Category: Article

Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation: The Gifts

~ Vincent

Early Christian writings on the Bible are some of the greatest untapped gifts that the Christian tradition has to offer not only the modern preacher, but any Christian that seriously wants to grow.  When we dig into the depths of those bygone saints, there’s an incomparable wisdom waiting to be discovered.  That said, this rose is not without its thorns.  These older writings come with their fair share of challenges. The realities that Christians were fighting against in those eras can be vastly different from the things that we fight against today.  At times, they’re worried about things that we see as deeply normative (theatre, sin after baptism, leaving a church on bad terms).  In other places, they’re doing battle against ideas so bizarre that it seems impossible that their notes could be relevant to us (the possibility of Jesus lacking any physical body, the influence of long-dead religions, the shame of someone avoiding martyrdom).  On top of that, the way they read their Bibles was often very different.  Often, they appear to play “fast and loose” with the Biblical text, noting conclusions that don’t make much sense by our standards.  So why bother with it at all?  

What are some of the biggest gifts in early Christian exegesis?  Of course, one could argue that their use of allegory and spiritual readings is strong enough to make it worth investigating on its own, but overuse of those techniques are exactly what make so many of us Protestants uncomfortable with them to begin with.  Rather than claim the controversy as a benefit, there are three far less controversial gifts that any Christian, regardless of background, denomination, or preference, can expect to find if they delve into these writings.

1) They find depth in passages we take for granted.

If we are reading for the “plain sense” of Scripture (as most of us Protestants strive to do), there are a handful of passages that don’t contain an overabundance of edification.  For example, Song of Songs 4:1 reads, “Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from the hills of Gilead.”  In most modern settings, people use this verse as purely an element of description, often noting that cultural standards of beauty and even the nature of compliments change over time.  After all, who today would long to have hair like goats going down a mountain, much less receive a compliment that their hair looks as such?  The reading highlights cultural differences appropriately, but fails to bring any spiritual edification to the listener or broach the question, “Why does God want us to hear this?”  

The Venerable Bede (the man who popularized the use of “BC” and “AD” in historical records) is a commentator from the Early Middle Ages that illustrates what depth older Christians found in little passages like this.  He wrote,

[I]f goats and the hair or skins of goats always signified the foulness of sinners and never the humility of penitents, that animal would by no means have been reckoned among the clean [animals], nor would it have been said in praise of the bride: “Your hair is like a flock of goats.”

-Bede, On the Tabernacle, 2.3

Goats are typically described as representative of sinners in the Bible, so why should it be tied to beauty in this passage?  Because the penitent sinner is beautiful to God, and we should all strive to be as such.  Small passages like this can sneak by modern Christians because we don’t expect to find anything, but older writers leave no stone unturned in their efforts to find God’s word for us in every verse.

2) They connect Scripture in ways that we don’t expect.

Not only do these older texts often find big things in small places, but they connect Scriptures in ways that we might not expect.  I hesitate to use the word “creative,” since a good theologian seeks to reveal what is already in the text, not innovate, but this connective instinct of patristic (the era of the Church Fathers, 100-400 AD) and early middle ages Bible readings might seem something like healthy creativity to us.  These are authors that lived in primarily oral cultures.  Books were expensive, and Google didn’t exist.  They memorized things far more extensively than a modern person, and consequently could connect Scriptures in ways that are both unexpected and insightful to us.

Origen of Alexandria is a theologian that’s particularly apt at this.  There can be little doubt that Origen ultimately deviated from the path of Orthodoxy, but his tremendous contributions to early Christian theology can’t be overstated.  On Song of Songs 1:1 (“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,”), Origen writes,

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”—that is to say, may pour the words of His mouth into mine, that I may hear Him speak Himself, and see Him teaching. The kisses are Christ’s, which He bestowed on His Church when at His coming, being present in the flesh, He in His own person spoke to her the words of faith and love and peace, according to the promise of Isaias who, when sent beforehand to the Bride, had said: Not a messenger, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself shall save us.

