Creeds, Canons, Councils, And The Contest Over Tradition

By Douglas A. Sweeney

[Douglas A. Sweeney is Dean and Professor of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.]

[This is the second article in the four-part series “Sources of Authority for Teaching Christian Doctrine: A Brief Historical Sketch,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 4–7, 2020.]

“Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 3–4, NRSV).

The first lecture in this series talked about the sending of the Spirit and the spread of Christian doctrine during early church history. Kerygmatic statements by apostles and other early servants of the church led to a much more comprehensive teaching, both written and unwritten, as well as practices intended to preserve sound teaching in the midst of persecution and confusion. But by the fourth century AD especially, the church had grown in numbers, wealth, and power. Now factions competed to control the Christian message, at least much of the time, and invasive species of various kinds harmed the Lord’s vineyard.

Meanwhile, church leaders advocated orthodoxy, fighting to defend the deposit of the faith handed down by conservatives in mainstream churches while new sects and heterodox philosophies arose. Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who was martyred for his fortitude, had cautioned the Philippians (ca. 110), “Whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment,” as some had done lately, “he is the first-born of Satan.” Adding admonition to insult, he beckoned to the wayward to return “to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning” of the church.[1] Irenaeus had advocated “rules” to guard the faith, simple aphoristic summaries of apostolic teaching over against which theological claims could be measured. He employed a “rule of truth” (regula veritatis) ten times in Against Heresies (c. 175–85),[2] and a “rule of faith” (regula fidei) twice in Proof of the Apostolic Preaching (c. 180).[3] Hippolytus of Rome did the same soon thereafter, wielding a doctrinal “rule of the truth” in Refutation of All Heresies (early third century).[4] And Tertullian, Novatian, Clement, Origen, and Cyprian also regulated orthodox theology with vigor, making a way for conciliar definitions of the faith in the fourth and fifth centuries.[5] Gregory of Nyssa represented their rationale at the climax of the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy. “It is enough for proof of our [doctrine],” he averred in Against Eunomius (c. 381), “that the tradition has come down to us from our fathers, handed on, like some inheritance, by succession from the apostles and the saints who came after them.”[6]

These regulations culminated in full-blown creeds, some of which were published widely and one of which was used in both Eastern and Western churches. The best-known are the Old Roman Symbol and the “ecumenical” creeds: the poorly-named Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed (or Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, received in East and West), and the Athanasian Creed.

The first of these statements was the Old Roman Symbol, a baptismal creed of the Roman church that dates to the late second century. There are minor variations in the versions that survive, but the oldest reads as follows:

I believe, therefore, in God Almighty and in Christ Jesus, his only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, and on the third day rose from the dead. He ascended into the heavens and is seated at the right hand of the Father, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead. And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh, and life everlasting.[7]

These affirmations reverberated in most later creeds. The next of these statements is the so-called Apostles Creed, professed in many Western congregations most Sundays. Legend has it that the apostles wrote this document on Pentecost, each of them supplying one of its twelve sacred lines. But the creed is not cited till the late fourth century (at least not in extant documents), and its text first appears in an eighth-century handbook by Pirminius of Reichenau, a missionary monk. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” it begins,

Creator of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell. On the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.[8] 

Now available in every major language in the world, the Apostles Creed is even used occasionally by Orthodox thinkers. It has shaped Christian teaching like no other source outside the Bible.

