Orthodoxy and heresy in earlier Christianity
I Howard Marshall
In April 1975 the Historical Theology Group of the Tyndale Fellowship held a conference at Dunblane, Scotland, at which they considered the theme of ‘Heresy’. This paper, first delivered at that conference, and subsequently at a meeting of the Scottish Divinity Faculties, examines the view, which has gained a wide following since the publication in English of Bauer’s important book, that the categories of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ are a later development, foreign to New Testament Christianity. Dr Marshall, Senior Lecturer in New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, was for several years editor of the TSF Bulletin.
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, which tells how the
Roman Catholics once advertised a public meeting in Sydney, Australia; on their
posters they presented their claim to be the upholders of pure Christianity by
means of the slogan ‘The Faith of our Fathers’. Not to be outdone, the
Protestants arranged a rival meeting with the redoubtable T. C. Hammond as
their speaker, and they advertised as their title, ‘The Faith of our
Grandfathers’. The title of this essay is somewhat similar to the Protestant
parody. It is a secondary elaboration of a more famous phrase, and will be
readily recognized as a parody of the title of a well-known book by Walter
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. As with a number of other
significant German books, the importance of this one was not recognized in this
country until long after its original publication. English-reading students have
had to wait until the last twelve years to see translations of the works of
William Wrede, Wilhelm Bousset and Rudolf Bultmann, and with them of W. Bauer,
first published in 1934 and not available in English until 1972 (in America,
1971).1 Unlike the others, however, which hit the headlines on the Continent at
the time of publication, Bauer’s work came at a time when the German church was
preoccupied with other more pressing issues, and it had to wait till after the
war for due recognition.
Bauer’s basic thesis was a polemical one and is best summed
up in his own words: he argued that, according to the generally accepted
interpretation of the situation, ‘Jesus revealed the true teaching to his
apostles who in their turn went out into all the world after the ascension to
hand on the unadulterated gospel to the peoples. It was only after their death
that obstacles arose for the preaching from the Christian side. For now some
people who were misled by the devil gave up the apostolic preaching which had
been the means of their conversion and put in its place their own human ideas.
Thus in the post-apostolic period there arose heresies of various kinds which
could certainly be very annoying to the church but never in any form really
dangerous.
‘This conception (he went on) must be tested for its
accuracy by means of history. Did the order: unbelief, orthodox belief, false
belief, which is said to have been the case everywhere, really correspond with
the facts or not, or was it the case to a limited extent that must be worked
out and expressed?’2
In order to settle this question Bauer thought it best to
start outside the disputed area of the NT writings. And so he proceeded to do a
package tour of the world of early second century Christianity in order to
discover whether the rise of what came to be called heresy was always preceded
by orthodox teaching from which it had deviated. A close study of the rise of
the church in Edessa and Alexandria suggested to him that in the beginning
so-called unorthodox groups were predominant; what was later regarded as
orthodoxy was represented at best by small groups, so that from the very
beginning so-called heretical and orthodox forms of the faith existed side by
side. The churches were more ‘orthodox’ in Asia Minor, but various arguments
suggest that there were strong pockets of unorthodox Christianity in this area.
If the position was different in Corinth, where the church certainly began with
strong heretical tendencies, this was due to the influence of Rome imposing its
views on the church. It could be said that ‘the form which Christianity gained
in Rome was led to victory by Rome and thus established as orthodoxy’.3 Bauer
then went on to show how Rome established its own doctrinal position as the
orthodox one. It was largely because the heretics were independent of one
another and unable to unite with one another in opposition to Rome that they
eventually succumbed to her influence. The great mass of middle-of-the-road
Christians who might well have been won over by either wing of the church in
fact threw in their lot with Rome.
Bauer thus concluded that what later came to be regarded as
orthodoxy was only one of several competing systems of Christian belief, with
no closer links to any original, so-called ‘apostolic Christianity’ than its
rivals, and that it owed its victory in the competition more to what we might
call political influences than to its inherent merits.
The corollary to be drawn from Bauer’s discussion is that
things were no different in the first century. Thus R. Bultmann, who fully
accepted Bauer’s arguments, stated: ‘The diversity of theological interests and
ideas is at first great. A norm or an authoritative court of appeal for
doctrine is still lacking, and the proponents of directions of thought which were
later rejected as heretical consider themselves completely Christian, such as
Christian Gnosticism. In the beginning, faith is the term which distinguishes
the Christian Congregation from Jews and the heathen, not orthodoxy (right
doctrine). The latter along with its correlate, heresy, arises out of the
differences which develop within the Christian congregations.’4 It is
interesting, however, that Bultmann proceeds to say, ‘In the nature of the case
this takes place very early’.
