What constitutes a Christian community? This is a question as old as the faith itself, but in this postmodern milieu the question is again being asked by many and answered in a variety of ways. Some argue that the way forward is to look back and attempt, insofar as it is possible, to recapture a premodern faith, whereas others advocate for an entirely new expression of Christianity fit for a post-Enlightenment, postmodern, and increasingly pluralistic world. In the first instance people cannot, unfortunately, will themselves to be pre-Enlightenment—let alone premodern; just as the person who emerges from Plato’s cave cannot unsee the sun, people cannot will themselves backward to ignorance. In the second instance, the way forward offered is nothing less than an attempt to remake Christianity in a postmodern image, an objective destined to fail because it is a forsaking of the church’s first love, Christ (cf. Rev 2:4), who is the fullness of revelation both then and now (cf. Heb 1:1–3a). A solution to this existential problem lies, however, in the regula fidei (“rule of faith”), which “developed from the apostolic kerygma” about Christ.¹Joseph F. Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” Theological Studies 29.3 (1968): 454–55. The rule of faith, like Scripture, is a product of the apostolic preaching that reveals who Christ is and the doctrines to which Christians must hold. This essay therefore argues that the rule of faith should be the primary hermeneutical key for defining doctrinal language in the church, establishing central truths as boundaries for orthodoxy in submission to the authority of Scripture so as to faithfully preserve “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3 ESV). This rule of faith thus provides the foundation of the Christian metanarrative and the framework for orthodox scriptural interpretation. In other words, the rule of faith determines identity because it contains the content—the very substance—of Christianity.

This thesis will be worked out in four parts: first, I review the history of the rule of faith and discuss what makes it authoritative; second, I survey select modern interpretations of the rule of faith; third, I explore the use of the rule of faith in patristic and modern hermeneutics; and, finally, I argue for the contemporary use of the rule of faith. Before diving into the primary subject matter of this paper, however, some contextualizing background is necessary.

1. Background

Although there is some debate as to what initiated this iteration of the dispute over Christian identity, a good place to start is in the field of philosophy. The Enlightenment, with its hyper-rationalism, had already challenged the traditional Christian metaphysics which had guided the faith and interpretation of Holy Scripture for well over a millennium. Many thinkers over the course of the following centuries have tried to “rationalize” and “demythologize” Christianity and its sacred text in an attempt to shore it up. Naturally, this led to a plethora of issues that Christians are still reckoning with today—not least an incessantly pervading Deism, particularly among believers in the global north-west. As large as the existential threat of the Enlightenment was, however, to a thoroughly premodern faith like Christianity, the bigger threat did not reveal itself until the late-nineteeth and early-twentieth centuries. That threat is termed the linguistic turn:

The linguistic turn was an unassailable and wholesale sea-change in twentieth-century philosophy that captured two fundamental insights: the claim that all knowledge is dependent upon its expression in language (all thought is language-dependent) … and the goal of philosophy is to provide an understanding of our conceptual schema in order to resolve problems that arise from the misuse of words.²Michael A Peters, “The Last Post? Post-Postmodernism and the Linguistic U-Turn,” Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 12 (2013): 36.

Philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein made the case that since philosophy is all about language, the discipline should be understood as “the primary tool of clarification of the process of thinking.”³Aleksandar S. Santrac, “Untying the Knots of Thinking: Wittgenstein and the Role of Philosophy in Christian Faith,” In Die Skriflig 49.1 (2015): 3. The result of such an understanding of philosophy was the upending of its traditional categories: instead of metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, and so forth, everything was reduced to an exploration of language.⁴Santrac, “Untying the Knots of Thinking,” 2. This exploration of language usually came in the form of “language games,” the unfortunate result of which meant “that objective certainty does not exist, and no proposition is limited to a single meaning, because every meaning is dependent on its context.”⁵Santrac, “Untying the Knots of Thinking,” 3. Consequently, all human knowledge was effectively reduced “to a text and narrative,” paving the way for the contemporary unholy matrimony of Friedrich Nietzsche’s nihilism and Michel Foucault’s understanding of power.⁶Peters, “The Last Post?” 40. This marriage, which presupposes that there is no objective truth and that everything is ultimately about power and thus control over language and narrative, is arguably the progenitor of the existential question of Christian identity. Thus, Pontius Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38a), could now essentially be answered, “Whatever I say it is.” One need not search any further than the ideology-driven writings of the theology faculties of numerous academic institutions, the corresponding meteoric rise of alternative (heterodox) interpretations of Scripture, and the reversal of age-old doctrines by various ecclesial bodies, to see just what this linguistic turn has done. Subjectivism reigns supreme, just as in the days of the judges of Israel (cf. Judg 17:6)—the grand metanarrative of catholic, orthodox Christianity has seemingly collapsed.⁷Paul Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” TJ 28.1 (2007): 85.

This naturally leads to the question, What use is the Bible, the Christian collection of sacred writings, if those writings can simply be interpreted however a person pleases? It is not hard to see why the contemporary church is in the midst of a hermeneutical and corresponding identity crisis.⁸Mark Randall James, “The Beginning of Wisdom: On the Postliberal Interpretation of Scripture,” Modern Theology 33.1 (2017): 16–17. In particular, this puts Protestants in an awkward spot because the entire Reformation is predicated on the doctrine of sola scriptura—Scripture alone—and the perspicuity of those Scriptures.⁹Martin Luther, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, ed. Ewald M. Plass (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1959), 265. This is why Lutheran theologians like Mark Tranvik, among others, would say that “God’s Word—preached and visible—is the remedy for the rampant subjectivism that plagues our culture and our congregations.”¹⁰Mark D. Tranvik, “Luther, Gerhard Forde and the Gnostic Threat to the Gospel,” LQ 22 (2008): 415. But how can this be the case when interpretation is seemingly at the whim of the hearer? In many ways this is the manifestation of the hermeneutical enthusiasm Martin Luther was keen to keep at bay.

