Colin, start by reading A High View Of Scripture? it’s an AMAZING book that everyone should read!

That was a very well-written and informative article. Excellent, actually. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series. The part that struck me as very important was…

“During much of Christianity’s first century, there was not a motivation for creating orthodoxy—something that is for longevity of the religion—because the primary focus was the imminent second coming of Christ.”

I think proper belief is important, but my opinion is that the church has largely digressed from the expectation of Christ’s return in favor of an emphasis on orthodoxy and tradition. I see this as a major obstacle to retaining an attitude of preparedness. Such overemphasis breeds diversion and imbalance.

I don’t agree. I think there is a false dichotomy presented here that the Church can only wait expectantly for Christ’s return OR set up orthodoxy and tradition. Even more importantly, the NT doesn’t show this to be the case AT ALL. The apostles thought that Christ was coming back in their lifetime, yet they still preached strongly against false doctrine and setting up proper structure and hierarchy within the church body. Furthermore, they were coming out of the Jewish tradition, which CLEARLY promoted tradition and orthodoxy. There is no reason to believe that the apostles completely rejected that idea. I’m not sure if cchrisr is arguing for that, but it appears you are, Chris A.

I can see how you may have misunderstood my comments. I agree that correct doctrine is important, and I have not presented a false dichotomy. This is not an either/or scenario. It’s a matter of balance. Both sound doctrine and an earnest awaiting for the return of the King are important. What I think is that the overemphasis of either (in this case the former) creates an imbalance.

Imagine Jesus coming back and people being so caught up with theological correctness that they fail to observe the signs of his coming. Rather than fulfilling the Commission to make disciples of all nations, we decide that “our calling” is to be heresy hunters. It’s just a matter of priorities really. The reality is that people are dying and going to hell. Certainly we should make sure our theology is sound so that we produce legitimate disciples, and we should stamp out false teaching when it threatens our existence. But if we fail to make disciples in the first place, we will be left to compare ourselves amongst ourselves, which is unwise (2 Corinthians 10:12). Then we will be left to the same carnal arguments that the Corinthian church made: “I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12).

By the time of Constantine this had became a constant source of problems within the empire to the point of being somewhat destabilizing. Constantine made what, at the time, seemed like a logical decision to recognize Christianity as an official religion. This was in the, as it turned out, very vain hope that as a state recognized religion Christianity would standardize the orthodoxy leading to a stabilization within the church. Despite what has been frequently written, Constantine never converted to Christianity. The decision was a purely political one. The practical result of this was to vastly increase the prize for being a winning orthodoxy. No surprise that this dramatically ratcheted up the competition.

One has to be aware that being a recognized church was very lucrative in a time when the empire was contracting and life was becoming much harder. Churches not only were exempt from taxes, but they received direct funding from the empire. Despite the very much sanitized depiction of the process as a series of scholarly discussions, establishing the orthodoxy was very frequently a bloody process sadly driven by self interest, power lust, and greed instead of true Christian values. Having a rival Christian sect’s orthodoxy declared heretical was a big score. You not only gained their funding, property, and followers, their leaders could end up executed as well.

My point on all this is that not all orthodoxy was derived from a polite debate by enlightened, benevolent church leaders living in ivory towers. Discussions of orthodoxy always seem to avoid why some issues became what could be charitably called convoluted. I would consider this at best intellectually dishonest, because it ignores the impact of the dark parts of the churches past. We should acknowledge all of the how and why of process that has led us to where we are today.

I sort of always thought this might be the case, although I have never read or heard this anywhere else.

Two millineum of mendacious apologetics hasn’t removed the neccessity to face reality.

The Demiurge that orthodoxers worship is not God. Never was, never will be.

This I think is where I would start to disagree. I think that there was a defined orthodoxy before the creation of the bible, and that orthodoxy was the “Rule of Faith”. The best brief description of the change from the “Rule of Faith” to a closed textual canon I’ve seen is from “A High View of Scripture?” by Craig Allert:

Generally speaking, a canon is anything that functions as a standard or norm. Even though we have here predominantly been using the word with reference to a list of texts, its initial use had nothing to do with texts, and this was the case also in Christianity. On the four occasions when the apostle Paul uses the term “canon,” it is never to refer to a collection of writings but rather once to the standard of Christian behaviour [Gal 6:16], and three times in the same passage in connection with the sphere that God has given to Paul for his missionary work [Cor 10:13-16]/ In chapter 4 we will see that, in the latter half of the second century “canon” for Irenaeus meant the Rule of Faith, the content of essential Christian belief. This was also true of other church fathers. Even the infamous Porphyry, who wrote the scathing Against the Christians in about 270, is aware of a “canon of truth” handed down from Jesus and safegarded in the church.

Soon the word “canon” moved from this more fluid usage to refer to concrete things, such as conciliar decisions, monastic rules, clergy, and finally to a list, index, or table - something with which a person can orient oneself. We can thus se the natural growth of the category to include an official list of Christian scripture alongside the other ecclesiastical canons. As we have already learned, however, this growth was gradual and is not explicitly discernible until the mid-fourth century with Athanasius. In light of this it is interesting to see how Scripture function in this age of canonical lists, after the concept of canon came to include a lot of authoritative Christian writings.

I guess it really matters what you mean by “strong definition”. I would definitely argue that there was an orthodoxy before the creation of the lists of scripture were done and that that orthodoxy was one of the main forces in choosing which books were to be scripture. The creation of a closed canon allowed the orthodoxy to then be further defined (as did opponents to the Rule of Faith arising).

Two other quick things. First Ehrman is not without good critics (Wallace is no light weight here). And second a link to throw up just for informational sake; The Canon And Ancient versions is a good place to quickly seewhat books were included in who’s list.