A Question for Shred, or any others that can help

GlassPrison · Number of posts: 2926 Age: 21 Registration date: 2007-07-21

I was hoping someone here could give a Christian scholarly perspective on a couple things, as I am currently only familiar with the secular treatment of them.

I am wondering how, on the academic level, Eusebius's Church History is treated along with Walter Bauer's refutation of it with Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. In particluar, how do protestant academics understand their relationship to what came to be known as the Orthodox of early Christianity, and how do Bauer and more recent scholars' arguments for a very splintered and plural "Christianities" effect beliefs on true vs. false doctrine, canonical selection, and anything else you care to comment on.

Thanks!

GP

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That's a huge topic. But one of my areas of interest.

You mentioned a few issues: canon, orthodoxy, Eusebius, etc.

As for Eusebius, even the most conservative scholars don't treat everything he says as the gospel truth about all the events and people he describes.

Like you said, Bauer's basic thesis was that there was no "orthodoxy" at the beginning of Christianity. Instead, there were a bunch of "Christianities" (plural) and one of them eventually won out over the rest and that one is what came to be known as orthodoxy. His book was written about 70 years ago and today there would be people like Bart Ehrman, Helmut Koester, Elaine Pagels, and others (those are the more "famous" ones that show up on the TV specials on anything related to Christianity) who more or less follow his central claim.

So within that issue are a bunch of sub-categories, such as doctrine, canon, church structure, church practices, and so forth.

You asked how Protestant academics understand their relation to these things. There would be a range of reactions. Bauer himself was a Protestant academic; he was a German Lutheran. Some Protestants would have no problems with his claims, others would disagree strongly.

I think the biggest flaw in his claims has focused on the fact that his book talks mostly about evidence from the 2nd century. He then takes that evidence and projects it back into the 1st century and assumes things were like that from the start of Christianity.

Also, a lot of people have accused Bauer of reading 20th-century situations back into the early church. At certain points, he explicitly says that "orthodoxy" was forced on the rest of the early Christian church by the Roman church. This strikes a lot of people as sort of an anti-Catholic slant that Bauer had as a Lutheran. He was taking his dislike of modern Roman Catholicism and reading that back into the early Church.

Are you looking more for works critical of Bauer's overall thesis? Or are you looking for positive arguments in support of traditional Christian claims about canon, original orthodoxy of the church, early belief in the divinity of Christ, etc.? Or both?

GlassPrison · Number of posts: 2926 Age: 21 Registration date: 2007-07-21

I was mostly interested in learning of positive arguments in support of traditional claims.

Quote:

I think the biggest flaw in his claims has focused on the fact that his book talks mostly about evidence from the 2nd century. He then takes that evidence and projects it back into the 1st century and assumes things were like that from the start of Christianity.

Yeah, I would think that would be a large assumption on his part, especially considering that Christian doctrine had to start from a single and original set of claims. However, I don't believe that we have anything to indicate what that origin was, or if the orthodoxy that won out later was an accurate representation of these beginnings. That is why I am interested in this, as current doctrinal claims as well as canon selection seems to me, to be sort of reaching into a grab bag of ideas and hoping to get the one that is most apostolic and historically accurate.

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GlassPrison wrote:

I was mostly interested in learning of positive arguments in support of traditional claims.

OK, got it. Well, the best arguments are always in books or articles rather than on internet sites, as I'm sure you know. Books that would make positive arguments in support of traditional claims in this area and would sort of contradict parts of Bauer's thesis are listed below. If you can find these books at a local (theological) library or through some sort of inter-library loan system, you don't have to buy them.

Some are a bit detailed, but it's not as if you need to know Greek or another foreign language to understand them.

(Click on the book titles below to see their Amazon listings):

As for early belief in the special status of Jesus (divine?), the best book on the subject is "Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity" by Larry Hurtado.

