Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christian Contexts

Reconsidering the Bauer Thesis

Hartog

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879556
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Eighty years ago, Walter Bauer promulgated a bold and provocative thesis about early Christianity. He argued that many forms of Christianity started the race, but one competitor pushed aside the others, until this powerful "orthodox" version won the day. The victors re-wrote history, marginalizing all other perspectives and silencing their voices, even though the alternatives possessed equal right to the title of normative Christianity. Bauer's influence still casts a long shadow on early Christian scholarship. Were heretical movements the original forms of Christianity? Did the heretics outnumber the orthodox? Did orthodox heresiologists accurately portray their opponents? And more fundamentally, how can one make any objective distinction between "heresy" and "orthodoxy"? Is such labeling merely the product of socially situated power? Did numerous, valid forms of Christianity exist without any validating norms of Christianity? This collection of essays, each written by a relevant authority, tackles such questions with scholarly acumen and careful attention to historical, cultural-geographical, and socio-rhetorical detail. Although recognizing the importance of Bauer's critical insights, innovative methodologies, and fruitful suggestions, the contributors expose numerous claims of the Bauer thesis (in both original and recent manifestations) that fall short of the historical evidence.

1

The Bauer Thesis: An Overview

Rodney J. Decker

Controversies regarding Jesus and the early Jesus movement are certainly not new, dating back now several centuries.23 Philip Jenkins summarizes an often-forgotten history of the proposals which have been “a perennial phenomenon within Western culture since the Enlightenment.”24 The primary impetus for the recent outbreak of speculation has not been the discovery of new data very different from what we have known for a long time. Rather it is, claims Jenkins, a philosophical/ideological shift in Western culture: the rise of postmodernism and its entailments.25

One of the current writers in the media spotlight is Bart Ehrman. He is not the first nor only voice advocating a radical overhaul of our conception of early Christianity.26 He has been, however, one of the more visible and influential voices.27 This is due to several factors. First, he is a first-rate scholar in a significant discipline, New Testament textual criticism. In this regard he has justifiably benefited from his association with the “dean” of that field, Bruce Metzger.28 He is also a good writer and effective communicator. In addition, he has achieved broad media exposure for his popularization of more scholarly work.29 His major publications relevant to the history of early Christianity include the following:

• Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1993)

• Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (2003)

• Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (2003)

• Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005)

• Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them) (2009)

• Forged: Writing in the Name of God, Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (2011)

• How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (2014)

The thesis which Ehrman proposes runs as follows, in his own words. After listing a wide range of phenomena in the diverse groups comprising “Christendom”30—including everything from Roman Catholic missionaries, snake handlers, Greek Orthodoxy, fundamentalists, mainline churches, to David Koresh—Ehrman writes,

All this diversity of belief and practice, and the intolerance that occasionally results, makes it difficult to know whether we should think of Christianity as one thing or lots of things, whether we should speak of Christianity or Christianities.

What could be more diverse than this variegated phenomenon, Christianity in the modern world? In fact, there may be an answer: Christianity in the ancient world. . . .

Most of these ancient forms of Christianity are unknown to people in the world today, since they eventually came to be reformed or stamped out. As a result, the sacred texts that some ancient Christians used to support their religious perspectives came to be proscribed, destroyed, or forgotten—in one way or another lost. . . .

Virtually all forms of modern Christianity . . . go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries. This one form of Christianity decided what was the “correct” Christian perspective; it decided who could exercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalized, set aside, destroyed. It also decided which books to canonize into Scripture and which books to set aside as “heretical,” teaching false ideas.

And then, as a coup de grâce, this victorious party rewrote the history of the controversy, making it appear that there had not been much of a conflict at all, claiming that its own views had always been those of the majority of Christians at all times, back to the time of Jesus and his apostles, that its perspective, in effect, had always been “orthodox” (i.e., the “right belief”) and that its opponents in the conflict, with their other scriptural texts, had always represented small splinter groups invested in deceiving people into “heresy.”

It is striking that, for centuries, virtually everyone who studied the history of early Christianity simply accepted the version of the early conflicts written by the orthodox victors. This all began to change in a significant way in the nineteenth century as some scholars began to question the “objectivity” of such early Christian writers as the fourth-century orthodox writer Eusebius, the so-called Father of Church History, who reproduced for us the earliest account of the conflict. This initial query into Eusebius’s accuracy eventually became, in some circles, a virtual onslaught on his character, as twentieth-century scholars began to subject his work to an ideological critique that exposed his biases and their role in his presentation. This reevaluation of Eusebius was prompted, in part, by the discovery of additional ancient books . . . other Gospels, for example, that also claimed to be written in the names of apostles.31

Ehrman is quite right that this is not the traditional portrait of early Christianity. But it is by no means original with him, though he has done as much to popularize it as anyone in recent years. The real credit for this view of history belongs to Walter Bauer, so we will fittingly commence with the fountain and by first examining Bauer’s influential thesis.32

Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy (1934)

Brilliant, profound, extremely well read, indefatigable—these are all accurate descriptions of the German scholar to whom we owe much.33 Although taking sharp issue with Bauer’s thesis under consideration, I have a great respect for his lexical work.34 No serious work in New Testament exegesis is possible without reference to his lexicon, whether the third English edition35 or the sixth German edition.36 But before the professor from Göttingen turned his attention to lexicography37 Walter Bauer (1877–1960) published several works on the history of the early church, including a 1903 study of the Syrian canon of the epistles in the fourth and fifth centuries38 and another in 1909 of Jesus in the apocrypha.39 Bauer published a major work in 1934 which has had major influence in its field over the last eighty years: Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum40—a “paradigm-shaping book.”41 Although widely discussed on the Continent and in England,42 it was not until the release of an English translation almost forty years later that its impact was noticeably felt in America.43 Since that time it has influenced almost every discussion of the topic.44 Orthodoxy and Heresy is not a full statement of Bauer’s ideas regarding the origins of “orthodoxy” and “heresy,” but this limited essay does not allow a broader discussion of Bauer’s other writings.45

Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy argues that we cannot merely assume that orthodoxy came first and that heresy is a later deviation, for in doing so we “simply agree with the judgment of the anti-heretical fathers for the post-New Testament period” (xxi). This is neither scientific nor fair since we are listening to only one voice—tha...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Introduction by Paul A. Hartog
• Chapter 1: The Bauer Thesis: An Overview by Rodney J. Decker
• Chapter 2: Walter Bauer and the Apostolic Fathers by Paul A. Hartog
• Chapter 3: Post-Bauer Scholarship on Gnosticism(s): The Current State of Our “Knowledge” by Carl B. Smith
• Chapter 4: Baur to Bauer and Beyond: Early Jewish Christianity and Modern Scholarship by William Varner
• Chapter 5: “Orthodoxy,” “Heresy,” and Complexity: Montanism as a Case Study by Rex D. Butler
• Chapter 6: Apostolic Tradition and the Rule of Faith in Light of the Bauer Thesis by Bryan M. Litfin
• Chapter 7: Bauer’s Forgotten Region: North African Christianity by David C. Alexander and Edward L. Smither
• Chapter 8: Patristic Heresiology: The Difficulties of Reliability and Legitimacy by W. Brian Shelton
• Chapter 9: Bauer’s Early Christian Rome and the Development of “Orthodoxy” by Glen L. Thompson
• Chapter 10: From Völker to this Volume: A Trajectory of Critiques and a Final Reflection by Paul A. Hartog
• Bibliography