The Nicene Creed was forged on a fourth-century anvil in the heat of controversy. Arian understandings of the status of the Son of God arose in Alexandria (where an ascetic theologian named Arius promoted them), attracted theologians in the eastern Mediterranean, and, in the early 320s, piqued the interest of officials all over the Roman world. These understandings were censured by the bishops of two councils, the Council of Nicea (325) and that of Constantinople (381), the latter of which declared its firm, Trinitarian faith in what is now called the Nicene Creed. In response to the Arian view that Christ was created by and lesser than the Father, the drafters of this document declared (among other things), “We believe in . . . 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.” And “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father” and thus is also fully God (a claim the Arians denied).[9] The council fathers, that is, defined the faith against Arianism. Western leaders added that the Spirit of God proceeds from the Father “and the Son” (filioque), changing the wording of the creed during the late sixth century, a move that gained prominence in much of Western Europe and was sanctioned by the popes of the early eleventh century (contributing to the church’s Great Schism soon thereafter in 1054, and dividing Eastern and Western Christianity ever since). Westerners have never used the Nicene Creed quite as often as the Apostles Creed. Its fulsome definition of the doctrine of the Trinity, however, won the approval of the Orthodox churches (sans the filioque clause), which renders its confession the most universal symbol of the faith in all the world.

The Athanasian Creed is the longest of the so-called ecumenical creeds. Another Trinitarian statement, it was once thought to be the work of Bishop Athanasius, arch-rival of the Arians, but is now thought to date to the fifth or sixth century. Its bulk makes it difficult to use in corporate worship. Its tone has repelled many cautious Christian readers. But its vigilant concern to guard the faith once delivered still functions as a symbol of the struggle over orthodoxy. “Whoever desires to be saved must above all things hold the catholic faith,” it claims. “Unless one keeps it in its entirety inviolate,” moreover, “one will assuredly perish eternally.”[10] These creeds and many others—marked with varying degrees of precision and severity—have served the church for centuries as summaries and boundaries of the orthodox faith.

The impulse to regulate Christian faith and practice also led to the forming of the New Testament canon. The English word “canon” comes from the Greek word κανών, meaning “measuring rod” or “rule.” And the New Testament canon is the list of books that measure up to standards implemented by the early church fathers: evident inspiration by the Spirit, most importantly—discerned by testing truthfulness, canonical consistency, and sanctifying power—and a certified apostolic pedigree. Consensus on the canon of Hebrew Scriptures was achieved shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem (late first century), though the Eastern lists of Hebrew books have minor variations and the canon of the Greek Old Testament was contested for centuries (and never quite resolved, except by Catholics at the Council of Trent in 1546).[11] The New Testament canon came together much later, largely in response to environmental pressure. Some of its material was believed to be inspired and authoritative for Christians shortly after it was written (see Col 4:16; 1 Tim 5:18; and 2 Pet 3:16). Most of it was firm by the late second century. But the canon as a whole did not congeal in final form until the late fourth and early fifth centuries.

The first powerful incentive to decide on an orthodox canon of Christian Scripture came from one who would later suffer censure as a heretic. Marcion of Sinope, a bishop’s son on the Black Sea in the Greek region of Pontus, made a canon of his own as a guide to his philosophy (c. 130–40). Convinced by a second-century gnostic named Cerdo that the Old Testament god differed starkly from the god and father of Jesus in the gospels—the former was cold, distant, militant, partial to the Jews, and concerned with physical needs, while the latter was full of love, accessible to all, and concerned with heavenly things—he organized a dualistic movement of the spirit, taught his followers to reject the Jewish god and his materialism, said that Jesus came to teach a way of life that freed the soul from its bondage to the flesh, and excluded from his canon any apostolic documents that contravened his message. Because Jesus only appeared to have been born of a virgin, encumbered with a body, and put to death in the flesh—things far too corporeal to warrant assent—most of the gospels must be scrapped. And inasmuch as other apostolic writings were too Jewish, too concerned with mundane life, they were cut from the Marcionite canon of Scripture as well. Paul of Tarsus, claimed Marcion, was called by the good god to clarify the true implications of Jesus’s teaching. He was taken up to heaven on the road to Damascus, instructed by the savior, and sent back to earth to craft “The Gospel of the Lord” (the gospel of Luke, some think, without its story of Christ’s nativity and other fleshly elements) and ten holy letters (shortened versions of the ones then attributed to Paul, minus 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus). These documents alone composed the Marcionite canon, which incited church leaders to form a canon of their own.

