John Behr
THE TRADITION AND CANON OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES.

Chapter 1 of John Behr, The Way to Nicea, The Formation of Christian Theology, Vol. 1 (SVS Press, 2001).

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Before examining the scriptural texture of the Gospel, and its relation to both the canon and tradition, it is worth considering the two main challenges against which it was worked out. The first is that of Marcion, a rich ship owner from the Black Sea, who arrived in Rome in the middle of the second century and donated a large sum of money to the church there, for its charitable works, which was soon after returned to him when his particular teaching became known and rejected. His teaching, however, found adherents, and a Marcionite church existed around the Mediterranean for several centuries. Marcion is infamous for having drawn a sharp distinction between the God of the Jewish Scriptures, on the one hand, a spiteful, vengeful and malicious deity, and, on the other hand, the newly revealed God, the Father of Jesus Christ, a loving God who redeems us from the God of the Old Testament. His major written work, the Antitheses, was a series of juxtaposed statements from the Old Testament and the Gospel demonstrating the contrast between their depictions of the ones whom they call God. He claimed that not only had the Old Testament proclaimed another God, but that all the apostles apart from Paul had misunderstood Jesus Christ in terms of the expected Messiah of the God of the Old Testament, and so had distorted his message--as Paul had said, there is only one Gospel which false brethren were perverting (Gal 1:6-7). According to Marcion, only Paul had fully understood Jesus Christ, but, even then, Marcion had to excise passages from Paul's letters.[1] The only Gospel in which Marcion had any confidence is supposed to have been that of Luke, the disciple of Paul, though this again required some editorial work.

It is what led Marcion to such a position that is of particular interest. Tertullian, writing at the beginning of the third century, gives us an indication:

That is, it is his particular exegetical concerns--the perceived opposition between the Law and Gospel--that led Marcion to postulate two different gods. Marcion denied the legitimacy of reading the Law allegorically, as speaking of Christ,[3] preferring rather to sever the Gospel from the Law, and to introduce instead a previously unknown god. The complete separation of the Gospel from Scripture (the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets) is dramatically repeated by Adolf von Harnack in what remains an indispensable study of Marcion. He concludes his monumental work by asserting, in highlighted text:

While there were no doubt many other factors at work (that both were disowned as Christians by their own fathers is perhaps not irrelevant),[5] both Marcion and Harnack exemplify a continuing reluctance to see the Gospel as related in any way to the Scriptures, a problem which becomes exacerbated when the writings comprising the New Testament are recognized as themselves Scripture and treated with increasing independence from the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets.

Marcion's solution of postulating another god might seem to us to be rather drastic. After many centuries of monotheism, understood from a philosophical rather than a scriptural perspective, it is today more likely to be assumed that if there is a God, there is only one God, and that while Scripture speaks about him, it is also possible to be in an independent or direct relationship with him; that one can believe in God before he is encountered through Scripture, and the one already known (or thought to be known) is then identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of Jesus Christ. And so, if a discrepancy were to be perceived, as Marcion thought, between what is said of God in the Old Testament and what is said in the New Testament, the response would probably be to claim that it is one and the same God operating in two different modes, historicizing the difference, and God himself.

But how can one be sure that the God already thought to be known is the same one spoken of in Scripture? There are, as Paul warns, many gods (1 Cor 8:5). Marcion's route seems to follow the opposite direction. His theology is derived from exegetical concerns: that our knowledge about God depends upon his revelation, which is mediated through Scripture, so that God is bound up with his Scripture. The same perspective is presupposed by Tertullian. And, as Northrop Frye concludes in his study of the nature and workings of scriptural language, it also seems to be the approach presupposed by Scripture itself: "We could almost say that even the existence of God is an inference from the existence of the Bible: in the beginning was the Word."[6] Beginning from what God has in fact revealed of himself, the Christian confession is certainly that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of Jesus Christ, is alone the one true God, who, together with his Son and his Spirit, created all things, and besides whom there is no other. But this is a confession, derived from his revelation, from his Scripture, not a metaphysical presupposition with which Scripture is approached and understood.

The second challenge is provided by the figures and writings grouped together, in modern times, under the general rubric of "Gnosticism."[7] What "Gnosticism" actually is, and how it relates to Christianity, has been the subject of intense debate, especially since the discovery of a large cache of works at Nag Hammadi (in 1945-6). One of the key figures in the second century was Valentinus, a native of Egypt, who, his disciples claimed, had been taught by Theodas, a pupil of Paul. Like Marcion, Valentinus also ended up in Rome, sometime in the middle of the second century, where he led a group of more speculative Christians. It is possible that as Valentinus came to recognize the increasing distance which lay between himself, and his followers, and other Christians, he began to differentiate between the faith of those in the Church, who have remained at the "psychical" level of understanding, and the deeper gnosis, possessed by those like himself who were truly "spiritual."[8] What is particularly interesting about Valentinus, and brought out well by David Dawson, is his use of Scripture.[9] Unlike Marcion, Valentinus did not feel the need to close a body of fixed authoritative writings, but rather continued to reuse, imaginatively and creatively, texts and images from Scripture in much the same way that the New Testament had used the Old Testament, so producing his own works, such as the Gospel of Truth (if it is indeed by him), a work which echoes much of Scripture (Old Testament and New Testament) yet is not at all tied to the text of Scripture. For Valentinus, the things spoken of in Scripture are expressions of the truth that is most authentically perceived in the heart, and as such, they are truths also seen in other places, in the writings of the philosophers and elsewhere, enabling him to draw diverse sources into his amalgam. As Valentinus put it:

