The Early Church and the Formation of Orthodoxy

Overview

Larry Hurtado documented that devotional practice — prayer to Jesus, hymns, invocation, baptism in his name — appears astonishingly early in a strictly monotheistic Jewish matrix. Paul's letters already contain what look like pre-existing hymnic and creedal fragments (Philippians 2:6–11, Colossians 1:15–20, 1 Corinthians 8:6), meaning the material predates the letters themselves.

The canon was recognized rather than imposed. Criteria were apostolicity, catholicity (broad use across churches), and conformity to the rule of faith. Marcion's truncated canon (c. AD 144) and the Muratorian Fragment (c. AD 170–200) show lists in circulation long before Athanasius' festal letter of 367 or the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation were the genuinely disputed books; the four Gospels and the main Pauline letters were not seriously in question.

The 'Da Vinci Code' claim that Constantine chose the Gospels or invented Christ's divinity is simply false and should be corrected calmly with dates. Nicaea (325) debated whether the Son is homoousios (of the same being) or homoiousios (of like being) with the Father — a dispute that only makes sense if his divinity was already assumed by both sides.

The Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 (Thomas, Philip, Judas, Mary) are real and worth studying, but they are second-to-fourth-century, philosophically Platonizing, and generally hostile to material creation and Jewish scripture. Elaine Pagels argues they represent suppressed diversity; most historians hold they are later developments rather than equally early rivals.