16 September 2024
Credo
There was no set of core beliefs which gained universal acceptance in the early church. In the absence of doctrinal consensus the different sects of Christianity competed with one another for influence. This audacious claim of Bart Ehrman is also held by many academics teaching in Western secular universities today. Ehrman’s theory is not new. He is basically popularizing the seminal work published by Walter Bauer in his landmark study, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934).
The Bauer-Ehrman theory may be summarized as follows: First, there was originally no clearly defined orthodox Christianity but a variety of “christianities” existing side by side with no one sect having a superior claim of apostolic authenticity. That is to say, the early church was characterized by heterodoxy rather than orthodoxy. Second, Orthodoxy emerged victorious because its champions from the church in Rome managed to impose its ecclesiastical power over other regional centres such as Alexandria, Edessa and Asia Minor in the late 2nd century. In short, what is described as orthodox Christianity was simply the sect which defeated its rivals in the early doctrinal disputes. Ehrman writes,
The victors in the struggles to establish Christian orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also rewrote the history of the conflict; later readers, then, naturally assume that the victorious views had been embraced by the vast majority of Christians from the very beginning, all the way back to Jesus and his closest followers, the apostles.
However, a closer reading of historical documents shows that the situation was different from what is asserted by the Bauer- Ehrman theory. Contrary to Ehrman’s assertion, the evidence shows that doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity was already in place in the New Testament times. First, the early believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teachings (Acts 2:42). Second, the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) shows that there was an established mechanism to resolve doctrinal and pastoral disputes. Third, the Pastoral Epistles. Jude, 1 John and the Book of Revelation confirm that there was a body of widely accepted doctrinal beliefs, that is, “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) which was to be defended against false teachings (heresies). There was unity of faith and a well-defined orthodoxy right at the birth of the church.
The deposit of faith or apostolic tradition that was passed down by the “church fathers and the apologists” – i.e., the influential early Christian writers in the 2nd century – provided continuity and unity of faith in the early church. The apostolic tradition was elaborated and crystalized in the later church councils like the Council of Nicea (325 AD), the Council of Chalcedon (451AD) and subsequent ecumenical councils of the church. To cite John Behr, “post-New Testament orthodox Christians clarified and explained the theology of the New Testament without changing it, and the creeds produced by the church councils accurately reflect the theology of the New Testament.”
The set of core doctrines was handed down by the early church fathers as the “Rule of Faith” or “Rule of Truth.” Everett Ferguson in the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity emphasizes that the “Rule of Faith” served as the norm of Christian faith. He noted that “the essential message was fixed by the gospel and the structure of Christian belief in one God, reception of salvation in Christ, and the experience of the Holy Spirit.”
Irenaeus (c. 180 AD) writes in The Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching,
This then is the order of the rule of our faith…God, the Father, not made, not material, invisible; one God, the creator of all things: this is the first point of our faith. The second point is: The Word of God, Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was manifested…the Holy Spirit…who in the end of the times was poured out in a new way upon mankind in all the earth, renewing man unto God (Dem. AP 6).
Irenaeus reiterates in Against Heresies that “The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [The church believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth…And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation…And in the Holy Spirit” (AH 1.10).
The church fathers applied the Rule of Faith in the church’s teaching of God and Christ to demonstrate why Gnosticism should be rejected as heretical.
A. Gnosticism teaches an inferior God who is limited in knowledge and power.
According to the Gnostic text, the so-called Hypostasis of the Archons, the Archon (a superior spiritual power) who created this world is blind and ignorant as he does not know his place in the celestial hierarchy. He cries out in hubris, “It is I who am God; there is none [apart from me]. When he said this, he sinned against [the Entirety]” (Hypo. Arch. 86:30). This is a reference to Yahweh. This Archon is also described as Demiurge who bungled his creation when he accidentally infused sparks of divinity into humanity. Gnostics believe themselves to be the trapped sparks of divinity seeking liberation from the present defective material world.
Elaine Pagels in The Gnostic Gospels contrasts the Archon who is the inferior creator of this world with the supreme but unknowable transcendent power who is a dyad “to be understood in terms of a harmonious, dynamic relationship of opposites – a concept that may be akin to the Eastern view of yin and yang, but remains alien to orthodox Judaism and Christianity.” According to Pagels, the dyadic power comprises both masculine and feminine elements: “I am androgynous. [I am both Mother and] Father, since [I copulate] with myself…[and] with those who love] me…I am the Womb [that gives shape] to the All…I am the fulfillment of All, that is, Me[iroth]ea, the glory of the Mother” (Trimorphic Protennoia 45.2-10).
Naturally, Irenaeus insists that the supreme power of Gnosticism and the God of orthodox Christianity are incompatible:
It is proper, then, that I should begin with the first and most important head, that is, God the Creator, who made the heaven and the earth…and to demonstrate that there is nothing either above Him or after Him; nor that, influenced by any one, but of His own free will, He created all things, since He is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Father, alone containing all things, and Himself commanding all things into existence. For how can there be any other Fulness, or Principle, or Power, or God, above Him, since it is matter of necessity that God, the Pleroma (Fulness) of all these, should contain all things in His immensity, and should be contained by no one? But if there is anything beyond Him, He is not then the Pleroma of all, nor does He contain all (AH 2.1-2).
B. Gnosticism teaches Christ as having knowledge inferior to that of Thomas.
In the Gospel of Thomas, the historical Jesus confesses that he could not be master to his disciples.
In one paragraph, Jesus said to his disciples,
Compare me to someone and tell Me whom I am like. Simon Peter [representing orthodox misunderstanding] said to Him, “You are like a ‘righteous angel.” Matthew [also representing orthodox misunderstanding] said to Him, “You are like a wise philosopher.” Thomas [the true Gnostic] said to Him, “Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom You are like.” Jesus said, “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out (Saying 13). Jesus [added], “That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you” (Saying 70).
In other words, Jesus Christ did not achieve salvation on the disciples’ behalf. They could attain their own salvation through knowledge and self-discovery.
Obviously, the Gnostic Jesus as an inferior being cannot be compared with Jesus the divine savior described by Ignatius (Bishop of Antioch, died c. 110 AD):
We have also as a Physician the Lord our God Jesus the Christ the only-begotten Son and Word, before time began, but who afterwards became also man, of Mary the virgin. For ‘the Word was made flesh.’ Being incorporeal, He was in the body; being impassible, He was in a passible body; being immortal, He was in a mortal body; being life, He became subject to corruption, that He might free our souls from death and corruption, and heal them, and might restore them to health, when they were diseased with ungodliness and wicked lusts.
To conclude, Ehrman may be an eloquent and engaging writer, but something is amiss when he asks his readers to accept the diverse forms of Gnosticism to be forms of “christianities” with equal authenticity as orthodox Christianity. The church fathers knew better when they vigorously rejected Gnosticism as an authentic expression of the deposit of faith that was handed down by the Apostles. To be sure, doctrinal diversity was accepted in the early church, but so long only as it remained within the boundaries defined by the apostolic tradition of core doctrines, creedal statements and Christological confessions of the ecumenical councils. Contrary to Ehrman’s views, heresies like Gnosticism emerged parasitically out of an already established apostolic orthodoxy. The Bauer-Ehrman’s theory should be rejected as it is without theological coherence and historical foundations.
