of Hellenization would know that in our own context we too are liable to bring in too much of our own surrounding culture and philosophy. It is inevitable. We cannot call the errors of the Fathers “childish blunders” because, despite the fact that these were brilliant people in their own time, it was also inevitable that they would err.
The way that we learn as a society is to identify the errors made in the past and to improve on them (this of course requires, as you would no doubt argue, that we identify the strengths of past arguments and retain them). In most cases, so far as I’ve been able to observe, this process follows the track of a pendulum which swings far beyond the reasonable point. Every generation makes its own errors as it reacts to earlier generations and it is left to another generation to evaluate all the errors and strengths and theorize anew.
What I’m saying is that it is inevitable that thinkers are erring even as they propose new and improved ways of thinking. This means that we can be critical to some extent of the early Church for Hellenizing too much or in unhelpful ways without thinking of the Fathers as bumbling idiots. It also means that we retain a healthy dose of humility when we are doing our own thinking. We must, as you argue, sift our own culture because it is not all compatible with our faith. However, we will not do this perfectly. We must accept that a future generation may very likely take apart our arguments and show how we were blinded by our own involvement with the culture that surrounded us.
Jacques, thank you for such a carefully thought through and wise contribution to this discussion. I resonate with much of what you’ve said and consider it very reasonable and sensible.
It does seem to make straightforward sense to say that both the Fathers and ourselves will be partly right and partly wrong in our integration of our respective cultures into Christianity. How could we expect them to get everything right? Doesn’t it seem like asking too much?
I wonder, though, if there isn’t another element that adds a level of complexity to the question. Perhaps the best way of drawing this out is to ask how far we can extend this same logic.
1. We are happy to say the Fathers probably got some things right and some things wrong, just like we do.
2. Are we equally happy to say the Apostles got some things right and some things wrong? Do we think of Paul’s letters as helpful conversation partners in a broader discussion about faith?
3. What about saying that the gospels got some things right and some things wrong in the way they depicted Jesus? If so, presumably we are judging the gospels by another standard which we readily admit isn’t infallible either.
4. What about the Old Testament? Did the Jews get some things right and some things wrong about Yahweh? How would we know?
You may say that the Bible is sacrosanct and not to be judged in the same way. But how do we know that? Isn’t it because the Fathers told us so? And what if the Fathers were wrong about that? If we are so sure they were right about that, then what about other things they said were essential elements of Christianity, like Eucharist, creeds, apostolic succession, etc.?
What I am trying to illustrate is the need for a continuity in tradition. There is, of course, one type of advantage we have over the fathers, in that we can learn from their mistakes. But there is another type of ‘advantage’ (so to speak) that they have over us: they came before us, and helped to determine the nature of orthodox Christianity for us. If we think that is subject to revision, where do we stop? What isn’t subject to revision?
I hope you get my point and I’d love to know what you think 🙂
Well Barney, there I was all comfortable and smug until you complicated everything :).
The short answer is that there are no easy answers. We can’t apply a batch formula and solve everything at once. Reality is complicated and each issue and doctrine has to be treated individually.
Now, for a longer reply in which we get up to our thighs in mud and see what happens. I don’t pretend to have everything solved, though I have thought about these things.
In essence you want to know what foundation to stand on — that is, what is solid ground and what is ready to crumble? I am not the sort to claim access to perfect knowledge. Neither am I comfortable with a complete loss of confidence in knowledge. I believe that God has given us enough — just enough — to know Him by and to live like God’s people in the world. The rest is a matter of faith. At least, that has been my experience in every area whether it is interpreting the text or determining which text we ought to be interpreting (I refer to textual criticism). Heck, which canon is the right one is not even a straightforward matter — is the Septuagint our Old Testament (Greek Orthodox)? Are the apocrypha Scripture, deuterocanonical, a waste of time? What about James (Luther didn’t think it was worthwhile)? What about Esther (the Qumran community read 1 Enoch and Jubilees, but apparently not Esther)? There is always just enough to chart a course with, but never ever enough for certainty.
Now, I am not yet prepared to say how that applies to Scripture and its authors, but I am positive this applies to our access to Scripture’s meaning. So, whether it is unknown Jews behind the writing of Old Testament books or the Gospels or the apostle Paul, there is a limit to our ability to exegete those texts. Anyone who has looked through several commentaries for the same book will know the wide range of suggested historical circumstances proposed for any book, chapter, or statement.
So, is a tradition stretching back to Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and others who knew the apostles or knew people who met them in person helpful for this? Absolutely. I think you would be right to say that we stand on our Fathers’ shoulders in the sense that we would not know what has been and is orthodoxy (or even the canon) without their teaching and writing. It is thanks to them that we read the Bibles we do rather than the so called gospel of Thomas and other heresies. It is thanks to them that orthodoxy has been Trinitarian rather than Arian. One would be foolish to disregard them or to depart from their teaching without good reason. But that is the question you are asking, isn’t it. What is good reason?
I think Scripture is the starting point, as you may have guessed. I am confident they would have said the same (Which canon? That is a question for another day. Let’s stick with those books which are common among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox.). As far as I can tell, Jesus and the New Testament authors are in very near agreement (if not complete agreement) with the Jewish tradition about which books are Scripture. The majority of New Testament books are not in question among the early Christian churches. That means we have a very few books that one might question, but I don’t think we have to get into it now. I believe that the Holy Spirit witnessed to the authority of Scripture in the community of God’s people and we can still recognize that today as we read.
It has been very important to me to rely on Scripture not because I think my English Bible is perfect, but because:
1) These Scriptures have been read everywhere and by everyone and by them we are connected to all ages of the Church in a way that no other texts are able to do for us. There is no chance for orthodoxy, past, present, or future, without common Scriptures.
3) There is in fact no other standard to judge Scripture by but Scripture itself. It is our single best witness to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and their deeds, words, and plans.
2) Having reached the limit of my ability to discern such things I have faith that if I stick with the Scriptures that have been handed down to me I have fully enough to be getting on with, even if it doesn’t hold the totality of all good things which I believe we are encouraged to pursue.
The Fathers have not been read as canonical Scripture and I think that they ought not to be. So, if in any place it can be determined that a doctrine contradicts Scripture, then we can prepare to revise it. I’d argue, for example that the teachings of certain Fathers and even Reformers with regard to women were misogynistic and not Christian at all.
What else might we call upon? Without implying that the Fathers are childish or foolish, I think we may rightly say that we have access to more knowledge than they do. We have their teaching plus many centuries of experience, philosophy, scientific discovery, etc. that they simply could not have relied upon. I think it is quite possible that our greater knowledge may in fact show some past teaching to be in error and in need of revision. I believe God encourages us to search out knowledge and apply our experience. I think that is one that that books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes have to teach us.
As a particular example of the above, we might consider the archaeological findings of the last two centuries. Through findings in the Judean desert, Ugarit, and other places we have access to information regarding the Old Testament period that almost no one has had for two millennia (or more). This gives us a tremendous advantage when it comes to interpreting certain passages on which doctrines may be based on.
Finally, I think we might find (but not necessarily) that some past interpretations or doctrines are just not reasonable if you think about it. This is, of course, the most difficult kind of ground to stand on. The Fathers didn’t always agree about what is reasonable and neither will we. But that doesn’t mean we should try and have a discussion about it anyway.
I want to finish by summarizing some thoughts, fully aware that I didn’t address what is probably a burning question for you. If you ask it again we can continue the conversation. I believe that beside the Scripture we must have our starting point in traditional orthodoxy. To start anywhere else is probably just arrogant. However, I believe that traditional orthodoxy is fully open to being questioned. Questions are only dangerous to those who are deliberately concealing the truth. For the rest of us who just want to know what the truth is, there must be open ground to ask questions. Asking questions means that we get to discuss whether traditional doctrines are correct and why they are or are not correct. We aren’t going to agree on every point, but to tell you the truth that seems to be why there are different denominations. Truth is not perfectly revealed to us, yet our desire to find it and form opinions about it is perfectly legitimate. What is important is not that we go to the same building to worship, but that we can meet each other on the street and call each other brother and sister.
