Theology Pathfinder

Tag: church fathers

  • Early Christians Debated How to Interpret Genesis, Too

    Early Christians Debated How to Interpret Genesis, Too

    For many folks with a little exposure to church history, this is actually old news. Discussions of how to interpret the early chapters of Genesis are as old as Christianity.

    But since I’ve been reading through the major theologians of the early church lately, I thought I’d share some of their more interesting quotes on the subject to demonstrate that differences of opinion on how God created are not to be treated as a matter of essential importance for salvation.

    St. Augustine: “Don’t weigh in if you’re ignorant of science!”

    Let’s start with this favorite of mine from St. Augustine of Hippo, written around AD 398:

    “Whenever I hear a brother Christian talking in such a way as to show that he is ignorant of these scientific matters and confuses one thing with another, I listen with patience to his theories and think it no harm to him that he does not know the true facts about material things, provided that he holds no beliefs unworthy of you, O Lord, who are the Creator of them all. The danger lies in thinking that such knowledge is part and parcel of what he must believe to save his soul and in presuming to make obstinate declarations about things of which he knows nothing.” (Confessions, Book 5, Ch. 5).

    In other words, Christians shouldn’t be weighing in on scientific matters about which they really aren’t sufficiently qualified. Much less should they treat their theories as essential to salvation.

    Augustine’s advice feels all the more relevant today. In another chapter of his Confessions, he mentions that the early chapters of Genesis are so dense and rich with ideas that he can’t help but feel like readers shouldn’t limit themselves to just focusing on the one “original meaning” of the text:

    “…since I believe in these commandments, and confess them to be true with all my heart, how can it harm me that it should be possible to interpret these words in several ways, all of which may yet be true? How can it harm me if I understood the writer’s meaning in a different sense from that in which another understands it? All of us who read his words do our best to discover and understand what he had in mind, and since we believe that he wrote the truth, we are not so rash as to suppose that he wrote anything which we know or think to be false” (Conf. 12.18).

    Notice that Augustine is not so flippant as to suggest that we can read whatever we want out of the text; he does acknowledge that there was an intended meaning to it. But at the same time, he has no problem admitting that the “literal” or “original” meaning is not the only layer that matters, and that truth is multifaceted.

    As he goes on to say in the next chapter, “For the great truth, O Lord, is that you made heaven and earth” (Conf. 12.19). That is the essential doctrine; the bottom line we must all agree on.

    Here Augustine lines up well with the creeds of the church, which say we must believe in “God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,” but do not hold us to a specific view on how he created, or how long ago.

    Origen of Alexandria: “All of Scripture has a spiritual meaning, but not all of it has a bodily meaning.”

    Prior to Augustine, we find the influential theologian Origen of Alexandria (c. AD 230) vehemently denying that everything in Scripture is to be taken literally:

    “For who possessed of understanding will suppose that the first and the second and the third day, evening and morning, happened without a sun and moon and stars? And that the first day was as it were also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a human farmer, planted a paradise in Eden towards the east, and placed in it a visible and perceptible tree of life, so that one tasting of the fruit by bodily teeth would obtain life, and again that one could partake of good and evil by chewing what was received from the tree there? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the afternoon, and Adam to hide himself behind the tree, I do not think that anyone doubts that these figuratively indicate, through apparent narratives and through things that did not happen bodily, certain mysteries.” (On First Principles, trans. by John Behr, 4.3.1).

    Origen makes clear that his intention is not to say that the Bible is never talking about actual history (Princ. 4.3.4). Rather, like any good biblical scholar, he says we must carefully search and investigate the Scriptures, as well as history and science, to discover whether a given passage is discussing literal history or is conveying spiritual truths through the use of myth or legend (4.3.5).

    Lest people cry foul, keep in mind that Origen’s principles here were not out of left field for ancient Christianity! He was regarded as the greatest teacher of biblical interpretation and theology by such crucial later theologians as St. Athanasius and St. Gregory of Nazianzus — men largely responsible for mainstream Christianity’s understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity.

    Though Origen was later accused of heresy after his death, it was not because of his biblical hermeneutics, but because certain groups of people grossly misinterpreted some of his other, more sophisticated ideas. His point about being sensitive to the different genres of biblical texts is timelessly important.

    St. Irenaeus of Lyons: “Day” Can Mean a Long Age

    Still earlier than Origen, writing around AD 180, St. Irenaeus of Lyons remarks that in his day, many Christians were of differing opinions as to whether the word “day” in Genesis 1 should be taken as referring to exactly 24 hours or as a symbol for a longer age of time, since verses like Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 affirm that to God “a thousand years are like one day” (Against Heresies, 5.23.2). 

    While Irenaeus himself preferred the more literal interpretation (5.28.3), he in no way implies that this was a matter of importance for one’s salvation, or that those who held to a “day = age” theory were somehow undermining the gospel.

    He is clear that it was a matter of opinion, about which people can disagree and discuss to their hearts’ content, but certainly shouldn’t divide the church over.

  • Getting to Know the Earliest Church Fathers

    Getting to Know the Earliest Church Fathers

    The history of Christianity is long and complex, but as I’ve written previously, there are a ton of reasons why it’s worth getting to know a little more about. Learning how the earliest Christians understood and lived out their faith can help deepen ours.

