Perusing the library

"There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between these two ways." - The Didache

Have you ever been to a used bookstore or a library and been able to touch and read a truly old book? The picture above is from the Duke Humfrey’s Library at Oxford; what I wouldn’t give for free reign in that room for just a few hours. There’s something magical about turning the pages of something that has physically been around for centuries, reading the names of previous owners on the inside cover, and sometimes the notes they left on the pages. This is a story a young man who found a book like that. A book which turned out to be extremely important.

1867 years after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a 35 year old Orthodox priest named Philotheos Bryennios (it’s phonetic, don’t worry) was made head of the Patriarchal School in Constantinople, the same city which Constantine established as his relocated ancient Roman capital 1500 years earlier. Constantine was obviously long dead and the city had been under Ottoman Muslim control (renamed Istanbul) for more than 5 centuries. Despite the Islamic occupation though, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the head¹ of the Orthodox church, still resided within its walls. The name “Patriarchal School” is somewhat modest; it had been the center of Eastern Christian thought since the 5th century. When headmaster Philotheos assumed his new role, he was placed in charge of the Christian equivalent of the Library of Alexandria and the University of Oxford rolled into one.

One day Philotheos was wandering through the nearby library of Constantinople’s Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre, when he found something labelled the Codex Hierosolymitanus (Jerusalem Codex), and inside was a name “Leon, notary and sinner” and the date AD 1056. Philotheos immediately realized he held something important.

The Jerusalem Codex is a bound edition of a good number of ancient Christian letters, copied by a single anonymous monk, Leon. Among the letters Philotheos was very familiar with was something he had never seen: “The Didache, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the Nations”. The name was familiar to him. From references in other Patristic era works, scholars had concluded that the Didache was an early liturgy (service order) and rules for baptism and church governance. The Council of Nicaea debated making it part of the Bible canon but didn’t, and the actual text hadn’t been seen in in centuries. Fragments of it were duplicated in a other 3rd and 4th century writings, but the original had been written off as lost for a millennia. Philotheos was now holding a fully intact copy in his hands.

Now that’s a good day at the library.

What is a Liturgy

To most people a liturgical church is one that uses the same prayers every time and the service remains largely uniform. Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican are all considered liturgical churches.

However, in truth, every church is liturgical.

• Are there things you do in every service?

• Do they occur at roughly the same time during each service?

• Does the congregation derive spiritual value from them?

If the answered “yes” to these questions, then you have a liturgy.

If you answered “no” to these questions, one could rightly ask whether you even have a church.

Bottom line, we’re all liturgical. If that terminology bothers you, just substitute “order of service” in your head and it’s close enough.

What Philotheos found that day

A word about timing. We started our search for roots with the Nicene Creed, which is actually very near the end of my working definition of the Patristic era (up to about 400 AD). The Didache dates from the other extreme, the very beginning of that era, possibly even before John wrote the Book of Revelation.²

What does it say? Well, read it yourself for starters. I’ll pull out some specific lines and talk about them below.

The term Didache derives from the Greek word διδάσκολος (dē-dá-skō-lōs), which means teacher. Like the book of Hebrews, the author is completely unknown but very clear about his audience. “The Teaching of the 12 Apostles to the Nations” means this is intended for Gentile Christians rather than those coming out of Judaism. Remember that early Christians actually called their religion “the Way”? The very first line of this letter — “there are two ways, one of life and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways” — echoes both that and Paul’s words about the dichotomy of flesh and spirit.³

While it may be targeted at Gentiles, the “Two Ways” teaching is very Jewish, taken from Deuteronomy 30:

“I have placed before you today life and happiness, and death and adversity, in that I am commanding you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, so that you may live and become numerous, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but allow yourself to be led astray and you worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you will certainly perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and take possession of it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants”

Many scholars believe the Didache was actually two documents that were put together later. It certainly feels that way when reading it.

Chapters 1-6 - A Christian Moral Handbook

Chapters 1-6 deal with the “two ways”, contrasting the way of light and truth vs the way of darkness and sin. These are essentially evangelical and largely parallel existing canonical books. Other Patristic documents mention a document used for oral catechesis of potential converts to the faith called “The Teaching of the Apostles”.

