Common Roots: The Original Call to an Ancient-Future Faith by Robert E. Webber

Author:Robert E. Webber
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 9780310291855
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

The second test for the second-century church was its conflict with Gnosticism. Through this conflict the church clarified her understanding of the substance of the historic faith. Christianity had already begun to be tested in the New Testament period by Judaism and esoteric religious ideas from Egypt and Persia. The acid test of the substance of her faith came, however, in conflict with the Gnostics who claimed to have a superior knowledge handed down in a secret tradition. This knowledge, while it varied somewhat from sect to sect, basically taught the existence of two Gods — one the Spirit God who was responsible for the good, the other the Creator God (often identified with Yahweh in the Old Testament) responsible for evil. Because the evil God was the creator, matter was regarded as evil. Naturally then, man’s body, which was a product of evil, was looked upon as the prison of his soul. Salvation, then, was the release of the soul from the body so it could ultimately unite with the good Spirit God. To accomplish this, the good God sent Christ, an emanation, to bring knowledge (gnosis) that would free the soul from the body. This knowledge that Christ gave to the disciples, the Gnostics declared, was what one needed to know to be saved.

It is obvious that the teaching of the Gnostics was diametrically opposed to apostolic teaching. What was needed therefore by the Christian to combat this perversion of Christian truth was a summary of the Christian faith, an authoritative answer to the gnostic threat. Consequently, summaries of apostolic Christianity began to emerge independently of one another in various parts of the Roman Empire. The similarity of content among these statements that came to be known as “rules of faith” are remarkable. Here is the rule of faith written by Irenaeus about AD 190:

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: (She believes) in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His (future) manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one,” and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess” to Him, and that He should execute just judgment

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