Why the “oral tradition” of the Apostles had to be written down

I’m continuing to address the question of why the “oral tradition” mentioned by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 had to be written down. This is used as a Roman Catholic proof text for its own version of “Tradition”. But there is a huge difference between what Paul is saying and the “Tradition” that Roman Catholic doctrine talks about.

Here is that verse:

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter

In previous articles, I’ve gone to some length describing how Jewish “oral tradition” worked (with reference to the the different kinds of Jewish oral tradition were (Mishnah, the Halakah, midrash, the Gemara, etc.), what Jesus thought about Jewish “oral tradition”, and the fact that the various forms of Jewish “oral tradition” was actually written down at some point.

The notion is that in the earliest church, there was a parallel situation. For example, there was not simply “oral tradition”; this was comprised in part of “apostolic tradition” and, for the sake of simplicity, “non-apostolic traditions” or if you prefer, “ecclesiastical", or “church-originated” traditions.

Oscar Cullmann is very careful to articulate this difference In his work “The Tradition: The Exegetical, Historical and Theological Problem” in “The Early Church”, London: UK, SCM Publishing, 1958.

Irenaeus confirms Michael Kruger on the "canonical core" of Scripture

I'm continuing to interact with the folks at Called to Communion.

Irenaeus is offered up as “direct evidence”. I question that evidence up above, especially his reporting of history, but citing Darrell Bock, who said that Irenaeus was a faithful reporter of the Gnostic heresies against which he was discoursing, I allowed that it may also be possible to allow that Irenaeus was a faithful reporter of what the church believed at the time.

In this vein, it is interesting that immediately before Irenaeus says anything about either “succession” or “Rome”, he talks about the Scriptures, and echoes these warnings from Matthew: the notion that the Apostles had a totally new message, that this message itself was the bearer of its own power, and that those who did not keep it properly were subject to “the worst calamity”:

The Lord of all gave his apostles the power of the Gospel, and by them we have known the truth, that is, the teaching of the Son of God.

Not the leftover teaching of the Jews. Per Cullmann, this is Paul’s paradosis “from the Lord” (1 Cor 11:23 etc).

To [the Apostles], the Lord said, “He who hears you hears me, and he who despises you despises Him who sent me”. For we have known the “economy” for our salvation only through those through whom the Gospel came to us [only through the Apostles]; and what they first preached they later, by God’s will transmitted to us in the Scriptures so that would be the foundation and pillar of our faith (“Against Heresies, 3 Pr.).”

So here, in the words of Irenaeus, before there is a promise of an “unbroken succession”, we have the Apostles carrying the message, and the message being written down, and what is written, to Irenaeus, is “the foundation and pillar of our faith”.

He continues:

It is not right to say that they preached before they had perfect knowledge …

That is, the apostles had “perfect knowledge” which they preached and set down. This speaks to Irenaeus’s understanding of “development”, too, as some [Gnostics] venture to say,

boasting that they are correctors of the apostles. For after our Lord arose from the dead and they were clad with power from on high by the coming of the Holy Spirit, they were filled concerning everything and had perfect knowledge. They went forth to the ends of the earth proclaiming the news [the message] of the good gifts to us from God and announcing heavenly peace to men. Collectively and individually they had the Gospel of God.

They had the message and it was written down. It is the written records that are “by God’s will transmitted to us”. Not “the succession”. Here, Irenaeus describes what Kruger called “the canonical core”. This, too, before any mention of “succession”:

Thus Matthew published among the Hebrews a gospel written in their language, at the time when Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and founding the church there. After their death Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself delivered to us in writing what had been announced [the message] by Peter. Luke, the follower of Paul, put down in a book the Gospel preached by him. Later John the Lord’s disciple, who reclined on his bosom, himself published a Gospel while staying at Ephesus in Asia.

Note, this is in contrast to the process that Joseph Ratzinger outlined in his work “Primacy, Episcopacy, and Successio Apostolica” (which I’ve cited above):

“The concept of [apostolic] succession was clearly formulated, as von Campenhausen has impressively demonstrated, in the anti-Gnostic polemics of the second century; [and not in the first century] its purpose was to contrast the true apostolic tradition of the Church with the pseudo-apostolic tradition of Gnosis” (pgs 22-23).

The idea of a “New Testament” as “Scripture” is still quite inconceivable at this point—even when “office”, as the form of the paradosis, is already clearly taking shape” (Ratzinger 25).

We should not deceive ourselves: the existence of New Testament writings, recognized as being “apostolic”, does not yet imply the existence of a “New Testament” as “Scripture”—there is a long way from the writings to Scripture. It is well known, and should not be overlooked, that the New Testament does not anywhere understand itself as “Scripture”; “Scripture” is, for the New Testament, simply the Old Testament, while the message about Christ is precisely “spirit”, which teaches us how to understand Scripture.” The idea of a “New Testament” as “Scripture” is still quite inconceivable at this point—even when “office”, as the form of the paradosis, is already clearly taking shape” (Ratzinger, 25).

This open situation of the existence of recognized New Testament writings without the existence of any New Testament principle of Scripture or any clear notion of the canon lasted until well in the second century—right into the middle of the period of the conflict with Gnosticism. Before the idea of a “canon” of New Testament Scripture had been formulated, the Church had already developed a different concept of what was canonical; she had as her Scripture the Old Testament but this Scripture needed a canon of New Testament interpretation, which the Church saw as existing in the traditio guaranteed by the successio (Ratzinger, 25-26).

This notion is reproduced in CCC 83:

83 The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus’ teaching and example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. The first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition.

Note that Irenaeus here contrasts with both Ratzinger and the CCC at this point. Irenaeus provides us “direct evidence”, in K. Doran’s usage, that what the Apostles preached, and then what they “put down” was, actually, “the Scriptures” which “would be the foundation and pillar of our faith”.

Cullmann’s whole premise is to say that there is a sharp disjunction between the “oral transmission” of the message, and the need to write it down in a fixed, canonical form.

Irenaeus has said all of that before he talks about Rome. At this point, too, there is an echo of the warnings of Matthew 23:

Thus the tradition of the apostles [now written down as “Scriptures”] manifest in the whole world, is present in every church to be perceived by all who wish to see the truth. We can enumerate those who were appointed by the apostles as bishops in the churches as their successors even to our time, men who taught or knew nothing of the sort that [the Gnostics] madly imagine. If however the apostles had known secret mysteries that they would have taught secretly to the “perfect,” [as the Gnostics were teaching – those who could somehow improve on the Apostles’ message, perhaps through some process of “development”], they would certainly have transmitted them especially to those to whom they entrusted the churches. For they wanted those whom they left as successors, and to whom they transmitted their own position of teaching, to be perfect and blameless in every respect [1 Tim 3:2). If these men acted rightly it would be a great benefit, while if they failed it would be the greatest calamity.

