The Alexandrians looked to the rule of faith, mystical interpretation, and authority as sources for shaping the Christian intellectual tradition. The Antiochenes looked to reason and the historical development of Scripture as the focus for understanding Christian thought. These approaches set the stage for the widely influential and shaping work of Augustine.11
Apologetic and Polemic Writings
In the last part of the second century and throughout the third centuries it became increasingly apparent that “Christians had to fight what every strategist tries to avoid—a war on two fronts.”12 While Christians were dealing with false teaching and heresy from within the church, they were forced to deal with harassment and persecution from outside the church as well. Williston Walker writes,
The charges brought against Christians, not to mention the official policy of treating the church as an unauthorized association, impelled believers not only to bear witness in suffering but also to explain and defend their faith. There arose, therefore, in the course of the second century a new genre of Christian literature, the “apology”—so called from the Greek apologia, meaning “a speech for the defense.” The authors of these works are known collectively as the apologists; and though writings of this type were produced long after the close of the second century, the period from about AD 130 to about 180 is frequently referred to as the age of the Apologists.13
Early apologists included Quadratus, Aristides, Melito, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr. Justin Martyr, who seems to have headed up a school in Rome, wrote one of the most famous early apologetic works, entitled simply Apology. One of his disciples, Tatian, wrote Discourse to the Greeks—a work that was as much a polemical attack on pagan culture and religion as it was a defense of Christianity. Irenaeus (born around AD 130) is sometimes known as the “Missionary Bishop.” His best-known apologetic work is Against Heresies, though he himself called it An Examination and Overthrow of What Is Falsely Called Knowledge—a title that was most apt since the book was largely directed against Gnosticism and the gnostics. Finally, Origen presented the gospel as the final goal of man’s quest for truth and defended it against all detractors. Among his six thousand writings of various genres, First Principles and Against Celsus are usually considered to be his best works.
Confessions and Creeds
As noted above, the church was called upon from within as well as without to make her faith known, and that she did with increasing unity and clarity right up to the triumph of Constantine. In fact, in some ways that was even more true after Constantine intruded his secular power into the affairs of the church. In such a context, it is easy to lose sight of the profound importance of creeds and confessions that serve to articulate and confirm the faith of the true Christian. These early confessions took two basic forms: 1) rules of faith and 2) classic creeds.
Table 1. Rules of faith and classic creeds
| Term | Basic Meaning |
| Rules of Faith | Essential or core beliefs of “early church laity.” |
| Classic Creeds | Standardized or universal creeds adopted in response to theological controversies. |
“Rules of Faith”
Rules of faith were confessional statements or core beliefs of the “early church laity.”
Christians sought to maintain religious unity by a rule of faith which, beginning with simple forms, gradually acquired more precise and definite expression; it was in essential points the same everywhere and was impressed upon all Christians at baptism.14
Classic Creeds
The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Athanasius are often classified as the “Three Universal Creeds.”15 After the persecuted church was reconciled to the state under Constantine in 313, seven major councils (among others) were called to resolve disruptive—and often, contentious—theological controversies. Nicaea (325) introduced a new stage in creedal development. At Nicaea an “ecumenical council adopted a creed that was to be a test for orthodoxy and was to be authoritative for the whole church.”16
It is important to be aware of the kind of issues with which early major councils had to do, such as the relation of Christ to the one God as well as the means and method of man’s salvation. About 318, a presbyter from Alexandria named Arius asserted that Jesus was of a similar but lesser essence or substance than God—homoiousios (of like substance) but not homoousios (of the same substance). Apolinarius basically agreed. He held that the Christ of Bethlehem and Nazareth—and of Calvary and the Empty Tomb—was not fully man. Docetists, on the other hand, held that Christ was entirely too divine in his nature to suffer either pain or death. He only seemed (Greek dokeo) to do so. All of these proposals were wrong, but they were more than wrong; they were heretical. And they were answered with increasing completeness and clarity at councils at Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, and the Council of Chalcedon in 451: Christ is, at one and the same time, fully God and fully man.
As concerns man’s salvation, the idea that man is lost and in need of salvation was seldom questioned. Rather, the fathers attempted to explain the work of Christ in redeeming mankind. J. N. D. Kelly suggests that running through all the various attempts to explain Christ’s redemptive work was “one grand theme”—recapitulation—derived from the apostle Paul by Irenaeus and presupposed in sacrificial theory. It held Christ to be
representative of the entire race. Just as all men were somehow present in Adam, so they are, or can be, present in the second Adam, the man from heaven. Just as they were involved in the former’s sin, with all its appalling consequences, so they can participate in the latter’s death and ultimate triumph over sin, the forces of evil and death itself. . . . All of the fathers, of whatever school, reproduce this motif.17
In 409 a British theologian named Pelagius appeared in Rome and promoted the idea that humans are born with a free will and with the ability to understand and “cooperate” with God in overcoming evil and attaining salvation and righteousness. Among others, Augustine argued against Pelagius, holding tenaciously to the doctrines of original sin, human depravity, the sovereignty of God, and the gospel of grace.
In this respect as in many others, we are greatly indebted to the brilliant Augustine. “Augustine’s work has shaped the best of the Christian intellectual tradition like few others during the two thousand year history of the church.”18 Most famous perhaps for writings such as Against the Skeptics and The City of God, multitudes of students will remember him best for works that relate to their special interests and needs. In my case that work would be his On Christian Doctrine—a work on hermeneutics sometimes thought to be the church’s first volume on homiletics. In On Christian Doctrine Augustine rethinks his rhetorical learning in Alexandria and characterizes it as “gold from Egypt,” but he makes it clear that its particulars must be examined to ascertain whether or not they are real gold. And he makes it clear that the amount of Egyptian gold available to preachers and teachers of the gospel is meager as compared to the gold to be found in the Bible.
Closing Reflections
Christians have been living in the light afforded by the apostles, early believers, and church fathers for two thousand years and more. For the most part Christians have taken what they have been given but with relatively little thinking and even less thanks; nevertheless, that heritage is inestimable. Enabled by the ministries of Christ and the Holy Spirit, those early believers accomplished a missionary task of inestimable proportions. Acknowledging a debt to Dockery and George, here are just a few aspects of the “deposit of faith” those early believers bequeathed to us:
•“Apostolic guidance”—studying and interpreting the Bible19
•Building on