The argument was taken further by G. Strecker in an
investigation of Jewish Christianity in an appendix to the 1964 edition of
Bauer’s book; he argued that Jewish Christianity was diverse in character and
that what must be considered as historically primary in the first century was
seen to be heretical when compared with what later was regarded as orthodoxy.5
A somewhat similar point of view appears to be represented
by Stephen S. Smalley in his examination of ‘Diversity and Development in
John’. He submits that in the Gospel of John, as distinct from the Epistles, we
have a considerable diversity of views expressed, some of which could be seized
upon as supporting their cause by later, orthodox writers, others of which
could be seized upon by the heretics. He therefore states that: ‘John’s
diversity can hardly be regarded as consciously orthodox or heretical; it is
neither one nor the other. If such considerations had influenced John’s
writing, it is very unlikely that he would have left so much on the “orthodox”
side unsaid, and so much on the “heretical” side open to misconstruction, to be
used eventually in evidence against him.’6
The scope of the present essay, confined as it is to the
first century, enables me to side-step a discussion of the correctness or
otherwise of Bauer’s thesis as it applies to post-apostolic
Christianity—although it must be observed that if it is inapplicable to the
second century, it can hardly be applied to the first century. On the whole, it
seems to have been subjected to considerable modification in detail, but few
have been willing to contradict its main lines. If it has done nothing else, it
has emphasized the prevalence of diversity in the second century church and the
difficulty that existed in attempting to draw clear boundaries between what was
orthodox and what was heretical.7 My starting-point is rather the fact that
Bauer had the effrontery to label the second century as ‘earliest
Christianity’, and I want to look at the period which is in fact earlier than
this, the period of the New Testament itself.
1. Unity, variety and diversity
In the essay which I have already quoted, S. S. Smalley
suggests that the key to our problem in John’s Gospel may lie in the categories
of diversity and development. These two terms give us a set of co-ordinates
against which the ideas of the early church might be plotted in such a way that
the variety of ideas at any one given time may be seen, and also the
differences in ideas between one period of time and another. A recent book of
essays by H. Koester and J. M. Robinson has used the term ‘trajectories’ to
give expression to this kind of approach, although it is obvious that the name,
like the word ‘canon’, is simply a new invention to describe a concept of which
scholars have long been conscious.8
Granted that there is diversity and development in the
theologies expressed in the New Testament, the question is whether this is the
same thing as saying that no distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was being
made, or that this concept did not exist prior to the development of a
vocabulary to describe it. And at once it is obvious that the two things are
not the same. It is possible, in other words, for there to be a variety in
presentation of the Christian faith without the varied presentations being
incompatible with one another. It is probable that in the church at Corinth
different cliques attached themselves to the names of Paul, Apollos and Cephas.
No doubt these three men presented the gospel in different ways, and it may
well be that their followers developed their own individual ideas, but Paul was
quite clear that there was no fundamental incompatibility between himself and
his colleagues in the presentation of the gospel. ‘We are fellow workers for
God’; ‘All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, … all are
yours’ (1 Cor. 3:9, 21f.). In the same way, while it was judged politic for
there to be two Christian missions, one to the circumcised and one to the
uncircumcised, they were in fellowship with one another, and there is no
suggestion of any fundamental disagreement between them (Gal. 2:7–9). Bauer’s
attempt to interpret Paul’s statement otherwise is somewhat mischievous.
The fact of such a basic unity was emphasized by A. M.
Hunter in a book which is of importance out of proportion to its size. In The
Unity of the New Testament9 he argued that the major writers of the New
Testament show a basic unity in their testimony to one Lord, one church and one
salvation. Writing in 1943, Hunter was working against a background of stress
on the diversity within the New Testament. This was presented in another
product of Scottish theology by E. F. Scott in The Varieties of New Testament
Religion.10 He was equally rightly concerned to emphasize the lack of
uniformity in the New Testament: the writers ‘are all inspired by the one
faith, but every teacher interprets it differently, as he has known it in his
own soul’.11 Both of these points of view need to be heard, but perhaps it is
the voice of Hunter which has had less attention than it deserves in our own
day. Where Scott is distinctly woolly in his survey and makes generalizations
do duty in place of hard facts, Hunter is careful to give evidence for his
statements and to argue a case which is the more impressive by reason of its
restraint and caution.
But Hunter was concerned with the writers of the New
Testament. He made no attempt to claim that Paul and his opponents in Galatia
had a basic unity in their theology. The question that now arises concerns the
degree of variety in the life and thought of the early church which is
reflected in the New Testament: at what point, if any, does variety become a
deviation from the truth?
2. The later books of the New Testament
We shall now make an attempt to look at the evidence
relevant to this second question, and like Bauer, it may be helpful to begin
with what are usually thought to be the latest writings in the New Testament,
then turn to the generally accepted letters of Paul, and finally to the
Gospels.
