The Early Development of Heresy
The Early Development of Heresy
In the summer of 144, a wealthy Christian shipowner called a meeting of church leaders in Rome. By this time, Christianity had gained a significant following in the imperial capital.1 Marcion of Sinope (c. 110–60) wanted to propose a fundamental change in the way in which the church positioned itself in relation to Judaism, not least its use of the Hebrew Bible.2 Marcion held that Christianity ought to be discontinuous with Judaism, appealing to biblical texts such as Luke 5:37: “[N]o one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.” Christianity, he argued, should have nothing to do with the God, beliefs, and rituals of Judaism. A clean break was necessary.
Sadly, the full details of Marcion’s theological proposals have been lost to history; his views, like those of so many who became embroiled in ecclesiastical controversies of this age, we know only through the writings of his opponents. The most detailed account of what happened in Rome is in the writings of Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 315–403).3 It seems clear that what Marcion was proposing represented a radical break with both the established tradition of the church and the writings of the New Testament. The majority position within the church, at Rome and elsewhere, was that Christianity represented the fulfillment of the covenant between God and Abraham, not its rejection or abrogation. The God whom Christians worshipped was the same as that worshipped by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whose will was disclosed through the Law and the Prophets.4 In marked contrast, Marcion proposed breaking with Judaism completely, seeing Christianity as a new faith concerning a new God.
We shall consider Marcion’s views in more detail later in this work. Our concern at this point, however, has to do with the reaction of the assembled Christian leaders to Marcion’s proposals, as related by Epiphanius. They declined to follow him in his views, and they returned his earlier gift of two hundred thousand sesterces, a very substantial sum by the standards of the day.5 There is no evidence that Christian leaders at Rome were particularly hostile toward Marcion. They unquestionably regarded him as being wrong in his beliefs. Yet they did not expel him from the church. Epiphanius makes it clear that Marcion dissociated himself from them, believing that they were not properly Christian in their beliefs, and went on to establish his own organization. Marcion saw himself as the defender of true orthodoxy and came to the conclusion that the only way to defend it was to break with the doctrinally suspect church of Rome and found his own society of true believers—a sect, to use the language of a later age.
The point here is that Marcion was perfectly clear about who was orthodox and who was heretical in this matter. Marcion was quite persuaded that his own views were correct, and that by failing to endorse them the Roman church had compromised its theology and thus lost its claim to be the true church. The Roman church leaders, of course, took a rather different view on the matter of which ecclesial group was heretical. Everyone wanted to be a champion of orthodoxy, Marcion included. Marcion did not see himself as a heretic but rather as a stalwart defender of what Christianity ought to be. But his prescription for what Christianity ought to be did not find significant support.
This observation that there were competing accounts of orthodoxy helps us appreciate that heresy is not a neutral concept but is determined by prior understandings of what Christianity ought to be. It is an evaluative notion, one that cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by historical analysis. It is this factor that makes the historical study of heresy so difficult, in that the historian is obliged to describe what others have prescribed. The judgment as to what is heretical and what is orthodox is not one that the historian can make using the legitimate tools of historical method. Rather, history attempts to understand the nature of heretical beliefs and of the processes, motivations, and criteria that led to the prescriptive judgment on the part of the church that these beliefs were heretical in the first place.
Epiphanius’s account of Marcion’s break with the Roman church is consistent with much of what we know about the history of the church and its circumstances around this time. But there were other ways of spinning this story. There is evidence of an emerging “official” narrative of the origins of heresy, locating its genesis in personal rivalry, ambition, and dishonesty in the late second and early third centuries. Tertullian, who played a significant role in the formulation of this alternative account, tells us that the Roman church threw out Marcion on account of his heretical views.6 Tertullian portrays the origins of Marcion’s heresy as lying in thwarted personal ambitions. According to Tertullian, Marcion was an eloquent and gifted Christian teacher who wanted to become bishop of Rome. When another candidate was appointed, Marcion reacted by leaving the church and establishing his heresy as an act of petulance.7 Marcion, he asserts, lost his faith, and as a result turned to heresy. He “was a deserter before he became a heretic.”8
There is little evidence that Tertullian had firsthand knowledge of the situation in Rome. His account is really of theological rather than historical significance, in that it points to a crystallizing “official” narrative of the origins of heresy that came to dominate early Christian heresiology. Significantly, the moral character and motivations of heretics often seem to assume at least as great a significance in these narratives as the theological characteristics of the heresies that they advocated. So what is the “official” or “received” view of the origins of heresy? In what follows, we shall explore the account of the nature and origins of heresy that gained the ascendancy in early Christianity.
