Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 49:1 (Mar 2006)
Article: Christian Communities In Western Asia Minor Into The Early Second Century: Ignatius And Others As Witnesses Against Bauer
Author: Paul Trebilco

---

JETS 49:1 (March 2006) p. 17

Christian Communities In Western Asia Minor
Into The Early Second Century:
Ignatius And Others As Witnesses Against Bauer

Paul Trebilco

Paul Trebilco is professor and head of the department of theology and religious studies at The University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. This paper was originally presented as a plenary address at the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Valley Forge, PA on November 18, 2005.

I. Introduction

Walter Bauer’s book Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei im dltesten Chris-tentum was published in 1934. The English translation, entitled Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity and published in 1971,1 gave the book a new lease on life. This book has had a significant impact on scholarship on the NT and the early Church. It is to this work and its legacy that I will devote this paper.

Bauer summarized his argument in this way: “Perhaps—I repeat, perhaps—certain manifestations of Christian life that the authors of the church renounce as ‘heresies’ originally had not been such at all, but, at least here and there, were the only form of the new religion—that is, for those regions they were simply ‘Christianity.’ The possibility also exists that their adherents constituted the majority, and that they looked down with hatred and scorn on the orthodox, who for them were the false believers.”2 Both chronological and numerical dimensions were important in Bauer’s argument. He thought that what would later be called heresy was often “primary” and hence the original form of Christianity, and that in some places and at some times, heresy had a numerical advantage and outnumbered what came to be called orthodoxy.3

JETS 49:1 (March 2006) p. 18

Bauer did not use the phrases “lost Christianities” or “lost Scriptures,” but they are clearly implicit in his work. If heresy was the earliest form in some places, then it has a certain primacy, which suggests it should not have been suppressed, nor its writings lost. And if what became “orthodoxy” was a minority in some places, with heresy actually being dominant, then some would argue that the decisions in favor of “orthodoxy” can be seen as very political decisions, which may involve power and politics more than a claim that this particular form of Christianity was a faithful witness to Jesus Christ. Thus the claim that what became orthodox Christianity involved the triumph simply of “the winners” gains much support from Bauer. But Bauer’s thesis also raises the issue of t...

visitor : : uid: ()