Preservation of Dogma in the Church (4)

By Professor Mikhail Nikolaevich Skaballanovich

In the Epistles of Ignatius the God-Bearer to Tralus, Smyr, and Polycarp, some passages can also be taken as fragments or echoes of the contemporary confession, and all of them speak only of Christ.

St. Ignatius’s expressions are remarkable: “baptized by John,”157 “persecuted under Pontius Pilate,”158 “put to death under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch,”159 “crucified and died before the eyes of the Lord.”160 In Ignatius the God-Bearer, we also find the first expression of the symbolic formula of the Incarnation: “incarnate (in ancient symbolism—born) of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” This formula is used by Ignatius alongside the simpler one: “from the seed” or “from the line of David and the Holy Spirit.”161 Both formulas must have been used together until the first supplanted the second. In turn, alongside the expression “from the Holy Spirit,” Ignatius apparently uses simpler and more original ones: “from God” (“from Mary and from God”)162 “from the line of David according to the flesh, the Son of God according to the will and power of God.”163 Polycarp contains the following expressions: “who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead and gave Him glory and a throne at His right hand, to whom all things in heaven and on earth are subject, who comes as judge of the living and the dead.”164 Comparing these passages with New Testament formulas, the mention of the Virgin (which, incidentally, is also found in Apostle Paul, Galatians 4:4: “born of a woman”) and of Christ’s death under Herod are particularly noteworthy. Furthermore, there is no reference to the resurrection (“He appeared to Cephas”) or to the ascension into heaven. It is also remarkable that there is no purely Johannine “only begotten” reference. Thus, the “confession” underwent few changes, if we are dealing with it—here and there (in the cited passages from the epistles of the apostles and apostolic leaders). Thus, the confession known to Paul, Peter, and John was accepted (as is evident from the writings of Ignatius the God-Bearer) also in Antioch and Asia Minor. It was, therefore, universal in nature, although there were local variations in individual words.

In Justin Martyr, we already find references to the trinitarian symbol. In those places of his writings that sound like a fragment of a symbol, expressions about God the Father are characteristic, as “the Creator of all this (Λημιοοργο᾿ ς τουδε τοδ πατο᾿ ς)”, “the Father of all”; about the Son of God, as “the Teacher who was among us” and for this purpose “born (or: carried in the womb) through (διά) the Virgin”, “crucified under Pontius Pilate”, “died”, “rose (ἀναστἀντα)”, “resurrected (άναγειρο᾿ μενος)”, “ascended (ἀναβα᾿ ντα) into heaven” and “reigned”, “Whom we place (ἕχοντες) on the right side “Who is to appear as the judge of absolutely all people”. The Spirit St. Justin calls “prophetic” and says that “we will indicate Him in third place, because we honor Him after the Word.”165 St. Justin does not yet mention the Church and the further members of the Creed. Moreover, in Justin Martyr we find the first testimony after the Gospel of Matthew about baptism in the name of the Trinity.166 If one cannot conclude from this, contrary to the commandment on baptism in Matthew 28:19, that previously baptism was performed only in the name of Christ, then the conclusion would be more likely that the confession at baptism now began to embrace the teaching about all the persons of the Holy Trinity. However fragmentary and incomplete such mentions and indications are, it seems likely that the confession presented to Justin in the expressions cited is far from identical with the ancient Roman one. Particularly significant is the absence, as we shall see: “Almighty,” “only begotten,” “but the holy church,” “remission of sins,” “resurrection of the flesh.” And from the fact that Justin became a Christian not in Rome, but in Ephesus, it becomes clear that in Ephesus, around 140, the baptismal confession was already threefold. – In the supposed fragments of the symbol in Aristides the Athenian, in his Apology, also written around 140, God is called “the Maker and Creator (κτίστης, δημορηὀς) of all things,” and speaks of “the Son of the Most High God, who descended from heaven in the Holy Spirit, took flesh, and clothed Himself with it from the Jewish Virgin.” Mention is made of the “judgment which through Jesus Christ is ready to come upon the whole human race.”167 The Holy Spirit is not mentioned, probably by chance. In similar passages of St. Irenaeus’s work “Against Heresies,” God is called “the Creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them, through Jesus Christ the Son of God”; concerning Jesus Christ, it is said, among other things, that “He will come with glory as the Savior of those being saved and the Judge of those being condemned.”168 Tertullian very freely, apparently, conveys the content of the “rule of faith” or “confession” of his time. In him, God is called “perfectly one (unus omnino), the only (unicus), omnipotent, the Creator (conditor) of the world from nothing through the Word (His), Who came into being (processerit)” or “sent out (emissum) by God, before all else, called the Son of God and under the name of God was seen in various ways by the patriarchs and heard by the prophets”, finally “sent from the Father to the Virgin” or “brought (delatum) by the power of the Father (virtute patris) from (ex) the Spirit B. into the Virgin Mary” and “became flesh in Her womb” and “was born man and God, the son of man and the Son of God”. Therefore, Christ, “ told the new covenant and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, created the powers”… etc. – the usual symbolic expressions; “he sent the vicarious power (vicariam vim) of the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the sanctifier of faith (sanctificatorem fidei), who leads (aget) the faithful.” Christ “will come to judge the living and the dead” “through the resurrection also of the flesh, at the awakening of the part (i.e. people who had died by that time)”169. Thus, Tertullian first gives the embryo of the symbolic articles about the Church and the resurrection of the dead. The connection in which Tertullian’s confession places the doctrine of the Son of God with the doctrine of the Father and the Holy Spirit is also remarkable.

