additions.church · full text export · 2026-11-03 Scripture quotations are from the ESV (© 2001 Crossway) and, for the Apocrypha, the NRSVUE. Scholars are summarized, not quoted. ############################################################################## THE OPENING PAGE ############################################################################## What did each church add after the apostles, and when? One line from the apostles, three partings, four churches. Every church holds things decided after the apostles. This site sets each addition on the date it came in and sorts them all by one rule, the Protestant line included. Pick where you stand. Then walk back toward the apostles and watch the pieces come off, one date at a time. READ THIS FIRST What this page asks of you, whoever you are This page will read as a threat to something you hold. It is written to be checked, not believed. Every entry gives its date, its first source, the earliest witness that the practice was once absent or resisted, the texts, the objections your own side would raise, and the three things that would refute it. Use them. IF YOU ARE ROMAN CATHOLIC The page does not say your church is no church, that its sacraments are empty, or that the men who made these decisions were insincere. It says that at dated points your church made things conditions of communion, of a valid ministry, or of law, that the apostles did not, and it shows the date, the source, and the earliest witness that the practice was once absent or different. The test it applies is the one your own tradition professes: Vincent’s “everywhere, always, by all,” Trent’s “received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself,” Vatican I’s “not so that they might make known some new doctrine.” Where the page counts a decision as recognition rather than addition, Nicaea, the Trinity, the canon, it says why, and it holds them with you. If an entry is wrong, the three conditions that would refute it are stated on the opening page, and a single early source would do it. For no entry on the Roman line has that source been produced; the page will print the first that is. IF YOU ARE EASTERN OR ORIENTAL ORTHODOX The page does not count the seven councils’ confession of Christ against you, nor the realism of the second-century Supper, nor the Spirit-led reception of the apostolic writings; it holds them. It counts what a council bound under anathema that the apostles did not bind, and it puts the same question to the Latin West and to the Protestant line, by the same rule, with the same result. It dates the West’s clause in the creed and the East’s anathema on the Latin reading on the same terms. Where the Orthodox answer is that a definition only named what the saints always knew, the page states that answer in your words and then asks for the early witness that would show it. Several entries carry a “contested” or “qualified” footing because your tradition’s defense has real evidence behind it; in each the page says what that evidence shows and what it does not, and in none of them does it show the practice received from the apostles. A council can name what the saints always knew. It can also name what the saints of its own century had come to believe, and the dates on this page are how a reader tells the two apart. IF YOU ARE PROTESTANT Your line is on the page, and it is not spared. It carries six entries of its own, three bindings it shares with Rome and the East, and seventeen of the entries from before 1517, seven of them in part; and its confessions bound readings as tests, on justification, on election, on the cross, on the clause in the creed, on infant baptism and on which baptism counts, in both directions, exactly as Rome and the East did. The rule this page applies is the one your confessions state, that every council since the apostles may err and that Scripture is the test. The page asks you to use that rule on your own line, where it has been used once at scale and then set aside. IF YOU BELONG TO NONE OF THESE Start at the apostolic form, at c. 50, which is where every line on this page begins and where it points: a house, a table with a meal, elders in the plural, each one with a part, and nothing required that the apostles did not require. Then walk forward on any line and watch what was added. The verdict at the end says what the page concludes and what it does not. THE RULE THIS PAGE APPLIES What counts as an addition? Every church today holds things decided after the apostles. Some of those decisions only recognized what the apostolic writings already say. The rest were added. One test tells the two apart, and it is put to all four lines, the Protestant one included. THE RULE A later decision is a recognition only if it affirms what the apostolic witness already asserts or excludes what that witness already contradicts, so that rejecting the decision would mean rejecting the text and not merely a later inference, AND it adds no content, office, rite, or condition of communion or salvation that the witness does not contain. Anything that fails either test is an addition, and where it is presented as apostolic or made binding, the burden lies on its defenders to show it in the earliest evidence as already received, not newly introduced. If they can, the claim stands. If they cannot, it cannot be bound on anyone as apostolic. Apostolic witness means the New Testament text: the one body of apostolic teaching that all four lines agree they hold. It closes with the apostles themselves: the last of them, John, saw the Revelation about 95 and lived until about 100. Where it ends, and what became of the spoken tradition ↓ Earliest evidence means the earliest surviving source for each item, not a fixed date. Tradition counts throughout as evidence of what was received. A reading means a way of taking the text that can be rejected without rejecting any text, as shown by readers who hold every verse and read it otherwise. Affirming the verses is not by itself a recognition, since Arius affirmed them: what decides is whether the view can be held without denying what the text asserts, with the earliest readers after the apostles as the evidence of what it was taken to assert. WHERE THE APOSTOLIC WITNESS ENDS, AND WHAT BECAME OF THE SPOKEN TRADITION It ends with the last apostle. John lived at Ephesus “until the times of Trajan,” who became emperor in 98, and saw the Revelation “towards the end of Domitian’s reign,” about 95 (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4; 5.30.3). After him no one could add to the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). That is why the page’s apostolic form runs from about 50 to about 100, and why everything after it is dated. The spoken tradition did not stop. Paul told the Thessalonians to “hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15), and the churches went on teaching what they had heard. The page uses that tradition at every date: it is what the first witnesses are. What changed in about 100 is that no one could hear an apostle any more. From then on, what the apostles said aloud can be known only as the churches kept it, so the question for any practice is whether it shows up in the earliest sources as already received, or appears later as new. Irenaeus, the first to argue from tradition, used that test himself: the apostles’ tradition was public, kept in the churches they founded, and taught the faith the writings teach (Against Heresies 3.3–4). The Catholic and Orthodox replies, Basil’s unwritten customs among them, are answered at 1546, under What about…? WHAT IS NOT AN ADDITION Conditions the witness itself contains: baptism on belief (Acts 2:38, 41), confessing Jesus as Lord (Rom 10:9), repentance (Acts 2:38), the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42), the assembly’s discipline (1 Cor 5:4–5). An optional form held as optional. A reading held as a reading. The rule bites in four ways only, and every entry says which: Required, made a condition of communion, of a valid ministry or sacrament, or of law, with a penalty for refusing; Replaced, an optional form that took the place of an apostolic practice as the normal shape of the church, though the older practice may survive at the edges; Made normative, made the church’s standard practice or teaching without an apostolic text and without a penalty; Contradicted, a rule that runs against a named apostolic instruction. EACH TRADITION’S OWN TEST The rule is not new, and it is not one tradition’s. It is the test each already puts to the others. Vincent of Lérins (434): hold “what has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” Trent (1546) binds only traditions “received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles themselves.” Vatican I (1870): the Spirit was promised to Peter’s successors “not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine.” The Council in Trullo (692) condemned Rome’s Saturday fast as against what “has been handed down,” and Photius (867) demanded that Rome show the fathers for the words it had added to the creed. Each asks the other for early evidence of reception. This page asks it of all four, and shows its evidence. WHAT WOULD REFUTE AN ENTRY Any one of three things: an apostolic text that commands or describes the practice; a source earlier than the entry’s first witness that shows it already received as apostolic, not newly introduced; or proof that the tradition carrying it neither binds it nor replaced an apostolic practice with it. Age alone, usefulness, or the authority of a later council does not meet the test, because the test is what the council itself claims to have met. Silence is not absence, so each entry also gives, where one has been found, the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted: 61 of the 63 carry one; any that do not say that they rest on the text and the first witness alone. Show any of the three, and the page is wrong at that date and will change. BOUND, TAUGHT, OR DATED: WHERE THE LINES RUN Every claim on this page falls into one of three kinds. Keeping them apart is the whole method, so here they are in plain words, with the test for each. BOUND What the apostolic text asserts, and what it excludes, where the first readers after the apostles already read it so. The creed of 381 as East and West both received it sits here. The test is two-sided: the view cannot be held without denying what a text asserts, and no one in the generation after the apostles who held the texts held the view. Affirming the verses is not enough. Arius affirmed every verse and still had to say “there was when he was not,” which no reader of those verses in the generation after the apostles had said. A church may require this of anyone, because the text already does. TAUGHT: A READING FROM THE TEXT’S OWN WORLD A way of taking the text whose terms come from the text itself and from the world it was written in: “counted” for how a sinner is made right (Rom 4:5), the Servant “pierced for our transgressions” (Isa 53:5), the mercy seat (Rom 3:25 with Heb 9:5), the Spirit sent by the Son (John 16:7), the glory the disciples saw on the mountain (Matt 17:2). Such a reading may be taught, held firmly and preached. It may not be made a test, because other readers hold every one of those verses and read them otherwise, and the page has no way to show that they are denying a text. This page’s own readings, of the Supper, of justification, of the vision of God, are of this kind, and are held as readings. DATED: A READING FROM THE WORLD AHEAD A reading whose load-bearing term or frame arrives after the apostles: the Latin iustificare for “count righteous,” the Latin in quo for “because,” “energies” as a category set over against God’s essence, the criminal court as the room in which the cross takes place, “and the Son” in the creed, a “formal cause” of justification. It may still be taught as a reading, and the page does not call it false. What the page does is this: when a church bound such a reading, as a condition of communion, of ministry or of law, the binding is dated, and the record says where the reading slipped from the text’s world into a later one. So the line is not old against new, or Greek against Latin. It is this: the text and its first readers bind; readings from the text’s world teach; readings from later worlds are dated when a church made them a test. The same line is drawn through every tradition, the Protestant one included. WHERE THE CREEDS SIT The creed of 325 and 381, as both East and West received it, is a recognition. What it binds are exclusions the text already makes: the Son is not a creature, the Spirit is not a creature, Christ is not less than fully God or less than fully man. The first readers after the apostles already held those things, and the FAQ below shows the test on each. The definition of 451 is not counted with it: the whole church did not receive it, what it excludes had already been confessed, and what it added, the formula “in two natures,” was made a test against another reading and parted the church. It is dated at 451. The one clause that one half of the church added to the common creed is dated, at 1014. Nothing in the creeds says how. They do not say how the cross saves, how a sinner is counted righteous, how the unseen God is seen, or who is chosen. The creed says “for us and for our salvation” and “crucified for us,” and stops. Every account of how is later, and where a church bound one, the page dates the binding: Rome’s and the East’s accounts of the vision of God at 1336 and 1351, three accounts of justification at 1547, 1577 and 1672, one account of the cross at 1561, 1563 and 1647. The line runs there. Above it, the creed, which this page holds. Below it, readings, which it dates when they were made a test and otherwise leaves to be taught. THE TAGS ON EVERY CARD ADDITION Added to the faith: not commanded or described in the apostolic writings. NARROWING Several views lived side by side; from this date, one was enforced over the rest. RECOGNITION A later word for what the text already says. Not an entry. REQUIRED Made a condition, with a penalty for refusing. REPLACED An optional form that took an apostolic practice’s place as the norm. MADE NORMATIVE Made the church’s standard without an apostolic text or a penalty. CONTRADICTED Runs against an apostolic instruction; the card names the verse. FIRM Date and fact not seriously disputed. QUALIFIED The fact stands; its reading is argued. The note says how. CONTESTED Date, reading or place on the line disputed. The card says why it is kept. THE MARKS ON THE LINE ADDITION A plus. NARROWING Two bars: the channel closed in to one way through. REQUIRED A solid disc. Where an entry binds more than one way, the line shows the strongest; the card lists every one. MADE NORMATIVE A heavy ring. REPLACED A dashed ring. CONTRADICTED A red × on the corner. RECOGNITION A book under the line, where a council stated what the text already says. WHERE THE LINE PARTS A fork in a ring: one line in, two out. Every tag on a card opens its definition when touched or hovered. FAQ Then why do these hold? The creed of Nicaea, the word “Trinity” and the list of New Testament books all come after the apostles. Here is why none of them is counted as an addition. RECOGNITION, IN WHAT IT EXCLUDES Why does Nicaea hold? Because the text already contradicts the reading Nicaea excludes. You cannot call the Son a creature and still affirm that all things were made through him and that he is before all things (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16–17; Hebrews 1:10–12). The text also calls him God (John 1:1; John 20:28). So homoousios, a word the text does not use, rules out a denial the text already rules out, and it adds no content, office, or rite. What binds is the exclusion. The word is its instrument. Arius affirmed those verses too; what shows that his reading denies them is the text in context, “all things” and “before all things” with no exception made for the Son, together with the earliest readers after the apostles, who already held the Son to be God. No surviving reader of those texts in the generation after the apostles took him for a creature. The earliest surviving sources show the Son’s deity received long before 325: Ignatius calls him “God existing in flesh” (Ephesians 7.2, c. 110) and “our God, Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 18.2), and Pliny reports Christians singing to Christ as to a god (Letters 10.96, c. 112). The same council’s canons on rank are a separate entry, at 325. RECOGNITION Why does the Trinity hold? Because the text already names the three together under one name and one divine agency (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 Corinthians 12:4–6). It already contradicts the three denials the doctrine excludes: that the Spirit is not God (Acts 5:3–4; 1 Corinthians 2:10–11), that the three are three gods (1 Corinthians 8:4–6), and that the three are one person under three names (Matthew 3:16–17; John 14:16–17). So the word “Trinity” labels a pattern the text already forces. The triadic confession is attested as received in baptism by Justin (1 Apology 61, c. 155) and in the Didache 7, whose date is debated, decades before the word appears in Theophilus (To Autolycus 2.15, c. 180). IDENTIFICATION Why does the canon hold? Because the canon is an identification, not a doctrine. The lists of 367, 393 and 397 conferred nothing. They recorded which writings the churches had received as apostolic: a core already visible inside the text (2 Peter 3:15–16; 1 Timothy 5:18) and in Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.11.8, c. 180), with the disputed edge settled by the same test of apostolic origin and early usage. The church’s testimony about what it received is accepted as evidence, not as authority to define. That is the New Testament, and its edge is still not counted the same everywhere: the Syriac Peshitta has twenty-two books, and the Ethiopian church’s broader list has more than twenty-seven. The Old Testament list is a separate question and still disputed: Hippo and Carthage also listed Tobit, Judith and Maccabees, which the list of 367 leaves out of the canon. It is taken up at 1546. THE COUNCILS, ONE BY ONE And the councils after Nicaea? The Oriental Orthodox count three councils, the Eastern Orthodox seven, Rome twenty-one. The rule does not take or leave a council whole. It sorts each decision, and it sorts them all the same way. 381 Constantinople COUNTED BY Prot. Rom. Cath. East. Orth. Or. Orth. RECOGNITION It confesses the Spirit as Lord, worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son. That recognizes what Acts 5:3–4 and 1 Corinthians 2:10–11 already force. Its creed says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father (John 15:26). The words “and the Son” were added to it later in the West: see 589–1014. 431 Ephesus COUNTED BY Prot. Rom. Cath. East. Orth. Or. Orth. RECOGNITION, IN WHAT IT EXCLUDES It holds in what it excludes: two subjects in Christ. The text already says that the one Mary bore is the Lord and God’s own Son (Luke 1:43; Galatians 4:4; John 1:14). So Theotokos, God-bearer, a word the text does not use, guards what the text says about him. Ignatius says as much without the word around 110: “our God, Jesus Christ, was … conceived in the womb by Mary” (Ephesians 18.2). The devotion to Mary that later gathered round the title is classified separately: see c. 600. This is the last council the Oriental Orthodox count. 451 Chalcedon COUNTED BY Prot. Rom. Cath. East. Orth. Or. Orth. NARROWING, NOT A RECOGNITION The whole church did not receive it. What it excludes, a Christ less than fully God or less than fully man, or divided into two persons, the church had already confessed at Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus, and both sides of the split still confess it (John 1:14; Colossians 2:9; 1 John 4:2–3). What 451 added was a formula, one Christ “in two natures,” made a condition of communion against the other reading in use, Cyril’s “one incarnate nature.” Neither formula is in the text, and joint commissions of the two families have since stated that both confess the same Christ (1989–90). That is a narrowing, and it is dated at the split of 451. Its canon 28 is dated at 381–595. 553 Constantinople II COUNTED BY Prot. Rom. Cath. East. Orth. Or. Orth. IN PART Its canons on the one subject hold on Chalcedon’s ground: the one crucified in the flesh is the Lord of glory (canon 10; 1 Corinthians 2:8). Its other work does not. It anathematized a teacher a century dead, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and certain writings of two others whom Chalcedon had received, Theodoret and Ibas, with all who defend them (canons 12–14); that is a condition of communion the text does not contain. The anathemas on Origen linked with it are the entry at c. 420–553. 680–81 Constantinople III COUNTED BY Prot. Rom. Cath. East. Orth. Or. Orth. RECOGNITION, IN WHAT IT EXCLUDES It holds in what it excludes: a Christ without a human will. The text shows him praying, “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), and the council itself argues from John 6:38. Its list of men condemned by name, a bishop of Rome among them, is not a teaching the text can be tested against. 787 Nicaea II COUNTED BY Prot. Rom. Cath. East. Orth. Or. Orth. ADDITION It does not pass. The council requires a rite, the kiss, the bow, lights and incense before images, and it anathematizes those who refuse. That is a condition of communion the text does not contain. Its strongest argument, that the Word became flesh and so can be pictured, shows that Christ may be depicted. It does not show that anyone was ever required to venerate the picture. See 787. “Counted by” means counted among that line’s general councils. Protestant confessions name the first four at most (Second Helvetic Confession 11). Rome counts fourteen more after 787. Seven standing objections to the method itself, from development of doctrine to private judgment, are answered in the record under Today. THE VERDICT So which church can take the additions off? The count is not the point. The point is what each line can do about its count, by its own rules. Three of the four lines have told us. ROME 41 entries · 31 required · 2 set down since Rome holds that a definition made from the chair is, “of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable,” and that whoever rejects this “let him be anathema” (Pastor Aeternus 4, 1870). Trent’s anathemas have never been withdrawn; the Joint Declaration of 1999 says they no longer “apply” to the Lutheran teaching as stated there, and lifts none of them. The definitions of 1854, 1870 and 1950 are to be believed on pain of losing the faith. By Rome’s own account, what it has bound cannot be set down without Rome ceasing to be what it says it is. That is not a charge; it is the claim Rome makes for itself, and the page takes it at its word. THE EAST 38 entries · 24 required · 1 set down since The East holds that “it is impossible for the Catholic Church to err, or at all be deceived” (Jerusalem 1672, decree 12), that the councils the whole church has received speak with the Spirit’s voice, and it reads their anathemas aloud each year, 1351’s among them. It has lifted one anathema on this page, the Old Rite’s, in 1971, which shows that it can, though the East will answer that 1667 was a local council and that the seven are another matter. Its principle says exactly that: what a received council bound is the faith, and it will not be set down. THE ORIENT 29 entries · 17 required · 0 set down since The Oriental churches hold three councils and the line that parted first, in 451, and carry the fewest entries. They hold the same principle as the East about the councils they receive, and they bind what they bind: one bishop, the ranks, the calendar of fasts and feasts, the tabot, the Zara Yaqob reforms. The last entry on their line is dated c. 1440–1450, and the page notes it. THE PROTESTANT LINE 35 entries · 21 required, most in part · 13 set down since The Protestant line holds, as a principle its confessions state, that every council after the apostles “may err; and many have erred,” and that none is “the rule of faith, or practice” (Westminster 31). That principle is the rule of this page. It is the only one of the four under which an addition can be tested and set down without the church that sets it down ceasing to be itself. The line used it once at scale, in 1517, when it set down 12 of the West’s additions, and it has carried 9 of its own since. It binds some of them, in its confessional churches: the tests of 1529, 1577, 1619 and 1647, inherited guilt, the clause in the creed, infant baptism in most of its churches. The principle is there. It has not been finished. So the conclusion of this page is narrower than a cheer for any church and sharper than a shrug. Faithfulness to the apostolic text without additions as requirements is not available inside Rome or the East on their own terms, because their additions are, by their own account, permanent. It is available inside the Protestant principle, and no Protestant church on this line has yet claimed it in full. Of the four, only the Protestant line allows it. None has done it. What it would look like is on the page. The baseline at c. 50 is not a theory: a house, a table with a full meal, elders in the plural, each one with a part, baptism on belief, and nothing bound that the apostles did not bind. Every piece that came off on the way is on the line at its date. None of it is a reason to leave Christ or to despise the churches that carried his Scriptures to you, and the record ends, at c. 50, on what the form was for. EVERY OBJECTION ON THIS PAGE, BY WHO RAISES IT (each is answered in its record) Catholic · 107 objections answered - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Why stop at the apostles? Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp knew them, and their churches were the apostolic church too.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The apostles kept going to the temple, and Paul paid for offerings there (Acts 3:1; 21:24, 26). Sacred space did not end with the cross.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Pascha was kept from the apostles. Polycarp kept it as he had with John.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “James rules alone in Jerusalem, Timothy and Titus rule alone, and the angels of the seven churches are bishops.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Timothy and Titus are told about ‘the overseer,’ in the singular (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7). One overseer led the elders.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Clement writes of the high priest, the priests, the Levites and the layman, each in his own place (1 Clement 40), about 96, while John was still alive.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “James 5 belongs to the priests. ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them’ (John 20:23), and the anointing is a sacrament for them to give.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “At Jerusalem the apostles and elders decided (Acts 15:6; 16:4). The church only listened.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “‘Tell it to the church’ (Matt 18:17) means tell its rulers. Discipline belongs to the elders.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The church is ‘a pillar and buttress of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). The apostles left a teaching church, not only writings.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “‘The prayers’ (Acts 2:42) were set prayers, said at set hours (Acts 3:1). Liturgy is apostolic.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Paul sets the Lord’s table beside Israel’s altar (1 Cor 10:18), and Hebrews says ‘we have an altar’ (Heb 13:10).” - c. 100–160 THE CHURCH MADE ISRAEL IN PLACE OF THE JEWS “Rome still calls the church the new Israel (Lumen Gentium 9).” - c. 155–170 · 553 THE JEWS MADE CHRIST’S KILLERS “The crowd said, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ (Matt 27:25).” - c. 155–170 · 553 THE JEWS MADE CHRIST’S KILLERS “Rome never taught the charge; its own catechism of 1566 put the guilt on sinners.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Irenaeus’s argument worked. Without succession, who is to say what the true doctrine is?” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Irenaeus says the bishops have received ‘the certain gift of truth.’” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Christ promised to be with the apostles ‘to the end of the age’ (Matt 28:20), and said to those he sent, ‘The one who hears you hears me’ (Luke 10:16). Promises that outlast the apostles need successors.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Matthew 16: Peter is the rock, and his keys pass to his successors.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.’ (John 20:21–23)” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Christ would not found an office and then let it lapse.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Succession keeps the church in the truth and settles disputed doctrine.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Ignatius: ‘Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it’ (To the Smyrnaeans 8).” - c. 200 CLERGY AND LAITY “Catholic teaching now honors the laity.” - c. 211 OFFERINGS FOR THE DEAD “Paul prays for Onesiphorus.” - c. 250 THE PRESIDER BECOMES A PRIEST “Paul describes his ministry as priestly in Romans 15:16.” - c. 250 THE PRESIDER BECOMES A PRIEST “The ordained priest does not rival Christ. He makes Christ’s one sacrifice present.” - c. 250 THE PRESIDER BECOMES A PRIEST “Protestant ministers act as priests in all but name.” - 321 · 585 SUNDAY REST MADE LAW “The Lord’s day was always kept holy; rest only made it possible.” - c. 200–321 THE CHURCH BECOMES AN OWNER “The apostolic church held a common fund, so it owned property.” - c. 190 · 325 EASTER DATED APART FROM THE JEWS “One feast on one day is unity, and unity is apostolic.” - c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 JEWISH BELIEVERS MADE TO GIVE UP JEWISH LIFE “The law was a shadow, and keeping it after Christ denies that he has come. That is why the fathers forbade it.” - 301–380 THE KING’S RELIGION “Augustine saw that fear opened minds. Many Donatists became sincere Catholics.” - 396–418 ADAM’S GUILT, INHERITED “The doctrine does not hang on two words. Romans 5:18–19 teaches it outright.” - 396–418 ADAM’S GUILT, INHERITED “The East teaches original sin too. It received the canons of Carthage.” - 396–418 ADAM’S GUILT, INHERITED “Rome no longer teaches personal guilt.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Isaiah 22: Jesus, the son of David, gives Peter the steward’s key. A steward’s office has successors.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Peter is named first in every list. ‘Feed my sheep.’ ‘Strengthen your brothers.’” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “The rock is Peter. In Aramaic the wordplay is exact: Kepha, kepha.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Augustine said: Rome has spoken, the case is closed.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “At Chalcedon the bishops cried, ‘Peter has spoken through Leo.’” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Clement’s letter shows Rome correcting another church as early as 96.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Irenaeus: ‘every church should agree with this church, on account of its preeminent authority.’ That is Rome’s primacy in 180.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Matthew 16:19 is singular. The keys are given to Peter alone. Chapter 18 gives binding and loosing to the church, but not the keys.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “The papacy developed from a seed in Matthew 16 and in Rome’s early standing. Growth is not addition.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “Gregory refused a title, not the authority. In the same letters he says the care of the whole church was committed to Peter.” - 537–543 TWO BISHOPS FOR ONE CITY “They rejected an ecumenical council and so left the church.” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “If restoration fails your own test, the council was right, and this entry should go.” - 567–800 GIVING BECOMES A TAX “We do not require tithes today.” - 528–692 BISHOPS MAY NOT BE MARRIED “Married priests and celibate bishops: the East shows that continence was the original rule.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “It only makes explicit what Scripture teaches. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “The council of 381 had already added to the creed of 325. Ephesus forbade a different faith, not different words.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “Rome does not require it of the East. Eastern Catholics say the creed without it.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “The filioque is a small matter of wording.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “Then the East bound the opposite. Photius taught ‘from the Father alone,’ the council of 879–880 forbade the clause, and Blachernae in 1285 anathematized the Latin teaching. By your own rule that should be dated beside 1014, as you dated Rome’s 1336 beside 1351.” - 1075 THE POPE OVER KINGS AND CHURCHES “It was a private memorandum and was never promulgated.” - 1075 THE POPE OVER KINGS AND CHURCHES “Gregory freed the church from the grip of kings.” - 1075 THE POPE OVER KINGS AND CHURCHES “The forgeries made no difference.” - 1075 THE POPE OVER KINGS AND CHURCHES “The temporal claims were dropped long ago.” - 1098 THE CROSS AS A DEBT PAID “Anselm is being blamed for Calvin.” - 1098 THE CROSS AS A DEBT PAID “Romans 3:25–26 says God put Christ forward ‘so that he might be just and the justifier,’ and Hebrews 9:22 that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.’ That is a payment that made forgiveness possible.” - 1139 PRIESTS MAY NOT MARRY “It is a discipline, not a doctrine. The Church may ask this of her ministers.” - 1139 PRIESTS MAY NOT MARRY “‘Husband of one wife’ sets a limit, not a requirement. Paul and Timothy were unmarried.” - 1139 PRIESTS MAY NOT MARRY “Continence after ordination is apostolic. Peter left everything.” - 1139 PRIESTS MAY NOT MARRY “Paul prefers the single life, and Jesus was unmarried.” - 1139 PRIESTS MAY NOT MARRY “An unmarried priest is free for his people.” - 1140 · 1930 PREVENTING CONCEPTION MADE A SIN “Every Christian church condemned contraception until 1930; the consensus is the tradition.” - 1140 · 1930 PREVENTING CONCEPTION MADE A SIN “The argument is from natural law, not from proof-texts.” - 1140 · 1930 PREVENTING CONCEPTION MADE A SIN “Onan was struck dead for it.” - 1140 · 1930 PREVENTING CONCEPTION MADE A SIN “Permission has produced a contracepting culture that refuses children.” - 1215 THE BREAD HELD UP TO BE SEEN “Transubstantiation only gives a name to what was always believed: this is his body.” - 1215 THE BREAD HELD UP TO BE SEEN “If he is present, adoration follows.” - 1215 THE BREAD HELD UP TO BE SEEN “The whole Christ is received under either kind.” - 1215 THE BREAD HELD UP TO BE SEEN “Rome has restored the cup and frequent communion.” - 1095–1439 PURGATORY AND INDULGENCES “Nothing unclean will enter heaven (Rev 21:27), so the imperfect must be purified.” - 1095–1439 PURGATORY AND INDULGENCES “David was forgiven and still punished (2 Sam 12:13–14). Temporal punishment remains after forgiveness.” - 1095–1439 PURGATORY AND INDULGENCES “The abuses were corrected. The doctrine stands.” - 1095–1439 PURGATORY AND INDULGENCES “The Orthodox pray for the dead, so they believe it in substance.” - 1285 THE LATIN READING OF THE SPIRIT ANATHEMATIZED “Good. This shows the East made additions too.” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “‘Face to face’ and ‘as he is’ mean the essence. Benedict defined what the text says.” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “Palamism denies God’s simplicity.” - 1525 THE SUPPER BECOMES A MEMORY AID “Then you grant the fathers taught the Real Presence. Come home.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “There is one baptism (Eph 4:5). Baptizing someone already baptized as an infant denies it.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “The church has always forbidden rebaptism: Stephen, Nicaea, Augustine.” - 1529 A CHURCH FOR EACH CONFESSION “This proves Scripture alone cannot hold the church together.” - c. 1541 THE PULPIT TAKES THE CENTER “You replaced the Eucharist with a lecture.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “2 Thessalonians 2:15 binds us to the spoken tradition as well as the letters. The apostles taught more than they wrote, the churches kept it, and Basil names customs that came down unwritten from them.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “Scripture alone is itself unscriptural, and the Church fixed your canon.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “Protestants removed books from the Bible.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “‘Authentic’ only meant free of doctrinal error. It was never set above the originals.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “To justify is to make just. Paul says so himself: ‘the doers of the law … will be justified.’ James says it. And Trent’s canons condemn only a faith without love.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “Without inherent righteousness, justification is a legal fiction: God calls the unjust just.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Orange is a recognition. Scripture excludes God as the author of evil (Jas 1:13; 1 John 1:5), and that is all Orange anathematized.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “1 Timothy 2:4 settles it: God desires all to be saved.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Rome never defined predestination. Trent only ruled out presumption.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “You have put this on the Protestant line only. Rome speaks of satisfaction too.” - 1647 THE LORD’S DAY MADE THE SABBATH “The Lord’s day is a precept of the church, so Rome binds it too.” - 1870 THE POPE DEFINED INFALLIBLE “Rome’s special place is early: Clement’s letter, Ignatius, Irenaeus.” - 1870 THE POPE DEFINED INFALLIBLE “Honorius was not speaking from the chair.” - 1870 THE POPE DEFINED INFALLIBLE “It has been used only twice. It is a narrow, negative protection.” - 1870 THE POPE DEFINED INFALLIBLE “Without a final judge there can be no unity.” - 1870 THE POPE DEFINED INFALLIBLE “If Peter is the rock, Rome inherits the rock.” - 1854 · 1950 TWO DOGMAS ABOUT MARY “The Church defined only what had always been believed.” - 1854 · 1950 TWO DOGMAS ABOUT MARY “Mary as the second Eve implies she was sinless.” - 1854 · 1950 TWO DOGMAS ABOUT MARY “The Greek perfect tense in Luke 1:28 shows a completed, permanent state of grace.” - 1854 · 1950 TWO DOGMAS ABOUT MARY “Scotus answered Aquinas: she was redeemed by being preserved.” - 1854 · 1950 TWO DOGMAS ABOUT MARY “No church ever claimed her relics. That silence points to the Assumption.” Eastern Orthodox · 75 objections answered - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Why stop at the apostles? Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp knew them, and their churches were the apostolic church too.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The apostles kept going to the temple, and Paul paid for offerings there (Acts 3:1; 21:24, 26). Sacred space did not end with the cross.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Pascha was kept from the apostles. Polycarp kept it as he had with John.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “James rules alone in Jerusalem, Timothy and Titus rule alone, and the angels of the seven churches are bishops.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Clement writes of the high priest, the priests, the Levites and the layman, each in his own place (1 Clement 40), about 96, while John was still alive.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “James 5 belongs to the priests. ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them’ (John 20:23), and the anointing is a sacrament for them to give.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The church is ‘a pillar and buttress of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). The apostles left a teaching church, not only writings.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “‘The prayers’ (Acts 2:42) were set prayers, said at set hours (Acts 3:1). Liturgy is apostolic.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Paul sets the Lord’s table beside Israel’s altar (1 Cor 10:18), and Hebrews says ‘we have an altar’ (Heb 13:10).” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “One table, and one man to give thanks at it. The bishop is the president of the one Eucharist from the start.” - c. 100–160 THE CHURCH MADE ISRAEL IN PLACE OF THE JEWS “The church is the new Israel. The fathers and the liturgy say so, and 1 Peter gives the church Israel’s own titles from Exodus 19.” - c. 155–170 · 553 THE JEWS MADE CHRIST’S KILLERS “The Good Friday hymns are the church’s prayer from the sixth century, and ‘lawless’ in them means every sinner.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.’ (John 20:21–23)” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Succession keeps the church in the truth and settles disputed doctrine.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Ignatius: ‘Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it’ (To the Smyrnaeans 8).” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Succession is not a pipeline of hands. It is the bishop at the Eucharist with his people, in the apostolic faith.” - c. 250 THE PRESIDER BECOMES A PRIEST “The ordained priest does not rival Christ. He makes Christ’s one sacrifice present.” - 321 · 585 SUNDAY REST MADE LAW “The Lord’s day was always kept holy; rest only made it possible.” - c. 200–321 THE CHURCH BECOMES AN OWNER “The apostolic church held a common fund, so it owned property.” - c. 190 · 325 EASTER DATED APART FROM THE JEWS “One feast on one day is unity, and unity is apostolic.” - c. 190 · 325 EASTER DATED APART FROM THE JEWS “Constantine’s words are not the council’s. Nicaea decided a date, not a judgment on the Jews.” - c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 JEWISH BELIEVERS MADE TO GIVE UP JEWISH LIFE “The law was a shadow, and keeping it after Christ denies that he has come. That is why the fathers forbade it.” - c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 JEWISH BELIEVERS MADE TO GIVE UP JEWISH LIFE “The canons were aimed at false converts and at Gentiles flirting with the synagogue.” - c. 330–380 A CALENDAR OF REQUIRED FASTS “The Wednesday and Friday fasts are in the Didache. That is first-century.” - 381–595 RANK FOLLOWS THE CAPITAL “Following the civil map is only good order.” - 381–595 RANK FOLLOWS THE CAPITAL “Rome did the same. Its primacy also came from the capital.” - 381–595 RANK FOLLOWS THE CAPITAL “‘Ecumenical’ meant imperial. It was never a claim to rule every church.” - 381–595 RANK FOLLOWS THE CAPITAL “It is a primacy of honor, not of power.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “You deny even the primacy of honour the East has always granted Rome: first among equals, by the canons of 381 and 451.” - 537–543 TWO BISHOPS FOR ONE CITY “They rejected an ecumenical council and so left the church.” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “If restoration fails your own test, the council was right, and this entry should go.” - 567–800 GIVING BECOMES A TAX “We do not require tithes today.” - 528–692 BISHOPS MAY NOT BE MARRIED “A bishop is wedded to his church and must give it his whole heart.” - 528–692 BISHOPS MAY NOT BE MARRIED “The church has authority to legislate for the good of the people.” - 528–692 BISHOPS MAY NOT BE MARRIED “Paul and John were unmarried.” - 787 HONOR TO IMAGES REQUIRED “The Epiphanius passage is an iconoclast forgery.” - c. 1100 A SACRED TONGUE THE PEOPLE HAVE LOST “A sacred language lifts worship above the everyday and binds us to our ancestors.” - c. 1100 A SACRED TONGUE THE PEOPLE HAVE LOST “The people know the liturgy by heart and grasp its meaning.” - c. 1100 A SACRED TONGUE THE PEOPLE HAVE LOST “Jesus prayed in Hebrew in the synagogue though he spoke Aramaic.” - c. 1100 A SACRED TONGUE THE PEOPLE HAVE LOST “The East has always used the vernacular. This is a Roman fault.” - 1285 THE LATIN READING OF THE SPIRIT ANATHEMATIZED “We only guarded the creed. The anathema fell on men who had signed a union that altered it.” - 1285 THE LATIN READING OF THE SPIRIT ANATHEMATIZED “The Latin reading is a heresy. It puts two causes in God.” - 1285 THE LATIN READING OF THE SPIRIT ANATHEMATIZED “Then what does the page hold about the Spirit’s procession?” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “Palamas only made explicit what Basil, Maximus and John of Damascus taught.” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “Without this distinction, union with God is either pantheism or a figure of speech.” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “The monks saw the light of Tabor.” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “This is recognition in what it excludes, exactly as you grant Nicaea. God ‘dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen’ (1 Tim 6:16), and yet ‘we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2), and we are ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1:4). The distinction is forced by the text.” - c. 1400 A WALL OF ICONS BEFORE THE TABLE “The iconostasis reveals heaven. It joins the two realms.” - c. 1400 A WALL OF ICONS BEFORE THE TABLE “Screens are ancient, and the West built them too.” - c. 1400 A WALL OF ICONS BEFORE THE TABLE “Holy things call for reverence and reserve.” - c. 1400 A WALL OF ICONS BEFORE THE TABLE “Many parishes now open the doors and pray aloud.” - 1525 THE SUPPER BECOMES A MEMORY AID “Then you grant the fathers taught the Real Presence. Come home.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “The Orthodox receive converts by economy, as the bishop judges. Nothing is bound.” - 1529 A CHURCH FOR EACH CONFESSION “This proves Scripture alone cannot hold the church together.” - c. 1541 THE PULPIT TAKES THE CENTER “You replaced the Eucharist with a lecture.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “2 Thessalonians 2:15 binds us to the spoken tradition as well as the letters. The apostles taught more than they wrote, the churches kept it, and Basil names customs that came down unwritten from them.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “Scripture alone is itself unscriptural, and the Church fixed your canon.” - 1546 TRADITION SET BESIDE SCRIPTURE “We never taught two sources. Scripture lives within Tradition.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “The whole quarrel is Latin. The East never divided justification from deification, and 1672 only restated James.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Foreknowledge, not decree. ‘Those whom he foreknew he also predestined’ (Rom 8:29). The order is in the text.” - 1589 A THIRD ROME “Harmony is not servility. Chrysostom defied an empress, and Metropolitan Philip died for rebuking Ivan the Terrible.” - 1589 A THIRD ROME “The West did the same and worse.” - 1589 A THIRD ROME “The third Rome was one monk’s letter.” - 1589 A THIRD ROME “Kings shall be your foster fathers (Isa 49:23). A Christian ruler is a gift.” - 1666–1667 THE RITE ITSELF MADE A TEST “The anathemas were lifted. The church repented.” - 1666–1667 THE RITE ITSELF MADE A TEST “The issue was obedience to the church, not fingers.” - 1666–1667 THE RITE ITSELF MADE A TEST “This is a Russian affair. It is not Orthodoxy as such.” - 1672 AN EASTERN TRENT “It was a local synod in the heat of controversy. It is not an ecumenical council.” - 1672 AN EASTERN TRENT “Metousiosis only means ‘change.’ We do not explain how.” - 1672 AN EASTERN TRENT “The seven rites are ancient. Only the counting is late.” - 1672 AN EASTERN TRENT “The ignorant and unstable twist the Scriptures (2 Pet 3:16).” - 1833–1872 A CHURCH FOR EACH NATION “Self-governing local churches are ancient. Cyprus has been independent since 431.” - 1833–1872 A CHURCH FOR EACH NATION “Orthodoxy itself condemned this. That is the church correcting itself.” - 1833–1872 A CHURCH FOR EACH NATION “Rome and the Protestants do the same.” - 1833–1872 A CHURCH FOR EACH NATION “The gospel always takes flesh in a culture. Think of Cyril and Methodius.” Oriental Orthodox · 11 objections answered - 537–543 TWO BISHOPS FOR ONE CITY “We added nothing. We kept the faith of Cyril and of Ephesus. Chalcedon was the innovation.” - 537–543 TWO BISHOPS FOR ONE CITY “The Chalcedonians caused it by persecuting.” - 537–543 TWO BISHOPS FOR ONE CITY “Ours is the continuing line in Alexandria. The emperor’s patriarch was the rival.” - c. 1320 AN ARK IN EVERY CHURCH “Every ancient church has a consecrated altar. The tabot is ours.” - c. 1320 AN ARK IN EVERY CHURCH “The Ark really is at Aksum.” - c. 1320 AN ARK IN EVERY CHURCH “Revelation 11:19 shows the Ark still matters.” - c. 1320 AN ARK IN EVERY CHURCH “These customs show that Ethiopia kept the earliest, Jewish form of Christianity.” - c. 1440–1450 MARY’S FEASTS BY ROYAL DECREE “Honor shown to the mother is honor to the Son, and a bow is not worship.” - c. 1440–1450 MARY’S FEASTS BY ROYAL DECREE “He ended a schism and unified the church.” - c. 1440–1450 MARY’S FEASTS BY ROYAL DECREE “The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments.” - c. 1440–1450 MARY’S FEASTS BY ROYAL DECREE “This is one country’s history. It is unfair to the Oriental churches as a whole.” Protestant · 87 objections answered - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Rome had several house churches (Rom 16:5, 14–15). Separate congregations in one city are biblical, and so are denominations.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The Lord’s day is the Christian Sabbath. The fourth commandment still binds, moved to the first day.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Acts 20:7 is one meeting. Nothing says the Supper was every week.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “James rules alone in Jerusalem, Timothy and Titus rule alone, and the angels of the seven churches are bishops.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Timothy and Titus are told about ‘the overseer,’ in the singular (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7). One overseer led the elders.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Prophecy and tongues ended with the apostles. 1 Corinthians 14 describes gifts the church no longer has.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “‘Bring the full tithe into the storehouse’ (Mal 3:10). The church is the storehouse.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Either is too easy. The Lord commanded that preachers be paid (1 Cor 9:14), so an unpaid eldership disobeys him.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “At Jerusalem the apostles and elders decided (Acts 15:6; 16:4). The church only listened.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “‘Tell it to the church’ (Matt 18:17) means tell its rulers. Discipline belongs to the elders.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “‘The prayers’ (Acts 2:42) were set prayers, said at set hours (Acts 3:1). Liturgy is apostolic.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “This is a Catholic and Orthodox matter.” - c. 100–160 THE CHURCH MADE ISRAEL IN PLACE OF THE JEWS “There is one people of God and one covenant of grace. Gentiles are grafted into Israel; that is not replacement.” - c. 155–170 · 553 THE JEWS MADE CHRIST’S KILLERS “Paul himself says ‘the Jews … killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets’ (1 Thess 2:15), and Peter told ‘all the house of Israel’ that they crucified him (Acts 2:36). The charge is apostolic.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Protestants have no stake in this.” - c. 200 CLERGY AND LAITY “Protestants believe in the priesthood of all believers.” - c. 200–253 INFANTS BAPTIZED “Baptism replaces circumcision, so the children of believers receive it.” - c. 200–253 INFANTS BAPTIZED “Then the Baptists are simply right.” - c. 250 THE PRESIDER BECOMES A PRIEST “‘Priest’ is only the English form of ‘presbyter.’” - 321 · 585 SUNDAY REST MADE LAW “A day of rest is a creation ordinance (Gen 2:2–3), so the church only restored it.” - 325 A LADDER OF RANK “Protestants are free of this.” - c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 JEWISH BELIEVERS MADE TO GIVE UP JEWISH LIFE “Galatians and Colossians end the law.” - c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 JEWISH BELIEVERS MADE TO GIVE UP JEWISH LIFE “Paul says he became as a Jew ‘though not being myself under the law’ (1 Cor 9:20). His keeping it was a missionary courtesy, not a Jewish life.” - 301–380 THE KING’S RELIGION “Protestants stand for religious liberty.” - 396–418 ADAM’S GUILT, INHERITED “The doctrine does not hang on two words. Romans 5:18–19 teaches it outright.” - c. 400–600 SACRED DRESS AND INCENSE “We got rid of all this.” - 440 ROME SPEAKS AS PETER “The rock is Peter. In Aramaic the wordplay is exact: Kepha, kepha.” - 567–800 GIVING BECOMES A TAX “Abraham and Jacob tithed before the law. It is a principle from creation.” - 567–800 GIVING BECOMES A TAX “Jesus said, ‘These you ought to have done.’” - 567–800 GIVING BECOMES A TAX “Without a tenth as a floor, giving collapses.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “It only makes explicit what Scripture teaches. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son.” - 589–1014 A CLAUSE ADDED TO THE CREED “Why is this on the Protestant line? We hold it because Scripture teaches it.” - 1098 THE CROSS AS A DEBT PAID “Romans 3:25–26 says God put Christ forward ‘so that he might be just and the justifier,’ and Hebrews 9:22 that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.’ That is a payment that made forgiveness possible.” - 1140 · 1930 PREVENTING CONCEPTION MADE A SIN “Onan was struck dead for it.” - 1525 THE SUPPER BECOMES A MEMORY AID “Jesus himself said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’” - 1525 THE SUPPER BECOMES A MEMORY AID “‘This is my body’ is a figure, like ‘I am the door.’” - 1525 THE SUPPER BECOMES A MEMORY AID “Realism leads straight to transubstantiation and the Mass.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “There is one baptism (Eph 4:5). Baptizing someone already baptized as an infant denies it.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “Infant baptism is not baptism at all. Baptizing a believer is not rebaptism; it is obeying Acts 2:38.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “Baptism means immersion. The word says it, and Romans 6 pictures burial.” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “The magistrates who drowned the Anabaptists were enforcing civil law, not doctrine.” - 1529 A CHURCH FOR EACH CONFESSION “Truth matters more than unity. Luther was right to hold his ground.” - 1529 A CHURCH FOR EACH CONFESSION “Denominations are branches of one invisible church.” - 1529 A CHURCH FOR EACH CONFESSION “Any church that takes this page as its charter will become one more denomination.” - c. 1541 THE PULPIT TAKES THE CENTER “Faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17). The Word must be central.” - c. 1541 THE PULPIT TAKES THE CENTER “Paul preached until midnight at Troas.” - c. 1541 THE PULPIT TAKES THE CENTER “Open participation breeds chaos and error. A trained pastor guards the flock (Titus 1:9).” - c. 1541 THE PULPIT TAKES THE CENTER “Prophecy ceased with the apostles. What remains is the teaching elder (1 Tim 4:13; Titus 1:9).” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “Justification by faith alone is the article by which the church stands or falls. To call our confession a narrowing is to concede the Reformation’s first principle.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “Imputation is in the text. ‘In him we might become the righteousness of God.’ ‘By the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.’ ‘Christ Jesus, who became to us … righteousness.’” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Romans 9 is explicit. ‘It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy’ (9:16). ‘He hardens whomever he wills’ (9:18). This is a recognition.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Foreknowledge, not decree. ‘Those whom he foreknew he also predestined’ (Rom 8:29). The order is in the text.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “1 Timothy 2:4 settles it: God desires all to be saved.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Then the page sides with the Lutherans, who bound election to life and nothing to death.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Isaiah 53 and 2 Corinthians 5:21 teach it outright.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Galatians 3:13 says Christ became ‘a curse for us’ and redeemed us from ‘the curse of the law.’ The curse is the law’s penalty. That is penal substitution in the text’s own words.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “The fathers taught it.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Without penal substitution God’s justice and the gravity of sin are lost.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Then a church that preaches penal substitution is doing something wrong.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Rillera overcorrects.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Leviticus 1:4: the hand is laid on the burnt offering ‘and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.’ Substitution and atonement are joined in the book’s first chapter.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Hebrews 10:4: ‘it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.’ What the animals could not do, Christ did. The shadow was never the penalty; the substance is.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Hebrews 9:22: ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.’ The death is the point, and the resurrection and ascension do not undo it.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Leviticus 16:16 and 16:21 say ‘all their transgressions, all their sins.’ The heaviest sins went under the blood on the Day of Atonement. Nothing was outside it.” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “Isaiah 53:10 makes the Servant’s life ‘an offering for guilt.’ He is a sin-bearing sacrifice by name, and the New Testament reads him so (1 Pet 2:24).” - 1561 · 1563 · 1647 ONE LEGAL ACCOUNT OF THE CROSS MADE THE TEST “In Leviticus the bearing and the dying are split between two goats. In Isaiah 53 and in Christ they meet in one person, who bears the sins and dies. That union is what makes his death penal.” - 1647 THE LORD’S DAY MADE THE SABBATH “The fourth commandment is moral law, written on stone with the other nine.” - 1647 THE LORD’S DAY MADE THE SABBATH “The apostles changed the day, so the command stands on the new day.” - 1647 THE LORD’S DAY MADE THE SABBATH “A day of rest protects workers and families.” - 1743–1908 ABSTINENCE FROM DRINK REQUIRED “Modern drink is stronger and the trade more predatory; the rule fits our time.” - 1743–1908 ABSTINENCE FROM DRINK REQUIRED “Love for the weak brother requires it (Rom 14:21).” - 1743–1908 ABSTINENCE FROM DRINK REQUIRED “The temperance movement freed families from ruin.” - 1743–1908 ABSTINENCE FROM DRINK REQUIRED “We require it of ministers, not of members.” - c. 1830 THE CHURCH TAKEN AWAY BEFORE THE TROUBLE “The church is not appointed to wrath (1 Thess 5:9), so it must be removed before the tribulation.” - c. 1830 THE CHURCH TAKEN AWAY BEFORE THE TROUBLE “Imminence requires it: Christ could come at any moment only if nothing must happen first.” - c. 1830 THE CHURCH TAKEN AWAY BEFORE THE TROUBLE “Many churches teach it without binding it.” - c. 1830 THE CHURCH TAKEN AWAY BEFORE THE TROUBLE “Two peoples protect Israel. Without them the church swallows Israel’s promises, which is replacement.” - c. 1830 THE CHURCH TAKEN AWAY BEFORE THE TROUBLE “Progressive dispensationalists have given up the earthly and heavenly peoples.” - c. 1830 THE CHURCH TAKEN AWAY BEFORE THE TROUBLE “A date for a doctrine says nothing about its truth.” - 1835 THE DECISION MOMENT “Choose this day whom you will serve (Josh 24:15). Save yourselves from this crooked generation (Acts 2:40).” - 1835 THE DECISION MOMENT “It is only a tool. Baptism still follows.” - 1835 THE DECISION MOMENT “The sinner’s prayer is just Romans 10:9.” - 1835 THE DECISION MOMENT “Finney’s theology was unsound, and we do not follow it.” - 1975 THE ROOM BECOMES A VENUE “Paul became all things to all people (1 Cor 9:22). This is contextualization.” - 1975 THE ROOM BECOMES A VENUE “Three thousand were added in one day. Big is biblical.” - 1975 THE ROOM BECOMES A VENUE “People come to faith. Judge it by the fruit.” - 1975 THE ROOM BECOMES A VENUE “Liturgical churches are no less a performance.” Raised by readers on more than one line · 102 objections answered - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Description is not prescription.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Houses were a necessity of poverty and persecution, not a principle.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The house church is romanticized. Hosts were patrons with power, and Christians met in shops, rented rooms and the open air too.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Leaving women’s eldership open is a dodge. The text settles it.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “Paul says ‘the women should keep silent in the churches’ (1 Cor 14:34). ‘Each one’ means each man.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “1 Corinthians 14:26–40 is Paul restraining chaos. It is hardly a model.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The Supper was always distinct from the meal. Paul sends the hungry home.” - c. 50 THE APOSTOLIC FORM “The pattern is chosen. The same letters command a holy kiss (Rom 16:16) and covered heads for women who pray (1 Cor 11:5–6), and Jesus tells his disciples to wash one another’s feet (John 13:14). If the meal binds, so do these.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “Ignatius was taught by the apostles. He hands on what they set up.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “John appointed bishops in Asia.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “A group of equals does not work. Someone always leads.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “It was universal by 200, and no one objected. It must be apostolic.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “Timothy and Titus were the first bishops of Ephesus and Crete.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “James was bishop of Jerusalem while the apostles lived.” - c. 110 ONE BISHOP OVER THE ELDERS “You cite Ignatius as a witness to the Son’s deity, and date him here as the start of an addition. You use him when he agrees with you.” - c. 155 THE MEAL THINS TO A RITE “Justin proves that the liturgy is second-century and essentially apostolic.” - c. 155 THE MEAL THINS TO A RITE “He may simply not mention the meal.” - c. 155 THE MEAL THINS TO A RITE “Worship needs a set order. Paul says so.” - c. 155 THE MEAL THINS TO A RITE “Prophecy and tongues (1 Cor 14:26–33) ceased with the apostles, and ordered worship took their place.” - c. 100–160 THE CHURCH MADE ISRAEL IN PLACE OF THE JEWS “Jesus said the kingdom would be taken away and given to a people producing its fruits (Matt 21:43).” - c. 100–160 THE CHURCH MADE ISRAEL IN PLACE OF THE JEWS “Paul himself says the branches were broken off, and that ‘the son of the slave woman shall not inherit’ (Rom 11:17; Gal 4:30).” - c. 100–160 THE CHURCH MADE ISRAEL IN PLACE OF THE JEWS “Two peoples, an earthly Israel and a heavenly church, is the true answer to replacement.” - c. 155–170 · 553 THE JEWS MADE CHRIST’S KILLERS “Melito kept Passover by the Jewish calendar and is a saint. He cannot be an enemy of the Jews.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “1 Clement 44 shows the apostles themselves providing for successors.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Paul to Timothy, Timothy to faithful men, they to others. That is succession.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Without the line there is no priest, and without a priest no Eucharist.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “The laying on of hands passes something on: to Joshua (Num 27:18–23), to Timothy (2 Tim 1:6), and at Samaria the Spirit itself (Acts 8:14–17).” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “Antioch’s founders had been taught by apostles. They were in the succession too.” - c. 180 A PEDIGREE OF BISHOPS “This is an argument from silence. The New Testament does not record everything.” - c. 200 CLERGY AND LAITY “The New Testament has ordained leaders, and tells us to obey them.” - c. 200 CLERGY AND LAITY “Jesus chose the Twelve. Hierarchy comes from him.” - c. 200 CLERGY AND LAITY “Without a clear line between clergy and people there is disorder.” - c. 211 OFFERINGS FOR THE DEAD “Jews prayed for the dead before Christ, and Jesus never corrected them.” - c. 211 OFFERINGS FOR THE DEAD “It is in every ancient rite, and it is attested by 200.” - c. 211 OFFERINGS FOR THE DEAD “Love does not stop at the grave.” - c. 200–253 INFANTS BAPTIZED “The households must have included infants.” - c. 200–253 INFANTS BAPTIZED “Irenaeus and Origen call it apostolic, and no one protested that it was new.” - c. 200–253 INFANTS BAPTIZED “Baptizing only believers is a sixteenth-century novelty.” - c. 250 THE PRESIDER BECOMES A PRIEST “The Eucharist was called a sacrifice from the beginning, and a sacrifice needs a priest.” - 313 THE HALL BECOMES A TEMPLE “The woman who poured out costly ointment was praised, and it was Judas who objected about the poor.” - 313 THE HALL BECOMES A TEMPLE “God commanded a glorious temple.” - 313 THE HALL BECOMES A TEMPLE “Buildings are tools, and Christians were building before Constantine.” - 313 THE HALL BECOMES A TEMPLE “Without imperial support the church could not have grown as it did.” - c. 320 A HIGHER LIFE APART “Jesus and Paul commend celibacy, and the first church shared everything.” - c. 320 A HIGHER LIFE APART “The monks kept the Scriptures, learning, prayer and mission alive.” - c. 320 A HIGHER LIFE APART “There are not two levels. The monk is simply a Christian who takes the gospel seriously.” - c. 320 A HIGHER LIFE APART “The Essenes show that this way of life belongs to the Jewish world behind the New Testament.” - 321 · 585 SUNDAY REST MADE LAW “Workers need a day off, and the church was right to give them one.” - c. 200–321 THE CHURCH BECOMES AN OWNER “Ownership was only impossible because the church was illegal. The moment it could own, it did.” - c. 200–321 THE CHURCH BECOMES AN OWNER “A church that owns nothing can run no hospital, no school, no relief at scale.” - c. 200–321 THE CHURCH BECOMES AN OWNER “The temple was owned by Israel at God’s command.” - c. 190 · 325 EASTER DATED APART FROM THE JEWS “Christ rose on Sunday; a Sunday Easter is closer to the Gospel than the fourteenth.” - 325 A LADDER OF RANK “Acts 15 is a council with authority over the churches.” - 325 A LADDER OF RANK “Someone had to confirm bishops and settle disputes. Metropolitans prevented chaos.” - 325 A LADDER OF RANK “If you set aside Nicaea’s canons, you undermine its creed.” - c. 350 THE DEPARTED ASKED TO PRAY “It is no different from asking a friend to pray for you.” - c. 350 THE DEPARTED ASKED TO PRAY “Second Maccabees shows a dead prophet praying for the people.” - c. 350 THE DEPARTED ASKED TO PRAY “Every ancient church does this.” - c. 350 THE DEPARTED ASKED TO PRAY “Peter Brown showed this was not paganism.” - c. 364 THE MEAL PUT OUT OF THE BUILDING “The essential thing was kept. The meal around it was incidental.” - c. 364 THE MEAL PUT OUT OF THE BUILDING “The feasts were abused, and the church was right to end them.” - c. 364 THE MEAL PUT OUT OF THE BUILDING “With hundreds present a meal is impossible.” - c. 364 THE MEAL PUT OUT OF THE BUILDING “Laodicea was a small regional synod.” - c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 JEWISH BELIEVERS MADE TO GIVE UP JEWISH LIFE “Keeping the law divides the table; Paul rebuked Peter for it (Gal 2:11–14).” - c. 330–380 A CALENDAR OF REQUIRED FASTS “Jesus said, ‘When you fast.’” - c. 330–380 A CALENDAR OF REQUIRED FASTS “A common rule saves us from each doing as he pleases. The body fasts together.” - c. 330–380 A CALENDAR OF REQUIRED FASTS “Lent comes from the apostles.” - 301–380 THE KING’S RELIGION “Constantine ended three centuries of persecution. That was providence.” - 301–380 THE KING’S RELIGION “A Christian ruler must rule as a Christian.” - 301–380 THE KING’S RELIGION “Israel’s kings enforced true worship.” - c. 400 THE PEOPLE WATCH AND SELDOM EAT “Better seldom and worthily than often and carelessly.” - c. 400 THE PEOPLE WATCH AND SELDOM EAT “Those who watch still take part, by hearing, praying and adoring.” - c. 400 THE PEOPLE WATCH AND SELDOM EAT “The great influx after Constantine made discipline necessary.” - c. 400 THE PEOPLE WATCH AND SELDOM EAT “This has been put right.” - 396–418 ADAM’S GUILT, INHERITED “David says he was conceived in sin, and Paul calls us ‘by nature children of wrath.’” - 396–418 ADAM’S GUILT, INHERITED “Deny inherited guilt and you are a Pelagian.” - c. 400–600 SACRED DRESS AND INCENSE “The worship of heaven in Revelation has robes, lamps and incense. Ours mirrors it.” - c. 400–600 SACRED DRESS AND INCENSE “God commanded beauty and vestments. He has not changed.” - c. 400–600 SACRED DRESS AND INCENSE “A uniform points to the office and hides the man.” - 537–543 TWO BISHOPS FOR ONE CITY “Why does the Oriental Orthodox line carry so few additions of its own?” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “Matthew 25:46 settles it.” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “The church always taught eternal torment. A few speculators dissented.” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “An ecumenical council condemned universalism.” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “Annihilation was the original belief of the church.” - c. 420–553 ONE VIEW OF THE END ENFORCED “Revelation 14:11 and 20:10 are explicit.” - c. 600 MARY’S FEASTS, AND PRAYERS TO HER “We only ask her to pray for us, as you would ask a friend.” - c. 600 MARY’S FEASTS, AND PRAYERS TO HER “Every ancient church does this, Roman, Greek, Coptic, Syrian and Armenian alike. So it must come from the apostles.” - c. 600 MARY’S FEASTS, AND PRAYERS TO HER “You accept ‘God-bearer.’ Devotion follows from it.” - c. 600 MARY’S FEASTS, AND PRAYERS TO HER “The papyrus prayer is from the third century.” - 787 HONOR TO IMAGES REQUIRED “The Word became flesh and was seen. To forbid his image is to deny the incarnation.” - 787 HONOR TO IMAGES REQUIRED “God commanded the cherubim and the bronze serpent.” - 787 HONOR TO IMAGES REQUIRED “Veneration is not worship. The honor passes to the one depicted.” - 787 HONOR TO IMAGES REQUIRED “The early texts condemn pagan idols, not Christian icons.” - 1098 THE CROSS AS A DEBT PAID “Jesus taught us to pray ‘forgive us our debts.’” - 1098 THE CROSS AS A DEBT PAID “David Bentley Hart shows that Anselm restates the fathers.” - 1098 THE CROSS AS A DEBT PAID “Forgiveness without satisfaction makes light of sin.” - 1336 · 1351 HOW THE UNSEEN GOD IS SEEN, DEFINED TWICE “Then why is the Protestant line not counted? Westminster speaks of ‘the immediate vision and fruition of God.’” - 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 WHICH BAPTISM COUNTS, MADE A TEST “Then a church may never require baptism before the table?” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “Justification is about who belongs to the covenant family, not how a sinner is saved. ‘Works of the law’ are the badges that kept Gentiles out.” - 1547 · 1577 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF JUSTIFICATION MADE THE TEST “Then what does this page itself teach?” - 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 ONE ACCOUNT OF ELECTION MADE THE TEST “Then what does this page itself teach, and what may a church require?” - 1666–1667 THE RITE ITSELF MADE A TEST “We kept the apostolic rite.” Against the method itself, from every side · 7 objections answered - Today THE METHOD “Doctrine develops. An acorn becomes an oak.” - Today THE METHOD “Some of what the apostles handed down was never written. Basil lists it: facing east, the sign of the cross, the words at the cup, triple immersion.” - Today THE METHOD “The Church gave you the Bible. If you trust her for the canon, trust her for the rest.” - Today THE METHOD “By what authority do you judge the church? Private judgment produced thousands of denominations.” - Today THE METHOD “The Spirit guides the church into all truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail.” - Today THE METHOD “Silence is not prohibition. The New Testament forbids neither buildings nor vestments nor bishops.” - Today THE METHOD “This is primitivism. The first-century church was a mess. Look at Corinth.” ############################################################################## THE APOSTOLIC FORM (c. 50): THE BASELINE ############################################################################## 1 WHAT IS LEFT With every addition off, four things are left, and each rests on more than one apostolic writer. The churches met in ordinary rooms, mostly homes. They gathered at a table for a full meal in which the bread and cup were shared. Each church was led by a group of elders, also called overseers. And the gathering was something every member took part in. These four are the control for everything above. They show what the churches looked like while the apostles were alive to correct them. The shape around them, as far as the texts and the first witnesses give it, is set out in the sections below. NOT CLAIMED That the New Testament legislates a church order, that the first churches were healthy, or that a house is holier than a hall. The form is a pattern read from the texts. 2 LINE BY LINE Each card is one part of the church’s life, read from the apostolic writings. Its line starts there, in black. Where it turns red, something was added, and each red mark is an entry on the timeline at its date. Tap a date to open the entry. Not everything here is a command. The label on each card says how the text holds it: stated outright, shown every time, left to choice, or read two ways. The line is stretched at the start, so the early dates can be told apart. Under each card the pushback opens in place, and each entry answers the objections to its own date. How each card holds its part: Stated: The text says it. Shown: The texts show it every time, without a command. Either: More than one form is in the text. None is required. Open: Readers who hold every verse read it differently. Added: Came later. Tap a date to open its entry. WHERE AND WHEN The room · Either The text shows: A house, a portico or a hall Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 313 · The hall becomes a temple The text: “Greet also the church in their house” (Rom 16:5). “They were all together in Solomon’s Portico” (Acts 5:12). Paul was “reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus” (Acts 19:9). Why: No text binds a kind of room, so any room is an option. What came later is the hall made a holy place: the emperor’s basilicas, laid out like a magistrate’s hall with the bishop’s throne in the apse, and endowments to keep them. Pushback (5): - “Houses were a necessity of poverty and persecution, not a principle.” · answered under What about…? 3 - “The apostles kept going to the temple, and Paul paid for offerings there (Acts 3:1; 21:24, 26). Sacred space did not end with the cross.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 4 - “The house church is romanticized. Hosts were patrons with power, and Christians met in shops, rented rooms and the open air too.” · answered under What about…? 5 - “God commanded a glorious temple.” · answered in the entry at 313 - “Buildings are tools, and Christians were building before Constantine.” · answered in the entry at 313 The church of a place · Shown The text shows: One church in each place, with no party names Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 537–543 · Two bishops for one city; 1529 · A church for each confession; 1833–1872 · A church for each nation The text: “To the church of God that is in Corinth” (1 Cor 1:2). “Each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor 1:12–13). Why: The letters are written to the church of a place (1 Thess 1:1; Rev 2:1), which could meet in more than one house (Rom 16:5, 14–15). Parties named for leaders are rebuked, not organized. Two bishops for one city, a church for each confession and a church for each nation came later. Pushback (3): - “Rome had several house churches (Rom 16:5, 14–15). Separate congregations in one city are biblical, and so are denominations.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 6 - “This proves Scripture alone cannot hold the church together.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered in the entry at 1529 - “Denominations are branches of one invisible church.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1529 Days, feasts and fasts · Stated The text shows: Kept freely, and no one judges another for them Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 330–380 · A calendar of required fasts; c. 1440–1450 · Mary’s feasts by royal decree The text: “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Col 2:16). Why: They met on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2) and fasted, with no days fixed (Acts 13:2–3; 14:23). A calendar of fasts enforced by penalty, and feasts of Mary fixed by royal decree, came later. Pushback (5): - “The Lord’s day is the Christian Sabbath. The fourth commandment still binds, moved to the first day.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 7 - “Pascha was kept from the apostles. Polycarp kept it as he had with John.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 8 - “The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments.” (Oriental Orth.) · answered in the entry at c. 1440–1450 - “The Wednesday and Friday fasts are in the Didache. That is first-century.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at c. 330–380 - “Lent comes from the apostles.” · answered in the entry at c. 330–380 WHO LEADS Elders · Stated The text shows: Several elders in each church, also called overseers Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 110 · One bishop over the elders; c. 180 · A pedigree of bishops as the proof The text: Paul “called the elders of the church” and told them, “the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:17, 28). “Appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5). Why: The same men carry both names, and the names are plural (Titus 1:5, 7). One man may lead with them, as James did at Jerusalem (Acts 15:13, 19; 21:18). One bishop over the elders, with nothing done without him, and lists of bishops as the proof of true teaching came later. Pushback (8): - “James rules alone in Jerusalem, Timothy and Titus rule alone, and the angels of the seven churches are bishops.” (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 10 - “Timothy and Titus are told about ‘the overseer,’ in the singular (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7). One overseer led the elders.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 11 - “Why stop at the apostles? Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp knew them, and their churches were the apostolic church too.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 2 - “It was universal by 200, and no one objected. It must be apostolic.” · answered in the entry at c. 110 - “One table, and one man to give thanks at it. The bishop is the president of the one Eucharist from the start.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at c. 110 - “Ignatius was taught by the apostles. He hands on what they set up.” · answered in the entry at c. 110 - “1 Clement 44 shows the apostles themselves providing for successors.” · answered in the entry at c. 180 - “Paul to Timothy, Timothy to faithful men, they to others. That is succession.” · answered in the entry at c. 180 Marriage · Stated The text shows: Leaders may marry Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 528–692 · Bishops barred from married life; 1139 · Priests barred from marriage The text: An overseer must be “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim 3:2). “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” (1 Cor 9:5). Why: The qualifications assume a married man may serve, and Paul calls a wife a right the apostles had (1 Cor 9:5). Rules that bishops, and then priests, must live unmarried came later. Pushback (3): - “It is a discipline, not a doctrine. The Church may ask this of her ministers.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at 1139 - “‘Husband of one wife’ sets a limit, not a requirement. Paul and Timothy were unmarried.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at 1139 - “Continence after ordination is apostolic. Peter left everything.” · answered in the entry at 1139 Who may be an elder · Open The text shows: Read two ways, by readers who hold every verse Nothing on the timeline. A church has to practice one answer; making either one a condition of belonging would bind a reading. The text: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12), and an overseer is “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim 3:2). These stand beside Phoebe, Prisca and Junia (Rom 16:1–7) and the daughters of Philip, who prophesied (Acts 21:9). Why: Both sides hold every one of these verses and weigh them differently. This page does not settle it. Pushback (2): - “Leaving women’s eldership open is a dodge. The text settles it.” · answered under What about…? 13 - “Paul says ‘the women should keep silent in the churches’ (1 Cor 14:34). ‘Each one’ means each man.” · answered under What about…? 14 Between churches · Stated The text shows: Christ the head, and churches that counsel one another Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 325 · A ladder of rank; 381–595 · Rank follows the capital; 440 · Rome speaks as Peter; 1075 · The pope over kings and churches The text: “He is the head of the body, the church” (Col 1:18). At Jerusalem “it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church” (Acts 15:22). Why: Churches helped and corrected one another by letters, envoys and a council that included the whole church (Acts 15:22–23; 2 Cor 8:18–19). A ladder of rank over the local elders, rank that follows the capital, Rome speaking as Peter, and a pope over kings and churches came later. Pushback (5): - “At Jerusalem the apostles and elders decided (Acts 15:6; 16:4). The church only listened.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 22 - “The rock is Peter. In Aramaic the wordplay is exact: Kepha, kepha.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered in the entry at 440 - “You deny even the primacy of honour the East has always granted Rome: first among equals, by the canons of 381 and 451.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at 440 - “Acts 15 is a council with authority over the churches.” · answered in the entry at 325 - “By what authority do you judge the church? Private judgment produced thousands of denominations.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under Today WHO TAKES PART One body · Stated The text shows: One people, not two orders Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 200 · Clergy and laity as two orders; c. 320 · A higher life apart; c. 400–600 · Sacred dress and incense The text: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9). Why: The New Testament knows leaders and people (1 Thess 5:12; Heb 13:17), and it has no word for the laity as a class. Clergy and laity as two orders, a higher life apart from ordinary households, and sacred dress and incense came later. Pushback (5): - “The New Testament has ordained leaders, and tells us to obey them.” · answered in the entry at c. 200 - “Jesus chose the Twelve. Hierarchy comes from him.” · answered in the entry at c. 200 - “Catholic teaching now honors the laity.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at c. 200 - “Clement writes of the high priest, the priests, the Levites and the layman, each in his own place (1 Clement 40), about 96, while John was still alive.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 12 - “Jesus and Paul commend celibacy, and the first church shared everything.” · answered in the entry at c. 320 Everyone takes part · Stated The text shows: Each one brings something, men and women Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 1541 · The pulpit takes the center; 1975 · The room becomes a venue The text: “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (1 Cor 14:26). Women pray and prophesy (1 Cor 11:5). “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another” (1 Pet 4:10). Why: Paul orders the many voices and does not replace them with one: “you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn” (1 Cor 14:31). One voice from a raised pulpit, and a room produced for an audience, came later. Pushback (5): - “1 Corinthians 14:26–40 is Paul restraining chaos. It is hardly a model.” · answered under What about…? 15 - “Prophecy and tongues ended with the apostles. 1 Corinthians 14 describes gifts the church no longer has.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 16 - “Paul says ‘the women should keep silent in the churches’ (1 Cor 14:34). ‘Each one’ means each man.” · answered under What about…? 14 - “Faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17). The Word must be central.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at c. 1541 - “Open participation breeds chaos and error. A trained pastor guards the flock (Titus 1:9).” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at c. 1541 Plain words · Stated The text shows: Words everyone in the room understands Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 1100 · A sacred tongue the people have lost The text: “If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?” (1 Cor 14:9). “How can anyone in the position of an outsider say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?” (1 Cor 14:16). Why: Paul holds even tongues to it: with no one to interpret, the speaker keeps silent (1 Cor 14:27–28). A sacred language the people no longer understood came later. Pushback (2): - “A sacred language lifts worship above the everyday and binds us to our ancestors.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at c. 1100 - “The people know the liturgy by heart and grasp its meaning.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at c. 1100 BAPTISM AND THE TABLE Baptism · Shown The text shows: Baptized when they believe, without delay Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 200–253 · Infants baptized (contested); 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 · Which baptism counts, made a test (contested); 1835 · A walk forward in baptism’s place The text: “Those who received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:41). The jailer “was baptized at once” (Acts 16:33). “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized” (Acts 22:16). Why: Each baptism Acts narrates follows the hearing of the word, and none is put off. Households were baptized too (Acts 16:15, 33), and the text does not say whether they held infants. No verse makes the timing a rule, so this is the pattern, not a law. Infants at the font, a test of which baptism counts, and a walk to the front standing where baptism stood came later. Pushback (4): - “The households must have included infants.” · answered in the entry at c. 200–253 - “Baptism replaces circumcision, so the children of believers receive it.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at c. 200–253 - “Irenaeus and Origen call it apostolic, and no one protested that it was new.” · answered in the entry at c. 200–253 - “There is one baptism (Eph 4:5). Baptizing someone already baptized as an infant denies it.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 The meal · Stated The text shows: A full meal, with the bread and the cup inside it Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 155 · The meal thins to a rite; c. 364 · The meal put out of the building; c. 400 · The people watch and seldom eat; 1215 · The bread held up to be seen; 1525 · The Supper becomes a memory aid The text: “When you come together to eat, wait for one another” (1 Cor 11:33). The cup comes “after supper” (1 Cor 11:25), and Paul calls the whole “the Lord’s supper” (1 Cor 11:20). Why: Paul corrects the meal and does not cancel it. His “if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home” (1 Cor 11:34) answers those who ate ahead while others went hungry (1 Cor 11:21). The rite without the supper, the meal put out of the building, the people watching instead of eating, the bread held up to be seen, and the Supper as a memory aid came later. Pushback (7): - “The Supper was always distinct from the meal. Paul sends the hungry home.” · answered under What about…? 17 - “Acts 20:7 is one meeting. Nothing says the Supper was every week.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 9 - “The essential thing was kept. The meal around it was incidental.” · answered in the entry at c. 364 - “With hundreds present a meal is impossible.” · answered in the entry at c. 364 - “Jesus himself said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1525 - “Better seldom and worthily than often and carelessly.” · answered in the entry at c. 400 - “Justin proves that the liturgy is second-century and essentially apostolic.” · answered in the entry at c. 155 The table · Shown The text shows: The Lord’s table, and no officer called a priest Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 250 · The presider becomes a priest; c. 1320 · An ark in every church; c. 1400 · A wall of icons before the table The text: “You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor 10:21). The whole church is “a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices” (1 Pet 2:5). Why: The words for priest are used of Israel’s priests, of Christ and of the whole people of God, never of a church officer. No text plainly calls the table an altar: Hebrews’ “we have an altar” (Heb 13:10) stands beside Jesus suffering “outside the gate” (Heb 13:12), and readers differ on whether it means the cross or the table. The presider called a priest, an ark in every church, and a wall of icons between the people and the table came later. Pushback (4): - “Paul sets the Lord’s table beside Israel’s altar (1 Cor 10:18), and Hebrews says ‘we have an altar’ (Heb 13:10).” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 26 - “‘Priest’ is only the English form of ‘presbyter.’” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at c. 250 - “Paul describes his ministry as priestly in Romans 15:16.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at c. 250 - “The Eucharist was called a sacrifice from the beginning, and a sacrifice needs a priest.” · answered in the entry at c. 250 PRAYER Prayer · Stated The text shows: To the Father, through the one mediator Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): c. 211 · Offerings for the dead; c. 350 · The departed asked to pray; c. 600 · Mary’s feasts, and prayers to her; 787 · Honor to images required The text: “Through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18). “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). Why: The living ask one another for prayer (Rom 15:30; Jas 5:16). No text has the living ask the departed. Offerings for the dead, asking the departed to pray, Mary’s feasts and prayers to her, and honor to images required came later. Pushback (4): - “It is no different from asking a friend to pray for you.” · answered in the entry at c. 350 - “Every ancient church does this.” · answered in the entry at c. 350 - “Jews prayed for the dead before Christ, and Jesus never corrected them.” · answered in the entry at c. 211 - “Paul prays for Onesiphorus.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at c. 211 Set words or free · Either The text shows: Both are in the text Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 1666–1667 · The rite itself made a test The text: “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven’” (Matt 6:9). “I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also” (1 Cor 14:15). Why: Jesus gives words to pray, and in the gathering one and another also pray and give thanks aloud in their own words (1 Cor 11:4–5; 14:16). Making one form of the rite a test of communion came later. Pushback (3): - “‘The prayers’ (Acts 2:42) were set prayers, said at set hours (Acts 3:1). Liturgy is apostolic.” (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 25 - “Worship needs a set order. Paul says so.” · answered in the entry at c. 155 - “Some of what the apostles handed down was never written. Basil lists it: facing east, the sign of the cross, the words at the cup, triple immersion.” (Orthodox) · answered under Today MONEY Giving · Stated The text shows: Given as each decides, from what each has Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 567–800 · Giving becomes a tax The text: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7). Each puts something aside “as he may prosper” (1 Cor 16:2). Why: The gifts the letters describe went to the poor and to those who taught (Rom 15:26; Gal 6:6). No apostolic writing asks a church for a tithe. A tenth required on pain of excommunication came later. Pushback (4): - “‘Bring the full tithe into the storehouse’ (Mal 3:10). The church is the storehouse.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 20 - “Abraham and Jacob tithed before the law. It is a principle from creation.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 567–800 - “Jesus said, ‘These you ought to have done.’” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 567–800 - “Without a tenth as a floor, giving collapses.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 567–800 Paying leaders · Either The text shows: Supported, or working with their hands Nothing on the timeline. Each form is in the text. The text: “The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). “But I have made no use of any of these rights” (1 Cor 9:15). “These hands ministered to my necessities” (Acts 20:34). Why: Paul calls support a right the Lord gave, and set it aside so as to put no obstacle in the way of the gospel (1 Cor 9:12). Both are faithful, and neither is the only way. Pushback (1): - “Either is too easy. The Lord commanded that preachers be paid (1 Cor 9:14), so an unpaid eldership disobeys him.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 21 WHAT BINDS Authority · Stated The text shows: The apostles’ teaching, delivered once for all Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 1546 · Tradition set beside Scripture; 1672 · An Eastern Trent; 1870 · The pope defined infallible The text: “The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). “Hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess 2:15). Why: What the apostles delivered is the standard every later teacher answers to: “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8). Unwritten traditions received with the same reverence as Scripture, a synod in the East ruling that Scripture is not for everyone to read, and a pope defined infallible came later. Pushback (6): - “The church is ‘a pillar and buttress of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). The apostles left a teaching church, not only writings.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 24 - “2 Thessalonians 2:15 binds us to the spoken tradition as well as the letters. The apostles taught more than they wrote, the churches kept it, and Basil names customs that came down unwritten from them.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered in the entry at 1546 - “Scripture alone is itself unscriptural, and the Church fixed your canon.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered in the entry at 1546 - “Some of what the apostles handed down was never written. Basil lists it: facing east, the sign of the cross, the words at the cup, triple immersion.” (Orthodox) · answered under Today - “The Church gave you the Bible. If you trust her for the canon, trust her for the rest.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under Today - “The Spirit guides the church into all truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail.” · answered under Today The ruler · Stated The text shows: Prayed for, and obeyed under God Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 301–380 · The king’s religion; 1589 · A third Rome The text: Pray “for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life” (1 Tim 2:1–2). “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Why: The churches lived under rulers as “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11), with no power to compel. The faith made the law of the realm, with dissent a crime, and Moscow as a third Rome with the tsar its guardian, came later. Pushback (3): - “Constantine ended three centuries of persecution. That was providence.” · answered in the entry at 301–380 - “A Christian ruler must rule as a Christian.” · answered in the entry at 301–380 - “Israel’s kings enforced true worship.” · answered in the entry at 301–380 How the cross saves · Open The text shows: Many images in the text, and none the only one Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 1098 · Satisfaction of God’s honor as the ruling frame (contested); 1561 · 1563 · 1647 · One legal account of the cross made the test (contested) The text: A ransom (Mark 10:45), a sacrifice (Heb 9:26), a victory (Col 2:15), a debt canceled (Col 2:14), reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19), and “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24). Why: The texts use all of these and rank none of them. Satisfaction of God’s honor made the ruling frame in the West, and one legal account of how made a test, came later. Pushback (2): - “Isaiah 53 and 2 Corinthians 5:21 teach it outright.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1561 · 1563 · 1647 - “Then a church that preaches penal substitution is doing something wrong.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1561 · 1563 · 1647 What is required to belong · Stated The text shows: What the apostles taught, with nothing added as a condition Not in the text, and when it came (each is a dated entry): 396–418 · Adam’s guilt, inherited; c. 420–553 · One view of the end enforced (contested); 589–1014 · A clause added to the creed; 1095–1439 · Purgatory and indulgences; 1285 · The Latin reading of the Spirit anathematized; 1336 · 1351 · How the unseen God is seen, defined twice; 1547 · 1577 · 1672 · One account of justification made the test (contested); 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 · One account of election made the test (contested); 1854 · 1950 · Two dogmas about Mary The text: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements” (Acts 15:28). Why: The apostles did draw lines: the gospel itself (Gal 1:8–9), Christ come in the flesh (1 John 4:2–3), the resurrection (1 Cor 15:12–17). They also refused to add conditions to Christ (Gal 5:2–4). Recognitions such as Nicaea’s name what the text already says and are not on this line. Each mark here is a doctrine or a reading that a church later made a condition of communion. Pushback (3): - “Justification by faith alone is the article by which the church stands or falls. To call our confession a narrowing is to concede the Reformation’s first principle.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1547 · 1577 · 1672 - “Then what does this page itself teach?” · answered in the entry at 1547 · 1577 · 1672 - “Doctrine develops. An acorn becomes an oak.” (Catholic) · answered under Today 3 THE SHAPE OF THE ASSEMBLY What the apostolic writings show of a church between about AD 50 and 100, mostly from Paul’s letters and Acts, read together. Each row is a claim with its texts. Beside it, struck through, is what later took its place, with its date, and each group’s line runs from the apostles to today. Where a point rests on the setting rather than on a text, it says so. This is a description, not a proposal: the page recommends nothing here. WHERE - In a house · Shown “The church in their house”: Prisca and Aquila at Ephesus and Rome (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:5), Nympha at Laodicea (Col 4:15), Philemon at Colossae (Phlm 2); Lydia’s house at Philippi (Acts 16:15, 40); an upstairs room at Troas (Acts 20:8). Paul taught “in public and from house to house” (Acts 20:20). Not in the text, and when it came: 313 · The hall becomes a temple - Several houses, one church in a city · Shown Paul’s greetings to Rome name at least three groups (Rom 16:5, 14, 15), and at Corinth “the whole church” could still meet in one house, Gaius’s (Rom 16:23). Each letter is written to the church of a place (1 Cor 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1), and parties inside it are rebuked (1 Cor 1:12–13). Not in the text, and when it came: 537–543 · Two bishops for one city; 1529 · A church for each confession; 1833–1872 · A church for each nation - A few dozen people · Setting From the setting, not a text. A dining room of the period seated about nine; the courtyard of a good house perhaps thirty to fifty (Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology, 1983; 3rd ed. 2002). Robert Banks puts Paul’s churches at around forty (Paul’s Idea of Community, 1979; 3rd ed. 2020). From the setting, so nothing here is dated. - Public space, while it was open · Shown The temple courts in Jerusalem (Acts 2:46; 5:12), the synagogue until it closed its doors (Acts 18:4–7), a hired hall at Ephesus (Acts 19:9). The houses were not a rule. They were what remained. Nothing on the timeline. Pushback (7): - “Houses were a necessity of poverty and persecution, not a principle.” · answered under What about…? 3 - “The apostles kept going to the temple, and Paul paid for offerings there (Acts 3:1; 21:24, 26). Sacred space did not end with the cross.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 4 - “The house church is romanticized. Hosts were patrons with power, and Christians met in shops, rented rooms and the open air too.” · answered under What about…? 5 - “Rome had several house churches (Rom 16:5, 14–15). Separate congregations in one city are biblical, and so are denominations.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 6 - “This proves Scripture alone cannot hold the church together.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered in the entry at 1529 - “Three thousand were added in one day. Big is biblical.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1975 - “Buildings are tools, and Christians were building before Constantine.” · answered in the entry at 313 WHEN - The first day of the week, kept freely · Stated At Troas, “on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread” (Acts 20:7). The collection is set aside “on the first day of every week” (1 Cor 16:2). “The Lord’s day” is named once (Rev 1:10). No text transfers the Sabbath to it; the day is simply the one they met on. Not in the text, and when it came: c. 330–380 · A calendar of required fasts; c. 1440–1450 · Mary’s feasts by royal decree - In the evening, as a supper · Shown The meal is “the Lord’s supper” (1 Cor 11:20) and the cup comes “after supper” (11:25). At Troas the talk ran “until midnight” and the lamps were lit (Acts 20:7–8). Nothing on the timeline. - Daily, at first · Shown In Jerusalem, “day by day … breaking bread in their homes” (Acts 2:46). No text gives a weekly rule for anywhere. Nothing on the timeline. Pushback (6): - “The Lord’s day is the Christian Sabbath. The fourth commandment still binds, moved to the first day.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 7 - “Pascha was kept from the apostles. Polycarp kept it as he had with John.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 8 - “Acts 20:7 is one meeting. Nothing says the Supper was every week.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 9 - “The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments.” (Oriental Orth.) · answered in the entry at c. 1440–1450 - “The Wednesday and Friday fasts are in the Didache. That is first-century.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at c. 330–380 - “Lent comes from the apostles.” · answered in the entry at c. 330–380 WHO - All the baptized, as one body · Stated “We were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Cor 12:13). A runaway slave is sent back to his master “no longer as a bondservant but … as a beloved brother” (Phlm 16). The rich who eat ahead of “those who have nothing” are rebuked, which means both were at the table (1 Cor 11:21–22). Not in the text, and when it came: c. 200 · Clergy and laity as two orders; c. 320 · A higher life apart - Elders, several, also called overseers, with deacons · Stated Paul “called the elders of the church” and told them, “the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:17, 28). The same men carry both names (Titus 1:5–7), they serve with deacons (Phil 1:1), and they are appointed “in every church” (Acts 14:23). Chosen for character more than office: “above reproach,” “not a lover of money,” “able to teach,” managing his own household well (1 Tim 3:2–7). Those who teach “labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Tim 5:17). Peter writes to them “as a fellow elder” and tells them to shepherd “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet 5:1–3). In the Greek New Testament episkopos (overseer) appears 5 times and presbyteros (elder) 66, about 18 of them for church elders. Not in the text, and when it came: c. 110 · One bishop over the elders; c. 180 · A pedigree of bishops as the proof - One elder may lead, as one of the elders · Shown James speaks last at the Jerusalem council and gives his judgment (Acts 15:13, 19), but the decision is the apostles’ and the elders’ “with the whole church” (15:22), and when Paul comes to him “all the elders were present” (21:18). Peter, an apostle, calls himself “a fellow elder” (1 Pet 5:1). Leading is a role inside the one office. A second office above the elders, without whom nothing is lawful, comes later (c. 110). Not in the text, and when it came: 325 · A ladder of rank; 440 · Rome speaks as Peter - Women who pray, prophesy, host and serve · Stated Women prayed and prophesied, and prophecy is speech that “builds up the church” (1 Cor 11:5; 14:4); Paul rules on the head covering, not on whether they spoke (11:13). Philip had “four unmarried daughters, who prophesied” (Acts 21:9), as Joel had said (Acts 2:17–18). Phoebe was “a servant of the church at Cenchreae” and a patron of many (Rom 16:1–2); Prisca with Aquila “explained” the way of God to Apollos (Acts 18:26); Nympha and Lydia hosted the church (Col 4:15; Acts 16:40); Euodia and Syntyche “labored side by side with me in the gospel” (Phil 4:2–3). So the silence of 1 Corinthians 14:34 is not silence from all speaking: it comes with “if there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home” (14:35). Whether a woman may teach men or be an elder turns on how far “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12) reaches, and this page does not settle it. Nothing on the timeline. Who may be an elder is read two ways. - Those with gifts · Stated Apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in tongues (1 Cor 12:28). “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (12:7). Nothing on the timeline. Pushback (10): - “James rules alone in Jerusalem, Timothy and Titus rule alone, and the angels of the seven churches are bishops.” (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 10 - “Timothy and Titus are told about ‘the overseer,’ in the singular (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7). One overseer led the elders.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 11 - “Why stop at the apostles? Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp knew them, and their churches were the apostolic church too.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 2 - “Clement writes of the high priest, the priests, the Levites and the layman, each in his own place (1 Clement 40), about 96, while John was still alive.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 12 - “It was universal by 200, and no one objected. It must be apostolic.” · answered in the entry at c. 110 - “1 Clement 44 shows the apostles themselves providing for successors.” · answered in the entry at c. 180 - “The New Testament has ordained leaders, and tells us to obey them.” · answered in the entry at c. 200 - “Jesus and Paul commend celibacy, and the first church shared everything.” · answered in the entry at c. 320 - “Leaving women’s eldership open is a dodge. The text settles it.” · answered under What about…? 13 - “Paul says ‘the women should keep silent in the churches’ (1 Cor 14:34). ‘Each one’ means each man.” · answered under What about…? 14 WHAT THEY DID WHEN THEY MET - Ate the meal, with the bread and the cup inside it · Stated “When you come together to eat, wait for one another” (1 Cor 11:33). The bread is “a participation in the body of Christ,” the cup “a participation in the blood of Christ” (10:16). “Do this in remembrance of me” (11:24–25); eating and drinking, “you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (11:26). Jude knows it as “your love feasts” (Jude 12). The supper (1 Cor 11:20, 33) and the hymn, lesson and revelation (14:26) both happen “when you come together.” In what order is inferred, not stated: Jesus’ supper ended with a hymn (Mark 14:26), as a formal dinner of the day ended in talk and song, but at Troas Paul taught before the bread and after it (Acts 20:7, 11). Not in the text, and when it came: c. 155 · The meal thins to a rite; c. 364 · The meal put out of the building; c. 400 · The people watch and seldom eat; 1215 · The bread held up to be seen; 1525 · The Supper becomes a memory aid - Heard the word, from more than one voice · Stated The apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42). The public reading of Scripture, exhortation and teaching (1 Tim 4:13). Letters read to the assembly and passed on to the next church (Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27). A “word of exhortation” (Heb 13:22), the same phrase the synagogue rulers use when they invite a visitor to speak (Acts 13:15, “word of encouragement” in the ESV). Teaching and admonishing one another (Col 3:16). Long teaching happened too, and Paul’s at Troas ran past midnight (Acts 20:7, 11); nothing says a single address was the center of each meeting. Not in the text, and when it came: c. 1541 · The pulpit takes the center - Prayed, and said Amen · Stated “The prayers” (Acts 2:42). Supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings “for kings and all who are in high positions” (1 Tim 2:1–2). The people answer: Paul worries about the outsider who cannot “say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving” (1 Cor 14:16). Not in the text, and when it came: c. 1100 · A sacred tongue the people have lost - Sang, to the Lord and to one another · Stated To the Lord and to one another at once: “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16). “Each one has a hymn” (1 Cor 14:26), and Paul will sing “with my spirit” and “with my mind also” (14:15). Not in the text, and when it came: 1975 · The room becomes a venue - Prophesied and spoke in tongues, in turn · Stated “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said” (1 Cor 14:29). “You can all prophesy one by one” (14:31). A tongue only with an interpreter, or else silence (14:27–28). “All things should be done decently and in order” (14:40). Prophecy is tested, not merely received (1 Thess 5:20–21; 1 John 4:1). Nothing on the timeline. - Prayed for the sick and confessed to one another · Stated “Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil” (Jas 5:14). “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another” (Jas 5:16). Nothing on the timeline. - Greeted one another with a kiss · Stated “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12); “the kiss of love” (1 Pet 5:14). The command closes letters that were read to the gathered church: “Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers” (1 Thess 5:26–27). Nothing on the timeline. Pushback (11): - “The Supper was always distinct from the meal. Paul sends the hungry home.” · answered under What about…? 17 - “The essential thing was kept. The meal around it was incidental.” · answered in the entry at c. 364 - “Justin proves that the liturgy is second-century and essentially apostolic.” · answered in the entry at c. 155 - “Jesus himself said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 1525 - “Better seldom and worthily than often and carelessly.” · answered in the entry at c. 400 - “The pattern is chosen. The same letters command a holy kiss (Rom 16:16) and covered heads for women who pray (1 Cor 11:5–6), and Jesus tells his disciples to wash one another’s feet (John 13:14). If the meal binds, so do these.” · answered under What about…? 19 - “1 Corinthians 14:26–40 is Paul restraining chaos. It is hardly a model.” · answered under What about…? 15 - “Prophecy and tongues ended with the apostles. 1 Corinthians 14 describes gifts the church no longer has.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 16 - “Faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17). The Word must be central.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at c. 1541 - “‘The prayers’ (Acts 2:42) were set prayers, said at set hours (Acts 3:1). Liturgy is apostolic.” (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 25 - “James 5 belongs to the priests. ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them’ (John 20:23), and the anointing is a sacrament for them to give.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 18 MONEY - Given by decision and in proportion, not as a tax · Stated “Each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper” (1 Cor 16:2). “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion” (2 Cor 9:7). The tithe is never asked of a church in the apostolic writings; see 567–800 on the Western lines. Not in the text, and when it came: 567–800 · Giving becomes a tax - For the poor · Shown A collection for the poor in Jerusalem, carried by men the churches chose (1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8:19–21; Rom 15:25–27). Relief sent in a famine (Acts 11:29–30). “Remember the poor” (Gal 2:10). Widows supported (Acts 6:1; 1 Tim 5:3–16). In Jerusalem goods were sold and shared “as any had need” (Acts 2:45; 4:34–35), by choice and not by rule (Acts 5:4). Nothing on the timeline. - Workers may be supported, and may refuse it · Either “The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). Paul worked with his hands and “made no use of any of these rights” (9:15; Acts 20:34; 1 Thess 2:9). Teaching elders are “worthy of double honor” (1 Tim 5:17–18); the one taught the word is to “share all good things with the one who teaches” (Gal 6:6). Both are in the text, so nothing is dated. - Hospitality as a duty · Stated “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality” (Rom 12:13). “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Pet 4:9). Traveling brothers are sent on their way “in a manner worthy of God” (3 John 6). Nothing on the timeline. Pushback (5): - “‘Bring the full tithe into the storehouse’ (Mal 3:10). The church is the storehouse.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 20 - “Abraham and Jacob tithed before the law. It is a principle from creation.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 567–800 - “Jesus said, ‘These you ought to have done.’” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 567–800 - “Without a tenth as a floor, giving collapses.” (Protestant) · answered in the entry at 567–800 - “Either is too easy. The Lord commanded that preachers be paid (1 Cor 9:14), so an unpaid eldership disobeys him.” (Protestant) · answered under What about…? 21 ORDER, WITHIN A CHURCH AND BETWEEN CHURCHES - Discipline by the assembly · Stated “When you are assembled … deliver this man to Satan” (1 Cor 5:4–5). “Purge the evil person from among you” (5:13). A “punishment by the majority,” and then forgiveness and comfort (2 Cor 2:6–8). “Tell it to the church” (Matt 18:17). Not in the text, and when it came: 301–380 · Dissent made a crime - Decided with the whole church present · Shown At Jerusalem the apostles and elders met to consider the question (Acts 15:6) while “all the assembly” listened (15:12), and it “seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church,” to choose men and send them (15:22). Luke calls the outcome “the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders” (16:4). The seven were chosen by “the full number of the disciples” (Acts 6:2–6). Not in the text, and when it came: 1870 · Irreformable of itself, not by the church’s consent - Apostles, delegates, letters, visits · Shown Timothy and Titus are sent for a season to set things in order and appoint elders (1 Tim 1:3; Titus 1:5; 3:12). Letters circulate (Col 4:16). Envoys are “appointed by the churches” (2 Cor 8:19). Traveling teachers are tested and may be refused (1 John 4:1; 2 John 10). Not in the text, and when it came: 381–595 · Rank follows the capital; 1075 · The pope over kings and churches - Correction while the apostles lived · Shown 1 Corinthians corrects a case of incest, a lawsuit, the meal and the meeting (5:1–2; 6:1–8; 11:17–22; 14:26–33); Galatians a gospel; Revelation 2–3 seven churches. The control is not that the churches were in order, but that someone with authority was correcting them against a known standard. Not in the text, and when it came: 1672 · The church declared unable to err Pushback (10): - “At Jerusalem the apostles and elders decided (Acts 15:6; 16:4). The church only listened.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 22 - “‘Tell it to the church’ (Matt 18:17) means tell its rulers. Discipline belongs to the elders.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered under What about…? 23 - “The church is ‘a pillar and buttress of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). The apostles left a teaching church, not only writings.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 24 - “By what authority do you judge the church? Private judgment produced thousands of denominations.” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under Today - “The Spirit guides the church into all truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail.” · answered under Today - “Acts 15 is a council with authority over the churches.” · answered in the entry at 325 - “The rock is Peter. In Aramaic the wordplay is exact: Kepha, kepha.” (Catholic, Protestant) · answered in the entry at 440 - “You deny even the primacy of honour the East has always granted Rome: first among equals, by the canons of 381 and 451.” (Orthodox) · answered in the entry at 440 - “Without a final judge there can be no unity.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at 1870 - “A Christian ruler must rule as a Christian.” · answered in the entry at 301–380 NOT IN THE TEXTS Not in the texts, each word with the date it came: One bishop over a city’s elders (c. 110); A clergy set apart from a laity (c. 200); Infants at the font (c. 200–253); A priest at the table, an altar, a sacrifice he offers (c. 250); A building treated as God’s house (313); A required tithe (567–800); One script required for the whole meeting (1666–1667) Pushback (8): - “Description is not prescription.” · answered under What about…? 1 - “Silence is not prohibition. The New Testament forbids neither buildings nor vestments nor bishops.” · answered under Today - “Doctrine develops. An acorn becomes an oak.” (Catholic) · answered under Today - “Some of what the apostles handed down was never written. Basil lists it: facing east, the sign of the cross, the words at the cup, triple immersion.” (Orthodox) · answered under Today - “Paul sets the Lord’s table beside Israel’s altar (1 Cor 10:18), and Hebrews says ‘we have an altar’ (Heb 13:10).” (Catholic, Orthodox) · answered under What about…? 26 - “Paul describes his ministry as priestly in Romans 15:16.” (Catholic) · answered in the entry at c. 250 - “The households must have included infants.” · answered in the entry at c. 200–253 - “God commanded a glorious temple.” · answered in the entry at 313 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The household. In the Roman world the household was the basic unit of society: family, slaves, freedmen, clients, and often a workshop. Voluntary associations, the collegia, met in houses and rented rooms, ate together, and kept a common fund. Their typical size was a few dozen. A church meeting in a house was a recognizable kind of thing. The synagogue. Jewish communities were led by councils of elders. Acts 13:15 has “the rulers of the synagogue,” plural, inviting visitors to speak: “Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.” Jesus is handed the scroll at Nazareth the same way (Luke 4:16–17). Open participation by competent members was the synagogue’s habit before it was the church’s. The banquet. A formal Greco-Roman dinner had two parts: the meal, then the symposium, with conversation, teaching and song over wine. Paul’s supper (1 Cor 11:20–21, 33) and his “each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation” (14:26) can be read in that order. The Jewish form is visible too. Bread is blessed before the meal, and the cup comes “after supper” (1 Cor 11:25). What was available and not used. Qumran had a single overseer, the mebaqqer, over each camp, and a priestly hierarchy. The temple had vested priests, incense and a calendar. The apostles knew these models. The churches they founded did not take them up. 5 THE FIRST WITNESSES AFTER THE APOSTLES c. 96 1 Clement 42, 44 Rome writes to Corinth as one church to another. The apostles appointed “bishops and deacons”; the men wrongly removed at Corinth are “presbyters.” Both words are plural and name the same group. c. 100 Didache 9–10, 15 Prayers for a meal: thanks are given again “after you are filled.” The congregation is told: “appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord.” c. 110 Polycarp, To the Philippians Opens “Polycarp, and the presbyters with him.” He instructs Philippi’s presbyters and deacons and mentions no bishop there. c. 112 Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96 A Roman governor reports what Christians told him under questioning: on a fixed day they met before dawn to recite a hymn to Christ “as though he were a god,” then met again “to take food,” which was “of no special character and quite harmless.” He tortured two slave women (ancillae) “who were called deaconesses”: Pliny’s word is ministrae, servants, and the title is the translator’s. c. 140 Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.4; 3.9 At Rome: “the presbyters who preside over the church.” c. 155 Justin Martyr, First Apology 67 On “the day called Sunday” all in town and country gather in one place. The memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read “as long as time permits”; the president exhorts; all stand and pray; bread, wine and water are brought; the president gives thanks and the people answer “Amen”; the deacons carry portions to those absent; the well-off give what they choose, and the president uses it for orphans, widows, the sick, prisoners and strangers. No meal is mentioned. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9 Against those who would put prophecy out of the church, he notes that Paul, in 1 Corinthians, “recognises men and women prophesying in the Church.” c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 39 “Tried men of our elders preside over us.” The supper is called agape. It opens and closes with prayer, and afterward each is invited to sing to God. Giving is monthly and free: “there is no compulsion; all is voluntary.” c. 208 Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.8 Paul enjoins silence on women “that they speak not for the mere sake of learning,” for “even they have the right of prophesying,” as he showed when he covered “the woman that prophesies with a veil.” c. 208 Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins 9 “It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church; but neither (is it permitted her) to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer.” Read with the line above, his rule is prophecy allowed, teaching and office barred. c. 240 The house at Dura-Europos, Syria A private home rebuilt for a church: two rooms joined into a hall for perhaps seventy people, and a baptistery. It is the earliest church building yet found. before 420 Jerome, Letter 146 “The apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops.” At Alexandria, he says, the presbyters long chose their bishop from among themselves. 6 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Raymond Brown SS, Priest and Bishop (1970) In the churches Paul founded, in the generation after him, presbyter and overseer are the same office, held by several men. The single bishop and the Christian “priest” are later. CATHOLIC Francis Sullivan SJ, From Apostles to Bishops (2001) Grants that the New Testament and the earliest sources show group leadership. He argues that the later episcopate was a Spirit-guided development, which is a theological claim about the history, not a different history. ORTHODOX Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971) In the first churches all the baptized celebrated together under a presider. The division into clergy who act and laity who attend came later. ANGLICAN Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops (2014) Dissents from the consensus: each house church had one episkopos, and “presbyters” were those leaders gathered across a city. Even on his account, one bishop over a whole city is a later step. HISTORIAN Edward Adams, The Earliest Christian Meeting Places (2013) “Almost exclusively houses” overstates it. Christians probably also met in shops and workshops, in commercial dining spaces and outdoors. ANGLICAN Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship (2014) The Eucharist was a real meal well into the second and third centuries, and “Eucharist” and “agape” were at first names for the same supper. PROTESTANT Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community (1979); Roger Gehring, House Church and Mission (2004) The household setting shaped what Paul’s churches were: small, mutual, around a table. 7 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Description is not prescription.” Agreed, and the entry says so. The base is not a law code. It is the control sample. A later form is not wrong for differing from it. But it then needs some warrant beyond its age, and it cannot be imposed as though the apostles had required it. 2. “Why stop at the apostles? Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp knew them, and their churches were the apostolic church too.” (Catholic, Orthodox) The page does not stop there. The first witnesses after the apostles are section 5 of this record and stand in every entry, and the page’s test for a recognition leans on them: a view is excluded only where it denies what a text asserts and no one in the generation after the apostles who held the texts held it. The baseline itself uses the texts, because they are the only writings all four lines receive as apostolic. And the first witnesses differ from one another on the points in question. Clement, about 96, and Polycarp, about 110, write of presbyters in the plural and name no single bishop at Corinth or at Philippi; Ignatius, in the same years, insists on one. Witnesses who disagree cannot settle what the apostles set up. The texts they all received are the common ground. 3. “Houses were a necessity of poverty and persecution, not a principle.” Largely true, and the New Testament has no doctrine of rooms. It does have a pattern of the gathering, set down by more than one apostolic writer: mutual, at a table, under several elders. Those are the features later forms displaced, and the room matters only as it shapes them. 4. “The apostles kept going to the temple, and Paul paid for offerings there (Acts 3:1; 21:24, 26). Sacred space did not end with the cross.” (Catholic, Orthodox) They did, as Jews, while the temple stood, and the page lists it under public space. James even asked Paul to show that he still lived “in observance of the law” (Acts 21:24). What the apostles never did was give the Gentile churches a holy place of their own. In the letters the temple is the people: “you are God’s temple” (1 Cor 3:16), “a holy temple in the Lord” built of believers (Eph 2:21). Jesus had said the hour was coming when “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (John 4:21). The building made a holy place is dated at 313. 5. “The house church is romanticized. Hosts were patrons with power, and Christians met in shops, rented rooms and the open air too.” Both points are fair, and the page grants them. Corinth shows a host’s table where some ate their fill while others went hungry (1 Cor 11:21–22), and Edward Adams, among the scholars in this record, shows the meeting places were more varied than houses. The page does not claim the first churches were healthy, or that a house is holier than a hall. Its claim is narrower: the gathering Paul corrects is one table at which every member takes part, and his correction is “wait for one another” (1 Cor 11:33), not a better room or a single voice. 6. “Rome had several house churches (Rom 16:5, 14–15). Separate congregations in one city are biblical, and so are denominations.” (Protestant) Several houses, yes. Rival churches, no. Paul writes one letter to all the believers in Rome (Rom 1:7) and tells the groups he greets to “greet one another” (Rom 16:16). The divisions he meets elsewhere he rebukes: “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor 1:13), and “there is one body and one Spirit” (Eph 4:4). Separate confessions that will not share a table are dated at 1529. 7. “The Lord’s day is the Christian Sabbath. The fourth commandment still binds, moved to the first day.” (Protestant) The texts name the first day as the day they met (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2) and call it “the Lord’s day” once (Rev 1:10). None of them carries the Sabbath command over to it. Paul lists the Sabbath among the things in which no one is to pass judgment (Col 2:16), and leaves the keeping of days to each one’s conscience (Rom 14:5–6). The strongest texts for the view are the creation rest (Gen 2:2–3) and “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9). Hebrews says that rest is entered by believing (Heb 4:3) and is God’s own rest (Heb 4:10), not a day of the week. The Westminster Confession reads the move to the first day as divine law (21.7). That is a reading. A church may keep the day gladly; the texts leave it free. 8. “Pascha was kept from the apostles. Polycarp kept it as he had with John.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Perhaps, and the page does not date the feast. The earliest quarrel over it shows what the first churches did with a difference. About 155 Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicetus of Rome each kept the day he had received. Neither persuaded the other, and still “they communed together” and parted in peace (Irenaeus, quoted in Eusebius, Church History 5.24.16–17). About 190 Victor of Rome tried to cut off the churches of Asia for keeping the other day, and Irenaeus rebuked him for it (Church History 5.24.9–11). A feast kept in common is one thing. A date made a condition of communion is the kind of step the page dates. 9. “Acts 20:7 is one meeting. Nothing says the Supper was every week.” (Protestant) Agreed that no verse commands it weekly, and the page does not claim one does. But Luke gives the meal as the reason they met: “we were gathered together to break bread” (Acts 20:7). And Paul’s “when you come together” runs through his whole passage on the supper (1 Cor 11:17, 18, 20, 33). The church met for other things too, to pray (Acts 12:12) and to fast (Acts 13:2), but where the texts describe its regular gathering, the meal is in it. A church that meets every week and eats the Supper a few times a year has separated what the texts keep together. 10. “James rules alone in Jerusalem, Timothy and Titus rule alone, and the angels of the seven churches are bishops.” (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) James is the leading voice (“my judgment is,” Acts 15:19), yet the decision is taken by “the apostles and the elders, with the whole church” (15:22), and when Paul visits him “all the elders were present” (21:18). Timothy and Titus are Paul’s delegates on assignments with an end date (1 Tim 1:3; Titus 3:12; 2 Tim 4:9). They are told to appoint elders, plural, and are never called bishops. Everywhere else in Revelation an “angel” is a heavenly being. The reading that makes these seven into bishops is later. And even if the angel were a man, each letter is addressed past him to the church: “let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:7). 11. “Timothy and Titus are told about ‘the overseer,’ in the singular (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7). One overseer led the elders.” (Catholic, Protestant) The singular follows “if anyone aspires to the office of overseer” (1 Tim 3:1). It is the singular of a list of qualifications, as “an elder” is a little later (1 Tim 5:19), beside “the elders who rule well” (1 Tim 5:17). In Titus the two words fall in one sentence: “appoint elders in every town … For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach” (Titus 1:5–7). The elders of Ephesus are its overseers (Acts 20:17, 28), and Philippi has “overseers,” plural (Phil 1:1). The strongest dissent, Alistair Stewart’s, gives each house church one overseer and calls the group of them the city’s elders. Even on his account, one bishop over a whole city comes later, c. 110. 12. “Clement writes of the high priest, the priests, the Levites and the layman, each in his own place (1 Clement 40), about 96, while John was still alive.” (Catholic, Orthodox) He does, and he is arguing from the temple to the church: God wanted order there, so he wants it among you. The order he then describes is the church’s own, and in it the names are plural and shared. The apostles appointed “bishops and deacons” (1 Clement 42), and the men wrongly removed at Corinth are presbyters who had served blamelessly and offered the gifts (1 Clement 44). He never calls a Christian leader a priest; the high priest he names is Christ (1 Clement 36). The temple is his picture of order, not his title for the elders. A clergy as a separate order is dated about 200. 