Recovery of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity sparked popular and academic intrigue at the turn of the twenty-first century. Critics like Ehrman and Pagels introduced Bauer’s thesis of a strong-armed orthodoxy rooting out viable Christian traditions, and evangelicals like Köstenberger and Kruger responded with biblical and historical defenses for the primacy of creedal Christianity. This paper extends the mediating, dynamic approaches of Koester and Hultgren who chastened Bauer’s thesis, exploring two contextual problems considered at the Council of Nicaea.
First, the Quartodeciman controversy festered among parties across the early Church. In the second century, Irenaeus served as peacemaker between sects who honored different practices on Pascha while he also fiercely rejected Gnostic cosmogony and theology. By the time of Nicaea, questions remained about the proper calendrical calculations which could provide unity, but the church largely heeded Constantine’s appeals to seek a common practice since the vast geographical swath of the church had settled for a non-Jewish dating. The diversity in the celebration of Easter emerged in contextual diversity, but unity developed over time in the search for practical peace.
Second, early Arianism was stymied at the Council of Nicaea despite pockets of protests by supporters scattered throughout the empire. Leaders were harshly divided on the details precisely because the person of Christ had such drastic theological implications. Hardly anyone rejected the Creed of Nicaea at the Council, showing that theological unity was prized despite differences of depth. Whereas Bauer proposed discrete acceptable theologies in different locations, the Church was torn on Christology between major alternatives. After Nicaea, diversity proliferated even more with Semi-Arian options, but these evince open, although fiery, debate on all sides. These cases show that definite diversity on specifics dynamically developed toward sincere unity over time and open deliberation, not mere theological bullying.