Approaches to orthodoxy and heresy in the study of early Christianity

Abstract

From the second to the twentieth centuries, the reigning historiographic model of Christian history understood orthodoxy as early, pure, and true, and heresy as late, deviant, and false. Ever since Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity overturned the traditional model by arguing that in some geographic locations, heresy preceded orthodoxy, scholars of early Christianity have struggled to describe the phenomena of orthodoxy and heresy. The most popular set of approaches, informed by discourse theory, imagines orthodoxy and heresy as historically contingent notions that first arise in second‐century Christian circles, where they were used to negotiate and articulate self‐identity vis‐à‐vis notions of both Judaism and paganism. Other approaches include the use of “proto‐orthodox” terminology as a signifier for the doctrinal party platform that was eventually victorious; attempts to detect social or popular movements beneath heresiological reports; and the outright attempt to repudiate the Bauer thesis.