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So much more could be said about Gnostic forms of Christianity. But perhaps enough has been said to give a taste of this strange, even inviting set of reli­

gious practices and beliefs.

Christianity in nearly all its forms has always had its spiritual elite, the in­

siders who have a special insight into the true meaning of the faith, a cut above the rest of us in their nuanced understanding of God, the world, and our place in it. The Gnostics virtually fetishized this notion of an elite, a group of people

in the know, who recognized the true nature of the church’s profession of faith, of its Scriptures, of its sacraments. Those outside the inner circle often felt threatened by it, so much so that the ones claiming to be in the know became the object of scorn and derision. We will observe some of these reactions in a later chapter, and we will see how some of the Gnostics answered in turn. For it was not only the proto-orthodox who felt that they themselves were right and all others were wrong. Every group felt the same, whether relatively small, established, and marginalized groups like the Ebionites, or fast-growing and progressive groups like the Marcionites, or insider, elitist groups like the Gnostics.

Is it conceivable that Gnostic Christianity could have eventually won out in this struggle for dominance? Certainly the proto-orthodox leaders felt the pres­

sure of these groups; otherwise, we would be hard-pressed to explain the mas­

sive expenditure of time and energy devoted to rooting out the Gnostic

“heretics,” spurning their views, maligning their persons, destroying their writ­

ings, eliminating their influence. And one can certainly see why the Gnostic views won a following. Here were Christian groups that were fearless in their denunciation of our material existence: This world is not just fallen; it is inher­

ently evil, a cosmic catastrophe; it is a place to be escaped, not enjoyed. It may seem acceptable on one level simply to say that humans have corrupted it. You can account for war and oppression and injustice simply by pointing the finger at someone else. But the suffering of this world is far deeper than that: droughts that bring massive starvation, unstoppable floods, volcanoes that devastate entire populations, rampant disease, pain that wracks the body, infirmity, death. The Gnostics took the suffering of this world seriously, and they turned their backs on it. This, they argued, cannot be laid at the feet of God.

God is good, true, and perfect. And some of us belong to him. We may feel alienated here. If so, it is for good reason. We are alienated here. We are not of this world; we belong to another world. The story of how we got here is filled with mystery; it can be told only as a myth, not as a propositional statement of historical fact. We came to be here by a cataclysmic rip in the fabric of reality, a cosmic disaster, a tragic mistake. But we can escape this world and all that it holds; we can return to our heavenly home; we can become united with God, once again, as we originally were.

It is a powerful message. It was obviously attractive. But I don’t know if it could ever have won out. One of the problems with religions that stress the importance of the spiritually elite is that they have trouble winning over the (nonelite) masses.

Had Gnostic Christianity done so, it would have made for quite a few changes in our world. Who knows what kind of social agenda could have been formed in the long run by a group that rejected the importance of the ongoing life of society? Would they have been able to address problems of poverty and dis­

ease, injustice and oppression, when they thought the flesh was to be escaped rather than endured? It is a genuine question, since other “other-worldly” groups

have strived to improve life on earth. On a less pressing but more fundamental level: Who knows how common modes of discourse would have developed had secret revelatory knowledge, accessible to only a few and confusing, no doubt, even to them, proved to be the ultimate arbiter of truth? Would a west­

ern form of philosophy rooted in the likes of Aristotle, which provide us today with what we think of as “common sense” (for example, in the Aristotelian

“law of noncontradiction”), have seemed bizarre or even quaint? Who knows how the ways of reading texts that strike us as obvious and straightforward, literal readings in which we follow the words in sequence and accept their commonly accepted meanings within their own contexts—who knows how our ways of reading texts would have altered if a group that insisted on figura­

tive understandings as the primary modes of interpretation had won out and established sway in our forms of civilization?

On the other hand, maybe hatred of the world would have led people to work to change the world instead of abandon it. Maybe devaluation of the body would have ultimately led people to work to control the body. We don’t know. What we do know is that these precious systems of belief and practice, these alternative forms of Christianity, had a lot to say to the world of antiquity, and evidently they have a lot to say to people even today, given the fascination about Gnosticism among those interested in early Christianity. They nonethe­

less came to be roundly defeated in the battles for dominance among early Christian groups. As a result, they were virtually lost to the world except in their polemical refutations by proto-orthodox adversaries, until some of their texts reappeared by sheer serendipity in modern times.

