On pages 10-11 of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman states the following:
"Nowhere
are the blurred lines separating 'acceptable' and 'aberrant' beliefs
more evident than in the 'popular' Christian literature of the second
and third centuries, literature, that is, that was written for and read
by general audiences not overly concerned with theological niceties.
This is especially true of the apocryphal Acts, fictional accounts of
the activities of apostles such as Peter, John, and Thomas. These works
have always proved puzzling for historians of doctrine, because they
represent theological views that at times appear orthodox and at times
heretical. This is due both to their nature ('Romances' for popular
consumption) and to the time of their writing, when such distinctions
cannot have been clearly made. But the blurred lines can also be seen
in ostensibly polemical literature, that is, in documents that
purportedly work to resolve theological issues. This is why
christological affirmations made by second- and third-century Christians
interested in theological 'correctness' can appear so primitive by
fourth- or fifth-century standards on the one hand, yet seem to be
headed towards orthodoxy, with its paradoxical affirmations, on the
other."
When I was in Indiana for my sister's wedding, I was going
through some old papers, and I came across a paper that I wrote for a
New Testament class at Harvard Divinity School. It was actually for a
class that was taught by N.T. Wright about the resurrection of Jesus,
but a Teaching Assistant (who was pursuing a Ph.D. in New Testament) was
grading my paper. We had been given a list of topics to write our
papers on, and I chose a topic about the extent to which New Testament
authors agreed and disagreed about the nature of Jesus' resurrection.
Essentially, I argued that the New Testament presents Jesus'
resurrection as bodily, and that the orthodox church fathers were
faithful to the New Testament, whereas the Gnostic Christians were not.
I got an A- on the paper, but the TA left some comments. I don't have
his comments in front of me, but my impression was that he was
questioning whether categories such as Gnosticism, orthodoxy, and heresy
were as firmly established in the second-third centuries, as I seemed
to be assuming. In my paper, I referred to some early Christian voices
that depicted resurrection as astral glorification in heaven, but I
tended to downplay their significance; the TA, however, said that they
were important and demonstrated diversity in early Christianity. The TA
also referred me to a book, and I think that it might have been Walter
Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity, which Ehrman refers to.
I'm
writing from memory, so I apologize for any misconceptualizations I may
have made in the above paragraph. In any case, I think that my TA was
saying that things were more muddled in the second-third centuries than I
thought. And perhaps there's something to his view, if Ehrman is
correct that there are early Christian writings that are mixtures of
what later Christians would characterize as orthodoxy and heresy. At
the same time, a big theme in Ehrman's book is that there were
proto-orthodox scribes who took issue with certain conceptions of Jesus,
and they altered the New Testament text so that the text would not give
the impression of supporting certain heresies. According to Ehrman,
the scribes were not doing this to persuade those whom they considered
heretics, but rather they were doing it for other reasons: so that the
text would clearly say what they (the proto-orthodox scribes) thought it
already meant, and to reaffirm the faith of those who believed as they
did, while preventing believers in their churches from being swayed by
so-called heretics. So, even if things were more muddled than I thought
when I wrote that paper, even Ehrman paints a picture of conflict
between proto-orthodox scribes and others.