In the Pastoral Epistles12 we have a writer who is
confronted by teaching which he regards as false in the churches for which he
has a responsibility. At the outset of 1 Timothy there is an instruction not to
allow people to teach ‘different doctrine’; it is associated with speculation
about myths and genealogies and it leads to vain discussion instead of growth
in faith. Such teaching appears to have rested on what the author regarded as a
misunderstanding of the law, and to have led to an intellectual type of
religion which ignored the claims of conscience. Over against it the author
places ‘healthy doctrine’, which he characterizes as being in accordance with
the gospel (1 Tim. 1:3–11). This basic theme is repeated throughout the
Pastorals, most clearly in 1 Timothy and Titus. It is probable that the writer
was confronted by a type of Gnosticizing teaching with strong Jewish elements,
which laid stress on knowledge and which led both to asceticism and to moral
licence. What is important is that he is clearly aware of its existence and of
its distinction from what he regards as the truth. The lines are firmly drawn.
The teaching is ‘other’ and does not conduce to spiritual ‘health’. It produces
moral behaviour which is incompatible with godliness. Over against it the
writer places healthy teaching, and he clearly reckons with the existence of traditions
in the church, such as the ‘faithful sayings’, which enshrine the truth of the
gospel. He regards the church as being the pillar and bulwark of the truth.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in these
Epistles the writer is conscious of being the defender of truth and that he is
prepared to take disciplinary measures against those who persist in erroneous
beliefs. The very word hairetikos is used in this connection. It is perhaps not
unfair to say that the Pastorals were composed in a situation of false teaching
threatening the truth, and that their basic purpose is to deal with this
situation by outlining the true nature of Christian living, and by equipping
the church with leaders who will be able to promote the cause of orthodoxy.
This understanding of the Pastorals was, of course, shared
by Bauer, but it did not basically affect his thesis because he was prepared to
put them at a rather late date and to see them as directed against Marcionite
teaching. If this late dating is wrong, an obvious weakness in Bauer’s case is
opened up. The trend in recent scholarship is in fact to date the Epistles in
the first decade of the second century, and this is a significant shift in
placing them historically.13 Even this date is probably too late, and there is
good reason to place them considerably earlier. But the commonly accepted date
is sufficient to allow us to make our point, that a distinction between
orthodoxy and heresy had come into existence by the end of the first century or
just after.
The Revelation can probably be dated in the last decade of
the first century. Its author’s main concern was to strengthen the church to
face persecution, but in order to achieve this aim he realized that the church
must be purified of false belief and immorality; otherwise it would fall under
the judgments of God on the world at large. His attack is directed mainly
against attempts to combine idolatry and idolatrous practices with Christian
faith. The apostolic decree requiring abstinence from food sacrificed to idols
and from immorality (Acts 15:29) was evidently being flouted. There were people
around who called themselves apostles, and there was a prophetess who gave the
weight of her authority to idolatrous practices and immorality (Rev. 2:2, 20).
The implication is that the upholders of this position felt it necessary to
claim support for their views by appeal to ecclesiastical office and to
Spirit-inspired revelations. It looks as though they formed a definite group in
the church. Their teaching may well have had a Gnosticizing tinge, as is
suggested by the allusion to the deep things of Satan (Rev. 2:24). The other
members of the church are said to have tested the false prophets and found them
wanting; they are criticized for not throwing out Jezebel as well. But what is
perhaps of greatest interest is that the group attacked by John are referred to
as Nicolaitans, followers of Nicolaus (Rev. 2:6, 15). They are thus known by
the name of their leader, real or imaginary, in the same way as later groups of
heretics were identified. This is to my knowledge the first example of such a
procedure, and it is highly significant as showing that already within New
Testament times it was possible to identify and label a group regarded as
heretical. In other words, the lines were already being clearly drawn.
Unfortunately, much is left obscure; we should like to know how the heretics
saw themselves, how they established their claim to authority, and how they
regarded their opponents.
We are not surprised to find the word hairesis being used in
its developed sense in what is often regarded as the latest writing in the New
Testament, 2 Peter (2:1). The writer is concerned about the rise of false
teachers in the church. Their behaviour was licentious; it appears to have involved
a rejection of the morality enshrined in the law, and to have questioned some
aspects of Christian teaching, including the hope of the parousia. Above all
they despised and reviled the accepted authority in the church. They evidently
appealed to the writings of Paul in support of their teaching, and imposed what
the author regarded as a false interpretation upon them. They also claimed
prophetic inspiration. The picture is similar to that in Revelation, but the
heresy appears to have gone further, and to have taken the step of claiming
Pauline support. We should naturally like to know how they interpreted Paul. It
seems probable that some of his teaching may have been understood as
sanctioning antinomianism, although it is hard to find passages in his existing
Epistles which give much support to such views.
