Re Walther Bauer and the ‘new school’ and the claims there was no early orthodoxy but a diversity of Christian beliefs early on.
Bauer’s two main theses:
Bauer had two main content ideas.
1. There were originally varieties of Christianities, not a fixed orthodoxy. In the beginning there were Christianities, existing side by side with no one option having a superior claim on apostolic roots. He claimed there was hard evidence to support this conclusion. In his regional survey of Edessa of ancient Syria and Alexandria in Egypt, Bauer argued that what became known as heresy was the faith’s original form. Other regions such as Asia Minor and Macedonia give evidence that such heretical views were at least a more prevalent minority than the church sources suggest. So Bauer’s key point is that orthodoxy is a construct of the later church. Between the fourth and sixth centuries a later orthodoxy was projected back into this earlier period. Bauer’s implication is that what Christianity has been and what it originally was are so different that we should rethink (or make over) the faith.
2.What allowed for the development of orthodoxy was the Roman church’s successful control over other areas in the late second century. Thus, for example, Rome threw its weight around in Corinth, even though Corinth had more diversity than orthodoxy.
Eventually, Rome won across most of Christiandom, so orthodoxy won. Bauer claimed that this victory distorted the earliest history, and subsequent writers, embracing his thesis, formed the new school with its push to reassess this history.
An Assessment of Bauer’s Content Theses
Did Rome Control? Is the orthodox church Rome’s work? Subsequent critique has discredited his thesis. In fact, the German church historian Hans-Dietrich Altendorf described this feature of Bauer’s work as playing with the argument from silence so that the result was the “constructive fantasy of the author”. Later he spoke of an elegantly worked out fiction” to describe Bauer’s view of of how Rome directed Corinth.
A closer look at Bauer’s argument helps us. If Rome is the center of orthodoxy, then Bauer must show two things: (1) that orthodoxy really did not exist elsewhere and (2) that Roman communication in I Clement (ca. AD 95) to Corinth was not merely an attempt to persuade but was a ruling imposed on Corinth. However neither of these is the case. [/quote]
See Norris, Frederick W. 1976, {b]Ignatius, Polycarp, and I Clement: Walter Bauer Reconsidered.[/b] Vigilae Christianae 30:23-44.
On the first point, we know that Antioch and Asia Minor were strongholds for what became orthodox views in this early period
See Robinson, Thomas A..1988,
The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in the Early Christian Church.
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