Di5501 - Theology (NT Wright)
cogito, Ergo Sum deus, ergo supplico
The Primacy of Prayer in Christian Belief
The Latin phrase lex orandi, lex credenda roughly translates as “the law of prayer is the law of belief.” This phrase evokes the complex relationship between piety and doctrine, between experience and intellect. Does one precede the other? Do they exist inextricably as a symbiosis, as eternal equals? This is one of the most animating debates for the early church, and is of utmost importance as she develops her identity in the generations following Jesus’ earthly ministry. I will argue that in fact prayer precedes and makes possible belief itself; piety gives birth to doctrine, not the other way around. To make my case, I will rely especially on Tertullian’s various references to a rule of faith, regula fidei, as he represents one of the earliest Christian thinkers whose impulse to standardize the faith becomes explicit. He bears special witness to this careful balance between action and intellect, as he insists over and over upon rules that define orthodoxy and guard against heresy. Scattered throughout his many writings, he calls attention to rules by which the individual and the community must judge between right and wrong belief and why they must be discerned critically.
In order to see more clearly how our context has shaped us, I will begin by attempting a brief description of how this tension has come to define the church by exploring the nature and history of creeds, of which Tertullian’s rule will be shown to be prototypical. There is vigorous debate around whether and to what extent creeds are authoritative, so a cursory review of ecclesiastical history is in order. It is my claim that there is a logical progression from prescribed (prayerful) liturgical practices, to the formation of scripture and determinations regarding its use, and finally to the production of extra biblical creeds crafted specifically to standardize and instruct individual belief. I will thereafter proceed from an exploration of the context and content of Tertullian’s regulae fidei to a specific example of proto-creedal liturgical practices derived from scripture, the exemplary creedal prayer called the Our Father. After all, prayerful belief is what Jesus calls us to; “follow me” he says, without providing very many doctrinal formulae (or regulae) for ensuring that our belief is uniform, because doctrine and belief derive from and are contingent upon prayer and liturgy. Creeds will be shown to be a later, but credible and authoritative source for Christian contemplation.
I. On the Origin and Authority of Regulae
To avoid chronological confusion, a bit of pedagogical gymnastics might be in order, though not without biblical precedent. In Matthew 5, Jesus’ sermon makes clear that the people, and especially the Pharisees, have already been passed the Mosaic kool-aid, “You have heard that it was said” he begins, before challenging the crowd to critically engage with assumed dogmas, in order to get at what’s behind them. Not to do away with them, but to illuminate how they are consummated. In doing so, he is funding the kind of imagination necessary to grasp what is truly at stake and therefore what makes their enactment possible. That 2+2=4 is great, but it is incoherent without assuming a prior consensus about what makes two “two” and four “four.”
Have we not all “heard that it was said” in some form that doctrine must shape, if not enforce, belief? Are not the commandments of God to be taken prima facie as authoritative by their own right? I answer that belief is contingent upon prayer; just as the codification of law exists for human flourishing, so too is doctrine contingent upon the prayerful practices of the church. A fruitful example may be the recent Synod in Rome on the family, watched with breathless anticipation by homosexuals and women especially, the gap between their cries for change and the stubborn reluctance thereto by the bishops highlights well the struggle between piety and doctrine, between prayer and creed. For under what rubric has the Catholic magisterium come to see itself as a guardian of faith as opposed to its witness?
It was of utmost importance in the early church to unify written accounts of the faith in order to establish a universal and doxologically appropriate expression thereof. But the texts were always secondary; they were produced to reflect the faith not only professed with lips, but in the very lives of those early followers of the Jewish messiah. The emphasis on textual uniformity was a later development in relation to the piety and liturgical behavior of the scattered churches of the first few decades. As with any law, lex credenda came to be thought of as necessarily codified in writing. In this schema, however, belief no longer rests primarily within the heart and mind of the prayerful believer, but depends upon definition and enforcement by doctrinal authorities.
