Diversity: The Background of Early Heresy

Why did early Christianity invent the idea of heresy? And how—if at all—can a distinction be drawn between the diversity that is invariably found within any worldview, whether religious or secular, and the more specific notion of heresy? Perhaps the most helpful way of understanding both the nature of heresy and its historical emergence is to reflect on the nature of Christianity during the first century of its existence, as this new and largely misunderstood religious movement began to emerge from within Judaism and establish itself as a significant presence in the Roman Empire. A set of orthodoxies—note the advised use of the plural—began to emerge, representing variations on central themes concerning the identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth.¹

As we noted earlier, at the heart of the Christian movement lay a series of reports and interpretations of the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. His significance was presented in terms of both his identity and his function, using a rich range of Christological titles and images of salvation, often drawn from the Jewish roots of Christianity.² Initially, Christian groups appear to have been established in leading urban centers, such as Jerusalem, by individuals who had personally known Jesus of Nazareth or who were familiar with his immediate circle.³ Other Christian communities were established by others with more complex associations with the Jerusalem church, most notably Paul of Tarsus.⁴ According to the New Testament itself, Paul was responsible for establishing Christian churches in many parts of the Mediterranean world. At first Christianity would almost certainly have been seen simply as one more sect or group within a Judaism that was already accustomed to considerable diversity in religious expression. Judaism was far from being monolithic.

Yet despite Christianity having its origins within Judaism, which was viewed as a “legal religion” (religio licita) by the Roman authorities,⁵ these Christian communities were not recognized as entitled to legal protection. The reasons for this are unclear; Pliny, for example, while governor of Bithynia (c. 110–12), appears to have persecuted Christians on the basis of precedent without entirely understanding the reasons for doing so. The churches thus existed under the constant shadow of possible persecution, forcing them to maintain a low public profile. They had no access to power or social influence, and were often the object of oppression by the secular authorities. The early Christian communities were simply not in the position to enforce conformity, even if they had wished to do so.

These Christian communities were scattered throughout the Roman Empire, each facing its own distinctive local challenges and opportunities. This raises two questions, each of which is of major significance for understanding the origins and significance of heresy. First, how did these individual Christian communities maintain their identity with regard to their local cultural context? It is clear, for example, that early Christian worship served to emphasize the distinctiveness of Christian communities, thus helping to forge a sense of shared identity over and against society in general.⁶ Second, how did individual Christian communities understand themselves as part of a larger, more universal community? To put this second question another way: how did individual local communities see themselves as connected with a larger universal community, increasingly referred to as “the church” in later writings? For example, there is evidence that these communities maintained contact with each other through correspondence and traveling teachers who visited clusters of churches, and especially through the sharing of foundational documents, some (but not all) of which were later incorporated into the canon of the New Testament.⁷

There is no doubt that the early Christian communities believed that they shared a common faith, which was in the process of spreading throughout the civilized world. Individual churches or congregations saw themselves as local representatives or embodiments of something greater—the church.⁸ While it is possible to argue that early second-century Christianity possessed a fundamental theological unity based on its worship of Christ as the risen Lord, the early Christians expressed and enacted their faith in a diversity of manners.

While it is correct to speak of early Christianity as a single tradition, it is perhaps best thought of as a complex network of groups and individuals who existed in different social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. These groups sought to relate their faith to those contexts and to express it in terms that made sense within those contexts. While it is potentially misleading to speak of these groups as “competing,” it is certainly fair to suggest that they possessed more autonomy at this early stage than is often appreciated. Early Christianity, as we shall emphasize later, did not possess any authority structures that allowed for the imposition of any kind of uniformity. Indeed, many patristic scholars prize the sheer intellectual excitement of the era, evident in the way in which the early Christians explored and expressed their faith.

