The Boundaries of Faith: A Growing Issue

The rise of controversy within the Christian churches over a series of matters – especially concerning the identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth – led to a tightening of the boundaries of what was to be considered as “authentic” Christianity. The periphery of the community of faith, once relatively loose and porous, came to be defined and policed with increasing rigor. Views that were regarded as acceptable in an earlier and less reflective age began to fall out of favor as the rigorous process of examination accompanying the controversies of the age began to expose their vulnerabilities and deficiencies. Ways of expressing certain doctrines which earlier generations regarded as robust began to appear inadequate under relentless examination. It was not necessarily that they were wrong; rather, they were discovered not to be good enough.

A good example of this development can be seen in early Christian reflection on the doctrine of creation. From the outset, Christian writers affirmed that God had created the world. However, there were several ways of understanding what the notion of “creation” entailed. Many early Christian writers took over existing Jewish notions of creation, which tended to see the act of divine creation primarily as the imposition of order on pre-existing matter, or the defeat of chaotic forces. Such views remained dominant within Judaism until the sixteenth century.

Other Christian theologians, however, argued that the New Testament clearly set out the idea of creation as the calling into being of all things from nothing – an idea that later came to be known as “creation ex nihilo” (Latin: “out of nothing”). As this idea gained the ascendancy, the older view of creation as “ordering of existing matter” came to be seen initially as deficient, and subsequently as wrong. An idea that was once regarded as main- stream thus gradually came to be sidelined, and eventually rejected altogether.