The encounter with God takes place in the interiority of the heart, and it is this experience which comes to expression in diverse writings. This vision alone, according to Valentinus, is the origin of all truth, knowledge and wisdom. As Dawson comments:

One has direct access to truth itself, that which has inspired what is true in various writings. Having such direct access to wisdom, Valentinus no longer recognized any distinction between Scripture and commentary, between source and interpretation. Rather, he reconfigured the language and images of Scripture in the light of his experience, and the results are themselves new compositions: "The visionary possesses those insights from which the shared wisdom of classical and Christian literature is derived; he or she is enabled not merely to comment (like Philo or Clement)... but to create (like... Philo's Moses or Clement's logos)."[12] The goal for Valentinus was to attain the gnosis, the higher knowledge, which enables its possessors to draw the truth out of various ancient writings and redeploy them in new myths. The important point here is, as Frances Young puts it, that "Gnostic doctrine is revelatory, rather than traditional, textual or rational."[13] It is Valentinus's own vision or understanding that is determinative, around which he reconfigures whatever he finds in Scripture and elsewhere, to produce his own myth. Not only is there no canon for Valentinus (either as a rule of right belief, or as a specific body of literature), but Scripture itself is no longer sacrosanct, it is superseded by the visionary's own experience and the new literary creation, and so there is, finally, no interpretative engagement with Scripture. What is fashioned by such reading of Scripture is, as Irenaeus puts it, the reader's own fabrication (plasma), rather than the handiwork (plasma) of God, flesh formed in the image and likeness of his Son.[14] Irenaeus's accusation that the Valentinians project their own inner states onto the heavens[15] is reiterated by Dawson when he comments that Valentinus turns the drama of Scripture into a "psychodrama": "In the end, this state of being [wrought by the Gospel of Truth] is the speaker's own; as visionary, Valentinus's ultimate concern is neither for textuality nor language in general, but for the personal subject or self."[16] While Williams is right to point out that the diverse figures characterized as "Gnostic" do not share a distinctive approach to the Scriptures, or method of interpretation,[17] this very individualizing freedom is itself the common feature uniting those who did not share in the emerging consensus concerning Christ "according to the Scriptures."[18]

A similar lack of concern for engagement with the Scriptures is shown by the Gospel according to Thomas, a collection of the sayings of Jesus presented with no narrative structure. Some of these sayings parallel those in Matthew and Luke, so prompting speculation concerning its relationship to the hypothetical Synoptic Sayings Source, "Q." The date of Thomas, and its relationship to "Gnosticism" are extremely problematic and extensively debated. However, whatever its date and provenance, and even if it really does preserve some authentic sayings of the "historical Jesus," the Gospel according to Thomas makes no attempt to present these sayings, or its picture of Christ, in a form "according to the Scriptures." There is not even any mention in it of the basic Christian proclamation concerning the Crucifixion and Resurrection, though it is possible that this is presupposed.[19]

Alongside such positions, there were also, of course, writers who espoused what was explicitly acknowledged, by the end of the second century, to be the orthodox position, figures such as Ignatius of Antioch, who was led under guard from Asia to Rome to be martyred at the beginning of the century; Justin Martyr, a Christian teacher in Rome in the middle of the second century; and later Irenaeus of Lyons, a bishop in Gaul, all of whom will be examined in depth in Part Two. In their own ways, these all maintained a text-interpretative framework for revelation, the point that Christ was preached by the apostles as having been crucified and risen "according to the Scriptures." So, what sense does it make to say that Christ is proclaimed "according to the Scriptures"? What is the relationship between Christ, the Gospel, and the Scriptures?

The place and function of literature in the ancient world, and especially the idea of mim�sis or emulation, provides the context in which this relationship is best understood. To be cultured in the ancient world, to have acquired a paideia, meant to be versed in the classics. The classics provided not only models of sublime style and speech, but also supplied moral exemplars, encouraged virtue and piety, and provided the material in which to learn to think and on which to hone one's critical skills.[20] In a word it meant providing a context, a "symbolic world," in terms of which one understood oneself and the events of one's life. The same also goes for the Scripture of Israel.[21] Throughout its history, the writers of Israel used images and figures of earlier events and figures to understand, explicate and describe the events and figures at hand. For example, Noah, in Genesis 9:1-7, is blessed to preside over a renewed world which is described in the vocabulary and imagery of Genesis 1:26-31: Noah is presented in terms which make him a new Adam, establishing a typological relation between them. And what has been established with Noah, then becomes a paradigm for understanding subsequent events. So, for instance, after referring to the overflowing wrath which resulted in Israel being forsaken, in exile, Isaiah adds the following oracle:

"For this is like the days of Noah to me;
as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you.
For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed,
But my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed."
Thus says the Lord who has compassion on you. (Is 54:9-10)

The description of the divine wrath of the flood followed by the covenant of natural order established with Noah is used to explain the divine wrath of the exile that will give way to eternal covenant of divine grace. And so, again, a typology is created between the two episodes.

