As Ian Marshall wrote, “Old heresies and arguments against Christianity have a habit of reappearing long after they had been thought dead… When this happens, they need fresh examination to save a new generation of readers from being taken in by them” (Kostenberger & Kruger, 2010, p. 11).
Truth corresponds with actual reality (not to be confused with scientism1). However, various skeptics and religious cults discard orthodoxy (i.e. “right belief”) and misrepresent early Christianity to make it fit their own ideas and desires.
In The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination With Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (2010), Andreas Kostenberger and Michael Kruger discuss this denial of early Christian orthodoxy which is occurring in a postmodern era that posits truth as subjective and a function of power. They carefully rebut the denial while explaining how it has impacted New Testament criticism in academia and the media.
Following successful earlier rebuttals, such misinformation once again began to gain a greater audience on the political left in academia when Walter Bauer’s thesis was translated into English in 1971 amidst an academic culture that was increasingly anti-Christian, relativistic, and revisionist. Marshall stated, “Various writers showed it to be flawed in its analysis of the early churches and their theology and mistaken in assuming that the New Testament writers did not know the difference between orthodoxy and heresy.” Yet, periodically the falsities are recycled anew and “the Bauer hypothesis needs a fresh dissection lest readers of it be tempted to think that it demands credence” (Kostenberger & Kruger, 2010, p. 12).
The New Testament (1997) makes clear distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, possesses a unified doctrine, and demonstrates conformity in covenantal theology. There were not manifold Christianities in the early church or material theological differences in the orthodoxy of early Christianity (Kostenberger & Kruger, 2010).
And despite a united "cosmopolitanism," "individualism," and a manifold "syncretism" in the Hellenistic world; as Nash (1984) wrote, "early Christianity was an exception to the syncretism and inclusiveness of the Hellenistic age" (pp. 19-20).
Ferguson (1993) stated, “Although Christianity had points of contact with Stoicism, the mysteries, the Qumran community, and so on, the total worldview was often quite different, or the context in which the items were placed was different” (p. 3).
While Jewish response to “Hellenistic and Roman cultural influences” varied, “the Jews maintained their distinctiveness more successfully than did any other people of the Mediterranean world” with “the Sabbath, circumcision, and the [Mosaic] law emphasized” (Ferguson, 1993, p. 404).
Where similarity existed, Nash (1984) stated that, "Early Christian writers welcomed this similarity as part of God's providential preparation of the world for the gospel,” however, “The Christian answer for the world's spiritual hunger was unique in the sense that it offered one exclusive way of salvation not amenable to accommodation to other religious systems. This exclusiveness gave the Christian way of salvation a measure of difficulty missing in all of the competitors of Christianity" (pp. 20-22).
That is not surprising as Old Testament authors wrote of Jesus Christ’s pre-earthly existence and prophesied of His arrival and purpose. As Walter C. Kaiser (1995) wrote, "the Old Testament presents the concept of the Messiah and his work in the context of an eternal plan, which was unfolded before the eyes of Israel and the watching world" in a manner that corresponded with “what had been declared in word prior to its happening" (p. 28, 235).
The time spent with the Jewish Diaspora in Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod I notwithstanding, Jesus was a Jew from a Jewish family who studied the Mosaic law and observed the Jewish religion in an ancient Jewish homeland where foreign overlords, with their pagan culture, were resented by most Jews. Jesus’s earliest followers were Jews and remained devoutly Jewish though they believed in “The Way” Jesus Christ had taught them (NASB, 1997, Luk 1-24, Act 9, 22, 24; Nash, 1984; Shelley, 1995, Chapter 1).
Following Jesus Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, and the Pentecost, “the infant church spread throughout Judea” “bound together, then, by the teaching of the apostles and the two ceremonies [drinking from the cup and eating the consecrated bread as communion] depicting the death and resurrection of their Lord” (Shelley, 1995, p. 58).
The movement grew further also adding Hellenistic Jews until the apostle Paul, educated in the strictest Jewish tradition under the famous rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, joined Barnabas in Antioch about A.D. 44 where they began to be called Christians (Shelley, 1995, Chapter 2).
The first Christian leaders exhibit theological unity in Jerusalem following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ continuing in theological unity as they worked together, including through challenges such as the salvation of Jesus Christ being made available to the gentiles (Act 10-11). Furthermore, despite the appearance of heresy later, subsequent orthodox Christian theology demonstrates a material continuity with early Christian teaching (Kostenberger & Kruger, 2010).