However, this historical observation does not in itself negate the idea that there was a fundamental unifying strand in early Christianity. The sociological diversity of early Christianity was not matched by anything even remotely approaching theological anarchy. In an important study, the British scholar of early Christianity H. E. W. Turner argued that it was possible to identify a pattern derived from the apostolic witness and maintained across time as the “deposit of faith” (depositum fidei), referred to in the New Testament as “the faith once delivered to the saints.”⁹ This pattern is embedded, like a genetic code, in the writings and worship of the early church, as well as in the texts of the New Testament. Yet despite this core “pattern of truth” that united them, early Christian communities clearly show diversity as well as unity. We must be careful not to rush to speak of the “emergence of diversity” as if this was a later development. There are reasons for thinking it may have been there from the outset, even if later developments exacerbated it in certain situations.

So what led to this diversity? Five important factors can be identified as contributing to this situation:

Early uncertainty over which resources were to be regarded as authoritative by all Christian communities.

Diversity concerning aspects of the Christian faith within the documents that would later be gathered together as the New Testament.

Divergent interpretations of these documents, leading to different ways of thinking emerging within the Christian church.

Diversity of patterns within early Christian worship. These are now known to have been considerably more diverse than was once thought, with important implications for how some core aspects of faith were understood within early Christianity.

An inability to enforce uniformity. In its early phase, Christianity was a minority group on the fringes of society, without proper legal status, and with no access to power until the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. This prevented any enforcement of uniformity until a relatively late stage, by which point considerable diversity existed.

We shall consider each of these points individually, as they are of major importance to our theme.

Uncertainty over Authoritative Resources

The second-century writer Lucian of Samosata noted that one of the most distinctive features of Christians was a penchant for writing and interpreting books. Christianity appeared to him to be a textual community, whose life and beliefs were shaped by its writings.¹⁰ Perhaps it was for this reason that pagan Roman criticism of Christianity often focused on its writings, just as attempts to eliminate it often took the form of confiscation of its books.¹¹ This does not necessarily mean that Christians were more literate than their contemporaries within Judaism or classical culture.¹² It is simply to note how important texts were to the early Christian communities, even if their impact primarily concerned their leaders.

Yet many early Christian manuscripts include more than texts that were later recognized as canonical New Testament writings. For example, some early Christian manuscripts take the form of collections of writings drawn from the Old Testament, early extracanonical writings such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Shepherd of Hermas, and fragments of other, unknown writings, as well as liturgical and theological texts.¹³ Christians seem to have drawn on a variety of resources in developing their faith, some of which would have appeared strange to those familiar with the settled canon of Scripture. A variety of texts jostled for the attention of their readers, including Gnostic Gospels, accounts of martyrdoms, pastoral works, and apocryphal acts.¹⁴ It is becoming increasingly clear that the early Christian communities had complex theological and devotional loyalties, which is clearly expressed in their reading preferences.

As the antiheretical writings of Irenaeus of Lyons make clear, an issue that emerged as significant as early as the second century was the question of apocrypha—writings whose origins and provenance were regarded as suspect, lacking historical or theological continuity with the apostolic church.¹⁵ As Jerome darkly commented, caveat omnia apocrypha—beware of all apocrypha.¹⁶ The formation of an established canon of Scripture was an integral part of the early church’s efforts to eliminate writings of dubious provenance from theological discussion.¹⁷ The appeal to the continuity of use of a given book within the churches was of particular significance, as this was seen as witnessing both to its antiquity and to its authority.

The point here is that the texts being so widely read within Christian communities offered quite divergent views about the nature and characteristics of Christianity, sometimes reflecting the concerns of their authors to address particular social or religious groups. There was a clear need to identify a group of such writings as possessing universal, as opposed to local, authority. While Christians were free to read what they liked, there was a growing recognition of a need to identify which works possessed a normative status for the church as a whole. Without wishing to prevent Christians from reading their favorite authors, Christian leaders began to identify a group of texts that transcended local preferences. Athanasius of Alexandria played a particularly significant role in assessing criteria of authenticity for the purposes of canonical evaluation.¹⁸ This process of crystallization gradually led to the formation of the New Testament canon.¹⁹

Christianity, in its formative stages, was subject to influence from a surprisingly wide variety of textual sources, with no clear agreement at this stage concerning their authenticity and authority. For example, “apocryphal” literature posed a particular challenge to the early church, on account of the diversity of materials recognized as potentially authoritative in different regions of the Christian world. Heresy could thus arise from basing one’s theology on apocryphal sources,²⁰ whereas orthodoxy gave priority to those works that were, or would be, included in the New Testament canon.

