Walter Bauer

Walter Bauer (ˈbaʊɐ; 8 August 1877 – 17 November 1960) was a German theologian, lexicographer of New Testament Greek, and scholar of the development of Early Christianity. Bauer was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, and raised in Marburg, where his father was a professor. He studied theology at the universities of Marburg, Strassburg, and Berlin. Bauer taught at Breslau and Göttingen, where he later died. Bauer's most famous and influential work is his 1934 book Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen; a second edition in 1964, edited by Georg Strecker, was translated as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity in a 1971 English edition). In it, Bauer developed his thesis that in earliest Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy do not stand in relation to one another as primary to secondary. In many regions, beliefs that would be considered "heresy" centuries later were the original and accepted form of Christianity. Bauer pushed against the overwhelmingly dominant view that for the period of Christian origins, ecclesiastical doctrine already represented what is primary, while heresies, on the other hand somehow are a deviation from the genuine. This was the view from the major Church historians of the era such as Eusebius, whose book Church History portrayed orthodox Christianity as descending from Jesus's clear teachings, and heresies as unusual offshoots by people who are evil, misled by the devil, and so on. Through studies of historical records, Bauer concluded that what came to be known as orthodoxy was just one of numerous forms of Christianity in the early centuries. It was the eventual form of Christianity practiced in the 4th century that influenced the development of orthodoxy and acquired the majority of converts over time. This was largely due to the conversion to Christianity of the Roman Emperor Constantine I and consequently the greater resources available to the Christians in the eastern Roman empire capital he established (Constantinople).