13. “Leaving women’s eldership open is a dodge. The text settles it.” Each side says the text settles it, and each holds every verse. One reads “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12), grounded in creation (1 Tim 2:13), with “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim 3:2). The other reads Phoebe, “a servant of the church” (Rom 16:1), Prisca explaining the way of God to Apollos (Acts 18:26), Junia (Rom 16:7) and the Spirit poured out on “your sons and your daughters” (Acts 2:17), and takes 1 Timothy 2 as a rule for one church’s trouble. That is what the page means by a reading: both sides hold every verse and read it otherwise. A church has to practice one answer, and may hold it firmly. Making either answer a condition of communion would bind a reading, which is the step the page dates on every line. 14. “Paul says ‘the women should keep silent in the churches’ (1 Cor 14:34). ‘Each one’ means each man.” Three chapters earlier Paul takes it for granted that women pray and prophesy in the gathering, and rules only on how (1 Cor 11:5). The silence of 14:34 comes with its own reason: “if there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home” (1 Cor 14:35). It sits in a passage about speaking in turn and weighing what is said (14:29–33), and it governs questions, not prayer or prophecy. Tertullian read it the same way: they are not to speak “for the mere sake of learning,” for “even they have the right of prophesying” (Against Marcion 5.8). Whether a woman may teach men or be an elder is a separate question, and the page leaves it open. 15. “1 Corinthians 14:26–40 is Paul restraining chaos. It is hardly a model.” He orders the participation and does not replace it. “You can all prophesy one by one” (1 Cor 14:31) stands beside “all things should be done decently and in order” (14:40). Both are his. 16. “Prophecy and tongues ended with the apostles. 1 Corinthians 14 describes gifts the church no longer has.” (Protestant) Grant it, and most of the meeting is still there. Paul’s list is “a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (1 Cor 14:26), and the hymn and the lesson need no sign gift. “Teaching and admonishing one another” (Col 3:16), “as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another” (1 Pet 4:10) and “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb 10:24) are written to whole churches, and none of them is tied to the sign gifts. The teaching elder is in the baseline too (1 Tim 5:17; Titus 1:9). What the page dates is one voice with the rest silent, not the elder who teaches. 17. “The Supper was always distinct from the meal. Paul sends the hungry home.” He sends home those who cannot wait for the others, and in the same breath tells the church to eat together: “when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (1 Cor 11:33). A bread-and-cup rite with no supper is first described about a century later. 18. “James 5 belongs to the priests. ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them’ (John 20:23), and the anointing is a sacrament for them to give.” (Catholic, Orthodox) James names who prays over the sick: “the elders of the church” (Jas 5:14), the plural elders of the baseline. In the next breath he gives confession to everyone: “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another” (Jas 5:16). The confessing runs both ways. Jesus gives the charge in John 20 to the disciples gathered that evening (John 20:19–23), and Luke’s account of the same evening has others with the eleven (Luke 24:33, 36). The forgiveness he sends them with is announced in his name to all nations (Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38). Confession to one’s own priest at least once a year is first made a law for the whole Western church at the Fourth Lateran Council, the council dated at 1215. 19. “The pattern is chosen. The same letters command a holy kiss (Rom 16:16) and covered heads for women who pray (1 Cor 11:5–6), and Jesus tells his disciples to wash one another’s feet (John 13:14). If the meal binds, so do these.” The page binds none of them, the meal included. The shape of the assembly describes, and the timeline dates only where a church later required something else or put a later form in the apostolic one’s place. Run the kiss through that test. It is in the list above, stated, and nothing is dated for it, because the churches kept it and no one forbade it: Justin, about 155, has it after the prayers (First Apology 65), and the liturgies kept a kiss of peace. The covering is argued from creation and custom together: “Does not nature itself teach you…?” (1 Cor 11:14). The passage closes on the churches’ practice: “we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God” (1 Cor 11:16). Readers who hold every verse divide over what it asks of a church now, so the page holds it as a reading and dates nothing. Jesus gives the foot washing as “an example” (John 13:15), and in the letters it appears once, as a good work in a widow’s list: she “has washed the feet of the saints” (1 Tim 5:10). The meal is different in kind. It is not a gesture inside the gathering but what Paul says the gathering was for: “when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (1 Cor 11:33). What the page dates are the steps that put something else in its place: a rite without the supper (c. 155), the supper put out of the building (c. 364), and the people watching instead of eating (c. 400). 20. “‘Bring the full tithe into the storehouse’ (Mal 3:10). The church is the storehouse.” (Protestant) Malachi speaks to Israel under the law about the tithe owed to the Levites and priests (Num 18:21), brought into the storehouses of the temple (Neh 13:12). The church has no Levites and no temple storehouse, and the apostles, writing at length about money (1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8–9), never cite the verse or ask for a tenth. In Jerusalem gifts were laid at the apostles’ feet and given out “as any had need” (Acts 4:35), and Peter says the land had been Ananias’s to keep (Acts 5:4). Andreas Köstenberger and David Croteau work through every tithe text in both Testaments. They find that Israel’s tithes came to more than a fifth of its income, not a tenth, that Malachi’s invitation to test God belongs to that moment, and that no passage carries the tithe into the new covenant (Bulletin for Biblical Research 16, 2006). 21. “Either is too easy. The Lord commanded that preachers be paid (1 Cor 9:14), so an unpaid eldership disobeys him.” (Protestant) He did, and Paul calls it a right: “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). Then he refuses it for the gospel’s sake (1 Cor 9:12, 15), and tells the Ephesian elders to do as he did: “by working hard in this way we must help the weak” (Acts 20:35). A church owes its teachers support (Gal 6:6; 1 Tim 5:17–18), and a teacher may set it aside. Both are in the text. Making either the mark of a true ministry, paid clergy or the unpaid elder, binds what the apostles left to choice. 22. “At Jerusalem the apostles and elders decided (Acts 15:6; 16:4). The church only listened.” (Catholic, Protestant) Partly granted, and the description above is worded to match. The apostles and elders met to consider the question (Acts 15:6), and Luke calls the outcome “the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders” (Acts 16:4). But “all the assembly” was there and heard the case (Acts 15:12), and the choosing and sending was done by “the apostles and the elders, with the whole church” (Acts 15:22). The point is that the church was present and agreed, not that it voted on doctrine. 23. “‘Tell it to the church’ (Matt 18:17) means tell its rulers. Discipline belongs to the elders.” (Catholic, Protestant) The elders lead it, and the texts say so (Heb 13:17). But in the cases the letters show, the church acts as a body. Paul tells the Corinthians to deal with the man “when you are assembled” (1 Cor 5:4) and asks, “Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” (5:12). Later he calls the result a “punishment by the majority” (2 Cor 2:6), which the same majority is now to lift by forgiving him (2:7–8). In Matthew the binding and loosing that follows “tell it to the church” is spoken to them all (Matt 18:18). 24. “The church is ‘a pillar and buttress of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). The apostles left a teaching church, not only writings.” (Catholic, Orthodox) They left both, and the verse says how the two stand. The church holds the truth up; the truth is what it holds, and the next line states it: “He was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim 3:16). The same letter tells Timothy to “guard the deposit entrusted to you” (1 Tim 6:20) and to devote himself “to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). A pillar bears a weight. It does not change it. Rome holds that interpreting the word is entrusted to the church’s teaching office alone, and says in the same paragraph that the office “is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on” (Dei Verbum 10). That is the page’s question for every entry: was it handed on? Irenaeus, who argues from the churches’ succession, says the apostles handed the gospel down “in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith” (Against Heresies 3.1.1). The objections to the method itself, from tradition, the canon and the Spirit’s guidance, are answered under Today. 25. “‘The prayers’ (Acts 2:42) were set prayers, said at set hours (Acts 3:1). Liturgy is apostolic.” (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) Granted, in part. They kept the hours of prayer (Acts 3:1; 10:9), Jesus gave words to pray (Luke 11:2), and the Didache, about 100, gives set thanksgivings for the meal. The page lists set words and free prayer as both in the text. What it dates is one form required of all, and even the Didache adds that the prophets may give thanks as they wish (Didache 10.7). One rite made a test of communion comes in 1666–1667. 26. “Paul sets the Lord’s table beside Israel’s altar (1 Cor 10:18), and Hebrews says ‘we have an altar’ (Heb 13:10).” (Catholic, Orthodox) The comparison is real, and the page takes it at full strength: to eat at the Lord’s table is “a participation in the body of Christ” (1 Cor 10:16), which is why it dates the Supper reduced to a memory aid, 1525. But look at who does what in the comparison. Those who eat Israel’s sacrifices are “participants in the altar” (1 Cor 10:18). The Christians are eaters too, and what stands on their side is called a table (1 Cor 10:21). No one at it is called a priest, and no one there offers for the rest. Hebrews’ “we have an altar” (Heb 13:10) is followed at once by Jesus suffering “outside the gate” and “let us go to him outside the camp” (Heb 13:12–13). Commentators divide on whether it means the cross or the table. Either way the letter’s claim is that the one sacrifice was offered “once for all” (Heb 10:10). What the page dates is the presider made a priest who offers it, about 250. 8 NOT SETTLED Whether “elder” and “overseer” were strict synonyms (the older consensus, from Jerome to J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry,” in St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, 1868) or overlapping roles (Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops, 2014) is not settled. How long the full meal lasted, and where, is debated. See the dates c. 155 and c. 364. Whether a woman may teach men or be an elder is not settled here. It turns on 1 Timothy 2:12–13 and “the husband of one wife” (3:2), read beside Phoebe, Prisca and Junia (Rom 16:1–7). Both sides hold every one of these verses, and the fathers, from Tertullian on, read 1 Timothy 2:12 as a bar on women teaching in the church. 9 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 96 · 1 Clement 42, 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 100 · Didache 9–10, 15 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 110 · Polycarp, To the Philippians — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm - c. 112 · Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96 — https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny10b.html#96 - c. 140 · Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.4; 3.9 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf02/anf02.ii.ii.ii.html - c. 155 · Justin Martyr, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103311.htm - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 39 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xxxix.html - c. 208 · Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.8 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.v.iv.vi.viii.html - c. 208 · Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins 9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0403.htm - c. 240 · The house at Dura-Europos, Syria — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kraeling+The+Christian+Building+Excavations+at+Dura-Europos - before 420 · Jerome, Letter 146 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm - voice · Raymond Brown SS, Priest and Bishop (1970) — https://archive.org/details/priestbishop00raym - voice · Francis Sullivan SJ, From Apostles to Bishops (2001) — https://archive.org/details/fromapostlestobi0000fran - voice · Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971) — https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Nikolaj_Afanasev/tserkov-duha-svjatogo/1 - voice · Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops (2014) — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-original-bishops/345491 - voice · Edward Adams, The Earliest Christian Meeting Places (2013) — https://katalog.muni.cz/Record/MUB01006375105/Description - voice · Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship (2014) — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/ancient-christian-worship/272671 - voice · Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community (1979); Roger Gehring, House Church and Mission (2004) — https://archive.org/details/paulsideaofcommu0000unse 10 WHAT THE FORM WAS FOR The record stops here, and not because the apostles came first. It stops because they saw him and touched him (1 John 1:1). Under the form at c. 50 there is no older form. There is a person. The form was for love. A church could take off every addition on this page and still be nothing: “if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). The table was the size of a house: even when the church in Jerusalem numbered thousands, it broke bread “in their homes” (Acts 2:46). No one is an audience at a table. Around it a church proclaims a death (1 Cor 11:26) and learns to lay down its life for people it knows by name (1 John 3:16–17). To a church that said, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,” the risen Christ said, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.” Then: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:17, 19–20). If this record has disappointed you, it has given you no reason to leave Christ, or to despise the people who taught you his name. Every line on this page carried to you the Scriptures it is tested by. Whatever you decide about your church, do not decide it alone, and do not decide it in a hurry. Some churches already meet the way the first ones did. If you look for one, look for elders, more than one, who can be corrected (1 Tim 5:19–20). On the day he rose, two disciples walked out of Jerusalem. “We had hoped,” they told the stranger who joined them (Luke 24:21). He opened the Scriptures to them on the road. “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (24:30–31). That same hour they went back to Jerusalem and found the others “gathered together” (24:33). ############################################################################## TODAY: THE THESIS, THE TEST, AND THE OBJECTIONS TO THE METHOD ############################################################################## 1 THE THESIS AND THE TEST Every tradition on this page carries forms and doctrines that can be dated later than the apostles. The dates come from each tradition’s own fathers, councils and decrees. The page claims that much, one addition at a time, and then asks one question of each: what is the warrant for calling it apostolic, or for binding anyone to it? The opening page gives the rule that separates a recognition from an addition. An addition gets an entry on the line when three things are true. First, no apostolic writing commands it or describes it. Second, its first clear witness can be dated, usually from inside the tradition that carries it. Third, that tradition now treats it as binding, or as the normal shape of the church, or holds it against an apostolic instruction. An entry marked narrowing is a different case: several views lived side by side, and one was later enforced. Each date opens the same way. The claim is stated as narrowly as the evidence allows. Then come the apostolic baseline, the Jewish and Greco-Roman world behind the text, the dated record, the point where a reading went wrong if one did, scholars from the tradition concerned and from its critics, the objections with answers, and what remains unsettled. Silence is not absence, so each date also gives, where one has been found, the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted. 61 of the 63 entries carry one; 2 rest on the apostolic texts and the first clear witness alone, and say so. Each entry also says how it binds: made a condition with a penalty, an optional form that replaced an apostolic one as the norm, a practice or teaching made normative without either, or a rule that contradicts a named text. The counts by line today are on the card: Rome 41, the East 38, the Orient 29, the Protestant line 35. The Protestant number is low because that line set down 12 Western additions in 1517 and then made 9 of its own; of the three ancient lines the Oriental Orthodox carry the fewest. They are counts, not scores. NOT CLAIMED That the church fell away. That everything after AD 100 is corrupt. That those who added these things were insincere. That any tradition today, Protestant included, has kept the original. Nicaea’s confession of Christ and the recognition of the New Testament books are not treated as additions: the first states what the apostolic writings teach, and the second receives what the apostles wrote. The opening page says why. Nor does the page call any reading false. Every claim on it is one of three kinds, and the opening page draws the line between them: bound, what the text asserts and its first readers already held; taught, a reading from the text’s own world, which may be preached and may not be made a test; and dated, a reading from a later world that a church made a condition. The creed of 381, as East and West received it, is the first kind. The definition of 451 is not: the whole church did not receive it, and its formula is dated at the split. No creed says how the cross saves, how a sinner is counted righteous, or how God is seen; every such account is the second or the third. 2 THE STANDARD USED Jude 3 “Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Gal 1:8 “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” 1 Cor 4:6 “That you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” Acts 20:29–30 Paul to the elders of Ephesus: “from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things.” Rev 2:4–5 To Ephesus, one generation on: “You have abandoned the love you had at first … repent, and do the works you did at first.” 2 Thess 2:15 “Stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” The apostles expected drift within their own lifetime and from inside the churches. An early date therefore does not make a practice apostolic. The last text is the one Rome and the East rightly press: the churches are bound to what the apostles taught, spoken or written. The question at every date is whether the addition can be shown to be that. The phrase in 1 Corinthians 4:6, “not to go beyond what is written,” is obscure and much discussed; it is quoted for the apostle’s instinct, not as a rule, and the case does not rest on it. Scripture is quoted from the ESV Bible (English Standard Version, © 2001 Crossway). 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The apostles were Second Temple Jews writing Greek inside the Roman empire. The page reads them against that world first: the Hebrew Scriptures and their Greek translation (the Septuagint, which the New Testament usually quotes), the synagogue, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus and Philo, the household, the voluntary association, the banquet, the patron and the city council. This section keeps to that world: what already existed when the apostles wrote, and what was happening while they wrote, before about 100. Everything later is in the record of each entry, with its date. Where a later reading turned on a translation or a text that was not there (a Latin preposition in Romans 5:12, a Latin pronoun in Genesis 3:15, a sentence of Basil about the emperor’s portrait, a ninth-century forgery taken as second-century law), the entry says so under “Where the reading slipped.” This is tradition too. The page does not set Scripture against tradition. It ranks the tradition the text stands on above the tradition that grew up after it. 4 THE TRADITIONS’ OWN ADMISSIONS c. 211 Tertullian, The Crown 4 Defending customs such as offerings for the dead and the sign of the cross: “If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none.” c. 375 Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27.66 Some practices come “from written teaching,” others were “delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the apostles.” His examples are customs: the sign of the cross, facing east, the words of invocation, triple immersion. before 420 Jerome, Letter 146 “The apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops.” One was later “chosen to preside over the rest … to remedy schism.” 434 Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 2 “The canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient.” His test for tradition: what “has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” c. 439 Socrates, Church History 5.22 “The aim of the apostles was not to appoint festival days, but to teach a righteous life and piety.” 1415 Council of Constance, session 13 Grants that Christ instituted the Supper “after a meal” and gave both bread and wine, and that the early church received both. It then makes bread alone for the laity “a law which nobody may repudiate.” 1546 Council of Trent, session 4 Receives the written books and the unwritten traditions “with an equal affection of piety, and reverence.” 1845 John Henry Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Introduction 19–21 Offers development to account for “the increase and expansion of the Christian Creed and Ritual,” and calls it “undoubtedly an hypothesis to account for a difficulty.” Vincent’s rule, he grants, is true in the abstract but “hardly available now.” 1965 Vatican II, Dei Verbum 8 and 10 Tradition “develops in the Church,” and the teaching office “is not above the word of God, but serves it.” 5 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP, Tradition and Traditions (1960–63) Separates Tradition, the apostolic deposit, from traditions, the customs of the church, which are changeable and of unequal weight. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966) Describes the Byzantine rite as strata laid over an early core: a “mysteriological” layer after Constantine, then a monastic one, fused in what he calls the Byzantine synthesis. ORTHODOX Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (1937) Calls the Latin and Protestant reshaping of Orthodox theology that began in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a “pseudomorphosis.” Orthodoxy too has taken on forms foreign to its sources. ANGLICAN Paul Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (2nd ed. 2002) Early practice was varied, and later uniformity must not be read back. This also warns against imagining one pristine apostolic pattern. PROTESTANT Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1 (1971) A Lutheran who later became Orthodox. Traces doctrine as real historical development. Later he distinguished living tradition from traditionalism (The Vindication of Tradition, 1984). 6 THE SEVEN STANDING OBJECTIONS The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Doctrine develops. An acorn becomes an oak.” (Catholic) The strongest form is that of John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). Christians confess the Trinity in words no apostle used, and Vincent of Lérins lets the faith grow as a body grows from child to adult. Newman pressed the parallel: it is “a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century” than that the church made no formal acknowledgment of the Trinity “till the fourth.” Rome holds that growth to Vincent’s rule: “the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding” (Vatican I, 1870). Two things travel under the one word. Nicaea’s “of one substance” is a recognition. It states what John 1 and Philippians 2 teach, and Athanasius says the bishops were compelled “to collect the sense of the Scriptures.” It added a word, not a belief. Newman claims more. A true development, he says, is “those antecedents and something besides them”: “an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects.” The word is his. The question is which additions grew from the root and which were grafted on. Growth is good. The body “grows with a growth that is from God,” and Paul sets that growth against “human precepts and teachings” (Col 2:19, 22). Vincent drew the line in the same place: the faith may be “enlarged in itself” but not “transformed into something else,” and a body whose limbs are “increased” becomes “either a wreck or a monster” (Commonitory 23). A graft is a cutting from another tree. It can take, draw on the root and look native for centuries, but it bears its own fruit, and it leaves a seam. Each addition on this line is a seam with a date: something no apostolic writing commands or describes, whose first clear witness can be dated, often resisted when it first appeared, and now treated as binding or as the normal shape of the church. Development explains that the tree changed. It cannot by itself tell growth from a graft, because every graft claims to be growth. Newman offers seven notes to tell the two apart, preservation of type, continuity of principles and the rest; each is applied by the church whose developments are in question, and his sixth, “conservative action upon its past,” is the one the record tests. A development that corrects what the earliest readers held is, on his own terms, a corruption. The record can show which is which, because it has the dates. Paul does use grafting for God’s work (Rom 11:17–24). His graft adds believers to the tree. It never adds to the root: “it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.” Rome itself declines the shelter for the papacy. Vatican I: the Spirit was promised to Peter’s successors “not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles” (Pastor Aeternus 4). On Rome’s own account the papal office is in the deposit or it is nowhere, and 440, 1075 and 1870 are where that account meets the record. 2. “Some of what the apostles handed down was never written. Basil lists it: facing east, the sign of the cross, the words at the cup, triple immersion.” (Orthodox) Basil’s list is this line’s list. Facing east is first seen around 197 (Tertullian, Apology 16), the sign of the cross around 211 (The Crown 3), and the Didache 7 allows pouring beside immersion. Basil calls them “the tradition of the apostles,” but names no apostle, no text and no chain for any of them; he argues from their being kept. And he draws the distinction himself: the teaching is “proclaimed,” these customs are “observed in silence.” This page keeps his distinction and places the burden where he leaves it. He needed the argument for one thing, the doxology “with the Spirit,” to defend the Spirit’s deity. The page counts that as recognition from Acts 5:3–4 and 1 Corinthians 2:10–11, with no unwritten tradition required. His conclusion stands without his method. Nothing here asks anyone to give up a custom Basil names. It asks that none of them be made a condition of communion, and he does not make them one. 3. “The Church gave you the Bible. If you trust her for the canon, trust her for the rest.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Recognizing a book as apostolic is this page’s own test applied, not an exception to it. And the fathers who listed the books ranked the books above themselves. Athanasius, giving the first list that matches the New Testament (367): “In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these.” Paul says Israel was “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom 3:2). That did not make the later tradition of the elders binding (Mark 7:8). A keeper of the writings stands under them. 4. “By what authority do you judge the church? Private judgment produced thousands of denominations.” (Catholic, Orthodox) The page asks no one to accept its author’s authority. It gives dates and documents, most of them from the traditions’ own sources and scholars, and anyone can check them. The Protestant line carries its own additions, the splintering included (1529). And the rule says what would refute an entry: an apostolic text that commands or describes the practice, a source earlier than the first witness that shows it already received, or a tradition that neither binds it nor replaced an apostolic practice with it. Show any one, and the page is wrong at that date. A living authority does not remove the judgment. One still has to decide which body is that authority, and Rome, the Orthodox and the Oriental churches have each anathematized the others while claiming the same Spirit. 5. “The Spirit guides the church into all truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail.” The promise in John is made to the apostles at the table, and it is tied to their testimony: the Spirit will “bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). That the church will not perish does not mean her practice cannot go wrong. The seven churches of Revelation 2–3 are true churches under rebuke. Every tradition already believes that large parts of the church added wrongly for centuries. The East says it of Rome, and Rome and the East both say it of the Protestants. The only open question is which additions. 6. “Silence is not prohibition. The New Testament forbids neither buildings nor vestments nor bishops.” Agreed, and the page sorts its entries accordingly. Some are optional forms that became obligatory, and there the problem is the obligation. Some displaced something the apostles did set in place: the meal, plural elders, each one taking part. Some were made normative with no text and no penalty, such as offerings for the dead. A few run against a text, such as forbidding marriage or compelling gifts. Each date says which kind it is: Required, Replaced, Made normative, Contradicted. Nor is every condition an addition. Conditions the witness itself contains are not: baptism on belief (Acts 2:38, 41), confessing Jesus as Lord (Rom 10:9), repentance (Acts 2:38), the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42), the assembly’s discipline (1 Cor 5:4–5). An optional form held as optional is not one either. The rule bites on obligation, on displacement, and on contradiction, and on nothing else. 7. “This is primitivism. The first-century church was a mess. Look at Corinth.” (Protestant) It was, and the apostles said so. The starting point of the line is called a pattern, not a blueprint, for that reason. The claim is modest: a later form is not wrong for being later, but it needs a warrant other than its age, and without one it cannot be made a condition of communion. 7 NOT SETTLED “Apostolic” describes a few decades across several regions, not one uniform church order. Each date is the first clear witness. Earlier unrecorded practice is always possible. Where it is claimed, the burden of proof lies with the claim. Some early additions, above all the single bishop around 110, may have begun while an apostle still lived. That is argued under its date. 8 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 211 · Tertullian, The Crown 4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0304.htm - c. 375 · Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27.66 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf208.vii.xxviii.html - before 420 · Jerome, Letter 146 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm - 434 · Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3506.htm - c. 439 · Socrates, Church History 5.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm - 1415 · Council of Constance, session 13 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum16.htm - 1546 · Council of Trent, session 4 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/fourth-session.htm - 1845 · John Henry Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Introduction 19–21 — https://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/introduction.html - 1965 · Vatican II, Dei Verbum 8 and 10 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html - voice · Yves Congar OP, Tradition and Traditions (1960–63) — https://archive.org/details/traditiontraditi0000cong - voice · Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966) — https://archive.org/details/bwb_T5-ALR-983 - voice · Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (1937) — https://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/florovsky_ways_chap2.html - voice · Paul Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (2nd ed. 2002) — https://archive.org/details/searchfororigins0000brad_n1g5_2nded - voice · Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1 (1971) — https://archive.org/details/emergenceofcatho00peli ############################################################################## THE THREE PARTINGS: 451, 1054, 1517 ############################################################################## ============================================================================== 451 · Chalcedon: the line splits 1 WHAT HAPPENED In 451 the Council of Chalcedon confessed Christ “in two natures.” Most of Egypt and much of Syria, later Armenia and Ethiopia, refused the wording as a betrayal of Cyril of Alexandria’s “one incarnate nature of God the Word.” Two communions resulted and have lasted to this day. Before this point the page shows one line under the name “The Undivided Church.” The name is a convenience. It means the main body that Catholics, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Protestants all descend from. What divided them was a narrowing. Before 451 two ways of speaking lived side by side in one communion: in 433 Cyril accepted the Antiochenes’ confession that “there became a union of two natures,” and kept his own “one incarnate nature.” At Chalcedon the draft definition said Christ is “from two natures,” wording Cyril’s followers could accept. It was changed to “in two natures,” and that wording was made the condition of communion. Neither formula is in the text, and the joint commissions of 1989–90 say both families confess the same Christ. If both are orthodox, enforcing one of them was a narrowing. That is what this parting marks; 451 is not counted among the recognitions. NOT CLAIMED That the church before 451 was united in fact. Novatianists, Donatists, Arian Goths and the Church of the East were already outside this communion. 2 THE RECORD c. 110 Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8 The first use of the name: “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” It means the whole church, as against one local gathering. It is not yet the name of one communion among others. 431 Council of Ephesus The church in the Persian empire does not receive it and goes its own way as the Church of the East. It is not shown on this page. 433 The Formula of Reunion Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch make peace after Ephesus. Cyril signs a confession that says “there became a union of two natures,” while he goes on teaching “one incarnate nature of God the Word.” Both vocabularies stand in one communion for eighteen years. 451 Chalcedon, the fifth session The draft definition says Christ is “from two natures.” The Roman legates and others object, a committee revises it, and the definition as signed says “in two natures.” The change is the line the Cyrillian churches would not cross. 451 Council of Chalcedon About 520 bishops. Dioscorus of Alexandria is deposed. The definition confesses one Christ in two natures “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” 482–519 The Henotikon and the Acacian schism An emperor’s formula to reconcile the sides sets Rome and Constantinople out of communion with each other for thirty-five years. c. 543 Jacob Baradaeus A separate non-Chalcedonian hierarchy is ordained, six years after the emperor installed a Chalcedonian patriarch in Alexandria. See 537–543. 1989–90 Joint Commission of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches Agreed statements declare that both families have kept the same faith in Christ, each in its own terms. 3 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The formula the Oriental churches defended, “one incarnate nature of God the Word,” came to Cyril from a letter he believed Athanasius had written. Scholars since the sixth century have traced that letter to the school of Apollinaris, whose teaching both sides condemn. Cyril gave the words an orthodox sense, and the churches that followed him confess Christ fully God and fully human. But the slogan that divided the East rested on a misattributed text. The other half of the problem was translation. Physis, hypostasis and their Syriac and Latin counterparts did not carry the same meaning in Alexandria, Antioch and Rome. 4 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORIENTAL ORTH. V. C. Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) An Indian Orthodox theologian. The non-Chalcedonians were never Eutychians, and the council condemned a position they did not hold. ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (1969) Grants that Cyril’s followers and Chalcedon’s defenders meant the same Christ, and that politics and vocabulary did much of the dividing. CATHOLIC Aloys Grillmeier SJ, Christ in Christian Tradition (1965–) The standard history. Documents the Apollinarian origin of the “one nature” formula and the orthodox intent of those who used it. HISTORIAN W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (1972) Argues the schism rested on real religious conviction, not a quarrel over words or disguised nationalism. The emperors failed, by persuasion and coercion in turn, to win back Chalcedon’s opponents, and a rival hierarchy grew up in the sixth century. 5 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Chalcedon was simply truth against heresy. (Chalcedonian) Chalcedon betrayed Cyril.” (Oriental Orth.) Joint commissions of both families have now stated that the other confesses the same Christ. If that is right, the division itself is the accretion: fifteen centuries of separate bishops over words. 2. “‘In two natures’ was needed to exclude Eutyches, who said ‘from two natures’ and meant one nature after the union.” The target was real, and the text excludes it: Christ “had to be made like his brothers in every respect” (Heb 2:17). It is also true that Dioscorus had restored Eutyches at Ephesus in 449, which is part of why Chalcedon pressed so hard. But the Oriental Orthodox condemn Eutyches too; Timothy Aelurus, the non-Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria, wrote against him within a few years of the council. The formula excluded far more than the error it aimed at: it shut out the Cyrillian way of speaking that the church had held in communion since 433. That excess is the narrowing. 3. “There never was an undivided church.” Correct, and the note above says so. The name marks the last point at which the four families on this page were one body. 6 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm - 431 · Council of Ephesus — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10755a.htm - 433 · The Formula of Reunion — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xi.v.html - 451 · Chalcedon, the fifth session — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Price+Gaddis+The+Acts+of+the+Council+of+Chalcedon - 451 · Council of Chalcedon — https://www.bcponline.org/Misc/histdocs.htm - 482–519 · The Henotikon and the Acacian schism — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/evagrius_3_book3.htm - c. 543 · Jacob Baradaeus — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Menze+Justinian+and+the+Making+of+the+Syrian+Orthodox+Church - 1989–90 · Joint Commission of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches — https://dss-syriacpatriarchate.org/second-agreed-statement-1990/?lang=en - voice · V. C. Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3ACouncil+of+Chalcedon+re-examined+au%3ASamuel - voice · John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (1969) — https://archive.org/details/christineasternc0000meye - voice · Aloys Grillmeier SJ, Christ in Christian Tradition (1965–) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Grillmeier+Christ+in+Christian+Tradition - voice · W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (1972) — https://www.jamesclarke.co/product/rise-of-the-monophysite-movement-the/ ============================================================================== 1054 · East and West part 1 WHAT HAPPENED Latin West and Greek East had been one communion with two languages, two sets of customs and growing mistrust. On 16 July 1054 a papal legate laid a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia, and the patriarch answered in kind. The break became permanent only later, above all after Western crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204. From here back, the page shows one line for both. What each side added after the parting stays on its own line after this point. NOT CLAIMED That 1054 was the moment of division, or that either side alone caused it. 2 THE RECORD 589 · 1014 The filioque A Spanish council at Toledo adds “and the Son” to the creed of 381. Rome itself resists for centuries: Leo III, around 810, has the creed displayed without the phrase. It enters the Roman Mass in 1014. This is a Western addition to an ecumenical text. It has its own entry at 589–1014. 863–867 The Photian dispute Rome and Constantinople break over the appointment of Photius and over mission in Bulgaria, then reconcile. Francis Dvornik showed that the later “second Photian schism” never happened (The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948). 1054 Humbert’s bull Charges the Greeks, among other things, with having removed the filioque from the creed. The legate had the history backwards. Pope Leo IX, who sent him, had died three months earlier. 1204 Fourth Crusade Constantinople is sacked and a Latin patriarch installed. For ordinary Greeks this, not 1054, is the break. 1274 · 1439 Lyon II and Florence Two reunions are agreed by emperors under military pressure. Both are rejected at home. 1965 Paul VI and Athenagoras The excommunications of 1054 are removed “from memory and from the midst of the Church” and committed “to oblivion.” Communion is not restored. 3 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP, After Nine Hundred Years (1954) The schism was an “estrangement” that hardened over centuries, with fault on both sides. CATHOLIC Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism (1948) A Catholic priest who cleared Photius of the charges Western tradition had laid on him. ORTHODOX A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque (2010) An Orthodox historian. The two sides read different fathers in different languages and for a long time did not know it. HISTORIAN Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism (1955) Politics, the crusades and popular hatred did what the theologians’ quarrel alone could not. 4 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “We are the church that stayed. The other side left.” Each side says it, and each can list what the other added. This page lists both sets and takes neither chair. 2. “The filioque is a small matter of wording.” Perhaps. But one half of the church altered the common creed without the other, and then accused the other half of tampering. As an example of how a late addition comes to be mistaken for the original, it is hard to better. 5 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 589 · 1014 · The filioque — https://www.usccb.org/resources/filioque-a-church-dividing-issue.pdf - 863–867 · The Photian dispute — https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/religion/religion-general-interest/photian-schism-history-and-legend - 1054 · Humbert’s bull — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Will+Acta+et+scripta+quae+de+controversiis+ecclesiae+Graecae+et+Latinae - 1204 · Fourth Crusade — https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/choniates1.asp - 1274 · 1439 · Lyon II and Florence — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum14.htm - 1965 · Paul VI and Athenagoras — https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/speeches/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19651207_common-declaration.html - voice · Yves Congar OP, After Nine Hundred Years (1954) — https://archive.org/details/afterninehundred027313mbp - voice · Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism (1948) — https://archive.org/details/photianschismhis0000fran - voice · A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque (2010) — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-filioque-9780195372045 - voice · Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism (1955) — https://archive.org/details/easternschismstu0000runc ============================================================================== 1517 · The Reformation 1 WHAT HAPPENED Between 1517 and 1563 the Western church divided. The Reformers cut a set of additions they could show were late: indulgences and purgatory, the papal claims, required clerical celibacy, the withheld cup, the host adored, images venerated, the saints invoked. They kept others without re-examining them, and then added their own. The page’s judgment on the Reformation is the same as on every other date. It removed real accretions. It was a partial removal, carried out with the tools of the sixteenth century, and it left standing most of what the fourth and fifth centuries had built. NOT CLAIMED That the Reformers recovered the apostolic church, or that they did nothing but damage. Both claims fail on the record below. 2 THE RECORD 1517 Luther, Ninety-Five Theses A call to debate indulgences, dated 31 October. The Catholic historian Erwin Iserloh argued in 1961 (printed as The Theses Were Not Posted, 1968) that the theses were sent to the archbishop, not nailed to a door. Theses 1 and 2 argue that Christ’s “repent,” which the Latin Bible renders “do penance,” cannot mean the sacrament of penance. The next year Luther grounded the point in the Greek word metanoia. 1520–21 Exsurge Domine; Decet Romanum Pontificem Rome condemns forty-one propositions, then excommunicates Luther. 1525–27 Zurich The city council that reformed the Mass also ordered infants baptized on pain of banishment (January 1525), and in March 1526 made rebaptism a capital crime. Felix Manz, who kept baptizing adults, was drowned on 5 January 1527. 1529 Diet of Speyer Catholic and Lutheran estates agree on the death penalty for rebaptizers. The same diet gives “Protestant” its name. 1530 Augsburg Confession Claims to teach nothing that departs from Scripture, from the catholic church, or even from the Roman church as known from its writers. The Reformers appealed to the fathers as well as to the Bible. 1545–63 Council of Trent Rome answers by defining what had been disputed: tradition, the canon, justification, the sacrifice of the Mass, purgatory, images. 1573–81 Jeremias II of Constantinople to the Tübingen Lutherans The patriarch reads the Augsburg Confession in Greek and declines it, courteously. The East sides with neither Rome nor Wittenberg. 3 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Joseph Lortz, The Reformation in Germany (1939–40) Luther rejected a late medieval Catholicism that, on Lortz’s account, was itself no longer truly Catholic. A Catholic historian granting that the abuses were real. CATHOLIC Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation (2012) Scripture alone, without an agreed interpreter, produced an open-ended pluralism that no Reformer wanted. PROTESTANT Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (1963) The Reformation grew out of late medieval theology and carried a good deal of it forward. PROTESTANT William Estep, The Anabaptist Story (1963) The radicals asked for a church of the baptized and gathered, without the magistrate, and were killed by Protestants and Catholics alike. HISTORIAN Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (2003) Reads the Reformation as a quarrel inside Augustine’s legacy, in B. B. Warfield’s phrase the triumph of his doctrine of grace over his doctrine of the church. 4 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The Reformation recovered the gospel. Calling it imperfect insults it.” (Protestant) The page credits it with fourteen real removals, with Scripture and the cup returned to the people, and with worship in their own language. It also counts what stayed: Augustine’s inherited guilt, the compulsory tithe, the clause added to the creed, a state church with a sword, the audience facing one speaker. And it counts nine additions. A Protestant who holds Scripture above tradition has no reason to exempt Protestant tradition. 2. “The Reformers threw out fifteen centuries.” (Catholic, Orthodox) They cut less than is often said. The shared trunk of the line, from the single bishop to the church calendar, largely survived in Lutheran and Anglican churches. What they cut is, date for date, among the latest and best documented on the page. 3. “Why 1517 and not 1521, or 1530?” Custom. Nothing ended on one day. The break ran from the indulgence dispute to the close of Trent. 5 NOT SETTLED Whether the split was avoidable is argued by historians on every side. The Regensburg colloquy of 1541 came close to agreement on justification and failed on the Eucharist and on authority. 6 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 1517 · Luther, Ninety-Five Theses — https://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html - 1520–21 · Exsurge Domine; Decet Romanum Pontificem — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo10/l10exdom.htm - 1525–27 · Zurich — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.iii.xvii.html - 1529 · Diet of Speyer — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc7/hcc7.ii.viii.iv.html - 1530 · Augsburg Confession — https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/article-xxi/ - 1545–63 · Council of Trent — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/fourth-session.htm - 1573–81 · Jeremias II of Constantinople to the Tübingen Lutherans — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Mastrantonis+Augsburg+and+Constantinople+Jeremias+II - voice · Joseph Lortz, The Reformation in Germany (1939–40) — https://archive.org/details/reformationinger0001lort - voice · Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation (2012) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AUnintended+Reformation+au%3AGregory - voice · Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (1963) — https://archive.org/details/harvestofmedieva0000ober - voice · William Estep, The Anabaptist Story (1963) — https://archive.org/details/anabaptiststory0000will - voice · Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (2003) — https://archive.org/details/reformationeurop0000macc ############################################################################## THE 63 ENTRIES ############################################################################## ============================================================================== c. 110 · One bishop over the elders Address: https://additions.church/110 Addition · How it binds: Required, Replaced A single bishop stands above the elders. Nothing is to be done without him. First clear witness: Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8, c. 110. Footing: firm. Early, and from a martyr near the apostles. His bishop pastors one congregation in one city, and Rome has no single bishop for decades more. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY Around the year 110 an old man was marched in chains across what is now Turkey toward Rome, where he expected to be killed by wild animals in the arena. He was Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, and along the road he wrote seven letters to churches that sent delegates to meet him. The letters are the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament to come from a named author facing death, and they say one thing over and over: hold to your bishop. Do nothing without him. Where he is, there the church is. Baptism and the Supper are not lawful without him. What makes that striking is what came before. Paul had written to “the overseers and deacons” at Philippi, in the plural. Luke records Paul telling the elders of Ephesus that the Spirit had made them overseers, the same men under two names. The letter from Rome to Corinth some fifteen years before Ignatius knows bishops and deacons, plural, and no one above them. The Didache tells each church to appoint for itself bishops and deacons. Ignatius is not describing that arrangement. He is arguing for a different one, one man over the elders, because the churches he writes to are being pulled apart by teachers who said Christ had only seemed to have a body, and he wants a single point of unity. He never says the apostles set it up. The arrangement spread fast. By the year 200 it was nearly everywhere, and two centuries after that Jerome could still write that it rested on custom, not on the Lord’s command. Every church on this page carries it today, whether the man at the top is called bishop, patriarch, pope or senior pastor. 2 THE CLAIM In the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, written on his way to martyrdom around 110, each church in Asia has one bishop, with a council of presbyters and with deacons beneath him. Nothing is to be done without him: no baptism, no Eucharist, no love feast. This is the first witness to a threefold ministry, and it is the oldest addition on the line. The New Testament, and other writings of Ignatius’s own decade, know churches led by a body of elders who are also called overseers. NOT CLAIMED That Ignatius was a corrupter. He was a martyr and may have known apostles. Nor that one elder taking the lead is wrong, which probably happened from the start. What is dated here is a separate and higher office without which nothing is lawful. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 20:17, 28 The elders of Ephesus are the overseers of Ephesus. Phil 1:1 One church, several overseers: “with the overseers and deacons.” Titus 1:5, 7 “Appoint elders in every town … For an overseer … must be above reproach.” The two words name one office. 1 Tim 4:14; 5:17 “The council of elders laid their hands on you.” Among the elders some “labor in preaching and teaching.” 1 Pet 5:1 An apostle places himself among them: “a fellow elder.” 3 John 9 The New Testament’s one rebuke of a man who “likes to put himself first” in a church: Diotrephes. What office he held is not said. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Jewish councils. A synagogue was governed by its elders, with a presiding officer and an attendant. That is close to the pattern of presbyters, a president and deacons. A Jewish single overseer. The Damascus Document from the Dead Sea Scrolls gives each camp of the sect one overseer, the mebaqqer, who teaches the members, examines newcomers and cares for them as a shepherd cares for his flock. A single overseer was a real Jewish option in the first century. The apostolic churches, as far as the texts show, did not take it. The householder. A church that met in a home had a natural head in its host, and episkopos was an ordinary Greek title for a supervisor or treasurer. Alistair Stewart argues (The Original Bishops, 2014) that each house church had one such overseer from the beginning, and that the “presbyters” of a city were these men meeting together. On his reading the new thing in Ignatius is one overseer for a whole city. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 110 Polycarp, To the Philippians, prescript; 5–6 Written to Philippi just after Ignatius had passed through, in the name of “Polycarp and the presbyters with him.” It addresses the deacons and presbyters of Philippi and knows no bishop there. The oldest addition on the line was not yet universal in its own decade. c. 96 1 Clement 42, 44 The apostles appointed “bishops and deacons,” plural, in each place, and the dispute at Corinth is about presbyters deposed by the congregation. Rome writes as a church, and names no bishop of its own. 6 THE RECORD c. 96 1 Clement 44 At Corinth the leaders are presbyters, in the plural, and their office is called oversight. c. 100 Didache 10.7; 15.1 “Appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord.” The church appoints its own overseers, in the plural, and the prophets give thanks at the table: “permit the prophets to make Thanksgiving as much as they desire.” Its date is debated. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8 “See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father.” “It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast.” c. 110 Ignatius, To the Magnesians 6–7 “Your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles.” So “neither do anything without the bishop and presbyters.” c. 110 Polycarp, To the Philippians Written soon after Ignatius’s letters, by the bishop he had just addressed (P. N. Harrison, Polycarp’s Two Epistles to the Philippians, 1936, argued that most of it is some decades later). It opens “Polycarp, and the presbyters with him,” tells the Philippians to obey their presbyters and deacons, and mentions no bishop at Philippi. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Romans The one letter in which he says nothing about a bishop of the church he is writing to. c. 140 Shepherd of Hermas At Rome “the presbyters who preside over the church” are still plural, and Hermas rebukes those who quarrel over the first seats. c. 190 Irenaeus to Victor, in Eusebius 5.24 Calls the earlier leaders of the Roman church “the presbyters before Soter, who presided over the church.” before 420 Jerome, Letter 146 “The apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops.” Later “one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest … to remedy schism.” At Alexandria, down to the middle of the third century, “the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves.” And: “what function, excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter?” 1563 Trent, session 23, canons 6–7 Anathema on anyone who denies that there is in the church a hierarchy instituted by divine ordinance, or that bishops are superior to priests. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Later meanings read back. Once “bishop” and “presbyter” named two ranks, the New Testament texts were read accordingly. Timothy and Titus became bishops, and the angels of the seven churches became bishops. Philippians 1:1, with several bishops in one town, became a puzzle. Chrysostom solves it by explaining that in those days presbyters were called bishops. What Ignatius does not say. He never claims that the apostles instituted the single bishop, and he never appeals to a succession. His reasons are symbolic: the bishop stands for God the Father, and the presbyters for the apostles. In his own scheme the apostles’ place belongs to the body of elders. An expanded Ignatius. For over a thousand years the church read his letters in a longer form, reworked in the fourth century, with additional letters that are not his. That version strengthened his statements about hierarchy. The shorter, genuine form was identified by James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, in 1644, though he doubted one of the seven letters. The seven were established by Theodor Zahn (Ignatius von Antiochien, 1873) and J. B. Lightfoot (The Apostolic Fathers, Part II: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, 1885; 2nd ed. 1889). 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ANGLICAN J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry” (1868) A bishop of Durham and the editor of Ignatius. The episcopate grew out of the presbyterate when one presbyter was raised to preside. It first appears in Asia Minor, and Lightfoot ties it to John’s sanction. It did not descend from the apostolate. CATHOLIC Francis Sullivan SJ; Raymond Brown SS; Eamon Duffy Three Catholic scholars who accept that the single bishop is a development of the second century and reached Rome late. ORTHODOX John Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church (1965) The strongest defense. One bishop presiding at the one Eucharist of each city is the church’s original and essential structure, and Ignatius describes what the church is. ANGLICAN Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops (2014) Single overseers of house churches are original. A single bishop over all the Christians of a city is the innovation. HISTORIAN Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch (2007) Ignatius was pressing a new model on churches that did not all have it, and drew his imagery from the civic and religious processions of the Greek cities. CHURCH FATHERS Jerome, Commentary on Titus 1:5 Before factions arose, he writes, the churches were governed by a common council of presbyters. Bishops should know that they are above presbyters by custom more than by any arrangement of the Lord. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Ignatius was taught by the apostles. He hands on what they set up.” He may have known apostles, though the evidence is late. He never says that they set up the office, and that is an argument he could hardly have left unused. He does say that the bishops settled everywhere are so “by the will of Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 3.2), a claim about his own day that Polycarp’s letter to Philippi already contradicts; a claim of Christ’s will is not a claim of apostolic institution, and the institution is the thing to be shown. Polycarp writing to Philippi, Clement and Hermas at Rome, and the Didache show the older arrangement still in place in his own generation. 2. “John appointed bishops in Asia.” This is the best case, and J. B. Lightfoot thought it likely. If it is true, a presiding elder in some churches of one region goes back to an apostle’s old age. It still falls short of a rule for all churches. And the bishop it gives is the pastor of one town’s congregation, with his fellow elders around him. 3. “A group of equals does not work. Someone always leads.” Usually someone does, and Paul recognizes elders who labor in teaching. The page has no quarrel with a presiding elder. It marks the point at which he became a distinct order, and baptism and the Supper became unlawful without him. 4. “It was universal by 200, and no one objected. It must be apostolic.” It did spread fast. But “no one objected” is the wrong test; “everyone had it” is the claim, and it was not so. Rome’s presbyters still presided about 140 (Hermas), Irenaeus still calls Rome’s early leaders presbyters, Alexandria’s presbyters made their own bishop into the third century (Jerome), and Ignatius argues for the office with a force no one spends on what everyone already has. The objections that survive are faint and they are there: Hermas on the scramble for first seats, and Jerome’s plain statement two centuries later that the arrangement rests on custom. 5. “Timothy and Titus were the first bishops of Ephesus and Crete.” So Eusebius records (Church History 3.4), and later copyists added the same titles in notes at the end of the letters. In the letters they are Paul’s traveling delegates, sent and recalled: “Do your best to come to me soon” (2 Tim 4:9); “do your best to come to me at Nicopolis” (Titus 3:12). Titus is left in Crete to “appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5). When Paul takes leave of the elders of Ephesus, Timothy is traveling with him (Acts 20:4), and the elders are left to lead. 6. “James was bishop of Jerusalem while the apostles lived.” He is the earliest leader known to preside in one city, and that should be granted. The text never calls him a bishop, and when Paul visits him “all the elders were present” (Acts 21:18). His standing came from being the Lord’s brother and a witness of the resurrection (Gal 1:19; 1 Cor 15:7). His successor, by Eusebius’s account, was Symeon, “a cousin, as they say, of the Saviour” (Church History 3.11). Jerusalem was a special case, not a template. 7. “One table, and one man to give thanks at it. The bishop is the president of the one Eucharist from the start.” (Orthodox) In the apostolic texts no one man gives thanks at the table: Paul’s assembly has “each one” bringing something (1 Cor 14:26), the Didache leaves the thanksgiving to the prophets “as much as they desire” (10.7), and the first single presider named is Justin’s “president” in 155, who is not called bishop. One table is apostolic (1 Cor 10:17); one man as its condition is not. 8. “This is a Catholic and Orthodox matter.” (Protestant) A senior pastor over a board of elders or deacons has the shape of Ignatius’s bishop, if not his claim; Presbyterian polity restored the plural eldership in its books and has a single minister in practice; and the Anglican line binds the office outright, since no one has ministered in it without a bishop’s hands since 1662. The entry shows all four traditions carrying this addition. 9. “You cite Ignatius as a witness to the Son’s deity, and date him here as the start of an addition. You use him when he agrees with you.” The text decides which, not Ignatius. John 1 contains the Son’s deity, so when Ignatius calls him “God existing in flesh” he is evidence that the text was received as it reads. Acts 20:17 and 28, Philippians 1:1 and Titus 1:5–7 contain plural elders who are the overseers, and no single bishop over them, so when Ignatius sets one man above the elders he is evidence of something introduced. The page’s rule is the same in both cases: the text first, and the earliest readers as evidence of what the text was taken to say. 10 NOT SETTLED A minority of scholars date the letters of Ignatius a generation later, between 140 and 170. If they are right, the first witness to the single bishop moves later too. Whether John had a hand in the Asian arrangement cannot be shown. Stewart’s account of the original overseers remains under discussion. Ignatius is writing to churches troubled by teachers who denied that Christ had come in real flesh and who held their own meetings. His remedy is unity around one man. The force with which he argues suggests that not everyone was yet persuaded. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 110 · Polycarp, To the Philippians, prescript; 5–6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm - c. 96 · 1 Clement 42, 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 96 · 1 Clement 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 100 · Didache 10.7; 15.1 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Magnesians 6–7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0105.htm - c. 110 · Polycarp, To the Philippians — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Romans — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0107.htm - c. 140 · Shepherd of Hermas — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf02.ii.ii.ii.html - c. 190 · Irenaeus to Victor, in Eusebius 5.24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html - before 420 · Jerome, Letter 146 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm - 1563 · Trent, session 23, canons 6–7 — https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct23.html - voice · J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry” (1868) — https://archive.org/details/christianministr00lighrich - voice · Francis Sullivan SJ; Raymond Brown SS; Eamon Duffy — https://archive.org/details/fromapostlestobi0000fran - voice · John Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church (1965) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Zizioulas+Eucharist+Bishop+Church+unity+first+three+centuries - voice · Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops (2014) — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-original-bishops/345491 - voice · Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch (2007) — https://archive.org/details/ignatiusofantioc0000bren - voice · Jerome, Commentary on Titus 1:5 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Jerome+Commentaries+on+Galatians+Titus+and+Philemon+Scheck ============================================================================== c. 155 · The meal thins to a rite Address: https://additions.church/155 Addition · How it binds: Replaced Sunday is readings, an address by the one presiding, prayers, then bread and cup. No shared meal is described. First clear witness: Justin Martyr, First Apology 65–67, c. 155. Footing: qualified. Meal and Eucharist part slowly and unevenly. Tertullian still describes a supper around 197. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY In the fifties, when Paul wrote to Corinth, the Lord’s Supper was a supper. His complaint was that some of the church were eating their own meal early and getting drunk while the poor went hungry, and his remedy was “wait for one another.” Luke says the first believers broke bread in their homes and ate with glad hearts. Jude mentions “love feasts.” A Roman governor named Pliny, writing to the emperor around 112, reports that the Christians of his province met before dawn to sing to Christ and then met again later to share ordinary food, a second meeting they had given up after he banned private clubs. Forty years after Pliny, a philosopher in Rome named Justin wrote an open letter to the emperor defending the Christians, and described their Sunday meeting so that outsiders would see nothing shameful in it. Readings, a talk by the one presiding, prayers, then bread and a cup of wine mixed with water, a thanksgiving, and a portion for each person present, with some carried to the absent. A collection for widows and orphans. No meal. The supper had become a token, a mouthful of bread and a sip, and the shared meal had moved elsewhere, where it would survive for a while as a charity dinner before being banned from the building altogether. Justin is not complaining. He is describing what his church did, and he is the first witness to it. The entry dates the change, not Justin, and the record shows what was lost when the table became a rite. 2 THE CLAIM Justin Martyr’s account from Rome, written about 155, is the first detailed Christian description of a Sunday gathering after the apostles. The memoirs of the apostles or the prophets are read. The one presiding gives an address. All stand and pray. Bread and wine mixed with water are brought, and the presider gives thanks “according to his ability.” The people answer Amen. Deacons distribute to those present and carry a portion to the absent, and those who are able give for the poor. This is the outline of every later liturgy. Set beside 1 Corinthians 11:20–34 and 14:26–31, it lacks two things: the meal, and the contributions of the many. NOT CLAIMED That Justin’s church was unfaithful. Most of what he describes is apostolic: Scripture read aloud, teaching, common prayer, bread and cup, gifts for the needy, the first day of the week. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 11:33 “When you come together to eat, wait for one another.” 1 Cor 14:26, 29 “Each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation … Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.” Acts 20:7, 11 At Troas they gather to break bread. Paul talks with them, and they eat, and he converses with them “a long while, until daybreak.” Col 3:16 “Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” 1 Tim 4:13 “The public reading of Scripture … exhortation … teaching.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Synagogue and table. The Jewish synagogue service was readings, an exposition and prayers. A Jewish meal opened with a blessing over bread and closed with one over the cup, with the meal between them. The Supper was given inside the second, and the apostles’ gatherings joined the two: teaching, prayers and the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42; 20:7–11), the supper and then the contributions (1 Cor 11:20–34; 14:26). What the first outline of a service after the apostles keeps and drops is in the record at c. 155. Morning. Sunday was a working day, and slaves and laborers could gather only before dawn or after dark; the meeting at Troas runs past midnight (Acts 20:7–11). A governor’s edict and an emperor’s Sunday law later changed the hour, and both are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 112 Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96 Christians in Bithynia met before dawn to sing to Christ and met again later “to take food.” A generation after the apostles the assembly still had its meal, and gave it up only under the governor’s edict. 6 THE RECORD c. 55 1 Corinthians 11:20–34; 14:26–33 A supper, and contributions from many members, both regulated by Paul, and both what happens “when you come together” (1 Cor 11:20, 33; 14:26). That the contributions followed the supper is an inference, not a statement: at Troas Paul taught before the bread and after it (Acts 20:7, 11). c. 100 Didache 9–10 Thanksgivings over cup and bread within a meal. “Permit the prophets to make Thanksgiving as much as they desire.” c. 112 Pliny, Letters 10.96 The Christians of Bithynia meet before dawn to sing to Christ, and say that they gave up their common meal after the governor’s edict against associations. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 The president “offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen.” “A portion is sent by the deacons” to the absent. “They who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit.” c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 39 In Africa the supper continues, and after it each person is invited to sing to God from Scripture or from his own heart. c. 210 Tertullian, On the Soul 9 A woman in his congregation, one that by then leaned to the New Prophecy, receives visions during the service. Even there she reports them to the leaders afterward, when the people have been dismissed. c. 215–350 The “Apostolic Tradition” Supplies a model thanksgiving prayer and adds that the bishop need not use these words. He may pray according to his ability, provided the prayer is sound. 321 Constantine’s Sunday law Sunday becomes a rest day for courts and towns (Code of Justinian 3.12.2). Until then it had been a working day, and the gathering had to fit around it. 393–407 Councils of Hippo and Carthage No one is to use prayers at the altar that have not been examined and approved. Free prayer by the presider is curbed in Africa: only approved texts are to be used. c. 380–600 Fixed liturgies The complete written rites appear: the Apostolic Constitutions, the liturgies under the names of Basil and Chrysostom, the Roman canon. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Reading Paul through Justin. Because Justin describes no meal, later readers took it that the Lord’s Supper had never been one, and read 1 Corinthians 11:20–34 as a rite that the Corinthians had spoiled by adding food to it. Paul’s text has the order the other way around. The presider’s title. In translations and in later citations Justin’s “president” becomes the bishop or the priest. The functional word he chose was replaced by titles he did not use. Justin’s outline. The first half of Justin’s service is the synagogue’s: readings, an exposition, prayers. The second half is the opening and closing blessings of a Jewish meal, over bread and over cup, with the meal between them gone. The form is two Jewish practices set one after the other. His word for the one who presides is proestōs, a term used for the head of any association. He does not say bishop, and he does not say priest. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ANGLICAN Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) Justin shows the classical shape already complete: a service of the word, then the taking, blessing, breaking and giving. Dix regards the core as apostolic. CATHOLIC Josef Jungmann SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite (1948) In Justin the Mass is present in all its essentials. CATHOLIC Allan Bouley OSB, From Freedom to Formula (1981) The eucharistic prayer was improvised within a known pattern until the fourth century and was then fixed in writing. ANGLICAN Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship (2014) Justin is one witness, in one city, writing for outsiders. Meals continued elsewhere for generations. PROTESTANT John Calvin, The Form of Prayers (1542) Titled “according to the custom of the ancient church.” Its Sunday service keeps the ancient shape Justin describes, readings, sermon and prayers, but without his weekly bread and cup. Calvin asked for the Supper every week (Institutes 4.17.43–46) and the Geneva council refused him; the shape without the table was the magistrate’s choice, and the line kept it. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Justin proves that the liturgy is second-century and essentially apostolic.” He proves that the order of word and then table existed at Rome by 155. He also shows no fixed text, no priest, everyone receiving, and giving that is voluntary. And he is writing a hundred years after Paul. 2. “He may simply not mention the meal.” That is possible, and several historians think so. If they are right, this entry belongs later, not earlier, and it is marked qualified for that reason. But Pliny’s Christians had already given up the meal under an edict forty years earlier, and what Justin describes is sent in portions to the absent (67), which is done with a rite and not with a supper. 3. “Worship needs a set order. Paul says so.” He does, and his order has several speakers in turn. In Justin one man presides and one man instructs. 4. “Prophecy and tongues (1 Cor 14:26–33) ceased with the apostles, and ordered worship took their place.” The Didache, Hermas and Irenaeus all speak of prophets active in the second-century churches. What changed after about 170 was the reaction to the Montanist movement, which made unscheduled speech suspect. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether meal and rite had separated at Rome by 155 is not settled. The date and origin of the “Apostolic Tradition” are now widely disputed. It can no longer be cited with confidence for Rome around 215. Justin is writing to the emperor to show that Christian meetings are orderly and harmless, and may describe only what an outsider needed to know. That caution cuts both ways: the meal may still have existed, and his outline cannot be assumed to be complete. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 112 · Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96 — https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny10b.html#96 - c. 55 · 1 Corinthians 11:20–34; 14:26–33 — https://bible.com/bible/59/1co.11.20-34.ESV - c. 100 · Didache 9–10 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 112 · Pliny, Letters 10.96 — https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny10b.html#96 - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxvii.html - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 39 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xxxix.html - c. 210 · Tertullian, On the Soul 9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0310.htm - c. 215–350 · The “Apostolic Tradition” — https://archive.org/details/apostolictraditi0000hipp - 321 · Constantine’s Sunday law — https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/books/book3/book%203-12rev.pdf - 393–407 · Councils of Hippo and Carthage — https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/214/2140627.htm - c. 380–600 · Fixed liturgies — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07158.htm - voice · Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) — https://archive.org/details/shapeofliturgy0000dixg - voice · Josef Jungmann SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite (1948) — https://archive.org/details/massofromanritei0001jose - voice · Allan Bouley OSB, From Freedom to Formula (1981) — https://archive.org/details/fromfreedomtofor0000boul - voice · Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship (2014) — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/ancient-christian-worship/272671 - voice · John Calvin, The Form of Prayers (1542) — https://archive.org/details/liturgiesofweste00thom ============================================================================== c. 100–160 · The church made Israel in place of the Jews Address: https://additions.church/160 Addition · How it binds: Contradicted The covenant is said to have passed from the Jewish people to the church, and then the name with it: the Christians are “the true spiritual Israel.” By the Middle Ages it is the standard teaching, and the Byzantine Holy Week hymns sing it. First clear witness: Epistle of Barnabas 4.6–8, c. 96–135: the covenant is “ours,” and “they lost it … for ever”; Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 11.5, c. 155–160. Footing: qualified. No council defined it; it runs against Paul’s instruction to the Gentile branch (Rom 11:18, 20). The sharing of Israel’s name in Christ is apostolic; the transfer away from the Jews is dated. Rome set that down in 1965 and kept the name; Protestants are divided. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Roman Catholic set it down in 1965 1 THE CLAIM Paul gives Israel’s marks to everyone in Christ: Gentile believers are “the circumcision,” “Abraham’s offspring,” fellow citizens in the household of God. In the same letters he denies that God has rejected his people and says their calling cannot be taken back. Within a few generations a different claim appears. The Epistle of Barnabas, written between about 96 and 135, says the covenant is “ours,” and that the Jews “lost it … for ever.” About 155–160 Justin Martyr takes the name as well, calling Christians “the true spiritual Israel” and “the true Israelitic race.” By the Middle Ages, in the words of a Vatican commission, this was “the standard theological foundation” of the church’s relation to the Jews, and the Byzantine hymns of Lent and Holy Week called the church the new Israel in place of the old. A sharing that Paul taught became a transfer that Paul denied, and it became the common teaching of the church in East and West. NOT CLAIMED That Gentile believers have no share in Israel’s name and promises, that the church is not the people of God, or that the fathers who wrote this were insincere. The sharing is apostolic, and the page does not date it. What is dated is the transfer away from the Jewish people: the claim that their covenant and their name passed to the church and that God was finished with them. No council defined it, and that is the entry’s weakest point. It enters the page as contradicting a text because Paul gives the Gentile church an instruction about exactly this, “do not be arrogant toward the branches … do not become proud, but fear” (Rom 11:18, 20), and the lines held the opposite in their teaching and sang it in their prescribed services 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Phil 3:3; Gal 3:29; Eph 2:19 “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God.” “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” The Gentiles are “fellow citizens with the saints.” The sharing. Gal 6:16 “Peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” Whether this names the whole church or Jewish believers is contested; it is the only verse that may use the name for the church. Rom 9:4 “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.” Present tense, of Jews who did not believe. Rom 11:1 “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” Rom 11:17–20 Some branches were “broken off because of their unbelief” and the Gentile, a wild shoot, was “grafted in among the others”: “do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.” “So do not become proud, but fear.” And “God has the power to graft them in again” (11:23). The instruction the later teaching runs against. Rom 11:28–29 “As regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Eph 2:14–16 Christ “has made us both one,” reconciling “us both to God in one body.” Two made one, not one put in the other’s place. 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT A people inside a people. The first churches were Jewish, and for a generation the question was whether Gentiles could belong without becoming Jews (Acts 15). Paul’s answer was that they belong as Gentiles, grafted into Israel’s tree. He never imagined a church without Jews in it, or Jews without a calling. A remnant within Israel. Jewish groups of the time, the community at Qumran among them, called themselves the faithful of the covenant within Israel, set against a faithless majority. None imagined a people from the nations taking Israel’s place. Paul’s remnant “chosen by grace” (Rom 11:5) is of that kind, and he sets it inside the hope for all Israel. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 1559 John Calvin, Institutes 4.16.14 Calvin grants a transfer, that Israel’s ingratitude “caused it to be transferred to the Gentiles,” and refuses that it is final: “in respect of the promise, the blessing of God still resides among them; and, as the apostle testifies, will never entirely depart from them.” 5 THE RECORD c. 96–135 Epistle of Barnabas 4.6–8; 14.1–4 Do not be like those “saying that our covenant remains to them also. Ours it is; but they lost it in this way for ever” (Lightfoot’s translation). The covenant was given, “but they themselves were not found worthy to receive it.” The church is not yet called Israel. c. 155–160 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 11.5; 135.3 Christians are “the true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham.” “We, who have been quarried out from the bowels of Christ, are the true Israelitic race.” The first time the name is given to the church outright (Peter Richardson, 1969). c. 160–170 Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 42–43 The type gives way to the reality: “the people lost their significance when the church came on the scene.” Middle Ages The Byzantine Triodion The hymns of Lent and Holy Week call the church the new Israel and express, in the words of a 2024 study, “the idea that the Church was replacing Israel.” They are sung in the churches of the Byzantine rite; the Romanian books of 1970 changed some of them. Middle Ages The standard teaching A Vatican commission’s 2015 summary: replacement theory “steadily gained favour until in the Middle Ages it represented the standard theological foundation of the relationship with Judaism.” 1964 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 9 Keeps the name: as Israel in the desert was “called the Church of God,” so “the new Israel” is called the Church of Christ. 1965 Vatican II, Nostra Aetate 4 Sets down the transfer: “Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.” God “does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues.” 1980 Synod of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland “We deny that the people Israel has been rejected by God or that it has been superseded by the church.” 2015 Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable 23, 33 The church is the new people of God “but not in the sense that the people of God of Israel has ceased to exist”; the covenant with Israel “has never been revoked.” The text says it is “not a magisterial document.” 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you” (Matt 21:43). The strongest text for a transfer. Matthew says who heard it: “the chief priests and the Pharisees … perceived that he was speaking about them” (21:45). It was read as a sentence on a people. “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (Rom 9:6). Paul is distinguishing within Israel, a remnant chosen by grace (11:5), on the way to saying that the rest are not cast off (11:11). The verse was read as if it ended the argument. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Peter Richardson, Israel in the Apostolic Church (1969) “The word ‘Israel’ is applied to the Christian Church for the first time by Justin Martyr c. A.D. 160.” Reads Gal 6:16 as not naming the Gentile church, a reading his critics contest. PROTESTANT N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013) The case against the entry from within: in Christ Israel’s story reaches its goal and the one family of Abraham is redefined around the Messiah; “all Israel” in Rom 11:26 is that whole family. Wright calls this fulfillment, not replacement, and Jewish believers belong to it on equal terms. PROTESTANT R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (1996) Traces supersessionism through the whole shape of Christian doctrine and argues it can be removed without loss to the gospel. CATHOLIC The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable (2015) “A replacement or supersession theology which sets against one another two separate entities, a Church of the Gentiles and the rejected Synagogue whose place it takes, is deprived of its foundations.” ORTHODOX Alexandru Ioniță, “Mapping the Jews in the Byzantine Hymnography” (2024) An Orthodox scholar reads the Triodion line by line, shows the replacement theme in it, and finds no pan-Orthodox revision, only a quiet one in the Romanian books of 1970. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The church is the new Israel. The fathers and the liturgy say so, and 1 Peter gives the church Israel’s own titles from Exodus 19.” (Orthodox) The entry grants the titles; Peter and Paul share them, and the page does not date the sharing. What it dates is the claim that the Jewish people lost them. Paul asks that question directly and answers it, “By no means!” (Rom 11:1). 2. “There is one people of God and one covenant of grace. Gentiles are grafted into Israel; that is not replacement.” (Protestant) Agreed, and that view is not dated here. Grafting in is Romans 11. Replacement is the further claim that the natural branches are cut off for good, which Calvin himself refused (Institutes 4.16.14) and Westminster never binds. 3. “Jesus said the kingdom would be taken away and given to a people producing its fruits (Matt 21:43).” He said it to the chief priests and Pharisees, and Matthew says they knew it (21:45). The same Gospel ends with Jewish apostles sent to the nations. Read as a verdict on the Jewish people for all time, the verse carries more than its setting does. 4. “Rome still calls the church the new Israel (Lumen Gentium 9).” (Catholic) It does, and the entry says so. Rome keeps the name and since 1965 denies the rejection, which is the distinction the entry draws. That is why Rome is shown as setting the entry down in 1965. 5. “Paul himself says the branches were broken off, and that ‘the son of the slave woman shall not inherit’ (Rom 11:17; Gal 4:30).” Some branches, “because of their unbelief,” and in the same breath “God has the power to graft them in again” (Rom 11:23). Galatians 4 is an allegory about two covenants, aimed at Gentiles being told to take on the law, not a sentence on the Jewish people. Neither text says the calling is withdrawn; Romans 11:29 says it cannot be. 6. “Two peoples, an earthly Israel and a heavenly church, is the true answer to replacement.” It answers the transfer by dividing the people, and it is dated on its own (c. 1830). Paul’s answer is neither: one body in which Jew and Gentile are made one (Eph 2:14–16), and Israel’s calling still standing (Rom 11:29). 9 NOT SETTLED Whether “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16) names the whole church or Jewish believers, and whether “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26) means the Jewish people or the whole people of God, are open questions among readers who hold every verse. The entry does not depend on either. The Oriental Orthodox carry the entry here by the inheritance before 451; their own service books have not been checked for it. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 1559 · John Calvin, Institutes 4.16.14 — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.vi.xvii.html - c. 96–135 · Epistle of Barnabas 4.6–8; 14.1–4 — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/barnabas-lightfoot.html - c. 155–160 · Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 11.5; 135.3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01289.htm - c. 160–170 · Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 42–43 — https://www.kerux.com/doc/0401A1.asp - Middle Ages · The Byzantine Triodion — https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/2/237 - Middle Ages · The standard teaching — https://cbcew.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/07/ebraismo-EN.pdf - 1964 · Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 9 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html - 1965 · Vatican II, Nostra Aetate 4 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html - 1980 · Synod of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland — https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/documents-and-statements/protestant-churches/eur/ecr1980 - 2015 · Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable 23, 33 — https://cbcew.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/07/ebraismo-EN.pdf - voice · Peter Richardson, Israel in the Apostolic Church (1969) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AIsrael+in+the+Apostolic+Church+au%3ARichardson - voice · N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APaul+and+the+Faithfulness+of+God+au%3AWright - voice · R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (1996) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+God+of+Israel+and+Christian+Theology+au%3ASoulen - voice · The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable (2015) — https://cbcew.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/07/ebraismo-EN.pdf - voice · Alexandru Ioniță, “Mapping the Jews in the Byzantine Hymnography” (2024) — https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/2/237 ============================================================================== c. 155–170 · 553 · The Jews made Christ’s killers Address: https://additions.church/170 Addition · How it binds: Contradicted The guilt for the cross is laid on the Jewish people as such, in every generation, and named the murder of God. From the sixth century the Byzantine Good Friday hymns sing it every year. First clear witness: Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 133.6, c. 155–160: “you slew the Christ, and do not repent of it”; Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 96, c. 160–170: “God has been murdered … by the right hand of Israel”; the Good Friday hymns of Mar Saba, c. 553–560. Footing: qualified. The New Testament names Judean leaders and a Jerusalem crowd (1 Thess 2:14–16; Matt 27:25). What is dated is the charge on a whole people for all time. No council defined it. Rome renounced it in 1965 (Nostra Aetate 4); the Byzantine hymns are still sung. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Roman Catholic set it down in 1965 1 THE CLAIM The apostles told the crowd in Jerusalem that they had crucified Jesus, and in the same sermons called them to repent and said they had acted in ignorance. Within a century the charge had moved from those hearers to a people. About 155–160 Justin tells Trypho, a Jew of his own day, “you slew the Christ, and do not repent of it.” About 160–170 Melito of Sardis, in a Passover sermon, makes it murder of God: “God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel.” In the sixth century the charge entered the hymns of Good Friday in the Byzantine rite, where four of the twelve name “the Jews” as the ones responsible. They are still sung. In the West it lived in preaching and Holy Week devotion rather than in a definition, and Rome’s own catechism of 1566 taught the opposite. The death Christ died “for our sins” was laid at the door of one people, in every generation. NOT CLAIMED That no one was responsible for the crucifixion, or that the New Testament does not name Judean leaders and a Jerusalem crowd. It does, and the entry says so. What is dated is the charge on the Jewish people as such, then and in every generation, and the name for it, the murder of God. No council defined it, and that is the entry’s weakest point. It enters the page as contradicting a text, because it is the very arrogance toward the branches that Paul forbids the Gentile church (Rom 11:18, 20), held in teaching and, in the East, sung in the prescribed services of Good Friday. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 2:23, 36, 38 “This Jesus … you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Then: “Repent and be baptized every one of you.” About three thousand did. Acts 3:17 “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.” Acts 4:27–28 The church prays that “both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,” gathered against Jesus “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” Every party at once. Luke 23:34 “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Some manuscripts omit the sentence.) 1 Cor 15:3; Rom 4:25 “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” He “was delivered up for our trespasses.” The apostolic account of whose sin put him there. Rom 11:18, 28 “Do not be arrogant toward the branches.” “As regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.” 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Insiders. Peter, Paul and the evangelists were Jews arguing with other Jews about Israel’s Messiah. When they said “you crucified him” they spoke as prophets of Israel had always spoken to Israel, in order to call it back (Isa 1). Words spoken inside a family read differently when strangers repeat them about the family. Who held the power to kill. Under Roman rule only the governor could put a man to death (John 18:31), crucifixion was a Roman punishment, and the high priest held office at Rome’s pleasure. The Gospels show the temple leadership handing Jesus over, a crowd in Jerusalem calling for his death, and Pilate condemning him. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 1566 The Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent), on the Creed, article 4 Rome’s own catechism places the guilt on sinners: “In this guilt are involved all those who fall frequently into sin.” “This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews,” since “if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.” 5 THE RECORD c. 155–160 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 16.4; 133.6 To a Jew of his own day: “you have slain the Just One, and His prophets before Him”; “because you slew the Christ, and do not repent of it.” c. 160–170 Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 73, 81, 96 “You killed the one who made you to live.” “O lawless Israel, why did you commit this extraordinary crime.” “The Lord is insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel.” 386–387 John Chrysostom, Against the Jews 6.2 Preached at Antioch to Christians attending the synagogue: “You did slay Christ, you did lift violent hands against the Master, you did spill his precious blood.” c. 553–560 The Good Friday hymns (idiomela) of the Byzantine rite Adopted at the monastery of Mar Saba under Justinian. “Four of the twelve explicitly name ‘the Jews’ as the lone group responsible,” and a fifth blames the “lawless.” They are sung every year (George Demacopoulos, 2022). 1566 The Roman Catechism Teaches the opposite of the charge: the guilt is ours, and “more enormous in us than in the Jews.” The catechism did not change the Good Friday liturgy. 1948 World Council of Churches, Amsterdam “Anti-Semitism is sin against God and man.” The churches “have helped to foster an image of the Jews as the sole enemies of Christ.” 1965 Vatican II, Nostra Aetate 4 “True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” 1970 The Romanian Triodion Drops or alters some of the Holy Week stanzas against the Jews without announcing it. No pan-Orthodox revision has followed. 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church 597–598 “Neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion,” and the Roman Catechism’s sentence on our greater guilt is quoted. 1994 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Declaration to the Jewish Community Rejects the “violent invective” of Luther’s later writings against the Jews and expresses “deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects.” 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt 27:25). A Jerusalem crowd, on one morning. Matthew’s readers had just heard Jesus call his blood the blood of the covenant “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). The sentence was read as a hereditary curse on a people. “The Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets” (1 Thess 2:14–16). Paul, a Jew, writes of the Judeans who persecuted the churches of Judea, which were Jewish churches. Most scholars hold the passage is his; a minority think it was added. Either way it names persecutors, and the same apostle writes Romans 11. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT JEWISH STUDIES Jules Isaac, Jesus and Israel (1948) A French Jewish historian, whose wife and daughter died at Auschwitz, traces the “teaching of contempt” from the fathers to the catechisms. He met John XXIII in 1960, and the meeting is counted among the beginnings of Nostra Aetate. HISTORIAN Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah (1994) A Catholic exegete weighs each Passion narrative’s account of who did what, and the uses later made of them. ORTHODOX George Demacopoulos, “The Origins of Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in the Hymns of Good Friday” (2022) An Orthodox historian dates the hymns to Justinian’s reign and counts which of them name “the Jews” alone. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 597–598 Sets the charge aside and quotes the Roman Catechism of 1566 on the guilt of sinners. PROTESTANT World Council of Churches, Amsterdam 1948 The first common Protestant and Orthodox statement after the war: the churches fostered “an image of the Jews as the sole enemies of Christ.” 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Paul himself says ‘the Jews … killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets’ (1 Thess 2:15), and Peter told ‘all the house of Israel’ that they crucified him (Acts 2:36). The charge is apostolic.” (Protestant) Both are Jews speaking to or about other Jews of their own time, and both speak in order that the hearers repent (Acts 2:38; 3:19). Peter adds that they acted in ignorance (3:17). Neither says the guilt passes to later generations, and Paul says those same people are beloved (Rom 11:28). The “wrath” of 1 Thess 2:16 falls on those who “drove us out” and hinder the gospel; it is not a sentence on a people for ever, as the same apostle’s Romans 9–11 makes plain. What the entry dates is the move from those hearers to a people in every age, and from killing the Messiah to murdering God. 2. “The crowd said, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ (Matt 27:25).” (Catholic) A crowd said it, and Rome now teaches that it binds no one later (Nostra Aetate 4; Catechism 597). The Roman Catechism of 1566 had already put the greater guilt on Christians who sin. 3. “Rome never taught the charge; its own catechism of 1566 put the guilt on sinners.” (Catholic) The catechism did, and the entry cites it as a witness against the charge. The charge lived in Western preaching and Holy Week devotion, which is what Nostra Aetate 4 corrected when it said the Passion “cannot be charged against all the Jews … nor against the Jews of today.” The page has no Western liturgical text for it, and its Western evidence is thinner than its Eastern. 4. “The Good Friday hymns are the church’s prayer from the sixth century, and ‘lawless’ in them means every sinner.” (Orthodox) Some lines can be read that way. Four of the twelve name “the Jews” alone, as an Orthodox historian has shown, and the Romanian books of 1970 quietly changed some stanzas. Age is what the page is measuring: the hymns are from the sixth century, not the first. 5. “Melito kept Passover by the Jewish calendar and is a saint. He cannot be an enemy of the Jews.” He kept the feast on their night, and still preached the charge on it. Holiness and a polemic can live in one sermon. The date of the charge stands either way. 9 NOT SETTLED When the Oriental Orthodox Holy Week services took up the charge, and in what words, is not established here; the entry rests for that line on the inheritance before 451. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 1566 · The Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent), on the Creed, article 4 — https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/trent - c. 155–160 · Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 16.4; 133.6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01289.htm - c. 160–170 · Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 73, 81, 96 — https://www.kerux.com/doc/0401A1.asp - 386–387 · John Chrysostom, Against the Jews 6.2 — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_06_homily6.htm - c. 553–560 · The Good Friday hymns (idiomela) of the Byzantine rite — https://www.jcrelations.net/article/the-origins-of-anti-jewish-rhetoric-in-the-hymns-of-good-friday.html - 1566 · The Roman Catechism — https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/trent - 1948 · World Council of Churches, Amsterdam — https://oikoumene.org/resources/documents/concerns-of-the-churches-the-christian-approach-to-the-jews - 1965 · Vatican II, Nostra Aetate 4 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html - 1970 · The Romanian Triodion — https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/2/237 - 1992 · Catechism of the Catholic Church 597–598 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1O.HTM - 1994 · Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Declaration to the Jewish Community — https://resources.elca.org/wp-content/uploads/Declaration_Of_The_ELCA_To_The_Jewish_Community.pdf - voice · Jules Isaac, Jesus and Israel (1948) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AJesus+and+Israel+au%3AIsaac - voice · Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah (1994) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Death+of+the+Messiah+au%3ABrown - voice · George Demacopoulos, “The Origins of Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in the Hymns of Good Friday” (2022) — https://www.jcrelations.net/article/the-origins-of-anti-jewish-rhetoric-in-the-hymns-of-good-friday.html - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 597–598 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1O.HTM - voice · World Council of Churches, Amsterdam 1948 — https://oikoumene.org/resources/documents/concerns-of-the-churches-the-christian-approach-to-the-jews ============================================================================== c. 180 · A pedigree of bishops Address: https://additions.church/180 Addition · How it binds: Required Lists of bishops traced back to apostles become the proof of true teaching. First clear witness: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3, c. 180. Footing: qualified. Irenaeus argues from public teaching against secret tradition, not from sacramental power passed by hands. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY Irenaeus was bishop of Lyons in Gaul around 180, and he had a problem. The Gnostic teachers of his day, the followers of Valentinus above all, claimed to hold a secret tradition handed down from the apostles to a chosen few, which explained what the public Scriptures really meant. Irenaeus wrote five books against them, and one of his best arguments was simple: the apostles founded churches in public, those churches have had public leaders in unbroken sequence ever since, and anyone can go and ask them what the apostles taught. He gave the list for Rome, from Linus, whom the apostles appointed, down to Eleutherus in his own day, twelve names. The list was a defence of public teaching against secret teaching, and it worked. But a list of names in a book is a different thing from a list of names as a credential, and that is what it became. Within a century the succession itself, rather than the teaching it guarded, was being treated as the thing that made a church a church and a minister a minister. Where the apostolic writings make the test the apostles’ teaching, held by whoever holds it, the later church made the test a pedigree. Rome, the East and the Orient still require the pedigree for a valid ministry. The Reformers set it down in 1517 and kept the teaching; the Anglican and Scandinavian Lutheran churches kept the line of bishops as well, and the Church of England has required a bishop’s hands for its ministers since 1662, which is why the Protestant line carries this entry in part. The record follows the list from Irenaeus’s argument to its use as a gate. 2 THE CLAIM Between about 160 and 200 the churches were contending with Gnostic teachers who claimed a secret tradition handed down from the apostles. Catholic writers answered with lists. In each church founded by an apostle, they said, one can name the leaders from that apostle to the present day, and all of them have taught the same doctrine in public. The list began as an argument about what had been taught. It became the basis of a larger claim, which the Catholic Catechism states in four parts. The apostles “left bishops as their successors” (77). The bishops “have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church,” in an office “exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops” (862). Only bishops “in the line of apostolic succession” validly ordain (1576). “Only validly ordained priests can preside at the Eucharist” (1411). Communities that have not kept “the valid Episcopate” are “not Churches in the proper sense” (Dominus Iesus 17). The Orthodox churches hold the bishop just as necessary, and place his succession within the faith and the eucharistic assembly of his church. The page dates the steps by which that claim was put together: a single bishop over the elders (the entry at c. 110), the list as the proof of teaching (c. 180), succession joined to a priestly grace (c. 225), the church located in the bishop (c. 250), and, in modern Catholic teaching, the line made the test of valid orders, of a valid Eucharist and of a church in the proper sense (1964–2000). The texts offered for the doctrine, read in their own setting, point elsewhere. Each is taken up below, and Matthew 16 in full at 440. NOT CLAIMED That the apostles left no provision for leaders after them, or that continuity of teaching does not matter. They did, and it does: they handed on their teaching, appointed plural elders to serve under Christ, and recognized them with the laying on of hands. Nor that the early names are invented, that Peter never reached Rome, or that churches holding the succession are not churches. What is dated here is the pedigree used as proof, and then as the channel of grace and the test of a true church. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 2 Tim 1:14; 2:2 What is handed on is a deposit: “guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Acts 20:29–32 Paul to the elders he himself appointed: “from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things … And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace.” Gal 1:8 The message judges the messenger: “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached.” Acts 1:21–22; 12:2 An apostle must be an eyewitness from John’s baptism to the resurrection. Judas is replaced to complete the Twelve. When James is killed, no one is appointed in his place. Matt 3:9 On pedigree: “do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’” Eph 2:20; Rev 21:14 The apostles and prophets are the foundation, and a foundation is laid once. The city’s wall “had twelve foundations,” bearing the apostles’ names. 1 Cor 9:1; 15:8 An apostle has seen the risen Lord: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” Paul is the last: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” 2 Pet 1:15 Peter’s provision for the church after his death is a written reminder: “after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.” Acts 11:19–23; Gal 2:9 Antioch is evangelized by believers no apostle sent, “men of Cyprus and Cyrene.” Barnabas, sent afterward, “saw the grace of God” and was glad. The pillars at Jerusalem received Paul the same way, when they “perceived the grace that was given to me.” Acts 13:1–3; Gal 1:1 Paul and Barnabas are sent out by the “prophets and teachers” at Antioch, who lay their hands on them. Paul is an apostle “not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” 1 Pet 5:1–4 Peter hands the shepherding to the elders, writing “as a fellow elder,” under Christ, “the chief Shepherd.” Acts 15:22, 28 The church decides together. The decision goes out from “the apostles and the elders, with the whole church,” because “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Succession lists were a known form. The Greek philosophical schools kept lists of their heads, one after another from the founder, to show that the founder’s teaching had been faithfully passed on. Books called Successions of the Philosophers were written from about 200 BC. The word is diadochē, and it is the word the church’s first succession lists use (see c. 175 in the record). Jewish chains. Josephus traces the succession of the high priests from Aaron to his own day (Antiquities 20.224–251). The New Testament has no list of this kind, and its one succession is from the apostles to “faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2): a handing on of teaching, with no office or city named. Who first claimed a chain of teachers for a Christian doctrine is in the record at c. 160. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Ephesians 3; To the Trallians 3 The first witness to the single bishop never argues from a succession of apostles. His reasons are symbolic: the bishop stands for the Father, the presbyters for the apostles. Seventy years later the pedigree is the argument; at 110 it is absent. 6 THE RECORD c. 96 1 Clement 42, 44 The apostles appointed their first converts as overseers and deacons and arranged that when these died “other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.” The men are plural, they are called presbyters, and they hold office “with the consent of the whole church.” c. 160 Ptolemy, Letter to Flora The earliest surviving Christian text to speak of “the apostolic tradition which we too have received by succession” is a Valentinian teacher’s. Basilides claimed to have his doctrine from an interpreter of Peter, and Valentinus from a disciple of Paul. The catholic lists were an answer in kind: our succession is public, and yours is private. c. 175–180 Hegesippus, in Eusebius, Church History 4.22 He travels from church to church and reports that “in every succession, and in every city” the teaching agrees with the law, the prophets and the Lord. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.2.2 Against secret teaching he sets “that tradition which originates from the apostles, and which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches.” c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.1–3 He can list those whom the apostles appointed and their successors down to his own time, and none of them taught what the Gnostics teach. Since it would take too long to do this for every church, he gives the list of “the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome” by Peter and Paul. The apostles “committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.” Then come Anacletus, Clement, and so on, one name at a time, to Eleutherus, the twelfth. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.26.2 Obey “the presbyters who are in the Church,” who “together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain gift of truth.” c. 200 Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 32 “Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops.” Then the qualification: churches founded later are “accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine.” c. 225 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, preface He writes of the apostles: “we, as being their successors, and as participators in this grace, high-priesthood, and office of teaching.” Succession is now joined to a priestly grace. c. 250 Cyprian, Letters 3 and 66 “Apostles, that is, bishops.” The church is in the bishop, and whoever is not with the bishop is not in the church. c. 325 Eusebius, Church History The first history of the church is organized around lists of bishops for Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, each running back to an apostle or, at Alexandria, to the evangelist Mark. 359 Council of Ariminum, in Jerome, Dialogue against the Luciferians 17–19 The bishops of the West, lawfully ordained, sign a creed drawn up “under the pretext of unity and faith.” It drops the word “substance” “because it is not found in the Scriptures.” Jerome writes that they “were not anxious about the name, so long as that which it implied was secured,” and presents them as misled rather than heretical. 1672 Synod of Jerusalem, Confession of Dositheus, decree 10 The Orthodox statement. The bishop’s dignity is “so necessary in the Church” that “without him, neither Church nor Christian could either be or be spoken of.” As “a successor of the Apostles,” he has received “in continued succession by the imposition of hands and the invocation of the All-holy Spirit” the grace “of binding and loosing.” 1896 Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae Anglican ordinations are declared “absolutely null and utterly void” because the chain was broken by a defective rite. 1964 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 20 Bishops “by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ.” 1964 Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio 15, 22 The Orthodox churches “possess true sacraments” and, by apostolic succession, “the priesthood and the Eucharist.” The Protestant communities, it says, “have not retained the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders.” 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church 77, 860–862, 1576, 1411 The apostles “left bishops as their successors.” One part of their office, “to be the chosen witnesses of the Lord’s Resurrection and so the foundation stones of the Church,” is not handed on (860). The shepherding office is to be “exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops.” Bishops “in the line of apostolic succession” validly ordain. “Only validly ordained priests can preside at the Eucharist.” 2000 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus 17 Churches that, though not in perfect communion with Rome, remain united to it “by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist” are “true particular Churches.” Communities “which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense.” Those baptized in them are “in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED An altered quotation. Clement supports the apostles’ appointment of overseers and deacons from Scripture: “I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith.” The verse is Isaiah 60:17. In the Septuagint it reads, “I will give your rulers in peace and your overseers in righteousness.” The Hebrew, as the ESV gives it, has “I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness.” Deacons appear in no version of Isaiah. Clement, or the source he used, adjusted the verse to fit the church’s two offices. An uncertain phrase. Hegesippus is usually quoted as saying that at Rome he “drew up a succession list as far as Anicetus.” Arthur McGiffert, Eusebius’s translator in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, notes that the interpretation “is greatly disputed.” Every manuscript reads diadochēn epoiēsamēn, “I made a succession.” The alternative, “I remained there until Anicetus,” rests on a conjectural emendation supported by Rufinus’s Latin version. Presbyters and bishops. Irenaeus uses the two words for the same men. In his letter to Victor of Rome he calls Victor’s predecessors “the presbyters before Soter, who presided over the church.” He also names them one at a time, as single holders of “the episcopate.” What his argument needs from them is that they taught the same thing in public. The lists disagree. Irenaeus begins Rome’s list with Linus, after the apostles. Tertullian says Clement was ordained by Peter. Later catalogues make Peter himself the first bishop for twenty-five years. Peter Lampe (From Paul to Valentinus, 1987; English 2003) and Eamon Duffy (Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 1997) conclude that the early names belong to leading presbyters and were arranged into a single line in the later second century. “Let another take his office.” Acts 1:20 quotes this from the Psalms about the vacancy left by Judas, and older English Bibles have “bishoprick.” It was read as establishing a succession to the apostles’ office. Peter applies it to one vacancy, to be filled by an eyewitness. A saying for the seventy-two. Vatican II and the Catechism say that whoever listens to the bishops listens to Christ (Lumen Gentium 20; Catechism 862). The words are those of Luke 10:16, “The one who hears you hears me.” In Luke they are said to the seventy-two sent ahead to the towns (10:1), not to the Twelve, and what is heard is their message. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Francis Sullivan SJ, From Apostles to Bishops (2001) The evidence does not show that the apostles appointed a single bishop in each church to succeed them. The episcopate developed in the second century. He holds that the development was guided by the Spirit, as the canon was. PROTESTANT Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (1953) The idea of succession arises between 150 and 180 in the conflict with Gnosticism, and its form is borrowed from the philosophical schools. HISTORIAN Allen Brent, “Diogenes Laertius and the Apostolic Succession” (1993) Shows in detail how the bishop lists follow the pattern of the school successions. ORTHODOX John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (1985), ch. 5 Succession is the continuity of whole communities gathered around their bishops. He rejects the picture of a pipeline running from one individual to the next. ANGLICAN Arnold Ehrhardt, The Apostolic Succession in the First Two Centuries of the Church (1953) Looks to the Jewish high-priestly lists and to James’s family at Jerusalem for the model. ECUMENICAL World Council of Churches, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982) An ecumenical text with Catholic and Orthodox participation. The primary sign of apostolic succession is the apostolic tradition of the whole church, and the line of bishops is “a sign, though not a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church.” CATHOLIC Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (1997) A Catholic historian. For roughly a century after the apostles the Roman church was led by a group of presbyters, and a single bishop emerged there only in the second century. HISTORIAN Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (1987; English 2003) The Christians of Rome met in scattered house churches. A single bishop over them all appears only around the middle of the second century. CATHOLIC Raymond E. Brown SS, Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections (1970) A Catholic biblical scholar. The New Testament does not show the apostles ordaining bishops to succeed them in each church. He accepts the later episcopate as a development under the Spirit. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “1 Clement 44 shows the apostles themselves providing for successors.” It does. They provided for the continuing appointment of presbyter-overseers in each church, with the church’s consent, and Clement’s point is that such men should not be removed without cause. The letter says nothing of a line of single bishops, and nothing of a ministry that is valid only if the line is unbroken. 2. “Paul to Timothy, Timothy to faithful men, they to others. That is succession.” It is a succession of teaching, and the verse says so. The test Paul gives for an elder is that he “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught” (Titus 1:9). 3. “Irenaeus’s argument worked. Without succession, who is to say what the true doctrine is?” (Catholic) It worked in 180 because what the churches taught in public did match the apostles’ writings, within two lifetimes of the apostles. It is an argument from sameness. Where the teaching has changed, the list proves nothing. Tertullian saw this: a church is apostolic by kinship of doctrine. 4. “Irenaeus says the bishops have received ‘the certain gift of truth.’” (Catholic) This is the nearest an early writer comes to a grace transmitted with the office, and it should be weighed. He is speaking of “presbyters.” In the next section he warns against presbyters who “serve their own lusts” and are “puffed up with the pride of holding the chief seat” (4.26.3). He does not treat the gift as automatic, and in the same passage the presbyters to be followed are those who “together with the succession … exhibit sound speech and blameless conduct” (4.26.4–5): the teaching is the test, and the succession alone does not confer it. 5. “Protestants have no stake in this.” (Protestant) Anglicans and some Lutherans kept the succession of bishops. Others invented pedigrees of their own, such as the Baptist “trail of blood” that traces true churches back through every medieval sect. The wish to prove legitimacy by lineage is not confined to Rome. Protestant churches also bind their own orders, by elders’ votes or by a senior pastor. The line the page draws is between an order kept as good practice, which it does not oppose, and an order made the test of whether a church is real. 6. “Christ promised to be with the apostles ‘to the end of the age’ (Matt 28:20), and said to those he sent, ‘The one who hears you hears me’ (Luke 10:16). Promises that outlast the apostles need successors.” (Catholic) The promise in Matthew comes with a task: make disciples, baptize, teach. The task belongs to the whole church, and what continues is Christ’s presence, not an office. Luke 10:16 was said to the seventy-two (see above). The Catechism itself grants that the apostles’ place as “the chosen witnesses of the Lord’s Resurrection” is not handed on (860). 7. “Matthew 16: Peter is the rock, and his keys pass to his successors.” (Catholic) The rock may be Peter, and the page does not rest its case on denying it. It reads the rock as the confession Peter has just made, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16), a reading as old as Chrysostom. The sentence moves from “you are Peter” to “on this rock” to “against it,” and the promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” is made to the church. The keys and the binding belong with those gates: authority over the powers of death, which Matthew gives to all the disciples (18:18). The other text offered, the key of David in Isaiah 22, is given in the New Testament to Jesus himself (Rev 3:7). Even if the rock is Peter, a foundation is laid once (Eph 2:20), and no successor is named. The full record is at 440. 8. “‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.’ (John 20:21–23)” (Catholic, Orthodox) The words are said to “the disciples” behind locked doors (John 20:19), and Luke’s account of the same evening has “the eleven and those who were with them” (24:33). The authority goes with the sending and the Spirit given for it. In Acts it is exercised by announcing forgiveness to those who believe (Acts 2:38; 10:43). Nothing in the scene names a successor. 9. “Without the line there is no priest, and without a priest no Eucharist.” The New Testament never calls a church leader a priest (hiereus). It gives the priesthood to Christ, who “holds his priesthood permanently” (Heb 7:24), “not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life” (7:16), and to all believers, “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9). Rome answers that the ordained do not succeed to Christ’s priesthood but make it present: “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers” (Catechism 1545). That answer still requires an ordained priest whom the apostolic writings do not describe. See c. 250. 10. “The laying on of hands passes something on: to Joshua (Num 27:18–23), to Timothy (2 Tim 1:6), and at Samaria the Spirit itself (Acts 8:14–17).” It is real and normal, and the page does not dispute it. In the texts it does not form a chain. After Joshua no one receives Moses’ hands: “the LORD raised up judges” (Judg 2:16). Timothy received hands from “the council of elders” (1 Tim 4:14). Paul and Barnabas were sent out by prophets and teachers (Acts 13:3), and Paul himself received hands from Ananias, who was not an apostle (Acts 9:17). At Samaria, the gospel’s first crossing beyond the Jews, the Spirit came through the apostles’ hands. At Caesarea “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” before any hands were laid (Acts 10:44). Hands recognize and commission. 11. “Antioch’s founders had been taught by apostles. They were in the succession too.” Agreed, and that is the page’s point. What reached Antioch was a succession of teaching, carried by believers no apostle had sent or ordained (Acts 11:19–21). Barnabas came afterward, “saw the grace of God,” and was glad (Acts 11:23). Recognition followed the Spirit’s work. 12. “Christ would not found an office and then let it lapse.” (Catholic) One office did lapse. When James was killed, no one took his place among the Twelve (Acts 12:2). The charge to shepherd went on, and Peter hands it to all the elders, writing “as a fellow elder”: “shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Pet 5:1–2). 13. “This is an argument from silence. The New Testament does not record everything.” The case rests first on what the texts do show: plural elders, traveling delegates, churches founded and sent out by the Spirit. The silence counts only where a successor would be expected, at the apostles’ departures. Paul commends the elders of Ephesus “to God and to the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32). 2 Peter makes its provision for “after my departure” a written reminder (1:15). John’s Gospel is written after Peter’s death, which it presupposes (21:19), and it ends Peter’s story with “You follow me!” (21:22). A doctrine that is made a condition of a true church has to be shown, not left possible. 14. “Succession keeps the church in the truth and settles disputed doctrine.” (Catholic, Orthodox) The line has run through both sides of a dispute. At Ariminum in 359 the bishops of the West, lawfully ordained, signed a creed without the Nicene word (see 359 above), and Athanasius, a bishop in the same line, answered them in On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia. Today Rome grants that the Orthodox have the succession and “true sacraments” (1964 above). Both lines are intact, and they still disagree about the papacy and the creed. The line cannot decide between them. Teaching measured against the apostles has to. 15. “Ignatius: ‘Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it’ (To the Smyrnaeans 8).” (Catholic, Orthodox) He does tie the table to the bishop, in Asia around 110, and his is the earliest text that does. The ground he gives is unity, not succession, and he never appeals to a line. In the same generation the Didache says: “permit the prophets to make Thanksgiving as much as they desire” (Didache 10:7). Practice was not yet uniform. See c. 110. 16. “Succession is not a pipeline of hands. It is the bishop at the Eucharist with his people, in the apostolic faith.” (Orthodox) That is a richer account than a chain of ordinations, and it answers the charge of mechanism (see John Zizioulas, above). It still makes one office the condition of the church: without the bishop, says the Confession of Dositheus, “neither Church nor Christian could either be or be spoken of” (1672 above). Some Orthodox treat that confession’s wording as a product of its century, but not the necessity of the bishop. The apostolic writings give each church plural elders and make none of them that condition. 10 NOT SETTLED How reliable the early names are, as distinct from their arrangement in a line, is debated. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Ephesians 3; To the Trallians 3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0104.htm - c. 96 · 1 Clement 42, 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 160 · Ptolemy, Letter to Flora — http://www.gnosis.org/library/flora.htm - c. 175–180 · Hegesippus, in Eusebius, Church History 4.22 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.ix.xxii.html - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.2.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103302.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.1–3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.26.