The “Received View” on the Origins of Heresy
By the middle of the third century, a narrative of the origins of heresy had become established within the church. Its main features can be summarized as follows.9
The church founded by the apostles was “unsullied and undefiled,” holding firm to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the traditions of the apostles. Orthodoxy took temporal precedence over heresy. This argument is developed with particular vigor by Tertullian, who insists that the primum is the verum. The older a teaching, the more authentic it is. Heresy is thus regarded as innovation. Heresy is thus to be seen as a deliberate deviation from an already existing orthodoxy. Orthodoxy came first; the decision to deliberately reject it came later. Heresy represents the fulfillment of New Testament prophecies of defection and deviation within the church, and can be seen as a providential means by which the faith of believers can be tested and confirmed. Heresy arises through a love of novelty, or jealousy and envy on the part of heretics. Tertullian regularly portrays heretics such as Valentinus as frustrated and ambitious, and ascribes their views to resentment at their failure to achieve the recognition of high ecclesiastical office. Taken as a whole, heresy is internally inconsistent, lacking the coherency of orthodoxy. Individual heresies are geographically and chronologically restricted, whereas orthodoxy is found throughout the world. Heresy results from the “dilution of orthodoxy with pagan philosophy.” Once more, Tertullian is a vigorous advocate of this position, arguing that Valentinus’s ideas were derived from Platonism and Marcion’s from Stoicism. What, he asked, has Athens to do with Jerusalem?10
This “received view” of the origins of heresy was widely accepted within Christianity until the early nineteenth century. Despite their many differences, both Protestant and Catholic theologians held that Christian orthodoxy—to which they both aspired—was to be equated with the teaching of the early church. Heresy was a later deviation from this original pure doctrine. Thus the influential early Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) argued that the Protestant Reformation was a return to the primum et verum, the “first and the true,” which had become distorted and confused by the medieval church. “Ancient doctrine, original doctrine and true doctrine are thus one and the same thing.”11 Theological orthodoxy is identical with the earliest teachings of the church. Melanchthon’s Catholic opponents agreed with him in asserting that the church’s earliest teachings were the most authentic, but they argued that Catholicism preserved these teachings whereas Protestantism introduced innovations. And was not innovation one of the distinctive features of heresy?
This regnant theory began to be challenged in the nineteenth century, largely on account of the growing recognition that Christian doctrine had undergone development or evolution. Rather than having been fixed in the earliest period of the church’s history, doctrinal formulations had emerged over an extended period of time through a process of reflection and negotiation. The emergence of heresy, it seemed, was part of the greater process of the development of Christian doctrine itself, in which the seeds of the New Testament began to grow into the more sophisticated and extended vision of reality that is often styled “orthodoxy.” Where once heresies were seen as the deliberate flouting of a well-established set of beliefs, they came to be seen more as byways opened up for exploration through the process of doctrinal development.
The classical view of the origins of heresy was put under even greater pressure in the twentieth century, when historians suggested that the causal relationship of heresy and orthodoxy was not quite as straightforward as was once thought. In what follows, we shall consider these challenges to the “received view” of the origins of heresy and explore their implications for our understanding of the notion.
The Development of Doctrine
In his influential study of the nature of heresy, H. E. W. Turner identified a number of pressures that led to heretical outcomes. One of the most intriguing is what Turner terms archaism—a refusal to accept that development in Christian thinking is necessary.12 Turner’s point is significant, as it draws attention to the fact that the church gradually found the repetition of earlier formulas to be inadequate as a means of ensuring continuity, except at the purely formal level, with the apostolic church. An instinct to preserve tradition by reiteration gradually gave way to the realization that the church must continue its history by restatement and interpretation of those traditions. The dynamism of the New Testament traditions concerning Jesus was simply compromised through such a process of preservation, in that this involved what amounted to petrification.13 The wooden repetition of biblical formulas proved inadequate as a means of safeguarding and consolidating the Christian faith as new challenges to its identity and integrity emerged.
