WHAT EVANGELICALS AND LIBERALS CAN LEARN FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS

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

Irenaeus does warn of the possibility of a presbyter of the church falling into error. There are those who "are believed to be presbyters by many" but whose behavior or teaching undercuts their claim to the position. The height of ecclesiastical disaster is the presbyter who fails in both his teaching and behavior. "Keep aloof from all such persons," Irenaeus exhorts, and "adhere to those who, as I have already observed . . . hold the doctrine of the apostles, and who, together with the order of the priesthood, display sound speech and blameless conduct for the confirmation and correction of others."22 Thus, the doctrine of the apostles remains the fundamental rule of life for faith and doctrine for all members of the Church, from its highest leadership on down.

Heretics such as the Gnostics, then, err seriously on a variety of issues. First, they have forgotten that they, like all Christians, are called to be students of the apostles, rather than their teachers. All the key Gnostic teachers "are of much later date than the bishops to whom the apostles committed the Churches." second, because the Gnostics are faulty listeners, refusing to submit to apostolic doctrine as taught in the Scriptures and preserved by the Church, Gnostic doctrine itself is confused and "scattered here and there without agreement or connection."23

Third, the mark of heretical teachers is that they believe only they have discovered the truth. Only they "have hit something more beyond the truth." The problem, Irenaeus writes, is that when people each discover their own truth for themselves, truth itself ends up scattered and inharmonious. The blind end up leading the blind, and they "deservedly fall into the ditch of ignorance lying in their path, ever seeking and never finding out the truth." What is the remedy for this willful blindness? Run "to the Church ... be brought up in her bosom, and be nourished with the Lord's Scriptures." Assume a humble stance before apostolic doctrine. Admit the limitations of human understanding. Do not be like the Gnostics, who have "formed opinions on what is beyond the limits of understanding," who have "set their own impious minds above the God who made them."24

We must leave Irenaeus, at least for the time being. Irenaeus's arguments against his Gnostic opponents demonstrate clearly, I think, that the emergence of an orthodox consensus within the early Church involved a complex testing of both ideas and practices. Different groups did claim the title "Christian." And we would be naive to think that the early Church was immune to the temptations power and prestige occasionally offered. Yet we would be strikingly myopic if we reduced the Church's thoughtful and lively response to Gnosticism to an attempt to dominate, marginalize, and deceitfully rewrite history. Gnostic documents, methods of interpretation, and theological models were rejected by the orthodox Christian community. This rejection, however, was firmly based on the conviction that the content of apostolic tradition was identifiable, as was the pattern of authority instituted by Christ himself. On both counts, Gnostic teaching and practice failed to match the pattern of apostolic truth.