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

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Kanon d. Schrift; loci; Tertullian, Irenäus: "subjectives" Prinzip in d. Abwehr der Herätiker;

Kurzinhalt: ...not quite in the modern sense of "subjective" but in the sense that he turns from the truth itself to the bearer of that truth...

Textausschnitt: 70c The Adversus haereses of Ireneus, for all its rambling diffuseness, reveals the new situation formed by ongoing history. The first chapter of the first book gives us the clue: Our adversaries, Ireneus says, "falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation." Remarks scattered through the first two books show this complaint to be continuously operative for Ireneus, but it is the third book, where he comes to his own positive statement, that concerns us most. His first chapter here states the source of all we know on "the plan of our salvation": the apostles, who first proclaimed the gospel and then committed it to writing. The next chapter lays the precise complaint against the adversaries: When we quote scripture, they appeal to tradition but, when we refer them to that tradition which originates with the apostles, they object to tradition. The third chapter reveals the strategy of Ireneus's reply: to list the order of succession from the apostles, through the bishops who followed them, down to the bishops of our own times, taking Rome as a sample. "In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us." (Fs) (notabene)

71a What Ireneus is doing, I should say, is moving from the objective to the subjective, not quite in the modern sense of "subjective" but in the sense that he turns from the truth itself to the bearer of that truth. He appeals directly neither to scripture nor to tradition though both of them contain the truth, but to the agents of the truth wherever it is found. Perhaps he has not got those categories quite clear or become fully aware of what is happening through his strategic decision, but it marks a significant trend in history, to be followed presently by Tertullian. Anyway, in his own mind he has found a principle to serve both for refutation and for proper procedure: "Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the church; since the apostles [...] lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth." (Fs) (notabene)

72b Tertullian in his work On Prescription against Heretics brings the precision of legal argument to the point made more vaguely by Ireneus. The prior question is not what the scriptures say, but to whom the scriptures belong. To take the case to the court of the scriptures, with the adversaries quoting and interpreting them one way and the orthodox church another, is a useless procedure: (Fs) (notabene)
To the Scriptures therefore we must not appeal [...] the order of things would require that this question should be first proposed, which is now the only one to be discussed, "To whom belongeth the very Faith; whose are the Scriptures; by whom, and through whom, and when, and to whom was that rule delivered whereby men become Christians." For wherever both the true Christian rule and Faith shall be shewn to be, there will be the true Scriptures, and the true expositions, and all the true Christian traditions. (Fs)

72a Tertullian then, as the title of his work declares, is appealing to prescription, a legal device in Roman law that had the effect of not even allowing the case to come to court. As for positive argument, he does not differ so very much from Ireneus. He goes on, from the passage quoted, to speak of Christ commissioning the apostles, the apostles founding churches, and other churches deriving from the apostolic. And he continues: (Fs)
On this principle therefore we shape our rule: that, if the Lord Jesus Christ sent the Apostles to preach, no others ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed [...] Now what they did preach . . . must be proved in no other way than by those same Churches which the Apostles themselves founded. (Fs)

72b Concluding his work, Tertullian restates his general principle: "And now indeed I have argued against all heresies in general, that they ought to be forbidden by fixed, and just, and necessary rules, to bring Scripture into their disputes." (Fs)

72c An enormous amount of learned ink has flowed in the effort to analyze Ireneus and Tertullian. What matters here, however, is the place of Ireneus and Tertullian in the ongoing evolution, and that cannot be fully clarified by any interpretation of their work, however erudite; it becomes plain only when the result of the evolution has disclosed its direction. The direction of their first fateful step turns out to be toward the doctrine of the magisterium; this doctrine will emerge in due course and reign with a vengeance, only to be challenged in its own turn. (Fs) (notabene)