How The Dominical and Apostolic Form of Sound Words Came About and Why They Are Important

This brief post explains just why I have taken such a great interest in the apostolic catechism, and what it means, and does not mean, for defending the faith of Jesus once for all delivered to the saints. Below, we have an example of just how it is that ideas and sayings from Jesus' earthly ministry came to be seen by the apostles as worthy of special attention for teaching purposes. This is step one to inclusion in the apostolic catechism. We must remember that the apostles were very intelligent, extremely gifted, and directly taught by God. But they had very practical concerns right in front of them, problems that needed solving.

One of these was, "What do we do with all the Gentiles that repent and believe the Gospel? what is their status compared to a saved Jew who believes? Can they eat together at the same table, or is one clean and the other unclean somehow? In other words, how do we [the Jews were "we" to the apostles] live differently now under the New Covenant? Answers to these questions were already anticipated by Jesus in his earthly ministry. He had told them all the answers. But they had not yet learned them experientially until they had to DEAL with it.

And the Lord was with them to help them. He reminded them of his earlier teachings, which, when seen in light of their new problems and the divine solutions to them, made them think, "Oh, so THAT's what he meant by saying "Such and so." Now I remember that. At other points, they understood fully right from the first after 1. Jesus taught them for forty days, likely repeating himself often (for he did so in his earthly ministry for their benefit) 2. After the Spirit fell upon them in Acts 2, as Christ first ascended to the right hand of the Father (Psalm 110) and then from there poured out his Spirit (just as Joel 2 says it must come to pass) from heaven upon men.

Here, we have a close up look at how Peter learned about one such important issue confronting the Church, how Peter shared it with the other apostles, and thus how the form of sound words was influenced by the post-resurrection teaching (and doing) ministry of Christ to the apostles. Here is our text.

Acts 11: 16

"Then remembered I [Peter, that is, Cephas] the word of the Lord [Jesus], how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost."

Comments: Here, we see that the phrase "the word of the Lord" refers not to the whole Bible, as is often the case, but to a particular saying of the Lord Jesus. This is how the term "word" is used to describe the apostolic catechism of the early Church, the form of sound words.

We see in the outworking of the didactic experiences of the apostles (here, Peter), how the Lord Jesus -- continued "to do AND TO TEACH" (as from the beginning of the Gospel of Luke). Jesus teaches Peter by a vision, and then shows him in the salvation of the Gentiles, its meaning. Peter thereby recalls the saying, or dominical word, which Jesus had earlier spoken, but at which time they did not understand.

But Peter remembered the dominical saying, and proceeds to quote it to the others, explaining its importance in light of his recent learning experience. The glorified Lord Jesus not only continues his teaching (and doing) ministry, but his teaching now comes with such force, power and insight, that even Peter cannot fail to get the point. Peter was intelligent; but he was just very suspicious of the Gentiles, until the Lord fixed his opinion by orienting it toward ethics and the covenant of grace (not defunct ceremonial law). Sin, not food, makes a man unclean. Got it. Anyone forgiven by Jesus is now clean. Bring on the sweet and sour pork.

The Lord continues pouring out his Holy Spirit from heaven at God's right hand as we first saw in Acts 2 -- first to the Jew, and now to the Gentiles. Thus, we have in Acts 11, set immediately before our eyes an example of how the sayings of the Lord -- the form of sound words -- developed.

Where did they come from? Jesus. When? From his earthly ministry. How did they become crystalized into a poetic form? They became seen as terribly important in light of this or that experience, and in light of the continued teaching of the ministry of Jesus (from heaven) in the book of Acts. Thus, the apostles put them in an easily memorizable format, which mimics for their format the poetic literature of the Older Testament, specifically, the Psalms. They recognized that the Psalms had the form they did because it made these sayings of the wise more easily memorized. Psalm 1 tells us this. "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked .... but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night."

The only way an Old Testament saint could do this -- since he could not carry around a scroll with him everywhere -- would be to memorize it first, so that he could later meditate on it. This is why Psalm 119 comes in an acrostic form. The Psalms were to be memorized by singing them. The Psalms are a Christological (Messianic) catechism. Thus, when the apostles created the form of sound words, they developed its christology from the Psalms -- you can see this in their sermons in Acts 1-12, and from comparing their quotations of the Psalms in those sermons, to the form of sound words itself.