The Catholic Mass, to use one example, incorporates the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed into its weekly mass,
We believe in one GOD, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only SON of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy SPIRIT, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic CHURCH. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Each major stanza begins with the Latin word crēdō, believe. Together they are collectively referred to simply as “the faith” believed by the confessing community. According to the Catholic catechism, “Whoever says ‘I believe’ says ‘I pledge myself to what we believe,’” but for many catholics, it can feel like the tail wagging the dog. The faith announced at the mass is often the faith of the council of bishops, not the faith of the gathered people. Indeed, the question must also be of what precise nature is “The Faith” that is proclaimed by the church in question, whether it is “I” who proclaim it or “We,” and whom is inferred thereby? One needs not even listen too closely during the Mass to hear the not-so-subtle popular subversion of the creed back from “I” to “We” or the stubbornly persistent omission “for us men and for our salvation.” The ideo-liturgical split has further entrenched the laity against the bishops after a long line of sexual abuse scandals made it clear to the former that priests and bishops do not witness to, much less guard, the faith of Jesus at all.
Though the above creed was decided on in 381 at the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, the Protestant Reformation did extensive damage to the use of creeds both liturgically and theologically. The plurality of the word “church” increased exponentially in large part because the actions of those professing membership in the apostolic genealogy of Jesus (and Peter) seemed like hollow, exclusively verbal confessions. From Luther and Calvin onward, Europe and the New World viewed the tendency to creedalize the faith with deep suspicion. Among the strata of ecclesial bodies the Reformers gave birth to, many denounced not only creeds themselves, but anything and everything that was not clearly biblical. The anti-clericalism they espoused overflowed into a loss of faith in Tertullian’s regulae and most any sacerdotal officiant who advocated in favor of their adherence or expression.
Indeed, an overemphasis on the Bible depraves the communities who transcribed and preserved its content. By itself, it funds the same kind of virtue-less theology that waits in breathless anticipation of the merely ocular confession of the suspiciously creedal variants of a “sinners prayer,” based on one verse in Romans 10. Such soteriological dyslexia is precisely what led bishops in the earliest centuries to prescribe rules by which both the individual and the gathered people could discern theological imperatives from their imposters. The situation today bears tragic witness to creeds representing merely intellectual ascent divorced from liturgically inclined, tradition informed action.
In fact, the Bible as we know it was only one pillar of three that could be called a “rule” by which faith could be measured in the exercise of identifying and engaging with heresy. An equally important measure of faith was apostolic succession, which in a thin sense is the unbroken relational lineage of teacher to student from Jesus through the apostles. For the first two generations of apostles, “scripture” had little, if any, text. The unbrokenness of apostolic succession is therefore imperative, and it testifies to the purity and validity of both the oral and textual traditions. According to Irenaeus, a Greek predecessor of Tertullian, heretics “are scattered here and there without agreement or connection.” But in the thick sense of the word, those called disciples (Latin; discipulus, student) of Christ share in his likeness only in so far as the nature and substance of their message coheres with Him. Being an apostle (Latin; apostolos, one sent, a messenger) is not just derived from what they eventually teach, but how, whether their character reflects that of the one true Teacher that sent them. Irenaeus earlier in his treatise, insists upon “following the only true and steadfast Teacher, the Word of God.”
Tertullian posits that thin, merely textual verifiability of succession at least guarantees against “diversity and contrariety” because “the apostles would never have taught things which were self-contradictory.” Citing church registers that record the apostle John appointing Polycarp bishop in Smyrna, and Clement in Rome by Peter, he challenges groups claiming the Christian name to do likewise. Underneath this proposal is the same thesis advanced earlier, that scribal articulation can only follow, not precede, the essence of faith, which is the constellation of liturgical habits we are called to as Christians. Scripture itself, Jesus’ apostolic deposit, and creedal confessions are just as much of one substance as the trinity itself, they are co-equal fruits of the messianic vine born from the seed of Israel, whose many petals are the worship of the church at once needing and reflecting the grace of God.
II. Further Nature and History of Creeds
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 survives to this day in large part because its origins in 325 at Nicaea were overseen and secured by no less than the emperor himself. After all, the work of archiving is much more effective when the holy books are not being hunted down and burned. Prior to 325, churches relied more heavily on the kinds of regulae that could be carried by word of mouth; hence the brief, Nicene measure of faith cited to above. The symbolum apostolorum, or Apostle’s Creed, survives and even predates the Nicene formula of 325, though dating and origins are less clear. Its twelve clauses evoke the twelve disciples themselves;
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body:
And the life everlasting. Amen.
