The History of Christian Theology

Lecture 7: The Emergence of Christian Doctrine

all.” It became a fundamental obligation of the bishops, as leaders of the

Great Church, to exclude heretics and their teaching.

The complex legacy of apostolic teaching accepted by the church, including

the startling claims about Jesus made by the Gospel of John, needed

to be sorted out and understood, which took centuries. It also resulted in

excluding some forms of teaching, such as Gnosticism, as heresy. A

key consequence of this need to reason

carefully about its doctrines is that, early

in its history, Christianity came to have a

deep commitment to the harmony of faith

and reason.

The social structure of the Great Church

was particularly well adapted to resist

new doctrines. The church in each town

remained in communion with churches in other towns, on the understanding

that all the churches in the Great Church taught the same things about Christ.

To be “in communion” meant to share the sacraments, that is, admitting

visitors from other churches to the Eucharist and accepting the validity

of their baptism. Thus the fundamental punishment for heretics was

excommunication, exclusion from the communion of the church. The effect

of this social organization was fundamentally to conserve old teachings and

resist innovations.

The local churches understood themselves to be handing down the teaching

of the apostles who founded them; the name for this “handing down”

is “tradition.” “Apostolic tradition” thus became the fundamental norm

of doctrine.

The New Testament was accepted as the written form of apostolic teaching.

For the earliest Christians, “scripture” meant the sacred writings of Israel,

what Christians now call the Old Testament. The list of approved writings

is called the “canon,” and the decision about which books to include in

the canon was one of the most fundamental theological decisions of the

Great Church. The New Testament was the collection of Christian writings

approved to be read aloud in church. All books included in the New

The social structure of

the Great Church was

particularly well adapted

to resist new doctrines.