The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in the Early Church (review)

Professor Robinson writes (on behalf of all of us?), "I could never get away from the implications" of the Bauer thesis (ix). To get it out of his craw, he engages the Bauer thesis head-on in this study, incorporating part of his doctoral dissertation at McMaster and directed by Ben F. Meyer. He weighs and finds the thesis wanting: "[Bauer's] work provides an adequate basis for no conclusion other than that early Christianity was diverse and that the Eusebian scheme is defective as history" (28).

After a helpful chapter (I) on the history of the debate from Eusebius to the present about whether early Christian orthodoxy had credible apostolic roots from the beginning, R. examines the geographical underpinnings of Bauer's claim about the primacy of heresy (Edessa, Egypt, Corinth, Rome, with reflections on Jerusalem and Antioch—II). His conclusion is that the evidence from the sub-apostolic centuries is too limited to give to Bauer's contention that heresy came first the right of truth (91). R. then (chs. III and IV) focuses on Western Asia Minor, so crucial to Bauer's reconstruction. He concludes that it collapses at "three structurally critical points: 1) the hypothetical alliance of 'ecclesiastically oriented' Paulinists with Palestinian immigrants against gnosticizing Paulinists; 2) the alleged strength of heresy in the area; and 3) the proposed cause for the rise of the monarchical episcopate" (130). In the final chapter (V) he analyzes the relationship between the orthodox and the separatists as Ignatius of Antioch reports it, concluding that the opposition Ignatius encountered came from a dissident minority and cannot, therefore, be explained by the Bauer thesis (197).

Given the centrality of Asia Minor to Bauer's reconstruction of sub-apostolic Christianity, R. proposes his own sketch in the two appendices (A and B): 1) the catholic community, not the heretics, represented the character of the majority in Western Asia Minor; 2) there was one set of heretics in the area, Gnostics with a Jewish coloring, not Gnostics and Judaizers; and 3) the target of the opposition was not the bishop but the nature of Christ—the innovation in Western Asia Minor was a docetic christology and neither orthodoxy nor monepiscopacy. Sic transit thesis Baueri.

Has R. emancipated himself (and us) from the Bauer thesis? The only way for readers to decide is to acquire a large desk, spreading out across it R., Bauer (in the Kraft-Krodel edition), the Pauline corpus, Ignatius' letters, 1 Clement, and the Nag Hammadi Library. Since I have neither the desk nor the space, the best I can do is share several reactions.

First, although R. rejects the trajectory model as the "golden calf of the last few years" for filling in the yawning gaps in the evidence (139), trajectory seems to this reviewer quite useful for emphasizing a point that R. consistently and compellingly makes: the evidence is slender. When it comes to Christian origins, the best one can do it to plot trajectories from the few ascertainable pieces of evidence. Hazardous? Very. Perhaps, an expert software engineer could help determine the most promising candidate! Expert or no, the real hazard is to assume that you have it right. Let the tracker beware. In any case, both R. and Bauer would have been considerably helped toward verisimilitude by a judicious use of social-science models. For instance, although R. promises a follow-up volume on the subject (29, n. 75), neither scholar adverts to what can be known about sect development, legitimation, the social construction of reality. Had it been available, R. would have found invaluable H. Maier's, The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement and Ignatius (Waterloo, Can.: Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 1991), just to mention one entry.

Second, both books are abrasive. Not only do their proposals rub raw some deeply held convictions...