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Chapter Four
The Third Century
It is only right
that we should, at this point, test the Early Fathers on their own doctrine.
We must ask if the Fathers of the first two hundred years of the Church have
indeed held to the same doctrine in regard to the nature of doctrine itself.
Have the early Fathers, without exception, all upheld the Apostolic Tradition,
in the strongest possible language, as the constant determinant of correct
belief? Have they condemned, in the strongest possible language, all deviation
therefrom? Is Tertullian's prescription for defining the Faith the same as
that of those like Irenaeus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement, and Hermas? From
the passages cited above, none can deny that the discernment of the Truth
of Christ, in the minds of the Early Fathers of the first two centuries,
followed, without fail, the system espoused by Tertullian in his treatise,
Against Marcion (ca. A.D. 207),1 which reads, "If it is evident that
that is the truer which is the earlier, if that is the earlier which is from
the beginning, if that is from the beginning which was authored by the Apostles,
then it will likewise be evident that that has been handed down by the Apostles,
which has been held sacrosanct in the Churches of the Apostles."2
For two hundred years, spanning the undulating influence of Greek Classical
thought, spanning the fall of Roman Republican ideology, spanning the birth
and corruption of Imperial Roman political and economic theory, and spanning
the growth of Christianity from a provincial phenomenon to a transforming
element in world civilization, the deposit of the Catholic Faith remained
unshakeable, implacable against countless attempts, including cultural,
theological, and political, to infect it with the progressing strains of
human philosophy and consciousness. More than 1700 years later, Pope John
XXIII, under the term "aggiornamento," would call for the "modernization"
of the Church's approach to mankind's problems and concerns, a "revolution"
in the mode of communicating the Christian Truth to the populations of the
world, due to what he and others of the Church's prelates viewed as a fundamental
barrier between a "rapidly changing world" and an antiquated and immobile
language of Faith.
How much more powerful were the forces that bore down upon the Early Church,
pressuring the Early Church Fathers to likewise declare an "aggiornamento"!
While the late 20th Century world saw the advent of faster cars, bigger bombs,
more intelligent computers, and more efficient economies, the late 2d Century
world saw one empire, which had for centuries dominated the very consciousness
of the world with its philosophy and culture, drift into barbaric mediocrity.
It saw another empire, whose legal, economic, and political structures had
begun to completely reshape the order of human life, fall into complete anarchy,
only to rise once more in the form of a ravenous wolf that, with its armies,
conquered nearly the entire known world, decimating and enslaving entire
populations, and assimilating whole civilizations into its collective system
of beliefs. It saw its own missionaries spread the light of Truth throughout
every corner of the known world, stretching from the size of a small room
in a small provincial city, to a Church strong enough to not only survive,
but flourish in spite of the cruelest and most violent efforts of the most
powerful empire in the history of the world.
The face of the earth, and the conceptions of mankind, had never and would
never again, go through so much tumult and development, and yet, no calls
for adaptation were heard from the Apostolic See. No Councils were convoked
to meet the ever-changing needs of the "modern man." This is not to say that
arguments for such "aggiornamento" were not made throughout the Church by
those who desired some form of progress, either in the sense of a change
or a fulfillment, as if such a change or such a fulfillment would somehow
connect more closely with the intent of Christ. In fact, among these "modernists"
was Tertullian who, finally ravaged by the seductions of the prophets and
prophetesses of Montanism after having fought so valiantly in rebuttal to
such a position, also raised his voice to call for "progress," a call for
which he has ever after been condemned as a heretic. He too, in the voice
of innovation, declared, "What, then, is the administrative office of the
Paraclete, if not this? - that discipline be directed, that the Scriptures
be revealed, that the understanding be reshaped, and that progress be made
to those things which are better."3 Are these not the same arguments made
in vindication of the revolutionary theology of Pope John Paul II and the
so-called "Spirit of Vatican II?" Do we not hear the declarations of the
presence of the Holy Spirit, guiding all that appears to be contradiction
into the safe harbor of Truth? Is this not the battle hymn for the "New
Evangelization" that has so completely swept across the face of the latter
half of the 20th Century and continues on into the 21st?
Such poisonous arguments, however, at the yawning of the 3d Century, were
met with the same profession of Faith and tradition as had always issued
forth from the doctors and rulers of the Church, a profession that Origen
most adeptly describes in The Fundamental Doctrines (ca. A.D. 225):
"Although there are many who believe that they themselves hold to the teachings
of Christ, there are yet some among them who think differently from their
predecessors. The teaching of the Church has indeed been handed down through
an order of succession from the Apostles, and remains in the Churches even
to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth which is in
no way at variance with ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition."4
In the same way as Irenaeus, when he declared that the Apostles had deposited
within the Church "most copiously everything which pertains to the truth,"
and as Pope Clement when he cautioned all to avoid disobeying in the slightest
"the things which have been said by Him through us," Origen declares the
common belief of the next generations of successors in the Faith of Christ.