-Origen, Commentary on Song of Songs, 1:1

Origen ties the opening of Song of Songs, a passage about a woman longing for the kisses of her groom, to the Church’s delight at seeing the incarnation of God in Christ and longing for his loving words spoken to it.  If ever there is an appropriate metaphor for the incarnation, God’s embodied presence with his people, it’s hard to imagine one more appropriate than a kiss.  The people of God longed for the presence of Christ, and ultimately were met by Him in ways more intimate than so many other religions would expect!  While this may still feel too far from a plain sense of text for some, if we abandon any sense of metaphor in Song of Songs, we end up with a simple story about a man and a woman in love.  Origen’s instinct to integrate that story into the greater narrative in Scripture may not be expected, but it helps us understand why this book may have been canonized to begin with.

3) Their comfort with abstract thinking often exceeds our own.

Previously, I used two examples from Song of Songs, which might be considered “loading the deck” in favor of the ancients and their comfort with finding meaning in passages that tend to challenge historical-critical readings, but their contributions aren’t just limited to areas where plain text readings require caution.  Augustine of Hippo, that great father of Christian Orthodoxy, wrote on the book of Genesis multiple times across his life, sometimes focusing on plain-text, literal meaning, and sometimes delving into more abstract realities that lay beneath the surface.  This particular passage, covering Genesis 2, is distinctly allegorical and plumbs the depths of the human psyche in ways that would make modern psychological figures like Freud and Jung think twice.  At this point in the work, he’s already stated that Adam represents higher reasoning (the soul’s deep wisdom), Eve represents lower reason (the ability to make rational decisions and manage earthly resources appropriately), and the snake represents appetite.  Here is his grand conclusion:

[T]he serpent did not eat from the forbidden tree, but only incited to eat… So too in one man, the sensual motion of the soul is set against the reasoning of wisdom… bodily things are sensed, but eternal things are understood through wisdom.

-Augustine, The Trinity, Ch. 3

What he reads, in some places, as a story about one man and one woman sinning long ago he now reads as a roadmap for the human soul.  It’s now a story about all of us.  We are all tempted by the world around us, and our mind takes in the world around us and offers it up to our soul to make an ultimate choice as to how we respond.  The psychological impact of this would make Jung or Freud do a double-take, but finding ways to show that inclination to sin in all of us like our forefathers is not only faithful, but deeply revealing about the human psyche.

Why should you wrestle with patristic and early medieval writings?

The insights offered up above are distinctly non-modern.  They may feel strange, but they’re also both rational and faithful to the Scriptures.  Whether for preaching or individual reflection, there’s a wonderful depth on display here that can be taken up and applied in our lives.  Older texts are a challenge, and there are reasons to go in with eyes wide open, but the way they see big things in small places, the way they weave the Scriptures together cohesively, and their comfort with abstract thinking gives us tools that make the challenge more than worth the effort.

King of Kings: Abgar and Jesus

~ Vincent

The ancient world was shaped by kings; men whose words were law and whose birthrights were governance.  Their will, for good or ill, shaped the world.  Stories of such kings converting to Christianity have a special place in Christian legend, as it often resulted in an overwhelming conversion of a nation afterwards.  This post details just one such legend.

I used to think that Ethiopia was the first Christian kingdom, mostly because I knew it managed to beat Rome to the punch.  Imagine my surprise when I picked up Eusibius’s Church History and came across the story of a king that converted before that: King Abgar V of Edessa (aka the Abgar V of the Kingdom of Osreone or Abgar the Black).

It’s worth mentioning that just because something appears in Eusebius’s history doesn’t mean it’s above suspicion.  Eusebius may be the Father of Church History, but a little fact checking is merited.  So much of history is collecting stories.  Some stories are compelling and have a lot of evidence supporting them, while others are a little more speculative.  In the case of King Abgar V, we’re definitely in speculative territory. It’s also worth noting that even double checking Eusibius’s work is a challenge in this instance.  Sources about the Kingdom of Osreone and goings on in its capital, Edessa, are rare before the third century.  Osreone was a small border kingdom that was gobbled up by Rome in the third century, and pre-Roman records weren’t well preserved.  A lot of primary sources aren’t available in English, and the secondary sources are often less than thorough. It was a genuine struggle finding reliable ancient sources on Abgar and Edessa, but I think I managed to find enough to help clarify what is (and isn’t) likely to be true.