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103426.htm - c. 200 · Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 32 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.v.iii.xxxii.html - c. 225 · Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, preface — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050101.htm - c. 250 · Cyprian, Letters 3 and 66 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050664.htm - c. 325 · Eusebius, Church History — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250101.htm - 359 · Council of Ariminum, in Jerome, Dialogue against the Luciferians 17–19 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3005.htm - 1672 · Synod of Jerusalem, Confession of Dositheus, decree 10 — https://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html - 1896 · Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13curae.htm - 1964 · Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 20 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html - 1964 · Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio 15, 22 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html - 1992 · Catechism of the Catholic Church 77, 860–862, 1576, 1411 — https://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p3.htm - 2000 · Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus 17 — https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html - voice · Francis Sullivan SJ, From Apostles to Bishops (2001) — https://archive.org/details/fromapostlestobi0000fran - voice · Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (1953) — https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalau0000hans - voice · Allen Brent, “Diogenes Laertius and the Apostolic Succession” (1993) — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-ecclesiastical-history/article/abs/diogenes-laertius-and-the-apostolic-succession/36342BA63A0EF214157FCD0D76E36600 - voice · John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (1985), ch. 5 — https://archive.org/details/beingascommunion0000jean - voice · Arnold Ehrhardt, The Apostolic Succession in the First Two Centuries of the Church (1953) — https://archive.org/details/apostolicsuccess0000arno - voice · World Council of Churches, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982) — https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/baptism-eucharist-and-ministry-faith-and-order-paper-no-111-the-lima-text - voice · Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (1997) — https://archive.org/details/saintssinnershis00duff - voice · Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (1987; English 2003) — https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9780800627027/From-Paul-to-Valentinus - voice · Raymond E. Brown SS, Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections (1970) — https://archive.org/details/priestbishop00raym ============================================================================== c. 200 · Clergy and laity Address: https://additions.church/200 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The church is spoken of as two orders: the ordained and the people. First clear witness: Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 7, c. 208: “the difference between the Order and the laity,” the first to name the division and say who made it; Prescription 41 (c. 203) already assumes it. Footing: qualified. Recognized leaders are apostolic. Tertullian says the church’s own authority made the distinction, and asks: “Are not even we laics priests?” Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY Tertullian of Carthage was a lawyer’s mind in a preacher’s body, the first great Christian writer in Latin, and a man who coined words that stuck. Around 200, in a treatise urging a widower not to remarry, he reached for a Roman civic distinction to describe the church: there is the ordo, the order, as Rome had its senatorial order and its town councils, and there is the plebs, the people. The clergy were an order. Everyone else was the laity. He meant it as description, and in the same breath he insisted that where there is no clergy, any believer may baptize and offer, because all are priests. The word outlived the qualification. In the apostolic writings the whole people is “a royal priesthood.” The Greek word that became “clergy,” klēros, is used by Peter for the people in an elder’s care, not for the elder. Paul’s letters are addressed to whole churches, and his picture of the gathering is one in which “each one has” something to bring. The two-tier church, an order that acts and a people that receives, has no sentence in the text behind it, and by Cornelius’s letter of 251 it was the shape of every church we can see. This entry is the hinge for several others: the priest, the robes, the people who watch and do not eat. The record shows the word arriving, and what it carried with it. 2 THE CLAIM The New Testament knows leaders and people. It has no word for the “laity” as a class, and it uses the word from which “clergy” comes both for a share in ministry (Acts 1:17) and for the flock (1 Pet 5:3). Around 200 the church begins to describe itself as two orders, the ordained and the people. Tertullian, the first to say it in Latin, says the distinction was made by the church’s own authority. Entry to the first order is by ordination. Things once open to any gifted member, such as teaching and baptizing, are reserved to it, and ranks multiply inside it. NOT CLAIMED That recognized leaders, the laying on of hands, or good order are unbiblical. All three are apostolic. What is dated here is a separate class, marked by a permanent character conferred by rite, with powers that belong to it alone. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Pet 2:9–10 The whole church is the people, the laos: “a people for his own possession … now you are God’s people.” 1 Pet 5:3 Elders are not to domineer over “those in your charge.” The Greek is klēroi, the word that later means clergy. Here it means the flock. Eph 4:11–12 Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers are given “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” 1 Cor 12:7 “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Acts 8:4; 11:20 Unnamed believers scattered by persecution preach the word and found the church at Antioch. Matt 23:8 “You have one teacher, and you are all brothers.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Temple and synagogue. Israel’s temple had a hereditary priesthood set apart from the people. The synagogue did not. It was run by elders, and any competent man could be asked to read and teach. Jesus and Paul both speak in synagogues as visitors. The churches’ elders, readings and open teaching look like the synagogue’s, not the temple’s. The Roman city. The words the church came to use were municipal. An ordo was the governing class of a town or of Rome itself, as against the plebs, the common people. An ordo was also a row: the councillors sat in order on their bench, and ordinatio was enrolment in it. “Holy orders” and “ordination” are Roman civic terms. Their application to the church is in the record at c. 200. Two Greek words. Klēros means a lot or a share. Laikos, “of the people,” does not occur in the New Testament or in the Septuagint. Its first appearance in a Christian text is in the record at c. 96. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 65–67 The fullest early account of the assembly has “the one presiding,” “those who are called deacons” and “the brethren.” There is no word for a clerical order and none for a laity. 6 THE RECORD c. 96 1 Clement 40, 44 In the temple “the layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen.” In the church, elders are appointed “with the consent of the whole church.” Clement draws the analogy to the church’s orders in the next chapter, “let each of you, brethren, in his own order give thanks to God” (41.1), yet still calls the leaders only bishops and presbyters, and the people’s consent still appoints them (44.3). The analogy is here; the two classes are not yet. c. 100 Didache 11–15 Traveling prophets and teachers are tested by the congregation, which also chooses its own overseers and deacons. c. 203 Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 41 Mocks the heretics for having no fixed orders: today a presbyter, tomorrow a layman, “for even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood.” The fluid arrangement has become the mark of a sect. c. 208 Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 7 “It is the authority of the Church” that has made “the difference between the Order and the laity.” Just before this he asks: “Are not even we laics priests?” c. 215 Eusebius, Church History 6.19 Origen, not yet ordained, is invited by the bishops of Caesarea and Jerusalem to preach. His own bishop protests that a layman has never preached before bishops. They answer with a list of precedents. 251 Cornelius of Rome, in Eusebius 6.43 The Roman church has one bishop, “forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolyths, fifty-two exorcists, readers, and janitors.” There are now eight ranks. c. 364 Council of Laodicea, canons 13, 15 and 59 The choice of clergy is not to be left to the crowd. No one is to sing in church but “the canonical singers, who go up into the ambo and sing from a book.” And “no psalms composed by private individuals” may be read in church, only the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. c. 375 Basil of Caesarea, Letter 207 The people still sing. At the night vigil they are “divided into two parts” and “sing antiphonally with one another”; then one begins the psalm, “and the rest take it up.” Read beside canon 15, this suggests the canon limited who leads from the ambo, not whether the people sang. c. 1140 Gratian, Decretum “There are two kinds of Christians” (duo sunt genera Christianorum, C.12 q.1 c.7). One is given to the divine office and to prayer. To the other, the laity, “it is granted to take a wife, to till the earth … and to lay offerings on the altar.” 1906 Pius X, Vehementer Nos The church is “an unequal society” of pastors and flock, and the one duty of the multitude is to let themselves be led. 1964 · 1983 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 30–38; Code of Canon Law 207 The council restores the dignity and mission of the laity. The Code still says that the distinction between clerics and lay persons exists “by divine institution.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The Lord’s portion. Jerome explains that clerics are so called because they are the Lord’s lot, or the Lord is theirs, as he was the inheritance of the Levites (Deut 18:2). Peter had used the word for the people in the elders’ care. Korah. Numbers 16, in which Korah claims that “all in the congregation are holy” and is swallowed by the earth, became the standard warning against those who question the clergy’s place. The chapter is used that way from 1 Clement, which names Dathan and Abiram, to Cyprian, who names Korah. Korah was a Levite reaching for Aaron’s priesthood. Hebrews says Aaron’s priesthood has given way to Christ’s (7:11–12, 23–25), and Peter gives the name to the whole people (1 Pet 2:9). Neither leaves room for a second Aaron. Laying on of hands. In Acts it is an act of prayer and commissioning by the church (6:6; 13:3). It came to be understood as the conferring of a permanent character that makes a man different in kind from the baptized. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Alexandre Faivre, The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church (1984) There are no “laity” in the New Testament. The category appears around 200, at the same time as the clergy against whom it is defined. CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP, Lay People in the Church (1953) The work that prepared Vatican II’s teaching. It grants a long history in which the layman was defined by what he was not. ORTHODOX Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971) A laikos is a member of the people of God, consecrated in baptism. The church has no unconsecrated members. PROTESTANT Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (1953) Charts the passage from gifts recognized by the community to office conferred by rite. ANGLICAN J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry” (1868) The apostolic church has officers and has no priestly class. The second came in during the two centuries that followed. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The New Testament has ordained leaders, and tells us to obey them.” It has recognized servants inside one people, and they are to be respected and followed. What is dated here is two classes of Christian. Paul’s lists of gifts run through the whole body, and the leaders’ task is to equip the rest for ministry. 2. “Jesus chose the Twelve. Hierarchy comes from him.” He chose them as witnesses and as the foundation, which is laid once (Eph 2:20; Rev 21:14). They did appoint elders (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5), and the entry does not date that. What they never did was call those elders a second kind of Christian: they call themselves servants and fellow elders, and they pass on his word that his followers are all brothers. 3. “Without a clear line between clergy and people there is disorder.” Paul wanted order as much as anyone and got it by rules for the meeting, with several speaking in turn and the rest weighing what was said. Around 215 two bishops could still defend preaching by a man who held no office. 4. “Catholic teaching now honors the laity.” (Catholic) It does, and Congar’s work behind it is admirable. The official texts still ground the two states in divine institution (canon 207) and say the two priesthoods differ “in essence and not only in degree” (Lumen Gentium 10). Tertullian, at the time it happened, attributed the distinction to the church’s authority. 5. “Protestants believe in the priesthood of all believers.” (Protestant) As a doctrine, yes. In most Protestant churches one ordained person still does nearly all the speaking, baptizing and presiding. The entry shows Protestants carrying this addition. 10 NOT SETTLED How sharply roles were defined before 200 is debated. Ignatius, around 110, already says that nothing is to be done without the bishop. See that date. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 65–67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 96 · 1 Clement 40, 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 100 · Didache 11–15 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 203 · Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 41 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm - c. 208 · Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0405.htm - c. 215 · Eusebius, Church History 6.19 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250106.htm - 251 · Cornelius of Rome, in Eusebius 6.43 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.xi.xliii.html - c. 364 · Council of Laodicea, canons 13, 15 and 59 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - c. 375 · Basil of Caesarea, Letter 207 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202207.htm - c. 1140 · Gratian, Decretum — https://geschichte.digitale-sammlungen.de/decretum-gratiani/kapitel/dc_chapter_2_2016 - 1906 · Pius X, Vehementer Nos — https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_11021906_vehementer-nos.html - 1964 · 1983 · Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 30–38; Code of Canon Law 207 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib2-cann204-207_en.html - voice · Alexandre Faivre, The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church (1984) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Faivre+Emergence+of+the+Laity+in+the+Early+Church - voice · Yves Congar OP, Lay People in the Church (1953) — https://archive.org/details/laypeopleinchurc0000cong - voice · Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971) — https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Nikolaj_Afanasev/tserkov-duha-svjatogo/1 - voice · Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (1953) — https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalau0000hans - voice · J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry” (1868) — https://archive.org/details/christianministr00lighrich ============================================================================== c. 211 · Offerings for the dead Address: https://additions.church/211 Addition · How it binds: Made normative On each anniversary an offering is made for the dead. Tertullian lists it with the sign of the cross and other customs, and says no Scripture commands any of them. First clear witness: Tertullian, The Crown 3–4, c. 211: “you will find none.” Footing: firm. He is defending these customs. Tradition is enough for him. Prayer for the dead is also older than the church (2 Maccabees 12). Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY A soldier in a North African legion refused to put on the laurel crown his unit wore at a parade, because the crown belonged to the gods. He was arrested, and the Christians around him argued about whether he had been a fool. Tertullian wrote a short book in his defense in 211, and in it, almost in passing, he listed practices Christians kept for which no Scripture could be cited: offerings for the dead on the anniversary of their death, the sign of the cross on the forehead, standing rather than kneeling on Sundays, and others. If you ask for a scriptural rule for these, he said, you will find none; tradition is their origin, custom their strength. That sentence is the earliest clear witness to the practice and also the earliest admission that the apostolic writings do not contain it. The inscriptions in the Roman catacombs show the meal at the grave and the prayer for refreshment; by 250 Cyprian shows the dead named at the altar (Letter 1). Over the next centuries it grew into Masses for the dead and then, in the West, into a system that could be bought and sold. The apostolic writings say that to die is to be with Christ and that judgment follows death, and give no instruction for the living to change the state of the dead. The Reformed set the practice down; Lutherans and Anglicans kept a commendation of the dead and dropped the offering. Rome, the East and the Orient keep it, each in its own form. 2 THE CLAIM By about 200 Christians in North Africa made an offering for the departed on the anniversary of a death and prayed for their refreshment. Tertullian, who reports the custom, says plainly that Scripture does not command it and that it rests on tradition, custom and faith. Prayer for the dead then entered every ancient liturgy. On this foundation the West later built purgatory, indulgences and the Mass offered for the dead. No apostolic text commands or describes an offering for the dead, and Tertullian, who first reports it, says so. The grounds given later are a book outside the Hebrew canon, the church’s custom, and an inference from the Eucharist as sacrifice. The New Testament’s one offering for sin is finished (Heb 10:18). The reader can weigh the grounds against it. These practices closely resemble Roman care for the dead. The church’s own bishops noticed the resemblance, and in one case allowed the Christian version to make conversion easier. The law forbids offering to the dead and inquiring of them; the church answered that its rite is offered to God. Whether that answer holds, the reader can judge. NOT CLAIMED That Christians should not grieve, remember, or commend the dead to God’s mercy. What is dated here is an offering made for the benefit of the dead, as a regular rite of the church. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Thess 4:13–14 “That you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. … God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” Phil 1:23; Luke 23:43 “To depart and be with Christ.” “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Rev 14:13 “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on … that they may rest from their labors.” Heb 9:27 “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Heb 10:18; 13:15–16 “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.” The offerings the church is given are praise and doing good: “such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” The New Testament names offerings to God; none is made for the dead. Deut 26:14; Ps 106:28 The law’s one instruction about offerings and the dead: “I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean, or offered any of it to the dead.” At Peor Israel “ate sacrifices offered to the dead.” The church’s offering is made to God for the dead, not to the dead, and the text does not address that case. The entry does not equate the two, but it is the only instruction there is. 2 Tim 1:16–18 The text for the other side. Of Onesiphorus, who may have died: “may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day.” 1 Cor 15:29 The other text for the other side: “what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?” Paul reports a practice of “those people” without commending it, no father reads it as an offering for the dead, and Tertullian uses it only to prove the resurrection (Against Marcion 5.10). 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT A Jewish precedent. In 2 Maccabees 12, written about a century before Christ, Judas has a sin offering made for soldiers killed in battle, “taking account of the resurrection.” Some Jews of the period therefore did pray for the dead. The book stands outside the Hebrew canon. The Roman family and its dead. Every Roman household kept the anniversaries of its dead with a meal at the tomb, and each February held days of offerings for the ancestors. The dead person’s “birthday” was observed. Few converts would have thought of neglecting that duty, and the record shows the church putting a Christian rite in its place: the Roman birthday offering moved to the death-day, which Christians called the birthday. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 An account written to tell the emperor everything Christians do on Sunday: readings, an address, prayer, bread and cup, a collection for orphans, widows, the sick, prisoners and strangers. No offering for the dead. Silence in an account written to tell an outsider what Christians do, including whom their collection serves. 6 THE RECORD c. 180 Acts of Paul and Thecla 28–29 In this popular romance Thecla prays for a dead girl, who has asked in a dream to be transferred to the place of the just. c. 190 Epitaph of Abercius Asks the prayers of fellow believers who read the inscription. c. 211 Tertullian, The Crown 3–4 “We make offerings for the dead as birthday honours.” Of this and the other customs in his list: “If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none.” “Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer.” c. 250 Cyprian, Letter 1 (ANF 65) Of a man who named a presbyter as executor of his will: “it is not allowed that any offering be made by you for his repose, nor any prayer be made in the church in his name.” The custom of naming the dead at the offering is assumed, and a bishop withholds it as a penalty. c. 350–390 Cyril (or John) of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 5 (Lecture 23).9–10 At the Eucharist prayer is made for the departed, “believing that it will be a very great benefit to the souls.” He adds: “I know that many say, what is a soul profited … if it be commemorated in the prayer?” c. 377 Epiphanius, Panarion 75 Records the teaching of Aerius, a presbyter in Pontus: prayers and offerings do not help the dead, a bishop is no different from a presbyter, and set fasts should not be imposed. Epiphanius lists him as a heretic. c. 380 Apostolic Constitutions 8.42 Memorials are to be held on the third, ninth and fortieth days after a death, and on the anniversary. c. 397 Augustine, Confessions 9.11 Monica’s dying request: “remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.” 593 Gregory I, Dialogues 4.55 After Mass is offered for a dead monk on thirty successive days, he appears and says he is now well. Gregory concludes that the sacrifice freed him from torment. c. 1030 Odilo of Cluny Odilo, abbot of Cluny, institutes a yearly commemoration of all the departed, All Souls’ Day. The statute is traditionally dated 998; modern editors put it near 1030. It becomes All Souls’ Day. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The Latin Bible’s vocabulary. Refrigerium, refreshment, was the Christian word both for the meal at the tomb and for the rest of the departed. It is also the word the Latin Bible uses when it says that the righteous who die early “shall be in rest” (Wisdom 4:7). The Scriptures that African Christians read and the customs of the cemetery shared a vocabulary. Tertullian’s list. He names offerings for the dead together with other unwritten customs: tasting milk and honey after baptism, not bathing for a week afterward, never kneeling on Sunday. No church keeps the whole list now. The traditions for which he claims no Scripture were treated selectively by the churches that inherited them. Onesiphorus. If he had died, Paul’s words are a wish for mercy at the last day. That is a commendation of a friend to God. It is not an offering to alter his condition in the meantime. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Éric Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (2003) In late antiquity burial and remembrance stayed with families. The church imposed no burial rites and gained control of burial only in the early Middle Ages. HISTORIAN Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church (2009) For most ordinary Christians of the period, religious life centered on gatherings and meals at the cemetery. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 1032 States that “from the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them,” and gives 2 Maccabees as its only text, no apostolic one. ORTHODOX Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) The Orthodox pray for the dead out of love and do not claim to know how the prayers help. ANGLICAN C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (1964) “Of course I pray for the dead.” A Protestant who found the practice so natural that “only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me.” 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Jews prayed for the dead before Christ, and Jesus never corrected them.” Some did, and the page grants it. The rest is an argument from his silence. Neither he nor any apostle commends the practice or is shown using it, although they speak often and plainly about what follows death. Whether 2 Maccabees belongs to the canon is the entry at 1546; this entry asks only whether any apostle commends the practice, and none does. 2. “Paul prays for Onesiphorus.” (Catholic) Possibly, if the man had died. What Paul says is “may he find mercy on that day.” Few would object to that. It is some distance from a yearly offering. 3. “It is in every ancient rite, and it is attested by 200.” Both are true, and this is one of the earliest additions on the line. Its first witness says it has no command in Scripture. In the later fourth century the Jerusalem catecheses know that many questioned it, and Aerius was condemned for saying so openly. 4. “Love does not stop at the grave.” It does not. Entrusting the dead to God is the instinct of every bereaved believer. What is dated here is a system of offerings believed to benefit them, and in time a clergy paid to perform it. 10 NOT SETTLED How widespread the offering was outside Africa before 250 is unknown. Whether Onesiphorus was dead when Paul wrote cannot be settled from the text. The first witnesses to a eucharistic offering for the dead are Latin (Tertullian, Cyprian). Prayer for the dead is attested in Greek Asia Minor before 200. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 180 · Acts of Paul and Thecla 28–29 — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/actspaul.html - c. 190 · Epitaph of Abercius — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01040a.htm - c. 211 · Tertullian, The Crown 3–4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0304.htm - c. 250 · Cyprian, Letter 1 (ANF 65) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050665.htm - c. 350–390 · Cyril (or John) of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 5 (Lecture 23).9–10 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310123.htm - c. 377 · Epiphanius, Panarion 75 — https://archive.org/details/panarionofepipha0000epip - c. 380 · Apostolic Constitutions 8.42 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf07.ix.ix.iv.html - c. 397 · Augustine, Confessions 9.11 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110109.htm - 593 · Gregory I, Dialogues 4.55 — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gregory_04_dialogues_book4.htm#C55 - c. 1030 · Odilo of Cluny — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11207c.htm - voice · Éric Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (2003) — https://archive.org/details/careofdeadinlate00rebi - voice · Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church (2009) — https://archive.org/details/secondchurchpopu0000macm - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 1032 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2N.HTM - voice · Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) — https://archive.org/details/orthodoxchurch00ware - voice · C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (1964) — https://archive.org/details/letterstomalcolm0000lewi_l3c3 ============================================================================== c. 200–253 · Infants baptized Address: https://additions.church/246 Addition · How it binds: Required, Replaced Baptizing newborns is first argued against, then called apostolic, then ruled on by a council of sixty-six bishops. First clear witness: Tertullian, On Baptism 18; Origen, Commentary on Romans 5.9; Cyprian, Letter 64. Footing: contested. The household baptisms in Acts are read both ways. These are the first clear witnesses, and the earliest of them argues for delay. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY The first writer in the surviving record to speak plainly of baptizing infants is arguing against it. Around 200 Tertullian advised that children be allowed to grow up first, to learn, to come asking for salvation when they could. Fifty years later Origen, the most learned Christian of his age, wrote from Caesarea that the church had received from the apostles the custom of baptizing infants, and that it did so because something in them needed cleansing. A few years after that, in 253, Cyprian of Carthage reported the decision of a council of sixty-six African bishops: an infant need not wait even until the eighth day. So within one lifetime the practice goes from being argued against, to being called apostolic, to being ruled on. The apostolic writings themselves record baptisms on belief, the same day, and five households baptized whose ages are not given. Whether there were infants in those houses is read both ways and cannot be settled from the text. What can be settled is that the earliest witness argues for delay, and that the reason later made law, that infants are born guilty, is dated separately on this page at 396–418. By the fifth century it was the rule, by the sixth all but universal, and from the sixteenth it was enforced by law in Protestant cities as well as Catholic ones. The record gives the three witnesses, the household texts, and the Baptist and paedobaptist readings side by side. 2 THE CLAIM The New Testament describes the baptism of people who have heard the message and believed it. It neither records the baptism of an infant nor forbids one. The first undisputed witnesses come between about 200 and 253. Tertullian knows the practice and advises against it. Origen calls it a tradition from the apostles. A council of sixty-six bishops under Cyprian rules that a newborn need not wait even eight days. In the fourth century many devout families still delayed their children’s baptism. Infant baptism became the general rule in the fifth century and was given its lasting rationale by Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt. NOT CLAIMED That infant baptism is invalid, that those baptized as infants are not Christians, or that the “households” of Acts certainly held no small children. This entry is marked contested, and the evidence does not allow certainty either way. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 2:38, 41 “Repent and be baptized every one of you.” “Those who received his word were baptized.” Acts 8:12 “When they believed Philip … they were baptized, both men and women.” Acts 16:15; 1 Cor 1:16 The other household texts, the paedobaptist’s best: Lydia “was baptized, and her household as well”; Paul “did baptize also the household of Stephanas.” No ages are given in either. Acts 16:33–34; 18:8 The household texts. The jailer “was baptized at once, he and all his family,” and “rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.” Crispus “believed in the Lord, together with his entire household.” Col 2:11–12 The strongest text for the other side. Paul sets baptism beside circumcision, and adds “through faith.” Acts 2:39; Mark 10:14 “The promise is for you and for your children.” “Let the children come to me.” 1 Pet 3:21 Baptism is “an appeal to God for a good conscience.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Circumcision. In Israel a boy received the sign of the covenant on the eighth day, long before he could believe anything. If baptism takes the place of circumcision, the children of believers are its natural subjects. This is the heart of the Reformed case, and it rests on real biblical ground. The household. In the ancient world a household followed the religion of its head, and the word covers children and slaves. Joachim Jeremias argued (Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries, 1958; English 1960) that “he and his household were baptized” would have been understood to include infants. Kurt Aland replied (Did the Early Church Baptize Infants?, 1961; English 1963) that in nearly every case Luke says the household heard, believed or rejoiced. Converts to Judaism. Gentile converts were immersed. There is no first-century evidence that the children of a converting family were immersed with their parents. Infant death. Perhaps a third of children in the Roman world died in their first year. What the first Christian gravestones show, and the argument built on them, are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 100 Didache 7 The one being baptized is first taught “all these things,” and is told to fast beforehand. The rite as described has a candidate who can learn and fast. c. 200 Tertullian, On Baptism 18 The first writer to speak plainly of infants at baptism argues for delay: “let them come when they are growing up.” The practice enters the record with its first witness against it. 6 THE RECORD c. 100 Didache 7 Candidates are instructed first, and the one to be baptized is told to fast for a day or two beforehand. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 61 “As many as are persuaded and believe” are brought to the water. Our first birth was “without our own knowledge or choice.” In baptism we become “children of choice and knowledge.” c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.22.4 Christ came to save all who through him “are born again to God: infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men.” Since Irenaeus elsewhere uses “born again” of baptism, many take this as the earliest reference to the baptism of infants. Kurt Aland and Everett Ferguson doubt that baptism is in view. c. 200 Tertullian, On Baptism 18 “Delay of baptism is preferable; principally, however, in the case of little children.” Let them come when they are older and can know Christ. He argues against the practice as a matter of judgment, and no one, so far as he says, has told him it is an apostolic rule. c. 215 (disputed) Apostolic Tradition 21.4 A church order once dated about 215 and ascribed to Hippolytus has the small children baptized first, with parents or relatives answering for those who cannot speak for themselves. Bradshaw, Johnson and Phillips hold the text a composite whose final form is fourth-century, so it cannot fix a Roman date; if early, it is the first witness to the practice as routine. c. 200–400 Christian gravestones The inscriptions that record baptized infants cluster around children who died young. Everett Ferguson argues from them (Baptism in the Early Church, 2009) that infant baptism began as the emergency baptism of dying children and spread from there. c. 245 Origen, Commentary on Romans 5.9 “The church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants.” The commentary survives mainly in the Latin version of Rufinus, who says that he abridged it. Origen also speaks of infant baptism in his homilies on Luke (14), which survive in Jerome’s Latin, and on Leviticus (8), again in Rufinus’s, so the practice is not attested through Rufinus alone. 253 Cyprian, Letter 64 (58) A council of sixty-six bishops answers a colleague who thought baptism should wait until the eighth day: “no one ought to be hindered from baptism.” c. 330–390 The fourth-century fathers Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine all had Christian mothers or fathers, and all were baptized as adults. Gregory’s father was a bishop. 381 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40.28 Should infants be baptized? “Certainly, if any danger presses.” Otherwise “I give my advice to wait till the end of the third year, or a little more or less,” “when they may be able to listen and to answer something about the Sacrament.” 418 Council of Carthage, canon 2 Anathema on anyone who says that newborns do not need baptism for the remission of sin inherited from Adam. 1527 The Schleitheim Confession The first Anabaptist statement restricts baptism to those who have been taught repentance and ask for it themselves. Catholic and Protestant governments answer with the death penalty. What each church then bound about baptizing believers who had been baptized as infants is dated at 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A verse added to Acts. The Ethiopian asks, “What prevents me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36). In later manuscripts Philip answers, “If you believe with all your heart, you may,” and the man replies, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (Acts 8:37). The verse is missing from the earliest copies, and the ESV gives it in a footnote. It was added early, since Irenaeus knows it. A second-century copyist thought the story incomplete without a confession of faith. Job in Greek. Origen grounds the practice on the stain that every newborn carries, and cites Job 14:4–5 in the Septuagint: no one is clean, “not even if his life is one day.” The phrase is not in the Hebrew. See the entry at 396–418. “Tradition from the apostles.” That phrase comes down to us in Rufinus’s Latin rendering. That Origen knew and approved the practice is not in doubt, since his homilies on Luke, translated by Jerome, say the same. Some scholars also connect Origen’s explanation for the practice, a defilement present from birth, with his theory that souls existed before the body, which the church later condemned. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (1958) A Lutheran. Infants were baptized from the beginning: the households of Acts, Jewish practice with converts, Polycarp’s eighty-six years of service, Irenaeus. PROTESTANT Kurt Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? (1961) Also a Lutheran. There is no evidence before about 200, and the practice arose in the later second century. PROTESTANT Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church (2009) The fullest study. Infant baptism began with children in danger of death and became routine only in the fifth and sixth centuries. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 1252 Calls infant baptism “an immemorial tradition,” with “explicit testimony” from the second century, and says only that it is “quite possible” that infants were baptized with the households of Acts. PROTESTANT Karl Barth, The Teaching of the Church Regarding Baptism (1943) The leading Reformed theologian of his century argues against infant baptism from within the tradition that defends it. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit (1974) The Orthodox practice of baptizing, anointing and communing infants together expresses that salvation is God’s gift before it is our response. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The households must have included infants.” They may have. It cannot be shown. In every case but Lydia’s (Acts 16:15) the text adds that the household heard the word, believed, rejoiced, or devoted itself to service (Acts 16:32–34; 18:8; 1 Cor 16:15). 2. “Baptism replaces circumcision, so the children of believers receive it.” (Protestant) This is the strongest argument for the practice. Three things count against it. Paul’s own comparison runs “through faith.” At the council of Acts 15, called to decide whether Gentile believers must be circumcised, no one answers that baptism has taken its place, which on this view would have settled the matter. And 1 Corinthians 7:14 calls the children of a believer “holy” in the same breath as the unbelieving spouse, who is not baptized, so the verse cannot carry the rite. 3. “Irenaeus and Origen call it apostolic, and no one protested that it was new.” Irenaeus may attest it around 180, though that reading is disputed, and Origen knows it as established practice by the 240s. But Tertullian did argue against it. And in the fourth century a number of the most devout Christian families in the empire still delayed their children’s baptism, which is hard to explain if they believed the apostles had commanded it. 4. “Baptizing only believers is a sixteenth-century novelty.” As a rule that excludes infants, it appears then. As the practice the New Testament describes, and as a common practice into the fourth century, it is the older of the two. 5. “Then the Baptists are simply right.” (Protestant) The evidence does not prove that either. The silence of the first century can be read both ways, and Jeremias’s case from the Jewish background is serious. That is why this entry is marked contested and Protestants are shown carrying it in part. 10 NOT SETTLED Everything about the period before 180 is inference. Polycarp’s “eighty-six years have I served him” may mean baptism in infancy, or may mean a lifetime in a Christian home. This entry is not settled. It marks the point at which the practice enters the record. Whether a believer baptized as an infant should be baptized on his own confession, and what the churches bound on that question, is at 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 100 · Didache 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 200 · Tertullian, On Baptism 18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 61 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxi.html - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.22.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103222.htm - c. 215 (disputed) · Apostolic Tradition 21.4 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Apostolic+Tradition+Hippolytus+Bradshaw+Johnson+Phillips+Hermeneia+commentary - c. 200–400 · Christian gravestones — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802871084/baptism-in-the-early-church/ - c. 245 · Origen, Commentary on Romans 5.9 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Origen+Commentary+on+the+Epistle+to+the+Romans+Scheck+Fathers+of+the+Church+103 - 253 · Cyprian, Letter 64 (58) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050658.htm - c. 330–390 · The fourth-century fathers — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110101.htm - 381 · Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40.28 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310240.htm - 418 · Council of Carthage, canon 2 — https://patristica.net/denzinger/ - 1527 · The Schleitheim Confession — https://www.anabaptists.org/history/the-schleitheim-confession.html - voice · Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (1958) — https://archive.org/details/bwb_S0-BEJ-423 - voice · Kurt Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? (1961) — https://archive.org/details/didearlychurchba0000alan - voice · Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church (2009) — https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23159576M/Baptism_in_the_early_church - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 1252 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm - voice · Karl Barth, The Teaching of the Church Regarding Baptism (1943) — https://archive.org/details/teachingofchurch0000bart - voice · Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit (1974) — https://svspress.com/of-water-and-the-spirit/ ============================================================================== c. 250 · The presider becomes a priest Address: https://additions.church/250 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The bishop is called a priest who offers the sacrifice in Christ’s place. First clear witness: Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 63, c. 253. Footing: qualified. The Supper is called a sacrifice as early as Didache 14. The new thing is one man who offers it. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY Cyprian was a wealthy teacher of rhetoric in Carthage who became a Christian in his forties, was made bishop within two years, led his church through the Decian persecution from hiding, and was beheaded in 258. In 253 he wrote a letter to a fellow bishop about some churches that were using water alone at the Supper, and in making his case he described what the bishop does at the table: he performs the office of Christ, imitates what Christ did, and offers a true and full sacrifice to God the Father. The word he used was sacerdos, the Latin for the priest of a temple. Tertullian had used the word before him, loosely. Cyprian made it the bishop’s title and tied it to the Supper as a sacrifice offered by the one presiding. In the apostolic writings no individual Christian is given the title hiereus, priest. The whole people is a priesthood; Christ is the one high priest, who offered himself once; the ones who preside at the table are elders and overseers, with no sacrificial language attached to them anywhere. Within a century and a half of Cyprian the presbyter too was a priest, and the table was an altar. The Reformers set the sacrificing priest down in 1517, and kept the minister. The three ancient lines keep him. The record traces the word from Cyprian’s letter to the definitions that made the priesthood a condition of a valid Supper. 2 THE CLAIM In the New Testament the words for “priest” are used of Israel’s priests, of Christ and of the whole people of God. They are never used of a church officer. By the middle of the third century the bishop is regularly called a priest who offers a sacrifice in Christ’s place. In the same years presbyters begin to be counted as priests with him, and from the fourth century the title is ordinarily theirs. Sanctuary, ritual purity, the tithe and clerical celibacy all follow from it. The English word “priest” descends from presbyteros, elder. The role it came to name is that of the hiereus, the one who sacrifices. NOT CLAIMED That the Supper has nothing to do with sacrifice, or that churches do not need recognized leaders. The Didache already calls the gathering a sacrifice. What is dated here is one man who offers it for the rest. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Heb 7:23–24 “The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently.” Heb 10:11–12 “Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down.” 1 Pet 2:9; Rev 1:6 “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood.” He “made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.” Heb 13:15–16 The sacrifices that remain: “a sacrifice of praise,” and “to do good and to share what you have.” Rom 15:16 The text for the other side. Paul calls his mission a “priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT After the temple. When the temple fell in 70, Judaism had no altar and no sacrificing priesthood, and the apostles had taught that Christ’s death completed the sacrifices: “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Heb 10:14). Neither heir of Second Temple Judaism had a sacrificing priesthood in its first generations. What a religion looked like. In the Greek and Roman world every cult had an altar, a sacrifice and a priest. Pagans found the Christians strange and called them atheists because they had none of these. As the church became a public body, it took on the standard equipment of a religion. The Old Testament as pattern. The temple’s orders, high priest, priests and Levites, were there to be compared with, and the New Testament compares the whole people with them (1 Pet 2:5, 9; Rev 1:6). The first writers after the apostles compared the church’s officers with them instead (see c. 96 and c. 100 in the record). Within a century and a half the comparison had become a description. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 117 “Prayers and giving of thanks, when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God.” The sacrifice the church offers is thanksgiving, and no officer is called a priest. 6 THE RECORD c. 96 1 Clement 40, 44 An analogy from the temple: “The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen.” The church’s own leaders are called presbyters and bishops throughout, and never priests. Their work is described once in the language of offering: they have offered the gifts of the overseer’s office (44.4, where the linked translation has “fulfilled its duties”). c. 100 Didache 13 The prophets are to receive the firstfruits, “for they are your high priests.” The first Christian figures called priests are prophets, not bishops. c. 155 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 116–117 Christians as a body are “the true high priestly race of God,” and prayers and thanksgivings, offered “in the Eucharist of the bread and the cup,” are the only sacrifices pleasing to him. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.8.3 “All the righteous possess the sacerdotal rank.” c. 200 Tertullian, On Baptism 17 “Of giving it, the chief priest (who is the bishop) has the right: in the next place, the presbyters and deacons,” and after them laymen. The first time a church officer is called a priest, and it is by analogy and in passing. c. 208 Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 7 “Are not even we laics priests?” Where no clergy are present, “you offer, and baptize, and are priest, alone for yourself,” for “where three are, a church is, albeit they be laics.” c. 230 Didascalia Apostolorum 9 The bishops are your high priests, and the presbyters and deacons, with the orphans and widows, your priests and Levites. Tithes are set aside for Christ and his ministers, and offerings go to the bishop, who distributes them. c. 253 Cyprian, Letter 63 (62).14 “That priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father.” c. 390 John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood The priest at the altar calls down the Spirit, and angels attend him. The office is now one of dread. 1215 Lateran IV, constitution 1 “Nobody can effect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained.” 1563 Trent, session 23, canon 1 Anathema on anyone who says the New Testament has no visible priesthood with power to consecrate, to offer the body and blood, and to forgive sins. 1964 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 10 The common priesthood of all the faithful and the ministerial priesthood differ “in essence and not only in degree.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED One English word for two Greek ones. “Priest” derives from presbyteros and is also used to translate hiereus. An English reader cannot see the difference. The Catholic Douay-Rheims version of 1582 has Paul and Barnabas ordaining “priests” in every church (Acts 14), where the Greek has elders. “Sacrifice” changes meaning. In the Didache and in Justin the church’s sacrifice is its thanksgiving and prayer, offered by all, and it is made pure when the brothers are reconciled. Justin also calls the bread and cup of the Eucharist the sacrifice that Malachi foretold (Dialogue 41). By Cyprian’s time the sacrifice is something the bishop offers on the people’s behalf. Hebrews applied to the clergy. “No one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was” (Heb 5:4) is said of Aaron and then of Christ. It was taken over as a text about Christian ordination. “Do this.” Trent teaches that with these words Christ made the apostles priests and commanded them to offer. The command is in the plural, and Paul hands it on to a whole congregation: “you proclaim the Lord’s death” (1 Cor 11:26). 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Raymond Brown SS, Priest and Bishop (1970) The New Testament never calls a Christian minister a priest. The title arrives once the Eucharist is understood as a sacrifice that has replaced the temple’s. CATHOLIC Albert Vanhoye SJ, Old Testament Priests and the New Priest (1980) Grants the silence of the New Testament and argues that ordained ministry is a sacrament of Christ’s one mediation. This is the modern Catholic account at its most careful. ANGLICAN J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry” (1868) The gospel as the apostles preached it has no priestly caste. The language of priesthood comes in with Tertullian and Cyprian, by Old Testament analogy and Gentile habit. ANGLICAN R. P. C. Hanson, Christian Priesthood Examined (1979) Dates the emergence of a Christian priesthood to the years between about 200 and 250. ORTHODOX Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971) Every baptized person is consecrated a priest. The one who presides does so among priests and not in their place. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “‘Priest’ is only the English form of ‘presbyter.’” (Protestant) As a matter of word history, yes. As a matter of meaning it names the Latin sacerdos, and that is what is dated here. 2. “Paul describes his ministry as priestly in Romans 15:16.” (Catholic) He does, in a figure. The offering is the Gentile believers themselves, and the service is preaching. In the same letter he tells all the believers to present their bodies “as a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1). 3. “The Eucharist was called a sacrifice from the beginning, and a sacrifice needs a priest.” The earliest texts call the whole church’s thanksgiving a sacrifice and call the whole church priests, and Clement already speaks of the overseers as those who offer the gifts. For a century no one does. From about 200 the bishop is called high priest by analogy with Aaron (Tertullian, On Baptism 17; the Didascalia), and Cyprian is the first to make the analogy a description: one man offering in Christ’s place. 4. “The ordained priest does not rival Christ. He makes Christ’s one sacrifice present.” (Catholic, Orthodox) As theology that is coherent, and it is stated with care. It was constructed after 250. The text it rests on, “do this,” is handed by Paul to a whole congregation (1 Cor 11:24–26), and the one sacrifice is “once for all,” after which he “sat down” (Heb 10:12); a re-presentation of it is a reading, taught after 250, not a text. The apostles give the remembering and the proclaiming to the assembly. 5. “Protestant ministers act as priests in all but name.” (Catholic) Often true. The Reformers cut the doctrine, which is why the entry shows the addition removed in 1517. The single ordained specialist stayed. See c. 200 and c. 1541. 10 NOT SETTLED The ordination prayers of the so-called Apostolic Tradition already speak of the bishop’s “high priesthood.” Their date, once put near 215, is now widely questioned. Whether Cyprian’s language was new or only made explicit what others assumed cannot be settled from the surviving texts. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 117 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.iv.cxvii.html - c. 96 · 1 Clement 40, 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 100 · Didache 13 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 155 · Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 116–117 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01288.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.8.3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103408.htm - c. 200 · Tertullian, On Baptism 17 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm - c. 208 · Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0405.htm - c. 230 · Didascalia Apostolorum 9 — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didascalia.html - c. 253 · Cyprian, Letter 63 (62).14 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050662.htm - c. 390 · John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/19226.htm - 1215 · Lateran IV, constitution 1 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm - 1563 · Trent, session 23, canon 1 — https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct23.html - 1964 · Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 10 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html - voice · Raymond Brown SS, Priest and Bishop (1970) — https://archive.org/details/priestbishop00raym - voice · Albert Vanhoye SJ, Old Testament Priests and the New Priest (1980) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Vanhoye+Old+Testament+Priests+and+the+New+Priest - voice · J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry” (1868) — https://archive.org/details/christianministr00lighrich - voice · R. P. C. Hanson, Christian Priesthood Examined (1979) — https://archive.org/details/christianpriesth0000hans - voice · Nicholas Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971) — https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Nikolaj_Afanasev/tserkov-duha-svjatogo/1 ============================================================================== 313 · The hall becomes a temple Address: https://additions.church/313 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The emperor builds basilicas and frees clergy from civic duties. The church takes the shape of a public hall, with money to match. First clear witness: Constantine after 313; the Lateran basilica. Footing: firm. Converted house churches predate Constantine (Dura-Europos, c. 240). “Constantine ruined it” is too simple. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY Before 313 most Christians met in houses, some altered for the purpose, and by 300 some cities had purpose-built halls. The best preserved of the houses is the one excavated at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, where two rooms were knocked into one around 240 and a small room was fitted as a baptistery. The gathering was in a home because the church was a household, and the texts say so: the church in the house of Prisca and Aquila, of Nympha, of Philemon. In 312 the emperor Constantine won a battle outside Rome under a Christian sign, and in 313 he and his co-emperor agreed to tolerate the church. Within a year he had given the bishop of Rome a palace, the Lateran, and begun a vast hall beside it. The form he chose was the basilica, the Roman public building used for law courts and markets: a long nave, side aisles, an apse at the end where the magistrate sat. Now the bishop sat there, on a throne, with his clergy around him, and the people stood in the nave facing the front. St Peter’s followed, and the Holy Sepulchre, and halls across the empire. Christians who had owned modest halls found themselves inside the architecture of the state. The room is the quietest addition on this page and one of the most consequential, because a room teaches. A hall with a front and an audience makes the gathering a performance whatever the theology. Every line carries it; the Protestant churches rebuilt the interior and kept the audience. 2 THE CLAIM After 313 Constantine gave the churches public money, land and great halls at Rome, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Constantinople, and freed the clergy from civic burdens. The assembly moved out of homes and modest converted buildings into monuments laid out like a magistrate’s audience hall: an apse with the bishop’s throne, the clergy on a raised platform, the people in the nave. With the buildings came endowments, a clerical career, and the idea of the church building as a holy place. NOT CLAIMED That buildings are wrong, or that Constantine built the first ones. Christians had a converted house at Dura-Europos around 240 and large halls in many cities before 300. What is dated here is the public monument, and what came with it. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 7:48; 17:24 “The Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.” God “does not live in temples made by man.” John 4:21, 23 “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. … the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” 1 Cor 3:16; 1 Pet 2:5 “You are God’s temple.” “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house.” Matt 18:20 “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Rom 16:5 “The church in their house.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT From temple to people. Israel had one temple at Jerusalem (a Jewish temple at Leontopolis in Egypt was a minor exception), and after the year 70 it had none. The apostles had already moved the temple’s language onto the community: God’s house, his dwelling, his priesthood are the believers. The basilica. The word means a royal hall. In Roman cities a basilica was the public building for courts and official business, with a raised apse at one end where the magistrate sat beneath the emperor’s image. Christians later took that form, and not the form of a pagan temple, because it could hold an assembly. It also gave the assembly a front, a throne and a processional aisle. The benefactor. Rulers and rich citizens in antiquity paid for public buildings and were honored for it. The apostles’ churches had patrons who lent their houses (Rom 16:5, 23; Phlm 2) and no benefactor who built them halls. The one who did is in the record at 313. The word “church.” The New Testament’s word is ekklēsia, an assembly of people, never a building. The English word comes from another Greek term, kyriakon, “the Lord’s house,” which came into use for the building later (see the record). 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 240 The house church at Dura-Europos The best-preserved church building from before Constantine is a private house with one wall taken out to seat about sixty. A century and a half after the apostles the assembly still met in a house. 6 THE RECORD c. 200 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.5 It is not the place but the gathering of the elect that he calls the church. c. 200–250 Minucius Felix, Octavius 10, 32 The pagan asks why Christians have “no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images.” The Christian replies that God is better honored in the heart than in a building. c. 240 Dura-Europos A house rebuilt as a meeting place for a small congregation. c. 300 Eusebius, Church History 8.1 Before the last persecution, Christians, “not being satisfied with the ancient buildings … erected from the foundation large churches in all the cities.” c. 300 Kyriakon “The Lord’s house” comes into use as a name for the building, from the third century, alongside ekklesia; and from it, through the Germanic languages, the English word “church.” 313 Constantine to the bishop of Carthage, in Eusebius 10.6 The treasury is to pay “three thousand folles” to “certain ministers of the legitimate and most holy catholic religion,” and more on request. 313–335 The imperial basilicas The Lateran and St Peter’s at Rome, the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the Nativity at Bethlehem. Clergy are exempted from public duties, and in 321 the church is permitted to receive bequests. c. 315 Eusebius, Church History 10.4 Preaching at the dedication of the new church at Tyre, he hails its bishop as a new Solomon and Zerubbabel and the building as a temple. c. 390 John Chrysostom, Homily 50 on Matthew What use is it, he asks, if Christ’s table is loaded with golden cups while Christ himself is dying of hunger? Feed him first, and then adorn his table. c. 394 Jerome, Letter 52 Many are building churches with marble walls and gilded ceilings, he writes, and no thought is given to the choice of Christ’s ministers. 494 Gelasius of Rome Church income is to be divided four ways: the bishop, the clergy, the poor, and the buildings. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “The house of God.” In Paul the same Greek phrase means the congregation: “the household of God, which is the church of the living God” (1 Tim 3:15). By the fourth century it meant the building, and the texts about Solomon’s temple were read at its dedication. Jacob’s words at Bethel, “This is none other than the house of God” (Gen 28:17), became the entrance chant of the Latin Mass for the dedication of a church. Haggai. “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former” (Hag 2:9) is a promise about the temple rebuilt after the exile. Eusebius applies it to the basilica at Tyre. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN L. Michael White, Building God’s House in the Roman World (1990) The change was gradual: house, renovated house, hall, basilica. Constantine accelerated a movement already under way. HISTORIAN Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (1965) The Christian basilica adapts the civic and imperial audience hall, and with it a setting for ceremony. CATHOLIC Josef Jungmann SJ, The Early Liturgy (1959) The new buildings reshaped the service: entrances, processions, and a growing distance between clergy and people. PROTESTANT Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (2008), ch. 2 Lay the church building at Constantine’s door. That overstates his part. Eusebius describes large churches a generation before him. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The woman who poured out costly ointment was praised, and it was Judas who objected about the poor.” Jesus defends one act of devotion to his own body before his burial: “you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” He also says where he will be found afterward: “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40). Chrysostom makes this argument himself. 2. “God commanded a glorious temple.” He did, and Solomon said at the dedication what Stephen and Paul repeat, that God does not live in houses (1 Kgs 8:27; Acts 7:48; 17:24). So the texts forbid no building. What they move is the word “temple,” onto the people (1 Cor 3:16), and the entry dates not the hall but the holy place and the audience. 3. “Buildings are tools, and Christians were building before Constantine.” Both points are granted. What came with the imperial halls was more than space: a room arranged for spectators and officials, a budget tied to property, and a theology of holy places. 4. “Without imperial support the church could not have grown as it did.” No one can know. It had grown from a few thousand to several million in houses and under intermittent persecution. 10 NOT SETTLED How large and how public the pre-Constantinian buildings were is debated. Almost none survive. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 240 · The house church at Dura-Europos — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kraeling+The+Christian+Building+Excavations+at+Dura-Europos - c. 200 · Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02107.htm - c. 200–250 · Minucius Felix, Octavius 10, 32 — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/octavius.html - c. 240 · Dura-Europos — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kraeling+The+Christian+Building+Excavations+at+Dura-Europos - c. 300 · Eusebius, Church History 8.1 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.xiii.ii.html - c. 300 · Kyriakon — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03744a.htm - 313 · Constantine to the bishop of Carthage, in Eusebius 10.6 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.xvi.vi.html - 313–335 · The imperial basilicas — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25023.htm - c. 315 · Eusebius, Church History 10.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250110.htm - c. 390 · John Chrysostom, Homily 50 on Matthew — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200150.htm - c. 394 · Jerome, Letter 52 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001052.htm - 494 · Gelasius of Rome — https://www.heiligenlexikon.de/CatholicEncyclopedia/Gelasius_I.html - voice · L. Michael White, Building God’s House in the Roman World (1990) — https://archive.org/details/buildinggodshous0000whit - voice · Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (1965) — https://archive.org/details/earlychristianby0000krau - voice · Josef Jungmann SJ, The Early Liturgy (1959) — https://archive.org/details/earlyliturgytoti0000jung - voice · Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (2008), ch. 2 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APagan+Christianity+au%3AViola ============================================================================== c. 320 · A higher life apart Address: https://additions.church/320 Addition · How it binds: Replaced, Required Vowed celibate communities form in Egypt. In time the monk becomes the model Christian, and the pool from which bishops are drawn. First clear witness: Pachomius’s communities, c. 320; Athanasius, Life of Antony, c. 357. Eusebius states the two ways of life about 315; Pachomius builds the wall around the higher one; the entry is dated by the vowed community. Footing: qualified. Celibacy for the kingdom is in Scripture (Matt 19:12; 1 Cor 7:7–8, 32–35). A vowed order set above ordinary households is the new thing. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY Antony went out into the Egyptian desert in the 270s and stayed there for most of a century, and people followed him. Around 320 a former soldier named Pachomius gathered disciples of his own into a community at Tabennesi on the Nile, with a wall, a rule, common meals and common work, and the monastery was born. Thirty years later Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria, wrote Antony’s life, and the book went everywhere; Augustine heard of it in Milan and it broke him open. Basil wrote rules for the Greek East; Benedict would write them for the West. What the monks sought was real, and the page does not belittle it. What changed was the church’s map of itself. From the fourth century there were two classes of Christian: those who had left the world for the higher life of the vowed, and the ordinary baptized who had not. The apostolic writings know no such ladder. Paul calls celibacy a gift, not a rank, and tells the Thessalonians to work with their hands. Every believer is a saint. The monastery shaped everything after it: the celibate bishop in the East, the celibate priest in the West, the fasts, the hours of prayer. The Reformers set the vowed state down; the first monasteries emptied in the 1520s and kept, in the married pastor, the thing the monks had given up. The record dates the two classes. 2 THE CLAIM From about 270 men and women in Egypt and Syria withdrew to the desert, and from about 320 Pachomius gathered them into communities under a rule, with lifelong celibacy, no private property and obedience to a superior. Within two generations the monk was the model Christian. Ranking celibacy above marriage was older (Cyprian; compare 1 Cor 7:38). What the fourth century added was a separate vowed state, and the condemnation of those who denied the ranking. Two classes of Christian resulted: those “in religion,” and everyone else. NOT CLAIMED That celibacy for the kingdom, simplicity, fixed prayer or a shared life are wrong. Jesus and Paul commend the first, and the Jerusalem church lived the last. What is dated here is the vowed state set apart from ordinary households and ranked above them. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 19:11–12 “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. … Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” 1 Cor 7:7, 20, 28 “Each has his own gift from God.” “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.” “If you do marry, you have not sinned.” Col 2:23 Rules of abstinence “have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” John 17:15 “I do not ask that you take them out of the world.” Heb 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” Acts 2:44–46 The shared life of the first church was lived in the city, in homes, by families. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Jewish forerunners. Communities of this kind existed in the apostles’ world. Josephus and Philo describe the Essenes: property held in common, a period of probation, and among some of them no marriage. Qumran had a written rule. Philo describes the Therapeutae near Alexandria, men and women living in cells for study and prayer. The option was available in the apostles’ own setting, and the churches they founded took another form. The philosopher’s life. Greek tradition honored the sage who renounced property and family: Cynics, Pythagorean brotherhoods, later the Platonists, and the Stoics kept catalogues of the passions. The movement that drew on all of this is in the record, with its first names and dates. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 15 “Many, both men and women, who have been Christ’s disciples from childhood, remain pure at the age of sixty or seventy.” Celibates lived inside the congregation, with no separate state and no vow. 6 THE RECORD c. 110 Ignatius, To Polycarp 5 If anyone is able to remain chaste in honor of the Lord’s flesh, let him do so without boasting. If he boasts, he is lost. c. 270 Antony of Egypt Hears “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess” read in church, and withdraws. c. 315 Eusebius, Demonstration of the Gospel 1.8 Two ways of life have been given to the church. One is above nature and renounces marriage, children and property. The other is “more humble, more human,” and permits them. c. 320 Pachomius Founds the first community under a common rule, at Tabennesi on the Nile. c. 340 Council of Gangra, canons 1, 4, 9 and 11 Condemns ascetics who despise marriage, who will not receive communion from a married priest, and who scorn the love feasts. The council defends the ordinary Christian household. c. 357 Athanasius, Life of Antony The book that made the monk a hero from Egypt to Gaul. c. 390 Evagrius of Pontus, Praktikos The desert teacher catalogues eight evil thoughts (Praktikos 6), the source of the seven deadly sins, drawing on Stoic accounts of the passions. The Greek fathers regularly call the monastic life “philosophy.” 393 Jovinian condemned; Jerome, Against Jovinian A Roman monk teaches that the married, the widowed and the virgin are equal in merit if their lives are equal. Synods at Rome and Milan condemn him. Jerome assigns the hundredfold, sixtyfold and thirtyfold harvest of the parable to virgins, widows and the married. c. 530 The Rule of Benedict From the ninth century, the standard rule of Western monks, as it remains. 1563 Trent, session 24, canon 10 Anathema on anyone who says that marriage is to be placed above virginity or celibacy, or that it is not better and more blessed to remain celibate. 1964 · 1996 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 40; John Paul II, Vita Consecrata 18, 32 All the faithful, of whatever state or rank, are called to the fullness of the Christian life. Rome has not withdrawn the ranking. In 1996 John Paul II writes that the consecrated life “has an objective superiority.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “If you would be perfect.” Jesus says this to one man whose wealth owned him (Matt 19:21). It became a “counsel of perfection” for a spiritual elite, separate from the commandments that bind everyone. In Matthew 5:48 “be perfect” is addressed to all disciples. The sower’s harvest. The hundredfold, sixtyfold and thirtyfold of the parable describe how fruitful the word is in those who hear it. The figures had been applied to ranks of Christians since Cyprian and Athanasius. Jerome fixed the Western form: virgins, widows, the married. “In view of the present distress.” Paul gives his preference for the single life as his own judgment, for a stated reason and with no command (1 Cor 7:25–26). It was read as a permanent order of merit. Philo’s Therapeutae. Eusebius read Philo’s account of these Jewish contemplatives and concluded that they were the first Christians of Alexandria, converts of Mark, living as monks. On that mistake monasticism was given an apostolic origin. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988) The standard account of how renunciation moved from the edge of the church to its center. CATHOLIC David Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity (2007) Jovinian spoke for a large body of ordinary Christian opinion. The ranking of celibacy over marriage was made binding through controversy. ORTHODOX Georges Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” (1957) Defends monasticism as the church’s permanent resistance movement, the gospel lived without compromise while the empire was being baptized. HISTORIAN Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony (1990) Antony was no unlettered peasant. He was a teacher formed by Origen’s theology and Greek philosophy. PROTESTANT Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) Monasticism turned the call given to all into the achievement of a few. He also founded a community with a rule of life, and wrote that the church needed a new kind of monasticism. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Jesus and Paul commend celibacy, and the first church shared everything.” They do, and those things are apostolic: a gift given to some, open-handed generosity, a common life. Lifelong vows, withdrawal from the church of ordinary households, and a fixed scale of reward are the additions. 2. “The monks kept the Scriptures, learning, prayer and mission alive.” They did, and the debt is very large. Good fruit does not make the ranking of states apostolic. Rome now teaches that all are called to holiness, and still affirms the “objective superiority” of the consecrated life. 3. “There are not two levels. The monk is simply a Christian who takes the gospel seriously.” That is the ideal, and Vatican II says it well. The record says otherwise for most of the church’s history: Jovinian was condemned for teaching that the states are equal, and Trent anathematized anyone who denies that celibacy is the better state. The East binds it differently: bishops are taken only from the celibate or the monks (Justinian, Novel 6; Trullo 12 and 48, the entry at 528–692), and Chrysostom teaches that virginity exceeds marriage “as heaven exceeds earth” (On Virginity 10). 4. “The Essenes show that this way of life belongs to the Jewish world behind the New Testament.” They show that the option existed in the apostles’ world and that the churches they founded did not take it. Paul warns against ascetic rules of this kind in Colossians 2 and 1 Timothy 4. 10 NOT SETTLED How far monasticism was a reaction to the imperial church, and how far it simply continued older ascetic traditions, is debated. The first monks withdrew before Constantine. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 15 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To Polycarp 5 — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/ignatius-polycarp-lightfoot.html - c. 270 · Antony of Egypt — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm - c. 315 · Eusebius, Demonstration of the Gospel 1.8 — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_de_03_book1.htm - c. 320 · Pachomius — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Rousseau+Pachomius+The+Making+of+a+Community - c. 340 · Council of Gangra, canons 1, 4, 9 and 11 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3804.htm - c. 357 · Athanasius, Life of Antony — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm - c. 390 · Evagrius of Pontus, Praktikos — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Evagrius+of+Pontus+Greek+Ascetic+Corpus+Sinkewicz - 393 · Jovinian condemned; Jerome, Against Jovinian — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30091.htm - c. 530 · The Rule of Benedict — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50040 - 1563 · Trent, session 24, canon 10 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/twenty-fourth-session.htm - 1964 · 1996 · Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 40; John Paul II, Vita Consecrata 18, 32 — https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_25031996_vita-consecrata.html - voice · Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988) — https://archive.org/details/bodysociety00pete - voice · David Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity (2007) — https://academic.oup.com/book/6378 - voice · Georges Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” (1957) — https://archive.org/details/christianitycult0000flor - voice · Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony (1990) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3ALetters+of+St.+Antony+au%3ARubenson - voice · Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) — https://archive.org/details/costofdisciplesh00bonh ============================================================================== 321 · 585 · Sunday rest made law Address: https://additions.church/321 Addition · How it binds: Required The emperor orders courts and workshops to rest on the day of the Sun. The councils then make rest a church duty under penalty: the advocate loses his case, the peasant is flogged, the cleric is shut out of communion for six months. First clear witness: Constantine’s law of 321, Codex Justinianus 3.12.2; Council of Laodicea, canon 29, c. 364; Second Council of Mâcon, canon 1, 585. Footing: qualified. Rest on the Lord’s day was a mercy to slaves before it was a rule for anyone, and the early church refused to carry the Sabbath over (Laodicea 29). What is dated is the sanction. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE CLAIM The apostles’ churches met on the first day of the week, in the evening, because it was a working day. No text makes it a day of rest, and the earliest fathers insist that Christians do not keep a Sabbath. In 321 Constantine ordered judges, townspeople and craftsmen to rest on “the venerable day of the Sun,” leaving farmers free to work. The councils then made Sunday rest a duty of the church: Laodicea, about 364, told Christians to rest on the Lord’s day “if they can,” and the Second Council of Mâcon in 585 attached penalties: the advocate loses his case, the peasant or slave is flogged, the cleric or monk is shut out of communion for six months. From there Sunday rest passed into the law of every Christian state and the discipline of every church line. What the apostles kept as an evening meeting became a day on which work was a sin. NOT CLAIMED That a day of rest is bad, that Sunday is the wrong day, or that the first Christians worked through the Lord’s day gladly. Rest was a mercy to slaves and laborers long before it was a rule, and the entry does not count the mercy. What is dated is the sanction: rest required, on one day, by law. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 20:7 “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them … and he prolonged his speech until midnight.” An evening meeting after the day’s work. 1 Cor 16:2 “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up.” The day is named for giving, not for rest. Rev 1:10 “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” The name, once, with nothing about rest. Rom 14:5–6 “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Col 2:16–17 “Let no one pass judgment on you … with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The planetary week. The seven-day week with days named for the planets spread through the Roman world in the first century. Sunday was the day of the Sun, a working day like any other; the Jewish Sabbath was the only weekly rest the empire knew, and pagans mocked it as idleness. When slaves could meet. Christians met before dawn (Pliny, Letter 10.96) or in the evening because most of them worked. The Lord’s day was not free time; it was the day they chose to spend what free time they had. The Sun and the emperor. Constantine honored Sol Invictus before and after his conversion, and his law of 321 names the day after the sun, not the Lord. Christians received a rest day from a law that did not mention them. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9 Those who lived in the old order came to a new hope, “no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s day.” The Lord’s day is set against the Sabbath, not made a new one. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 “On the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place.” He describes a meeting, a reading, a collection, and says nothing of rest. c. 200 Tertullian, On Prayer 23; On Idolatry 14 Christians should defer business on the Lord’s day so as not to give place to the devil; yet he must answer the pagan charge that Christians do not keep the Sun’s day as pagans keep theirs. Rest is counsel, not law. 5 THE RECORD c. 112 Pliny to Trajan, Letter 10.96 Christians in Bithynia meet “on a fixed day before dawn” to sing to Christ, then disperse and meet again to eat. The day is not named and no one rests. 321 Constantine, Codex Justinianus 3.12.2 “On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.” Farmers may work, since the weather does not wait. c. 337 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.18 The emperor “enjoined on all the subjects of the Roman empire to observe the Lord’s day as a day of rest,” and gave his soldiers a prayer for it. c. 364 Council of Laodicea, canon 29 “Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians.” 538 Third Council of Orléans, canon 28 It is Jewish superstition, the council says, to forbid driving, cooking or cleaning on the Lord’s day; but field work is forbidden, so that people can come to church. The first church law to name the work that must stop. 585 Second Council of Mâcon, canon 1 Sunday is to be kept by all: the advocate who pleads loses his case, the peasant or slave who works is flogged, the cleric or monk is shut out of communion for six months. The first church law with penalties (MGH Concilia 1, 163). 789 Charlemagne, Admonitio generalis 81 Servile work on the Lord’s day is forbidden throughout the empire, with a list of what counts: field work, vines, building, weaving, washing, markets. 1234 Decretals of Gregory IX 2.9 Sunday rest is codified in the law of the Western church, with the exceptions a bishop may grant. 1983 Code of Canon Law 1247 “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass” and to abstain from work that hinders worship or rest. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Remember the Sabbath day” (Exod 20:8). The commandment names the seventh day. Its transfer to the first is a later argument (see 1647), not something the fourth century claimed; Laodicea forbade resting on the Sabbath. “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9). The writer says that rest is entered by believing (4:3) and is God’s own rest; it is not a day. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Willy Rordorf, Sunday (1968) The standard history: the Lord’s day was a day of worship for three centuries and became a day of rest only with Constantine. PROTESTANT Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday (1977) An Adventist argues that Sunday worship itself was a second-century Roman innovation. Most scholars date Sunday worship to the apostles and only Sunday rest to the fourth century. CATHOLIC Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sunday” (1912) Traces the law from Constantine through Laodicea and Orléans to the councils from the eighth century that forbade servile work, trade and pleading in court, and on to the Sunday laws of Protestant England and the United States. ORTHODOX Council in Trullo (692), canon 90 Kneeling is forbidden from Saturday evening to Sunday evening in honor of the resurrection; the East marks the day by posture and the liturgy, and leaves rest to the civil law. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The Lord’s day was always kept holy; rest only made it possible.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Kept, yes, by assembling. The fathers before 321 describe a meeting at dawn or in the evening by people who then went to work. Rest came from the emperor and was made a church duty two centuries later. The entry does not deny that the gift was welcome. 2. “A day of rest is a creation ordinance (Gen 2:2–3), so the church only restored it.” (Protestant) That is the argument of 1647, not of the fourth century, which refused to rest on the Sabbath and let farmers work on Sunday. If rest were a creation law it would have bound the first churches, and Paul says the opposite (Rom 14:5; Col 2:16). 3. “Workers need a day off, and the church was right to give them one.” Agreed, and no one in the apostles’ churches had one. The entry dates the sanction, not the mercy; a church may keep the day gladly without making work on it a sin. 9 NOT SETTLED How far Constantine’s law was a Christian measure and how far a solar one is still argued; the law names the Sun and Eusebius names the Lord. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0105.htm - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 200 · Tertullian, On Prayer 23; On Idolatry 14 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0322.htm - c. 112 · Pliny to Trajan, Letter 10.96 — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/pliny.html - 321 · Constantine, Codex Justinianus 3.12.2 — https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/justinian/codex3.shtml - c. 337 · Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25024.htm - c. 364 · Council of Laodicea, canon 29 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - 538 · Third Council of Orléans, canon 28 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Hefele+History+of+the+Councils+Orleans+538+Sunday - 585 · Second Council of Mâcon, canon 1 — https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_conc_1/index.htm - 789 · Charlemagne, Admonitio generalis 81 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Admonitio+generalis+789+Sunday+servile+work - 1234 · Decretals of Gregory IX 2.9 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Decretals+Gregory+IX+de+feriis - 1983 · Code of Canon Law 1247 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann1244-1253_en.html - voice · Willy Rordorf, Sunday (1968) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3ASunday+au%3ARordorf - voice · Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday (1977) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AFrom+Sabbath+to+Sunday+au%3ABacchiocchi - voice · Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sunday” (1912) — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14335a.htm - voice · Council in Trullo (692), canon 90 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm ============================================================================== c. 200–321 · The church becomes an owner Address: https://additions.church/321-property Addition · How it binds: Replaced Churches hold burial grounds and halls in their own name; an emperor gives them back to the churches as bodies; Constantine lets a church inherit. A church can now be rich, and sued. First clear witness: Hippolytus, Refutation 9.12, on the cemetery under Callistus, c. 217; Gallienus’s rescript of 260, in Eusebius, Church History 7.13; the edict of 313, in Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 48; Codex Theodosianus 16.2.4, 321. Footing: qualified. Ownership is two generations older than Constantine; what he added is the legal person. With it came the hospital, the poor roll and the endowment, and the entry does not call those wrong. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE CLAIM The apostles’ churches owned nothing. They met in houses that belonged to members and kept a fund for the poor that was spent as it came in. By about 200 the church at Rome was administering a burial ground in its own name; in 260 the emperor Gallienus gave the churches back their places of worship as bodies; in 313 Constantine ordered everything confiscated restored “to their society in general, that is, to their churches,” and in 321 he let anyone leave property to the church by will. The church had become a legal person that could hold, inherit, and be sued. With ownership came what ownership brings: endowments, officers to manage them, the clerical career, the hospital and the poor roll on one side, and on the other the patrimony, the lawsuit, and the building that became the church. NOT CLAIMED That owning is wrong, or that the churches were purer for being poor. The hospital Basil built about 370 stood on land the church held, and the poor of Rome were fed from church property for a thousand years. What is dated here is the church as owner and legal person, which no apostolic church was, and the shape it gave to everything after. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15; Phlm 2 “The church in their house.” Every meeting place named in the New Testament belongs to a member: Prisca and Aquila, Nympha, Philemon. Acts 12:12 Peter goes “to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.” The house is hers. Acts 4:34–35; 5:4 Lands and houses were sold and the money laid at the apostles’ feet. Title never moved to the church: “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” Acts 19:9 At Ephesus Paul reasons daily “in the hall of Tyrannus,” a room borrowed or hired, not owned. 1 Tim 5:16 A church keeps a roll of widows and a fund for them: “let the church not be burdened.” Money, held for a need, is as far as the texts go. 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Who could own. Roman law let a city, a guild or a burial club hold property as a body; a religion as such could not, and an illegal one least of all. Whether the churches used the burial-club form is an old scholarly guess that most historians now doubt. What is certain is that by the third century they held cemeteries and halls and that governors knew whom to confiscate from. The common chest. The first churches kept a fund, filled by free gifts and spent on widows, orphans, prisoners and the poor (Justin, First Apology 67). It was a flow, not a holding. Tertullian calls it a deposit of piety, not a treasury for banquets. The householder. In the apostles’ churches the patron was a member who lent a room (Rom 16:23; Phlm 2). He could not be the church, because the church could leave his house. Once the church owned the house, the question of who controlled the church’s property became a question about the church itself. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 The collection is “deposited with the president,” who uses it for orphans, widows, the sick and strangers. A fund administered by a man, with no building and no estate in view. c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 39 A monthly chest of voluntary gifts, spent on the poor and on burials: “these are the deposits of piety.” 5 THE RECORD c. 217 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9.12 Bishop Zephyrinus set Callistus “over the cemetery,” the burial ground on the Appian Way that still bears his name. The church at Rome is managing real property. 260 Gallienus, in Eusebius, Church History 7.13 The emperor writes to the bishops that “the places of worship” are to be given back to them, and no one is to molest them. The first time the law treats the churches as bodies that can be dispossessed and restored. 303 Diocletian’s first edict, in Lactantius 12 and Eusebius 8.2 The church at Nicomedia is pulled down and the Scriptures burned; churches everywhere are to be razed. A persecution of property presupposes property. 313 The edict of Milan, in Lactantius 48 Property taken from the Christians is to be restored not to individuals but “to their society in general, that is, to their churches,” and the state will compensate the buyers. 321 Codex Theodosianus 16.2.4 “Let everyone have the liberty, at his death, to leave what he wishes to the most holy catholic and venerable council.” The church may inherit. c. 372 Basil, Letter 94 Basil defends to the governor the “place of entertainment for strangers” he has built beside his church, with care for “those who require medical treatment on account of sickness,” doctors and transport. The first hospital, and the church owns it. c. 380 Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy 2.28 Asked why he melted church plate to ransom captives: “the Church has gold, not to store up, but to lay out.” The question could only arise once the church had plate. 494 Gelasius of Rome Church income is to be divided four ways: the bishop, the clergy, the poor, and the buildings. A church with a budget and a fabric fund. 1983 Code of Canon Law 1254 §1 “The Catholic Church by innate right is able to acquire, retain, administer, and alienate temporal goods independently from civil power.” Ownership stated as a right of the church’s nature. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “They had everything in common.” Acts 2:44 and 4:32 describe members sharing, not a church holding title. Peter’s question to Ananias (5:4) shows the field was his until he chose to give. “The church of God which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). A statement about the people. It was later read as the church’s title to what it held, as if the church were a thing that could be owned and therefore own. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle (2012) Traces how the churches of the fourth and fifth centuries became the great landholders of the late empire, and how wealth reshaped the bishop’s office. HISTORIAN A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (1964), ch. 22 On the legal standing and the endowments of the churches after Constantine, and the clergy’s exemptions. CATHOLIC Code of Canon Law 1254–1258 The church’s right to temporal goods is held to be innate and independent of the state; its purposes are worship, the support of ministers, and works of charity. ORTHODOX The Russian Church’s Basis of the Social Concept (2000), VII.4 Church property comes from the believers’ gifts and serves worship, the clergy and the community; the state is asked to treat it as a property of its own kind. PROTESTANT Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (2008), ch. 2 Lay church property at Constantine’s door. The cemeteries and halls of the third century show the churches owning two generations before him. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The apostolic church held a common fund, so it owned property.” (Catholic, Orthodox) It held money on its way to a need, administered by the apostles and then the Seven. No text shows a church holding land, a building or an endowment, and the one sale described keeps title with the seller until he gives (Acts 5:4). The entry dates ownership, not the fund. 2. “Ownership was only impossible because the church was illegal. The moment it could own, it did.” Granted, and the entry says so: the churches held cemeteries and halls before any emperor allowed it. What the law added in 313 and 321 was the legal person, which is the thing that outlived every bishop and every congregation and became the church that people join or sue. 3. “A church that owns nothing can run no hospital, no school, no relief at scale.” True, and Basil’s hospital is the proof. A church may choose to own and do those goods. The entry records that the apostles’ churches did not, that the choice came later, and what else came with it. 4. “The temple was owned by Israel at God’s command.” It was, and the apostles moved the word onto the people (1 Cor 3:16; 1 Pet 2:5). The one building God commanded is the one the New Testament says is now the church itself. 9 NOT SETTLED Whether the third-century churches held property through the burial-club form or by simple toleration is unsettled; the evidence is thin either way. When a church first owned a building, rather than a cemetery, cannot be fixed. Edessa may have had one in 201; Dura-Europos was a converted house about 240. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 39 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xxxix.html - c. 217 · Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9.12 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050109.htm - 260 · Gallienus, in Eusebius, Church History 7.13 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250107.htm - 303 · Diocletian’s first edict, in Lactantius 12 and Eusebius 8.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0705.htm - 313 · The edict of Milan, in Lactantius 48 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0705.htm - 321 · Codex Theodosianus 16.2.4 — https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/theodosius/theod16.shtml - c. 372 · Basil, Letter 94 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202094.htm - c. 380 · Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy 2.28 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/34012.htm - 494 · Gelasius of Rome — https://www.heiligenlexikon.de/CatholicEncyclopedia/Gelasius_I.html - 1983 · Code of Canon Law 1254 §1 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib5-cann1254-1310_en.html - voice · Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle (2012) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThrough+the+Eye+of+a+Needle+au%3ABrown - voice · A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (1964), ch. 22 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Later+Roman+Empire+au%3AJones - voice · Code of Canon Law 1254–1258 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib5-cann1254-1310_en.html - voice · The Russian Church’s Basis of the Social Concept (2000), VII.4 — https://old.mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/vii/ - voice · Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (2008), ch. 2 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APagan+Christianity+au%3AViola ============================================================================== c. 190 · 325 · Easter dated apart from the Jews Address: https://additions.church/325-easter Addition · How it binds: Required One common date for the feast is bound on every church, reckoned apart from the Jewish calendar. The emperor gives the reason: “Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.” Antioch excommunicates those who keep it with the Jews. First clear witness: Council of Nicaea, 325, in its letter to the Alexandrians and Constantine’s letter (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.18–19); Council of Antioch, canon 1, 341. Victor of Rome had tried and failed about 190. Footing: firm. Sunday Easter was the majority practice long before 325, and a common feast kept freely is not what is dated. The binding is. Nicaea did not forbid Easter to fall on Passover; that is a later reading. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE CLAIM The New Testament commands no yearly feast. Christ was crucified at Passover and Paul calls him “our Passover lamb,” and the churches of Asia, claiming John and Philip, kept the Pascha on the fourteenth of Nisan, the night of the Jewish Passover. Most other churches kept it on the Sunday after. About 155 Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicetus of Rome disagreed about it and “parted from each other in peace.” About 190 Victor of Rome tried to cut off all Asia for its date; “this did not please all the bishops,” and some rebuked him sharply. In 325 the Council of Nicaea bound one date on every church, reckoned apart from the Jewish calendar. Constantine’s letter to the churches gives the reason: “Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.” In 341 the Council of Antioch excommunicated laymen and deposed clergy who kept Easter with the Jews. A feast the apostles never commanded was given one common date, bound on pain of excommunication, and set apart from the Jews on purpose. NOT CLAIMED That Christians should not keep Easter, that Sunday is the wrong day, or that one date is a bad thing. A common feast held freely is not what is dated, and Sunday Easter was the majority practice long before 325. What is dated is the binding of one reckoning on every church, with a penalty, and the reason given for it. The common claim that Nicaea forbade Easter ever to fall on or before Passover is a later reading; the documents do not say it. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 5:7–8 “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven … but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” John 19:14, 31 Jesus is condemned on “the day of Preparation of the Passover.” The cross stands inside the Jewish feast. Col 2:16–17 “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” Rom 14:5 “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Gal 4:10–11 “You observe days and months and seasons and years!” Days made a condition, not days kept. 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The Jewish calendar. Passover falls on the fourteenth of Nisan, the first spring month, and in the apostles’ day the month began when the authorities in Jerusalem declared the new moon. The Gospels set the cross inside that calendar, on the day of Preparation, and date the resurrection to the first day of the week after it. Passover in the first churches. Jesus died and rose at Passover, and the first believers went on marking the Jewish year: Paul sails “after the days of Unleavened Bread” and hurries to be in Jerusalem for Pentecost (Acts 20:6, 16; 1 Cor 16:8). Whether they kept a Christian Pascha, and on what day, the texts do not say. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Polycarp and Anicetus, in Irenaeus’s letter to Victor (Eusebius, Church History 5.24) Polycarp kept the fourteenth “with John the disciple of our Lord,” Anicetus did not, and “they communed together … And they parted from each other in peace, both those who observed, and those who did not.” Rome’s earlier bishops had sent the eucharist to those who kept the other date. 5 THE RECORD c. 190 Victor of Rome and the synods (Eusebius, Church History 5.23–24) Synods in Palestine, Rome, Pontus, Gaul and Osrhoene rule that the resurrection is kept “on no other but the Lord’s day.” Victor “attempted to cut off from the common unity the parishes of all Asia.” Polycrates of Ephesus answers, “We observe the exact day; neither adding, nor taking away,” and “this did not please all the bishops.” 3rd c. Didascalia Apostolorum 21 A Syrian church order still ties the Christian fast to the Jewish feast: “When therefore that People keeps the Passover, do you fast.” c. 250s Dionysius of Alexandria (Eusebius, Church History 7.20) A table of eight years, holding “that it is not proper to observe the paschal feast until after the vernal equinox.” Christian tables of their own were being made, at Rome and Alexandria, in place of the synagogue’s reckoning. 314 Council of Arles, canon 1 In the West: Easter is to be kept “on one day and at one time in all the earth.” 325 Council of Nicaea, synodal letter to the Alexandrians (Socrates, Church History 1.9) “All the brethren in the East who have heretofore kept this festival when the Jews did, will henceforth conform to the Romans and to us.” No canon on Easter survives; the decision is known from letters. 325 Constantine’s letter to the churches (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.18–19) “It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews.” “Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way.” The feast is to be kept “by all and in every place on one and the same day.” 341 Council of Antioch, canon 1 Whoever sets aside “the decree of the holy and great Synod which was assembled at Nice … concerning the holy and salutary feast of Easter” is to be “excommunicated and cast out of the Church”; clergy who keep Easter with the Jews are deposed. c. 380 Apostolic Canon 7 A bishop, presbyter or deacon who keeps Easter “before the vernal equinox, with the Jews” is deposed. 1998 · 2010 North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation The Nicene rule “was directed against making the calculation of the date of Easter depend upon contemporary Jewish reckoning, not against a coincidence of date,” and the two feasts still coincided “as late as the 8th century.” 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Meta ton Ioudaion,” with the Jews (Apostolic Canon 7). Meant not reckoning by the Jews. Later commentators, Zonaras in the twelfth century among them, read it as a rule that the Jewish Passover must come first, which the Orthodox scholar Archbishop Peter L’Huillier calls “a literal but erroneous understanding.” 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Archbishop Peter (L’Huillier), The Church of the Ancient Councils (1996) Nicaea “did not impose the use of the nineteen-year cycle,” and the two Paschas “coincided several times” in the fourth century. CATHOLIC North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation, Celebrating Easter/Pascha Together (2010) Both churches’ theologians agree on what Nicaea decided and propose a common date by the same principles. HISTORIAN Thomas Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (1986) Traces the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Sunday Pascha side by side and argues the Quartodeciman form is the older. PROTESTANT The Westminster Directory for Public Worship (1645) “Festival days, vulgarly called holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.” Part of the Protestant line kept no Easter at all. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “One feast on one day is unity, and unity is apostolic.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Unity is apostolic; a single date is not, and Polycarp and Anicetus kept unity without one. The binding is what is dated, together with the reason Constantine gave for it. 2. “Constantine’s words are not the council’s. Nicaea decided a date, not a judgment on the Jews.” (Orthodox) The council’s own letter says the East will no longer keep the feast “when the Jews did,” and Antioch 341 enforced the decree against keeping it “with the Jews.” Constantine’s reason is his, and the page quotes it as his. 3. “Christ rose on Sunday; a Sunday Easter is closer to the Gospel than the fourteenth.” Perhaps, and the entry does not date the Sunday. It dates the rule that made one reckoning a condition of communion, against churches that claimed John for theirs. 9 NOT SETTLED Whether the Quartodeciman Pascha or the Sunday Pascha is older is disputed. The entry does not depend on it. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Polycarp and Anicetus, in Irenaeus’s letter to Victor (Eusebius, Church History 5.24) — https://bkv.unifr.ch/works/cpg-3495/versions/the-church-history-of-eusebius/divisions/140/ - c. 190 · Victor of Rome and the synods (Eusebius, Church History 5.23–24) — https://bkv.unifr.ch/works/cpg-3495/versions/the-church-history-of-eusebius/divisions/140/ - 3rd c. · Didascalia Apostolorum 21 — https://earlychristiancommentary.com/?p=875 - c. 250s · Dionysius of Alexandria (Eusebius, Church History 7.20) — https://bkv.unifr.ch/works/cpg-3495/versions/the-church-history-of-eusebius/divisions/213/ - 314 · Council of Arles, canon 1 — https://www.fourthcentury.com/arles-314-canons/ - 325 · Council of Nicaea, synodal letter to the Alexandrians (Socrates, Church History 1.9) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26011.htm - 325 · Constantine’s letter to the churches (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.18–19) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25023.htm - 341 · Council of Antioch, canon 1 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3805.htm - c. 380 · Apostolic Canon 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - 1998 · 2010 · North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation — https://www.usccb.org/resources/celebrating-easter-pascha.pdf - voice · Archbishop Peter (L’Huillier), The Church of the Ancient Councils (1996) — https://www.oca.org/holy-synod/statements/archbishop-peter/concerning-the-date-of-pascha-and-the-1st-ecumenical-council - voice · North American Orthodox–Catholic Theological Consultation, Celebrating Easter/Pascha Together (2010) — https://www.usccb.org/resources/celebrating-easter-pascha.pdf - voice · Thomas Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (1986) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Origins+of+the+Liturgical+Year+au%3ATalley - voice · The Westminster Directory for Public Worship (1645) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3ADirectory+for+the+Public+Worship+of+God+1645 ============================================================================== 325 · A ladder of rank Address: https://additions.church/325 Addition · How it binds: Required Bishops of great cities are set over provinces of other bishops. Patriarchs follow. First clear witness: Council of Nicaea, canons 4 and 6, 325. Footing: firm. Nicaea’s teaching about Christ is not in question here. This is about its ordering of offices. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY In 325 Constantine summoned the bishops of the empire to Nicaea, near Nicomedia, where he was residing, to settle the Arian dispute about the Son. They settled it, and that confession this page holds as a recognition of what the apostles taught. They also passed twenty canons on church order, and two of them did something no council had done before: they wrote the empire’s administrative map into church law for every province. Canon 4 placed the bishops of each province under the bishop of its capital, the metropolitan, whose consent was needed for any consecration. Canon 6 confirmed the “ancient customs” by which the bishops of Alexandria, Rome and Antioch held authority over whole regions. A ladder had been built: bishop, metropolitan, the great sees. Within sixty years Constantinople was placed on the second rung because it was New Rome, and within a century and a half the rungs were the patriarchates of the East and the papacy of the West. In the apostolic writings the churches are equals. Paul writes to Rome as he writes to Colossae. Jerusalem’s council sends decisions the apostles made, and no standing office above the churches follows from it; the elders of each city answer to no one above them but Christ. All four lines carry the ladder; the Protestant churches rebuilt it as synods, conferences and presidencies. The record dates the canons and shows the ladder growing. 2 THE CLAIM At Nicaea in 325 the bishops, summoned and housed by the emperor, wrote a hierarchy of churches into law. In each province the bishop of the capital confirms the appointment of every other bishop. Above the provinces, Alexandria, Rome and Antioch hold wider authority, which the council rests on “the ancient customs.” The patriarchates followed by 451. Churches that the apostles left answerable to their own elders became units in a ranked system laid out on the map of the empire. NOT CLAIMED That Nicaea’s confession of Christ is in question, or that churches should not confer. What is dated here is the ladder of rank. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 23:8, 11 “You are all brothers. … The greatest among you shall be your servant.” Acts 14:23; 20:28 Elders are appointed “in every church,” and each body of elders is charged with its own flock. Acts 15:22 A dispute between churches is settled by conference: “the apostles and the elders, with the whole church.” 1 Pet 5:1–4 Elders shepherd the flock among them and await “the chief Shepherd.” There is one. Rev 2–3 Christ addresses seven churches directly, each by name, with no church set over another. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The provincial pattern. Each Roman province had a capital, and in many the cities sent delegates to an annual assembly there under a presiding high priest. The apostles’ churches knew the pattern and did not copy it: the gathering in Acts 15 is of apostles and elders with the whole church, and no bishop of a capital confirms anyone’s appointment. The church’s structure was later fitted to one that already existed; the record shows the fitting. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 256 Cyprian, opening the Seventh Council of Carthage “None of us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or by tyrannical terror forces his colleagues to a necessity of obeying.” Eighty-seven bishops sit as equals. The ladder of rank is not yet built. 6 THE RECORD c. 96–110 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp Churches write to one another without titles of rank. Rome admonishes Corinth, in terms Catholics read as authority and others as fraternal correction; Ignatius greets Rome as the church “presiding in love,” which Catholics read as rank and Afanasiev as the love of one church among equals; see 440. Smyrna’s bishop writes to Philippi with “the presbyters with him.” c. 190 Eusebius, Church History 5.23–24 The first known meetings of bishops across regions are held to discuss the date of Easter. Most agree on Sunday, and Asia dissents. Victor of Rome tries to cut off the Asian churches and is rebuked by Irenaeus and others. 256 Council of Carthage Cyprian, presiding: “every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment.” 325 Nicaea, canon 4 A bishop is to be appointed by the bishops of the province, and “the ratification of what is done should be left to the Metropolitan.” 325 Nicaea, canon 6 “Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail”: Alexandria has authority over all of them, as Rome and Antioch have in their regions. 325 Nicaea, canons 15 and 20 Two rules from the same council that are now widely set aside: no bishop, presbyter or deacon “shall pass from city to city,” and on Sundays “prayer be made to God standing.” Bishops are moved everywhere, and the West kneels on Sunday. The Orthodox still keep canon 20. 325 Nicaea, canon 5 “In every province synods shall be held twice a year.” The province, a unit of the empire, becomes a unit of the church. 325 Constantine at Nicaea The emperor calls the bishops together, gives them “the use of the public means of conveyance” (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.6), walks through the assembly to open it (3.10), and by edict sends Arius “into exile, together with Eusebius and Theognis” (Socrates 1.8). He calls himself “a bishop, ordained by God to overlook whatever is external to the Church” (Life 4.24). 381 Constantinople, canon 2 Bishops are not to act outside their own civil diocese. 451 Chalcedon Five great sees now stand above the metropolitans: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Custom, by the council’s own account. Canon 6 does not claim that the apostles ranked the churches. It appeals to custom. The theory that these three rank first because all are Peter’s sees, Rome and Antioch directly and Alexandria through Mark, is first stated at Rome later in the century, traditionally at a synod of 382. Timothy and Titus as bishops. Eusebius, writing in Nicaea’s generation, calls Timothy the first bishop of Ephesus and Titus bishop of the churches of Crete. The letters show them as Paul’s traveling delegates, soon to be recalled (2 Tim 4:9; Titus 3:12). The fourth century read its own structure back into the first. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Nicholas Afanasiev, “The Church Which Presides in Love” (1960) In the earliest understanding every local church is the whole church in its place. A “universal” church made up of parts under a single head is a later idea, which he traces from Cyprian onward. PROTESTANT Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (1953) Follows the passage from authority that rests on the Spirit’s gifts to authority that rests on office and law. ANGLICAN Henry Chadwick, “Faith and Order at the Council of Nicaea” (1960) Canon 6 was written to settle a local dispute, Libya’s bid to slip Alexandria’s control. Later readers took it as fixing the rank of the great sees, which obscured its first meaning. CATHOLIC Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy (1964) The church organized itself along the administrative lines of the empire. A Catholic historian grants this fully for the East and largely for the West. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Acts 15 is a council with authority over the churches.” Its decisions were delivered to other churches “for observance” (Acts 16:4), so it did carry authority. That authority was the apostles’, exercised with the elders and the whole assembly. Nothing in it sets one church’s bishop over another’s as a standing rank. 2. “Someone had to confirm bishops and settle disputes. Metropolitans prevented chaos.” Churches do need to work together, and neighboring bishops had been laying hands on new ones for a century. What Nicaea added was subordination, assigned by the political standing of a city. 3. “If you set aside Nicaea’s canons, you undermine its creed.” The creed is received because it says what the apostles taught about the Son. The canons are rules, and the churches that revere Nicaea have never treated them as untouchable. Bishops are moved from see to see as a matter of routine, against canon 15, and the West kneels on Sunday, against canon 20, which the Orthodox still keep. 4. “Protestants are free of this.” (Protestant) Anglicans and the Scandinavian Lutherans kept it. The rest rebuilt it under new names: superintendents and consistories, synods and assemblies, conferences and bishops. The entry shows Protestants still carrying this addition. 10 NOT SETTLED How much authority neighboring bishops exercised over one another before 325 is debated. Nicaea calls its arrangement ancient, and for Egypt and Rome it probably was a few generations old. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 256 · Cyprian, opening the Seventh Council of Carthage — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0508.htm - c. 96–110 · Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm - c. 190 · Eusebius, Church History 5.23–24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html - 256 · Council of Carthage — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0508.htm - 325 · Nicaea, canon 4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - 325 · Nicaea, canon 6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - 325 · Nicaea, canons 15 and 20 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - 325 · Nicaea, canon 5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - 325 · Constantine at Nicaea — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25023.htm - 381 · Constantinople, canon 2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm - 451 · Chalcedon — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum04.htm - voice · Nicholas Afanasiev, “The Church Which Presides in Love” (1960) — https://archive.org/details/primacyofpeter0000meye - voice · Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (1953) — https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalau0000hans - voice · Henry Chadwick, “Faith and Order at the Council of Nicaea” (1960) — https://archive.org/details/harvard-theological-review_1960-07_53_3 - voice · Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy (1964) — https://archive.org/details/byzantiumromanpr0000dvor ============================================================================== c. 350 · The departed asked to pray Address: https://additions.church/350 Addition · How it binds: Required, Made normative At the table the apostles and martyrs are named so that God will hear the church through their prayers. Their bones go under altars and their days fill the year. First clear witness: In the church’s public prayer: the Jerusalem catecheses (Cyril, Lecture 23.9), c. 350–390, “at their prayers and intercessions.” Private invocation is scratched on a Roman wall from about 260. Footing: qualified. Honor for martyrs is early (Polycarp, c. 156), and Revelation shows the dead praying. Asking them to pray is the step no New Testament writer takes. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY The church honoured its martyrs from the beginning. The account of Polycarp’s death at Smyrna in the 150s says the Christians gathered his bones and kept the day, and adds, as if someone had already asked, that they worship Christ and love the martyrs. For two centuries that is the pattern: remember them, keep their day, thank God for them. The dead are “with Christ,” and the living pray to God. Somewhere in the fourth century the direction of the prayer turned. The catechetical lectures given in Jerusalem around 350, which go under the name of Cyril, describe the Supper and say that the church commemorates the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs so that at their prayers and intercessions God may receive the petition. By the end of the century the martyrs’ shrines were the busiest places in Christian cities, relics were moved and divided, and the saints were addressed directly. When a priest in Gaul named Vigilantius objected around 406 that the practice looked like the old religion with new names, Jerome answered him with the fiercest pamphlet he ever wrote. The apostolic writings have the saints in heaven and the living on earth and one mediator between God and men. They record no prayer addressed to anyone departed. The Reformers set the practice down in 1517; the three ancient lines keep it, and the record shows the century in which it arrived. 2 THE CLAIM The first Christians honored their martyrs, kept the anniversaries of their deaths, and believed that those who die in Christ are alive with him. From about the middle of the fourth century something further appears in the public prayers and sermons of the church. The prayers of the departed are named as a ground on which God will hear the living, and by about 380 preachers speak to the martyrs directly and ask them to pray. Their bones are moved, divided and placed under altars. Shrines, pilgrimages and a calendar of saints’ days follow. No writer of the New Testament asks anything of anyone in heaven except God. These practices closely resemble Roman care for the dead. The church’s own bishops noticed the resemblance, and in one case allowed the Christian version to make conversion easier. The law forbids offering to the dead and inquiring of them; the church answered that its rite is offered to God. Whether that answer holds, the reader can judge. NOT CLAIMED That the faithful dead are not alive, that they do not pray, or that the martyrs should be forgotten. Revelation shows them praying. What is dated here is addressing them, and the cult that grew up around their remains. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 6:9; John 16:26–27 “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father.’” “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you.” Heb 7:25; 1 Tim 2:5 Christ “always lives to make intercession for them.” “There is one mediator between God and men.” Rev 6:9–10 The martyrs under the altar cry out to God, “how long?” They pray. No one on earth speaks to them. Rev 22:8–9 John falls at an angel’s feet. “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you … Worship God.” Deut 18:10–11; Isa 8:19 The one practice toward the dead the law names is consultation: “should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?” The entry does not equate a request for prayer with it, but it is the only instruction there is. Luke 16:24–31 The text for the other side: the rich man asks Abraham, among the dead, for relief and for a message to his brothers. It is a parable set among the dead, and both requests are refused. Jas 5:16 What is commanded: “pray for one another.” Every example in Scripture is among the living. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Jewish belief. Jews of the period did believe that angels and the righteous dead pray for Israel. In 2 Maccabees 15 Judas sees the dead prophet Jeremiah, “a man who loves the family of Israel and prays much for the people and the holy city” (15:14). Tobit’s angel carries prayers before God (Tobit 12:12, 15). So heavenly intercession was not a Christian novelty. Calling on such figures was another matter. In Revelation an angel twice refuses John’s worship: “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you” (19:10; 22:8–9), and Paul names “worship of angels” as a fault (Col 2:18). The honored tomb. Greeks and Romans kept annual meals at family graves and paid cult at the tombs of heroes, who were thought to protect their cities. Jesus mentions the Jewish version: “you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous” (Matt 23:29). Patrons. Roman society ran on patronage. One did not approach a great man directly but through a friend at court, and Paul’s churches had patrons of their own (Rom 16:2). How closely the later language about the saints, as patrons, friends and advocates, follows that pattern is in the record. Bones. For Jews a corpse defiled (Num 19:11), and Roman law forbade disturbing a grave. Digging up, dividing and enshrining human remains would have been new and shocking to both. When it began, and the law that had to answer it, are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 156 Martyrdom of Polycarp 17–18 The church keeps the day of his death and gathers at his bones, and says why: “Him we worship as the Son of God, but the martyrs we love as disciples.” Honor, an anniversary, relics, and no prayer addressed to him. 6 THE RECORD c. 156 Martyrdom of Polycarp 17–18 Christ “we adore; but the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love.” His bones are gathered as “more precious than the most exquisite jewels,” and the church will “celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom.” The letter contains no request for his prayers. c. 233 Origen, On Prayer 11, 14–15 The saints and angels pray alongside us. Prayer in the strict sense is to be offered to the Father alone. One line (14.6) allows requests to be addressed to “saints,” and whether he means the living or the departed is debated. c. 260–320 Graffiti beneath San Sebastiano, Rome Visitors to a shrine of the two apostles scratch on the wall: “Paul and Peter, pray for Victor.” They are among the earliest datable invocations of saints, private and scratched on a wall; nothing in the church’s public prayer yet. c. 350–390 Cyril (or John) of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 5 (Lecture 23).9 At the offering “we commemorate” patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs, “that at their prayers and intercessions God would receive our petition.” The saints’ intercession is now pleaded before God in the eucharistic prayer. Direct address follows in the sermons of about 380. c. 351–357 The first translations of relics The bones of the martyr Babylas are moved at Antioch, and those said to be of Timothy, Andrew and Luke are brought to Constantinople. c. 364 Council of Laodicea, canon 35 Christians must not leave the church to “invoke angels.” The canon calls this hidden idolatry. It aims at a separate angel cult in Phrygia, not at the martyrs; what it shows is a church of 364 calling the invocation of a heavenly intermediary outside its own prayer idolatry. c. 380 Gregory of Nyssa, On Theodore the Martyr; Ambrose, On Widows 9.55 Sermons now address the martyrs directly; Ambrose tells widows that the martyrs “are to be entreated” (377). Gregory of Nyssa, preaching at Theodore’s shrine, asks the martyr to intercede for the country and to gather his fellow martyrs to the plea (PG 46:736–748; English in Leemans and others, “Let Us Die That We May Live,” 2003). c. 385 Augustine, Confessions 6.2 Monica brings “cakes, and bread, and wine” to the martyrs’ shrines as she had in Africa. Ambrose has forbidden it, as being “very like the superstition of the Gentiles.” 386 A law against the trade in relics An imperial law of 26 February 386 has to forbid moving or selling the bodies of martyrs: “let no one divide a martyr, let no one trade in one” (nemo martyrem distrahat, nemo mercetur; Theodosian Code 9.17.7). Digging up, dividing and enshrining human remains was new, and it shocked pagans. 395 Augustine, Letter 29.9 Augustine explains the martyr feasts in his own church. When peace came, “crowds of heathen who wished to assume the Christian religion were kept back,” because they could not give up their festivals for the idols. Earlier leaders chose “to permit them to celebrate, instead of the festivals which they renounced, other feasts in honour of the holy martyrs.” A bishop records the substitution, and argues that its time has passed. 406 Jerome, Against Vigilantius A presbyter from Gaul objects to the veneration of relics, to vigils at tombs and to prayers to the dead, and calls them pagan. Jerome answers him with scorn. 787 Nicaea II, canon 7 No church is to be consecrated without relics. 993 · 1234 Papal canonization A pope canonizes a saint for the first time on record (Ulrich of Augsburg, 993). The declaring of saints is reserved to Rome from about 1170, and by general law in 1234. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED From “they pray” to “pray to them.” Revelation 5:8 and 8:3 show elders and an angel presenting the prayers of God’s people. That supports the belief that heaven prays with the church. It was taken to support speaking to those in heaven, which is a different act. “A cloud of witnesses.” Hebrews 12:1 calls the faithful of chapter 11 witnesses, people whose lives testify to faith. The verse came to be read as a crowd watching from the stands, able to see and hear us. How do they hear? Jerome argued that if apostles could pray for others on earth, they can do so all the more in heaven. Vigilantius had objected that the martyrs’ souls rest in Abraham’s bosom or under God’s altar and cannot be present at their tombs to hear. Augustine, who defended the practice, himself raised the question of how the martyrs could be present in so many places at once, and said it was beyond his understanding. A phrase in the creed. “The communion of saints” is a late addition to the Apostles’ Creed, first found around 400. In Latin it can as easily mean “sharing in holy things.” 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (1981) The cult is not paganism under a new name. It is a creation of late Roman Christianity and its leaders, modeled on patronage and friendship. CATHOLIC Hippolyte Delehaye SJ, The Legends of the Saints (1905); Les origines du culte des martyrs (1912) A Jesuit and the leading Bollandist of his century. The cult grew out of commemoration at the tomb, and a large part of the legends is fiction. HISTORIAN Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (1997) Against Peter Brown: much of the practice at the shrines continued what converts had always done at tombs and temples. ORTHODOX Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) Death does not divide the church. Asking the saints’ prayers is family life carried across the grave. PROTESTANT Augsburg Confession, article 21 (1530) The saints are to be remembered and imitated. Scripture does not teach us to call on them, and it sets forth one mediator. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “It is no different from asking a friend to pray for you.” Scripture has many requests for prayer among the living and not one addressed to the departed, although Stephen, James and many others had died before the letters were written. Consulting the dead is the one practice in this area that the law forbids. Catholics and Orthodox answer that a request for prayer is not consultation, and the distinction is a fair one. The silence of the apostolic writings remains, and so does the question your own defenders left open, how the departed hear: Vigilantius asked it, and Augustine said it was beyond him (On the Care of the Dead 16). 2. “Second Maccabees shows a dead prophet praying for the people.” It does, in a dream. Judas takes courage from the vision. He does not pray to Jeremiah. 3. “Every ancient church does this.” From the later fourth century, yes. Before that the apostolic fathers are silent, and the evidence is thin: one debated line in Origen and private graffiti from about 260, nothing in the church’s prayer. Objections were raised inside the church as the practice spread: the canon on angels, Epiphanius on Mary (see c. 600), Vigilantius on relics. 4. “Peter Brown showed this was not paganism.” This page does not say it was. It says the practice can be dated, and that its forms follow the patronage and tomb customs of the late Roman world more closely than anything in the apostles. 10 NOT SETTLED How far popular practice ran ahead of the texts is hard to judge. The graffiti suggest that it did, and the earliest prayer addressed to Mary, on a papyrus dated anywhere from the third century to the eighth, is in the entry at c. 600. Protestants who cut this addition often lost the memory of the martyrs altogether. That is a real poverty, and the earliest church did not share it. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 156 · Martyrdom of Polycarp 17–18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm - c. 233 · Origen, On Prayer 11, 14–15 — https://tertullian.org/fathers/origen_on_prayer_02_text.htm - c. 260–320 · Graffiti beneath San Sebastiano, Rome — https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/?p=103095 - c. 350–390 · Cyril (or John) of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 5 (Lecture 23).9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310123.htm - c. 351–357 · The first translations of relics — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm - c. 364 · Council of Laodicea, canon 35 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - c. 380 · Gregory of Nyssa, On Theodore the Martyr; Ambrose, On Widows 9.55 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Let+Us+Die+That+We+May+Live+Greek+homilies+on+Christian+martyrs+Leemans - c. 385 · Augustine, Confessions 6.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110106.htm - 386 · A law against the trade in relics — https://ancientrome.ru/ius/library/codex/theod/liber09.htm - 395 · Augustine, Letter 29.9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102029.htm - 406 · Jerome, Against Vigilantius — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm - 787 · Nicaea II, canon 7 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xvi.xiv.vii.html - 993 · 1234 · Papal canonization — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364b.htm - voice · Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (1981) — https://archive.org/details/cultofsaintsitsr0000brow - voice · Hippolyte Delehaye SJ, The Legends of the Saints (1905); Les origines du culte des martyrs (1912) — https://archive.org/details/thelegendsofthesa00deleuoft - voice · Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (1997) — https://archive.org/details/christianitypaga0000macm - voice · Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) — https://archive.org/details/orthodoxchurch00ware - voice · Augsburg Confession, article 21 (1530) — https://www.gutenberg.org/files/275/275-h/275-h.htm#link2H_4_0022 ============================================================================== c. 364 · The meal put out of the building Address: https://additions.church/364 Addition · How it binds: Required A synod forbids love feasts in church buildings. The table that began as a supper is now only an altar. First clear witness: Synod of Laodicea, canon 28, between 343 and 381. Footing: firm. A regional synod, and the feasts had been abused. It shows that the meal and the gathering have come apart. Carried today by: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY For three hundred years after Paul, Christians kept eating together. The token Supper had separated from the meal by the middle of the second century, but the meal itself survived as the agape, the love feast, a shared dinner that fed the poor and bound the church together, often held in the same building where the Supper was celebrated. Tertullian defends it against pagan slander; Clement of Alexandria frets about its excesses; the Apostolic Tradition gives rules for it. Then the buildings changed, and the meal had nowhere to go. A synod of bishops at Laodicea in Asia Minor, meeting sometime between 343 and 381, ruled in its twenty-eighth canon that love feasts were not to be held in the Lord’s houses, and that no one was to eat or spread couches in the house of God. Councils at Carthage and, three centuries later, in Trullo repeated the ban. The hall had become a temple, and you do not eat in a temple. The apostolic gathering was a meal. Luke’s account of Troas has Paul talking until midnight, a young man falling out of a window, and then bread broken and food eaten before dawn. By the end of the fourth century the church had put the meal out of its own building, and every line carries the empty room. The record dates the canon and shows what it closed. 2 THE CLAIM The Lord’s Supper began as a supper. By the middle of the second century the bread and cup were often taken in a morning service with no full meal, while the church’s common meal, the agape or love feast, continued on its own. In the later fourth century synods put the love feast out of church buildings. By then the table in the church was an altar. The meal moved to homes and charity halls and in most places died out. NOT CLAIMED That bread and cup without a meal is not the Lord’s Supper, or that the love feasts were never abused. Paul and Jude both say they were. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 11:20–21, 33 “It is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. … when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” Luke 22:20 “Likewise the cup after they had eaten.” The bread and the cup stand at either end of a meal. Acts 2:46 “Breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.” Jude 12 “These are hidden reefs at your love feasts.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The supper as the gathering. For a Greek association or a Jewish household, eating together was the main form of common life. Paul’s word is deipnon, the main meal of the day. Pressure from the law. Roman governors distrusted evening meetings of private clubs, and emperors banned associations from time to time. A supper after dark was the kind of thing that drew notice; a morning rite before work drew less. The first report of Christians giving up their meal under that pressure is in the record at c. 112. Numbers. A dining room held a dozen people, and a house perhaps forty or fifty. When congregations outgrew houses, and above all when they moved into halls (see 313), a real meal for everyone became impractical. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 39 Describes the church’s supper under its own name: “our feast explains itself by its name; the Greeks call it agape.” It opens and closes with prayer and feeds the poor. At the end of the second century it is still the church’s meal. 6 THE RECORD c. 110 Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8 “It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast.” The love feast is still the church’s central meal. c. 112 Pliny, Letters 10.96 The Christians of Bithynia tell the governor that they gave up their common meal after his edict against associations. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 A Sunday service of readings, address, prayers, bread and cup. No meal is described. c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 39 The agape is a modest supper that begins and ends with prayer and feeds the needy. c. 211 Tertullian, The Crown 3 The Eucharist, “which the Lord both commanded to be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken by all alike,” is now taken “in congregations before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the presidents.” He knows that the practice has moved from the command. c. 253 Cyprian, Letter 63 (62).16 Christ offered the cup in the evening after supper, and we offer in the morning. A supper, he explains, is not a setting where all the brothers can be gathered. 321 Constantine’s Sunday law “All judges and the people in the city should rest, and the work in all the crafts should cease, on the holy Sunday” (Code of Justinian 3.12.2); the countryside may go on working. Until then it had been a working day, and Christians had gathered before dawn or after dark. c. 340 Council of Gangra, canon 11 Anathema on anyone who despises those who hold love feasts and invite the brothers in honor of the Lord. The meal still has defenders. c. 364 Council of Laodicea, canon 28 “It is not permitted to hold love feasts, as they are called, in the Lord’s houses, or churches, nor to eat and to spread couches in the house of God.” 397 Council of Carthage, canon 30 Bishops and clergy are not to feast in churches, and the people are to be kept from it as far as possible. 692 Council in Trullo, canon 74 Repeats the ban of Laodicea for the whole East, with a penalty: “let him cease, or be cut off.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Eat at home.” 1 Corinthians 11:22 and 34 were taken as Paul separating the Supper from the meal. The page reads him as telling the rich who will not wait to take the edge off their hunger first, because the instruction to the whole church stands beside it: “when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (11:33). Dix and Jungmann read the verses as Paul himself parting the rite from the meal; it is a reading either way, and the entry does not rest on it. “The house of God.” Laodicea’s phrase treats the building as a holy place where a common meal does not belong. In the New Testament the house of God is the people (1 Tim 3:15; 1 Pet 2:5). 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ANGLICAN Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship (2014) For the first two centuries the Eucharist was a meal, and agape and eucharistia were names for the same event. The separation was gradual and took different courses in different places. ANGLICAN Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) The other reading: the rite was detached from the supper very early, perhaps within the apostles’ lifetime, and the love feast is what remained of the meal. CATHOLIC Josef Jungmann SJ, The Early Liturgy (1959) Places the separation before the middle of the second century and explains it by growth in numbers. PROTESTANT Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist (2003) Shows how fully the earliest gatherings followed the form of the ancient banquet. ANGLICAN Paul Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (2004) Warns against any single line of development. Practice varied from church to church. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The essential thing was kept. The meal around it was incidental.” Jesus set the bread and cup inside a supper, and Paul’s Corinthians still ate one (1 Cor 11:20–21). The meal did things a token cannot do. It fed the poor, it seated rich and poor at one table, which is the very issue in 1 Corinthians 11:21–22, and it gave time for the many voices of 1 Corinthians 14:26. 2. “The feasts were abused, and the church was right to end them.” Paul faced drunkenness and division at the table and answered with correction. As late as 340 a council was still defending the love feast against those who looked down on it. 3. “With hundreds present a meal is impossible.” In a hall, yes. That is a consequence of the hall. The first churches managed by meeting in numbers that could eat together, and the love feast went on in smaller gatherings for two centuries more. 4. “Laodicea was a small regional synod.” It was, and the entry says so. Its canons were later taken into the common law of the Eastern and Western churches. 10 NOT SETTLED When and where the meal and the rite parted is the chief disagreement among historians of the liturgy (Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, 1945, against Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 2014). The date of the Laodicean synod is uncertain: sometime between 343 and 381. Traces of the meal survive: the blessed bread shared after the Orthodox liturgy, the Ethiopian and Coptic meals after the service, and the Moravian and Methodist love feasts. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 39 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm - c. 112 · Pliny, Letters 10.96 — https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny10b.html#96 - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxvii.html - c. 211 · Tertullian, The Crown 3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0304.htm - c. 253 · Cyprian, Letter 63 (62).16 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050662.htm - 321 · Constantine’s Sunday law — https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/books/book3/book%203-12rev.pdf - c. 340 · Council of Gangra, canon 11 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3804.htm - c. 364 · Council of Laodicea, canon 28 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - 397 · Council of Carthage, canon 30 — https://archive.org/details/acts-of-the-council-of-carthage-397-and-council-of-hippo-393-v-1-2022 - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 74 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xiv.iii.lxxv.html - voice · Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship (2014) — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/ancient-christian-worship/272671 - voice · Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) — https://archive.org/details/shapeofliturgy0000dixg - voice · Josef Jungmann SJ, The Early Liturgy (1959) — https://archive.org/details/earlyliturgytoti0000jung - voice · Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist (2003) — https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9780800634896/From-Symposium-to-Eucharist - voice · Paul Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (2004) — https://spckpublishing.co.uk/eucharistic-origins-pb ============================================================================== c. 155 · c. 364 · 787 · Jewish believers made to give up Jewish life Address: https://additions.church/364-customs Addition · How it binds: Required, Contradicted Christians who rest on the Sabbath are anathematized, and a Jew who believes is baptized only if he renounces the customs of his people for himself and his children: circumcision, the Sabbath, the feasts, the food laws. First clear witness: Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 47, c. 155–160, of Christians who shun such believers: “I do not agree with them”; Council of Laodicea, canon 29, 343–381; Second Council of Nicaea, canon 8, 787. Footing: firm. The canons aimed first at feigned converts and at Gentiles drawn to the synagogue, and Laodicea binds every Christian. What is dated is the rule that fell on Jewish believers. Protestant confessions differ: the Belgic says the ceremonies must be abolished, Westminster only that they no longer bind. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox (in part) 1 THE CLAIM The apostles left Jewish believers free to live as Jews. James could tell Paul that “thousands” of believing Jews were “all zealous for the law,” and Paul joined a temple purification so that all would know he himself lived “in observance of the law.” He had Timothy circumcised, told the circumcised not to remove the marks, and became “as a Jew” to Jews. What the council of Acts 15 refused was the law laid on Gentiles. About 155–160 Justin Martyr reports Christians who will not eat with or receive believing Jews who keep the law, and says he does not agree with them. The councils took the other side. Laodicea, between 343 and 381, anathematized every Christian who rested on the Sabbath. Jerome and Augustine held in 404–405 that Jewish believers might not keep the ceremonies in their own day. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 made renouncing Jewish “customs and observances” a condition of baptizing a Jew, and Florence in 1442 declared all who keep circumcision and the Sabbath “alien to the Christian faith.” A freedom Paul kept open for Jewish believers became a condition of their baptism. NOT CLAIMED That Gentiles must keep the law, which Acts 15 settled; that the law justifies, which Galatians denies; or that Jewish believers must keep it. Paul makes it a freedom, and forbids compelling it on anyone. What is dated is the reverse compulsion: the requirement that Jews who believe give up circumcising their sons, the Sabbath, the feasts and the food laws in order to belong. It is bound by canon, and it runs against Paul’s instruction that each should “remain in the condition in which he was called,” the circumcised as circumcised (1 Cor 7:17–20). 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 21:20–24 “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law.” Paul joins the vow so that all may know “that you yourself also live in observance of the law.” Acts 16:3 Paul has Timothy circumcised “because of the Jews who were in those places.” 1 Cor 7:18–20 “Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision.” “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.” This is my rule in all the churches, Paul says (7:17). The instruction the later canons run against. 1 Cor 9:20 “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews.” Rom 14:5–6 “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.” Acts 15:19 “We should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God.” The decree is for Gentiles (Acts 21:25). 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The Jerusalem church. Until the war of 66–70 the mother church under James kept the law and worshiped in the temple. Paul, arriving there about 57, was told of “thousands” of believers zealous for the law and was asked to show that he was one of them. Gentiles and the synagogue. Many Gentiles attended the synagogues as God-fearers without becoming Jews (Acts 13:16, 26; 17:4), keeping some customs of their own accord. The question the apostles faced was whether Gentile believers must become Jews. When a rumor said Paul taught Jews “to forsake Moses” and not to circumcise their children, the apostles treated it as false and asked him to show it was (Acts 21:21–24). 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155–160 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 47 A believing Jew who keeps the law “will be saved, if he does not strive in every way to persuade other men” to do the same, and Justin will “associate with them in all things as kinsmen and brethren.” Of Christians who refuse them: “I do not agree with them.” 5 THE RECORD c. 155–160 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 47 “There are such people, Trypho, and these do not venture to have any intercourse with or to extend hospitality to such persons; but I do not agree with them.” The first witness to Christians who shun law-keeping Jewish believers. 343–381 Council of Laodicea, canons 29, 37, 38 “Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day … if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.” No feasting with Jews, no unleavened bread from them. Binding on every Christian, Jewish-born included. 404–405 Jerome, Letter 112, and Augustine, Letter 82 Of the Nazarenes: “while they desire to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other.” Augustine replies that the apostles kept the law for a time, and that “it never was my opinion that in our time, Jews who become Christians were either required or at liberty to observe” the ceremonies. 692 Council in Trullo, canon 11 No cleric or layman may “eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them”; deposition or excommunication. 787 Second Council of Nicaea, canon 8 Aimed first at Jews who feign conversion and keep the Sabbath in secret. A sincere convert who professes his faith, “setting at naught their customs and observances,” is to be baptized with his children, and they are to “hold aloof from the ordinances of the Hebrews. But if they will not do this, let them in no wise be received.” c. 8th–9th c. The Byzantine abjuration for Jewish converts “I renounce all customs, rites, legalisms, unleavened breads and sacrifices of lambs of the Hebrews … and Sabbaths … in one word, I renounce absolutely everything Jewish.” The date of the formula is disputed. c. 1270 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q.103 a.4 “It would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity.” 1442 Council of Florence, bull of union with the Copts All who “observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law” it “declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation.” 1561 · 1646 Belgic Confession 25; Westminster Confession 19.3 The Protestant confessions differ. The Belgic: the ceremonies ceased at Christ’s coming, “so that the use of them must be abolished amongst Christians.” Westminster: “All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament,” which denies that they bind without forbidding them. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” (Gal 5:2). Written to Gentiles being told to be circumcised in order to be justified. The same writer circumcised Timothy. “He makes the first one obsolete” (Heb 8:13). The covenant of the priesthood and sacrifices gives way to Christ’s. The letter does not tell Jewish believers to stop circumcising their sons or keeping the Sabbath; it warns them against leaning on foods rather than grace (13:9). “Let no one pass judgment on you … with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Col 2:16). A text of freedom from being judged, read as a ban. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Gavin D’Costa, Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II (2019) A Catholic theologian asks whether the ceremonial law is “dead and deadening or alive and life-giving” for baptized Jews, and argues that Florence assumed Jews who knowingly deny Christ. CATHOLIC Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q.103 a.4 The case for the canons: every ceremony professes faith, and the old ceremonies profess a Messiah still to come; after the gospel they are “both dead and deadly.” PROTESTANT Mark Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (2005) Argues that the church has a Jewish part bound to Torah, and that the patristic rule against it is the church’s wound, not its teaching. PROTESTANT David Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews (2011) Reads 1 Cor 9:19–23 as Paul living as a Torah-observant Jew among Jews, not pretending. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The law was a shadow, and keeping it after Christ denies that he has come. That is why the fathers forbade it.” (Catholic, Orthodox) That is Aquinas’s reason, and it is a serious one. Paul did not reason so: he kept the law after the resurrection, among Jews, and told the circumcised to stay as they were. What a believer keeps in Christ’s name professes Christ. 2. “Galatians and Colossians end the law.” (Protestant) They end it as a condition of justification and as a yoke on Gentiles. Neither forbids a Jew to keep it, and Westminster and the Thirty-nine Articles stop at saying it does not bind. That is the apostolic line; the canons went past it. 3. “The canons were aimed at false converts and at Gentiles flirting with the synagogue.” (Orthodox) Mostly, and the entry says so of Nicaea II. Its second half still made renouncing the customs a condition for the sincere convert and his children, and Laodicea bound every Christian. 4. “Paul says he became as a Jew ‘though not being myself under the law’ (1 Cor 9:20). His keeping it was a missionary courtesy, not a Jewish life.” (Protestant) He says he was not under it as a means of standing before God, and in the same letter tells the circumcised to remain so. Acts shows him keeping it in Jerusalem to prove the rumor false (21:24). A courtesy can be kept; a canon that forbids it under anathema is another thing. 5. “Keeping the law divides the table; Paul rebuked Peter for it (Gal 2:11–14).” Paul rebuked Peter for withdrawing from Gentiles and so compelling them to live like Jews. Justin’s rule is the apostolic one: no compulsion either way, one table. 9 NOT SETTLED The Ethiopian church kept a Saturday Sabbath beside Sunday (see c. 1440–1450) and circumcision, so the Oriental line carries the entry in part. Whether earlier regional rules, in Visigothic Spain (Toledo IV, 633; the converts’ pledges of 637 and 654) or in the Byzantine abjuration, required renunciation before 787 needs checking in print. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155–160 · Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 47 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01283.htm - 343–381 · Council of Laodicea, canons 29, 37, 38 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - 404–405 · Jerome, Letter 112, and Augustine, Letter 82 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102075.htm - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 11 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm - 787 · Second Council of Nicaea, canon 8 — https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/214/2140694.htm - c. 8th–9th c. · The Byzantine abjuration for Jewish converts — https://www.caspari.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mishkan22.pdf - c. 1270 · Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q.103 a.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2103.htm - 1442 · Council of Florence, bull of union with the Copts — https://catholicism.org/what-does-the-old-testament-has-never-been-revoked-mean.html - 1561 · 1646 · Belgic Confession 25; Westminster Confession 19.3 — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html - voice · Gavin D’Costa, Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II (2019) — https://academic.oup.com/book/38733/chapter/337242528 - voice · Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q.103 a.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2103.htm - voice · Mark Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (2005) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APostmissionary+Messianic+Judaism+au%3AKinzer - voice · David Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews (2011) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AA+Jew+to+the+Jews+au%3ARudolph ============================================================================== c. 330–380 · A calendar of required fasts Address: https://additions.church/375 Addition · How it binds: Required Lent spreads, and by about 380 a church order makes it and the weekly fast days binding. Clergy who do not keep them are deposed, and lay people are shut out. First clear witness: Athanasius’s Festal Letters, from 330; Apostolic Canon 69, c. 380. Footing: firm. Fasting is biblical, and Wednesday and Friday fasts are in the Didache. The penalty is what is added. Coptic and Ethiopian Christians now fast for half the year or more. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY The first Christians fasted. The Didache, around the end of the first century, tells them to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays rather than on the days the “hypocrites” fast, Mondays and Thursdays, a Jewish custom moved to other days. Jesus had assumed his disciples would fast and told them to do it in secret. Paul told the Romans that one man esteems one day above another and another esteems every day alike, and that each should be fully convinced in his own mind. After Nicaea the fast was organized. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, sent a letter to his churches each spring from 329 onward announcing the dates of Easter and of the forty-day fast before it, and the forty days became a fixed season of the whole church within a generation. By about 380 a collection of canons circulating under the apostles’ names ordered that any cleric who did not keep the forty days, or the Wednesday and Friday fasts, be deposed, and any layman be excommunicated. A private discipline had become a calendar with penalties. The churches then fought over the calendar. In 692 a council in Trullo condemned Rome for fasting on Saturdays; the Orient kept its own seasons. The Reformers set the required fasts down in 1517 and kept the freedom Paul described; the Anglican Prayer Book keeps a table of fasts without a church penalty, which is where this entry draws the line. The record dates the penalty, not the fasting. 2 THE CLAIM The apostles left fasting to the conscience of each believer and the agreement of each church. In the second century customs varied widely, and the one bishop who tried to penalize a difference, Victor of Rome about 190, was rebuked by Irenaeus. Between about 330 and 380 the forty-day fast before Easter spread through the churches. By about 380 a Syrian church order attached penalties to it and to the weekly fasts on Wednesday and Friday: a cleric who does not keep them is deposed, and a layman is excluded. The East made that rule law in 692. The West never received the canon. The calendar went on growing. In the Coptic and Ethiopian churches today it covers half the year or more. NOT CLAIMED That fasting is unbiblical or that a church may not agree to fast together. Jesus assumes his disciples will fast. What is dated here is the fixed calendar enforced by sanction. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 6:16–17 “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites … But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face.” No days are named. Rom 14:3, 5 “Let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats.” “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Col 2:16 “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” 1 Tim 4:3–4 A mark of later error: requiring “abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving.” Acts 13:2–3 A church fasting together by its own decision, before sending out workers. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Jewish fasts. The law commands one fast, the Day of Atonement. The Pharisees fasted twice a week (Luke 18:12); the Didache names the days, Monday and Thursday. Jesus assumes his disciples will fast and tells them not to be seen doing it (Matt 6:16–18), and the apostolic letters lay down no fast days. The Christian weekly fast is first set out in the record at c. 100. Forty days. Moses, Elijah and Jesus each fasted forty days, and that gave the pattern for a fast before Easter once one was wanted. It is first mentioned, in passing, by Nicaea in 325, in the record. The ascetic ideal. Greek philosophy prized abstinence from meat and wine as a discipline of the soul, and initiation into the mysteries was preceded by days of fasting. The monks’ regime, and its extension to everyone, are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 190 Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 Some fast one day before Easter, some two, some more, some forty hours, and the variety, he says, “originated long before our day.” The difference in fasting “confirms the agreement in the faith.” No rule, no penalty. 6 THE RECORD c. 100 Didache 8 “Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites; for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week; but fast on the fourth day and the Preparation.” A custom is recommended and no penalty is attached. c. 190 Irenaeus, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 On the fast before Easter: some keep one day, some two, some more, some forty hours. “The disagreement in regard to the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.” c. 210 Tertullian, On Fasting Writing as a Montanist, he attacks the mainstream church for holding that, beyond the days when “the Bridegroom was taken away,” fasts are voluntary. The catholics answer him from Galatians 4:10 and 1 Timothy 4:3. At this date it is the sectarians who want further fasts made compulsory. 325 Nicaea, canon 5 Provincial synods are to meet “before the forty days” (tessarakostē), the first surviving use of the word for the season; the canon assumes it and says nothing of what it requires. 330–340 Athanasius, Festal Letters Announces a fast of forty days. Writing from Rome in 340, he urges Egypt to keep it as the rest of the world does, so that the Egyptians will not be laughed at. In Egypt it was still new. c. 380 Apostolic Canon 69 A bishop, presbyter, deacon, reader or singer who does not fast the forty days, or on Wednesday and Friday, is to be deposed, unless illness prevents him. A layman is to be excommunicated. c. 439 Socrates, Church History 5.22 Rome fasts three weeks, others six or seven, and all call it “forty days.” Some eat fish, some birds, some nothing but bread. Of the Easter feast he says that the Savior and his apostles “have enjoined us by no law” to keep it. Of the fast he says that no written command exists, and that the apostles left it to each person’s free will. 692 Council in Trullo, canons 55–56 The Eastern rules are imposed on Rome and on Armenia, with deposition and excommunication for those who keep their own customs. c. 400–1200 More fasts Fasts before Christmas, before the feast of the Apostles and before the Dormition are added. The Orthodox year comes to about 180 fast days. The Coptic year has more than 200, and the Ethiopian about 250, of which some 180 bind lay people. 1522 Zurich Printers eat sausage in Lent, and Zwingli defends them in a sermon on freedom in the choice of foods. The Swiss Reformation begins over this addition. 1966 Paul VI, Paenitemini Rome reduces its days of obligatory fasting to two and keeps Friday abstinence as law that bishops’ conferences may commute. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Words added to the text. In most later manuscripts Jesus says that a certain kind of demon comes out only “by prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:29; Matt 17:21), and Paul tells couples to give themselves “to fasting and prayer” (1 Cor 7:5). In Matthew 17:21 and 1 Corinthians 7:5 the earliest manuscripts lack the reference to fasting. In Mark 9:29 the fourth-century codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus lack it, though the third-century papyrus P45 apparently has it. The ESV omits the words or moves them to a footnote. If they are additions, as most editors judge, the fathers and councils who read those copies found fasting commanded in places where the apostles had not written it. “Then they will fast.” Jesus says that the wedding guests will fast when the bridegroom is taken away (Mark 2:20). Tertullian reports that the catholics of his day took this to mean the days of Christ’s death and burial, and held those to be the only fast that binds. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ANGLICAN AND LUTHERAN Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (2011) The forty-day Lent is a fourth-century construction, after Nicaea, fusing older and different practices: the short fast before Easter, the final preparation of candidates for baptism, and an Egyptian forty-day fast after Epiphany. PROTESTANT Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (1971) Explains the manuscript evidence for the added references to fasting and attributes them to the growing emphasis on the practice. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent (1969) Defends the fast as a school of repentance on the way to the joy of Pascha, and insists that limits on food are a means, not an end. CHURCH FATHERS Jerome, Letter 41; Leo the Great, Sermon 44 The other side: Jerome in the 380s and Leo in the fifth century call the forty-day fast an apostolic institution. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Jesus said, ‘When you fast.’” He assumes the practice, forbids making a show of it, and names no days. 2. “The Wednesday and Friday fasts are in the Didache. That is first-century.” (Orthodox) As a custom they are that old, and the entry says so. The Didache recommends them and threatens no one. What is dated here is the penalty. 3. “A common rule saves us from each doing as he pleases. The body fasts together.” That is a good reason for a church to agree on a fast, as the church at Antioch did. Paul’s rule still stands over any such agreement: the one who abstains is not to judge the one who eats. 4. “Lent comes from the apostles.” That is claimed from the 380s (Jerome, Letter 41.3) and repeated by Leo in the fifth century. The second-century evidence is Irenaeus, who knows fasts of one day, two days and forty hours, and regards the differences as harmless; the second-century pedigree for forty days rests on a misreading of his “forty hours” as forty days, which Rufinus’s Latin encouraged. 10 NOT SETTLED How the forty days came together, from a fast after Epiphany in Egypt or from the preparation of candidates for baptism, is still debated. Many Protestant churches removed required fasts and then lost fasting itself. That is a loss of a different kind and is not charted here. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 190 · Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm - c. 100 · Didache 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 190 · Irenaeus, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html - c. 210 · Tertullian, On Fasting — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.iii.ix.ii.html - 325 · Nicaea, canon 5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - 330–340 · Athanasius, Festal Letters — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806012.htm - c. 380 · Apostolic Canon 69 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - c. 439 · Socrates, Church History 5.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm - 692 · Council in Trullo, canons 55–56 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm - c. 400–1200 · More fasts — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Bradshaw+Johnson+Origins+of+Feasts+Fasts+and+Seasons+in+Early+Christianity - 1522 · Zurich — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Zwingli+Regarding+the+Choice+and+Freedom+of+Foods - 1966 · Paul VI, Paenitemini — https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19660217_paenitemini.html - voice · Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (2011) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Bradshaw+Johnson+Origins+of+Feasts+Fasts+and+Seasons+in+Early+Christianity - voice · Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (1971) — https://archive.org/details/textualcommentar0000metz - voice · Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent (1969) — https://archive.org/details/greatlent00schm - voice · Jerome, Letter 41; Leo the Great, Sermon 44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001041.htm ============================================================================== 301–380 · The king’s religion Address: https://additions.church/380 Addition · How it binds: Required Armenia’s king, then Ethiopia’s, then the Roman emperor make the faith the religion of the realm, and the emperor is cast in Israel’s story as a new Moses. Dissent becomes a crime, and in 385 a bishop charged as a heretic is executed. First clear witness: Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.12, 1.38, c. 337–339; Edict of Thessalonica, 380; Priscillian executed, 385. Footing: firm. Many of these rulers were sincere, and it ended persecution. It also gave the church a sword the apostles never held. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic (in part), Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY For three centuries the church had been a people inside an empire that did not want it, sometimes tolerated and sometimes hunted. Jesus had said his kingdom was not of this world; Peter had called the churches sojourners and exiles. Then, within a single lifetime, the kingdom of this world took the church up. Armenia’s king made Christianity the religion of his realm around 301 by tradition, more likely 314. Constantine favored it from 313. And on 27 February 380 the emperor Theodosius issued an edict at Thessalonica declaring the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria to be the religion of all the peoples of the empire, and the rest to be heretics liable to punishment. Five years later the punishment arrived. A Spanish bishop named Priscillian, accused of heresy and sorcery, was tried before the usurper Maximus at Trier and beheaded with several companions. Martin of Tours and Ambrose of Milan protested, and Martin refused communion with the bishops who had pressed the charge. It made no difference to what followed: for fourteen centuries, on every line of this page, the ruler’s religion was the people’s religion, and the church’s discipline had the sword behind it. The entry is carried by all four lines. The Protestant churches of the Reformation were state churches from the first day, and some still are. The record dates the edict and the first execution, and lets the reader hear what the apostles said about the kingdom. 2 THE CLAIM Between 301 and 380 Christianity went from an illegal association to the religion of kings. Armenia’s king adopted it, from 313 Constantine favored it, and the king of Aksum followed about 330–340. In 380 Theodosius made the Nicene faith the law for all his subjects, called dissenters “demented and insane,” and threatened them with punishment. In 385 a bishop charged with heresy was put to death by the state for the first time. The church’s historian had already given the emperor Israel’s story: Eusebius’s Life of Constantine makes him a Moses raised “in the very home of the tyrants” and his rival Maxentius a Pharaoh who “sank as lead in the mighty waters” of the Tiber. The church received something the apostles never had or asked for: the power to compel. NOT CLAIMED That the end of persecution was a misfortune, that these rulers were insincere, or that Christians should keep out of public life. Freedom for the church, which came in 313, is not what is dated here. Compulsion in the church’s favor, which began under Constantine and became general law in 380, is. Rome renounced compulsion in 1965 (Dignitatis Humanae 2) while keeping “the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion” (DH 1) and an established church in a few concordat states, which is why Rome carries this entry in part. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 18:36 “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.” Luke 9:54–55 “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” “But he turned and rebuked them.” Matt 13:29–30 Of the weeds among the wheat: “Let both grow together until the harvest.” Titus 3:10 The whole of the apostolic penalty for false teaching: “after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.” 1 Cor 5:12–13 “What have I to do with judging outsiders? … God judges those outside.” 2 Cor 10:4 “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel. Under the law of Moses idolatry was a capital crime, and good kings enforced right worship. A century before Christ the Jewish rulers of Judea forced the conquered Idumeans to be circumcised. Jesus’ disciples had that model before them, and he declined it. Israel’s story and the nations. The apostles applied Israel’s titles to the church scattered among the nations, “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:9–11), and never to a ruler or a realm. The kingdom Jesus announced was “not of this world” (John 18:36). The record shows how soon the story was read onto an emperor. Rome. For Romans, religion was a public duty. The safety of the state depended on the gods’ favor, and the emperor, as chief priest, was responsible for securing it. The apostles’ churches lived under that rule as the suspect party. The record shows the same reasoning turned first against them and then, with the God changed, by Christian emperors against everyone else. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 212 Tertullian, To Scapula 2 “It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions… it is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion.” Said by the church before it held the sword. 6 THE RECORD c. 212 Tertullian, To Scapula 2 “It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions.” “It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion.” 250–303 Decius and Diocletian The emperors order sacrifice for the safety of the state: a certificate of 26 June 250 survives in which a citizen swears “I have always sacrificed to the gods” and has now sacrificed, poured a libation and tasted the victims before the officials. The reason they give for persecuting Christians, that the gods’ favor is a public matter, is the one Constantine and Theodosius will keep. c. 310 Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.19–20 Religion cannot be forced. Nothing is so much a matter of free will. 301 or 314 Armenia King Tiridates is baptized, and the kingdom follows. c. 330–340 Aksum King Ezana’s coins change from the crescent to the cross and his inscriptions begin to invoke the Lord of heaven; Rufinus (Church History 10.9–10) tells how Frumentius brought the faith to the court and was made its bishop by Athanasius. The Ethiopian line begins as a king’s religion too. 313 The “Edict of Milan” Constantine and Licinius grant Christians and everyone else freedom to follow the religion each prefers. 325–333 Constantine after Nicaea Exiles Arius and two bishops who will not sign. An edict of 325 or 333 orders his books burned. c. 337–339 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.12, 1.38 Constantine, like Moses, “dwelt, as that other servant of God had done, in the very home of the tyrants.” At the Milvian Bridge, “as once in the days of Moses,” Maxentius and his guards “went down into the depths like stone” and “sank as lead in the mighty waters,” and the victors could sing as Moses’ people sang over Pharaoh, “the impious tyrant of old.” The Christian ruler is cast in Israel’s roles, and his enemies in Egypt’s. 380 Edict of Thessalonica All peoples are to hold the religion “which the divine Apostle Peter handed over to the Romans.” Those who do so are to be called “Catholic Christians.” The rest, “whom we judge to be demented and insane,” will bear the disgrace of heresy, and “their little meetings will not receive the name of churches.” 385 Priscillian of Ávila A Spanish bishop, accused by fellow bishops, is tried by an imperial court and beheaded at Trier under the emperor Maximus. Martin of Tours and Ambrose protest. c. 408 Augustine, Letter 93 “Originally my opinion was, that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ.” The results of the laws against the Donatists changed his mind, and he now cites “compel them to come in.” 1215 Lateran IV, constitution 3 Secular rulers must swear “to expel from the lands subject to their jurisdiction all heretics designated by the church.” A ruler who neglects this is to be excommunicated. 1527 · 1553 Zurich and Geneva Protestant councils drown the Anabaptist Felix Manz and burn Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician who denied the Trinity, at Geneva. 1965 Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae 12 Affirms religious freedom and grants that the people of God have at times acted in ways “hardly in accord with the spirit of the Gospel or even opposed to it.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Compel them to come in.” In the parable of the banquet the host sends his servant to the roads to press strangers to accept his hospitality (Luke 14:23). The Greek verb is the one used when Jesus “made” his disciples get into the boat (Matt 14:22). Augustine’s Latin Bible read coge intrare, “force them to come in” (the Vulgate has compelle), and he made it a warrant for the laws against the Donatists. A parable about the wideness of an invitation was read as an instruction to magistrates. The sword of Romans 13. Paul says the ruler bears the sword against wrongdoing. He is writing about a pagan government and about crime. The verse was extended to cover wrong belief. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom (1984) Treats Constantine as “the symbol of an epochal shift” that fused church and world, and traces the West’s social ethics to it. PROTESTANT Peter Leithart, Defending Constantine (2010) The best answer to John Howard Yoder (The Politics of Jesus, 1972). Constantine was a sincere believer, he ended public sacrifice, and “Constantinianism” is too crude a label. HISTORIAN H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops (2000) Constantine sought consensus and left pagans free to choose. Coercion came from the politics of the bishops, beginning under Constantine with laws against heretics and turning on pagans later in the century. HISTORIAN Peter Brown, “St. Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion” (1964) Follows Augustine’s change of mind step by step and takes his reasons seriously. CATHOLIC Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae (1965) Vatican II’s teaching that no one may be coerced in religion, grounded in the dignity of the person and in the way Christ and the apostles acted. The council calls it a development. Critics on both sides read it as a reversal of nineteenth-century teaching. ORTHODOX Georges Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” (1957) The Christian empire was an experiment the church entered with hope, and it failed. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Constantine ended three centuries of persecution. That was providence.” It may well have been, and the policy of 313, freedom for all, is not counted here as an addition. The edict of 380 is a different act. 2. “Augustine saw that fear opened minds. Many Donatists became sincere Catholics.” (Catholic) He reports it, and his candor about changing his mind is to his credit. Before him and after him the sword served every side in turn. Arian emperors exiled Athanasius. Catholic kings burned heretics. Protestant cities drowned Anabaptists, and tsars burned Old Believers. 3. “A Christian ruler must rule as a Christian.” He must rule justly. The apostles give rulers no part in the church’s discipline, and they limit the church’s own sanction to exclusion from its fellowship. Isaiah’s “kings shall be your foster fathers” (49:23), the verse Rome and the Reformers both used, promises care; a nurse does not carry a sword. See 1589. 4. “Israel’s kings enforced true worship.” Israel was one nation under one covenant law in one land. The church is gathered out of every nation and holds no territory. 5. “Protestants stand for religious liberty.” (Protestant) Since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and first among Baptists and other dissenters who had suffered for lack of it. The Reformers themselves kept this addition, which is why the entry marks Protestants as carrying it in part. 10 NOT SETTLED The traditional date for Armenia’s conversion is 301. Most historians now prefer 314. Priscillian was formally condemned for sorcery, a capital charge, and his heresy trial stood behind it. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 212 · Tertullian, To Scapula 2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0305.htm - 250–303 · Decius and Diocletian — https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/libellus_from_time_of_decius.htm - c. 310 · Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.19–20 — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf07.iii.ii.v.xx.html - 301 or 314 · Armenia — https://archive.org/details/agathangeloshist0000rwth - c. 330–340 · Aksum — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Ezana+Aksum+conversion+coins+cross+Frumentius+Rufinus - 313 · The “Edict of Milan” — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250110.htm - 325–333 · Constantine after Nicaea — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26011.htm - c. 337–339 · Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.12, 1.38 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25021.htm - 380 · Edict of Thessalonica — https://andrewjacobs.org/rs91/cucntos.html - 385 · Priscillian of Ávila — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Chadwick+Priscillian+of+Avila+Occult+and+Charismatic - c. 408 · Augustine, Letter 93 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102093.htm - 1215 · Lateran IV, constitution 3 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm - 1527 · 1553 · Zurich and Geneva — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.iii.xvii.html - 1965 · Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae 12 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html - voice · John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom (1984) — https://muse.jhu.edu/book/48240 - voice · Peter Leithart, Defending Constantine (2010) — https://www.ivpress.com/defending-constantine - voice · H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops (2000) — https://archive.org/details/constantinebisho0000drak - voice · Peter Brown, “St. Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion” (1964) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/298656 - voice · Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae (1965) — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html - voice · Georges Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” (1957) — https://archive.org/details/christianitycult0000flor ============================================================================== 381–595 · Rank follows the capital Address: https://additions.church/381 Addition · How it binds: Required Constantinople is ranked next to Rome because it is the imperial city, then given equal privileges. Its bishop takes the title Ecumenical Patriarch. First clear witness: Constantinople, canon 3 (381); Chalcedon, canon 28 (451). Footing: firm. Gregory of Rome called the universal title “proud and foolish” in 595. Canon 28 says old Rome’s rank came from the empire too, which Rome denied. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY In 330 Constantine made a Greek town on the Bosporus, Byzantium, his new capital and renamed it after himself. Fifty years later, in 381, a council of Eastern bishops meeting there ruled in its third canon that the bishop of Constantinople should hold the first place of honor after the bishop of Rome, “because it is New Rome.” In 451 the Council of Chalcedon went further and said out loud what 381 had implied: the fathers had given Rome its privileges because it was the imperial city, and Constantinople, being the seat of the emperor and senate now, should have the same. Rome’s legates protested and Leo refused the canon, because he held Rome’s place to come from Peter and not from the emperor. But the East kept the principle and built its order on it: the rank of a church follows the rank of its city. By the end of the sixth century the bishop of Constantinople was calling himself the ecumenical patriarch, and Gregory the Great in Rome was writing furious letters about it. In the apostolic writings no church ranks above another by its city. Jerusalem is consulted because the apostles are there, not because it is a capital; the great cities are where Paul went to preach, not where authority lived. This entry is on the Eastern line alone, because the East made the principle a canon and still orders its patriarchates by it. The record dates both councils. 2 THE CLAIM Constantinople was a new city with no apostle for a founder. In 381 its bishop was given second place after Rome’s “because Constantinople is New Rome.” In 451 he was given equal privileges, on the stated ground that the fathers had honored old Rome “because it was the royal city.” By 595 he was using the title Ecumenical Patriarch. The East built its order of precedence on the political rank of cities, with one exception made for holiness: Jerusalem, a provincial town, was raised to a patriarchate at the same council of 451. The order is bound because the East receives these canons as law: Trullo (canon 2, 692) seals Chalcedon’s canons, Nicaea II (canon 1, 787) makes breaking any of them a deposing offence for clergy and an excommunicating one for the laity, and canon 28 fixes who may ordain whom, so a bishop who ignores the order is deposed. NOT CLAIMED That Rome’s rival theory, rank from Peter, is the apostolic one. Neither is. Nor that some bishops meeting to coordinate their work is wrong. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Mark 9:34–35 “They had argued with one another about who was the greatest. … ‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.’” Luke 22:25–26 “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them … But not so with you.” Rev 2–3 Seven churches are addressed one by one. Ephesus, the provincial capital, receives no precedence and is the first rebuked. Acts 11:20–21; 13:1–3 Antioch is founded by unnamed believers; Jerusalem sends Barnabas to see what has happened (11:22), and Antioch then sends out its own missionaries without asking anyone (13:1–3). 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The imperial map. Rome governed through provinces, each with its capital, and everyone with business to do came to the capital. The New Testament knows churches of cities and of regions (Gal 1:2; 2 Cor 8:1), and no church that outranks another by its city. Jerusalem is consulted because the apostles are there (Acts 15:2; Gal 2:2), not because it is a capital, and the decision it sends out is the apostles’ and elders’ (Acts 16:4), not the city’s. How the church took over the empire’s map, and even its word “diocese,” is in the record. Rank as a civic passion. Cities of the Greek East fought openly over titles such as “first city of Asia,” and stamped them on their coins. Honor and precedence were the prizes of public life. This is the habit of mind that “not so with you” was spoken against. “Ecumenical.” The word comes from oikoumenē, the inhabited world, which in practice meant the empire (Luke 2:1). As a title it meant something like “imperial.” In Latin it was heard as “universal.” 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 325 Nicaea, canon 6 Rank follows “ancient custom”: Alexandria, Rome, Antioch. Byzantium is not named; it was then a suffragan see of Heraclea. Fifty-six years later its bishop ranks second because the emperor lives there. 6 THE RECORD c. 300 Diocletian’s dioceses The empire is reorganized into twelve great “dioceses,” each under a vicar, with the provinces beneath them. The church will take over the map and the word. 325 Nicaea, canon 6 “Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail.” The great sees are ranked by custom. No apostolic command is cited. 381 Constantinople, canon 3 The bishop of Constantinople has the prerogative of honor after the bishop of Rome, “because Constantinople is New Rome.” 403–451 Alexandria against Constantinople Three bishops of Alexandria in turn bring down three bishops of the capital: Chrysostom, Nestorius, Flavian. The rivalry of sees runs through each of the great Eastern crises from 403 to 451. 451 Chalcedon, canon 28 Equal privileges for New Rome, and the right to ordain metropolitans in three civil dioceses. The reason given is the city’s imperial standing. 452 Leo, Letter 104 Rejects the canon. “Things secular stand on a different basis from things divine.” Of the capital’s bishop: “Let him not disdain a city which is royal, though he cannot make it an Apostolic See.” 595 Gregory I, Register 5.18 On the title “universal”: “a proud and foolish title.” 692 Council in Trullo, canon 36 Sets the order of the five patriarchs: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem. c. 650–850 The legend of Andrew A story appears that the apostle Andrew founded the church of Byzantium. The capital acquires an apostle some centuries after it acquired its rank. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED An altered canon. At Chalcedon the papal legate read out Nicaea’s sixth canon in a Latin form that began, “The Roman church has always held the primacy.” According to the acts, a secretary then read the Greek text from a codex supplied by the archdeacon of Constantinople, and it has no such sentence. Some scholars doubt that this second reading took place. Either way, Rome’s copy had been expanded. Two pedigrees. Rome explained its standing by Peter. Constantinople later acquired an apostle of its own in Andrew, though Francis Dvornik argues (The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew, 1958) that the legend was not invented to answer Rome. Canon 28 gives a plainer account: both cities were honored because they were capitals. Rome never accepted that account of itself. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew (1958) The East ordered its churches by “accommodation” to the civil structure. The appeal to apostolic founders was a Western argument. The legend that Andrew founded Byzantium is late, and he argues it was not invented to answer Rome; it was turned against Roman primacy only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions (1989) Grants the political basis of the patriarchates and treats it as a practical arrangement, not a dogma. CATHOLIC Leo I, Letter 104 The contemporary Roman objection, quoted above. HISTORIAN Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church (2003) Traces how questions of rank poisoned relations long before 1054. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Following the civil map is only good order.” As administration it is reasonable. But a church that takes its ranks from the empire inherits the empire’s contests, and the record from 403 to 451 shows what that cost. 2. “Rome did the same. Its primacy also came from the capital.” Canon 28 says so. Rome had claimed a basis in Peter since at least the third century, and historians weigh the two explanations differently. Rome’s own account is examined at 440. Neither city’s rank rests on a command of the apostles. 3. “‘Ecumenical’ meant imperial. It was never a claim to rule every church.” Granted. The title is not what the entry dates; the principle is, that rank follows the capital, and the title is its fruit. Gregory’s alarm shows how a title outgrows its meaning, and canon 28 is cited today for jurisdiction over Orthodox Christians everywhere outside the old patriarchates, a claim to rule whatever the word once meant. 4. “It is a primacy of honor, not of power.” Canon 28 also grants the right to ordain the metropolitans of three civil dioceses, and the bishops among the barbarians beyond them. That is jurisdiction. 10 NOT SETTLED The account of the two readings of Nicaea’s canon at Chalcedon follows the acts as usually printed, and the second reading is doubted by some. What primacy means within Orthodoxy is in open dispute between Constantinople and Moscow. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 325 · Nicaea, canon 6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - c. 300 · Diocletian’s dioceses — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05001a.htm - 381 · Constantinople, canon 3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm - 403–451 · Alexandria against Constantinople — https://archive.org/details/byzantinestudies0000bayn - 451 · Chalcedon, canon 28 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm - 452 · Leo, Letter 104 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604104.htm - 595 · Gregory I, Register 5.18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360205018.htm - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 36 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xiv.iii.xxxvii.html - c. 650–850 · The legend of Andrew — https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=1355 - voice · Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew (1958) — https://archive.org/details/ideaofapostolici0000dvor - voice · John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions (1989) — https://archive.org/details/imperialunitychr0000meye - voice · Leo I, Letter 104 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604104.htm - voice · Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church (2003) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Chadwick+East+and+West+making+of+a+rift+in+the+church ============================================================================== c. 400 · The people watch and seldom eat Address: https://additions.church/400 Addition · How it binds: Replaced Most of the baptized stop taking the bread and cup. The gathering becomes something to attend. First clear witness: John Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Ephesians: “there is no one to partake.” Footing: firm. Chrysostom is rebuking it. Rome and many Orthodox parishes went back to frequent communion in the twentieth century. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic (in part), Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY John Chrysostom, “golden mouth,” was the greatest preacher of the Greek church, a presbyter at Antioch and then, unwillingly, bishop of Constantinople, where his sermons against the court got him exiled to his death in 407. Around 400, preaching on Ephesians, he stopped in the middle of a sermon to complain about his own congregation. The sacrifice was offered every day, the table was spread, and no one came to it. They stood and watched. Some came at Epiphany, some at Easter, and the rest of the year the priest consecrated and consumed alone. Paul’s instruction to Corinth had been that when they came together to eat, they should wait for one another. Everyone ate; that was the point of the gathering. By Chrysostom’s day the Supper had become so awesome, and the warnings about unworthy eating so loud, that the people had drawn back from the table, and the clergy had let them. Over the next eight centuries the retreat became the norm. In 1215 the Western church had to make a law that every Christian receive at least once a year, at Easter, which tells you how rarely most did. The people watching while the priest eats was the shape of the Mass and the Liturgy for a thousand years, and still is in much of the East; Rome and many Orthodox parishes turned back in the twentieth century, and the Protestant churches that restored frequent communion are a minority on their own line. The record dates the complaint and follows the retreat. 2 THE CLAIM In the second century everyone present at the Supper ate and drank, and portions were carried to those who could not come. By about 400, in the great city churches, most of the baptized attended, listened and looked on, and left without receiving. Preachers protested. Councils then set a floor: three times a year in 506, once a year in 1215. For more than a thousand years, in East and West, the ordinary Christian’s part in the Supper was to be present at it. NOT CLAIMED That self-examination is wrong, or that nothing has changed since. Rome and many Orthodox parishes restored frequent communion in the twentieth century, as the entry notes. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 26:26–27 “Take, eat.” “Drink of it, all of you.” 1 Cor 10:17 “We all partake of the one bread.” 1 Cor 11:28 “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” Acts 20:7 “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT A meal is for eating. At Passover “all the congregation of Israel shall keep it” (Exod 12:47), and to be present was to eat. The same held for a Greek sacrificial banquet. A shared meal at which the guests do not eat has no precedent in either world. The one thing like it is the temple, where the priests alone ate the sin offering and the people did not (Lev 6:26, 29); that is the model the church reached for once the presider had become a priest (see c. 250). “Unworthily.” Paul’s warning about eating “in an unworthy manner” (1 Cor 11:27) is addressed to people who were eating, and its remedy is examination and then eating: “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (11:28). How the warning became a reason to stay away is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 “There is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.” Everyone present ate, and the absent were brought a share. 6 THE RECORD c. 155 Justin, First Apology 65, 67 All present share the bread and cup, and the deacons carry a portion to those who are absent. c. 250 Cyprian, On the Lord’s Prayer 18 Speaks of receiving the Eucharist daily as the ordinary thing. c. 330 Council of Antioch, canon 2 (traditionally dated 341) Those who come to hear the Scriptures and then turn away from the communion are to be put out of the church. c. 380 Apostolic Canon 9 (10) The faithful who do not stay for the prayers and Holy Communion “are to be excommunicated, as causing disorder in the Church.” c. 380–400 The crowds, and the fear After 380 the churches fill with people whose attachment is slight. Many put off baptism for decades, as Constantine himself had, and the unbaptized are sent out before the Supper; attending without receiving becomes the normal experience of a large part of every congregation. The same preachers who rebuke their people for staying away teach them that the rite is “fearful and full of awe” (Chrysostom, On the Priesthood 3.4) and warn them at length against receiving unworthily. Rules of fasting and of abstaining from marriage before communion, taken from the purity laws of Leviticus, raise the bar further. c. 390 Ambrose, On the Sacraments 5.25 If it is daily bread, Ambrose asks, why do you receive it once a year, as the Greeks in the East are accustomed to do? The first Western notice of the Eastern habit. c. 395–400 John Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Ephesians “In vain is the daily Sacrifice, in vain do we stand before the Altar; there is no one to partake.” Of those who stay and do not receive: “every one, that partakes not of the mysteries, is standing here in shameless effrontery.” 506 Council of Agde, canon 18 Lay people who do not receive at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are not to be counted as Catholics. 1215 Lateran IV, constitution 21 All must receive “at least at Easter.” 1562 Trent, session 22, chapter 6 The council wishes that “the faithful who are present should communicate,” and approves Masses at which the priest alone does. 1783 Makarios and Nikodemos, Concerning Frequent Communion Makarios, former bishop of Corinth, and the Athonite monk Nikodemos argue from the canons that the faithful should receive at every liturgy. Their book is at first condemned at Constantinople. 1905 Pius X, Sacra Tridentina Rome urges frequent and even daily communion. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “In an unworthy manner.” Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 11:27–29 concerns how the Corinthians were eating: the rich going ahead with their own supper while the poor went hungry and were shamed. His remedy is to examine oneself “and so eat,” and to wait for one another. Read apart from that setting, the verse became a warning about the inner state of the communicant, and the safest course seemed to be not to receive. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Robert Taft SJ, “The Decline of Communion in Byzantium” (2006) Sets out the Eastern evidence in order and shows that the decline was already far advanced in Chrysostom’s day. CATHOLIC Josef Jungmann SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite (1948) The Western story: from the communion of all, to communion a few times a year, to a Mass that was watched. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent (revised edition 1974), appendix Calls the custom of receiving once a year a deformation with no basis in the church’s own tradition. ANGLICAN Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) The fourth century turned the Eucharist from something the church did together into something done in front of the church. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Better seldom and worthily than often and carelessly.” Paul faced careless eating at Corinth. His answer was self-examination followed by eating. He did not advise staying away. 2. “Those who watch still take part, by hearing, praying and adoring.” They pray, and God hears them. The command was to eat and to drink. 3. “The great influx after Constantine made discipline necessary.” It explains what happened. The discipline that grew up was abstention. The apostles’ discipline was to teach people and then to bring them to the table. 4. “This has been put right.” In the Roman church and in many Orthodox parishes it has, on the authority of the same early texts cited here. In others it has not: in much of the Ethiopian church, and in many traditional Orthodox settings, adults still receive rarely. 10 NOT SETTLED How general the decline was outside the great cities is hard to know. The sermons that complain of it were preached in Antioch, Constantinople and Milan. Protestants appear in the entry as carrying this addition “in part”: they restored communion for all present and then made the Supper infrequent. See c. 1541. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 65, 67 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxvii.html - c. 250 · Cyprian, On the Lord’s Prayer 18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050704.htm - c. 330 · Council of Antioch, canon 2 (traditionally dated 341) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3805.htm - c. 380 · Apostolic Canon 9 (10) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - c. 380–400 · The crowds, and the fear — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/19223.htm - c. 390 · Ambrose, On the Sacraments 5.25 — https://archive.org/details/stambroseonmyste00ambruoft - c. 395–400 · John Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Ephesians — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230103.htm - 506 · Council of Agde, canon 18 — https://archive.org/details/ahistoryofthecou04hefeuoft/page/80/mode/1up - 1215 · Lateran IV, constitution 21 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm - 1562 · Trent, session 22, chapter 6 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/twenty-second-session.htm - 1783 · Makarios and Nikodemos, Concerning Frequent Communion — https://orthodoxethos.com/post/the-historical-condemnation-of-concerning-frequent-communion - 1905 · Pius X, Sacra Tridentina — https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/decree-on-frequent--daily-reception-of-holy-communion-29051 - voice · Robert Taft SJ, “The Decline of Communion in Byzantium” (2006) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Thresholds+of+the+Sacred+Gerstel+Dumbarton+Oaks+2006 - voice · Josef Jungmann SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite (1948) — https://archive.org/details/massofromanritei0001jose - voice · Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent (revised edition 1974), appendix — https://www.schmemann.org/byhim/confessionandcommunion.html - voice · Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) — https://archive.org/details/shapeofliturgy0000dixg ============================================================================== 396–418 · Adam’s guilt, inherited Address: https://additions.church/418 Addition · How it binds: Required Augustine reads Romans 5:12 from the Latin as “in whom all sinned.” Every infant is born guilty of Adam’s sin. First clear witness: Augustine against Pelagius; Council of Carthage, 418. Footing: qualified. That all sin and die in Adam is Paul’s. Inherited guilt is the step the Greek fathers did not take. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant 1 THE STORY Augustine of Hippo was the most powerful mind the Latin church ever produced, and he read Paul in Latin. Romans 5:12, in Paul’s Greek, says that death spread to all men “because all sinned.” Augustine’s Latin Bible said death spread to all men in quo, “in whom all sinned,” that is, in Adam. From that reading, and from his own long struggle with his will, he built the doctrine that every human being is born carrying Adam’s guilt as well as Adam’s mortality, so that an unbaptized infant who dies is justly condemned. A British monk in Rome named Pelagius thought this made God unjust and human effort pointless, and said so. The quarrel that followed consumed the last twenty years of Augustine’s life. In 418 a council at Carthage condemned Pelagius and ruled that infants are baptized “for the remission of sins” in the literal sense, and the bishop of Rome confirmed it. The Greek fathers, reading the Greek, had never taken that step: Chrysostom and Theodoret held that we inherit Adam’s death and weakness, not his guilt, and the East’s fathers, and most of its theologians today, still hold that (one Eastern confession of 1672 did not; the record says where). The entry is on the Western lines only. Rome kept Augustine’s doctrine through Trent, and the Reformed confessions sharpened it: the guilt of Adam’s sin “imputed.” The record shows the Latin word that carried the doctrine, and the Greek that did not. 2 THE CLAIM Between 396 and 418 Augustine taught that all humanity sinned in Adam and is born guilty of his sin, so that infants who die unbaptized are justly condemned. He read this in Romans 5:12 as his Latin Bible gave it: “in whom all sinned.” A council at Carthage in 418 made it binding, and Roman Catholic and Protestant theology both inherited it. Paul wrote “because all sinned.” The Greek fathers did not take him to teach inherited guilt. NOT CLAIMED That Adam’s sin left the race untouched. Paul says death and sin’s dominion came to all through one man (Rom 5:12–19; 1 Cor 15:22). Nor does the page side with Pelagius: no one is saved without grace. What is dated here is one step: guilt for Adam’s act, charged to each person from birth. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Rom 5:12 “… just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned …” Rom 5:18–19 The texts that best support Augustine: “one trespass led to condemnation for all men … by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” Ezek 18:20 “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father.” Ezekiel is answering a proverb about inherited guilt, “the fathers have eaten sour grapes” (18:2–4), and Exodus 20:5, which speaks of consequences visited on the children, is the text he is read against. Deut 24:16 “Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.” Rom 9:11 Of unborn twins: “they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad.” 1 Cor 15:22 “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Adam among Paul’s contemporaries. Jewish writers of Paul’s century and the one after, 4 Ezra (c. 100) and 2 Baruch (a generation later), agree that Adam brought death on everyone and that everyone answers for his own sin. “O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants” (4 Ezra 7:118). “Adam is therefore not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam” (2 Baruch 54:19). See also Sirach 25:24 and Wisdom 2:23–24. What they do say is inherited. The same writers know a weakness handed down. “The first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him” (4 Ezra 3:21); “a grain of evil seed was sown in Adam’s heart from the beginning” (4:30); and 2 Baruch laments what Adam did to all born after him (48:42–43). A transmitted inclination is in the period. A transmitted verdict is not. No Jewish text of the period charges Adam’s guilt to his children. “Because all sinned” is what a Jew of Paul’s time would be expected to write. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 391 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 10, on 5:12–19 Reading the Greek, he asks what “made sinners” means and answers: liable to punishment and condemned to death. Not guilty of Adam’s act. The greatest Greek preacher of Augustine’s own lifetime did not find inherited guilt in the verse. 6 THE RECORD c. 200 Tertullian, On Baptism 18 Advises delaying the baptism of children: “why does the innocent period of life hasten to the remission of sins?” 253 Cyprian, Letter 64 (58) A newborn “has not sinned,” except that he has caught “the contagion of the ancient death.” What is forgiven him is “not his own sins, but the sins of another.” c. 375 Ambrosiaster on Romans 5:12, as Augustine quotes him An anonymous Roman commentator explains the Latin of 5:12: in whom, that is in Adam, all sinned, “as in a lump.” Augustine quotes the passage as Hilary’s: “all have sinned in Adam, as it were in the mass” (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.4.7). c. 391 John Chrysostom, Homily 10 on Romans A native Greek speaker on the same verses. Through Adam all “become mortal.” To be “made sinners” means to be “liable to punishment and condemned to death.” Otherwise, he asks, “how would it follow that from his disobedience another would become a sinner?” 396 Augustine, To Simplician 1.2 All humanity is one lump of sin, a massa peccati: Paul’s “lump” of Romans 9:21, read as the whole race under condemnation. 418 Council of Carthage, canon 2 Anathema on anyone who denies that newborns are baptized for the remission of sin drawn from Adam. The canon quotes Romans 5:12 with “in whom all have sinned.” c. 420 Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.7 “All men were in him when he sinned,” so “all men are understood to have sinned in that first ‘man.’” He checks the Greek for gender: “sin” is feminine there, so “in whom” cannot mean “in which sin.” 1546 Council of Trent, session 5 Repeats Carthage and quotes the verse in the same form: “in whom all have sinned.” Infants are cleansed of what “they have contracted by generation.” 1647 Westminster Confession 6.3 “The guilt of this sin was imputed” to all Adam’s posterity. The Reformation keeps Augustine here. 1979 Nova Vulgata Rome’s revised Latin Bible changes Romans 5:12 from in quo, “in whom,” to eo quod, “because.” 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church 404–405 Original sin is “contracted” and not “committed,” “a state and not an act,” and “does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Two words of Greek. Paul wrote eph’ hō pantes hēmarton. The preposition is epi, and the phrase means “because,” “inasmuch as,” or possibly “with the result that.” The phrase recurs in 2 Corinthians 5:4 and in Philippians 3:12 and 4:10, where its exact sense is also debated. In none of them is it “in whom.” The Old Latin translators rendered it in quo, which a Latin reader naturally took as “in whom.” Greek has a way to say “in whom,” and Paul did not use it. A gloss with a borrowed name. The comment that fixed the reading, “in Adam, as in a lump,” comes from the writer now called Ambrosiaster. Augustine believed he was quoting Hilary of Poitiers, whom he calls “the sainted Hilary,” and cited him as an authority. What Augustine checked. He was not careless. He consulted the Greek to see which noun “in whom” could refer to, and reasoned correctly about the genders. He did not question the Latin “in.” The mistake had been made by the translator before he ever opened the book. A Greek verse that is not in the Hebrew. The fathers who speak of infants as stained cite Job 14:4–5 in the Septuagint: no one is clean, “not even if his life on earth is one day.” Augustine repeats it in the Confessions. The Greek is a divergent rendering of the Hebrew, which does not mention a life of one day. In the ESV: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one.” “In the loins.” The idea that all were physically present in Adam leans on Hebrews 7:9–10, where Levi is said to have paid tithes while still in Abraham’s body. The writer marks it as a figure: “one might even say.” Reatus. The Latin word for the guilt that is passed on, reatus, comes from the Roman courts and means liability to a charge. Tertullian had already taught that the soul is passed on from the parents along with the body, which makes the transmission of sin a matter of physical descent. Augustine never decided whether that was so (Letter 166, to Jerome), but his doctrine needs sin to pass by descent, and reatus names what passes. The practice came first. In Africa infants were baptized with the same rite as adults, “for the remission of sins.” Augustine argues from the rite to the doctrine: if infants are baptized for remission, they must have a sin to remit, and it can only be Adam’s. A custom first attested around 200–250 became the proof of a doctrine. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Joseph Fitzmyer SJ, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993) Surveys every proposed meaning of the phrase. “In whom” is not what the Greek says. He translates “with the result that all have sinned.” ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974) The Latin rendering was used in the West to support a doctrine of guilt inherited from Adam. That sense cannot be drawn from the Greek. For the Greek fathers what is inherited is mortality, and with it the pull toward sin. PROTESTANT Henri Blocher, Original Sin (1997) A Reformed theologian. Grants that in quo is a mistranslation, declines the transfer of Adam’s guilt, and argues that Adam’s headship is what brings his descendants’ own sins under judgment. PROTESTANT Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (1996) Translates “because all sinned,” and argues from verses 18–19 that all sinned in and with Adam. The best current defense. HISTORIAN Pier Franco Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin (Italian 1978; English 2013) The idea of sin passed on through procreation is older than Augustine and can be found in second-century ascetic groups. He did not invent it. ANGLICAN J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1958) The Greek fathers hold that the race shares Adam’s mortality and weakness, and that guilt comes with one’s own sin. The Latin line from Tertullian to Ambrosiaster prepares Augustine. He also finds in some Greek fathers hints of a share in Adam’s sin. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The doctrine does not hang on two words. Romans 5:18–19 teaches it outright.” (Catholic, Protestant) That is the right place to press, and it is where Douglas Moo makes his stand (The Epistle to the Romans, 1996; 2nd ed. 2018). The verses say that one trespass led to condemnation for all and that the many were made sinners. But each half of each sentence has a twin: one act of righteousness “leads to justification and life for all men,” and “the many will be made righteous.” If the first half means that Adam’s guilt is charged to every person apart from anything that person does, the second half means the same of Christ’s righteousness, and that is universalism, which the defenders reject. Defenders answer that the second “all” means all who are in Christ, entered by faith. Grant it, and the parallel then runs the other way too: those in Christ are made righteous through something that happens in them, believing; those in Adam are made sinners through something that happens in them, sinning, which is what verse 12 says: because all sinned. Chrysostom, reading his own language, takes “made sinners” to mean made subject to death. 2. “David says he was conceived in sin, and Paul calls us ‘by nature children of wrath.’” The psalm is a penitent’s poetry about how deep his own sin runs. The phrase in Ephesians follows a description of conduct: “among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh.” “By nature” (physei) there describes what we were while living so, as “Jews by nature” in Galatians 2:15 describes birth and upbringing; it is not a verdict passed before birth. 3. “The East teaches original sin too. It received the canons of Carthage.” (Catholic) This is partly right, and the East should not be caricatured. Its fathers teach a real inherited corruption, and the canons of Carthage do stand in its collection (Trullo, canon 2). The Greek fathers did not draw Augustine’s conclusions: guilt charged to infants, the unbaptized child condemned, the human race as a condemned lump. Later Orthodox confessions written under Latin influence did. The Confession of Dositheus (1672) consigns unbaptized infants to eternal punishment for hereditary sin. 4. “Deny inherited guilt and you are a Pelagian.” The Pelagians were condemned for holding that Adam’s fall damaged no one but Adam and that a person can obey without grace. The Greek fathers deny neither the damage nor the need for grace, and no one calls Chrysostom a Pelagian. 5. “Rome no longer teaches personal guilt.” (Catholic) The Catechism’s wording follows an old scholastic distinction between a sin of nature and a personal fault, so Rome would not call it a change. What has shifted is the fate assigned to infants who die unbaptized. For fifteen centuries they were excluded from heaven on this ground, and the Catechism now entrusts them to God’s mercy (1261). The classical Protestant confessions still say that the guilt is imputed. 10 NOT SETTLED The exact force of eph’ hō is still argued. Fitzmyer lists eleven proposals. None of the serious ones is “in whom.” Whether Irenaeus’s statement that we “offended in the first Adam” (5.16.3) anticipates Augustine or only speaks of solidarity is disputed. Do not say the East has no doctrine of original sin, or that Augustine knew no Greek. Neither is true. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 391 · John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 10, on 5:12–19 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210210.htm - c. 200 · Tertullian, On Baptism 18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm - 253 · Cyprian, Letter 64 (58) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050658.htm - c. 375 · Ambrosiaster on Romans 5:12, as Augustine quotes him — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15094.htm - c. 391 · John Chrysostom, Homily 10 on Romans — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210210.htm - 396 · Augustine, To Simplician 1.2 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Augustine+Earlier+Writings+Burleigh+Library+of+Christian+Classics - 418 · Council of Carthage, canon 2 — https://patristica.net/denzinger/ - c. 420 · Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15094.htm - 1546 · Council of Trent, session 5 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/fifth-session.htm - 1647 · Westminster Confession 6.3 — https://opc.org/wcf.html#Chapter_06 - 1979 · Nova Vulgata — https://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_nt_epist-romanos_lt.html - 1992 · Catechism of the Catholic Church 404–405 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM - voice · Joseph Fitzmyer SJ, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993) — https://archive.org/details/anchorbibleroman0000jose - voice · John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974) — https://archive.org/details/byzantinetheolog0000meye - voice · Henri Blocher, Original Sin (1997) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Blocher+Original+Sin+Illuminating+the+Riddle - voice · Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (1996) — https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/34933859 - voice · Pier Franco Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin (Italian 1978; English 2013) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Atransmission+of+sin+au%3Abeatrice - voice · J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1958) — https://archive.org/details/earlychristiando0000kell_s3t1 ============================================================================== c. 400–600 · Sacred dress and incense Address: https://additions.church/428 Addition · How it binds: Replaced Clergy begin to dress apart from the people, and court ceremony enters worship: vestments, incense, processions. First clear witness: Laodicea, canons 22–23, c. 364, the first garment restricted by rank; Celestine of Rome, 428, still holding that clergy are known “by our learning, not by our clothes.” Footing: firm. A bishop of Rome is still objecting in 428, which shows how new it was. Robes and incense belong to Israel’s temple, not to the apostles’ houses. The Reformed churches set the wardrobe down from 1523; Lutheran and Anglican churches kept some or all of it, which is why the Protestant line carries this in part. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY A Roman gentleman of the first century wore a tunic and, over it in the open air, a cloak with a hole for the head called a paenula. So did the presbyter who presided at the table, because he dressed like everyone else in the room. Fashions moved on, as they do, but the clergy kept the old clothes for the liturgy, and within a few centuries the paenula had become the chasuble, a garment no one else wore and that now carried meaning. In 428 Celestine, bishop of Rome, scolded some bishops in Gaul who had taken to wearing a distinctive dress copied from the monks. We should be distinguished from the people, he wrote, by our learning and our life, not by our clothes. He lost. Over the next two centuries the dress of the clergy at worship became a separate wardrobe with its own rules, and incense, which Tertullian had kept out of worship because it was the smell of the pagan altar (he allows it for burials, Apology 42), was swinging in Christian basilicas. The East developed its own vestments from the court dress of Constantinople. The apostolic writings describe the gathering in a house, and the clothing instructions they give are about modesty (1 Tim 2:9; 1 Pet 3:3), about covered and uncovered heads in the assembly (1 Cor 11:4–16), and about not favoring the man in fine clothes (Jas 2:2–4); none sets the presider apart by dress. The Reformers set the vestments down in 1517, and some of them picked a few back up. The record dates the dress to the century in which a bishop of Rome still thought it was a mistake. 2 THE CLAIM In the fourth century the clergy led worship in the ordinary good clothes of the time. Between about 400 and 600 a distinct dress for clergy took shape. It came about partly because clergy kept the older Roman fashions when laymen gave them up, and partly, on an influential but disputed account, because bishops had been granted the insignia of imperial officials. Incense, processional lights and the ceremonial of the court entered the service in the same period. Biblical and symbolic explanations were supplied afterward. NOT CLAIMED That dignity and beauty in worship are wrong, or that a robe is a sin. What is dated here is a sacred wardrobe that marks out a separate order. What it displaced is the apostolic gathering in which no one was marked out by dress (Jas 2:2–4); the requirement that followed (Toledo, 633, and the rubrics since) is noted but not what the entry dates. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Mark 12:38–39 “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues.” Matt 23:5 “They make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” Jas 2:2–4 If the man in fine clothing gets the good seat, “have you not then made distinctions among yourselves?” Rev 5:8 What incense stands for: “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” Heb 10:1 The temple’s rites were “a shadow of the good things to come.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel’s priests. Aaron’s garments were made “for glory and for beauty” (Exod 28:2), and incense burned on a golden altar. That was the temple. The synagogue, where most Jews actually worshiped, had no vested priests and no incense, and the churches grew out of the synagogue and the home. Rome’s officials. In Roman society dress announced rank. Magistrates had their stripes, scarves and shoes, and lights and incense were carried before them. The chasuble began as the common outdoor cloak, and the stole as a scarf of rank. What bishops received of the insignia, and when, is in the record. Incense. A pinch of incense before the emperor’s image was the test of loyalty, and Revelation’s churches knew it (Rev 13:15). Incense appears in church services only after the persecutions end. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 428 Celestine I, bishop of Rome, letter to the bishops of Vienne and Narbonne Rebukes bishops in Gaul who have taken to dressing as monks in daily life: we should be distinguished from the people by our learning, not by our clothes; by our conduct, not by our dress (discernendi a plebe … doctrina, non veste; conversatione, non habitu; Letter 4.1, PL 50:431). His complaint is about a monk’s cloak and belt in the street, not dress at the altar; the record cites it for the principle he states, which Rome would give up within two centuries. 6 THE RECORD c. 150–200 Justin, First Apology 13; Athenagoras, Plea 13; Tertullian, Apology 30 The apologists point to the absence of incense and sacrifice from Christian worship as a mark of difference from the cults around them: God “has no need of streams of blood and libations and incense” (Justin); he “does not need blood, nor the odour of burnt-offerings, nor the fragrance of flowers and incense” (Athenagoras). c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 30, 42 Christians offer prayer from a pure heart and not grains of incense. “We certainly buy no frankincense,” he tells the pagans. 258 The Acts of Cyprian Led out to die, the bishop of Carthage takes off his cloak and then his dalmatic, and stands in his linen tunic. They are the clothes any gentleman wore. c. 315–400 The bishop as official Theodor Klauser argued (A Short History of the Western Liturgy, 1965; English 1969), and others dispute, that under Constantine bishops were given the standing of high officials, together with the insignia: the scarf of office that became the pallium, the throne, the escort with candles and censer. c. 364 Council of Laodicea, canons 22–23 Subdeacons and readers may not wear the stole. This is the first sign of a garment that marks clerical rank. c. 383 Egeria’s travel diary A pilgrim from the Latin West describes the services she saw in Jerusalem. At the Sunday vigil censers are carried into the shrine of the Resurrection. It is the first description of incense in a Christian service. 428 Celestine of Rome to the bishops of Gaul Rebukes clergy who have taken to a distinctive costume: “We should be distinguished from the common people by our learning, not by our clothes.” c. 400–800 Catholic Encyclopedia, “Vestments” “The Christian vestments did not originate in the priestly dress of the Old Testament.” They “developed from the secular dress of the Graeco-Roman world.” Before Constantine the clergy’s dress “did not yet differ from the secular costume.” 633 Fourth Council of Toledo, canon 28 Rules that an unjustly deposed cleric is restored by receiving back the insignia given at ordination: stole, ring and staff for a bishop, stole and chasuble for a presbyter. c. 820 Amalarius of Metz and Rabanus Maurus Carolingian commentators give each vestment a symbolic meaning, and comparison with the garments of Aaron follows. c. 1523–1865 Protestant dress Zwingli and Calvin replace the vestments with the black gown of the university. The clerical collar is a nineteenth-century invention. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Exodus 28 applied to Christian ministers. Once the presider was thought of as a priest (see c. 250), Aaron’s wardrobe became the obvious model, and garments that had come from the Roman street were given Old Testament meanings. Malachi 1:11. “In every place incense will be offered to my name.” The second-century fathers took this incense to be the prayers of the church, as Revelation does. Later it was cited for the censer. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Catholic Encyclopedia, “Vestments” (Joseph Braun SJ, 1912) The standard Catholic authority, quoted above, on the secular origin of every major vestment. CATHOLIC Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy (1965) Traces episcopal insignia and ceremonial to privileges granted to bishops as imperial dignitaries. Later scholars question how much of this goes back to Constantine. ANGLICAN Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) The vestments are the lay dress of the late empire, kept by a conservative clergy. They had no symbolic meaning at first. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966) Names the imperial and courtly layer in Byzantine worship as a distinct stratum added after Constantine. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The worship of heaven in Revelation has robes, lamps and incense. Ours mirrors it.” Revelation draws its pictures from the temple and interprets them as it goes: the incense is the prayers, and the white robes are given to the whole multitude of the redeemed (Rev 7:9), not to an order of clergy. 2. “God commanded beauty and vestments. He has not changed.” He commanded them for Aaron’s sons in the tabernacle. Hebrews says that ministry was a shadow, and that its substance is Christ’s own ministry in heaven. 3. “A uniform points to the office and hides the man.” That is a sensible reason and was probably part of the motive. Celestine’s answer of 428 still stands: the mark of a teacher is what he teaches. And what the robe does not hide is the line it draws between him and everyone else in the room, and that line is dated at c. 200. 4. “We got rid of all this.” (Protestant) The scholar’s gown, the collar and the stage wardrobe are dress codes too. Each one says who the specialist in the room is. 10 NOT SETTLED How early incense was used at Christian funerals, as distinct from services, is uncertain. It may be earlier than Egeria. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 428 · Celestine I, bishop of Rome, letter to the bishops of Vienne and Narbonne — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03477c.htm - c. 150–200 · Justin, First Apology 13; Athenagoras, Plea 13; Tertullian, Apology 30 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0205.htm - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 30, 42 — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xlii.html - 258 · The Acts of Cyprian — https://newmanreader.org/works/fathers/cyprian.html - c. 315–400 · The bishop as official — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-short-history-of-the-western-liturgy-9780192132239 - c. 364 · Council of Laodicea, canons 22–23 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - c. 383 · Egeria’s travel diary — https://www.ccel.org/m/mcclure/etheria/etheria.htm - 428 · Celestine of Rome to the bishops of Gaul — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Celestine+I+letter+bishops+Vienne+Narbonne+428+clerical+dress - c. 400–800 · Catholic Encyclopedia, “Vestments” — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15388a.htm - 633 · Fourth Council of Toledo, canon 28 — http://www.benedictus.mgh.de/quellen/chga/chga_046t.htm - c. 820 · Amalarius of Metz and Rabanus Maurus — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15388a.htm - c. 1523–1865 · Protestant dress — https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/la-robe-pastorale/ - voice · Catholic Encyclopedia, “Vestments” (Joseph Braun SJ, 1912) — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15388a.htm - voice · Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy (1965) — https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofwe0000theo - voice · Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) — https://archive.org/details/shapeofliturgy0000dixg - voice · Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966) — https://archive.org/details/bwb_T5-ALR-983 ============================================================================== 440 · Rome speaks as Peter Address: https://additions.church/440 Addition · How it binds: Required Leo I gives Rome’s claim its classic form: the bishop of Rome is Peter’s heir, and Peter speaks and rules through him. First clear witness: Leo I, bishop of Rome 440–461. Footing: qualified. Rome’s primacy of honor is older, and Damasus and Innocent I had already claimed more. With Leo the claim takes the form later popes build on. Carried today by: Roman Catholic. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY Leo was a deacon of the Roman church, away on a diplomatic errand in Gaul, when he was elected bishop of Rome in 440. He came home to a city that was ceasing to be the capital of anything. The emperors lived at Ravenna; the Vandals had taken Africa; the Huns were coming. In 452 Leo himself went out to meet Attila, who turned back, and in 455 he met the Vandal king Gaiseric at the gates and could not stop the sack, only soften it. In that vacuum the bishop of Rome became the one Roman institution still standing, and Leo gave the office a theory to match. The theory is in his sermons for the anniversary of his consecration. Christ gave Peter authority over the whole church. Peter did not die, in the sense that mattered: his power lives and his authority prevails in his see, and in the person of each bishop of Rome, however unworthy, Peter is to be recognized and obeyed. The word Leo reached for was the Roman law of inheritance, in which the heir steps into the dead man’s legal person entire. Peter had an heir, and the heir was Leo. No bishop of Rome is known for certain to have argued this before the middle of the third century, and when one did, a bishop in Asia Minor called it a betrayal of unity. The fathers Leo’s successors would cite had read Matthew 16 as being about Peter’s confession, or about Christ, or about every believer. In 445 the emperor Valentinian III made Leo’s claim imperial law for the West. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon applauded his letter on Christ and then, over his legates’ protest, ranked Constantinople beside Rome because both were imperial cities. The record follows the claim from Leo to 1870, and the objections a Catholic reader would raise are answered one by one. 2 THE CLAIM Leo I, bishop of Rome from 440 to 461, gave the Roman claim the form it has kept. Christ gave Peter a ruling authority over the whole church. That authority did not end with Peter’s death but lives on in his see. The bishop of Rome is Peter’s heir in the full legal sense, holding all that Peter held whatever his own merits. No bishop of Rome is known for certain to have argued this before the middle of the third century. Leo is the first to work it out as a system, and the fathers his successors cite read the key texts differently. NOT CLAIMED That Rome was not honored early, that Peter did not lead the Twelve, or that Peter never reached Rome. Nor that the rock of Matthew 16 cannot be Peter: the page reads it as the confession Peter has just made, a reading as old as the fathers, and its argument holds either way. What is dated here is the transfer of Peter’s role to the bishops of one city, as a power to rule. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 16:16–19 Peter confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then: “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Then the keys, and binding and loosing. 1 Cor 3:11; 1 Pet 2:4 “No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Peter calls him “a living stone.” Rev 1:18; 20:1 Keys in the world of the gates of hell: the risen Christ has “the keys of Death and Hades,” and an angel comes down “holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit.” Matt 18:18; John 20:23 To all the disciples: “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.” “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.” Luke 22:24 At the last supper, long after the promise of Matthew 16 and just before Jesus tells Peter to strengthen his brothers (22:32): “A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest.” They did not think the question settled. Acts 8:14; 11:2–3 The apostles in Jerusalem “sent” Peter and John to Samaria. Back from Caesarea, Peter is criticized and has to explain himself. Gal 2:9, 11 “James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars.” Then: “I opposed him to his face.” 2 Pet 1:15 Peter’s own provision for the time after his death is a written reminder: “so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.” He names no successor. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Keys. In Isaiah 22:22 the steward Eliakim receives “the key of the house of David.” Revelation 3:7 takes up those words and gives the key to Christ himself. In the Gospels a key stands for the teaching that opens God’s kingdom or shuts it: the lawyers “have taken away the key of knowledge” (Luke 11:52), and the scribes “shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces” (Matt 23:13). Peter opens the door to Jews, to Samaritans and to Gentiles (Acts 2; 8:14–17; 10). Revelation places “the keys of Death and Hades” in the risen Christ’s hand (1:18). In Matthew the keys are named a breath after the gates of hell, and what they open, death cannot shut. Binding and loosing. The phrase is Jewish. Josephus says the Pharisees under Queen Alexandra “bound and loosed” whom they wished (War 1.111): forbade and permitted. Richard H. Hiers has shown (“‘Binding’ and ‘Loosing’: The Matthean Authorizations,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104, 1985) an older usage in Second Temple texts in which it means binding demons and releasing their captives (Tobit 3:17; 8:3; 1 Enoch 10:4–13; Testament of Levi 18:12). The Gospels use it that way: the strong man must be bound before his house is plundered (Matt 12:29), and Jesus looses a woman “whom Satan bound” (Luke 13:16). In a sentence that has just named the gates of hell, that sense fits. In either sense Matthew gives it to the whole band of disciples two chapters later. The heir. In Roman law the heir (heres) steps into the legal person of the deceased and holds his rights entire, whatever the heir’s own character. That category was there in the apostles’ world. The New Testament never applies it to Peter or to anyone after him. Its application, at 440, is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 96 · c. 140 1 Clement; Hermas, Visions 2.4.3 Rome’s letter to Corinth is written in the name of “the church of God which sojourns at Rome,” and names no bishop. A generation later Hermas describes Clement’s office: “Clement shall send it to the cities abroad, for that is his duty.” A secretary for the church’s correspondence, not Peter’s heir. 6 THE RECORD c. 96 1 Clement, opening “The church of God which sojourns at Rome” writes to Corinth. The letter is firm, corporate and anonymous. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Romans He speaks of the bishop in every other letter. Writing to Rome he greets the church “which presides in love” and names no bishop there. “I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you.” c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2–3 The Roman church was “founded and organized” by “Peter and Paul,” two apostles. His list of its bishops begins after them, with Linus. “For with this church, on account of its preeminent authority, every church must agree (convenire)” (3.3.2): the Latin survives, the Greek is lost, and “agree” may mean “resort to.” c. 190 Eusebius, Church History 5.24 Victor of Rome tries to cut the churches of Asia off from communion over the date of Easter. Bishops elsewhere rebuke him sharply, and Irenaeus, who had praised Rome’s standing a decade before, writes to admonish him. The churches did not treat a Roman ruling as the end of a matter. c. 220 Tertullian, On Modesty 1, 21 Mocks a bishop who issues an edict like “the Pontifex Maximus — that is, the bishop of bishops.” If, on the strength of Matthew 16, “you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has derived to you,” he asks, “what sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of the Lord?” The Lord conferred the gift “personally upon Peter.” c. 246 Origen, Commentary on Matthew 12.10–11 The first commentary on the passage. “If we too have said like Peter, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,’” then “we become a Peter.” He asks whether “upon that one Peter only the whole church is built by God,” and whether the keys are “given by the Lord to Peter only, and will no other of the blessed receive them?” His answer to both is no. 251–256 Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4 The chapter survives in two forms, both probably his. Both say the other apostles were what Peter was. The earlier adds that a primacy is given to Peter. The revision, made during his clash with Rome, reads: “endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power.” On either wording every bishop sits in Peter’s chair. 256 Firmilian of Caesarea, in Cyprian, Letter 75 Complains that Stephen of Rome “boasts of the place of his episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession from Peter.” This is the first certain report of a Roman bishop arguing so. It comes from a bishop who rejects Stephen’s ruling and says that by it Stephen “betrays and deserts unity.” 343 Council of Sardica, canons 3–5 A Western council lets a deposed bishop ask the bishop of Rome for a rehearing, which Rome may order before neighboring bishops: “let us honour the memory of St. Peter the Apostle.” A council confers the right. 366–385 Damasus and Siricius From the time of Damasus the Roman bishops speak of their church as the apostolic see, and from Siricius (385) they issue decretals in the form of an emperor’s rescript: the oldest to survive answers fifteen questions from a Spanish bishop, decides each, and orders the decisions passed to the neighboring provinces. c. 390 Chrysostom, Homily 54 on Matthew The rock is “the faith of his confession.” c. 416 Augustine, Tractate 124 on John, 5 “The Rock was Christ.” Peter received the keys as one who “represented the universal Church.” 427 Augustine, Retractations 1.21 Notes that he had once explained the rock as Peter and later, more often, as Christ whom Peter confessed, and leaves the reader to choose. 418–c. 425 The Apiarius affair Rome hears an African priest’s appeal and cites canons of Nicaea for its right to do so. The Africans send to the East for the Nicene canons as kept there and find no such canons. They were Sardica’s. Carthage, which had barred its lower clergy from appealing overseas in 418, asks Rome about 425 not to admit appellants from Africa readily, nor to receive those it has excommunicated, nor to send legates. 440s Leo, Sermon 3 Peter “has not abandoned the helm of the Church.” His “power lives” and his “authority prevails in his See.” In Leo’s “humble person” Peter is to be “recognized and honoured,” for his “dignity is not abated even in so unworthy an heir.” 445 Valentinian III, Novel 17 The emperor makes it law that nothing be done against the authority of the Roman see, and orders governors to compel bishops whom the pope summons. 451–452 Chalcedon, canon 28; Leo, Letter 104 The council ranks Constantinople next to Rome on the ground that both are imperial cities. Leo answers that a royal city cannot be made “an Apostolic See.” 595 Gregory the Great, Letters 5.18 and 7.33 A bishop of Rome refuses the title “universal.” To the bishop of Constantinople: Chalcedon offered the title to Rome’s bishops and “not one of them has ever wished to be called by such a title.” To the emperor: “whosoever calls himself, or desires to be called, Universal Priest, is in his elation the precursor of Antichrist.” Gregory asserts Rome’s care for all the churches in the same letters, and refuses the word that 1870 would make substance. 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church 424, 552, 881 Uses both readings. “On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church” (424). “The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the ‘rock’ of his Church” (881). Paragraph 552 joins them: “Because of the faith he confessed Peter will remain the unshakable rock of the Church.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Against it.” The promise of Matthew 16:18 is made to the church. The pronoun’s nearest antecedent is “church” (rock is also feminine in Greek, so grammar alone does not decide), and the sentence moves from “you are Peter” to “on this rock” to “against it.” Whatever the rock is, it is the church that the gates of hell will not overcome. The text attaches no promise to an office or a see. One verse without its neighbor. The Roman reading takes Matthew 16:19 as a grant to one man and his successors. Matthew 18:18 repeats the grant to all in the same words. Tertullian, Cyprian, Chrysostom and Augustine each read the text in a way that does not yield Leo’s conclusion. A legal category. The step from “Peter was first” to “the bishop of Rome holds Peter’s powers” is supplied by the Roman law of inheritance. The category was already in the mind of a fifth-century Roman churchman when he came to the text. The wrong canons. In the Apiarius case Rome’s archive had the canons of Sardica filed as those of Nicaea. The claim was made in good faith on a mislabeled document, and the Africans exposed it by checking the Greek. Peter as bishop of Rome. That Peter and Paul died at Rome is well attested. That Peter was the city’s bishop is a later way of putting it. Irenaeus starts his list after the apostles. Tertullian says Clement was ordained by Peter, which leaves no room for Irenaeus’s Linus and Anacletus. And Clement, Ignatius and Hermas know no single bishop at Rome. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Robert Eno SS, The Rise of the Papacy (1990) The evidence does not show a single bishop at Rome before the middle of the second century, nor a Roman claim to universal authority before the later fourth. CATHOLIC Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 (1920) The classic Catholic case from the early texts: Clement’s tone, Irenaeus’s tribute, the appeals to Rome. HISTORIAN Walter Ullmann, “Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” Journal of Theological Studies 11 (1960) Identifies the Roman law of the heir as the working part of Leo’s doctrine. PROTESTANT Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (German 1987; English 2003) Roman Christianity was a network of house churches under presbyters. A single bishop emerges only in the second half of the second century. PROTESTANT Ulrich Luz, “The Primacy Text (Mt 16:18)” (1991) Several readings of the rock in the tradition: every believer who confesses as Peter did (Origen), Peter’s faith (the East), Christ (Augustine), and Peter with his Roman successors. The last appears in the third century and comes to dominate only much later. ORTHODOX John Meyendorff and others, The Primacy of Peter (1963) The Byzantine view follows Cyprian: every bishop is Peter’s successor in his own church. Rome’s precedence came from the capital and its two apostles. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Isaiah 22: Jesus, the son of David, gives Peter the steward’s key. A steward’s office has successors.” (Catholic) This is the best modern argument and deserves a straight answer. First, Revelation 3:7 quotes Isaiah 22:22 and places the key of David in Christ’s own hand. Second, Matthew speaks of “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” and explains them by binding and loosing, which he then extends to all the disciples. Third, the oracle ends badly for the steward: “the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way” (Isa 22:25). At most the passage gives a steward who serves under the king, and that is what every faithful leader is. It does not give a line of stewards appointing their own successors: the king appoints them and removes them. Fourth, the argument is a modern inference. The fathers who comment on Matthew 16 do not reason from Eliakim to a continuing Roman office. 2. “Peter is named first in every list. ‘Feed my sheep.’ ‘Strengthen your brothers.’” (Catholic) Granted. Peter is first among the Twelve. Being first is not being ruler of the rest: they send him (Acts 8:14), question him (11:2) and oppose him to his face (Gal 2:11). And a first place among the apostles does not of itself produce an heir. Both charges are tied to his denial and restoration (Luke 22:31–34; John 21:15–19), and Peter passes the charge to shepherd on to the elders, writing “as a fellow elder,” under “the chief Shepherd” (1 Pet 5:1–4). 3. “The rock is Peter. In Aramaic the wordplay is exact: Kepha, kepha.” (Catholic, Protestant) It may be, and the page does not stake its case on denying it. The page reads the rock as the confession Peter has just made, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). Chrysostom read it so, Augustine came to prefer Christ himself, and the Catechism uses both readings, holding them together in Peter, the rock “because of the faith he confessed” (424, 552, 881). Elsewhere the one foundation is Christ (1 Cor 3:11), and Peter calls him “a living stone” (1 Pet 2:4). If the rock is Peter, he is the first stone of a foundation that is laid once (Eph 2:20). Either way the text names no successor, and the keys and the binding go, two chapters later, to all the disciples (Matt 18:18). 4. “Augustine said: Rome has spoken, the case is closed.” (Catholic) The sentence in Sermon 131 runs: the decisions of two councils were sent to the apostolic see, replies have come back, the case is finished. Councils and Rome agreed. In 418–19 the African bishops, Augustine among them, barred their lower clergy from appealing overseas and accepted the canons Rome had cited only until they could be checked. About 425 an African council asked the bishop of Rome not to admit appellants from Africa readily, and to send no more legates. 5. “At Chalcedon the bishops cried, ‘Peter has spoken through Leo.’” (Catholic) They did, as soon as the letter was read, and added that Leo and Cyril taught the same. Some bishops then questioned passages in it, and the council subscribed only at a later session, after the letter had been tested against Cyril. The acclamation says that Leo’s letter agrees with Peter’s confession. The same council then passed canon 28 over the protests of Leo’s legates. 6. “Clement’s letter shows Rome correcting another church as early as 96.” (Catholic) It shows a church with confidence and standing, and that should not be played down. It does not show a bishop of Rome, since none is mentioned, or an appeal to Peter’s keys, since none is made. A church writing to a church is what the letter is, and the same Corinthians had been corrected by Paul from Ephesus. 7. “Irenaeus: ‘every church should agree with this church, on account of its preeminent authority.’ That is Rome’s primacy in 180.” (Catholic) The sentence is real and is quoted on the record above, in the only form in which it survives, a Latin translation of a lost Greek original. What it claims is that the apostolic tradition can be checked at Rome, because the faithful from everywhere come there and have kept it; the same chapter sends the reader to Smyrna and Ephesus for the same check. Irenaeus founds Rome on two apostles, “Peter and Paul,” not on Peter’s heir, and begins its list of bishops after them, with Linus. And when Victor of Rome tried to cut off the churches of Asia a decade later, Irenaeus wrote to rebuke him. A man who thought Rome’s word ended a matter does not write that letter. Preeminence is on the record. Rule is not. 8. “Matthew 16:19 is singular. The keys are given to Peter alone. Chapter 18 gives binding and loosing to the church, but not the keys.” (Catholic) The verse explains the keys by the binding and loosing in the same breath: “I will give you the keys … and whatever you bind on earth.” What the keys do is bind and loose, and that is what 18:18 gives to all the disciples in the same words, and John 20:23 gives to all as the forgiving and retaining of sins. Origen, the first to comment on the passage, asked whether the keys were “given by the Lord to Peter only” and answered no. Peter uses them in Acts, at Pentecost, in Samaria and at Caesarea, and Paul opens the same door wherever he preaches. And the text records no handing on of keys to anyone: Peter’s own provision for the time after his death is a letter (2 Pet 1:15). A power given to one man, explained as a power given to all, and never passed on, is not the foundation of an office. 9. “You deny even the primacy of honour the East has always granted Rome: first among equals, by the canons of 381 and 451.” (Orthodox) The page does not. The entry’s own note says Rome’s primacy of honor is older than Leo and is not what is dated. What is dated is the claim to rule as Peter’s heir, with all his powers, whatever the heir’s merits. The East’s own account, that every bishop sits in Peter’s chair and that Rome’s precedence came from the capital and its two apostles, is on this card as the counter-witness at 451, in the council’s own canon 28. The ranking of sees itself is dated separately, at 325, on all four lines. 10. “The papacy developed from a seed in Matthew 16 and in Rome’s early standing. Growth is not addition.” (Catholic) The record above is the growth, date by date: a church that “presides in love” and names no bishop (110); a church founded by two apostles, with a list that begins after them (180); a “bishop of bishops” mocked for reading Matthew 16 as a grant to himself (220); the first certain claim to Peter’s succession, reported by a bishop who rejected it as a betrayal of unity (256); Peter’s heir in law (440); a bishop of Rome calling the title “universal” the precursor of Antichrist (595); “irreformable” definitions and immediate rule over “all and each of the churches” under anathema (1870). Each step was resisted by bishops who held the texts. A seed that grows into a plant its first gardeners would have pulled up is not what Newman meant by development, and the Today record answers his tests one by one. 11. “Gregory refused a title, not the authority. In the same letters he says the care of the whole church was committed to Peter.” (Catholic) Granted, and the record says so. Gregory asserts Rome’s charge and refuses the word. The difficulty is that the word is what 1870 defined: a jurisdiction “ordinary and immediate” over all and each of the churches, whose definitions are “irreformable of themselves.” The man who held Peter’s chair in 595 called that claim’s name the precursor of Antichrist. The page does not use his sentence as a slogan. It puts it on the record beside 1870 and lets the reader weigh a pope against a council. 10 NOT SETTLED Cyprian’s On the Unity 4 survives in two versions, one of which speaks of a “primacy” given to Peter. Most scholars think Cyprian wrote both and revised the passage during his clash with Stephen. The standard Septuagint text of Isaiah 22:22 reads “the glory of David” and has no key. Revelation 3:7 plainly echoes the Hebrew. Whether Matthew’s first Greek-speaking readers would have heard that verse in 16:19 is less certain. How much authority 1 Clement assumes is argued on both sides. Whether the “bishop of bishops” Tertullian mocks is Callistus of Rome or a bishop of Carthage is disputed; the record cites the passage for how Matthew 16 was being read, not for who read it so. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 96 · c. 140 · 1 Clement; Hermas, Visions 2.4.3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 96 · 1 Clement, opening — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Romans — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0107.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2–3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm - c. 190 · Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm - c. 220 · Tertullian, On Modesty 1, 21 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.iii.viii.xxi.html - c. 246 · Origen, Commentary on Matthew 12.10–11 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101612.htm - 251–256 · Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050701.htm - 256 · Firmilian of Caesarea, in Cyprian, Letter 75 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050674.htm - 343 · Council of Sardica, canons 3–5 — https://tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/Npnf2-14-141.htm - 366–385 · Damasus and Siricius — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14026a.htm - c. 390 · Chrysostom, Homily 54 on Matthew — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200154.htm - c. 416 · Augustine, Tractate 124 on John, 5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701124.htm - 427 · Augustine, Retractations 1.21 — https://archive.org/details/saintaugustinere0000unse - 418–c. 425 · The Apiarius affair — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xv.iv.iv.cxxxix.html - 440s · Leo, Sermon 3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360303.htm - 445 · Valentinian III, Novel 17 — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09154b.htm - 451–452 · Chalcedon, canon 28; Leo, Letter 104 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604104.htm - 595 · Gregory the Great, Letters 5.18 and 7.33 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360207033.htm - 1992 · Catechism of the Catholic Church 424, 552, 881 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/2/53.HTM - voice · Robert Eno SS, The Rise of the Papacy (1990) — https://archive.org/details/riseofpapacy0000enor - voice · Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 (1920) — https://archive.org/details/earlypapacytosyn0000fort - voice · Walter Ullmann, “Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” Journal of Theological Studies 11 (1960) — https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/XI.1.25 - voice · Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (German 1987; English 2003) — https://archive.org/details/diestadtromische0000pete - voice · Ulrich Luz, “The Primacy Text (Mt 16:18)” (1991) — https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/princetonsemina1211prin_0-dmd008 - voice · John Meyendorff and others, The Primacy of Peter (1963) — https://archive.org/details/primacyofpeter0000meye ============================================================================== 537–543 · Two bishops for one city Address: https://additions.church/543 Addition · How it binds: Replaced Bishops who refuse Chalcedon are deposed and the emperor fills their sees. Jacob Baradaeus ordains a hierarchy for those who refuse. Cities now have rival bishops. First clear witness: Justinian in Alexandria, 537; Jacob Baradaeus, bishop from about 543. Footing: firm. A result both sides carry, so it is on all four lines. The Orientals were the persecuted side. Both lines of patriarchs still exist. Carried today by: Protestant (in part), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY The Council of Chalcedon in 451 defined that Christ is one person in two natures, and the churches of Egypt, Syria and Armenia refused the formula. They did not deny that Christ is fully God and fully man; they held, with Cyril of Alexandria, that “one incarnate nature” was the right way to say it, and that “two natures” smelled of Nestorius. For eighty years the empire tried to paper over the split. In 537 the emperor Justinian gave up: he deposed the patriarch of Alexandria, Theodosius, who would not accept Chalcedon, and installed a Chalcedonian in his place. The people of Egypt stayed with Theodosius. From that moment, without a break since, Alexandria has had two patriarchs, the Greek and the Coptic, each claiming the chair of Mark; it had briefly had two before, in 457. In Syria a monk named Jacob Baradaeus, made bishop around 543 with the quiet help of the empress Theodora, spent thirty-five years walking the Near East in a beggar’s rags ordaining bishops and priests for the churches that would not accept the imperial faith, and the Syriac church that resulted is still called Jacobite by others, a name it does not use of itself. Two bishops for one city, two churches for one people, each excommunicating the other. The Council of Nicaea had ruled that there should be one bishop in a city, and the apostolic writings know one church in each place. The split of 451 is dated as a parting on this page, not as an addition. What is dated here is the arrangement that followed, two rival hierarchies for the same cities, which every line has lived with since. 2 THE CLAIM For decades after 451 the opponents of Chalcedon stayed inside the one imperial church and contended for its bishoprics. From 518 the emperors deposed their bishops and imprisoned their clergy. Around 542–543, at the request of a Christian Arab king and with the help of the empress Theodora, Jacob Baradaeus was consecrated in secret. For thirty-five years he traveled in disguise, ordaining priests and bishops for those who rejected the council. From then on Syria and Egypt each had two lines of bishops, and the division of one church into parallel churches became permanent. Rival bishops in one city were not new: Novatian against Cornelius at Rome (251), the Donatists across Africa from 311, three bishops at Antioch in the 360s, and Alexandria itself briefly in 457. What is new from 537–543 is a double hierarchy that was never healed and that both sides still ordain. The Protestant line carries it in part: from 1529 its churches set up ministries beside the old ones in the same cities (see 1529). Both sides ordained those bishops, so the entry is carried on all four lines. It is not the Oriental line’s alone. NOT CLAIMED That the Oriental churches are heretical, or that they were chiefly at fault. They were the persecuted party. The entry describes a result, not a culprit, and it does not claim that two bishops in one city was unheard of before 537; it claims that from then the two hierarchies were permanent. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 17:21 “That they may all be one.” 1 Cor 1:10 “That there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind.” 2 Tim 2:14 “Charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.” Col 2:9; John 1:14 What the apostles say of Christ: “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” “The Word became flesh.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The words. The New Testament does not use physis (nature), hypostasis or prosōpon of Christ in any technical sense. It says that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and that “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9), and leaves the vocabulary there. The dispute of the fifth century was conducted in terms the apostles had not defined, and what each side heard in the other’s word is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 325 Nicaea, canon 8 “There may not be two bishops in the city.” The rule the whole church had agreed on, two centuries before the rival hierarchies were ordained. 6 THE RECORD c. 433–451 Two vocabularies In Alexandria physis meant something close to a concrete individual, so “two natures” sounded like two Christs. In Antioch and Rome it meant a set of properties, so “one nature” sounded like a Christ not truly human. Each side heard heresy in the other’s formula (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, ch. 12; W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 1972). Since 380 it had been the emperor’s business to enforce one confession, so dissent was disloyalty: Chalcedon’s supporters came to be called Melkites, “the king’s men,” and its opponents were strongest where Coptic and Syriac were spoken. 