Soon orthodox Christians placed Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and most of Paul’s epistles on a level of authority with Old Testament writings. Irenaeus and Tertullian attacked Marcion’s views by contrasting them with unrevised apostolic teaching.[12] And an anonymous, more orthodox canon was composed (c. 170). Called the Muratorian Canon or the Muratorian Fragment, it includes all our New Testament books except Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter. It also includes the Apocalypse of Peter, however (a fragment of which survives, but is not in any Bible), and the Wisdom of Solomon (also called the Book of Wisdom, which is published in most editions of the Apocrypha).[13]

By the early fourth century, discussions about the canonization of New Testament books had become more sophisticated, though not yet unanimous. Eusebius of Caesarea, a bishop and historian, created a taxonomy in History of the Church (c. 313) that reflects the state of learned conversation at the time. He distinguished what he called widely “recognized books” (homologoumenoi) from “disputed books” (antilogoumenoi) and those deemed specious or heretical. The recognized books were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, the Pauline epistles, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, and John’s Apocalypse (though Eusebius remarked that the status of the book of Revelation was contested). The disputed books were organized in two different groups: those widely yet not quite universally sanctioned, namely James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude; and others deemed spurious by most at the time, The Acts of Paul, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Apocalypse of Peter, The Epistle of Barnabas, The Didache, and, by some, John’s Apocalypse as well. The heretical list featured an array of bogus texts, such as the Gospels of Matthias, Thomas, and Peter.[14]

By the late fourth century, unanimity was near. Athanasius of Alexandria, the on-again, off-again, controversial bishop and opponent of the Arians, circulated an Easter letter in 367 in which he specified the very twenty-seven books later ruled the New Testament canon. “These are fountains of salvation,” the bishop told his people, “that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take aught from these.”[15] Several major church councils then adjudicated the canon, most importantly in Rome and Carthage in 382 and 397, respectively, sanctioning the twenty-seven books of Athanasius. The clergy in the East received the canon more slowly. They were less inclined than Westerners to dogmatize decrees of non-ecumenical councils. And the New Testament canons of the Orthodox in Syria, Armenia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Georgia had minor variations. By the late fifth century, though, an overwhelming majority of believers, East and West, embraced the same New Testament. At the Quinisext Council held in Constantinople (692), moreover, Eastern bishops stamped the canon with approval.

In the providence of God and the power of the Spirit, the traditions by means of which the apostolic teaching shaped the faith, hope, and love of ancient followers of Jesus yielded a stable set of Scriptures by the time of the decline of the ancient Roman Empire (in the long fifth century—the city of Rome itself was sacked by Visigoths on August 24, 410). Most Christians now agreed that the canon was the main source of Christian faith and practice, the ultimate authority in ecclesial disputes, and the most reliable handbook of the teaching of the prophets and apostles of the Lord, not to mention Christ himself. This did not put an end to their diversity of thought, however. They continued to debate the way the Spirit had presided over Scripture’s canonization, the relative authority of extrabiblical customs in the teaching of the church, the place of popes, bishops, councils, and the faithful in discerning what the Spirit says in Scripture, and the best ways to transmit the elements of Scripture not codified in ancient Christian doctrine.

Furthermore, the fall of Rome and dissolution of its cultural system meant chaos, especially west of Constantinople. Arian and pagan tribes invaded from the north, wreaking havoc on the catholic civilization of Western Europe and Roman North Africa, and worrying the faithful about the future of the church. If there ever was a time for agreement in the ranks—for a stable set of doctrines that would stem fear and confusion—it was now, and on the basis of a canonized Bible. The church was “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” Christians claimed in an oft-repeated line from the Nicene Creed. Nearly the entire church affirmed that some of Scripture was self-evident. Some portions of Scripture had yielded teaching codified by ecumenical councils. But some texts proved ambiguous—susceptible of more than one sound interpretation—yet important to the practice of the faith nonetheless. Who retained the final say in presenting Scripture’s mysteries? How much difference of opinion was permissible? What should Christians do, when their teachers disagreed, to determine what the Spirit was declaring in the Bible? The churches and their leaders had confronted similar questions since the time of the apostles. Heretics had long bent Scripture to their benefit. Catholics had responded that these heterodox exegetes “falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation.”[16] Theologians had offered up methods of exegesis. But now that the orthodox agreed on the kerygma, rules of faith, and canon of Scripture, expectations surged with respect to doctrinal unity. And now that their churches lacked protection from the Romans, the stakes of their quest for unanimity were raised.