In any case, Eusebius reports that King Abgar the V of Edessa holds the unique honor of being the first Christian king.  Not only was he the first, but he was so interested in Jesus that he actually wrote a letter to him before he died on the cross!  To verify this claim, Eusebius travelled to the royal records in Edessa and found copies of the letter that Abgar wrote to Jesus and the response that Jesus sent back.  He even translated them and copied them for his readers!  It’s hard to imagine that Eusebius was lying about the existence of these documents.  When he shares the content of other documents in his major work Church History, it’s incredibly accurate.  For example, in chapter three, he cites letters between a magistrate named Pliny the Younger to the Roman Emperor Trajan regarding what to do with Christian citizens.  When compared to Pliny’s records (Epistles 10.96-97), Eusebius’s work is almost verbatim.  Again, in chapter four, he accurately reproduces the full account of the Martyrdom of Polycarp.  Even his consistent citation of imperial edicts is spot on with independent accounts.  Whether or not we find ourselves compelled by the contents of the letters, it’s hard to deny that Eusebius found them and copied them accurately.  Here are the letters between Abgar and Jesus, as translated and by Eusebius in the early 4th century:

From Abgar to Jesus:

Abgar, son of Archam, prince of the land, to Jesus, Saviour and Benefactor of men, who has appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting:—

I have heard of You, and of the cures wrought by Your hands, without remedies, without herbs: for, as it is said, You make the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be healed; You drive out unclean spirits, You cure unhappy beings afflicted with prolonged and inveterate diseases; You even raise the dead. As I have heard of all these wonders wrought by You, I have concluded from them either that You are God, come down from heaven to do such great things, or that You are the Son of God, working as You do these miracles. Therefore have I written to You, praying You to condescend to come to me and cure me of the complaints with which I am afflicted. I have heard also that the Jews murmur against You and wish to deliver You up to torments: I have a city small but pleasant, it would be sufficient for us both.

From Jesus to Abgar:

Blessed is he who believes in me without having seen me! For it is written of me: ‘Those who see me will not believe in me, and those who do not see me will believe and live.’ As to what you have written asking me to come to you, I must accomplish here all that for which I have been sent; and, when I shall have accomplished it all, I shall ascend to Him who sent me; and when I shall go away I will send one of my disciples, who will cure your diseases, and give life to you and to all those who are with you. 

Anan, Abgar’s courier, brought him this letter, as well as the portrait of the Saviour, a picture which is still to be found at this day in the city of Edessa.

Let’s begin by pointing out just a few of the obvious reasons why these letters aren’t trustworthy: 

  1. Notice that Jesus referenced John 20:29 in the opening of this letter (“because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed”).  He says this is what has been written about him.  Unfortunately, this is something that couldn’t have been written about him at this point, given that Jesus said this to Thomas AFTER his resurrection, not before.  
  2. A document that was hand-written by Jesus would have been a MASSIVE deal to the ancient church.  The New Testament Scriptures were chosen partially based on their apostolic credentials.  A connection to one of the twelve apostles ensured that the document represented the best of Jesus’s teachings and was not only inspired by the Holy Spirit, but fully legitimate.  Something that people really thought was written by Jesus?  They’d have put that in the Bible in a heartbeat.
  3. Finally, notice how strangely orthodox Abgar is.  He describes Jesus as “God, come down from heaven to do great things, or… the Son of God.”  Wow!  He was so close!  He almost recognized Jesus’s role in the Holy Trinity at a time when even the apostles were struggling with it.  Funny how uncanny his instincts were given that he had never met Jesus and wasn’t Jewish.

There are other problems that I’ll leave you to catch on your own.  The bottom line is that these aren’t particularly compelling documents.

On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that this legend is incredibly cool.  You can’t get much better than a story about your king personally reaching out to Jesus and acknowledging his greatness and divinity.  That’s top tier.  Not only that, but he offers to let Jesus live with him in Edessa so he can get away from the coming violence in Israel?  If that’s your king, he’s unbelievably rad.

While the document itself is more legend than reality, it’s hard to deny that, at minimum, it’s pointing towards some very true realities about the ancient world.  Even the most critical historians admit that Abgar’s great, great grandson, King Abgar IX was definitely Christian and made the Kingdom of Osreone legally Christian in the early third century.  That’s earlier than Ethiopia (330) and Rome (380), making it still the oldest Christian nation, even if we completely disregard the letters as a forgery.  That alone ought to suggest that there may have been significant Christian history before that time.  But is there any chance that any of this particular legend is true?

