(11 votes, average: 4.73 out of 5)
Loading...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 one known particularly in Rome. Once this Roman form of Christianity had more or less swept aside its opponents,
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If scholars are correct and the disciples and early followers, including Paul and his congregations, believed the world was about to end, it is reasonable that no one wrote down “doctrine.” The core message was repent and believe in the death and resurrection. Later, it is easy to imagine that educated converts, realizing that the early followers had something wrong, began devising alternatives to the “Jesus will return soon” scenario and who/what Jesus was. The movement would have been far-flung by then with few church authorities to enforce doctrine except in their congregation. Is this a reason doctrinal alternatives arose? “Orthodoxy” won out as texts got written, distributed, and ideas competed.
As a start, wouldn’t it make sense to use the NT documents-or just the Synoptics and authentic Paul-as the best available measure of what “should” be considered orthodox?
Yes, it was ultimately Orthodoxy that itself defined the canon. But aren’t these also the oldest Christian writings we have? Maybe the oldest documents should be considered the standard.
If the point is mainly that proto-orthodoxy was not the version used by many particular Christian communities from their origins onward, Bauer might well be correct. Then heresy would not be a corruption of orthodoxy in that particular place. But heresy in general could still be a corruption of the “orthodoxy” represented by the oldest documents.
If Bauer is saying that the NT itself does not speak with a uniform voice and/or the NT itself is a corruption of Jesus’s original teachings and/or that orthodoxy itself deviates strongly from the NT, then that too is plausible. But then is anything but maybe the Ebionites not clearly some sort of heresy?
I really have trouble thinking that Gnosticism and Valentinianism are not corruptions compared to the NT. But Arianism and the mono-physites seem quite similar to orthodoxy.
Yes, they are the oldest writings *we* have. But they aren’t the oldest writings. (Luke says “many” had written accounts of Jesus that he did not find satisfactory). These are the writings that later orthodox chose as authoritative, and so I’m reluctant to say they necessarily contain the original views. Even more,these writings seem to support orthodox views precisely because we have orthodox ways of reading them that just seem common sense to us since we’ve inherited them from the Western tradition whose reading practices were handed down by orthodox Christianity. Another way of putting this is that if the Gospel of John had not ultimately been included in the canon of the Scripture, and all we had were the Synoptis, and then John was discovered in the modern world, NO ONE would consider it orthodox. It’s hard to convince people of that, but that’s because we’re so used to reading john in light of the synoptics and vice versa. They are in fact extremely different.
In the parable of the 10 virgins—5 wise and 5 foolish depending on whether they run out of lamp oil before the bridegroom returns—are female celibates used as the characters because: (1) wisdom in the OT is portrayed as female; and (2) celibacy can be a metaphor for waiting, particularly waiting for something beyond this life?
With regard to 2, I think of Paul recommending celibacy like his own (even though marriage is ok since it’s better to be married than to burn) because he’s expecting the “bridegroom’s,” ie, Jesus’s, imminent return.
Or maybe it’s just that servants/slaves (or just the female ones?) were expected/required to be unmarried and celibate?
Adult slaves, especially female ones, were decidely not expected/required/thought to be virgins. Quite the opposite.
Quite unrelated to this post, but would you like to comment on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s recent “conversion” to Christianity? I found it very interesting how she did not touch any of the beliefs that traditionally define Christianity!
I’m afraid I don’t know about it.
That’s news to me!
You are right, Dr Ehrman, Bauer’s book is a very tough read. I think I remember him not saying that much about North Africa (ie. Roman N Africa – not including Egypt). North Africa did seem to be pretty proto-Orthodox as far as we can tell (I think Tertullian and later on Augustine came from there), so was this omission because it did not help his argument?
It’s a good point. I haven’t thought about that for a very long time so I can’t give a substantive reply. It may be because he was looking at places for which we have solid second century evidence, which would be Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Rome principally. I’m not sure off hand what evidence we have for Carthage prior to Terttullian. His other noticeable lacuna is Judea/Jewish Xty generally, but that material would simply have buttressed his case. I suppose you can’t do everything!
I would say Christianism is more the work of heretics than of the orthodox.
Paul himself was the first heretic (at least the fist we know about).
Is it just that what once was called heretic later became orthodox, just like in politics !
Treason ne’er prospers – where’s the reason?
Why, if it prospers, none dare call it treason.
(And St Paul certainly did make a good fist of it.)
Bauer seems correct if I understand him properly. Earliest forms of Christianity or even earlier depictions of Jesus may have existed. But so what. They can still legitimately be deemed heretical later on by orthodox Christians.
While it’s great to have the earliest testimonies of Jesus and Christian doctrines available to us, that doesn’t make them necessarily correct in who Jesus actually was and what Jesus taught.
For example, say we discover the very early works of someone painting Jesus as a pimp working the red light districts in Galilee, or making Jesus preaching the virtues of pedophilia as being Christian doctrine. So what if we do discover it. Because in spite of these works being the earliest we may have discovered, they would obviously be the efforts of an imaginative heretic, because it wouldn’t align with the albeit later, more consistent multiple attestations of Jesus, and Christian doctrines.