The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought

272 Pages·2006·1.46 MB·English

THE APOSTOLIC AGE IN PATRISTIC THOUGHT
SUPPLEMENTS TO
VIGILIAE CHRISTIANAE
Formerly Philosophia Patrum
TEXTS AND STUDIES OF EARLY CHRISTIAN LIFE
AND LANGUAGE
EDITORS
J. DEN BOEFT — J. VAN OORT — W.L. PETERSEN
D.T. RUNIA — C. SCHOLTEN — J.C.M. VAN WINDEN
VOLUME LXX
THE APOSTOLIC AGE
IN PATRISTIC THOUGHT
EDITED BY
A. HILHORST
BRILL
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2004
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The apostolic age in patristic thought / edited by A. Hilhorst.
p. cm. — (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, ISSN 0920-623X ; v. 70)
English, French and German.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 90-04-12611-2 (alk. paper)
1. Apostolate (Christian theology)—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30-600. 2.
Theology, Doctrinal—History—Early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Fathers of the church.
I. Hilhorst, A. II. Series.
BV601.2.A665 2003
270.1’072—dc22
2003065308
ISSN 0920-623X
ISBN 90 04 12611 2
© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands
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CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................ vii
Abbreviations .............................................................................. xiii
Theodore Korteweg
Origin and Early History of the Apostolic Office .................. 1
Joseph Ysebaert
The Eucharist as a Love-meal (agape) in Didache 9–10, and
Its Development in the Pauline and in the Syrian
Tradition .................................................................................. 11
Ton Hilhorst
Romantic Fantasies: Early Christians Looking Back on the
Apostolic Period ...................................................................... 28
Peter Van Deun
The Notion épostolikÒw: A Terminological Survey .............. 41
Jan den Boeft
Miracles Recalling the Apostolic Age ...................................... 51
Gerard Rouwhorst
Liturgy on the Authority of the Apostles ................................ 63
Riemer Roukema
La tradition apostolique et le canon du Nouveau
Testament ................................................................................ 86
Gerard P. Luttikhuizen
Witnesses and Mediators of Christ’s Gnostic Teachings ........ 104
H. S. Benjamins
Die Apostolizität der kirchlichen Verkündigung bei Irenäus
von Lyon ................................................................................ 115
Fred Ledegang
Origen’s View of Apostolic Tradition ...................................... 130
vi contents
Johannes van Oort
The Paraclete Mani as the Apostle of Jesus Christ and the
Origins of a New Church .................................................... 139
Arnold Provoost
The Apostolic World of Thought in Early Christian
Iconography ............................................................................ 158
Adelbert Davids
The Era of the Apostles According to Eusebius’ History of
the Church .................................................................................... 194
G. J. M. Bartelink
Monks: The Ascetic Movement as a Return to the Aetas
Apostolica ................................................................................ 204
B. Dehandschutter
Primum enim omnes docebant: Awareness of Discontinuity in the
Early Church: The Case of Ecclesiastical Office ................ 219
Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen
Urbs beata Jerusalem: Saint Augustin sur Jérusalem .................. 228
Indexes
Index of References ................................................................ 243
Index of Names and Subjects .............................................. 249
Index of Greek and Latin Words ........................................ 252
Index of Modern Authors ...................................................... 253
INTRODUCTION
In March 2001, the Dutch Foundation for Early Christian Studies
celebrated its fortieth anniversary with a conference entitled Aetas
Apostolica—Tertullian’s term for the founding period of Christianity.
As could be expected, the theme proved to be a most rewarding
one. Any movement or association will tend to assign a special pres-
tige to its starting time, but in the case of nascent Christianity this
prestige was plainly due to the divine stature of its founder, Jesus
Christ, who had personally commissioned his Apostles and assured
them of the unfailing guidance of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, the
authority of the Apostolic Age was acknowledged by all who regarded
themselves as Christians, no matter whether or not they were accepted
as such by a later orthodoxy. It was appealed to in questions of doc-
trine, of ritual and conduct, and it mirrored itself in literature and
art. Thus, the speakers at the conference could choose from a num-
ber of important subjects. Their papers, duly revised and footnoted,
are collected in this volume. Below is a summary of the contents.
There has been much discussion about the origin of the office of
apostle. Korteweg shows that a Jewish precedent is hardly plausible.
An apostolos is an unspecific term for someone sent. Paul introduces
a specific sense for the word—to him, an apostle is a messenger sent
by God from heaven. There may be a connection with an ancient
oriental concept, as discussed by G. Widengren and W. Schmithals.
After Paul, a horizontal dimension becomes prominent: an apostle
is sent by the earthly Jesus, from Palestine and Jerusalem. The apos-
tles are identified with the Twelve; the concept of apostolic succes-
sion comes into being.