The situation reflected in Jude appears to have been similar
to that in 2 Peter. Here again opponents of the writer are to be found in the
church, and have not yet been ejected. They are castigated for their immorality
and contentiousness which have caused divisions in the church. We learn nothing
about the actual content of their teaching. The author’s reply is to call his
readers back to the tradition which they have received, to the faith once for
all delivered to the saints; he has no doubt that this stands in opposition to
the teaching which he is criticizing. This may reflect a slightly earlier stage
than in 2 Peter, since the heretical appeal to tradition may well have followed
the orthodox appeal by claiming that the orthodox were misinterpreting it.
A clear consciousness of differing opinions in the church is
found in 1-3 John. In 2 John the writer speaks of deceivers who deny the coming
of Jesus Christ in the flesh. There are people who do not abide in the doctrine
of Christ. It is probable that some off-beat christological teaching is in
mind, possibly a docetic denial that Jesus really was the Christ, or that the
Christ really became incarnate in Jesus. In 1 John the group has come out into
the open and begun a separate existence. Three important facts characterize the
Elder’s reply. One is that he attacks this point of view on the intellectual
level by asserting that the doctrine of God is jeopardized by this teaching.
One cannot truly believe in the Father without also believing in the Son. In other
words, a heresy which may have seemed innocuous or marginal is shown to affect
understanding of basic doctrine. This point is stressed throughout 1 John.
Second, the writer’s stress on the need for love, shown in practical ways, is a
flank attack on his opponents’ position, but he does not indulge in empty abuse
against them; rather he invites his readers to apply the test of ‘By their
fruits you shall know them’. The third point is that the writer holds that
fellowship should not be extended to those who maintain this point of view; we
may compare the similar command in Titus 3:10f. Those who adopt such teaching
are equated with antichrist (i.e. the opponent of Christ, rather than somebody
taking the place of Christ). A distinction between different groups with
different doctrines is consciously taking place.
It is not clear whether a situation of heresy is reflected
in 3 John. It is well known that E. Käsemann has proposed that Diotrephes was
really the champion of orthodoxy, attempting to stifle the influence of the
unorthodox Elder, but there is good reason to reject this interpretation.14 On
the other hand, there is no proof that Diotrephes was unorthodox; at the most
he appears to have been ambitious and curt with his possible rivals.
We can quickly pass over James and 1 Peter in our survey.
The writer of the former letter, it is true, has been thought to be critical of
Paul, but his real bone of contention is with Christians lacking in the works
of love who probably claimed Paul in support of their own position. From both
James and 2 Peter it can be seen that appeal was made to Paul in support of
opinions that were denied by other New Testament writers; but both 2 Peter and
James regard Paul as being on their side, and James does not give the impression
of regarding the people whom he is criticizing as heretics.
We may summarize our conclusions so far by noting that in
the late first century church there was a consciousness of the distinction
between orthodoxy and heresy. Appeal was made on both sides to the teaching of
the apostles and to the voice of prophecy. There was a consciousness of an
inherited body of belief, ‘the faith’, and excommunication was beginning to be
used as a weapon. There is no reason to suppose that these ideas developed
without previous preparation: we are justified in examining the other New
Testament documents to see whether they reflect a development towards this
position.
3. Paul
We turn, therefore, back to Paul. Almost everywhere in his
writings we can detect the presence of opponents who questioned his teaching or
put up some other teaching instead of it. To be sure, it is unlikely that this
is the case in 1 Thessalonians where such problems as arose were probably due
simply to the inadequate grounding which his converts had had in his teaching
before he was forced to leave them. The situation is one of questions and
uncertainties rather than opposition to his teaching. The situation in 2
Thessalonians is at first sight very similar, but it is interesting that in
attacking the view that the day of the Lord has already arrived Paul should
refer to the possibility of a spirit or word or letter purporting to be from
himself, and that he urges the readers to hold fast to the traditions which he
has taught them orally or by letter. Further, he lays stress on the importance
of what he says in this letter to the extent that anyone who does not accept
its teaching is to be solemnly warned and disciplined. Such strict discipline
is not unparalleled in Paul (1 Cor. 5). The significant facts are rather that
Paul considers the error which he is opposing to be so serious and that he
suspects that his own authority has been used to defend it. It is not
surprising that this Epistle has been thought to be post-Pauline, and to
reflect an attempt by the orthodox to claim Paul’s authority for their own
position instead of that of their rivals. There appears to be an organized
opposition against the Pauline position. But the situation is comprehensible if
the life of the church is in danger of being crippled by an apocalyptic
enthusiasm which has upset normal daily life. Nor would it be surprising if a
prophet claimed to speak in the name of the Lord, and even claimed the
authority of Paul (cf. Acts 19:13). The Pauline situation remains the more probable,
and, if correct, it shows that at an early date teaching opposed to that of
Paul was being promulgated with a false appeal to his authority, and that the
answer to this teaching was for Paul himself to claim that he had been wrongly
interpreted. It was presumably because of this direct misrepresentation of his
own views that Paul spoke out so strongly against those who rejected his
authority in Thessalonica.
