THE AFRICAN CHURCH & THE EARLY BIBLE
Understanding Early African Christianity Helps Us Better Understand the Canonization Process of Holy Scripture
What is the standard by which ideas about God are measured as true or false? The Early Church grappled with how to best conceptualize and articulate what God revealed about himself regarding his Triune nature. During that discussion, another question was asked: what are the boundaries of this discussion?
In the early years of the church, orthodox theology was refined on matters like the triune nature of God. Naturally, this question came to the forefront: “What has God said?” To have proper dialogue about God’s nature, there needs to be some understanding of what is God’s Word to his people. This is where the process of “canonization”—the acknowledgement and affirmation of the texts that God inspired as his revealed Word — comes into play.
The word “canon” simply means “standard”. Not everything written about God is reliable for guiding a disciple of Christ toward the truth of God. There is some “fool’s gold” out there. The Early Church understood the importance of being unified in distinguishing God’s specially revealed truth from everything else.
Consider how we look to the internet as a source of information. For some folks, if you put it in a meme, or if it’s somewhere to be found on social media, then it simply must be true. I often come across self-described former Christians who have a poor grasp of sound theology. It’s obvious they were left vulnerable to be led astray by what I call “memeology”.
Obviously, you shouldn’t go around believing something just because it’s on the internet! Likewise, in the early centuries of the Christian church, the early Christians recognized there were people writing untrue things about Christ; for all that glitters ain’t gold. (Vocab dispels myths about the NT canon in the audio link below)
As the church grew, some people were saying this thing or that thing under the banner of the “Christian” movement. Therefore, it was imperative that believers get a handle on what the Church was to stand on as God’s Word.
The process of canonization is crucial to the mission of the church. Why? Because at the time the Christian movement emerges, it was competing amongst a market place of religions and philosophies. The last thing you’d want is to have a movement founded on the blood of Christ, tainted and hampered by misinformation seeping in from influences that are foreign to the teachings of Christ and what God was doing in the earth.
With that in mind, the early Christians asked:
Which writings can be vouched for as having accurately and reliably conveyed what God intended to reveal to mankind?
Which of these writings can be read in our churches and endorsed to disciples of Christ as that which believers can base their walk with Christ on?
What is the standard, or “canon”, for the church?
Historians comb documents like early Christian writings and church council proceedings to find themes as to what were the guidepost criteria/rules of thumb by which a document was affirmed to be canon or not. Examples of these criteria for discerning what writings were to be understood as inspired scripture are as follows:
A. Is the document widely circulated among the church?
B. Was the document written by an apostle or direct associate of an apostle?
C. Is the document consistent with apostolic doctrine?
Consider the following example of how historians can look to historical events to discern why the early church would have deemed particular writings to have satisfied that first rule of thumb. (Mike Licona talks NT authorship w Vocab in audio link below)
In 180 AD Christians, in Scilliam North Africa were undergoing persecution from their governor. This group of North African believers was questioned by the governor and ultimately sentenced to death for refusing to renounce Christianity. During the investigation of these individuals, a box was brought into the courtroom containing property which belonged to that church. When asked about the contents of the box, these soon to be martyrs reported that in the box were “Books, and the writings of Paul, a just man”.
These historical events from North Africa are the sort of things that historians can look to and infer:
A. This body of believers understood Paul’s writings to be authoritative and of value, as evidenced that they took great care to preserve them.
B. Paul’s writings must have been in circulation among the Early Church for which they are later considered canon.
Just a few years ago, I did a personal study on how the books in our Bible came to be understood as inspired scripture. As I dug into the subject, I found myself confronted with the substantial influence of African Christians in the Early Church as the biblical canon was being established. I highlight specific examples of how the African Church directly influenced the process of canonization in the Early Church.
ORIGEN OF ALEXANDRIA
ORIGEN is one of my favorite figures of the early Church. He was reportedly born to Christian parents in Alexandria, Egypt around 200 AD. Accounts of Origen’s life suggest that when Origen was a young man, his father was martyred for Christ. Origen was determined to go with his father to be martyred alongside him. However, Origen’s mother prevented him from doing so by hiding his clothes! Origen went on to be one of the most prolific and influential scholars of the Early Church.