The importance of this point can be seen through a close reading of Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 293–373). One of Athanasius’s most significant insights is that loyalty to the Christian tradition actually demands innovation. As the inadequacy of traditional concepts and formulas to do justice to God’s self-revelation became increasingly clear, Athanasius argued for the need to explore fresh ways of expressing the fundamental themes of faith. For Athanasius, the critical question concerned what specific forms of doctrinal innovation were required if the integrity of the Christian faith was to be preserved.14 The stolid and unimaginative repetition of doctrinal formulas of the past offered no guarantee that the living tradition of the Christian faith was being adequately or authentically transmitted.
Yet the question of whether Christian doctrine can be said to “develop” caused many considerable unease in the nineteenth century. The issue was particularly sensitive for Catholics. Earlier generations of theologians had asserted the unchangeability of the fundamentals of faith with complete confidence. Thus the influential Catholic theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) insisted that the catholic “deposit of faith” remains the same—yesterday, today, and forever. The innovations of Protestants and heretics, Bossuet argued, could easily be identified because they represented change to a hitherto static and unchanged body of teaching.15
Yet evidence was mounting that pointed to the development of doctrine—that the teaching of the church had undergone evolution over a period of several centuries before crystallizing into the mature belief system expressed at the Council of Chalcedon (451). During the 1830s and 1840s, a group of Catholic theologians based at the University of Tübingen, including Johann Sebastian Drey (1777–1853) and Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), developed an organic approach to doctrinal development that likened the process to the natural growth of a biological seed.16 This simple biological analogy, which had its roots in the New Testament itself, became increasingly popular in German theological circles. It allowed for doctrinal development while at the same time suggesting that the pattern of growth was predetermined rather than arbitrary or random. To concede that doctrine had developed was therefore not necessarily a cause for theological concern.17
This approach was developed in the English-speaking world by John Henry Newman (1801–90). In a university sermon at Oxford in 1843, Newman used the text of the day—“But Mary kept these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19)—to draw a pointed distinction between “new truths” and “further insights.”18 The church, he argued, was engaged in a process of reflection, through which new insights emerged. This did not, he insisted, result in innovation; rather, it led to an expansion of the church’s understanding of what it believed.
In 1845, Newman set out his ideas more fully in his celebrated Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Its most important contribution to the study of the development of doctrine was arguably not a theory of how doctrine develops but its acknowledgment that such change had indeed taken place.19 It is the insistence upon the observable fact of doctrinal development, not any specific theory or model of this process, that is probably the distinguishing feature and most significant achievement of Newman’s seminal work. For Newman, “development,” or the attainment of “further insights” in matters of doctrine, was an entirely orthodox idea.
From the necessity, then, of the case, from the history of all sects and parties in religion, and from the analogy and example of Scripture, we may fairly conclude that Christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true developments, that is, of developments contemplated by its Divine Author.20
Newman’s idea was not well received in more traditional Catholic circles, which were alarmed at signs of growing secularization in Europe and regarded any dilution or diminution of traditional standpoints as anathema in such a dangerous context. The First Vatican Council (1869–70) had little time for the idea of doctrinal development, reasserting the notion of the “immutability of doctrine”21 alongside that of papal infallibility. Yet the historical evidence for this process of development was accumulating inexorably, laying the groundwork for a reconsideration of the traditional notion of a static doctrinal heritage. Perhaps the “faith once delivered to the saints” was not a full-fledged set of dogmas but the basic kit for the construction of such dogmas under God’s providential guidance.22
The idea of the “development of doctrine” was given a new injection of intellectual energy with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). If one could speak of evolution within the biological world, could not the same—or at least an analogous—process be discerned within the world of ideas? Given the growing impact of Darwinism throughout the Western world in the late nineteenth century and beyond, it was perhaps inevitable that the phenomenon of doctrinal development would begin to be thought of in Darwinian terms.