Lent is a time of preparation for a (re)acceptance of the Lord at Easter. So it seems appropriate to discuss these 6 chapters during Lent (Orthodox Lent at least), since most scholars believe these were essentially a form of baptismal preparation specifically for Gentiles. The reason for that is this passage in Chapter 7:

concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water.

“Having first said all these things” appears to indicate that the candidate being baptized was expected to hear, understand and assent to (maybe even repeat) all the preceding 6 chapters. It’s essentially a catechism, and notice that this is done before baptism, not as part of discipleship afterward. Candidates for baptism need to know what they’re signing up for (both then and now.) Which begs a question: does your own church have a pre-baptismal catechism of some kind? If not, why not? The Apostolic era church clearly did.

The Christian life during ancient Rome was difficult. Done properly, it still is. Being countercultural is dangerous; it effectively makes you a heretic from the dominant theology (whatever that is) of your society. Fortunately we can only be fed to a digital Twitter mob instead of a very real lion pride (for now), but I suspect that the line between a society that is willing to financially ruin someone for heresy⁴ and a society that is willing to imprison or execute the heretic is far more perforated than we like to believe — but I digress.

The first half of the Didache summarizes what behaviors are expected of, and forbidden to, Christians. This is before the broad circulation of many of Paul’s letters, and since these candidates were Gentiles, the Jewish Scriptures would be unknown and largely nonsensical to them. The church needed a tool to easily convey the key moral teachings of the faith; this was how they did it.

For those of us today who are familiar with the New Testament, much of this section feels like “old news”. It wouldn’t have felt that way in the 1st century. These ideas were deeply countercultural, heretical (from Rome’s perspective), and dangerous.

Chapters 7-15 - Apostolic church governance

We must be careful here, since the Didache is a single document from a single church. To call church practices diverse in the 1st century is a gross understatement; Paul often complains to his planted churches that they are doing things he did not sanction. That said, the Didache was broadly circulated and accepted, so these practices appear to have held up over the centuries:

• Ch 8: The Church fasted. They abstained from food and did this counterculturally (on days opposite to the Jews). The Orthodox retain this schedule (Wed/Fri fasts) to this day.

• Ch 8: The actual text of Lord’s Prayer was recited multiple times per day. That the text of the prayer matches word-for-word implies that the author was familiar with Matthew’s gospel. Christians were instructed to pray these exact words at least 3 times daily. This corresponds to the Catholic and Orthodox practice of Praying the Hours today.

• Ch 9: The Eucharistic prayer is beautiful: “Just as this broken loaf was scattered over the hills, and, having been gathered together, became one; so may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.” Why don’t our Protestant prayers have that kind of poetry to them?

• Ch 9-10: There is a separation between “the Eucharist” and “Communion” which we don’t have today. The Eucharist obviously refers to the bread & wine of the Last Supper. Communion likely refers to the “agape feasts” mentioned in Jude and which Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians.

• Ch 12: Christian charity has limits. This community was concerned about moochers: “he shall not live with you idle. But if he wills not to do, he is a Christ-monger”. Christians are called to give generously but also judiciously. Reconciling these is hard even today, but both are commanded.

• Ch 14: Even at this early date (1st century), Christians were gathering on Sunday (the Lord’s Day not on the Saturday Sabbath as the Jews did — intentionally countercultural, again.

• Ch 15: The eschatology wars began in the 1st century.

Applications

I’m not a theologian, so my goal here isn’t really to provide commentary. Instead, I want you to read the original material and come to your own conclusions about how to apply it today, both for yourself and your church.

For myself, I have altered my daily prayers based on the Didache and other readings. I have always demeaned rote prayers. Pray the Lords Prayer 3 times a day? Yeah, right. Actually trying them now, I find them rather effective. They’re a form of meditation. They get me out of “figuring out what words to say” so that I focus on “being” with the Lord. If you share my reticence, consider them more seriously. Remember: you can’t tell God anything he doesn’t know! If you’re not sure where to start, consider the Nicene Creed (I start each day with it) followed by the Lords Prayer. If you want to go further outside the box, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate prayer is also beautiful (thanks, Paul Kingsnorth for the suggestion.)

