The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

by Bart D. Ehrman

  It is very hard to know whether other Christian groups were more tolerant than the proto-orthodox, given the sparse writings surviving from their pens. They certainly opposed the proto-orthodox themselves on a number of issues. But there is little to indicate just how strenuously they argued their views or how convinced they were that the differences between themselves and others were of some kind of ultimate, eternal significance. It is not difficult, however, to gauge the tolerance levels of the proto-orthodox. As a group, they were not tolerant at all.

  They were certainly not tolerant toward pagans. On this, the narratives of proto-orthodox apostolic heroes and the stories of proto-orthodox martyrs are quite unambiguous: Worshipers of other gods needed to convert to the belief in Jesus as the Son of God or else be subject to eternal torment. Nor were they tolerant toward Jews. Here, too, proto-orthodox writings were unambiguous: Jews who rejected Jesus as the messiah had rejected their own God; he in turn had rejected them.

  Of yet greater relevance for our study, they were not tolerant toward heretics. Proto-orthodox Christians insisted that salvation was dependent on faith and that faith was not simply a vague sense of the goodness of God or a general dependence on God's mercy. Faith was in something; it had content. The content therefore mattered. The regula fidei and then the creeds that developed were ways to indicate what it was that people had to believe. Those who rejected the true beliefs adhered, necessarily, to false ones. But since only right belief can bring salvation, wrong belief can do nothing but bring damnation. As a result, heretics would pay for their false teachings with eternal torment.

  Discovering What Was Lost

  This kind of religious intolerance might itself seem intolerable to us today. Even though we are heirs of the proto-orthodox victory, times have changed, and changed with them has been a sense of what is acceptable and unacceptable in religious dialogue.

  To be sure, for many people in the world today—millions of people—the religious views inherited from the early Christian tradition are truths to be cherished. Christian theologians continue to plumb the mysterious depths that these truths affirm; Christian lay people continue to recite the creeds, to read the Scriptures, to listen to the proclamation, to follow the teachings. These teachings stimulate thought and reflection; they guide action and influence behavior; they provide hope and comfort. And yet many Christians people today are less inclined than their proto-orthodox forebears to condemn those who disagree with these teachings. For good or ill, there is a greater sense—though obviously not a universal sense—of the need for tolerance.

  The broader interest in and heightened appreciation for diverse manifestations of religious experience, belief, and practice today has contributed to a greater fascination with the diverse expressions of Christianity in various periods of its history, perhaps especially in its earliest period. This fascination is not simply a matter of antiquarian interest. There is instead a sense that alternative understandings of Christianity from the past can be cherished yet today, that they can provide insights even now for those of us who are concerned about the world and our place in it. Those captivated with this fascination commonly feel a sense of loss upon realizing just how many perspectives once endorsed by well-meaning, intelligent, and sincere believers came to be abandoned, destroyed, and forgotten—as were the texts that these believers produced, read, and revered. But with that feeling of loss comes the joy of discovery when some of these texts, and the lost Christianities they embody, are recovered and restored to us. For our own religious histories encompass not only the forms of belief and practice that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the past but also those that were overcome, suppressed, and eventually lost.