It is important not to exaggerate the discord and disintegration of the church as it entered what scholars used to call the “dark ages” of the post-Roman West. Christianity had always been much bigger than the West. Though the culture of the Romans did facilitate its rise—and its spread beyond the boundaries of their international empire—disciples took the gospel well beyond the Roman world from the beginning of their missionary movement. Most Christian leaders now agreed about the teachings of their Savior, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the life of the world to come. And some of these beliefs were solidified further—for Christians East and West—at the ecumenical councils of the sixth to eighth centuries (all convened east of Rome, in Asia Minor, modern Turkey, under the protection of the Eastern, or Byzantine, rulers). From far enough away, the church appeared strong, well-prepared to meet the onslaughts of the post-Roman age.

Such strength was not enough, though, to guarantee unity, or even make it likely, in the centuries to come. In fact, the rest of catholic history could be told as a story of disciples with an old-fashioned, centripetal faith—and a passionate commitment to the ideal of unity—responding to centrifugal dynamics of success and accommodating changes in the church as it spread, spanned the globe, and adapted to new cultures and priorities. Most members of the body of Christ trusted in its unity. Their theologians taught them of its indefectibility. But many wanted freedom to inhabit that body—to nourish it, clothe it, and present it to the world—in keeping with their own local customs and traditions. Just as Christians reached consensus on the New Testament canon, divisions in the way its finer points were interpreted undermined the oneness of the church in all but spirit. “I ask . . . that they may all be one,” Christ himself had pleaded on the way to the cross, “as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20–21). Most honored this prayer and believed in its fulfillment. They trusted that the Spirit would take them into all the truth on the basis of the Word, thus unifying the body of Christ all around the world. Still, they often disagreed about what the Spirit said.

The first major episode of post-canonical conflict transpired over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries and centered on Augustine’s view of predestination. A British theologian named Pelagius moved to Rome in about 380, and soon became concerned about its people’s moral laxity. He engaged in strict asceticism and gained a minor following. When Rome was sacked in 410, he fled with a follower named Caelestius to Carthage, and sparked a major controversy that spread across the Roman world by teaching an extreme form of moral rigorism. He said that everyone can live a sinless life and find salvation without waiting for a special interposition of God’s grace (though he granted that the freedom of the will, moral law, Christian nurture and instruction were results of God’s grace that helped Christians on their way). Augustine and his followers resisted this teaching. They said that even in the Garden of Eden—before the first sin and tragic fall of the race—Adam and Eve needed supernatural grace to live for God. East of Eden, furthermore, human need had grown much worse. On account of original sin, we are now born depraved. We have disordered affections, minds and wills inclined to sin. We never choose to honor God unless our hearts are transformed. God foresaw this predicament before he made the world. In his mercy, he chose to create us anyway and then rescue a portion of the race by his grace. There is nothing we can do to earn this blessing retroactively. The elect owe their status to the sovereignty of God, and their righteousness to God’s decree to transform their souls and help them want to live according to his plan for their lives.

