The Faith Once Delivered

The commemorations of the Apostles and Evangelists are spread throughout the course of the Church’s year, and they conclude on 28th October (Monday) with the feast of Simon and Jude – the other Simon (not Peter), and the other Judas (not Iscariot). On this feast we give thanks for the completion of the foundations of the walls of the new Jerusalem: “for the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14). By the finished work of redemption Christ has brought the faithful “unto Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22). For having returned to the Father, Christ commissioned the Apostles to be his witnesses and emissaries in the world. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). So it is that we who receive their witness in faith who are “built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20).

The foundations of the city are complete, in the witness of the apostles to the finished work and final revelation of Christ. Yet precisely because they are foundations, on them we must be built (in faith) and also build (in teaching). For that work Christ has sent the “Spirit of truth”, whose mission is to glorify Christ, by bringing his works and words to remembrance, thus teaching and guiding his disciples into all truth. Bible-only fundamentalists deny that there can be any building on the foundations, that the church has any teaching authority (even under Scripture). At the other extreme, liberals pay scant attention to the foundations, and often build on the shifting sand of human opinion and the vagaries of experience. Papists add foundations for which there is no warrant of Scripture, like the papal supremacy. What an authentic building looks like appears in the teaching of the ancient catholic councils, creeds, and fathers, which were led by the Spirit to clarify the meaning and implications of Scripture’s witness, above all the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, Sin and Grace, the Church, and the Sacraments. Further important refinements and clarifications were made in later ages, by the medieval doctors and the reformation divines; for the work of building on those foundations is never complete, as the church under the Spirit continues to work out the meaning and implications of what Jude calls the “faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (3). Yet always and ever the work of building must be made in line with the apostolic foundations, and where necessary reformed and corrected by them. So however great our reverence is and should be for the great teachers of the faith, who have opened our eyes to the Scripture’s teaching, their authority remains subordinate to that of Scripture. As the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum said, “the sacred Words [of Scripture] should be the rule and indicator of all human doctrine for us. Even the fathers themselves were reluctant to grant themselves such an honor and requently warned the reader that he should admit his own [i..e. the father’s] opinions and interpretations only to the extent that he was aware that they agreed with the sacred Words”.

That is the first lesson of this feast. The other is the necessity, as Jude puts it, “that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). Likewise in the ancient gospel lesson for the feast (John 15:17-27) Jesus tells the disciples at the last supper “Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.” The witness of the apostles and of the Spirit in the church is ever contested and embattled. In the faithful church, therefore, we look for a readiness to suffer for the truth – but not to persecute; earnest contention for the faith once delivered – but not contentiousness. As Cranmer’s admirable collect for the feast of the apostles reminds us, the point of being built on these foundations is “so to joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee”.