The similarities to the Nicene regula are apparent: God as father; Jesus his son as lord (and the primary focus of each creed); the Spirit’s power working through a virgin named Mary; suffering and crucifixion his fate; rising on the third day and ascension to the right hand of the father; coming again as judge over living and dead alike; and of the universality of the Church, her saints, forgiveness, and resurrection. Later additions were inserted at Nicaea in response to heresies the composers of the Apostles Creed did not anticipate, and linguistic differences such as “I” against “We” can be explained as interpretive moves supported by an ambiguous syntax. The people for whom this symbolum were intended were new converts who were often illiterate and therefore not in a place to split hairs.
Creeds and regulae attempt to quantify fundamental precepts in order to begin the process of internalizing, and therefore embodying, the faith by succeeding generations of believers. Rules and symbols, synonymous with creeds, were memorized prior to baptism in order to instruct new converts and had to therefore encapsulate the basics of the Christian faith concisely and in a form that would be easy to remember. Prior to the second century, the pedagogical value of creeds had not yet reached a tipping point. Paul Bradshaw observes "The Didache, which many would date as having been composed well before the end of the first century, contains no reference at all to a profession of faith among its instructions for the celebration of baptism.” As the church grew, and eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry and teaching became scarce, the faith needed means of internalizing teaching. Besides being expensive, those found possessing holy books could be subject to persecution. The earliest creeds needed to be short, which improved the likelihood of memorization, evidenced by the increase in content from the Apostolic to the Nicene creeds. Hence, the twelve clauses of the Apostles Creed quickly draws to mind the twelve apostles. Another creed, the Old Roman Symbol, which John Kelly claims can be traced to both Irenaeus and Tertullian, can be translated from Latin as;
I believe in God the Father almighty;
and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord,
Who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried,
on the third day rose again from the dead,
ascended to heaven,
sits at the right hand of the Father,
whence He will come to judge the living and the dead;
and in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Church,
the remission of sins,
the resurrection of the flesh
(the life everlasting)
Notice the Nicene symbol contains four crēdō statements, the apostolorum only three, and this earlier version only one. Each references the tripartite nature of the faith and its central feature, the threefold God of Father, Son, and Spirit (or Ghost). This Symbol is the earliest that takes the brevity it does, though it clearly derives from a number of Tertullian’ writings. Across a number of documents, he repeats a similar Trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Spirit, the briefest of which is found in his treatise On the Veiling of Virgins;
The rule of faith, indeed, is altogether one, alone immoveable and irreformable; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right (hand) of the Father, destined to come to judge quick and dead through the resurrection of the flesh as well (as of the spirit).
The opening line of this rule highlights well the subject of inquiry here, namely, the synonymy of rules with belief and creeds, of regulae with crēdō; “Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis, credenda…”Over and over again Tertullian closely associates rules with belief. His thirteenth chapter in The Prescriptions Against Heretics begins similarly; “with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point acknowledge what it is which we defend—it is… that which prescribes the belief;
that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent [down]; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen “in diverse manners” by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; (then) having ascended [taken away] into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh.
Whereas the Old Roman Symbol had to be short in order to be used in catechism, Tertullian lays its groundwork for it to be simplified into a formula presented to catechumen. These rules, however, are not presented as a way of enforcing them, far from it. As we have seen, rules like his and symbols like the apostolorum were kept before journeyers on the right path as guides, not behind them as guards; establishing belief, not protecting it. At least not yet.
Converts did not teach, they only learned. Heretics were suspect in that they taught that theirs was the true faith over that taught by the catholic doctors of the orthodox church. After all, the above rule of Tertullian’s concludes with a reminder that it “was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics.” Creedal formulae assumed that ethical teachings, what Christians do, like pray and act in peculiar ways that had to be explained to pagans, were already in place. Doctrine is therefore only coherent when doxological action is already in place.
If lex orandi, lex credenda is translated “the law of prayer is the law of belief,” then “is” implies a relationship of equality. But the actual clause, which appears in a book on apostolic authority by Prosper of Aquitaine in the fifth century, actually reads ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi; “as the law of praying might establish (statuat) the law of believing.” The laws about what we do establish and precedes any law outlining what we believe. Bradshaw agrees; “…according to the evidence of the Didascalia and other sources, ethical instruction would have preceded the making of the profession of faith… and specifically doctrinal teaching would have been reserved until afterwards and given in the interval between then and the occasion of baptism itself.” Doctrine follows prayer, making a robust life of faith possible.
