Jesus’s Promise Of The Spirit And The Teaching Of The Faith: From Kerygma To Catechesis

By Douglas A. Sweeney

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

[This is the first 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.]

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. . . . [T]he Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. . . . I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. . . . I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you (John 14:15–16:14, NRSV).

There would be no history of doctrine if Jesus had not promised the Spirit to his disciples in the upper room before his crucifixion.[1] Or, at least, the history of doctrine would have proven far poorer. Still frightened and confused, the apostles needed help understanding and believing—let alone handing on—what the master had been teaching. They had lived with their rabbi for about three years. Still, they failed to comprehend much of what the Lord had said. They abandoned him, in fact, when the going got tough. One sold him out to members of the Jewish Sanhedrin who sought to have him killed. Even the boldest of the group, named the “rock” by Jesus (Πέτρος in Greek, Matt 16:18), denied him three times. Jesus seems to have foreseen their bewilderment and weakness. In keeping with an inner-Trinitarian arrangement, he assured them that the Spirit would soon come alongside them, abide with them, speak to them, reignite their faithfulness, and help them sort things out.

Less than two months later, this promise was fulfilled. On the day of Pentecost, or Jewish Festival of Weeks (Shavuot), the disciples “were . . . together in one place,” wrote Luke, a close associate of Paul who had investigated the sources of his story carefully (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1–5). “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:1–4). Jews “from every nation” had assembled in Jerusalem to keep Shavuot (in honor of the harvest and, according to tradition, to commemorate the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai). Astounded by this miracle, “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (v. 6). Peter addressed the throng, now behaving like the rock Jesus had told him he would be. Reminding everyone who listened of the prophecy of Joel (“Then afterwards I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” Joel 2:28), he testified that Jesus had arisen from the dead, ascended to the Father, and effected what the prophet had foretold long ago—and what Jesus had predicted only seven weeks earlier. “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God,” he preached, Jesus, the Messiah, “has poured out this that you . . . see and hear” today (Acts 2:33).

For nearly two millennia, Christian leaders have debated the importance of the sending of the Spirit for their ministries, especially the ministry of handing on the faith. Just what did Jesus mean when he promised that the Spirit would guide us “into all the truth”? How much of “all the truth” has been codified in Scripture? How much was revealed after the closing of the canon? Does the Spirit still speak outside the leaves of Scripture? If so, how are we to understand what he is saying?

Modern liberals have suggested that the Spirit still guides us into truths not seen in either Scripture or tradition, primarily by inspiring the development and spread of our most charitable and liberating global cultural values. Conservative, or “old-school,” Protestants demur, saying Jesus sent the Spirit not to shape secular values, but to guide the first disciples as they wrote the New Testament. With the founding of the church and the closing of the canon, they contend, God’s Spirit stopped sharing new truths and, instead, helped Christians understand what was written. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most other Christians stand somewhere in the middle of these first two positions. Roman Catholics say the Spirit still leads us into truths not codified before, but only through the office of the Catholic magisterium (composed of all the bishops in communion with the pope). The Orthodox affirm that the Spirit led the early church fathers in their work, superintending the results of the first seven, so-called “ecumenical councils,” but pausing this dogmatic work in 787 (at Nicea II, which restored the use and veneration of icons, a hallmark of Eastern Orthodox Christianity) and resuming it, perhaps, at the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church held in Crete in 2016 (a resumption still contested among the Orthodox faithful, some of whom did not attend this latter-day council). Pentecostals are convinced that the Spirit has been poured out again in recent days (the “last days,” inaugurated in the nineteenth century, at least according to most), but mainly to enable us to live according to Scripture and to hasten Christ’s return with evangelistic power. And most other Protestants are somewhat less certain what to make of the leading of the Spirit in the present. The majority believe that the Spirit still speaks, but they hesitate to separate that speech from the Scriptures. Word and Spirit work together, these Protestants aver. When the Spirit speaks now, he appropriates the Word, helping those with ears to hear to understand, obey, and make use of the Bible and the best of church history to improvise responses to uniquely modern questions.

We will flesh these positions out further in what follows. For now, what matters is that nearly all Christians owe the teachings of their churches to the sending of the Spirit. He steered the first Christians after Jesus’s resurrection, ascension, and session at the Father’s right hand. He inspired the disciples as they wrote the New Testament. And he helped the church fathers—and later doctors of the church—as they handed on the faith then “entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). In these lectures, we will explore this history and the debates that attend the task of sorting out the Spirit’s work in Scripture and tradition.