Eusebius records that the disciple who witnessed to Abgar V after Jesus ascended into Heaven was one of the 72 disciples mentioned in Luke 10: a disciple named “Thaddeus,” or Addai in the local Syriac.  If we can show that Addai existed and has some form of historic record aside from just witnessing to Abgar V, that goes a long way towards indicating that there’s more to this than just a legend.  Luckily for us, there is indeed a document that verifies the independent history of Bishop Addai: The Doctrine of Addai (Syriac, 4-5 c.).  This brief document contains the history of the first three bishops in Edessa: Addai (the first bishop who was sent to the region by the apostle Thomas), Addai’s successor Aggai, and the third bishop in the region, Palut.  Sure enough, Addai does things apart from witness to Abgar V in this document!  Unfortunately, the things he does aren’t at all possible.  For example, he converts Protonice, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, to Christianity by showing her incredible miracles.  That would be really impressive… if Claudius ever had a wife named Protonice.  Not only that, but Protonice goes to take a little tour of Jerusalem with Addai and finds the true cross in a story that sounds a lot like the story of Helena (Constantine’s mom), which was a story that would have existed by the time this document was written.  A massive portion of Addai’s story in this document focuses on his relationship with the king and how he built up Christianity in the region until he died and basically everyone famous in Edessa went to his funeral and cried, regardless of their religion.  This document makes the letters seem feasible in comparison.

The final straw is the details provided during the explanation of Palut’s (the third bishop’s) ordination.  Apparently after the grand funeral of Addai, King Abgar V passed away and Aggai took over until he was martyred by increasing persecution in the region.   Then we get to Palut!  Since Aggai died before he could ordain Palut as a bishop, Palut was ordained by Serapion, Bishop of Antioch, who was ordained by Zephyrinus, Bishop of Rome.  Here’s the problem… Serapion was the Bishop of Antioch between 191 and 211.  Zephyrinus was the Bishop of Rome from 199-217.  Zephyrinus wouldn’t have been able to ordain Serapion as a bishop, given that Serapion was ordained as a bishop first!  Not only that, but both men are from around the 3rd century, when the king of Edessa would have been Abgar IX, who is the first recorded Christian king that a majority of historians consider the first Christian king of Edessa.

The difficulties to justify this particular legend are much too great to overlook, and this comes from someone who looked at as many other sources as I could to try to find a way to make the legend work.  Regardless of which additional documents I included, these two documents are both foundational to the Abgar/Addai mythos, and anything that comes afterwards is a clumsy effort to try to massage the obvious errors in those documents.

I sadly have to admit that it seems almost certain that the claim that Abgar V of Edessa was the first Christian king isn’t true.  The letters that it’s based on have clear historical errors and the legends that the disciple that converted to him have clear historical errors.  That said, I do think there’s evidence that the legend points to a reality that we can count on.  There was indeed a king named Abgar (IX, not V) that converted to Christianity due to the influence of a growing Christian community in Edessa, likely led by a very real bishop named Palut.  Everything before that point is shrouded enough by legend that it’s not a reliable source to use.  Was there someone named Addai?  Maybe, but his resume would have been so radically different from the Addai of legend that it’s not even worth comparing the two.

All signs bring us back to somewhere in the early third century, where a king named Abgar (IX) saw a growing Christian population, probably led by a bishop named Palut, and was indeed converted through the influence of someone from the community.  So, to be fair, the first Christian king WAS an Abgar of Edessa!  The legends seem concerned with establishing an impressive lineage for the first Christian kingdom, which is a shame, because I’d say having the first Christian king is impressive enough without the exaggeration (though the exaggeration is still highly rad).

A Monk for a New Year’s Mentor

~ Vincent

As we enter the new year, we inevitably look back on our actions in 2025 and ask ourselves, “Am I proud of that?”  Some of us make resolutions to help address the areas we want to change, while others make less formal plans in the hope that some flexibility might make things a little easier to apply.  This year, I’m a member of the latter group.  Resolutions are hard and I have a tendency to break them within a month or two.  Even so, I’m looking for ways to enter into this new year with resolve to be better than I was last year, and to that end, I’m back with an old friend, Isaiah the Solitary.

