The Church Carries the Biblical Story into Our Time

We often think of the biblical narrative as ending at Revelation. And it does… mostly. The biblical canon ends with the Book of Revelation, and no amount of arguing in the following centuries will change this, not even Martin Luther’s attempt to get rid of Revelation altogether.

However, if we Christ-followers believe that God’s word is indeed living and active, then this means that we must continue to engage with it through the generations that follow.

The biblical canon has been ‘closed,’ meaning that no other gospels, letters, or prophecies may be added to it, but this does not mean that we stop interacting with it, asking questions of it, and wrestling with the theological implications of Scripture for our current time, geography, and culture.

Enter the patristic theologians,

i.e., the late first century to the mid-eighth century… basically up until the fall of the Western Roman Empire.(1)

These men and women wrestled with the Scriptures, trying to make sense of them in their present Greco-Roman context. These are the theologians who, over centuries, developed the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the basic canon of Scriptures that we hold today.(2)

Today, Christians either accept these decisions without further thought or grapple with and question the decisions that were made way back when. Modern-day Christians are essentially told, “We figured it all out back then, so don’t worry about it now.” That’s a little more bluntly put than the message we might hear from the pulpit, but that’s the gist of it.

Many of these questions have led the questioner to reject modern Western evangelical Christian faith (especially fundamentalism) because its leaders don’t know how to answer them.

Why did they develop the doctrine of the Trinity in that way?
Why did they exclude certain books from the Scriptural canon?
Where did the doctrine of eternal conscious torment come from?
Who says that my interpretation is the right one? How do we know?

Many of the doctrines that we have heard all our lives from the pulpit were developed by theologians well after the first century. While a Scriptural basis may be found for many (if not all) of these, further exploration in the history of theology reveals that these doctrines were not assumed by all at the time of their adoption by the church.

There was dissention; there were alternative interpretations that were rejected by the majority.

Once a view or doctrine was decided upon by the majority, anyone who believed differently from the ‘orthodox’ view was branded a heretic, excommunicated from the Church, and therefore in mortal danger of hellfire and eternal damnation.(3)

This is why, later in Western history, we encounter horrible events like the Crusades, where anyone who did not accept that the Church was the defender of the Holy Land was a traitor not only to the Crown but also to the Church, or the Inquisition, where anyone who believed differently than the official Roman Catholic Church doctrine was burned at the stake, or the Protestant-Catholic Wars across Europe, where families were torn apart by differences in theology.

Today, despite the Protestant break from the Roman Church during the sixteenth century and the reform of the Roman Catholic Church during the twentieth century, the threat of eternal damnation in response to any espoused heresy remains strong.

If you believe the wrong thing, you’re in danger of eternal hell. It appears that there is plenty at stake if one believes differently from the accepted view.

But if Scripture is living and breathing, as Christians widely believe, then that means that we must be constantly engaging with it to determine what it is saying for our current context.

This is the work of theology.

Scripture is not static or dead. Its words are not only for them back then, but for us now, and not only in the exact ways in which it was used and interpreted then, but also applicable for wisdom for us now.

Scripture itself demonstrates how it may be reinterpreted for new and current contexts.

Remember how God revealed himself through Creation and the Exodus. Remember how he then used similar imagery to reveal himself further in the Exile. The prophets freely used earlier Scripture to answer the post-exilic Jewish questions of “Where is God? Has he abandoned us?”

The prophets and authors of the later biblical books used the themes of the earlier books to continue their message of salvation, redemption, and hope (and judgment, too). Recall how Jesus co-opted the sacrificial system to declare himself the Lamb of God. Jesus took it another step further, reinterpreting the Law and Prophets in his teaching on the Mount. He does not get rid of the old Scriptures, but reforms them in the new kingdom-coming context of his life and ministry on earth.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:17-20)

Jesus and his disciples worked to place the events of John the Baptizer, Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost within the grand biblical narrative that had begun at Creation and stretched through Exile.