Hurtado argues that within the first two decades of Christianity (30-50 A.D.), Jesus was treated as a recipient of religious devotion and was associated with God in striking ways. He looks not only at these early decades, but into the 2nd century. To reach his conclusion he looks at early beliefs about Jesus' divine status and significance, Christian devotional practices of the time, including prayer and worship, the use of Jesus' name in exorcism, baptism, and healing, martyrdom, and the use of sacred names for Jesus.

I think it's an awesome book and I use it as a reference all the time.

For issues related to the formation of the New Testament canon (the Old Testament canon is a different issue altogether), I think a really good book is "The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance" by Bruce Metzger.

Metzger was actually Bart Ehrman's dissertation advisor when Ehrman did his Ph.D. at Princeton.

I think Metzger's main point is to refute the notion that the New Testament books were arbitrarily selected or imposed on the church by something like the church at Rome. He shows how the books were, with a few exceptions, recognized as authoritative by churches throughout the Roman Empire from as early as we can detect historically.

Another book that might be of interest, but it's pretty detailed and could get boring if you try to read straight through it is "Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity" by James Dunn.

This is a fairly specific rebuttal of Bauer's idea that there was no "orthodoxy" in the New Testament period (1st century). I basically agree with what Dunn says, which is that there was definitely diversity in first-century Christianity. I don't think that can be disputed. But what he argues is that there were certain boundaries as to what was still acceptable. So he's not really rejecting everything that Bauer said, he agrees with the diversity part of Bauer's thesis, but Dunn argues that there was still an orthodoxy in the first century and that the "orthodoxy" allowed for some diversity. In the first chapter, Dunn puts the question of his book as this: "Was there a unifying strand in earliest Christianity which identifies it as Christianity?"

His answer to the question, of course, is "Yes" and he spends the next 400 pages elaborating and demonstrating why he says "Yes."

So those are some of the books I'd recommend along those lines. Is there a specific question on any of the Bauer-related issues that I might answer in a few paragraphs?

GlassPrison · Number of posts: 2926 Age: 21 Registration date: 2007-07-21

Thanks for the book recommendations. Those are getting added to my reading list and I'll get to them shortly.

As for further questions, I will most likely have some once I start reading more on the perspectives offered in these texts.

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GODSWIZARD · Play it LOUD!! Number of posts: 17975 Age: 52 Registration date: 2007-01-06

This is a

(Begin the Shred advertising phase of this evening)

I enjoy it when Shred writes at length on something. (Like this)

(Insert scheduled CMR reading and posting activities here)

KISS

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GW is too kind. Thanks for those comments, brother.

GlassPrison (and anyone else)...

I've been trying to think of some books that are directed more to a non-specialist audience but still have really good material. It finally hit me. Find a few books by Rodney Stark. He does some really good stuff and he has written these for people who aren't necessarily experts in this field. Here they are (again click the titles for links to their Amazon listings):

Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome

The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries

Seriously, these two books are awesome. Anyone into the historical development of early Christianity or just ancient history in general would really like these books. They're not too long (200-300 pages) and they're easy to follow while still packing a ton of information.

I would bump these Stark books to the top of your reading list, since they're more of a broad overview of the topic from a traditional perspective.

GlassPrison · Number of posts: 2926 Age: 21 Registration date: 2007-07-21

Ok, I'll try those out if I find that the others are more than I am looking for. I'm usually not turned off by things that "could get boring" as you say. Actually the more dry a non-fiction book is, the more I tend to like it, haha.

In the coming days I'll be preparing posts for a couple of new topics that should be interesting to discuss and will hopefully spice this room up in a non-heated way.

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GODSWIZARD · Play it LOUD!! Number of posts: 17975 Age: 52 Registration date: 2007-01-06

GP said:

Quote:

Actually the more dry a non-fiction book is, the more I tend to like it

I'm more or less the same way. Twisted Evil

Don't get me wrong.......I can enjoy a well--written non--fiction book as much as anyone can. But......i'm like you, in that the *dry* ones don't bother me either. Evil or Very Mad

Have you ever heard of the *Dry As Dust Book Of The Month Club*?? Shocked