Isaiah the Solitary was a monk that lived in Gaza around 1500 years ago, and truth be told, I’m not even aware of how many works he wrote.  I’m only familiar with one, and yet that one is as brief and strange as it needs to be to keep me coming back: On Guarding the Intellect: Twenty-Seven Texts.  When he says “texts,” he really means paragraphs, which means this is the sort of thing you can gobble up in five or so minutes.  That said, it’s not an easy read.  Part of it comes from the language that he uses.  He talks about developing “the intellect” and avoiding “the passions,” which vaguely sounds like he wants you to learn a lot and not get excited about it.  But when we learn his vocabulary, we can see what he’s trying to get at.  When Isaiah talks about “the intellect,” he’s talking about the highest part of our soul, responsible for our journey towards God.  When he talks about “the passions,” he’s talking about the sins that distract us, ensnare us, and pull us away from God.  So really, he’s spending twenty-seven paragraphs trying to help us learn how to pursue God and avoid sin, and that’s something that any of us could use.

Part of what makes Isaiah’s advice so compelling is that it comes from a place so vastly removed from our own. He wrote over a thousand years ago, over a thousand miles away, in a life circumstance that none of us can really relate to (again, he was a monk, and if you look at his name, you can see he wasn’t a particularly social one).  There’s a real need to listen to Christians across time and space.  We all enter the world with certain blind spots that we inherit from the culture we’re born in.  There’s not a lot we can do on our own to see them; it would be like a fish critiquing water!  We know what we know, and it’s hard to address what we don’t know.  But when we read from people that wrote so long ago, they can see things that we don’t see and address realities we don’t regularly address.  

For example, one of Isaiah’s key interests?  Detachment.  In his words, detachment is “death in relation to every person or thing,” (text 25).  That sounds intense!  But consider how often we are shaped by desires related to the world around us.  We want certain people to admire us.  We want to acquire certain goods.  We want to be praised for our work and to avoid losing what we have.  Why?  Because too often, we think in terms of worldly success: we love to gain and hate to lose.  If we’re busy carrying that burden, how can we serve God effectively?  What if the things he asks of us involve loss?  What if we get a swollen ego from praise and start to see ourselves as greater than Him?  What if repeated failure (by the world’s standards) leads us to a level of depression that stops us from loving God well?  That’s why Isaiah urges us towards detachment.  The more we can remove ourselves from the love of the world’s things, the more we can keep ourselves away from the passions (sins in our heart) and grow towards God.

Isaiah never presents this as something that’s easy or normal.  To the contrary, he talks about it like it’s a great battle that we’re called to.  It’s all about “guarding our heart” against sin and “casting out” evils and “competing in the arena” of life.  Militaristic language for faith doesn’t see broad use today, but it really does capture the seriousness of sin.  Avoiding sin isn’t just a matter of politeness or decency; it’s a matter of life and death.  If we want to turn towards God, it’s not an uncontested goal, and the stakes are high.  While I imagine some might find that stressful, it’s a strangely comforting realization for me.  Life may not be easy, but it’s also not frivolous.

To a comfortable people living in a consumer culture, Isaiah’s advice is strange and wonderful.  It’s a wake up call, it’s encouragement, and it’s a reminder to let go of what we don’t need to be holding.  We all have burdens weighing us down.  The battle is letting go and looking to God.  If we can do that, there’s a life in Him just waiting for us.

Letters from Luther: The Struggles (and Gifts) of Wartburg

~ Vincent

The story of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms is the stuff of legend.  Who could forget that grand moment in which he refused the emperor’s demands and cast his whole hope on the Gospel?   You can just imagine his voice resounding as he spoke those legendary words:

Unless I am convinced by testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or someone can reasonably prove to me that I have erred (for I believe neither in the pope nor councils alone, since it has been established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures which I have cited at length, and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God.  I am neither able nor willing to recant.  Here I stand.  I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

What happened after the drama died down—after the Pope declared him a heretic, the Emperor branded him an outlaw, and he was whisked away to Wartburg Castle by his protector, Frederick the Wise, for a year of hiding?  What happened in the heart of someone so bold when he was brought low and forced into solitude?  The letters he wrote during his time in exile give us the opportunity to see a side of him that we don’t often consider.  Of course, in some letters, we see the Luther we know.  We see the hero!  He gives orders to his supporters in the Protestant movement, he encourages them to push forward and risk martyrdom if necessary, and he continually redirects them towards the love of Christ.  It’s inspiring!  But alongside all of that wild courage, we see the man beneath the cape, so to speak.  We see Luther wrestling with frustration and depression.  We see him rethinking his identity as a monk, a son, and a Christian.  Best of all, we get to see him announce what he produced during his time in isolation, despite being burdened with all of that.  It’s that vulnerable side of Luther that I want to explore, because I think that’s something we can all relate to.  I don’t know that most of us have ever been the symbol of a Christian movement and responsible for rallying the troops, but we have had periods of loneliness, frustration, isolation and introspection.  How did Luther handle a moment like that?  And how can we be inspired to do the same?