What we have in Matthew 23 is echoed here in Irenaeus. It is not the promise of some future “unbroken succession, but as evidence that a faithful transmission has occurred to this point. It is a warning against “improving upon” the message (rather, the need to keep it faithfully” and also that warning (in the light of the destruction of the temple) that those, in the “succession”, “if they failed it would be the greatest calamity”.

This is not a promise for the future, but an echo of Matthew’s warning of destruction to church leadership that was not faithful.

1956 Oscar Cullmann work available in reprint

I learned today that an Oscar Cullmann work I’ve been citing for some time now, Cullmann’s article on “The Tradition” has been reprinted now, (in “The Early Church,” London: SCM Press LTD © 1956, reprinted ©2011). I had been told by a Seminary Professor that this work of Cullmann’s is probably the best article discussing the relationship of Scripture and Tradition in the early church. I have the 1956 edition, which was difficult to get, but it’s good to see that this fine work is now available to anyone who wants to look into it.

Other essay titles include:

1. The Necessity and Function of higher Criticism

2. The Origin of Christmas

3. The Plurality of the Gospels as  Theological Problem in Antiquity

4. The Tradition

5. The Kingship of Christ and the Church in the New Testament

6. The Return of Christ

7. The Proleptic Deliverance of the Body According to the New Testament

8. ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος (“he who comes after me”)

9. Samaria and the Origins of the Christian Mission

10. Early Christianity and Civilization

I’ve not read much at all of the other articles, but I offer this as a source for those exegetically-minded folks who might be interested.

Which came first, the “apostolic succession” or the New Testament?

The second of Michael Kruger’s three “criteria for canonicity” is “Apostolic origins” of the New Testament canon. With his use of the term “Apostolic Origins” as a criterion for canon, Dr Kruger recognizes that the Apostles played a unique role not only in the development of the canon but in the foundation of the church.

The message of redemption in Jesus Christ was entrusted to the apostles of Christ, to whom he gave his full authority and power: “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16, pg 109).

                                                                                            

Roman Catholics are accustomed to hearing this verse in conjunction with the notion of “apostolic succession”, the notion that the Apostles somehow passed on this authority to “the Church”, and that this “succession” of apostolic “authority” was “handed on” in full measure not only from Christ to the Apostles (which it was), but from the Apostles to the church that came after them.

And while the concept of “apostolic succession” really has nothing to do with the growth and acceptance of the New Testament canon, it’s important to place this into the context of the overall discussion about the New Testament canon.

The question often is asked, (as Trosclair places it in this comment):

the same men who saw the need to ‘fix’ the Biblical canon also saw the need to ‘fix’ the lists of those who were successors to the Apostles. As a matter of fact, the Apostolic sees were more important for Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, etc. for the purpose of combating the Gnostic sects than was the Biblical canon. This contradicts Cullmann’s thesis. The Church fathers make it clear that the Scriptures could be twisted but the Apostolic sees had the sure ‘charism of truth’ which would preserve orthodoxy.

The short answer is that the “canonical core” of Apostolic writings was in place long before Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), and Cyprian (c. 250) ever commented about “lists”. Prior to the time these men wrote, both the Old Testament and the “canonical core” (of the collected works of Paul and the four gospels) of the New Testament were actually were the source of orthodoxy and the precursor of the “rule of faith” (see Canon Revisited, pgs 133-141). I’ll discuss the specifics of this as I move forward through the book.

Suffice it to say that Cullmann’s thesis (“Scripture and Tradition,” reprinted in “The Early Church,” London: SCM Press LTD © 1956, reprinted ©2011) does account for this fact, in a way that Trosclair may not have seen in the short selections I’ve posted from Cullmann’s writings. The writings of the New Testament came first, (in the form of the “canonical core”, to be sure), and the “Apostolic sees” came later. Someone may protest that “the canonical core” wasn’t quite complete, but it was authoritative nonetheless.

Here is how Cullmann described the apparent unreliability of “oral tradition” in maintaining “the apostolic witness”, which was regarded to be unique and unrepeatable, in comparison with later “ecclesiastical” traditions, which were certainly not binding on the universal church (especially not the church of the Reformation or the church in our time):

For a long time it has been noted that, apart from the letters of Ignatius, the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers, who do not really belong to the Apostolic age but to the beginning of the second century—[1 Clement, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas]—despite their theological interest, are at  a considerable distance from New Testament thought, and to a considerable extent relapse into a moralism which ignores the notion of grace, and of the redemptive death of Christ, so central to apostolic theology. [See Torrance’s “The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers,” 1948].

It has also been noted that the Church Fathers who wrote after 150—Irenaeus and Tertullian—although chronologically more remote from the New Testament than the authors of the first half of the century, understood infinitely better the essence of the gospel. This seems paradoxical, but is explained perfectly by that most important act, the codification of the apostolic tradition in a canon [a “canonical core”], henceforward the superior norm of all tradition.

The Fathers of the first half of the century wrote at a period when the writings of the New Testament already existed, but without being vested with canonical authority, and so set apart. Therefore they did not have any norm at their disposal, and, on the other hand, and on the other hand, they were already too far distant from the apostolic age to be able to draw directly on the testimony of eye-witnesses. The encounters of Polycarp and Papias with apostolic persons could no longer guarantee a pure transmission of authentic traditions, as is proved by the extant fragments of their writings.

But after 150 contact with the apostolic age was re-established through the construction of the canon, which discarded all impure and deformed sources of information. Thus it is confirmed that, by subordinating all subsequent tradition to the canon, the Church once and for all saved its apostolic basis. It enabled its members to hear, thanks to this [“canonical core”], continually afresh and throughout all the centuries to come the authentic word of the apostles, a privilege which no oral tradition, passing through Polycarp or Papias, could have assured them (96).

The writings of Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), and Cyprian (c. 250), came much later than this “canonical core” of Paul’s writings and the Gospels. Cullmann goes on to note that, of course “scripture needs to be interpreted” and “the church ought to feel responsible for this interpretation” (97).

However, if the notion of “apostolic sees” was helpful in combating the Gnostic heresies of the day, it must be recognized that this was a still-later development (late second century), and the church at large ought in no way to be bound by what really was an “interpretive hermeneutic” of the second century.  It was by no means a “structural component” of “the Church that Christ founded”. An apologetic tactic that worked in the context of Gnostic heresies by no means subjects the later church to that hermeneutic and tactic.

And comments by late second and third-century writers ought by no means to provide the basis for a governmental structure that clearly became not merely open to abuse, but which itself became a form of abuse, and desperately needed to be changed.

This is precisely where the heart of the conflict between Rome and the Reformation lies. Once the notion of “apostolic succession” is put into perspective as a mechanism for addressing heresies (and not a mechanism by which the “authority” of the apostles was “handed down” to later popes and bishops), it clears the way for us to understand that the Reformers rightly cast off Roman authority when they did.

The Reformation holds that the role and “office” of Apostle was unique and unrepeatable. Rome holds, too, to some form of lip service that the “office” was unrepeatable, but somehow, the authority made its way to “bishops” (and from Peter to “the successor of Peter”), as somehow “structural” to the church – an “ontological reality” of the church. “Bishops must be in charge”, and not only are they “in charge”, but they somehow have interpretive mastery over the texts of Scripture.

Cullmann goes on to say that, in its acceptance of core canonical works of the New Testament as normative (based on the apostolic testimony therein), it is tacitly making the agreement that it “does not impose on future generations to take as a starting-point and as a norm of their interpretation of the same text the decision that it feels bound to take, but it remains conscious of the superiority of the scripture as the immediate testimony of the divine revelation to the interpretation which it feels compelled to give, and which can only be a derivative testimony…” (97).

So, the concept of “apostolic succession” within the “apostolic sees” did not, for the church of this period, constitute a “structural element” of the church, in the same way that the “apostolic testimony” (or “apostolic tradition”) was normative and foundational for the church. 

Roman Catholic Canon Canard

Note too that (in my last post) Jaki has to rely on the time-worn canard that Roman Catholics are always pulling out of their hats, a perpetual excuse for not having to respond to the substance of Protestant arguments. Recall that Cullmann, complained that, upon publication of his work on Peter, that the typical Roman Catholic response was not to address the work directly, but rather he noted that “One argument especially is brought forward: scripture, a collection of books, is not sufficient to actualize for us the divine revelation granted to the apostles. (Oscar Cullmann, “The Early Church,” London: SCM Press LTD., pg 57

                                                                                                                                                 

But by erecting a chasm between the apostolic and the postapostolic church, it undercut the consistency of the times of all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, with the Church founded by Christ on the apostles. Among those ties is the New Testament itself as a document whose divinely inspired character can be assured only by a Church teaching in the name of Christ. (Jaki, “And On This Rock”, pg 40)

This is a tactic for which I have almost no patience any more, and quite a bit of disdain. In our day, Protestants may point to Kruger’s work “Canon Revisited”, as providing a most thorough response to this age-old accusation.

Conservative Roman Catholics return to the vomit from their non-scholar Scholar Heroes

This thread has died down, but I still owe a few responses to someone from the comments here.

Trosclair said (#16): Cullmann is a fine source, I agree. But his reasons for accepting the canon yet rejecting the Apostolic authority found in the 2nd century Church rests on his assumption that Christ was ignorant about his own Church. Even the greatest of scholars can base their ecclesiology on what is a faulty assumption, i.e., Christ’s ‘ignorance.’

I responded: I haven’t read all of Cullmann, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that he argued for this. More likely, given that he was arguing against Bultmann, who was asking questions about, and making comments on, what Jesus actually knew. But this is the place for a whole ‘nother discussion.

Trosclair then replied: (#46) I have read very little of Cullmann, but I recently came across an interesting critique of his work that was fresh in my mind when we started our discussion. Concerning Cullmann’s PETER: DISCIPLE, APOSTLE, and MARTYRS and Cullmann’s rejection of apostolic succession, Stanley Jaki writes: “In Cullmann’s case a most revealing consequence of that allegedly biblical notion of time is the error which he attributes to Jesus concerning the time of his second coming! See pp. 201 and 207 in the English translation of the first and second editions, respectively.” (AND ON THIS ROCK, 51) I don’t have Cullman’s book, so I am strictly trusting authority here. If you have this book by Cullmann, I would be interested to hear your take on Jaki’s interpretation.

To show just how far Roman Catholics will go in (a) creating and (b) perpetuating not just “urban legends”, but outright falsehoods, I’m looking at Stanley Jaki’s “And On This Rock: The Witness of One Land and Two Covenants”, Front Royal, VA: Christendon Press, Third Enlarged Edition, ©1997).

Trosclair quotes Jaki accurately, but mis-cites the page number. It comes from a footnote on page 40. Here is his larger contention. Noting that “in the Old Testament, only God is called rock”, he goes on to say:

This is not to suggest that the Old Testament usage of the word “rock” failed to be recalled for such tactics in Oscar Cullmann’s famous book, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, and Martyr, first published in 1952 [and expanded and re-issued in 1961]. This book is a classic in cutting both ways and also in undercutting itself. On the one hand, it dealt the coup de grace to the traditional Protestant interpretation that Christ meant Peter’s faith and not Peter himself in speaking of him as rock. On the other hand, it presented Peter as a primus inter pares, or one of the triumvirate of which James and John were the other members, a conclusion clearly destructive of the Roman Catholic position. But by erecting a chasm between the apostolic and the postapostolic church [FN], it undercut the consistency of the times of all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, with the Church founded by Christ on the apostles. Among those ties is the New Testament itself as a document whose divinely inspired character can be assured only by a Church teaching in the name of Christ.

And the [FN] at that point goes on to say: “In Cullmann’s case a most revealing consequence of that allegedly biblical notion of time is the error which he attributes to Jesus concerning the time of his second coming! See pp. 201 and 207 in the English translation of the first and second editions, respectively.”

So in the first comment, Trosclair translated that as Cullmann having “based his ecclesiology” on “the assumption” “that Christ was ignorant about his own Church” “a faulty assumption, i.e., Christ’s ‘ignorance.’” But the problem for Trosclair is, this is not actually this on which Cullman “based his ecclesiology”.

Cullmann is discussing a topic that is much discussed, especially among older New Testament scholars: What Jesus knew, and when he knew it. Cullman says:

The fellowship that Jesus founded even in his life time does of course point to the future. Only after his death will it develop, will it be ‘built up’ in the real sense. We have seen that the Messianic consciousness must lead to the founding of the Church. For Jesus, however, this consciousness involves the necessity of his death. Therefore his death is the real starting-point of the new people of God …. But here the question arises whether for Jesus the time immediately after his death is the time of the complete fulfillment or whether, before the end comes, the time of anticipation begun by his earthly work will still continue for a while, and continue as the period of the church. Matthew 16:17 ff. implies this second assumption. Before we deal with the question whether this agrees with the general expectation of Jesus as we are able to deduce it from the Synoptic Gospels, we still must study a very important utterance of Jesus (Cullmann 204).

And that is Mark 14:57: “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’”

In response to this, Cullmann said, “Jesus had in view a fellowship when he announced that he would again erect the destroyed temple [From Mark 13:2].

We have already seen, indeed, that it was already common in Jewish terminology to apply to the people in the image of the building. IN the New Testament area this usage is quite common; the Church is the temple or the ‘spiritual house’, as it is called in [1 Peter 2:5-8]. … It must be assumed, in keeping with the Synoptic tradition, that Jesus proclaimed the building of a temple not made by human hands. By this he can only have meant the new people of God that he intended to found … We have seen that according to this saying this future must still fall in this age, since otherwise the contrast between heaven and earth would have no meaning. This very fact, however, gives occasion for the final objection which is raised against the genuineness of the [Matthew 16:17] passage. It is claimed that if Jesus spoke of a future realization of the people of God, to follow after his death he can only have meant its final realization in the Kingdom of God. Those other promises, such as the saying concerning the temple, must in such a case be understood to mean that with the death of Jesus the consummation of the Kingdom of God already occurs. Since, however, in Matthew 16:17 ff., the ekklesia is already realized in the present age, it is alleged that there exists here a contradiction, and therefore this saying cannot come from Jesus (206).