    In particular, we should ask: How did those who lived closer to the time of the apostles interpret the Scriptures? How did the early church wrestle with doctrinal questions and answer challenges to their faith? Studying all of this will help us get a sense of what really is most essential for Christian belief and practice — what it is that makes up Christian orthodoxy (right belief / right worship) and orthopraxy (right living).

    To that end, I’m going to try to post every so often about some early Christian writings and some of the key insights we can glean from them. They won’t be exhaustive, but hopefully they’ll encourage you to go deeper in your own study of church history.

    Introducing The Apostolic Fathers (c. AD 70-150)

    To start, let’s look at the group of Christian writings that emerged immediately after the time in which the New Testament was written. This collection is commonly referred to as the Apostolic Fathers — so named because they were written by important Christian leaders in the early church (hence the honorific, “fathers”) who were alive early enough to have had a personal connection to Jesus’ apostles.

    This diverse group of writings was produced during the time immediately after the first generation of Christians, and they give us a glimpse into the kinds of issues that most concerned the early church. Most of them were written, in part, out of a concern for maintaining apostolic doctrine and church order now that the original generation of apostles was no longer around to consult on such matters.

    They come in different genres — most of them are epistles, or letter-sermons, in the same vein as Paul’s letters (1 & 2 Clement; The Epistles of St. Ignatius; The Epistle of Barnabas; The Epistle to Diognetus). There is also a handbook for church practice called The Didache. The Shepherd of Hermas is an apocalyptic-prophetic work similar to the book of Revelation. And there’s even a detailed account of an early Christian martyrdom (Martyrdom of Polycarp).

    We find in the Apostolic Fathers several major, repeated themes:

    • A concern for church order and what kinds of leadership should be maintained. With the original apostles gone, church unity hinged on curbing unnecessary divisions and urging individual Christians to unite under faithful leaders. Over time, this led to the formalizing of the office of bishops presiding over churches in different regions.
    • A focus on moral purity among congregations. The pressures of the pagan Roman culture around them presented a great deal of temptation for Christians to commit sinful behavior to blend in, so the Apostolic Fathers placed a great emphasis (some might say too great) on moral purity and virtuous living in the church.
    • Guidance on how believers should relate to outsiders — in particular, Jews (their estranged spiritual brothers) and Romans.
    • The reality of persecution and the possibility of martyrdom. This especially characterizes the epistles of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who writes zealously of his willingness and even eagerness to follow his Lord in martyrdom.

    Out of the whole bunch, my personal favorites are the Didache (the earliest surviving manual for church practice) and the Epistle to Diognetus (a stirring defense of the faith, beautifully presenting Christianity as an alternative way of life). The other writings in the collection all have their important perspectives to offer, too, giving us a valuable window into a time when Christians were navigating the very practical and urgent questions of how to keep this fledgling movement going in the midst of persecution from without, dissensions from within, and the ever-present temptation to compromise with the broader culture’s morals and values.

    In the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, who writes while on the way to his own imminent martyrdom, we get passionate pleas for unity under the leaders of the church. He promotes rule by single bishops in each local church, an important step on the way to later “catholic”/episcopal church structure.

    In 1 Clement, we see how a Roman Christian leader attempted to curb schisms in Corinth, where Paul had already been struggling to call the church to order barely a generation prior. 

    The Epistle of Barnabas, for all its strange allegorizing tendencies, represents an early attempt to define Christianity in light of its growing and undeniable distinction from the Judaism from which it grew. 

    The Shepherd of Hermas wrestles with issues of morality and community ethics in the second-century church, clothing its moral instruction in the popular garb of apocalyptic visions and allegories.

    And in The Martyrdom of Polycarp, we experience a gripping, firsthand account of an early Christian martyrdom under Roman persecution.

    It’s certainly true that the theological reflections of these writings are quite underdeveloped compared to the later church fathers and councils, but that’s mainly because they were writing at a time when Christian leaders were responding to urgent, practical needs in an off-the-cuff manner. As such, not everything the Fathers taught would be incorporated into later orthodoxy as it developed and was systematized over time; nor do they quite live up to the heights of the writings that we now recognize as canonical (though some early church theologians considered some of the Apostolic Fathers’ writings as equal to the New Testament!).

    Even so, these are vitally important historical works that I think every Christian ought to at least read once and be familiar with, considering they are the voice of those who passed the torch from the apostles to later generations. They thus serve as a crucial bridge between the New Testament and the later church fathers and theologians. As the great patristic scholar J. B. Lightfoot wrote,

    “There is a breadth of moral sympathy, an earnest sense of personal responsibility, a fervour of Christian devotion, which are the noblest testimony to the influence of the gospel on characters obviously very diverse, and will always command for their writings a respect wholly disproportionate to their literary merits” (The Apostolic Fathers, Part I, 2nd ed. [London: MacMillan, 1890, 1.1.7).

    We can learn a great deal about early Christianity from these courageous figures, and they’re definitely worth the time and effort to read.

    You can find the Apostolic Fathers for free online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org), or check out the fantastic critical edition by Michael W. Holmes, which includes the original Greek text side-by-side with readable, modern English translations, as well as introductions to each writing. It’s a great resource, highly recommended for pastors, scholars, students, and anyone interested in experiencing firsthand the key documents of the early post-apostolic church.

    Next time we’ll dive in to some of these writings and their teachings more in depth. See you down the path.