The solution, according to some, is to point to an interpretative authority: a magisterium, defined as “an institution in the continuing life of the church that is credited with Spirit-led authority to discern the underlying scriptural and creedal truth.”¹¹Robert W. Jenson, Canon and Creed, Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 68. For instance, the Roman Catholics claim the following:

“The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.¹²Pope John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger, eds., Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 27.

Now, this of course makes any Protestant shudder, as it effectively puts Scripture and its interpretation in the control of a select few. It did not take long for this system to break down and for all sorts of false teachings to enter the church—hence the Reformation, which called for the magisterium to be subject to the Scriptures.¹³Luther, What Luther Says, 89. Ironically, many Protestants opted to keep a form of the episcopal magisterium in their own churches, and several of these have also led their flock into grievous, anti-scriptural error, particularly surrounding issues of human sexuality and gender identity. Even the Protestants that do not have episcopates have essentially turned their theology faculties into a quasi-magisterium, an approach that has proven dangerous in its own way, as theology faculties, too, are made up of sinful humans.¹⁴Jenson, Canon and Creed, 68. Regardless, the point remains that the solution does not lie in a magisterium, whatever shape it may take.

Another solution, then, is needed, and so across history some have claimed that it is the ecumenical councils which are the binding authority of the church and the final word on the right interpretation of Scripture, a viewpoint called Conciliarism. Unfortunately, this comes with its own set of issues. As Luther points out regarding the origin of ecclesial councils:

[The Devil] raised a dreadful brawl about Scripture and created many sects, heresies, and factions among Christians. And since every faction claimed Scripture for its position and explained it in harmony with its view, it finally began no longer to rate as an authority and ultimately even acquired the name of a book for heretics, a book from which all heresy arises, because all heretics have recourse to Scripture…. He made Scripture so suspect among Christians that they regarded it as pure poison, against which they must defend themselves…. After Scripture had in this way become a torn net, so that no one allowed himself to be held by it but everybody broke a hole in the direction he wanted to go and followed his own interpretation, twisting and turning Scripture as he pleased, then Christians knew of no other way to remedy the matter than to convene many councils. In these they set up many external commands and ordinances besides Scripture in order to hold people together in the face of these divisions. From this attempt (although they meant well) comes the saying: Scripture is not enough; one must also have the commands and explanations of the councils and the fathers, because the Holy Spirit did not reveal everything to the apostles but reserved certain things for the fathers. This view spread until it finally developed into the papacy, in which nothing has authority except the commandments and comments of men in accordance with the shrine of the holy father’s heart.¹⁵Luther, What Luther Says, 104. Much more of Luther’s thoughts on this topic can be found in volume 41 of Luther’s Works.

Once again, the same problem arises as that in the magisterium; the councils, as great as they were and as much as they offered and continue to offer exceptional guidance in many matters of the Christian faith, are not infallible and did err because they are made up of fallen people. Hence why, early in the Reformation, Conciliarism was ultimately rejected along with the magisterium as an ultimate authority and was made subject to Scripture.¹⁶Luther, What Luther Says, 89.

So, what then is the solution? What authority can ensure the right interpretation of Scripture? The answer is that it is ultimately the believing community, the invisible church catholic, which determines the meaning of Scripture, because she alone has been enlightened by the Truth who is the hermeneutical key: Christ (cf. Jude 1:3).¹⁷James, “The Beginning of Wisdom,” 10–11. This is where the rule of faith comes in. Without getting too deep into defining the rule of faith at this point, it is important to note that what is not meant is “Tradition” as articulated by the Roman Catholics.¹⁸Pope John Paul II and Ratzinger, Catechism, 25. “‘In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them ‘their own position of teaching authority.’ Indeed, ‘the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.’ This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through Tradition, ‘the Church, in her doctrine, life, and worship perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.’ ‘The sayings of the holy Fathers are a witness to the life-giving presence of this Tradition, showing how its riches are poured out in the practice and life of the Church, in her belief and her prayer.’” What is meant by the rule of faith and how it is to be used, however, will be explored in the rest of this paper, beginning with a survey of its history.