Consider how Paul did away with the laws of circumcision and dietary restrictions as he reinterpreted the prophets to spread the message of redemption to Gentiles as well as Jews. Paul, Peter, John, and the other apostolic authors freely used the Law and Prophets to answer the questions of their day:

“What does it mean that Jesus died on a cross and rose again? How does this reveal God?” Recall the post on The Cross and the Crucified God, where we explored six of the Christological heresies of the early church.
“Why is Jesus’ resurrection significant?” Recall how we discussed the impact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus against the popular Gnostic and Platonic teachings of the day in The Embodied Resurrection.
“What does it mean to be the holy people of God?” Recall how we explored the inclusion of the Gentiles in our post on Pauline soteriology.
“What does salvation mean when the temple has been destroyed and the Jews are scattered to every nation?” Recall how we explored the themes of salvation in Revelation and that the diaspora was invited to see their hope in the revelation of Jesus Christ, despite Roman persecution in The Enigma of the Book of Revelation.

The patristic theologians who lived after the lifetime of the apostles simply continued this work of reforming and reimagining Scripture for their current context. They addressed the questions of their day, wrestling with the Scriptures to make some coherent sense of it. They are the ones who planted these letters and gospels in the canon of Scripture rather than leave them to wither into dust. They determined the shape of the Scriptures for their day, and also for Christians for centuries to follow.

The theological work of the Church since the first century has been to determine how the message of the Bible continues in different contexts and places.

To the patristic theologians, it was important to answer the questions of “who is Jesus?” and “who are the people of God?” in response to Gnosticism and Platonism’s separation of body and soul, as well as to the tragedy of the Temple’s destruction, the scattering of the Jews, and the persecution of Christians and minorities by the Romans.

Later, their work included answering the questions of “what is the role of Church and State?” and “how much influence should the Church have?” as Christianity became a state-sanctioned religion and the Church gained political power.

The monastics and desert fathers and mothers wrote much about the contemplative and ascetic life in response to the Church’s overwhelming support for state power. There, too, they disagreed on the nature of what it meant to follow Jesus and continue the biblical story of redemption, hope, and love.

Differences in opinion on church leadership, among other things, led to the schism between the Western Roman Catholics and the Eastern Greek Orthodox. As a result, there are differences in theology between the West and the East, though both would argue that these were Scripturally sound and Spirit-led.

Different interpretations for different times and places. The work of theology must always be relevant to the time, geography, and culture, held against the checks and balances of the scriptural narrative.

The answers of theology are always in response to the questions of the day.

The Reformation was sparked in response to the increasing corruption and nepotism of the Medieval Catholic Church. Luther and Calvin wrestled to answer the question, “Do only Church-sanctioned priests and kings have access to God?” Their answer was no; they leaned on Paul’s writings of Gentile inclusion to preach a priesthood of all believers and a gospel of grace through faith where all people could come to God freely. They countered the medieval Roman Catholic practices of penance, indulgences, and confession only to the priest.

Protestantism and the printing press largely decentralized power from the medieval Church as they made the Bible accessible to all languages, answering the question, “Can regular people know God, too?” Their answer was a resounding yes, but it destabilized the wealth and power of the Roman Church dramatically as believers began worshipping outside of the state-sanctioned Church.

Thus, movements like the French Revolution, where the Third Estate stripped power from the First and Second (the nobility and aristocrats) occurred; the Church of England was born as Henry VIII seized power for himself, deciding that the threat of excommunication and hell was no longer terrifying when he could be the head of his own church; and Puritanism swung the pendulum far to the other side in response to the excesses of both the Roman and English churches, not unlike the medieval monasteries.

The work of reinterpreting Scripture for our present day is the work of theology, and it never stops.

I realize that this can make us uncomfortable, especially those of us who grew up in the fundamental church, where “the Bible says it and I believe it” is the standard response to any faith questions

I’m not arguing against the Christian faith. I’m simply drawing our attention to how we came to our present-day theological ‘certainties,’ which are most certainly not certain at all.

