The Search For The Standard Authority Of The Early Church

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proach to biblical studies, by a scholar named Walter Bauer who published Rechtglaumbigkeity und Ketzerei im altesten Christentum (Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity). In it Bauer argued that, contrary to Eusebius, the early church did not begin with a single orthodoxy from which emerged a variety of competing heretical movements, rather early Christianity comprised of a number of divergent forms, no one of which represented the clear and powerful majority of believers against all others. According to Bauer ¡§orthodoxy¡¨ in the sense of a unified group of doctrines that were accepted by the majority of Christians everywhere simply did not exist in the second and third centuries. Instead during this time there were beliefs that competed with each other for dominance which due to historical and social forces, resulted in the dominate view being called orthodox, while those beliefs that lost the struggle for dominance would later be labeled as heretical. Underlying Bauer¡¦s reconstruction is the belief that the dominant force ...