What the Apostles Handed Down

Preface

Everyone who believes and is convinced that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and who knows Christ to be the truth — as he said himself, “I am the truth” — draws the knowledge that stirs people to a good and happy life from one source and no other: the very words and teaching of Christ. And by the words of Christ we do not mean only the ones he spoke when he became a man and lived among us in flesh. Before that, Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and in the prophets. Without the Word of God, how could they have prophesied about Christ? If it were not my aim to keep this work as short as it can possibly be made, it would not be hard to show from the holy Scriptures that Moses and the prophets said and did everything they did because they were filled with the Spirit of Christ. So I think one testimony from Paul is enough, out of the letter to the Hebrews, where he says: “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer hardship with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, counting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” And that after his ascension into heaven he spoke in his apostles, Paul shows in these words: “Or are you looking for proof of Christ, who speaks in me?” [b]

Many of those who profess to believe in Christ, however, disagree with one another — not only in small and trivial matters, but on subjects of the greatest importance: about God, or about the Lord Jesus Christ, or about the Holy Spirit, and not only about these but about other beings as well that were created, that is, the dominions and the holy powers. For that reason it seems necessary first of all to fix a definite limit and lay down an unmistakable rule about each of these, and only then to move on to looking into other points. We stopped searching for truth among all those who claimed it for mistaken opinions — whatever Greeks and foreigners alike professed to make known — once we had come to believe that Christ is the Son of God and were persuaded that we must learn it from him. In the same way, since there are many who think they hold the opinions of Christ and yet some of them think differently from those who came before them, and since the teaching of the church, handed on in orderly succession from the apostles and still kept in the churches to this day, is preserved: that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no way from the tradition of the church and of the apostles. [d]

Now it should be understood that the holy apostles, in preaching the faith of Christ, spoke with the utmost clarity on certain points that they believed everyone needed, even those who seemed rather slow at looking into the knowledge of God. But they left the grounds of what they said to be examined by those who would deserve the excellent gifts of the Spirit and who, above all through the Holy Spirit himself, would receive the gift of language, of wisdom, and of knowledge. On other subjects they simply stated that things are so, and kept silent about how those things came to be or where they came from — plainly so that the more eager of those who came after them, the ones who love wisdom, might have something to work at and show the fruit of their ability. I mean those who would make themselves fit and worthy to receive wisdom.

The particular points clearly handed down in the teaching of the apostles are these. [e]

First, that there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, called all things into being — God from the first creation and founding of the world, the God of all righteous men: of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets. And that this God, in the last days, as he had announced beforehand through his prophets, sent our Lord Jesus Christ to call Israel to himself first, and second the Gentiles, after the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. This God, righteous and good, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, himself gave the law and the prophets and the Gospels, and he is also the God of the apostles and of the Old and the New Testaments.

Second, that Jesus Christ himself, the one who came, was born of the Father before all created things. After he had served the Father in the creation of all things — “for through him all things were made” — in the last times he emptied himself, became a man, and was made flesh although he was God, and while made a man remained the God he was. He took a body like our own, differing only in this, that it was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. This Jesus Christ was truly born, and truly suffered, and did not undergo the death that comes to us all in appearance only, but truly died. He truly rose from the dead, and after his resurrection he talked with his disciples and was taken up.

Then, third, the apostles reported that the Holy Spirit is joined in honor and dignity with the Father and the Son. But in his case it is not clearly settled whether he is to be regarded as born or unborn, or as a Son of God too, or not. These are points to be looked into out of sacred Scripture as well as we are able, and they call for careful investigation. And that this Spirit inspired each one of the holy ones, prophets and apostles alike, and that there was not one Spirit in the people of earlier times and another in those who were inspired at the coming of Christ, is taught most plainly throughout the churches.

