WHAT EVANGELICALS AND LIBERALS CAN LEARN FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS

Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has recently published an interesting, provocative book titled Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.1 Ehrman's title is thought-provoking. There are clearly, in Ehrman's thinking, "Christianities" that have been lost as what we know as "orthodox" Christianity emerged as the dominant group and purposely suppressed other "Christian" interpretations of the gospel.

Ehrman describes these diverse "Christianities" as illustrative of an amazing, lively diversity in the earliest centuries of the Church's history. In Ehrman's words, "What could be more diverse than this variegated phenomenon, Christianity in the modern world? In fact, there may be an answer: Christianity in the ancient world. As historians have come to realize, during the first three Christian centuries, the practices and beliefs found among people who called themselves Christians were so varied that the differences between Roman Catholics, Primitive Baptists, and Seventh-Day Adventists pale by comparison."2

Despite the diversity found in the ancient Christian world, Ehrman acknowledges that "virtually all forms of modern Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries."3 What we know as orthodox Christianity today, with its distinct affirmations concerning the Trinity, Christ's incarnation, resurrection, and ascension, Christ's body, the Church, and so on, are viewed by Ehrman as the tenets of a community that defeated its theological and ecclesial opponents through its dominance, strength, and willingness to shape the historical record into its own image. Other perspectives, all of whom orthodox Christians would describe as in some way heterodox, either were "reformed or stamped out, by the dominant orthodox group."4

Ehrman repeatedly employs the language of triumph, dominance, and marginalization to portray the success of orthodoxy in the early Church. This one form of Christianity decided what was the "correct" Christian perspective; it decided who could exercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalized, set aside, destroyed. It also decided which books to canonize into Scripture and which books to set aside as "heretical," teaching false ideas.

And then, as a coup de grace, this victorious party rewrote the history of the controversy, making it appear that there had not been much of a conflict at all, claiming that its own views had always been those of the majority of Christians at all times, back to the time of Jesus and his apostles, that its perspective, in effect, had always been "orthodox" (i.e. the "right belief") and that its opponents in the conflict, with their other scriptural texts, had always represented small splinter groups invested in deceiving people into "heresy."5

At the cost of a coerced and manipulated unity, the diversity of the ancient Christian world evaporates, with an accompanying catalog of losses. Ehrman asks, what if "some other form of Christianity" had triumphed? The thought and practices of the Christian world would have been entirely different.

. . . the familiar doctrines of Christianity might never have become the "standard" belief of millions of people, including the belief that there is only one God, that he is the creator, that Christ his son is both human and divine. The doctrine of the Trinity might never have developed. The creeds still spoken in churches today might never have been devised. The New Testament as a collection of sacred books might never have come into being. Or it might have come into being with an entirely different set of books, including, for example, the Gospel of Thomas instead of the Gospel of Matthew, or the Epistle of Barnabas instead of the Epistle of James, or the Apocalypse of Peter instead of the Apocalypse of John.6

I. LISTENING TO IRENAEUS

In roughly the first half of my address, I want to allow a Church father to respond to at least some of the issues, individuals, and groups Ehrman believes should be classified as possible "Christianities."7 Irenaeus (ca. AD ISO200), bishop of Lyons in the late second century AD and a principal opponent of the Gnostic "Christianities" advocated by Gnostic teachers such as Marcion, Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, and Valentinus, was convinced that the Gnostic world view, one with its distinct set of doctrines and practices, could not possibly be considered Christian. Irenaeus is worth listening to, both because he was a clear, cogent thinker and writer, and because he was familiar with the teaching of early orthodox Christian leaders such as Polycarp, who in turn were familiar with even earlier Christian leaders and teaching. Does Irenaeus's testimony, often given in the heat of debate, render plausible or implausible Professor Ehrman's position that the defeat of Gnostic teaching within the early Church was largely a matter of one group dominating and finally marginalizing another group?