457 Alexandria The council’s opponents consecrate Timothy “the Cat” as patriarch. Soon afterward the Chalcedonian patriarch Proterius is killed by a mob. 482 Zeno, the Henotikon An imperial formula tries to set Chalcedon aside without condemning it. Rome breaks communion with Constantinople over it. 518 Justin I Bishops who refuse Chalcedon are deposed, Severus of Antioch among them. He flees to Egypt. c. 530–538 John of Tella Ordains clergy in secret for the non-Chalcedonians and dies in prison. 537 Alexandria Justinian installs a Chalcedonian patriarch with the support of troops. Egypt has two lines of patriarchs from this point. c. 543 Jacob Baradaeus Consecrated bishop in Constantinople. He ordains two patriarchs of Antioch, some twenty-seven bishops, and a great number of clergy. His opponents name the Syrian church “Jacobite” after him. 553 Second Council of Constantinople Justinian’s attempt to win the dissenters by condemning the Three Chapters: Theodore of Mopsuestia, and writings of Theodoret and Ibas that they detested. It fails and causes a new schism in the West. 1973–90 Common declarations Rome and the Coptic church (1973), and Rome and the Syrian church (1984), declare that they confess the same faith in Christ. The joint commission of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox says the same in agreed statements of 1989 and 1990, which not all the churches have yet received. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A misattributed slogan. The formula the dissenters defended, “one incarnate nature of God the Word,” was taken by Cyril from a letter he believed to be by Athanasius. It came from the circle of Apollinaris. See the note at 451. A misnomer. Their opponents called them “Monophysites,” as if they taught that Christ’s humanity was absorbed into his divinity. That was the teaching of Eutyches, the Constantinople abbot condemned in 448 for it, whom Severus and the Oriental churches themselves condemn. A Latin letter in Greek. Leo’s Tome says that each “form” in Christ does what is proper to it. In Latin this guards the reality of both natures. In Greek and Coptic ears it sounded like two actors, which was the error of Nestorius. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Volker Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (2008) The separate church was the product of imperial policy between 518 and the 550s. Its founders did not set out to leave. ORIENTAL ORTH. V. C. Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) The non-Chalcedonian fathers held the full humanity and full divinity of Christ and were condemned for what they did not teach. ORIENTAL ORTH. Shenouda III, The Nature of Christ (1991) The Coptic pope explains “one nature” as one united nature from two, without mixture or confusion. ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions (1989) Fault lay on both sides, and imperial coercion made reconciliation impossible. HISTORIAN Sebastian Brock, studies on Syriac Christology The labels “Monophysite” and “Nestorian” are both polemical misnomers that have hidden how close the positions were. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “We added nothing. We kept the faith of Cyril and of Ephesus. Chalcedon was the innovation.” (Oriental Orth.) On the wording they have a case: “in two natures” was a new formula in 451, and the entry calls their response survival. Two hierarchies in one city still turned a dispute into two churches, and both sides ordained them. 2. “The Chalcedonians caused it by persecuting.” (Oriental Orth.) Largely so, as the record above shows. That is why this entry sits on all four lines. The sword behind it is the entry at 301–380, and the formula is told at the split of 451. 3. “Ours is the continuing line in Alexandria. The emperor’s patriarch was the rival.” (Oriental Orth.) On the record above that is a fair account of Egypt, where the Chalcedonian line was installed with troops in 537. In Syria the new ordinations were on the other side. The entry does not rank the two lines. It dates the point from which there were two. 4. “They rejected an ecumenical council and so left the church.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Rome has since signed common declarations with Oriental churches, and the official commission of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox has issued agreed statements, affirming that both sides confess the same Christ. If the faith was the same, what was rejected was a form of words. 5. “Why does the Oriental Orthodox line carry so few additions of its own?” Because nearly everything it carries was already in place by 451 and is counted in the shared trunk before the split. These churches did not receive the later Greek and Latin definitions. The trunk is the same for all four. Two of its three own entries are Ethiopian and are marked as carried in part, and its use of images is counted in part at 787. 10 NOT SETTLED The date of Jacob’s consecration is given as 542 or 543. The numbers ordained are legendary in the sources. The agreed statements of 1989–90 recommended lifting the mutual anathemas. That has not yet been done. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 325 · Nicaea, canon 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - c. 433–451 · Two vocabularies — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kelly+Early+Christian+Doctrines+Frend+Rise+of+the+Monophysite+Movement - 457 · Alexandria — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/evagrius_2_book2.htm - 482 · Zeno, the Henotikon — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/evagrius_3_book3.htm - 518 · Justin I — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/evagrius_4_book4.htm - c. 530–538 · John of Tella — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Menze+Justinian+and+the+Making+of+the+Syrian+Orthodox+Church - c. 543 · Jacob Baradaeus — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Menze+Justinian+and+the+Making+of+the+Syrian+Orthodox+Church - 553 · Second Council of Constantinople — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum05.htm - 1973–90 · Common declarations — https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/speeches/1973/may/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19730510_dichiarazione-comune.html - voice · Volker Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (2008) — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/justinian-and-the-making-of-the-syrian-orthodox-church-9780199534876 - voice · V. C. Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3ACouncil+of+Chalcedon+re-examined+au%3ASamuel - voice · Shenouda III, The Nature of Christ (1991) — https://st-takla.org/books/en/pope-shenouda-iii/nature-of-christ/union.html - voice · John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions (1989) — https://archive.org/details/imperialunitychr0000meye - voice · Sebastian Brock, studies on Syriac Christology — https://syri.ac/bibliography/1425803109 ============================================================================== c. 420–553 · One view of the end enforced Address: https://additions.church/553 Narrowing · How it binds: Required Three readings of final punishment had lived side by side. Restoration is condemned, which the texts and the first witnesses already excluded; with it the destruction of the lost falls silent, and unending torment becomes the one permitted manner. First clear witness: Augustine admits “very many” doubted it (Enchiridion 112); anathemas of 543 and 553; Westminster Confession 33.2, 1647 (“eternal torments”). Footing: contested. Eternal punishment language is in Matthew 25:46, and no one in the generation after the apostles taught that the judgment ends, so the anathema on restoration meets this page’s test and is not the addition. The addition is the single permitted manner: the destruction of the lost, which the texts also carry, went unheard for a thousand years. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant (in part) 1 THE STORY In the early church several views of the end of the wicked lived side by side. Some held, with the plain sense of Matthew 25, that the punishment was everlasting. Some held that the wicked would be destroyed, that “the wages of sin is death” meant death. And some, following the great Alexandrian teacher Origen, hoped that in the end all things, perhaps even the devil, would be restored to God, since God would be “all in all.” Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three Cappadocian fathers who gave the doctrine of the Trinity its settled words, held a version of that hope. Augustine, writing around 421, admitted that “very many” of the faithful could not believe the punishment was eternal, and argued against them. In 543 the emperor Justinian issued an edict condemning Origen in ten anathemas, the last of them against anyone who says the punishment of demons and impious men is temporary and will have an end, and had a synod at Constantinople confirm it. Ten years later the fifth ecumenical council, meeting in the same city under the same emperor, is generally reckoned to have ratified the condemnation of Origen. From then on, in East and West alike, one view was safe to teach. This is a narrowing: the view that won has texts behind it, and so do the views that lost. What is dated is the anathema that closed the question. The two lines that count the council carry its anathema; the Protestant line carries the same narrowing by its own confessions (Augsburg 17, 1530), most of its churches at least; the Orient, which was not at Constantinople in 553, does not. The record sets out the texts for each view and the anathema that chose between them. 2 THE CLAIM For four centuries three readings of the last judgment were taught by Christians in good standing. On the first, the lost suffer consciously without end. On the second, they are destroyed, since immortality is God’s gift to the saved. On the third, punishment purifies and ends in the restoration of all. In the 420s Augustine argued at length for the first and noted that “very many” of his contemporaries did not hold it. In 543 an imperial edict condemned restoration under the name of Origen. In 553 the bishops assembled for the fifth general council did the same, and the council named Origen among the heretics. After that, unending conscious punishment was in practice the one view allowed in the Chalcedonian churches, and the destruction of the lost, which the texts carry as plainly as torment, went untaught for a thousand years. What is dated here is that narrowing to one manner. The anathema on restoration is not the addition: the texts call the judgment eternal (Matt 25:46; 2 Thess 1:9; Heb 6:2), and no one in the generation after the apostles taught that it ends, so by this page’s own test the exclusion of restoration was there to be found. The council found it late, and stated it as an anathema on a system that also carried the pre-existence of souls. NOT CLAIMED That the first Christians were all annihilationists, or all universalists. Neither can be shown. Nor that unending punishment is a late idea: Tertullian teaches it plainly before 200, and some Jews taught it before Christ. Nor that restoration was ever taught in the generation after the apostles: the earliest Christians to teach it are Clement of Alexandria about 200 and Origen after him. 3 THE TEXTS EACH READING RESTS ON Unending punishment “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt 25:46). “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever” (Rev 14:11). Also Mark 9:48; Rev 20:10. Destruction “Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28). “The punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess 1:9). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). God “alone has immortality” (1 Tim 6:16). Also John 3:16; Phil 3:19. Restoration “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive … that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:22, 28). “To reconcile to himself all things” (Col 1:20). Also Rom 5:18; Phil 2:10–11; 1 Tim 2:4; Acts 3:21. Each reading has to explain the other two sets of texts, and all three argue from the apostles’ words. Two of them can be read in the first witnesses after the apostles, who repeat the texts’ own words of fire and of perishing; restoration cannot, and first appears about 200. That is why this page counts the exclusion of restoration as the text’s and not the council’s. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Two views in Judaism. Unending torment: “he will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever” (Judith 16:17; compare 4 Maccabees 9:9). Destruction: the hope of the ungodly is like chaff and smoke before the wind (Wisdom 5:14), sinners are taken away to destruction and remembered no more (Psalms of Solomon 13:11), and the Qumran Rule speaks of torment that lasts until the wicked are destroyed without remnant. Both were in circulation around the first century. A third, a punishment that ends in release, is hinted at once, in 2 Maccabees 12:43–45, where prayer and sacrifice are offered for the fallen “so that they might be delivered from their sin”; it says nothing of Gehenna, and no text of the period describes a term in it. The twelve-month Gehinnom is first written down in the Mishnah, in the record. Gehenna. The word is the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, which Jeremiah names as the place where corpses will be thrown (Jer 7:32–33). The picture Jesus quotes in Mark 9:48 comes from Isaiah 66:24, where worm and fire consume “the dead bodies” of the rebels. The immortal soul. Plato taught that every soul is immortal by nature. If that is so, the lost cannot cease to exist, and only two options remain: endless torment or eventual restoration. In Scripture, immortality belongs to God alone and is “put on” at the resurrection (1 Cor 15:53). Adam is kept from the tree of life “lest he … live forever” (Gen 3:22). The first Christian writer to argue from Plato’s premise is in the record at c. 210. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 421 Augustine, Enchiridion 112 Arguing for eternal punishment, he concedes the field: “very many,” he says, deplore it and do not believe it. In his own day the views still lived side by side. 787 Second Council of Nicaea, on Gregory of Nyssa A council the East counts as ecumenical calls Gregory of Nyssa “father of fathers” (session 6, in the refutation of the council of 754; Mansi 13:293). He taught the restoration of all. The condemnation of 553 was never read as reaching him. 6 THE RECORD c. 155 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 5–6 The old man who converts Justin teaches that souls are not immortal by nature. The wicked “are punished so long as God wills them to exist and to be punished.” When God wills a soul to cease, “the spirit of life is removed from it, and there is no more soul.” Justin reports this as the teaching that won him. Elsewhere he speaks of eternal punishment, so he is claimed by both sides. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.34.3 “Life does not arise from us, nor from our own nature; but it is bestowed according to the grace of God.” The one who rejects it “deprives himself of [the privilege of] continuance for ever and ever.” c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 48 One of the clearest early statements of unending torment: a fire that does not consume what it burns but renews it. c. 200–400 The rabbinic texts on Gehenna The Mishnah (Eduyot 2:10) and the Tosefta (Sanhedrin 13:3–4) record a limited punishment, “twelve months” in Gehinnom, and attribute the view to Rabbi Akiva and to the school of Shammai, whose middle class of souls goes down and comes up again. These are the earliest Jewish texts to describe a punishment after death that ends in release. They were written down after the apostles, and what they attribute to earlier teachers cannot be checked. c. 210 Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 3 Cites Plato’s “Every soul is immortal” as a truth known by nature. If every soul is immortal, the lost cannot cease to exist, and only endless torment or eventual restoration remain. c. 230 Origen, On First Principles 1.6; 3.6 Explores the restoration of all rational beings, tied to his theory that souls existed before their bodies. c. 305 Arnobius, Against the Nations 2.14 A Latin teacher of rhetoric, newly converted, writes that the souls of the wicked are consumed and pass away. That, he says, is man’s real death. c. 380 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection Punishment is a refining fire, evil will cease, and God will be all in all. Gregory was never censured. The council of 787 calls him “father of fathers.” c. 421 Augustine, Enchiridion 112 “Some, indeed very many,” lament the eternal punishment of the lost and do not believe it will be so. c. 426 Augustine, City of God 21.17 He must now argue with “those tender-hearted Christians who decline to believe” in endless punishment. “Origen was even more indulgent.” 543 Justinian’s edict against Origen, anathema 9 Anathema to anyone who says that “the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end.” 553 Second Council of Constantinople Fifteen anathemas condemn “the fabulous pre-existence of souls” and “the monstrous restoration which follows from it.” Canon 11 lists Origen among the heretics. 1530 Augsburg Confession 17 The Lutherans condemn the Anabaptists “who think that there will be an end to the punishments of condemned men and devils.” The Reformation keeps the narrowing. 1647 Westminster Confession 33.2 The wicked “shall be cast into eternal torments, and be punished with everlasting destruction.” Torment and destruction in one sentence, read as torment: the Reformed confessions bind the manner, and ministers subscribe it. 1995 · 2000 The Church of England’s Doctrine Commission, The Mystery of Salvation; the Evangelical Alliance, The Nature of Hell Two Protestant reports accept the destruction of the wicked as a view a Christian may hold, while the confessional churches still bind Westminster 33 and Augsburg 17. The Protestant line carries this narrowing in part. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A Greek word in Latin. “Eternal” in Matthew 25:46 is aiōnios, literally “of the age.” In the Greek Old Testament the word is used of things that last long and then end: the bars of the deep that closed on Jonah “forever,” the “everlasting” hills that sink low in Habakkuk 3:6. Latin has aeternus, which is stricter. Augustine, working in Latin by his own account, argues that the word must mean the same length of time in both halves of the verse. Among Greek speakers Origen and Gregory did not feel that force, though Basil did (Short Rules 267). What the argument does prove. Augustine’s point about the parallel is fair in any language. The conditionalist reply is that Scripture also speaks of “eternal judgment” and “eternal redemption” (Heb 6:2; 9:12), where the act is completed and its result lasts. Sodom is said to have suffered “a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). What 553 condemned. The anathemas are aimed at a system: souls that existed before birth and all return to their first state. This was being taught by monks in sixth-century Palestine. Gregory of Nyssa’s version, without pre-existence, is not addressed, and the destruction of the wicked is not mentioned at all. Historians also doubt that the fifteen anathemas were enacted in the council’s formal sessions. They appear to have been issued by the bishops at the emperor’s request before it opened. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Brian Daley SJ, The Hope of the Early Church (1991) The standard handbook. Shows how varied the fathers’ views were, and how slowly they narrowed. PROTESTANT Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes (1982) The standard modern biblical and historical case for the destruction of the wicked. ANGLICAN John Stott, in Evangelical Essentials (1988) Holds annihilation tentatively and asks that it be accepted as a legitimate, biblically grounded view. PROTESTANT Robert Peterson, Hell on Trial (1995) The traditional case. Matthew 25:46 and Revelation 14 and 20 cannot be made to mean anything but conscious punishment without end. HISTORIAN Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013); Michael McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption (2018) Ramelli argues that restoration was widely held and biblically argued by many fathers. McClymond answers that it was always a minority view with esoteric roots. ORTHODOX Kallistos Ware, “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?” (2000) Origen’s system was condemned. The hope was not, and Gregory of Nyssa stands uncensured. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Matthew 25:46 settles it.” It is the strongest text for the traditional view, and the entry says so. Those who read it as destruction answer that the punishment is eternal in its result, a death with no return. This page does not decide between torment and destruction; it says that question was once open and was closed in practice without a text that closes it. Between those two and restoration it does decide, by its own test, and says so above. 2. “The church always taught eternal torment. A few speculators dissented.” Augustine, who opposed the dissenters, says they were very many. And the most eminent of them, Gregory of Nyssa, is venerated as a saint in East and West. 3. “An ecumenical council condemned universalism.” It condemned Origen and a package of ideas tied to the pre-existence of souls. Whether the fifteen anathemas belong to the council’s own acts is doubted by Catholic and Orthodox historians, as well as others. In either case the council said nothing about conditional immortality. 4. “Annihilation was the original belief of the church.” This goes too far and should not be claimed. The earliest writers mostly repeat biblical phrases that each side reads its own way. Justin and Irenaeus can be quoted on both sides. Tertullian is unmistakable by 197. 5. “If restoration fails your own test, the council was right, and this entry should go.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Half right, and the entry says so: the anathema on restoration meets the test and is not counted as an addition. What is counted is what followed it. One manner of punishment was taught as the only one, and destruction, which has texts of its own and early readers, was shut out without any council ever addressing it. The date stands for that, and the entry stays marked contested. 6. “Revelation 14:11 and 20:10 are explicit.” They are the hardest texts for the other two readings, and that should be admitted. The image is drawn from Isaiah 34:10, where the smoke of Edom “shall go up forever,” and Revelation itself names the lake of fire “the second death” (20:14). 10 NOT SETTLED This entry is marked contested. It claims a narrowing to one manner of punishment and nothing more; the exclusion of restoration it counts as the text’s. Whether aiōnios in Matthew 25:46 means “endless” or “of the age to come” remains disputed among competent scholars. Some Byzantine writers, Germanus of Constantinople among them (reported in Photius, Library 233), held that Gregory of Nyssa’s universalist passages were Origenist interpolations; modern editors do not. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 421 · Augustine, Enchiridion 112 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm - 787 · Second Council of Nicaea, on Gregory of Nyssa — https://archive.org/details/acts-of-the-seventh-ecumenical-council-second-of-nicaea-787 - c. 155 · Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 5–6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01281.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.34.3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103234.htm - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 48 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xlviii.html - c. 200–400 · The rabbinic texts on Gehenna — https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Eduyot.2.10 - c. 210 · Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0316.htm - c. 230 · Origen, On First Principles 1.6; 3.6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04121.htm - c. 305 · Arnobius, Against the Nations 2.14 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/06312.htm - c. 380 · Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2915.htm - c. 426 · Augustine, City of God 21.17 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120121.htm - 543 · Justinian’s edict against Origen, anathema 9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm - 553 · Second Council of Constantinople — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm - 1530 · Augsburg Confession 17 — https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/article-xvii/ - 1647 · Westminster Confession 33.2 — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html - 1995 · 2000 · The Church of England’s Doctrine Commission, The Mystery of Salvation; the Evangelical Alliance, The Nature of Hell — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=The+Mystery+of+Salvation+Doctrine+Commission+Church+of+England+1995+Nature+of+Hell+Evangelical+Alliance+2000 - voice · Brian Daley SJ, The Hope of the Early Church (1991) — https://archive.org/details/hopeofearlychurc0000bria - voice · Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes (1982) — https://archive.org/details/firethatconsumes0000fudg - voice · John Stott, in Evangelical Essentials (1988) — https://archive.org/details/evangelicalessen0000edwa - voice · Robert Peterson, Hell on Trial (1995) — https://archive.org/details/hellontrialcasef0000pete - voice · Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013); Michael McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption (2018) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AChristian+Doctrine+of+Apokatastasis+au%3ARamelli - voice · Kallistos Ware, “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?” (2000) — https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-inner-kingdom-volume-1-of-the-collected-works-ware/ ============================================================================== 567–800 · Giving becomes a tax Address: https://additions.church/585 Addition · How it binds: Required, Contradicted A tenth is required on pain of excommunication, and Charlemagne later enforces it by law. First clear witness: Council of Tours, 567; Mâcon, 585; Charlemagne’s capitularies. Footing: firm. Paying those who labor in the word is apostolic (1 Cor 9:14). The compulsory tithe is not. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant 1 THE STORY Israel paid tithes, a tenth of the harvest and the flock, to support the Levites who had no land, with a second tithe for the feasts and a third-year tithe for the poor. The apostles never asked for it. Paul told the Corinthians to give as each had decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, and refused support for himself so that the gospel would be free of charge. For three centuries giving was free, and the fathers say so. From the third century the church orders asked for tithes and firstfruits for the bishop as Israel’s high priest, and preachers from Jerome to Caesarius of Arles called a tenth owed; no church required it under penalty until the Frankish councils. Then the Frankish bishops began to. A council at Tours in 567 urged tithes; a council at Mâcon in 585 ordered them, with excommunication for refusal. In 779 Charlemagne, who had a kingdom to run and a church to pay for, made the tithe civil law in a capitulary issued at Herstal, and his officials collected it. From then until the nineteenth century, in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, a tenth of what a European farmer grew went to the church by force of law, and the church’s wealth, and its buildings, and its quarrels with kings, grew from it. The entry is marked “contradicted,” the rarest kind on this page, because the apostolic instruction is explicit: not under compulsion. It is on the Western lines, and the Protestant state churches kept it longest. The record dates the councils and the capitulary, and shows what Paul said. 2 THE CLAIM The New Testament never commands Christians to tithe. For three centuries giving was voluntary, and the fathers say so. From the late 500s Frankish councils required a tenth on pain of excommunication, and by 800 Charlemagne had made it civil law. Roman Catholic and most Protestant churches inherited the belief that a tenth is owed to the church. NOT CLAIMED That generosity is optional, that those who teach should not be supported, or that giving a tenth is wrong. Many of the first Christians gave far more. What is dated here is compulsion, and the claim that God’s law requires it. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 2 Cor 9:7 “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” 2 Cor 8:3, 8 The Macedonians gave “according to their means … and beyond their means, of their own accord.” Paul adds: “I say this not as a command.” 1 Cor 16:2 “Each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper.” Proportion, with no fixed fraction. 1 Cor 9:14; Gal 6:6 Workers are to be supported: “those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” Acts 4:34–35 Where it went: “There was not a needy person among them.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel had three tithes. One supported the Levites, who held no land (Num 18:21–24). One was eaten by the worshiper’s own household at the festival in Jerusalem (Deut 14:22–27). One, every third year, went to the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow (Deut 14:28–29). Second Temple sources count them separately (Tobit 1:6–8; Josephus, Antiquities 4), which comes to more than twenty percent a year. What was tithed. Crops and livestock from the land of Israel. Wages, trade and craft were not. The tithe belonged to a system of land, tribe and temple. Malachi’s “storehouse” (3:10) is a chamber in the temple where the Levites’ portions were kept (Neh 10:38). How churches were funded. Greek and Roman associations ran on dues and patrons. The churches kept a common chest filled by free gifts, and spent it on the poor and on those who taught. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 “Those who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit.” The collection is voluntary and sized by the giver, four centuries before a tenth was required. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.2; 4.13.3 The Jews gave tithes; Christians, “who have received liberty, set aside all their possessions for the Lord’s purposes,” giving freely and with joy. He treats the tithe as a thing of the old covenant. 6 THE RECORD c. 100 Didache 13 Firstfruits go to the prophets, “for they are your high priests.” If there is no prophet, “give it to the poor.” c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 “They who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit.” The fund supports orphans, widows, the sick, prisoners and strangers. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.2 The Jews consecrated their tithes. Those who have received liberty set aside all they have for the Lord’s purposes, freely. c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 39 “There is no compulsion; all is voluntary.” c. 230–380 Didascalia; Apostolic Constitutions Church orders begin to urge tithes and firstfruits, brought to the bishop as high priest, who lives from them and distributes them to the clergy, widows, orphans and the poor. c. 400 Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Ephesians The Jews gave tenths and more, he tells his people, and Christians should be ashamed to give less. This is exhortation and not law. 567 · 585 Tours and Mâcon The Catholic Encyclopedia: “The earliest positive legislation on the subject” is the bishops’ letter from Tours in 567 and the canons of Mâcon in 585. Mâcon adds excommunication. 779–800 Charlemagne’s capitularies “The earliest instance of the enforcement of the payment of ecclesiastical tithes by civil law.” The conquered Saxons are made to pay. 796 Alcuin to Charlemagne and to Arn of Salzburg The king’s own adviser asks Charlemagne whether the apostles “ever demanded tithes, or ordered them to be demanded,” and calls the levy on the new converts “the yoke of tithes.” To Arn of Salzburg: “The tithes have well-nigh ruined the faith of the Saxons.” 1525 The Twelve Articles of the German peasants Ask that the grain tithe pay the pastor and relieve the poor, and that the tithe on livestock be abolished as a human invention. 1870s– American Protestantism With no state funding and pew rents falling out of use, tithing is revived as the biblical way to finance a congregation. By the 1920s “storehouse tithing,” the whole tithe to the local church, is taught in several denominations. 1919– The German church tax The Weimar constitution (article 137, carried into the Basic Law) lets the churches levy a tax that the state’s tax offices collect; the Catholic and Protestant churches of Germany still live on it, and the German bishops (2012) bar from the sacraments those who formally leave the church to stop paying. The one place Charlemagne’s arrangement survives in form. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Malachi 3:8–10. “Will man rob God?” is addressed to Israel after the exile, about the temple storehouse and the Levites’ support. Applied to a church budget, it brings over one of the three tithes without the land, the tribe or the temple. Matthew 23:23. “These you ought to have done” is said to scribes and Pharisees, under the law, about herbs from the garden, while the temple stood. Hebrews 7. Abraham gives Melchizedek a tenth of the plunder from a single battle (Gen 14:20). The writer uses it to prove Christ greater than Levi. He draws no conclusion about Christian giving. The engine. The tithe returned once the bishop was called a high priest and the clergy Levites (see c. 250). The church orders give this as the reason in so many words. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Andreas Köstenberger and David Croteau, “Will a Man Rob God?” and “Reconstructing a Biblical Model for Giving,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 16 (2006) Work through every tithe text in both Testaments. The tithe is not carried into the new covenant. The New Testament asks for giving that is willing, proportionate and generous. PROTESTANT Ken Hemphill and Bobby Eklund, in Perspectives on Tithing: Four Views (2011) The case for the defense: the tithe is older than Moses (Abraham, Jacob), Jesus endorsed it, and so it remains the baseline. CATHOLIC Catholic Encyclopedia, “Tithes” (1912); Catechism 2043 “In the beginning this was supplied by the spontaneous offerings of the faithful.” The tithe “was adopted from the Old Law.” Rome today asks each to give according to ability and names no fraction. HISTORIAN Giles Constable, Monastic Tithes (1964) The standard study of monastic tithes to the twelfth century. Its opening chapter traces how the voluntary tithe became a compulsory due under Frankish councils and Carolingian law. HISTORIAN James Hudnut-Beumler, In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar (2007) Modern Protestant tithing teaching is largely a product of the later nineteenth century in America. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Abraham and Jacob tithed before the law. It is a principle from creation.” (Protestant) Abraham’s was a single gift from the spoils of war. Jacob’s was a vow with conditions attached (Gen 28:20–22). Neither is a command. Circumcision also predates Moses (Gen 17), and Paul does not conclude that it binds the church. 2. “Jesus said, ‘These you ought to have done.’” (Protestant) He said it to men who were under the law of Moses and rightly kept it. He also sent a cleansed leper to offer what Moses commanded (Mark 1:44), and no church carries that over. 3. “Without a tenth as a floor, giving collapses.” (Protestant) As a voluntary rule of thumb a tenth has helped many, and early preachers used Israel’s tenth to shame the stingy. The apostles’ standard is at once freer and more demanding: according to means, and sometimes beyond. What is dated here is the legal obligation. 4. “We do not require tithes today.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Largely true of a tenth. Rome enforced the tithe for about a thousand years and names no fraction now, but its law still binds the duty (canon 222 §1), and in Germany and Austria the state collects a church tax for it. The Greek East never had a general tithe law. The addition is most alive as a tenth in evangelical Protestant churches, which is why it stays on that line. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether Jewish farmers in the first century really paid all three tithes is debated. The legal theory is clear and the practice is not. Supporting those who teach is apostolic. The page does not argue against paid workers. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.2; 4.13.3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103418.htm - c. 100 · Didache 13 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103418.htm - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 39 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xxxix.html - c. 230–380 · Didascalia; Apostolic Constitutions — https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didascalia.html - c. 400 · Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Ephesians — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230104.htm - 567 · 585 · Tours and Mâcon — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14741b.htm - 779–800 · Charlemagne’s capitularies — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14741b.htm - 796 · Alcuin to Charlemagne and to Arn of Salzburg — https://ccel.org/ccel/neander_a/light/light.iv.ii.vii.html - 1525 · The Twelve Articles of the German peasants — https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/ghdi:document-4323 - 1870s– · American Protestantism — https://archive.org/details/inpursuitofalmig0000hudn - 1919– · The German church tax — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kirchensteuer+church+tax+Germany+history - voice · Andreas Köstenberger and David Croteau, “Will a Man Rob God?” and “Reconstructing a Biblical Model for Giving,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 16 (2006) — https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/sor_fac_pubs/80 - voice · Ken Hemphill and Bobby Eklund, in Perspectives on Tithing: Four Views (2011) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Perspectives+on+Tithing+Four+Views - voice · Catholic Encyclopedia, “Tithes” (1912); Catechism 2043 — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14741b.htm - voice · Giles Constable, Monastic Tithes (1964) — https://archive.org/details/monastictithesfr0000cons - voice · James Hudnut-Beumler, In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar (2007) — https://archive.org/details/inpursuitofalmig0000hudn ============================================================================== c. 600 · Mary’s feasts, and prayers to her Address: https://additions.church/600 Addition · How it binds: Required, Made normative A feast of Mary’s falling asleep is set for 15 August, drawn from narratives whose earliest copies date from the fifth century. Hymns and prayers addressed to her multiply. First clear witness: A feast of Mary on 15 August at Jerusalem, c. 420–440; the Dormition story attached by the sixth century; the empire-wide feast reported for 600. Epiphanius, c. 377, could find no settled tradition about her end. Footing: qualified. Honor for Mary is in Luke 1:48, and calling her God-bearer (431) guards who Christ is. Prayers to her and the account of her end are later. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY No writer of the first four centuries whose work survives claimed to know how Mary died. Epiphanius, a bishop who collected everything the churches said about everything, wrote around 377 that he had searched and could find no settled tradition about her end: perhaps she died, perhaps she was martyred, perhaps she remained; no one knew. Stories filled the silence. From the fifth century a family of narratives called the Transitus, the passing of Mary, told how the apostles were gathered to her deathbed and how her body was taken up, and the stories spread in Greek, Syriac, Latin and Coptic. A feast of Mary on 15 August was being kept at Jerusalem by about 430, before any story was attached to it; by the sixth century the day was her Dormition, her falling asleep, and about 600 the emperor Maurice is reported to have ordered it kept throughout the empire. The feast gave the story a day, and prayer to Mary, which had begun in private petitions some centuries earlier, had a day of its own. The title “Mother of God” that the Council of Ephesus had defended in 431 was a statement about Christ, that the one she bore was God; the feasts and the prayers were about her. The apostolic writings last mention Mary in the upper room before Pentecost. The Reformers set her feasts and the prayers to her down in 1517; Rome kept them, added two dogmas in 1854 and 1950 that are dated separately, and the East and the Orient keep the feasts as the heart of the year. The record dates the decree and the stories behind it. 2 THE CLAIM A feast of Mary on 15 August is kept at Jerusalem by about 420–440; by the sixth century the day has become her “falling asleep,” and the emperor Maurice is reported to have ordered it kept throughout the empire about 600, which is the date the entry takes, when the feast is empire-wide and the story is attached to it. Rome was keeping it within a century. The story the feast tells comes from narratives whose earliest copies date from the fifth century, though some scholars place their sources a century or more earlier. In the same period hymns and prayers addressed to Mary herself became a regular part of public worship. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox worship all carry this addition, and Rome lists the Assumption among its holy days of obligation (canon 1246), so for Rome it is bound as well as kept. The Reformation removed the Dormition and the prayers to her; the feasts that are Christ’s as much as hers, the Annunciation and the Purification, stayed in Lutheran and Anglican calendars. NOT CLAIMED That Mary should not be called blessed, or God-bearer. Luke requires the first, and the second protects the truth about her Son. The Roman dogmas of 1854 and 1950 are a separate entry. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Luke 1:48 “From now on all generations will call me blessed.” John 2:5 Her last recorded words: “Do whatever he tells you.” Acts 1:14 Her last appearance: one of those “devoting themselves to prayer.” She prays with the church. No one is shown praying to her. 1 Tim 2:5; Heb 4:16 “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.” Matt 6:9 “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven.’” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel’s mothers. Jews honored Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. Scripture and the Second Temple sources show no prayer addressed to them. The one Second Temple scene of the departed at prayer, Onias and Jeremiah praying for the people (2 Macc 15:12–14), comes to Judas in a dream, and he asks them for nothing. “Queen of heaven.” The title was borne by goddesses long before it was given to Mary, and Jeremiah condemns the women who bake cakes for the queen of heaven (Jer 7:18). A capital city’s divine patroness was an old pattern in the Greek world. Whether pagan cult shaped Christian devotion directly is debated. That a bishop saw the danger when the devotion appeared is in the record at 377. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 377 Epiphanius, Panarion 78.11, 23 On Mary’s end: whether she died or did not die, “no one knows.” The Scriptures are silent, he says, and so he will not say. The feast is set two centuries later, on narratives whose earliest copies are fifth-century. 6 THE RECORD c. 150–200 Protoevangelium of James The first life of Mary: her parents, her childhood in the temple, her perpetual virginity. Later condemned in the West as apocryphal, and still the source of several feasts. 3rd–8th c. The prayer “Beneath your compassion” A Greek papyrus from Egypt preserves a prayer of refuge addressed to the God-bearer. Its date is disputed, from the third century to much later. If the early date holds, it is the earliest known prayer to Mary. c. 377 Epiphanius, Panarion 78–79 He can find no tradition about Mary’s end, and he condemns the offering of cakes to her. c. 379 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 24 Tells of a virgin who begged the Virgin Mary for help. This is the first literary mention of calling on her. 431 Council of Ephesus Mary is to be confessed as God-bearer. Churches are dedicated to her in the decades that follow. c. 420–440 The Jerusalem lectionary The Armenian lectionary of Jerusalem keeps a feast of “Mary Theotokos” on 15 August at the Kathisma, the “resting place” on the Bethlehem road; by the Georgian lectionary of the sixth century the day has become her Dormition at Gethsemane. The earliest witness to the feast, and it is a feast before it is a story. c. 450–500 The Dormition narratives Several accounts of Mary’s death and of her body or soul taken to paradise circulate in Syriac, Greek and Coptic. They do not agree with one another, and some scholars trace their sources to the fourth century or earlier. c. 450–720 Constantinople’s protector The capital gathers relics of Mary, her robe and her belt, and comes to regard her as the city’s defender. After the sieges the city sings to her as its “champion general”: tradition places the hymn’s opening stanza after the siege of 626, and the Byzantine hymn scholar Egon Wellesz after the Arab siege of 718. c. 500–550 The “Gelasian Decree” A sixth-century Latin list that circulated under Pope Gelasius’s name puts the Passing of Mary among the apocrypha that are not received. c. 600 The emperor Maurice Reported by Nicephorus Callistus, writing about 1320 (Church History 17.28), to have fixed the Dormition on 15 August throughout the empire; no earlier source records the decree. The entry keeps the date because by 600 the feast is kept across the East and the story is attached to it, not because the decree is well attested. c. 690 Pope Sergius I Orders a procession at Rome on four feasts: the Annunciation, the Dormition, the Nativity of Mary and the Presentation of the Lord (2 February). This is the first Roman notice of the Dormition feast. c. 1050–1568 The Hail Mary The first half is Gabriel’s and Elizabeth’s words from Luke 1. The petition “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” is added in the fifteenth century and fixed in 1568. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A feast from apocrypha. A widely copied Western list classed the narratives of Mary’s passing as apocryphal, and Epiphanius, who looked, found no tradition. The feast was built from those narratives all the same. “Behold, your mother.” John 19:26–27 is read as giving Mary to all believers as their mother. The evangelist explains the words himself: “from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” The wider reading becomes common in the twelfth century. Cana. Mary’s word to her son at the wedding is taken as the model of her intercession. What she says to everyone else is to do as he tells them. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Stephen Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (2016) Devotion to Mary is earlier and more important than scholarship, Protestant scholarship especially, has assumed: roots in the second century and clear devotion by the third, though still modest until the fifth. He also shows how much of it comes from apocryphal writings. CATHOLIC Luigi Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church (1991) Gathers the patristic texts father by father. In the earliest of them Mary is spoken of in connection with Christ, as the virgin mother and the new Eve. ORTHODOX Vladimir Lossky, “Panagia” (1949) Grants that Scripture and the early public preaching say little. Devotion to the Mother of God belongs, he says, to the church’s inner tradition and not to its proclamation. HISTORIAN Averil Cameron, “The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople” (1978) Documents the rapid growth of Mary’s civic cult in the capital in the later sixth century. PROTESTANT Martin Luther, Commentary on the Magnificat (1521) Honors Mary warmly as the model of faith and refuses to make her an object of trust. In this early work he still asks for her intercession. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “We only ask her to pray for us, as you would ask a friend.” Asking the living for prayer is commanded. Addressing the departed is treated at c. 350. The prayers in question also go further than a request: “beneath your compassion we take refuge,” and in the Byzantine rite, “Most holy God-bearer, save us.” 2. “Every ancient church does this, Roman, Greek, Coptic, Syrian and Armenian alike. So it must come from the apostles.” The breadth is real, and it shows that the practice is older than the divisions of the fifth century. That makes it fourth-century, or third at the earliest. The first witnesses appear then, one at a time, and a leading bishop of the same years condemns an offering made to her. 3. “You accept ‘God-bearer.’ Devotion follows from it.” The title says who Jesus is. It can be confessed in full by someone who prays as Jesus taught, to the Father. 4. “The papyrus prayer is from the third century.” It may be. In that case the earliest prayer to Mary dates from about 250, two centuries after the apostles, and stands alone for another hundred years. 10 NOT SETTLED The date of the papyrus prayer and the age of the Dormition traditions are both unsettled. Do not claim that Marian devotion was borrowed from goddess worship. The resemblance is noted by historians and the dependence is not proven. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 377 · Epiphanius, Panarion 78.11, 23 — https://archive.org/details/panarionofepipha0000epip - c. 150–200 · Protoevangelium of James — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm - 3rd–8th c. · The prayer “Beneath your compassion” — https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/MS-GREEK-P-00470/1 - c. 377 · Epiphanius, Panarion 78–79 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Panarion+Epiphanius+Salamis+Books+II+and+III+Williams - c. 379 · Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 24 — https://doi.org/10.25446/oxford.13802093.v1 - 431 · Council of Ephesus — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum03.htm - c. 420–440 · The Jerusalem lectionary — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Armenian+Lectionary+of+Jerusalem+Renoux+Kathisma+15+August+Theotokos - c. 450–500 · The Dormition narratives — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ancient-traditions-of-the-virgin-marys-dormition-and-assumption-9780199210749 - c. 450–720 · Constantinople’s protector — https://archive.org/details/DOP09-10_06_Wellesz - c. 500–550 · The “Gelasian Decree” — https://www.tertullian.org/decretum_eng.htm - c. 600 · The emperor Maurice — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Nicephorus+Callistus+Ecclesiastical+History+17.28+Maurice+Dormition - c. 690 · Pope Sergius I — https://archive.org/details/duchesne01 - c. 1050–1568 · The Hail Mary — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07110b.htm - voice · Stephen Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (2016) — https://yalebooks.yale.edu/9780300217216/mary-in-early-christian-faith-and-devotion - voice · Luigi Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church (1991) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Gambero+Mary+and+the+Fathers+of+the+Church - voice · Vladimir Lossky, “Panagia” (1949) — https://archive.org/details/inimagelikenesso0000loss - voice · Averil Cameron, “The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople” (1978) — https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/XXIX/1/79/1731366 - voice · Martin Luther, Commentary on the Magnificat (1521) — https://archive.org/details/magnificatluther0000luth ============================================================================== 528–692 · Bishops may not be married Address: https://additions.church/692 Addition · How it binds: Required, Contradicted Imperial law, then a council, require a bishop to live apart from his wife. In time bishops are taken only from monks. First clear witness: Justinian’s laws, from 528; Council in Trullo, canons 12 and 48, 692. Footing: firm. Married priests stay the norm in the East. The Oriental churches hold the same rule for bishops by custom. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY Paul told Timothy that an overseer must be the husband of one wife, with his children in order, because a man who cannot manage his own house cannot care for God’s church. For five centuries a bishop could be a married man: Gregory of Nazianzus’s father was one, and Gregory of Nyssa was probably married when he took his see. But the monastery had set a higher standard, and the emperor took it up. From 528 Justinian’s laws began to require that bishops have no children, and then that they be unmarried. In 692 a council of Eastern bishops in the domed hall of the palace at Constantinople, the Trullo, made it canon law. Canon 12 ordered bishops who were living with their wives to separate from them. Canon 48 ordered the wife of a man elected bishop to enter a convent. The same council, in canon 13, rebuked Rome for making its priests and deacons give up living with their wives: the East would keep its married priests and take its bishops from the monks. It has done so ever since, and the Orient with it. This entry is marked “contradicted,” because it does not merely add a rule but contradicts an instruction. It is carried by the Eastern and Oriental lines, which bound it; the West’s rule for its priests is dated separately at 1139. The record gives the laws, the canons, and the bishops who were married before them. 2 THE CLAIM Paul’s qualifications for an overseer begin with a man above reproach, the husband of one wife, with an orderly household. In 528 and 531 the emperor Justinian barred men with children from becoming bishops. In 692 the Council in Trullo forbade a bishop to live with his wife and required her to enter a distant monastery. In time bishops were taken only from among monks. The council’s own canon calls the older arrangement something “established of old by Apostolic authority,” says it does not mean to overthrow it, and forbids what it allowed. NOT CLAIMED That an unmarried bishop is a bad thing, or that the East has a celibate clergy. Its priests and deacons are commonly married men, who must marry before they are ordained (Trullo, canon 6). What is dated here is the exclusion of the married from the office Paul describes. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Tim 3:2, 4–5 “An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife … He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive.” Titus 1:6–7 “The husband of one wife, and his children are believers … For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach.” 1 Cor 9:5 The apostles themselves traveled with their wives. 1 Cor 7:5, 10–11 “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time … the wife should not separate from her husband.” The texts the rule runs against are the ones on separation, not the qualification list: Trullo 12 and 48 order a separation that Paul forbids. 1 Tim 4:3 Teachers “who forbid marriage” are named as a mark of departure from the faith. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The household as proving ground. In Greek and Roman thought a man showed he was fit for public trust by how he ran his own house. Paul reasons the same way, and he calls the church “the household of God” (1 Tim 3:15). The married householder is the model for the office. Marriage and holiness. Second Temple Judaism knew celibate communities, the Essenes among them (see c. 320), and took the married priest for granted. The apostles chose married elders (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:6) and made a man’s family the test of his fitness. Why the law changed, and for whom, is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 380 Apostolic Canons 5 “Let not a bishop, presbyter, or deacon put away his wife under pretence of religion; if he does, let him be excommunicated.” The East’s own canon collection forbade what the later law required of bishops. 6 THE RECORD c. 110 Polycarp, To the Philippians 11 Mentions “Valens, who was once a presbyter among you,” and his wife. c. 380 Apostolic Canons 5 and 51 A bishop must not “put away his wife under pretence of religion.” A cleric who abstains from marriage because he abhors it is to be corrected or deposed. c. 410 Synesius of Cyrene, Letter 105 Elected bishop, he accepts on condition that he keep his wife. He will not be parted from her, he writes, nor live with her in secret like an adulterer. c. 439 Socrates, Church History 5.22 In Thessaly a cleric who sleeps with his wife after ordination is degraded. Elsewhere in the East clergy and bishops abstain “of their own accord, and not by the necessity of any law; for there have been among them many bishops, who have had children by their lawful wives, during their episcopate.” 486 · 497 · 544 The Church of the East Persian synods allow all clergy to marry, and in 497 explicitly the bishops and the catholicos. The permission for bishops is withdrawn in 544. 528 · 531 Justinian, Code 1.3 Imperial law requires that a bishop have neither children nor grandchildren, and soon (Novel 6, 535; Novel 123, 546) that he have no wife. 692 Council in Trullo, canon 12 Notes that bishops in Africa, Libya and elsewhere still live with their wives, and forbids it. The council says it acts “not to abolish and overthrow what things were established of old by Apostolic authority” but for the people’s “advance to better things.” 692 Council in Trullo, canon 48 The wife of a man made bishop is to separate from him by consent and enter a monastery far from his residence. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Husband of one wife.” Later readers took the phrase as a ceiling and not as a description: no more than one wife, and better none. Some read it as a figure, with the bishop wedded to his church. The verses that follow, on children and household, show that Paul means an actual family. The canon’s own wording. Trullo 12 does not claim that the apostles required unmarried bishops. It speaks of what was “established of old by Apostolic authority,” denies any wish to overthrow it, and then forbids what that arrangement allowed, for the sake of what it judges better. The rule in view is most likely Apostolic Canon 5, which canon 30 of the same council calls “the Apostolic Canon concerning the not putting away of a wife.” 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective (1970) The rule is a disciplinary canon of the sixth and seventh centuries. It is not a doctrine, and a council could change it. ORTHODOX Orthodox writers on the canon generally Grant that 1 Timothy 3:2 describes a married overseer and that the change came by imperial law. They defend the rule as a wise use of the church’s authority. CATHOLIC Christian Cochini SJ, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (1981) Reads Trullo the other way: the East kept for bishops a continence that had once bound all the higher clergy. HISTORIAN Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988) How monks and ascetic women in Egypt and Syria made renunciation a public Christian ideal in the East. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “A bishop is wedded to his church and must give it his whole heart.” (Orthodox) Paul considered the same question and reached the other answer: a man who has not managed a household is untested for managing God’s. 2. “The church has authority to legislate for the good of the people.” (Orthodox) It does make rules, and Orthodox teachers say this one could be changed. The point for this page is that the council knew the older arrangement had apostolic authority, as its own canon says, and that the reasons first given in law were about property. 3. “Paul and John were unmarried.” (Orthodox) Some apostles were. Peter and the Lord’s brothers were not, and Paul wrote the qualifications. 4. “Married priests and celibate bishops: the East shows that continence was the original rule.” (Catholic) It shows a seventh-century settlement between the older practice and the ascetic ideal. The documents before 500 show married bishops in East and West. Western law, from Elvira (canon 33) and Pope Siricius (385), required them to live in continence. The East had local customs to the same effect and no general law until Justinian. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether particular fourth-century bishops, Gregory of Nyssa for one, were married while in office is debated. The Oriental churches hold the same practice by custom and not by this council. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 380 · Apostolic Canons 5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - c. 110 · Polycarp, To the Philippians 11 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm - c. 380 · Apostolic Canons 5 and 51 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - c. 410 · Synesius of Cyrene, Letter 105 — https://www.livius.org/sources/content/synesius/synesius-letter-105/ - c. 439 · Socrates, Church History 5.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm - 486 · 497 · 544 · The Church of the East — https://archive.org/details/ChabotSynodiconOrientale - 528 · 531 · Justinian, Code 1.3 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Annotated+Justinian+Code+Blume - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 12 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 48 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm - voice · John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective (1970) — https://archive.org/details/marriageorthodox0000meye - voice · Orthodox writers on the canon generally — https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2020/05/why-do-only-monks-become-bishops - voice · Christian Cochini SJ, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (1981) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=apostolic+origins+of+priestly+celibacy+cochini - voice · Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988) — https://archive.org/details/bodysociety00pete ============================================================================== 787 · Honor to images required Address: https://additions.church/787 Addition · How it binds: Required A council rules that icons must be venerated and condemns those who refuse. First clear witness: Second Council of Nicaea, 787. Footing: qualified. Christian pictures are early: Dura-Europos, the catacombs. What 787 adds is the duty to venerate them. The Oriental churches venerate images by custom, without this council. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox (in part). Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY Christians painted from early on: the catacombs have the Good Shepherd and Jonah, and the house church at Dura-Europos had frescoes on its walls around 240. Whether such pictures should be honored was another question, and for centuries no one had required it. In 726 the emperor Leo III turned against the images, and his son Constantine V called a council in 754 that condemned them as idols. Monks who defended the icons were persecuted, and the quarrel tore the Byzantine church for sixty years. In 787 the empress Irene, ruling for her young son, called a council to Nicaea to undo the damage. It restored the images and then went further than any church had gone: it decreed that icons of Christ, of Mary, of the angels and the saints are to be given honor and veneration, with the kiss, the bow, lights and incense, and it anathematized anyone who refused. The honor, it said, passes to the one depicted. A second iconoclast period followed; the final restoration in 843 is kept by the East every year as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The council’s best argument, that the Word became flesh and so can be pictured, shows that Christ may be depicted. It does not show that anyone was ever required to venerate the picture, and that requirement is what is dated. The Frankish church rejected the council’s terms at Frankfurt in 794, and the Reformers set the requirement down in 1517. The record gives the acts, the arguments on both sides, and the texts. 2 THE CLAIM In 787 the Second Council of Nicaea decreed that images of Christ, Mary, the angels and the saints are to be set up and given veneration, by kissing, bowing, lights and incense, though not the adoration owed to God alone. It anathematized those who refuse. The early church had pictures. It had no such duty, and where its teachers mention the practice they oppose it. The Frankish church of the time rejected the decree, although Pope Hadrian I, whose legates had signed it, defended it. NOT CLAIMED That Christian art is wrong, or that those who venerate icons mean to worship wood and paint. They say they do not, and the council draws that line. What is dated here is the obligation, and the acts of veneration themselves. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Exod 20:4–5 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image … You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” Deut 4:15–16 “Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb … beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image.” 2 Kgs 18:4 An image God himself had ordered: Hezekiah “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it.” Acts 10:25–26; Rev 22:8–9 Honor refused: “Stand up; I too am a man.” “You must not do that! … Worship God.” Col 1:15; 2 Cor 5:7 Christ himself “is the image of the invisible God.” Meanwhile “we walk by faith, not by sight.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Jewish practice. First-century Jews would die before allowing an image into worship. Josephus records the uproar when Pilate brought standards bearing the emperor’s portrait into Jerusalem (War 2.169–174), and the golden eagle Herod set over the temple gate was torn down by young men who paid for it with their lives (Antiquities 17.149–163). Decoration with plants and symbols was another matter: a golden vine hung over the sanctuary doors (War 5.210). Bowing to an image was the line nobody crossed. Where the first Jewish and Christian pictures stand on that line is in the record. Pagan and imperial practice. The acts that Nicaea II requires were the ordinary way of honoring a god’s statue or the emperor’s portrait: a kiss, a bow, lamps, incense, garlands, a procession. The honor shown to a ruler’s portrait was understood to reach the ruler, which is why Revelation can make worship of “the image of the beast” the test of loyalty (Rev 13:15). Images “not made by hands.” The ancient world knew the type of a holy image that no human had made. The town clerk of Ephesus speaks of “the sacred stone that fell from the sky” (Acts 19:35). The Christian versions, from the sixth century, are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 112 Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96 The governor’s test of a Christian was to offer incense and wine before the emperor’s image and the statues of the gods, “none of which those who are really Christians can be forced to do.” In 112 refusing to venerate an image marked a Christian; in 787 venerating one did. c. 305–306 Council of Elvira, canon 36 “There shall be no pictures in church, lest what is worshipped and adored be painted on the walls.” The earliest council to mention images forbids them. 6 THE RECORD c. 112 Pliny, Letters 10.96 The governor of Bithynia tests suspected Christians by having them offer incense and wine before the emperor’s image, which he says no real Christian can be made to do. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.25.6 A Gnostic sect keeps images of Christ, crowns them, and honors them “after the same manner of the Gentiles.” Irenaeus lists this among their errors. c. 200–245 The catacombs and the Dura-Europos synagogue The first Christian art, from about 200, is symbols and stories on walls and tombs. The synagogue at Dura-Europos, around 245, has walls covered with painted Bible scenes. Decoration and teaching were one thing. Bowing was another, and neither shows it. c. 248 Origen, Against Celsus 8.17–19 The pagan critic says Christians “shrink from raising altars, statues, and temples.” Origen does not deny it. The altars and images Christians raise, he answers, are in the soul: “we do refuse to build lifeless temples to the Giver of all life.” c. 305–306 Council of Elvira, canon 36 Pictures ought not to be in churches, lest what is worshiped and adored be painted on the walls. 394 Epiphanius of Cyprus, in Jerome, Letter 51.9 Finds a church curtain bearing “an image either of Christ or of one of the saints,” judges it “contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures,” and tears it down. 600 Gregory I to Serenus of Marseilles A bishop has smashed images because people were adoring them. Gregory: for forbidding the adoration “we altogether praise you; but we blame you for having broken them.” “To adore a picture is one thing, but to learn through the story of a picture what is to be adored is another.” 754 Council of Hieria Three hundred and thirty-eight Eastern bishops condemn the making and veneration of icons. 787 Second Council of Nicaea “Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images.” 794 Council of Frankfurt, canon 2 The bishops of Charlemagne’s realm, with papal legates present, condemn the Greek synod, which they understood to require for images the adoration due to the Trinity. The Frankish position, set out in the Caroline Books, the treatise Charlemagne’s theologians wrote against the council, is that images are to be neither destroyed nor venerated. 843 The “Triumph of Orthodoxy” After a second period of imperial iconoclasm, an empress restores the icons for good. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A sentence about the Trinity. The council’s chief patristic warrant is Basil: “the honour paid to the image passes on to the prototype.” Basil wrote it in On the Holy Spirit 18 to explain how the Father and the Son are one God: “we speak of a king, and of the king’s image, and not of two kings.” He is using the emperor’s portrait as a comparison. He is not discussing pictures in church. A bad translation. The Franks rejected Nicaea II on the basis of a Latin version that the Catholic Encyclopedia calls “very faulty.” It rendered the Greek word for veneration as “adoration” and had one bishop say he gave images the worship due to the Trinity, the reverse of his meaning. The misunderstanding was real. Even so, the Frankish position was Gregory’s, pictures for teaching and no veneration, and that is not the position of 787. Legends as history. Defenders of images in this period held that Luke had painted the Virgin, and the council cited the portrait Christ was said to have sent to King Abgar of Edessa. The Abgar story is told by Eusebius around 325, and in his version there is a letter and no picture. A portrait painted by Abgar’s envoy first appears in the Syriac Doctrine of Addai, about 400. The miraculous image “not made by hands” first appears in Evagrius, about 593. Jacob’s staff. Hebrews 11:21 says Jacob bowed “over the head of his staff,” following the Greek of Genesis 47:31 (the Hebrew reads “bed”). The Latin Bible has him adoring the top of the staff, and the verse was quoted for the veneration of objects. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm” (1954) The veneration of images grows sharply from the middle of the sixth century. HISTORIAN Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (2011) Place regular icon veneration later still, toward 680, and show that both sides rewrote the history afterward. ORTHODOX Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon (1978) The icon follows from the incarnation and belongs to the apostolic tradition. Early hostile texts are aimed at idols. CATHOLIC Gregory I; Catholic Encyclopedia, “Caroline Books” (1908) Rome’s own early position allowed pictures and forbade their adoration. The Encyclopedia grants that the Frankish church at first refused the council. HISTORIAN Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God (1994) A caution against the opposite error: the first Christians were not against art on principle. They lacked “land and capital.” PROTESTANT John Calvin, Institutes 1.11 Sets Lactantius, Eusebius, Augustine and Elvira against images and rejects Gregory’s defense of them as “books of the unlearned” (1.11.5–6). He overstates how bare the early churches were (1.11.13). 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The Word became flesh and was seen. To forbid his image is to deny the incarnation.” This is the heart of the Orthodox case, and it shows that Christ may be pictured. It does not show that the apostles required anyone to venerate the picture. The men who saw him left no portrait and not one word about his appearance. 2. “God commanded the cherubim and the bronze serpent.” He did. Israel also bowed before the ark as before God’s footstool (Josh 7:6; Ps 99:5), and that is the strongest text on the Orthodox side. No one is told to bow to the cherubim or to the serpent, and when Israel began making offerings to the serpent, a king destroyed it and is praised for doing so. 3. “Veneration is not worship. The honor passes to the one depicted.” The distinction is clear, and this page does not call icon veneration idolatry. Three things remain. The proof text is about something else. Scripture knows a bow of honor to a living man (Gen 33:3; 1 Sam 24:8). What it never shows is that bow given to a made thing and approved; and when it is offered to Peter or to an angel as more than honor, both refuse it (Acts 10:26; Rev 22:9). And the early writers object to the acts, not only to a wrong intention. 4. “The early texts condemn pagan idols, not Christian icons.” That is true of Origen and Clement. It is not true of Elvira, which speaks of pictures in churches, or of Epiphanius, who tore down an image of Christ or a saint, or of Gregory, who was dealing with Christians adoring Christian images. 5. “The Epiphanius passage is an iconoclast forgery.” (Orthodox) John of Damascus said so in the eighth century. The letter comes down among Jerome’s own, in his translation, and most modern scholars accept it. Other fragments under Epiphanius’s name are less secure. 10 NOT SETTLED What Elvira’s canon was meant to prevent is debated. Some read it as protecting sacred images from insult by pagans. How early veneration began is unsettled (Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8, 1954; Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680–850: A History, 2011). Graffiti and small devotional objects may push it earlier than the texts do. The Oriental churches venerate images without this council. In 1990 their delegates to the joint commission with the Eastern Orthodox said that what the council taught is “in basic agreement with the teaching and practice” of their own churches. So the Oriental line carries this entry in part: the practice, without the decree. When the practice began among them is not dated here. Whether Hebrews 11:21 is quoted in the acts of 787 themselves, and not only by other defenders of images, is left open here. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 112 · Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96 — https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny10b.html#96 - c. 305–306 · Council of Elvira, canon 36 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Laeuchli+Power+and+Sexuality+Elvira - c. 112 · Pliny, Letters 10.96 — https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny10b.html#96 - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.25.6 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103125.htm - c. 200–245 · The catacombs and the Dura-Europos synagogue — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kraeling+The+Synagogue+Excavations+at+Dura-Europos - c. 248 · Origen, Against Celsus 8.17–19 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04168.htm - 394 · Epiphanius of Cyprus, in Jerome, Letter 51.9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001051.htm - 600 · Gregory I to Serenus of Marseilles — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211013.htm - 754 · Council of Hieria — https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/icono-cncl754.asp - 787 · Second Council of Nicaea — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm - 794 · Council of Frankfurt, canon 2 — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03371b.htm - 843 · The “Triumph of Orthodoxy” — https://www.britannica.com/event/Iconoclastic-Controversy - voice · Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm” (1954) — https://archive.org/details/DOP08_05_Kitzinger - voice · Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (2011) — https://www.cambridge.org/ca/knowledge/isbn/item2707495/ - voice · Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon (1978) — https://archive.org/details/theologyoficon0000ousp - voice · Gregory I; Catholic Encyclopedia, “Caroline Books” (1908) — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03371b.htm - voice · Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God (1994) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=bn:9780195082524 - voice · John Calvin, Institutes 1.11 — https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.iii.xii.html ============================================================================== 589–1014 · A clause added to the creed Address: https://additions.church/1014 Addition · How it binds: Required The Latin West adds “and the Son” to the creed of 381. Rome refuses the change around 810, sings it in 1014, and in 1274 condemns those who deny it. First clear witness: Third Council of Toledo, 589; Rome, 1014; Second Council of Lyon, 1274. Footing: qualified. The teaching is argued from Scripture on both sides. What is dated is one half of the church changing the common creed. The Reformers kept it. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant 1 THE STORY The creed that Christians recite was finished at Constantinople in 381, and it says of the Holy Spirit that he “proceeds from the Father.” The words are John 15:26. In 589 the Visigothic king of Spain, Reccared, gave up the Arian faith of his people for the Catholic faith of his subjects at a council in Toledo, and the council ordered the creed recited at every Mass. In Spain it was recited with a clause: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Against Arians who made the Son a lesser being, the clause said that whatever the Father has, the Son has. It spread from Spain into Gaul and into the chapel of Charlemagne, who liked it. In 808 Frankish monks in Jerusalem were accused of heresy by Greek monks for singing it. Charlemagne’s bishops defended the clause; Leo III, bishop of Rome, agreed with the doctrine and refused to put the words in the creed, and had the creed engraved on two silver shields at St Peter’s without them. Two centuries later, in 1014, a German emperor came to Rome to be crowned and asked that the creed be sung at the Mass as it was sung at home. Benedict VIII obliged, and the clause has been in the Roman creed ever since. In 1054 a cardinal from Rome accused the Greeks of having deleted it. In 1274 a council condemned anyone who denied it. The East never agreed, because no council of the whole church had changed the text and because, in Greek, the words say something the Latins did not mean. The entry dates the alteration and the condemnation. The East’s own anathema on the Latin reading, in 1285, is dated on its line. The record shows how two languages heard one sentence differently, and what the text actually says. 2 THE CLAIM The creed of 381 says that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” In the Latin West the words “and the Son,” in Latin Filioque, were added. The addition is first prescribed in Spain in 589 and spreads through the Frankish church. Around 810 a bishop of Rome refuses it a place in the creed. From 1014 it is sung at Mass in Rome, and in 1274 a Western council condemns those who deny it. The Greek East was not asked and never agreed, and no council of the whole church changed the creed. One half of the church altered a text both halves had received, and then made the altered text a test. NOT CLAIMED That the teaching behind the clause is false. Latin fathers taught that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son long before the clause was added. Greek fathers spoke of the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son. The question is argued from Scripture on both sides. What is dated here is the change to the common creed, and the requirement that followed. Four things a reader should not take from this entry, because it does not say them: that the Spirit does not proceed from the Son, which the page neither affirms nor denies; that the East is simply right, since “from the Father alone,” Photius’s phrase, is no more in the text than “and the Son”; that the creed itself is an addition, when the creed of 381 as both halves received it is one of the recognitions this page holds; and that the doctrine is dated, when what is dated is one half of the church altering a text both halves had sealed, and then making the altered text a test. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 15:26 “The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father.” The creed of 381 takes its wording from this verse. John 16:7 “If I go, I will send him to you.” The Son sends the Spirit. John 16:14–15 “He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.” John 20:22 “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Gal 4:6 “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” The West reads the last four as showing where the Spirit comes from in God himself. The East reads them of the Spirit’s sending into the world and keeps the first for his eternal origin. Each reading affirms every one of these texts. Where the line runs: “proceeds from the Father” is John 15:26 and the creed, and is bound. “And the Son” is a reading, and so is “from the Father alone.” The page binds the first and neither of the other two. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The verb. The creed’s Greek verb, ekporeuesthai, is the one in John 15:26: the Spirit of truth “proceeds from the Father.” Greek theology kept it for the Spirit’s coming forth from the Father as from a first source. The New Testament has no sentence in which the Spirit proceeds from the Son. It has the Son sending the Spirit (John 15:26; 16:7), which is a different verb and a different thing. The one place the creed’s verb is used of something coming from the Son is Revelation 22:1, where the river of the water of life flows (ekporeuomenon) from “the throne of God and of the Lamb”; Latin readers took the river for the Spirit, and the text calls it a river. The page does not press it either way. How a broader Latin verb let the two be run together is treated under “Where the reading slipped.” 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 431 Council of Ephesus, canon 7 Forbids anyone “to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different faith” from the creed of Nicaea. The clause was added to a creed a council had sealed against addition, and Rome itself refused it around 810. 6 THE RECORD 381 Creed of Constantinople “And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver-of-Life, who proceeds from the Father.” c. 400–420 Augustine, On the Trinity 15 The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and from the Father “principally.” This is theology in a treatise. Augustine does not propose changing the creed. 431 Council of Ephesus “It is not permitted to produce or write or compose any other creed except the one which was defined” at Nicaea. Both sides later quote this decree. c. 450–500 The “Athanasian” Creed A Latin creed, probably from Gaul: “The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.” It ends by saying that no one can be saved without this faith. 589 Third Council of Toledo Spain’s king and bishops renounce Arianism. The council orders the creed recited before communion, and in Spain it is recited with the clause. c. 645–650 Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus A Greek father defends the Romans against Greek critics. By their wording “they themselves do not make the Son Cause of the Spirit,” for “the Father is the sole Cause of the Son and of the Spirit.” They mean that the Spirit comes forth through the Son. 808–810 Jerusalem, Aachen, Rome Greek monks in Jerusalem accuse Frankish monks of heresy for singing the clause. Charlemagne’s council at Aachen defends it. Leo III of Rome agrees with the teaching and refuses to add it to the creed. He has the creed set up at Saint Peter’s on two silver shields, in Greek and in Latin, without it. 867 Photius of Constantinople Charges the West with heresy over the clause, and teaches that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father alone.” 879–880 Council of Constantinople Restores Photius and, with Rome’s legates assenting, forbids any addition to the creed (the horos in Mansi 17; Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948). 1014 Rome At the request of the emperor Henry II, Benedict VIII has the creed sung at Mass in Rome with the clause, for the first time. 1054 Cardinal Humbert Charges the Greeks with having removed the clause from the creed. See the split at 1054. 1274 Second Council of Lyon Condemns “all who presume to deny that the holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son,” and adds that he proceeds “not as from two principles, but as from one principle.” 1439 Council of Florence Defines that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one principle, and that the clause was added to the creed lawfully and with good reason. Most of the Greek delegates sign. Mark of Ephesus refuses, and the union is rejected at home. 1530–1647 The Protestant confessions The Reformers keep the clause. The Westminster Confession: “the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.” 2003 North American Orthodox–Catholic Consultation Recommends that Rome use the creed of 381 without the clause in translations for teaching and worship, and declare the condemnation of 1274 “no longer applicable.” It asks both sides to “refrain from labeling as heretical the traditions of the other side.” 2025 İznik, the site of Nicaea On the council’s 1,700th anniversary the bishop of Rome, the patriarch of Constantinople and leaders of other churches recite the creed together, without the clause. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A wider verb. The Latin creed rendered ekporeuomenon with procedit, and procedere is broader than the Greek: it can be used of any coming forth, including a coming forth through another. Once the Latin verb was in place, adding “and the Son” said something Latin theology had long held, and said less in Latin than the same words would say in Greek. Put back into Greek, the addition says that the Son is a second source of the Spirit, which no one on either side meant to teach. Much of the quarrel was two languages hearing one sentence differently. The history turned around. By 1054 a Roman legate could accuse the Greeks of deleting the clause. Within five centuries the addition had come to be taken for the original. The anathema. The addition was bound by Rome in 1014 by use and in 1274 by the Second Council of Lyon, which condemned those who deny the procession from the Son; the East’s answer in kind is the entry at 1285. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque (2010) An Orthodox historian. Both traditions have real support in the fathers, and for a long time each side misread the other’s language. ORTHODOX Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944) Holds that the clause is a matter of dogma, not of wording, and the root of the division. ORTHODOX Vasily Bolotov, Theses on the Filioque (1898) A Russian historian. The clause is a private theological opinion of the West and need not by itself prevent communion. CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3 (1980) Defends the teaching, and suggests that Rome could drop the clause from the creed as a gesture toward the East. CATHOLIC Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, “The Greek and Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit” (1995) Affirms the Father as the sole source in the Trinity, and grants that the Greek verb of the creed cannot be used of the Son. PROTESTANT Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 (1932) The strongest modern Protestant defense of the clause. PROTESTANT Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (1980) Argues that the West should withdraw the clause from the creed. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “It only makes explicit what Scripture teaches. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son.” (Catholic, Protestant) It may be a true reading, and many Latin fathers held it. But the East rejects the clause and affirms every text cited for it. So refusing the clause is not refusing the text, and by the rule on the opening page that makes it an addition. Whether it is a true one is a separate question, and this page does not settle it. 2. “The council of 381 had already added to the creed of 325. Ephesus forbade a different faith, not different words.” (Catholic) That is a fair reading of Ephesus, and the creed of 381 does expand the creed of 325. The difference is who made the change. The longer text of 381 was received by the whole church. The clause was added by one region, refused by Rome itself for two centuries, and never received by the East. 3. “Rome does not require it of the East. Eastern Catholics say the creed without it.” (Catholic) True today, and to Rome’s credit. Rome has recited the creed without the clause beside Eastern patriarchs, most recently at Nicaea in 2025. What the consultation of 2003 asked for, a declaration that the condemnation of 1274 no longer applies, is not recorded here as having been made. 4. “Why is this on the Protestant line? We hold it because Scripture teaches it.” (Protestant) Perhaps it does. But the Reformers did not reach the clause by a fresh reading. They received it in the creed as the Latin church handed it on, and their confessions repeat it. A Protestant who tests every tradition by Scripture has reason to test this one, and to ask by what right a regional addition stands in a creed of the whole church. 5. “The filioque is a small matter of wording.” (Catholic) Perhaps. It is also the clearest case on the line of how an addition comes to be taken for the original. 6. “Then the East bound the opposite. Photius taught ‘from the Father alone,’ the council of 879–880 forbade the clause, and Blachernae in 1285 anathematized the Latin teaching. By your own rule that should be dated beside 1014, as you dated Rome’s 1336 beside 1351.” (Catholic) Two things, and the page dates both. The West altered a common text and bound it (1014; Lyon, 1274). The East kept the text and in 1285 bound its own reading of it: the Tomus of Blachernae condemned as heretics men who affirmed John 15:26 and read it the Latin way, while its own account, the Spirit’s eternal “manifestation” through the Son, was offered as an explanation and not imposed. That is binding a reading, by the same test applied here to the West, and it is on the Eastern line at 1285. What the East did not do is put “alone” into the creed: “from the Father alone” is Photius’s phrase, and the council of 879–880, with Rome’s legates assenting, forbade any addition to the common text, which is a guard on the creed and not an account of the Spirit’s origin, a guard Rome itself kept for another century. The two acts are not the same: one side altered a common text and bound it, the other bound its reading of the unaltered text. Both are dated. Neither is validated. 10 NOT SETTLED The East’s binding of the opposite reading, at the Council of Blachernae in 1285, has its own entry on the Eastern line. Whether the Tomus’s own account of an eternal “manifestation” through the Son was ever bound, the page reads as no; it dates the anathema and not the account. Whether the clause stood in the acts of Toledo in 589 or entered Spanish copies of the creed soon afterward is debated. That Spain was reciting it in the seventh century is not. Whether “through the Son” and “and the Son” can be reconciled is the subject of current dialogue. The consultation of 2003 judged that the difference need not divide the churches. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 431 · Council of Ephesus, canon 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3810.htm - 381 · Creed of Constantinople — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm - c. 400–420 · Augustine, On the Trinity 15 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf103.iv.i.xvii.xvii.html - 431 · Council of Ephesus — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum03.htm - c. 450–500 · The “Athanasian” Creed — https://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html - 589 · Third Council of Toledo — http://www.benedictus.mgh.de/quellen/chga/chga_045t.htm - c. 645–650 · Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus — https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/greek-and-latin-traditions-regarding-the-procession-of-the-holy-spirit-29259 - 808–810 · Jerusalem, Aachen, Rome — https://www.usccb.org/resources/filioque-a-church-dividing-issue.pdf - 867 · Photius of Constantinople — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12043b.htm - 879–880 · Council of Constantinople — https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/religion/religion-general-interest/photian-schism-history-and-legend - 1014 · Rome — https://www.usccb.org/resources/filioque-a-church-dividing-issue.pdf - 1054 · Cardinal Humbert — https://archive.org/details/Will1861ActaEtScripta - 1274 · Second Council of Lyon — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum14.htm - 1439 · Council of Florence — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum17.htm - 1530–1647 · The Protestant confessions — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.iv.xvii.ii.html - 2003 · North American Orthodox–Catholic Consultation — https://www.usccb.org/news/2003/north-american-orthodox-catholic-theological-consultation-issues-agreed-statement - 2025 · İznik, the site of Nicaea — https://iarccum.org/?p=5457 - voice · A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque (2010) — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-filioque-9780195372045 - voice · Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944) — https://archive.org/details/mysticaltheology0000vlad_o5h0 - voice · Vasily Bolotov, Theses on the Filioque (1898) — https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Vasilij_Bolotov/k-voprosu-o-filioque/ - voice · Yves Congar OP, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3 (1980) — https://archive.org/details/ibelieveinholysp0003cong - voice · Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, “The Greek and Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit” (1995) — https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/greek-and-latin-traditions-regarding-the-procession-of-the-holy-spirit-29259 - voice · Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 (1932) — https://archive.org/details/churchdogmatics0001bart_pt1 - voice · Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (1980) — https://archive.org/details/trinitykingdomdo0000molt ============================================================================== 1075 · The pope over kings and churches Address: https://additions.church/1075 Addition · How it binds: Required Rome claims that the pope alone may depose bishops and emperors, and that no one may judge him. First clear witness: Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae, 1075. Footing: firm. A list of claims in the papal register, not a council’s decree. Later popes acted on it. Carried today by: Roman Catholic. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY Hildebrand was a monk from Tuscany who spent a quarter of a century as the power behind five popes before becoming one himself, as Gregory VII, in 1073. He had one aim: to free the church from the lay lords and kings who bought and sold its offices and installed its bishops, and to put the pope at the head of a church that answered to no earthly ruler. In 1075 a list of twenty-seven short propositions was entered in his register. Historians still argue about what it was for, a set of headings for a canon law collection, perhaps. What it says is not in doubt. The Roman church was founded by the Lord alone. The Roman pontiff alone is rightly called universal. He alone can depose or reinstate bishops. He may depose emperors. He may be judged by no one. The Roman church has never erred and never will. No one who is not at peace with the Roman church is to be counted Catholic. The following year Gregory excommunicated the German king Henry IV and declared him deposed; Henry was not yet crowned emperor, and in January 1077 Henry stood for three days in the snow outside the castle of Canossa to be absolved. The quarrel lasted fifty years and ended in a compromise, but the propositions did not go away. They are the skeleton of the papacy Vatican I defined in 1870. No text of the apostles gives any church a ruler over kings, and the only sentence about the Twelve and rank is that the greatest among them must be the servant. The Reformers set the Dictatus down in 1517; Rome carries it. The record gives the propositions and what followed. 2 THE CLAIM In 1075 twenty-seven statements were entered in the register of Pope Gregory VII. They include these: the Roman pontiff alone is rightly called universal; he alone may use the imperial insignia; he may depose emperors; he may be judged by no one; the Roman church has never erred and never will. Within two years the pope had excommunicated the German king and declared him deposed. From this point the bishop of Rome claims authority over rulers and direct authority in every church. NOT CLAIMED That Gregory was insincere. He was fighting the sale of church offices and the control of bishops by kings, and both abuses were real. Nor is every clause new. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Luke 22:25–26 “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them … But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” Matt 23:8–9 “You have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth.” 1 Pet 5:3 Peter to his fellow elders: “not domineering over those in your charge.” John 18:36 “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.” 2 Cor 1:24 An apostle on his own authority: “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The emperor’s place. In the Roman world one man was supreme judge, lawgiver and chief priest (pontifex maximus), and the apostles lived under him. The New Testament gives no one in the church that combination, and tells the rulers of the church that it is “not so among you” (Mark 10:43). How the bishop of Rome came to hold the emperor’s vocabulary and his insignia is in the record. Jeremiah 1:10. “I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down,” is a commission given to one prophet for one task. Its use as the charter of a permanent office is treated under “Where the reading slipped.” 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 595 Gregory the Great, Letters 5.18 (to John of Constantinople) and 7.33 (to the emperor Maurice) A bishop of Rome rejects the title “universal bishop” as proud and profane: John “desires to put himself above” the other bishops “by this proud title,” and whoever calls himself Universal Priest “is in his elation the precursor of Antichrist,” because he “proudly puts himself above all others.” Gregory asserted Rome’s primacy in the same years (Letter 9.26: who doubts that Constantinople is subject to the apostolic see?); the entry does not date primacy, which is 440. It dates the claims to depose bishops everywhere, to depose emperors and to be judged by no one, none of which Gregory I made. Five centuries before Dictatus Papae claimed that the pope alone is universal. 6 THE RECORD 494 Gelasius I to the emperor Anastasius Two powers chiefly rule the world, the sacred authority of bishops and the royal power, each in its own sphere, though Gelasius calls the bishops’ the weightier, since they answer to God even for kings. This was the older Roman position. c. 501 The Symmachian forgeries Invented records of earlier councils supply the rule that “the first see will not be judged by anyone,” later the maxim “the first see is judged by no one.” c. 750–800 The Donation of Constantine A forged imperial grant. Lorenzo Valla proved it false in 1440 from its Latin and its anachronisms. c. 850 The False Decretals Letters of the earliest popes, composed in ninth-century France. The Catholic Encyclopedia: “forged in the North of France between 847 and 852,” and “the Middle Ages were deceived by this huge forgery.” 1053 Leo IX to the patriarch of Constantinople Quotes the Donation of Constantine at length as proof of Rome’s rights. The next year brings the break of 1054. 1075 Dictatus Papae “The Roman Pontiff alone can with right be called ‘Universal.’” “All princes shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone.” “It may be permitted to him to depose emperors.” “He himself may be judged by no one.” “He may absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” 1077 Canossa Henry IV stands in the snow to have his excommunication lifted. c. 1200 Innocent III Takes the title Vicar of Christ in place of Vicar of Peter. 1302 Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam “It is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Both swords, spiritual and temporal, are in the church’s power. 1870 Vatican I The ecclesial claims are defined as dogma. See that date. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED False documents, used in good faith. No pope wrote these forgeries, and Gregory believed he was restoring ancient law. But the law he restored was partly invented. Compare Gregory I in 595, who called the title “universal” proud and foolish, with the second clause of 1075. Two swords. Luke 22:38, “Look, Lord, here are two swords,” was read as an allegory of spiritual and temporal power, both belonging to the church. In the passage itself Jesus stops the one sword that is drawn: “No more of this!” (22:51). Binding and loosing. “Whatever you loose” was stretched to cover oaths of loyalty, so that a pope could release subjects from their king. On the Jewish meaning of the phrase see 1870 and 440. Jeremiah 1:10. Gregory and his successors read their office in God’s words to Jeremiah: “I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down.” A commission given to one prophet for one task became the charter of a permanent office. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP Called the Gregorian reform the great turning point in Catholic ecclesiology: from a communion of churches toward a legal monarchy under the pope. CATHOLIC Catholic Encyclopedia, “False Decretals” (1909) Grants the forgery in full and argues it changed little: “Isidore or no Isidore, Gregory VII and Innocent III would not have acted otherwise than they did.” HISTORIAN H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII (1998) Gregory thought of himself as a restorer of ancient law. The Dictatus may be the chapter headings of a canon-law collection that was never completed (Karl Hofmann, 1933), or notes for an expected negotiation with the Greeks (G. B. Borino, 1947). HISTORIAN Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (1955) Traces the build-up of a legal theory of papal government from the late fourth century (Damasus, Leo I, Gelasius) to Gregory VII and the mid-twelfth century. ORTHODOX Aristeides Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy (1994) The reformed papacy is what made the estrangement from the East permanent. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “It was a private memorandum and was never promulgated.” (Catholic) True. It is a list in the papal register and was never issued as a decree, and the entry takes it as the first full statement of the claim, not its binding. Gregory acted on the clauses about kings within a year. Later popes bound the rest: Unam Sanctam (1302) is a formal bull, and 1870 made the pope’s universal jurisdiction a definition. 2. “Gregory freed the church from the grip of kings.” (Catholic) The grip was real. Rulers were appointing bishops and selling the posts. The remedy was to claim for one bishop the powers the emperors had held. That did not remove the addition of 380, in which the church received a ruler’s sword. It reversed who held it. 3. “The forgeries made no difference.” (Catholic) Perhaps not to the popes. They made a difference to everyone the popes had to persuade: the canon lawyers, who built them into the standard textbook; the theologians; and the Greeks, who were shown them as ancient decrees. 4. “The temporal claims were dropped long ago.” (Catholic) They were. The claims about the church were not. That the pope’s authority is universal and that no one may judge him were defined in 1870 and stand in canon law now. 10 NOT SETTLED What the Dictatus was for is still discussed: a table of contents, a program, or notes for negotiation with the Greeks. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 595 · Gregory the Great, Letters 5.18 (to John of Constantinople) and 7.33 (to the emperor Maurice) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360207033.htm - 494 · Gelasius I to the emperor Anastasius — https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/gelasius1.asp - c. 501 · The Symmachian forgeries — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Wirbelauer+Zwei+P%C3%A4pste+in+Rom+symmachianische - c. 750–800 · The Donation of Constantine — https://history.hanover.edu/texts/vallapart1.html - c. 850 · The False Decretals — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05773a.htm - 1053 · Leo IX to the patriarch of Constantinople — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Will+Acta+et+scripta+quae+de+controversiis+ecclesiae+Graecae+et+Latinae - 1075 · Dictatus Papae — https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/dict_pap.html - 1077 · Canossa — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Cowdrey+Pope+Gregory+VII+1073-1085 - c. 1200 · Innocent III — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15403b.htm - 1302 · Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm - 1870 · Vatican I — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm - voice · Yves Congar OP — https://archive.org/details/afterninehundred027313mbp - voice · Catholic Encyclopedia, “False Decretals” (1909) — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05773a.htm - voice · H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII (1998) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Cowdrey+Pope+Gregory+VII+1073-1085 - voice · Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (1955) — https://archive.org/details/growthofpapalgov0000ullm - voice · Aristeides Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy (1994) — https://archive.org/details/christianeastris0000papa ============================================================================== 1098 · The cross as a debt paid Address: https://additions.church/1098 Narrowing · How it binds: Replaced Anselm explains the cross as satisfaction owed to God’s honor. A frame of debt and payment begins to rule the Western account. First clear witness: Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1098. Footing: contested. Ransom and sacrifice language is biblical. What is new is one model governing the others. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant 1 THE STORY Anselm was an Italian monk who became abbot of Bec in Normandy and then, against his will, archbishop of Canterbury, and who spent much of his archbishopric in exile quarreling with English kings. In 1098, in exile, he finished a book called Why God Became Man. The question was the one in the title, and his answer was new. Sin is a failure to render to God the honor due to him, as a vassal fails his lord. Honor taken must be either restored with interest or punished. Humanity cannot restore it, because everything it has it already owes. Only God can pay; only man ought to. So God became man, and the God-man’s death, which he did not owe, paid what we owed and more. For a thousand years the church had explained the cross in several pictures at once: a ransom that freed captives, a victory over death and the devil, a sacrifice that cleansed, a recapitulation in which Christ retraced Adam’s steps and got them right. Anselm did not deny these; he thought the ransom-to-the-devil picture absurd and set out to replace it with something a rational man could accept. What he supplied was a single frame, built from the word the Latin church had used for penance since Tertullian and colored by the feudal order he lived in, in which the cross is a debt paid. The Reformation would turn the debt into a sentence served, and that is dated separately. The apostolic writings use every one of the older pictures, often in one paragraph, and never make one the key to the rest. The entry is marked “replaced”: Anselm’s frame did not bind anyone, but it became the normal way the West thinks about the cross, and the Protestant line inherited it. The record shows the older pictures and the one that took their place. 2 THE CLAIM In Cur Deus Homo, finished in 1098, Anselm of Canterbury argued as follows. Sin robs God of the honor owed to him. The debt must be met by punishment or by satisfaction. Only one who is both God and man could offer a satisfaction of infinite worth. Therefore the incarnation and the cross were necessary. The argument set aside the older ransom account. It made a logic of debt and payment the frame for Western thinking about the cross. The treasury of merits (1343) and the Reformation’s penal substitution were both built on it. NOT CLAIMED That debt language is unbiblical, that Anselm taught penal substitution, or that he was simply projecting a feudal lord onto God. None of these is true. What is dated here is one frame made to govern. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 6:12 “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Matt 18:27 In the parable the debt is cancelled: “the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.” No third party pays. Col 2:13–14 “Having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us … nailing it to the cross.” Rom 5:8 The cross as God’s own act toward enemies: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Mark 10:45; Heb 2:14–15 Ransom and rescue from the power of death. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Sin as debt is Jewish. In most of the Hebrew Bible sin is a burden to be carried or a stain to be washed. In the Second Temple period, under Aramaic influence, it becomes a debt, and almsgiving becomes a credit that can offset it (Dan 4:27; Tobit 12:9; Sirach 3:30). “Forgive us our debts” belongs to that world. Gary Anderson has traced this in detail (Sin: A History, 2009), and it means Anselm’s vocabulary has real roots in the Judaism of Jesus’ day. Satisfaction is Roman. The word comes from Roman private law, where a wrongdoer could make amends in place of suffering a penalty. The New Testament does not use the term. Its path into the church’s account of forgiveness, and from there to the cross, is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 383 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45.22 Asks to whom the ransom was paid. Not to the evil one. Not to the Father either, for it was not by him that we were being oppressed, and the Father accepts the offering not because he demanded it or needed it. The idea that the Father demanded or needed payment is examined and refused. 6 THE RECORD c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.1.1 Christ redeems those held captive, by persuasion and not by force. c. 203 Tertullian, On Repentance 5–9 Writing in the vocabulary of the Roman courts, he describes the penitent as having “begun to make satisfaction to the Lord,” and says that “by confession satisfaction is settled,” with fasting, sackcloth and tears. The word has entered the church’s account of forgiveness. Anselm will apply it to Christ. c. 250 Cyprian, On Works and Alms Sins after baptism are cleansed by almsgiving, which makes satisfaction to God. c. 385 Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 24 The devil takes the bait of Christ’s humanity and is caught on the hook of his divinity. The ransom picture at its most vivid. 1098 Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 1.11–12, 15; 2.6 To sin is to fail to render God his due. It is not fitting for God to remit sin by mercy alone, with no payment. Either punishment or satisfaction must follow. Only a God-man can make it. c. 1135 Peter Abelard, Commentary on Romans How cruel, he objects, that anyone should require the blood of the innocent as a price. The cross is love shown, so as to kindle love (on Romans 3:26; English in Eugene Fairweather, A Scholastic Miscellany, 1956). c. 1272 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.46.2; 48.2 Corrects Anselm’s necessity: God could have freed us another way. Christ’s satisfaction is “superabundant.” 1343 Clement VI, Unigenitus Since one drop of Christ’s blood would have sufficed, the rest forms a treasury the church may dispense. The debt logic now supports indulgences. 1559 Calvin, Institutes 2.16 Satisfaction becomes punishment borne. See 1561 · 1563 · 1647. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The method. Anselm sets out to prove his case by necessary reasons, “leaving Christ out of view, as if nothing had ever been known of him.” The argument is built from what is fitting for a supreme being. It is not built from the texts, and it is brought to them afterward. The premise. Book 1, chapter 12 holds that God cannot rightly forgive by mercy alone. In Jesus’ own parables the king cancels the debt outright, and the father runs to the son before a word of amends is spoken (Matt 18:27; Luke 15:20). The New Testament speaks of debt. It does not say the debt had to be paid to God before he could forgive. Honor. In Anselm’s society the gravity of an offense depended on the rank of the person offended. R. W. Southern has argued (Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, 1990) that Anselm’s “honor of God” means the right order of creation and not a lord’s pride. The social coloring remains. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Gary Anderson, Sin: A History (2009) The debt metaphor is Second Temple Jewish and comes from Jesus’ own lips. He sees a real continuity from there to Anselm. ORTHODOX David Bentley Hart, “A Gift Exceeding Every Debt” (Pro Ecclesia, 1998) An Orthodox theologian defends Anselm against Orthodox critics. He is not penal, and his “honor” is God’s goodness. He stands closer to the fathers than his reputation suggests. CATHOLIC Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (1968) The theory as commonly received looks like a rigid legal mechanism, and can make God’s justice appear in a sinister light. PROTESTANT Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor (1931) The “Latin” type of atonement doctrine has its roots in the Latin theology of penance, Cyprian’s above all, and is first fully worked out in Anselm. The fathers’ own account was victory. ANGLICAN R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (1990) Reads Anselm inside his monastic and feudal world, and takes care not to reduce him to it. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Jesus taught us to pray ‘forgive us our debts.’” He did, and this page grants the Jewish depth of the image. In his teaching the debt is forgiven, which is to say canceled. Anselm’s further step is that God may not cancel it without receiving its value. 2. “Anselm is being blamed for Calvin.” (Catholic) He is not penal, and the entry calls his work a frame. It appears on both the Catholic and the Protestant lines because both built on it: Rome the treasury of merits, the Reformers the penalty borne. 3. “David Bentley Hart shows that Anselm restates the fathers.” If David Bentley Hart is right (“A Gift Exceeding Every Debt,” Pro Ecclesia 7, 1998), the narrowing lies more in how Anselm was received than in Anselm himself. The result is the same. After him the Latin West explains the cross chiefly by what is owed to God, and ransom and victory move to the margins. 4. “Romans 3:25–26 says God put Christ forward ‘so that he might be just and the justifier,’ and Hebrews 9:22 that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.’ That is a payment that made forgiveness possible.” (Catholic, Protestant) Those verses are in the text, and the satisfaction reading of them is a reading from the text’s own world, the mercy seat and the altar, which the opening page lists under Taught. A church may teach it. What the page dates is not that reading but its promotion to the frame that governs every other picture, and the step Anselm adds that the verses do not contain: that God may not forgive without first receiving the value of the debt. 5. “Forgiveness without satisfaction makes light of sin.” This is Anselm’s best point: “you have not yet considered how heavy sin is.” The apostles also measure sin by the cross. They describe the cross as God reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19). 10 NOT SETTLED How much of Anselm’s argument is feudal and how much is patristic is still argued (R. W. Southern; David Bentley Hart; Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor, 1931). This entry is marked contested. It should be presented as a narrowing of emphasis, never as an error about whether Christ died for our sins. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 383 · Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310245.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.1.1 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103501.htm - c. 203 · Tertullian, On Repentance 5–9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0320.htm - c. 250 · Cyprian, On Works and Alms — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050708.htm - c. 385 · Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf205.xi.ii.xxvi.html - 1098 · Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 1.11–12, 15; 2.6 — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cur_Deus_Homo - c. 1135 · Peter Abelard, Commentary on Romans — https://archive.org/details/scholasticmiscel0000fair - c. 1272 · Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.46.2; 48.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4046.htm#article2 - 1343 · Clement VI, Unigenitus — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm - 1559 · Calvin, Institutes 2.16 — https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.iv.xvii.html - voice · Gary Anderson, Sin: A History (2009) — https://archive.org/details/sinhistory0000ande - voice · David Bentley Hart, “A Gift Exceeding Every Debt” (Pro Ecclesia, 1998) — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106385129800700304 - voice · Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (1968) — https://archive.org/details/introductiontoch0000jose - voice · Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor (1931) — https://wipfandstock.com/9781592443307/christus-victor/ - voice · R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (1990) — https://archive.org/details/saintanselmportr0000sout ============================================================================== c. 1100 · A sacred tongue the people have lost Address: https://additions.church/1100 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The people’s speech moves on and the liturgy does not. Coptic, Ge’ez, Syriac, Armenian, Slavonic and Byzantine Greek stay in use after their hearers stop understanding them. First clear witness: Egypt: Arabic overtakes Coptic among the people from the late eleventh century; a Coptic bishop was already writing in Arabic for them by 987. Footing: qualified. Each began as speech its people knew. Rome is not counted here because it changed in 1963, though Trent’s anathema of 1562 has never been withdrawn; the Protestant line set it down in 1517. Many Eastern parishes now add the vernacular. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox 1 THE STORY Paul told the Corinthians that if he prayed in a tongue his spirit prayed but his mind was unfruitful, and that in church he would rather speak five words with his mind than ten thousand in a tongue, so that others could be built up. The first churches prayed in the language of the street: Greek in the East, Latin in the West when the West stopped understanding Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ge’ez. The liturgy was translated because the liturgy was for the people. Then the languages of the people moved, and the liturgies did not. In Egypt the Arab conquest of 641 began a slow change; by the eleventh century most Copts spoke Arabic, and the Coptic of the liturgy was a sacred language the congregation could no longer follow. In the Slavic lands the Church Slavonic that Cyril and Methodius had made in the ninth century became, over centuries, a language no one spoke. In Greece the Greek of the liturgy is the Greek of Chrysostom, not of the street. The West’s Latin followed the same path, until Rome put the Mass into the people’s languages in the 1960s. This is an addition by displacement, not by decree: no council ordered the people to stop understanding. It happened because the words were holy and the people were not asked. The Eastern and Oriental lines carry it, each with its own frozen tongue; the Reformers put the service back into the people’s language. The record gives Paul’s instruction and the languages that drifted away from it. 2 THE CLAIM The old liturgical languages of the East began as languages their worshipers spoke or could follow: Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ge’ez, Slavonic. Each then stopped changing while the people’s speech moved on. Worshipers now hear a language they follow in part or not at all. The date marks Egypt, where Arabic overtook Coptic among ordinary people from the late eleventh century. Rome kept Latin in the same way until the 1960s. NOT CLAIMED That an old language has no beauty, or that worship should sound like the street. A formal style is one thing. A language the people do not know is another. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 14:9 “If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?” 1 Cor 14:16, 19 “How can anyone in the position of an outsider say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? … in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.” Acts 2:11 “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” Neh 8:8 “They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The synagogue translated. Where Hebrew was no longer the people’s speech, Scripture was carried over into it. Ezra’s Levites read the law “clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Neh 8:8), and Aramaic translations of Scripture existed in the apostles’ day: a targum of Job was found at Qumran. In the Greek-speaking diaspora the Scriptures were read in Greek. That Greek Bible, the Septuagint, is the one the apostles quote. The apostles wrote in common Greek. The New Testament is in the everyday Greek of traders and soldiers. It is not in Hebrew, and it is not in the literary Greek of Athens. Jesus’ own Aramaic words survive only in translation, apart from a handful of phrases. Paul wrote to Rome in Greek because that is what its church spoke. When Rome changed to Latin, and why, is in the record. The other model. Roman state religion kept archaic formulas that had to be recited exactly. Quintilian remarks that the hymns of the Salian priests, an ancient Roman priesthood, were scarcely understood by the priests themselves. A sacred language that no one understands was a familiar feature of pagan cult. The apostolic churches did not have one. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 880 John VIII, bishop of Rome, Industriae tuae, to Svatopluk of Moravia Sanctions the Slavonic liturgy of Methodius: nothing in sound faith or doctrine forbids singing the Mass in the Slavonic tongue, provided the Gospel is read first in Latin. The people’s tongue was authorized before the liturgies froze. 6 THE RECORD c. 248 Origen, Against Celsus 8.37 Greeks pray in Greek and Romans in Latin, each in his own tongue, and the Lord of every language hears them all. c. 380 Rome The liturgy passes from Greek to Latin, under Damasus on the usual dating (Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy, 1965; Uwe Michael Lang, The Voice of the Church at Prayer, 2012). Rome changed its language once, to be understood. 405 Armenia Mesrop Mashtots creates an alphabet so that the Bible and the liturgy can be put into Armenian. 867–880 Cyril and Methodius Their Slavonic liturgy is attacked by clergy who hold that only Hebrew, Greek and Latin are fit for worship. Pope John VIII rules for them in 880: the God who made the three chief languages made all the others for his praise. c. 950–987 Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffa‘, bishop of al-Ashmunayn The first Coptic bishop to write in Arabic says why: most of the Copts no longer understand Coptic. The church’s own admission comes a century before the people’s speech had wholly changed (J. Zaborowski, “From Coptic to Arabic in Medieval Egypt,” Medieval Encounters 14, 2008). 1080 Gregory VII to the duke of Bohemia Refuses the Slavonic liturgy. It has pleased God, he writes, that Scripture should be hidden in certain places. c. 1100 Egypt Arabic replaces Coptic in daily life. Bilingual service books follow, and Coptic remains the language of the altar. The entry takes the date at which an old liturgical tongue was lost by its own people; a ruler forbidding a new one, as Gregory VII did in 1080 and Trent in 1562, is in the record as the same thing done by decree. 1562 Council of Trent, session 22 “It has not seemed expedient to the Fathers” that the Mass be “every where celebrated in the vulgar tongue.” Anathema on anyone who says it must be in the vernacular only. 1571 Thirty-Nine Articles, article 24 Prayer “in a tongue not understanded of the people” is “plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church.” The Protestant line set the sacred tongue down at 1517 and said why. 1901 Athens, the Gospel riots A translation of the Gospels into modern Greek provokes riots in which several people die. The constitution of 1911 forbids such translations without the church’s consent (P. Carabott, “Politics, Orthodoxy and the Language Question in Greece: the Gospel Riots of November 1901,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 3, 1993). 1917–18 Council of the Russian Church A section of the council drafts a measure to allow Russian and Ukrainian alongside Church Slavonic. The council is cut short and it is never enacted (Hyacinthe Destivelle, The Moscow Council (1917–1918), 2015). 1963 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium 36 Opens the Roman rite to the people’s languages. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Three sacred tongues. The inscription on the cross was written “in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek” (John 19:20). From Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century, and above all from Isidore of Seville in the seventh, this was taken to mark out three sacred languages. John records Pilate’s notice. It is not a rule for prayer. 1 Corinthians 14:16 set aside. Paul is speaking of tongues (14:13–19). His reason, that the outsider cannot say Amen to what he does not understand, was not applied to a liturgy in a dead language, though Justinian in 565 applied it to prayers said inaudibly. The Reformers applied it to worship in a language the people did not know. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) Worship in the language of the people is the Orthodox principle, and Orthodox practice often falls short of it. CATHOLIC Christine Mohrmann, Liturgical Latin (1957) The best case for the other side. Liturgical Latin was never street Latin. A stylized, sacred register is natural to worship and need not be fully understood to do its work. HISTORIAN Francis Thomson, “SS. Cyril and Methodius and a Mythical Western Heresy: Trilinguism” (1992) A caution: the West never formally taught that only three languages are permitted. The resistance to Slavonic was practical and political. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “A sacred language lifts worship above the everyday and binds us to our ancestors.” (Orthodox) A heightened style can do that. Paul’s test is narrower and harder: can the ordinary person in the room say Amen to what was said? 2. “The people know the liturgy by heart and grasp its meaning.” (Orthodox) Many do. The Scripture readings are another matter. A lesson read in a language the hearers do not know instructs no one, and that is exactly the case Paul describes. 3. “Jesus prayed in Hebrew in the synagogue though he spoke Aramaic.” (Orthodox) Hebrew was not a dead language in Judea in Jesus’ day: Qumran and the Bar Kokhba letters show it still written and spoken, written Aramaic translations existed (the Qumran targums), and Luke 4 has Jesus read and then expound in the hearers’ own speech. The objection assumes the thing it needs to prove. When the apostles founded churches among Greeks they used Greek. 4. “The East has always used the vernacular. This is a Roman fault.” (Orthodox) The East began that way, and its missions to the Slavs, to Alaska and to Japan kept the principle. What is dated here is what happened afterward in the old heartlands. 10 NOT SETTLED How much a modern Greek, Russian or Ethiopian worshiper understands varies with education and with the part of the service. The claim should not be flattened into “no one understands anything.” 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 880 · John VIII, bishop of Rome, Industriae tuae, to Svatopluk of Moravia — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04592a.htm - c. 248 · Origen, Against Celsus 8.37 — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.ix.viii.xxxvii.html - c. 380 · Rome — https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofwe0000theo - 405 · Armenia — https://archive.org/details/LifeOfMashtots - 867–880 · Cyril and Methodius — https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_19850602_slavorum-apostoli.html - c. 950–987 · Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffa‘, bishop of al-Ashmunayn — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Zaborowski+From+Coptic+to+Arabic+in+Medieval+Egypt+Medieval+Encounters+2008 - 1080 · Gregory VII to the duke of Bohemia — https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_epp_sel_2_2/index.htm#page/473/mode/1up - c. 1100 · Egypt — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Zaborowski+From+Coptic+to+Arabic+in+Medieval+Egypt - 1562 · Council of Trent, session 22 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/twenty-second-session.htm - 1571 · Thirty-Nine Articles, article 24 — https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/articles-religion - 1901 · Athens, the Gospel riots — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Carabott+Gospel+Riots+November+1901+Journal+of+Mediterranean+Studies - 1917–18 · Council of the Russian Church — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Destivelle+Moscow+Council+1917-1918 - 1963 · Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium 36 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html - voice · Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) — https://archive.org/details/orthodoxchurch00ware - voice · Christine Mohrmann, Liturgical Latin (1957) — https://archive.org/details/liturgicallatini0000unse - voice · Francis Thomson, “SS. Cyril and Methodius and a Mythical Western Heresy: Trilinguism” (1992) — https://repository.uantwerpen.be/link/irua/4026 ============================================================================== 1139 · Priests may not marry Address: https://additions.church/1139 Addition · How it binds: Required, Contradicted Marriage is closed to the Western clergy. The elder as head of a household is gone. First clear witness: Second Lateran Council, 1139. Footing: firm. Rome treats this as a discipline that could change, and the Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men. Carried today by: Roman Catholic. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY Peter had a mother-in-law. Paul asked whether he did not have the right to take along a believing wife, as the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas did, and told Timothy that an overseer should be the husband of one wife and that those who forbid marriage teach the doctrines of demons. For the first three centuries the clergy were married men, and no surviving rule required them to give up their wives. In 385 Siricius of Rome ruled that priests and deacons must live in continence with their wives, and Western councils repeated the rule for seven hundred years with mixed results, because the rule was unpopular and the priests had sons. The reform movement of the eleventh century made the issue a crusade. Gregory VII forbade the people to receive the sacraments from married priests, and the Second Lateran Council of 1139, in its seventh canon, took the final step: the marriages of priests, deacons and subdeacons were not merely forbidden but declared null, no marriages at all. From then on a Western priest could not have a wife, only a concubine, and his children were bastards. The East never followed; it kept its married priests and condemned Rome for the rule, while taking its bishops from the monks. The entry is marked “contradicted,” because the rule does not add to Paul’s instruction but contradicts it. The Reformers set it down in 1517, and Luther married a nun. Rome carries it. The record gives the texts, the councils and the long resistance. 