Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006) wrote a book in 1959 called The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (Abingdon: 1959). While parts of it are dated, it’s also a wise and patient Lutheran interaction with the phenomenon that is the Roman Catholic Church. In chapter 16, “The Challenge of Roman Catholicism,” Pelikan muses about what American Protestantism can learn from the Roman church, and among the other items on his list (comprehensive world view, inclusive appeal, urban ministry, sacramental worship), he includes “a living tradition.”

If you know Pelikan you know that for his entire career he was in tradition like a fish in water, so it’s hard to imagine that he would be so short-sighted as to take up the lament that his American Lutheran church was somehow magically disconnected from tradition. There it sits, objectively just as traditioned as any church. But what Pelikan wants Protestants to learn from Roman Catholics is how to present themselves in such a way that they express that living tradition clearly.

In describing this, he hits on a term which I found instructive: “Devices for symbolizing the living tradition.” He asks, “Can Protestantism find devices for symbolizing and carrying the living tradition of the Christian past that are truly meaningful to the general church public?” (p. 234)

By “devices,” I don’t think Pelikan is just talking about gimmicks. He pokes fun for a bit at ham-fisted attempts to symbolize tradition, like “Russian Orthodox chants in a Baptist church or the introduction of ‘the daily sacrifice of the masss’ in a Methodist church,” which he views as “exoticism, not living tradition.” But he is aware that human ingenuity needs to seek out some cultural mechanisms for making tradition visible, because tradition is one of those odd things that goes invisible if you neglect it.
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In the year 381, the second ecumenical council (also known as the First Council of Constantinople, or Constantinople I, to distinguish it from two later councils in the same city), met to make decisions on Christian doctrine and order.

The main thing the fathers of the first Council of Constantinople would want us to say about their work is that they re-affirmed the Council of Nicaea. That’s what they came together to do, and it was something that needed doing. Although the anti-Arian cause had prevailed decisively in the first ecumenical council in 325, the middle decades of the fourth century saw the imperial church dominated by Arianism and various forms of semi-Arianism. By 381, however, the Nicene or Athanasian party had regained control, and this council convened by emperor Theodosius I made its first order of business to re-assert the creed from the Council of Nicaea.

The biggest change they made to the creed from Nicaea was to extend the article about the Holy Spirit: In 325 the bishops had merely noted, “and [we believe] in the Holy Spirit.” But in 381 they added the wonderful language calling the Spirit “the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”
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Cleverly concealed within the hard structure of the turtle’s shell, dual miniature turbofan jet engines roar to life, sure to give him a competitive advantage when that cocky rabbit comes boasting of his superior landspeed. Pictured here with a satisfied smile at the moment of blast-off, the turtle flattens himelf out aerodynamically by tucking his head down and reaching out his legs fore and aft. His forelegs are poised in readiness for the moment when he’ll need to provide a tiny nudge of vertical thrust to keep himself on course. That will be about three-quarters of a mile down the trail, of course, but this turtle is all about planning ahead. Red and yellow flame swirls in long looping lines with a bit of black smoke in the blast behind him.

Behind him, a small red scribble with little loops coming off it.
Yes.
The rabbit.

The first ecumenical council was Nicaea, in the year 325. As all the later councils are at pains to attest, the Council of Nicaea is the most important of all the councils.

The heresy which provoked this epochal council was Arianism, the teaching that the pre-existent Logos who took on flesh in the incarnation was not God, but a great and exalted creature. Since he was the Son of God, Arius argued, he must have come into existence from non-existence, and prior to that he must not have existed. The Arian Christ is certainly a supernatural being, but just as certainly he is not actually divine.

Arianism was rejected by the 318 bishops gathered at Nicaea under emperor Constantine. Because Arius and his supporters were capable of making most scriptural language agree with their doctrine, the orthodox party pressed the extra-biblical term “homoousios” into service, meaning by it that the Son of God is of the same (homo) substance (ousia) as God the Father, or consubstantial with him. The goal of the Nicene theologians (both the bishops present and the rising generation which included the great Athanasius of Alexandria) was to assert the complete deity of Jesus Christ in a clear and unequivocal way, which they did by placing this term into the creed which was produced at this council, calling Christ “the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father…”

Lying behind this undertaking was a vision of what salvation entails: personal reconciliation with God and participation in God’s own life. With that view of soteriology in place, the implicit soteriological axiom driving Nicaea and the entire conciliar theological tradition downstream from it is: God alone can save.

There are a lot of parts to theology, and although over-specialization is always bad, some division of labor makes a lot of sense unless you’re personally interested in earning degrees in everything from Hittite to Herodias to Haplography to Heidegger’s Hermeneutics of Hegel’s Historicism. Here’s how I see the labor divided.

While the various theological disciplines are peers, each operating with their own independent and valid methodologies, there is also a kind of normative order to them which is dictated by the one object which they study in common. Because Christianity is based on scriptural revelation, the biblical disciplines have a decisive priority when it comes to engaging the content of the faith. As Scripture is absolutely primary, the disciplines which engage it directly are at the front of the line: exegesis and the field which calls itself biblical theology.
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Christology is one of the most important doctrines in all of theology, and also one of the most difficult. The standards of proof here are high, because the claims –that this man is God, one of the Trinity, the eternal Son– are so outrageous. It is incumbent on all Christians, I think, to be able to make a clear declaration of who Jesus Christ is directly from Scripture. No matter what the great theologians may have said, no matter how early the early church may have made a clear confession that Christ is God, a serious Christian faith requires a direct view of Christ’s deity and eternal sonhood in the Bible itself. That, of coure, is what all those great theologians and church fathers were insisting on anyway.

But there’s a lot of theological heavy lifting to do in the doctrine of christology, and I for one am grateful for any help I can get from the great tradition. Sure, every generation has to see the truth for itself, but life is too short to spend it re-inventing the christological wheel.
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