Kostenberger & Kruger (2010) showed that “the essential theological convictions of Jesus and the New Testament writers continued into the second-century writings of the church fathers” (p. 54). They introduce the regula fidei (which made its way into the third- and fourth-century creeds) and work forward noting how, “the church fathers saw their role as propagators, or conduits, of this unified and unifying theological standard. They used the nomenclature of ‘handing down’ to describe their role (e.g. Iraneus, Haer. 3.3.3)” (p. 55). The behavior of the church fathers was in direct opposition to the appearance of those who began developing heresies.
Second-century orthodox Christianity was a largely unified movement; however, there were heresies in the Patristic Era which did emerge such as the Ebioneans, Docetism, and Gnosticism.
“Gnosticism was a diverse syncretistic religious movement that, although loosely sharing a few key thematic elements, never emerged as a singularly connected movement.” A “primitive, incipient form of Gnosticism” began to grow in the shadow of Christianity at the end of the first century, taking shape in the second century, as an assortment of smaller competing groups which commonly disagreed with each other and orthodox Christians (Kostenberger & Kruger, 2010, pp. 59-61).
Comfort & Dreisbach (2008) surveyed canonical and noncanonical manuscripts within their appropriate historical context. They detailed how “the Gospels and the major epistles of Paul were ‘canonized’ in the minds of many Christians as early as A.D. 90-100” and read in church noting that “in Peter’s second Epistle, he puts Paul’s letters in the same category as ‘Scriptures’” (p. 11).
“Contrary to the view of Pagels and others, the Gnostic or apocryphal gospels were generally rejected… because they [Christians] found these gospels not to be inspired by God, nonauthoritative as to authorship, and questionable as to content (contradictory to the earliest apostolic literature)” (Comfort & Dreisbach, 2008, p. xv).
With respect to the canonical four Gospels, the manuscript evidence shows that they were circulated from the first century both individually as publications but also combined into codex form exclusive of any other books “to establish the fourfold Gospel as the authoritative norm for the church” and this continued “in subsequent centuries” (Comfort & Dreisbach, 2008, p. 9).
And, “The twenty-seven books now included in the New Testament canon were first given notice (as far as we know) in what is called the Muratorian Canon (A.D. 170)… it was in the middle of the fourth century that the development of the canon came to its culmination with the Festal Letter for Easter (A.D. 367). Here, Athanasius of Alexandria included information designed to eliminate once and for all the use of apocryphal books… with its admonition, ‘Let no one add to these; let nothing be taken away’” specifying “the twenty-seven books without qualification” and listing “the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, as we have them today” (Comfort & Dreisbach, 2008, pp. 12-13).
Kostenberger & Kruger (2010) wrote “that the concept of canon not only existed before the middle of the second century, but that a number of New Testament books were already received and being used as authoritative documents in the life of the church. Given the fact that such a trend is evident in a broad number of early texts-2 Peter, 1 Timothy, 1 Clement, the Didache, Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, and Papias- we have good historical reasons to think that the concept of a New Testament canon was relatively well established and perhaps even a widespread reality by the turn of the [first-to-second] century” (p. 149).
The set of (Christological) core beliefs known as orthodoxy was considerably earlier and much more widespread than heresy and the authors provide a timeline at the end of chapter two to summarize the relationship between orthodoxy and heresy in the patristic era. Their conclusion is that when “orthodoxy and heresy are compared in terms of their genesis and chronology, it is evident that orthodoxy did not emerge from a heretical morass; instead, heresy grew parasitically out of an already established orthodoxy. And while the church continued to set forth its doctrinal beliefs in a variety of creedal formulations, the DNA of orthodoxy remained essentially unchanged” (Kostenberger & Kruger, 2010, p. 67).
As Kostenberger & Kruger (2010) review the scribal variations, they note how “the New Testament is different from most other ancient texts in a fundamental way” given the large body of manuscript evidence showing that the “original text has not been lost but has been preserved in the manuscript tradition as a whole” observing that “the vast number of textual variants is insignificant, and given that our text-critical methodology can tell which significant readings are original and which are secondary, can have confidence that the text we possess is, in essence, the text that was written in the first century” (pp. 230-231).
