Stewart—“The Rule of Truth... which He Received through Baptism” 153However, if the regula fidei is to be considered in some sense a credal statement,
we need to refer to the objection raised by Smulders to any relationship between the
regula fidei and baptismal ritual. Namely, the fact that there is more than one form of
the rule of faith, and that many of these are binitarian rather than trinitarian.^6 As such,
he rejects any relationship between the regula and the baptismal creed, and is followed
in this by Westra.^7 It is certainly the case that there are forms of the regula which are
not trinitarian; indeed, we may note that Irenaeus’s own writings contain a number of
binitarian forms.^8 As such, we cannot say that the rule of faith generated a threefold
baptismal interrogation, or indeed that there is any relationship between a threefold
interrogation and the rule.^9 Two-membered rules exist alongside three-membered.
However, given that we might root Irenaeus in Smryrnean Christianity, we may par-
ticularly note another binitarian credal formula from Smyrna, namely in the confes-
sion of the elders of Contra Noetum.^10 In using the term binitarian, however, we should
be clear that we are not talking of a technical binitarianism, but rather of what Hall has
identified within the work of Melito, namely, a typically Asian Christocentric mono-
theism.^11 Thus the existence of two-membered versions of the rule of faith may in itself
be a clue to the direction of development within the rules, namely, that they reflect
christologically centered statements of faith such as that found, again in Smyrna, in
Polycarp’s writing.^12 The existence of a christological confession at baptism is thus the
next point that needs to be established. For the moment, however, we may observe that
there is instruction received in the course of the catechumenate that relates directly
to baptismal ritual and that might reasonably be called a traditio.^13 The creed, accord-
ing to Eusebius, was received both in catechesis and in the baptismal ritual. The same
seems to have been the case in Irenaeus’s practice, even if it is hard, for the moment, to
see what that meant in fact.
Christological Confessions at Baptism
There is evidence of christological confessions at baptism in the Western text of Acts,
in which the Ethiopian eunuch makes a confession that “Jesus Christ is the Son of
God” before being baptized,^14 and in a ps-Hippolytean homily on the Theophany that
states that the candidate at baptism “confesses that Christ is God.”^15 We may also note
the rite of commitment to Christ found in Antioch at the time of Chrystostom, as well
as being reflected in the Apostolic Constitutions.^16 Finally, I argue elsewhere that such
a confession is mentioned in Pliny’s report of Bithynian Christians who sing a hymn
secum invicem (“among themselves” or “in turn”) to Christ as to a God.^17 I may suggest
that this in turn explains the form of the regula given here. For what is odd about this
rule is that the Christology is not part of the second section of a threefold rule but is
an appendix to the triadic formula; this may be explained by suggesting that the rule is
given in a form reflecting catechetical instruction and then is followed by a version of
the christological confession made in baptism. Kelly notes that we have “an ingenious
conflation of a short, neatly balanced trinitarian confession with a more detailed and
circumstantial christology.”^18 We suggest that the christological section is joined on
to the trinitarian regula fidei here because this is an expanded form of the christo-
logical statement that was made at baptism, having been delivered in catechesis. Thus