Recent Challenges to the Bauer Thesis

In the summer of last year, I spent my birthday wondering the historic streets of Dublin, Ireland. There was no shortage of Irish heritage for me to behold, from the still-present bullet holes in the GPO building from the 1916 Easter Rising to the Book of Kells sitting comfortably in a dimly lit and strictly no-photographs room in Trinity College. The summit of my visit was the Chester-Beatty library, not too far from Dublin Castle. Looming adjacent to the room where fragments of the famous P46 manuscript are housed stood a info-board that read the following:

"The early Christian movement was exceptionally diverse; the numerous Christian groups in the second and third centuries had a wide range of beliefs and practices. Most had gospels written by 'apostles' to back up their claims. In the fourth century, one group became dominant, deeming itself orthodox (true) while marginalising all others as heretical (false)."

The use of terms such as "diverse," "dominant," and "marginalise" all evoke the language we have become familiar with through the popular repackaging of Walter Bauer's reconstruction of early Christianity in his magisterial Orthodoxy and Heresy. in Earliest Christianity (1934). The "Bauer Thesis," as it has been affectionately labelled, insists that early Christianity was not a unified apostolic faith from the get-go. Instead, it coalesced into a monotonous orthodoxy only after the early centuries of the religion. This era was contrastingly characterised by many competing groups with different theologies, each vying for power within the fledgling religion. 

Although the provocative terms above are lacking if not totally absent from Bauer's actual monograph, they are the typical vocabulary that is liberally scattered in books like Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities (2003) where such terms are implicitly charged with moral denunciation of the actions of ancient Christians. Leaders of proto-orthodox Christianity—the precursors to modern incarnations of Christian religion—are implicitly vilified as agents of religious subterfuge: they suppressed forms of Christianity that they deemed unacceptable and then drew up arbitrary boundary markers for who is and is not a Christian. There is little need for further elaboration on why such an incendiary thesis is viewed as a hostile assault upon the very foundations of modern, credal Christianity.

Beyond levelling ethical judgments against the founders of ancient Christianity, popular anti-Christian activism has taken a great liking to the Bauer Thesis for the simple reason that it reveals how many different kinds of Christianity there were in the ancient world; the modern diversity in the church can no longer be simply chalked up to a sudden prevalence of 21st century heresy and/or a great falling away from the original truth. If there was no "original truth" in the sense that one particular group had a monopoly on the right belief, then no Christian group can claim that they represent "true" Christianity. From here, Christianity's metaphysical, political, and moral grandstanding (at least in the eyes of counter-apologists) is destabilised. 

On the evangelical side of the argument, the Bauer Thesis has been (unsurprisingly) poorly received in some semi-recent scholarship. Avid readers will no doubt be aware of works like Kostenberger and Kruger's The Heresy of Orthodoxy (2010) which attacks the Bauer Thesis and those who propagate it in modern religious critiques on historical and theological grounds. Regardless of what one thinks of this issue, however, it is apparent that more open dialogue on the question of how accurate the historical and literary premises of Bauer's ideas are. Responses to Bauer and his modern acolytes by evangelicals have not received much attention.

It would be an understatement to label Bauer's thesis as influential: it is one of the major paradigms through which most reconstructions of early Christianity are built from today. Modern popularisers of the thesis such as Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels are among the most recognisable faces in popular New Testament scholarship. It is through these figures that the Bauer Thesis has been disseminated to the masses and has thus dragged the idiom "history is written by the winners" into the realm of biblical studies.

That being said, the Bauer Thesis is not above scrutiny. Even Ehrman and Pagels, despite their seemingly uncritical acceptance of the general parameters of the thesis, observe that Bauer's ideas have been criticised and refined through the decades to better reflect the data. There are, however, more pressing questions about the Bauer Thesis that these popular authors appear to neglect in assessing the validity of Bauer's reconstruction of early Christianity: did the Roman church really force other churches to adopt their doctrine? Were forms of "unorthodox" Christianity closer to orthodoxy than we thought? Were the centres of early Christianity unilaterally characterised by heresy preceding orthodoxy? These are the questions raised by the collection of essays in Paul A. Hartog's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christian Contexts (2015). In today's post, I wish to outline the arguments made by this book's contributors; we will see below that this book has failed to gain the traction I think it deserves.

