Proto-orthodox Christianity

The term proto-orthodox Christianity or proto-orthodoxy describes the early Christian movement that was the precursor of Christian orthodoxy. It was coined by Bentley Layton (a major scholar of Gnosticism and Coptologist at Yale), but is often erroneously attributed to New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman. Ehrman argues that this group from the moment it became prominent by the end of the third century, "stifled its opposition, it claimed that its views had always been the majority position and that its rivals were, and always had been, 'heretics', who willfully 'chose' to reject the 'true belief'." In contrast, Larry W. Hurtado argues that proto-orthodox Christianity is rooted in first-century Christianity. Diversity in early Christian theology According to Ehrman, "'Proto-orthodoxy' refers to the set of [Christian] beliefs that was going to become dominant in the 4th century, held by people before the 4th century." Ehrman expands on the thesis of German New Testament scholar Walter Bauer (1877–1960), laid out in his primary work Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934). Bauer hypothesised that the Church Fathers, most notably Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, "had not given an objective account of the relationship of early Christian groups." Instead, Eusebius would have "rewritten the history of early Christian conflicts, so as to validate the victory of the orthodox party that he himself represented." Eusebius claimed that orthodoxy derived directly from the teachings of Jesus and his earliest followers, and had always been the majority view; by contrast, all other Christian views were branded as "heresies", that is to say, willful corruptions of the truth, held by small numbers of minorities. However, in modern times, many non-orthodox early Christian writings were discovered by scholars, gradually challenging the traditional Eusebian narrative.