A similar typology is created by Isaiah between Abraham and the post-exilic situation of Israel. Isaiah encourages the despairing people, and urges them to "look to Abraham your father, and Sarah who bore you; for he was one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many" (Is 51:2). However small the remnant has become, the people are a promised national renewal if only they imitate the patriarchal action and return to their ancestral land: Abraham is a "type" both of the required action and of the promised outcome. And again, this invocation of Abraham as a type for the new exodus seems to be based upon an earlier typology already at work in the description of Abraham, this time between Abraham and the original exodus. Genesis 12 describes how Abram was forced to leave Canaan, when the land was struck by famine, and migrate to Egypt. When Pharaoh made amorous advances towards Sarai, believing her to be Abram's sister, the Lord brought a plague against Pharaoh and his household, prompting Pharaoh to send the patriarch away from his land. The typological parallelism is clear: Abraham is described as foreshadowing in his life the destiny of his descendants.[22]

This process, reemploying images to understand and explain the present in terms of the past, and so as being anticipated by the past, which is evident throughout the Scriptures, continues in the New Testament and its presentation of Christ "according to the Scriptures." For instance, Christ's Passion is described in terms of being the true and primary Pascha (now etymologized as "Passion"), of which the Exodus Pascha is but a type; Christ is the true Lamb of God. Or, according to another typology, in John 3:14: "Just as Moses raised the snake in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that those who believe in Him may have eternal life." This refers back to Numbers 21, where the Israelites were complaining to Moses that it was folly to remain in the desert--the wisdom of the world arguing that it is preferable to go back to Egypt. God then struck the people with the deadly bites of serpents, and at the same time provided a remedy, the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole: by looking upon the serpent, the people regained life. Paul also appeals to this concatenation of images, when he points out to those in his Corinthian community who were seduced by wisdom, that the folly of God (Christ lifted on the Cross, as the bronze snake lifted on the pole) overcomes the wisdom of the world, and, as such, Christ is the true power and wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:22-5). In another vein, but using the same scriptural, literary or intertextual technique, Matthew describes Christ as a new Moses, going up a mountain to deliver the law, while Paul describes Christ as the new Adam, correcting the mistakes of the first Adam, whom Paul explicitly describes as being "a type of the One to come" (Rom 5:14).

The relationship between Scripture, the Gospel and Christ is not a subject of direct reflection for Paul, as it will be in the second century, examined in Part Two. However, the dynamics of this relationship is intimated by Paul, in a complex passage which merits being cited at length:

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor 3:12-4:6)

In this very dense passage, Paul begins to address the interconnected relationships between Moses and Christ, the Scriptures and the Gospel. According to Paul, the "same veil" that Moses placed over his own head remains to this day upon those who read "Moses"--now a text.[23] But this veil is removed for those who have turned to the Lord and can now understand Scripture aright. That the veil was removed by Christ means that it is only in Christ that the glory of God is revealed and that we can discern the true meaning of Scripture, and that these two aspects are inseparable. The identity between Moses the man and Moses the text, whose face and meaning were hidden by the same veil, is paralleled by the identity between Christ, in whose face is revealed the glory of God, and the Gospel which proclaims this. So, behind the veil is nothing other than "the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ," himself the image of God, though this remains "veiled" to those who reject the Gospel. What this means, as Hays points out, is that, ultimately, "Scripture becomes--in Paul's reading--a metaphor, a vast trope that signifies and illuminates the gospel of Jesus Christ."[24]

This is not to imply that the Gospel itself is, as Ricoeur claimed, simply "the rereading of an ancient Scripture."[25] The proclamation of the death and resurrection of Christ is not straightforwardly derivable from Scripture. Rather, the death and resurrection of Christ acts as a catalyst. Because God has acted in Christ in a definitive, and unexpected, manner, making everything new, Scripture itself must be read anew. The "word of the Cross," the preaching of "Christ crucified" may be a scandal for the Jews and folly for the Gentiles, but it alone is the "power of God" making known "the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:18-25). This preaching, the kerygma, provides what Hays describes as "the eschatological apokalypsis of the Cross," a hermeneutical lens, through which Scripture can now be refracted with "a profound new symbolic coherence."[26] Read in the light of what God has wrought in Christ, the Scriptures provided the terms and images, the context, within which the apostles made sense of what happened, and with which they explained it and preached it, so justifying the claim that Christ died and rose "according to the Scriptures." It is important to note that it is Christ who is being explained through the medium of Scripture, not Scripture itself that is being exegeted; the object is not to understand the "original meaning" of an ancient text, as in modern historical-critical scholarship, but to understand Christ, who, by being explained "according to the Scriptures," becomes the sole subject of Scripture throughout.[27]

And this interpretative engagement with Scripture is indeed what we find in the canonical Gospels, where, in the descriptions of Christ and his activity, culminating in the Passion and always told from that perspective, there is constant allusion to scriptural imagery. The very "beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" in Mark is illustrated by the citation of a passage from Isaiah (Mk 1:1-3; Mal 3:1; Is 40:3). In Matthew, the same engagement with Scripture is found throughout, in terms of prophecy-fulfilment structuring the narrative. While in Luke it appears as the hermeneutic, the principle of interpretation, taught by the risen Christ and so enlightening his disciples: "Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Lk 24:27, cf. Lk 24:44-49). This literary enlightening of the disciples is paralleled in John when Christ breathes on his disciples the Holy Spirit, the one he had promised, who would remind them of all things concerning Christ, leading them into all truth (cf. Jn 20:22; 14:26); Word and Spirit can never be separated, and both are at work in the task of interpretation. It is also in John where the relationship between the Scriptures and Christ is stated most emphatically, by Christ himself: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me" (Jn 5:46).

