On “The Heresy of Orthodoxy,” Part Two
This is the second in a series of posts on Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s recent book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010). Since the first post, I have come across two other on-line responses to the book from Tim Henderson (at Earliest Christianity) and from Michael Bird (at Euangelion).
The first part of The Heresy of Orthodoxy deals heavily with the Bauer thesis and it’s most vocal and visible recent defender Bart Ehrman. The first chapter outlines the thesis in a fairly neutral fashion, save for the occasional remark about how it has led to a championing of diversity in today’s age. The authors also mention some of Bauer’s critics and supporters.
The second chapter, “Unity and Plurality: How Diverse was Early Christianity?”, explicitly challenges the Bauer thesis. Bauer examined five urban centres and made the argument that heresy preceded orthodoxy in these areas. K&K’s criticisms are valid at times; indeed, we have a lot more information about heretical groups (thanks largely to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library) than Bauer had in his time, and we also have more nuanced views about what constituted “Gnosticism” in the early centuries. So, for several of these urban centres, Bauer’s arguments are now unsustainable; particularly because, as K&K note, Bauer neglects much of the first-century evidence for some of these areas. However, he does so with reason: “the New Testament seems to be both too unproductive and too much disputed to be able to serve as a point of departure. The majority of its anti-heretical writings cannot be arranged with confidence either chronologically or geographically; nor can the precise circumstances of their origin be determined with sufficient precision” (Bauer, p. xxv). Other writers have tried to apply the Bauer thesis to the first-century, but Bauer himself was more cautious.
While I concede that orthodoxy (or proto-orthodoxy as I would prefer) was fairly established in first and early second-century Rome, Asia Minor, and Macedonia and Crete, I think Bauer’s arguments about Alexandria and Edessa continue to hold some weight. The origins of Egyptian Christianity are rather murky; we have no NT text that hails from there, nor do we have any that mention Egypt at all (even Acts is silent about the origins of Christianity there). The forms of Christianity that emerge in Egypt in the second-century, if not entirely heretical (i.e., clearly Gnostic), are distinctly different from Christianity in the West (Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen all have their un-orthodox sides). And the Epistle of Barnabas, which K&K try to rescue for orthodoxy, is still a non-canonical text with plenty of un-orthodox elements. True, it is not Gnostic (as K&K strain to point out, and which Bauer, incidentally, claims himself), but it does not have to be Gnostic to be heretical. K&K also raise the point that of the 14 second- or third-century papyri found in Egypt, only one (the Gospel of Thomas) reflects a Gnostic context, and the Gnostic quality of GT is debatable. However, the list of 14 early papyri listed in Robert Funk’s Honest to Jesus (p. 118; which, I admit, may be different from the list K&K are using, but there certainly would be overlaps), includes seven non-canonical texts (Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Mary, two copies of Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of James, and two untitled gospels). Again, Gnosticism may be a heresy, but not all heresies were Gnostic—this is a mistake often made in K&K’s book and in books by other anti-CA apologists. K&K also do not discuss the presence in Alexandria of such non-canonical texts as the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Gospel of the Hebrews, both of which may have been very early compositions, and were considered useful by Clement of Alexandria and other “orthodox” writers. Nor do K&K discuss Bauer’s argument that Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria from 189-231, appears to be the first hint of “ecclesiastical” Christianity in Alexandria (Bauer, p. 53-56).
As for Edessa, K&K focus only on Bauer’s view that Marcionism was the earliest form of Christianity in that area. They say Marcionism was more a corrective than a converting movement, so Pauline or Jewish Christianity would have to be present before it could take a foothold (48-49). Since Bauer’s day we have learned more about the so-called “Thomas school” and Bauer’s successors (including Helmut Koester) have made arguments that the Christianity present in the Gospel of Thomas may have been present in Edessa before Marcion. This possibility is mentioned only in a footnote (p. 48 n. 30) and dismissed with the statement, “Koester’s argument is interesting because it exemplifies the lack of consensus concerning what type of Christianity first appeared in Edessa even among those who are committed to the thesis that heresy preceded orthodoxy in that location.” K&K’s argument (shared by James Robinson and other Bauer thesis supporters) that some form of Christianity must have been present in the century before Marcion is valid; and there are other possibilities besides Thomas, including Jewish-Christianity (which does become a heresy), the Christianity of the Odes of Solomon, and the forms that influenced Tatian, Quq, and Bar Daisan. K&K also, once again, neglect other aspects of Bauer’s argument for the late arrival of orthodoxy in Edessa, including the third-century composition of the Abgar Correspondence to validate the mission of the bishop Palut (whose descendants, the orthodox of the fourth century, were called “Palutians” because, it is argued, the name Christian was already taken), and that the church in the West barely took note of Edessa until the fourth century. Edessa remains the best example for diversity in early Christianity and for the minority position of orthodoxy (if not its complete absence) in the first two centuries.
