Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Von den ersten Glaubensformeln -> Nizäa (Nicea); Häresie und Orthodosie (Bauer)

Kurzinhalt: The sequence is from a word of confession in which there is truth-content, to a creed that selects the truth-content for special attention and makes it a password, to a conciliar definition that sets two contradictory statements in opposition ...

Textausschnitt: 49b The trend here is too slow to occupy us, for our business is change, not continuity, and we are looking for significant transitions in the emergence of the truth-function. However, there is one preliminary problem that was raised by Walter Bauer in his work on orthodoxy and heresy in the early church. We have proceeded as if truth were the given element, with heresy arising as a sort of perverse refusal to hear and obey a word that is plainly spoken with a definite message. Is that assumption justilled? ...

50a Bauer's work forces us to a refinement of our account of the way truth emerges in the rational exercise of our minds. That exercise, we recall, depended on the occurrence of questions. Sometimes there is a stated proposition whose meaning is sufficiently clear, and then the question is one for reflection: Is it true? But sometimes no statement is proposed, there is not yet a question for reflection, and then the emergence of truth depends on the occurrence of the prior question for understanding and the ideas that provide a possible answer. Now the ideas may be right, but much more likely they will be wrong, simply because many explanations of the data are generally possible, but generally only one is correct. To apply this now to the Christian message: Along with the actual truth in the original kerygma, "the facts about Jesus," there is an enormous range of possibilities; there is an amorphous mass that is neither true nor false, but just data for inquiry and reflection. In Lonergan's terms, it has not yet been "promoted" to the level of truth. Truth is achieved; you reach it by climbing to a new level. Even the word of God may not be true, not in the sense that it is false, but in the sense that it is neither true nor false; it may contain historical experience, ideas, hypotheses, and arguments, it may go on to exhort or rebuke, it may deal in various ways with words and deeds, all without bringing the matter to the critical issue of truth. Bauer's work, I believe, is to be read in the clarifying light of this analysis. At any rate this perspective will guide our own discussion of what happened in the conciliar phase of the theology of the word. (Fs) (notabene)
51a The immediate precursor of the conciliar mentality on truth is the credal form, which mediates between the scriptural confession of Christ and the definition of truth under pain of anathema. The original elements in the creed were scriptural, found in such statements as were "confessed" ("Jesus is Lord") or in such narratives of fact as were handed on ("I handed on to you the facts which had been imparted to me"). These early Christological confessions were complemented a generation later by the formula in Matthew which we have come to call trinitarian: "Baptize men everywhere in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (28:19). (Fs)

51b However, there is a century of obscurity between these scriptural elements and the creeds that clearly presage the conciliar definition. At one time it was an accepted tradition in the West that the twelve apostles, just before their dispersal to the four winds of the great mission-field, gathered for a last meeting and composed their creed, each apostle in turn contributing an article. The legend, propagated by Rufinus in the 5th century, was never an Eastern tradition; in fact, the bishops of the Orthodox Eastern church refused at the time of the council of Florence to have this Western "Apostles' " creed foisted upon them. The attack became general in Renaissance times, and in 1443 the humanist scholar Valla was brought before the Inquisition for denying the ancient tradition. But it was only in 1647 that a definitive positive step forward was taken, with the discovery by James Ussher, bishop of Armagh, of a text that obviously antedated the one explained by Rufinus. And it was only from the 19th century on, with the work of Caspari, Harnack, Kattenbusch, Burn, and other more recent writers, that we have been able to trace the main steps in the development of the creed. (Fs)

51c They are roughly as follows. A century after Matthew we find in Ireneus a rule of faith, in the sense of a rule prescribed by faith; this is close to a creed but not yet the later category. In Tertullian there is more definite use of a credal form, identified with the rule of faith adopted in Rome and Africa, and used as a tessera, a token. This metaphor is taken from a custom of hospitality: There was "an earthenware token, which two friends divided and passed on to their descendants, making the duty of friendship hereditary." At this time, therefore, the creed may have become a badge of Christian profession, admitting the Christian to social meals in churches where he was a stranger. That seems to be the idea also in the use of the term symbolum among Christians. Symbolum became technical, if not in Tertullian, then certainly in Cyprian, for whom it meant the short creed put in interrogative form to candidates at baptism, a form that endures even in our own day. From such beginnings, the "Apostles' " creed developed, and also, presumably, the creed that was employed as the basis of the first conciliar definition at Nicea in 325. (Fs) (notabene)

52a The sequence is from a word of confession in which there is truth-content, to a creed that selects the truth-content for special attention and makes it a password, to a conciliar definition that sets two contradictory statements in opposition, choosing one as an article of faith and condemning the other as heretical. I would certainly not say that the sequence occurs without overlapping, but the emphasis in scripture does seem to be on confessing Christ, the creeds do seem to become an admission requirement, and in the councils we do find what amounts to a formal process of fixing and imposing the truth and anathematizing the contrary. (Fs)