2. The History and Authority of the Rule of Faith

It is important to begin by noting that “the Rule [of Faith] appears in an apologetic context addressing the question of Christian identity and normativity.”¹⁹Tomas Bokedal, “The Rule of Faith: Tracing Its Origins,” JTI 7 (2013): 237. This is not the origin of the rule of faith, as if it did not exist before this point, but it is where what was implicit becomes explicit because of the challenges faced by the fledging Christian movement in the second century—particularly the threat of Gnosticism. Since the rule of faith was not necessarily definitively codified at this point, it can be difficult to define; however, it can be loosely understood as a “theological catchphrase” which encompassed “the totality of Christian faith/truth as set down in Scripture, baptismal confession, and apostolic teaching.”²⁰Bokedal, “The Rule of Faith,” 233–34. Or, even more broadly, ‘“the rule of faith’ refers to any shorthand summary of ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3).”²¹Scott R. Swain, “A Ruled Reading Reformed: The Role of the Church’s Confession in Biblical Interpretation,” IJST 14 (2012): 187. Accordingly, to the church fathers, to appeal to the rule of faith was to appeal to a condensed version of “the whole body of doctrines and beliefs comprising the Christocentrically interpreted Old Testament and the writings of the apostles, the kerygmatic, catechetical, and liturgical doctrinal elements of the Christian message,” the sum and core of the faith.²²Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 449. As such, the rule of faith was never independent of Scripture; rather, there was an intimate and indissoluble relationship between the two in the patristic mind.²³Bokedal, “The Rule of Faith,” 249, 254. Scripture and apostolic teaching provided the substance of the rule of faith, and in turn the rule of faith helped guide the right interpretation of Scripture.²⁴Jenson, Canon and Creed, 34, 41. Although this appears on the surface to be little more than circular reasoning, a deeper dive into how the rule of faith was understood and utilized by the church fathers will reveal the profundity and nuance of this system of thought. Such an exploration must necessarily begin with none other than the great saint, Irenaeus.

Saint Irenaeus was bishop of Lyons during the tumultuous second century and was one of the fiercest critics of Gnosticism and an articulator and defender of what would eventually be considered orthodoxy in later centuries.²⁵J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: HarperOne, 1978), 38–39. Gnosticism is hard to define because there is no single confession to point to; however, there are four beliefs that most Gnostics held in common: (1) they presupposed radical dualism, which divided spirit and matter and claimed that matter was “intrinsically evil”; (2) they did not attribute creation of the material world to the supreme deity but to a lower entity; (3) they believed every man had a spiritual element which desired to be freed from matter; and finally, (4) they believed in a mediator who would help them to ascend back to the spiritual world, their true home.²⁶Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 26.

Returning to Irenaeus, it is worth noting that he had an exceptional spiritual pedigree as he was trained by Saint Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who himself was a disciple of the apostle John. This meant that Irenaeus was only two generations removed from Jesus himself and only one generation removed from an apostle, meaning it is reasonable to assume that Irenaeus received the oral tradition of the Christian faith in virtually the purest form possible and likely had access to, or at least knowledge of, many documents that would eventually form the New Testament canon. As such, believers across the centuries have tended to take the writings of Irenaeus very seriously, and rightfully so, as in his works we clearly see the core of the Christian faith articulated—though obviously somewhat less refined. Take for example how Irenaeus summarizes the faith in On the Apostolic Preaching:

And this is the order of our faith, the foundation of [the] edifice and the support of [our] conduct: God, the Father, uncreated, uncontainable, invisible, one God, the Creator of all: this is the first article of our faith. And the second article: the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was revealed by the prophets according to the character of their prophecy and according to the nature of the economies of the Father, by whom all things were made, and who, in the last times, to recapitulate all things, became a man amongst men, visible and palpable, in order to abolish death, to demonstrate life, and to effect communion between God and man. And the third article: the Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied and the patriarchs learnt the things of God and the righteous were led in the path of righteousness, and who, in the last times, was poured out in a new fashion upon the human race renewing man, throughout the world, to God.²⁷St. Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching 1.1.6, ed. and trans. John Behr, Popular Patristics Series 17r (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997).

Even a relatively untrained layperson can see in this passage the archaic form of what would eventually become the codified beliefs of the church: namely, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. Irenaeus knew the Christian faith and he knew it well, but how could he defend it?

As a result of the gnostic threat, Irenaeus was keen not simply to live out the faith but to articulate as precisely as possible its content.²⁸St. Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching, Preface:3. One scholar points out that “Irenaeus knew very well that the Gnostics claimed to know secret traditions allegedly coming from the apostles, and by appealing to those traditions they twisted the Scriptures.”²⁹Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 455. To counteract this, Irenaeus made the following appeal in his most famous work, Against Heresies:

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith…. The Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth.³⁰St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.12.1–2 (ANF 1:333).

What Irenaeus is referring to here is none other than what Jude 3 calls “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”³¹St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.4.2. Irenaeus is appealing to the rule of faith, which he claimed was “entirely public and accessible to everyone, transmitted by [the apostles] to the churches they had founded,” contrary to the gnostic claim that some of the revelation about Christ was preserved for only a select few.³²Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 466. It was this apostolic, public, and universal rule of faith which could prevent distorted interpretations of Scripture: Scripture being in Irenaeus’s mind “the foundation and pillar of our faith.”³³Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 38–39; Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 445.

This brings up an important question about the relationship between Scripture and the rule of faith (sometimes referred to as tradition, though not to be confused with the Roman Catholic understanding and usage of the word) in the mind of church fathers like Irenaeus. A particularly insightful answer to this can be found in the work of patristics scholar Joseph Mitros:

If we ask what served for Irenaeus as the norm of the Church’s teaching and the basis of her faith, the answer would be: both Scripture and tradition. Scripture is ‘the basis and support of our faith,’ and the tradition is substantially identical with the canon of the (apostolic) truth. Which of them is the superior or the ultimate norm? He never asked this question (as a matter of fact, no Father ever asked it); understandably, then, he never gave a direct and explicit answer to it. Indirectly, however, he seems to have used the Scriptures as the last court of appeal. As we have seen, he calls Scripture the foundation of Christian faith, defends orthodoxy by appealing to Holy Writ, and views even the canon of the truth as a condensation of Scripture.³⁴Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 455.