K&K’s final argument in this chapter is that the church fathers were the voice of early orthodoxy and that they were largely unified. Gnosticism, on the other hand, was diverse. Their point is that Gnostic Christianity was not a viable contender for becoming “mainstream” Christianity. Three reasons are offered: Gnosticism was diverse, it organized later than orthodoxy, and orthodoxy’s numbers were greater and therefore more influential (see pp. 58-66). I have four problems with this line of argument. First, it equates second-century orthodoxy with NT “orthodoxy” (yes, the church fathers trace their thought to the first-century, but so does every Christian group, sometimes with equal validity) and with 3rd, 4th, and later orthodoxy (which is problematic for the same reason). Second, it again ignores other forms of heresy, including Jewish-Christianity, which, more than any other form of Christianity, has a claim for being the most valid successor to Jesus’ mission. Third, it equates the success of a particular group (the orthodox) with the claim that it is “true.” And fourth, does anyone, even Ehrman and Pagels, argue with the point that orthodox Christianity was most well-equipped to be successful? Or, to use K&K’s words, “any assessment that concludes that Gnosticism was organized earlier than the second-century is ultimately an argument from silence” (61); who makes this claim?
What I find objectionable about K&K’s arguments is that they seek to discredit the Bauer thesis by dismantling only minor points that, at times, even Bauer is cautious about or are tertiary to his principal argument (e.g., that Marcionism was the earliest form of Christianity in Edessa, that the Epistle of Barnabas is Gnostic). For my part, I am not certain that heresy preceded orthodoxy in even Edessa and Alexandria, but the evidence does indicate considerable diversity in those areas and that orthodoxy was not solidified there for some time. I am more inclined to envision early Christianity as represented in a broad spectrum of beliefs (about Jesus, about proper practice, etc.) that led to the forms we find in the second century and beyond. Whether any of these forms of Christianity is the “true” one is a theological, not a historical, argument.
It’s clearly an interesting book — although why you object to them making it you don’t say. But I enjoyed reading your posts. One query, tho:
You write: “any assessment that concludes that Gnosticism was organized earlier than the second-century is ultimately an argument from silence” (61); who makes this claim?
This read oddly to me, after reading your two posts. I think most people reading them would presume that YOU held just such a view! 🙂
It is a commonplace of the diverse argument that gnosticism is just as representative of 1st century Christianity as that championed by the Fathers. Is there any practical difference between that and the position whose existance you query? You might want to rephrase this to make your real point clearer.
My objection to the quotation on p. 61 is the word “organized,” which I think is key to K&K’s point–the notion that heretical groups (Gnosticism specifically) were in a position to challenge heavily-structured orthodoxy (with its hierarchy of offices, etc.). I remain agnostic (tee hee) about the existence of Gnosticism in the first century, though feel there’s plenty of evidence to suggest it was around, but I certainly don’t think it was “organized,” even in later centuries.
I go to the other extreme. I don’t see how one can find untainted evidence for anything resembling the orthodoxy later associated with Irenaeus in Rome before the middle of the second century. Was there an organized form of Christianity at Rome? Most certainly. What form did it take? Who knows.
I find something inherently fishy about Irenaeus retelling of the conflict between Polycarp and Anicetus, so much so that it makes it impossible to believe that there was a ‘Catholic’ or ‘orthodox’ tradition as we know it before then.
Polycarp was clearly connected with a Jewish or Judaizing form of Christianity which calculated Pascha in a way that was not ‘orthodox’ a few generations later. I also think that his ‘Judaizing’ went beyond merely calculating a particular date for a festival and challenges not only the idea that he was associated with SOME of the later orthodoxy but all of it.
Irenaeus did a masterful job covering up for his master but isn’t it strange that we have no independent information for Polycarp (outside of the Death of Peregrinus which everyone seems to ignore) outside of Irenaeus?
I don’t believe scholars of any generation have been critical enough with the evidence which comes to us through the hands of Irenaeus. All of which makes me suspicious that if the Roman Church which eventually emerges through a glossed over dispute between Polycarp and Anicetus ultimately establishes ‘orthodoxy’ as a middle position (or indeed one which tilts IN FAVOR of Polycarp) that Anicetus’s position must have always skewed to the left or right of that orthodoxy.
I can’t tell you who Anicetus was or what tradition he was aligned with but Irenaeus’s account can be read to ultimately subordinate his authority to that of Polycarp strangely enough. Was Anicetus part of an organized church? Yes. Did the effect of Polycarp’s challenge to that his authority lead to a new definition of orthodoxy in Rome. Yes.
All of this leaves open the question of what Anicetus’s church affiliation was. It certainly wasn’t Catholic as this hadn’t been invented yet.
And don’t get me started on Clement or Ignatius …