Hartog and the Problems with Bauer's Thesis

Excluding the opening essay by Rodney Decker, which serves as an overview of the thesis itself, Hartog provides the first contribution entitled "Walter Bauer and the Apostolic Fathers." Hartog criticises Bauer's interpretation of the letters written by Polycarp and Clement of Rome and suggests that Bauer overplayed the situations described in the letters. Hartog suggests that Polycarp's letters betray dependence on the New Testament and that this serves as early evidence of apostolic authority as normative.

Carl B. Smith follows up with "Post-Bauer Scholarship on Gnosticism(s)." Observing that Bauer lacked many Gnostic materials at his time, Smith details more recent research on Gnosticism to see if Bauer's views of the early Gnostic sects still holds up. He suggests that the term "Gnosticism" is itself problematic due to its modern and invention and that earlier models of Gnosticism's origins (including the German models that influenced Bauer) are incorrect. The late dates of the Gnostic texts and the legitimate continuity between Christianity are also emphasised. Smith concludes that knowing what Gnosticism is will be important to any reconstruction of early Christianity and that Bauer, who wrote before the discovery of Nag Hammadi, simply did not have the resources for a proper understanding of early Gnosticism.

Next is William Varner with his essay "Baur to Bauer and Beyond" which focuses on the Jewish-Christian element of the Bauer Thesis. Observing that Bauer's theory appears to be an extension of F. C. Baur's dialectic understanding of Judaism and Christianity, he goes on to critique the use of the Pseudo-Clementines and their supposed anti-Paul portrayal of the apostolic era and also attempts to outline the extent of Jewish Christianity in the early centuries. With an excursus on Raymond Brown's four groups of early Jewish Christianity in the first few centuries, Varner challenges the simplicity of the traditional model that leaves no room of theological diversity but also affirms that the Jewish kernel of New Testament Christianity was what held those diverse groups together under the umbrella of orthodoxy.

Following is Rex D. Butler with "'Orthodoxy,' 'Heresy,' and Complexity." Butler focuses on the Montanist movement popularised by Tertullian. Against Bauer's characterisation of Montanism as just another early heresy, Butler shines light on the many normative aspects of Montanism including its acceptance and pioneering of Trinitarianism. Documents that Bauer perceived to be Montanist, such as the passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, cannot be definitively identified with Montanism and emphasis is placed on the fact that Carthage—the home of the Montanist "New Prophecy" movement—never separated from the broader church. Butler affirms that there is even acceptable diversity in normative Christianity and there is more nuance to the orthodoxy of the New Prophecy movement than Bauer allowed.

Bryan M. Liftin's "Apostolic Tradition and the Rule of Faith" is next. His essay accepts the pervasive existence of many early "Jesus-Religions," but questions whether they can all be considered "Christianity." Liftin thus initiates a search for an authentic apostolic kerygma, largely dependent on the works of James D. G. Dunn and C. H. Dodd. He suggests that there were four basic contours of the Christian regula fidei with the Easter event serving as the bare-bones affirmation. Therefore, any "Jesus-Religion" that denied the centrality of the crucifixion and resurrection was automatically something "other" and "later."

David C. Alexander and Edward L. Smither provide an analysis of North African Christianity in their essay "Bauer's Forgotten Region." Outlining the basic elements and origins of Christianity in Carthage and Alexandria, they point out that Bauer neglected the resistance of Tertullian and Cyprian to heretical bishops who took power in the Roman church. Accordingly, this undermines Bauer's theory about Roman orthodoxy attempting to export its influence to other churches. They ultimately suggest that Tertullian's "lost Christianity" in North Africa self-identified as orthodox and that Bauer was uncritically dependent on Jerome's later condemnation of Tertullian and other Montanists who may fit more comfortably into orthodox belief than previously thought. 