Studying the earliest liturgy of the Eucharist, Ysebaert considers
that from Homer onwards a sacrificial meal was normally a full
meal. This holds well for the Jewish Passover meal, the Last Supper,
and all Christian Eucharistic meals. The consecrated bread and wine
were consumed together with other food taken from home. The typ-
ical order of blessing the wine first continues a Jewish tradition and
is still found in Didache 9, 1 Cor. 10.16 and parts of the Syrian
tradition. The conflict in Antioch, Gal. 2.11–14, is due to the new
situation that Gentile Christians might take unclean food with them.
viii introduction
The abuse in Corinth encourages Paul to separate Eucharist and
love-meal, and to place the blessing of the wine after the meal,
1 Cor. 11.17–34. His appeal to the Lord makes him contradict his
own words in 1 Cor. 10.16. Instead of the blessing he makes the
institution words the moment of consecration.
Hilhorst considers the idealized image of the apostolic age in the
Muratorian Canon and in the Letters alleged to have been exchanged
between Paul and Seneca. The idea emerging from these texts of
the starting time as a period of internal harmony and prestige with
the outside world is, however, found not to be restricted to apoc-
ryphal and patristic sources but already present in a number of books
of the New Testament, notably the Acts of the Apostles.
Van Deun sets out to investigate the usage of the Greek term
apostolikos. Absent from the New Testament and attested for the first
time with Ignatius, it is used in quite a number of contexts, for
instance to denote the apostolic origin of a church or a conformity
with the doctrine of the Apostles, or also to refer to the Apostle par
excellence, Paul. Eusebius is the first author to use it for the notion
of an apostolic era.
Miracles were a prominent feature of the apostles’ time but lost
importance in later periods. Theologians, Den Boeft argues, used to
interpret the shift as a sign of divine pedagogy: initially, people had
to be won over by visible means, later on, prime importance was
attached to ethical and spiritual values. Nevertheless, the importance
of miracles remained unaffected in the cult of the saints; and Bishop
Ambrose even hailed the miracles accompanying the invention of
the bones of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius as a return of the
apostolic age. Augustine agreed with such a view, although earlier
he had taken the position that miracles belonged to the past.
Liturgical customs have always been legitimised by an appeal to
the foundational period of Christianity. Rouwhorst works this out
for the celebration of Passover/Easter. The Quartodecimans had
good reason to celebrate it on 14/15 Nisan, whatever the day of
the week, but from the second century onward they were opposed
by those who practised Easter on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection.
These opponents, who grew more and more numerous, went so far
as to claim apostolic authority for their own view and eventually
depicted the Quartodeciman claims as those of a sect disturbing the
unity of the Church.
Roukema examines the previous history of the New Testament
introduction ix
canon in a number of authors of the late second and early third
centuries. Previous, indeed, because in that period there was not yet
any such thing as a New Testament canon in the sense of a closed
list of books declared authoritative by the Church. Rather, the ques-
tion was whether a given book or an orally transmitted teaching was
a pure witness of the apostolic tradition as the foundation of faith
and ecclesiastical practice. However, a tendency to define a list is
perceivable in Tertullian and in the Muratorian Fragment.
Gnostics, just like early orthodox Christians, appealed to Jesus
Christ for their doctrines, but they deliberately distinguished them-
selves. They claimed, as Luttikhuizen explains, either a right under-
standing of Jesus’ prepaschal teachings which their opponents allegedly
lacked, or they referred to special revelations. The receivers of these
revelations in some texts are the assembled apostles but more often
privileged witnesses: Peter, John, James, Jude Thomas or Mary
Magdalene.
Benjamins deals with two passages in Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses in
which the author puts forward the apostolic character of the preach-
ing against Gnostic and other dissident groups. Conceding that the
Apostles could disagree on such minor points as the validity of the
Mosaic Law, Irenaeus maintains that they were of one mind con-
cerning the identity of the Old Testament God with God Father of
Jesus Christ. He denies the claim of his opponents that there was a
secret doctrine hidden behind the apostolic testimony.
Ledegang demonstrates that, for Origen, not just those in office
but all who follow Christ are bearers of the apostolic tradition. They
all are ‘sent’ to preach the Gospel and called to live accordingly.
Since 1970, our knowledge of Mani and Manichaeism has been
exceptionally enriched by the discovery of the so-called Cologne Mani
Codex, which informs us both of Mani’s life and ideas. Van Oort
studies the many new insights this document provides. On the basis
of a series of revelations, Mani apparently considered himself to be
the new Apostle of Christ as well as the incarnation of the Paraclete.
In this quality, it was his vocation to found a new and final Christian
Church. A number of interesting parallels between the aetas apostolica
and Mani’s version of it are discussed. In particular, however, Mani’s
apostolate shows striking parallels with Jesus’ ministry.
Provoost asks how early Christian iconography in its different peri-
ods reflected the body of ideas of the apostolic period. His material
is the frescos and sarcophagi found in Rome and Ostia. Remarkably,