The writers of the second century who were later recognized as orthodox by those of the "Great Church," to use the expression of the second-century pagan Celsus,[28] were sensitive to this relationship between Scripture and the Gospel: not only does Scripture speak of Christ, but everything that is said in the apostolic writings is found already in Scripture. For instance, Justin Martyr asserts categorically:

The point of importance for Justin is clearly not the "historical Christ," in our modern sense of the word "historical," but rather to demonstrate the scriptural texture of what is said of Christ, and the scriptural texture of the Christ thus described, the Word of God. There is, as Greer puts it, a twofold dynamic at work in this relationship between Scripture and the Gospel. On the one hand, "the earliest Christian attempts to explain Christ are in great measure exegetical in character. What is said of Christ is rooted in the details of Scripture." And on the other hand, "what gives form to the exegetical work is the Christian story." It is in this sense that Christ, the Word of God, is often said to be the key to Scripture.[30]

The ways in which Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus understood Christ to be the Word of God will be dealt with in Part Two. The concern in this chapter is with the relation between the symbolic coherence of Scripture, effected by the word of the Cross, and the appeal to canon and tradition--the key elements in the self-identification of orthodox or normative Christianity. The coherence of Scripture--the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets--in the apostolic preaching of Christ is shown most clearly in the short, nonpolemical, and perhaps catechetical treatise of Irenaeus devoted to the topic, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.[31] That Irenaeus is concerned with the preaching of the apostles, rather than the authentic words of the "historical Christ," is significant, and shows a development over earlier works, such as the Didache, the subtitle of which is "The Lord's Teaching to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles."[32] Although Irenaeus clearly knows the apostolic writings,[33] the substance of his exposition is drawn exclusively from Scripture: that Jesus was born from a virgin and worked miracles is shown from Isaiah and others; while the names of Pilate and Herod are known from the evangelists, that Christ was bound and brought before them is shown by Hosea; that he was crucified, raised and exalted is again shown by the prophets. In the first part of the work (3b-42a), Irenaeus recounts the scriptural history of God's salvific work which culminates in the apostolic proclamation of Christ. In the second part of the work (42b-97), Irenaeus demonstrates how all the things which have come to pass in Jesus Christ, were spoken of by the prophets, both so that we might believe in God, as what he previously proclaimed has come to pass, and also to demonstrate that Scripture throughout does in fact speak of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as preached by the apostles.

This coherence of Scripture, the scriptural texture of the apostolic preaching of the Gospel in its interpretative engagement with Scripture, is the basis for Irenaeus' appeal to canon and tradition, and the full use of the apostolic writings as themselves Scripture, in his work Against the Heresies.[34] This text is the earliest extant work to employ all the elements of apostolic Scripture, tradition, succession and canon, and it does so in confrontation with those who "speak the same, but think otherwise" (AH 1.Pref.2). After beginning with a description of some of the Valentinian myths, Irenaeus turns to an analysis of their use of Scripture, and discusses the role of canon and tradition:

The terms used by Irenaeus to critique his opponents all have a very precise meaning within Hellenistic epistemology and literary theory. And indeed, after further examples of his opponents' exegesis, Irenaeus continues by using a literary example. In AH 1.9.4, he describes how some people take diverse lines from the work of Homer and then rearrange them to produce homeric-sounding verses which tell a tale not to be found in Homer. While these centos can mislead those who have only a passing knowledge of Homer, they will not deceive those who are well versed in his poetry, for they will be able to identify the lines and restore them to their proper context.

Irenaeus' basic charge against the Valentinians is that they have disregarded "the order and the connection of the Scriptures," the body of truth, so distorting one picture into another. They have not accepted the coherence of the Scriptures, as speaking about Christ, but have preferred their own fabrication, created by adapting passages from Scripture to a different hypothesis, attempting to endow it with persuasive plausibility. The terms used by Irenaeus, "fabrication" (plasma) and "myth" (muthos), are terms which, in Hellenistic literary theory, describe stories that are, in the first case, not true but seem to be so, and in the latter case, manifestly untrue.[37] In doing this, according to Irenaeus, the Valentinians have based their exegesis of Scripture upon their own "hypothesis" (hupothesis), rather than that foretold by the prophets, taught by Christ and delivered ("traditioned") by the apostles. In Hellenistic times, the term "hypothesis" (hupothesis) had a variety of meanings, one of which, again in a literary context, was the plot or outline of a drama or epic (what Aristotle, in the Poetics, had termed the mu`qo~).[38] It is what the poet posits, as the basic outline for his subsequent creative work. It is not derived from reasoning, but rather provides the raw material upon which the poet can exercise his talents. The Valentinians have used the words and phrases from Scripture, but have creatively adapted them to a different hypothesis, and so have created their own fabrication.[39]