This is one of those cases where Jaki, though he was a scholar of Physics, was out of his league. His statement about Cullmann erring is actually a case of Cullmann rescuing Roman Catholicism out of the hands of critical scholars like Bultmann, and bringing “the Christ of faith” back into line with “the Christ of history”. Cullmann’s work. And he rescued this statement about Peter from liberal oblivion, and, I’d venture to say that, even in this case, Roman Catholics are indebted to Cullmann.

As to the statement on pg 207 of Cullmann’s work, one might suggest that Jaki is actually misrepresenting him. The statement of Cullmann’s, referring to Mark 2:18, Mark 14:28, and Mark 14:62, is that “Jesus distinguishes between the moment when the Son of Man will sit at the right hand of God and the one when he will come again on the clouds of Heaven. To be sure, Jesus does not reckon with a duration of Millennia, but he does assume that there will be a rather brief period of time between his resurrection and return, as becomes clear from what he says in expectation of the approaching end” (207).

This is the statement of which Jaki says “In Cullmann’s case a most revealing consequence of that allegedly biblical notion of time is the error which he attributes to Jesus concerning the time of his second coming!”

Cullmann is not making an error, any more than Peter is making an error when he says “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” [Cullmann actually notes that this concept of Time, which he later explores in his work Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time, “does not concern us in our study” (207)].

So to recap, Jaki (and Trosclair citing him) turn something which “does not concern us in our study” into a foundational piece of his argument, when it is no such thing. And further, Jaki misconstrues what Cullmann is actually saying as an error, when it is not.

So from Jaki, it’s pure vomit, and from Trosclair, well, it’s lapping up the vomit. This only goes to show how far even Templeton Prize-winning Roman Catholic conservatives, such as Stanley Jaki, are willing to go in order to buttress their thread-hanging papacy. And how far conservative Roman Catholics, eager to find any word to say against Cullmann, are eager to slurp up this kind of vomit.

Roman Catholic view of Eucharist not only contradicts, but violates Hebrews “ἐφάπαξ”

While I was looking up something else, I came across this passage from Oscar Cullmann’s “The Christology of the New Testament” and I thought I’d pass it along, as it really is central to the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics:

Before we examine more closely this correspondence between the perfection of the High Priest and the perfection of the brothers, we must first consider an aspect of Jesus’ high priestly work which … indicates the chasm between the theology of Hebrews and all Gnosticism and mythology. We think of the once-for-all character (ἐφάπαξ) of the high priestly work. It stands in express opposition to the necessity of the continual repetition of the Old Testament priest’s work. We see again in this respect how Jesus not only fulfils the Old Testament priesthood, but also overcomes all its inadequacies.

The writer of Hebrews emphasizes the ἐφάπαξ so strongly in order to demonstrate this opposition. He describes a final and decisive act which in its very uniqueness brings salvation to men. This uniqueness points primarily to the idea that the act of salvation will not be repeated by Jesus the High Priest himself, but it also suggests that the brothers cannot repeat the act, despite the solidarity of the High Priest with their humanity. This ‘one time’ means ‘once for all time’: ‘…he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption’ (Heb. 9:12); ‘…he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself’ (9:26); ‘…we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’ (10:10). Corresponding to ‘once for all’ we read in 10:14, ‘for all time’ (εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς). The saving character of this historically unrepeatable fact is decisive and unending. What the High Priest Jesus completed on the human level is therefore the centre of all events, the decisive midpoint of time. Every cultic event from now on is concentrated on the historical event of this High Priest’s human life, lived at one single time, with its one crowning climax in his atoning death.

Christian worship is therefore possible only on the basis of unreserved respect for this ἐφάπαξ. As I have previously pointed out, Protestants are incorrect in describing the Catholic mass as a ‘repetition’ of the sacrificial act of Jesus. Catholic theologians have always rejected this interpretation. They speak rather of ‘making present’ Christ’s act. But does not also this description of the mass violate the ἐφάπαξ of Hebrews—above all when one designates the mass a ‘sacrifice’? It is just the sacrifice as such which cannot be made present in the way it is supposed to happen in the Catholic mass.

The danger of falling back to the level of Old Testament priesthood arises when the high priest must always present the sacrifice anew. Christian worship in light of that ‘one time’ which means ‘once for all time’ is possible only when even the slightest temptation to ‘reproduce’ that central event itself is avoided. Instead, the event must be allowed to remain the divine act of the past time where God the Lord of time placed it—at that exact historical moment [when it occurred]. It is the saving consequences of this atoning act, not the act itself, which become a present event in our worship. The Lord present in worship is the exalted Kyrios of the Church and the world, raised to the right hand of God. He is the risen Lord who continues his mediating work on the basis of his unique, completed work of atonement. The words εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν (in remembrance of me, 1 Cor 11:24. 25) describe the connection between his crucifixion and the celebration of the Lord’s supper. This means ‘in remembrance of that which I have completed, on the basis of which I now dwell among you as the resurrected Lord’.

This was one of the things that struck me most, when I read through the New Testament at age 19. Roman Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist, arguably its most central doctrine, is at odds with what the writer to the Hebrews is not only saying clearly, but emphasizing. This is a clear case of biblical perspicuity vs Roman Catholic obfuscation.

Look at this contradiction through the Bryan Cross paradigm, through the Roman Catholic Hermeneutic:

From a Catholic point of view, we never assume as part of our theological methodology that a prima facie contradiction within the Tradition is an actual contradiction. Out of humility toward the Tradition, we instead assume as a working hypothesis that the appearance of a contradiction is due to our own ignorance or misunderstanding. So from a Catholic point of view, if we have at hand an explanation that integrates the apparently conflicting pieces of evidence, we already have a good reason to accept it rather than conclude that there is an actual contradiction…

 Jesus had a word for this, too: “Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that” (Mark 7:13).

The weakness of “the living voice” in the 2nd century, and the integrity of the New Testament canon

This blog post is in response to some comments over at Green Baggins. Trosclair wrote:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears that your method would require us to find out, with some level of certainty (more than just a plausible hypothesis), whether a particular epistle or gospel was written by an Apostle before we accepted its inspiration. Given such a method, each Christian would have to investigate the Apostolic origin of each book of the NT and then determine his/her own canonical list.