Creeds performed in worship confirm my thesis that prayer and behavior is superordinate to doctrinal belief, that we cannot make sense of the claims made by Christ without conforming our lives to his. At best, doctrine comes back around and informs prayerful worship, but it is something like a parasite upon worship. Doxology alone can bear the soteriological density requisite to be at one with the subject of the Old Roman Symbol, specifically God the Father almighty, and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord. Indeed, the earliest rule of faith by which communities were shaped was not a creed at all, but a prayer.
III. Our Father, the Proto-Creedal Orandi
The pearl at the center of the protective shell of the primitive magisterium was not belief or even doctrine, but the worship of pious Christians. The law of praying establishes the law of believing, for one believes wrongly if they have been praying wrongly. An unbroken line of bishops, whose agreement is measured against the witness of the gospels, therefore must secure purity of belief against the storm of heresy that threatened proper worship. Before there was an agreed upon canon, Christians could trace the ecclesiastical purity of their bishop because they could count the number of degrees from Jesus on one hand. Though important, neither apostolic succession nor anything reminiscent of a canon of texts stands apart from the liturgies of the earliest followers of Jesus.
The prayerful practices of the first gatherers around Jesus’ words and witness were a genre of proto-creedal expressions that helps make sense of how Tertullian justifies departing from explicitly biblical material for his rule. Indeed, parts of what become canonized as scripture were passed between churches to be used in the same way creeds eventually came to be used, with canonization assuming the same rigor with which catechists were instructed. "The Didache… directs the Lords Prayer to be said three times per day (8.2-3), but does not specify which particular times, presumably expecting those already to be familiar to its readers.” Tertullian, as with many patristic writers, “sees the Lord’s Prayer as the model and summit of all Christian prayer.” In Matthew 5, Jesus’ prayer is presented like a vaccine for Christians against becoming like the actors, the hypocritae, who pretend to be pious. His prescription is that we pray;
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
Jesus’ regula, if he has one, presumes bodily expressions of faith. Noteworthy is the assumption that his followers will be a forgiving people, that their own forgiveness is contingent upon their reflection of Christ’s own reconciliation with each of them. Put another way, their bleeding hearts will eventually be vindicated by his bleeding, cruciform heart. Liturgy, the work that a believing people perform, is prayer, is a necessary manifestation of his prayer.
In Jesus’ lex orandi, crēdō is simply assumed (“Our Father”), hurrying the pray-er on to the crux of the matter – the kind of lives that make belief possible. The language of belief in the Gospels is most often accompanied by descriptions of what leads thereto. In John especially, Jesus’ signs and miracles are a genre of soteriological theater, depending as it did on bodies and actions (or stories about them) that inspired either belief or contempt in his hearers. The gospels depict a Jesus not concerned so much with belief, but on the activity that produces belief
For the church, prayer has never been mere words that escape our lips whose final destination is a presumably listening God. Prayer has always been participation in the doxological exuberance testified to by such scriptural imagery as Isaiah 6.3, which is also repeated in liturgical settings, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” In its parallel in John’s apocalypse, the angels continually cry out “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.” Though not in themselves creeds, it is easy to see their resemblance.
The lex orandi for Christians begins with those prayers that have come before us, for we are creatures captive to time. We do not serve texts, but serve us by preserving those things which have been passed down for our sake, for the sake of the church worshipping rightly. The Reformers had it right in insisting upon the priesthood of all believers, but they went too far in suggesting piety could be excised from the Church as the people (and work) of God in a corrupted world. Bradshaw confirms,
Christians viewed their acts of prayer as a sacrifice offered to God and as the true fulfillment of the ‘perpetual’ (amid) daily sacrifices of the Old Testament. Here then, indeed, was the royal priesthood of the Church, though dispersed, engaged in its priestly task - continually offering the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God on behalf of all creation, and interceding for the salvation of the world.