Where do we stop? We never stop asking, but we have to ask with humility. We have to listen to what others say and we have to be prepared to accept someone’s authority somewhere. And, of course, I think there is a core set of doctrines — the fundamentals of the Christian faith — which will always stand the test of time and no amount of questions will demolish them.
Jacques, I am very impressed with your ability to go carefully step-by-step through some thorny issues! This is an excellent tour de force of many contemporary theological problems and a map of how best to approach them. Thank you!
In responding, I’m going to start with your last point and work backwards.
I 100% agree that “traditional orthodoxy is fully open to being questioned” for the reasons you subsequently give; that sincere truth-seekers must never be afraid to ask questions. I have to be willing to question my Christian faith in order for it to be sincerely held; and if my questions lead me towards atheism or Buddhism or Islam then so be it.
But in addition to questions, there must also be a process of elimination where false answers are uncovered. To call myself a Christian and hold the Koran as my highest authority is a false answer. How can I be so sure of that? Maybe I’m the only person who’s ever realised the true essence of what Jesus taught? Likewise, if my reading of Scripture leads me to deny the Trinity, then I am implicitly saying that the entire Christian tradition has been wrong up until I came along. It’s theoretically possible, but I rule it out partly because I don’t have enough faith in my own perspective, especially when pitted against the perspective of other Christ-followers.
You’re quite right that the Fathers have never been read as canonical Scripture, nor would they want to be. But it is illusory to say that we may find that a patristic doctrine “contradicts Scripture” because, as you point out, our only access to Scripture is through our own interpretive lens. So the best we can ever say is that a patristic doctrine contradicts “Scriptures-as-I-understand-it.” Once again, I lack the faith in my own perspective to be able to say that I can read Scripture better than the Fathers.
I lack this faith despite all of the recent scientific and archaeological discoveries of recent decades, wonderful and helpful though they are. In my experience, these findings represent the correction of small details and fine-tuning of accuracy in textual criticism. These things are hugely important, but in terms of their interpretive power they are still far weaker than every individual’s interpretive lens which comes from their cultural upbringing and implicit assumptions. How do I know this?Simply because of the vast amount of disagreement in biblical studies on almost every issue you can imagine. Recent archaeological discoveries don’t seem to have got us any closer to a consensus on how to interpret Scripture. Once again, unless I’m willing to back my own interpretation of the archaeological findings over everyone else’s out there, I have to fall back on the consensus of previous generations.
In short, I take a very postmodern epistemology that has given up hope of any objective standard for truth, and that leaves me with nowhere to turn but tradition. However, far from undermining my confidence in truth, I have found myself increasinly confident to stand on the Christian tradition and use that as my standard by which to judge everything else. This is partly because the tradition often says things I don’t like or wish it hadn’t said, but this only confirms that I am no longer the centre of my own orthodoxy. I didn’t invent Christianity and I don’t get to choose what it teaches. There is a great sense of freedom in relinquishing my own ability to find truth on my own, and in submitting to something so much bigger and older and more trans-cultural than I could ever be.
Those are my own answers to the questions I have posed. I don’t think there is any other alternative, but I am ALWAYS willing to listen to any alternative that is given to me, for the reasons you have already given. So please tell me what you think and why!
Thanks for your response Barney. I now recognize where you are coming from and can say that I have shared similar concerns. There is something freeing, even safe, about snuggling up to the warm comforter of tradition. Someone else has done all the hard thinking for me and all I have to do is follow.
As far as I can tell without discussing particulars at length we would likely agree on many things. As I implied before, I accept the tradition as an authority from which we ought to begin our reflection and teaching. When I doubt, and I admit that I doubt from time to time, it is the tradition and the creeds that hold me steady. When I am bewildered, it is the tradition and the creeds that speak for me.