I’ve repeated this several times, but Remember Kruger’s premise. He is not writing a work that will prove to skeptics that the Christian New Testament canon is what Christians say it is [the “self-authenticating” model he outlines]. He is rather arguing that, given the process by which the canon developed, Christians do have adequate grounds for believing the “self-authenticating” model.

Trosclair wrote:

Assuming such a method, my personal canonical list would probably be about half of the New Testament’s 27 books. If we wish not to rely on the 2nd century witnesses, we must rely on current scholarship or our personal intuitions. I don’t put much faith in either one of these. Do you find this method acceptable? What other method would you recommend?

As you might expect, there is a discussion of this. First of all, it’s not the case that Kruger doesn’t rely on the 2^nd century witness. The point of Cullmann’s treatment is not that the 2^nd century witness was unreliable. It was that “oral tradition” as a bearer of the “Apostolic witness” was unreliable. And much in the fashion of a game of “telephone”, the early church realized that a fixed written source was needed in order to become reliable. That’s the point of the creation of the canon. After that, theologians like Irenaeus and Tertullian are considered to be far more reliable theologians than some of the Apostolic fathers.

For example, it should be noted that the second century writer Papias said “I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and abiding voice” (cited from Michael W. Holmes, “The Apostolic Fathers”, 3^rd edition, Edited and Translated by Michael W. Holmes, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2007, “Fragments of Papias”, pg 735).

Cullmann puts forth this argument about Papias and the weakness of “the living voice”:

1. For Paul, the paradosis (“oral tradition”), in so far as it refers to the confession of faith and to the words and deeds of Jesus, has a parallel in the Jewish concept of paradosis.

2. This tradition relates to the direct apokalypsis of the Lord to the Apostles. That is, the office of the Apostles was unique because they provided unique eyewitness testimony to the life of Christ.

3. This “Apostolic tradition” was the definitive, eyewitness testimony of the Apostles. This “tradition” lived and died with the apostolic office. No other source had the eyewitness authority of the Apostles. The later church did maintain an “ecclesiastical tradition”, or “traditions of the church”. There was a clear difference in authority between the “Aposotlic tradition” and the “ecclesiastical tradition”. However, that did not prevent the church, at a later date, from mixing the two.

4. The development of the canon was a conscious decision on the part of the earliest church, born from the consciousness of the heresies spinning out of control, to establish a superior written norm, and to stake out the boundaries of orthodoxy and heresy.

Cullmann makes the case that the canon of the New Testament became fixed, as a necessity, because of the damage that was being inflicted by various Gnostic heresies: “oral” tradition was no longer reliable because it was becoming an admixture of too many things. The only reliable “apostolic tradition” was that which had been written down by the apostles and their associates during the lifetimes of the apostles.

This is the place to speak about the establishment of the canon by the Church of the second century. This again is an event of capital importance for the history of salvation. We are in complete agreement with Catholic theology in its insistence on the fact that the Church itself made the canon. We even find in this fact the supreme argument for our demonstration. The fixing of the Christian canon of scripture means that the Church itself, at a given time, traced a clear and definite line of demarcation between the period of the apostles and that of the Church, between the time of foundation and that of construction, between the apostolic community and the Church of the bishops, in other words, between apostolic and ecclesiastical tradition. Otherwise, the formation of the canon would be meaningless.

We must recall the situation that led the Church to conceive the idea of a canon. About the year 150 there is still an oral tradition. We know this from Papias, who wrote an exposition of the words of Jesus. He tells us himself that he used as a basis the viva vox and that he attached more importance to it than to the writings. But him we have not only this declaration of principle; for he has left us some examples of the oral tradition as he found it, and these examples show us well that we ought to think of an oral tradition about the year 150! It is entirely legendary in character. This is clear from the story that Papias reports about Joseph Barsabbas, the unsuccessful candidate, according to Acts 1:23 f., for the post of twelfth disciple rendered vacant by Judas’s treason. Above all there is the obscene and completely legendary account [in Papias] of death of Judas Iscariot himself.

Regarding this, Papias says: Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out.

The period about 150 is, on the one hand, relatively near to the apostolic age, but on the other hand, it is already too far away for the living tradition still to offer in itself the least guarantee of authenticity. The oral traditions which Papias echoes arose in the Church and were transmitted by it. For outside the Church no one had any interest in describing in such crude colours the death of the traitor. Papias was therefore deluding himself when he considered viva vox as more valuable than the written books. The oral tradition had a normative value in the period of the apostles, who were eye-witnesses, but it had it no longer in 150 after passing mouth to mouth (Cullmann, 88-89).

What Cullman relates here is that the church (as reported by Papias) had greatly valued the living voice of the Apostles. But they recognized the thing that we (Protestants) have all along been saying: the “living voice” is not a reliable transmitter, after a point. Over time, the value of this “living voice” had seriously degraded.

* * *

Regarding the second portion of Trosclair’s comment, in response to modern scholarship, Kruger asks, “Are Christians rational to continue their belief in the canon in light of these claims of modern [critical] scholars? He says, “several considerations suggest that the answer is yes”. Paraphrasing for brevity:

1. There are many other scholars outside the “critical consensus” who affirm the apostolicity of these New Testament writings. So much so, one wonders whether the critical consensus can be called a “consensus” in the first place. These scholars have made an an impressive historical case for the apostolic origins of the New Testament books.

2. Modern historical methodologies used to reach these “critical” conclusions rest on on-Christian and enlightenment assumptions. “It comes as no surprise then, that its conclusions are at odds with traditional belief”

3. Kruger argues that not only is there a lack of reasons to accept the certain critical positions, but there are compelling reasons to think they are false.

4. See also my previous post on the whole topic of the possibility that some New Testament works were pseudepigraphical.

Trosclair wrote:

Of course the 2nd century witnesses themselves would disagree with your rejection of the “Roman Catholic view”.

You don’t know this to be the case. The “Roman Catholic view” is actually, still, a work in progress. I’ve noted this in my blog post on “The Roman Bait-and-Switch on [Holy] Orders”.

The 2^nd century church developed an apologetic which included succession – it is clear from the writings of even Roman Catholic writers like Raymond Brown and Francis Sullivan [not to mention Protestant writers] that “succession” itself was a 2^nd century development. As a second century development, it is no way “instituted by Christ”. And I outlined the implications of this.

Citing the Roman Catholic theologian Edward Kilmartin: “In Trent’s Decree on Holy Orders, Canon 6 states that there is in the Church ‘a hierarchy instituted by divine ordination, which consists of bishops, presbyters and ministers.’” The Vatican II formulation steps back from this and notes, ““Christ the Lord”  … “set up a variety of offices”. And other writers have further clarified this: “Biblical and patristic studies make clear that historically a gap occurs at the point where it has been claimed ‘the apostles were careful to appoint successors in’ what is called ‘this hierarchically constituted society,’ specifically ‘those who were made bishops by the apostles . . .,’ an episcopate with an ‘unbroken succession going back to the beginning.’ [citing Lumen Gentium 20]. For that, evidence is lacking…”

Trosclair wrote:

Cullmann is a fine source, I agree. But his reasons for accepting the canon yet rejecting the Apostolic authority found in the 2nd century Church rests on his assumption that Christ was ignorant about his own Church. Even the greatest of scholars can base their ecclesiology on what is a faulty assumption, i.e., Christ’s ‘ignorance.’