Nobody denies that Paul himself faced opposition when he
composed Galatians, but the situation is more than a little complex. We need to
distinguish between the opposition in Galatia itself, and that which Paul
experienced in Jerusalem and Antioch. Then we must assess correctly the nature
of the opposition experienced by Paul. There are two main views of this, namely
that it was either Judaizing or Gnostic, but the case that it was Judaizing is
the stronger of the two. If so, this means that the same type of opposition was
prevalent in Galatia and on the home front. The opposition in Galatia was
Jewish or Jewish-Christian in inspiration, and it received the full force of
Paul’s opposition because it compromised the doctrine of faith in Christ which
he regarded as all-important. Acceptance of the contrary point of view called
the mission to the Gentiles in question. Paul’s defence, as is well known,
rested on an appeal to history, to experience and to Scripture. He was able to
claim that his message had been accepted by the leaders of the church in
Jerusalem; the weakness in this argument was the strange case at Antioch where
Peter and Barnabas sided against him, and Paul never says that they changed
their minds, although the friendly allusions to them in 1 Corinthians would
imply that they did in fact do so. But, while it is possible that Paul passed
over their initial reaction with a discreet silence, it is more likely that he
was simply carried away by the force of his own argument. His second appeal was
to experience, both his own and that of his converts; he could point to his own
revelation of Jesus at his conversion, which for him had immediate authority,
and he could also point to the way in which his converts received the gift of
the Spirit apart from the law. His third appeal was to Scripture, showing from
the Old Testament that God’s principle of working with men, even in the era of
the law, was by faith. Since his converts had not yet apparently succumbed to
what he regarded as error, he was able to address them in terms of appeal
rather than condemnation; but he spoke in no uncertain terms about those who
were leading them astray. He called down God’s curse on anybody who was doing
this. There could be no other gospel than Paul’s gospel. There is no appeal to
apostolic authority here other than his own; Paul argues from his own
experience of Christ.
By the time of 1 Corinthians, however, Paul is more
conscious of the significance of tradition, to which he makes appeal more than
once. His bases for argument include the commands of the Lord, as well as his
own consciousness of inspiration by the Spirit. He can appeal to the practice
of other apostles. This suggests that the opposition to Paul stood outside the
mainstream of the church, even if there was appeal to Apollos and Cephas.
Basically, Paul appears to have been confronted by two groups in the church,
one Jewish Christian and the other incipient Gnostic. The former were ‘weak’ in
faith, but not heretical; Paul thinks they are wrong, but does not condemn
their error, and indeed seeks a sympathetic approach to them from the rest of
the church. On the point at issue, he tended to side with the strong
Christians. But the impression we gain is of a church with tendencies that
could lead to error, judged by Pauline standards, rather than with full-blown
heresy. There was immoral and licentious behaviour to be corrected. There was
an over-emphasis on spiritual gifts unaccompanied by love. There may have been
a false understanding of the resurrection. But the whole tone of the letter is
that of a wise pastor, rather than that of someone determined to stamp out
organized opposition at any cost. The extent of the opposition to Paul in
Corinth at this point can easily be exaggerated.
The fact of opposition is clearer in 2 Corinthians 10–13,
but in this middle period of Paul’s work the problems of interpretation are
complex. Here we do hear of preaching of another Jesus, a different spirit and
a different gospel which did not lead to reformation of life (2 Cor. 11:4).
There was opposition to Paul by persons who claimed apostolic status, who
regarded themselves as engaged on a mission similar to his own and under
superior auspices. They were in danger of assuming control of the church at
Corinth. Paul was strenuously opposed to them, as they were to him. He speaks
of them in the strongest terms as servants of Satan, and it may well be that
they regarded him in similar terms. There is no doubt, then, that lines were
being drawn between opposing sides. But what was the basis of the disagreement
with them? I am not convinced by the theory that they were Gnostics, nor that
they thought of themselves as divine men preaching a Jesus who was similarly a
divine man. The truth is that the nature of the doctrinal disagreement scarcely
comes to the surface in this section of the Epistle. They were Jews, possibly
claiming special credentials from Jerusalem, people whom Paul regarded as proud
of their position and making extravagant claims and demands for themselves in
virtue of it, people who claimed spiritual visions and revelations. But it is
extraordinarily hard to discern exactly what they believed and taught. Paul
simply places his own claims over against theirs and attacks their claims
rather than their message. Nor is it clear why they were so opposed to Paul.
Did they regard his teaching as false, or were they simply jealous of his
success, or what? And suppose some third party came along: how could he tell
which group was ‘orthodox’? These questions can hardly be answered for lack of
information.
