The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

by T. W. Allies

Against the gnostic claim to possess a private tradition, in virtue of which each of them “depraving the rule of the truth was not ashamed to preach himself,” he sets forth the one original tradition which the Apostles,[222] only “when they had first been invested with the power of the Holy Ghost coming down on them, and endued with perfect knowledge,” delivered to the churches founded by them. “And this tradition of the Apostles, manifested in the whole world, may be seen in every church by all who have the will to see what is true, and we can give the chain of those who by the Apostles were appointed bishops in the churches, and their successors down to our time, who have neither taught nor known any such delirious dream as these imagine. For, had the Apostles known any reserved mysteries, which they taught to the perfect separately and secretly from the rest, assuredly they would have delivered them to those especially to whom they intrusted the churches themselves. For very perfect and irreprehensible in all respects did they wish those to be whom they left for their own successors,[223] delivering over to them their own office of teaching, by correct conduct on whose part great advantage [pg 267] would accrue, as from their fall the utmost calamity. But since it were very long, in a volume like this, to enumerate the succession of all the churches, we take the church the greatest, the most ancient, and known to all, founded and established at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, and pointing out the tradition which it has received from the Apostles, and the faith which it has announced to men, reaching down to us by the succession of its bishops, we confound all those who form societies other than they ought, in any way, whether for the sake of self-fancied doctrines, or through blindness and an evil mind. For, with this church, on account of its superior principate, it is necessary that every church agree, that is, the faithful everywhere (every church) in which by the (faithful) everywhere, the apostolic tradition is preserved.

“The blessed Apostles, then, having founded and built up the church, committed to Linus the administration of its episcopate.... Anencletus succeeds him, from whom in the third place from the Apostles Clemens inherits the episcopate.... He is succeeded by Evaristus; Evaristus by Alexander, who is followed by Xystus sixth from the Apostles. Then Telesphorus, who was gloriously martyred; next Hyginus; then Pius; after whom Anicetus. Soter followed Anicetus; and now in the twelfth degree from the Apostles Eleutherius holds the [pg 268] place of bishop. By this order and succession the tradition from the Apostles in the Church and the teaching of the truth have come down to us. And this proof is most complete that it is one and the same life-giving Faith which has been preserved in the Church from the Apostles up to this time, and handed down in truth.... With such proofs, then, before us, we ought not still to search among others for the truth, which it is easy to take from the Church, since the Apostles most fully committed unto this, as unto a rich storehouse, all which is of the truth, so that everyone, whoever will, may draw from it the draught of life. For this is the gate of life: all the rest are thieves and robbers. They must therefore be avoided; but whatever is of the Church we must love with the utmost diligence, and lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how? if on any small matter question arose, ought we not to recur to the most ancient churches in which the Apostles lived, and take from them on the matter in hand what is certain and plain. And suppose the Apostles had not even left us writings, ought we not to follow that order of tradition which they delivered to those to whom they intrusted the churches? To this order many barbarous nations of believers in Christ assent, having salvation written upon their hearts by the Holy Spirit without paper and ink, and diligently guarding the old tradition.”[224]

This capital point of the ever-living teaching office he further dwells on:

“The Faith received in the Church we guard in it, which being always from the Spirit of God, like an admirable deposit in a good vessel, is young itself, and makes young the vessel in which it is. For this office on the part of God[225] is intrusted to the Church, as the breath of life was given to the body, in order that all the members receiving may be quickened, and in this is placed the communication of Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, the earnest of incorruption, the confirmation of our faith, and the ladder by which we ascend to God. For, says he, in the Church God has placed Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, and all the remaining operation of the Spirit; of whom all those are not partakers who do not run to the Church, but deprive themselves of life by an evil opinion and a still worse conduct. For where the Church is, there also is the Spirit of God: and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace: but the Spirit is Truth. Wherefore they who are not partakers of Him are neither nourished unto life from the breasts of the mother, nor receive that most pure fountain which proceeds from the Body of Christ, but dig out for themselves broken cisterns from earthly ditches, and from the filth drink foul water, avoiding the Faith of the Church lest they be brought back, and rejecting the Spirit [pg 270] that they may not be taught. So estranged from the truth they deservedly wallow in every error, tossed about by it, having different opinions on the same subjects at different times, and never holding one firm mind, choosing rather to be sophists of words than disciples of the truth; for they are not founded upon the one rock, but on the sand, which has in it a multitude of pebbles.”[226]

