WHAT EVANGELICALS AND LIBERALS CAN LEARN FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2006 by Hall, Christopher A

It is within the Church that the teaching of the apostles has been faithfully passed on and preserved, rather than within the Gnostic communities. How so? Apostolic teaching has been "preserved by means of the successions of presbyters in the Churches."17 Irenaeus believes that anyone of good faith can observe the public record: "It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times."18 If the apostles passed on secrets to a chosen few, as the Gnostic teachers claimed, would they not have communicated these secrets to those chosen by the Church to succeed the apostles as leaders of Christ's body? Furthermore, would not the apostles have passed on this secret information to those they had publicly recognized as leaders within the Church, leaders who bore the responsibility for faithfully preserving the teaching of the apostles? Irenaeus adds, "For [the apostles] desired that these men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, [men] they were leaving behind as their successors, delivering up their own place of government to these men."19

Irenaeus is deeply concerned to demonstrate the unbroken connection between the apostles and the bishops or presbyters of the Church, precisely because Gnostic teachers were denying the connection. Apostolic truth was grounded on the apostles' teaching and had been handed down publicly by them in their writings to specific Christian leaders whose responsibility it was to pass on and preserve that same truth faithfully. This was not something done in a corner or secretly. Thus, if leaders arise claiming to be teaching in the name of Christ and Christ's Church, their teaching must be tested by the standard of apostolic truth preserved in the Church. Why? Because the apostles passed on the truth to the Church and expected the Church to preserve and preach it. New teachings that did not fit the apostolic pattern could not be welcomed. To use an analogy, "the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in [the Church's] hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every person . . . can draw from her the water of life."20

The Church, in Irenaeus's thinking, is an inherently conservative institution. For Irenaeus, it is not the job of the Church to innovate or to create new doctrines out of whole cloth. Whatever the Church chooses to say must find its root in apostolic sources. If the source of a bishop's teaching, for example, cannot be traced to apostolic teaching, that bishop's instruction must remain suspect. When disputes over teaching and doctrine arise, Irenaeus argues that they must be adjudicated by turning to the "most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in response to the present question."21 Teachers within the Church must never place themselves above apostolic teaching. They are not free to undercut the apostolic tradition through appeals to further revelation, however secret, mysterious, or elevated such revelation might appear to be.