In the other arts, it is similarly the hypothesis, as that which is posited, which facilitates both action and inquiry, and ultimately knowledge itself. Hypotheses are, as Aristotle puts it, the starting points or first principles (archai) of demonstrations.[39] The goal of health is the hypothesis for a doctor, who then deliberates on how it is to be attained, just as mathematicians hypothesize certain axioms and then proceed with their demonstrations.[40] Such hypotheses are in both cases tentative; if the goal proves to be unattainable or if the conclusions derived from the supposition turn out to be manifestly false, then the hypothesis in question must be rejected. The aim of philosophy, however, at least since Plato, has been to discover the ultimate, non-hypothetical first principles.[41] But even here, as Aristotle concedes, it is impossible to demand demonstrations of the first principles themselves; the first principles cannot themselves be proved, otherwise they would be dependent upon something prior to them, and so the inquirer would be led into an infinite regress.[42] This means, as Clement of Alexandria points out, that the search for the first principles of demonstration ends up with indemonstrable faith.[43] For Christian faith, according to Clement, it is the Scriptures, and in particular, the Lord who speaks in them, that is the first principle of all knowledge.[44] It is the voice of the Lord, speaking throughout Scripture, that is the first principle, the (nonhypothetical) hypothesis of all demonstrations from Scripture, by which Christians are led to the knowledge of the truth.

These first principles, grasped by faith, are the basis for subsequent demonstrations, and are also subsequently used to evaluate other claims to truth, acting thus as a "canon." Originally this term simply meant a straight line, a rule by which other lines could be judged: "by that which is straight, we discern both the straight and the crooked; for the carpenter's rule (ho kanon ) is the test of both, but the crooked tests neither itself nor the straight."[45] Epicurus' Canon seems to have been the first work devoted to the need to establish "the criteria of truth,"[46] a need which, in the face of the Sceptical onslaught, made it almost obligatory in the Hellenistic period to begin any systematic presentation of philosophy with an account of "the criterion."[47] Without a canon or criterion, knowledge is simply not possible, for all inquiry will be drawn helplessly into an endless regression. It was generally held in Hellenistic philosophy that it is preconceptions (provlhyei~ --generic notions synthesized out of repeated sense perceptions, later held to be innate) that facilitate knowledge and act as criteria. The self-evidence (enargeia) of the sense-perceptions for the Epicureans, and the clarity of the cognitive impressions for the Stoics, provide the infallible criterion for examining what truly exists. But again Clement points out how even Epicurus accepted that this "preconception of the mind" is "faith," and that without it, neither inquiry nor judgement is possible.[48]

In the same manner in which Hellenistic philosophers argued against the infinite regression of the Sceptics by appealing to a canon or criterion of truth, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria countered the constantly mutating Gnostic mythology (Irenaeus claims that the Gnostics were obliged to devise something new every day. AH 1.18.1; 1.21.5), by an appeal to their own canon of truth.[49] Using similar terminology to the philosophers, Irenaeus asserts that "we must keep the canon of faith unswervingly and perform the commandments of God" in faith, for such faith "is established upon things truly real" and enables us to have "a true comprehension of what is" (Dem. 3). After criticizing the Gnostics for their distortion of Scripture according to their own hypothesis and giving the example of the Homeric cento, as described above, Irenaeus continues:

This is followed, in AH 1.10.1, by the fullest description, given by Irenaeus, of the faith which was received from the apostles: "the faith in one God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth...; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was enfleshed for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets preached the economies"[50] that is, his coming (ten eleusin), the birth from a Virgin, the Passion, Resurrection and bodily ascension into heaven, and his coming (parousia) from heaven, to recapitulate all things, bringing judgement to eternal separation or life. In AH 1.9.4, Irenaeus described the canon of truth as having been "received through baptism," and what he presents in AH 1.10.1 is indeed structured upon the same three central articles of belief found in the interrogatory baptismal creeds from the earliest times and going back to the baptismal command of Christ himself (Matt 28:19). Elsewhere, in the context of discussing the rule of truth, Irenaeus also affirms that "the baptism of our regeneration takes place through these three articles" (Dem. 7). Despite this connection with baptism, the rule of truth is not given in a declarative form, as are the creeds used in baptism from the fourth century onwards.[51] The canons of truth remained much more flexible in their wording than the later declaratory creeds, and seem to have been used differently, as a guide for theology rather than as a confession of faith.

The point of the canon of truth is not so much to give fixed, and abstract, statements of Christian doctrine. Nor does it provide a narrative description of Christian belief, the literary hypothesis of Scripture.[52] Rather, the canon of truth expresses the correct hypothesis of Scripture itself, that by which one can see in Scripture the picture of a king, Christ, rather than a dog or fox. It is ultimately the presupposition of the apostolic Christ himself, the one who is "according to the Scripture" and, in reverse, the subject of Scripture throughout, being spoken of by the Spirit through the prophets, so revealing the one God and Father. As a canon it facilitates the demonstration of the incongruous and extraneous nature of the Gnostic hypotheses. By means of the same canon of truth the various passages, the "members of truth" (AH 1.8.1), can be returned to their rightful place within "the body of truth" (Dem. 1), Scripture, so that it again speaks of Christ, while exposing the Gnostic fabrications for what they are. The canon of truth is neither a system of detached doctrinal beliefs nor a narrative. Based upon the three names of baptism, the canon of truth is inextricably connected, for Irenaeus, with "the order (taxis) and the connection (eirmos) of the Scriptures" (AH 1.8.1) for it presents the one Father who has made himself known through the one Son by the Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets, that is, through the Scripture--the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets. It is striking that in the fullest canon of truth outlined by Irenaeus, in AH 1.10.1, all the economies of Christ, the episodes recounted in the Gospels, are presented under the confession of the Holy Spirit, who preached these things through the prophets, Scripture when read according to the Spirit, rather than under the second article, as in the later declaratory creeds, where what it is that the Spirit "spoke through the prophets" is left unspecified. For Irenaeus, the canon of truth is the embodiment or crystallization of the coherence of Scripture, read as speaking of the Christ who is revealed in the Gospel, the apostolic preaching of Christ "according to Scripture." It is along these lines that Clement of Alexandria attempts to define the canon:

Understood in this way, the canon is not an arbitrary principle used to exclude other legitimate voices or trajectories. Rather it expresses the hypothesis of Scripture, enabling the demonstrations from Scripture to describe, accurately, the portrait of a king, Christ; it is a mode of interpretation delivered by the apostles in their proclamation of Christ.[54] This certainly excludes other pictures or fabrications, but then, other pictures do not present the Christ spoken of by the apostles, the Christ presented "according to the Scriptures."

The key elements of the faith delivered by the apostles are crystallized in the canon of truth. This canon expresses the basic elements of the one Gospel, maintained and preached in the Church, in an ever-changing context. The continually changing context in which the same unchanging Gospel is preached makes it necessary that different aspects or facets of the same Gospel be drawn out to address contemporary challenges. However, whilst the context continually changes, the content of that tradition does not--it is the same Gospel. So, after stating the rule of truth in AH 1.10.1, Irenaeus continues:

As the faith is the same, those who can speak endlessly about it do not add to it, any more than those who are poor speakers detract from it, for the meaning or the content of tradition is one and the same. It is clear, then, that for Irenaeus "tradition" is not alive, in the sense that it cannot change, grow or develop into something else.[55] The Church is to guard carefully this preaching and this faith, which she has received and which she is to preach, teach and hand down harmoniously.

However, as we saw above, the point of a canon is not to stymie inquiry and reflection, but rather to make it possible.[56] So, although Irenaeus specifies that the content of the apostolic tradition remains one and the same, in the next section, AH 1.10.3, he nevertheless gives directions to those who desire to inquire more deeply into the revelation of God. Here Irenaeus reiterates his basic perspective: theological inquiry is not to be carried out by changing the hypothesis itself (thinking up another God or another Christ), but by reflecting further on whatever was said in parables, bringing out the meaning of the obscure passages, by placing them in the clear light of the "hypothesis of truth."

Irenaeus further examines the relation between Scripture and tradition in the opening five chapters of his third book Against the Heresies, this time to counter the claim of the Gnostics to possess secret, oral traditions. He begins by affirming categorically that the revelation of God is mediated through the apostles. It is not enough to see the "Jesus of history" to see God, nor to imagine God as a partner with whom one can dialogue directly, bypassing his own Word. Rather the locus of revelation, and the medium for our relationship with God, is precisely in the apostolic preaching of him, the Gospel which, as we have seen, stands in an interpretative engagement with Scripture. The role of the apostles in delivering the Gospel is definitive. As Irenaeus puts it:

It is the apostles alone who have brought the revelation of Christ to the world, though what they preach is already announced by Scripture--the Law and the Prophets. The Gospels composed by those who were not apostles, Irenaeus claims, are interpretations of the preaching of those who were apostles. Irenaeus further emphasizes the foundational role of the apostles by asserting, in the passage elided from the above quotation, that the apostles did not begin to preach until they were invested with the fullness of knowledge by the risen Lord. That the apostles preached the Gospel and then subsequently wrote it down is important for Irenaeus, as it will later enable him to appeal to the continuous preaching of the Gospel in the Church, the tradition of the apostles. It is also important to Irenaeus to specify that what they wrote has been handed down ("traditioned") in the Scriptures, as the ground and pillar of our faith. While Paul had spoken of the Church as being the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), in the need to define more clearly the identity of the Church Irenaeus modifies Paul's words so that it is the Scripture which is the "ground and pillar" of the faith, or, he states later, it is the Gospel, found in four forms, and the Spirit of life that is "the pillar and foundation of the Church" (AH 3.11.8). It is by their preaching the Gospel that Peter and Paul lay the foundations for the Church, and so the Church, constituted by the Gospel, must preserve this deposit intact.

Having specified the foundational character of Scripture and the Gospel, Irenaeus turns to the mechanics of his debate with his opponents:

According to Irenaeus, his opponents' response to the charge that their teaching is not to be found in Scripture is simply to assert that these Scriptures are not authoritative, that they are inadequate for full knowledge, that they are ambiguous and need to be interpreted in the light of a tradition which is not handed down in writing but orally. That is, they appeal to a dichotomy between Scripture and tradition, understanding by the latter the oral communication of teaching derived from the apostles, containing material not to be found in the Scriptures yet which is needed to understand Scripture correctly.[57] As we have seen, the apostles certainly delivered a new manner of reading the Scriptures, proclaiming Christ "according to the Scriptures," but, according to Irenaeus, what they handed down, both in public preaching and in writing, remained tied to the Scripture. Rather than standing within this tradition of the apostolic engagement with Scripture, in which Christ is revealed, the Word which is not man's but God's, those who distort this canon think that the truth resides in their own interpretations, their own fabrications, and so end up preaching themselves.

