Faith to Creed: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Affirmation ofthe Apostolic Faith in the Fourth Century (review)Kelly McCarthy Spoerl

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1993,pp. 100-102 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.0.0108

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S. Mark Heim, ed.Faith to Creed: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Affirmation ofthe Apostolic Faith in the Fourth Century.Papers of the Faith to Creed Consultation Commission of theNational Council of Churches in the U.S.A., October 25-27,1989.Grand Rapids, ML: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991.xxiii + 206 pages. $13.95.

For those scholars who are engrossed in studies of the doctrinal development of thefourth century in all its historical and textual complexity, it may come as somethingof a surprise that the Nicene creed has in recent years become the focus of muchconcentrated examination and discussion within the contemporary ecumenicalmovement. Faith to Creed is a collection of articles written primarily by partici-pants at a consultation on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed held in Waltham,Massachusetts in the autumn of 1989. The criticisms and defenses of the creed froma wide variety of denominational perspectives that appear in this volume renderFaith to Creed a book well worth reading for patristic scholars, for they make usaware that our researches, which may sometimes seem hopelessly arcane anddevoid of practical value even to ourselves, can influence significantly the experi-ence of Christians in our own times and in the future.

Several of the articles in the volume are written by patristic scholars and/or dealextensively with evidence from patristic sources. John Meyendorff's keynote ad-dress and Andr de Halleux's article, an English translation of an article thatappeared in the 1984 volume of Revue thologique de Louvain, describe the pre-Nicene context of credal formulae and the history of the reception of the Nicenecreed from 325 to 451. Meyendorff asserts that, despite the changed environmentof the fourth century, creeds in this period still retained their pre-Nicene characteras charismatic confessions of faith rooted in the liturgical worship of Christiancommunities. Thus the Nicene creed was not simply a set of propositions to beaccepted, nor was it regarded as theologically exhaustive. De Halleux reiterates thispoint, and presents in a particularly effective way the evidence that the "Nicenefaith" was not until Justinian's time coterminous with the literal text of the Nicenecreed, but was thought to be expressed as well in a variety of local creeds used incatechetical and liturgical contexts. William G. Rusch is one of many contributorsto this volume who believe that this phenomenon offers fruitful possibilities fordivided churches to confess a common apostolic faith. His article, written from aLutheran perspective, also emphasizes the continuity between the pre- and post-Nicene contexts for credal formulae, referring favorably to the work of patristicscholars such as R. P. C. Hanson, J. N. D. Kelly and others who argue that theemergence of orthodoxy in the form of creeds in the fourth century is part of aprocess by which the Church sought to exclude theological options contrary to thekerygma and express in summary form the faith of the Church reflected in Scrip-ture, popular devotion and liturgy.

The articles by Roberta C. Bondi, Rosemary Jermann and Paulo D. Siepierski allattempt to correct the predeominantly episcopal focus of much of the study of the

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patristic church's doctrinal development by examining in more detail the broadercontext of this development in the spiritual currents of the age. AU do so in an effortto help those churches who place more emphasis on Christian witness and ethics,such as the free churches growing out of the Radical Reformation, to assess morepositively the creed that was often an instrument of persecution and exclusion intheir denominational histories. Bondi's article considers the contribution of themonastic movement to the spiritual context for theological reflection in the fourthcentury. Jermann's and Siepierski's articles, both of which use Cappadociansources, further explore the spirituality and philanthropic activity developing in-side and outside the monastic milieu in the fourth century that informed attitudestowards the Nicene creed. Siepierski's article is particularly provocative because itsets a discussion of Basil of Caesarea 's ministry to the poor and theological explora-tions in the fields of Christology and pneumatology within a methodologicalframework markedly influenced by modern liberation theology.