I haven’t read all of Cullmann, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that he argued for this. More likely, given that he was arguing against Bultmann, who was asking questions about, and making comments on, what Jesus actually knew. But this is the place for a whole ‘nother discussion.

Michael Kruger: 10 Misconceptions about the NT Canon: #3: The NT Authors Did Not Think They Were Writing Scripture

Michael Kruger has posted the third of 10 blog posts on “misconceptions about the NT Canon”. And it is evident from what he writes that the writers of the New Testament were indeed aware that what they were writing was Scripture:

1 Thess 2:13.  In perhaps Paul’s earliest letter, he is explicit about his own authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ when he reminds the Thessalonians, “You received the word of God, which you heard from us, and accepted it not as the words of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (2:13). By the phrase “word of God” (λόγον θεοῦ), Paul is no doubt referring to the authoritative “apostolic tradition” which they had already passed to the Thessalonians through their oral teaching and preaching. But, if Paul’s apostolic instruction bears divine authority, are we to think that the instruction contained in 1 Thessalonians itself does not?  Is this letter somehow exempt from that very authority? Paul acknowledges elsewhere that the mode of delivery for his apostolic instruction is secondary, “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess 2:15).

1 Cor 14:37-38.  This passage is one of the most explicit about Paul’s apostolic authority, “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.  If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Cor 14:37-38).  Most noteworthy about this passage is that Paul directly addresses the precise nature of his writings and declares that they are a “command of the Lord” (κυρίοu ἐντολη,).  Such a phrase is common throughout the Old Testament as a reference to either the commands that come directly from God himself or to the commands he has given to Moses. So confident is Paul of his authority to speak for the Lord that he declares that anyone who does not recognize the authority of his writings is himself “not recognized.”

Luke 1:1-4.  Luke makes express claims to be passing down apostolic tradition. In his prologue, Luke claims that the traditions included in his gospel have been “delivered” to him by those “who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.”  Most scholars view the “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” as a clear reference to the apostles. And the term “delivered” is a standard reference to the way that authoritative apostolic tradition is passed along. Thus, Luke understood his gospel to be the embodiment of the authoritative apostolic “Word” that had been delivered and entrusted to him. Craig Evans comes to the same conclusion about the prologue, “Luke does not see himself primarily as a biographer, nor even a historian.  The Lukan evangelist is a writer of Scripture, a hagiographer who is proclaiming what God has ‘accomplished among us.’”

Rev 1:1-3. The most explicit claim for a book’s authority no doubt comes from the author of Revelation.  The opening line of the book directly claims that it is the inspired prophecy of Jesus Christ delivered to John by an angel (1:1).  Consequently, there is a divine blessing attached with this book: “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near” (1:3).  Moreover, the authority of this book is heightened by the inclusion of an “inscriptional curse” at the end, warning the reader not to add nor take away from this document lest they suffer divine judgment (22:18-19). 

My contention here is simple: the NT authors show evidence that they understood their writings to contain authoritative apostolic tradition.  Since the apostles were commissioned by Christ to speak for him, and were empowered by the Holy Spirit to do so, then these writings would have borne the authority of Christ himself.  Thus, whether we call these books “Scripture” is a bit beside the point.  To the earliest Christians, they were “the word of God.”

Roman Catholics are fond of citing verses like Matt 10:40 and similar verses as evidence of “apostolic succession” in the church: “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me”. Richard Bauckham notes:

For this same message the disciples must have employed the same sayings in which Jesus himself had crystallized his teaching [paragraph break]. In that sense a formal transmission of Jesus’ teaching by authorized tradents, his disciples, began already during Jesus’ ministry. … Only when formulated and transmitted by the eyewitnesses and especially, though not exclusively, by the Twelve after the resurrection of Jesus would the narrative traditions about Jesus have become more formal, in the sense of tradition authorized by an acknowledged competent tradent and formally delivered to others. (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, ©2006, pg 285).

So there were “authorized representatives” who spoke and wrote with the authority of Scripture. But the later generations of Christian writers clearly recognized themselves as NOT having anything like the authority that the Apostles had. Clement, writing in 96 AD, is clearly cognizant of a certain impotence in his address to the Corinthians. Writing in 58:2, he says “accept our advice” (συμβουλήν, or “symboulen”). Michael Holmes notes this was “a ‘symbouleutic’” (or “deliberative”) letter, a category widely discussed by ancient rhetoricians and to which 1 Clement closely conforms” (“The Apostolic Fathers”, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, © 2007, pg36). Clement knows that he must reason with them; he may not order them. As well, Ignatius writes clearly in multiple places that “as a bishop he, unlike the apostles, is not in a position to give orders or to lay down the precepts or the teachings (δόγματα), which come from the Lord and the apostles alone (see his letters to the Magnesians 13; Romans 4:3; Ephesians 3:1 etc. Citing John Behr’s introduction to Irenaeus of Lyons “Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching” Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, pgs 9-11).

For reasons like this, Oscar Cullmann (“The Tradition”, in “The Early Church”, “London: SCM Press Ltd, © 1956), writes:

We shall insist on the fact that the infant Church itself distinguished between apostolic tradition and ecclesiastical tradition, clearly subordinating the latter to the former, in other words, subordinating itself to the apostolic tradition (pg 87).

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the early church understood this distinction, the Roman Catholic Church puts “sacred Tradition” on the same level of Scripture (in its “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” otherwise known as “Dei Verbum”), with both “sources” “flowing from the same divine wellspring,” “merging into a unity” and “to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence”:

there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.(6)

The authors of Scripture knew they were writing Scripture. The early church, following them, knew that they were subordinate to it. It is the Roman Catholic Church which is out of step with both “apostolic tradition” and “ecclesiastical tradition”. It is the church of Rome which, though it had been invited to a place at the table, claims without warrant to speak with the authority of Christ, and chose to “sit in the first place” without having been asked to do so. We pray for the day when the master bids them “go and take a lower seat”.

Previous entries:

Introduction (JB comments)

#1: The Term “Canon” Can Only Refer to a Fixed, Closed List of Books, (JB comments)

#2: Nothing in Early Christianity Dictated That There Would be a Canon (JB comments)

The Christology of the New Testament

There seems to have been a round of dust-ups over Christology in recent days.

The opening words of David King’s work struck me hard when I first read them, and they strike me hard now, in the matter of Christology:

Christianity is preeminently a revealed religion (religio revelata); a revelation of the one true and living God manifested in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When we speak of revelation in general terms, we mean that process by which God has disclosed what otherwise could not be known of himself. Only God can reveal God. Scripture states that ‘the secret things belong only to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law’ (Deut. 29:29). (From David King, “Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith,Vol 1”. Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources, Pg 25.)