They present relevant history, manuscripts (including apocryphal literature and New Testament boundaries), materials, and argumentation (both past and present) associated with this discussion making their book essential reading for those who wish to explore this discussion further.
Also relevant to the discussion on alleged pagan dependencies, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Nash, 1984) and The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow From Pagan Thought? (Nash, 2003) are suggested reading. Nash surveys the arguments of pagan dependency and shows why the view was deemed rebutted and all but abandoned by most serious scholars, including those who believed Christianity was a purely natural religion, in the 20th century.
Patrick Zukeran provides a brief summary article titled The Pagan Connection: Did Christianity Borrow From the Mystery Religions (2016), posted at Probe Ministries which is easy to read for those who are interested.
William L. Craig (2021) explained that this movement to try and explain Christianity against the backdrop of paganism originally accelerated primarily as a Germanic antisemitic theological movement around those who wanted a non-Jewish Jesus, with that line of argumentation collapsing as scholars rebutted the hypothesis within a correct historical Jewish reclamation of Jesus.
The errors of constructing conflicts behind inessential variants in materials which are then posited as supposed historical absolutes; employing inconsistency in the use of criteria so as not to introduce evidence disproving argumentation; using sets of sources that are recognized as implausible to support the argumentation under discussion; engaging in exaggeration, partial truths, falsity, etc. does not result in some new revelation of history but rather a misconstrued presentation of it.
Certainly, postmodern relativism enables these behaviors but sometimes it is just plain bias. Rodney Stark discussed this in his publications. An elementary, but profound, example would be why Andrew Dickson White lied about Christopher Columbus.
Stark (2004) wrote:
"Almost every word of White's account of the Columbus story is a lie. Every educated person of the time, including Roman Catholic prelates, knew the earth was round... and advised against funding him because they also knew the world was far larger than Columbus thought it was.
They opposed his plan only on the grounds that he had badly underestimated the circumference of the earth and was counting on much too short a voyage [Columbus asserted 2,800 miles from the Canary Islands to Japan when it is actually 14,000 miles]. Had the Western Hemisphere not existed, and Columbus had no knowledge that it did, he and his crew would have died at sea...
Why do only specialists know now? For the same reason that White's book remains influential despite the fact that modern historians of science dismiss it as nothing but a polemic. White himself admitted that he wrote the book to get even with Christian critics of his plans for Cornell.
The reason we [referring to the non-specialist general audience] did not know the truth concerning these matters is that the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical devices used in the atheist attack on Christianity. From Thomas Hobbes through Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, false claims about religion, history, and science have been used as weapons in the battle to 'free' the human mind from the 'fetters of faith'" (p.122-123).
Such rarely present information or viewpoints in a historically correct context if it rebuts them, and discard or malign orthodox biblical truth. They claim to follow a scholarly path but often break from it; claim historical orthodox Christianity cannot be right while engaging in the aforementioned behaviors to tell us which view of early Christianity is right even after competent rebuttal; dismiss sources that do not help them but then present manuscripts and materials in ways that actually do not either; misinterpret manuscript content to bolster their positions; display an inconsistency with respect to methods and hermeneutics; engage in exaggeration, partial truths, and falsity; recite moral absolutes they claim to hold; etc...
Rousas Rushdoony (2002) referred to the behavior as an “intellectual schizophrenia” while Goldberg (2003) viewed it as "ideologues... whose purpose is to satisfy one's psychological and ideological needs" (p. 17).
Bibliography
Anderson, J. N. D., Anderson, N. (1984). Christianity and world religions: The challenge of pluralism. United Kingdom: InterVarsity Press.
Bauckham, R. (2017). Jesus and the eyewitnesses: The gospels as eyewitness testimony. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Bauer, W. (1971). Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity. Fortress Press.
Blomberg, C. L. (2007). The historical reliability of the gospels. Apollos.
Bruce, F. F. (1997). The canon of scripture. InterVarsity Press.
Bruce, F. F., Packer, J. I., Comfort, P. W., & H., H. C. (2012). The origin of the Bible. Tyndale House.
Comfort, P. W., & Driesbach, J. K. (2008). The many gospels of Jesus: Sorting out the story of the life of Jesus. Tyndale House.
Craig, W. L. (2021). Does Christianity have pagan roots? Retrieved February 22, 2022, from
Evans, C. A. (2007). Fabricating Jesus: How modern scholars distort the gospels. IVP.