While this is an important point, it is important to appreciate that a degree of diversity can be found even in the limited range of texts eventually accepted as canonical. We shall therefore consider the significance of the theological diversity of the New Testament for any account of the origins of heresy.

Diversity Within the New Testament Documents

The collection of documents that we now know as the New Testament clearly presupposes that there is some basic unity among and across Christian communities, yet it presents a subtly variegated range of ways of understanding the fundamental themes of the Christian faith and how these are to be applied to issues of practical conduct. While some writers offer somewhat facile harmonizations of the New Testament, others have appreciated the importance of identifying and respecting differing emphases and nuances,²¹ not least on account of the New Testament’s implications for diversity within contemporary Christianity.

A recognition of the polyphony of the New Testament is ultimately little more than an indirect acceptance of the diversity that existed within early Christianity. The term “diversity” must be used with caution, and surrounded with qualifications. In the first place, concession of diversity does not entail the notion of a fundamental unity. As Stephen Neill pointed out many years ago, Jesus of Nazareth is a central focus of the New Testament; nevertheless, his significance is articulated in terms that are adapted to the audiences and communities served by the authors of the New Testament books.²² And in the second, the diversity in question is actually quite limited. We must avoid speaking carelessly, as if to suggest that the New Testament offers an unbridled multiplicity of visions of the Christian faith.²³ It is perfectly possible to identify a “core” set of ideas within the New Testament, as follows:

The God of Israel can be loved and trusted as Creator of all.

Jesus is the one sent by God, to reveal God and redeem humanity.

In spite of human failure, trust in God’s redemptive work through Christ is the way to salvation, a redemptive process begun in this life and completed in the life beyond.

A person who has salvation is expected to love others and care about them, and to follow the ethical standards laid down by Jesus.

The body of believers is an extended fellowship.²⁴

While being critical of the idea of an early crystallization of Christian orthodoxy, the leading British New Testament scholar James Dunn also argues that a “unifying strand” can be discerned within the New Testament. Dunn uses the Greek work kerygma, best translated as “proclamation,” to refer to New Testament interpretations of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth. Where Rudolf Bultmann and others once spoke of the New Testament kerygma, in the singular, Dunn suggests that the evidence points to a group of New Testament kerygmata, in the plural, held together by certain core themes.²⁵ Dunn argues that there “was no standardized pattern, no extended outline of Christian proclamation” in the New Testament, but a range of such proclamations, adapted to the particular circumstances of the situation. For example, Paul’s proclamation of the gospel “took diverse forms as circumstances determined, and it developed over the years, altering in emphasis in tone.”²⁶

The question is one of interpretation and synthesis: of allowing the inherent unity of the New Testament to be perceived, while respecting its diversity. Whether the New Testament is perceived as a cacophony or symphony depends in part on how it is interpreted, especially how its diverse voices are allowed to relate to one another. Richard Hays, for example, argues that the multifaceted vision of the Christian faith found in the New Testament can be set out in terms of a complex narrative with three focal points: community, cross, and new creation.²⁷ Yet the point is clear: the intrinsic diversity of the New Testament is such that it potentially gives rise to a corresponding diversity of interpretations. We shall explore this point further in what follows.

Divergent Interpretations of the New Testament

The long history of Christian interpretation of the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that certain texts are interpreted in very different ways by different individuals and groups. This poses the critically important question, Who is authorized to adjudicate between such interpretations of the New Testament? The growing emphasis upon the Catholic Church as the supreme authority in the interpretation of the New Testament began to proceed apace in the second century and is especially evident in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons.