I’m now working on adding Prayers of the Hours. If you want to as well, put alarms in your phone and start by just reciting the Lord’s Prayer at 9, 12, and 3 — 3 times a day as listed in the Didache. The whole point of studying the Patristic era is for Protestants to reclaim the practices of the early church, so start reclaiming! Stop thinking… do! And watch what happens. You can’t “think” your way to God.

Secondly, I am roughly following the Orthodox Fasting schedule for Lent this year. This is a first for me. It’s a little hard — I have a wife and 3 teenagers who aren’t joining me on the fast and I do most of the cooking — but I have actually enjoyed it. Has it brought me closer to God? No. Not yet. But I hope and I obey. Patristic reading changed my perspective on this. I’m not fasting to gain God’s favor; I’m fasting to provide him a tool to open my heart. To use an analogy: if God is constructing a house for me, then fasting and prayer are simply taking out the hammer and nails. I’m not designing anything; God is still the one building the house. I’m not earning my keep; He can get his own tools or tell me I took out the wrong ones — that’s fine. But perhaps my meager contribution will make the work He’s doing for my own benefit slightly more effective or faster. (Yes, I know any Calvinists reading this are screaming at their screens, but any analogy is imperfect and I’m not Calvinist.) So I’m fasting and hoping God will use the tools.

Thirdly, I am increasingly very conflicted about the Eucharist being “just a symbol”. I’m having a hard time reconciling this common American Evangelical doctrine to both my patristic reading and even Scripture itself. That may be the topic of another post sometime.

Finally, the early church wasn’t just countercultural by necessity; they went out of their way to make it obvious they were different from both Jews and Romans (like fasting and worshipping on different days) despite very real risks. Do we do this today? Do I? Pious Muslims are obvious anywhere. The Amish / Mennonites are obvious anywhere. Why aren’t serious Evangelical Christians obvious? Is it because we’re being humble, worldly, or chicken? One of the elders at my church wore a 4-5 inch tall cross necklace everywhere, all the time. I always thought it was gaudy and ostentatious — I was wrong. I’ve known women who wore nothing but dresses or men who wore ties every day “for God” and always thought this was pretentious and legalistic — I was wrong. These people are marking themselves: “as for me and my house, we serve the Lord.” I need to do more of that. If the culture is running from God, being countercultural (even in small things) is a marker that you’re going in the right direction. As C.S. Lewis says: “if you're on the wrong road, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

If anyone has others ideas to take from the Didache, feel free to comment. I started writing these posts for myself and my family, and while there aren’t many of us here, perhaps there are enough to get a discussion going now. If you want commentary from people who actually know things (as opposed to some Evangelical layman muddling his way through), the book Reading the Early Church Fathers is a very approachable overview to this subject.

1. The Orthodox church doesn’t actually have a head. The Ecumenical Patriarch is considered a “first among equals”, more like a senior archbishop than a Pope. If you’ve read Asimov’s Foundation series, the role compares to the First Speaker of the 2nd Foundation. The Orthodox governed the same way the church was in the book of Acts, by councils of bishops (like the Council of Nicaea) not by a single man. It was the Bishop of Rome’s demand for fealty from the other bishops of the Church that partially precipitated the Great Schism of 1054.

2. It is fair to ask why there is such confidence that the Didache is actually a 1st century document when the oldest extant copy is from the 11th century. Couldn’t it have been made (or significantly modified) by Leon himself? I am hardly an expert on ancient documents, but there appears to be no hint among scholars that the Didache is a forgery. There are apparently enough fragments preserved in other writings to validate parts of it, and scholars who know much more than I, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, or secular, uniformly agree: the Didache is from the apostolic era. There are many supposedly ancient items that are controversial (the Shroud of Turin being the most famous); the dates and validity of Didache are not controversial at all.

For background on this, look to Loeb Classic Library’s The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 1.

3. “I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” (Saint Paul, Romans 7) There are many other examples.

4. Every society has a theology because every society makes something sacred. We moderns think we’ve gotten over this; that’s an illusion. Our sacred, highest good is “maximal personal autonomy” (my rights only stop at your nose). Liberal democracy will tolerate a great deal of ideological and behavioral diversity, but challenge this sacred assumption, you can expect to be treated as a heretic. That’s what “cancellation” of someone is: excommunication for heresy.