Early Christian Literature

Title: «Tradunt maiores nostri». From the Kerygma to the Symbols in Christian origins. The case of Rufinus of Aquileia, Explanation of the Creed

"Symbol" (or "Creed") is the title of numerous short textual compositions, whose formal affinities have made it possible to classify a literary genre, consolidated from the beginning of the third century, characterized by axiomatic collections, articulated in rhetorical structures distinctly paratactic.
These brief papers had the task of defining and preserving the features of the religious identity of each Christian community; this decisive function meant that the complex process of identification and improvement of this "textual genre" coincided with the troubled process of parting and consolidating the various ecclesial identities within which the original Christian traditions were arranged.
"Professing the kerygma" - and, later, "professing the faith" - meant giving public visibility to personal adherence to a Church, confessing as one's own the theological theses (the "theologumena") that that particular religious tradition held.
The itinerary that led to the definition of the first Symbols went through different phases: starting from the simple affirmation of the Name, proclaimed at the moment of entering into the community ("In the Name of Jesus, the Christ ...", "In the name of the Lord ..." etc. ), short series of questionnaires arose ("Do you believe in ...?") which established the rubrics around which the backbone of the first Symbols of faith was finally structured. These bornt as series of theological propositions to be publicly confessed - coram populo e coram Deo -, in which each Church placed the memory of its own religious life and the foundations of an identity that ideally went back to the preaching of Jesus, the Christ.
Contrary to the common belief, given the characteristic identitarian value that these texts assumed, the Christian origins produced numerous symbols of faith, in most cases comparable in structure but never completely coinciding in theological content.
The course aims to investigate this specific literary tradition starting from the oldest treatise dedicated to the Explanation of one of these formulas: the Explanation of the Creed by Rufino of Aquileia.
The development of the course will follow three Argumentative Units:
I Argumentative Unit: the concept of the kerygma in proto-Christian traditions: from Paul to the Synoptics.
II Argumentative Unit: from the kerygma to the Symbol. Identity, controversy and worship in the ancient Christian Churches.
III Argumentative Unit: Rufin of Aquileia, The Explanation of the Creed.
In the I Unit, the class will try to go back to the origin of the concept of the kerygma, observing how it is constitutive of the most ancient Christian movements. The examination of the genesis of this theme will allow the class both to consider the characteristic features of the most ancient Christian textual production and to recall the epistemological principles on which the disciplinary autonomy of the Discipline is based, whose main methodological acquisitions will be applied exemplarily to the criticism of the texts analyzed. This examination will also allow the class to enter into the merits of the most recent debate on the original character of these movements of believers in Jesus, the Christ, if they should be considered as a-kerygmatic sapiential aggregations or if they were actually based on recognition, in the Passover of Jesus, of the event which fulfilled history, inaugurating the kingdom of God.
In the II Unit, the genesis of the first symbols of faith will be observed, with particular attention to the liturgical, polemical (especially from an anti-heresiological perspective) and identity value of the different kerygmatic formulations and of the different Symbols. Specifically, the genesis of the Aquileian tradition will assume the function of a "case study".
Finally, the last Argumentative Unit (III) will be dedicated to the Explanation of the Creed of Rufino of Aquileia. The analysis of the text aims at several objectives: 1. it aims to return the document to its own Sitz im Leben; 2. it is intended to isolate and analyze the kerygmatic formula reported by the Explanation; 3. it will underline the peculiarities of the Aquileian Creed and the argumentative strategies with which Rufino presented them.