So echoes St. Clement of Alexandria in The Miscellanies (ca. A.D.
210): "It seems clear to me that the true Church, that which is really ancient,
is one; . . . We say, therefore, that in substance, in concept, in origin
and in eminence, the ancient and Catholic Church is alone, gathering as it
does into the unity of one faith which results from the familiar covenants."5
Blessed St. Cyprian, the great African Father of the Church, in The Unity
of the Catholic Church (ca. A.D. 255) also lent his efforts to defending
the inherited traditions of the Faith: "Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who
endeavoured to claim to themselves the power of sacrificing in opposition
to Moses and Aaron the priest, underwent immediate punishment for their attempts.
. . . These, doubtless, they imitate and follow, who, despising God's tradition,
seek after strange doctrines, and bring in teachings of human appointment,"6
and similarly, in On the Dress of Virgins (ca. A.D. 248):
Discipline, the
safeguard of hope, the bond of faith, the guide of the way of salvation,
the stimulus and nourishment of good dispositions, the teacher of virtue,
causes us to abide always in Christ, and to live continually for God, and
to attain to the heavenly promises and to the divine rewards. To follow her
is wholesome, and to turn away from her and neglect her is deadly. The Holy
Spirit says in the Psalms, 'Keep discipline, lest perchance the Lord be angry,
and ye perish from the right way, when His wrath is quickly kindled against
you.' And again: 'But unto the ungodly saith God, Why dost thou preach my
laws, and takest my covenant into thy mouth? Whereas thou hatest discipline,
and hast cast my words behind thee.' And again we read: 'He that casteth
away discipline is miserable.' . . . But if in Holy Scripture discipline
is frequently and everywhere prescribed, and the whole foundation of religion
and of faith proceeds from obedience and fear; what is more fitting for us
urgently to desire, what more to wish for and to hold fast, than to stand
with roots strongly fixed, and with our houses based with solid mass upon
the rock unshaken by the storms and whirlwinds of the world, so that we may
come by the divine precepts to the rewards of God?7
Among these 3d
century Fathers, there is the same urgency of adherence to tradition as with
their predecessors. They do not teach that the mere attestation of orthodoxy
is valid for acceptance into the doctrine of the Faith, for many "believe
that they themselves hold to the teachings of Christ," though, in actuality,
dwell far from those teachings by thinking "differently from their predecessors."
This deviation does not need to take the form of a formal opposition or a
gross contradiction; even the slightest novelty is grounds for repudiation,
for only that is true "which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical
and apostolic tradition." Again, this strict adherence to the letter of Aposolic
teaching is not due to a brittle legalism or to some kind of trepidation
in face of the unknown and unexplored. It simply reflects the belief that
what is "ancient" in "concept, in origin and in eminence," to use the words
of Clement of Alexandria, is none other than the exact voice and desire of
Christ, or, as Cyprian says, the "tradition of God."
Furthermore, no one should assume that the contents of this "tradition" are,
for these later Fathers, any less specific and detailed than that held by
the Fathers of the 1st and 2d Century. Just as Pope St. Clement stressed
the significance even of the days, times, and manners of liturgical and
ecclesiastical practices in the heritage of divine tradition, these later
teachers, with Cyprian, uphold the indispensable certitude of "discipline,"
as composing the "foundation of religion and of faith." Those functions which
are today seen solely as adornments to the faith, to be dispensed with when
no longer eliciting a religious response from the psyche of modern man, who
desires ever greater application of God's Truth to his ever changing disposition,
were, in the early Church deemed as invaluable "roots," as a "rock unshaken
by the storms and whirlwinds of the world," which transmit, through the
unchanging character of their "divine precepts," the "rewards of
God."
Footnotes:
1 By this time (ca. A.D. 207), Tertullian was already beginning
to demonstrate heretical tendencies. One senses in his writings of this period
a kind of internal schism. On the one hand, the core of his faith had always
been the loyalty to the Apostolic traditions. On the other, he had become
enamored by the practices of the Montanist priests and prophetesses, who
preached a development of Truth based on continued inspiration and revelation
from God Himself. In Against Marcion, Tertullian still holds to his previous
convictions. Tragically, it is one of his last works in which he did so.
2 Tertullian Against Marcion (ca. A.D. 207) 4.5.1
3 Tertullian The Veiling of Virgins (ca. A.D. 210) 1.5
4 Origen The Fundamental Doctrines (ca. A.D. 225) 1.Preface.2
5 St. Clement of Alexandria The Miscellanies (ca. A.D. 210)
7.17.107.3
6 St. Cyprian The Unity of the Catholic Church
1.18-19
7 St. Cyprian On the Dress of Virgins (ca A.D. 248) 2.1-2
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