The depths of Luther’s depression are especially clear in his communications with his friend and fellow Protestant leader, Philip Melancthon.  Even as he encourages Philip onward with complete assurance of the righteousness of their cause in the eyes of God, he shares just how difficult it is for him to be sidelined and forced into inaction.  He writes:

Instead of being ardent in spirit I am the prey of sinful appetites – laziness and love of sleep. For eight days I have neither prayed nor studied, through fleshly temptations. If I do not improve, I shall go to Erfurt and consult the physicians, for I can endure my malady no longer. (Letter to Philip Melancthon, May 12, 1521)

For a man that previously lived as a monk and spent hours every day praying the Liturgy of the Hours, that’s a vast departure from his norms.  Here is a famous professor, renowned for his writings and his hours spent in prayer, and he can’t get out of bed.  He refers to his pain elsewhere as “unbearable” and describes a prevailing numbness.  He should be weeping!  He should be worried about people that need the Gospel and are being opposed by the powers that be!  But instead, he finds himself quoting Psalm 89:47: “For what futility you have created all humanity!”  I can’t help but appreciate Luther’s use of the psalms here.  In some spaces in the modern Christian world, there’s this relentless push to smile and be happy that makes those darker psalms almost incomprehensible, but Luther draws on those words to faithfully express the very real pain that he’s experiencing at Wartburg.

That pain does prove helpful in giving him a fuller picture of himself.  It’s common to place the end of Luther’s time as a monk in 1524 or 1525 when he formally took off his monastic habit and married Katharina von Bora, but his writings very clearly show that what officially ended later was something that he had already come to terms with in a letter to his father during his stay at Wartburg.  Historically, his dad wasn’t a big fan of his decision to become a monk, but he came to terms with it because he loved his son.  He never apologized for his decision to become a monk, but the way he frames it isn’t the same anymore.  In his earlier writings, it’s his way of giving his life over to God.  And that’s still true… partially.  God did call him into monasticism earlier, but he did it so that Luther could see “the slavery it brings” firsthand and help others flee its clutches:

Dear father, do you ask me to renounce monkish orders? But – God has been before you, and has brought me out Himself… and has placed me, as thou seest, not in the miserable, blasphemous service of monachism, but in the true divine worship, for no one can doubt that I serve God’s Word…  Therefore I send you this book, from which you will see how miraculously Christ has redeemed me from my monkish vows, and endowed me with such freedom, that although I am the servant of all men, I am subject to Him alone. For He is my sole Bishop, Abbot, Prior, Lord, Father, Master! I know no other. I trust He has deprived you of your son, so that, through me, He may help the sons of many others and prevent you rejoicing alone.  (Letter to Hans Luther, November 21, 1521.)

He included a copy of On Monastic Vows with the letter, which explicitly talks about the dangers of monasticism, the ways in which it directly opposes God’s word, and encourages monks and nuns to leave the orders.  Until this point, Luther’s logic clearly points in this direction.  It’s not a wild deviation from his course of thought, but his time in Wartburg was more than just a bleak experience of pain.  It was an opportunity for him to ask, “How do I respond to this?  Who am I, and who do I need to be?” He synthesized some of what he had only hinted at previously into a full, cohesive idea that he’d later live out.

But the greatest gem is yet to come.  If you’re living out your own Wartburg moment, note that there were even greater treasures Luther forged in this season.  It was during his time at Wartburg that Luther gave the world one of his greatest contributions to the Reformation.  As he was emerging back into the public world in March of 1522, Luther wrote this to fellow reformer Georg Spalatin:

I have not only translated the Gospel of St. John in my Patmos, but the whole of the New Testament, and Philip and I are now busy correcting it, and, with God’s help, it will be a splendid work. Meantime we need your help, to find out proper words, therefore be ready to supply us with the common terms for some things we require, but not those used at Court, for this book is to be written in the simplest language that all may understand it[.] (Letter to Georg Spalatin, March 30, 1522)

In the middle of the depression, the frustration, and the self-examination, Luther had produced a full translation of the New Testament into German.  Until this point, most Bibles were in Latin, making them accessible only to scholars and nobles.  The Luther Bible in common German was one of the first accessible copies of the Bible to make its way into the everyman’s hands.