None of our modern-day beliefs happened instantaneously, but rather, over centuries of disputes, debates, written works, and church council meetings. It involved a high degree of difference in the beliefs of the theologians involved.

Scripture itself is a journey across time and space, through vastly different cultures and languages. We can learn from the biblical authors, who so painstakingly wrote and organized Scripture into a cohesive narrative that tells us the story of God and his people.

We can continue to extrapolate the biblical narrative into our present-day life. N.T. Wright calls this the ‘fifth act,’ where the church (and now I use this to mean the global believers, not any one church tradition) expands this gospel story into every place and time across the globe.

So, what is salvation for us today?

Salvation is placing ourselves within the biblical narrative.

We are the image-bearers of God who bring his goodness to the land.

We are the captives who are freed by God’s justice and redemption.

We are those wandering in the wilderness, trying to figure out how to worship this Almighty and also Near God.

We are in exile, waiting for the Sabbath rest of returning to our created home.

We are followers of Jesus, learning what it means to bring God’s kingdom to earth.

We are the crucified, dying to our sins and rebellious ways, dying because of the oppression and injustice of political and religious systems.

We are the resurrected, living new life in our bodies and having defeated death entirely.

We are the body of Christ, living and breathing with all the diversity of multiple languages and ethnicities.

We are those who hope and wait for Christ to return and restore his creation to glory.

Today, we look back at the patristic theologians and the creeds, the monastic and desert mothers and fathers, the priests and clergy, the reformers, the translators, and the missionaries who fought for God’s salvation to be known to the people of their day and place.

We see their mistakes. We criticize their ignorance. We revere their wisdom and insight.

They got things right. They got things wrong (at least to our eyes).

It’s okay, because God’s work is bigger than our understanding of it. God is bigger than the writing and canonization of Scripture and all the theological work thereafter.

We’ve got some things right today, too—things like eliminating racist and misogynist laws and making attempts to reconcile with the people who have been damaged by our bad theology; things like making healthcare and education accessible to every single person regardless of colour, language, or race; things like taking care of our earth instead of stripping it of all its good resources for our own gain (I realize that each of these issues are still present in our world… and many continue to work tirelessly to eradicate rampant greed, corruption, and injustice whatever it looks like in their neighbourhood).

We’ve also done some things horribly wrong… and those who come after us may well shake their heads and wonder at our stupidity. That’s okay; most of us are doing the best we can in our specific time and place.

Salvation—and theology—are not merely intellectual activities; they are holistic and practical as we work out how to be the people of God here and now.

Salvation is communal. We don’t do it alone. Individualism has never been part of the biblical story.

Rather, salvation is part of the great narrative of returning to right relationship with God, creation, ourselves, and others.

May we continue the work of theology in the places in which we live, work, and play—right here, in our neighbourhoods and cities. May we add to the mosaic that is the biblical story as we carry out God’s salvation.

Footnotes

Unfortunately, while there were many women theologians and clergy, most of their work has not been recorded or valued in the patriarchal world of the Roman Empire and Western Europe. Notable patristic mothers include Saint Monica, the mother of Augustine of Hippo; Saint Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine; Melania the Elder, a prominent ascetic and monastic leader; and Macrina the Younger, the sister of Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great. These women and many others were highly influential in the development of Christian thought during the patristic era, but have often been overlooked.
Not that this canon is the one held by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Protestants would later eliminate all Apocryphal books—that is, those books written by Jewish rabbis during the Second Temple period.
The only acceptable branch from Roman Catholicism was the Greek Eastern Orthodox Church; their schism was over the interpretation of divinely inspired leadership of the Church in a far more political move than a theological one… but this is up for debate.

More Resources

Gonzalez, Justo. The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1 & 2, 2nd ed. (2010).
Shelley, Bruce L. Church History in Plain Language, 5th ed. (2021).

The Cross and the Quill is all about diving deep into various theological topics and considering how the biblical and historical context informs how we think about these things. If you liked this article, consider sharing it with your friends or subscribing to the newsletter below!

Photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash

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