Tag Archives: rule of truth

Nailing Jelly to the Wall

Recently, while having a conversation with my Church History/Historical Theology professor about the changes in theology that Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430) either brought into or caused to become far more widespread in the church, I expressed the idea that we need to examine and carefully consider what the church believed on various articles of belief prior to the time of Augustine, because the basic contents of the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3), and “the rule of faith” were formed and delivered to the early church before Augustine had even been born. My professor responded by saying that the problem with such an idea is that defining exactly what the “rule of truth” or “rule of faith” consisted of in the church of the first three centuries was like trying to nail jelly to the wall—meaning that it was no easy task, or that it was something very difficult or something next to impossible to accomplish. And while I believe there is some truth to what he said (because the rule of truth was variously stated depending on both who the writer and what the circumstance was), I also believe that there is still a great deal of value in our knowing what the most universal consensus was in the church of the first three centuries on how to understand or interpret the Scriptures as a whole and especially the various passages on which there are so many different and even contradictory interpretations floating around within Christianity today.

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