Ferguson, E. (1993). Backgrounds of early Christianity (2nd ed.). Eerdmans Publishing.
Fidei, U. (Director). (2018). Interview with Dr. Andreas Kostenberger [Video file].
| Unitas Fidei: An online journal for world Christianity.
Foreman, M. (2012). Chapter 11: Challenging the Zeitgeist movie: Parallelomania on steroids. In Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics (pp. 169–188). essay, B & H Academic.
France, R. T. (1998). Jesus and the Old Testament. Regent.
Geisler, N. L. (1981). Inerrancy. Zondervan.
Geisler, N. L. (2004). Systematic theology (Vols. 1-4). Bethany House.
Green, J. B. (2005). Dictionary of Jesus and the gospels. InterVarsity Press.
Goldberg, S. (2003). Fads and Fallacies in the Social Sciences. Prometheus Books.
Habermas, G. R. (1996). The historical Jesus: ancient evidence for the life of Christ. College Press.
Howe, T. (2006). A response to Bart D. Ehrman’s misquoting Jesus. The International Society of Christian Apologetics.
Kaiser, W. C. Jr. (1995). The Messiah in the Old Testament. Zondervan.
Kim, S. (2007). The origin of Paul's gospel. Wipf and Stock.
Komoszewski, J. E., Sawyer, M. J., Wallace, D. B. (2006). Reinventing Jesus: How contemporary skeptics miss the real Jesus and mislead popular culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
Köstenberger, A., & Kruger, M. (2010). The heresy of orthodoxy: How contemporary culture's fascination with diversity has reshaped our understanding of early Christianity. Crossway.
Nash, R. (1984). Christianity and the Hellenistic world. Zondervan.
Nash, R. H. (2003). The gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament borrow from pagan thought? P & R Pub.
New American Standard Bible. (1997). (Original work published 1960). The Lockman Foundation
Rochford, J. (2017, February 10). Was Christianity copied from pagan myths? Evidence Unseen. https://www.evidenceunseen.com/christ/was-christianity-copied-from-pagan-myths/
Rushdoony, R. J., (2002). Intellectual schizophrenia: Culture, crisis, and education. Ross House Books.
Shelley, B. L. (1995). Church history in plain language (2nd ed.). Thomas Nelson.
Stark, R. (2004). For the glory of God: How monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts, and the end of slavery. Princeton University Press.
Zukeran, D. P. (2016, June 4). The pagan connection: Did Christianity borrow from the mystery religions? https://probe.org/the-pagan-connection-did-christianity-borrow-from-the-mystery-religions/
Fair Use: Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act in 1976; Allowance is made for “Fair Use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statue that might otherwise be infringing. All rights and credit go directly to its rightful owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Notice: Content on this page (including reviews, business, theology, and technology commentary) is provided for informational and opinion purposes only and does not constitute professional, legal, financial, medical, or pastoral advice. Reviews may include quotations or summaries under fair use. All views expressed are those of the author alone. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no warranties are provided. Use and rely on this content at your own risk. For important decisions, consult qualified professionals. For copyright takedown requests or corrections, please email ppothier@substack.com with the subject “Takedown/Correction” and include full details. Effective: 2026-05-08.
Copyright © 2024 Paul L. Pothier. All rights reserved.
Scientism is the epistemological claim that only knowledge derived through methodological naturalism and the scientific method is valid. It rejects any and all objective reality and truth that cannot be quantified or tested within the constraints of methodological naturalism using the scientific method.
It effectively treats the current scientific model as the absolute boundary of reality while failing to account for the fact that scientific ‘truth’ is inherently provisional with knowledge changing, and even being overturned in cases, as new discoveries and new evidences arise (however and wherever they arise).
Where science offers an arguably justified confidence rooted in its own provisionality, scientism demands an unearned certainty that imposes an ontological ceiling on reality, rendering the position internally inconsistent.
Next, consider how immaterial transcendence challenges the foundations of scientism. Then consider the profound implications of the Incarnation; the assertion that the Divine Logos, the Second Person of the Triune God, entered the spatio-temporal order.
When the Creator of the universe enters His own creation (to offer redemption), the closed-system presuppositions of scientism are exposed as insufficient. By manifesting the transcendent within the contingent, the person of Christ invalidates the 'ontological ceiling' of scientism, demonstrating that methodological naturalism is a subset of a broader, supernatural reality rather than its absolute boundary.