Why do the sound words convert easily back into Aramaic? They were formed very early to help solve very early ecclesiastical problems -- like what do we teach new Christians that are pouring in by the thousands, and how do we train out ministers to give them sufficient knowledge to deal with the theological and practical problems they will encounter?

These problems were what the form of sound words aimed at resolving, but in each case, the reason for its answers stem from who Jesus is, and what He did and said. If its a unity problem, that unity must be restored since Christ is the head of the Church, his one body (Col. and Eph.).

We know what these problems were because Acts and the epistles tell us: circumcision, Gentiles, dietary laws, Jewish feast days ("Sabbaths" in Colossians), Helping saved Jew and Gentile "all just get along" (diaconal office created to help solve this problem), understanding just why Jesus was crucified (in light of the OT prophesies), what his resurrection means, where he went after that, and what he is doing now, the nature of the apostolic office and Paul's late inclusion in it, and various ecclesiastical problems (including ministers who won't minister, or just run off; Gnostics and false teachers, other gospels, other people not-ordained by the Church preaching the right gospel, sometimes with right motives (Apollos) or else not (Paul rejoices anyway and disregards the motive to get him in trouble).

A few more questions are in order. When did this "new phase" of the teaching ministry of Jesus to the apostles begin? During the forty day, post-resurrection teaching marathon recording in Luke's Gospel. This was part one. Part two of this "second dominical teaching" ministry phase had to wait until the Holy Spirit fell upon the apostles in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit would do three things:

1. He would confirm the Gospel they preached with signs and wonders, including wonders which protected the apostles -- earthquakes, jail breaks and the like. There is nothing like a divinely-inspired jailbreak to comfort an imprisoned apostle.

2. He would remind them of the dominical sayings of Christ during his earthly ministry and post-resurrection, forty-day didactic sermon series, which were needed for the occasion at hand.

3. He would do apologetics for them, put the very words to speak in their mouths when called before rulers to give an account for why they behaved and taught as they did. Jesus Himself would defend the Gospel. And man can He preach. We see this with Stephen, also, though he was a deacon only, but a man "full of wisdom and of the Holy Spirit." His face lit up like an angel's face when He preached with power. The Spirit of Jesus did the preaching and defending, and it says, "they could not stand up to the Spirit by which he spoke."

This is a polite way of saying that Stephen, or rather the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, bowled them down like so many pins lined up -- one for each commandment. It was a clean strike. They were cut to the quick. And you know the rest about their subsequent protest.

When they first learned from the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit was with them to help them, but He had not yet been "poured out" by Christ, for Christ had not yet ascended to the right hand of the Father, from which place -- according to the Holy Scriptures of the OT -- he was scheduled so to do.

He could not pour out His Spirit needful for the mighty ministry of the apostles (to which they were appointed) until He had first ascended. But he COULD teach them all things concerning Himself and the Kingdom. Then as the Spirit worked out their salvation in them (and their apostolic office), they learned the meanings of what Jesus had much earlier said to them.

The dominical sayings -- together with many prophecies about Jesus -- were all "in their hearts," but many remained, we might say "unmined" -- until the Spirit unpacked their importance in light of the new things God was teaching them. Then they taught each other, by recounting what God had done among them, and what He had told them to do.

This happened at the Jerusalem Councils also. As iron sharpeneth iron, so one apostle sharpens another. So too the evangelists and prophets, like Philip, Luke, Agabus and others. We KNOW Luke went around telling everyone what God was doing because we have it in writing. And that is the JOB-description of evangelists, for the most part. Each apostle explained to the others what God was doing -- what Christ continued to do and to teach them -- so that each enabled the understanding of the others. Those were, to put it very mildly, exciting times.

Then they "crystallized" some of the more important (obviously not all) of the dominical sayings by creating a list of them to teach new Christians and ministers in training. Some of these dominical sayings were sayings of Jesus AFTER the resurrection, or even from above (as with the conversations that Peter and Paul had with Him).

Finally, the apostles were powerfully and unusally "spirit-filled." This should be terribly obvious from the fact that Peter walks about described by Luke in terms of the ark of the covenant, and anyone on whom his shadow falls is healed instantly. The Holy Spirit was totally in control of Peter, under such conditions, and the things he did and said were directly from God the Spirit. Especially in regard to their teaching ministries did the Spirit powerfully constrain them, so that His words and their own were one and the same.