That said, the tradition is an imperfect authority. Not only do I think that some aspects of the tradition are in need of correction, but I believe that we as the people of God are not in jeopardy because we have not had access to perfect teaching. It seems to me that God is content to give us enough to go on and to encourage us to keep searching. The task of theology is just as much about seeking God Himself as it is about seeking the right words to describe true doctrine. If we have perfect teaching already, why would we keep asking questions and searching? What would happen to our relationship with God as individuals and as a Church if we did not have to keep asking God was is true?
The problem as I see it is that safety is a kind of trap. I think there are real problems to solve in our time and to stick with the tradition without challenging it in some areas is to turn our backs on our responsibility.
The difference between the two of us seems to be twofold:
1) I cannot accept a fully postmodern epistemology. Despite the fact that we are finite I think we can know and access truth. The challenge is that it is always mixed up with other stuff that may or may not be truth. Access to the truth takes a community and it takes a really really long time because no single person has the capacity to untangle it all on his or her own. Every generation has the opportunity to take a step closer to the truth than the one before, but that does not always happen. In the meantime we have enough truth revealed in Scripture and passed along through the tradition for us to know what the Lord requires of us. However, to be satisfied with ‘just enough’ is hardly the best possible attitude. False and imperfect doctrines are harmful and a more perfect teaching will always be beneficial.
2) I seem to be more confident than you. I have been and continue to be willing to challenge my teachers, textbooks, and tradition. While trying hard to stay humble (pride is one of my faults) I believe that all three of the above are flawed. It doesn’t bother me that they are because I don’t see how they could be otherwise. In so far as I have been given reason and training I believe that I and others have both the blessing and the responsibility to correct what is there to be corrected.
It may help if I add a paragraph here. My reading of the Bible and history in general has led me to believe that the one great challenge which has always and will always face human beings until the judgment is the challenge of getting along. This one likes chocolate, that one does not. This one likes rap music, that one likes classical. This one baptizes by immersion, the other by sprinkling. It should seem silly to all of us, but these are real sources of division for people. You can multiply such sources from now until we grow old and die and people will continue to find reasons to disagree and to therefore refrain from associating with each other. To the extent that Christians are able to bring the grace of God into the world to heal such divisions, the world will have a small taste of the Kingdom of God. God created in wondrous diversity because it pleased him, and this includes people of all sorts with all sorts of ideas. So why do I mention it? Only because religious teaching is perhaps the strongest source of division possible, even between what would be rightfully called Christian churches. It is my conviction that God allows us to be confused and even mislead from time to time so that we can learn to get along despite disagreement. Error in the tradition does not spell doom for our Christian lives, but it does present the opportunity for us to show that God’s love is greater than our divisions. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
I for one am glad to have this conversation with you despite our obvious disagreement. And we will continue to disagree as long as items 1 and 2 above continue to be differences between us.
I do have a question for you though. Which tradition are you falling back on? Are we still talking about Church Fathers, or does the tradition lead up right until today? Unfortunately we have even more traditions at our disposal than we have possible canons, and more than one of those traditions claim to go all the way back. It seems to me that you have to make yourself the standard of orthodoxy just to choose which tradition to be a part of.
Jacques, you have offered some helpful insights and clarifications. I am firmly convinced that if we keep talking we can reach agreement! The issues you have raised are important ones and deserve attention.
Your paragraph about Christians getting along is crucial. You’re quite right that it is one of the hardest things to love one another despite diversity and disagreement. But I would want to go even further than you have gone. Let’s say, for example, that I am convinced that the tradition has been in error about the divinity of Christ. Let’s say that I am the only person who thinks this, and every other Christian in the world believes in the divinity of Christ. Should they include me despite our differences, and should we love one another? Or are there some non-negotiables which one must believe in order to be counted among the Christian community? (you could also take a more extreme example, such as the existence of God or the resurrection. Marcus Borg disbelieves the resurrection but still considers himself a Christian. Are we to welcome him as one of us in the name of getting along? Or should we love him but only the same way we would love a pagan? How wide do the boundaries of Christian belief extend?)