So, was the “faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) itself a fully developed system of doctrine, or was it rather the seed from which such a system might grow?23 Most Christian writers would now give broad assent, with inevitable qualifications, to the general position mapped out by Charles Gore in 1891. Dealing with the question of the relationship of the New Testament witness to Christ and the subsequent elaboration and consolidation of those ideas in the doctrines of the church, Gore argues for a natural, organic emergence of the Chalcedonian definition.24 The whole process is governed by the gradual emergence of what Gore termed “a corporate consciousness” that is in a continual process of “gaining clearer expression” using the language and conceptualities of its environment.
The idea of doctrinal development is now widely accepted by most theologians, whether Protestant or Catholic, and is no longer seen as causing any particular difficulties. Most theologians would now argue that the Christian church has constantly been engaged in a process of self-criticism and self-evaluation as it interrogates itself as to whether its existing modes of thought are indeed adequately grounded in the realities of divine revelation or whether they are indeed the best possible representations of a divine self-disclosure that is ultimately resistant to being reduced to human words and concepts.25
It is not difficult to see how this demand for constant theological vigilance is intimately connected with the notion of the development of doctrine, in that the church’s internal dialogue and self-critique inevitably (if slowly) lead to a realization that, in some cases, yesterday’s attempts to conceptualize the essence of faith need improvement, the need perhaps arising through their being too closely tied to the prevailing assumptions of the day, or perhaps through their focusing excessively on only one aspect of a complex question. Doctrinal development is the inevitable and proper outcome of the theological watchfulness demanded by the church. There is thus a sense in which Christian orthodoxy is something that is made as succeeding generations inherit ways of speaking about God and Christ that they rightly respect yet equally rightly wish to subject to examination. And, conversely, it follows that certain approaches, even those once regarded as positive and helpful, may have to be set aside as unacceptable or even heretical.
Rather than passively accepting the ways that previous generations interpreted a particular biblical passage or dogmatic concept, the church is called to “put everything to the test, and hold on to what is found to be good” (1 Thess. 5:21). This is most emphatically not being disrespectful toward the past; rather, it is about maintaining the dialogue that began in the past, continues today, and will not end until the close of history. Is this really the best way of telling the truth of faith? Is this really the most comprehensive account of who God is and what God has done? Is this really the least conceptually extravagant way of representing the identity of Christ? These questions must be asked and answered as part of the church’s “discipleship of the mind.”
The acceptance of the idea of the development of doctrine has important implications for the classical model of the origins of heresy. For Tertullian, heresy was about innovation, change, or modification of the pristine doctrinal truth of antiquity. Yet if it is accepted that orthodox doctrine develops over time, Tertullian’s method of identifying and accounting for heresy is left stranded. This clearly raises difficulties for the traditional account—difficulties that are compounded through a growing realization of the complexity of the interconnection of orthodoxy and heresy, as we shall see presently.
Outsider or Insider? The Origins of Heresy
Traditional Christian accounts of the origins of heresy generally depict heresy as an invader or external contaminant. Heresy arises when alien ideas become influential within the church. Tertullian, for example, argued that a naive Christian willingness to make use of the ideas of the Platonic Academy in theological reflection led to the church’s falling victim to a series of heresies. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? What has the Christian church to do with the Platonic Academy?26 Heresy is the inevitable outcome of the contamination of the purity of the Christian faith by external influences.
This received account of the origins of heresy is now generally regarded as incorrect. While certain forms of heresy may represent responses to wider intellectual or cultural movements in society, heresy nevertheless appears to originate from inside the church. The stimulus for the development of heresy may come from outside the church; the development of heresy takes place within the community of faith. Tertullian and others are correct to suggest that wider cultural and intellectual influences may play a role in catalyzing the emergence of a heresy. Yet it is important to appreciate that the heresies in question seem to have been developed by Christians, particularly those who felt the need to ensure that the church remained culturally engaged.
