Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] The most significant study of Christian heresy in modern times by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth.
[00:00:09] In my last post, I started discussing the terms Orthodoxy and heresy, pointing out that their traditional etymological meanings are not very helpful. For historians, orthodoxy literally means the quote right belief, unquote, about God, Christ, the world, and so on. That means it is a theological term about religious truth. But historians are not theologians who can tell you what is theologically true. They are scholars who try to establish what happened in the past. And so how can a historian, acting as a historian, say that one group of believers is right and that another is wrong? The problem with the two terms came to particular expression in a book written in 1934 by a German scholar named Walter Bauer. The book was Alf Deutsch, but its English title is Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity. For my money, this was the most important book on early Christianity written in the 20th century. It completely revolutionized how we are to understand the theological controversies that were racking the Christian Church in its early years.
[00:01:13] If you recall, the Church historian Eusebius had argued and popularized the view that by definition, Orthodoxy always preceded heresy, that it was and always had been the majority view among Christians, that it had been taught by Jesus to his disciples and passed on by them to their successors. This orthodoxy entailed theological beliefs that Eusebius and his Christian cohort themselves subscribed to. There is one God who created all things. Christ his son is both completely human and divine. Salvation comes only by his atoning sacrifice, and so on. Bauer's book was meant to turn that view on its head. Bauer looked at our earliest evidence of Christian belief in several key locations of the empire. Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Rome. And he showed that in most of these places, the earliest evidence showed that the form of Christianity that was originally dominant was in fact a form of Christianity that was later declared heretical. And so the earliest evidence of Christianity in Egypt indicates that it was originally Gnostic, the earliest in Syria was Marcionite, and so on. Bauer's argument was highly detailed and based on an unusually intimate knowledge of every piece of evidence from the second and third Christian centuries. The view that resulted from his analysis was completely at Ods, with the one that had been held from the time of Eusebius, that is, for 1500 years. Whereas Eusebius had thought of Christianity as consistently and always being a mass of Orthodox believers with occasional offshoots, heresies started by willful and demon inspired heretics. Bauer thought of Christianity as originally a widely diverse phenomenon with different Christian groups in different parts of Christendom back in the second century, as far as our evidence goes, holding different beliefs about God, Christ, the world, salvation, and so on. Only one of those groups held to views that eventually came to be declared Orthodox. This was the group that won the battles for dominance. If things had gone differently, the Christian world could have adopted a Marcionite understanding of the faith, or a Gnostic view or a Jewish Christian view. That view would have been declared Orthodoxy. Bauer found that the views later deemed Orthodox were located in several places in the Roman Empire, but it was principally to be found among the Christians who resided in Rome. The Roman Church was particularly intent on overcoming the views found in various places. And since it was located in the largest city in the empire and was therefore the largest church in the empire and the richest and the best organized, it was able to use its power, money and influence in order to convince other communities to change their views and to adopt its perspective. We see the Roman Church flexing its muscles in order to bring another church into its fold. Already in the earliest period, in the letter of first Clement, a non canonical book written by the Christians of Rome to the Church in Corinth, insisting that it get its act together by reinstating church officers who had been ousted from power.
[00:04:17] Bauer argued that the deposed church officers had held to the Roman form of Christian faith and that that was why the Roman Church wanted them back in power, and their letter worked. According to Bauer, the Roman Church was able to use its financial resources to its advantage. It could promise donations to other churches if they would elect the right bishop. That is one that agreed with the Roman perspective. It could use its funds to buy freedom for slaves, who would, of course, out of gratitude, join in its movement, and so on.
[00:04:50] Eventually, the Roman form of Christianity began to spread, and by the end, say, of the third century, it had managed to squash its opposition. And then this is a very important point. It rewrote the history of the engagement. Authors like Eusebius produced histories of early Christianity in which they claimed that the views they supported had always been the majority Christian view everywhere since the beginning, that in fact their views were those pronounced by Jesus and his apostles. Other views, they maintained, had originated as later corruptions of these Orthodox truths.
[00:05:25] Orthodoxy then came to be defined by the winning side as the view that they had held. Their views were by definition Orthodox. Other views were corrupt heresies. The Orthodox view became the quote unquote universal view throughout Christendom. The Greek word for universal is Catholic. The Roman Church then determined the Catholic understanding of the faith. Christianity became the Roman Catholic Church.
[00:05:54] For Bauer, even though this rewriting of Christian history and the struggle over dominance came to be the accepted narrative, the one still prevailing in his day in the early 20th century, it was certainly wrong. Orthodoxy was not the original form of Christianity originally. It was one of many competing forms. It just happens to have been the form that won out in the contests for supremacy in the Christian tradition.
[00:06:20] The.
