A Brief Carl Trueman review of "The Heresy of Orthodoxy"

It's one thing to work through the historical situation of the early papacy, and show how the thing was *not* there, not in the Scriptures, not in the belief or practice of the early church. It's quite a different thing to reconstruct what *was* there. And that's one of the things I like so much about this work, "The Heresy of Orthodoxy."

Carl Trueman has written a very brief review of this work that I wanted to pass along:

the authors are both New Testament scholars; and their book tackles the influential thesis of Walter Bauer, that what came to triumph in early Christianity was not some primeval orthodoxy but merely one competing vision of Christianity among a host of others. It just happened to be the one that won…

In such a context, this book is a gem, giving both a summary of the Bauer-Ehrman thesis and offering good, solid evidence of its manifold flaws. In the process, the authors deal with the development of the canon, textual transmission, and the relevant bibliography for those who wish to read further. It also has a very helpful concluding chapter (albeit, in my opinion, too brief -- like young Twist, I wanted more cultural criticism, Beadle Kruger!) on why the work of such as Ehrman and Pagels, with its emphasis on diversity, is so appealing in the contemporary cultural context. The book is also thoroughly footnoted throughout, giving plenty of pointers for further reading. All in all, an extraordinarily helpful volume.

Keep in mind as you're reading this, as you see the words "Bauer/Ehrman thesis" or "the flawed thesis of Walter Bauer," you can substitute "the flawed thesis of Newman's development" or "the flawed assumptions about the earliest church made by Roman apologists today."

The work is a sound, biblical based, historically accurate response to all of those things.