The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in theEarly Church (review)Thomas M. Finn

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, Summer 1993,pp. 217-219 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.0.0158

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ever, this is primarily due to her efforts to integrate a tremendous breadth ofmaterial to support her perception of an overarching pattern in Gregory's spiritu-ality.

Gregory the Great is a definitive work for all students of this monk, pope andtheologian. But the book has much wider appeal. Patristic scholars and historiansof late antiquity will appreciate the nuanced treatment of Gregory in the context ofa pivotal period in religious, intellectual and cultural history. Those interested inmedieval spirituality, for which Straw demonstrates Gregory's foundational impor-tance, will find the work a fount of information, insight and suggestive ideas forfurther research. This book will no doubt remain the standard work in English onGregory's thought for years to come.

Andrea Sterk, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey

Thomas A. RobinsonThe Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography ofHeresy in the Early ChurchStudies in the Bible and Early Christianity 11Queenstown, Ont.: Edwin Mellen, 1988Pp. xi + 248. Np.

Professor Robinson writes (on behalf of all of us?), "I could never get away from theimplications" of the Bauer thesis (ix). To get it out of his craw, he engages the Bauerthesis head-on in this study, incorporating part of his doctoral dissertation atMcMaster 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 earlyChristianity 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 thepresent about whether early Christian orthodoxy had credible apostolic roots fromthe beginning, R. examines the geographical underpinnings of Bauer's claim aboutthe primacy of heresy (Edessa, Egypt, Corinth, Rome, with reflections on Jerusalemand AntiochII). His conclusion is that the evidence from the sub-apostolic centu-ries is too limited to give to Bauer's contention that heresy came first the right oftruth (91). R. then (chs. Ill and IV) focuses on Western Asia Minor, so crucial toBauer's reconstruction. He concludes that it collapses at "three structurally criticalpoints: 1) the hypothetical alliance of 'ecclesiastically oriented' Paulinists withPalestinian immigrants against gnosticizing Paulinists; 2) the alleged strength ofheresy in the area; and 3) the proposed cause for the rise of the monarchicalepiscopate" (130). In the final chapter (V) he analyzes the relationship between theorthodox and the separatists as Ignatius of Antioch reports it, concluding that theopposition Ignatius encountered came from a dissident minority and cannot, there-fore, be explained by the Bauer thesis (197).

Given the centrality of Asia Minor to Bauer's reconstruction of sub-apostolicChristianity, R. proposes his own sketch in the two appendices (A and B): 1) thecatholic community, not the heretics, represented the character of the majority inWestern Asia Minor; 2) there was one set of heretics in the area, Gnostics with a

218 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Jewish coloring, not Gnostics and Judaizers ; and 3 ) the target of the opposition wasnot the bishop but the nature of Christthe innovation in Western Asia Minor wasa docetic christology and neither orthodoxy nor monepiscopacy. Sic transit thesisBaueri.

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

First, although R. rejects the trajectory model as the "golden calf of the last fewyears" for filling in the yawning gaps in the evidence (139), trajectory seems to thisreviewer quite useful for emphasizing a point that R. consistently and compellinglymakes: the evidence is slender. When it comes to Christian origins, the best one cando it to plot trajectories from the few ascertainable pieces of evidence. Hazardous?Very. Perhaps, an expert software engineer could help determine the most promis-ing candidate! Expert or no, the real hazard is to assume that you have it right. Letthe tracker beware. In any case, both R. and Bauer would have been considerablyhelped toward verisimilitude by a judicious use of social-science models. For in-stance, although R. promises a follow-up volume on the subject (29, n. 75), neitherscholar adverts to what can be known about sect development, legitimation, thesocial construction of reality. Had it been available, R. would have found invaluableH. Maier's, The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings ofHermas, Clement and Ignatius (Waterloo, Can. : Canadian Corporation for Studiesin Religion, 1991), just to mention one entry.