To understand the importance of Irenaeus’s appeal to the institution of the church as the interpreter of the New Testament, we may consider some difficulties in biblical interpretation that affect Protestantism—a religious movement that does not acknowledge any authority above Scripture.²⁸

Consider the question, Are Christians meant to evangelize? The predominant interpretation of the gospel imperative to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19) in the first phase of Protestantism during the sixteenth century was that this command was addressed to the apostles, not to subsequent generations. While the first apostles were therefore under an obligation to spread the gospel, this responsibility was restricted to their age. It was not until the late eighteenth century that this view began to be challenged successfully, particularly through the growing influence of missionary societies in England. By the end of the nineteenth century, most Protestants considered that the obvious and clear meaning of the passage was that all Christians were called to evangelize, and to support the work of missions. The predominant way of interpreting a biblical text had undergone a major shift. But which of the two options was right? And who had the authority to decide?

The problems that Protestantism faced here were famously set out by John Dryden (1631–1700) in his satirical poem “Religio Laici” (A Layperson’s Religion) (1682). Dryden here argued that the great Protestant emphasis on the Bible merely led to the proliferation of heresy, due to the absence of any universally acknowledged, authoritative interpreter. The attitude toward biblical interpretation found within Protestantism, Dryden argues, not merely leaves it powerless to resist heresy, but actually encourages the emergence of heresy, through Protestantism’s naive idea that ordinary Christians will be led, inerrantly and inevitably, to orthodoxy as they browse the scriptural pages. The text of Scripture was open to all; but what of the rule by which it was to be interpreted? Protestants agreed on and respected a common authority, but they had no shared notion of a meta-authority.

Dryden invites us to imagine an orthodox Protestant convinced that the Bible clearly teaches the divinity of Christ, yet disturbingly confronted with another Protestant who interprets those same passages purely in terms of Christ’s humanity—the Socinian heresy, 29 which emerged in the sixteenth century and held that Christ was a human being devoid of divine identity. Thus Dryden writes, in “Religio Laici”:

We hold, and say we prove from Scripture plain,

That Christ is God; the bold Socinian

From the same Scripture urges he’s but man.

Now what appeal can end th’ important suit;

Both parts talk loudly, but the Rule is mute?

Dryden’s point is that Scripture did not disclose, clearly and unambiguously, the rule by which it was to be interpreted. And as there was no authority higher than Scripture, how could Protestantism discriminate between orthodoxy and heresy? If any norm or institution outside or apart from the Bible is recognized as authoritatively determining its meaning, that norm or institution is in effect superior to the Bible. This was a dangerous vulnerability, which many believe remains at best incompletely resolved within Protestantism.

Irenaeus appears to have anticipated this difficulty in arguing for the role of the church as the authoritative interpreter of Scripture. For some scholars, Irenaeus was motivated primarily by a desire for uniformity, which according to Elaine Pagels and Karen King led to his laying down that “all true Christians must confess the same things, joining together to say a common creed that states what all believe.” The driving force behind Irenaeus’s approach was an institutional agenda that would set the church over and above individual Christians, intended to “consolidate scattered groups of Jesus’s followers into what he and certain other bishops envisioned as a single, united organization.” Heresy could therefore be understood as those teachings that were “antithetical to the consolidation of the church under the bishops’ authority.”³⁰

Yet this is only one way of interpreting Irenaeus’s approach. Most Christian theologians would argue that Irenaeus’s concern was neither for ecclesiastical uniformity for its own sake, nor for the empowerment of the episcopacy. Irenaeus wanted to maintain continuity with the apostolic era, ensuring that what was taught in that formative age continued to characterize his own age. For this reason, he placed emphasis on the importance of historical continuity between the present church leadership and the apostles. The church represented a community of memory, capable of aligning its interpretation of the Bible with its recollection of the apostolic witness and teaching.

A further attempt to limit diversity developed later. Vincent of Lérins (d. 450), increasingly concerned about theological innovation, developed a checklist to limit the spread of new and potentially dangerous ideas. Every doctrine needed to conform to three criteria. It had to be shown to have been accepted (1) everywhere, (2) always, and (3) by all believers. In this way, Vincent hoped to limit Christian teaching to those teachings that had always commanded universal assent.³¹ Yet the historical evidence suggests that Vincent’s efforts did not succeed in checking the growth of doctrinal diversity in the church at the time.³²