In Romans we have evidence of people who create dissensions
and stand in opposition to the doctrine which Paul taught; they are not in
Paul’s eyes true servants of Jesus, but they serve their own carnal natures.
Schmithals regards them as Gnostics, but it is doubtful whether the evidence
takes us that far. But it may be that the same sort of rival mission as we
found in 2 Corinthians is reflected here, and that Paul feared persons
travelling around in his footsteps and contradicting his teaching. Once again
we note that their teaching is not detailed nor refuted by Paul; he simply
warns against them, and their deceitful methods of establishing their views.
This is significant as regards the later Epistles which, it is sometimes said,
reflect a lack of argument with heresy in contrast to Paul’s own earlier
attempts to deal more rationally with it.
In Philippians again there is danger to the church from
persons who uphold circumcision. Here the most plausible identification of the
opponents of Paul is as Judaizers. But the situation is complicated by the
mention of people who claimed some kind of perfection and those whom Paul
regarded as enemies of the cross who pandered to their own fleshly desires.
This wording is similar to that in Romans and suggests that the same group were
on their rounds. They could be antinomians. The danger comes from outside the
church, and perhaps this is why Paul does not deal with its errors in detail;
it may be a potential rather than a real situation.
The same is possibly true of Colossians. Here it has been
traditional to find evidence of a developed Gnostic heresy, but recently M. D.
Hooker has strongly challenged this assumption, and shown that it is doubtful
whether there was a coherent, organized heresy.15 Paul’s teaching, it is said,
‘seems to us to be quite as appropriate to a situation in which young
Christians are under pressure to conform to the beliefs and practices of their
pagan and Jewish neighbours, as to a situation in which their faith is
endangered by the deliberate attacks of false teachers’.16 Whatever be the
situation, Paul’s reply is to call the church back to the way in which it
received Christ as Lord, and to the gospel which it preached throughout all the
world. The doctrines of the person of Christ and of union with him leading to
ethical behaviour are his reply to false versions of the gospel.
4. The Gospels
We turn, finally, to the Gospels before attempting to draw
some conclusions. Traces of polemic have been found in all of them. This is
least obvious in the case of Luke along with its companion, Acts. Certainly there
is one clear warning against the rise of heresy in the church in the
post-Pauline period, which may well reflect earlier struggles, but on the whole
little is said about the nature of such troubles. The attempt by C. H. Talbert
to find Gnostics under Luke’s bed seems to me singularly unsuccessful.17 What
we do have is the early struggle of the church to deal with Judaizing
tendencies, and this struggle is regarded as being successfully resolved in
favour of the Pauline position. There is a point of view which is resisted and
shown to be wrong, and the proof is found in the manifest willingness of God to
accept the Gentiles and bestow the Spirit upon them apart from acceptance of
circumcision. The argument is not dissimilar to that in Galatians.
In Matthew E. Schweizer has found opposition to a group of
enthusiasts who sat loose to the ethical teaching of Jesus.18 It is this Gospel
more than any other which bears witness to the fact of a mixed church with true
and false believers in it. But the nature of a Gospel prevents direct address
to such people, and all that can be done is to present the relevant teaching of
Jesus, in some cases carefully underlined to bring out the significant points
for the situation.
It is chiefly in Mark that recent students have found
polemic against heresy. Especially in the work of T. J. Weeden19 and N.
Perrin20 we have the suggestion that the disciples are identified with a false
view of the person of Jesus over against which Jesus himself presents the
truth. They were tempted to think of him as Messiah and Son of God in terms of
a divine man working miracles, whereas Mark insisted that this view must be
qualified by the preaching of Jesus as the Son of man who must suffer and die
before being glorified. The main essentials of this position are accepted by R.
P. Martin, who, however, does not identify the disciples as the carriers of the
false view.21
With respect to John something similar has been claimed,
John being seen as the corrector of a too simple view of Jesus as a docetic
figure, a worker of signs, but there is too much uncertainty here for us to
offer any assured conclusions.22
5. Historical conclusions
We have now surveyed the evidence relative to the positions
of the writers of the New Testament. What have we found?
1. We have found that teaching regarded by them as false was
extremely common. In nearly every book of the New Testament this has been
evident. The significance of this must not be over-estimated. Van Unnik has
rightly observed that we must not seek heresy everywhere as the determinative
factor in the composition of the New Testament.23 Alongside the need to combat
it there was what is probably more important, the proclamation of the gospel.
‘The development of the earliest church was not set in motion by the almost
unbridgeable tensions between Christians, but by the positive task of being
witnesses of Jesus Christ in a world whose demands continually summoned them to
provide answers.’ Nevertheless, it is clear that from New Testament times the
New Testament writers were conscious of rivalry and teaching opposed to their
own.
