Logopneumatika: Polemics & Patristics (Part 1)

The concept of Word and Spirit (logopneumatika) that I see as being the coalescing principle for Christian theology finds its genesis in the early polemical treatises of the early church. This is not surprising; it has been said that heresy is the mother of orthodoxy. The law of binary opposites tells us that we best define something not only when we know what it is, but also when we know what it is not. I myself did not know "cold" (being raised a Floridian) until I moved to Iowa and experienced this thing called "February." Classical theologians knew this and employed negative theology ("God is not...") to this end.

As it is with theology proper, so it is with the historical development of that theology. We see that heresy forces the hand of the definition of orthodoxy. Those who study the history of Christian doctrine usually frame that development by the study of the heresies themselves. Phillip Schaff, Adolph von Harnack, John Henry Newman, J.N.D. Kelly, and Jaroslav Pelikan come to mind.

Thus it is not surprising that when we turn to some of the early polemicists, we find the aforementioned principle of Word and Spirit being used to define the nature of the God at the center of Christian life and worship. Two of the major proponents were Irenaeus and Tertullian. These two men lived in tendentious times and found themselves faced with multiple opponents. The Gnostics and the Marcionites sought to lead the Church away from her Savior and the rule of faith given to her by that Savior's apostles.

Irenaeus is known as being the first great "Catholic" theologian. He debunked Gnosticism by appealing to universal principles found in the true churches. Such principles were the episcopate, canonical scripture, and the rule of faith (regula fidei). In one of his seminal works, Against Heretics, Irenaeus proffers a picture of the God of the Bible through his analysis of his work in creation. He says:

He who, by His Word and Spirit, makes, and disposes, and governs all things, and commands all things into existence,--He who formed the world (for the world is of all),--He who fashioned man,--He [who] is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor initial principle, nor power, nor pleroma,--He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Against Heretics, 1.22).

Here, Irenaeus combats the Gnostic belief that the creator God and the supreme God were not the same and that Christ came as the emissary of the latter, not the former. Irenaeus says that this God is one; creation and providence are his work. The instrumental principle that Irenaeus uses to draw together the manifold work of God with the singular essence of God is the logopneumatic principle. The works of creation, regulation, and governing (no doubt different forms of work) are performed by His Word and Spirit. By "Word" we are to understand the personal speech-act of the Father (in the Son) and by "Spirit" the perlocutionary agent of that speech-act (the Holy Spirit). The way God acts is thoroughly Trinitarian. There is one God, but there is a community of persons within this God.

In prototypical ways, Irenaeus understands that the God who reigns supreme and the God who raised Adam from the dust are the same. There is no demiurge. There is no bifurcation in the Almighty. The only way to make sense of the one true God is to show his modus operandi. Irenaeus' method is logopneumatic. By Word (Logos) and Spirit (Pneuma), God can both reign and raise, not to mention redeem! The Gnostics did not employ this principle and produced a fractured picture of divinity with various gods and emanations thereof. Orthodoxy proclaimed the Catholic faith: God is one essence in three persons, coequal and coeternal.

Logopneumatika may be a grid through which to understand orthodoxy in order to aver the obsession with only Word (embodied by traditionalism, fundamentalism, or biblicism) or only Spirit (embodied by fanaticism or charismaticism). It was employed in the early church for apologetic and polemical purposes. It is well worth consideration today.