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Acknowledging a special debt to Douglas Sweeney’s historically oriented definition of what it means to be evangelical on the one hand, and what has proved to be a complementary study of The Great Tradition of Christian Thinking by David Dockery and Timothy George on the other, we begin our study with the early church and the apostolic fathers. With the completion of the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus and his return to the Father, where did they find true doctrine and divine direction? Paul answers that question in large part when, addressing the church at Thessalonica, he admonished believers to “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). The Christian great tradition begins with the inspiration and inscripturation of the word of God and proceeds with its proclamation, dissemination, and instruction.

The Scripture Canon: The Old and New Testaments

Wherever the Christian faith has been found, there has been a close association with the written Word of God, with books, education, and learning. Studying and interpreting the Bible became natural for the early Christian community, having inherited the practice from late Judaism.5

The great tradition is not only rooted in the biblical text itself but also in the history of the study and interpretation of the biblical text. It shows that, historically, Bible interpretation was informed by approaches inherited from intertesta­mental Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world of the apostles. However, with the passing of the apostles various needs surfaced: the need for an authoritative Scripture canon, the need to clarify and defend apostolic beliefs and practices, the need to encounter and counter false religionists, the need to reply to heresies within the church, and the need to respond to persecution from without the church. In one form or another—and to one or another degree—these challenges continued and were met by the church throughout the classical period and beyond.

The single most important part of the Christian Tradition is, of course, the New Testament itself.6 Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would bring what he had taught them to the minds of the apostles and “guide them into all truth” (John 16:13). That promise was extended so as to include the apostle Paul and Luke the historian. Scholars disagree as to the date of the pastorals, Peter’s epistles, Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Gospel of John, but it is safe to say that by the end of the first century or very shortly thereafter the early church possessed at least a good part of the New Testament and accorded it the authority that went with apostolic authorship. With that authority and additional agreements among the churches, the New Testament canon essentially as we have it today was accepted by the churches before two more centuries had passed. That Bible came to be our Bible and with it came the true truth and undivided authority that forever attends the word of God.

The apostolic witness contained in the writings of the apostles, then, was the authoritative source for addressing key issues that faced the early church. The following table summarizes these issues and key figures and events in the second through the fifth centuries of the church.

Figure 2. Three main elements of classical orthodoxy

Hermeneutics: Interpreting and Applying the Written Word

Following the death of the apostles, and as the church moved into the second century, more attention was given to ways of understanding and applying Scripture to everyday life and thought. Which books and letters are authentic? How is the New Testament to be understood? What is the relationship of New Testament books to the Old Testament? Marcion (ca. 85–160) and the gnostics abandoned the Old Testament and interpreted the New Testament according to their own ideas. Justin Martyr linked the testaments with each other, both being an outgrowth of the Logos. Toward the end of the second century Irenaeus and Tertullian improved on the understanding of Justin and also stressed the mutuality of both testaments and theological tradition.7 Two schools of interpretation were most influential.

The School at Alexandria

Origen (185–254), who studied under Clement (ca. 150–215) of the school at Alexandria, was one of the first great scholars of the church and a leader of a catechetical School of Alexandria. In First Principles Origen systematized the rules of faith and distinguished between “necessary” doctrines delivered by the apostles and other doctrines. He believed that Bible interpretation must of necessity follow the rule of faith including the doctrines of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit; the doctrine of spiritual beings including angels and Satan; and the doctrine of last things such as the reward of the righteous and the condemnation of the wicked.

Origen’s work represented a response to the interpretations of Marcion and the gnostics and thus met a growing need of the church during the early centuries. However, Origen went beyond the teachings of the apostles in maintaining that the Scriptures are subject to a threefold interpretation. “For as man is said to consist of body, and soul, and spirit, so also does sacred Scripture” he wrote.8 Accordingly, he concluded, there is the literal or historical meaning which corresponds to the body; the moral sense or higher stage or meaning corresponding to the soul; and, finally, the highest sense of all corresponding to a man’s spiritual nature. Only by allegorizing the Bible in this way can we “enter into its Holy of Holies,” said Origen.9 However, Origen’s fanciful hermeneutic was rejected by the early church.

The School at Antioch

It remained for the School of Antioch, represented by men such as Theodore of Mopseustia (ca. 350–428) and John Chrysostom (354–407), to develop an improved method of Bible interpretation for the church—a method less given to Platonic imagination and more in-line with Aristotle’s “down-to-earth” orientation. Antiochene hermeneutics decried allegorical interpretation and replaced it with typological interpretation in which the events, people, and things of the Old Testament are understood as prefiguring or foreshadowing the events, people, and things of the New Testament. Theodore also gave increased attention to the historical record and to the overall purposes of God as revealed in the Bible. As for Chrysostom, he “gave primary attention to the literal, grammatical and historical interpretation of Scripture.”10

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 certain common commitments to Jewish tradition20

•The Bible as primary source for shaping the Christian tradition21

•In time the “church had to demonstrate on biblical grounds that the same God was revealed in both Testaments”22

•A “pattern of Christian truth”—the integration of faith and reason23

All of this and more lay behind the faith consensus that the church of the classical period bequeathed to the church of subsequent ages. Viewed from a missionary perspective, it is more than the church of any age could have dreamed, much less anticipated. A paragraph from the writings of the eminent missions historian, Bishop Stephen Neill, sums it up well.

Inwardly, the church had gone far to consolidate its life and to perfect its organization. It had defined the limits of the Scriptures, and had given to the New Testament equal canonical status with the Old. Through the work of the great Councils it had settled many questions of doctrine, and had laid down the limits within which Christian thought has moved ever since. . . . In the great Councils it had developed a marvelous instrument for the expression and maintenance of Christian unity; in spite of troublesome disputes as to the relative status and authority of the patriarchs—Antioch against Alexandria, and at times Rome against all the rest—Christians in every part of the world felt themselves to be at one with all other Christians.24

Somewhere25 I recall a missions historian adding that missions history is usually told in terms of individuals and groups who left home and journeyed to distant places and peoples to share the gospel and build the church. It is seldom told in terms of theologians and ecclesiastics who defended the faith, instructed the church, and formed creeds and confessions that tethered the gospel to scriptural revelation. Nevertheless, those contributions are monumental and deserving of undying gratitude and careful study.

5. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 23.

6. Or, perhaps better, the New Covenant because that links the New Testament with the covenantal character of God’s relationship with Israel and with covenant theology as well.

7. Cf. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 26–29.

8. Origen, Princ. 4.1.11 (776).

9. Williams, Early Church Fathers, 106.

10. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 35.

11. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 35.

12. Cairns, Christianity through the Centuries, 97.

13. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 53. See also Ott et al., Encountering Theology of Mission, xxiv.

14. Baus, History of the Church, 151.

15. Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, 375.

16. Leith, Creeds of the Churches, 28.

17. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 377.

18. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 38.

19. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 23.

20. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 24.

21. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 24–25.

22. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 25.

23. Dockery and George, Great Tradition, 52.

24. Neill, History of Christian Missions, 52.

25. I believe it was also from Stephen Neill although I can no longer find the passage.