Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 178:710 (Apr 2021)
Article: Creeds, Canons, Councils, And The Contest Over Tradition
Author: Douglas A. Sweeney

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Creeds, Canons, Councils, And The Contest Over Tradition

Douglas A. Sweeney

Douglas A. Sweeney is Dean and Professor of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.

* This is the second article in the four-part series “Sources of Authority for Teaching Christian Doctrine: A Brief Historical Sketch,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 4–7, 2020.

“Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 3–4, NRSV).

The first lecture in this series talked about the sending of the Spirit and the spread of Christian doctrine during early church history. Kerygmatic statements by apostles and other early servants of the church led to a much more comprehensive teaching, both written and unwritten, as well as practices intended to preserve sound teaching in the midst of persecution and confusion. But by the fourth century AD especially, the church had grown in numbers, wealth, and power. Now factions competed to control the Christian message, at least much of the time, and invasive species of various kinds harmed the Lord’s vineyard.

Meanwhile, church leaders advocated orthodoxy, fighting to defend the deposit of the faith handed down by conservatives in mainstream churches while new sects and heterodox philosophies arose. Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who was martyred for his fortitude, had cautioned the Philippians (ca. 110), “Whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither

BSac 178:710 (April-June 2021) p. 132

a resurrection nor a judgment,” as some had done lately, “he is the first-born of Satan.” Adding admonition to insult, he beckoned to the wayward to return “to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning” of the church.1 Irenaeus had advocated “rules” to guard the faith, simple aphoristic summaries of apostolic teaching over against which theological claims could be measured. He employed a “rule of truth” (regula veritatis) ten times in Against Heresies (c. 175–85),2 and a “rule of faith” (regula fidei) twice in Proo...