Thus, only God can tell us the things he tells us about himself. And does so in a way that what is revealed “belongs to us and to our children forever”. That way is through the Scriptures.

The editors of Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, in their introduction to the section on “The Person of Christ”, note: “The doctrine of Christ is the central point of the whole system of dogmatics.” And this is merely the result of the understanding of Hebrews 1: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word”.

So we had better get our Christology, our study of Christ, correct.

Steve linked to some articles on Christology at a relatively new site called CalvinistInternational.com. I believe the writer here, Steven Wedgeworth, is precisely correct when he says:

Reformed theologians … should be profoundly confident in their own tradition of doctrine and reflection. In fact, B.B. Warfield wrote some extremely insightful essays in his collection, The Person and Work of Christ, ... The Reformed masters interact with ancient and modern arguments without skipping a beat. Bavinck's third volume of Reformed Dogmatics is magisterial, confidently interacting with world religions and philosophical concepts from the broadest of traditions. He consistently connects the right dots without getting side-tracked. 

The Reformed tradition's classic distinctive is that God is always and ever God, and man is always and ever man. Even in the unity of Christ, the two natures remain unmixed. And it is God who does the saving. Far from being a weakness, any reluctance to go beyond this is our foremost achievement: a biblical theology of Christ. Jesus didn't go around teaching people how to energize their hypostases. He preached the kingdom, judgment, and how to gain rest in Him. This is the gospel, and this also happens to be both catholic Christology and Reformed theology.

I hope to say more about this down the road. But Steve Hays makes the most important distinction of all when he says: “Now, our primary concern ought to be with NT Christology, not patristic or conciliar Christology.” The “magisterial” Bavinck, too, points to the Scriptures as our primary knowledge of Christ: “The Synoptic [Gospels] already contain all the things that the apostles and the Christian church later taught about taught about the person of Christ. True, before Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples did not yet have the right insight into his person and work. The Gospels themselves tell us that. It is for this reason that Jesus in his teaching also took account of the diciples’ capacity to understand, gradually introduced them to the knowledge of his sonship and messiahship, and left a great deal to the instruction of the Spirit (John 16:12). But the resurrection already marvelously illumined the person and work of Christ. From that time on, he was to all the disciples “a heavenly being”; the teaching of Paul and John concerning the essential character of Christ was in now way opposed by any of the other disciples.” (Bavinck, Vol 3, pg 252).

I’ve already hinted that, per Hurtado, Paul’s letters themselves are the best and earliest source of what the earliest Christians believed about Christ.

Oscar Cullmann, in his “The Christology of the New Testament” (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press (translated from the German Die Christologie Des Neuen Testaments, Tubingen, 1957), goes into some detail about this:

The ancient formulas (such as those found in 1 Cor 8:6 and 2 Cor 13:14, for example) are especially important for knowledge about early Christian thinking, because, as short summaries of the theological convictions of the first Christians, they show what these Christians emphasized, which truths they regarded as central and which as derived. We can therefore say that early Christian theology is in reality almost exclusively Christology. In so far as it concentrated its whole theological interest for several centuries in Christological discussions, the early Catholic Church remained close enough to the early Church….

It must be acknowledged from a historical point of view, of course, that it was necessary for the Church at a certain period to deal with the precise problems resulting from the Hellenizing of the Christian faith, the rise of Gnostic doctrines, and the views advocated by Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches and others. That is, it was necessary for the [later] Church to deal with the question of the natures and attempt to answer it. We may say, however, that although the Church attempted a solution to the problem by reference to the New Testament, its statement of the problem was nevertheless oriented all too exclusively in a direction which no longer corresponds to the manner in which the New Testament itself states it.

The New Testament hardly ever speaks of the person of Christ without at the same time speaking of his work … When it is asked in the New Testament ‘Who is Christ?’, the question never means exclusively, or even primarily, ‘What is his nature?’, but first of all, ‘What is his function?’ Therefore, the various answers given to the question in the New Testament (answers which are expressed in the various titles we shall investigate one after the other) visualize both Christ’s person and his work. This applies even to the titles of honour referring to the pre-existent Christ ….

As a result of the necessity of combating the heretics, then, the Church fathers subordinated the interpretation of the person and work of Christ to the question of the ‘natures’. In any case, their emphases, compared with those of the New Testament, were misplaced. Even when they did speak of the work of Christ, they did so only in connection with discussion about his nature. Even if this shifting of emphasis was necessary against certain heretical views, the discussion of ‘natures’ is none the less ultimately a Greek, not a Jewish or biblical problem (pgs 2-4).

So, we must know what we know of Christ primarily from the New Testament. To be sure, it was important, as Bavinck noted, to draw some “clear-cut boundaries” “within which the church’s doctrine of Christ would be further developed” (v. 3, pg 255). The formula of Chalcedon helped to do that. But the substance of the doctrine of Christ always must be Scriptural, not speculative. 

Dr Wallace’s Problems with Protestant Ecclesiology

Dr. Daniel Wallace has recently put up a blog post lamenting “Protestant Ecclesiology”. Of course, he starts off by affirming his Protestant identity: “I am unashamedly a Protestant. I believe in sola scriptura, sola fidei, solus Christus, and the rest. I am convinced that Luther was on to something when he articulated his view of justification succinctly: simul iustus et peccator (‘simultaneously justified and a sinner’).”

That’s a good start, to be sure. But then, he brings in a not very good concept when he says, “Jaroslav Pelikan had it right when he said that the Reformation was a tragic necessity. Protestants felt truth was to be prized over unity, but the follow-through was devastating. This same mindset began to infect all Protestant churches so that they continued to splinter off from each other. Today there are hundreds and hundreds of Protestant denominations. One doesn’t see this level of fracturing in either Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. Not even close.”

The real tragedy of the Reformation was not that “Protestants splintered”. The real tragedy of the Reformation was that Rome had become what it had become. The Protestants of the time didn’t “splinter”. They did what had to be done. They headed away from Rome. They were unified in their agreement: what the Roman Church had become was a tragedy.

While I greatly admire the work that Dr. Wallace has done regarding our understanding of the manuscripts of the New Testament, I tend to think that he has done a bad thing here, lamenting “Protestant Ecclesiology”. The Reformers did what they had to do at the time; the results are in the Lord’s hands.

Meanwhile, some of what he says, I think, is manifestly unhelpful.

* * *

Dr. Wallace notes that “three events have especially caused me to reflect on my own ecclesiological situation and long for something different.” I’d like to take a look at these.