Irenaeus continues his rhetorical argument, by making an appeal to the apostolic tradition as he understands it:

Irenaeus clearly believes that an appeal to tradition is legitimate. And just like his opponents, Irenaeus claims that the tradition to which he appeals derives from the apostles, though this time it is one which has been maintained publicly, by the succession of presbyters in the churches. As we saw, Irenaeus began his argument by asserting the identity between what the apostles preached publicly and subsequently wrote down. Just as Irenaeus's opponents object to his use of Scripture, so also they object to the tradition to which he appeals, for the tradition to which Irenaeus appeals, in both its written and oral form, has elements of Scripture, the Law, mixed up with what comes from the Saviour himself. Moreover, according to his opponents, even the words of the Lord have to be carefully discerned, to determine whence they derive.[58] Not surprisingly, those who set themselves above Scripture in this manner have little use for tradition as understood by Irenaeus.

Irenaeus continues in chapter three by developing his allusion to the apostolic tradition being preserved by the successions of presbyters in the churches. As we have seen, the apostolic tradition is nothing other than the Gospel proclaimed by the apostles as the foundation for the Church. Insofar as the Gospel, proclaimed in public, has been preserved intact, it is possible to appeal, as a point of reference for what has been taught from the beginning, to the succession of presbyter/bishops who have taught and preached the same Gospel. In this way, apostolic succession becomes an element, alongside Scripture, canon and tradition, in the self-identification of orthodox or normative Christianity. So Irenaeus begins:

The tradition of the apostles is manifest in all the churches throughout the world, preserved by those to whom the apostles entrusted the well-being of the churches founded upon the Gospel. To demonstrate this, Irenaeus next turns to list the succession of bishops at Rome, as being the preeminent example of an apostolic church. When considering this passage, it is important to remember that monarchical episcopacy was not established in Rome until at least the end of the second century, and perhaps later.[59] The Church in Rome was primarily composed of house churches, each with its own leader. These communities would have appeared like philosophical schools, groups gathering around their teachers, such as Justin and Valentinus, studying their scriptures and performing their rites. Thus the purpose of enumerating "those who were appointed by the apostles as bishops in the churches," is not to establish the "validity" of their individual offices and the jurisdiction pertaining to it, but, as Irenaeus puts it, to make possible the discovery "in every church" of the "tradition of the apostles" manifest in the whole world, that is, the truth taught by the apostles, insofar as it has been preserved, in public, intact. Similarly, although Irenaeus describes the apostles as leaving these men behind as their successors, they are not themselves described as "apostles." A firm distinction is made between the "blessed apostles" and the first "bishop" of Rome (AH 3.3.3). More important than the office itself is the continuity of teaching with which the successors are charged.[60] After listing the various presbyter/bishops up to his own time, Irenaeus concludes by again emphasizing the point of referring to such successions: "In this order and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles and the preaching of the truth have come down to us" (AH 3.3.3). It is the preaching of the truth, preserved by the presbyter/bishops throughout their successions, that is the ecclesiastical tradition deriving from the apostles. Finally, after establishing this to be the case in Rome, Irenaeus turns briefly to speak of the churches in Asia, at Smyrna and Ephesus, both of which for him are "true witnesses to the tradition of the apostles" (AH 3.3.4).

In the following chapter, after again emphasizing the completeness and exclusivity of the revelation made by the apostles, who deposited "all things pertaining to the truth" in the Church, Irenaeus continues with an interesting hypothetical case:

Here Irenaeus goes even further than his appeal to tradition in AH 3.2.2; not only can one appeal to tradition in the sense of the Christian revelation delivered by the apostles, and now preserved and preached by the Church, but even if the apostles had not left behind anything written, we should "follow the course of the tradition which they have handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches," as do the barbarians, who believe in Christ, having salvation written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, "preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God�"[61] So that "by means of the ancient tradition of the apostles," true believers will not be swayed by those who teach anything else. Although it is not actually called a canon of truth, what Irenaeus describes as being believed by these illiterate people written upon by the Spirit, is very much like his descriptions of the canon elsewhere. The content of tradition, what it is that these barbarians believe, it is important to note, is nothing other than what is written in the apostolic writings, themselves "according to Scripture." Again, the apostolic writings and tradition are not two independent or complementary sources, but two modalities of the Gospel "according to the Scriptures."

So, for Irenaeus, both the true apostolic tradition maintained by the churches, and the apostolic writings themselves, derive from the same apostles, and have one and the same content, the Gospel, which is itself, as we have seen, "according to the Scriptures." "Tradition" for the early Church is, as Florovsky put it, "Scripture rightly understood."[62] Irenaeus' appeal to tradition is thus fundamentally different to that of his opponents. While they appealed to tradition precisely for that which was not in Scripture, or for principles which would legitimize their interpretation of Scripture, Irenaeus, in his appeal to tradition, was not appealing to anything else that was not also in Scripture. Thus Irenaeus can appeal to tradition, to establish his case, and at the same time maintain that Scripture cannot be understood except on the basis of Scripture itself, using its own hypothesis and canon.[63]

Having established, in principle, that the tradition delivered by the apostles is a current reality in the church, Irenaeus turns, however, to Scripture to examine what it says about God and Christ:

Scripture, as written, is fixed,[64] and though the tradition maintained by the succession of presbyters is similarly fixed in principle, in practice it is much less secure, and, in any case, it can never be, for Irenaeus, a point of reference apart from Scripture. The doctrine concerning God, and the truth that is Christ, is to be found in the exposition of the Scriptures as interpreted by the apostles, who alone proclaimed the Gospel, handing it down in both Scripture and tradition.