In other words, Scripture and the rule of faith in the patristic mind worked together because they were both deposits which preserved and expressed the same truth, and both had authority because they ultimately came from the same source, Jesus Christ.³⁵Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 457. That said, Scripture was the highest authority, but for church fathers like Irenaeus it had “to be interpreted in the light of tradition by the Church, which is the home of the Holy Spirit,” otherwise readers and hearers could be led astray following their own imaginations rather than being beholden to truth.³⁶Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 448, 457–59, 462–63.

One of Irenaeus’s contemporaries, Tertullian, also contended for Christianity by appealing to the rule of faith. Many of his arguments about and conceptions of the Rule of Faith, however, mirrored that of Irenaeus’s, so for the purposes of this paper it would be redundant to cover him in detail.³⁷Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 39; Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 453. Instead, there will be a concise note about an influential thinker from the succeeding generation named Origen. As one scholar states: “to Origen, the consensus of the belief of the church, based on the Scriptures and the oral tradition, was of paramount importance.”³⁸Albert C. Outler, “Origen and the Regulae Fidei,” CH 8.3 (1939): 220. Like his predecessors, Origen recognized the centrality of the rule of faith, believing that “assent to it is the sole avenue of approach to the higher knowledge of God which reaches over and beyond simple faith.”³⁹Outler, “Origen and the Regulae Fidei,” 221. As a result of this viewpoint, some have argued that trying to read and understand Origen is essentially impossible without first acknowledging the place of the rule of faith in his thinking.⁴⁰Outler, “Origen and the Regulae Fidei,” 218. In this way, Origen represents the further solidification of the rule of faith’s role in Christianity, notably in the task of theology and scriptural interpretation.

A final church father worth briefly surveying is Saint Augustine because he will provide insight into the evolution and use of the rule of faith in a post-ecumenical council context as his life began after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and his conversion and ministry was not until after the First Council of Constantinople in 381. As his predecessors did, Augustine affirmed that Scripture and the rule of faith had the same source, and he repeatedly utilized the rule of faith to combat the controversies and heresies of his own day.⁴¹Roland J. Teske, “Augustine’s Appeal to Tradition,” in Tradition and the Rule of Faith in the Early Church, ed. Ronnie J. Rombs and Alexander Y. Hwang (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 153, 172. In the words of one scholar, “the Rule of Faith very often functioned as an interpretive device for Augustine, in which the apostolic faith was summarized and could be brought to bear on pressing theological or exegetical questions.”⁴²Bryan M. Litfin, “The Rule of Faith in Augustine,” ProEccl 14 (2005): 88. This is very evident in Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine where he asserts that “if, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church.”⁴³St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 3.2.2 (NPNF¹ 2:556–57). Augustine did not believe, however, that the rule of faith could answer every question or hermeneutical problem; rather, it provided a reliable foundation and some sound boundaries to safeguard the core truths of Christianity, leaving a great deal of flexibility on other matters.⁴⁴Litfin, “The Rule of Faith in Augustine,” 89–90, 95, 97. In other words, the rule of faith for Augustine functioned “as a limitation on interpretive fancy, while not prohibiting interpretive variety.”⁴⁵Litfin, “The Rule of Faith in Augustine,” 100. Obviously, given the status and influence of Augustine, this has a profound and lasting impact on the task of hermeneutics, at least in the Western church, effectively until the advent of modern hermeneutics. Having reviewed the history and authority of the rule of faith, as articulated in particular by Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine, I now turn to modern approaches to the rule of faith.

3. Select Modern Approaches to the Rule of Faith

Although there are a plethora of modern approaches and interpretations of the rule of faith, this paper focuses on two, in particular: first, a narrative approach as found in the work of Paul M. Blowers; and second, a linguistic approach as offered by Robert Jenson. After surveying a variety of other approaches to the rule of faith, in his article, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” Blowers posits,

The Rule of Faith (which was always associated with Scripture itself) served the primitive Christian hope of articulating and authenticating a world-encompassing story or metanarrative of creation, incarnation, redemption, and consummation. I will argue that in the crucial ‘proto-canonical’ era in the history of Christianity, the Rule, being a narrative construction, set forth the basic ‘dramatic’ structure of a Christian vision of the world, posing as a hermeneutical frame of reference for the interpretation of Christian Scripture and Christian experience, and educing the first principles of Christian theological discourse and of a doctrinal substantiation of Christian faith.⁴⁶Paul M. Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” ProEccl 6 (1997): 202.

What Blowers essentially says here is that the rule of faith, since the very beginning, functioned as a narrative by which Christianity, and thus Christians, could be identified. This storied apostolic kerygma included the core of Christian belief and provided those who heeded it their metanarrative.⁴⁷Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 213–14. Blowers asserts that through successive generations, the rule of faith has preserved the Christian story and offered believers a lens through which to properly interpret Scripture.⁴⁸Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 205. In a time where the canon was not yet entirely written and fully assembled, it was necessary to have an anchor in such an extremely pluralistic context—especially given the fact that even various early Christian communities struggled to find perfect agreement.⁴⁹Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 203–4. As such, Blowers states that “the Great Church committed itself not to a universally invariable statement of faith but to variable local tellings of a particular story that aspired to universal significance.”⁵⁰Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 208. This did not of course mean that the rule of faith was subjective and could be modified any which way according to an individual, community, or locality’s pleasure; rather, the rule of faith was understood to have some degree of flexibility in its expression and exposition without fundamentally changing its content.⁵¹Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 207–8.