To illustrate these issues, we may consider the origins of Montanism, a movement that originated in Phrygia, in Asia Minor, during the late second century. Montanism was noted for its moral rigorism, and it developed ideas concerning ecstatic prophesying that are often seen as anticipations of modern Pentecostalism.27 It has been argued for some time that there are important points of contact between Montanism and Phrygian paganism, suggesting that the movement was influenced, at least to some extent, by its immediate context.28 Yet while a good case can be made for arguing that from its outset Montanism exhibited characteristics that are more compatible with aspects of pagan religions prominent in Phrygia at the time than with contemporary traditional Christianity, this does not mean that Montanism is to be seen as an essentially pagan corruption of Christianity. Other scholars have emphasized how Montanism, despite its distinctive emphases, remains an essentially Christian movement.29
Montanism is perhaps best understood as a local form of Christianity that adapted itself to its local cultural environment, developing emphases that can be seen as representing accommodations to local Phrygian culture. Although the influences that shaped its emergence originated from outside the church, Montanism is not to be thought of as representing a pagan takeover of Christianity. It clearly arose within a church, or group of churches, as some church members sought to develop what they regarded as an authentic form of Christianity capable of engaging with the pagan culture of its day.
Similar narratives can be offered in the case of most of the other classical heresies of Christendom. The common pattern is the development, within the churches, of movements that were later regarded as heretical but that were considered by their originators as authentic forms of Christianity, superior to their alternatives in that they were better adapted to the cultural environment or more effective in avoiding certain weaknesses of their rivals. The subsequent fate of these approaches depended heavily upon the long-term reliability of that judgment.
The Relation of Orthodoxy and Heresy: The Bauer Thesis
The twentieth century witnessed the discovery of significant documents at Nag Hammadi and other locations that opened up new debates about the interaction of orthodoxy and heresy. The Nag Hammadi library consisted of a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts in a sealed glass jar that was discovered by agricultural workers in upper Egypt in December 1945. The discovery of these documents led to the reopening of many questions concerning the context in which early Christianity developed. One of the most significant of these discussions involved revisiting the issues originally raised by Walter Bauer in his Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934).30 In this work, published before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, Bauer set out two principal theses defining the relationship between orthodoxy and heresy in the second century.
In the first place, Bauer argued that Christianity was, from its outset, a loose coalition of different groups that differed considerably in their understanding of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth and in their history of religious provenance. What would later be called heresies were not to be seen as illegitimate deviations from an originally unified and orthodox mainstream, but as direct descendants of earlier forms of Christianity that differed from those from which second-century orthodoxy is derived. In other words, what would later be termed “heresy” and “orthodoxy” were present from the earliest of times in the church.
In the second place, Bauer argued that the predominant form of Christianity in most places down to the end of the second century was heretical rather than orthodox. Early Christianity was thus dominated by what was later termed “heresy” by the orthodox, but which was not regarded as such at this stage. Bauer makes a significant exception in the case of Rome, which he concedes to have been dominated by orthodoxy. From the end of the first century onward, Rome gradually extended its orthodox influence eastward, until it achieved dominance by the end of the third century. Bauer’s assertion has, it must be said, puzzled most historians of this period, who correctly note that the early Christian communities were simply not in a position to coerce anyone. (See the earlier discussion on Chapter 3.)
Bauer went on to argue that a variety of views that were tolerated in the early church gradually began to be regarded with suspicion by the later church. Teachings that were accepted in the earliest decades of the church’s existence were later condemned, particularly from the end of the second century onward, as an orthodox consensus began to emerge. Bauer’s hostility to the idea of doctrinal norms can be seen particularly clearly in his conviction that these were a late development within Christianity. Opinions that had once been tolerated were now discarded as inadequate.
So how was this distinction between heresy and orthodoxy drawn? Bauer argued that the shared sense of fellowship within the early Christian churches was not initially located at the level of doctrines but lay primarily in the worship of the same Lord rather than in any formal statement of doctrine (which is how “orthodoxy” tends to be defined). The notion of orthodoxy, he suggested, was a direct result of the growing political power of Rome, which increasingly came to impose its own views upon others, using the term “heresy” to designate and disparage those views it rejected or found threatening. The rhetoric of the Roman church created a climate of hostility and suspicion toward earlier forms of orthodoxy that the church found threatening or uncongenial.