The problem the church faced in their day (and which continues in our own) is one shared with, not started by, Tertullian, who seems to worry that Christians have reduced eschatologically intercessory lives of “pray[er] without ceasing” to ticking the box on a ‘regular’ schedule of hours. He laments that those scriptures that do circulate have “no force in commanding an observance,” but settles for the lesser good, that at least “they may enforce the obligation and drag us from our business to a period so occupied as though they were law.” Well, he seems to say to his fellow laity, at least do it no less than three times a day.
But prayers originating in (such as the Our Father), or destined for, God are trans-chronological. Indeed, “the prayer of the church is not restricted to certain fixed hours and forms… the only absolute rule is to live a life of communion with God, punctuated by specific moments of prayer, whenever and wherever possible.” That the liturgy makes possible prayer that participates in the intercessory life of communion with God is not an invention of the Church, it emerges from the vine upon which we are grafted. The earliest Christian communities “maintained the character, if not the form, of prayer reflected in New Testament documents, and especially the Pauline epistles, and derived ultimately from Judaism, of praise and thanksgiving leading to petition and intercession for others.” For early Christians, like some Jewish groups “the roots of their regular times of prayer lay in encouraging a state of constant eschatological readiness.”
Prayer is not passive and merely spoken, but part and parcel to the life of faith. Christian prayers drawn from Jewish forms are often presented “in an active and not a passive form, with God addressed directly… its primary meaning is not the expression of gratitude but rather confession or acknowledgement that something is the case.” Recited prayers bring God into our life and are to remind us of the ever-present reality of the purpose of worship, which for early Christians was “intercession for others,” including the salvation of the world. “He comes again in glory” as the creeds imply, every time the church glorifies him. The creeds, like the Our Father, is oriented to an “earth as it is in heaven.” Glorifying God reaches all the way from a tiny prayer to the purpose and presence of his body in the world. Doctors of the church like Tertullian are like a court reporter - doctrine is a record that aids a church captive to time. Prayer, the juridical proceedings itself, are the thing that actually occurred which doctrine points toward.
IV. Conclusion(s)
Because disunity represented a direct affront to another of Jesus’ prayers, of his prayer for unity at Gethsemane, those under holy orders held it as their special duty to prevent schism. But the schism faced by the popularity of the gnostic project is best seen as a threat to the worship of the one true God and Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. Over time, in their genuine and admirable zeal for gospel truth, sacerdotal officials lost sight of their authority deriving not from formal ascent from other bishops but testimony to Jesus Christ, the fountainhead of the apostolic pedigree.
Ironically, though Tertullian is an ardent supporter of apostolic succession, he was himself never ordained. Jerome goes even further to suggest that Tertullian would have felt a kinship with the aforementioned gay and female people so at odds with the modern magisterium, listing him as one of many Illustrious Men, who was “driven by the envy and abuse of the clergy of the Roman Church.” The early apostles and immediate disciples thereof, vessels of scripture though they were, do not stand alone as the rule by which prayer and belief are measured. Belief may be codified as law, but it is transcribed in order to enshrine properly pious prayer and secure liturgically formed lives.
After all, the piety of the church is constantly in flux, and has been since its conception. Likewise, prayer is living and vibrant, not just in the verbal languages in which it is spoken or imagined, but in the manifold diversity by which it is represented in scripture. Transcribing and standardizing it, which doctrine requires, faces the challenge of language and the necessary loss (or at least misinterpretation) of meaning across cultural and linguistic barriers. We need not assume doctrinal diversity is anti-Biblical, for what God did at Babel was maintained at Pentecost; the flaming tongues did not undo linguistic barriers but the ‘messengers’ of Christ performed concretely within their confines – “each one heard them speaking in [their] native language.”
The problem is that lex credenda and doctrine, its kin, does not do the thing it proposes to be able to do – produce a community that reflects the Son of God “on earth as he is in heaven.” Jesus gives us his creed so that we, his students, may have the strength to be the people Jesus called us to be, to forgive so that we may be forgiven. Prayer affirms what doctrine can only transcribe, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Christians realized very early that we become like what we worship, and so far as our prayers are a contemplative practice, they have a formative effect on who and whose we become. Athanasius insists that Christ “was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father.” Indeed, this is precisely the doxological formula prescribed by the Old Roman Symbol. “Do we believe” in this idea, the baptismal question is posed? “Crēdō,” comes the reply, I do.