According to Blowers then,

Early authorities like Irenaeus envision the church as by definition one catholic body receiving Scripture, already and always bound up in the process of interpreting Scripture, and not just the sum total of particular communities of interpretation standing equidistant from a body of sacred writ, entrenched in differences of language and tradition, and inevitably imposing their own peculiar readings. Far from being imposed on Scripture from without (in the manner that the Gnostics impose their own abusive hermeneutical rules on the Bible), the regula fidei—or “canon of truth” as Irenaeus sometimes calls it—bears out the true dramatic narrative of Scripture within the church universal, which is its ever-contemporary context.⁵²Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 210.

This is crucially important to understand. What Blowers is saying here is that Scripture does indeed dictate the values and lifestyle of believers and that the sacred text is received collectively by the body of Christ. What this means is that enthusiasm, the often eisegetical hermeneutical practice of those who believe God is revealing the proper interpretation of Scripture to them alone, is rejected. It also means that any sort of phyletism/ethnophyletism—the practice of treating nation, ethnicity, and/or language as the delineating mark of ecclesial bodies—is rejected. In rejecting these two practices in particular, Blowers argues that the church fathers were ensuring the preservation of a truly universal faith and Christian metanarrative: “the Rule in effect offers the believer a place in the story by commending a way of life framed by the narrative of creation, redemption in Jesus Christ, and new life in the Spirit. It immediately sets the believer’s contemporary faith and future hope into the context of the broader, transhistorical and trinitarian economy of salvation.”⁵³Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 214. This concept becomes very important in the application section of this paper.

Turning now to the linguistic approach of Jenson, it is important to note that he refers to the rule of faith as “creed” and that he always envisions it in tandem with the Christian canon.⁵⁴Jenson, Canon and Creed, 15. Indeed, in Jenson’s mind “Scripture and creed are ecumenical possessions”—meaning they belong to the universal church.⁵⁵Jenson, Canon and Creed, 2. More than this, Jenson highlights the fact that “canon and creed appeared in the church’s history as—or so the church has believed—Spirit-given reminders of what sort of community the church must be if it is indeed to be church.”⁵⁶Jenson, Canon and Creed, 2–3. What this entails is that not only are canon and creed relevant because the whole church possesses them, together they effectively establish the boundary markers of the church itself by providing her identity. To put it as bluntly as possible, what Jenson is arguing is that without the canon and creed there is no “church,” at least not one that would be recognizable or orthodox as we have come to know it. From here, Jenson goes on to swiftly repudiate liberal historical-critical scholarship which has made the case “that creedal doctrine is the result of the ‘hellenization of the gospel,’” by pointing out that such a viewpoint “has been often and conclusively debunked.”⁵⁷Jenson, Canon and Creed, 2.

Having delineated himself from the modern liberal scholarly camp, Jenson summarizes his understanding of the rule of faith in the following way: “the rule of faith, the regula fidei, was a sort of communal linguistic awareness of the faith delivered to the apostles, which sufficed the church for generations. This gift of the Spirit guided missionary proclamation, shaped instruction, identified heresy, and in general functioned wherever in the church’s life a brief statement of the gospel’s content was needed.”⁵⁸Jenson, Canon and Creed, 15. What Jenson is saying here is that the rule of faith offered, and continues to offer, the Christian community a common linguistic core which contains the truth as revealed by Christ and transmitted by the apostles who were empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to communicate the pure Gospel to the church. This is especially significant for the contemporary Western context given what was explored above regarding the linguistic turn and other movements in philosophy, specifically the philosophy of language, which has gravely endangered both the understanding and transmission of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

To further reinforce his position, Jenson, following a similar line of thought as Blowers, argues that historically what “maintained the church’s grasp of the narrative character of the gospel … was the rule of faith … for the rule in all its versions simply listed a set of events and specified their agent.”⁵⁹Jenson, Canon and Creed, 23. Ultimately, what this conceptualization of the rule of faith offers is a standard by which to measure continuity, for if there can be a general agreement of key terms and their definitions among Christians, then the true faith, and thus the church, is preserved. Furthermore, she can be defended against those who wish to rend her asunder with a varied arsenal of radical ideology, hyper-rationalism, syncretism (both religious and political), emotionalism/sensationalism, spiritual enthusiasm, and more. Indeed, it will be a combination of Blowers and Jenson’s conceptions of the rule of faith which shall help the contemporary community of believers navigate such a difficult era and preserve orthodoxy—the communal expression of the true revelation of Christ.