Second, both books are abrasive. Not only do their proposals rub raw somedeeply held convictions about how things were in the beginning, but they arepugnacious. Neither quite succeeds in "filtering all polemical material throughsome more neutral screen" (144). In part, I think, both authors work from theologi-cal grounds. This stance comes clearly through in Bauer's contention that ortho-doxy first surfaced in Rome, subsequently summoned to supremacy through Ro-man Christianity's will to power. Although R. explores the Roman evidence, hepays no detailed attention to that central part of the Bauer thesis in which heproposes that Rome's wiles and wealth solidified orthodoxy eventually even inthe distant east. Perhaps, because his own roots are in the Pentecostal tradition(141, n. 31), he has other facets of the thesis on his mind.

Third, both books reinforce one important issue: theological diversity is a char-acteristic of early Christianity from the beginning, a characteristic underscored byNT studies. For R., Bauer was the pioneer in establishing this fact, putting to flightwhat R. calls the "Eusebian" view of church history and Bauer calls the "eccle-siastical view." Further, R. observes that as long as "the debate about orthodoxyand heresy defines its focus in terms of uniformity, the Bauer Thesis will appear tooffer a coherent analysis of the history of the early church" (29)no emancipation.R. is convincing when he insists that orthodoxy and heresy are the wrong catego-ries and that no theory demanding uniformity within orthodoxy offers a satisfac-tory reconstruction of early Christianity. The primacy of heresy seems to be the neworthodoxythe Bauerian rather than the Eusebian view of church history. None-

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theless, in this study, R. does not propose anything new on how diversity achievesunity. Perhaps, in his next book, which I await.

Thomas M. Finn, Department of Religion, College of William and Mary,Williamsburg, Virginia

J. H. W. G. LiebeschuetzBarbarians and Bishops: Army, Church, and Statein the Age of Arcadius and ChrysostomOxford: Clarendon Press, 1990Pp. xiv +312. $64.00.

The focus of this major contribution of the "transformation of society in LateAntiquity" is "Demilitarization and Christianization" (1). Professor Liebeschuetz,of the University of Nottingham, covers some well-known terrain, to be sure, but hedoes so with a meticulous review of the extant sources and the very large body ofscholarship. The result is a lucid exposition of the complicated scene involving theEastern and Western halves of the Late Roman Empire, or better now, the world ofLate Antiquity with the powerful and dynamic new elements: the Barbarians andChristianity.

With careful and nearly exhaustive documentation utilizing the extant printedsources and expanding body of scholarship, Liebeschuetz describes his theme inthree parts which include twenty-three chapters, plus a particularly useful mise aupointhis "Conclusion: The Historians' Post-Mortem." There are two appen-dices, a 24-page Bibliography and an adequate index. Finally a collection of platesillustrating the appendix on "Arcadius' Column" concludes the volume, whichis presented according to the traditional standards of the Oxford University/Clarendon Press. The bibliography, pp. 279-303, is devoted entirely to secondarystudies, and it demonstrates Liebeschuetz' command of the complex body of schol-arly studies devoted to Late Antiquity which range over Late Roman imperialgovernment, and the increasingly defined institution of the Church in the Western-Roman Latin Catholic half of the Empire and the Eastern-Roman Greek-Orthodoxhalf of the Empire, plus the Germanic-Barbarian factor within both the secular andreligious history of this era.

I have a few reservations concerning the bibliographical materials which aboundin the detailed footnotes as well as the formal list at the end of the volume. Sinceassessment of the historians and chronicles for the events and personalities includedin this study is a noteworthy feature of Liebescheutz' analysis, I am surprised at theomission of Glenn F. Chesnut, The First Christian Histories. Eusebius, Socrates,Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius, 2nd ed. rev. and enlarged (Macon, Georgia:Mercer University Press, 1986). In several instances, items listed in the bibliographyare not factored into the documentation adequately in my judgment, e.g. Jay Breg-man, Synesius ofCyrene. Philosopher-Bishop and Raymond Van Dam, Leadershipand Community in Late Antique Gaul.

In "Part I: An Army of Mercenaries and Its Problems," the author conciselyreviews the military history of the fourth-century empire by describing the role of