What is CCT (Classical Christian Thought)?
Welcome to Classical Christian Thought (CCT)!
CCT is an institute committed to providing exclusive course content on particular subjects within Christian theology and history. We might do well in first asking "what is classical Christian thought"? Here, we take from Ronald E. Heine (PhD, University of Illinois) who said in his Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Baker Academic) that for something to be called "classical," it must have endured. He says, "If Shekespeare's plays had not been read and performed after their first performance in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, they would not be considered classical." To speak then of classical Christian thought is to enter into the world of thought that has long endured throughout the centuries by those who called themselves Christian. However, many people call themselves Christians so we should define the word "Christian" here.
A Christian is someone who has both heard and believed in the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Further, a Christian is someone who has entered into the catholic church. Now here, let's define catholic" since we don't necessarily mean, strictly speaking, the Catholic (capital C) Church. What is meant here is the ancient adjective that the early Christians used when they said someone entered the catholic church. The word "catholic" means universal, whole, or fullness. The Greek term is καθολικός (katholikos), a combination of κατά (kata) 'according to' and ὅλος (holos) ' the whole'. The Latin catholicus (universal) takes from this. In Syriac it is ܩܬܘܠܝܩܝܬܐ (Qaṯolīqayṯo). The word "church" comes from the Greek εκκλησία and the Latin ecclesia (Syriac ܥܕܬܐ/ʿĪṯo). The concept is rooted in the creative purpose of God in making mankind in His image in the Garden of Eden:
"So God created man in His image... Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" (Gen. 1:27-28)
This fruitfulness, multiplicity, filling, domination, and subduing of all creation is a catholic project. God originally intended the earth to be a planetary temple of His presence ruled and governed by His image-bearers, the Kings and Queens of creation. This is further testified in Psalm 8:5-10:
"What is man that thou art mindful of him?... Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor: And hast set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields. The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea. O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in all the earth!"
Obviously, through the fall of man into sin and death, this vocation has been interrupted, a point to which we will return below. For now, a point to observe is this inclusion of all sentient life on the planet. That is just symbolic of universal dominion. We know that because in Hebrews 2:9, St. Paul says that Jesus Christ, the true man, has been given universal dominion, crowned with glory and honor, and has all things under his feet. In 1 Corinthians 15:25-27, St. Paul further states that all things will be put under the feet of Christ's reign. Christians enjoy the hope and anticipation of having all things put under their feet (Rom. 16:20). That is the ultimate purpose of creation.
Jesus Christ is the ultimate catholic ruler. When presenting Himself to the Apostles after His resurrection, he proclaims, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations" (Matt. 28:18-19). That is the catholic commission.
I mentioned above how the word catholic is rooted in God's purpose in the Garden of Eden. We get further testimony throughout the Law and Prophets of a coming catholicization that would characterize the salvation of mankind. In the promise given to Abraham, we read: "In you all nations of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen. 12:3). That is, through Abraham's genealogy, all humanity will be blessed (i.e., a catholic blessing). We know in the New Testament, this catholic blessing is the gift of salvation in Christ (c.f. Ge. 3:8-9, 14). This promise recurs throughout the sacred scriptures. In the prophet Zechariah 9:9-10, we read a prophecy of the coming Messiah and His reign:
"Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey... He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth."
Christians understand this to have been fulfilled in Christ (c.f. Mark 11:1-10). And the Messianic reign, as you can read, is a catholic reign. And therefore, the catholic commission is the beginning of Christ's messianic reign. This is God's purpose in Genesis finding its fruition. The gathering back of all of Adam's lost children into one human family through His only begotten Son Jesus Christ is the mission of God, and therefore is a catholic mission.
A catholic Christian, therefore, is one who has believed in the catholic Gospel, has entered the catholic Church, and participates in this catholic plan of God.
It does not stop here.
The promise of Christ was that His catholic Church would spread in a concrete historical manner. He said: "But you will receive power, the Holy Spirit having come upon you. And you will be My witnesses— both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). In other words, the catholic church is not to be abstracted from history and geography. Rather, is is quite concretely historical and geographic. It begins in Jerusalem and will spread from that place (A.D. 33) unto the ends of the earth. That means it will pass through the terrain and the people-groups of the Middle-East out through the Greco-Roman Empire and eventually to the very ends of planet earth.
This concretization of the catholic church was understood by prominent early Christian theologians to have certain entailments. First, it means that you can't just self-proclaim yourself a catholic Christian. Rather, you have to show that you are part of this universal mission that had its concrete beginning in Jerusalem with the Apostles and endured without abrogation from thenceforward until the geographic flowering of all lands. Moreover, this mission from Jerusalem thence-forward had certain rules of propagation and advancement that required an Apostolic license to replenish new coverage in new lands at later times. This is called Apostolic succession by theologians.