For Bauer, the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was thus essentially arbitrary, reflecting the sociological and political predominance of power groups rather than anything intrinsic to the ideas themselves. Bauer’s ideas were taken up and developed in the writings of the Harvard scholar Helmut Koester31 and enjoyed at least a degree of acceptance within the scholarly community until as late as the 1960s.32 Koester lauded Bauer’s achievement, declaring that he had “demonstrated convincingly” that “Christian groups later labeled heretical actually predominated in the first two or three centuries, both geographically and theologically. Recent discoveries, especially those at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, have made it even clearer that Bauer was essentially right, and that a thorough and extensive revaluation of early Christian history is called for.”33
Today, Bauer’s thesis looks decidedly shaky.34 While fully conceding that Bauer demonstrated that early orthodoxy was a more fluid and less rigidly defined notion than some had supposed, his critics have called most of his conclusions into question, expressing particular concern over his extensive argumentation from silence.35 For example, Bauer’s argument that early Christianity did not understand its unity in doctrinal terms received early support from some writers, such as Martin Elze;36 however, others had been arguing that a fundamentally doctrinal understanding of Christian unity was already present in the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Justin Martyr.37
Further, Bauer’s assertion that, in most geographical regions, what would later be stigmatized as heresy was actually the earliest form of Christianity has been firmly rebutted on the basis of both literary and archaeological evidence.38 A growing awareness of the ease of communication within the Roman Empire has led to an increasing understanding of how relatively easy it was for a widely flung faith to sustain a network of interlocking and interrelating communities with a shared sense of identity and purpose.39
The accuracy of Bauer’s account of certain heresies has also been challenged. For example, Bauer held that Valentinism was a form of Christianity that was essentially independent of orthodoxy in terms of its origins. Yet in a careful study of Valentinian sources, James McCue suggested that the origins of Valentinism were best understood as lying within second-century orthodoxy. In particular, McCue noted the following:
The role of orthodoxy in Valentinism is such that it seems to be part of the self-understanding of the moment rather than its antithesis. Valentinian sources at several points explicitly and clearly identify the orthodox as a large group, compared with a relatively small number of Valentinians. The Valentinians of the decades prior to Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria use the books of the orthodox New Testament in a manner that is best accounted for by supposing that Valentinianism developed within a mid-second-century orthodox matrix.40
A similar conclusion was reached by Birger Pearson, who noted that pre-Valentinian Gnosticism in Alexandria seemed to have emerged in a context in which orthodox faith and practice were already established.41 Valentinism here conforms to the general pattern, which we noted earlier, in which heresy has its origins within the community of faith rather than outside the church.
In his influential study of the relationship of Christianity and paganism in this formative era, Robin Lane Fox shows that Bauer’s historical approach to heresy fails on the grounds of precisely those historical criteria that he chooses to deploy in its support. While it is difficult to make firm historical judgments on many issues relating to the history of early Christianity, on one issue a clear verdict is possible:
An older view that heretical types of Christianity arrived in many places before the orthodox faith has nothing in its favour, except perhaps in the one Syrian city of Edessa. In Lyons and North Africa, there is no evidence of this first heretical phase and the likelier origins are all against it. In Egypt, the argument has been decisively refuted from the evidence of the papyri. Details of practice and leadership did differ widely, but the later existence of so many heresies must not obscure the common core of history and basic teaching throughout the Christian world.42
Instead, there has been a renewed appreciation of the merits of a more traditional view, which holds that second-century Christianity ought to be viewed essentially as an orthodox core surrounded by a penumbra within which the borderline between orthodoxy and heresy was still somewhat blurred and open to further clarification through controversy and debate.43 One can speak of a “pool of acceptable diversity” without raising any fundamental theological or historical difficulties.44 In any case, the historical observation that heresy existed prior to orthodoxy in a given location does not amount to saying that heresy exists on historically equal terms to orthodoxy.45
For most scholars, Bauer’s thesis is now to be seen as being of relatively little historical value. It rests on a series of assumptions that subsequent scholarship has found unsustainable. Yet there is one point at which Bauer is unquestionably correct—namely, that early Christianity was much more complex and diverse than some of its leading representatives of the time appear to wish us to believe. That, however, is now widely accepted and is no longer seen as controversial—or problematic.