To lie to the apostles under such conditions was the same as lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3-5).

The sound words were thus formed under highly unusual and apostolically-interactive conditions where God taught men rather directly. So also the rest of Scripture was immediately inspired by God, but that does not form the focus of our present study, since we can't study everything at once. And Paul's letters were not formed the way (historically) that the apostolic catechism came about.

The point of the sound-word study is not their superiority to the rest of the Bible, but their primary importance in the development of a uniquely "Christian" (biblical) historiography of the New Testament, to provide the biblically-sanctioned alternative to Bultmania. It functions by itself to provide a greater understanding on the part of Christians as to how -- the mechanics - the New Testament canon actually came about, and came to appear as it does at present.

This biblical historiography is not intended as a justification for its several parts divorced from the rest of the canon. Biblical historiography is not an evidentialist enterprise, since we justify that historiography as only one (though important) part or aspect of the whole system of theology taught in the Holy Scripture.

The whole biblical worldview -- the canon -- presents its own best defense from the logical impossibility of the contrary. But Christian apologists must be prepared to specify just what that historiography is, and to set it over against its would-be competitors to show the strength of the biblical worldview at just those places attacked, while undermining the necessary preconditions for logic, historical investigation, and analysis using (for the sake of argument) the three layers of presuppositions in the worldviews which so set them up against the knowledge of Christ.

Those three layers of their oh-so-tangled web are (listen up apologetes):

1. Philosophical presuppositions native to individual writers [i.e. Crossan is something of a deconstructionist, while Marcus Borg is either a Pantheist (or Panentheist)]

2. Methodological presuppositions -- these consist in the propositions native to the pre-understanding of the canon which allegedly influenced its development (i.e. the doctrines of legendary growth, apostlic inter-relations, conditions of the early church [i.e. literacy v. illiteracy] and the like.

3. Criterological presuppositions - these detail just why this or that literary unit may or may not count as reliable, authentic or historical. I have, er, "demythologized" these at length in previous posts.

Why three layers? I don't know, that's just how they come packaged. I noticed this in my undergraduate years at CSU Hayward. If you want a total critique -- and you Vantillians know that you do -- you have to treat all three layers.

By laying out these presuppositions in three classes, and then comparing them intra-class first (how does the criterion of "this" compare to the others; how does it self-refer?) and then by noting the logical consequences of their inter-class relations (Does the criterion of X undermine methodological skepticism as a principle? Does it get along with the doctrines of Borg's metaphysics? Does it tolerate the doctrine of the legendary growth of the pre-canonical "pericopes, " which Bultmaniacs propose?), we can isolate many dialectical tensions -- I know I can (like buttuh), so surely you could too -- sufficient to show the impossibility of the contrary to the biblical historiography in each case.

But we must first know what the biblical trajectory of the development of the New Testament was, and the Bible tell us this. The Bible has the answers.

The dominical and apostolic "form of sound words" (I argue) played a central role in the development of the New Testament canon. Thus, it merits special attention for its unique role in canonical development, not for any special "authority" it has apart from the rest of the canon of the Holy Scripture. ALL Scripture is God-breathed, and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. But not all of it functions the same way to teach us about this or that part of the canon, or its proper application to this or that field of study.

Thus far, we have a basic core of teachings justified from the Word.

1. The apostles had an early catechism, put together in discreet oral and literary units, and these are identified in the Word itself as a single body, a form of sound dominical and apostolic sayings.

2. Old Testament Christology, primarily, but not exclusively, from the Psalms and the Book of Daniel informs the central orientation of the perspective of the sound words. Jesus is the Son of Man, the lofty, powerful and glorious person who ascends the hill of the Lord to sit down at the right hand of power, after His vindicating resurrection from the dead, and miraculous ministry. In Jesus, God was manifest in the flesh, as the royal seed of King David (or Solomon the Greater). He died, was buried and rose three days later. The Apostles saw this first hand. Note that in Acts' early chapters, the apostles preach this Jesus from Solomon's porch.

The greatness of Jesus is the reason for the specific teaching in each particular sound word. Even in the case of Paul's apostleship, the Lord converted Paul and the Spirit of Jesus set him apart for the ministry to the Gentiles.

