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The Reception of Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity during the Last Decade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Daniel J. Harrington S. J.
Daniel J. Harrington S. J.
Affiliation:
Weston School of Theology, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Extract

First published in 1934, Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum warned against simply equating the words “orthodoxy” and “heresy” with the notions of majority and minority and with the process of deviation from correct belief to wrong belief. Bauer sought to show that in the first two Christian centuries orthodoxy and heresy did not stand in relation to one another as primary and secondary. He tried to prove that in many regions what came to be known in the ecclesiastical tradition as “heresy” was in fact the original manifestation of Christianity. For example, according to Bauer, the major figures in earliest Christianity at Edessa were the “heretics” Marcion, Bar Daisan, and Mani. In Egypt a gnostic form of Christianity appears to have been dominant before A.D. 200, and in Asia Minor “orthodox” leaders such as Ignatius and Polycarp waged only moderately successful battles against gnosticism and judaizing Christianity.

Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 73 , Issue 1-2 , April 1980 , pp. 289 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1980

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References

1 It appeared as volume 10 in the series BHTh=Beiträge zur historischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1934).

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