In this section, we have emphasized the diversity of interpretations of the Bible found within the Christian tradition. So who decides which interpretation of the Bible is orthodox and which heretical? It is an important question. Every major heresy within the Christian faith has presented itself as offering a legitimate interpretation of the Bible and has criticized its orthodox opponents as deficient in the art of biblical hermeneutics.³³ Appealing to the Bible was not the exclusive preserve of the orthodox. Indeed, many views that would later be regarded as heretical had their origins in a close reading of the biblical text.³⁴ The Arian controversy of the fourth century, which pitted the arch-heretic Arius against his orthodox opponent Athanasius, can be seen as fundamentally concerning how best to interpret the statements found in John’s Gospel concerning the identity and significance of Jesus Christ.³⁵

Up to this point, we have considered a number of factors concerning Christian texts that appear to have led to increasing diversity of belief within the church. Yet it is important to appreciate that diversity also seems to have developed in relation to another aspect of the church’s life—its worship.

Diversity in Early Christian Worship

Traditional liturgical scholarship has generally assumed that a single, coherent line of evolution of Christian worship can be traced from the apostolic age to the fourth century. Even by the early second century, Christian worship had developed considerably beyond what is described in the New Testament, characterized by a tendency to invent new symbolism not directly present in Scripture. In some cases, the continuity between early Christian liturgies and the practice of the New Testament church is obscure.³⁶ In recent years, there has been a growing realization that early Christian worship may have been more diverse and variegated than this simple model suggests.³⁷

Why is this so important? Because the way in which Christian communities worship both reflects and affects their doctrinal beliefs.³⁸ According to Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390–c. 455), “the law of prayer determines the law of belief [legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi].”³⁹ The Latin slogan lex orandi, lex credendi (“the way you pray shapes the way you believe”) is often cited here as indicating the way in which doctrine and worship are interconnected.⁴⁰ Differences in worship would thus be expected to further increase the degree of diversity already present in early Christian communities.

Christian Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century

The early church was socially fragmented, disconnected from influence and power within the imperial structures. There was no question of some centralized church authority “imposing” its views on other congregations, as the church was denied access to political or military power. No mechanism for preventing diversification or enforcing orthodoxy existed. The Roman state was generally hostile to Christianity, often seeing it as subverting traditional religious views. Occasionally, periods of repression developed, such as the Decian persecution (250–51). Until the conversion of Constantine and the issuing of the Edict of Milan (313), the Christian churches had no significant social status or access to power. The convening of the Council of Nicaea by Constantine in 325 can be seen as the first step in the attempted creation of an essentially uniform imperial church, whose doctrines would be publicly defined by creeds. By this stage, however, a considerable degree of diversity had become established within the church.

The comparison with early Islam is instructive. Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, a political structure for ruling the new Muslim state emerged. Known as “the caliphate,” it grew both in power and territory during the centuries following Muhammad’s death, conquering the lands of the Fertile Crescent to the north. Within this expanding territory, often referred to as the ummah, Islam was enforced as the official state religion. During the period of the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr (632–34) and Umar (634–44), the codification of the Qu’ran was carried out as the number of individuals who had committed it to memory (the “Companions of the Prophet”) began to diminish. Yet the process of committing the Qu’ran to writing led to textual divergencies. Thus the codex of Abdullah ibn Mas’ud became the standard text for the Muslims at Kufa in Iraq, while the codex of Ubayy ibn Ka’b was widely used in Damascus in Syria. Aware that this situation might lead to factionalization and disunity within the emergent Islamic state, Umar ordered the production of an official, authorized text of the Qu’ran. All other texts, whether complete or fragmentary, were ordered to be destroyed.⁴¹ We see here a strategy devised to achieve uniformity within early Islam—one that had, and could have had, no parallel within early Christianity.

This point is of no small importance in connection with the argument of Walter Bauer, to be considered in more detail in the following chapter, that orthodoxy arose through the gradual and expanding imposition of the views of the Roman church on its neighbors in the second century. This suggestion has proved very difficult to defend, given that Rome’s influence over other churches in the region began to become significant only in the third century.⁴² Bauer seems to have retrojected the later influence of the Roman church onto an earlier period, when, it is perfectly clear, the Christian communities at Rome did not have the power or authority that later emerged.