Eduardo Hoonaert's contribution reiterates much of Siepierski's socioeconomiccriticism of the fourth century's credal activity, and in particular takes the Nicenecreed to task for not alluding to the ethical imperative to serve the poor so charac-teristic of early Christianity. By criticizing the creed's focus on doctrinal exactitudeat the expense of paraenetic exhortation, Hoonaert's article serves as a bridge to thecollection's final three articles, all written by Christians from the free church tra-dition. E. Glenn Hinson, writing from a Baptist viewpoint, reiterates many of thepoints made by Meyendorff, De Halleux and Rusch regarding the sources ofthe Nicene creed in the confessional and liturgical activity of the early Church. Heparticularly addresses the question of great importance for Baptists regarding therelationship between creeds and Scripture, and argues that creeds can be under-stood as summaries of the apostolic faith that can guide the faithful in the inter-pretation of Scripture. A. James Reimer's article summarizes the work of a numberof contemporary Mennonite scholars who have articulated and criticized thatchurch's traditional view of the "Constantinian shift." This view sees the fourthcentury as a time when the Christian community ceased to function as a critical,prophetic and suffering minority within a hostile pagan world and instead took ona privileged role as legitimator of power, wealth and hierarchy. On a doctrinal level,according to this view, the fourth century debates on the doctrine of the Trinity,which were concretely expressed in the proliferation of creeds, confirm the Chris-tian movement's incipient elitism since they represent the triumph of Alexandrianphilosophical thinking over the simple, biblical and Hebraic approach of Anti-ochene thought. After enumerating his criticisms of this view, Reimer concludesthat the orthodoxy expressed in the conciliar creeds of the fourth century stands incontinuity with the Scriptures, at the same time as it represents a necessary develop-ment beyond the Scriptures to assure an ontological-metaphysical grounding forethics. Max L. Stackhouse's article reiterates this conclusion from the perspective ofthe United Church of Christ. Stackhouse explores the implications of the doctrineof the Trinity not just for Christian ecumenism, but also for the encounter of Chris-tianity with other world religions and philosophical movements such as Freud-ianism and Marxism. In asserting the centrality of the goal of social justice to allissues posed to and by the Christian community, Stackhouse goes so far as to say

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that the doctrine of the Trinity must be abandoned by Christians if it cannotprovide the intellectual, ethical and sociopolitical model to guide complex andpluralistic cosmopolitan life.

Faith to Creed closes with a summary statement that reviews the consultation'sfindings and suggests issues and questions for further reflection and discussion. Itprovides a helpful conclusion to a book that is both informative and stimulating.

Kelly McCarthy Spoerl, St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire

Gregory the GreatForty Gospel HomiliesTranslated by David HurstCistercian Studies Series 123Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990. Pp. 389.

The translator has proceeded in a rather unorthodox fashion which necessitatessome explanation. Since there is no modern critical edition of Gregory's FortyGosepl Homilies, David Hurst has created an "interim critical edition" (p. 3). Fiveitems form the basis of the "interim critical edition": (1) the Maurist text reprintedin Migne's Patrolog-a Latina 76, which the translator has judged insufficient, (2)Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 69, (3) Barcelona, Archivo Capitular de laCatedral 120, (4) Paris, Bibliothque Nationale, lat. 12254, (5) quotations fromGregory's homilies found in the commentaries of Bede the Venerable. In otherwords, Hurst has translated the text of PL 76, supplemented and corrected in lightof the three manuscripts and the subsequent quotations in Bede. In his very briefintroduction of four pages he has offered no criteria for his selection of manuscripts.Since the "interim critical edition" exists nowhere but in the mind of the translator,the original text cannot be consulted. The normal method of procedure is rathersimple, plain, and straightforward. First, one established the text. Second, onetranslates the established text. The present translation attempts both at the sametime. Of course, in defense of Hurst one may legitimately assert that we now havethe translation of a work that was previously unavailable to the English-speakingpublic.

Scholars generally agree that the gospel homilies were preached during the litur-gical year 590-591 and published in the following year. Gregory dictated the firsttwenty homilies which were read to the congregation by some official. Since thecongregation was less inclined to listen to a bureaucrat, Gregory delivered thesecond twenty homilies personally, as he himself discloses in Homily 21: "Hence Iwant to depart from my usual custom and carry out myself this explanation of thelessons of the holy Gospel during the sacred solemnity of the mass, not dictating butaddressing you in person" (p. 157). The homilies appear to have been circulatedoriginally in two codices with each containing twenty homilies. The two volumeswere later combined into one during the ninth century by scribes of the Carolingianperiod. Since PL 76 presents the homilies out of their original order, Hurst usedseveral medieval Gospel Books to reconstruct the original sequence according tothe then current Roman liturgical calendar: British Museum, Cotton. Nero D. IV