Out of all the writings
of the early church, I chose to start with The
Didache because it is one of the most intriguing to me. One of the longer
titles of this work is The Teaching of
the Twelve Apostles; this indicates the reasoning behind the shorter name Didache, as this is Greek for The Teaching. The very opening lines of
the treatise suggests the oldest title of the work: “The Teaching of the Lord
to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles;” again, indicating the high probability
that the writing was known to early Christians simply as The Teaching.
The dating of this work
is debated among scholars (as most important historical and extra-biblical
texts are); however, the majority date this writing as one of the earliest, placing it between late first century and
mid-second century, and most likely coming out of modern day Syria. The
composers are unknown, and are thought not to have been the Disciples of Christ
– though there is no way to know for sure. Much of the work certainly has
Jewish literary structure, Pauline overtones, and resonates with much of the
teachings in the Synoptic Gospels.
The work is written
into two distinctive sections. The first is called The Two Ways (ch. 1-6) and is a very prominent theme throughout the
work (not unlike the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy with Mt. Gerizim &
Mt. Ebal between blessings and curses). Some may look at this as a do and do-not list, but this section is
more than that. In chapter one, we are re-taught Christ’s teaching of the “Golden
Rule.” In chapter two, we are re-taught the most basic teachings of the Ten
Commandments. In this first section the church is trying to teach that there
are virtues and lifestyles that bring forth life and those that bring forth
death; to foster these virtues is to bring oneself into closer alignment with
the will of God and the result would be a showering of God’s grace. To ignore
these teachings on the virtues would be to cultivate the sin in us which leads
to death, as taught in Romans.
Whereas the first
section would be called a manual for the everyday Christian, the second section
could be called the manual for the Church herself. This section is more of a practical
guidance for both her leaders and lay Christians in the proper way to conduct
services, what the structure of the church looks like, how to treat its
leaders, what the sacraments are and why they are important, and how to tell
between true and false teachers. This section is crucial in early Christian studies
because the early church did not have a uniform, nor complete, codex of the New
Testament at this time. Even if they had a completed canon of the New Testament,
it would (and does) leave us wanting. It does not teach on a practical level how
the church should conduct worship services, take communion, and how to conduct
baptisms. Concerning this last line item, for example, it only says we need to
go into all the world and baptize. It also gives us stories of people getting
baptized. However, it does not teach how a Christian should be baptized. In
fact, this issue is how the Anabaptist movement took hold in England. Should it
be done with infants, children, or adults? With running water, sprinkling, or
full immersion (a 19th century North American spiritual crisis at
times)? Many groups strayed from the teachings of the early church that
addressed these issues precisely because the writings that would later become canonized
as part of the word of God did not teach how to do these things – that was
mostly left to oral teaching of the Apostles and a few works such as the one we
are about to delve into.
There are two things
that are quite intriguing about The
Didache: (1) the work seems to have been written as a sort of Christian
manual on how to live as a follower of Christ, and more importantly what it
even meant to be a Christian, and (2) a very large portion of the teachings are
so biblical and in line with the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, that it
is very possible this work acted as a unifying force of doctrine and orthopraxy
(right practice) for the early church – as a complete New Testament would not
be uniformly agreed upon until the late 4th to early 5th
centuries.
On the first note:
while we are reading through this work and studying it, I would like us to consider
whether The Didache have anything to
teach us about what it means to be a Christian in today’s world – it certainly teaches
us what it meant in the first and second centuries – at the inception of our
faith. On the second note: I would like us to consider how helpful and
absolutely necessary some of the early church’s extra-biblical writings were to
her survival and formulation of her faith and doctrine.
Below are some very
helpful resources that I have used in the past and still currently use. The
first is a link to a free online copy of the text we are about to study
together. The second is a book that has most of the NT and many early Christian
writings in one volume but more often than not is of a more critical nature.
The third is one of my more favorite books and holds many early church writings
including The Shepherd of Hermas
which we will need later.
With Love,
Devin (Athanasios) Green