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In America today, Christians new in town sometimes find it difficult to choose the right church. If they are Episcopalian, do they prefer high church or low church? If Methodist, socially liberal or ethically conservative? If evangelical, large and technologically sophisticated or small and intimate? Should it be a Bible-preaching church or a liturgically oriented church? Politically active or spiritually focused? Strong music program or thoughtful sermons? Should it have a solid social ministry? Active youth group? Vibrant outreach program?

The questions go on and on for those concerned about such things.

Imagine the choices facing Christians in the second century. Which is bet­

ter: the Ebionite church or the Marcionite? Gnostic or proto-orthodox? A church that believes in one god or twelve or thirty? A church that accepts the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke or the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Mary? A church that believes God created the world or that the world is a cosmic mis­

take? A church that adheres to the Jewish laws of kashrut, Sabbath observance, and circumcision or a church that condemns these laws as inspired by an infe­

rior deity?

It makes the choice of a good music program pale a bit by comparison.

We have talked about several of the early Christian groups, but as we have seen, there were in fact many more. Gnostic groups alone had so many perspec­

tives, theologies, and mythological systems that not even the heresy hunters could

*By “Nicaea” I refer to the council called in the city of Nicaea by the emperor Constantine in 325 CE, a council that established a creed that became the basis of Christian ortho­

doxy for centuries to follow. Eventually this creed developed into the Nicene Creed;

see chap. 9.

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track them all down. And there were interminglings: Jewish Christians influ­

enced by Gnostics, Gnostics influenced by Marcionites, proto-orthodox influ­

enced in one way or another by everyone.

But only one form of Christianity, this group we have been calling proto­

orthodox, emerged as victorious, and it is to this victory that we owe the most familiar features of what we think of today as Christianity. This victory be­

queathed to us four Gospels to tell us virtually everything we know about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In fact, it handed down to us the entire New Testament, twenty-seven books, the only books produced by Christians accepted as Scripture. Along with these “new” Scriptures was the “Old” Testa­

ment, still accepted as canon, even though sometimes considered to have been superseded by the New. The proto-orthodox victory also passed along a church hierarchy—different kinds of hierarchy in different denominations now. But for centuries (in parts of the church) it was as widely accepted and unproblematic as the branches of the federal government in the United States today, a hierar­

chy of bishops, elders, and deacons and eventually offices still higher up, to the rank of pope, and lower down.

In addition, the proto-orthodox victory conferred to Christian history a set of practices and beliefs. These include “sacraments” practiced by Christians almost everywhere: baptism and eucharist. And they include doctrines familiar to anyone conversant with Christianity: Christ as both divine and human, fully God and fully man. And the sacred Trinity, the three-in-one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons, but only one God, the mystery at the heart of tradi­

tional Christian faith.

All this, and much more, was bequeathed to the world by the victory of proto-orthodoxy. We are now in a position in our study to take a closer look at what the proto-orthodox stood for and, to some extent, see what they stood against. In many respects, it was their opposition to alternative perspectives that drove proto-orthodox Christians to adopt the views they did. But rather than focusing on the conflicts with other groups, for the moment we will con­

sider some of their major perspectives on their own terms, as reflected in the proto-orthodox writings. As was true of the other forms of Christianity we have examined, this group was no monolith. Here also we find a wide range of perspectives, even though they all fall within certain parameters, boundary markers that separated the proto-orthodox from other groups and that deter­

mined their acceptability to later Christians who established the creeds and scrip­

tural canon of Christianity. But within these broader parameters there were multiple views represented—not a solitary perspective that could be traced all the way back to Jesus and his apostles, despite the claims of the proto-orthodox them­

selves, claims they sometimes made, ironically enough, even when expressing views that their fellow proto-orthodox found dubious or problematic.

Moreover, not even the parameters of proto-orthodoxy were hard and fast, static boundary markers that were never moved. They evolved over time, with new boundaries occasionally being set up and old ones shifted accordingly.

Still, we can acquire a good sense of the broad contours of proto-orthodox Christianity by examining the writings of some of its earliest champions, au­

thors who were later embraced as the forebears of orthodoxy. Of these, no one can serve our purposes better than Ignatius of Antioch, whose letters adum­

brate many of the issues to be taken up by his successors among the proto­

orthodox.

Proto-orthodox Martyrs as