• Part 1 – The Odds
• Part 2 – The Process
  • 2.1, Preparation
  • 2.2, Execution
  • 2.3, Community
• Part 3 – The Agony
• Part 4 – The Ecstasy
• Part 5 – Conclusion
• Appendix A – Walking the Tightrope? On Pursuing a Career in the Humanities
• Appendix B – Whose Ranking? Which Criteria? Where Theology is Done in America (and Beyond)

In a previous post, I made some general notes about the Ancient Christian Doctrine (ACD) series from IVP. In this post I will now give attention to the first volume in the series, which covers the first article of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

The author and editor, Gerald L. Bray, is a reserach professor at the Beeson Divinity School, the director of research at the Latimer Trust, and is an ordained priest in the Church of England. In addition to this volume, he co-edits and contributes to the Ancient Christian Texts series and contributes to the Ancient Christian Commentary series, both of which are also published InterVarsity Press.

The major topics that Bray highlights are drawn from the section of the Creed cited above; he discusses faith and scripture, the nature of God, God as Father, God as almighty, God as creator, creation itself, and things seen and unseen. It’s hard to imagine that all those topics and their respective sub-topics fit within 150 pages, but somehow Bray was able to do it. In the introduction, Bray reminds us that the first article is the only section of the Creed that is faithful to both testaments, and even a practicing Jew can assent to it with only a few reservations about wording (xxvii). The first article is the shortest and most likely the oldest article of the Creed. With that being the case, Bray traces much of the theology from this section back to the earliest Christian writers. Of course, since the later patristic authors tended develop their theology more thoroughly, they are often cited as well.

Bray briefly tackles the subject of how well the church fathers represented the broader Christian community. He argues that H. E. W. Turner refuted Walter Bauer’s claim that the so-called heretical branches of early Christianity were the mainstream. For Bray, Turner’s word should have been the end of the story, but instead there has been a renewal of interest in this subject. He writes:

“[I]t is now necessary to defend the classical fathers of the early church against the charge that they were a small and underrepresented minority who happened to take control of the church at a key moment in its development and who were thus able to obscure the historical truth in their own interests. Fortunately, the best refutation of such ideas is the reading of the Fathers themselves. (xxxviii)

In the end, Bray argues that the “Gnostics” or “people with syncretistic doctrines” were not very influential or numerous, and so the classical church fathers and the Nicene Creed both represent authentic Christianity. This, of course, has bearing on which texts are included in the patristic commentary itself, and we shouldn’t expect non-Nicene forms of Christianity to be represented here given that it’s a work on Nicene Creed. I only make reference to this feature of the commentary because the title of the series, “Ancient Christian Doctrine,” could be understood in a number of ways.

While selecting sources for the patristic commentary, Bray sought to choose texts that not only represented the early Christian doctrine, but ones that were also valuable to spiritual formation of the modern reader. The main goal of the book is to “foster the edification of Christian believers” (xli), although Bray also notes that the book should prove helpful to scholars and others less interested with that goal.

The sampling of texts used in the commentary are easy to navigate and the selections are generally very relevant. The selections are also nicely footnoted with pointers to source material, cross references, and explanatory notes. Unfortunately, there aren’t notes on the translation of the Greek and Latin texts themselves, and those interested in the original languages will have to consult other editions. The commentary functions as a hybrid between a concordance of topics pertaining to the Nicene Creed and an anthology of primary sources of patristic authors. It’s definitely a useful volume to locate sources on the theology of the writers known as the Church Fathers. I see this this book as a helpful starting place for further inquiry.

References

• Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr, 1934; ET: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity; London: SCM, 1972).
• H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954).

Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St Luke (Trans. by Geoffrey Buswell; New York: Harper & Row, 1961).

Conzelmann’s book was very influential to my understanding of Luke’s theology, but what else would one expect from such an important work? His contribution literally changed the face of Lukan studies for the second half of the twentieth century. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Conzelmann, everyone interested in Luke-Acts needs to wrestle with this book. The significance of Die Mitte der Zeit is partly due to the fact that it was the first monograph to apply the tools of redaction criticism to Luke’s gospel. This of course gets at the specific theology of the evangelist rather than the source material:

We must make it plain, however, that our aim is to elucidate Luke’s work in its present form, not to inquire into possible sources or into the historical facts which provide the material. A variety of sources does not necessarily imply a similar variety in the thought and composition of the author. How did it come about, that he brought together these particular materials? Was he able to imprint on them his own views? It is here that the analysis of the sources renders the necessary service of helping to distinguish what comes from the source from what belongs to the author. (9).

Conzelmann brought Luke out of the realm of history and into the field of theology. Of course Luke is still interested in history, but his is a theologized history. He argues that Luke divides redemptive history (Heilsgeschichte) into three distinct periods: Israel, Jesus, and the Church. This tripart division of history works in cooperation with two important Lukan ideals.

1. Luke historicizes the Jesus account. No longer is Jesus portrayed in the present as in Mark’s Gospel. By placing Jesus in the middle period, Luke distances his own time from that of Jesus. “The fact that another period has intervened between Jesus and the present gives rise to a problem, for because of this the ‘centre’ of history itself is now an ascertainable historical fact.” (151). For Conzelmann this is a negative thing, a concept that I didn’t really understand until reading Bultmann’s Jesus book.
2. Luke wrestles with the problem of the parousia and addresses the question of why it hasn’t occurred yet. He puts the focus on the past and downplays the imminent parousia. Sure, the parousia will ultimately bring an end to this age, but it’s not expected to happen in the very near future. This approach to understanding the delay of the parousia might have eased the Lukan “community” who would have been troubled by the absence of the parousia which never came after the first generation.

There have been countless reactions and criticisms of Conzelmann’s work on Luke. It surely doesn’t represent the current state of scholarship. Yet even if people don’t agree with him, it serves as a good starting point for discussing Luke’s theology.