We next have W. Brian Shelton's "Patristic Heresiology" which tackles the reliability of the orthodox fathers in their representation of their opponents. He affirms that the fathers were more trustworthy in their characterisation of their opponents than Bauer suggested and that certain incidents, including the arguments between Hippolytus and other Roman bishops over the formation of the Trinity, were theological controversies rather than Rome over-extending its boundaries. Agreement between ecclesiastical authorities and shared persecution as a metric for evaluating the sincerity of the fathers lend to his plea that the heresiologists should not be ignored or discounted in assessing the legitimacy of "other" Christianities.

The final essay is Glen L. Thompson's "Bauer's Early Christian Rome." Thompson criticises Bauer's reconstruction of early Rome as a domineering force in the early church. Among other arguments, Thompson rejects Bauer's assumption of a one-bishop system in Rome, his interpretation of the early traditions of Mark in Alexandria as a Roman "plan" to plant their doctrine in North Africa, and views the Neronian persecution as evidence against the Roman church's "long term vision" for the rest of Christianity: if the church had been decimated by this event, how could it be looking to extend it's influence by the end of the first century? Thompson thus declares that early Roman Christianity was not as unified or powerful as Bauer thought, which does not lend support to the suggestion of ideological imperialism in the Bauer Thesis.

The (Limited) Reception of Hartog's Volume

The purpose of this post is not to blindly regurgitate these arguments, but to try and encourage people interested in early Christianity to critically re-examine widely held and often uncriticised aspects of New Testament scholarship. Only in such an environment where views are not allowed to gain immunity from criticism will the discipline develop and move forward. I encourage the reader to acquire a copy of Orthodoxy and Heresy and read the contributions for themselves. There are free versions available on JSTOR and in Rob Rowe's Sentinel Google drive.

Hartog's collection of essays have, unfortunately, had a negligible effect in the published literature. Michael Kruger, co-author of The Heresy of Orthodoxy, cites the essays be Hartog, Butler, and Litfin in his 2018 book Christianity at the Crossroads. J. D. Atkins, in his 2019 doctoral dissertation The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church contains a passing footnote in which Hartog's book appears as the most recent and relevant volume on the topic of early church diversity. Other volumes published in the late 2010s and early 2020s have similar passing footnotes referring Orthodoxy and Heresy, including those of Bradley J. Bitner, Nicholas Perrin, Michael Mollerich, and Jeremiah Mutie.

The most interaction with Hartog's book has been by Alain le Boulluec in a new edition of his book The Notion of Heresy in Greek Literature in the Second and Third Centuries (2022, originally 1985). Sadly, this is once again only a footnote in the translation introduction, but Boulluec nevertheless provides some assessment of the essays in Orthodoxy and Heresy. Boulluec says concerning the volume:

"Although the critique in this collected work is at times nuances, its militant character and its concern to construct Christianity united from the beginning by a unanimous credo are too apparent for the argument not to be somewhat biased" (xxv, n. 45),

I must confess my profound disappointment by this assessment, even if it is only a footnote. I do not understand how Boulluec could dismissively assert that the content of Hartog's book is "miliatant," smearing it with an aroma of fundamentalism that has little place in serious academic discourse. Yes, the contributors are evangelicals; yes, there is a polemical counter to the popular repurposing of Bauer's work; and most certainly, yes, it is "biased" against Bauer and his thesis. If these are "militant" characteristics, then Bart Ehrman is a domestic terrorist.

Undoubtedly, there is a level of militancy in Kostenberger and Kruger's Heresy of Orthodoxy—whose concluding remarks are little more than a cringeworthy prayer for God's mercy on anyone who disagrees with them. But Orthodoxy and Heresy contains no such evangelical quips. Most of the contributions lavish Bauer praise for his work and what he did for biblical studies as a whole. Bauer is not an enemy to the writers in Hartog's book. It is straight, sober scholarship from start to finish.

Bringing things full circle, I am convicted that the Bauer Thesis should be subject to the best critical evaluation that modern scholarship can provide. I am also convinced that evangelical scholars like the contributors to Orthodoxy and Heresy should be included and recognised in such debates. Their prior faith commitments are no grounds to outright dismiss their work. No theory about early Christianity is above criticism, neither the Bauer Thesis nor traditional creedal affirmations. Anyone with a modicum of intellectual fairness should take the above arguments into consideration when we discuss the convoluted subject of Christian origins.