All these factors combined to lead to a significant degree of doctrinal diversity within early Christianity, particularly in the late first and early second centuries. Even in the New Testament documents, concerns are expressed at some of the outcomes of such diversity—most notably, the tendency to form factions within Christian communities, which was seen as a threat to the unity of churches. Theological latitude is not identical with heresy; nevertheless, it may be argued that it provides a context within which heresy may arise. All this tends to confirm the judgment of H. E. W. Turner in his landmark 1954 study of the relationship between heresy and orthodoxy in the early church:

During the formative period of the Christian Church orthodoxy resembles a symphony composed of various elements rather than a single melodic theme, or a confluence of many tributaries into a single stream rather than a river which pursues its course to the sea without mingling with other waters. Already within the New Testament itself there exists a considerable variety of theological traditions.⁴³

Yet despite this obvious diversity of early Christian expression, the historical evidence clearly points to a shared sense of identity, expressed and maintained in the face of considerable geographical distance and cultural differences. Early Christians clearly saw themselves as belonging to the same extended family, characterized by a minimal “basic kit” of beliefs, values, and attitudes toward worship.⁴⁴ The core Christian rituals or sacraments of baptism and Eucharist provided a focus of identity, which was supplemented by emerging creedal statements.⁴⁵ Diversity generally arose over what was to be added to this “basic kit,” or how some of its key elements were to be interpreted or applied. This identity was not sustained simply by internal means; external agencies, including representatives of the Roman state, came to see Christianity as a coherent entity—in the case of the Roman state, as a potential threat—and solidified its sense of shared identity through various repressive measures.⁴⁶ Despite its internal diversities, Christianity came to be seen as a coherent entity by outside observers who felt threatened by its increasing numerical strength. Christian identity can thus be seen to have been enhanced by processes of social negotiation, involving at least some degree of social construction, that reinforced an internally generated Christian sense of corporate identity.

These reflections on the complex character of early Christianity set the context for any discussion of heresy. It is very difficult to speak of “Christian orthodoxy” in the late first century or early second century as this would later be understood as an “authorized” or “official” statement of faith. Christian orthodoxy was emergent at this time, characterized by an exploration of intellectual options, without any decisive control by authoritative figures or institutions. It is perfectly possible to speak of the beginnings of a process of “crystallization” of orthodoxy, as various theological formulations of faith were proposed and examined, some to be affirmed and others rejected. In the former, we see the beginnings of orthodoxy; in the latter, of heresy. From the outset, heresy had its origins within the church, as part of an ongoing process of explorations of the center and boundaries of faith.

It is important to appreciate that many of those who came to be regarded as heretics were active and committed participants in Christian communities who were genuinely concerned to enable the gospel to be understood and presented faithfully and effectively. The impression created by some patristic writers is that heretics were outsiders who sought to subvert or destroy the church. The origins of this inaccurate stereotype of heresy are now reasonably well understood. In recent years, increased attention has been paid to the strategies devised by Irenaeus of Lyons to exclude certain individuals and teachings from the church.⁴⁷ A new “heresiology” emerged in the late second century as a way of portraying heresy that attempted to mask the fact that heresy had its origins within the church, occasionally even remaining present within it.⁴⁸

Making use of established forms of “philosophical invective,”⁴⁹ Irenaeus and others argued that heretics were impostors, wolves in sheep’s clothing, who pretended to be members of the church yet were ultimately bent on its destruction. Where the heretics based their views on a reading of Scripture, it was argued that their exegesis was merely a pretext for developing views that had their origin outside the tradition of Christ and his apostles and were intended to subvert the church. Such studies suggest that Irenaeus wanted to convert difference into exclusion, as a means both of isolating heretics from the community of faith and of maintaining the idea that heresy was a contaminant of faith that had its origins outside the church, being smuggled in by imposters or traitors. Yet to understand the importance of heresy, we must confront the fact that every major heresy began as an exploration of the dynamics of faith within the church.

So where might we begin this exploration? The most obvious point is to consider how the phenomenon of heresy came to emerge within the early church, and its potential significance. We shall consider this in the chapter that follows.

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