And he elsewhere contrasts the certainty within, and the uncertainty without, this teaching power:

“The said heretics, then, being blind to the truth, cannot help walking out of the track into one path after another, and hence it is that the vestiges of their doctrine are scattered about without any rule or sequence. Whereas the road of those who are of the Church goes round the whole world, because it possesses a firm tradition from the Apostles, and gives us to see that all have one and the same faith, where all enjoin one and the same God the Father, believe one disposition of the Son of God's incarnation, know the same gift of the Spirit, meditate on the same precepts, guard the same regimen of ecclesiastical rule, await the same advent of the Lord, and support the same salvation of the whole man, body and soul alike. Now the Church's preaching is true and firm, in whom one and the same way of salvation is shown [pg 271] through the whole world. For to her is intrusted the light of God; and hence the wisdom of God, by which He saves all men, ‘is sung at her entrance, acts with confidence in her streets, is proclaimed on her walls, and speaks ever in the gates of the city.’ For everywhere the Church proclaims the truth: she is the seven-branched candlestick bearing Christ's light.”[227]

It has been necessary to give at considerable length the very words of S. Irenæus, because they are stronger and more perspicuous than any summary of them can be, and because they exhibit a complete answer not to this particular heresy only, but to all heresy for ever. Such an answer, coming from one who stood at the second generation from S. John, is of the highest value. Thus he meets the gnostic principle that divine truth is acquired by the individual through some process of his own mind, which in this particular case is termed gnosis, but which may bear many other names, by appealing to an external standard, the Rule of Faith in the Church from the beginning, which by its unity points to its origin and lineage from the apostles and Christ. And this serves to bring out the central idea which rules his whole mind, that “where the Church is, there also is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace: but the Spirit is Truth.” The deposit of which he spoke is not a [pg 272] dead mass, or lump of ore, requiring only safe custody, but a living Spirit dwelling in the Church, the source within her of unity, truth, and grace, using her teaching office, which is set up in her episcopate, for the drawing out and propagation of the deposit from the double fountain of Tradition and Scripture, for these her teachers as such have a divine gift of truth.[228] It is thus that he expands without altering the doctrine of his teacher Polycarp's fellow-disciple, “Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”[229] And from it he proceeds to what follows necessarily on such a conception, that this Church must have a visible point of unity. As then he appeals to the churches founded by Apostles as the principal centres of living tradition, so before yet one of these churches had fallen into possession of heretics,[230] before yet there was any disagreement between them, he singles out one for its superior principate, on account of which it was necessary for every church to agree with it, which he grounds on its descent from S. Peter and S. Paul, giving every link in the chain of succession during the hundred and ten years which had elapsed between their martyrdom and his own episcopate. He sees an especial prerogative lodged in [pg 273] that church as the means of securing the whole Church's organic unity; and this prerogative is, that it is among churches what S. Peter and S. Paul were among Apostles;[231] as the first general western council expressed it, “in it the Apostles sit daily, and their blood without intermission bears witness to the glory of God.”[232]

Thus the conception expressed by Irenæus, with the greatest emphasis and continual repetition, in order to refute heresy, is that all truth and grace are stored up in the one body of the Church; to which his doctrine of the Roman Primacy is as the keystone to the arch. For everything in his view depends on the unity, the intrinsic harmony, of the truth which he is describing as lodged in the episcopate: the means therefore of securing that unity are part of its conception. Accordingly, to see in its due force his statement that every church must agree with the Roman Church, it must not be severed from the context and taken by itself, but viewed in connexion with the argument as part of which it stands. If the Church is to speak one truth with one mouth, which is his main idea, she must have an organic provision for such a result, which he places in the necessary agreement of all churches with one: [pg 274] and this is his second idea, subsidiary to the first, and completing it.

Irenæus by birth and education represents in all this the witness of the Asiatic churches; as bishop of Lyons, the churches of Gaul.

A few years after Irenæus, Tertullian in a professed treatise against heresy lays down exactly the same principles. With him, too, the main idea is the possession of all truth and grace by the one Body which Christ formed and the Apostles established. This he thus exhibits: