The Hypothesis

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 Way to Nicaea, John Behr

Irenaeus wrote a short, nonpolemical treatise on this topic, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. While he knew the apostolic writings, in this exposition he leaned on Isaiah to show that Jesus was born of a virgin and worked miracles; on Hosea to show that Christ was bound and brought before the authorities; that He was crucified, raised, and exalted was shown by the prophets.

This coherence of Scripture is the basis for Irenaeus’ appeal to canon and tradition, evidenced in his work, Against the Heresies.

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.”

In dealing with some of the Valentinian myths, Irenaeus confronts their hypothesis, “which neither the prophets preached, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles handed down.” They use the works of others to interpret Scripture, instead of the other way around; they transfer passages and rearrange them; they take an image of a king, rearrange the pieces, and claim the resulting dog or fox is the image of the king.

…he describes how some people take diverse lines from the works of Homer and then rearrange them to produce Homeric-sounding verses which tell a tale not to be found in Homer.

These sound like Homer to the unversed, but not to anyone well-taught in Homer. In much the same way, the Gnostics rearrange the Scriptures and the apostolic writings and adapt these to tell a tale not found in Scripture.

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 make their own invention by working with a different hypothesis. What is meant by this? in math and science, a hypothesis is formed to be tested. However, since the time of Plato, the aim in philosophy has been to discover – note, discover, not invent – the ultimate, non-hypothetical first principles.

These first principles, as Aristotle notes, cannot be demonstrated with proofs – otherwise they would be dependent on a principle before what was assumed first.

For Christian faith, according to Clement [of Alexandria], it is the Scriptures, and in particular, the Lord who speaks in them, that is the first principle of all knowledge.

This is the first principle of the Christian faith, the non-hypothetical hypothesis. This is the point from which Christians are led to all truth; it is from here that all other truth claims are evaluated. This is the canon – a term that originally meant a straight line. From a straight line, both the straight and the crooked could be determined; from a crooked line, neither the straight nor the crooked could be demonstrated.

Without a canon or criterion, knowledge is simply not possible, for all inquiry will be drawn helplessly into an endless regression.

It was this canon of the Scripture, the words of Christ, the apostolic teaching, and tradition, that would form the basis from which all truth about the Christian faith would be derived and taught; all other knowledge would be considered based on the straight line of this canon, this truth, this hypothesis.

This canon is summarized (by me, as the quote will be too long): our faith is in God the Father, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit; the prophets pronounced Christ’s birth from a virgin, His Passion and Resurrection, and His bodily ascension, and His coming again.

But this “rule of truth” is not yet a creed – it is merely the rule of truth by which all else will be measured:

…the rule of truth is not given in declarative form, as are the creeds used in baptism from the fourth century onwards. 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.

My aside: there was much to work out about Jesus Christ, what His coming meant, how this would be taught, how this life should be lived. Consider what happened, just one century before: God was manifest on earth, as a man. Is it possible, even with all the aid available from the Holy Spirit, that men could get their heads around just what happened and what it meant?

What is described here, by Irenaeus and others, is the guidepost or boundaries – do your work within these walls. Yes, the apostles began this work – we see this in their letters, and, as noted in the first post on this book, even in the Gospels.

God came to earth in the form of a man. Just how quickly and simply might man grasp all of what this meant, all of the ramifications?

Returning to Behr:

The point of the canon of truth is not so much to give fixed, and abstract, statements of Christian doctrine. … 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 a fox.

This canon of truth is neither a list of detached doctrinal beliefs, nor is it a narrative. It expresses the hypothesis of Scripture and a mode of interpretation.

So, how does “tradition” fit into this view?

It is clear, then, that for Irenaeus “tradition” is not alive, in the sense that it cannot change, grow or develop into something else.

The content of the apostolic tradition, according to Irenaeus, remains unchanged. Yet the point of the canon is not to stymie inquiry or reflection, but instead to make this possible. All inquiry is to be done against the hypothesis (which remains unchanged by any new or outside idea), and as such inquiry proves straight, doctrine is better defined and creeds can be brought into view. But this is still some time in the future.

Conclusion

Here, the role of the apostles in delivering the Gospel is definitive. Irenaeus writes:

“We have learned from no others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us…”

This the apostles proclaimed in public, and, to those in the time of Irenaeus, through the Scriptures, the Gospels, and the letters.

“These have all declared to us that there is one God, Creator of heaven and earth, announced by the Law and Prophets; and one Christ the Son of God.”

That the apostles preached the Gospel and subsequently wrote it down – including their interpretations through the letters – was important for Irenaeus. The Scriptures are the ground and pillar of our faith.

Consider this for a moment: if not sola scriptura, Irenaeus is certainly advocating prima scriptura – and this at a time only at most one century removed from the lives of the apostles. This portrayal by Behr helps me to better understand what I quoted from Irenaeus when I reviewed selected quotes of his on this topic of tradition.

Next, Irenaeus will directly confront the heretics.