The early Church, Scripture and apostolic tradition

After the death of the apostles, how could anyone know what they had really taught? The first Christian generations answered by combining three sources of authority.

Three authorities together

Among the Apostolic Fathers, at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, authority is threefold:

• The words of Jesus, often quoted from memory.
• The Scriptures, meaning first the Old Testament, then gradually some writings of the apostles.
• The bishops, successors of the apostles.

Ignatius of Antioch strongly emphasises this third point: for him the bishop is God’s representative in the assembly. Polycarp, closer to the texts, already quotes the letters of Paul as “Holy Scriptures”.

Apostolic succession

Faced with the Gnostics, who appealed to secret traditions, Irenaeus of Lyon puts forward a simple argument. The apostles founded Churches and entrusted them to bishops, who handed the teaching on to their successors. This chain can be named. In Rome, the apostles entrusted the office to Linus, then to his successors: “In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us.”

Irenaeus adds that the Gospel was first preached, then put into writing “to be the ground and pillar of our faith”. Scripture and tradition are not opposed: one is the written form of the other.

Why the Scriptures matter

One point is striking: the early Fathers do not quote the Scriptures because they are Scriptures, but because their authors are trustworthy, linked to the apostles. Tertullian denies Luke the rank of apostle: he is only an “apostolic man”, a disciple. The text has value through its author’s link with Christ.

As J. N. D. Kelly writes, there is nothing to suggest that the early Church limited the apostolic witness to written documents alone. Logically as well as chronologically, the witness came before the documents.

No conflict

The historian Albert Outler puts it this way: at that time it was “simply impossible to imagine a conflict between Christian Scripture and Christian tradition, and therefore no need to choose between them”.

Everywhere, always, by all

In the fifth century, Vincent of Lérins proposes a criterion for recognising the true faith: what has been believed everywhere, always and by all. The principle is attractive: it protects against novelties.

It does, however, raise questions. Who can know what everyone has always believed? Disagreements between East and West, and within local Churches, have been constant. And is the majority necessarily right? Jesus himself contradicted the dominant opinions of his time. The criterion of antiquity matches the earliest criteria of the canon. The criterion of numbers is weaker.