McCall RTCH785c Initial Post Wilken
In The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Wilken repeatedly emphasizes the role of the Bible in early Christian theology. In the following paragraphs, I will note the ways that the Bible played a pivotal role in early Christian theology. Interspersed parenthetically, I will briefly mention some implications for us today.
Distinctive of early Christianity was its (over?)emphasis upon the biblical texts for guidance and instruction in the way of righteousness. Those early Christians viewed the bible as a book to be learned and obeyed, and not merely to be learned and thereafter explained away (unlike most liberals of this day and age, note). Early Christianity, it is noted, used the bible to get to know Jesus more deeply just as much as it used the bible to be apologetic (3; I think this is a stark contrast to today, as we often can be apologetic about the bible, but know not the God of the bible!). Early Christians, in extension of the above thought, used the bible as a source of Christian “witness” about what happened to Christ and his disciples rather than an argument to convert people (6).
Origen, typifying the thought of this era, noted that the proof of the bible’s authority in faith and life was, so to speak, in the proverbial ‘pudding’ – that is, divine proof was attested to by the Spirit and by the power (using I Cor. 2:4, cited by Wilken on 13). The early Christians, affirming that God’s movement toward humans is primary, recognized the grace imparted through the bible, and thus did not rest upon naked reason (19-20). The early church realized that Christianity did not spring from a new idea, but was based instead upon the revelation of God in the OT (24). Augustine, being the bible thumper par excellence, directly pronounced that in the word, one encounters the face of God (ref. 50). For Clement, the bible began and ended with “likeness to God” – which could be wrought by faith in Christ (60). And how did Clement know Christ in order to put faith in him? The bible! (what a novel thought). Irenaeus seemingly echoed Clement’s thinking regarding the beginning point and ending point of the bible being God (cf. 67).
In stark contrast to most movements outside of the academy today, the early Christians did not bridle the bible into having only one meaning (i.e. the literal sense). Instead, they affirmed multiple meanings of the bible and its specific texts (70-73). I contend that we would do well to return to a more fruitful reading of the word, one that allows multiple implications and connotations from any text, and thereby providing a robust fertility of application. We would do well, then, to return to the beginning, so to speak, as modeled by the early Christians.