My answer to this is that you cannot separate epistemology from community. As Richard Rorty once said, “Truth is what your friends let you get away with saying” (see Jamie Smith’s helpful Christian appropriation of this phrase here: http://blog.bakeracademic.com/is-truth-what-your-friends-will-let-you-get-away-with-saying-james-k-a-smith/). One of the requirements of ‘getting along’ as Christians involves trust of one another. Since trust is identical to faith, and since faith is our only access to truth, I would say that as a Christian I have a responsibility to submit my beliefs to those of the wider Christian community, even when (for example) it might look to me as though Jesus is not divine.
This leads to my second point. I do not associate postmodernism with a belief that “we can’t access truth.” On the contrary, what I have seen in postmodernism leads me to understand that it still believes in truth, but just believes that such cannot be objectively proven. Truth is subjective, truth is a person, truth is Jesus Christ. Everyone who has a relationship with Jesus has access to the truth. But when we disagree with one another about what Jesus means, we must listen to one another as conduits of the truth in Jesus, and sometimes that means submitting our opinions to those around us.
Finally, I do not think that submitting to tradition will ever mean that “someone else has done all the hard thinking for me and all I have to do is follow.” The tradition gives me general truths (e.g. love is preferable to hatred), but it’s still up to me to figure out their specific applications (e.g. what love looks like in my specific, local context. Does it mean doing X or Y?) Only my own hard thinking can help me there. So we will always have decisions to make and disagreements to resolve, no matter how much all of us submit to the tradition. This principle is really only an extension of the principle of submitting to the tradition contained within Scripture.
So to answer your final question, at present I am only falling back on the church fathers – I am not commenting on where I stand as regards present day traditions. All I am arguing for is that we follow the logic of submission to Scripture to its conclusion, which includes submission to those who gave us Scripture and to the other things they gave us (e.g. the Nicene creed). I would suggest there is a disconnect in logic in your second point, which applies common sense principles to the Fathers (i.e. probably errant) and yet doesn’t apply the same principles to the Bible. I can never be 100% certain that the gospels accurately depict Jesus, but I live my life as if they did, even when they attribute things to Jesus that don’t fit my picture of what he should be like. In short, when I naturally would disagree with the Bible, I instead submit to what the Bible says. In the same way, when all the Fathers agree on something and it seems to me unlikely, I cannot be 100% certain that they are right, but I live my daily life as if they were, which is ultimately the same thing as believing it.
Barney, thank you for raising some very important and specific issues. I appreciate attention to detail. I think I’ll just go through and respond to your direct questions or points.
1. There are certainly limits to what can be considered Christianity. In other words, there really is an orthodoxy and we cannot pretend to be part of the Christian Church if we decide for ourselves what we should or simply want to believe. There is a core of non-negotiables, among which the resurrection is essential. You are right to point out that several of our essential Christian doctrines are not explicit in the Bible and the early Church Fathers would be our authority. You are also correct to say that none of us in the 21st century have the authority to discard or alter those non-negotiables. If we do then we break faith with all the Christians who have lived in the centuries between the Fathers and us — it puts us outside the Christian camp, outside the communion of hte Church, and inside something else, some new sect.
The challenge as I see it is identifying which are the non-negotiables. I suspect that, if asked to produce a list, Christian teachers would not agree on every single doctrine. You might say that the boundaries of orthodoxy are somewhat fuzzy. Nevertheless, there are some that are more obvious than others. In my opinion the resurrection is such a one. Not only do the gospels attest it, but Paul himself says that if you disbelieve the resurrection there is no hope for you because the only promise you’ve been given is for a resurrection. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want, but you had better call yourself something other than Christian.
2. I agree with what you say in your paragraph about epistemology being inseparable from community. Also, forgive my mistake about postmodernism and belief in truth. I think I will have to ponder this some more, but I think we may still disagree somewhat here, though admittedly I see the gap shrinking even as I type. I suppose that what I want to affirm is not that we can prove something to be true objectively, but that, over time, with the application of reason and through experience, we may increase our level of trust in a ‘fact’ (or distrust in some cases). For example, from what I have studied of the teaching of the Fathers regarding the Eucharist I find that I disagree with them to some extent. This disagreement arises in part from a difference in hermeneutic approach, literary method, and linguistic/scientific understanding. Much has been learned between their time and ours and I think a strong case can be made for understanding the Eucharist in a different way.