The designation of baptismal confession in the most ancient writers is also characteristic. St. Ignatius uses the term “confession” before the excerpts cited; St. Irenaeus, “ancient tradition,” “rule of truth”; Tertullian, “rule,” “rule of truth,” “confession of what we believe,” “by which we believe.” Tertullian says that those being baptized “answer somewhat more extensively than the Lord has determined in the Gospel.” Finally, in St. Cyprian, we find the very term “symbol,” as well as an indication of a very important feature in the form that the baptismal symbol had at that time. “If anyone,” writes St. Cyprian to Magnus, “objects that Novatian holds to the same law as the universal church, baptizes with the same symbol as we do, confesses the same God the Father, the same Christ the Son, the same Holy Spirit, and therefore can rightfully baptize, since, apparently, he does not differ in any way from us in the question of baptism, then let the objector know that, firstly, we do not have the same law of symbol with the schismatics, and the question is not the same; in fact, when they say: Do you believe in the remission of sins and eternal life through the holy church? then they deceive in the question, because they do not have a church.” A similar expression is found in the letter of Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, to St. Cyprian: “Will Stephen and his adherents also accept this baptism, especially since, in its performance, both the symbol of the Trinity and the legalized questioning were observed in their own way?” “If anyone,” writes St. Cyprian to Magnus, “objects that Novatian adheres to the same law as the universal church, baptizes with the same symbol as we do, confesses the same God the Father, the same Christ the Son, the same Holy Spirit, and therefore can rightfully baptize, since, apparently, he does not differ in any way from us in the questioning of baptism, then let the objector know that, firstly, we do not have the same law of symbol with the schismatics, and the same questioning; in fact, when they say: do you believe in the remission of sins and eternal life through the holy church? then they deceive in the questioning, because they do not have a church? “If anyone,” writes St. Cyprian to Magnus, “objects that Novatian holds to the same law as the universal church, baptizes with the same symbol as we do, confesses the same God the Father, the same Christ the Son, the same Holy Spirit, and therefore can rightly baptize, since, apparently, he does not differ in any way from us in the questioning of baptism, then let the objector know that, firstly, we do not have the same law of the symbol with the schismatics, and the questioning is not the same; in fact, when they say: Do you believe in the remission of sins and eternal life through the holy church? then they deceive in the questioning, because they do not have a church.” Here the symbol, apparently, is not called the confession of faith, but perhaps threefold immersion, as the symbol of St. Trinity or burial with Christ, since in the fourth century, in the East, confessions of faith were not called symbols, but rather faith, dogmas, and so on. Baptismal confession is called here “questioning,” since it took the form of questions to the person being baptized, as we see more clearly in the Syriac Creed, transmitted to us by the monument “The Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” But this passage seems to shed light on why the confession was subsequently given the name “symbol.” (The first time the name “symbol” was applied to baptismal confession was apparently by St. Ambrose in a letter to Pope Siricius.)

Thus, we see that by the third century, baptismal confession everywhere had not only the same content but also a nearly identical verbal expression, although, apparently, it was nowhere recorded, judging by the different variations among the same writer and by Irenaeus’s expression. about it, that “many barbarians accepted this faith without writing”171. This circumstance, strikingly testifying to the unity of faith of the universal church, subsequently, given the agreement of the then-current symbol with the fragmentary remnants of the Apostles’ Creed in the New Testament, could easily have given rise to both the belief in the apostolic origin of the symbol and the well-known tradition that the apostles forbade its writing.

The question of where the Christological symbol of the apostolic era was first replaced by the trinitarian symbol is hopeless. Traces of the latter are found simultaneously, as we have seen, in Asia Minor and Rome. Alternatively, Rome and Asia Minor can be considered; the latter, in addition to the aforementioned testimonies of Justin and Irenaeus, is also supported by 1) the presence of the concept of monogenes (John’s) in the Roman symbol; 2) the fact that Asia Minor was older in Christianity, the birthplace of Rome; 3J The fact that the trinitarian symbol soon became known throughout the East, which would have been impossible had it been of Roman origin, is evident. In the isolated Syrian church where the Didascalia arose, it was already considered a fact in the first decades of the third century that the apostles at the Council of Jerusalem had drawn up a threefold confession for the whole world. 172 Doesn’t the memory of such a confession originating in Jerusalem lie at the heart of this story as a historical kernel? The book of Elkesai requires baptism to be performed in the name of the great and supreme God and in the name of His Son, as witnesses to which must call upon heaven and earth and the “holy spirits.”173 This also indirectly speaks to the Judeo-Christian origin of the Trinitarian confession at baptism. Something similar could have happened with the symbol, as with the full-fledged episcopate: both moved from Jerusalem to Asia Minor, and from there to Rome; but in Rome they reached their full flowering.174

Notes:

157Ignatius the God-Bearer Smir. 1, 1.

158Trawl. 9, 1.

159Smir. 1:2

160 βλεποντων) of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, who actually also rose from the dead (ηγε᾿ ρβη ἀπο νεκρων), just as the Father raised him up.”1

161 Ignatius the God-Bearer Eph. 18:2

162 Eph. 7:2

163 Smyr. 1:1

164 Polycarp, Philip. 2:1

165 Justin. Apol. 1:13, 31, 42, 46, 61, 65, 67. Col. with Trifol. 63:85, 132

166 Apol. 1, 61.

167Aristides, Apol. 2, 6, 8; 14, 2; 15, 2; 17, 8.

168Irenaeus, Against Heresies III, 4.

169Tertullian, De presser. 3. On the Veil of Virginity. 1. Archpriest Prax. 7.

170Tertullian. On the Soldier’s Crown 3.

171Irenaeus, Against Heresies III, 4.

172Didascalia. 24.

173Hippolytus. Refut. IX, 15.

174Secberq Lehrb. d. Dogmeng. 174.

Source in Russian: Skaballanovich M. The Preservation of Dogma in the Church // Works of the Kyiv Theological Academy. 1910. No. 9. P. 17-78.