Lest we lose ourselves in intramural controversy, however, let’s remember that the Spirit is still at work in the world today and wants to help us make good use of the history of our faith. As most faithful Christian teachers have affirmed over the centuries, the Spirit grants cognitive and ethical advantages to those who seek to grow in the practice of the faith—even two thousand years after the pouring out at Pentecost (1 Cor 2). So the surest way forward for believers in the present is to study Christian doctrine, try to walk with the Spirit, and encircle oneself with other like-minded disciples—past and present, near and far—interpreting one’s learning in communion with the saints and checking one’s perspective against the teaching of their churches, thereby grounding one’s practice in the ripest fruit of the Spirit’s work in Scripture, tradition, and the worldwide family of God. God’s Word is too important to engage in isolation, the faithful too finite (not to mention hardhearted) to apply it on our own. We “see in a mirror, dimly” (13:12), limited by personal and socio-cultural blinders. So we need the Lord’s help to improve on what we learn. “No one comprehends” the things of God except God’s Spirit, but “those who are spiritual discern all things” (2:11, 15).

Christians have long disagreed about the optimal relationship of Scripture, tradition, and discernment of the Spirit in the teaching of the church. But honesty requires that all parties to the controversy assent to something like the following history lying behind it, a history of the impact of primitive proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ (κῆρυγμα), the unwritten traditions of the Lord’s own apostles (pertaining, some claim, to institutions like fasting, prayer, sacraments, devotion to the saints and their images, virginity, and more), ancient worship (lex orandi), rules of faith (regulis fidei), creeds and councils, canons of Scripture, and the leading of the Spirit in the pedagogical ministries of ecumenical churches (the churches that intend to be “catholic,” meaning universal and orthodox).

The biblical materials consistently spotlight the word of the Lord as revealed through Christ, his prophets and apostles as the ultimate authority for guiding God’s people. Relatedly, they highlight “the sacred writings” themselves, given by inspiration of God, which “are able to instruct you,” as Paul wrote Timothy, “for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15–16). Traditions not given by direct inspiration simply pale by comparison, when not condemned for sinfulness and often even hypocrisy. As Jesus asked the Pharisees and scribes who condemned his disciples for transgressing the traditions of the elders, “why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? . . . [Y]ou make void the word of God. You hypocrites!,” he chided. “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines” (Matt 15:1–9; Isa 29:13). The Lord and his prophets said the like many times, calling people to repent of their glib devotion to convention and submit to the word of God itself.

But neither Christ nor his witnesses eschewed all tradition. Tradition understood as paradosis (παράδοσις)—as handing on the Word, teaching and doing what it says—was advocated repeatedly throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and early Christian history. The Old Testament brims with admonition from the Lord to disseminate his teachings. “Recite them to your children,” God commanded through Moses after giving the Shema (“Hear, O Israel, . . .”), “and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:7–9). And early Christian leaders spoke frequently of guarding and imparting the deposit of the faith they received: both Old Testament teaching and the kerygmatic witness and tuition of the apostles. Shortly after the resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus told the eleven to “make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:18–20). During and after Pentecost, they did just that. Soon thousands of believers “devoted themselves” to their “teaching . . . to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).

The New Testament writings bleed costly Christian witness to the efforts of disciples to perpetuate the pattern of instruction they received. From the martyr Stephen’s speech to the Jewish Sanhedrin (Acts 7) through the treacherous peregrinations of the ministry of Paul to the epistolary labors of the New Testament authors—often undertaken from prison—and the pedagogical programs that were built upon their teaching (1 Cor 3:10), they preserved and transmitted the tradition they possessed. “Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you,” Paul urged his charge. “Hold to the standard of sound teaching. . . . Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit.” And “what you have heard from me,” he appended programatically, “entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others” (1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:13–14, 2:2). “Contend for the faith,” pleaded Jude the brother of James, “that was once for all entrusted to the saints” by the apostles (Jude 3). For as Irenaeus echoed in Against Heresies (c. 175–85), “the Church has received from the apostles and imparted” the one and “only true and life-giving faith.”[2] And as Tertullian would stress in Prescription against Heretics (c. 200), nothing was withheld from this transmission process. Everything needed for salvation was included, and troublemakers boasting secret teaching should be stopped, lest they turn some aside from the riches of the Lord.[3]

This strenuous commitment to protect and promote the instruction of the apostles stemmed in part from the importance of the Scriptures in the synagogues. Jews had long valorized the teaching of the Word. But it also came from Christian trust that Jesus’s resurrected life and teaching brought salvation. “I should remind you, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote,

of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you. . . . For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles (1 Cor 15:1–7).