2. There is a development in the presence of false teaching.
The New Testament writings reflect an early stage in which the church was
formulating its attitude on the question of circumcision and the Mosaic law.
But from Galatians onwards Paul regards that issue as settled, and is
intolerant of any who impose Jewish legalism on Gentiles. He does not object to
Jews keeping up their own practices, although on the whole he thinks them
unnecessary and a source of possible danger. But from the period of his letters
onwards various types of problems arise. (a) There is sheer rivalry in the
proclamation of the gospel. This Paul was prepared to put up with, but he drew
the line when his own mission and apostolate were called in question. (b) There
was unethical behaviour, which Paul condemned, especially if it arose from
false teaching. (c) There was the possibility of Christians being misled as a
result of pagan ideas, through lack of Christian instruction, through false
deductions from the gospel. (d) There was the possibility of teaching which
differed from Paul’s understanding of the gospel. This included Judaizing,
which jeopardized faith in Christ, and antinomianism, which went contrary to
Paul’s understanding of the nature of the new life in Christ. There may have
been erroneous views of the work of the Spirit, especially in relation to
spiritual gifts, and false views of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Another Jesus, another gospel, another Spirit—these three phrases sum up the
dangers faced by Paul. This was how he saw heresy. Similar dangers are found in
the other New Testament writings.
3. Paul’s method of treatment varied. Sometimes he was
simply warning his churches against possible influences, and we do not learn
much about the character of the problems faced. At other times, the error seems
to have got a firmer hold on the church. Then there may be a full-scale
argument to show its falsity, as in Galatians, or a restatement of doctrine, as
in Colossians. There is appeal to the nature of Christian experience, to the
gospel as he preached it, and as he had received it, and to his own calling.
Those who persist in false teaching may be removed from fellowship in the church.
The church needs to appoint teachers who will stand firmly in the succession of
sound doctrine and themselves be apt to teach others.
Now if this survey is sound, it shows that certain people in
the first century, namely the writers of the New Testament, were conscious of
the existence of opinions different from their own in the church, that they
wrote and used other means to state or show that they were incompatible with
the gospel which they believed themselves to have inherited, and that certain groups
of people were regarded by them as deviationists and were excluded from the
church or took themselves off to form their own groups. And this in my opinion
is evidence that Bauer’s thesis does not work when it is applied to the first
century. Smalley’s version of it with regard to John cannot be applied to the
rest of the New Testament, and I am doubtful whether it is true even of John.
For Bauer said in effect that there was considerable variety of belief in the
early church, and that what later came to be regarded as orthodoxy was not
conscious of being such at first, nor were there clear boundaries between
different sorts of Christian belief, nor was what later came to be regarded as
orthodox necessarily first on the ground. But the only valid point in this is
that there was variety of belief in the first century. The New Testament
writers one and all regard themselves as upholders of the truth of the gospel,
and they often see quite clearly where the lines of what is compatible with the
gospel and what is not compatible are to be drawn. And while it is possible
that in some places the beginnings of Christianity came from people later
regarded as heretical, it is not the case that orthodoxy was a later
development.
6. Areas for further exploration
What factors might be placed over against this conclusion?
1. Basically, there is the question whether the New
Testament writers were in fact in such agreement that any one of them would
have recognized any other as ‘sound in the faith’. Did James think that Paul
was sound? If Paul had read Revelation, would he have agreed with it? Did John
write his Gospel because he thought the others needed correction or even
supersession, and did any of the other Gospel writers think the same way? These
questions cannot be given a facile answer in the brief space left at my
disposal, but I make bold to say that they would have recognized one another as
brothers and colleagues in the defence of the gospel.
2. What were the groups criticized by the New Testament
writers as heretical really like? Until a sort of first century Nag Hammadi
library comes to light, this question cannot be fully answered. But it may be
worth noting that when the Nag Hammadi library was first discovered, H.
Chadwick expressed his opinion that it would not cause any major alteration in
our assessment of the nature of Gnosticism as we had learned it from the church
fathers who wrote against it. The same may well be true of the New Testament.
Thus I find no reason to doubt that Paul was justified in his accusations of
immorality against those who rejected his gospel. Did such people regard
themselves as the defenders of truth? We have seen that some did, but this
reinforces the view that the idea of orthodoxy was prevalent in the first
century.
3. How did such groups regard persons like Paul or John?
Were they regarded as heretical, if so, by whom? and in such cases how do we
decide which was right? Was Diotrephes the defender of ‘orthodoxy’ against the
Elder? The church’s answer was to canonize Paul and John, and not their
opponents. But how did the situation seem during their period of ministry? One
answer is that Paul evidently had some respect for the Jerusalem church, and he
wanted to have its assurance that he was not, as he puts it, running in vain.