First, he cites a positive reaction from his associations with “Greek Orthodox folks”:

It doesn’t matter what Orthodox church or monastery I visit, I get the same message, the same liturgy, the same sense of the ‘holy other’ in our fellowship with the Triune God. The liturgy is precisely what bothers so many Protestants since their churches often try very hard to mute the voices from the past. “It’s just me and my Bible” is the motto of millions of evangelicals. They often intentionally forget the past two millennia and the possibility that the Spirit of God was working in the church during that time. Church history for all too many evangelicals does not start until Luther pounded that impressive parchment on the Schlosskirche door.

In Protestantism, one really doesn’t know what he or she will experience from church to church. Even churches of the same denomination are widely divergent. Some have a rock-solid proclamation of the Word, while others play games and woo sinners to join their ranks without even the slightest suggestion that they should repent of anything. Too many Protestant churches look like social clubs where the offense of the gospel has been diluted to feel-good psycho-theology. And the problem is only getting worse with mega-churches with their mini-theology. This ought not to be.

To be sure, I wish more Protestants had a firmer grasp of church history, prior to the Reformation. But that’s not to say that the sameness of Orthodox liturgy is always a good thing. God didn’t make two billion unique individuals only to paste them all into the same mold when it comes to worship. I admit that there’s some benefit to be gained from being able to see what a fourth century liturgy was like. But by the fourth century, Christian worship had already evolved a great deal from its first century origins (and from its second and third century struggles as well). Eastern Orthodoxy has its attractions, but it is wrong to focus on these without considering the doctrinal weaknesses that are inherent in that church as well.

Second, he points to a lack of accountability within some Protestant churches he has encountered:

a man whom I mentored years ago became a pastor of a non-denominational church. Recently and tragically, he denied the full deity of Christ and proclaimed that the Church had gotten it wrong since Nicea. He got in with a group of heretics who were very persuasive. The elders of the church had no recourse to any governing authority over the local church; they were the governing authority and they were not equipped to handle his heterodox teaching. It smelled wrong to them and they consulted me and another evangelical teacher for help. It took some time before they could show the pastor the door, and they were bewildered and troubled during the process. The congregation wasn’t sure which way was up. Doubts about the cornerstone of orthodoxy—the deity of Christ—arose. This cancer could have been cut out more swiftly and cleanly if the church was subordinate to a hierarchy that maintained true doctrine in its churches. And the damage would have been less severe and less traumatic for the church.

This is a tragedy, but again, even individuals who do have “a hierarchy that maintains true doctrine”. In fact, this man’s relatively swift exit from the church, at the hands of “the elders of the church”, may be seen as a blessing. Consider the anguish that someone like Peter Leithart, and a like-minded group in the Northwest Presbytery, is continuing to cause the PCA.

But worse than that, consider the ultimate “hierarchy that maintains true doctrine”, Rome. Consider how that “hierarchy” has gone off the rails, and the infinitely greater trouble it has caused the church of Christ than even that wrought by individuals like Leithart.

A more effective response to this would be to assure that not only elders, but whole congregations full of “non-denominational” Protestants, continue to understand Biblical teaching on “the full deity of Christ”.

Third, he appeals to “the shape of the canon in the ancient church”:

a book by David Dungan called Constantine’s Bible makes an astounding point about the shape of the canon in the ancient church. Dungan discusses the passage in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (6.12) when this church father famously spoke of four categories of literary candidates for the canon—homolegoumena, antilegomena, apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha. Dungan mentions that for Eusebius to speak of any books as homolegoumena—those twenty books that had universal consent in his day as canonical—he was speaking of an unbroken chain of bishops, from the first century to the fourth, who affirmed authorship and authenticity of such books. What is significant is that for the ancient church, canonicity was intrinsically linked to ecclesiology. It was the bishops rather than the congregations that gave their opinion of a book’s credentials. Not just any bishops, but bishops of the major sees of the ancient church. Dungan went on to say that Eusebius must have looked up the records in the church annals and could speak thus only on the basis of such records. If Dungan is right, then the issue of the authorship of certain books (most notably the seven disputed letters of Paul) is settled. And it’s settled by appeal to an ecclesiological structure that is other than what Protestants embrace. The irony is that today evangelicals especially argue for authenticity of the disputed letters of Paul, yet they are arguing with one hand tied behind their back. And it has been long noted that the weakest link in an evangelical bibliology is canonicity.

It’s on this score that I think Dr. Wallace’s comments are weakest. It’s been known and acknowledged many times that the “unbroken chain of bishops” that Eusebius was talking about, simply didn’t exist much further back than the middle of the second century. The “unbroken chain of bishops” was rather an apologetic tool, developed in the second century, to deal with growing Gnostic movements that were encroaching in various cities. Eusebius was merely looking to the status of the church in his day, and assuming that this existed all the way back to the first century.

As Jason Engwer has noted here (and others have noted elsewhere), “We have many lines of evidence for the widespread acceptance of the books of the Protestant canon, such as Eusebius' comments about the degree of acceptance of the books among the churches.” In fact, Oscar Cullmann wrote extensively about the relationship between “tradition” and the canon of the New Testament (see here and here, for example). Eusebius isn’t the only early church writer who talked about the canon. So Dungan’s point about “the shape of the canon in the ancient church” really isn’t “astounding”. It may be new to Dr. Wallace (though given his work in textual criticism, it’s hard to believe this concept is new to him), but the reality of it is that he is conflating a number of issues – “succession”, “canon”, early church ecclesiology, and other issues that require far more explanation than he can give in a short blog post by a single author.

Most importantly, for the canon of the New Testament, is something noted by Herman Ridderbos, and cited by Andreas Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger in their The Heresy of Orthodoxy, pg 171, citing Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, pg 25:

When understood in terms of the history of redemption, the canon cannot be open; in principle it must be closed. That follows directly from the unique and exclusive nature of the power of the apostles received from Christ and from the commission he gave to them to be witnesses to what they had seen and heard of the salvation he had brought. The result of this power and commission is the foundation of the church and the creation of the canon, and therefore these are naturally unrepeatable and exclusive in character.

As Ridderbos says, “The attempt to retain some form of ongoing oral tradition as a supplement to the written canon (as in Roman Catholicism) in fact relativizes the latter and makes illusory the church’s intention in adopting the canon in the first place. By accepting the canon, not only has the church distinguished canonical from noncanonical writings, but it has established in general the limits of what it is able to acknowledge as the apostolic canon. The written canon, then, is the boundary between the history of redemption and the history of the church” (26).

In other words, the fixing of the canon necessarily excludes from the “apostolic witness” what “the unbroken chain of bishops” proposes to bring to it. “The establishment of the Christian written canon indicates that the Church itself at a definite time drew a clear line of demarcation between the time of the apostles and the time of the church, between the time of the foundation and the time of the superstructure, between the apostolic church and the church of the bishops, between the short apostolic [tradition] and the ecclesiastical tradition. This occurrence would be meaningless if its significance were not the formation of the canon (citing Cullmann on Tradition). 

In short, Dr. Wallace’s problems with Protestant ecclesiology aren’t solved by an appeal to Eusebius.