Instruction about Jesus’s resurrection changed the world. Christian doctrine was life and death, and the contest surrounding it demanded close attention. Paul went on to warn that

if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ. . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (vv. 14–19).

A great deal depended on early Christian paradosis.

The apostles also inculcated unwritten traditions, though we lack the means to verify the ones taught by Jesus and adjudicate rival Christian claims about their value. As explained in John’s Gospel, the Savior did many things witnessed by disciples that were not written down. If all of them were registered, “the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 20:30, 21:25).

And Jesus told the twelve that when the Holy Spirit came, he would “guide [them] into all the truth” (16:13), helping them remember things not put to writing and, presumably, revealing even more from the Lord. This promise came true at the Council of Jerusalem, whose verdict in the case of the Gentile Christians “seemed good to the . . . Spirit and to us,” wrote Luke (Acts 15:28). It resulted in the writing of the New Testament books. And it yielded oral teaching bearing apostolic warrant. Paul told the Thessalonians, “Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter” (2 Thess 2:15). He encouraged those at Corinth just a few years later, “I commend you because you . . . maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you” (1 Cor 11:2).

In early church history, episcopal supervision of the church’s faith and practice gained prominence as surety for apostolic orthodoxy, both written and unwritten. Heresy emerged, the primal Christian witness needed careful transmission, and the worship of the faithful demanded sound guidance. Oral teaching found its way into everyday piety through prayers to the saints, eucharistic rites, and more—all supervised closely by the bishops and their aides. These never formed the cornerstone of any cardinal doctrine. But they did play a role in the teaching of the churches as the law of supplication—in worship and devotion—turned rule for belief (lex orandi, lex credendi). According to the testimony of Basil of Caesarea (c. 375), “of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. And these no one will gainsay—no one, at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the Church.”[4] And in the words of an episcopal admonition issued shortly after the Council of Ephesus (431), “let us be mindful of the sacraments of priestly public prayer, which handed down by the Apostles are uniformly celebrated in the whole world and in every Catholic Church, in order that the law of supplication may support the law of believing.”[5]

These ecclesiastical trends took shape in relation to several short, pithy summaries of kerygmatic faith that were employed as rules of faith and the interpretation of Scripture. The apostles wrote the most important kerygmatic statements. A few were simple sketches of the doctrine of the Trinity (Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:13; Eph 3:14–17; 1 Pet 1:1–2). Others spoke of Christ in light of Old Testament Scripture, or of Father, Son, and Spirit in creation and redemption. Paul summarized in Romans what he called “the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name” (Rom 1:1–5). To the Philippians, he quoted an early creedal hymn of Christ,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:5–11).

To the Colossians, Paul made an even grander gospel summary: God, he wrote,

has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross (Col 1:13–20).

Other apostles, too, published kerygmatic statements. Peter wrote to “exiles” dispersed in Asia Minor that Christ

suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him (1 Pet 3:18–22).

John likewise assured Christians of the basics of the faith as an unstable mix of other teachings cluttered their minds nearly a generation later:

we declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, [namely,] God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:1–9).

As the church and the needs of its members grew apace, post-apostolic leaders, well-versed in Christian teaching, took the learning they received and adapted it for use in various liturgies, apologies, and catechetical aids. The ancient church orders represent their efforts well. They epitomized the faith for use in early Christian liturgies and codified the creed required of those seeking baptism. (A few of these orders boast an apostolic pedigree, though none bears a clear and free title to such a claim.) The earliest, The Didache (late first-century Syria), contains only a brief sketch of Trinitarian faith.[6] But The Apostolic Tradition (c. 215), often attributed to the presbyter Hippolytus of Rome, lays out in more detail the faith of many early baptizands:

When the person being baptized goes down into the water, he who baptizes him putting his hand on him shall say: “Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty?”

And the person being baptized shall say: “I believe.” Then holding his hand on his head, he shall baptize him once.

And then he shall say: “Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose again the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?” And when the person says: “I believe,” he is baptized again.

And again the deacon shall say: “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy church, and in the resurrection of the body?” Then the person being baptized shall say: “I believe,” and he is baptized a third time.[7]

Kerygmatic summaries led to laws of supplication, which, in turn, ruled early Christian faith, practice, and worship.