After these points, the teaching of the apostles is also that the soul has a substance and a life of its own, and that once it has left this world it will be rewarded according to what it deserves. It will either obtain an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its actions have won that for it, or be handed over to eternal fire and punishment, if the guilt of its crimes has brought it down to that. It teaches too that there is to be a time of resurrection from the dead, when this body, which now “is sown in corruption, will rise in incorruption,” and what “is sown in dishonor will rise in glory.” [i]

This also is clearly defined in the teaching of the church: that every rational soul has free will and choice; that it has a struggle on its hands with the devil and his angels and the powers opposed to it, because they are trying to load it down with sins; but that if we live rightly and wisely we ought to work at shaking ourselves free of a load like that. From this it follows that we are not subject to necessity, as though we were forced by every means, even against our will, to do either good or evil. For if we are our own masters, some influences may perhaps push us toward sin and others help us toward salvation; but we are not forced by any necessity either to act rightly or to act wrongly. That we are forced is exactly what those people think who say that the courses and movements of the stars are the cause of what human beings do — not only of the things that lie outside the freedom of the will, but of the things that are within our own power as well.

But about the soul itself, the teaching of the church does not make it clear enough whether it is handed on from the seed, so that its reason or substance might be thought to lie in the seminal particles of the body themselves, or whether it has some other beginning; and whether that beginning is by birth or not, and whether it is given to the body from outside or not.

About the devil and his angels and the powers opposed to us, the teaching of the church has laid down that these beings do exist; but what they are, or how they exist, it has not explained clearly enough. Most people hold this opinion, though: that the devil was an angel, and that after he turned traitor he drew as many of the angels as he could into falling away with him, and that these are called his angels to this day. This too is part of the church’s teaching: that the world was made and took its beginning at a certain time, and that it is to be destroyed because of its wickedness. But what existed before this world, or what will exist after it, has not become certainly known to most people, since there is no clear statement about it in the teaching of the church.

Then, finally, that the Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and that they have a meaning beyond the one that is obvious at first sight — another meaning, which most people fail to notice. For the words that are written there are the forms of certain mysteries and the images of divine things. About this there is one opinion throughout the whole church: that the whole law is indeed spiritual, but that the spiritual meaning the law carries is not known to everyone, only to those on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is given in the word of wisdom and knowledge. [k]

The term asōmaton — that is, “bodiless” — is out of use and unfamiliar, not only in many other writings but in our own Scriptures as well. And if anyone should quote it to us out of the short work called The Teaching of Peter, in which the Savior seems to say to his disciples, “I am not a bodiless demon,” my reply is, first of all, that this work is not counted among the books of the church; we can show that it was composed neither by Peter nor by anyone else inspired by the Spirit of God. But even if the point were granted, the word asōmaton there does not carry the meaning that Greek and pagan writers intend when philosophers discuss bodiless nature. For in the little work referred to, the phrase “bodiless demon” is used to say that the form or outline of a demon’s body, whatever it is, is not like this heavy, visible body of ours. What the author of that work meant must be taken this way: that the Savior did not have the kind of body demons have, which is by nature fine and thin as though it were made of air — which is why many either consider it or call it bodiless — but that he had a solid body that could be handled. In ordinary human speech, anything that is not of that kind is called bodiless by the simple or the ignorant: as if someone were to say that the air we breathe is bodiless, because it is not a body of the sort that can be grasped and held, or that can push back against pressure.

We will ask, however, whether the thing that Greek philosophers call asōmaton, or “bodiless,” is found in holy Scripture under some other name. It also has to be investigated how God himself is to be understood — as bodily, and formed according to some shape, or as of a nature different from bodies — a point our teaching does not clearly indicate. And the same inquiries have to be made about Christ and about the Holy Spirit, and about every soul as well, and everything that has a rational nature. This too is part of the teaching of the church: that there are certain angels of God and certain good powers who serve him in bringing about the salvation of human beings. But when they were created, or what sort of nature they have, or how they exist, is not clearly stated. And about the sun, the moon, and the stars — whether they are living beings or without life — there is no distinct ruling. [n]

Everyone, then, must make use of elements and foundations of this sort, following the command “Light up for yourselves the light of knowledge,” if he wants to form a connected series and body of truths in keeping with the reason behind all these things — so that by clear and necessary statements he may work out the truth on each separate topic and form, as I have said, one body of teaching, by means of illustrations and arguments, either the ones he has found in holy Scripture or the ones he has drawn out by carefully tracing consequences and following a correct method.