But he was accepted by it, and could build on that fact. It was to the apostles
that appeal was made. And if a Peter or Barnabas could deviate from Paul on
occasion, it was only temporary and an inevitable risk during the growing
period. There must undoubtedly have been a growing period during which the
situation was flexible and ideas were not hard and fast, but some basic
essentials were probably settled quite early, certainly earlier than Bauer
suggests.
4. Perhaps the biggest problem concerns the relations
between the various groups which lie behind the New Testament writers. There is
the problem of the relation between Hebrews and Hellenists in the Jerusalem
church, and the whole question of Jewish-orientated and Gentile-orientated
types of Christians. This has been stressed by U. Wilckens in an essay
discussing the place of Jesus-traditions in the church; he suggests that there
were two communities, one passing on these traditions, and the other
comparatively unaffected by them; the one orientated to the earthly Jesus, the
other to the exalted Christ. These were later brought together, but at first
there were in effect two quite different types of Christianity.24
Somewhat similar is the attempt of H. Koester to show that
there were four different types of Gospel material in the early church,
effecting different christologies. These were (1) the collection of sayings of
Jesus, assembled by those who thought that the essence of Christianity was to
perpetuate the teaching of Jesus as a teacher of wisdom. (2) The aretalogy,
presenting Jesus as a divine man who performed supernatural actions. (3) The
revelation, in which the risen Jesus gives esoteric instruction to his disciples.
(4) The kerygma of the death and resurrection of Jesus historicized into a
narrative form. Our canonical Gospels represent to some extent corrections of
these earlier outlooks—a feature we have already noticed in the case of Mark.25
The question would then be how far these different points of
view represented varieties of Christian belief, and how far they required the
rejection of other points of view as heretical. But a more basic question would
be how far this is a correct analysis of the position in the early church, and
I would suggest that Koester’s view is in fact a misleading description of the
situation. This point cannot be developed in detail here. But if Koester’s view
contains elements of truth, it poses questions for us.
These four problems indicate that I have not provided all
the answers to the historical questions posed by orthodoxy and heresy in New
Testament times. None of them, however, is sufficient in my opinion to call in
question my basic thesis, namely that the first-century church was conscious of
the difference between orthodoxy and heresy, and that from an early date there
was a body of belief which could be regarded as apostolic and orthodox.
7. The theological consequences
I have left myself no space to discuss the theological and
contemporary significance of the material we have been discussing. It must
suffice simply to pose some questions that arise.
1. We have travelled thus far without raising the basic
question of what we are talking about. What in fact is heresy? It is dangerous
to work with undefined terms. W. Bauer at one point speaks of a heretic as ‘a
fellow Christian concerning whom one is convinced that his divergent stance
with regard to the faith bars him from the path of salvation.’26 That is perhaps
an extreme definition. At the opposite extreme there have been those who regard
any deviation from their particular brand of Christianity as heresy. I can
think of one distinguished writer on baptism who certainly came near to
thinking that anybody who had doubts about the validity of infant baptism ought
not to be a candidate for the ministry in his particular denomination.
Somewhere in between these extremes there may be the idea of heresy as teaching
which is regarded as contrary to the basic confession of the church in some
central point or points, such that the confession is endangered by it.
2. A second question concerns the rise of heresy. H. Koester
suggests that it arises from two possible dangers: either the time-bound
historical shaping of the Christian revelation was absolutized and the quality
of revelation was credited to a temporary form, or as a result of the
consciousness that the revelation had a supra-historical quality, the link with
its historical origin was surrendered, and foreign ideas were able to claim
admission.27 One might see Judaizing as an example of the first of these
dangers and Gnosticizing as an example of the second. The question then arises
as to whether heresies in general can be subsumed most fruitfully under these
two headings.
3. The early church took up a stance against heresy, and in
some cases acted against heretics. Does this provide a pattern for the church
today to follow? In a brief article written at the time of the Pike
controversy, J. Macquarrie suggested that the category of heresy was no longer
applicable in the church today. Christianity can exist in a variety of forms,
and the lines between orthodoxy and heresy cannot be drawn sharply.
Excommunication for heresy is no longer a viable possibility, especially when
today’s heresy may become tomorrow’s orthodoxy.28
This approach certainly suggests the need for caution, but
it may well be that it does not take the New Testament seriously enough. For
the essence of heresy is that it presents itself as a form of the real thing,
as distinct from, say, an atheistic position which is confessedly
anti-Christian, and therefore it presents the greater danger to the faith
since, from the point of view of orthodoxy, error is masquerading as truth. A
church which takes its confession seriously must surely be prepared to speak
out against what it believes to be error, and if necessary to discipline those
who profess to uphold its confession while effectively denying or contradicting
it. A confessional church has a right and necessity to do so. Whether the same
thing is possible in a non-confessional church may be more difficult to argue;
perhaps indeed it is an argument against a non-confessional church that it is
unable to apply the categories of orthodoxy and heresy.