4. The Rule of Faith and Scriptural Hermeneutics

Given the deep relationship between the rule of faith and Scriptural interpretation—Jenson even going so far as saying “canon confirms creed, and creed confirms canon”—this paper would be incomplete without a section dedicated to this topic.⁶⁰Jenson, Canon and Creed, 34. In order to address this, the use of the rule of faith in the interpretation of Scripture will be divided into two eras: patristic and modern. Beginning with the patristic era, it must be noted that “if the Fathers always viewed Scripture as a supreme wisdom and all-sufficient, they also always insisted that Scripture had to be interpreted in the Church and by the Church, since it was always assisted by the Holy Spirit and had at its disposal the living apostolic tradition supplying the rule of faith as an apt instrument of interpretation.”⁶¹Mitros, “The Norm of Faith in the Patristic Age,” 457–58. In other words, Scripture has always been supreme, but it is meant to be interpreted in the church, by the body of believers which has the “communal linguistic awareness” necessary to rightly read it.⁶²Jenson, Canon and Creed, 15; Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 78. This does not of course mean that the rule of faith can definitively address every hermeneutical query and solve every problem neatly, only that it can ensure the most salient and central points of Christianity are discerned and thereby preserved.⁶³Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 66; Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 217. Beyond this, it should be made clear that ‘“built into the patristic understanding of exegesis is the conviction that the Christian’s theological vision continues to grow and change, just as the Christian life is a pilgrimage and progress toward a destiny only dimly perceived. The framework of interpretation, then, does not so much solve the problem of what Scripture means as supply the context in which the quest for that meaning may take place.”’⁶⁴Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 218. Thus, the rule of faith functions as a sort of boundary marker in which to do scriptural exegesis in the church.⁶⁵Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 76. Therefore, it can be said that “confession of Jesus as the Christ was the result of the kerygma and the presupposition of biblical interpretation.”⁶⁶Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 68, 75.

The ultimate product of all of this is summarized well by the scholar Paul Hartog:

The rule establishes a theological framework with boundaries. The narrative of the Rule of Faith recounts true history, but it is not simply relegated to the historical past. Early Christians were not interested in history for history’s sake. Present life and reality is formed, informed, and transformed by this history. The Son became human for our sake and for our salvation. Christ came to renew humanity in all its present misery. The narrative had a meaning, and the meaning was theological. Therefore, exegesis was theological as well. The goal of interpretation was not simply the grasping of the original meaning of the text in its original historical context. The Fathers did not mean to deny the historical setting of the text. They, in fact, noticed most of the historical difficulties that have become “the stock-in-trade” of modern historical-critical study of Scripture. But to concentrate on historical inquiries alone would be to analyze the beautiful setting of the table without partaking of the sumptuous feast. Biblical texts (including definable pericopes) are not so many beads randomly strung together. They are integrated by a theological vision encompassing the entirety of progressive revelation.⁶⁷Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 76.

In other words, the church fathers understood that the Scriptures were not just a collection of historical texts to be read with brutal literalness, to be subjected to the whim of particular and ever-shifting hermeneutical methodologies, or to be placed under the microscope to draw out the original meaning in its historical purity. Rather, the Scriptures provide the framework of Christianity for its readers to be genuinely changed as they believe and come to adopt the Christ metanarrative as their own, thereby making it eternally relevant.⁶⁸Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 78.

At this point, some more concrete examples of the patristic use of the rule of faith in scriptural exegesis would be helpful; so, the approaches of Saints Irenaeus and Augustine will be briefly surveyed. Irenaeus understood the rule of faith as providing unity and a single message to the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments.⁶⁹Thomas Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis: A Study of Competition in Early Christian Hermeneutics, vol. 1 of Journal of Theological Interpretation Supplements, ed. Murray Rae (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 221. As one scholar highlights,

For Irenaeus, then, the Rule of Faith is not identical with Scripture, nor does it trace Scripture’s narrative plot. Rather, the Rule of Faith provides Scripture’s hypothesis. This hypothesis concerns the unified actions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, most especially the salvific events of the Son, who brings all things to full consummation in and through his life, death, resurrection, and second coming. The result is that the various notes sounded by Scripture are brought together into a rich and satisfying harmony.⁷⁰Nathan MacDonald, “Israel and the Old Testament Story in Irenaeus’s Presentation of the Rule of Faith,” JTI 3 (2009): 290.

Furthermore, though he acknowledged the importance of grammar and historical context, Irenaeus’s hermeneutic was ultimately focused on the theological goals of Scripture.⁷¹Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis, 224. This is because, as noted above, Irenaeus operates out of a fundamentally Christocentric interpretative lens: everything in Scripture was ultimately about Christ.⁷²MacDonald, “Israel and the Old Testament Story in Irenaeus’s Presentation of the Rule of Faith,” 296.

As for Augustine—like Irenaeus articulated—the Scriptures were a divinely inspired unified whole which pointed to Christ; consequently, he posited that “the Old Testament and New Testament are not at odds, but mutually enlightening.”⁷³Philip Porter, “Liberated by Doctrine: Augustine’s Approach to Scripture in De Doctrina Christiana,” ProEccl 26 (2017): 224–25. Augustine also viewed the rule of faith as a sort of boundary marker for those engaging in the task of exegesis.⁷⁴Litfin, “The Rule of Faith in Augustine,” 97, 98, 100–101. In doing so, Augustine put “a limitation on interpretive fancy, while not prohibiting interpretive variety.”⁷⁵Litfin, “The Rule of Faith in Augustine,” 100. “On matters of non-essential doctrine, good exegetes can and should tolerate one another’s differences. Likewise, multiple levels of spiritual interpretation are acceptable, so long as they stay in bounds. It is the church’s regula fidei which keeps the interpreter within safe limits.” This belief in multiple meanings, many of which can find a place within the guardrails set by the rule of faith, resulted in a far more versatile and less restrictive approach to scriptural hermeneutics which ultimately works to humble the would-be exegetes of the world as even the greatest of them must admit they do not have a monopoly on right interpretation.⁷⁶Porter, “Liberated by Doctrine,” 225–26. Above all, however, Augustine argues that it is love, in tandem with the rule of faith, which should guide the process of interpretation and is most likely to lead to an orthodox understanding of Scripture.⁷⁷Porter, “Liberated by Doctrine,” 226.