The vital point established in all this is the affirmation that there is indeed one Gospel, a Gospel which is of God, not of man (cf. Rom 1:1; Gal 1:11-12). ^{This point is equally an affirmation that there is one Lord Jesus Christ. The one Christ, the Son of God, proclaimed by the apostles in the one Gospel "according to the Scriptures," makes known (cf. Jn 1:18:} ejxhghvsato , "exegeted") the Father, just as the one God has made himself known through his one Son by the Holy Spirit who speaks about him through the prophets. Yet, as noted in the beginning of this chapter, this Gospel proclaims the Coming One (ho erchomenos), and so it is not fixed in a text, but is found in an interpretative engagement with Scripture, based upon its own hypothesis, not man's, and in accordance with the canon and tradition delivered by the apostles. Equally important is that, despite the great variety of positions against which this basis was articulated, and even if not manifest clearly and continuously from the beginning, it is nevertheless based upon what was delivered at the beginning. The order and structure of the Christian Church, its ordained ministers and its liturgy, all underwent many developments and modifications in subsequent centuries, which it is beyond the scope of this present work to examine. Because of these changes, care needs to be taken to ensure that later understandings of the Church, her ministers and her tradition, are not projected back into the use that was made of the appeal to apostolic succession and tradition in the earliest debates concerning the basis of normative or orthodox Christianity.

This very success entailed certain consequences in the realm of ecclesiology. The reverse side of the affirmation of truth is the recognition of error. And so, the very proclamation that Christians are united in their faith throughout the whole world introduces, in fact, division and exclusion. However, it must be remembered that in this period the Church did not have the authoritarian powers, or the financial basis enabling such powers, that would later be bestowed upon it. In this context, excommunication was a self-chosen affair. According to Ignatius, it is the one who refuses to come to the common assembly that separates himself (Ephesians 5.3). Similarly, Irenaeus describes how Cerdo sometimes taught secretly and at other times confessed openly, but when refuted for his false teaching "he separated himself from the assembly of the brethren" (AH 3.4.3). Rather than share in the common teaching, Cerdo preferred to break with the other communities in Rome, probably symbolized by the refusal to exchange the fermentum, the common symbol of eucharistic communion.[65] Even though these communities which preferred to separate from others were outwardly similar to them, such a decision was described pejoratively by Irenaeus as the founding of a "school" with its own succession of teaching (Ptolemy from Valentinus, AH 1.Pref.2; Marcion from Cerdo, AH 1.27.2), all ultimately deriving from Simon Magus (AH 1.23), and so not part of the succession of teaching which was traced back to the apostles (AH 3.3).[66] The unity of the Church established in this way, in the late second century, was perceived by Christians themselves, such as Avircius Marcellus, the bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, who on his own epitaph describes how he has traveled from Nisibis to Rome and found the same faith, serving the same nourishment, everywhere,[67] and also acknowledged by pagans, such as Celsus, who differentiated between the various sects and "the Great Church."[68]

That there is indeed one Christ made known through the one Gospel, means that the question, "Who do you say I am?" is meaningful, one to which an answer is possible. As we have seen, inquiry is only possible on the basis of a hypothesis and a canon, and in this case the hypothesis is that of Scripture itself, and the canon is found in the interpretative engagement with Scripture according to which Christ was preached by the apostles, an engagement in which the student of the Word is also "interpreted" by the Word as he or she puts on the identity of Christ. This scriptural engagement cannot be avoided; even when John the Baptist was imprisoned and sent his disciples to ask Jesus "Are you he who is to come (ho erchomenos) or shall we look for another?" Jesus did not give a straightforward answer, but directed him to signs--the blind seeing, the lame walking--which can only be understood as "messianic" through the interpretation of them by Scripture (Matt 11:2-5). This hypothesis and canon calls for continual reflection, and the centuries that followed did so reflect and used all the means at their disposal. There are many monuments to this continual engagement with the Gospel proclaimed according to the Scriptures--writings of the Fathers and saints, schools of iconography and hagiography and so on--all of which have a certain authority to the extent that they point to the same vision of the King, the Gospel image of Christ. In the light of the canon of truth itself, other elements are also called "canons," such as the classical liturgical anaphoras, which epitomize the whole of Scripture; those saints whose lives and teachings embody the truth are "canons" of faith and piety; and similarly the decisions of the councils concerning the proper order for the Church and people of God in particular situations are "canons." The Word grows, as Acts puts it (Acts 6:7), in that as more and more people believe on it and reflect on it, there are ever new, more detailed and comprehensive explanations elaborated in defense of one and the same faith, the faith in what has been delivered from the beginning, the Gospel according to the Scriptures, the same Word of God--Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever (Heb 13:8).