In the silence of isolation, the agony of self-examination, and the frustration of every circumstance, good things can happen.  Trust God in all circumstances, and in Luther’s words to Melancthon, “I am praying for you.  Pray for me, and let’s share this burden,” (Letter to Melancthon, May 12, 1521).

What Do We Mean By ”Apocrypha?”

~ Vincent

It’s so important to know what a word means before you start disagreeing with someone about it.  I remember a whole debate that I had with an old roommate about the ethics of punching someone that was “imminently” about to attack one of your friends or you.  I insisted that you should always try to de-escalate things first while he insisted that it was unethical to let someone get punched because you weren’t willing to step in.  We went back and forth and back and forth for about an hour, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend.  It wasn’t until we started roleplaying different scenarios (yes, it went that far) that we realized that the way that we were defining “imminent” was very different.  I assumed that the hostile party had just started to become erratic and hostile, showing their fast escalation towards an attack, while he assumed that they were already deeply hostile and were literally about to throw a punch.  When we recognized the difference, we realized we didn’t disagree at all on any point, much to the continued annoyance of his girlfriend, who took the opportunity to say, “You two are so stupid.  I’ve been saying this all along.”  We weren’t arguing about ethics; we were arguing about a definition.  Unclear terms are the real culprit behind a lot of disagreements.

One theological term that is infamously unclear is “apocrypha.”  The word is varyingly defined as…

•Those extra books the Catholics have (Tobit, Judith, Maccabees 1 and 2, etc.)

•Any ancient Christian-y book that didn’t make it into the Bible (Book of Jasher, Book of Adam and Eve, Book of Enoch, etc.)

•Helpful ancient books that wise Christians know about (The Epistles of Clement, Shepherd of Hermas, etc.)

•Harmful ancient books that are mostly heretical (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas, Acts of Paul and Thecla, etc.)

That boils down to two key factors that our word is trying to get at: canonicity and doctrine.  First, it might be an attempt to discuss the canonical status of a book.  Maybe someone is trying to say it’s only canonical for Roman Catholics (or “deuterocanonical” to Protestants).  That’s one option.  But it might also be saying that a book is flat out non-canonical.  Or maybe the key concern isn’t about canonicity, but about the doctrine presented in a particular book.  That doctrine could be sound without being a piece of Scripture, or it might be horrendously heretical.  Again, the term can mean either of these things.  It’s saying something about canonicity and/or doctrine… but what exactly?  The vagueness in the term isn’t a modern invention;  it’s baked into the term from the earliest days of the Church.

Factor One: Deuterocanonical vs. Purely Non-Canonical

A fair understanding of the first factor (canonicity) can be uncovered by just looking at the meaning of the word “apocrypha”.  It comes from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφα (apokryphos), which means “hidden” or “secret.”  The word was originally used by ancient Christians (or heretics) to refer to books that were wise, but had somehow been obscured because they represented a threat to authority.  It should be obvious how often this term was used by heretics to introduce “sacred” literature that violated church doctrine.  It’s not hard to find early Church Fathers railing against apocryphal books, meaning those things that were obviously non-canonical and harmful.  A good example can be found in that famous hunter of heresy , Irenaeus, when he’s against the Gnostics:

“[T]hey adduce an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish men, and of such as are ignorant of the Scriptures of truth.”

Irenaeus, Against Heresies, (1, 20, 1)

Cleary, he uses the word to warn Christians about harmful, non-Canonical books.  Another good example comes from that rhetorician of Carthage, Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul.  He notes that some philosophers arrived at partial truths about the world by using non-Christian sources such as Greek myths, but it doesn’t concern him because they don’t actually seem to hold those myths in particularly high esteem:

“[T]hese philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal, certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in this present age; because we do not forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world with cunning knowledge”

Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, 2

Again, apocryphal here means any book that’s not a canonical part of Christian scripture.  Clearly that is indeed a valid, historic, Christian use of the term. 