Since the dawn of modernity, and particularly after the Enlightenment, the task of hermeneutics has evolved greatly. For one, the historical-critical method seemingly reigns supreme, and this is troublesome in part because the methodology it is predicated on is the unintelligibility of Scripture—that is, without complicated and highly specialized exegetical work usually undertaken by those elite few in the academy.⁷⁸Porter, “Liberated by Doctrine,” 228. This has led scholars like Jenson to argue that the authority to interpret Scripture, at least among Protestants, has shifted from the church (the magisterium) to the faculties of universities, colleges, and seminaries—this not necessarily being a positive development.⁷⁹Jenson, Canon and Creed, 68. In fact, it has even led scholars like Philip Porter to argue for a return to more antiquated approaches such as found in the patristic era as a corrective.⁸⁰Porter, “Liberated by Doctrine,” 220. As other scholars point out, however, this is not as simple as it may seem: people cannot simply will themselves to be removed from their intellectual and cultural milieu and somehow bridge the very large chasm between the patristic era and modernity.⁸¹Hartog, “The ‘Rule of Faith’ and Patristic Biblical Exegesis,” 82. Beyond this, postmodernity has taught very clearly that ‘“there is no hope of a perfect hermeneutical key or control: pluralism is inevitable;” consequently, “perfect vision is … an eschatological prospect than a present possibility for faith.”⁸²Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 224; John Lee Thompson, “At the Margins of the Rule of Faith: Reflections on the Reception History of Problematic Texts and Themes,” JTI 7 (2013): 195. This, of course, does not mean that any attempt at scriptural interpretation is hopeless or that it cannot provide tangible fruit that can find wide agreement among believers, it simply means that as long as there is more than one interpreter of Scripture, there will also be a variety of interpretations.⁸³Adriani Milli Rodrigues, “The Rule of Faith and Biblical Interpretation in Evangelical Theological Interpretation of Scripture,” Themelios 43.2 (2018): 263.

It is for this reason that many modern scholars, particularly those who identify with the canonical approach to scriptural interpretation, have begun looking to the rule of faith as a hermeneutical guide, recognizing that the ‘“theological boundary markers’” it provides are essential.⁸⁴Rodrigues, “The Rule of Faith and Biblical Interpretation in Evangelical Theological Interpretation of Scripture,” 262. As a Reformed scholar, Scott Swain, posits: “the rule of faith is an ecclesiastically authorized re-presentation of scriptural teaching whose hermeneutical function is to provide not only a starting point for biblical exegesis but also to direct exegesis to its goal, which is the exposition of each particular text of Holy Scripture within the overarching context and purpose of the whole counsel of God.”⁸⁵Swain, “A Ruled Reading Reformed,” 180. Ultimately, the use of the rule of faith returns interpretation to the church and to the province of believers, thereby shifting the focus “from the emphasis on authorial intent to ‘divine meaning,’ which implies a broadening of the concept of intended audience that is not restricted to the readers originally addressed by the author, but also includes the contemporary church.”⁸⁶Rodrigues, “The Rule of Faith and Biblical Interpretation in Evangelical Theological Interpretation of Scripture,” 262; Swain, “A Ruled Reading Reformed,” 182. Such an approach does not negate the work of historical-critical theorists, much of which has been useful and enriching, but it ensures the Bible is read as it was intended to be—as divine revelation.⁸⁷Thompson, “At the Margins of the Rule of Faith,” 194. In this way “the rule of faith functions for the Christian reader like a Kantian a priori: the rule of faith is not simply a truth that the interpreter thinks about when reading Holy Scripture; it is also a truth that the interpreter thinks with when reading Holy Scripture.”⁸⁸Swain, “A Ruled Reading Reformed,” 191. Emphases original.

Though some have made the case that relying on the rule of faith as a hermeneutical guide places the institutional church above the Scriptures, as is the case in Roman Catholicism for instance, a better case can be made which contends that ‘“the authority of the rule depends on its conforming to the Scriptures,’ and ‘the ultimate purpose of the rule of faith is to let Scripture interpret Scripture.”’⁸⁹Rodrigues, “The Rule of Faith and Biblical Interpretation in Evangelical Theological Interpretation of Scripture,” 267. If the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) is understood with this crucial contextualization, then it can continue to serve as a reliable foundation for Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy.⁹⁰Swain, “A Ruled Reading Reformed,” 181. Jenson offers an application of this approach in the final part of his book Canon and Creed, affirming that indeed it is within the church that Scripture is rightly interpreted.⁹¹Jenson, Canon and Creed, 81. This is because, according to Jenson, “Christ—as the creed tells us—is God’s agenda in Scripture, and it is God whom we should always try to discern, as what the text before us ‘really’ imports.”⁹²Jenson, Canon and Creed, 82. Only those who know Christ and believe in him can understand the Scriptures that are about him—Christ is the ultimate hermeneutical key (cf. John 5:39) not only for the Scriptures but for all of reality (cf. Col 1:16).⁹³Jenson, Canon and Creed, 120. This is why Jenson asserts that “the gospel story cannot fit within any other would-be metanarrative because it is itself the only true metanarrative—or it is altogether false.” Having surveyed the effect that the rule of faith has on hermeneutics, both in the patristic era and today, this paper finally turns to further applications of the rule of faith for contemporary use.