For example, St. Irenaeus of Lyons (+202) wrote:
"The church, although scattered throughout the whole world... has received from the apostles and their disciples the faith in one God the Father almighty, 'who made heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them... and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the ways of salvation and the coming of our beloved Christ Jesus the Lord and his birth from the virgin and his suffering and resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven in the flesh, and his return from heaven in the glory of the Father to 'sum up all things' [Eph. 1:10] and to raise all human flesh to that 'every knee might bow of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess' [Phil 2:10-11] to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Savior and King according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father... The church, although scattered in the whole world, as we said previously, has received the message and this faith and carefully preserves it as if it lived in one house... The churches situated in Germany haven't believed or handed on anything different, nor those in Spain or France, or those in the East, or in Egypt or Libya, or those situated in the mid-part of the world... Like the sun... which is one and the same in the whole world, so too the light, the message of the truth, shines everywhere and enlightens all people who want to come to the knowledge of the Church." (Against Heresies 1.10.1.2)
Thus says Irenaeus, the early doctor of catholic doctrine.
So, to be a catholic Christian is to be a part of this catholic Church, and to be a part of this one has to be included in the confessional society that makes part of this concrete, historical, geographic, and Apostolic community that holds to one single deposit of faith. Invariably, that gets us to the concept of tradition (Greek: παράδοσις; Latin: traditio; Syriac: ܣܵܦܝܵܢܘܼܬ݂ܵܐ). But the reader should not be drawn away. Historically, Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants have all accepted the need for tradition. Protestants, of course, never attributed any infallible protection to tradition, but they nonetheless upheld it as essential to the propagation of the Christian religion. Nonetheless, for tradition to be authentic and truly rooted in Christ, it must conform to the aforesaid criteria. In other words, it must conform to the tradition of the catholic society that emanated from Jerusalem through the Apostles and their successors unto all nations outward in an unbroken and unified way.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (+386) speaks of this when he exhorts his students to not simply join any community that calls itself Christian:
"[...] if ever you are sojourning in cities, inquire not simply where the Lord's House is (for the other sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens houses of the Lord), nor merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Church, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God." (Catechetical Lectures, 18)
As can be seen, catholicism was not "universal" in the sense that it was everywhere because anywhere people call themselves Christians, there is the catholic church. Far from it. Catholicism was universal, but according to the Apostolic, confessional, historical, and geographic criteria that have been described thus far. Thus, by the time the Roman Empire had been sufficiently "baptized" by the Christian religion, Emperor Theodosius II issued a decree (Edict of Thessalonica) in A.D. 380 which states the following:
"It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our clemency and moderation, should continue the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the [Roman] Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one Deity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of heaven, will decide to inflict." (Theodosian Code XVI.i.2)
The classical Christian is the catholic Christian, and the catholic Christian is the one who believes in the Apostolic tradition of the catholic church of which he or she is a baptized member. Further, the catholic Church is that society that perpetuates the original Apostolic community beginning in Jerusalem, and through unbroken succession, reached out, and continues to reach out, unto all nations. Therefore, classical Christian thought is the study of the beliefs that have characterized this society from the 1st century, from the holy day of Pentecost to this very day.
"Ok, what does that mean today? Catholic? Eastern Orthodox? Oriental Orthodox? Assyrian Church of the East? Lutheran? Anglican? Methodist? Presbyterian? Baptist? Evangelical?"
The good news is that CCT is a platform dedicated to the exploration of all of these. However, the pre-dominate perspective will be in defense of Catholicism. Having said that, the spectrum of study will be extremely wide and easily accessible for non-Catholics who are interested in the Apostolic Tradition and Church History.
Subjects of interest are Old and New Testament studies, soteriology, ecclesiology, Christology, Ecumenical Councils, sacramentology, and in-depth examinations of what divides historic Christendom between Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, the historic Reformed churches, and the wider world of Protestant Evangelicalism. One can expect fair and balanced treatments of the primary sources beginning with the Holy Bible and Sacred Tradition and the receptive interpretations in Latin, Greek, and Syriac theologies. In addition, the rather explosive developments of the second millennium caused by the Greek-Latin schism that created the scholastic west on one side and medieval Byzantium on the other will be a particular area of focus. Inevitably, this will require also diving into the geo-political and cultural backgrounds throughout these centuries, as well as touching upon the revolutionary responses that took place flowing out from the Renaissance, European reforms, and the collapse of religion into skepticism and secularism. This will come in the form of lectures, Q&A sessions, round table discussions, 1 on 1 tutorials, and exclusive access to academic interviews.