At the same time, we can find Church Fathers that use the term to refer to just the opposite on this particular axis!  Some use it to refer to consent that would go on to be accepted in the Catholic canon and not the Jewish or Protestant canon.  For those that might be unfamiliar with this kind of so-called “apocryphal” content, the Catholic Bible contains a number of additions in the Old Testament that don’t appear in the Jewish or Protestant Bibles.  Why?  Early Christians often spoke Greek and consequently read Scripture from a Greek copy of the Old Testament called the Septuagint.  The Septuagint contained seven extra books (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch) and a few additional chapters in the books of Daniel and Esther.  Even though a broad segment of Greek speaking Jews that used the Septuagint for Scripture readings also considered this content legitimate, ultimately the authorities in Israel neither used it nor considered it canonical.  As time went on, Jews used the content less and less, returning to the Hebrew Scriptures, and Christians used it more and more.  Eventually, there was debate in the Church about it.  Why were Christians using versions of the Jewish Scriptures that the Jews didn’t actually think was canonical?  Why use the septuagint at all instead of something that would have circulated in the region that Jesus actually lived?  Should the church remove that extra content that had been used for generations?  Or did it still count as sacred Scripture?   In his Letter to Africanus, the ever-abstract and theological genius, Origen, argued for the legitimacy of the story of Susanna (a story from the additional chapters in Daniel):

But probably to this you will say, Why then is the History not in their Daniel, if, as you say, their wise men hand down by tradition such stories? The answer is, that they hid from the knowledge of the people as many of the passages which contained any scandal against the elders, rulers, and judges, as they could, some of which have been preserved in uncanonical writings (Apocrypha).

Origen, Letter to Africanus, 9

A word that was elsewhere used to condemn non-canonical writing is now used to point at the additional Septuagint literature as actually purer, uncorrupted, Scripture, hidden away from the tyranny of Israelite authorities.  You can see that from the earliest days of the faith and in the highest circles of authority, the word is used in multiple senses to talk about the canonicity of sacred writings.

Factor Two: Safe or Dangerous Doctrine

We’ve seen how the term historically was used in different circumstances to refer to different aspects of a document’s canonicity, but that’s not all it could do!  Apocryphal could also be a way to discuss expectations for the reliability of a document’s doctrine.  Obviously, Irenaeus and Tertullian used the term to refer to books that were actively heretical and not worth reading, and Origen used it to refer to books that should be considered canonical and are doctrinally pure, but we can also find people that use the term to refer to things that aren’t dangerous, per se, but don’t have any claim towards anything resembling canon.

The compiler of the Vulgate, Jerome, is a perfect illustration of this still further way of using the word “apocryphal.” In the fourth century, Jerome was debating the details of the emerging Christian canon, and he objected to the inclusion of both deuterocanonical content and certain other books that had arisen popularly in key Christian communities.  He listed the Old Testament books he thought ought to be canonical (identical to the modern Protestant and historic Jewish canon), and then makes this note:

Whatever falls outside these must be set apart among the Apocrypha.  Therefore, wisdom, which is commonly entitled Solomon’s, with the book of Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith, Tobias, and the Shepherd are not in the canon.

Jerome, Preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings

At first glance, this appears to be little more than a further exploration of canon.  Jerome is condemning the Catholic epistles to a non-canon status, just like Irenaeus and Tertullian did with dangerous books.  But Jerome doesn’t have that same attitude of suspicion and frustration when regarding these books.  To the contrary, he seems to like them.  He occasionally quotes them in his other writings.  Jerome has the utmost respect for some of these documents that he’s calling apocryphal; he just doesn’t think they’re canonical.  That’s a far cry from Tertullian and Irenaeus’s use of the term, which was essentially “horrible heresy carriers.”  He uses the term “apocryphal” to refer to books that have positive, doctrinally-sound additions to the Christian life.

To recap, we’ve established that even from the beginning of the church, the word “apocryphal” could refer to a writing that is either canonical or deuterocanonical/Catholic, or it could be a reference to the reliability of the doctrine within a non-canonical book. It’s a broad, flexible term! And it get’s thrown around pretty readily among church people that are exploring non-canonical writings enough that it causes issues from time to time.  When you’re talking with fellow Christians about apocrypha, just remember how much history this particular term has and be careful to define what you mean when you use it. It might just save you an argument.