The most significant legacy of Bauer’s thesis is the view that heretical visions of Christianity have just as much claim to legitimacy as their orthodox alternatives. An example of this approach is found in Elaine Pagels’s writings, beginning with The Gnostic Gospels.46 Pagels is an important witness not only to the lingering influence of the Bauer thesis within sections of academia but to the curious belief that Gnosticism offers a more liberating vision of reality, especially for women.47
Pagels’s revisionist account of heresy, especially her advocacy of Gnosticism as an egalitarian movement that encouraged the participation of women in sacred rites,48 can be sustained only through a policy of selective attention to the sources, filtering out or marginalizing those aspects of heresy that are inconveniently inconsistent with her approach. One obvious example will make this point clear. Let us consider the ending of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, which Pagels seems to regard as an early feminist manifesto. It is clearly nothing of the sort. This work’s dramatic conclusion sets out its view on women vigorously and forcefully. It is worth citing in its totality. According to this Gnostic document, Jesus ends his ministry with a proclamation that the “kingdom of the Father” is spread throughout the world. So who will enter this kingdom? What are the preconditions of membership?
Simon Peter said to them: “Let Mary go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.”
Jesus said: “See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, in order that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”49
The Gospel of Thomas proclaims that entrance to the kingdom of Heaven is restricted to males and to a select few females who are willing to sacrifice their gender identity. Egalitarian? Hardly. As the feminist scholar Kathryn Greene-McCreight rightly points out, Gnostic writings “abound in antifemale statements that make the ‘problematic’ New Testament passages about women pale in comparison to their own misogyny.”50
It needs to be made clear from the outset that it is historically indefensible to contrast a liberal, relaxed, gender-neutral, and generous heresy with a narrow, dogmatic, patriarchal, and rigid orthodoxy. It makes for a neat and winsome antithesis, ideally attuned to the contemporary cultural mood. Yet it is not compatible with the historical data. To mention some obvious difficulties: Montanism and Pelagianism were strongly disciplinarian heresies, while Marcionism was unpleasantly anti-Semitic. If heresy is to be dealt with seriously as a historical phenomenon, we need to abandon the curious presumption that it is a victim of some kind of theological oppression. To designate a movement as heretical does not imply that it was egalitarian or libertarian in a patriarchal and authoritarian age. Heresies could be even more patriarchal and authoritarian than orthodoxies. Sometimes heresies were rejected because they needed to be rejected.
So where do these reflections take us? The essential point that has been established by modern scholarship is that orthodoxy is an emergent phenomenon. It was not delivered as a ready-made package but grew, as a seed, over an extended period of time. All the fundamental themes that would be woven into the fabric of orthodoxy were there from the beginning; as time progressed, however, they came to be expressed in ways that sometimes involved moving beyond the language and imagery of the documents that would later be incorporated into the canon of the New Testament.51 A core orthodoxy was in the process of emerging and being passed on within a culture that was accustomed to oral transmission. Even without a functioning and authoritative New Testament, the patterns of teaching and worship that we know to have been operational in early Christianity would have been sufficient to create what some are now calling a proto-orthodoxy. Larry Hurtado defines this notion as follows:
By “proto-orthodox,” I mean early examples and stages of the sorts of beliefs and practices that, across the next couple of centuries, succeeded in becoming characteristic of classical, “orthodox,” Christianity, and came to be widely affirmed in Christian circles over and against the alternatives.52
Hurtado points out that a study of the second-century Christianity shows its tendency to affirm, preserve, promote, and develop what were by then becoming traditional expressions of belief that had originated in earlier years of the Christian church.53
The crystallization of doctrinal formulations and that of the canon of the New Testament are thus to be seen as related processes, two sides of the same coin of the firming up of a Christian community that was increasingly confident about its identity, vision, and place. As Christian communities came under increasing pressure, internal and external, to define themselves and to defend themselves against their alternatives, so there was growing interest in clarifying what were acceptable and unacceptable expressions of the faith—without enforcing a rigid, restrictive, and monochrome view of the essence of Christianity.54 And this program involved doctrines—attempts to express central themes of the Christian vision of reality in words.
This was a highly significant development, one that could stabilize and safeguard the core reality of the Christian faith. Doctrines were like protective, enfolding intellectual cocoons spun around the larva of faith. When constructed properly, they had the potential to give added resilience and stability to Christian life and thought. Yet a defective cocoon had the potential to disfigure, distort, and damage the life of faith. Heresy can be considered as an inadequate, distorting, or damaging conceptualization of faith—a faulty cocoon that damages rather than protects its larva.
These musings on how heresy is to be understood naturally lead us to ask whether it is possible to identify the “essence” of heresy, and if so, what this might be.