In the near term, Augustine’s view prevailed in the Western church. Pelagius and his men were condemned at major councils held in Carthage (418) and Ephesus (431). But the doctrine they espoused never simply disappeared. Nor did the biblical exegesis that supported it. In fact, a group of monks in southern Gaul (near the city of Marseilles), championed a compromise that proved quite resilient. Concerned about the moral implications of Augustine’s view of predestination, they re-emphasized the freedom sinners have to repent and make good upon the grace God has woven into the world without waiting for an extra, supernatural act of God. Of course saving grace was required, the “Gallicanis” granted, but seekers could elicit it by turning to the Lord. John Cassian and Vincent of Lérins were their spokesmen, the latter of whom coined a test of orthodoxy (in controversies with Arians and others) that he thought would make their compromise position more tenable. Called the “Vincentian Canon” (c. 434), it stipulated that “care must especially be had that that be held which was believed everywhere [ubique], always [semper], and by all [ab omnibus]” faithful Christians.[17] Augustine’s view of sin and election failed this test, and so should not be required of the faithful moving forward. Augustinians like Prosper of Aquitaine resisted this Gallicani compromise (also called “Massilian” for its locus in Marseilles), contending that it downplayed the consequences of sin and gratuity of grace. Both groups appealed to the canon, rule of faith, and traditions of the church. But they disagreed about how to handle these authorities and settle their dispute. Prosper concluded that the popes were the ultimate interpreters of Scripture. The Gallicanis countered that consensus should be sought. But their Vincentian Canon proved difficult to use, and the Gallicani doctrine was condemned at the Council of Orange (529).[18] This controversy plagued the church for centuries to come. During the late middle ages it resurfaced yet again and promoters of the Gallicani doctrine were condemned—and labeled “semi-Pelagian”—by Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders.

The next major episode of post-canonical controversy centered on the veneration of icons by Christians. As Islamic forces overspread the Byzantine world, Eastern rulers sought to purify their churches of corruption (which they blamed for Christian losses) and avoid adding fuel to the conflict with their foes (who were largely aniconic, or opposed to using icons). Iconoclastic sentiment intensified in fits and starts, especially among those most worried about Islam, yielding a ban on Christian icons in the late 720s by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III. Such images themselves, of course, are not found in Scripture and opponents of their use (often called “iconoclasts,” which means “image destroyers”) claimed that paying them respect was like bowing down to idols. Still, God had made humans in his “image” and “likeness” (Gen 1:26–27). Moses put images of angels in the tabernacle (Exod 25–31, 35–40). And Christ himself is said to be the “icon” (εἰκὼν) of God (Col 1:15). Few artists made icons of the person of the Father, who does not have a body and “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see,” wrote Paul (1 Tim 6:16). Depictions of the Father were forbidden much later (at the Eastern Synod of Moscow, in 1667). But many came to believe that the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ made a way for depictions of the Savior and his saints. They also said that the handling of the relevant Scripture texts should be governed—in the main—by tradition.

By the mid-sixth century, tradition had begun to assume a life of its own, not far beneath the canon and the bishops as a norm in the development of doctrine. A number of different sources could be cited in this regard, not least the canon of Vincent first deployed by Massilians. The bishops at the Second Council of Constantinople (553) claimed, when promulgating doctrine, to “hold and declare the faith given from the beginning by the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ to the Holy Apostles, and preached by them in the whole world; which the sacred Fathers both confessed and explained, and handed down to the holy churches.”[19] And many later theologians, when working on matters not discussed in the canon, resorted to tradition in support of their opinions.

John of Damascus, for example, the most important of the eighth-century champions of icons, appealed to tradition in his battle with opponents. In On Holy Images (c. 730), he aggregated statements from the fathers on their use. In The Orthodox Faith (c. 740s), he explained that while conservatives wanted “nothing beyond” the teachings of the “Law and Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists,” they refused to flout what John called the “everlasting boundaries” of proper interpretation, haughtily “overpassing the divine tradition (Prov 22:28).”[20] By the late eighth century, John’s instincts won the day as the leaders of Nicea II (787) exalted the tradition in support of sacred icons. Referring to the fathers of the church as “inspired,” and contending that the Spirit “dwells in” the tradition, they condemned those “who dare to think or teach otherwise,” underwriting the veneration of icons by Christians.[21] Even so, opposition to them never fell away. Emperor Leo V led another purge of icons in the early ninth century (814–42). In the sixteenth century, many Protestants destroyed priceless icons, crucifixes, statuary, and paintings in the name of abolishing idolatry.