I believe that the practice of the Eucharist is essential to the Christian faith, but I don’t think that we need to agree about (or even understand) the purpose of the sacrament or what is happening when we celebrate it. Agreement and understanding are, of course, nevertheless desirable.
3. About who is doing the hard thinking, I was talking about doctrines like the resurrection, the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, etc. For this discussion the agreement or disagreement I’ve been referring to occurs at that level. Submitting to the tradition would therefore mean that these doctrines are set and we don’t have to think or argue about them anymore. In my opinion this would mean accepting certain teachings that are erroneous.
I did not mean to imply that we don’t think about how to apply our faith to life and ethics. For convenience I separate the two kinds of issues.
4. I do not agree that following the logic of submission to Scripture requires submission to the later tradition necessarily and I wonder what the path of logic that you follow is exactly.
As I said before, the teaching of the Fathers is subject to the greater authority of the Bible. You and I agree with the Fathers on that point. As you said, it is the interpretation of the Bible which is our only access to the Bible. As I see it, the value of the Fathers to us is as interpreters. I maintain that we have every reason to think that we could be as good, or even better, interpreters than the Fathers. I do not say that they are not the keepers of certain true teaching passed down from the apostles that isn’t in the Bible, but I do say that for practical purposes the Bible has to be our rallying point in a way that the Fathers cannot be for us. Whether the Bible is errant or inerrant we have to consider it to be our prime authority because there is nothing else given to us with more authority to interpret. There is simply no other source that we can use to ‘get behind the Bible’ to a more perfect or more direct teaching (not to deny the work of the Spirit, but simply to affirm with the Church through the ages that we have to be careful with trying to access truth about God directly). We may err in our interpretation, but as I tried to argue before, God is prepared for us to do just that. It is up to us to keep trying.
Need I mention that our only access to the Fathers is our interpretation of their writings? No matter what we have to trust in our ability to interpret.
5. I agree what you write at the end beginning with “I can never be 100% certain…”. In my own life I have found it necessary to simply submit to what the Bible says or even what the tradition says in times of doubt or perplexity. Not only is submission to an authority outside ourselves an extremely good posture to have as Christians, but our minds are finite, meaning we cannot hope to solve all the mysteries, and there is no better or higher authority to turn to. Jesus Himself commends the Old Testament Scriptures to us in several places and those who walked with Him were specially chosen to teach about Him. After that the Fathers walked with the original walkers, and that too grants them authority that I certainly do not have. Nevertheless, with great care and humility, and in community I would say that some things may well be in need of better explanations, and I return to my example of the Lord’s Supper from above as such a case. If the prayerful application of human reason was able to convince many in the Church who are otherwise faithful Christians that a more recent teaching is more accurate than a very old one, then we should be prepared to consider it.
I think I agree with your conclusion that
Harnack was arrogant to think that the early church was unaware of their
Hellenization of the gospel, and the purification from these cultural
influences seems to be what he was advocating for. However, this seems to
dismiss the (still valid, to my mind) observation that the gospel we inherit is
to a large degree Hellenized. Although “stripping the Hellenic influence
out of it” may not be appropriate (especially for those in Western
cultures which inherit a lot of Hellenic baggage – for better or for worse), I
think it is useful to give latitude for instantiation of the gospel outside of
the Hellenized context – not as a “purer” form of the
“original” message, but as a parallel appropriation of the same
truths that is no less valid. One example that comes to mind would be viewing
social trinitarian and radical monotheistic along a culturally variable
spectrum, where the former is informed by a polytheistic (or henotheistic)
world view, and the latter is informed by a monist world view. Both ends of the
spectrum require a journey (perhaps this is the meaning of conversion?), but
both are informed by their particular culture. Bottom line: you can only de-Hellenize
the gospel if you acknowledge that you are simultaneously Anglicising it (or
Americanizing it or whatever one’s personal cultural appropriation of the
gospel is).