10 Misconceptions about the NT Canon: #7: “Christians Had No Basis to Distinguish Heresy from Orthodoxy Until the Fourth Century.”
This is the seventh installment of a blog series announced here.
Ever since Walter Bauer published his now famous Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity there has been a widespread obsession amongst modern scholars with the theme of early Christian diversity. Study after study has explored how different, contradictory, and divergent early Christian beliefs were. And it is on this basis that the terms “heresy” and “orthodoxy” are declared to be unintelligible prior to the fourth century. After all, we are told, there was no Christianity (as we know it) prior to this time period, but only a variety of different Christianities (plural) all claiming they are the true … Continue reading...