A third major episode of post-canonical dissidence pertained to the use of the filioque clause. This epochal, church-dividing, theological conflict (which resulted in the Great Schism of 1054) took its rise not mainly from an exegetical row (though the Bible was involved), but from debate about the authority of Western church leaders to change the liturgy, the creed, and thus the doctrine of the Trinity without seeking input from the churches of the East. Not only had tradition taken on a life of its own, then, by this time in history, but East and West had now diversified dramatically, and many doctrinal feuds involved discussion about the canon, the authority of bishops and traditions in its use, and the relative authority of contrary bishops and traditions in the teaching of the church. The development of doctrine proved as complex as ever. It would lead to more divisions in the centuries to come, whose history we will take up in the next lecture.

Notes

1. Polycarp, Epistles to the Philippians 7, 1–2; English translation at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm.
2. Irenaues, Adversus Haereses passim; English translation at http://www.new advent.org/fathers/0103.htm.
3. Irenaeus, Proof (᾽Επίδειξις) of the Apostolic Preaching 3, 6; English translation at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/irenaeus/demonstr.iv.html.
4. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium 10, 1; English translation at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0501.htm.
5. See, for example, Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum 13; Novatian, De Trinitate, 1, 9, and passim; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 4.15, 6.15, 18; Origen, De Principiis, Preface.2; and Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiae, 19.
6. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium 4.6; English translation at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2901.htm.
7. The Roman Symbol in Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1:681–82. These volumes are hereafter cited as Pelikan and Hotchkiss.
8. Pelikan and Hotchkiss, 1:667–69.
9. Pelikan and Hotchkiss, 1:670–72.
10. Pelikan and Hotchkiss, 1:673–77.
11. The Greek Old Testament, also known as the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament writings), includes a number of items not found in Hebrew Scripture (some of which are not in all the oldest extant copies of the Greek Bible either—these copies vary quite a bit and some include material that is not in any canon). Called deuterocanonical (“of the second canon,” or canonical but secondary) and anagignoskomena (“readable, worthy to be read”) by Catholics and Orthodox, apocryphal by Protestants (“obscure” or noncanonical), they were published in the Vulgate (the ancient Latin Bible of Jerome and his associates), despite Jerome’s view that they should not be in the canon, and appeared in many subsequent editions of the Christian Bible as well. Most Protestant reformers either excluded them completely or set them apart visibly from the main canon of Scripture, usually in between the testaments. On April 4, 1546, at the Council of Trent, Catholic leaders made a decree, De Canonicis Scripturis (“Concerning the Canonical Scriptures”), in which they defined their Old Testament canon clearly and dogmatically (English translation at http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch4.htm).
12. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.27, 3.2, and passim; Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem.
13. The Muratorian Fragment is a seventh-century Latin translation of a late second-century Greek text, named for L. A. Muratori, who discovered it in Milan in the early eighteenth century. The English translation by Bruce Metzger is found here: http://www.bible-researcher.com/muratorian.html.
14. Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.25.
15. Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letter 39; English translation at http://www. newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm.
16. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.Preface (see also 1.8.1); English translation at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm.
17. Vincent of Lérins, Comonitoria 2; English translation at http://www.newad vent.org/fathers/3506.htm.
18. Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (New York: B. Herder, 1957; orig. Enchiridion Symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 13th ed. [Freiburg: Herder & Co., 1954]), §173b–200 (pp. 75–81).
19. Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, §212 (p. 85).
20. John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith (part of Πηγή Γνώσεως, see above), 1.1; English translation at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33041.htm.
21. Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, § 302–4 (pp. 121–22).