2 THE CLAIM In 1139 the Second Lateran Council ruled that marriages contracted by bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, monks and canons are not marriages. That ended a campaign which had begun in Spain around 306. Paul’s own description runs the other way: the overseer he has in view is a proven husband and father, and the apostles kept the right to a wife (1 Cor 9:5). The entry does not say the verse requires marriage; it says a law that bars the man Paul describes and voids his marriage runs against the text. NOT CLAIMED That celibacy for the kingdom is wrong. Jesus and Paul commend it as a gift given to some. What is dated here is a law binding all clergy. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Tim 3:2, 4–5 “An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife … He must manage his own household well … for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” Titus 1:5–6 Elders in every town: “the husband of one wife, and his children are believers.” 1 Cor 9:5 “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” 1 Tim 4:1–3 A mark of later error: those “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods.” 1 Cor 7:7, 25 “Each has his own gift from God.” On the unmarried: “I have no command from the Lord.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel’s priests. They married, and the office passed from father to son. A priest abstained from his wife only while serving his turn at the altar (compare Exod 19:15; 1 Sam 21:4–5). The Western rule was later argued from exactly this (see 385 in the record): if Christian priests offer the sacrifice every day, they must abstain every day. The argument works only if the elder has already become a sacrificing priest (see c. 250). The ascetic ideal. Greek philosophy prized self-mastery and was wary of the body, and the Essenes, as Josephus describes them, shunned marriage. Paul knew both and commends the unmarried life as a gift some have (1 Cor 7:7), while requiring that an overseer be “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim 3:2). The movements that rejected marriage outright came after him and are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 692 Council in Trullo, canon 13 Names the Roman rule and rejects it: presbyters and deacons keep their wives, and anyone who deposes a married cleric or forces him to separate is himself deposed. Four centuries before 1139 the East held the Western rule to be against the apostolic canons. 6 THE RECORD c. 160–190 The Acts of Paul and Thecla A popular romance in which Paul preaches “blessed are they that have kept the flesh chaste,” and Thecla, betrothed to Thamyris, will not have him after hearing it. Second-century movements of this kind made virginity the mark of the serious Christian. The church condemned the extreme and kept much of the instinct. c. 200 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3 Defends marriage against the Encratites, who rejected it as evil. Peter and Philip had children, he says, and Paul allows a presbyter to be a married man. c. 306 Council of Elvira, canon 33 Bishops, presbyters and deacons are to abstain from their wives. The Catholic Encyclopedia, following Hefele, calls it “the oldest positive ecclesiastical ordinance concerning the celibacy of the clergy.” 325 Nicaea, as told by Socrates, Church History 1.11 A proposal to impose continence on married clergy is opposed by the Egyptian confessor Paphnutius, himself unmarried: “not to impose so heavy a yoke.” The council leaves it alone. c. 340 Council of Gangra, canon 4 Anathema on anyone who refuses communion from a married presbyter. c. 380 Apostolic Canon 5 (6) A bishop, presbyter or deacon must not “put away his wife under pretence of religion.” 385 Siricius of Rome, letter to Himerius The first papal decretal. Requires continence of priests and deacons, on the model of Levitical purity. c. 439 Socrates, Church History 5.22 Customs differ: in the East many bishops have fathered children by their lawful wives while in office. 692 Council in Trullo, canon 13 The East names the Roman rule and rejects it, appealing to the ancient and apostolic order. Married presbyters and deacons keep their wives. 1022–1123 The property motive Married priests had been passing churches and their incomes to their sons. A synod at Pavia in 1022 declares the children of clergy unfree and the church’s property, and the reform bars them from succeeding to their fathers’ benefices, church posts with an income attached. Historians on every side count the property among the motives for the law. 1074 Gregory VII Forbids the people to attend the masses of married priests. Clergy at Erfurt and Paris protest that the demand is unbearable. 1139 Lateran II, canons 6–7 Married clergy are deprived of office. Of their unions: “we do not deem there to be a marriage.” No one is to hear their masses. 1965 Vatican II, Presbyterorum Ordinis 16 Celibacy “is not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood, as is apparent from the practice of the early Church and from the traditions of the Eastern Churches.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Husband of one wife.” Advocates of the rule read this as “married once, and now living in continence.” The verses that follow speak of children and of running a household. The man Paul describes has a family and has been tested by it. 1 Corinthians 7:5. Paul allows a couple to abstain “for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer,” and then tells them to come together again. Siricius and Jerome reversed the logic: a priest must always pray, so he must always abstain. The conclusion is the one Paul wrote the verse to prevent. Jerome against Jovinian. The monk Jovinian taught that married and celibate Christians are equal in merit. He was condemned around 393. Jerome’s reply rated marriage so low that his own friends in Rome tried to take the book out of circulation. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Christian Cochini SJ, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (1981); Stefan Heid, Celibacy in the Early Church (1997) The strongest case for the other side. From the apostles’ time, they argue, married clergy were expected to live in continence after ordination, and Elvira only wrote down the custom. CATHOLIC Roger Gryson, Les origines du célibat ecclésiastique (1970) The law of continence arises in the fourth century from ideas of ritual purity. CATHOLIC David Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity (2007) Jovinian’s view was widely held. The ranking of celibate above married won out only through a fight. HISTORIAN Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988) Traces how permanent sexual renunciation spread among Christian men and women from Paul to Augustine, and how continence came to be expected of the clergy, above all in the Latin West. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “It is a discipline, not a doctrine. The Church may ask this of her ministers.” (Catholic) Rome says so itself, and the Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men. Then the charge is this: a discipline that excludes from office the very man Paul describes as fit for it, and voids a marriage Paul calls a right (1 Cor 9:5), was imposed on all Western clergy for nine centuries. Paul’s warning against those “who forbid marriage” (1 Tim 4:3) is aimed at a different error, and the page does not say it names Rome; it shows that for Paul a rule against marriage was a danger sign, not a mark of holiness. 2. “‘Husband of one wife’ sets a limit, not a requirement. Paul and Timothy were unmarried.” (Catholic) Granted. The verse does not require marriage, and the page does not say an unmarried elder breaks it. What runs against the text is a law that bars the man Paul describes and voids his marriage; a limit on marriages is not a ban on marriage. The clearest text is 1 Corinthians 9:5, where Paul asserts a right for apostles and the Lord’s brothers that Lateran II took away, and the oldest canon in the East forbids a cleric to put away his wife “under pretence of piety” (Apostolic Canon 5). 3. “Continence after ordination is apostolic. Peter left everything.” Luke 18:29 does speak of leaving house or wife. But twenty-five years later Paul says Peter and the Lord’s brothers travel with their wives (1 Cor 9:5). Cochini reads the “sister, wife” of that verse as a continent companion, as Clement of Alexandria already did (Stromateis 3.6.53); but Clement in the same book says Peter and Philip fathered children (3.6.52) and that Paul allows a married presbyter, and Paul’s “right” is a right the churches had to pay for, a wife and not an attendant. The first rule requiring continence is regional and dates from about 306. Nicaea declined to adopt it, an early collection of canons forbids putting a wife away for piety’s sake, and the East rejected the rule by name in 692. 4. “Paul prefers the single life, and Jesus was unmarried.” (Catholic) True. Paul calls it a gift and says he has no command. Where he lists the qualities of an elder, he describes a man with a household. 5. “An unmarried priest is free for his people.” (Catholic) That is a sound reason for some to choose it. It is not a reason to forbid marriage to all. 10 NOT SETTLED Some historians doubt the Paphnutius story, which first appears a century after Nicaea. The council’s silence on the subject is not in doubt. How widely married clergy were expected to abstain before 300 cannot be shown either way from the surviving sources. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 13 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm - c. 160–190 · The Acts of Paul and Thecla — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0816.htm - c. 200 · Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm - c. 306 · Council of Elvira, canon 33 — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05395b.htm - 325 · Nicaea, as told by Socrates, Church History 1.11 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf202.ii.iv.xi.html - c. 340 · Council of Gangra, canon 4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3804.htm - c. 380 · Apostolic Canon 5 (6) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - 385 · Siricius of Rome, letter to Himerius — https://patristica.net/denzinger/ - c. 439 · Socrates, Church History 5.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm - 1022–1123 · The property motive — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm - 1074 · Gregory VII — https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/g7-reform1.asp - 1139 · Lateran II, canons 6–7 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum10.htm - 1965 · Vatican II, Presbyterorum Ordinis 16 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_presbyterorum-ordinis_en.html - voice · Christian Cochini SJ, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (1981); Stefan Heid, Celibacy in the Early Church (1997) — https://ignatius.com/apostolic-origins-of-priestly-celibacy-aopcp/ - voice · Roger Gryson, Les origines du célibat ecclésiastique (1970) — https://archive.org/details/lesoriginesducel0000roge - voice · David Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity (2007) — https://academic.oup.com/book/6378 - voice · Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988) — https://archive.org/details/bodysociety00pete ============================================================================== 1140 · 1930 · Preventing conception made a sin Address: https://additions.church/1140 Addition · How it binds: Required Augustine’s sentence that spouses who procure sterility are not spouses enters the law of the Western church; in 1234 a canon counts causing sterility as homicide. In 1930 Rome rules that every marital act must stay open to conception; the Anglicans release the rule the same year, and most Protestants within thirty. First clear witness: Gratian, Decretum, C. 32 q. 2 c. 7 (Aliquando), c. 1140; Decretals of Gregory IX 5.12.5 (Si aliquis, from Regino of Prüm, 906), 1234; Pius XI, Casti Connubii, 1930; Lambeth Conference, resolution 15, 1930. Footing: qualified. Augustine taught it about 400 and condemned even timing (De moribus Manichaeorum 18). The East punishes abortifacient drugs (Basil, canon 8; Trullo, canon 91) without a rule on prevention. Rome admitted timing in 1853 and 1951, which is why the entry dates the rule and not the whole ethic. Carried today by: Roman Catholic. Protestant set it down in 1930 1 THE CLAIM No text forbids a married couple from regulating conception, and the apostles’ churches had no rule about it. The fathers condemned potions that caused sterility or abortion, and Augustine condemned any marital act closed to children, including the Manichees’ practice of avoiding the fertile days. Gratian’s Decretum of about 1140 carried Augustine’s rule into the law of the Western church, that those who procure the poisons of sterility are not spouses but fornicators; in 1234 Gregory IX’s Decretals added a canon of Regino of Prüm (906), “Si aliquis,” that counted causing sterility as homicide. In 1930 Pius XI ruled in Casti Connubii that every marital act must remain open to conception, and the same year the Lambeth Conference released Anglicans from the rule; most Protestant churches followed within a generation. Rome kept the rule and refined it: the infertile days were admitted in 1853 and taught in 1951, and Humanae Vitae in 1968 made the line between timing and other means the principle. NOT CLAIMED That children are a burden, that fruitfulness is not a good of marriage, or that any means is permitted. Abortion the early church called murder (Didache 2:2), and the entry does not touch that. What is dated is the rule that preventing conception is itself a sin, which the apostles did not make and the churches did. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Heb 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled.” 1 Cor 7:3–5 Husband and wife owe each other their bodies and are not to deprive one another “except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” The one text on timing in marriage, and it is about prayer. Prov 5:18–19 “Rejoice in the wife of your youth … be intoxicated always in her love.” The union is celebrated for its own sake. Ps 127:3 “Children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Blessing language, with no command. Gen 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” A blessing on humanity, which Jesus and Paul, unmarried, did not read as a command to each person (Matt 19:12; 1 Cor 7:7–8). 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT What the ancients had. Greek and Roman medicine knew potions, pessaries and timing, mostly ineffective, and exposure of infants after birth. The Christian horror at exposure and abortion is early and unanimous. Prevention before conception is harder to find in the sources until Augustine. Onan. Genesis 38 says Onan spilled his seed “so as not to give offspring to his brother” and that “what he did was wicked in the sight of the LORD.” Whether the wickedness was the act or the refusal of his duty to his brother’s widow (Deut 25:5–10), the text does not say; Judah’s own confession (38:26) keeps the story in those terms. The fathers and the Reformers read it as the act. Either reading is a reading. The Stoic premise. Clement of Alexandria and Augustine took from Stoic ethics the rule that intercourse is for procreation alone, so that pleasure sought apart from it is a fault even in marriage. The rule against contraception grew from that premise more than from any text. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 100 Didache 2:2; Barnabas 19:5 “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one that has been born.” The line the early church drew, and where it drew it. 1853 · 1880 The Sacred Penitentiary Asked whether spouses who use the infertile period may be left in peace, Rome answers that they are not to be disturbed (1853) and that confessors may cautiously suggest it (1880). Augustine’s rule against timing is quietly dropped. 5 THE RECORD c. 195 Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 2.10 Intercourse is for procreation, and to seek it otherwise is to do injury to nature. The Stoic rule enters Christian teaching; the standard English translation leaves the chapter in Latin. c. 217 Hippolytus, Refutation 9.12 Women of Callistus’s church “use drugs for producing sterility” and bind themselves to abort; he condemns both at once, without distinguishing them. c. 375 Basil, Letter 188, canon 8 “Those who give drugs for abortion are murderers themselves.” The Eastern canons punish the abortifacient; they have no canon against prevention. c. 388 Augustine, On the Morals of the Manichaeans 18.65 The Manichees tell married people “to observe as much as possible the time when a woman, after her purification, is most likely to conceive,” and to abstain then; the wife is then “not a wife, but a mistress.” Timing, the method Rome now allows, is condemned by name. c. 420 Augustine, On Adulterous Marriages 2.12 Intercourse “even with one’s lawful wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of offspring is prevented. This is what Onan did.” The one place a father reads Genesis 38 that way in so many words. 906 Regino of Prüm, Ecclesiastical Discipline 2.89 “If anyone, to satisfy his lust or in deliberate hatred, does something to a man or woman so that no children be born of him or her … let it be held as homicide.” The canon Si aliquis. c. 1140 Gratian, Decretum, C. 32 q. 2 c. 7 (Aliquando) Augustine’s sentence enters the standard collection of church law under the rubric “They are fornicators, not spouses, who procure the poisons of sterility,” and if both do it, “they are not married.” 1234 Decretals of Gregory IX 5.12.5 (Si aliquis) “If anyone, to satisfy his lust or in deliberate hatred, does something to a man or a woman so that no children be born … let him be held a homicide.” Regino’s canon becomes the universal law of the Latin church, and stays so until 1917. 1930 Lambeth Conference, resolution 15 “Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood,” and abstinence is impracticable, “other methods may be used.” Carried 193 to 67; the first church body to lift the rule. 1930 Pius XI, Casti Connubii 54–56 “Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature.” The infertile times may be used (59). 1951 Pius XII, Address to the Italian midwives Periodic continence is lawful for serious reasons: the method Augustine condemned is taught as the Christian one. 1968 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 11, 14, 16 “Each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life”; recourse to infertile periods is lawful; the pope sets aside his own commission’s majority. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Genesis 38:10. “What he did was wicked.” The verse is the one text on either side, and it does not say which thing he did was the wickedness. A charter or a canon that rests on it rests on a reading. “Be fruitful and multiply.” A blessing spoken to the race, to Noah’s sons, and to Israel (Gen 1:28; 9:1; 35:11), and in Acts applied to the word of God (12:24). Aquinas held that it binds humanity as a whole and not each person (ST II-II 152.2). 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (1965) The standard history, by a Catholic judge who sat on the papal commission: the rule is constant from Augustine to 1930 and its reasons change several times. CATHOLIC Humanae Vitae 11–16; Catechism 2366–2370 The case for the defense: the unitive and procreative meanings of the act are inseparable by God’s design, so that every act must remain open to life; timing respects the design and contraception contradicts it. ORTHODOX The Russian Church’s Basis of the Social Concept (2000), XII.3 Abortifacient means are condemned; other means are left to the spouses with their confessor, with a warning against selfish refusal of children. The one synodal statement in the East: “spouses should make such decisions mutually on the counsel of their spiritual father.” PROTESTANT Charles Provan, The Bible and Birth Control (1989) A Protestant case that every Reformer and every Protestant church before 1930 condemned contraception, with the Onan texts from Luther and Calvin. PROTESTANT Lambeth Conference 1958, resolution 115 Family planning is “a right and important factor in Christian family life,” to be exercised in conscience; the Anglican position settled. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Every Christian church condemned contraception until 1930; the consensus is the tradition.” (Catholic) Granted as history, and the entry dates it. The rule rests on Augustine, whose sentence is the canon Gratian carried. Consensus is what the page records as an addition when the texts are silent; it is not a text. The same consensus condemned timing until 1853 and the churches have not kept that part. 2. “The argument is from natural law, not from proof-texts.” (Catholic) Agreed, and that is the point. A rule that rests on a philosophical premise about the ends of an act binds those who accept the premise and the authority that applies it. The apostles’ writings do not state it. 3. “Onan was struck dead for it.” (Catholic, Protestant) He was struck dead; for what, the text leaves open between the act and the refusal of his brother’s line. The entry does not use Onan in either direction. 4. “Permission has produced a contracepting culture that refuses children.” (Catholic) A real charge, and selfish refusal of children is a fault the text can name (Ps 127; 1 Tim 5:14). The remedy the apostles give is the motive, examined; the churches of 1140 and 1930 chose the method, forbidden. 9 NOT SETTLED Whether Regino’s canon was aimed at potions alone or at every means is debated; Gratian’s placement under the question of sterile marriages widened it. Which modern methods may act after conception is a medical question the page does not decide; the early church’s line against abortion is where any Christian answer must start. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 100 · Didache 2:2; Barnabas 19:5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - 1853 · 1880 · The Sacred Penitentiary — https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/23.4.3.pdf - c. 195 · Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 2.10 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02092.htm - c. 217 · Hippolytus, Refutation 9.12 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050109.htm - c. 375 · Basil, Letter 188, canon 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202188.htm - c. 388 · Augustine, On the Morals of the Manichaeans 18.65 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf104.iv.v.xx.html - c. 420 · Augustine, On Adulterous Marriages 2.12 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Augustine+De+coniugiis+adulterinis+Onan - 906 · Regino of Prüm, Ecclesiastical Discipline 2.89 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Regino+of+Pr%C3%BCm+Si+aliquis+homicide+canon - c. 1140 · Gratian, Decretum, C. 32 q. 2 c. 7 (Aliquando) — https://geschichte.digitale-sammlungen.de/decretum-gratiani/kapitel/dc_chapter_3_3286 - 1234 · Decretals of Gregory IX 5.12.5 (Si aliquis) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Decretals+Gregory+IX+Si+aliquis+5.12.5 - 1930 · Lambeth Conference, resolution 15 — https://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/127734/1930.pdf - 1930 · Pius XI, Casti Connubii 54–56 — https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html - 1951 · Pius XII, Address to the Italian midwives — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Pius+XII+Address+to+Midwives+1951+periodic+continence - 1968 · Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 11, 14, 16 — https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html - voice · John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (1965) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AContraception+au%3ANoonan - voice · Humanae Vitae 11–16; Catechism 2366–2370 — https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html - voice · The Russian Church’s Basis of the Social Concept (2000), XII.3 — https://old.mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/xii/ - voice · Charles Provan, The Bible and Birth Control (1989) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Bible+and+Birth+Control+au%3AProvan - voice · Lambeth Conference 1958, resolution 115 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Lambeth+Conference+1958+resolution+115+family+planning ============================================================================== 1215 · The bread held up to be seen Address: https://additions.church/1215 Addition · How it binds: Required Transubstantiation is defined. The people commune so rarely that once a year is set as the minimum, and in 1415 the cup is withheld. First clear witness: Lateran IV, 1215; Council of Constance, 1415. Footing: firm. Realism about Christ’s presence is early. The metaphysics and the watching are late. Rome restored the cup and frequent communion in the twentieth century. Carried today by: Roman Catholic. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY In the Supper the bread is broken and eaten and the cup is shared; that is what the apostles did and what Paul describes. By the twelfth century the Western church had come to look at the bread rather than eat it. About 1205 the bishop of Paris, Odo de Sully, ordered priests to lift the consecrated bread high after the words of institution, so that the people, who no longer received, could at least see. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council, the largest the West had held, defined in its first canon that the bread and wine are changed in substance into the body and blood, “transubstantiated,” and that only a priest can bring this about. The consequences followed in order. If the host is Christ, it is to be adored: a feast was founded for the purpose in 1264 and processions carried the bread through the streets. If the cup is Christ, it must not be spilled: the people were given bread alone, and in 1415 the Council of Constance made the withholding of the cup a law, against the Bohemians who had restored it. The Supper had become a thing to be seen and worshipped, and the meal that Paul described had become the priest’s act before a watching crowd. The Reformers set all of this down in 1517, restored the cup, and then divided over what the bread is; that division is dated at 1525. The East did not adopt the term until Mogila’s confession, approved at Jassy in 1642, and the synod of Jerusalem in 1672, both written against Calvinism in Latin terms; that is dated on its line. The record gives the texts, the canon, and the history of looking. 2 THE CLAIM In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council stated that the bread and wine are “changed in substance” into Christ’s body and blood, and that no one can bring this about except a properly ordained priest. In the same years priests began lifting the host after the words of consecration so that the people could see and adore it; the bishop of Paris first ordered the elevation about 1205, and the entry takes the council’s date. Seeing took the place of eating. Lay communion had long been rare, and the same council had to require it once a year. In 1415 the Council of Constance made it law that the laity receive bread only, while granting that Christ and the early church did otherwise. NOT CLAIMED That Christ is absent from the Supper, or that belief in his presence is late. Early realism is granted (see 1525). What is dated here is the philosophical definition, the host adored apart from eating, and the cup withheld. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 26:26–27 “Take, eat; this is my body.” “Drink of it, all of you.” 1 Cor 11:28 For every member: “so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” 1 Cor 10:17 “We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” John 6:53 “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT A Jewish table. At Passover and at any Jewish meal the bread is blessed, broken and handed to everyone, and the cup is shared. The blessing thanks God for the food. The Supper was given in that setting as something to be eaten and drunk together. Aristotle. The Greek schools had long distinguished what a thing is from the properties one can see and touch, Aristotle’s substance and accidents, and the New Testament never applies that vocabulary to the bread. “Substance” in 1215 was still a Latin schoolman’s word, not yet Aristotle’s full apparatus; Aquinas gave the definition that form a generation later (see c. 1272 in the record). Either way the question it answers, what the bread is underneath its properties, is one no apostle asked. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 350 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 23.21 How to receive: “make your left hand a throne for the right… and having hollowed your palm, receive the body of Christ.” The bread is handed to the people and eaten, not held up to be seen. 6 THE RECORD c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 Everyone present receives, and “a portion is sent by the deacons” to those who are absent. c. 380 Apostolic Canon 9 (10) The faithful who come in and do not stay for the prayers and Holy Communion “are to be excommunicated, as causing disorder in the Church.” c. 840 Paschasius and Ratramnus Two monks of Corbie write rival treatises, neither naming the other: is the sacrament Christ’s body “in truth,” the flesh born of Mary, or “in figure” and spiritually? Neither is condemned at the time. 1059 Berengar’s first oath He is made to swear that Christ’s body is handled and broken by the priest’s hands and crushed by the teeth of the faithful. Later theologians found the wording an embarrassment. c. 1140 The word transubstantiation First appears in the Latin schools. c. 1205–1208 Odo de Sully, Synodal Statutes of Paris The bishop of Paris directs priests not to lift the host before the words “This is my body,” and then to raise it high enough for all to see (Mansi 22:682; ed. O. Pontal, Les statuts synodaux français, vol. 1). 1215 Lateran IV, constitutions 1 and 21 “The bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood.” The faithful must confess “at least once a year” and receive “at least at Easter.” 1264 Urban IV, Transiturus Establishes the feast of Corpus Christi. Processions with the host follow. c. 1272 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.75–77 Aristotle’s logic had been known in Latin since Boethius; his works on nature arrived in new translations from Greek and Arabic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Aquinas gives the word of 1215 its full form in that vocabulary: the substance of the bread is changed, and “the accidents continue in this sacrament without a subject” (III.77.1). 1415 Constance, session 13 Christ instituted the sacrament “after a meal” and gave it under both kinds, and so did the early church. Yet bread alone for the laity is now “a law which nobody may repudiate,” and those who say otherwise are to be treated as heretics. Jan Hus is burned at the council three weeks later. 1551 Trent, session 13 The council says the change is properly called transubstantiation, and that the host is to be given the worship due to God. Anathemas attach. 1905 · 1963 Pius X; Vatican II Frequent communion is urged, and the cup is again permitted to the laity. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A moment and a formula. The Latin West came to locate the change at the priest’s recital of “This is my body,” and the elevation marks that instant. The East locates it in the prayer calling down the Spirit. The earliest prayers do neither. The Didache’s thanksgivings do not quote the words of institution at all. Nor does the ancient Syriac prayer of Addai and Mari, which Rome recognized as a valid Eucharist in 2001. The cup. “Drink of it, all of you” is a command. The medieval answer was the doctrine of concomitance: the whole Christ is present under either kind, so nothing is lost. The deduction may be sound. It was used to set aside what the Lord said to do, and Constance says as much. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period (1984); “The ‘Dogma of Transubstantiation’ in the Middle Ages” (1994) Before 1215, and for some time after, several accounts of the presence were taught freely. The council used the word without imposing one explanation. CATHOLIC Josef Jungmann SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite (1948) The Mass became a thing watched, with the elevation at its center and communion a rarity. CATHOLIC Edward Kilmartin SJ, The Eucharist in the West (1998) Judges the scholastic focus on the priest and the moment of consecration a narrowing, and calls for a return to the older prayer of the whole assembly in the Spirit. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (Russian 1984; English 1988) Rejects a theology “concentrated entirely upon a single moment: the isolated consecratory formula.” The whole liturgy is the church’s act. PROTESTANT Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) Names three captivities: the withheld cup, transubstantiation as a required opinion, and the Mass as a sacrifice. He kept the real presence. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Transubstantiation only gives a name to what was always believed: this is his body.” (Catholic) If that were all, the name and its philosophy would not need to be required. Trent anathematizes anyone who denies that the whole substance is converted. The East confesses the body and blood and has mostly declined the definition. Irenaeus spoke of “two realities, earthly and heavenly,” which is not obviously the same doctrine. 2. “If he is present, adoration follows.” (Catholic) Augustine’s “no one eats that flesh unless he has first adored it” (Expositions on the Psalms 98.9) is adoration in the act of receiving, and the page does not date that. What it dates is adoration in place of receiving: the host shown, reserved for display, carried through the streets. No writer of the first centuries describes the bread reserved to be looked at or carried in procession. It was kept so that the sick and absent could eat it. The words are “Take, eat.” 3. “The whole Christ is received under either kind.” (Catholic) Perhaps so. The Lord still said “all of you” to those at the table, and Paul applied both verbs, eat and drink, to every member at Corinth (1 Cor 11:26–28); the council that withdrew the cup admits that it was changing his institution. 4. “Rome has restored the cup and frequent communion.” (Catholic) It has, and the entry says so. Rome does not call the older practice an error. But what was refused under anathema to those who asked for it is now permitted, on the authority of the same early texts. 10 NOT SETTLED What exactly Lateran IV meant to define is debated (Gary Macy, “The ‘Dogma of Transubstantiation’ in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, 1994, against the older view). The Orthodox synod of Jerusalem in 1672 adopted a Greek equivalent of the term. See that date. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 350 · Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 23.21 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310123.htm - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxvii.html - c. 380 · Apostolic Canon 9 (10) — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - c. 840 · Paschasius and Ratramnus — https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwsnl1 - 1059 · Berengar’s first oath — https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/berengar-tours - c. 1140 · The word transubstantiation — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/traditio/article/invention-of-transubstantiation/28B3EAB49FD23D310C0DA52E02759D54 - c. 1205–1208 · Odo de Sully, Synodal Statutes of Paris — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Pontal+Les+statuts+synodaux+fran%C3%A7ais+du+XIIIe+si%C3%A8cle - 1215 · Lateran IV, constitutions 1 and 21 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm - 1264 · Urban IV, Transiturus — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04390b.htm - c. 1272 · Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.75–77 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4077.htm - 1415 · Constance, session 13 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum16.htm - 1551 · Trent, session 13 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/thirteenth-session.htm - 1905 · 1963 · Pius X; Vatican II — https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html - voice · Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period (1984); “The ‘Dogma of Transubstantiation’ in the Middle Ages” (1994) — https://archive.org/details/theologiesofeuch0000macy - voice · Josef Jungmann SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite (1948) — https://archive.org/details/massofromanritei0001jose - voice · Edward Kilmartin SJ, The Eucharist in the West (1998) — https://archive.org/details/eucharistinwesth0000edwa - voice · Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (Russian 1984; English 1988) — https://search.worldcat.org/title/16712167 - voice · Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) — https://www.projectwittenberg.org/etext/luther/babylonian/babylonian.htm ============================================================================== 1095–1439 · Purgatory and indulgences Address: https://additions.church/1274 Addition · How it binds: Required Rome remits penalties for crusaders, defines a purifying punishment after death, and teaches a treasury of merits that the pope can dispense. First clear witness: Clermont, 1095; Lyon II, 1274; Unigenitus, 1343; Florence, 1439. Footing: firm. Prayer for the dead is ancient and shared with the East. The East never accepted purgatory, and the sale of indulgences is what set off 1517. Carried today by: Roman Catholic. Protestant set it down in 1517 1 THE STORY The early church prayed for its dead; that is dated at 211. Augustine was sure that some suffer “temporary punishments” after death and that the church’s prayers help them; whether a purifying fire is what 1 Corinthians 3:15 describes he left a question. Gregory the Great, around 600, told stories of souls released from suffering by Masses, and the stories became the belief of the West. In 1095, preaching the first crusade at Clermont, Urban II promised that the journey would count in place of all penance for those who went, and the indulgence, a remission of the temporal punishment owed for sin, was born. By the end of the twelfth century purgatory had a name and a place, a third realm between heaven and hell where the forgiven were purified by pain. The Second Council of Lyon in 1274 wrote it into a profession of faith for the Greeks, who had been rejecting it since a Franciscan first put it to the metropolitan of Corfu in 1231; Innocent IV had already defined it for the Greeks of Cyprus in 1254. In 1343 Clement VI explained how indulgences worked: Christ and the saints had earned a treasury of merit which the pope could dispense. In 1439 the Council of Florence defined purgatory again, over Greek objections, and in 1476 Sixtus IV allowed indulgences to be applied to the souls already there. By then they were being sold, and in 1517 a Dominican friar named Tetzel was selling them at Jüterbog, just over the Saxon border, where Luther’s parishioners went to buy, to pay for the rebuilding of St Peter’s. An Augustinian friar in Wittenberg wrote ninety-five theses about it. The apostolic writings know death, judgment, and being with Christ; they know no third place and no treasury that the church can draw on. The Reformers set the structure down, the indulgence in 1517 and purgatory itself by 1530; Rome carries it, with the sale ended but the doctrine intact. The record follows it from Augustine’s question to the indulgence for the dead. 2 THE CLAIM Between the First Crusade and the Council of Florence the Latin church assembled a system in four parts. Forgiven sin still leaves a debt of temporal punishment. That debt is paid by penance in this life or by purifying pains after death. The church holds a treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints. And the pope can apply that treasury by indulgence, to the living and, from 1476, to the dead. No part of this is found in the apostles’ writings, and each part carries a date. NOT CLAIMED That prayer for the dead is late (see c. 211), that God does not perfect his people, or that every idea of purification after death is absurd. Some Protestants hold one. What is dated here is the system of debt, treasury and remission. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Luke 23:43 To a criminal, hours from death: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” 2 Cor 5:8; Phil 1:23 “Away from the body and at home with the Lord.” “To depart and be with Christ.” Heb 10:14, 18 “By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. … Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.” Rom 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 1 Cor 3:13–15 The text most often cited for purgatory: “the Day will disclose it … the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. … he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Jewish roots. The one support from the period is 2 Maccabees 12, written about a century before Christ. Judas takes up a collection for a sin offering for fallen soldiers, “taking account of the resurrection” (12:43). That shows prayer and an offering for the dead. It does not show a temporary punishment, a cleansing after death, or a debt to be worked off. No Jewish text that can be dated before the apostles describes a limited punishment that ends in release. The Testament of Abraham, of disputed date, has a soul whose deeds hang in the balance saved by a patriarch’s prayer, and 4 Ezra 7 gives the dead seven days of seeing before their place is fixed; neither is a debt worked off by pain. The first Jewish texts to speak of a limited time in Gehenna are later than the apostles, and they are in the record with their date. Greek roots. Plato describes curable souls purified by punishment (Phaedo 113; Gorgias 525), and Virgil has souls cleansed by wind, water and fire (Aeneid 6.739–751). The category of a purifying punishment after death was available in the apostles’ world. The New Testament does not take it up. Where Christian writers do, from the third century, is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 421 Augustine, Enchiridion 69 “It is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful.” The best Latin mind of the age takes “temporary punishments” after death as certain (City of God 21.13) and the church’s prayers as a help to some of the dead (Enchiridion 110), and holds a purifying fire as a question, not a teaching. He names no debt measured in time, no treasury, and no remission by the church’s keys. 6 THE RECORD c. 200–230 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 7.6; Origen, On First Principles 2.10 The first Christian writers to speak of a fire after death that purifies rather than destroys. Origen ties it to the restoration of all. c. 200–400 The rabbinic texts on Gehenna The Mishnah (Eduyot 2:10) and the Tosefta (Sanhedrin 13:3–4) record a limited punishment, “twelve months” in Gehinnom, and attribute the view to Rabbi Akiva and to the school of Shammai, whose middle class of souls goes down and comes up again. These are the earliest Jewish texts to describe a punishment after death that ends in release. They were written down after the apostles, and what they attribute to earlier teachers cannot be checked. c. 203 Passion of Perpetua 7–8 Perpetua prays for her dead brother Dinocrates and then sees him at peace: the earliest Christian picture of a dead person’s suffering eased by prayer. The boy had died at seven; the text does not say he was baptized, and Augustine, who took the story seriously, had to argue that he must have been (On the Soul and Its Origin 1.10). It shows prayer for the dead and relief, not a debt of temporal punishment. c. 421 Augustine, Enchiridion 69 That some believers are saved through a kind of purifying fire after death is “not impossible,” and “a matter that may be inquired into.” His language is tentative. c. 600–800 The penitentials In the early medieval West, penance is reckoned in days and years of fasting, and a penance can be “redeemed”: twenty solidi (gold coins) in alms for seven weeks of fasting, the Psalter recited in place of a fast, and from 1095 the crusade in place of all penance. The indulgence grows out of that arithmetic. When penances are left unfinished at death, the remainder is carried into the next life. 1095 Council of Clermont, canon 2 Whoever goes to free Jerusalem out of devotion alone may count the journey in place of all penance. This is usually counted as the first plenary (full) indulgence. c. 1170 The noun purgatorium “Purgatory” first appears as the name of a place c. 1170–1180, among the Paris masters and Cistercian monks (Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, 1981). 1231 · 1254 George Bardanes and the Franciscan Bartholomew; Innocent IV, Sub catholicae professione The first recorded dispute between Greeks and Latins over purgatory, at Otranto in 1231: Bardanes, metropolitan of Corfu, rejects a purifying fire. In 1254 Innocent IV, writing for the Greeks of Cyprus, says that the place where lesser sins are cleansed after death is called purgatory, and that the Greeks are to use the name (Denzinger–Hünermann 838; Robert Ombres, “Latins and Greeks in Debate over Purgatory, 1230–1439,” 1984). 1274 Second Council of Lyon In the profession required of the Greek emperor: “their souls are cleansed after death by purgatorical or purifying punishments” (Denzinger–Hünermann 856). 1343 Clement VI, Unigenitus Teaches a treasury of merits entrusted to Peter and his successors to dispense. 1439 Council of Florence, Laetentur caeli Defines purgatorial punishments. The Greek delegates sign, Mark of Ephesus refuses, and the East repudiates the union. 1476 Sixtus IV, Salvator noster Indulgences may be applied to souls in purgatory. 1517 The St Peter’s indulgence Preached in Germany to fund the new basilica and to repay an archbishop’s loan. Luther’s theses follow. 1563 · 1567 Trent, session 25; Pius V Trent affirms purgatory and indulgences and condemns “evil gains.” Four years later the pope abolishes their sale. 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1031 “The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Do penance.” Where Jesus says “Repent” (Greek metanoeite, a change of mind and direction), the Latin Bible reads poenitentiam agite, “do penance.” A whole discipline of satisfaction was read into the word. Erasmus corrected the translation in 1516. Luther’s first two theses deny that the word can mean sacramental penance, and in 1518 he appealed to the Greek. The fire of 1 Corinthians 3:12–15. Paul speaks of “the Day,” the final judgment, when the work of the church’s builders will be tested. He is not describing a state between death and resurrection. The later Greek fathers, Chrysostom above all, did not find purgatory here; Origen had (see c. 200–230), and at Ferrara the Latins pressed Gregory of Nyssa, whose text Mark of Ephesus argued was corrupt or mistaken. Chrysostom took the fire to be that of final punishment. At Ferrara the Greek side said so. The Latin reading leaned on Augustine and Gregory the Great. 2 Maccabees 12. The soldiers prayed for had died wearing the tokens of idols. Critics observe that later Catholic teaching would call that mortal sin, beyond purgatory’s reach, and defenders answer from verse 45 that the men had fallen asleep in godliness. Either way the passage shows prayer for the dead. It does not show the doctrine built upon it. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (1981) The standard history. Purgatory as a third place, with a name, is born between 1170 and 1200. CATHOLIC Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology (1977); Spe Salvi 47 (2007) Recasts purgatory as the transforming encounter with Christ, who is himself the fire. Its “duration” cannot be calculated “in terms of the chronological measurements of this world,” and he does not describe it as a place. That concedes a good deal of the medieval picture. ORTHODOX Mark of Ephesus, at Ferrara and Florence (1438–39) The East prays for the dead and trusts those prayers help. It knows no third place, no cleansing fire, and no debt of punishment to be paid. PROTESTANT Jerry Walls, Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (2012) A Protestant philosopher defends purgatory as the completion of sanctification, without merit or indulgence. ANGLICAN C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (1964) “I believe in Purgatory,” by which he means a cleansing that the soul itself would ask for. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Nothing unclean will enter heaven (Rev 21:27), so the imperfect must be purified.” (Catholic) That is a reasonable inference, and C. S. Lewis (Letters to Malcolm, 1964) and Jerry Walls (Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation, 2012) draw it. It is not the doctrine defined at Lyon and Florence, which concerns punishment owed and remitted. The one change Paul describes is at Christ’s coming and in a moment (1 Cor 15:51–52), and John’s is at his appearing: “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Neither is a term served. 2. “David was forgiven and still punished (2 Sam 12:13–14). Temporal punishment remains after forgiveness.” (Catholic) God disciplines his children in this life (Heb 12:6). Carrying that into the next life as a measurable debt, payable by someone else’s merits, is the step the text does not take. 3. “The abuses were corrected. The doctrine stands.” (Catholic) The sale was abolished in 1567, and that is granted. What remains still requires every part listed above: the debt, the treasury, the pope’s power over it, and its reach beyond the grave. Each was added between 1095 and 1476. 4. “The Orthodox pray for the dead, so they believe it in substance.” (Catholic) Their spokesmen argued against purgatorial fire in the debates of 1438. Their delegates signed the decree under pressure the next year, and the Eastern churches repudiated it once they were home. The nearest the East has come since is Jerusalem 1672 (decree 18), which has such souls suffer in Hades and be released by the church’s prayers while denying a purifying fire; see that entry. A punishment that prayers shorten, without fire, treasury or indulgence, is still not the system dated here. 10 NOT SETTLED The New Testament says little about the state between death and resurrection. The page claims only that this particular system is not apostolic. Luther’s theses of 1517 assume purgatory. He rejected it by 1530, in his Revocation of Purgatory, and the Smalcald Articles of 1537 call it “a specter of the devil.” The Reformation began as a dispute about indulgences. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 421 · Augustine, Enchiridion 69 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm - c. 200–230 · Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 7.6; Origen, On First Principles 2.10 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04122.htm - c. 200–400 · The rabbinic texts on Gehenna — https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Eduyot.2.10 - c. 203 · Passion of Perpetua 7–8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0324.htm - c. 600–800 · The penitentials — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12682a.htm - 1095 · Council of Clermont, canon 2 — https://archive.org/details/urbanandcrusade00munrgoog - c. 1170 · The noun purgatorium — https://archive.org/details/birthofpurgatory0000lego - 1231 · 1254 · George Bardanes and the Franciscan Bartholomew; Innocent IV, Sub catholicae professione — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-ecclesiastical-history/article/abs/latins-and-greeks-in-debate-over-purgatory-12301439/7F2857522415313C13B25FB7AC926498 - 1274 · Second Council of Lyon — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Denzinger+Hunermann+Compendium+of+Creeds+Definitions+and+Declarations - 1343 · Clement VI, Unigenitus — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm - 1439 · Council of Florence, Laetentur caeli — https://www.vatican.va/content/eugenius-iv/la/documents/bulla-laetentur-caeli-6-iulii-1439.html - 1476 · Sixtus IV, Salvator noster — https://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/dw4.htm - 1517 · The St Peter’s indulgence — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Tetzel - 1563 · 1567 · Trent, session 25; Pius V — https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct25.html - 1992 · Catechism of the Catholic Church 1031 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2N.HTM - voice · Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (1981) — https://archive.org/details/birthofpurgatory0000lego - voice · Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology (1977); Spe Salvi 47 (2007) — https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html - voice · Mark of Ephesus, at Ferrara and Florence (1438–39) — https://silouanthompson.net/2019/05/mark-of-ephesus-purgatory/ - voice · Jerry Walls, Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (2012) — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/purgatory-9780199732296 - voice · C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (1964) — https://archive.org/details/letterstomalcolm0000lewi_l3c3 ============================================================================== 1285 · The Latin reading of the Spirit anathematized Address: https://additions.church/1285 Addition · How it binds: Required Three years after the union with Rome collapses, a council at Constantinople condemns as heretics those who taught that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as from a cause. First clear witness: Tomus of the Council of Blachernae, under Gregory II of Cyprus, 1285. Footing: qualified. The council of 879–880 had guarded the text of the creed; 1285 condemned a reading of it, and the men who held it, as heresy. Whether the Tomus’s own account, the Spirit’s eternal “manifestation” through the Son, was bound is doubtful: Gregory left office over it in 1289 and no council imposed it. The anathema on the Latin reading is what is dated. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY In 1261 the Byzantines recovered Constantinople from the Latin crusaders who had held it for fifty-seven years, and the emperor Michael VIII found himself facing a new crusade from the West to take it back. His defense was diplomacy: he offered the pope union of the churches. At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 his envoys accepted the Roman faith, the clause in the creed included, and the council condemned anyone who denied it. At home the union was hated. The patriarch who defended it, John Bekkos, a learned man who had once opposed it and changed his mind after reading the Greek fathers, argued that “through the Son” and “from the Son” meant the same thing. Michael died in 1282 and the union died with him. His son repudiated it, Bekkos was deposed, and in 1285 a council met in the Blachernae palace under the new patriarch, Gregory of Cyprus. It condemned Bekkos and two of his allies as heretics and anathematized them for teaching that the Son is a cause of the Spirit’s being. Gregory’s Tomus tried to say what the Greek fathers had meant by “through the Son”: an eternal manifestation of the Spirit through him, not his origin. The explanation divided the Greek clergy so badly that Gregory left office four years later (the sources differ on whether he resigned or was pushed). The anathema stood. The council of 879 had guarded the text of the creed. The council of 1285 bound a reading of it, by condemning as heretics men who affirmed the same verses and read them the Latin way. That is the same act the page dates for the West in the record under 589–1014, by use in 1014 and by condemnation at Lyon in 1274, and it is dated here, on the Eastern line, by the same rule. The record says why the two acts differ and why both are dated. 2 THE CLAIM In 1274 the Second Council of Lyon had brought the Greek church into union with Rome on the emperor’s terms, with the clause “and the Son” confessed. In 1282 the union was repudiated and the patriarch who had defended it, John Bekkos, was deposed. In 1285 a council at the Blachernae palace in Constantinople, under the new patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus, condemned Bekkos, Constantine Meliteniotes and George Metochites as heretics and anathematized them for teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as from a cause. Its Tomus set out the Greek account: the Father alone is the cause of the Spirit’s being; what the fathers meant by “through the Son” is the Spirit’s eternal manifestation through him, not his origin. In plain words: the West had altered the common creed and bound the altered text (dated at 1014). The East did not alter the creed. What it did in 1285 was bind a reading of the creed’s words, that “from the Father” excludes the Son as cause, by condemning as heretics men who held the other reading while affirming the same verses. The council of 879–880 had guarded the text; 1285 bound what the text means. That is the step dated here. NOT CLAIMED That the Latin reading is true, or that the East was wrong to refuse the clause, which is dated as the West’s addition at 1014. That the Tomus’s own account, the eternal “manifestation” through the Son, was bound: it was offered as an explanation, it divided the Greek clergy, Gregory left office over it in 1289, and no council imposed it. Three things a reader should not take from this entry: that the page says the Spirit proceeds from the Son, which it neither affirms nor denies; that the page counts 1285 as the same act as 1014, when one side altered a common text and the other bound a reading of it; and that either side is validated. Each bound what the text does not say, and both bindings are dated. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 15:26 “The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father.” The creed’s words, and the verse both sides claim. John 16:7, 14–15 “If I go, I will send him to you.” “He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.” John 20:22; Gal 4:6 “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” “From the Father” is the text and the creed, and the page binds it. “Alone” is Photius’s word, and “and the Son” is the West’s. Neither is in the text, and the page binds neither. The East reads the sending texts of the Spirit’s mission in time and keeps John 15:26 for his eternal origin; the West reads them of his origin as well. Each affirms every verse here. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT One verb. The creed’s Greek verb, ekporeuesthai, is John 15:26’s: to come forth from a source. Greek theology kept it for the Spirit’s origin from the Father. The New Testament has no sentence about the Spirit proceeding from the Son, and no sentence with “alone.” It has the Son sending the Spirit (15:26; 16:7), which is a different verb. The quarrel of 1274 and 1285 is between two readings of a verse that says less than either. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 645–650 Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus A Greek father defends the Romans against Greek critics: by their wording “they themselves do not make the Son Cause of the Spirit,” for “the Father is the sole Cause of the Son and of the Spirit”; they mean that the Spirit comes forth through the Son. Six centuries before 1285, the Latin wording could be read by a Greek saint without a charge of heresy. 6 THE RECORD 867 Photius of Constantinople Charges the West with heresy over the clause and teaches that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father alone.” The word “alone” enters the Greek position here. 879–880 Council of Constantinople Restores Photius and, with Rome’s legates assenting, forbids any addition to the creed. A guard on the text; no reading is bound (the horos in Mansi 17; Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948). 1274 Second Council of Lyon The Greek delegates accept union, and the council condemns “all who presume to deny that the holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son,” adding “not as from two principles, but as from one principle.” 1275–1282 John Bekkos, patriarch Argues from Cyril, Athanasius and Maximus that the Greek fathers and the Latins “substantially agreed,” the Greeks’ “through the Son” and the Latins’ “from the Son” being two wordings of one faith, and that the union is lawful. On the death of Michael VIII in 1282 the union is repudiated and Bekkos forced from his see. 1285 Council of Blachernae; the Tomus of Gregory II Bekkos, Meliteniotes and Metochites are “condemned as heretics and anathematised by the Tomos of Patriarch Gregory II” for teaching that the Son is a cause of the Spirit. The Tomus affirms the Father as sole cause and speaks of the Spirit’s eternal manifestation through the Son (A. Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, 1983; the Tomus in PG 142). 1289 Gregory leaves office The Tomus’s “manifestation” divides the Greek clergy; a commentary by Gregory’s pupil Mark makes it worse, and the patriarch is forced from office for the peace of the church (Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, ch. 6–7). The anathema on the Latin reading stands; the explanation is left unbound. 1341–1351 Gregory Palamas Takes up Gregory of Cyprus’s distinction between the Spirit’s existence and his manifestation in his own account of essence and energies. See 1336 · 1351. 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, §5 Answering Pius IX, the four patriarchs and their synods say the doctrine of the addition to the creed “is essentially heresy, and its maintainers, whoever they be, are heretics.” The anathema of 1285 is not a dead letter; this is the East’s standing position, carried today. 2003 North American Orthodox–Catholic Consultation Asks both sides to “refrain from labeling as heretical the traditions of the other side” on the procession of the Spirit. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Alone.” The creed says “from the Father.” Photius wrote “from the Father alone,” and the Tomus of 1285 treated the Son as excluded from any share in the Spirit’s origin. The word is a reading, as “and the Son” is a reading, and the one is no more in the text than the other. Cause and principle. The Greek charge was that the Latins made two causes (aitiai) in God. Lyon had answered “not as from two principles, but as from one.” Whether the Latin principium and the Greek aitia name the same thing is where the two languages part, and the anathema of 1285 did not wait for the answer. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1983; 2nd ed. 1997) The standard study. Reads the Tomus as the East’s most serious theological answer to the clause, and documents the condemnations and the dispute that followed. ORTHODOX A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque (2010) Both traditions have real support in the fathers, and for a long time each side misread the other’s language. CATHOLIC Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, “The Greek and Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit” (1995) Affirms the Father as the sole source in the Trinity and grants that the Greek verb of the creed cannot be used of the Son. CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3 (1980) Defends the Latin teaching and suggests that Rome could drop the clause from the creed as a gesture toward the East. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “We only guarded the creed. The anathema fell on men who had signed a union that altered it.” (Orthodox) The guard on the text is 879–880, and the page does not date it. The Tomus of 1285 condemned a teaching, that the Son is a cause of the Spirit, and called the men who held it heretics. They affirmed John 15:26; they affirmed every text on this card. A view that is held by readers who hold every verse, and is anathematized anyway, has been bound as a reading. That is the same test the page applies to the West at 1014 and 1274. 2. “The Latin reading is a heresy. It puts two causes in God.” (Orthodox) Lyon said “not as from two principles, but as from one.” Whether that answers the Greek objection, or only restates the Latin one, is argued by serious people on both sides, and the page does not settle it. What it notes is that the whole Latin church, and the Reformers after it, affirm every verse the East cites and read them otherwise, which is what a reading looks like. 3. “Good. This shows the East made additions too.” (Catholic) It shows that the East bound a reading. It does not make 1285 the same act as 1014: one side altered a text both halves had received and sealed, and then bound the altered text; the other bound its reading of the unaltered text. The page dates both, calls neither the original, and validates neither. 4. “Then what does the page hold about the Spirit’s procession?” What the text says: the Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father (John 15:26); the Son sends him (16:7); he is the Spirit of the Son (Gal 4:6). The creed of 381 as both halves received it. Whether “from the Father” excludes the Son as cause, or includes him as one principle with the Father, is a reading, and the page holds neither as a test. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether the Tomus’s anathemas were entered in the Synodikon read on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, as the anathemas of 1351 were, is not settled here. Whether the “manifestation” of the Tomus was ever more than one patriarch’s explanation. The page reads it as unbound, which is why the entry dates the anathema and not the account. Whether the first binding is 1285 or the acts of 1283–1284 that deposed and tried the unionists. The page takes no position on the procession of the Spirit. It dates the two bindings, the West’s in the record under 589–1014 (by use in 1014, by condemnation at Lyon in 1274), the East’s at 1285. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 645–650 · Maximus the Confessor, Letter to Marinus — https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/greek-and-latin-traditions-regarding-the-procession-of-the-holy-spirit-29259 - 867 · Photius of Constantinople — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12043b.htm - 879–880 · Council of Constantinople — https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/religion/religion-general-interest/photian-schism-history-and-legend - 1274 · Second Council of Lyon — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum14.htm - 1275–1282 · John Bekkos, patriarch — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02380b.htm - 1285 · Council of Blachernae; the Tomus of Gregory II — https://ejournals.uni-muenster.de/index.php/byzrev/article/download/8419/8503/20902 - 1289 · Gregory leaves office — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Papadakis+Crisis+in+Byzantium+Filioque+Controversy+Gregory+II+of+Cyprus - 1341–1351 · Gregory Palamas — https://archive.org/details/studyofgregorypa0000meye - 1848 · Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, §5 — http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1848.aspx - 2003 · North American Orthodox–Catholic Consultation — https://www.usccb.org/news/2003/north-american-orthodox-catholic-theological-consultation-issues-agreed-statement - voice · Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1983; 2nd ed. 1997) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Papadakis+Crisis+in+Byzantium+Filioque+Controversy+Gregory+II+of+Cyprus - voice · A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque (2010) — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-filioque-9780195372045 - voice · Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, “The Greek and Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit” (1995) — https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/greek-and-latin-traditions-regarding-the-procession-of-the-holy-spirit-29259 - voice · Yves Congar OP, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3 (1980) — https://archive.org/details/ibelieveinholysp0003cong ============================================================================== c. 1320 · An ark in every church Address: https://additions.church/1320 Addition · How it binds: Required In Ethiopia every church must hold a tabot, a copy of the Ark of the Covenant that only priests may see or touch. A national epic says the true Ark itself came to Aksum. First clear witness: Kebra Nagast, put into Ge’ez 1314–1322. Footing: qualified. This is the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches, the largest in this family. The practice is probably older than the epic that explains it. Carried today by: Oriental Orthodox (in part) 1 THE STORY Every Ethiopian Orthodox church, from the cathedral at Aksum to the smallest round church on a hillside, has at its heart a tablet of wood or stone called the tabot, kept wrapped in the sanctuary, carried out on feast days under a canopy with drums and dancing. The tabot is the church’s Ark of the Covenant, a copy of the one Ethiopia believes it holds in Aksum, and without a consecrated tabot a building is not a church and the liturgy cannot be celebrated. No other church identifies its altar tablet with the Ark; the Syrian tablitho and the Byzantine antimension are the same kind of object without the identification. The belief has a book. The Kebra Nagast, the Glory of Kings, tells how the queen of Sheba visited Solomon, bore him a son, Menelik, and how Menelik, grown, brought the Ark from Jerusalem to Ethiopia with the sons of Israel’s nobles. The book was put into Ge’ez, Ethiopia’s sacred language, between 1314 and 1322, at the court of a new dynasty that claimed descent from Solomon and needed the story. Older than the book may be the church’s keeping of parts of Israel’s law, the Sabbath, the food rules, circumcision; how old is disputed (see Not settled), and the Saturday Sabbath was only made law in 1450 (see c. 1440–1450). The apostolic writings have the ark in the heavenly temple of Revelation, and in Hebrews a priesthood that has set the old sanctuary aside. The entry is carried by the Oriental line alone, and marked with respect: it is one church’s identity, and it is also a condition of a valid church that no apostle laid down. The record gives the book and the texts. 2 THE CLAIM In the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches every church building holds at least one tabot: a consecrated tablet of wood or stone that stands for the tablets of the Law and for the Ark of the Covenant. It rests in the innermost sanctuary. Only priests may see or handle it, the liturgy cannot be celebrated without it, and on feast days it is carried out veiled. The national epic, the Kebra Nagast, tells that the true Ark was brought from Jerusalem to Ethiopia in the company of a son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It is said to be at Aksum now. NOT CLAIMED That Ethiopian Christianity is anything but ancient. The court of Aksum was Christian by about 340, and the faith there has survived much. What is dated here is the rule that a church needs an ark, and the claim about the Ark itself. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Jer 3:16 “They shall no more say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD.’ It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again.” Heb 8:13; 9:24 “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.” Christ has entered “not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself.” 2 Cor 3:3 “Written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” Rev 11:19 The only ark in the New Testament’s future: “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT What Jews of the apostles’ time believed. The Ark was gone. Josephus says the inner room of Herod’s temple held “nothing at all.” 2 Maccabees tells that Jeremiah hid it in a cave, and that “the place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again” (2 Macc 2:7). No Jewish source of the period sends it to Ethiopia. What the Old Testament says. The epic has the Ark leave Jerusalem in Solomon’s lifetime. Three centuries after Solomon, King Josiah tells the Levites, “Put the holy ark in the house that Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, built” (2 Chr 35:3). 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. No witness the other way has been found. The entry rests on the apostolic texts above, on Jeremiah 3:16, and on its first clear witness. A source showing Ethiopian churches without a tabot before the fourteenth century would strengthen it; a source showing the practice received earlier would move its date. 6 THE RECORD c. 340 Aksum King Ezana becomes a Christian. Frumentius is consecrated bishop for Ethiopia by Athanasius of Alexandria (Rufinus, Church History 10.9–10; Athanasius, Defense before Constantius 31, which preserves the emperor’s letter to the princes of Aksum about “Frumentius, bishop of that place”). c. 1200 Abu al-Makarim, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt A Coptic writer reports that the Abyssinians possess the Ark of the Covenant. This is the earliest known notice of the claim. 1270 The “Solomonic” dynasty Yekuno Amlak takes the throne. 1314–22 Kebra Nagast Its colophon, the note at the end of the manuscript, says that the book was turned into Arabic from a Coptic manuscript, and that one Isaac then put it into the language of Ethiopia with the approval of the governor Ya’ibika Egzi’. He held office under King Amda Seyon, and the date is inferred from that. 1520s Francisco Álvares A Portuguese chaplain describes altar stones carried in procession and reports that the church at Aksum is called Zion because its altar stone came from Mount Zion. 1868 Maqdala British troops carry off tabots after the battle. The British Museum holds eleven, all from Maqdala, and has never displayed them. Today Ethiopian Orthodox practice No church celebrates the liturgy without a consecrated tabot on its altar, and lay people may not look at it. The church’s own teaching: “churches are not considered churches until the local bishop gives them an Ark,” and “only priests are allowed to touch the Tabot” (Mahibere Kidusan, the church’s Sunday School Department, “Liturgical Worship,” 2023). 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Ethiopia” in the Greek Bible. The Septuagint uses Aithiopia to translate the Hebrew “Cush,” the kingdom on the Nile south of Egypt, in what is now Sudan. Psalm 68:31, “Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God,” and the Ethiopian official of Acts 8:27, who served the queen of Meroe, both refer to that country. The highland kingdom of Aksum later took the name and, with it, the texts. Sheba. The queen who visits Solomon in 1 Kings 10 comes from Saba, in south Arabia. The Kebra Nagast makes her an Ethiopian and gives her a son by Solomon. The Bible gives her neither. Josephus, in the apostles’ century, makes her queen “of Egypt and Ethiopia” (Antiquities 8.165), meaning the Nile kingdom of Meroe; he gives her no son and says nothing of the Ark. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible (1968) Ethiopian Christianity carries a striking number of Hebraic and Old Testament features. He thought some of them older than the country’s conversion. HISTORIAN Stuart Munro-Hay, The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant (2005) The tabot is an altar tablet. The claim to hold the Ark cannot be traced before the late twelfth century. HISTORIAN Ephraim Isaac, The Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahïdo Church (2012) An Ethiopian-born scholar surveys the church’s history and practice. Ethiopia’s Jewish inheritance is ancient, and the tabot is the heart of the church’s worship. HISTORIAN Maxime Rodinson, “Sur la question des ‘influences juives’ en Éthiopie” (1964) Many “Judaic” practices in Ethiopia are best explained as a Christian imitation of the Old Testament, not as survivals from before Christ. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Every ancient church has a consecrated altar. The tabot is ours.” (Oriental Orth.) As an altar tablet it is one form of a practice found across the East. That practice is itself later than the apostles, who broke bread at ordinary tables. What is particular to Ethiopia is the identification with the Ark, the inner room modeled on the holy of holies, and the veneration that follows. 2. “The Ark really is at Aksum.” No one outside is permitted to see it, so the claim cannot be tested. Against it stand Josiah’s words, Jeremiah’s prophecy, the Jewish testimony that the Ark was lost, and eight centuries of Ethiopian Christianity before the claim is first recorded. 3. “Revelation 11:19 shows the Ark still matters.” John sees it in heaven. Hebrews says the earthly copies have served their purpose. 4. “These customs show that Ethiopia kept the earliest, Jewish form of Christianity.” Some of them may be old. But the apostles ruled that Gentile believers are not bound to the law of Moses (Acts 15), and in any case a tablet without which no church can worship is not a first-century practice. 10 NOT SETTLED How old Ethiopia’s Sabbath-keeping, circumcision and food laws are is debated (Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, 1968, against Maxime Rodinson, “Sur la question des ‘influences juives’ en Éthiopie,” Journal of Semitic Studies 9, 1964). The sources and date of the Kebra Nagast behind its Ge’ez form are uncertain. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 340 · Aksum — https://bkv.unifr.ch/works/cpg-2129/versions/defence-before-constantius/divisions/32 - c. 1200 · Abu al-Makarim, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt — https://archive.org/details/churchesmonaster00abusuoft - 1270 · The “Solomonic” dynasty — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yekuno-Amlak - 1314–22 · Kebra Nagast — https://sacred-texts.com/chr/kn/kn118.htm - 1520s · Francisco Álvares — https://gutenberg.org/files/72622/72622-h/72622-h.htm - 1868 · Maqdala — https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/maqdala-collection - Today · Ethiopian Orthodox practice — https://eotcmk.org/e/?p=6673 - voice · Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible (1968) — https://archive.org/details/ethiopiabible0000ulle - voice · Stuart Munro-Hay, The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant (2005) — https://archive.org/details/questforarkofcov00munr - voice · Ephraim Isaac, The Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahïdo Church (2012) — https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/ethiopian-orthodox-tawahido-church - voice · Maxime Rodinson, “Sur la question des ‘influences juives’ en Éthiopie” (1964) — https://academic.oup.com/jss/issue/9/1 ============================================================================== 1336 · 1351 · How the unseen God is seen, defined twice Address: https://additions.church/1336 Narrowing · How it binds: Required Rome defines that the blessed see God’s essence itself. Fifteen years on, Constantinople defines that the essence is beyond sharing and God is met in his uncreated energies. First clear witness: Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus, 1336; Council of Constantinople, 1351; Council of Florence, 1439. Footing: qualified. Orthodox theology holds that 1351 names what the saints always knew; Rome holds that 1336 states what “face to face” means. Each is a fourteenth-century definition the other rejects while confessing every verse, and the Oriental churches bound neither. Benedict’s constitution carries no anathema; it defines “with apostolic authority,” Florence repeated it, and Rome counts its denial heresy. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY The Bible says that no one has ever seen God and that God dwells in unapproachable light, and it says that the pure in heart shall see God and that we shall see him as he is. For thirteen centuries the churches held both and did not define how. Then, within fifteen years, East and West each did, in opposite directions, and each has held its definition since. In Avignon, where the popes then lived, John XXII had preached in 1331 that the saints do not see God until the last judgment, and the theologians of Paris had risen against him. His successor Benedict XII settled it in 1336: the souls of the saints see the divine essence itself, face to face, with no creature in between, now. On Mount Athos, meanwhile, monks practicing a discipline of stillness and ceaseless prayer were claiming to see the uncreated light of God, the light the disciples saw on the mountain of the transfiguration. A Calabrian scholar named Barlaam called them deluded. Gregory Palamas, a monk and later archbishop of Thessalonica, defended them: God’s essence is beyond sight and sharing, but his energies, his uncreated working and glory, are God himself and can be seen and shared. A council in Constantinople in 1351, four years after a civil war that Palamas’s patron had won, made his distinction the faith of the church and added anathemas against those who denied it to the text read every year on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Each side affirms every verse and rejects the other’s account. By the rule of this page that makes each account a reading, and a reading cannot be bound. The entry dates both bindings on one card. The record gives the texts, the fathers each side cites, and the objection an Orthodox reader will raise, that this is recognition like Nicaea, with the answer. 2 THE CLAIM In 1336 Benedict XII defined, “with apostolic authority” and “to remain in force for ever,” that the souls of the saints “see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.” In 1351 a council at Constantinople declared the teaching of Gregory Palamas to be the faith of the church: God’s essence is wholly beyond knowledge and beyond sharing; his energies, such as the light the disciples saw at the transfiguration and the monks of Athos claimed to see in prayer, are uncreated and are God himself, yet distinct from the essence; by them human beings are made divine. Anathemas against those who deny this were added to the Synodikon read out each year on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The apostles say that no one has seen God or can see him, and that we shall see him as he is, and do not say how. Two accounts of how had lived side by side since the fourth century. Within fifteen years each half of the church bound one of them as a test of right belief, in opposite directions. NOT CLAIMED That either account is false, that Palamas or Benedict made his up, or that the promise of seeing God and sharing in his life is not biblical. What is dated is the binding of a mechanism, which no earlier council had required, which each side rejects in the other while confessing every verse, and which neither of the Oriental churches has received. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 1:18; 1 Tim 6:16 “No one has ever seen God.” He “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.” 1 John 3:2; 1 Cor 13:12 “We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” Matt 5:8; Rev 22:4 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” “They will see his face.” 2 Pet 1:4 “That through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” 1 Cor 6:17; 2 Cor 3:18 “He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Matt 17:2 “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” The apostles hold three things together, God unseen, God to be seen, and a real sharing in his life now, and do not explain how. Rome’s definition reads “face to face” as the essence; Constantinople’s reads “no one can see” as the essence. The page binds neither reading. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel’s way of speaking. The Scriptures speak of God’s glory, his name, his face, his presence in the cloud. Moses asks to see God’s glory and is shown his back, because “man shall not see me and live” (Exod 33:18–23). These are ways of saying that God is truly present and still beyond grasp. They are images, not a theory. The philosophers’ way. Philo of Alexandria, Paul’s older contemporary, used Greek philosophy to say that God’s essence is unknowable and that he is known by the working of his powers. Energeia is Aristotle’s word. The New Testament uses it for God’s working (Eph 1:19; Phil 3:21) and never as a category set over against his essence. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 376 Basil, Letter 234 “We know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence.” “Operations” translates the Greek energeiai. The sentence Palamas built on is a statement about how God is known. It bound no one, and for a thousand years no council made it a test. c. 390 Chrysostom, Homilies on John 15 On “no one has ever seen God”: “what God really is, not only have not the prophets seen, but not even angels nor archangels,” for “how can any created nature even see the Uncreated?” Aquinas read him as denying comprehension, not sight (Summa I.12.1 ad 1). Either way, the fourth century had not defined that the blessed see the essence, and Chrysostom had to be explained before Rome could. 6 THE RECORD c. 40 Philo, On the Special Laws 1.41–50 Moses asks to see God, and then God’s powers, and is told that neither can be grasped in essence. Only the imprint of their working can be known. c. 376 Basil, Letter 234 “We know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His operations come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.” “Operations” here translates the Greek energeiai. 413 Augustine, Letter 147, On Seeing God To Paulina: the saints will see God’s substance with the eyes of the heart, as the angels see it now; “no one has seen God” is said of the eyes of the body (English in Fathers of the Church 20, Letters 131–164). The West’s account, a generation after Basil’s, and no more binding than his. c. 500 The writings under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite A body of mystical theology that presents itself as the work of Paul’s convert at Athens (Acts 17:34). It was accepted as such in East and West for a thousand years, and Palamas and Aquinas both cite it. 681 Third Council of Constantinople Defines two “energies,” or operations, in Christ, one divine and one human. Until 1351 this was the term’s place in dogma. 1266–68 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.12 “It must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God,” by a created light of glory raising the mind. Chrysostom and Dionysius, he says, “speak of the vision of comprehension.” 1331–34 John XXII The pope preaches that the saints see only Christ’s humanity until the last judgment. The masters of Paris object; he withdraws the view on his deathbed in 1334. 1336 Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus “By this Constitution which is to remain in force for ever, we, with apostolic authority, define” that the saints “see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision.” There is no anathema; it is a definition, and Rome counts its denial heresy. 1341–51 Councils of Constantinople Barlaam is condemned in 1341. The dispute becomes entangled with a civil war (1341–47), which Palamas’s patron John Kantakouzenos wins. The council of 1351 then defines the distinction between essence and energies and adds its anathemas to the Synodikon (the Tomos of 1351, PG 151:717–762; the Synodikon additions, ed. J. Gouillard, Travaux et Mémoires 2, 1967; John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 1959; English 1964 tells the story). 1368 Palamas is declared a saint The synodal act is the patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos’s. In the same year Prochoros Kydones, an Athonite monk who had translated Aquinas into Greek, is condemned for opposing him (John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 1959; English 1964). 1439 Council of Florence, decree of union with the Greeks Repeats Rome’s definition: the souls of the cleansed “behold clearly the one and triune God himself, as he is” (intueri clare ipsum Deum trinum et unum, sicuti est). The Greek delegates sign; their churches repudiate the union within the decade. 1944–59 Lossky and Meyendorff The teaching, long in the background, is brought forward as the heart of Orthodox theology. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A pseudonym. The author called Dionysius wrote around the year 500 and drew on the pagan philosopher Proclus. A bishop, Hypatius of Ephesus, doubted the writings when they were first cited in 532. Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus argued that the author could not have been Paul’s convert, and in 1895 Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayr demonstrated his dependence on Proclus. Palamas, like Aquinas, believed he was reading a witness from the apostles’ own circle. 2 Peter 1:4. The verse says believers share in the divine “nature.” Palamas reads “nature” as the energies, since the essence cannot be shared; Calvin reads it as God’s qualities; a Latin reads it as the essence shared by participation and not by identity. The word says the sharing is real and does not say its mode. Seeing and comprehending. Rome’s definition reads “face to face” and “as he is” as the essence, and takes “no one has ever seen” to mean the eyes of the body (Augustine) or comprehension (Aquinas). The East reads the same verses the other way round. Each side’s exegesis supplies the term the text lacks. Knowing and being. Basil’s point in Letter 234 is about knowledge: we know God by what he does. Whether he meant a real distinction within God, as the council of 1351 defined, is disputed by scholars who know the texts well. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas (French 1959; English 1964) Palamas faithfully sums up the Greek fathers against a humanist rationalism. ORTHODOX David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West (2004) Follows energeia from Aristotle through Paul and the Cappadocians to Palamas, and argues that the East kept a line of thought the West lost. ANGLICAN Rowan Williams, “The Philosophical Structures of Palamism,” Eastern Churches Review 9 (1977) Argues that the distinction carries Neoplatonist assumptions into the doctrine of God and creates more problems than it solves. CATHOLIC Martin Jugie (1930s), and the later Catholic reception Jugie called Palamism a novel theology and an error. Rome has never ruled on it. John Paul II praised Palamas as a great theologian, and some Eastern Catholic churches keep his feast. ORTHODOX David Bentley Hart, The Hidden and the Manifest (2017) An Orthodox critic of the modern school that hardens the distinction into a division within God. PROTESTANT Michael Allen, Grounded in Heaven (2018); Hans Boersma, Seeing God (2018) Two Protestant retrievals of the vision of God. Allen keeps the Reformed accent on Christ as the one in whom God is seen; Boersma draws on Gregory of Nyssa and Palamas and leaves the mode open. Neither binds one. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Palamas only made explicit what Basil, Maximus and John of Damascus taught.” (Orthodox) He drew on them, and the continuity is real; that is why this entry is a narrowing and not an addition. A council then made one construction of their language binding under anathema. Byzantines as Orthodox as he was opposed it at the time, and no church outside the Byzantine tradition has adopted it. 2. “Without this distinction, union with God is either pantheism or a figure of speech.” (Orthodox) That is a serious theological argument. The Latin West answers the same problem differently, and the Oriental churches use neither formula. A doctrine can be a good answer to a real problem and still not be something the apostles required anyone to confess. 3. “The monks saw the light of Tabor.” (Orthodox) No document can settle what they saw, and the page does not deny it. What the apostles promise is that we shall see him “as he is.” 4. “This is recognition in what it excludes, exactly as you grant Nicaea. God ‘dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen’ (1 Tim 6:16), and yet ‘we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2), and we are ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1:4). The distinction is forced by the text.” (Orthodox) The texts are forced; the distinction is not. The test the opening page sets is not whether a definition uses a word the apostles did not use, since homoousios and “two natures” do, but whether the view it anathematizes can be shown to deny what a text asserts. Arius affirmed every verse and still had to say “there was when he was not,” which denies John 1:1; each of Chalcedon’s four adverbs shuts out a denial of a text. Akindynos and the whole Latin West affirm every verse and say the energies are not really distinct from the essence, and no text is denied by saying so. What can be held without denying a text is a reading, and the rule allows no reading to be bound. The page does not say the distinction is false. Palamas may have the better reading of how the unseen God is seen. What it says is that the apostles did not require anyone to confess it, and a council did; and it says the same of Rome’s definition of the opposite, fifteen years earlier, on the same card. 5. “‘Face to face’ and ‘as he is’ mean the essence. Benedict defined what the text says.” (Catholic) The verses are in the text; “essence” is not, and “whom no one has ever seen or can see” is in the text too. Whether “as he is” means the essence itself or the uncreated glory in which the essence stays hidden is exactly what the East denies while holding every verse, as Augustine already had to argue against readers of “no one has seen God” in 413. A reading that the other half of the church rejects without denying a text is a reading. Benedict defined it “with apostolic authority” and “to remain in force for ever,” and that is the binding dated here. 6. “Palamism denies God’s simplicity.” (Catholic) That was the Latin charge, and Palamas denied it: God is wholly present in each energy, and the energies are not parts. Rome’s own definition of 1336 is a fourteenth-century precision as well. East and West each made its theory of the vision of God binding within fifteen years of the other, in opposite directions, and this entry dates both. 7. “Then why is the Protestant line not counted? Westminster speaks of ‘the immediate vision and fruition of God.’” It does (Larger Catechism 90), and it defines no mode and anathematizes no one; Calvin warns against going past the text on the matter (Institutes 3.25.10–11). A church that hopes for the vision of God in the text’s words and binds no account of it is doing what this page asks. If a Protestant body made the essence-vision or the energies a condition of its communion, its date would go here. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether the distinction is real, formal or conceptual is argued among Orthodox theologians today. Whether Chrysostom and the Greek fathers denied the sight of God’s essence or only its comprehension is the hinge of the Latin reading of them, and is argued both ways. The page takes no position on whether Palamas or Benedict was right. It dates the two definitions. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 376 · Basil, Letter 234 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202234.htm - c. 390 · Chrysostom, Homilies on John 15 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/240115.htm - c. 40 · Philo, On the Special Laws 1.41–50 — http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book27.html - 413 · Augustine, Letter 147, On Seeing God — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Augustine+Letters+131-164+Fathers+of+the+Church+20+Parsons - c. 500 · The writings under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite — https://ccel.org/ccel/dionysius/works.html - 681 · Third Council of Constantinople — https://tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/Npnf2-14-128.htm - 1266–68 · Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.12 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1012.htm - 1331–34 · John XXII — https://archive.org/details/originsofpapalin0000tier - 1336 · Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/ben12/b12bdeus.htm - 1341–51 · Councils of Constantinople — https://archive.org/details/studyofgregorypa0000meye - 1368 · Palamas is declared a saint — https://archive.org/details/studyofgregorypa0000meye - 1439 · Council of Florence, decree of union with the Greeks — https://www.vatican.va/content/eugenius-iv/la/documents/bulla-laetentur-caeli-6-iulii-1439.html - 1944–59 · Lossky and Meyendorff — https://archive.org/details/mysticaltheology0000vlad - voice · John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas (French 1959; English 1964) — https://archive.org/details/studyofgregorypa0000meye - voice · David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West (2004) — https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/aristotle-east-and-west/51AB6B683806BF9A3969F990A49DC9C3 - voice · Rowan Williams, “The Philosophical Structures of Palamism,” Eastern Churches Review 9 (1977) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Rowan+Williams+Philosophical+Structures+of+Palamism - voice · Martin Jugie (1930s), and the later Catholic reception — https://bekkos.wordpress.com/martin-jugie-the-palamite-controversy/ - voice · David Bentley Hart, The Hidden and the Manifest (2017) — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802873798/the-hidden-and-the-manifest/ - voice · Michael Allen, Grounded in Heaven (2018); Hans Boersma, Seeing God (2018) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Boersma+Seeing+God+Beatific+Vision+in+Christian+Tradition ============================================================================== c. 1400 · A wall of icons before the table Address: https://additions.church/1400 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The low screen before the altar grows into a solid wall. The table is now out of the people’s sight. First clear witness: The high iconostasis, Russia, around 1400. Footing: qualified. Low chancel screens are far older. The prayer at the table was already being said out of hearing by 565, when Justinian tried to forbid it. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY In the early churches the table stood in view of the people. In the great basilicas of the East a low barrier, the templon, marked off the sanctuary, a railing with columns and a beam, through which everyone could see. From the eleventh century icons began to be set on the beam and between the columns, and the screen grew. In Russia, around 1400, it became a wall: tier upon tier of icons from floor to vault, Christ enthroned at the center with Mary and John the Baptist turned toward him, the feasts above, the prophets above those, and three doors, the central pair closed and curtained except at the moments the liturgy opens them. The painters were the greatest the Russian church produced. Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev worked on the screen of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin in 1405, and Rublev’s Trinity, painted later for a monastery near Moscow, is the most famous icon in the world. The wall is a work of art and of theology: heaven shown to the people. It is also a wall. The table where the bread is broken is behind it, and the people, who in the first century sat around the table, now stand before doors that close at the central moments, while the prayer of thanksgiving is said behind them in a voice they cannot hear, apart from its closing phrases. The entry is marked “replaced”: no council ordered the wall, and it became the normal shape of the Eastern church. It is carried by the Eastern line. The record gives the growth of the screen and the texts about a veil that was torn. 2 THE CLAIM In the church buildings of the fourth century a low rail marked off the space around the table. In Byzantium it became a row of columns. From the eleventh and twelfth centuries icons were set between the columns, and in Russia around 1400 the screen grew into a solid wall several tiers high, closed with doors and a curtain. By then the prayers at the table had long been said too quietly to hear. In an Orthodox church of this kind the people stand before doors that close at the central moments, the prayer of thanksgiving is said behind them in a voice they cannot hear apart from its closing phrases, and a layman may not enter the place where it is done. NOT CLAIMED That the screen is meaningless to those who pray before it, or that every Orthodox church has a high one. Orthodox writers explain it as a window onto heaven. What is dated here is what it does to the gathering. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Mark 15:38 “The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” Heb 10:19–20 “We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain.” Heb 9:8 The old arrangement meant “that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing.” 1 Cor 14:16 The thanksgiving must be heard and understood: otherwise “how can anyone in the position of an outsider say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The temple’s grades of holiness. Israel’s sanctuary had a court for the people, a court for priests, a holy place, and behind a veil the holy of holies, which the high priest alone entered once a year (Heb 9:7). The letter to the Hebrews says that this arrangement was itself the sign that access was not yet open, and that Christ has opened it. Awe as a model. The mystery cults of the apostles’ day kept their rites from the uninitiated, and a vocabulary of fear and distance was available. The New Testament’s word for the church’s approach is confidence: “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus” (Heb 10:19). When the table came to be called “fearful,” when the curtained court of the later emperors became a model, and when the building was explained by the temple’s plan, are in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 565 Justinian, Novel 137.6 Orders bishops and presbyters to say the prayers of the oblation and of baptism aloud, not inaudibly, so that the people may hear and answer Amen. The emperor is fighting a screen of silence; the screen of wood came eight centuries later. 6 THE RECORD c. 155 Justin, First Apology 65, 67 The one presiding gives thanks aloud “according to his ability,” and all the people answer “Amen.” c. 315 Eusebius, Church History 10.4 In the new church at Tyre the altar is surrounded by a wooden lattice so that the crowd cannot approach it. c. 380–400 Chrysostom and the Syrian preachers The sacrifice is “this most awful mystery,” and the rites of the new covenant are “fearful and full of awe” (Chrysostom, On the Priesthood 3.4), in language shared with the mystery religions and the late imperial court, where from Diocletian on the ruler sat behind curtains (Edmund Bishop, “Fear and awe attaching to the Eucharistic service,” in Connolly, The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai, 1909). Distance and silence come to seem the fitting response to holy things. 565 Justinian, Novel 137 The emperor orders bishops and presbyters to say the prayers of the Eucharist and of baptism “not silently but with a voice which may be heard by the faithful,” and quotes 1 Corinthians 14:16. The silent prayer was already common. 692 Council in Trullo, canon 69 “It is not permitted to a layman to enter the sanctuary.” The emperor is excepted, “in accordance with a certain ancient tradition.” c. 730 Germanus of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy Explains each part of the building and the rite as an image of heaven and of the temple. c. 1050–1350 The Byzantine templon Icons are placed first on the beam above the columns, from about the eleventh or twelfth century, and later, at dates scholars dispute, in the spaces between them (Sharon Gerstel, ed., Thresholds of the Sacred, 2006). 1405–08 Moscow and Vladimir Screens of three and four tiers, with icons larger than life, appear in the cathedrals of the Annunciation in Moscow and the Dormition in Vladimir. They are traditionally attributed to Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny. The five-tier wall is complete in the sixteenth century (Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, on the iconostasis). 1905–18 The Russian reform debate Asked in 1905–06 what needed reform, a number of bishops call for worship the people can follow, with the prayers said aloud. The council of 1917–18 takes up the question, and the revolution ends it before it acts. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Hebrews read backward. The description of the tabernacle in Hebrews 9 became the pattern for the Christian sanctuary. The letter describes that pattern in order to say it is finished. Mystery. In Paul a mystery is something once hidden and now made public: “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Col 1:26). In later usage the word came to mean a rite that must be veiled. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Robert Taft SJ, “The Decline of Communion in Byzantium and the Distancing of the Congregation from the Liturgical Action” (2006) A Jesuit of the Byzantine rite and the leading historian of that liturgy. Documents each step: the silent prayer by the sixth century, the enclosed sanctuary, communion become rare. He is cautious about which caused which. ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (Russian 1984; English 1988) The laity became spectators at a rite performed by the clergy. He argues for the prayers said aloud. ORTHODOX Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis (written 1921–22; published 1972) The best defense. The screen does not hide the altar. It makes visible the saints who stand around it, and without it the worshiper would see nothing of heaven at all. ORTHODOX Nicholas Afanasiev, The Lord’s Supper (1952) In the early church the whole assembly celebrated. The later separation of sanctuary and nave contradicts that. HISTORIAN Sharon Gerstel, ed., Thresholds of the Sacred (2006) The archaeology and art history of the screen from late antiquity onward. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The iconostasis reveals heaven. It joins the two realms.” (Orthodox) That is a true account of what it means to those formed by it. The page records a different kind of fact: the table cannot be seen, the prayer cannot be heard, and the explanation given for both is the plan of the temple. 2. “Screens are ancient, and the West built them too.” Low screens are attested from the fourth century, and the medieval West had its rood screens, wooden screens topped by a crucifix, most of which came down after the sixteenth century. The entry dates the high wall, not the rail. 3. “Holy things call for reverence and reserve.” Reverence, certainly. The apostles’ own word for the gospel is a secret now told, and the thanksgiving they describe is spoken so that everyone can answer it. 4. “Many parishes now open the doors and pray aloud.” They do. Those parishes are removing this addition, and they cite Justin and Justinian for it. 10 NOT SETTLED How far the screen caused the people’s withdrawal, and how far it only expressed it, is unsettled (Robert Taft, “The Decline of Communion in Byzantium and the Distancing of the Congregation from the Liturgical Action,” in Thresholds of the Sacred, 2006). 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 565 · Justinian, Novel 137.6 — https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/novels/121-140/Novel%20137_Replacement.pdf - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 65, 67 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxvii.html - c. 315 · Eusebius, Church History 10.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250110.htm - c. 380–400 · Chrysostom and the Syrian preachers — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/19223.htm - 565 · Justinian, Novel 137 — https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/novels/121-140/Novel%20137_Replacement.pdf - 692 · Council in Trullo, canon 69 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm - c. 730 · Germanus of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy — https://archive.org/details/ondivineliturgy1984germ - c. 1050–1350 · The Byzantine templon — https://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/books/thresholds-of-the-sacred-architectural-art - 1405–08 · Moscow and Vladimir — https://archive.org/details/theologyoficon0000ousp - 1905–18 · The Russian reform debate — https://www.stlukeorthodox.com/files/html/thefaith/schmemann.htm - voice · Robert Taft SJ, “The Decline of Communion in Byzantium and the Distancing of the Congregation from the Liturgical Action” (2006) — https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780884023111 - voice · Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (Russian 1984; English 1988) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Schmemann+%22The+Eucharist%22+%22Sacrament+of+the+Kingdom%22 - voice · Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis (written 1921–22; published 1972) — https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Pavel_Florenskij/ikonostas/ - voice · Nicholas Afanasiev, The Lord’s Supper (1952) — https://myslavsky.pp.ua/ecclesia/trapeza_poln.htm - voice · Sharon Gerstel, ed., Thresholds of the Sacred (2006) — https://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/books/thresholds-of-the-sacred-architectural-art ============================================================================== c. 1440–1450 · Mary’s feasts by royal decree Address: https://additions.church/1445 Addition · How it binds: Required Emperor Zara Yaqob sets more than thirty feasts of Mary and orders his subjects to bow before her image. Monks who refuse are put to death. In 1450 his council makes Saturday a second Sabbath. First clear witness: Zara Yaqob, emperor of Ethiopia 1434–1468; Council of Debre Mitmaq, 1450. Footing: firm. Ethiopia again. Copts, Syrians and Armenians keep their own feasts and hymns to Mary without this decree. Carried today by: Oriental Orthodox (in part) 1 THE STORY Zara Yaqob ruled Ethiopia from 1434 to 1468, and he ruled the church as he ruled the army. He wrote theology, and he enforced it. A dispute had divided Ethiopian monks for a century over the Sabbath: one party, the followers of a monk named Ewostatewos, kept Saturday as well as Sunday, and had been excommunicated for it; the other party, backed by the metropolitan sent from Egypt, kept Sunday alone. At a council at Debre Mitmaq in 1450 the emperor settled it by decree: both days were to be kept. He did the same for Mary. Zara Yaqob commanded that thirty-three feasts of Mary be kept each year, one in every month and more besides, and that the people prostrate themselves before her icon and keep her days with the rigor of Sundays. Those who would not were punished as heretics, and some were. He composed the books of readings for the feasts himself. The Ethiopian church has kept his calendar ever since, and its devotion to Mary, deep before him, has the shape he gave it. The apostolic writings say that one man esteems one day above another and that no one is to pass judgment in questions of festival, and they last mention Mary before Pentecost. The entry is on the Oriental line alone, marked “required” because the emperor bound it with penalties. The record gives the council, the decrees and the texts. 2 THE CLAIM Zara Yaqob, emperor of Ethiopia from 1434 to 1468, reshaped the church by decree. He set more than thirty feasts of Mary in the year, had readings from the Miracles of Mary added to the services, and required all his subjects to bow before her image and before the cross. Monks who refused, the followers of Abba Estifanos, were tortured and put to death. In 1450 his council at Debre Mitmaq ended a long quarrel by ordering Saturday and Sunday both to be kept as Sabbaths. NOT CLAIMED That this is the practice of all the Oriental churches, or that devotion to Mary began here. Syrian and Coptic hymns to her go back to the fourth and fifth centuries (see c. 600). What is dated here is devotion and calendar imposed by a king, on pain of death. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 4:10 “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Luke 11:27–28 “Blessed is the womb that bore you …” “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Col 2:16 “Let no one pass judgment on you … with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” Gal 4:10–11 “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The king as reformer. Zara Yaqob ruled as an heir of David and Solomon (see c. 1320), and his model was the reforming kings of Judah, Hezekiah and Josiah, who purged and ordered Israel’s worship by royal command. The New Testament gives no ruler that role in the church, and it leaves days free: “Let no one pass judgment on you … with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Col 2:16; compare Rom 14:5). Where the Sabbath rule and the book of miracles came from is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. No witness the other way has been found beyond the calendar itself. Before Zara Yaqob the Ethiopian church kept the Marian feasts of its Coptic mother church, a handful in the year. The king’s chronicle presents the thirty-three as his own decree, and the deaths of the monks who refused are recorded by his own side. 6 THE RECORD c. 380 Apostolic Constitutions 8.33 “Let the slaves work five days; but on the Sabbath-day and the Lord’s day let them have leisure to go to church for instruction in piety.” 1352 Ewostatewos The monk who championed the Saturday Sabbath dies in exile in Armenia. The bishops sent from Alexandria, who held the Sabbath to be Jewish, oppose his followers and keep them from orders until the king’s council of 1450 takes their side (Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia 1270–1527, 1972). 1434–68 Zara Yaqob Institutes “more than 30 feasts” of Mary and requires prostration before her image. The decrees are in his own writings, edited by Getatchew Haile, The Mariology of Emperor Zär’a Ya‘eqob of Ethiopia (1992). c. 1441 The Miracles of Mary Ordered to be read in church on Sundays and on her feasts. 1450 Council of Debre Mitmaq The two Sabbaths are made law. The Egyptian bishops give way (Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia 1270–1527, 1972, chapter 5). c. 1450–60 The Stephanites The followers of Abba Estifanos refuse to bow to the image of Mary or to the king, saying that worship belongs to God alone. They are flogged, mutilated and executed. Their own Acts (the Gädlä Estifanos) record the trials; Tamrat, chapter 5, tells the story from both sides. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED A pseudonymous law book. The Apostolic Constitutions present fourth-century custom as the direct commands of the Twelve. The Council in Trullo rejected the book in 692 as corrupted. In Ethiopia it kept its apostolic authority, and a rule about slaves’ rest days became a national Sabbath. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Getatchew Haile, The Mariology of Emperor Zär’a Ya‘eqob of Ethiopia (1992) Edits the emperor’s own writings and documents his Marian program and its enforcement. HISTORIAN Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (1972) The standard history. The emperor used doctrine and cult to unify a divided kingdom. ORIENTAL ORTH. The Coptic bishops of the time Opposed keeping Saturday until Zara Yaqob brought the two Egyptian metropolitans, Mikael and Gabriel, to accept both Sabbaths at the Council of Debre Mitmaq (1450). Here one Oriental church objected to another’s addition. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Honor shown to the mother is honor to the Son, and a bow is not worship.” That is the distinction of 787, and the same reply applies. Here there is a further fact. The bow was commanded by a king, and those whose conscience forbade it were killed. 2. “He ended a schism and unified the church.” He did, by requiring everyone to keep both days. The apostles’ rule for disputes over days is the opposite: “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). 3. “The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments.” (Oriental Orth.) Paul names it among the things for which no Christian is to be judged (Col 2:16). His triad, festival, new moon, Sabbath, is the Old Testament’s own formula for the whole calendar, weekly Sabbath included (1 Chr 23:31; Ezek 45:17; Hos 2:11), and the apostles met on the first day (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2) without making a rule of it. The page does not ask Ethiopia to drop Saturday; it dates the day a king made it law. 4. “This is one country’s history. It is unfair to the Oriental churches as a whole.” The entry says the same, and the line marks it as carried in part. Ethiopia is nevertheless by far the largest church in this family, and these are still its rules. 10 NOT SETTLED The Ethiopian church honors Zara Yaqob as a theologian-king who healed a schism, and long remembered the Stephanites as heretics. How they should be understood is under fresh study; calling them early Protestants claims more than is known. The date of the decree on the Miracles of Mary is approximate. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 380 · Apostolic Constitutions 8.33 — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf07.ix.ix.iv.html - 1352 · Ewostatewos — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Taddesse+Tamrat+Church+and+State+in+Ethiopia+1270-1527 - 1434–68 · Zara Yaqob — https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002601231 - c. 1441 · The Miracles of Mary — https://archive.org/details/onehundredtenmir0000budg - 1450 · Council of Debre Mitmaq — https://archive.org/details/churchstateineth0000tadd - c. 1450–60 · The Stephanites — https://archive.org/details/churchstateineth0000tadd - voice · Getatchew Haile, The Mariology of Emperor Zär’a Ya‘eqob of Ethiopia (1992) — https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002601231 - voice · Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (1972) — https://archive.org/details/churchstateineth0000tadd - voice · The Coptic bishops of the time — https://archive.org/details/churchstateineth0000tadd ============================================================================== 1525 · The Supper becomes a memory aid Address: https://additions.church/1525 Addition · How it binds: Made normative In Zurich the bread and cup become signs that call Christ’s death to mind. The early realism is cut along with the Mass. First clear witness: Zwingli’s Zurich liturgy, Easter 1525. Footing: qualified. Zwingli also put a plain table back among the people and gave them the cup. Carried today by: Protestant 1 THE STORY Huldrych Zwingli was the people’s priest of the great minster in Zurich, a humanist who had read Erasmus’s Greek New Testament and preached straight through Matthew from the pulpit, and by 1523 he had the city council on his side. The images came out of the churches in 1524. At Easter 1525 the Mass was abolished, and in its place Zwingli set a Supper so plain it startled visitors: the people sat, the bread was carried round on wooden plates and the wine in wooden cups, with readings from 1 Corinthians 11:20–29 and John 6:47–63, the creed and a few prayers, and no more. It was to be held four times a year. Zwingli’s reason was in the Greek. “This is my body,” he argued, means “this signifies my body,” as “I am the door” does not make Christ a door; the bread is a sign by which the church remembers, and the body of Christ is in heaven. Luther thought this emptied the Supper and said so with violence; the two met at Marburg in 1529 and could not agree, and that failure is dated at 1529. But Zwingli’s reading spread, and most of the Protestant world, Reformed and Baptist and free, holds the Supper as a memorial, or as a spiritual feeding by faith, with the meal gone and the realism of the second century gone with it. This entry is on the Protestant line only, and it is marked “made normative”: Zurich bound no one by penalty, and the memorial became the normal Protestant Supper. The page’s own reading, stated as a reading, is on the record, with the second-century witnesses that Zwingli set aside. 2 THE CLAIM In Zurich at Easter 1525 the Mass was replaced by a plain Supper understood as a memorial. Bread and wine are signs that call Christ’s death to mind and mark out the community that remembers. In later Baptist and free-church practice this hardened into “only a symbol.” That reading removes more than the medieval doctrine. It also removes the realism of the second-century church and, this page argues, the participation Paul describes. NOT CLAIMED That Zwingli denied any presence of Christ, or that the only alternative is transubstantiation. His last writings speak of Christ truly present to faith. The reading this page takes, and holds as a reading and not as a test, is a real sharing in Christ by the Spirit at the covenant meal: the realism of the second century before any definition (Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 7.1; Justin, First Apology 66; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.5), read through 1 Corinthians 10:16. It is older than Zurich and older than Geneva, and no one is asked to sign it. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 10:16 “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” 1 Cor 10:18, 21 The comparison is with real altars: “are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? … You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” 1 Cor 11:24–26 “Do this in remembrance of me … you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” 1 Cor 11:27, 30 Eating unworthily makes one “guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. … That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Passover remembrance. The Supper was instituted at Passover, where to remember is to take part. “This day shall be for you a memorial day” (Exod 12:14); the father tells his son, “It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt” (13:8); the bread is eaten “that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt” (Deut 16:3); and the worshiper who brings firstfruits tells the story in the first person, “the LORD brought us out of Egypt” (Deut 26:8). A Jewish “memorial” makes the past event present to those who keep it. Sacred meals. In the Greek cities, to eat at a god’s table was to share in the god. Paul takes that for granted in 1 Corinthians 10:18–21 and uses it as his argument. A meal that only pictures something is not the category he is working with. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 7.1 “The Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins.” The realism this page takes as its reading is the earliest reading on record, fourteen centuries before Zurich. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 66 “Not as common bread and common drink do we receive these.” 6 THE RECORD c. 110 Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 7 Some stay away from the Eucharist because “they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” c. 155 Justin, First Apology 66 “Not as common bread and common drink do we receive these.” The food over which thanks has been given “is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.5 After the invocation the bread “is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly.” c. 840 Paschasius and Ratramnus of Corbie The first sustained written disagreement over the Eucharist, traditionally called the first eucharistic controversy. Ratramnus defends a spiritual, figurative presence and is not condemned in his lifetime. 1525 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion; the Zurich rite Unleavened bread on wooden plates and wine in wooden cups are carried to the people where they sit. 1529 Marburg Luther chalks “Hoc est corpus meum,” “This is my body,” on the table. They agree on fourteen of fifteen articles, but not on whether Christ’s body is bodily present. 1549 Consensus Tigurinus Calvin and Zwingli’s successor Bullinger agree that the signs are not empty: by the Spirit, believers receive what the signs show. 1689 Second London Baptist Confession 30.7 Worthy receivers “spiritually receive, and feed upon Christ crucified.” The early Baptists were not bare memorialists. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Zwingli’s tools. He was trained as a humanist in the school of Erasmus, with a sharp division between spirit and matter: a physical thing cannot convey a spiritual gift. He took the reading “this signifies my body” from a letter of the Dutch lawyer Cornelius Hoen in 1524. The framework is sixteenth-century and Platonist. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ANGLICAN J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1958) Early teaching about the Eucharist was, in general, realist: the bread and wine were treated and spoken of as the Lord’s body and blood. PROTESTANT W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (1986) “Memorialism” sells Zwingli short. His later work affirms Christ present to the faith of the communicant. PROTESTANT Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (1935) Sets the words of institution in the Passover and reads “remembrance” from Jewish usage. ANGLICAN Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (2000) Remembrance in Paul is covenantal identification with Christ’s death, more than an act of recall. ANGLICAN Paul Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (2004) A caution for every side: the earliest evidence is varied, and not every early meal text mentions the body and blood at all (the Didache does not). 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Jesus himself said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’” (Protestant) He said it at Passover, where remembrance means taking part in the event remembered. And Paul, handing on those same words, calls the meal a participation and warns that it can be eaten to one’s harm. 2. “‘This is my body’ is a figure, like ‘I am the door.’” (Protestant) It may be. The page claims only that the bare-sign reading has no clear witness in the early church and is thinner than Paul’s language. 3. “Realism leads straight to transubstantiation and the Mass.” (Protestant) It did not for a thousand years. Second-century realism had no theory of substance, no host lifted up to be adored, no cup withheld. Calvin, the early Baptists and the East show that there is ground between Zurich and Lateran IV. 4. “Then you grant the fathers taught the Real Presence. Come home.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Early realism is granted, plainly. What the early texts do not have is the definition of 1215, a priest who offers the sacrifice, or the loss of the meal. Those are dated on this page too. 10 NOT SETTLED What early realism meant is itself disputed. For the fathers a symbol and a reality were not opposites: Tertullian can call the bread the “figure” of the body, and Augustine speaks of signs. Zwingli’s own final view remains debated among his interpreters. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 7.1 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 66 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103418.htm - c. 840 · Paschasius and Ratramnus of Corbie — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xi.xxii.html - 1525 · Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion; the Zurich rite — https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/archives-replacing-the-mass - 1529 · Marburg — https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/the-marburg-colloquy-the-marburg-articles-1529 - 1549 · Consensus Tigurinus — https://apostles-creed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/The-Consenus-Tigurinus-Zurich.pdf - 1689 · Second London Baptist Confession 30.7 — https://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/1689lbc/english/Chapter30.htm - voice · J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1958) — https://archive.org/details/earlychristiando0000kell_s3t1 - voice · W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (1986) — https://archive.org/details/theologyofhuldry0000step - voice · Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (1935) — https://archive.org/details/eucharisticwords0000jere - voice · Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (2000) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Thiselton+%22First+Epistle+to+the+Corinthians%22 - voice · Paul Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (2004) — https://spckpublishing.co.uk/eucharistic-origins-pb ============================================================================== 1526 · 1547 · 1644 · 1755 · Which baptism counts, made a test Address: https://additions.church/1526 Narrowing · How it binds: Required Zurich drowns a man for baptizing believers who had been baptized as infants, and Trent anathematizes it. The London Baptists make immersion of believers the only baptism. Constantinople declares the West’s baptisms void. First clear witness: Zurich, 1526; Trent, Session 7, 1547; First London Confession, 1644; Second London Confession, 1689; Oros of Constantinople, 1755. Footing: contested. Baptizing believers is the apostles’ practice and is not what is dated. What is dated is making one answer, to a case the apostles never met, a condition of communion or of life. The Protestant line carries it in both directions, and the East in part. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant (in part), Eastern Orthodox (in part) 1 THE STORY On the evening of 21 January 1525, in the house of Felix Manz in Zurich, a small group who had been reading the Bible together concluded that baptism belongs to those who believe. Every one of them had been baptized as an infant, and the city had just ordered all infants baptized. Conrad Grebel baptized George Blaurock, and Blaurock baptized the rest. Within fourteen months Zurich threatened with death those who persisted, and on 5 January 1527 Manz was taken out on the river Limmat and drowned. Two years later the imperial diet at Speyer, the same diet at which the Lutheran princes made the protest that gave Protestants their name, ordered every Anabaptist and every rebaptized person put to death. The confessions followed the magistrates. The Lutherans at Augsburg in 1530 condemned the Anabaptists by name; Trent in 1547 anathematized anyone who said that those baptized as infants should be baptized again; the Reformed Belgic Confession of 1561 rejected “the error of the Anabaptists.” A century later the Baptists of London bound the other answer: baptism only for those who profess faith, and only by dipping the whole body, so that a believer sprinkled as a child was not baptized at all and, in many of their churches, could not come to the table. John Bunyan, a Baptist, argued in 1673 that the difference was no bar to communion, and the Baptists of 1689 printed their disagreement on the point beside their confession. In 1755 three Eastern patriarchs declared the baptisms of the West “useless waters” and ordered converts baptized with three immersions, though a synod at Moscow in 1667 had ruled the other way. The apostles baptized people who believed, in water, once, in the name of Jesus, and never met a believer who had been washed as a baby, or by pouring, or in a rival church. This entry does not date baptizing believers, which is what the apostles did, and it does not call any of these baptisms valid or void. It dates each church’s answer to a case the apostles never met, made a condition of communion or of life, on three lines, and in both directions on the Protestant one. The record gives the texts, the first readers who divided over the question in 256, and the confessions. 2 THE CLAIM That believers are baptized is in the text: “Repent and be baptized every one of you” (Acts 2:38), and “when they believed Philip … they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12). So is “one baptism” (Eph 4:5). This page dates neither. What the apostles never met is a believer who had been washed before he believed, or washed by pouring, or washed in a rival church, and the text gives no ruling on whether such a washing is the one baptism. From 1526 each church bound an answer. In Zurich the first believers who had been baptized as infants were baptized again on 21 January 1525. In March 1526 the city threatened with death those who persisted, and on 5 January 1527 it drowned Felix Manz in the Limmat. The imperial diet at Speyer (1529) ordered “every Anabaptist and rebaptized person” put to death. The Lutheran and Reformed confessions condemned the Anabaptists by name (Augsburg 9, 1530; Belgic 34, 1561), and Trent anathematized anyone who says that those baptized as infants “are to be rebaptized when they have attained to years of discretion” (1547). The London Baptists bound the opposite answer: baptism “only upon persons professing faith,” by “dipping or plunging the whole body under water” (1644), immersion “necessary to the due administration” (1689), and in many of their churches no table and no membership for a believer baptized as an infant. In 1755 the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria and Jerusalem called baptisms given in the West “useless waters,” required three immersions, and received converts “as unholy and unbaptized.” In plain words: the page does not date baptizing a believer, which is what the apostles did, and it does not date immersion, which the first church used wherever it could. It dates each church making its answer to a case the apostles never met a condition of communion, of membership or of life. Earlier rulings, from the quarrel between Carthage and Rome in 256 to Lateran II in 1139, are on the record below. NOT CLAIMED That infant baptism is valid, or that it is void; that immersion is not the fullest sign; or that a church may not baptize a believer who asks for it. Three things a reader should not take from this entry: that the page counts the Anabaptists’ baptism of believers as an addition, when it counts it as the practice the text shows (the addition, infant baptism, is dated at c. 200–253); that the page sides with the Baptists against Rome, when it dates the Baptist binding beside Rome’s; and that it faults the East for receiving converts by baptism, when what it dates is the ruling that every other baptism is void. On the Protestant line the entry is counted in part: the Lutheran and Reformed confessions bound one answer and the Baptist confessions the other, and Protestant churches today differ on whether either is a condition of membership. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 2:38 “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” Acts 8:12, 38 “When they believed Philip … they were baptized, both men and women.” “They both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.” Eph 4:4–6 “There is one body and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” Rom 6:3–4; Col 2:12 “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.” “Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith.” Acts 19:3, 5 The one second baptism in the text: “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” … “On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 2:41–42 Baptism, then the table: “those who received his word were baptized … And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” The apostles baptized people who believed, once, in the name of Jesus, and brought the baptized to the table. They never met a believer who had been washed as an infant, or by pouring, or in a rival church, and they left no ruling on any of them. The one second baptism in Acts is of disciples who had received John’s baptism, a different rite. The page binds what the apostles did and none of the rulings on what they never met. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Many washings and one. Jews of the period washed again and again. The stepped immersion pools found at Qumran and beside the temple served repeated purification, and the Pharisees kept “the washing of cups and pots” (Mark 7:4; compare Heb 6:2, “instruction about washings”). John’s baptism in the Jordan was a different thing, a single act of repentance (Mark 1:4–5), which Josephus describes as the purification of the body once the soul had been cleansed by righteousness (Antiquities 18.117). The church’s baptism was single, as John’s was, and into Christ. What the period never had to ask is whether a washing given in a way the apostles did not use was that one baptism. The word and the picture. The verb baptizō means to dip or plunge, and the pictures the text gives are of going down and coming up (Mark 1:10; Acts 8:38–39) and of burial (Rom 6:4; Col 2:12). The same verb is used of washing before a meal, “he did not first wash” (Luke 11:38), and of washing cups (Mark 7:4). Immersion has the word and the picture on its side. The word alone does not make every other washing void. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 100 Didache 7 The first church order after the apostles has baptism given “in living water,” or in other water, cold or warm, and, where there is not enough of either, says to “pour out water thrice upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” It prefers immersion and allows pouring. The mode is not yet a condition. c. 255 Cyprian, Letter 75 (69), to Magnus Those baptized on a sickbed by sprinkling are truly baptized: “the sprinkling also of water prevails equally with the washing of salvation.” In the same letter Cyprian rules that those baptized by schismatics must be baptized. The first readers had not settled the question this entry dates. 256 Stephen of Rome, as Cyprian and Firmilian quote him Rome receives those baptized by heretics with the laying on of hands: “let nothing be innovated (or done) which has not been handed down.” Cyprian and Firmilian of Caesarea baptize them. Firmilian to Stephen: “while you think that all may be excommunicated by you, you have excommunicated yourself alone from all.” The first readers divided, and neither answer can be called the text’s. 6 THE RECORD c. 200 Tertullian, On Baptism 15 “There is to us one, and but one, baptism.” “We enter, then, the font once.” He also holds that the heretics’ baptism “is not one with ours,” because it is not the same: one baptism, read as excluding other churches’ baptisms. 256 The Seventh Council of Carthage Eighty-seven bishops under Cyprian give their votes one by one: those baptized by heretics are to be baptized when they come to the church. Firmilian’s letter of the same year says Stephen broke the peace with those who held so (Cyprian, Letter 74). 325 Nicaea, canons 8 and 19 The clergy of the Cathari, the Novatians, keep their rank when they come over (canon 8); the followers of Paul of Samosata “must by all means be rebaptized” (canon 19). The council rules case by case. c. 400 Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists Against a church that baptized Catholics again, Augustine argues that baptism given in Christ’s name is Christ’s wherever it is given and must not be repeated; outside the church it is real but does not profit until the person comes in. The West’s answer for a thousand years. 1139 Second Lateran Council, canon 23 Those who, “simulating a kind of religiosity, condemn” the Eucharist, “the baptism of children,” the priesthood and marriage are expelled from the church as heretics, and the secular power is to restrain them. 1525–1527 Zurich On 21 January 1525, in the house of Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel baptizes George Blaurock, who then baptizes the others present. All of them had been baptized as infants. In March 1526 the city threatens those who persist with death, and on 5 January 1527 Manz is drowned in the Limmat. 1527 The Schleitheim Confession, articles 1 and 3 “Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life.” “This excludes all infant baptism, the highest and chief abomination of the Pope.” The breaking of bread is for those “united beforehand by baptism in one body of Christ.” 1529 Diet of Speyer The empire orders that “every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex be put to death by sword, or fire, or otherwise” (Schaff’s rendering). It is the same diet at which the Lutheran princes made the protest that gave Protestants their name. 1530 Augsburg Confession 9 “They condemn the Anabaptists, who reject the baptism of children, and say that children are saved without Baptism.” The Lutheran binding. 1547 Trent, Session 7, canons on baptism 4, 11 and 13 Anathema on anyone who says that baptism given by heretics in the name of the Trinity, “with the intention of doing what the Church doth,” is not true baptism (canon 4); that a baptism “true and rightly conferred” is to be repeated (canon 11); or that those baptized as infants “are to be rebaptized when they have attained to years of discretion” (canon 13). 1561 Belgic Confession 34 One “ought to be baptized only once, without ever repeating it.” “We reject the error of the Anabaptists who are not content with a single baptism once received and also condemn the baptism of the children of believers.” The Reformed binding, subscribed by Dutch ministers from 1571. 1644 First London Confession 39–40 Baptism is “to be dispensed only upon persons professing faith,” and its “way and manner” is “dipping or plunging the whole body under water.” The first Baptist confession to make dipping the manner. When English Baptists began to immerse is argued (see Not settled). 1647 Westminster Confession 28.3, 28.7 “Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.” Baptism “is but once to be administered unto any person.” 1667 Synod of Moscow Reverses a Moscow synod of 1620 that had ordered Latin converts baptized, and receives them by chrismation, as Constantinople had in 1484 (George Dragas, “The Manner of Reception of Roman Catholic Converts into the Orthodox Church,” 1998). 1673 John Bunyan, Differences in Judgment about Water-Baptism, No Bar to Communion A Baptist pastor answers the Baptists who refused the table to believers baptized as infants: the difference is real, and it is no bar to communion. 1689 Second London Confession 29.2, 29.4 Those who “do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to, our Lord Jesus Christ” are the only proper subjects, and “immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance.” A note printed with the confession records that some signers “cannot hold Church-communion, with any other then Baptized-believers,” while “some others of us have a greater liberty and freedom in our spirits that way.” 1755 The Oros of Constantinople Cyril V of Constantinople, Matthew of Alexandria and Parthenios of Jerusalem call the baptisms of those who come “from the West” “useless waters” that “give no sanctification,” require the three immersions, and rule: “we receive those who come over to us from them as unholy and unbaptized.” 2010 Lutheran World Federation, Stuttgart On 22 July the Eleventh Assembly unanimously adopts an “Action on the Legacy of Lutheran Persecution of Anabaptists,” asking forgiveness “from God and from our Mennonite sisters and brothers.” 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “One baptism.” Ephesians 4:5 sets one baptism beside one Lord and one faith, against division. The Baptist reads it to mean that a washing before faith was not the one baptism. Rome and the Reformers read it to mean that the washing was the one baptism and may not be given again. The Oros reads it to mean that a baptism outside the true church is no baptism at all. Each reading supplies a premise the verse does not state: what counts as the one baptism when it was given in a way the apostles never saw. Acts 19. Paul baptizes in Jesus’ name disciples who had received John’s baptism (19:1–7). The Anabaptists read it as a precedent for baptizing those whose first washing was not Christian baptism; their opponents answer that John’s baptism was a different rite. The passage shows that the apostles did not treat every washing as Christian baptism. It does not say which later washings are. The verb. Baptizō means to dip, and Paul’s picture is burial (Rom 6:4). The confession of 1644 reads the meaning of the word as a rule of validity, so that a baptism that does not dip is no baptism. The Didache had read it as the rule for ordinary cases, with pouring allowed when water was lacking. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church (2009) A scholar of the Churches of Christ, who hold immersion to be the apostolic practice. He shows that immersion was the norm and that pouring appears from the start as an exception for necessity. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 1239 “Baptism is performed in the most expressive way by triple immersion in the baptismal water,” and “from ancient times” also by pouring. Rome grants that immersion is the fuller sign. ORTHODOX George Dragas, “The Manner of Reception of Roman Catholic Converts into the Orthodox Church” (1998) An Orthodox scholar, writing for the Orthodox and Catholic dialogue in the United States, traces the East’s different answers: chrismation at Constantinople in 1484, baptism at Moscow in 1620, chrismation at Moscow in 1667, baptism at Constantinople in 1755. The East has not given one answer for all its churches. PROTESTANT John Bunyan, Differences in Judgment about Water-Baptism, No Bar to Communion (1673) A Baptist who held believers’ baptism and would not make it a condition of the table. The page’s rule in a Baptist’s words, three centuries early. PROTESTANT William Whitsitt, A Question in Baptist History (1896) A Baptist historian and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who argued that immersion among English Baptists began in 1641. The claim cost him his post in 1899. PROTESTANT Lutheran World Federation, “Action on the Legacy of Lutheran Persecution of Anabaptists” (2010) The heirs of Augsburg ask forgiveness of the heirs of Schleitheim for the persecution their confessions supported. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “There is one baptism (Eph 4:5). Baptizing someone already baptized as an infant denies it.” (Catholic, Protestant) The verse is bound, and the page keeps it. Whether a washing given before faith was the one baptism is the question, and the verse does not answer it: the apostles never baptized an infant that the text records, and never met a believer who had been washed as one. The page dates infant baptism at c. 200–253 and declines to call it either valid or void. What is dated here is Trent’s anathema, the Lutheran and Reformed condemnations and the sword, all of which bind one answer to that question. 2. “Infant baptism is not baptism at all. Baptizing a believer is not rebaptism; it is obeying Acts 2:38.” (Protestant) The page agrees that baptizing believers is the practice the text shows, and it dates infant baptism as the addition. A Baptist church may baptize any believer who asks, and may teach that his infant washing was not baptism. What it binds, when it bars from the table or from membership a believer baptized as an infant who reads the texts the other way, is an inference the text does not state, since the text never meets the case. Bunyan said so in 1673. The same rule forbids Rome’s anathema on those who baptize such believers. 3. “Baptism means immersion. The word says it, and Romans 6 pictures burial.” (Protestant) The word and the picture favor immersion, and the first church immersed where it could. The Didache allowed pouring when water was lacking (c. 100), Cyprian defended the sprinkled sick (c. 255), and the same verb is used of washing before a meal (Luke 11:38). A church may immerse every believer it baptizes. Making immersion a condition of validity voids what the first readers allowed. 4. “The church has always forbidden rebaptism: Stephen, Nicaea, Augustine.” (Catholic) The first readers divided. Cyprian with eighty-seven African bishops, and Firmilian in Asia, baptized those who had been baptized outside the church; Stephen did not; Nicaea baptized the followers of Paul of Samosata and not the Novatians. A question on which the first readers divided is a reading. Rome bound one answer at Trent in 1547, with anathema, and that binding is what is dated. 5. “The Orthodox receive converts by economy, as the bishop judges. Nothing is bound.” (Orthodox) Then the East carries this in part, as marked, and Moscow’s ruling of 1667 is on the record beside Constantinople’s of 1755. But the Oros of 1755 is not economy. It calls the baptisms of the West “useless waters,” and those who follow it baptize converts as “unholy and unbaptized.” 6. “The magistrates who drowned the Anabaptists were enforcing civil law, not doctrine.” (Protestant) The confessions condemned them by name (Augsburg 9; Belgic 34), and Speyer named the crime: being “rebaptized.” The Lutheran World Federation asked the Mennonites’ forgiveness in 2010 for the persecution its confessions had supported. The sword is the measure of the binding, not a separate matter. 7. “Then a church may never require baptism before the table?” It may. Baptism, then the table, is the order of the text (Acts 2:41–42) and of the first readers (“let no one eat or drink of your Thanksgiving, but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord,” Didache 9.5). What it may not require is one answer to whether a disputed baptism counts, against a believer who holds the texts and reads them the other way. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether a washing given before faith is the one baptism of Ephesians 4:5 is not decided by any text. The apostles baptized no one the text records as having been washed as an infant, and the one second baptism in Acts (19:1–7) is of disciples who knew only John’s. When English Baptists began to immerse is argued. William Whitsitt’s date of 1641 cost him his seminary presidency in 1899; others place immersion earlier. How far the Oros of 1755 binds the Orthodox churches today is argued among them, and their practice differs by church and by bishop. The page takes no position on whether infant baptism, or baptism by pouring, is valid. It dates the bindings on both sides. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 100 · Didache 7 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm - c. 255 · Cyprian, Letter 75 (69), to Magnus — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050675.htm - 256 · Stephen of Rome, as Cyprian and Firmilian quote him — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050673.htm - c. 200 · Tertullian, On Baptism 15 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm - 256 · The Seventh Council of Carthage — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0508.htm - 325 · Nicaea, canons 8 and 19 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - c. 400 · Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1408.htm - 1139 · Second Lateran Council, canon 23 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum10.htm - 1525–1527 · Zurich — https://swissinfo.ch/eng/business/the-reformation-eats-its-young_the-anabaptist-felix-manz-meets-a-terrible-end/43485650 - 1527 · The Schleitheim Confession, articles 1 and 3 — https://www.anabaptists.org/history/the-schleitheim-confession.html - 1529 · Diet of Speyer — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.iii.xvii.html - 1530 · Augsburg Confession 9 — https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/article-ix/ - 1547 · Trent, Session 7, canons on baptism 4, 11 and 13 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/seventh-session.htm - 1561 · Belgic Confession 34 — https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/belgic-confession - 1644 · First London Confession 39–40 — https://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/1644lbc.htm - 1647 · Westminster Confession 28.3, 28.7 — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html#Chapter_28 - 1667 · Synod of Moscow — https://mail.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/Dragas_RomanCatholic_5.html - 1673 · John Bunyan, Differences in Judgment about Water-Baptism, No Bar to Communion — https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/differencesinjud00buny - 1689 · Second London Confession 29.2, 29.4 — https://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/1689lbc/english/Chapter29.htm - 1755 · The Oros of Constantinople — https://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/baptisma1/par2.htm - 2010 · Lutheran World Federation, Stuttgart — https://2010.lwfassembly.org/experience/lwi-assembly-news/news-detail/article/461/8/neste/5/index.html - voice · Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church (2009) — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802871084/baptism-in-the-early-church/ - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 1239 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3J.HTM - voice · George Dragas, “The Manner of Reception of Roman Catholic Converts into the Orthodox Church” (1998) — https://mail.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/Dragas_RomanCatholic.html - voice · John Bunyan, Differences in Judgment about Water-Baptism, No Bar to Communion (1673) — https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/differencesinjud00buny - voice · William Whitsitt, A Question in Baptist History (1896) — https://archives.sbts.edu/sbts-history/our-story/conflict-1895-1899/ - voice · Lutheran World Federation, “Action on the Legacy of Lutheran Persecution of Anabaptists” (2010) — https://2010.lwfassembly.org/experience/lwi-assembly-news/news-detail/article/461/8/neste/5/index.html ============================================================================== 1529 · A church for each confession Address: https://additions.church/1529 Addition · How it binds: Required The Reformers meet at Marburg and part over the Supper. Separate confessions harden into separate churches. First clear witness: Marburg Colloquy, 1529, with agreement on fourteen articles of fifteen. Footing: firm. Division did not begin here. East and West had already parted. This is where it starts to multiply. Carried today by: Protestant 1 THE STORY In the autumn of 1529 Philip of Hesse, who wanted the Protestant princes united against the emperor, brought Luther and Zwingli together in his castle at Marburg to settle their quarrel about the Supper. For three days the two reformers and their colleagues argued across a table. They agreed on fourteen articles of fifteen: the Trinity, Christ, faith, baptism, good works, the magistrate, all of it. On the fifteenth, whether Christ’s body is present in the bread, they could not. Luther wrote “This is my body” in chalk on the table and would not move; Zwingli wept and offered his hand; Luther refused it. Within a year there were separate confessions: the Lutherans at Augsburg in 1530, the Zwinglians, four south German cities with a confession of their own (the Tetrapolitan), and soon the Reformed. Each confession became a church, the Lutheran churches closed their table to the Reformed, each confession defined itself by condemning the other’s reading of the Supper, and the pattern set at Marburg has repeated itself for five centuries, every disagreement producing a new body with its own name. Division did not begin here; East and West had parted in 1054, and the Orient in 451. What began here was the multiplying. Paul asked the Corinthians whether Christ was divided and told them they were not to say “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos.” The entry is on the Protestant line alone and is marked “required,” because the confessions were made conditions of communion. The record gives the colloquy and what came of it. 2 THE CLAIM At Marburg in October 1529 Luther and Zwingli signed fourteen articles of agreement and most of a fifteenth, and parted over how Christ is present in the Supper. Luther would not acknowledge the Swiss as brothers. Within a generation there were separate confessions, churches and names: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist. To be a Christian in the West now meant belonging to a named confession, usually the one chosen by the ruler. NOT CLAIMED That division began here, or that doctrine does not matter. East and West had parted, and before them Chalcedon’s supporters and opponents. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 1:12–13 “Each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ … Is Christ divided?” 1 Cor 10:17 “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.” The meal that divided Marburg is the one Paul says makes the church one. John 17:21 “That they may all be one … so that the world may believe.” Gal 2:9 Unity is visible: “the right hand of fellowship.” Acts 11:26 “In Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” One name. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The Corinthian slogans follow a form everyone knew. Students of philosophy named themselves for their teacher: of Plato, of Epicurus, of Pythagoras. Judaism had its parties too, which Josephus calls haireseis: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes. Outsiders slotted the church into the same list: “the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5). Paul answers, “the Way, which they call a sect” (24:14). The first Christians refused to be one school among others, with a founder’s name. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 190 Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 When Rome moved to cut off the churches of Asia over the date of Easter, Irenaeus wrote that earlier bishops of Rome had kept communion with those who differed, and that “the disagreement in the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.” Difference without separate churches. 6 THE RECORD 1522 Luther, A Sincere Admonition Asks that his followers not use his name: they should call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. 1529 Marburg Articles Fifteen articles. The last records agreement that the Supper is a sacrament of the true body and blood and should be received in both kinds, and disagreement on bodily presence. 1530–71 Augsburg Confession; Helvetic Confessions; Heidelberg Catechism; Thirty-Nine Articles Each territory’s church is defined by its own document. 1555 Peace of Augsburg Each prince chooses Catholic or Lutheran for his lands. Subjects conform or leave. 1580 Book of Concord Lutheran orthodoxy formally condemns the “Sacramentarians,” meaning the Reformed. 1648 Peace of Westphalia The Reformed are added. Everyone else stays outside the law. 1804– The “Christians only” movements in America Barton Stone and the Campbells drop every party name in order to restore the New Testament church. Their movement becomes three more denominations. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard, the “confessionalization” thesis (1980s) A Protestant and a Catholic historian. After 1555 Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic churches each built a disciplined confessional identity in partnership with the state, by parallel means. PROTESTANT H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929) Denominations follow class, race and nation more closely than doctrine. He calls the result a moral failure. PROTESTANT Peter Leithart, The End of Protestantism (2016) A Reformed theologian: denominationalism is not the unity the New Testament describes and should not be defended as if it were. CATHOLIC Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation (2012) Reads the multiplying confessions as the direct result of Scripture without an agreed interpreter. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Truth matters more than unity. Luther was right to hold his ground.” (Protestant) He may have been right about the Supper. The page does not rule on that here (see 1215 and 1525). It records that two parties signed fourteen articles of common faith and still would not eat at one table. 2. “This proves Scripture alone cannot hold the church together.” (Catholic, Orthodox) It shows the cost. But a single teaching office did not prevent 451 or 1054, nor the forty years after 1378 when two and then three popes each claimed the chair. And for long stretches the unity of the older churches was kept by the magistrate. See 380. 3. “Denominations are branches of one invisible church.” (Protestant) The unity the apostles describe can be seen: one table, one baptism, a hand given in fellowship. An invisible unity is what is left when the visible one has been given up. 4. “Any church that takes this page as its charter will become one more denomination.” It is the most serious objection to this entry, and the Stone and Campbell story bears it out. A new name is not the answer, and a claim to have restored the original is how the new name usually starts. 9 NOT SETTLED The often-quoted figure of “30,000 denominations” counts national branches of the same bodies separately. Several dozen major families is nearer the truth. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 190 · Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm - 1522 · Luther, A Sincere Admonition — https://archive.org/details/worksofmartinlut03luth - 1529 · Marburg Articles — https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/the-marburg-colloquy-the-marburg-articles-1529 - 1530–71 · Augsburg Confession; Helvetic Confessions; Heidelberg Catechism; Thirty-Nine Articles — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.html - 1555 · Peace of Augsburg — https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/ghdi:document-4386 - 1580 · Book of Concord — https://bookofconcord.cph.org/en/formula-of-concord-epitome/vii_the_holy_supper_of_christ - 1648 · Peace of Westphalia — http://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/portal/Internet/ku.php?tab=que&ID=740#art7 - 1804– · The “Christians only” movements in America — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Last_Will_and_Testament_of_The_Springfield_Presbytery - voice · Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard, the “confessionalization” thesis (1980s) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Reinhard+Schilling+confessionalization - voice · H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929) — https://archive.org/details/socialsourcesofd00nieb - voice · Peter Leithart, The End of Protestantism (2016) — https://archive.org/details/endofprotestanti0000leit - voice · Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation (2012) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AUnintended+Reformation+au%3AGregory ============================================================================== c. 1541 · The pulpit takes the center Address: https://additions.church/1541 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The altar goes and the room is rebuilt around one speaker. The people still face the front. First clear witness: Calvin’s Geneva from 1541; Reformed church interiors. Footing: qualified. The Reformers gave the people Scripture in their own language. The audience-facing room is what they kept. Carried today by: Protestant 1 THE STORY John Calvin, a Frenchman trained in law who turned to theology, was expelled from Geneva in 1538 and called back in 1541, and this time the city let him order its church. The altars were already gone, the images and the organs with them. What replaced them was the pulpit. Calvin preached several times a week, through whole books of the Bible verse by verse, and the people sat in pews that faced him. The Reformed church interior, bare walls, a high pulpit, a table brought out when needed, was built in Geneva and copied from Scotland to Hungary. Calvin wanted the Supper every Sunday, and the city council refused him; Geneva kept it four times a year, and so did most of the Reformed world after it. The result was a room organized around one voice. The Reformers had given the people the Scriptures in their own language and a preacher who explained them, which the medieval church had done unevenly: the friars had preached in the people’s tongue from the thirteenth century, but the Mass and the Bible stayed in Latin. What they kept from the medieval church was the audience: a people facing the front, receiving. In the apostolic gathering “each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation,” and the prophets speak two or three while the others weigh what is said. The entry is marked “replaced”: the pulpit was never a condition of anything, and it became the shape of the Protestant church. The record sets Paul’s picture of the assembly beside Calvin’s. 2 THE CLAIM The Reformed churches removed the altar and rebuilt both room and service around preaching. In Zurich the Supper went from every Mass to four times a year. In Geneva Calvin held that it belonged to every Sunday, proposed once a month as a concession, and was allowed four times a year by the city council. A sermon by one ordained man became the main event of Sunday, and the congregation remained what it had been: an audience. The Reformers changed what was said from the front. They did not change who spoke or which way the people faced. NOT CLAIMED That preaching is unbiblical, or that the sermon was invented in the sixteenth century. Chrysostom and Augustine preached at length. What is dated here is the displacement of the table and of the many voices by one pulpit. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 2:42 Four things held together: “the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship … the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Acts 20:7 The one Sunday gathering Luke describes met “to break bread,” and Paul “talked with them.” 1 Cor 14:29–31 “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said … you can all prophesy one by one.” 1 Tim 4:13; 2 Tim 4:2 Teaching is not optional: “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” “Preach the word.” Heb 10:24–25 “Stir up one another to love and good works … encouraging one another.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The synagogue. Scripture was read and then explained, and the explaining was open to any competent man present (Luke 4:16–21; Acts 13:15). Christian teaching in the gathering descends from this, so the sermon has an honest Jewish root. The orator. The other model was there to be copied. Public orators, the sophists, drew crowds and fees, and a city judged a speaker by his delivery. Paul set himself against it at Corinth: “my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom” (1 Cor 2:4). The sermon’s origin is the synagogue; its later polish and its place of honor are not, and the record shows where they came from. The verb in Acts 20:7 is dialegomai, which usually means to discuss or reason with. The English “preached” in older versions hides this. The ESV has “talked with them.” 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 After the readings “the president instructs,” then all stand to pray, and bread and cup are brought, every Sunday. The address is there from the start, and it never displaced the table. 6 THE RECORD c. 155 Justin, First Apology 67 After the readings the one presiding gives an address urging the hearers to imitate what was read. Then prayers, bread and cup. c. 390 Chrysostom and Augustine After Constantine the church’s preachers were men trained in classical rhetoric. Chrysostom “studied rhetoric under Libanius the sophist” (Socrates, Church History 6.3), and Augustine had been a professor of rhetoric. The homily became a polished public speech, and congregations applauded: Chrysostom complains that his hearers sit “like critics of tragedies” and that preachers are “overcome by the thought of applause” (On the Priesthood 5.1–2). The claim that the sermon is simply “pagan” is too strong. Its polish and its place of honor owe a great deal to the Greek lecture hall, and its origin does not. c. 395 John Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Ephesians The people stand through the service without receiving, and most commune only at the great feasts: “there is no one to partake.” 1523 Luther, Concerning the Order of Public Worship A congregation should never gather without the preaching of God’s Word. 1525 Zurich The Mass is abolished. The Supper is set for four times a year. 1537–41 Geneva Calvin’s Articles of 1537 say the Supper ought to be held every Sunday and, because of the people’s weakness, propose once a month. The council sets it at four times a year. In Institutes 4.17.43 he still calls for it “at least once a week.” c. 1532–1546 Swiss Brethren, “Why we do not attend the churches” An Anabaptist tract charges the state-church preachers, Zwinglian and Lutheran, with breaking 1 Corinthians 14: only one man speaks, and the congregation may not. 1564 Reformed “temples” in France At Lyon the Huguenots, the French Protestants, build the “Paradis” in six months: tiers of galleries around a hall, the pulpit at its center, the benches set round it so that every seat faces the preacher. A building designed for hearing. 1645 Westminster Directory for Public Worship The sermon is the central act. The Supper is to be held “frequently,” which in practice meant a few times a year. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (7 vols., 1998–2010) A Reformed historian. Christian preaching continues the reading and exposition of Scripture in the synagogue, carried on by Jesus and the apostles, and the Reformation renewed it. The strongest answer to the claim that sermons are a pagan import. PROTESTANT Bard Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church (1961) Documents Calvin’s failed effort to win weekly communion in Geneva. ANGLICAN Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) The Reformation rites kept the late medieval assumption that worship is something the individual watches and hears. PROTESTANT Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (2008), ch. 4 Trace the sermon to Greek rhetoric. Right about the polish, wrong about the origin. See Hughes Oliphant Old, above. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17). The Word must be central.” (Protestant) It must. In the apostolic gathering the word is carried by reading, teaching, prophecy, song and mutual exhortation, through several voices and tested by the rest. The single sermon is one way to carry it, and it became the only one. 2. “Paul preached until midnight at Troas.” (Protestant) The verb is “talked with,” the purpose of the meeting was to break bread, and the speaker was an apostle on his last visit. It is a thin base for a weekly monologue. 3. “Open participation breeds chaos and error. A trained pastor guards the flock (Titus 1:9).” (Protestant) Elders must be able to teach and to refute, and Paul requires order. He gets order by rules for participation, with the others weighing what is said, not by silencing the room. 4. “Prophecy ceased with the apostles. What remains is the teaching elder (1 Tim 4:13; Titus 1:9).” (Protestant) Even with prophecy gone, 1 Corinthians 14:26 and Hebrews 10:24–25 describe a gathering of several voices, and the elder “able to teach” is in the baseline; one voice with the rest silent is not. The page dates the room, not the office. 5. “You replaced the Eucharist with a lecture.” (Catholic, Orthodox) As to frequency, the charge is fair, and Calvin made it himself against his own city. But the people had stopped receiving a thousand years earlier, in the Catholic and Orthodox rites. See c. 400. 9 NOT SETTLED How open first-century gatherings really were is debated. 1 Corinthians 14:26–31 may describe Corinth more than every church. The Reformers’ gains are not in question here: Scripture in the people’s language, read and explained. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 67 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 390 · Chrysostom and Augustine — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/19225.htm - c. 395 · John Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Ephesians — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230103.htm - 1523 · Luther, Concerning the Order of Public Worship — https://archive.org/details/worksofmartinlut0006unse_n3s5 - 1525 · Zurich — https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/archives-replacing-the-mass - 1537–41 · Geneva — https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.vi.xviii.html - c. 1532–1546 · Swiss Brethren, “Why we do not attend the churches” — https://archive.org/details/45MQR1971.pdf - 1564 · Reformed “temples” in France — https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/the-old-paradise-temple-of-lyon/ - 1645 · Westminster Directory for Public Worship — https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp582-607 - voice · Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (7 vols., 1998–2010) — https://archive.org/details/readingpreaching0001oldh - voice · Bard Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church (1961) — https://archive.org/details/liturgiesofweste00thom - voice · Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) — https://archive.org/details/shapeofliturgy0000dixg - voice · Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (2008), ch. 4 — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APagan+Christianity+au%3AViola ============================================================================== 1546 · Tradition set beside Scripture Address: https://additions.church/1546 Addition · How it binds: Required Unwritten traditions are to be received with the same reverence as the written books. First clear witness: Council of Trent, Session 4: “with an equal affection of piety, and reverence.” Footing: qualified. The appeal to unwritten tradition is at least as old as Basil, around 375. Trent formalizes it. Carried today by: Roman Catholic 1 THE STORY The Council of Trent opened in December 1545 in a town in the Alps chosen because it was in the empire but near Italy, twenty-four years after Luther had been excommunicated and twenty-eight after his theses. Its first task was to say where the faith came from. On 8 April 1546 the fourth session decreed that the gospel is contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions received by the apostles from Christ’s own mouth or dictated by the Spirit, and that the council receives both “with an equal affection of piety and reverence.” It listed the books of Scripture, the disputed ones included, under anathema, and declared the old Latin Vulgate the authentic text. Something had happened that the fathers of the first centuries would not have recognized. They appealed to tradition constantly, as the record of what the apostles had taught, the public teaching Irenaeus set against the Gnostics’ secret one. Trent set the unwritten traditions beside the writings, to be received with the same reverence and judged by the church: a second source, on the reading most Catholics gave the decree for four centuries (see Not settled). In practice the formula came to mean that whatever the church held, the apostles must have taught, written or not. The step closed the question this page keeps asking: whether a later practice can be checked against the apostolic writings and found wanting. The entry is on Rome’s line alone, though the East would take a similar step in 1672. The record gives the decree, the canon, and the first-century sense of tradition that it replaced. 2 THE CLAIM On 8 April 1546 the Council of Trent decreed three things in one session. The gospel is contained “in the written books, and the unwritten traditions,” and both are received “with an equal affection of piety, and reverence.” A list of biblical books, including the seven disputed ones, is fixed under anathema. And the old Latin Vulgate is to be “held as authentic” in lectures, disputations and sermons. The decree speaks of traditions that come from Christ or from the apostles. It gives no means of telling which those are apart from the church’s own judgment, and the formula came to cover teachings whose first witnesses are centuries later. In the same session a Latin translation was declared the authentic text at the moment its errors were coming to light. NOT CLAIMED That tradition is worthless, that Scripture needs no community to read it, or that Trent was the first to appeal to unwritten tradition. Tertullian and Basil did so long before. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Mark 7:8, 13 “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men … making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.” 2 Thess 2:15 “Hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” 1 Cor 15:3 What apostolic tradition is: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins.” Luke 1:4 Why it was written down: “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” 2 Tim 3:16–17 Scripture is given “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Unwritten law among the Pharisees. Trent’s formula has an ancient Jewish parallel. Josephus reports that the Pharisees handed on regulations “from the fathers” that were not written in the law of Moses, and that the Sadducees rejected them (Antiquities 13.297). Jesus honors Scripture and refuses to be bound by the tradition of the elders (Mark 7). What Paul means by tradition. In Paul the word names what he himself had delivered, in public, to churches he could still correct: the gospel and the practices that go with it (1 Cor 11:2, 23; 15:3). It is a present, checkable thing. It is not a reserve of unwritten teaching to be drawn on centuries later. The books. Josephus counts twenty-two books in the Hebrew Scriptures (Against Apion 1.38). The Greek Bible in Christian use carried others beside them, such as Tobit, Wisdom and Maccabees. The New Testament echoes some of these and cites none as Scripture. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 350 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 4.17 “Not even a casual statement must be delivered without the Holy Scriptures… for this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning, but on demonstration of the Holy Scriptures.” 367 Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 “In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take anything from these.” 6 THE RECORD c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1; 3.2.1 The apostles preached the gospel and then “handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.” It is the heretics who say “the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but vivâ voce.” He then appeals as well to the tradition kept in the churches, which he says agrees with those Scriptures (3.2.2). 367 Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 Lists twenty-two Old Testament books and the twenty-seven of the New. Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, Judith and Tobit are “not indeed included in the Canon” but are read. “Let no man add to these.” c. 375 Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27.66 Written and unwritten tradition, he says, “have the same force.” This is the nearest patristic precedent for Trent’s wording. His examples are rites: the sign of the cross, facing east, triple immersion. c. 391 Jerome, prefaces to Kings and to the books of Solomon Books outside the Hebrew list belong among the apocrypha. The church reads Judith, Tobit and Maccabees but does not receive them as canonical. 397 Council of Carthage A regional African council, with Augustine among its bishops, re-adopts the list first set out at Hippo in 393: the wider collection, matching Augustine’s own list. 434 Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 2 Scripture is “sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient.” Tradition is the rule for reading it rightly. 1517–32 The Complutensian Polyglot (1514–17); Cajetan, Commentary on the Historical Books (1532) On the eve of Trent, Cardinal Ximénez, whose Polyglot printed the Bible in several languages in parallel columns, and Cardinal Cajetan, Luther’s own papal examiner, both follow Jerome: the disputed books are read in the church but do not establish doctrine. 1546 Trent, session 4 The decree quoted above. It also forbids interpreting Scripture against the church’s sense “or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” 1590–92 The Sixtine and Clementine Vulgates The official edition issued by Sixtus V in 1590 is withdrawn after his death as faulty and replaced in 1592 by the Clementine edition; later critics have judged the two more evenly. 1943 · 1979 Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu; the Nova Vulgata Rome explains that the Vulgate’s authenticity is “not … primarily as critical, but rather as juridical,” sets the original texts above every translation, and allows translation directly from them. A revised Latin Bible, the Nova Vulgata, follows in 1979. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The Latin readings. Several entries on this line rest on the Vulgate where it departs from the Greek or Hebrew: “in whom all sinned” (Rom 5:12, see 396–418), “she shall crush” (Gen 3:15) and “full of grace” (Luke 1:28, see 1854 · 1950), “do penance” for “repent” (Matt 4:17, see 1095–1439), and “sacrament” for “mystery” (Eph 5:32). Valla in the 1440s and Erasmus in 1516 had pointed out the New Testament cases. Trent answered by making the Vulgate the authentic text. “Partly … partly.” The draft decree said that revelation is contained partly in Scripture and partly in tradition. The final text says “and.” Catholic scholars still debate whether the change was meant to leave room for the older view that all saving truth is in Scripture. Customs and dogmas. The decree covers traditions of faith and morals received “from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating.” When the fathers appeal to unwritten apostolic tradition, what they name are customs, such as facing east and triple immersion, and Rome no longer requires several of those. The dogmas later defended under the formula are ones those fathers never mention. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Yves Congar OP, Tradition and Traditions (1960–63) Many fathers and medieval doctors held that Scripture contains all saving truth, read within the church. CATHOLIC Joseph Ratzinger, commentary on Dei Verbum (1967) Regrets that Vatican II did not speak of the possibility of distorting tradition, or of Scripture’s role as a critic of tradition. ORTHODOX Georges Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church” (1963) For the early fathers tradition was first of all a way of reading Scripture rightly. It was not a second source beside it. PROTESTANT Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (1963) Distinguishes “Tradition I,” Scripture as the one source read in the church, from “Tradition II,” two sources. The Reformers held the first. Trent, on the usual reading, chose the second. ANGLICAN J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1958) In the second and third centuries Scripture and tradition were understood to have the same content. PROTESTANT Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (2001) Defends Scripture as the final authority and rejects the individualist version in which each reader stands alone. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “2 Thessalonians 2:15 binds us to the spoken tradition as well as the letters. The apostles taught more than they wrote, the churches kept it, and Basil names customs that came down unwritten from them.” (Catholic, Orthodox) Paul does bind his hearers to what he said aloud, and the spoken tradition did not stop when the writing did. The page does not set it aside: the first witness under every date is that tradition, as the churches kept it. The question is not whether the apostles taught by word but how anyone after them can know that a given practice is what they taught. The last apostle, John, lived “until the times of Trajan,” about 100 (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4). From then on no one could hear an apostle, and the spoken teaching can be known only through those who received it. The nearer a source stands to the apostles, the more it can bear. Irenaeus, the first to argue from tradition, says what that tradition was: public, not secret; kept in the churches the apostles founded; and the same faith the writings teach, which he sets out as the rule of faith (Against Heresies 1.10; 3.3–4). Had the apostles left no writings, he says, the churches would still have followed it (3.4.1). He offers it as a check on new teaching, not as a store of doctrine the writings lack. That is the test this page applies. Basil is the strongest case. In On the Holy Spirit 27 he names customs he holds came down unwritten from the apostles: signing with the cross, facing east to pray, the words of invocation over the bread, triple immersion, the renunciation of Satan at baptism. The page does not deny that some are very old: Tertullian lists several about 211 and says no Scripture commands them (see c. 211). It dates each where it first appears, and counts it an addition only where it was required, replaced an apostolic practice, or contradicts a named text. Facing east to pray, held as a custom, is no addition at all. What cannot be done is to read 2 Thessalonians 2:15 forward onto a practice that first appears centuries later with no trace before. The verse names what Paul taught the Thessalonians. It does not name what a later century says he taught. 2. “Scripture alone is itself unscriptural, and the Church fixed your canon.” (Catholic, Orthodox) As to “unscriptural”: the page binds no doctrine of Scripture alone. It applies each tradition’s own test, early reception, and it notes why the writings were made at all: “that you may have certainty” (Luke 1:4) and “that the man of God may be complete” (2 Tim 3:17). On the canon, see the record under Today: to recognize an apostolic book is not to rank above it. The argument also cuts the other way. Before 1546 no list had been defined under anathema, though the Council of Florence had named the same books in 1442. Athanasius, Jerome, Gregory the Great and Cardinal Cajetan each held a canon narrower than the one Trent fixed under anathema. 3. “Protestants removed books from the Bible.” (Catholic) They took Jerome’s side of an open Catholic debate, and Luther printed the books as “useful and good to read.” The Orthodox list is wider than Rome’s, and the Ethiopian wider still. There has never been one canon held by all the ancient churches. 4. “‘Authentic’ only meant free of doctrinal error. It was never set above the originals.” (Catholic) That is how Rome explained the decree in 1943, and the explanation is accepted here. For the four centuries between, Catholic Bibles were translated from the Latin. 5. “We never taught two sources. Scripture lives within Tradition.” (Orthodox) That is why this entry is on the Roman Catholic line only. But see 1672, where an Orthodox synod says the church’s witness is of no less authority than Scripture (decree 2) and rules that Scripture is not for all to read (question 1). 10 NOT SETTLED Whether Trent teaches two sources is debated among Catholics themselves (Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Die Heilige Schrift und die Tradition, 1962, against Heinrich Lennerz, “Scriptura sola?,” Gregorianum 40, 1959, and since). The vote on the canon decree is often given as 24 for, 15 against and 16 abstaining. Scripture as final authority has real difficulties of its own: who recognizes the canon, and who settles a disputed reading. The opening page takes up the first. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 350 · Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 4.17 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310104.htm - 367 · Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1; 3.2.1 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103301.htm - c. 375 · Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27.66 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf208.vii.xxviii.html - c. 391 · Jerome, prefaces to Kings and to the books of Solomon — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206/npnf206.vii.iii.iv.html - 397 · Council of Carthage — https://archive.org/details/acts-of-the-council-of-carthage-397-and-council-of-hippo-393-v-1-2022 - 434 · Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3506.htm - 1517–32 · The Complutensian Polyglot (1514–17); Cajetan, Commentary on the Historical Books (1532) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Complutensian+Polyglot+Bible - 1546 · Trent, session 4 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/fourth-session.htm - 1590–92 · The Sixtine and Clementine Vulgates — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15515b.htm - 1943 · 1979 · Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu; the Nova Vulgata — https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divino-afflante-spiritu.html - voice · Yves Congar OP, Tradition and Traditions (1960–63) — https://archive.org/details/traditiontraditi0000cong - voice · Joseph Ratzinger, commentary on Dei Verbum (1967) — https://archive.org/details/commentaryondocu0003unse - voice · Georges Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church” (1963) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Florovsky+Bible+Church+Tradition+Eastern+Orthodox+View - voice · Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (1963) — https://archive.org/details/harvestofmedieva0000ober - voice · J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1958) — https://archive.org/details/earlychristiando0000kell_s3t1 - voice · Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (2001) — https://archive.org/details/shapeofsolascrip0000math ============================================================================== 1547 · 1577 · 1672 · One account of justification made the test Address: https://additions.church/1547 Narrowing · How it binds: Required Justified by faith apart from works is in the text. Rome, the Protestant confessions and the East each bound a different account of how, and condemned the others. First clear witness: Trent, Session 6, 1547; Belgic Confession 22–23, 1561; Heidelberg Catechism 60, 1563; Formula of Concord, 1577; Westminster Confession, 1647; Synod of Jerusalem, 1672. Footing: contested. What is dated is not the teaching but the binding of a mechanism as a test. The Oriental Orthodox bound none and do not carry it. On the Protestant line it is bound by the confessional churches and taught without a test by most others. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant (in part), Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY In January 1547, after seven months of argument, the Council of Trent issued its decree on justification, the longest and most careful thing it ever wrote, and the one aimed most directly at Luther. Luther had said that a sinner is counted righteous by faith alone, through Christ’s righteousness credited to him, and that this is the article by which the church stands or falls. Trent said that justification is a real change in the inward man, a righteousness poured in and made ours, and anathematized anyone who said that faith alone justifies in the sense that nothing else is required to cooperate, or that the sinner is justified by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness alone, to the exclusion of grace poured into the heart. The Protestants then defined their side. The Reformed confessed imputation in the Belgic Confession of 1561 and the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, and Dutch ministers subscribed them. The Lutherans, after thirty years of quarreling among themselves about what Luther had meant, settled it in the Formula of Concord of 1577: to justify means to declare righteous, and the righteousness is Christ’s, imputed. The Westminster Assembly said the same in 1647 for the English-speaking Reformed. And in 1672 the Orthodox, answering a patriarch of Constantinople who had published a Calvinist confession, declared at Jerusalem that man is justified not by faith alone but by faith working through love, and the synod’s acts anathematized the chapter it answered. Four churches had each turned an account of how into a test. The apostle’s sentence, that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law, is in the text, and every one of the four affirms it. What they bound was a mechanism, and each mechanism is rejected by readers who hold every verse. The entry dates all four bindings on one card, and the record says what the page itself holds, which is the text and no more. 2 THE CLAIM “One is justified by faith apart from works of the law” is in the text (Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16), and so is the ban on adding a condition to it: “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law” (Gal 5:4; Acts 15:10–11, 28). That is a recognition, and this page does not date it. What it dates is what came after. Each tradition bound its own account of how the verdict works, and condemned the others. Rome in 1547 defined justification as the renewal of the inner person, with inherent righteousness as its one formal cause, and anathematized “faith alone” taken to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate, and “the sole imputation” of Christ’s righteousness to the exclusion of grace poured into the heart. The Reformed and Lutheran confessions (1561 and 1563; 1577; 1647) bound the opposite account, a declaration in which Christ’s obedience is counted to the believer, and condemned the alternatives. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) bound “not by faith alone, but by faith which works through love, that is, through faith and works.” This entry is marked a narrowing and marked contested. The claim is that three accounts of one verdict were each made a test, in answer to one another, between 1547 and 1672. The Oriental Orthodox churches bound no account of justification, and their line does not carry this entry. NOT CLAIMED That Trent teaches salvation by works (its chapter 8 says that nothing before justification merits it), that the Reformers invented justification by faith (1 Clement and Chrysostom say it), or that any of the three accounts is false. The page holds that none of them may be bound, and binds none of them, its author’s own reading included. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Rom 3:28 “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Rom 4:5 “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Gal 2:16; 5:4 “A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” Acts 15:10–11 “A yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear … we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” Rom 8:33; 5:1 “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.” “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.” 2 Cor 5:21; Phil 3:9 “So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” “Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.” Rom 2:13; 2 Cor 5:10 “It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body.” Jas 2:24 “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” The texts say both things: justified by faith apart from works, and judged according to works. Every tradition harmonizes them by a reading. This page records the readings and binds none of them. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT “Counted as righteousness.” The phrase is Genesis 15:6: Abraham “believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Israel also used it of a deed: Phinehas’s act “was counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever” (Ps 106:31). Some Second Temple readers took Abraham’s case the second way; Philo took it of trust (Who Is the Heir 90–95). “Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?” (1 Macc 2:52, NRSVUE). A Qumran letter promises the same to those who keep the law: “it will be reckoned to you as righteousness when you do what is upright” (4QMMT C 31, second century BC), and the same letter, a few lines earlier (C 27), has the one clear use of “works of the law” before Paul. The phrase Paul uses was already being read of faithfulness and of doing. He read it of faith, and said so against the grain (Rom 4:4–5). The verb. To justify, Hebrew hitsdiq and Greek dikaioō, is a judge’s word. Judges decide between parties, “acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty” (Deut 25:1); “he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Prov 17:15); God himself “will not acquit the wicked” (Exod 23:7). Paul’s God “justifies the ungodly” (Rom 4:5), which is why the Greek fathers found the phrase startling. A verdict in the Hebrew Bible is a declaration by a court. What stands behind the verdict is a further question, and the texts do not answer it in the terms the later definitions use. Habakkuk 2:4. “The righteous shall live by his faith,” quoted in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11. The Qumran commentary on Habakkuk reads the verse of those who keep the law and stay loyal to the Teacher of Righteousness (1QpHab 8.1–3). Before Paul the verse was already a text about faithfulness. The argument over what it means is older than the church. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 96 1 Clement 32.4 “We … are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom or understanding or godliness or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart, but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men.” Written from Rome, a generation after Paul. c. 200 Letter to Diognetus 9 “O sweet exchange … that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors.” Exchange language, with no theory of how. c. 391 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 8, on 4:1–5 On the one “who does not work”: for someone with no works to be justified by faith is, he says, a very great thing, and he presses that the ungodly is justified. No mechanism is stated and none is condemned. What the three witnesses have in common Each says by faith and not by works. None says how, and none condemns a how. For fifteen centuries the verdict was confessed, the mechanism was taught more than one way, and no church made its account a test. 6 THE RECORD 412 Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter 26.45 “What else does the phrase ‘being justified’ signify than being made righteous, by him, of course, who justifies the ungodly?” The Latin iustificare read as “make righteous.” The Western definition rests here. 1519 Luther, Two Kinds of Righteousness An “alien righteousness,” Christ’s, instilled from outside, is the believer’s righteousness before God (Luther’s Works 31:297–299). The seed of the Reformation’s imputation language, though Luther’s word here is still “instilled.” 1530 · 1531 Augsburg Confession 4; Apology 4 “Freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith,” and “this faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight.” The Apology adds that “to justify” in Paul can mean to pronounce righteous, a forensic sense, while allowing that Scripture uses the word in both senses (Apology 4.252, 4.305). 1547 Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 7; canons 9, 11, 12 Justification is “not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man,” and its “alone formal cause is the justice of God … whereby he maketh us just.” Canon 9: “If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification … let him be anathema.” Canon 11: the same for justification “by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ … to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts.” Canon 12: the same for the claim that justifying faith “is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy.” 1561 · 1563 Belgic Confession 22–23; Heidelberg Catechism 60 With Paul, “we are justified by faith alone” (Belgic 22), and God “grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ” (Heidelberg 60). Subscribed by Dutch ministers from the Synod of Emden (1571): the first Reformed binding of imputation. 1577 Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 3 “The word justify here means to declare righteous and free from sins.” The view that the indwelling righteousness of God is the believer’s righteousness before God is rejected. The Lutheran binding of the forensic account. 1647 Westminster Confession 11.1 God justifies “not by infusing righteousness into them … but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them.” The fullest Reformed statement, required of ministers by subscription. 1672 Synod of Jerusalem, Confession of Dositheus, decree 13 “We believe a man to be justified, not simply by faith alone, but by faith which worketh through love, that is to say, through faith and works.” The East’s binding, written against the Calvinist confession of 1629. See 1672. 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church state a shared understanding: by grace alone, in faith, apart from merit (§15). The condemnations of the sixteenth century, they declare, do not apply to the teaching of the partner as it is now presented (§41). Methodists (2006), Anglicans (2016) and the Reformed (2017) associated themselves with it. 2007 · 2009 John Piper, The Future of Justification; N. T. Wright, Justification A dispute inside Protestantism over the mechanism, both sides affirming every text above. Evidence that the mechanism is a reading. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Iustificare. The Latin verb read as iustum facere, “to make righteous.” Augustine built the Western definition on it (412), and Trent’s chapter 7 restates it. The Greek dikaioō, in the Septuagint and in Paul, is the word for a judge’s verdict (Deut 25:1; Prov 17:15; Rom 8:33). The slip is in the Latin, as at 396–418. Augustine, in the same section, allows that “justified” can mean “reckoned just” and chooses “made just”; Trent’s chapter 7 argues from the language of Romans 5:5 (love “poured forth” in the hearts of the justified), of 1 Corinthians 6:11 (the washed are sanctified) and of Galatians 5:6 (faith working through love), not from the verb. The definition still rests on taking the verb the Latin way. It also runs the other way: a verdict is not yet a theory of what stands behind the verdict, and the Protestant definitions supplied one. “Faith alone.” The phrase occurs once in the New Testament, in James 2:24, where it is denied. Luther added allein to Romans 3:28 to render the Greek sense (“apart from works”); his opponents read James. Each side harmonizes the other’s verse, and a harmonization is a reading. “Works of the law.” Whether Paul means obedience to the law in general or the marks that set Jew apart from Gentile (circumcision, food, days) is argued. The wage language of Romans 4:4 and 11:6 tells for the first; the table at Antioch in Galatians 2 for the second. The page binds neither, and the recognition above does not depend on the answer. “Counted.” What Romans 4 counts as righteousness is faith (4:3, 5, 9, 22). That Christ’s own obedience is the thing counted is read from Romans 5:19, 2 Corinthians 5:21 and 1 Corinthians 1:30. The reading may be right. The text does not say it in those words, and Protestants who hold the forensic verdict have rejected it while affirming every verse (see “Who concedes what”). 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993) A Catholic commentator: Paul’s verb carries the Old Testament judicial sense, God’s acquittal of the sinner, though for Paul the declaration is effective. The forensic sense is not a Protestant invention. CATHOLIC Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) Rome and the Lutheran World Federation agree that the believer is justified by grace through faith apart from merit, and declare the sixteenth-century condemnations inapplicable to the teaching as each now presents it. A Vatican note of 1998 and a Lutheran protest of the same year show how far the agreement reaches and where it stops. ORTHODOX Valerie Karras, “Beyond Justification: An Orthodox Perspective” (2003) The East never framed salvation as justification; the Western quarrel presupposes a Latin legal frame; union with God is the category. The decree of 1672 answered the Calvinist confession of 1629 in that confession’s own terms. PROTESTANT Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul (2004) A critic of the New Perspective: Paul’s “works” are works, not badges, and the Reformers read Paul rightly on grace. He grants that the covenantal reading recovered much of Paul’s Jewish setting. PROTESTANT Simon Gathercole, Where Is Boasting? (2002) Second Temple texts do speak of final vindication by obedience, so Paul’s contrast with works is a real contrast and not only a boundary dispute. ANGLICAN N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (2009) The best-known advocate of the New Perspective, and a bishop: justification is a verdict, not a process, and the Reformers were right against Trent on that. But Paul does not teach the imputation of Christ’s own righteousness; the verdict is membership in the covenant family; and it anticipates a final verdict in accordance with the whole life. His readings are his own and are not bound here. PROTESTANT John Piper, The Future of Justification (2007) The Reformed reply to Wright: without imputed righteousness the believer has no standing at the judgment, and a final verdict in accordance with works undermines the peace of Romans 5:1 and 8:1. HISTORIAN John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (2015) Grace in Paul is unconditioned, given without regard to worth, but not unconditional: the gift expects a return. Both the old perspective and the new, he argues, kept one half of that and lost the other. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Justification by faith alone is the article by which the church stands or falls. To call our confession a narrowing is to concede the Reformation’s first principle.” (Protestant) The first principle as Paul states it is the recognition at the head of this entry, and the page binds it: by faith, apart from works of the law, with nothing added as a condition. What is dated is the binding of a mechanism with condemnations: that the verdict is a declaration only, that what is counted is Christ’s own obedience, that any other account is to be rejected. Protestants who hold every one of the texts have rejected that mechanism, Wright among them, and beside him the Finnish school of Luther research, which reads Luther’s own doctrine as union with Christ present in faith (Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 1979; English 2005). If rejecting the mechanism were rejecting the text, they would have rejected the text. They did not. By the rule on the opening page, what can be rejected without rejecting the text is a reading, and a reading cannot be bound. 2. “Imputation is in the text. ‘In him we might become the righteousness of God.’ ‘By the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.’ ‘Christ Jesus, who became to us … righteousness.’” (Protestant) Those verses say that in Christ we become righteous, are made righteous, and have him as righteousness. They do not say that his obedience is counted to our account, and Romans 4 says that what is counted is faith. The inference from the three verses to the mechanism may be sound. It is an inference, which is all the rule needs to know. 3. “To justify is to make just. Paul says so himself: ‘the doers of the law … will be justified.’ James says it. And Trent’s canons condemn only a faith without love.” (Catholic) The verb in the Septuagint and in Paul is a court’s word, and Romans 4:5 has the court acquit the ungodly, which no court that first made him godly would need to do. The definition of 1547 rests on the Latin iustificare, a dated reading like in quo at 396–418. Romans 2:13 and James 2:24 are in the text and this page leaves them there; a judgment according to works at the last day is not a definition of the verdict as inner renewal. Canon 9 condemns “faith alone” with a gloss, “in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate,” and that no preparation “by the movement of his own will” is needed; the gloss is itself an account of how, and it is that account which is bound. Canon 12 condemns the claim that justifying faith is “nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy.” Both bind a reading against readings, which is the whole of what the entry says. 4. “Without inherent righteousness, justification is a legal fiction: God calls the unjust just.” (Catholic) The page binds no account of what makes the verdict true, and so does not have to answer the charge. It notes that the charge assumes the Latin definition, that Protestants answer it by union with Christ (Rom 6:3–11; 8:1), and that “justifies the ungodly” is Paul’s phrase before it is anyone’s problem. 5. “The whole quarrel is Latin. The East never divided justification from deification, and 1672 only restated James.” (Orthodox) Agreed that the quarrel is Latin in origin, and the entry says so. The decree of 1672 is nevertheless a binding: it takes James’s phrase as a definition, in answer to Calvin, and the synod that issued it bound a change of substance in the same breath. That is why it is on the line at its date. The Oriental churches, who bound nothing, are not. 6. “Justification is about who belongs to the covenant family, not how a sinner is saved. ‘Works of the law’ are the badges that kept Gentiles out.” A reading, with strong critics: “to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due” (Rom 4:4), and “if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works” (Rom 11:6), are about earning, not badges. The page binds neither the badge reading nor its opposite. The recognition at the head of the entry holds on either. 7. “Then what does this page itself teach?” What the text says and no more. Counted righteous by faith, apart from works of the law, with nothing added as a condition (Rom 3:28; 4:5; Gal 5:4; Acts 15:28). Judged according to what was done (Rom 2:6; 2 Cor 5:10). Both stand in the text. How they stand together is a reading, and the page holds its own reading as a reading. A church may teach one and preach it. It may not make it a condition of the table or of the pulpit, because the apostles did not. 10 NOT SETTLED Do not say that Trent teaches salvation by works. Chapter 8 says that nothing before justification merits it, and chapter 16 speaks of merit only in those already justified. Do not say that the Reformers invented justification by faith. 1 Clement and Chrysostom say it, and Augustine says a man is justified “by faith in Jesus Christ” and not “by the precepts of a holy life” (On the Spirit and the Letter 22). Whether “works of the law” means works or badges is argued, and the sense of “the doers of the law … will be justified” (Rom 2:13) with it. The 1999 declaration is disputed on both sides: some Lutheran faculties rejected it, and Rome’s note of 1998 qualified it before signing. The page takes no position between the three accounts. It records that each was made a test, and holds that the verdict Paul states may be confessed without any of them. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 96 · 1 Clement 32.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 200 · Letter to Diognetus 9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0101.htm - c. 391 · John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 8, on 4:1–5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210208.htm - 412 · Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter 26.45 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1502.htm - 1519 · Luther, Two Kinds of Righteousness — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Luther%27s+Works+volume+31+Career+of+the+Reformer+I - 1530 · 1531 · Augsburg Confession 4; Apology 4 — https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/article-iv/ - 1547 · Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 7; canons 9, 11, 12 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/sixth-session.htm - 1561 · 1563 · Belgic Confession 22–23; Heidelberg Catechism 60 — https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism - 1577 · Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 3 — https://bookofconcord.org/solid-declaration/righteousness-of-faith/ - 1647 · Westminster Confession 11.1 — https://opc.org/wcf.html - 1672 · Synod of Jerusalem, Confession of Dositheus, decree 13 — https://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html - 1999 · Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification — https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html - 2007 · 2009 · John Piper, The Future of Justification; N. T. Wright, Justification — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Piper+Future+of+Justification+Wright+Justification+God%27s+Plan+and+Paul%27s+Vision - voice · Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Fitzmyer+Romans+Anchor+Bible - voice · Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) — https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html - voice · Valerie Karras, “Beyond Justification: An Orthodox Perspective” (2003) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Karras+Beyond+Justification+An+Orthodox+Perspective - voice · Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul (2004) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Westerholm+Perspectives+Old+and+New+on+Paul - voice · Simon Gathercole, Where Is Boasting? (2002) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Gathercole+Where+Is+Boasting - voice · N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (2009) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Wright+Justification+God%27s+Plan+and+Paul%27s+Vision - voice · John Piper, The Future of Justification (2007) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Piper+The+Future+of+Justification - voice · John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (2015) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Barclay+Paul+and+the+Gift ============================================================================== 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672 · One account of election made the test Address: https://additions.church/1547-election Narrowing · How it binds: Required Chosen before the world began, and God desiring all to be saved, are both in the text. Rome, the Lutheran and Reformed confessions and the East each bound an account of how. First clear witness: Trent canon 17, 1547; Concord 11, 1577; Dort, 1619; Jerusalem decree 3, 1672. Footing: contested. What is dated is not the teaching but the binding of a mechanism as a test, and each binding is against another’s. Orange (529) is the first anathema, Western and on one point. The East bound nothing until 1672. On the Protestant line the Lutheran and Reformed confessions bound opposite accounts, and most other churches bind none. Carried today by: Roman Catholic, Protestant (in part), Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY The question is as old as Paul’s letter to Rome. God chose Jacob before he was born and hardened Pharaoh; God desires all people to be saved. Jewish teachers in Paul’s own day divided over how far God’s decree reached, and Paul used both kinds of sentence and did not reconcile them. For three centuries the church’s teachers read him toward freedom: Justin, Origen, Chrysostom all held that God chooses in view of what he foreknows. Then Augustine, in 396 and before any quarrel with Pelagius, read him the other way: faith itself is God’s gift, given to those he has chosen, withheld from the rest. He spent his last years defending the reading against the monks of Gaul. A council at Orange in 529 took Augustine’s side on grace and drew one line: no one is predestined to evil. The West then argued for a thousand years without a council of the whole West binding an answer. A ninth-century monk who taught a double predestination was condemned and imprisoned; one council bound against him and another bound for him; the question was left. The Reformation forced it. Calvin taught election and reprobation as one decree; Trent anathematized the view that grace is only for the predestined; the Lutherans bound an election to life alone; the Dutch Reformed at Dort in 1619 bound the full decree and deposed the ministers who refused it; the Orthodox at Jerusalem in 1672 anathematized the Calvinists. Rome, meanwhile, spent nine years trying to settle the same question between its Dominicans and its Jesuits, and in 1607 gave up and forbade either side to condemn the other. The entry dates four bindings, each aimed at another, on one card. The record gives the texts on both sides, the Jewish schools, the fathers, and the answer to “then what may a church require?”, which is the texts and no mechanism. 2 THE CLAIM That God chose his people before the world began is in the text (Eph 1:4–5; Rom 8:29–30; 9:11–18). So is God’s desire that all be saved (1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9; Ezek 18:23) and the call to whoever believes (John 3:16; Rom 10:13). The apostles hold these together and do not explain how. After them, four churches each bound an account of how, and each binding is aimed at another’s. Trent (1547, canon 17) anathematizes anyone who says that the grace of justification is “only attained to by those who are predestined unto life” and that the rest are “predestined unto evil.” The Formula of Concord (1577) binds Lutheran pastors to an election that “extends only over the children of God” and holds that God “is no cause of punishment, of damnation.” The Canons of Dort (1619) bind Reformed ministers to the opposite: that “some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it, proceeds from God’s eternal decree,” and that God “decreed to leave in the common misery” those he passed over and “to condemn and punish them forever”; the Remonstrant ministers who refused were deposed. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672, decree 3) teaches that God predestined to glory those he foreknew would use their freedom well, and subjects “to an eternal anathema those who say and think” that God condemns without cause. In plain words: the page does not date the teaching that God chooses, which is the apostles’ own. It dates the point at which each church required one account of how he chooses, and condemned the others. The first anathema on the question, at Orange in 529, is on the record below; it is Western, regional, and on one point only, and the Reformed hold that it does not touch them. What the churches bound from 1547 was a full mechanism, each against the rest. NOT CLAIMED That any of the four accounts is false, or that the question does not matter, or that a church may not teach one. Three things a reader should not take from this entry: that the page denies election, which it affirms in the text’s words; that it sides with the Arminian or the Orthodox reading against the Reformed, when it binds none of them; and that it counts Orange’s canons on grace as an addition, when the entry is about the decree, not about whether grace comes first. The Protestant line is counted in part: the Lutheran and Reformed confessions bound opposite accounts, and most other Protestant churches bind none. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Eph 1:4–5, 11 “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world … he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” Rom 8:29–30 “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son … and those whom he predestined he also called.” Rom 9:11–18 “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God’s purpose of election might continue … ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ … So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. … He has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” Rom 9:22–23; John 6:37, 44; Acts 13:48 “Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction … vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.” “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9 God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” He is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Ezek 18:23, 32; Matt 23:37 “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” “How often would I have gathered your children together … and you were not willing!” John 3:16; Rom 10:13; Rom 11:32 “Whoever believes in him should not perish.” “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” “God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.” Jas 1:13 “God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” The apostles say both that God chose before the world and that he desires all to be saved, often in the same letter, and bind no account of how both are true. Every one of the four definitions is a harmonization. Each can be rejected by readers who hold every verse here, which is the mark of a reading. The page binds the verses and none of the harmonizations. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Israel’s election. “The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession” (Deut 7:6), and “not because you were more in number” (7:7). Election in the Scriptures is first of a people, and it comes with “I have set before you life and death … therefore choose life” (Deut 30:19). Jacob over Esau (Gen 25:23; Mal 1:2–3) and the hardening of Pharaoh, who hardens his own heart (Exod 8:15, 32) and whose heart the LORD hardens (9:12), are the stories Paul reaches for in Romans 9. Both sides of the later dispute are already inside them. The schools. Josephus says the Jewish schools of Paul’s day divided on exactly this. The Essenes held that fate governs everything; the Sadducees did away with fate and put everything in human power; the Pharisees held a middle view, in which fate and human will cooperate (Antiquities 13.171–173; War 2.162–165). The Community Rule at Qumran teaches that from the God of knowledge comes all that is and shall be, and that he created the spirits of light and darkness (1QS 3.15–4.1). Sirach answers the other way: “Do not say, ‘It was the Lord’s doing that I fell away’ … he left them in the power of their own free choice” (Sir 15:11, 14 NRSVUE). The Psalms of Solomon say that our works are in the choosing of our own soul. Paul, a Pharisee, wrote into a world where the question was open and both answers had Scripture behind them, and he did not close it. One verb. “Foreknew” (Rom 8:29; 11:2; 1 Pet 1:2, 20) is proginōskō, to know beforehand. In the Greek fathers it keeps that sense: God chooses in view of what he knows. In Latin it becomes praescivit beside praedestinavit, and Augustine reads the knowing as itself a choosing. The word does not decide between them. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, First Apology 43–44 “Unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable” for their actions; and the prophets foretell what will happen because God foreknows it, not because it is fated. The earliest Christian treatment of the question binds nothing and reads the texts the other way from Dort. c. 390 Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 16 On Jacob and Esau: “this was a sign of foreknowledge, that they were chosen from the very birth,” for “he that knows the secrets of the hearts, he only knows for a certainty who deserve a crown.” Pharaoh was fitted for wrath “by his own proper self.” The Greek reading of Romans 9, a generation before Augustine’s, and never bound. 6 THE RECORD c. 396 Augustine, To Simplicianus 1.2; recalled in On the Predestination of the Saints 3.7–4.8 Asked about Romans 9, Augustine reverses his earlier view: the choice of Jacob rests on God’s mercy alone, not on foreseen faith. He later says he had been “thinking that faith whereby we believe in God is not God’s gift, but that it is in us from ourselves,” until “God revealed this to me as I sought to solve this question.” 428–429 Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints “Predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is the donation itself.” The mature account, written against the monks of Marseille, who held that the beginning of faith is ours. 529 Second Council of Orange The beginning of faith is God’s gift, against the monks of Gaul (canons 3–8). At the close: of those who hold that any are predestined to evil, “if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema.” Confirmed by Boniface II in 531. The first anathema on the question, in one region of the West. 848–860 Gottschalk; Mainz, Quierzy, Valence, Toucy A monk teaches a twofold predestination from Augustine’s own words. Mainz (848) and Quierzy (849) condemn him and he is imprisoned for life; Quierzy (853) binds “only one predestination,” to life; Valence (855) answers with a predestination “of the elect to life and of the wicked to death.” At Toucy (860) the two sides reach, in Schaff’s words, “a sort of agreement,” and the West lets the matter rest. 1547 Trent, Session 6, canon 17 Anathema on anyone who says that the grace of justification “is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life,” the rest being “predestined unto evil.” Chapter 12 warns against presuming “as regards the secret mystery of divine predestination,” since “except by special revelation, it cannot be known whom God hath chosen unto Himself”; canon 15 anathematizes the claim that the justified are bound by faith to believe themselves “assuredly in the number of the predestinate.” 1559 Calvin, Institutes 3.21–24 Election and reprobation as one decree: “some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation” (3.21.5). A book, which bound no one, and the source of the Reformed confessions’ wording. 1577 Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 11 God’s foreknowledge “extends over all creatures, good and bad”; his election “does not extend at once over the godly and the wicked, but only over the children of God.” “As God is not a cause of sins, so, too, He is no cause of punishment, of damnation.” Lutheran pastors subscribe. 1598–1607 Rome, the Congregatio de Auxiliis Rome’s commission “on the helps of grace.” Dominicans and Jesuits dispute whether grace moves the will of itself or in view of God’s knowledge of what the will would do. After nine years Paul V closes the inquiry without a ruling and forbids each side to censure the other: “the question was not solved but an end was put to the disputes.” Rome, which bound against the Reformed reading in 1547, leaves the question open between its own schools. 1610–1619 The Remonstrance; the Synod of Dort Dutch ministers, on Johannes Uytenbogaert’s draft, protest the Reformed decree (1610); Simon Episcopius speaks for them at the synod. The synod condemns them: “that some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it, proceeds from God’s eternal decree” (I.6); God “decreed to leave in the common misery” the rest and “to condemn and punish them forever,” which “by no means makes God the Author of sin” (I.15). About two hundred Remonstrant ministers are deposed and some banished. 1647 Westminster Confession 3.3 “Some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death,” while “neither is God the author of sin” (3.1). Presbyterian ministers subscribe. 1672 Synod of Jerusalem, decree 3 “We believe the most good God to have from eternity predestinated unto glory those whom He has chosen,” not without cause, but foreseeing the right use of free will; and “we do subject to an eternal anathema those who say and think such things” as that God condemns without cause. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED From a people to a person. In the Scriptures the chosen one is Israel, and in Paul the chosen are “in him,” in Christ (Eph 1:4). The sixteenth-century definitions ask the question of each soul one by one. That is a fair question to put to Romans 9, and it is not the one Romans 9 is answering, which is why Israel stands behind the whole chapter (9:1–5; 11:1–2, 26). Two verbs in one verse. “Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (Rom 9:22) is a passive with no agent named; “vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (9:23) has God as its subject. Chrysostom noticed the difference and built on it; the Reformed read the first as God’s work too. The text leaves the first verb without a subject. The hardening. Exodus says three times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (8:15, 32; 9:34) and then that the LORD hardened it (9:12; 10:1). Romans 9:18 quotes only the second. Exodus also has the LORD announce the hardening before Pharaoh’s first refusal (4:21; 7:3). A reader who brings the whole story finds both orders in it; a reader who takes Romans 9:18 alone finds one. Both have the text. “All.” “Who desires all people to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4) is read as every person, and as all kinds of people. “Not wishing that any should perish” (2 Pet 3:9) is read of everyone, and of “you,” the readers. Each side has a reading of the other side’s verse, and that is the sign that a verse cannot settle it. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (1998; 2nd ed. 2018) Reads Romans 9 of individuals and unconditional election, and answers the corporate reading at length. PROTESTANT Brian J. Abasciano, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9 (2005–2011) Reads the election of Romans 9 as corporate and covenantal, in Israel’s story, from the same texts. ANGLICAN N. T. Wright, Romans (2002) and Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013) Romans 9–11 is about Israel, and the hardening and the mercy are stages in one story that ends with “mercy on all” (11:32). CATHOLIC Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ, Romans (1993) Paul is speaking of God’s free choice of Israel and of the nations, not of the predestination of individuals to glory or damnation; the later question is not his. CATHOLIC Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, Predestination (1936); Luis de Molina SJ, Concordia (1588) The two Catholic schools Rome declined to choose between in 1607: grace efficacious of itself, and grace given in view of God’s knowledge of free choices. ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974) The East never adopted Augustine’s doctrine of predestination; it reads election through foreknowledge and synergy, as the Greek fathers did. JEWISH STUDIES E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) Election in Second Temple Judaism is of the people by grace; obedience keeps one in, it does not get one in. The frame Paul inherited. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Romans 9 is explicit. ‘It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy’ (9:16). ‘He hardens whomever he wills’ (9:18). This is a recognition.” (Protestant) The verses are bound; the page keeps every one of them. What Dort bound is a mechanism: that the difference between believer and unbeliever “proceeds from God’s eternal decree,” and that the rest are passed over and condemned by decree. Catholics of the Molinist school, Lutherans and the Orthodox affirm Romans 9:16 and 18 and deny that mechanism, reading the chapter of Israel and the nations, or of God’s freedom to have mercy on the undeserving, or of a choice in view of foreknowledge. Chrysostom read it so in 390. Catholics of the Thomist school hold something near Dort’s decree, and Rome lets both schools stand; what Rome permits as a school opinion, Dort bound. A reading that readers of the whole text reject without denying a text is a reading, and the rule allows no reading to be bound. The same sentence applies to Trent, Concord and Jerusalem. 2. “Orange is a recognition. Scripture excludes God as the author of evil (Jas 1:13; 1 John 1:5), and that is all Orange anathematized.” (Catholic) If that were all, the Reformed would be inside it: Dort says its decree “by no means makes God the Author of sin,” and Westminster that “neither is God the author of sin.” Whether “predestined to evil” reaches a decree that passes some by is itself argued, and that is the point: an anathema that needs a reading to know whom it strikes is binding a reading. Trent made it explicit in 1547, when canon 17 condemned the view that justifying grace is “only attained to by those who are predestined unto life,” a clause Dort affirms. The page does not date Orange’s canons on grace, which are a different question; it dates the anathema as the first binding on this one, and dates Rome’s fuller binding at 1547. 3. “Foreknowledge, not decree. ‘Those whom he foreknew he also predestined’ (Rom 8:29). The order is in the text.” (Orthodox, Protestant) The order is in the text, and so is the question what “foreknew” means: knowledge of what people would do, or a knowing that is a choosing, as “you only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2) uses the verb. Each reading has the texts. Jerusalem in 1672 bound the first with an anathema, and that binding is dated here beside the others. 4. “1 Timothy 2:4 settles it: God desires all to be saved.” (Catholic, Protestant) It is bound, and the Reformed affirm it. They read “all” as all kinds, as 1 Timothy 2:1–2 has just said “all people … kings and all who are in high positions.” That reading can be wrong without denying the verse. So can the other. The page holds the verse and neither reading. 5. “Then the page sides with the Lutherans, who bound election to life and nothing to death.” (Protestant) No. The Formula of Concord is on the card as a binding: it makes a single election a condition of the Lutheran ministry and rejects the double decree. That is an account of how, held as a test, and it is dated with the others. The page’s own position is the text’s: chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world; God desires all to be saved; no one comes unless drawn; whoever believes. Both, and no mechanism. 6. “Rome never defined predestination. Trent only ruled out presumption.” (Catholic) Trent anathematized a reading, which is a binding, and the page dates it. It is also true, and on the record, that Rome left the question open between Thomists and Molinists in 1607. Rome bound against the Reformed account and bound none of its own. The entry says both. 7. “Then what does this page itself teach, and what may a church require?” What the text says and no more. God chose his people in Christ before the world; he desires all to be saved; no one comes unless the Father draws him; whoever believes will not perish; God tempts no one. All of that is in the text and may be required, because the text requires it. How the choosing and the desiring fit is a reading. A church may teach a reading, and may ask its teachers to teach it as a reading. It may not make it a condition of the table or of membership, and it may not exclude a teacher who holds the texts and reads them another way. The same rule forbids binding the Arminian or the Orthodox reading against the Reformed one. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether Orange’s canons on the beginning of faith (3–8) are a recognition of John 6:44, 15:5 and 1 Corinthians 4:7, or a reading, is not decided on this page. A Pelagian who affirms those verses is hard to find, and the first readers after the apostles held that faith itself is given (Eph 2:8; Phil 1:29), which is why the page leans to recognition and does not date them. Whether Calvin himself or his successors made reprobation a confessional test is argued; the Gallican Confession (1559) and the Belgic (1561) speak of election and of leaving the rest, without Dort’s precision. Whether Jerusalem’s decree 3 binds foreknowledge as a mechanism, or only anathematizes the double decree, is a fair question; the decree does both in one paragraph. Do not claim that the early church was Arminian, or that it was Augustinian. Before Augustine the question was not asked in his form; after him the West answered it both ways for a thousand years, and no council of the whole West bound either until Trent. The page takes no position on which account is right. It dates the four bindings. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, First Apology 43–44 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm - c. 390 · Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 16 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210216.htm - c. 396 · Augustine, To Simplicianus 1.2; recalled in On the Predestination of the Saints 3.7–4.8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15121.htm - 428–429 · Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15121.htm - 529 · Second Council of Orange — https://www.crivoice.org/creedorange.html - 848–860 · Gottschalk; Mainz, Quierzy, Valence, Toucy — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xi.xvii.html - 1547 · Trent, Session 6, canon 17 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/sixth-session.htm - 1559 · Calvin, Institutes 3.21–24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.v.xxii.html - 1577 · Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 11 — https://bookofconcord.org/solid-declaration/election/ - 1598–1607 · Rome, the Congregatio de Auxiliis — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04238a.htm - 1610–1619 · The Remonstrance; the Synod of Dort — https://doxologypress.org/creeds/dort.php - 1647 · Westminster Confession 3.3 — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html#Chapter_03 - 1672 · Synod of Jerusalem, decree 3 — https://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html - voice · Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (1998; 2nd ed. 2018) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Schreiner+Romans+Baker+Exegetical+Commentary - voice · Brian J. Abasciano, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9 (2005–2011) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Abasciano+%22Paul%27s+Use+of+the+Old+Testament+in+Romans%22 - voice · N. T. Wright, Romans (2002) and Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Wright+Paul+and+the+Faithfulness+of+God - voice · Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ, Romans (1993) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Fitzmyer+Romans+Anchor+Bible - voice · Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, Predestination (1936); Luis de Molina SJ, Concordia (1588) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Garrigou-Lagrange+Predestination - voice · John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974) — https://archive.org/details/byzantinetheolog0000meye - voice · E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Sanders+Paul+and+Palestinian+Judaism ============================================================================== 1561 · 1563 · 1647 · One legal account of the cross made the test Address: https://additions.church/1561 Narrowing · How it binds: Required That Christ bore our sins, for us, is in the text. The Reformed confessions bind one account of how: the Father’s justice satisfied by punishing the Son in our place. First clear witness: Belgic Confession 21, 1561; Heidelberg Catechism 37, 1563; Westminster Confession 8.5, 1647. Footing: contested. Substitution language is in Scripture and in the fathers, and the creeds say only “crucified for us.” The claim is that one model came to rule the rest and was required of ministers. It is marked in part because most Protestant churches teach it without binding it, and the rest of the Protestant line is not counted. Carried today by: Protestant (in part) 1 THE STORY Anselm had explained the cross as a debt of honor paid. The Reformers, several of them trained in law, moved the scene from the lord’s hall to the criminal court. Sin is a crime against God’s justice; justice requires that it be punished; Christ, standing in our place, bore the punishment, so that the Father’s wrath is satisfied and we go free. Luther preached it, beside the “happy exchange” of our sin for Christ’s righteousness and the victory over death and the devil. Calvin set it out in the Institutes: Christ bore the weight of divine severity and suffered in his soul the torments of a condemned man. A book binds no one. The confessions did. The Belgic Confession of 1561 said that Christ presented himself in our name before his Father to appease his wrath with full satisfaction, and sensed the horrible punishment our sins required. The Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 said he sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. The Westminster Confession of 1647 said he fully satisfied the justice of his Father. Reformed ministers subscribed to these as a condition of office, and in some circles the penal account became the gospel itself, so that to question it was to question whether a man was a Christian. The apostolic writings say that Christ died for our sins, bore them in his body on the tree, became a curse for us, and they also say ransom, victory, sacrifice, and that we died with him. No one of these is made the key to the rest. The entry dates the confessions that made one of them the test. The record is careful to say what it does not claim, because this is the entry a Reformed reader will come to first. 2 THE CLAIM In the Reformed confessions, the cross is explained chiefly one way: Christ bore, in our place, the punishment that God’s justice required for sin, and so appeased the Father’s wrath. The Belgic Confession (1561) says he “presented himself in our name before his Father, to appease his Father’s wrath with full satisfaction,” and “sensed the horrible punishment required by our sins”; the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) that he “sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race”; the Westminster Confession (1647) that he “fully satisfied the justice of his Father.” Ministers subscribe to these texts as a condition of office. For much of Protestantism this penal reading became the meaning of the atonement, the other New Testament images were treated as secondary, and in some circles the reading itself became a test of whether a person holds the gospel. This entry is marked a narrowing, marked required in part, and marked contested. In plain words: the page does not date the teaching that Christ died for our sins, which is the oldest creed there is (1 Cor 15:3). It dates the point at which one account of how his death saves was required of ministers and made a test. The creeds of the whole church say only “for us and for our salvation” and “crucified for us.” Everything below that line is a reading, this one included. NOT CLAIMED That substitution is unbiblical or missing from the fathers. “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3) is the earliest creed, and Isaiah 53, Galatians 3:13 and 2 Corinthians 5:21 say what they say. Three things a reader should not take from this entry, because it does not say them: that the page denies Christ died in our place, which it affirms; that the page calls penal substitution false, which it does not, since it is a reading the texts can carry; and that penal or substitutionary language was invented at the Reformation, which the sources do not allow, since Eusebius and Athanasius use it. What is dated is the binding of one mechanism, the Father’s justice satisfied by punishing the Son instead of us, as the account that governs the rest. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 15:3 The oldest creed: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” It says for whom and does not say how. Isa 53:5–6, 10; 2 Cor 5:21 Bearing sin: “pierced for our transgressions … the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all”; “when his soul makes an offering for guilt.” “He made him to be sin who knew no sin.” Gal 3:13; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18 Curse and tree: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” “The righteous for the unrighteous.” These are the texts the defenders rightly cite. Rom 8:3 “Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.” Mark 10:45 Ransom: “to give his life as a ransom for many.” Col 2:15; Heb 2:14 Victory: he “disarmed the rulers and authorities”; “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death.” Rom 3:25; Heb 9:13–14; 13:12 Sacrifice and cleansing: as the goats’ blood and the heifer’s ashes “sanctify for the purification of the flesh,” the blood of Christ will “purify our conscience”; he suffered outside the gate “in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.” 2 Cor 5:19 Reconciliation: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” Rom 6:3–6 Participation: “buried therefore with him by baptism into death.” The apostles use all of these, often in one paragraph, and do not make any one of them the key to the rest. The sentences say that he bore our sins, became a curse for us, and that sin was condemned in his flesh. They do not say that the Father’s retributive justice was satisfied by punishing the Son instead of us. That sentence is the theory. The texts can carry it, and they can carry ransom, sacrifice and union; what is dated is making one of these the gate. Hebrews is the one apostolic writing that explains the cross by Leviticus at length, and its words for what the blood does are purify, sanctify and perfect (9:14; 10:10, 14; 13:12). It says he was “offered once to bear the sins of many” (9:28). It does not say he was punished. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Leviticus: what the offering is for. In Israel’s sacrifices blood is life (Lev 17:11) and is applied to cleanse the sanctuary and the people. The animal is not described as punished, and the offering English Bibles call the sin offering (ḥaṭṭāʾt) is brought where there is no sin. A mother brings one after childbirth (12:6; Mary brought the poor woman’s pair of birds, Luke 2:24). A healed leper brings one (Lev 14:19), and a guilt offering besides (14:12), with no wrong named. A Nazirite brings one on finishing his vow (Num 6:14). A new altar receives one, “to make atonement for it” (Lev 8:15). The red heifer is “a sin offering” whose whole product is water for those who have touched the dead (Num 19:9, 17). The verb behind the noun, in the form Leviticus uses, means to purify: Moses “purified the altar” with the blood (8:15), and the priest “cleanses the house” (14:49, 52). And the poorest Israelite’s sin offering is a handful of flour, with no blood in it and nothing killed, of which the text says “the priest shall make atonement for him … and he shall be forgiven” (5:11–13). An offering that a mother brings, that an altar receives and that can be made of flour is not a penalty carried by an animal. It is what the word says: a purification. Leviticus: where the blood goes. The text’s attention is not on the death but on the blood. For an ordinary Israelite or a leader the priest puts it on the horns of the altar in the court (Lev 4:25, 30); for a priest or the whole congregation he carries it inside, sprinkles it seven times before the curtain and puts it on the horns of the incense altar (4:6–7, 17–18); on the Day of Atonement the high priest takes it past the curtain to the mercy seat (16:14–15). The sin reaches farther, and the blood follows it farther in. A penalty would be one death for every sinner alike; what varies here is not the death but where the blood is put. What becomes of the body says the same. The flesh of the ordinary sin offering is “most holy,” and the priests eat it in the holy place (6:25–26, 29); Moses tells them that in eating it they “bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them” (10:17). It is the priest, not the animal, who is said to bear the iniquity. The sin offerings whose blood went inside are not eaten; the carcass is burned outside the camp (4:12, 21; 6:30). That is the rite Hebrews applies to Jesus, with the result named: he “suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood” (Heb 13:11–12). The same letter sets the goats’ blood beside the heifer’s ashes, says both “sanctify for the purification of the flesh,” and says the blood of Christ does for the conscience what they did for the flesh (9:13–14). Leviticus: what no offering does. Where the Torah imposes a penalty, no animal takes it. The offerings are for sins done unknowingly (Lev 4:2, 13, 22, 27), for the cases in 5:1–4, for wrongs against a neighbor’s property, which are made good with restitution before the ram is brought (6:1–7), and for impurity. The one who sins “with a high hand” has no offering: “that person shall be cut off … his iniquity shall be on him” (Num 15:30–31). For murder the law forbids the substitute outright: “you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death,” and no atonement can be made for the land “except by the blood of the one who shed it” (35:31, 33). Where the text has a sentence it falls on the one sentenced; where it has an offering no one is sentenced, and where a fine is attached, the fifth added (Lev 6:5), the offender pays it himself. The one explicit transfer of sins in Leviticus is onto an animal that is not killed: Aaron lays both hands on the live goat, confesses over it “all the iniquities of the people of Israel,” and sends it away, and “the goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area” (16:21–22); the man who leads it out must wash before he comes back in (16:26). Leviticus 16:5 calls the two goats together “a sin offering,” one offering in two parts, and the text divides the parts: the bearing of sins to the goat that lives, the blood to the goat that dies. The laying on of a hand, by itself, means less than readers have made it mean: it is laid on the burnt offering (1:4) and on the peace offering (3:2), which the offerer and his guests then eat (7:15–16). The Passover lamb marks and frees a people; it is not a sin offering. Isaiah 53:10 does call the Servant’s death “an offering for guilt,” and that is the clearest place where the sacrificial and the substitutionary language meet in the text. The offering Isaiah names is the one with a price on it: the guilt offering (ʾāšām) is a ram “valued in silver shekels” (Lev 5:15), brought after the wrong has been made good and a fifth added (6:5–6). It is the Torah’s word for a debt repaid. The martyrs. Jews of the period could speak of a righteous death as atoning for others. In 2 Maccabees 7, written before Paul, a dying martyr prays that God’s wrath against the nation may end with him and his brothers. In 4 Maccabees, which may be a little later than Paul, a martyr prays that his blood may be the people’s purification and his life taken in exchange for theirs (6:28–29), and the martyrs’ deaths are called a ransom and an atoning sacrifice (17:21–22). The idea of a vicarious death was current in Paul’s world. That counts against anyone who calls substitution a medieval invention. The court. Scripture has courtroom language, and Paul uses it (Rom 8:33–34). Romans 3:19–26 does put the verdict in a court: the whole world “held accountable to God,” and God “just and the justifier.” In the same sentence it puts the cross at the mercy seat (3:25), which is a sanctuary, not a dock. The blood of Leviticus cleanses, the goat carries, the lamb marks and frees, the martyr’s death is a ransom. The text keeps court and sanctuary side by side; when a later frame let the court swallow the sanctuary is in the record and in the section below it. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 318 Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8–9, 20 The death of Christ pays the debt of death and, in the same breath, abolishes corruption, renews the image and defeats death by the resurrection. Several images stand together, and none is made the frame for the rest. 6 THE RECORD c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.18; 5.1 Christ retraces Adam’s course and defeats the one who held humanity captive. c. 318 Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8–9, 20 The Word dies “in the stead of all” to pay the debt of death and undo corruption. Substitution, in a frame of death and life more than of sentence and penalty. c. 320 Eusebius, Demonstration of the Gospel 10.1 Christ was chastised for us and bore a penalty he did not owe. The kind of text defenders rightly cite. c. 383 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45.22 Rejects a ransom paid to the devil and also one demanded by the Father: on what principle would the blood of his Son please him? 1098 Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 1.15; book 2 Sin must be followed by satisfaction or by punishment. Christ offers satisfaction so that punishment does not fall. This is not yet a penal theory. 1559 Calvin, Institutes 2.16.10–11 Christ bore the weight of divine severity, and suffered in his soul the torments of a condemned and forsaken man. A book, which bound no one; Calvin also uses victory and sacrifice freely. 1561 Belgic Confession 21 Christ “presented himself in our name before his Father, to appease his Father’s wrath with full satisfaction,” and “sensed the horrible punishment required by our sins.” Adopted by the Dutch churches, subscribed by their ministers from the Synod of Emden (1571), and from 1619 together with the Canons of Dort. 1563 Heidelberg Catechism 37 Christ “sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.” The catechism of the Palatinate and then of the Dutch churches. 1647 Westminster Confession 8.5 Christ “fully satisfied the justice of his Father.” Westminster gives the penal reading its classic English confessional form, and Presbyterian ministers subscribe to it. 1931 Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor A Swedish Lutheran theologian, later a bishop, argues that victory over the powers, not penalty, was the fathers’ main account. 2016 N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began An Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar puts the cross back inside Israel’s story. The animal in Leviticus is not punished; the one sentence of punishment in Paul falls on Sin itself, “in the flesh” of the Messiah (Rom 8:3); and the version in which an angry God is paid off he calls paganized. 2022 David M. Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement A Hebrews scholar reads Jesus’ sacrifice as the whole Levitical sequence: the slaughter, then the living one carrying the blood into the holy place. In Hebrews the atoning act is the presentation, by the risen Jesus, in heaven (9:11–12, 24). The death is necessary and is not the moment of atonement. 2024 Andrew Rillera, Lamb of the Free Argues from Leviticus that no sacrifice in the Torah is a substitutionary death, and that the New Testament speaks of Jesus’ death as one believers share in. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Sacrifice read as punishment. Later Western readers assumed the animal dies the death the sinner deserves. Leviticus never says it. Jacob Milgrom (Leviticus 1–16, 1991) reads the sin offering as a purification: its blood purges the holy place of the pollution that sin and impurity leave there, which is why the blood goes to the furniture and goes deeper as the sin is graver. Roy E. Gane (Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy, 2005) answers that the offering removes the sin from the offerer and carries it into the sanctuary, which the Day of Atonement then clears; Jay Sklar (Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: The Priestly Conceptions, 2005) finds ransom as well as purification in the word kipper, a payment that averts the penalty the offerer had incurred. William K. Gilders (Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power, 2004) cautions all three: the priestly texts say what is done with the blood and that it atones, and almost never say how; Leviticus 17:11 stands nearly alone, and is itself read several ways. On any of these readings the sin is cleansed, carried or paid off. On none of them is the animal punished. That part, too, is supplied by the reader. One Hebrew word. English Bibles render ḥaṭṭāʾt “sin offering,” and a reader hears an offering for sin. The same noun names the offering a mother brings after childbirth, and the verb it comes from, in the form Leviticus uses, means to purify (8:15; 14:49, 52). “Purification offering” is now the usual scholarly rendering; the NRSVUE prints it, and the NIV notes it. The English name did for the Hebrew rite what “propitiation” did for the Greek word below: it points the reader toward the sinner’s guilt, where the text points toward what is made clean. The offering stopped at the slaughter. In Leviticus the killing is the first act of a sacrifice, not the whole of it. The offering is complete when the blood has been brought where it belongs and the portions burned. Hebrews keeps the sequence: Christ “entered once for all into the holy places … by means of his own blood” (9:12), “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (9:24), and “always lives to make intercession” (7:25). David M. Moffitt (Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, 2022) argues that in Hebrews the atoning act is this presentation, by the risen Jesus, in the sanctuary above, and that the death, necessary as it is, is not the moment the letter calls atonement. A reading that ends the sacrifice at the cross, with a penalty paid, has ended it where Leviticus begins it. One Greek word. In Romans 3:25 Paul calls Christ a hilastērion. In the Septuagint and in Hebrews 9:5 that word is the mercy seat, the lid of the ark where the blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement. The Latin Bible gives “propitiation,” and the King James Version and its successors, the ESV among them, follow it. That points the reader to appeasing wrath and away from the place of cleansing. Luther and Tyndale had translated “mercy seat.” Hebrew and Greek Isaiah. Isaiah 53:10 in the Hebrew text reads “it was the will of the LORD to crush him.” The Greek Septuagint, the Bible of the Greek fathers and the form the New Testament usually quotes, reads, in Brenton’s translation, “The Lord also is pleased to purge him from his stroke.” Readers of the two versions met a different verse at the center of the debate. “For us.” The creed’s word is hyper, “on behalf of.” It can mean in our place, as in “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8) and “one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50), or for our sake, as in “lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13); context decides. The plainly substitutionary preposition, anti, “in exchange for,” is Jesus’ own: “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45; 1 Tim 2:6). Beside these the text has the participatory reading in its own words: “one has died for all, therefore all have died” (2 Cor 5:14), “a forerunner on our behalf” (Heb 6:20), “suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21), “crucified with Christ … who gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). The “with” and the “for” stand in the same sentences. A reading that keeps both is from the text’s world; a reading that drops either is not; and the creed’s “for us” says the one and leaves the other to be read. The court. Calvin trained as a lawyer at Orléans and Bourges, and the Reformation read the cross in the frame of a criminal court: guilt, sentence, penalty borne by another. Scripture has courtroom language. The question is whether the courtroom is the room in which the whole event takes place. That frame is from the world ahead of the text; the Servant, the mercy seat and the curse of the law are from the world of it. That is the difference between a reading the page dates and one it only notes. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions (2007) The fullest defense. Gathers penal and substitutionary passages from Justin, Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrysostom and others. ANGLICAN N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (2016) Keeps substitution inside Israel’s story. The animal in Leviticus is not punished; what the cross does is end the exile and break the powers; the one sentence of punishment in Paul is passed on Sin itself, “in the flesh” of the Messiah (Rom 8:3). Rejects the version in which an angry God is bought off. PROTESTANT Andrew Rillera, Lamb of the Free (2024) Against penal substitution from the sacrificial texts, and for a death believers share rather than one that replaces theirs. Reviewers answer that he underplays Isaiah 53 and Mark 10:45. JEWISH STUDIES Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (1991) The standard commentary. The purification offering purges the sanctuary. It is not a penalty laid on the animal. CATHOLIC Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.48; Catechism 615 Rome speaks of merit, satisfaction, sacrifice and redemption together and has never defined one theory. ORTHODOX Vladimir Lossky, “Redemption and Deification” (1953) The juridical account is true as one image and distorting when made the whole. PROTESTANT Morna D. Hooker, From Adam to Christ (1990) “Interchange,” not substitution: Christ shares our condition so that we may share his. The participatory reading in its classic form, three decades before Rillera, and holding “for us” and “with him” together. PROTESTANT David M. Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement (2022) A Hebrews scholar. The New Testament’s sacrificial language follows Leviticus, where the slaughter is the first step and the presentation of the blood the completing one. In Hebrews the atonement is finished by the risen and ascended Christ in the sanctuary above. The cross is necessary and is not the whole of the sacrifice. PROTESTANT L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? (2015) A Reformed Old Testament scholar reads Leviticus as the center of the Pentateuch and its question as the title’s: how a people comes up into God’s presence to dwell with him. Substitution and propitiation are kept, inside a frame that is the sanctuary and the way up to it, not the court. PROTESTANT Roy E. Gane, Cult and Character (2005); Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement (2005) The other side of the Leviticus debate, from two Protestant scholars. Gane: the sin offering removes the sin from the offerer and carries it into the sanctuary, which the Day of Atonement then clears. Sklar: kipper is ransom and purification together, a payment that averts the penalty the offerer had incurred (17:11). On neither reading is the animal punished: the sin is carried, or paid off; the penalty is cleared, not served. JEWISH STUDIES William K. Gilders, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible (2004) The caution. The priestly texts say what is done with blood and seldom say what it means; Leviticus 17:11 stands nearly alone, and is itself read several ways. The theories, purging included, are the interpreters’. What the rites plainly do is mark who may approach and how far. The warning cuts against every confident “how,” this page’s included. PROTESTANT Brian Zahnd, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God (2017); The Wood Between the Worlds (2024) A pastor’s case against the penal reading, written for churches raised on it. The cross is not the Father punishing the Son; it is God in Christ absorbing human sin and violence and answering with forgiveness. The second book declines any one theory and multiplies images instead. Not scholarship and does not claim to be; Reformed reviewers answer that it argues against the teaching at its crudest. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Isaiah 53 and 2 Corinthians 5:21 teach it outright.” (Protestant) They teach that the Servant bore our sins, for us, and the page keeps that. The theory adds that the Father’s justice required a punishment and was satisfied by punishing the Son instead. The texts can carry that reading. They are also read through ransom, sacrifice and union with Christ. The narrowing is in making one reading the gate. 2. “Galatians 3:13 says Christ became ‘a curse for us’ and redeemed us from ‘the curse of the law.’ The curse is the law’s penalty. That is penal substitution in the text’s own words.” (Protestant) It is the strongest text, and the entry puts it on the card. The sentence has both words: the curse of the law is a penalty, and he became it for us. What the sentence does not say is that the Father satisfied his justice by punishing the Son instead of us; it says the Son took the law’s curse, which Deuteronomy 21:23 attaches to the hanged man, so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations (3:14). Read as the Father punishing the Son, or read as the Messiah absorbing the covenant’s curse at the end of Israel’s exile, the verse is affirmed either way. A verse that both readings affirm cannot settle between them, and the page binds the verse and neither reading. 3. “The fathers taught it.” (Protestant) Penal and substitutionary language does appear, in Eusebius for one, and in Chrysostom on 2 Corinthians 5:21, which is why this entry is marked contested. But no father wrote it as the frame that governs the rest, no council bound it, the East never did, and Gregory of Nazianzus rejects the idea of a payment demanded by the Father. 4. “Without penal substitution God’s justice and the gravity of sin are lost.” (Protestant) The other accounts are not gentle about sin. They describe slavery, death and corruption, and a curse borne. The page does not deny that the cross answers God’s justice; it declines to bind one account of how. 5. “You have put this on the Protestant line only. Rome speaks of satisfaction too.” (Catholic) It does, from Anselm on. Trent binds the word “satisfaction” (Session 6, chapter 7: Christ “made satisfaction for us unto God the Father”) and the word “propitiatory” (Session 22, canon 3), and the Anglican Articles (31) and the Augsburg Confession (3) bind “sacrifice,” “propitiation” and “satisfaction.” None of these binds the sentence that the Father’s justice was satisfied by punishing the Son in our place; Rome holds merit, satisfaction, sacrifice and redemption together and has never defined one theory. That sentence is what the Reformed texts add (Belgic 21; Heidelberg 37), and it is the only sentence this entry dates. If a Catholic text is shown binding the penal mechanism as a condition of office or communion, its date goes here. 6. “Then a church that preaches penal substitution is doing something wrong.” (Protestant) No. A church may preach it, and this page says the texts can carry it. What the rule forbids is making it the test of whether a person holds the gospel, when readers who hold every verse read the cross through ransom, sacrifice or union. The same rule forbids the opposite: a church that forbade its teachers to preach Isaiah 53 as the Servant punished for us would be binding a reading in the other direction, and would be dated here too. 7. “Rillera overcorrects.” (Protestant) That is a fair criticism of Andrew Rillera (Lamb of the Free, 2024), and this page does not depend on his strongest claims. It needs only that Levitical sacrifice is not a transferred execution, and Jacob Milgrom supports that independently. 8. “Leviticus 1:4: the hand is laid on the burnt offering ‘and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.’ Substitution and atonement are joined in the book’s first chapter.” (Protestant) They are, and the entry keeps both words. What the verse does not say is what the hand does. The same hand is laid on the peace offering (3:2, 8, 13), which the offerer and his guests then eat as a festive meal (7:15–16), so the gesture cannot by itself move sin or penalty onto the animal, or the family would be eating it. The one place the text says what a laying on of hands transfers is the live goat, with both hands and a confession (16:21), and that animal is not offered. The burnt offering does make atonement. The text does not say that it does so by being punished. 9. “Hebrews 10:4: ‘it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.’ What the animals could not do, Christ did. The shadow was never the penalty; the substance is.” (Protestant) Hebrews does say the animals could not do what Christ did, and it says what each did. The animals’ blood and the heifer’s ashes “sanctify for the purification of the flesh”; Christ’s blood will “purify our conscience” (9:13–14). He “suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people” (13:12); by his offering “we have been sanctified” and “perfected” (10:10, 14). The letter raises the cleansing from flesh to conscience and from a year to forever. It does not change the cleansing into a punishment. A reader who finds the penalty in Hebrews has brought it; the letter’s own word for the difference is “better” (9:23), not other. 10. “Hebrews 9:22: ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.’ The death is the point, and the resurrection and ascension do not undo it.” (Protestant) The verse begins “almost everything is purified with blood,” and the “almost” is Leviticus: the poor man’s sin offering is flour, with no blood, and “he shall be forgiven” (Lev 5:11–13), and most impurities are cleared by water and time with no blood at all (chapters 11 to 15). Blood is required, and 9:22 says in its first half what it is required for: purifying. Nothing here undoes the cross. What Hebrews adds to it is the entry of the risen Christ into the holy places with his own blood (9:12, 24), the part of a sacrifice Leviticus counts as its completion. The question is not whether he died for us but whether the death is read as a sentence served or as an offering carried through. 11. “Leviticus 16:16 and 16:21 say ‘all their transgressions, all their sins.’ The heaviest sins went under the blood on the Day of Atonement. Nothing was outside it.” (Protestant) Read the verses for what receives the blood. In 16:16 the atonement is “for the Holy Place,” and in 16:18 and 16:20 for the altar and the tent, “because of” the people’s uncleannesses and transgressions. The blood goes on the furniture. The transgressions themselves are confessed over the live goat and carried out (16:21–22). What the people are promised is the vocabulary of washing: “to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins” (16:30). The high-handed sinner is dealt with elsewhere, with no offering: he “shall be cut off” and “his iniquity shall be on him” (Num 15:30–31). What the Day did for deliberate sin is argued, and the Not settled section says so. What the text does not say, on that day or any other, is that an animal was sentenced in a sinner’s place. 12. “Isaiah 53:10 makes the Servant’s life ‘an offering for guilt.’ He is a sin-bearing sacrifice by name, and the New Testament reads him so (1 Pet 2:24).” (Protestant) He is, and the entry puts the verse on the card as the clearest place where sacrifice and substitution meet. Then look at the offering Isaiah chose. The guilt offering (ʾāšām) is the Torah’s reparation: a ram “valued in silver shekels” (Lev 5:15), brought after the wrong has been made good and a fifth added, paid to the priest or to the one wronged (5:16; 6:5–6). It is the one offering with a price on it and the one that comes with a fine, and the offender pays the fine himself; the ram is not punished, it is the compensation. Isaiah reached for the Torah’s word for a debt made good, not its word for a sentence served. That is nearer the satisfaction Anselm described (1098) than the punishment the confessions bound, and this page binds neither. What 1 Peter 2:24 adds is bearing, “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,” and the page affirms it. 13. “In Leviticus the bearing and the dying are split between two goats. In Isaiah 53 and in Christ they meet in one person, who bears the sins and dies. That union is what makes his death penal.” (Protestant) This is the best form of the argument, and the entry grants its premise. One person bears and dies: the Servant “bore the sin of many” and was “cut off out of the land of the living” (Isa 53:8, 12), and “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3). That is the substitution of bearing and of death the page affirms in so many words. The conclusion adds a sentence the premise does not contain: that the Father’s justice required a punishment and was satisfied by inflicting it on the Son. Bearing and dying together give you a sin-bearer who died. They do not give you a court, a sentence or a Father who punishes; the confessions supply those, and the page dates the supplying. Isaiah’s own frame for the union is the reparation offering (53:10), and the Day of Atonement’s is cleansing (Lev 16:30). 10 NOT SETTLED Whether hilastērion means mercy seat, expiation or propitiation remains argued (C. H. Dodd, “Hilaskesthai, Its Cognates, Derivatives, and Synonyms, in the Septuagint,” Journal of Theological Studies 32, 1931, against Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 1955, and since). Whether “condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3) means that sin was punished in Christ’s flesh or that sin was judged and broken there is read both ways, and the page takes neither. Whether the narrowing belongs to the confessions themselves or hardened later, in Protestant scholasticism and nineteenth-century Princeton, is a fair question. The confessions bind the wording; how exclusively it was taught varied. Whether ḥaṭṭāʾt is best rendered “sin offering” or “purification offering” is still argued, and the page’s point does not rest on the translation but on what the offering is brought for. What the sin offering does with the sin, purging the place it polluted (Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1991), carrying it into the sanctuary (Roy E. Gane, Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy, 2005), or ransoming the offerer (Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: The Priestly Conceptions, 2005), is argued too, and William K. Gilders (Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power, 2004) doubts the texts say enough to decide. What the Day of Atonement did for deliberate sin is a further question: Leviticus 16:16 and 16:21 name “transgressions,” Numbers 15:30–31 gives the high-handed sinner no offering, and the readings differ on how the two fit. The page takes none of these sides. It needs only what every side grants: that no text calls the animal punished. Do not claim that penal substitution is a modern invention, or that the early church taught Christus Victor only. Neither survives the sources. Nor that substitution is foreign to Israel’s world: the ram dies in Isaac’s place (Gen 22:13), the Passover lamb dies and the firstborn do not (Exod 12:13, 23; 1 Cor 5:7), a lamb redeems the firstborn donkey (13:13) and the Levites stand in for the firstborn of Israel (Num 3:12), the goat bears the sins away (Lev 16:22), the Servant’s death is “an offering for guilt” (Isa 53:10), and the Maccabean martyr prays “take my life in exchange for theirs” (4 Macc 6:29 NRSVUE). What Israel’s rites do not have is a transfer of punishment, a sentence lifted from the guilty and laid on the innocent; what they do have is a substitution of bearing and of death. The creedal line, for anyone keeping score: “crucified for us” is in the creed and is bound. Every account of how is a reading, and the page holds its own that way. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 318 · Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8–9, 20 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.18; 5.1 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103318.htm - c. 320 · Eusebius, Demonstration of the Gospel 10.1 — https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_de_12_book10.htm - c. 383 · Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310245.htm - 1098 · Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 1.15; book 2 — https://ccel.org/ccel/anselm/basic_works/basic_works.vi.ii.xv.html - 1559 · Calvin, Institutes 2.16.10–11 — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.iv.xvii.html - 1561 · Belgic Confession 21 — https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/belgic-confession - 1563 · Heidelberg Catechism 37 — https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism - 1647 · Westminster Confession 8.5 — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html#Chapter_08 - 1931 · Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor — https://archive.org/details/christusvictor0000gust_y6q7 - 2016 · N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began — https://archive.org/details/dayrevolutionbeg0000wrig_g6d0 - 2022 · David M. Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/rethinking-the-atonement/414600 - 2024 · Andrew Rillera, Lamb of the Free — https://wipfandstock.com/9781666703054/lamb-of-the-free/ - voice · Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions (2007) — https://www.crossway.org/books/pierced-for-our-transgressions-tpb/ - voice · N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (2016) — https://archive.org/details/dayrevolutionbeg0000wrig_g6d0 - voice · Andrew Rillera, Lamb of the Free (2024) — https://wipfandstock.com/9781666703054/lamb-of-the-free/ - voice · Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (1991) — https://archive.org/details/leviticus11600jaco - voice · Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.48; Catechism 615 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4048.htm - voice · Vladimir Lossky, “Redemption and Deification” (1953) — https://archive.org/details/inimagelikenesso0000loss - voice · Morna D. Hooker, From Adam to Christ (1990) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Hooker+From+Adam+to+Christ+Essays+on+Paul - voice · David M. Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement (2022) — https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/rethinking-the-atonement/414600 - voice · L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? (2015) — https://ivpress.com/who-shall-ascend-the-mountain-of-the-lord - voice · Roy E. Gane, Cult and Character (2005); Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement (2005) — https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-101-6.html - voice · William K. Gilders, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible (2004) — https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/3469/blood-ritual-hebrew-bible - voice · Brian Zahnd, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God (2017); The Wood Between the Worlds (2024) — https://ivpress.com/the-wood-between-the-worlds ============================================================================== 1589 · A third Rome Address: https://additions.church/1589 Addition · How it binds: Required Moscow becomes a patriarchate, with the tsar as guardian of the true faith. Church and throne are bound together as they were in Byzantium. First clear witness: Patriarchate of Moscow, 1589; the “Third Rome” letter of Philotheus, c. 1523. Footing: firm. This is one Orthodox church, the largest. The ideal of harmony between emperor and priesthood goes back to Justinian in 535. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox (in part) 1 THE STORY When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, the one Orthodox ruler of any weight not under Muslim or Latin lords was the grand prince of Moscow; Moldavia’s princes and Georgia’s kings were small and hemmed in. A monk named Philotheus of Pskov wrote to the grand prince’s secretary in Pskov around 1523 that two Romes had fallen, the third stood, and a fourth there would not be. The idea took hold: Moscow was the heir of the Christian empire, the tsar the guardian of the true faith, and the Russian church the church of the last Orthodox kingdom. All it lacked was a patriarch. In 1589 the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias II, came to Moscow to raise money for his church under the sultan, and found himself detained until he agreed to consecrate Job, metropolitan of Moscow, as patriarch. He did. The Eastern patriarchs ratified it, and Moscow took its place as the fifth patriarchate, with the tsar beside the patriarch as the emperors had stood beside the patriarchs of Constantinople. The bond between church and throne that Justinian had called a symphony had found a new throne, and it held, through Peter the Great’s abolition of the patriarchate and the Soviet decades, to the present. The apostolic writings know no Christian empire and no church of a kingdom. The entry is carried by the Eastern line, with the note that Moscow is one Orthodox church, the largest, and that the ideal behind it goes back to the sixth century. The record gives the letter, the consecration and the texts about a kingdom not of this world. 2 THE CLAIM In 1589 the metropolitan of Moscow was made a patriarch, under pressure from the tsar’s government. The founding charter takes up the idea that old Rome fell into heresy, that the second Rome fell to the Turks, and that Moscow is the third Rome with the one Orthodox emperor. The Byzantine partnership of throne and altar was carried into Russia, and the state’s law bound the people to the church: the code of 1649 made blasphemy and disturbing the liturgy capital crimes, and until 1905 leaving Orthodoxy for another faith was itself a crime. From 1721 to 1917 the Russian church had no patriarch and was supervised by an official of the tsar. NOT CLAIMED That Russian Christianity is insincere, or that only the East tied church to crown. The same addition in its first form is at 301–380, and the Latin and Protestant forms are at 1075 and 1529. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 18:36 “My kingdom is not of this world.” Phil 3:20; Heb 13:14 “Our citizenship is in heaven.” “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” Acts 17:7 The charge against the first Christians: “they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” Acts 5:29 “We must obey God rather than men.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Rome in the New Testament. The apostles lived under an empire that called its ruler lord, savior and son of a god, and announced his victories as “good news.” Their confession that Jesus is Lord used the emperor’s vocabulary against him. In Revelation the imperial city appears as Babylon (chs. 17–18), and Jews of the period already read Daniel’s fourth kingdom as Rome: the eagle of 4 Ezra “is the fourth kingdom that appeared in a vision to your brother Daniel” (12:11), and it is Rome, awaiting its end. The reversal of all this after Constantine is in the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 212 Tertullian, To Scapula 2 The church’s first word against compelled religion: “it is no part of religion to compel religion.” See 301–380 for how the binding of church and realm came in. Moscow in 1589 inherited the form; it did not invent it. 6 THE RECORD 336 Eusebius, Oration in Praise of Constantine One God in heaven, one emperor on earth as his image. 535 Justinian, Novel 6 The classic statement of “harmony” between priesthood and empire. 988 Kiev Prince Vladimir is baptized and orders the people of the city into the river. 1448 Moscow Having rejected the union of Florence, the Russian bishops elect their own metropolitan without Constantinople. c. 1523 Philotheus of Pskov A monk writes to the grand prince’s official in Pskov: two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth. 1547 Ivan IV Crowned tsar, which is to say caesar. 1589 The patriarchate Jeremias II of Constantinople, in Moscow to raise funds, is kept there for months until he agrees to install a Russian patriarch. The founding charter puts in his mouth a speech calling the tsar’s realm the third Rome, though he could neither speak nor read Russian (Marshall Poe, “Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment’,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 49, 2001). 1649 · 1905 The Ulozhenie; the edict of toleration The law code of 1649 opens with a chapter on blasphemers and church troublemakers: blasphemy is punished by burning, and disturbing the liturgy by death. From 1722 priests must report confessions of intended treason. Until the edict of 17 April 1905, leaving Orthodoxy for another faith was a crime in Russian law. This is the binding the card records. 1721–22 Peter the Great, Spiritual Regulation Replaces the patriarchate, vacant since 1700, with a synod. From 1722 a lay official watches over it for the tsar, and priests must report confessions of intended treason. 1927 Metropolitan Sergius Declares the church’s loyalty to the Soviet state. 2022 Declaration on the “Russian World” teaching More than a thousand Orthodox theologians and clergy sign a condemnation of the doctrine that ties the church to a Russian civilization and its wars. They call it a heresy. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Daniel’s fourth kingdom. The apostles’ contemporaries took Daniel’s fourth kingdom to be Rome and expected its end (4 Ezra 12). Once the empire was Christian the same reading was turned over: if Rome is the fourth kingdom, Rome must last until the end, and when Constantinople fell the empire had to be found somewhere else. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy (1963) Treats the Byzantine fusion of church and empire as a standing temptation, inherited by Russia. ORTHODOX Georges Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” (1957) The Christian empire was a daring experiment that failed. The monks who fled to the desert were its critics from the start. ORTHODOX Cyril Hovorun, Political Orthodoxies (2018) Names civil religion and nationalism as distortions of Orthodoxy, by the measure of Orthodoxy’s own teaching. HISTORIAN Marshall Poe, “Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment’” (2001) The “third Rome” idea mattered less in sixteenth-century Moscow than later writers supposed. It was revived in the 1860s, when Philotheus’s letters were first printed, and became the standard reading of Russian history. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Harmony is not servility. Chrysostom defied an empress, and Metropolitan Philip died for rebuking Ivan the Terrible.” (Orthodox) Both are true, and the ideal does distinguish the two powers. What is dated here is a church whose structure and sense of itself are bound to one state and one people. Philip’s death shows what the bond cost when it was tested. 2. “The West did the same and worse.” (Orthodox) It did. See 301–380, 1075 and 1529. Each line on this page carries this addition in its own form. 3. “The third Rome was one monk’s letter.” (Orthodox) Largely so, and historians now say as much. The date marks the patriarchate and what followed, not the letter. 4. “Kings shall be your foster fathers (Isa 49:23). A Christian ruler is a gift.” (Orthodox) Rulers who do justice are a gift to everyone. The apostles gave the church no ruler but Christ, and put no sword in her hand. 10 NOT SETTLED How far Muscovite rulers actually used the third Rome idea is disputed (Donald Ostrowski, “‘Moscow the Third Rome’ as Historical Ghost,” in Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), 2006; Marshall Poe, “Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment’,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 49, 2001). 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 212 · Tertullian, To Scapula 2 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0305.htm - 336 · Eusebius, Oration in Praise of Constantine — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2504.htm - 535 · Justinian, Novel 6 — https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/novels/1-40/novel%206_replacement.pdf - 988 · Kiev — https://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/HIS101/Documents/Chronicle.html - 1448 · Moscow — https://www.britannica.com/print/article/305824 - c. 1523 · Philotheus of Pskov — https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-811-25-Poe.pdf - 1547 · Ivan IV — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=de+Madariaga+Ivan+the+Terrible - 1589 · The patriarchate — https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-811-25-Poe.pdf - 1649 · 1905 · The Ulozhenie; the edict of toleration — https://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0127/_P1.HTM - 1721–22 · Peter the Great, Spiritual Regulation — https://archive.org/details/spiritualregulat0000russ - 1927 · Metropolitan Sergius — https://lib.pravmir.ru/library/readbook/1339 - 2022 · Declaration on the “Russian World” teaching — https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/ - voice · Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy (1963) — https://archive.org/details/historicalroadof0000schm - voice · Georges Florovsky, “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” (1957) — https://archive.org/details/christianitycult0000flor - voice · Cyril Hovorun, Political Orthodoxies (2018) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Hovorun+%22Political+Orthodoxies%22 - voice · Marshall Poe, “Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment’” (2001) — https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-811-25-Poe.pdf ============================================================================== 1647 · The Lord’s day made the Sabbath Address: https://additions.church/1647 Addition · How it binds: Required The fourth commandment is declared to bind on the first day: a whole day’s rest from work, words and recreations, required of ministers by subscription. First clear witness: Nicholas Bownde, The Doctrine of the Sabbath, 1595; the Synod of Dort’s rules on the Sabbath, 1619; Westminster Confession 21.7–8, 1647. Footing: qualified. A weekly rest is in creation and in the commandment, and the early church kept the first day gladly. The transfer of the Sabbath law to it is the addition. It is marked in part because Lutheran and most free churches never bound it, and Calvin himself did not (Institutes 2.8.34). Carried today by: Protestant (in part) 1 THE CLAIM For sixteen centuries no church said the fourth commandment bound Christians to rest on Sunday. The fathers denied it, Aquinas called the day a matter of church law, and Luther and Calvin said the same in so many words. The English Puritans changed that. Nicholas Bownde argued in 1595 that the Sabbath command was moral and perpetual and had been moved to the first day; the Synod of Dort weighed it in 1619; and the Westminster Confession in 1647 made it a required article: the Lord’s day is “the Christian Sabbath,” to be kept holy “the whole day,” with rest “from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations.” Ministers subscribed it, parliaments legislated it, and the Reformed world kept a Sunday stricter than any the medieval church had known. NOT CLAIMED That rest is wrong, that Sunday worship is late, or that a church may not keep the day with care. Most of the Protestant line never bound this; the Lutherans denied it in their confession, and the free churches kept Sunday by custom. What is dated is the claim that the fourth commandment, moved to the first day, binds the conscience, and its enforcement by subscription. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Rom 14:5 “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Col 2:16–17 “Let no one pass judgment on you … with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” Gal 4:10–11 “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2; Rev 1:10 The first day is the day the churches met and gave, and once it is called the Lord’s day. No text carries the Sabbath command to it. Mark 2:27–28 “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The Sabbath in Israel. The seventh day was a sign of the covenant with Israel (Exod 31:13–17), kept by rest, with work on it punishable by death (Num 15:32–36). Gentiles were never bound to it, and the synagogue did not ask it of God-fearers. Jesus and the day. The Gospels record more disputes about the Sabbath than about any other law. Jesus kept it and healed on it, and his claim to be its lord is the claim the first Christians took up when they met on another day. The Puritan Sunday. England’s Sunday had been a day of mass in the morning and games in the afternoon; James I’s Book of Sports (1618) defended the games. The Puritan case against them produced a doctrine, and the doctrine a confession. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 110 Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9 Christians live “no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s day.” c. 364 Council of Laodicea, canon 29 Christians “must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day.” The one weekly rest the fathers knew was the one they refused. 1530 Augsburg Confession 28 Those who hold that the Lord’s day was appointed in place of the Sabbath “as a thing necessary” “greatly err.” Scripture has abrogated the Sabbath; the church chose Sunday for order’s sake. 1559 Calvin, Institutes 2.8.34 The Sabbath was a shadow abolished in Christ; the church keeps a day for assembly and rest, and he will not have Sunday called a transfer of the Jewish law. 5 THE RECORD c. 1270 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 122.4 The precept of the Sabbath is moral in commanding time for God and ceremonial in fixing the day; the Lord’s day is kept “by the Church’s ordinance,” not by the law. 1529 Luther, Large Catechism, the third commandment “This commandment, therefore, according to its literal sense, does not apply to us Christians.” A day is kept for rest and the word, and “if it were kept on any other day it would do as well.” 1595 Nicholas Bownde, The Doctrine of the Sabbath The first full statement that the fourth commandment is moral and perpetual, moved by apostolic practice to the first day, and binds a whole day’s rest. The book was suppressed and reprinted. 1618 James I, the Book of Sports The king declares lawful recreations after service on Sundays, against the Puritan magistrates who had banned them. The confession of 1647 answers this. 1619 Synod of Dort, post-acta Six rules on the Sabbath: the fourth commandment has a ceremonial part, abolished, and a moral part, which binds a set day to God’s service, now the Lord’s day, with rest from servile work and recreations that hinder worship. 1647 Westminster Confession 21.7–8 The first day is “the Christian Sabbath,” and men are “to observe an holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations.” Ministers subscribe the whole. 1648 The Scottish Parliament Ratifies the Confession and the Catechisms; subscription is required of ministers, and the kirk sessions enforce the day. 1781 The Sunday Observance Act England closes places of entertainment on Sunday by statute; the law lasted until 1932. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Genesis 2:2–3. God rested and blessed the seventh day. The text records no command to anyone, and the first command to rest comes with the manna (Exod 16) and at Sinai (Exod 20). Reading a law for all nations into the blessing is the step the argument needs and the text does not take. Hebrews 4:9–10. “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works.” The rest is entered by faith (4:3); it is not a day of the week. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT D. A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day (1982) Seven scholars conclude that the New Testament does not transfer the Sabbath to Sunday and that the Christian Sabbath is a post-Reformation doctrine. PROTESTANT Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath (1988) Shows the Elizabethan and Puritan Sabbath growing out of earlier English practice; the doctrine was new in its rigor, less new in its instincts. PROTESTANT Westminster Confession 21.7 and the Reformed subscription The case for the defense: the fourth commandment is moral law, the day was changed by apostolic example, and a whole day’s rest is what love of God requires. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 2175–2176 Sunday “fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish Sabbath” and the church’s precept, not the Mosaic command, binds the faithful to it. ORTHODOX The Orthodox Church Keeps Sunday by the liturgy and forbids kneeling on it (Trullo 90); it has never taught a Sabbath transferred, and Saturday keeps a mild festal character in the East. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The fourth commandment is moral law, written on stone with the other nine.” (Protestant) The other nine are repeated in the New Testament as binding; the fourth is the one Paul lists among the shadows (Col 2:16) and the one Jesus claims lordship over. The early church read the tables that way, which is why Laodicea forbade resting on the Sabbath. 2. “The apostles changed the day, so the command stands on the new day.” (Protestant) They met on the first day; no text says they moved the Sabbath to it, and for sixteen centuries no church said so. The argument from their practice is a reading, and the entry marks it as one. 3. “A day of rest protects workers and families.” It does, and a church may keep it with joy. The entry dates its binding on the conscience by confession and law, not the rest. 4. “The Lord’s day is a precept of the church, so Rome binds it too.” (Catholic) Rome binds attendance and rest by its own law (canon 1247) and says so; it does not claim the fourth commandment moved. That is the difference the entry marks, and why Rome is not on this line. 9 NOT SETTLED How much of the Puritan Sabbath was already English custom before Bownde is debated; Parker argues continuity, others a break. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 110 · Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0105.htm - c. 364 · Council of Laodicea, canon 29 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm - 1530 · Augsburg Confession 28 — https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/power-of-bishops/ - 1559 · Calvin, Institutes 2.8.34 — https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes - c. 1270 · Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 122.4 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3122.htm - 1529 · Luther, Large Catechism, the third commandment — https://bookofconcord.org/large-catechism/ten-commandments/ - 1595 · Nicholas Bownde, The Doctrine of the Sabbath — https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/A16523 - 1618 · James I, the Book of Sports — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Book+of+Sports+1618+James+I - 1619 · Synod of Dort, post-acta — https://heidelblog.net/2012/08/the-synod-of-dort-on-sabbath-observance - 1647 · Westminster Confession 21.7–8 — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html - 1648 · The Scottish Parliament — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Westminster+Confession+ratified+Scotland+1648 - 1781 · The Sunday Observance Act — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Sunday+Observance+Act+1781 - voice · D. A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day (1982) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AFrom+Sabbath+to+Lord%27s+Day+au%3ACarson - voice · Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath (1988) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+English+Sabbath+au%3AParker - voice · Westminster Confession 21.7 and the Reformed subscription — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 2175–2176 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM - voice · The Orthodox Church — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm ============================================================================== 1666–1667 · The rite itself made a test Address: https://additions.church/1667 Addition · How it binds: Required A Moscow council anathematizes those who keep the older Russian rite, down to crossing themselves with two fingers instead of three. The Old Believers who refuse are cut off and persecuted. First clear witness: Great Moscow Council, 1666–1667. Footing: firm. Moscow lifted the anathemas in 1971 and called the old rites equally sound. The split they caused remains. Carried today by: no line today. Eastern Orthodox set it down in 1971 1 THE STORY Patriarch Nikon of Moscow decided in the 1650s that the Russian service books had drifted from the Greek, and he corrected them to match the Greek books of his own day: the sign of the cross with three fingers rather than two, the alleluia sung three times rather than twice, the name of Jesus spelled with an extra letter, processions walking against the sun. To Nikon these were corrections. To a large part of the Russian people, for whom the old rite was the faith their fathers had died in, they were the end of Holy Russia. The archpriest Avvakum led the resistance and was exiled to Siberia. In 1666 and 1667 a great council met in Moscow with two Eastern patriarchs present. It deposed Nikon, for other reasons, and then upheld his reforms and anathematized the old rite and all who kept it, down to the two fingers. The Old Believers were cut off, hunted, taxed double, and burned; Avvakum was burned in 1682; whole communities burned themselves rather than submit. The schism has never healed. In 1971 the Moscow council of the Russian church lifted the anathemas of 1667 and declared the old rites equally sound, which is why this entry is marked as set down. The council of 1667 did what no apostle did: it made the manner of a gesture a condition of communion, under anathema. The entry is on the Eastern line, marked “required,” with the date of its lifting. The record gives the council, the persecution, and Paul’s instruction about days and foods and the weak brother. 2 THE CLAIM In the 1650s Patriarch Nikon of Moscow altered the Russian service books and customs to match the Greek usage of his day: three fingers in the sign of the cross where Russians used two, a threefold alleluia, a changed spelling of the name of Jesus. A council in 1666–67, with the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch taking part, anathematized those who kept the old forms. Many were exiled, tortured or burned. The Old Believers still exist. Details of ritual were made a condition of communion and a matter for the state’s executioner. NOT CLAIMED That either side was right about the rite. Both agreed that salvation depended on getting it exactly right, and that shared assumption is what is dated here. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Rom 14:5, 17 “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. … the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Col 2:20–21 “Why … do you submit to regulations—‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’?” Matt 23:24 “Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.” The New Testament prescribes no sign of the cross at all. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Rites differed among the Jews. The Dead Sea Scrolls follow a solar calendar of 364 days, as Jubilees and 1 Enoch do, while the temple kept a lunar one, so that the sect and the priesthood kept the same feasts on different days. Josephus says the Essenes sent offerings to the temple but kept their own purifications and performed their rites by themselves (Antiquities 18.19). The Jews of the apostles’ world did not have one rite. What the apostles ruled. Days and foods are not tests of communion. “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Col 2:16). The council in Jerusalem laid on Gentile believers “no greater burden than these requirements” (Acts 15:28), and the manner of worship was not among them. The apostolic churches kept the Supper and baptism and left the manner free. The sign. No gesture of the hand is commanded or described in the New Testament. Tracing a cross on the forehead is first mentioned around 211 (see the record), by a writer who says no Scripture commands it. The fingers arranged to carry a doctrine are later still. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 190 Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 “The disagreement in the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.” 1551 The Stoglav Council, Moscow A Russian council made the two-finger sign of the cross the rule and anathematized the three-finger form. In 1667 another Russian council anathematized the two fingers. The rite was made a test in both directions within a century, which is the surest sign that it was never one. 6 THE RECORD c. 190 Irenaeus, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 Churches differ in their fasts and remain at peace. c. 211 Tertullian, The Crown 3–4 The sign of the cross is among the customs for which “you will find none” in Scripture. c. 439 Socrates, Church History 5.22 The historian lists page after page of differing local customs: Rome fasts three weeks before Easter and Greece six; some abstain from all flesh and some eat fish or fowl; most churches hold the Supper every Saturday, Rome and Alexandria do not; at Antioch the altar faces west. His conclusion: “the apostles left each one to his own free will in the matter.” c. 1000–1400 Two fingers and three The sign made with the fingers arranged to carry a doctrine is medieval. Two fingers stood for Christ’s two natures; three fingers for the Trinity came into Greek use in the Middle Ages, and the Russians kept the older form (Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform, 1991). 1439–1453 Florence, and the fall of Constantinople Constantinople accepts union with Rome at Florence and falls to the Turks fourteen years later. Russians come to see their own rite as the last uncorrupted one. Changing it looked like apostasy (Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform, 1991). 1551 The Stoglav Council, Moscow Makes the two-finger sign obligatory and curses anyone who does not use it. 1652–58 Nikon’s reforms The books are “corrected,” and the three-finger sign is imposed. 1666–67 Great Moscow Council Confirms the reforms, anathematizes the old rites and those who hold to them, and sets aside the council of 1551 as having acted in ignorance (Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform, 1991). 1682 Archpriest Avvakum The leader of the resistance is burned at the stake. In the following decades many Old Believers die, thousands of them by setting fire to themselves to avoid capture (Robert Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist, 1970). 1971 Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Lifts the anathemas of 1667 “as if they had never been” and declares the old rites equally sound. The resolution is printed in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1971, no. 6) and, in English, as an appendix to Paul Meyendorff’s Russia, Ritual, and Reform. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Which text was the old one? Nikon assumed that the Greek books of his day preserved ancient practice and that the Russian differences were copyists’ errors. Research begun by the Russian church historian Nikolai Kapterev (Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, 1909–12) and completed by others showed the reverse. The Russians had kept an older Byzantine usage that the Greeks themselves had since changed. Nikon’s correctors worked from Greek service books printed recently in Venice, and not from ancient manuscripts. The council therefore cursed the older practice in the name of antiquity. Two councils of the same church, in 1551 and in 1667, attached anathemas to opposite gestures. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform (1991) An Orthodox liturgical scholar. Documents that the reform followed contemporary printed Greek books and that the “old” Russian rite was in many points the more ancient. ORTHODOX Nikolai Kapterev, Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1909–12) A professor at the Moscow Theological Academy whose findings were at first suppressed by the church’s censors. ORTHODOX Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (1971) The church’s own verdict on the anathemas: lifted “as if they had never been,” the old rites declared equally sound. HISTORIAN Georg Michels, At War with the Church (1999) Shows from the archives how much of the resistance was local and social, and how violently it was put down. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The anathemas were lifted. The church repented.” (Orthodox) It did, three hundred years later, and that deserves respect. The line shows the piece as set down in 1971. The split remains. And the church’s own verdict of 1971, that what 1667 anathematized was never wrong, is this page’s definition of an addition: a condition bound that the apostles did not bind. 2. “The issue was obedience to the church, not fingers.” (Orthodox) The council’s decree names the rites. And the church had commanded the opposite, under the same penalty, a century earlier. If it had been obedience only, 1971 would have had nothing to lift; it lifted the anathemas on the rites and called the rites equally sound. 3. “This is a Russian affair. It is not Orthodoxy as such.” (Orthodox) Two of the four Eastern patriarchs took part in the council and signed its acts. 4. “We kept the apostolic rite.” The old rite was older than Nikon’s. It was not apostolic. A sign of the cross made with a set number of fingers is itself a development of later centuries. 10 NOT SETTLED Estimates of the number who died vary widely and should not be quoted without a source. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 190 · Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm - 1551 · The Stoglav Council, Moscow — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Stoglav+1551+council+Moscow - c. 190 · Irenaeus, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html - c. 211 · Tertullian, The Crown 3–4 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0304.htm - c. 439 · Socrates, Church History 5.22 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm - c. 1000–1400 · Two fingers and three — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - 1439–1453 · Florence, and the fall of Constantinople — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - 1652–58 · Nikon’s reforms — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - 1666–67 · Great Moscow Council — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - 1682 · Archpriest Avvakum — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Crummey+%22Old+Believers+and+the+World+of+Antichrist%22 - 1971 · Council of the Russian Orthodox Church — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - voice · Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform (1991) — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - voice · Nikolai Kapterev, Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1909–12) — https://archive.org/details/kapterevnfpatriarhnikonitsaraleksejmi86 - voice · Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (1971) — https://search.worldcat.org/title/24669408 - voice · Georg Michels, At War with the Church (1999) — https://archive.org/details/atwarwithchurch0000geor ============================================================================== 1672 · An Eastern Trent Address: https://additions.church/1672 Addition · How it binds: Required Answering Calvinism, a synod at Jerusalem teaches seven sacraments and a change of substance in the bread and wine, and rules that Scripture is not for everyone to read. First clear witness: Synod of Jerusalem, Confession of Dositheus, 1672. Footing: firm. The comparison to Trent is Philip Schaff’s. Many Orthodox today treat its wording as a product of its moment. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY In 1629 a confession of faith appeared in Geneva under the name of Cyril Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, and it was Calvinist: justification by faith alone, two sacraments, Scripture above the church, no veneration of icons. Whether Cyril wrote every word is still argued; that he leaned toward the Reformed churches, who were the Ottoman sultan’s Protestant allies against the Catholic powers, is not. He was deposed and restored five times, and in 1638 he was strangled by the sultan’s soldiers and thrown into the Bosporus. The Orthodox world then had to say what it believed, in the vocabulary the West had forced on it. Synods at Constantinople in 1638 and 1642 condemned Cyril’s confession. In 1672 Dositheus, patriarch of Jerusalem, convened a synod at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that answered it decree by decree. Its confession teaches that the witness of the church is not inferior to Scripture, that there are seven sacraments, that the bread and wine are changed in substance, that Scripture is not for everyone to read, and that man is justified not by faith alone. Philip Schaff compared it to Trent, and the comparison has stuck. Many Orthodox today treat its Latin wording as the product of its moment. The entry is on the Eastern line, marked “required.” Its decrees on justification and on predestination are counted with the Western bindings on those questions at 1547 · 1577 · 1672 and 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672. The record gives Cyril, the synod, and the texts the synod set the church’s witness beside. 2 THE CLAIM In 1672 a synod at Jerusalem under Patriarch Dositheus answered a Calvinist confession that had been published under the name of Cyril Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople. Its eighteen decrees and four answers teach seven sacraments, a change in the bread and wine described by a Greek equivalent of “transubstantiation,” and a restriction on the reading of Scripture by ordinary believers. It is the nearest thing Orthodoxy has to a confession from the Reformation era. It shows the East defining itself with tools borrowed from the Latin schools. NOT CLAIMED That Orthodoxy is Roman Catholicism in Greek dress, or that the synod’s rejection of Calvin’s predestination is the issue. Many Orthodox theologians today keep their distance from this document. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27 “Have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans.” “I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.” Acts 17:11 The Bereans are praised for “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” 2 Tim 3:15 “From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings.” Eph 5:32 “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Scripture for everyone. Israel read the law aloud to “the men and the women and those who could understand” (Neh 8:3; Deut 31:12), and Josephus boasts that Jewish children learn the laws from their first years. The apostles’ letters were written to be read to whole congregations (Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27). “Mystery.” In the New Testament a mystērion is God’s hidden plan now made known (Rom 16:25; Eph 3:3–6; Col 1:26). The word is never used there for a rite, and the New Testament counts no rites. The Latin word that replaced it, and the number seven, are in the record and under “Where the reading slipped.” 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 400 John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on Colossians Tells lay people to get the books, “the medicine of the soul,” or at least the New Testament. The East’s own preacher against the synod’s first answer. c. 745 John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith 4.13 The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood; as for the manner, it is enough to know that it is through the Holy Spirit, and “the manner is unsearchable.” The East’s standard teacher declines to define what 1672 defined. 6 THE RECORD c. 400 John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on Colossians Addressing lay people: get the books, the medicine of the soul, or at least the New Testament. c. 1150 Peter Lombard, Sentences 4 The list of seven, found in Paris school texts of the 1140s and 1150s, is fixed by Lombard’s textbook. 1274 Second Council of Lyon A profession of faith containing the seven is required of the Byzantine emperor as the price of union. 1629 Confession of Cyril Lucaris Printed at Geneva. It teaches justification by faith alone, two sacraments, and Scripture above the church. Lucaris is strangled on the sultan’s order in 1638. Some Orthodox deny that he wrote it. 1640 Peter Mogila, Orthodox Confession Composed at Kiev, in Latin, on the model of Roman catechisms. Revised at the Synod of Iași in 1642, where Meletios Syrigos put it into Greek, and approved by the four Eastern patriarchs in 1643. 1672 Synod of Jerusalem Philip Schaff’s summary: it teaches seven sacraments “with the Roman Church,” uses metousiosis for the change in the elements, and “discourages and even prohibits the general and indiscriminate reading of the Holy Scriptures.” It is signed by Dositheus and sixty-eight others. 1690 Dositheus revises his own text In his Manual against the Calvinist Madness he retracts the 1672 wording on purifying punishments after death, which stood too close to purgatory, and adds arguments against it (Basil Krivoshein, The Symbolic Texts in the Orthodox Church, 1964). 1723 The Eastern patriarchs to the English Non-Jurors The decrees of 1672 are sent to the Non-Jurors, Anglican bishops who had refused the oath to William III and sought union with the East, as the statement of what the Orthodox Church believes, and acceptance of them is made the condition of union. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The count. “Seven sacraments” is a product of twelfth-century Latin teaching and reached the East through the union councils. The rites themselves are older. The list, the number and the definition are not. The term. Metousiosis is first used of the Eucharist, as the equivalent of transsubstantiatio, in the Greek text of the emperor’s profession for the union council of 1274. It is taken up in the fifteenth century by Gennadios Scholarios, an admirer of Aquinas. Decree 17 adds that the word does not explain how the change happens, and it speaks of the substance of the bread and its accidents, which is the vocabulary of Aristotle as the Latin schools used it. Scripture withheld. The synod’s first answer has no support in the Greek fathers. It takes over a Roman policy of the Counter-Reformation. Infants. Decree 16 teaches that infants who die unbaptized are, because of hereditary sin, subject to eternal punishment. That is Augustine’s conclusion, which the Greek fathers had not drawn (see 396–418). Sacramentum. The Latin Bible translated mystērion as sacramentum, a soldier’s oath and a sacred pledge. From Ephesians 5:32 in Latin, where Paul’s “mystery” of Christ and the church became a sacramentum, marriage came to be counted a sacrament. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1 (1877) Calls the synod the most important in the modern history of the Eastern church and compares it to Trent. ORTHODOX Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (1937) Describes seventeenth-century Orthodox theology as a “pseudomorphosis,” Orthodox content pressed into Latin and Protestant molds. ORTHODOX Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) Treats the confessions of Mogila and Dositheus as statements of local councils, liable to error and received selectively. Mogila’s in particular shows Western influence. CATHOLIC Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church (1907) Uses the synod to argue that Orthodoxy stands with Rome against the Reformation on nearly every disputed point. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “It was a local synod in the heat of controversy. It is not an ecumenical council.” (Orthodox) Agreed, and the entry notes that many Orthodox read it so. But it was signed by a patriarch and sixty-eight bishops and clergy, it was sent out for a century as the faith of the East, and its seven sacraments passed into every Orthodox catechism. The synod’s acts anathematize the chapters of the 1629 confession that deny them, and in 1723 the patriarchs made acceptance of these decrees the condition of union with the Non-Jurors. 2. “Metousiosis only means ‘change.’ We do not explain how.” (Orthodox) The decree says so itself: the word does not explain the manner of the change. It also says that the substance of the bread and wine no longer remains, and it speaks of their accidents. 3. “The seven rites are ancient. Only the counting is late.” (Orthodox) That is what this page says. What is dated here is the counting and defining, which came from the Latin West in the thirteenth century and was made a mark of orthodoxy in the seventeenth. 4. “The ignorant and unstable twist the Scriptures (2 Pet 3:16).” (Orthodox) Peter warns that some will twist them. He does not tell the church to keep them back. Chrysostom, the East’s own great preacher, tells working people to read. 10 NOT SETTLED Decree 13, on justification (“not by faith alone, but by faith which worketh through love”), is counted with Rome’s definition of 1547 and the Lutheran and Reformed confessions of 1577 and 1647 in the entry at 1547 · 1577 · 1672. Decree 3, on predestination, is counted with Trent’s canon 17, the Formula of Concord and the Canons of Dort in the entry at 1547 · 1577 · 1619 · 1672. How much authority the synod of 1672 has in Orthodoxy today is not agreed. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 400 · John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on Colossians — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230309.htm - c. 745 · John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith 4.13 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33044.htm - c. 1150 · Peter Lombard, Sentences 4 — https://archive.org/details/patrologiaecur192mign - 1274 · Second Council of Lyon — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13295a.htm - 1629 · Confession of Cyril Lucaris — https://www.crivoice.org/creedcyril.html - 1640 · Peter Mogila, Orthodox Confession — https://archive.org/details/cu31924029363094 - 1672 · Synod of Jerusalem — https://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html - 1690 · Dositheus revises his own text — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Krivoshein+Symbolic+Texts+in+the+Orthodox+Church - 1723 · The Eastern patriarchs to the English Non-Jurors — https://pages.uoregon.edu/sshoemak/325/texts/nonjurors.htm - voice · Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1 (1877) — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds1.v.vii.html - voice · Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (1937) — https://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/florovsky_ways_chap2.html - voice · Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) — https://archive.org/details/orthodoxchurch00ware - voice · Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church (1907) — https://archive.org/details/orthodoxeasternc00fortuoft ============================================================================== 1743–1908 · Abstinence from drink required Address: https://additions.church/1743 Addition · How it binds: Required Wesley’s societies put out members who buy, sell or drink spirits. A century later whole churches make total abstinence a condition of membership. First clear witness: John Wesley, General Rules of the United Societies, 1743; the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Discipline, 1848; the Salvation Army’s Articles of War, 1890; the Church of the Nazarene’s General Rules, 1908. Footing: qualified. The Encratites required it about 170 and the churches rejected them (Irenaeus 1.28; Cyprian, Letter 63). The entry is marked in part because most Protestant churches never made abstinence a condition, and the temperance churches did real good against the gin shop. Carried today by: Protestant (in part) 1 THE CLAIM The text forbids drunkenness and nowhere forbids drink. Jesus made wine, gave the cup, and was called a drunkard for eating and drinking with sinners; Paul told Timothy to use a little. The one early movement that required abstinence from wine, the Encratites of about 170, was rejected by the churches, and Cyprian wrote a whole letter against those who put water alone in the cup. In 1743 John Wesley’s General Rules put out of the societies anyone who bought, sold or drank spirits; in the next century the Methodist, Holiness and Salvationist churches made total abstinence from every drink a condition of membership, and many evangelical churches have kept it as one. A rule the churches had refused for sixteen centuries became, for part of the Protestant line, a test of belonging. NOT CLAIMED That drunkenness is tolerable, that the temperance churches were wrong to fight the gin shop, or that a Christian may not abstain. Abstinence for a brother’s sake is apostolic (Rom 14:21), and a house may agree to it. What is dated is the requirement, and the shift of the line from drunkenness, which the text names, to drink, which it does not. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE John 2:1–11 At Cana Jesus makes about a hundred and twenty gallons of wine for a wedding, and the master of the feast says it is the good wine. Luke 7:33–34 “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard.’” 1 Tim 5:23 “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” Eph 5:18; 1 Cor 6:10; Gal 5:21 “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.” Drunkards do not inherit the kingdom. The sin the text names. Col 2:16; 1 Tim 4:3–4 “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink.” Requiring “abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” is a mark of later error. Rom 14:21 “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.” Abstinence as love, chosen, not required. 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Wine in the ancient Mediterranean. It was the ordinary drink, usually mixed with water, safer than much of the water, and part of every meal and every sacrifice. Drunkenness was shameful; abstinence was a philosopher’s or an ascetic’s mark, not an ordinary person’s. Nazirites and Rechabites. Israel knew vows of abstinence (Num 6; Jer 35), taken by a few for a time or as a clan rule, and honored as such. No law asked it of the people, and the feasts commanded wine (Deut 14:26). The gin shop. What Wesley saw was not wine but cheap distilled spirits, which had flooded English cities after 1690 and were killing the poor. His rule names spirits and leaves beer and wine alone. The later movement did not keep that line. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.28 Tatian’s followers, the Encratites, “preach against marriage” and “abstain from what they call animate things,” and introduce total abstinence in the name of holiness. Irenaeus lists them among the heretics. c. 253 Cyprian, Letter 63 Against those who offer water alone in the cup: the Lord offered wine, and “we cannot see the blood of Christ” in water. The churches refuse an alcohol-free Supper. c. 380 Apostolic Canons 51, 53 A cleric who “abstains from marriage, or flesh, or wine, not by way of religious restraint, but as abhorring them” is to be corrected or deposed; one who “does not on festival days partake of flesh and wine, from an abhorrence of them,” likewise. The early church law runs against required abstinence. 5 THE RECORD 1743 John Wesley, General Rules of the United Societies Members are to avoid “drunkenness, buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity.” The first church rule against drink, aimed at spirits, dated 1 May 1743. 1826 The American Temperance Society Founded by clergy in Boston; its pledge is against ardent spirits. By 1836 the movement adopts total abstinence, “teetotal,” from all drink. 1838 Father Theobald Mathew’s pledge, Ireland A Capuchin friar administers a total-abstinence pledge to millions of Irish Catholics. Rome honored him and never required the pledge of anyone. 1848 The Methodist Episcopal Church, Discipline The General Rules carry Wesley’s full sentence again, “buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them,” after the clause against buying and selling had been dropped in 1790; the Discipline begins to urge total abstinence. 1877–1890 The Salvation Army Committed to total abstinence from 1877; from 1890 every soldier signs the Articles of War with the pledge in them. The Soldier’s Covenant still promises to “abstain from alcoholic drink.” 1886 The Southern Baptist Convention Resolves for total abstinence and against the liquor trade; many Baptist churches write abstinence into their covenants. 1908 The Church of the Nazarene, Manual The General Rules forbid the use of intoxicating drink and the trade in it, as a condition of membership. 1920–1933 Prohibition in the United States The Eighteenth Amendment, carried by the Anti-Saloon League and the evangelical churches. Its repeal did not repeal the church rules. 1869– Grape juice in the cup Thomas Welch, a Methodist dentist, pasteurizes grape juice so that his church may commune without wine; by 1900 most American Protestant churches use it. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Wine is a mocker” (Prov 20:1). The proverb warns against being led astray by it; the same book commends wine to the perishing (31:6) and the Psalm thanks God for “wine to gladden the heart of man” (104:15). “Touch not; taste not; handle not” (Col 2:21). Paul is quoting the rules he condemns. “New wine” as grape juice. The claim that the Bible’s wine was unfermented was made in the 1830s to serve the pledge; the Greek and Hebrew words, and the drunkenness warned against, say otherwise. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT HISTORIAN W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic (1979) Americans in 1830 drank more spirits per head than at any time before or since; the temperance churches answered a real crisis. PROTESTANT Kenneth Gentry, God Gave Wine (2001) A Reformed case that Scripture commends moderate drinking and forbids only drunkenness; the abstinence requirement is a human rule. PROTESTANT Peter Masters, Should Christians Drink? (1992) The case for the defense: the wine of Scripture was weak or diluted, the modern trade is a snare, and abstinence is the wise rule for a church. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 2290 Temperance disposes us to avoid excess; the church forbids drunkenness and requires wine in the Mass. ORTHODOX The Orthodox fasts Wine is given up on fast days and drunk on feasts; the cup is always wine. Total abstinence has never been asked of anyone. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Modern drink is stronger and the trade more predatory; the rule fits our time.” (Protestant) Wesley thought so about gin, and his rule named spirits. A church may counsel abstinence and a house may agree to it. The entry dates the point at which counsel became a condition of membership, which the text does not allow for drink and does for drunkenness. 2. “Love for the weak brother requires it (Rom 14:21).” (Protestant) Love may choose it; Paul says it is good. He does not let the strong be judged for drinking (14:3), and a rule that judges them is the thing the chapter forbids. 3. “The temperance movement freed families from ruin.” It did much good, and the entry says so. Good done by a rule does not make the rule apostolic, which is all the date claims. 4. “We require it of ministers, not of members.” (Protestant) Where that is so, the entry applies to the office, and the line between deacons “not addicted to much wine” (1 Tim 3:8) and ministers forbidden any is still a line the text does not draw. 9 NOT SETTLED The date at which any church first required total abstinence of all members, rather than of ministers or against spirits, is between 1840 and 1908 and depends on the denomination. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.28 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103128.htm - c. 253 · Cyprian, Letter 63 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050662.htm - c. 380 · Apostolic Canons 51, 53 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm - 1743 · John Wesley, General Rules of the United Societies — https://corpus.historyofmethodism.com/passage/jw-general-rules-001 - 1826 · The American Temperance Society — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=American+Temperance+Society+1826+history - 1838 · Father Theobald Mathew’s pledge, Ireland — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Theobald+Mathew+temperance+pledge+1838 - 1848 · The Methodist Episcopal Church, Discipline — https://archive.org/details/26977704.1848.emory.edu - 1877–1890 · The Salvation Army — https://www.salvationarmy.org/soldiers-covenant - 1886 · The Southern Baptist Convention — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Southern+Baptist+Convention+1886+resolution+temperance - 1908 · The Church of the Nazarene, Manual — https://whdl.org/en/browse/resources/16810 - 1920–1933 · Prohibition in the United States — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Anti-Saloon+League+Prohibition+churches+history - 1869– · Grape juice in the cup — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Welch+unfermented+wine+communion+1869 - voice · W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic (1979) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Alcoholic+Republic+au%3ARorabaugh - voice · Kenneth Gentry, God Gave Wine (2001) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AGod+Gave+Wine+au%3AGentry - voice · Peter Masters, Should Christians Drink? (1992) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AShould+Christians+Drink+au%3AMasters - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 2290 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM - voice · The Orthodox fasts — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm ============================================================================== c. 1830 · The church taken away before the trouble Address: https://additions.church/1830 Addition · How it binds: Required Christ’s return is split in two: a secret coming for the church before a seven-year tribulation, and a public one after it. Beneath it, God’s people are split in two as well: Israel his earthly people, the church his heavenly one. Within a century it is a test of soundness in many churches. First clear witness: J. N. Darby, from about 1830; the Scofield Reference Bible, 1909; the doctrinal statements of the Assemblies of God, 1916, and Dallas Theological Seminary, 1924. Footing: firm. Premillennialism itself is early (Papias, Justin, Irenaeus). No confession or teacher before Darby is known to hold the two-stage return or the two peoples, and the entry is marked in part because most Protestant churches bind neither it nor its denial. Carried today by: Protestant (in part) 1 THE CLAIM For eighteen centuries every church taught one return of Christ, public, at the end, with the resurrection and the judgment together. About 1830 John Nelson Darby, a former Church of Ireland curate among the Brethren, taught that the church would first be caught up secretly, before a seven-year tribulation, and that Christ would return in public only afterward with the saints. The Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 carried the scheme into the notes of the Bible millions read, and by the 1920s it was written into the doctrinal statements of Bible institutes, seminaries and denominations as a condition of fellowship. Beneath the two comings lay two peoples. “The church is in relationship with the Father, and the Jews with Jehovah,” Darby said at Geneva in 1840; the church’s calling is heavenly and Israel’s promises are earthly, and the church must be taken away so that God can take up Israel again. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Dallas Seminary’s founder, put it as a principle in 1936: God pursues “two distinct purposes,” one “related to the earth with earthly people,” the other “related to heaven with heavenly people.” The result is a reading first taught in the 1830s that many churches now test their members and ministers by. NOT CLAIMED That Christ will not return, that premillennialism is new, or that those who hold the view are not Christians. Belief in a reign of Christ on earth before the end is in Papias, Justin and Irenaeus. What is dated is the two-stage return, with the church removed before the trouble, the division beneath it of God’s people into an earthly Israel and a heavenly church, and their binding. 2 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 24:36 “Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” 1 Thess 4:16–17 “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.” The one text for a catching up, and it is loud. 1 Cor 15:51–52 The dead are raised and the living changed “at the last trumpet.” One trumpet, called the last. Matt 24:29–31 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days … they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds,” and the elect are gathered then. Rev 1:7 “He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him.” 3 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The two ages. Jewish hope spoke of this age and the age to come, with the day of the Lord between them. The apostles kept that shape: one coming, one resurrection, one judgment (John 5:28–29; Acts 17:31). The early millennium. Papias, Justin and Irenaeus expected Christ to reign on earth for a thousand years after his return (Rev 20). Augustine read the thousand years as the church’s age, and the West followed him. Neither view had a secret coming before the end. Where the scheme came from. Darby’s innovation grew with his reading of Israel and the church as two peoples with two destinies; the church had to be removed so that God could resume with Israel. The Powerscourt conferences in Ireland (1831–33) spread it; an 1830 vision of a Scottish girl, Margaret Macdonald, has been proposed as a source and is disputed. 4 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 155 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 80–81 Justin expects a resurrection and a thousand years in a rebuilt Jerusalem, and says many true Christians think otherwise. One return, after the tribulation of the last days. c. 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.29–30 The church will go through the tribulation under Antichrist: “when the Church shall suddenly be caught up … it is said, There shall be tribulation,” and he reads it as the saints’ trial, not their escape. c. 1640s–1830 The Westminster Confession 33; every Protestant confession One day of judgment, one return. No confession before 1830 knows a secret coming. 5 THE RECORD 1830 J. N. Darby, “On ‘Days’ Signifying ‘Years’” Having left the Church of Ireland for the Brethren, Darby writes that the saints are “to be caught up to meet Him in the air in order to His judging of the nations.” The Powerscourt conferences (1831–33) work the scheme out. 1840 Darby, The Hopes of the Church of God, lecture 6 At Geneva he says it plainly: the church “will already have been caught up to Him” and “will be entirely out of the scene at the time of these last persecutions.” The Jews, not the church, pass through the great tribulation. 1840 Darby, The Hopes of the Church of God, lecture 1 The two peoples: “The church is in relationship with the Father, and the Jews with Jehovah, which is the characteristic name of their relationship with God.” Believers should “learn to separate” the earthly promises made to the Jews “from those which refer to us Gentiles,” whose calling is “participation in a coming heavenly glory.” 1878 The Niagara Bible Conference The American prophecy conferences adopt the any-moment coming; Darby’s scheme becomes the Bible-conference orthodoxy. 1909 C. I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (revised 1917) The note on Revelation 4:1, “Come up hither,” reads: “This call seems clearly to indicate the fulfilment of 1 Thess. 4:14–17,” and the church is not named again until all is fulfilled. The Bible with the scheme in its margins sells in the millions. 1909 · 1917 Scofield Reference Bible, note on Hosea 2:2 “Israel Jehovah’s earthly wife … the Church the Lamb’s heavenly bride.” 1916 Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths 13 The translation of the living with the risen dead “is the imminent and blessed hope of the Church.” A position paper of 1979 states it outright: “the Church will be raptured before the period called the Great Tribulation.” 1918 Clarence Larkin, Dispensational Truth The charts: the church caught up, the seven years, the return. The picture taught the scheme to a generation that never read Darby. 1924 Dallas Theological Seminary, doctrinal statement, articles 18–19 “The Blessed Hope,” and then: “the translation of the church will be followed by the fulfillment of Israel’s seventieth week,” during which the church “will be in heaven.” Faculty sign it yearly. 1936 Lewis Sperry Chafer, Dispensationalism, p. 107 (Bibliotheca Sacra 93: 448) “The dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved which is Judaism; while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved, which is Christianity.” Quoted from Charles Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (1965). 1970 Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth The best-selling nonfiction book of the American 1970s makes the secret rapture, the seven years and the politics of Israel one story, and the news a commentary on prophecy. 1995–2007 Left Behind Sixteen novels and some sixty-five million copies. The scheme becomes the only one most American churchgoers have heard. 6 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “One will be taken and one left” (Matt 24:40–41). The context is the flood, which “swept them all away”: the ones taken are the ones judged. The text has been read backward. “Come up here” (Rev 4:1). Said to John, about his vision. Scofield’s note made it the church’s departure, and the church is not mentioned. “Kept from the hour of trial” (Rev 3:10). Spoken to Philadelphia, one of seven churches, two of which are told they will suffer. Kept from can mean kept through (John 17:15 uses the same construction). 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope (1956) A premillennialist argues from the texts and the fathers that the church has always expected one return after the tribulation, and that the pretribulation rapture has no history before Darby. PROTESTANT John F. Walvoord, The Rapture Question (1957) The case for the defense: the church is not appointed to wrath (1 Thess 5:9), the tribulation is for Israel, and imminence requires a coming that could be at any moment. PROTESTANT Dave MacPherson, The Incredible Cover-Up (1975) Argues the scheme came from Margaret Macdonald’s 1830 utterance. Most historians think Darby reached it on his own; the dispute is about origins, not about the date. CATHOLIC Catechism of the Catholic Church 668–682 One coming, in glory, with the resurrection and the judgment; the church must pass through a final trial before it. ORTHODOX The Orthodox Church Holds the creed’s line, “he will come again in glory,” one coming, and has no doctrine of a prior removal; its saints expect to suffer under Antichrist, as Irenaeus did. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The church is not appointed to wrath (1 Thess 5:9), so it must be removed before the tribulation.” The verse contrasts wrath with salvation, not tribulation with rapture. The same letter promises the catching up at a trumpet and a shout, and the next one says the Lord is revealed “in flaming fire” when he comes to relieve the afflicted (2 Thess 1:6–8), one event, in public. 2. “Imminence requires it: Christ could come at any moment only if nothing must happen first.” The apostles expected his coming while also expecting trouble first (2 Thess 2:1–4). Watchfulness in the Gospels is commanded to those who will see the signs. Imminence as the scheme defines it is itself from the 1830s. 3. “Many churches teach it without binding it.” (Protestant) True, and the entry is marked in part for that reason. Where a statement of faith names the pretribulational rapture, as many do, it is a test, and that is what is dated. 4. “Two peoples protect Israel. Without them the church swallows Israel’s promises, which is replacement.” The fear is just: replacement is dated on this page too (c. 100–160). Paul’s answer to it is not two peoples but one body in which Jew and Gentile are made one (Eph 2:14–16), with Israel’s calling still standing (Rom 11:29). Two destinies, one earthly and one heavenly, are as new as the secret coming. 5. “Progressive dispensationalists have given up the earthly and heavenly peoples.” Many have, since the 1980s, and hold one people of God with Israel’s promises still standing. Where a church holds that, it does not carry this part of the entry; the entry dates the scheme where it is bound. 6. “A date for a doctrine says nothing about its truth.” Agreed. The page dates; it does not refute. What a reader should weigh is that no church found the scheme in the texts for eighteen centuries, which is at least a question about how plainly the texts teach it. 9 NOT SETTLED Whether Darby took the idea from Macdonald, from Edward Irving’s circle, or from his own reading of Isaiah 32 is unsettled; the date is not. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 155 · Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 80–81 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01286.htm - c. 180 · Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.29–30 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103529.htm - c. 1640s–1830 · The Westminster Confession 33; every Protestant confession — https://www.opc.org/wcf.html - 1830 · J. N. Darby, “On ‘Days’ Signifying ‘Years’” — https://www.stempublishing.com/authors/darby/PROPHET/02002E.html - 1840 · Darby, The Hopes of the Church of God, lecture 6 — https://stempublishing.com/authors/darby/PROPHET/02016E.html - 1840 · Darby, The Hopes of the Church of God, lecture 1 — https://stempublishing.com/authors/darby/PROPHET/02011E.html - 1878 · The Niagara Bible Conference — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Niagara+Bible+Conference+premillennialism - 1909 · C. I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (revised 1917) — https://archive.org/details/scofield-reference-bible-1917 - 1909 · 1917 · Scofield Reference Bible, note on Hosea 2:2 — https://sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/sco/hos002.htm - 1916 · Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths 13 — https://ag.org/Beliefs/Position-Papers/Rapture-of-the-Church - 1918 · Clarence Larkin, Dispensational Truth — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Larkin+Dispensational+Truth+1918 - 1924 · Dallas Theological Seminary, doctrinal statement, articles 18–19 — https://www.dts.edu/about/doctrinal-statement/ - 1936 · Lewis Sperry Chafer, Dispensationalism, p. 107 (Bibliotheca Sacra 93: 448) — https://www.dunzweilerlib.ibri.org/SysTheol/SysTheol-IV/PDFpages/328.pdf - 1970 · Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Late+Great+Planet+Earth+au%3ALindsey - 1995–2007 · Left Behind — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Left+Behind+LaHaye+Jenkins - voice · George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope (1956) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Blessed+Hope+au%3ALadd - voice · John F. Walvoord, The Rapture Question (1957) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Rapture+Question+au%3AWalvoord - voice · Dave MacPherson, The Incredible Cover-Up (1975) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AThe+Incredible+Cover-Up+au%3AMacPherson - voice · Catechism of the Catholic Church 668–682 — https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM - voice · The Orthodox Church — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103529.htm ============================================================================== 1835 · The decision moment Address: https://additions.church/1835 Addition · How it binds: Replaced The anxious bench and the call to come forward. Conversion becomes a method that can be scheduled. First clear witness: Charles Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 1835. Footing: firm. Public response to preaching is as old as Acts 2. The engineered method dates to Finney’s new measures. Carried today by: Protestant (in part) 1 THE STORY Charles Finney was a New York lawyer who was converted in 1821, became the most effective revival preacher of his generation, and reduced revival to a method. Revival, he said, is not a miracle but the right use of means, as a harvest is. The means were what came to be called the “new measures”: meetings that ran for days, women praying aloud in mixed company, naming sinners from the pulpit, and the anxious bench, a front row to which those under conviction were called to come forward, in front of everyone, and decide. He defended all of it in his Lectures on Revivals of Religion in 1835, against the Presbyterians who thought it manipulation. The anxious bench became the altar call, and the altar call became, across much of American and then global Protestantism, the moment of conversion itself: the walk forward, the raised hand, the prayer repeated after the preacher. A person who had done it had been saved; a person who had not was invited again next week. Churches were built around producing the moment, and a whole style of music, preaching and lighting grew up to produce it. In the apostolic writings the public response to the gospel is baptism, the same day, in water. There is no walk forward and no decision moment apart from it. The entry is on the Protestant line, marked “replaced,” because the altar call took baptism’s place as the visible act of becoming a Christian. The record dates the defense of the method, not its first use, and gives the texts. 2 THE CLAIM American revivalism gave the response to the gospel a new and repeatable form: come forward to a marked seat, later walk the aisle, later still repeat a set prayer. Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835) defended these “new measures” and taught that a revival is the predictable result of using the right means. In many churches the practice now stands where baptism stands in Acts: it is the moment a person is counted as having become a Christian. NOT CLAIMED That calling for a response is wrong, or that people who came to faith this way did not. What is dated here is the engineered method and what it displaced. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Acts 2:37–38, 41 “What shall we do?” “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ … So those who received his word were baptized.” Acts 8:36; 16:33 “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” The jailer “was baptized at once, he and all his family.” Acts 22:16 “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes.” The older Protestant objection to Finney: new birth cannot be scheduled. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT In the first century a change of allegiance was marked by a rite. Converts to Judaism were, by the end of the century, immersed (Epictetus, Discourses 2.9.19–21; compare the call to the nations to “wash your whole bodies in ever-flowing rivers,” Sibylline Oracles 4.165), John called Israel to the Jordan, and Qumran had its washings. Baptism was the public act by which a person crossed over, and the confession “Jesus is Lord” (Rom 10:9) belonged to it. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 1746 Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections The theologian of the earlier awakening devotes a whole part of the book to what are “no certain signs” of grace: high feeling, bodily effects, fluent talk, a text that comes to mind. The evidence he allows is a changed life over time. Half a century before the camp meetings, and ninety years before Finney defended the bench. 6 THE RECORD 1740s The Great Awakening Edwards and Whitefield preach to thousands and use no altar call. Inquirers are counseled afterward. c. 1800 Kentucky camp meetings; the Methodist “mourner’s bench” A place at the front for those under conviction appears at the camp meetings that begin in Kentucky in 1799–1801 and that the Methodists make their own (Charles A. Johnson, The Frontier Camp Meeting, 1955). 1835 Finney, Lectures on Revivals, lecture 1 A revival “is not a miracle.” It is “a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means.” 1835 Finney, Lectures on Revivals, lecture 14 On the anxious seat: the church has always needed something for this purpose, and “in the days of the apostles baptism answered this purpose.” 1843 John Williamson Nevin, The Anxious Bench A Reformed theologian answers that the bench substitutes a human device for the church’s own means. 1870s–1950s Moody, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham The inquiry room, the “sawdust trail,” the walk forward during a hymn. 1950s–60s The printed “sinner’s prayer” Tracts such as the Four Spiritual Laws end with a prayer to repeat. Set prayers for the convert appear only in the late nineteenth century and are first printed in 1922. Tracts like these made them the norm from the mid-1960s (the Four Spiritual Laws, 1965). 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Finney’s own comparison. Finney argued that the anxious seat did for his hearers what baptism had done for the apostles’: it gave them something to do at once, in public. That is an accurate account of what the new measure replaced. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism (1994) Separates revival, which is given, from revivalism, which is produced. Traces the change to the 1820s and 1830s. PROTESTANT David Bennett, The Altar Call: Its Origins and Present Usage (2000) The fullest history. Finds scattered use before Finney and no trace before the eighteenth century. PROTESTANT R. Alan Streett, The Effective Invitation (1984) The case for the defense: public invitations have biblical precedent. HISTORIAN Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1989) Sets the new measures in a culture that prized results, choice and the persuasive individual. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Choose this day whom you will serve (Josh 24:15). Save yourselves from this crooked generation (Acts 2:40).” (Protestant) A summons to respond is as old as preaching, and the entry says so. What dates from the nineteenth century is the designed procedure, and the idea that it reliably produces conversions. 2. “It is only a tool. Baptism still follows.” (Protestant) Then the decisive public act has moved from the water to the aisle, and baptism has become a later testimony about it. Baptist confessions had already made baptism a sign of a conversion that came first (London, 1644; see 1527 · 1644 · 1689); what conversion then lacked was a public act, and Finney supplied one and said so. 3. “The sinner’s prayer is just Romans 10:9.” (Protestant) Romans 10 speaks of confessing and believing. It does not describe a prayer recited after a speaker, and in Acts the confession is made at baptism (22:16). 4. “Finney’s theology was unsound, and we do not follow it.” (Protestant) Many who reject his theology kept his method. The form outlived the reasons he gave for it. 10 NOT SETTLED Who first used a call to the front is disputed: Separate Baptists, Methodists and others have been proposed. The date 1835 marks the published defense, not the first use. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 1746 · Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections — https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/affections.iv.html - 1740s · The Great Awakening — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Kidd+The+Great+Awakening+Roots+of+Evangelical+Christianity - c. 1800 · Kentucky camp meetings; the Methodist “mourner’s bench” — https://archive.org/details/frontiercampmeet00john - 1835 · Finney, Lectures on Revivals, lecture 1 — https://ccel.org/ccel/finney/revivals/revivals.iii.i.html - 1835 · Finney, Lectures on Revivals, lecture 14 — https://ccel.org/ccel/finney/revivals/revivals.iii.xiv.html - 1843 · John Williamson Nevin, The Anxious Bench — https://archive.org/details/anxiousbench00nevi - 1870s–1950s · Moody, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham — https://archive.org/details/altarcallitsorig0000benn - 1950s–60s · The printed “sinner’s prayer” — https://www.9marks.org/review/the-origins-of-the-altar-call-and-the-sinners-prayer/ - voice · Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism (1994) — https://archive.org/details/revivalrevivalis0000murr - voice · David Bennett, The Altar Call: Its Origins and Present Usage (2000) — https://archive.org/details/altarcallitsorig0000benn - voice · R. Alan Streett, The Effective Invitation (1984) — https://archive.org/details/effectiveinvitat0000stre - voice · Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1989) — https://archive.org/details/democratizationo0000hatc ============================================================================== 1870 · The pope defined infallible Address: https://additions.church/1870 Addition · How it binds: Required When he defines doctrine from the chair the pope cannot err, and he holds direct rule over every church. First clear witness: Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 1870. Footing: firm. Some Roman primacy is early. This is the end of a long growth in its scope. Carried today by: Roman Catholic 1 THE STORY Pius IX had lost the Papal States to the new kingdom of Italy, all but Rome, and in December 1869 he opened a council in St Peter’s to define what the papacy was. The majority of bishops wanted a definition of papal infallibility; a minority, including some of the most learned men in the church, thought it untrue, or unwise, or both. The debate was bitter and the summer was hot. On 13 July 1870 a trial vote showed eighty-eight bishops opposed. Most of them left Rome rather than vote against the pope to his face, and on 18 July, in a thunderstorm, the constitution Pastor Aeternus passed with two votes against. It defined that the bishop of Rome holds, by divine institution, immediate and ordinary jurisdiction over every church and every Christian, and that when he defines a doctrine of faith or morals from the chair of Peter, to be held by the whole church, he is infallible, and his definitions are irreformable of themselves and not by the church’s consent, with anathema on anyone who rejects this. The next day France declared war on Prussia; in September Italian troops took Rome and the council never met again. A group of German and Swiss Catholics who could not accept the definition were excommunicated and became the Old Catholic churches. The apostolic writings have Peter opposed to his face, sent by the other apostles, and criticized by the church, and they have no office that cannot err. The entry is on Rome’s line, marked “firm,” because the claim is Rome’s own and the date is certain. The record follows the claim from Leo to 1870 and gives the Catholic answers their due. 2 THE CLAIM On 18 July 1870 the First Vatican Council defined two things. The pope holds “full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church.” And when he defines a doctrine of faith or morals from the chair, his definitions “are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.” The council presents this as “the ancient and unchanging faith of the whole church.” The record shows a claim that grew by stages over many centuries. In this form it was never received by the whole church in the first thousand years, and there are several witnesses against it. Catholic historians now largely grant the history and defend the doctrine as a legitimate development. NOT CLAIMED That Rome had no early standing, that popes have not served the church’s unity, or that the definition makes every papal statement infallible. Its conditions are narrow. What is dated here is the claim itself, and the universal jurisdiction that goes with it. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Matt 16:18–19 “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church … I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.” Matt 18:18 To all the disciples, in the same words: “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Gal 2:11 “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” Acts 15:19, 22 James: “my judgment is.” Then “it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church.” 1 Pet 5:1 Peter’s own title for himself: “a fellow elder.” Eph 2:20; Rev 21:14 The foundation is “the apostles and prophets.” The city has “twelve foundations.” The page reads the rock in Matthew 16 as the confession Peter has just made (16:16), and does not rest its case on that reading: many scholars take the rock to be Peter himself. Either way, Peter does open the kingdom: to Jews (Acts 2), to Samaritans (Acts 8), to Gentiles (Acts 10). Nothing in the text passes the role to a successor, or attaches it to one city. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Binding and loosing. The phrase is Jewish. Josephus says the Pharisees under Queen Alexandra “bound and loosed” whom they wished (War 1.111): forbade and permitted. Richard H. Hiers has shown (“‘Binding’ and ‘Loosing’: The Matthean Authorizations,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104, 1985) a second usage in Second Temple texts, where the same verbs describe binding demons and loosing their captives (Tobit 3:17; 8:3; 1 Enoch 10; Mark 3:27; Luke 13:16). On either reading it is an authority exercised by a community of disciples (Matt 18:18), not an office with one holder. The court of no appeal. The idea that one man judges all and is judged by none belongs to the Roman emperor, who was supreme judge and chief priest of the state. Nothing in the New Testament gives it to anyone in the church. The church’s version of the maxim, “the first see is judged by no one,” is in the record of 1075, at c. 501. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. 681 Third Council of Constantinople An ecumenical council, received by Rome, anathematized Pope Honorius by name for his letters on the one will of Christ, and Pope Leo II confirmed the sentence. For twelve centuries the record held a pope condemned for teaching error. 417–418 Zosimus reopens Innocent’s case A year after Pope Innocent I had condemned Pelagius and Caelestius, Pope Zosimus reopened Caelestius’s case, and after a Roman synod found Pelagius’s confession “orthodox” he wrote in his defense and rebuked his accusers. When Africa and the emperor pressed, his Tractoria of 418 condemned them both. One chair, a provisional acquittal and a condemnation, within a year. 6 THE RECORD c. 96 1 Clement “The church of God which sojourns at Rome” writes to the church at Corinth. No bishop of Rome is named or implied. c. 190 Eusebius, Church History 5.24 Victor of Rome moves to cut off the churches of Asia over the date of Easter. Irenaeus and other bishops respond by “sharply rebuking Victor,” and he does not prevail. 256 Council of Carthage under Cyprian Eighty-seven bishops, opposing Stephen of Rome: “neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience.” 451 Chalcedon, canon 28; Leo, Letter 104 The council says the fathers gave old Rome its privileges because it was the imperial city. Leo rejects the canon. The East keeps it. 595 Gregory I, Register 5.18 To the bishop of Constantinople, on the title “universal bishop”: a “proud and foolish” word, an “execrable title of pride.” 681 Third Council of Constantinople Anathematizes Honorius, “who was some time Pope of Old Rome,” for confirming the Monothelite teaching in his letters. Pope Leo II confirms the sentence. 1075 Dictatus Papae 19, 22 “He himself may be judged by no one.” “The Roman Church has never erred. Nor will it err, to all eternity.” 1324 John XXII, Quia quorundam A pope rejects the claim that a predecessor’s doctrinal rulings cannot be revised. The claim had been made by Franciscans to bind him. (Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350, 1972.) 1415 Council of Constance, Haec sancta A general council holds its power directly from Christ, and “everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith.” 1846–69 Keenan’s Controversial Catechism A widely used Catholic catechism in Britain and America answers the charge that Catholics must believe the pope infallible: it is “a Protestant invention” and “no article of the Catholic faith.” The line is removed after 1870. 1870 Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus The definitions quoted above. About sixty bishops of the minority leave Rome before the final vote of 533 to 2. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED The rock. Trent requires Scripture to be read according to “the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” On Matthew 16:18 there is none. Augustine: “the Rock was Christ,” and Peter stood for the whole church when he received the keys. Chrysostom: the rock is “the faith of his confession.” Cyprian, in the last form he gave the passage: the other apostles were “endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power.” Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of St. Louis prepared a speech for Vatican I counting the fathers: seventeen for Peter, forty-four for the faith he confessed, sixteen for Christ, eight for all the apostles. A sentence that survives only in Latin. The chief second-century proof text, Irenaeus 3.3.2, is lost in Greek. In the Latin, every church must convenire ad the Roman church because of its potentior principalitas. The verb can mean “agree with” or “resort to,” and the noun “more powerful origin” or “pre-eminence.” The standard English version prints “agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority,” which decides in translation what the Latin leaves open. Irenaeus gives his reason in the same sentence: the tradition from the apostles is preserved there by those who come from everywhere. Forged supports. The medieval case leaned on documents now known to be false: the Symmachian acts (c. 501), the Donation of Constantine (eighth century), the False Decretals (c. 850), and a collection of invented Greek quotations that Aquinas used in good faith in 1263. See 1075. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Klaus Schatz SJ, Papal Primacy (1996) If a Christian in 100, 200 or 300 had been asked whether the bishop of Rome was head of all Christians with the final word, he would have said no. CATHOLIC Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350 (1972) The doctrine first appears around 1280 among dissident Franciscans, and Pope John XXII rejected it in 1324. CATHOLIC Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners (1997) For decades after the apostles Rome had no single bishop. He grants the history and remains Catholic. CATHOLIC John Henry Newman, letter to Bishop Ullathorne (1870) Calls the party pressing the definition “an aggressive insolent faction.” He accepted the dogma once it was defined. ORTHODOX Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848) The guardian of the faith is the whole body of the church, the people themselves. PROTESTANT Oscar Cullmann, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr (1953) The rock is Peter, in person, and for that reason the role cannot be handed on. A foundation is laid once. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Rome’s special place is early: Clement’s letter, Ignatius, Irenaeus.” (Catholic) Granted. Rome was the capital, the place where Peter and Paul died, and a generous and orthodox church. What 1870 defined is universal jurisdiction and teaching that needs no consent. Against that stand bishops rebuking Rome (190, 256), councils ranking Rome by custom and by the empire (325, 451), a pope who calls “universal” a proud title (595), and a council that condemns a pope for heresy (681). 2. “Honorius was not speaking from the chair.” (Catholic) Under the conditions set in 1870 that defense may work. Leo II, confirming the sentence, softened it in his letter to the Spanish bishops to negligence: Honorius had not put out the flame of heretical teaching at its start but fed it by his neglect. Softened or not, a council confirmed by Rome anathematized a pope for what he wrote on the faith, and no one in 681 or 682 said that a pope’s letters on the faith could not err. The bishops of 681, and the popes who repeated their sentence for centuries in the oath taken at their consecration, knew no distinction between the chair and the man. 3. “It has been used only twice. It is a narrow, negative protection.” (Catholic) Its narrowness is granted. The jurisdiction defined with it is used every day, and the definitions usually named as its exercise are the Marian dogmas of 1854 and 1950. 4. “Without a final judge there can be no unity.” (Catholic) That is an argument that such an office would be useful. It is not evidence that the apostles set one up. The church of the first centuries settled its gravest disputes by councils and by the slow consent of the churches. 5. “If Peter is the rock, Rome inherits the rock.” (Catholic) The rock may be Peter, and the argument here does not depend on denying it. What the text does not say is that his role passes to anyone. Peter, the man, opened the kingdom at the beginning. The first bishop of Rome who certainly applied the text to his own authority is Stephen in the 250s, and we know of it because a fellow bishop wrote to object (Firmilian, in Cyprian’s Letter 75). The bishop Tertullian mocks around 220 may be an earlier case. Either way the chain has a first link, and it is two centuries after Peter and is made by a bishop about himself. A text that says nothing of succession cannot be made to say it by the man who would benefit. 10 NOT SETTLED The Catholic and Orthodox dialogue statements of Ravenna (2007) and Chieti (2016) agree that primacy was exercised differently in the first millennium. What follows from that is not agreed. Kenrick took his count from the seventeenth-century Gallican scholar Jean de Launoy; it had circulated among the bishops at the council in a pamphlet. A count of the fathers is not a weighing of them. Gregory I rejected the title “universal” and also held that Constantinople is subject to the apostolic see. He can be cited against the title. He cannot be cited against Roman primacy. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - 681 · Third Council of Constantinople — https://tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/Npnf2-14-128.htm - 417–418 · Zosimus reopens Innocent’s case — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15764c.htm - c. 96 · 1 Clement — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm - c. 190 · Eusebius, Church History 5.24 — https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html - 256 · Council of Carthage under Cyprian — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0508.htm - 451 · Chalcedon, canon 28; Leo, Letter 104 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604104.htm - 595 · Gregory I, Register 5.18 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360205018.htm - 1075 · Dictatus Papae 19, 22 — https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/dict_pap.html - 1324 · John XXII, Quia quorundam — https://archive.org/details/originsofpapalin0000tier - 1415 · Council of Constance, Haec sancta — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum16.htm - 1846–69 · Keenan’s Controversial Catechism — https://archive.org/details/controversialcat00keen - 1870 · Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm - voice · Klaus Schatz SJ, Papal Primacy (1996) — https://litpress.org/Products/5522/Papal-Primacy - voice · Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350 (1972) — https://archive.org/details/originsofpapalin0000tier - voice · Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners (1997) — https://archive.org/details/saintssinnershis00duff_0 - voice · John Henry Newman, letter to Bishop Ullathorne (1870) — https://digitalcollections.newmanstudies.org/document/bx4705_n5a4_v_25_1978/letters_and_diaries_of_john_henry_newman_volume_25_the_vatican_council_january_1870_to_december_1871/1978-00-00?pageNo=40 - voice · Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848) — http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1848.aspx - voice · Oscar Cullmann, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr (1953) — https://archive.org/details/peterdiscipleapo0000cull_g6o2 ============================================================================== 1833–1872 · A church for each nation Address: https://additions.church/1872 Addition · How it binds: Replaced New nation states get national churches. A synod condemns dividing the church by ethnicity, and the practice goes on. First clear witness: Church of Greece, 1833; Bulgarian Exarchate, 1870; Council of Constantinople, 1872. Footing: firm. Orthodoxy names this as a fault. Overlapping ethnic bishops in one city break its own rule of one bishop per city. Carried today by: Eastern Orthodox 1 THE STORY The Orthodox churches under Ottoman rule were ruled from Constantinople, whose patriarch the sultan held responsible for all his Orthodox subjects, Greek, Bulgarian, Serb, Romanian and Arab alike. When the Greeks won their independence in the 1820s, the new state would not have its church governed from the sultan’s capital, and in 1833 it declared the Church of Greece self-governing, with the king at its head, on the model of the Russian synod. Constantinople recognized it in 1850. A church had been founded on a nation. The Bulgarians wanted the same, and in 1870 the sultan gave it to them by decree: a Bulgarian exarchate with jurisdiction over a list of dioceses and over any district where two thirds voted to join, including inside the patriarch’s own territory. In 1872 a council at Constantinople condemned the arrangement under a new name, phyletism, the organizing of the church by race or nation, and declared it a heresy. The condemnation stands, and so does the practice: Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the rest each received their own church in their own borders, and the Orthodox diaspora in America and Western Europe is divided to this day by the homeland of the grandparents. In the apostolic writings there is one church in each city, made of Jew and Greek, and no church of a people. The entry is on the Eastern line, marked “replaced,” because the national church became the normal Orthodox form by events, with the 1872 condemnation as the East’s own witness against it. The record gives the dates and the council. 2 THE CLAIM As the Ottoman empire broke apart, each new Orthodox state obtained an independent church of its own: Greece (declared 1833, recognized 1850), Serbia (1879), Romania (1885). The Bulgarians obtained an exarchate from the sultan in 1870, eight years before they had a state. In 1872 a council at Constantinople condemned “phyletism,” the organizing of the church by race or nation, as a heresy. The condemned principle became the working rule. Outside the old Orthodox lands, several Orthodox bishops, one for each ethnic community, now hold jurisdiction over the same city. NOT CLAIMED That a people’s language and culture have no place in the church, or that nationalism is an Orthodox problem only. The Protestant line carries its own version (1529, with the settlement of 1555). 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Col 3:11 “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Eph 2:14–15 Christ “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility … that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two.” Acts 6:1; 13:1 Greek-speaking and Hebrew-speaking believers quarrel and stay in one church. Antioch’s teachers include a Cypriot, a North African and a member of Herod’s court. Rev 7:9 One multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT Religion by birth. In the ancient world a people and its gods went together. Each nation kept its ancestral rites, and Israel was a nation with a temple. A stone barrier in that temple warned foreigners to go no farther on pain of death. One of the warning inscriptions was found in 1871, and many take that barrier to be the “dividing wall” of Ephesians 2. The church set out to gather all peoples into one worshiping community in each town. One city, one church. Paul writes to “the church of God that is in Corinth” (1 Cor 1:2), one church for the city, and in it “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” are one body (1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:28). One church to a city is the apostolic pattern before it is anyone’s canon. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 200 Letter to Diognetus 5 Christians “dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners… Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign.” No church of a nation, because no nation had a church. 6 THE RECORD 325 Nicaea, canon 8 One bishop to a city. 1833 Church of Greece Declared independent by the regents of the new kingdom, on a plan drawn by a Bavarian Protestant jurist, with a Catholic king as its administrative head. Constantinople recognizes it in 1850. 1870 The Bulgarian Exarchate Created by decree of the sultan for a list of named dioceses, with other districts free to join by a two-thirds vote. In practice membership followed nationality, and the exarch resided in the patriarch’s own city. 1872 Council of Constantinople Condemns phyletism and declares the Bulgarian church schismatic. The schism lasts until 1945. 1920s– North America and western Europe Greek, Russian, Serbian, Antiochian, Romanian and other bishops minister side by side in the same cities. 2009 Pan-Orthodox conference, Chambésy Admits that the overlapping jurisdictions fall short of the strictly canonical order, one bishop in one place, and sets up assemblies of bishops as a temporary measure. 2016 Council of Crete Planned for decades as a council of all the Orthodox churches. Four of the fourteen, including Russia and Antioch, do not attend. 2018–19 Ukraine Constantinople recognizes an independent Ukrainian church. Moscow breaks communion with Constantinople. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED Apostolic Canon 34. The text most often cited for national churches says that “the bishops of every nation must acknowledge him who is first among them.” The Greek word is ethnos. In the fourth century it meant the population of a Roman province. Reading it as a modern nation brings a nineteenth-century idea to a fourth-century text. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT ORTHODOX Alexander Schmemann, “Problems of Orthodoxy in America: The Canonical Problem” (1964) Parallel ethnic jurisdictions contradict what the Orthodox Church says the church is. ORTHODOX Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) Calls nationalism the bane of Orthodoxy for the last ten centuries. ORTHODOX Cyril Hovorun, Scaffolds of the Church (2017) Autocephaly and patriarchates are historical scaffolding. They are useful and changeable, and are not the church’s essence. HISTORIAN Paschalis Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans” (1989) Orthodoxy was made national in the nineteenth century, against the grain of its own tradition. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Self-governing local churches are ancient. Cyprus has been independent since 431.” (Orthodox) Territorial churches are ancient, and no one disputes them. The nineteenth-century change is a church defined by a nation-state and a bloodline, founded by governments, and exported wherever that people settles. 2. “Orthodoxy itself condemned this. That is the church correcting itself.” (Orthodox) It did, and the entry gives it credit. The condemnation was aimed at one people by a synod led by another, and the practice has continued for a century and a half since. 3. “Rome and the Protestants do the same.” (Orthodox) Protestant state churches are an addition on that line (1529, 1555). It is entered on the Eastern line because there the church of a nation became the normal shape: autocephaly for each state, and one bishop per people in the same city. Rome’s overlapping Eastern-rite eparchies are the same fault on a smaller scale; show them to be Rome’s normal form and the entry will be carried on both lines. 4. “The gospel always takes flesh in a culture. Think of Cyril and Methodius.” (Orthodox) It does, and worship in the people’s own language is an Eastern strength (see c. 1100 for what became of it). Culture is not what is dated here. Jurisdiction by descent is. 10 NOT SETTLED Whether Orthodoxy can resolve overlapping jurisdictions without a stronger primacy is debated among the Orthodox themselves. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 200 · Letter to Diognetus 5 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0101.htm - 325 · Nicaea, canon 8 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm - 1833 · Church of Greece — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Frazee+The+Orthodox+Church+and+Independent+Greece+1821-1852 - 1870 · The Bulgarian Exarchate — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Bulgarian+Exarchate+1870+firman - 1872 · Council of Constantinople — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=phyletism+council+Constantinople+1872 - 1920s– · North America and western Europe — https://orthodoxhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2009Diasporadecision_EN_OFFICIAL-1.pdf - 2009 · Pan-Orthodox conference, Chambésy — https://orthodoxhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2009Diasporadecision_EN_OFFICIAL-1.pdf - 2016 · Council of Crete — https://www.holycouncil.org/ - 2018–19 · Ukraine — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Ukrainian+Orthodox+autocephaly+2019+tomos - voice · Alexander Schmemann, “Problems of Orthodoxy in America: The Canonical Problem” (1964) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Schmemann+Problems+of+Orthodoxy+in+America+Canonical+Problem - voice · Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963) — https://archive.org/details/orthodoxchurch00ware - voice · Cyril Hovorun, Scaffolds of the Church (2017) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Hovorun+Scaffolds+of+the+Church - voice · Paschalis Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans” (1989) — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/026569148901900203 ============================================================================== 1854 · 1950 · Two dogmas about Mary Address: https://additions.church/1950 Addition · How it binds: Required The Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950) are defined as binding on all the faithful. First clear witness: Ineffabilis Deus, 1854; Munificentissimus Deus, 1950. Footing: firm. Rome holds that these define what was always believed. The definitions themselves carry these dates. Carried today by: Roman Catholic 1 THE STORY The question whether Mary was conceived without original sin was argued in the Western church for seven centuries, from Bernard to 1854. Bernard of Clairvaux, who loved her as much as any man alive, wrote to the canons of Lyon in the twelfth century to rebuke them for keeping a feast of her conception, which he thought had no foundation. Thomas Aquinas denied the doctrine; the Franciscans, following Duns Scotus, defended it; the two orders fought about it until the popes forbade either side to call the other heretical. In 1854 Pius IX ended the argument by defining it: Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin from the first instant of her conception, and whoever thinks otherwise is condemned and has fallen from the faith. In 1950 Pius XII, having asked the bishops of the world and received their assent, defined that Mary at the end of her earthly life was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and declared that anyone who denies it has fallen away from the faith. It was the first use of the power defined in 1870. The East honors Mary’s falling asleep with a feast and keeps the story, but it has never defined the Assumption, and it rejects the Immaculate Conception as defined, because it does not hold Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt that the definition presupposes. The apostolic writings last mention Mary before Pentecost. The entry is on Rome’s line, marked “required,” because both definitions carry penalties, and “firm,” because the dates and the texts are not in doubt. The record gives the definitions, the seven centuries of Catholic dispute before the first, and what the page does not claim about Mary. 2 THE CLAIM In 1854 Pius IX defined that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception. In 1950 Pius XII defined that she was taken up body and soul into heaven. Both are declared revealed by God and binding on every believer. Of the first, the decree says that those who think otherwise “have made shipwreck concerning the faith.” Neither teaching is stated in Scripture or attested in the first centuries. The first was argued openly in the Roman church for seven centuries, from Bernard to 1854, and denied for most of that time by some of its leading theologians. NOT CLAIMED That Mary should not be honored (Luke 1:48), that she is not rightly called God-bearer (Ephesus, 431, on the opening page), or that Jesus was not born of a virgin. The claim is only that these two definitions cannot be shown to be apostolic. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE Luke 1:28, 47–48 “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior … from now on all generations will call me blessed.” Rom 3:23; 5:12 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” “Death spread to all men because all sinned.” No exception is noted. Luke 11:27–28 A woman blesses the womb that bore him. “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Acts 1:14 The last mention of her: at prayer with the disciples, “together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus.” Nothing is said of her death. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT What Luke does say. Luke’s account echoes the ark: the power of the Most High “overshadows” Mary as the cloud overshadowed the tabernacle, and Elizabeth’s question echoes David’s before the ark (Luke 1:35, 43; Exod 40:35; 2 Sam 6:9). Catholic writers also point to the queen mother of Judah’s kings (1 Kgs 2:19). These are real echoes and show how highly Luke regards her as the one who bore the Lord. They say nothing about her conception or her end. Assumption as a category. Second Temple Jews told of Enoch and Elijah taken up, and of a dispute over the body of Moses (Jude 9). The idea was at hand. No writer of the apostles’ generation applies it to Mary, and the New Testament says nothing of her death. The stories of her end are later than any text on this card: the earliest surviving narratives are fifth-century, with roots Stephen Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, 2002 puts in the third or fourth. See the record. 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 240 Origen, Homilies on Luke 17 Reads the sword of Luke 2:35 as doubt at the cross, and says that if Mary was not scandalized, Jesus did not die for her sins. The earliest commentator on the verse assumes she had them. c. 377 Epiphanius, Panarion 78.11, 23 The most learned heresy-hunter of the fourth century looks for an account of Mary’s end and finds none: whether she died, was buried or remained alive, no one knows. Silence, not a tradition. c. 390 John Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew Attributes “superfluous vanity” to Mary at Matthew 12:46. The East’s greatest preacher did not hold her sinless from conception. c. 1140 Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 174 to the canons of Lyon Objects to the new feast of Mary’s conception as a novelty of which the custom of the Church knows nothing, which reason does not approve, and which ancient tradition does not commend. c. 1272 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.27.2 Denies that Mary was sanctified before animation, since then she would not have needed redemption. The doctor of the Latin church held against what 1854 defined, and the church did not count him a heretic for it. 6 THE RECORD c. 150–200 Protoevangelium of James Supplies Mary’s parents, her childhood in the temple and her lifelong virginity. It is the earliest source for most of what later devotion knew of her life. It says nothing of her conception without sin or of her end. c. 240 Origen, Homilies on Luke 17 The sword that pierces Mary (Luke 2:35) is doubt at the cross. If she was not scandalized, he says, then Jesus did not die for her sins. c. 377 Epiphanius, Panarion 78.11, 23 Searches for an account of Mary’s end and finds none: whether she died, was buried or remained alive, no one knows. c. 390 John Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew On Matthew 12:46: what Mary attempted “was of superfluous vanity.” She wished to show the people her authority over her Son, “imagining not as yet anything great concerning Him.” c. 1140 Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 174 Rebukes the canons of Lyon for a new feast of Mary’s conception: unknown to the church’s rite, unsupported by reason, not commended by ancient tradition. c. 1272 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.27.2 “The sanctification of the Blessed Virgin cannot be understood as having taken place before animation.” Otherwise she would not have needed Christ, which “would be derogatory to the dignity of Christ” as “the universal Saviour of all.” He adds that “the Church of Rome does not celebrate the Conception.” c. 1300 John Duns Scotus Proposes that Mary was redeemed by being preserved. The Franciscans follow him. The Dominicans follow Aquinas. 1483 Sixtus IV, Grave nimis Forbids either side to call the other heretical. The question is officially open. 1546 Council of Trent, session 5 Declares that it does not intend to include “the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary” in its decree on original sin, and defines nothing. 1854 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus Mary was “preserved free from all stain of original sin.” This “was revealed by God, and is, therefore, to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful.” 1950 Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus Mary, “having completed the course of her earthly life,” was assumed body and soul. The wording leaves open whether she died. Whoever denies it has fallen away from the faith. 7 WHERE THE READING SLIPPED “Full of grace.” Gabriel’s word in Luke 1:28 is kecharitōmenē, “one who has been shown favor.” The Latin Bible rendered it gratia plena, “full of grace,” and the 1854 decree argues from that fullness. Paul uses the same verb of every believer (Eph 1:6). The Greek phrase that does mean “full of grace” is used of Stephen (Acts 6:8). “She shall crush.” In Genesis 3:15 the Hebrew says that the woman’s offspring, “he,” will bruise the serpent’s head, and the Greek Septuagint agrees. Most manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate read ipsa, “she.” From that pronoun came the image of Mary treading on the serpent, which the 1854 decree uses. Rome’s own revised Latin Bible (1979) corrects the word. The decree of 1854 draws on both Latin readings in its argument. Neither is what Luke and Moses wrote. 8 WHO CONCEDES WHAT CATHOLIC Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (1952) A standard manual. Grants that the Immaculate Conception is not explicitly revealed in Scripture and that express scriptural proofs of the Assumption are not to be had. CATHOLIC Raymond Brown and others, Mary in the New Testament (1978) A joint study by Catholic and Protestant scholars. The New Testament does not address either doctrine. CATHOLIC John Henry Newman, Letter to Pusey (1866) The best Catholic case. Mary as the second Eve is in Justin and Irenaeus by 160–180, and he argues that the Immaculate Conception follows from it as “an immediate inference,” holding that it was implicit in the second Eve from the start. ORTHODOX John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974) The East calls Mary all-holy and keeps the feast of her falling asleep. It does not accept the Immaculate Conception, which answers an Augustinian problem the East does not have, and it has made neither belief a dogma. HISTORIAN Stephen Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (2002) The earliest surviving narratives are fifth-century; he argues that the traditions behind them reach back to the third or fourth. Devotion to Mary is older than Protestants usually allow, and the narratives are later than Catholics usually assume. PROTESTANT Tim Perry, Mary for Evangelicals (2006) Protestants have said too little about her. He still finds no biblical ground for the two dogmas. 9 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “The Church defined only what had always been believed.” (Catholic) The record shows that it had not always been believed. Bernard, Aquinas, Bonaventure and the whole Dominican school denied the Immaculate Conception. In 1483 a pope forbade calling either view heresy, and Trent left the matter open. A belief that a Catholic was free to deny in 1483 and bound to hold in 1854 has changed its status. That change is what this entry records. What is early is praise of her holiness, “all-holy” and “immaculate” in hymns from the fourth century. What 1854 defined is the precise claim that she was preserved from original sin at conception, which the hymns do not say, which is why Aquinas could sing them and deny it. 2. “Mary as the second Eve implies she was sinless.” (Catholic) The comparison is early and worth honoring. It concerns her obedience at the annunciation, set against Eve’s disobedience. It does not concern her conception. And the fathers who made it did not draw the inference: Irenaeus himself has the Lord check her “untimely haste” at Cana (Against Heresies 3.16.7), Tertullian counts her among the unbelieving (On the Flesh of Christ 7), and later fathers still attribute faults to her: Origen, Basil, Chrysostom. 3. “The Greek perfect tense in Luke 1:28 shows a completed, permanent state of grace.” (Catholic) A perfect participle says that she stands as one who has been favored. It does not say since when, or how far. The same verb covers all Christians in Ephesians 1:6. 4. “Scotus answered Aquinas: she was redeemed by being preserved.” (Catholic) He did, and neatly. That shows the doctrine is possible without dishonoring Christ. It does not show that the apostles taught it. A thing can be coherent and still not be revealed. 5. “No church ever claimed her relics. That silence points to the Assumption.” (Catholic) It is an argument from silence, and Epiphanius, looking in the 370s, found silence in both directions. The churches that kept and traded the bones of every martyr kept none of hers because they had no account of her end, not because they knew it; the accounts came after, and the dogma rests on them. No apostle wrote a word of it. 10 NOT SETTLED How early the stories of Mary’s end began is unsettled (Stephen Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, 2002, argues for the third or fourth century). Whether Augustine exempted Mary from original sin or only from actual sin is disputed. In On Nature and Grace 36 he declines to discuss her when sin is the subject, “for the honor of the Lord.” The Eastern and Oriental churches keep the feast and the hymns without a dogma. That is treated at c. 600. 11 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 240 · Origen, Homilies on Luke 17 — https://archive.org/details/homiliesonlukefr0000orig - c. 377 · Epiphanius, Panarion 78.11, 23 — https://archive.org/details/panarionofepipha0000epip - c. 390 · John Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200144.htm - c. 1140 · Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 174 to the canons of Lyon — https://ccel.org/ccel/bernard/letters/letters.lxviii.html - c. 1272 · Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.27.2 — https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4027.htm - c. 150–200 · Protoevangelium of James — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm - c. 1140 · Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 174 — https://ccel.org/ccel/bernard/letters/letters.lxviii.html - c. 1300 · John Duns Scotus — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Duns+Scotus+immaculate+conception+Ordinatio+III+d.+3 - 1483 · Sixtus IV, Grave nimis — https://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/dw4.htm - 1546 · Council of Trent, session 5 — https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/fifth-session.htm - 1854 · Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds2.v.i.iii.html - 1950 · Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus — https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html - voice · Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (1952) — https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsofca0000ottl - voice · Raymond Brown and others, Mary in the New Testament (1978) — https://archive.org/details/maryinnewtestame0000raym - voice · John Henry Newman, Letter to Pusey (1866) — https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/pusey/section3.html - voice · John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (1974) — https://archive.org/details/byzantinetheolog0000meye - voice · Stephen Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (2002) — https://academic.oup.com/book/27239 - voice · Tim Perry, Mary for Evangelicals (2006) — https://ivpress.com/mary-for-evangelicals ============================================================================== 1975 · The room becomes a venue Address: https://additions.church/1975 Addition · How it binds: Replaced Stage, lights and screens. Sunday is produced for an audience, and growth is the measure. First clear witness: Willow Creek opens in a rented movie theater, 1975. Footing: firm. Big rooms are older: Spurgeon’s Tabernacle seated about 5,000 in 1861. The production model is what is new. Carried today by: Protestant 1 THE STORY In October 1975 a group of young people led by Bill Hybels began holding Sunday services in a rented movie theater in Palatine, Illinois, after surveying the neighborhood about why people did not go to church. The answers were that church was boring, irrelevant, and always asking for money, and the new church was designed to be none of those things. Willow Creek Community Church grew into one of the largest congregations in America and a model copied across the world: a professional stage, bright lights, a band, a talk, screens, a lobby with coffee, a service built for the visitor rather than the member, and no cross on the wall to put anyone off. The venue is the basilica’s logic carried to its conclusion. Constantine put the people in a hall facing a front; the Reformation put a pulpit at the front; the twentieth century put a stage there, and a sound system, and the congregation became an audience in a nearly literal sense. The design works. It fills rooms. It also makes the gathering a production, performed by a few for the many, in which the mark Paul gives the assembly, each one bringing something (1 Cor 14:26), has no place in the room. The entry is on the Protestant line, marked “replaced”: no one is required to attend a venue, and the venue became the normal shape of the growing Protestant church. It is the last date on the line and the one most readers will recognize from their own Sundays. The record gives Paul’s assembly and the survey. 2 THE CLAIM From the 1970s a model spread through evangelical Protestantism in which Sunday is designed as a produced event for an audience: a stage, a band, lighting, screens and a talk. Attendance is the measure of success. The date marks Willow Creek’s first service, held in a rented movie theater in Palatine, Illinois, on 12 October 1975. This is the newest addition on the Protestant line, and it is built directly on an older one: the room that faces a single speaker (c. 1541). NOT CLAIMED That large gatherings, music or technology are wrong, or that these churches do no good. What is dated here is the format of performers and audience, and the budget that format requires. 3 APOSTOLIC BASELINE 1 Cor 14:26 “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation … Let all things be done for building up.” 1 Cor 14:24–25 Outsiders are expected in the room, and it is the whole church that reaches them: “if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all.” Acts 5:42 “In the temple and from house to house.” Large and small together, from the start. Gal 2:10; 2 Cor 8:14 Where the money went: “remember the poor”; “your abundance at the present time should supply their need.” Also 1 Cor 16:1–2 and, for those who labor in teaching, 1 Tim 5:17–18. 4 WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT The audience and the star speaker were familiar in Paul’s cities. Public orators, the sophists, drew crowds and fees, and a city judged a speaker by his delivery. Paul sets himself against that model at Corinth: he came “not with words of eloquent wisdom” (1 Cor 1:17), and “we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word” (2 Cor 2:17). So the performance model was available to the apostles as a tool for reaching a city. They declined it for the gathering, and described the gathering instead as a body in which each part works (1 Cor 12:12–27; Eph 4:16). 5 BEFORE IT Silence is not absence. So this is the earliest source after the apostles that shows the practice absent, different or resisted, where one has been found. c. 197 Tertullian, Apology 38–39 The chapter before says Christians renounce the shows. Then the assembly: prayer, the reading of Scripture, exhortation, and the shared supper. “We are a body knit together by a common religious profession.” No stage, no audience, and the measure is not how many came. 6 THE RECORD 1861 Metropolitan Tabernacle, London Spurgeon’s hall seats about five thousand. Very large Protestant rooms are older than the seeker model. 1955 Donald McGavran, The Bridges of God Founds the church growth school: growth can be studied, planned and measured. 1975 Willow Creek Community Church Begins after a door-to-door survey asking people why they stayed away from church. The service is built around the answers. 1995 Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church The model becomes a method any congregation can adopt. 2007 Willow Creek, Reveal The church’s own study finds that taking part in its programs did not predict spiritual growth. Its leaders say publicly that they had been wrong about what produces disciples. 2014 Church budget surveys In Church Law & Tax’s 2014 survey of American congregations, personnel took 47% of the average budget and the building (mortgage or rent, utilities, upkeep) another 19%: two thirds of giving before any mission or mercy. Compare Tertullian’s account of the common fund around 197 (Apology 39): it goes “to support and bury poor people,” orphans, the old and prisoners. 7 WHO CONCEDES WHAT PROTESTANT Scott Thumma and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths (2007) The best defense. Large churches often show higher commitment and more small groups than critics allow. PROTESTANT G. A. Pritchard, Willow Creek Seeker Services (1996) A sympathetic study from inside. Concludes that the marketing method ended up shaping the message. PROTESTANT David Wells, No Place for Truth (1993) An evangelical theologian: the church borrowed the tools of management and therapy and was changed by them. HISTORIAN Kimon Sargeant, Seeker Churches (2000) Shows how consumer choice became the organizing principle of these churches. 8 WHAT ABOUT…? The objections a reader from each tradition would raise, in their own terms, each with its reply. 1. “Paul became all things to all people (1 Cor 9:22). This is contextualization.” (Protestant) He adapted himself. The gathering in his letters stays what it was: believers building one another up. And 1 Corinthians 14:23–25 already pictures outsiders present in a meeting that is not designed around them. 2. “Three thousand were added in one day. Big is biblical.” (Protestant) Yes, and in the same paragraph they are breaking bread in homes (Acts 2:41, 46). Size is not what is dated here. The format is. 3. “People come to faith. Judge it by the fruit.” (Protestant) Many do, and that is a real good. The fruit question is the one Willow Creek asked of itself in 2007, and its answer is in the record above. 4. “Liturgical churches are no less a performance.” (Protestant) Agreed. This page says the same at c. 400, where the people begin to watch, and at c. 1400, where the table goes behind a wall. The seeker service is a new form of a very old shift. 9 NOT SETTLED Small and house churches have their own failures: insularity, thin teaching, unaccountable leaders. Nothing here settles what size a church should be. The budget figures vary by survey. 10 SOURCES IN THIS RECORD Every dated source and every scholar named above. Where the text is online it is linked; otherwise the link finds the work in a library. - c. 197 · Tertullian, Apology 38–39 — https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm - 1861 · Metropolitan Tabernacle, London — https://www.metropolitantabernacle.org/About-Us/History - 1955 · Donald McGavran, The Bridges of God — https://archive.org/details/bridgesofgodstud0000mcga - 1975 · Willow Creek Community Church — https://archive.org/details/rediscoveringchu00hybe - 1995 · Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church — https://archive.org/details/purposedrivenchu0000warr - 2007 · Willow Creek, Reveal — https://archive.org/details/revealwhereareyo0000hawk - 2014 · Church budget surveys — https://www.churchlawandtax.com/manage-finances/budgets/a-peek-inside-how-churches-spend-their-money/ - voice · Scott Thumma and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths (2007) — https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Thumma+Travis+Beyond+Megachurch+Myths - voice · G. A. Pritchard, Willow Creek Seeker Services (1996) — https://archive.org/details/willowcreekseeke00prit - voice · David Wells, No Place for Truth (1993) — https://archive.org/details/bwb_P7-CNQ-570 - voice · Kimon Sargeant, Seeker Churches (2000) — https://archive.org/details/seekerchurchespr0000sarg