For what we have received as a heritage from our Fathers, we must earn if we are really to possess it. Each generation of the Church has had to learn this lesson anew. Continuity is not the same as archaism, and over and over the Church has reacted to the challenges of heresy and unbelief by stating its historic faith and restating it, and, as Maximus Confessor says, “giving it an exegesis and working out its implications” (PG 91:260). It, in response to Christological heresy or to attacks upon the holy icons, it was appropriate for the Fathers to recite the Nicene Creed with an extended paraphrase that spoke to these false teachings, then it remains appropriate for us also to locate ourselves within the continuity of the faith of our Fathers and, in the name of that
continuity, to speak the Word of God to the world of today. For what a world intoxicated with each fleeting moment needs to sober it up is the message of the apostolic faith, but we are not simply pipes and conduits through which that message passes, but living, responsive, and, yes, creative participants in its ongoing life and history.
Jaroslav Pelikan Continuity and Creativity with thanks to Matthew Baker