3. This catechism has Aramaic-based roots which are in many cases traceable by the linguistic features common to early Aramaic speaking and writing, like Daniel chapters 2 - 7, and like the special linguistic features of our Lord Jesus in prayer and dialogue, as recorded by the Gospels, whose writers saw Him as the Danielic Son of Man, the Psalmic Son (or else Lord) of David (But if David calls Him "Lord," how then can He be David's Son?), the deuteronomic prophet like unto Moses, and priest after the order of that Melchizedek who put into effect God's covenant with Abraham by a blessing, and by bread and wine.

4. This catechism and its early apostolic use -- as it comes to expression in the Gospels, selcted parts of the epistles, and Semitic thought-forms behind the sermons of Acts 1-12 -- the form of sound words almost certainly provided the framework for the canonical Gospels since Luke calls them "set forth in order" according to the eyewitness testimony "pattern" of the apostles. Set in order means "they follow the authorized [divine] pattern." This is a liturgical Semitism (Hebrew idiom) found in the Older and Newer Testaments. It is always used the same way.

In other words, this apostolic written testimony may be the closest thing we will ever get to "Q," the hypothetical document or oral tradition standing behind the body of sayings Matthew and Luke have in common, which is not found in Mark. Instead of "Q," however, I prefer to call it "A" for "apodosis." What student wants to get a "Q" on his biblical homework project?

5. The Christology of A most likely provides the key to understanding the Christology of the book of Revelation, which is certainly its hermeneutical centerpiece -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

6. "A" was used to teach new Christians the fundamentals of the faith once (for all saints) delivered; it was used to train ministers -- deacons and elders too -- that they may be "thoroughly equipped for every good work," according to their respective offices.

7. "A" contains the central teachings of the Christian faith, which is called "the Gospel of Jesus Christ," which Gospel the canonical "Gospels" themselves elaborate upon. Even their nomenclature (Apostolically-authorized titles) suggests this. This catechetical pattern set the form (liturgy and preaching) of the earliest churches, which no Christian or teacher was expected to deviate from by any "acknowledged exceptions," unless one wished to be an acknowledged heretic.

If anyone preached any other Gospel than this, he was to be damned by apostolic pronouncement. The apostles were not religious pluralists, but strident and zealous Christological monotheists with a postmillenial attitude. They did not invite compromise; they invited conversion to faith in Jesus. Paul described other religions in the least glowing terms possible, even calling his own former Judaism -- by the Holy Spirit -- "skubala" compared to knowing Jesus Christ. I cannot translate that word directly for the potential readership of children. So Paul was as popular among the Jews as Stephen.

8. This means that the form of sound words was enforced by apostolic sanctions. It was canonical, once put in writing, which was almost from the very first, alongside the oral tradition of the apostles. We know this because Luke and others would have needed copies of it to compare with the works they sought to compose. This is HOW they "set forth in order" their accounts to ensure their compliance with apostolic limits.

Luke traveled and interviewed others to fill in the details, not to come up with a brand new set of ideas about Jesus. People like Theophilus could then have their curiosity satisfied, be edified in the Christian faith, grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, and "know the certainty of "the things surely believed" [sound words] among us."

And now for the obligatory summation.

By way of terribly unscientific postscript, I should wish to note that I have included this post to fill out some of the detailsof just what I am arguing (and not arguing for), and to clarify some of the possible misgivings that the Vantillians might have about my doing what would seem to be "evidential" apologetics. As you can see well now, I have not a Montgomerian bone in my body. I am of Cornelius, and from the tribes of the North, the Bahnsen and the Rushmeister.

Death before individuated facticity. My favorite teachers put it directly in terms of biblical attributes: "The consent of all the parts." I like to add the word "mutual" to that description - the mutual consent of all the parts -- because it feels -- SO -- Johannine. And Paul spoke this way of the Church and its many members -- the gifts are for the mutual edification of the one body.

In any case, this mutual consent assures me that further study in this vein can only serve to strengthen the faith of other believers in Jesus, utterly overthrow the alleged competition (whose car and smoking radiator I passed up on the side of the road some 40 miles back), highlight the full, final sufficiency of the whole Word of God, and do all kinds of assorted damage to Satan's kingdom.

A few from the "other side" of the Christological and historiographic fence might even catch on and decide to mutiny. People sometimes do not realize that, since we are born into the world under the dominion of the wrong side, Christianity is primarily about repentance unto godly defection, and sanctified treachery. Mutiny well mates. There is great treasure to be had (Proverbs 3:3-12). Now bring me that horizon.