5. The Rule of Faith for Contemporary Use

Before diving too deeply into the contemporary use of the rule of faith, it would be wise to heed Jenson’s insight that “the church’s theological tradition has always been less the transfer of a neat body of thought than a continuing discussion, or indeed continuing argument.”⁹⁴Jenson, Canon and Creed, 86. In other words, what the rule of faith can offer the contemporary Christian landscape is not some completely clear doctrine by which all people must abide, only the framework for conversations about what constitutes the faith and boundary markers to delineate who is “in” and who is “out.” As Jenson says, “for the sake of its integrity through history, the church must always remember that canon needs creed and creed needs canon, and that it is permitted to govern its discourse and practice by their joint import.”⁹⁵Jenson, Canon and Creed, 117–18. The challenge remains the same as it always has been, how can “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) be preserved while still contextualized in a meaningful way for each generation to hear anew?⁹⁶Blowers, “The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith,” 228; Swain, “A Ruled Reading Reformed,” 189–90.

In this vast and extremely diverse twenty-first-century theological landscape, the biggest question now becomes “who is ‘right’ and how can they be identified as such”? If it is indeed true that outside of the church there is no salvation, then this question must be addressed, and urgently. Perhaps the single gravest mistake in attempting to answer this question would be by asking, as Pontius Pilate did some 2000 years ago, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). This is because Christians confess that the truth is not an abstraction, a concept, pure reason, or something in the Platonic world of forms; rather, truth is a person. So, the question is actually, “Who is truth?” and not “What is truth?” and the answer given by Christianity—both in the Scriptures and in the rule of faith—is Jesus Christ (cf. John 14:6). Hence why the early church was so obsessed with Christological questions, because how Jesus’s inquiry, “Who do you say that I am?” is answered ultimately determines what is believed (Matt 16:15). It was the rule of faith which helped the early church to answer these questions, and it will be the rule of faith which will help answer the questions of today. For the rule of faith, as a product of the apostolic kerygma alongside Scripture, reveals who Christ is and thus what is to be believed if a person wishes to be within the church.

Truth is not something that a person can claim to be in possession of; instead, truth possesses a believer. Therefore, it is apparent that the Person of the Holy Spirit plays a crucial role (cf. John 14:15–27). This is because the Holy Spirit of Christ, who removes the veil of Moses, allowing for Scripture to be read with understanding (cf. 2 Cor 3:14), is the same who grants believers eyes to see and ears to hear the rule of faith (cf. Matt 13:16), particularly as it has been instantiated in the ecumenical creeds.⁹⁷Jenson, Canon and Creed, 43, 58. The apostle John further reinforces this when he says, “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for uss” (1 John 4:13–16a ESV). The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is undoubtedly a mark of a true believer in Christ. Jesus said that ‘“you will know them by their fruits’” (Matt 7:16), and the fruit which comes from the work of the Holy Spirit in each believer is made clear by the apostle Paul in Galatians 5:22–26. Furthermore, as Jesus himself testifies: ‘“I am the vine, you are the branches. “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” ”’ (John 15:5–6 ESV).

Indeed, and thankfully, it is not the fruit of the Holy Spirit which saves, but always and only the finished work of Christ—the Spirit’s fruit is simply a by-product of what Christ has made available through faith, namely the forgiveness of sin and all the many other entailments of salvation. Consequently, however, those who do not exhibit the fruit of the Holy Spirit cannot make a serious claim of being in the church—for it is impossible to be beholden to Christ and not be changed (cf. Jas 2:14–26). That being said, given that believers are always simultaneously righteous in Christ and sinner in their own flesh, the fruit of the Holy Spirit will manifest but not perfectly. Sinful thoughts and behaviours continue unto death and this itself does not disqualify someone from being in the body of Christ, for if it did no one would be saved (cf. Rom 3:23).

What all this means for the contemporary use of the rule of faith is that, first, it is a necessary component for preserving the correct language and thus content of the Christ narrative within the church, and as such, the true church is always in alignment with it. Second, those who are not aligned with the rule of faith cannot rightly interpret Scripture, and therefore both interpreter and interpretation should justly be deemed outside the faith. Finally, the rule of faith, though incapable of answering every query arising from postmodernity, does provide an arena of orthodoxy in which important and relevant discussions can and should take place.

6. Conclusion

In conclusion, this paper has argued that the rule of faith is best understood in the framework of a linguistic and narrative inheritance that is a product of the apostolic teaching about Christ and thereby contains and preserves “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) alongside Scripture. Beginning with why this topic is worthy of exploration, this paper proceeded to offer a history of the development of the rule of faith in the patristic era with a special focus on the work of Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine. From here the approaches to the rule of faith of Paul Blowers and Robert Jenson, two modern theologians, were analyzed: the first positing a narrative understanding and the second hypothesizing a linguistic function. At this point we surveyed the ways in which the Rule of Faith was, and can continue to be, used to interpret the Scriptures both in the patristic and modern eras. Finally, we argued for the way in which the contemporary Christian community could utilize the rule of faith to preserve orthodoxy and help delineate between genuine and false teachings in a time of extreme subjectivism and revisionism. If anything, this paper reveals that the true faith is, and has always been, preserved within the community of believers: for it is among believers that Jesus promised he will be (cf. Matt 18:20; 28:20b), and where he is, so is truth.

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