d, tradition, "sound doctrine", definite facts, such as the reality
of the human nature (flesh) of Christ, and the reality of his death and
resurrection.[31] In instruction, in exhortations, and above all in
opposing erroneous doctrines and moral aberrations, this precept was
inculcated from the beginning: [Greek: apolipomen tas kenas kai mataias
phrontidas, kai elthomen epi ton euklee kai semnon tes paradoseos hemon
kanona] ("Let us leave off vain and foolish thoughts and betake
ourselves to the glorious and august canon of our tradition"). But the
very question was: What is sound doctrine? What is the content of
tradition? Was the flesh of Christ a reality? etc. There is no doubt
that Justin, in opposition to those whom he viewed as pseudo-Christians,
insisted on the absolute necessity of acknowledging certain definite
traditional facts and made this recognition the standard of orthodoxy.
To all appearance it was he who began the great literary struggle for
the expulsion of heterodoxy (see his [Greek: syntagma kata pason ton
gegenemenon haireseon]); but, judging from those writings of his that
have been preserved to us, it seems very unlikely that he was already
successful in finding a fixed standard for determining orthodox
Christianity.[32]

The permanence of the communities, however, depended on the discovery of
such a standard. They were no longer held together by the _conscientia
religionis_, the _unitas disciplinae_, and the _foedus spei_. The
Gnostics were not solely to blame for that. They rather show us merely
the excess of a continuous transformation which no community could
escape. The gnosis which subjected religion to a critical examination
awoke in proportion as religious life from generation to generation lost
its warmth and spontaneity. There was a time when the majority of
Christians knew themselves to be such, (1) because they had the "Spirit"
and found in that an indestructible guarantee of their Christian
position, (2) because they observed all the commandments of Jesus
([Greek: entolai Iesou]). But when these guarantees died away, and when
at the same time the most diverse doctrines that were threatening to
break up the Church were preached in the name of Christianity, the
fixing of tradition necessarily became the supreme task. Here, as in
every other case, the tradition was not fixed till after it had been to
some extent departed from. It was just the Gnostics themselves who took
the lead in a f