In my last two posts I talked about the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy in early Christianity.   The standard view, held for many many centuries, goes back to the Church History  of the fourth-century church father Eusebius, who argued that orthodoxy represented the original views of Jesus and his disciples, and heresies were corruptions of that truth by willful, mean-spirited, wicked, and demon inspired teachers who wanted to lead others astray.

In 1934 Walter Bauer challenged that view in his book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.   Bauer argued that in many regions of the church, the earliest known form of Christianity was one that later came to be declared a heresy.   Heresies were not, therefore, necessarily later corruptions of an original truth.  In many instances they were the oldest known kind of Christianity, in one place or another.   The form of Christianity that became dominant by the end of the third century or so was the only known particularly in Rome.   Once this Roman form of Christianity had more or less swept aside its opponents, it then rewrote the history of the engagement, so that later Christians all came to think that it had always been the majority view among Christians, going back to the days of Jesus himself.

There has been a veritable ton of research done in this field in the eighty years since Bauer published his book, and  n some circles there is still controversy over the matter.   As a rule, conservative Christian scholars….

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As a rule, conservative Christian scholars – for example traditional Roman Catholics and conservative evangelicals – have not found Bauer’s view attractive or convincing.  There continue to be books and articles written by such folk arguing that Bauer was completely wrong.   Other scholars, on the other hand, are convinced by the basic model.

No one thinks Bauer was right in all the particulars.   The question is whether the essential vision of what early Christianity was is correct.   There are all sorts of problems with the particulars.   Here are some of them:

  • Bauer made an excessive use of the argument from silence. If there was a region of early Christendom from which we do not hear of Christianity or of “orthodox” Christianity (that is, the form of Christianity that later came to be dominant) in the second or third centuries, then Bauer assumes that there is a reason for the silence:  later orthodox writers refused to talk about the faith in those areas because it was heterodox (i.e., represented a heretical view; “heterodoxy” means, literally, “a different doctrine”).    But there are all sorts of reasons that we may not hear about Christianity in one region or another: it doesn’t have to be because the sources at that time and place here heretical.
  • Bauer somewhat underestimates the spread of orthodox Christianity. It shows up in more places than he allows.
  • Bauer somewhat overestimates the influence of Rome on worldwide Christianity. It is hard to show that it was specifically Roman influence that carried the day.
  • Bauer does not actually speak about earliest Christianity because he brackets the writings of the New Testament and begins his analysis with later second century texts. But if the question is whether orthodoxy is original or not, surely we should look at our oldest documents.

There are, however, several things to be said in defense of Bauer and his argument.

  • To begin with, he, and his argument, are brilliant. He knows the sources that he deals with in incredible detail, basing many of his arguments on extremely careful and nuanced understandings of the original texts in the original languages.   On one hand, that makes his book very difficult reading.  It’s not for amateurs.  If you wonder if that’s the case, then I’d suggest you try reading his first chapter, on Christianity in the Syrian city of Edessa.   It is tough-sledding, even for PhD students with a lot of background in the field
  • He is quite clear that his coverage is not intended to begin with the New Testament, and he has good reasons. What he wants to do is discover what Christianity was like in various regions, as far back as our evidence goes.  The problem with most of the New Testament is that we simply don’t know where most of the books were written.   If one wanted to use the Gospel of John, for example, as evidence for the form of Christianity that was dominant at the time in a certain place – what do you do with the fact that you have no idea where John was written?   Was it in Syria?  Ephesus?  Somewhere else in Asia Minor?  Alexandria?   If you don’t know, then you can’t use it for precisely the purpose that you want to use it for.   So too for virtually all of the writings of the NT, with the exception of the seven letters of Paul.
  • Bauer did acknowledge that there were orthodox factions in places outside of Rome. But he thought that in many places they were beleaguered.   Sometimes his argument is admittedly strained.   But he knows of orthodox forms of Christianity, for example in Antioch, where Ignatius came from.

The ultimate question one has to deal with when considering Bauer is not whether he is right about this, that or the other detail in his long and complicated book.   It is about whether his overall vision of early Christianity is probably right.    Did Christianity start out with a kind of orthodoxy promoted by Jesus to his disciples, which they passed on to their successors, and which was and always had been the majority opinion of Christians in most places, only to be corrupted in some times and regions by later heretics (as Eusebius maintains), or was Christianity originally seriously multiform, with different versions of Christianity dominant in a variety of places at the same time and in the same place at different times (Bauer’s view)?

Apart from very conservative scholars, most hold to the latter model.   I’ll explain why the view is persuasive starting in my next post, en route to discussing what my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture was about