Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum

The following early review of Walter Bauer's book, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (1934), was by one of the most prominent Protestant patristic scholars of the era. Walter Völker was himself the author of important and still valuable studies on Philo, Gnosticism, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius Areopagita, and Maximus the Confessor. The significance of Völker's devastating critique of Walter Bauer's thesis and historical method is that it stemmed from a scholar whose stature in the field of patristic studies was not negligible and whose expertise was precisely focused on the material and time period covered in Bauer's work. Moreover, as a fellow German Protestant, Völker could hardly be suspected of "Roman" sympathies. It is certainly interesting to observe that the highest praise for Bauer's thesis has come from New Testament scholars, such as Bultmann and Koester; yet Bauer's work does not deal with the New Testament, but with second and third century Christianity.