Early church fathers also published creedal summaries in apologetic texts. Most famously, Justin Martyr, whose First Apology (c. 155–57) included several well-known creedal fragments, made a series of such statements in his Dialogue with Trypho (c. 155–67), which would later reappear in the ecumenical creeds. He penned this, for example, in chapter 85:

In the name of this very Son of God and first-begotten of all creation,

Who was born through the Virgin,
And became a passible man,
And was crucified under Pontius Pilate by your people,
And died,
And rose again from the dead,
And ascended to heaven,
Every demon is exorcised, conquered, and subdued.[8]

Such patterns of instruction and belief frequently recurred.

With the conversion of the empire, longer teaching aids appeared, which systematized the Christian faith for use among the swelling ranks of public catechumens. Cyril of Jerusalem promoted such productions. In his Catechetical Lectures (c. 348), he exhorted younger Christians, “Attend closely to the catechisings, and though we should prolong our discourse, let not your mind be wearied out. . . . You have many enemies; take to you many darts. . . . [T]he armour is ready, and most ready the sword of the Spirit: but you also must stretch forth your right hand with good resolution, that you may wage the Lord’s warfare, and overcome adverse powers, and become invincible against every heretical attempt.”[9] Gregory of Nyssa’s Great Catechism (c. 385) cultivated a similar perspective on the need for catechesis. “The presiding ministers of the ‘mystery of godliness,’” it emphasized, “have need of a system in their instructions, in order that the Church may be replenished by the accession of such as should be saved, through the teaching of the word of Faith being brought home to the hearing of unbelievers.”[10] And Augustine wrote a treatise on the art of catechizing.[11] These publications culminated in later, longer, even more comprehensive compendia of Christian faith and practice by Theodoret of Cyrus, John of Damascus, and others used by scholars and their teachers more than laity.[12]

The church was growing quickly and becoming very powerful. Moving forward, it would enjoy state support in many places. It accrued great wealth. And thus, perhaps not surprisingly, many of its leaders now vied to shape its narrative and control its faith and practice. All agreed that the Spirit had led them into all the truth about their Christian faith and practice. He steered the first Christians after Jesus’s resurrection, ascension, and session at the Father’s right hand. He inspired the disciples as they wrote the New Testament. And he helped the church fathers—and later doctors of the church—as they handed on the faith then entrusted to the saints. They disagreed, however, about the details of the faith that the Spirit had enabled. In the next lecture we will learn that their ancient disagreement has had a deep and lasting effect on the history of Christian doctrine, unity, and witness.

Notes

1. New Testament scholars disagree about where Jesus and the apostles were by John 16. At the end of John 14, Jesus said to the apostles, “Rise, let us be on our way.” But not until 18:1, “after Jesus had spoken these words” (presumably, the words that had begun in the upper room), did they go “out” and cross the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane. Many think it likely that they stayed in the upper room throughout the whole “upper room discourse” (John 13–17).
2. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, III.Preface, an English translation of which is available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm.
3. Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 25–26.
4. Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, 27.66, an English translation of which is available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm.
5. “The Catalog or the Authoritative Statements of the Past Bishops of the Holy See Concerning the Grace of God,” chapter 8, in 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]), §139 (p. 56). Pope Pius IX attributed this statement to Pope Celestine I in an apostolic constitution called “Divini cultus,” on December 20, 1928, noting the “intimate relationship between dogma and sacred liturgy, and likewise between Christian worship and the sanctification of the people.” Denzinger suggested that the “Catalog” in which it appears was organized “at Rome by St. Prosper of Aquitaine . . . shortly after CELESTINE I, between 435 and 442, and, about the year 500 to have been recognized universally as the genuine doctrine of the Apostolic See” (52n4).
6. The Didache (“Teaching”), 7.1–4, in Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1:42. These volumes are hereafter cited as Pelikan and Hotchkiss.
7. The Apostolic Tradition, 21.12–18, in Pelikan and Hotchkiss, 1:61.
8. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 85, as presented in Pelikan and Hotchkiss, 1:22–23. An alternative English translation is available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01286.htm.
9. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses (Κατηχήσεις), Procatechesis (Prologue), 10; English translation at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310100.htm.
10. Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio Catechetica, Prologue; English translation at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_II/Volume_V/Apologetic_Works/The_Great_Catechism.
11. Augustine, De Catechizandis Rudibus (c. 400).
12. Theodoret of Cyrus, Hæreticarum Fabularum Compendium (c. 452), the five books of which are known collectively in English as The Discernment of Falsehood and Truth; and John of Damascus, ΠηγήΓνώσεως (or Pege Gnoseos, Fount of Knowledge, c. 740s), the most doctrinal part of which is called The Orthodox Faith. Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis (c. 220s), is also a lengthy, early compendium of Christian faith and practice.