Origen wrote about 6,000 works and is considered by some to be the father of systematic theology. Among the written works of Origen we have some monumental contributions, with the most notable being The Hexapla. In The Hexapla, Origen took six Hebrew and Greek variations of the Old Testament and put them into one document. Each of these translations were aligned in columns. The Hexapla was the first comparative study Bible and an example of early rudimentary textual criticism of the Bible.
Origen went on to launch a sort of “graduate school program”, where his students could go deeper in the Scriptures after having completing studies at the Alexandrian Catechetical School. When it comes to the New Testament, Origen’s work is significant: we can glean from what he writes in his commentaries and quotes from which books this early Christian scholar from Alexandria, Egypt recognized as being authoritative and instrumental in the discipleship of believers. In his writings, Origen affirms each of the 27 books of our New Testament as being valuable for Christian instruction. Origen is a crucial part of our historical heritage.
ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA
ATHANSIUS is another early Christian theologian from Alexandria, Egypt. Athanasius is known for the role he played in defending the orthodox doctrine of the Triune nature of God after the Council of Nicaea. In the 21st century, there are a million and one conspiracy theories about what happened at the Council of Nicaea (see: Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code). Over the last few years, I’ve encountered ridiculous claims like:
“Jesus was invented at the Council of Nicaea.”
“The Bible was written at the Council of Nicaea.”
“Constantine took over and or ‘changed’ the church and Christian doctrine at the Council of Nicaea”.
Today’s YouTube Scholars and Memeology Experts have everything to say about the Council of Nicaea … except what ACTUALLY happened at the Council of Nicaea! Historians glean from a number of sources, such as correspondence between figures in the church following the Council at Nicaea, to piece together what happened there.
Athanasius was eventually installed as the bishop of Alexandria. One of his duties flow from a minor decision at the council of Nicaea. There was debate about what date should be used to celebrate the resurrection/Christ as the Passover lamb. It was decided that every year the bishop of Alexandria would send out a letter to the churches to appoint the celebration date for that year. Athanasius sent 45 of those letters in which he would also address other matters of concern for the Church.
In his 39th letter, Athanasius lists out the books to be included in the New Testament for use in the church. It is the same 27 books that we have in our Bibles today. This is the actually the earliest document we have affirming the exact set of New Testament documents we have today.
In 340 AD, Athanasius finds himself in exile for a second time; this time in Rome. He was well received during his time in Rome as a respected theologian. Prior to his stay in Rome—among Alexandrian theologians— books like Hebrews, Jude, and 1 John were accepted as authoritative, yet there was some debate in Rome and the more western branch of the church concerning these books.
Historian F.F. Bruce notes there are indications that Athanasius was influential in addressing the resistance to these books in Rome. According to Bruce, evidence suggests that after the time of Athanasius’ visit, the Western church began accepting those works just as the Alexandrian theologians. That’s why we don’t see that controversy among them moving forward.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Augustine flourished between 354 and 420 AD. He was from Tagaste, North Africa. In Augustine’s writings he affirms the same 27 books that were listed by Athanasius Origen. What’s really interesting here is the timing and influence of Augustine. At the end of the 4th century, there were a number of councils in Carthage under the leadership of Augustine.
At the council of Carthage (393 AD) we witness, for the first time, a council weighing in on the question of what writings were to be canonized and in a definitive move they lean heavily on the works of St. Augustine and list out the same New Testament documents that he did.
We don’t have the records from that council extant but we find this ruling on the Canon reiterated in records from the council at Carthage in 397 AD and again in 419 AD at the sixth Council of Carthage. This is crucial, because these councils relying upon Augustine set the tone for later discussions about Canonicity. These are the backbone of later considerations, like what we find at the council of Trent or even in the writings of Luther.
I hope you can clearly see how true it is that when we understand Early African Christianity better, it equips us to better understand the process of canonization for the New Testament.
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