If you are looking for a historical look at what were the essentials for the early church, I’d recommend Darrell Bock’s excellent book The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities. Bock, as always, does a superb job addressing current, popular myths and academic trends with even-handed, gracious, devastating logic. One of the main tenets of Bock’s argument is that Christianity, from the beginning, was defined by orthodoxy. That is, there was such a thing as Christianity before there were Christianities.
Bock takes the reader on a tour of early Christianity and demonstrates that there was a broad consensus in four areas–the view of God, the view of Jesus, the nature of salvation, and Jesus’ work–that defined traditionalist Christianity. “I believe our tour has shown enough unanimity of belief in these four topics among the traditionalists,” writes Bock, “that, for them, these ideas were the core of Christianity.”
Bock continues:
The core can be viewed as this: There was one Creator God. Jesus was both human and divine; He truly suffered and was raised bodily. He also is worthy to receive worship. Salvation was about liberation from hostile forces, but it was also about sin and forgiveness–the need to fix a flaw in humanity that made each person culpable before the Creator. This salvation was the realization of promises that God made to the world and to Israel through Israel’s Law and Prophets. The one person, Jesus Christ, brought this salvation not only by revealing the way to God and making reconciliation but also by providing for that way through His death for sin. Resurrection into a new exalted spiritual life involves salvation of the entire person–spirit, soul, and boy. Faith in this work of God through Jesus saves and brings on a spiritual life that will never end. This was the orthodoxy of the earliest tradition (207).
This core of orthodox teaching could also be stated negatively.
(1) God was not to be divided in such a way that He was not the Creator. God was a Creator of all things, and that initial creation was good. (2) A division between Jesus and the Christ in terms of His basic person and work was not acceptable. Orthodoxy was that Jesus as Son of God was sent from God, came truly in the flesh, and truly suffered. (3) Redemption only on a spiritual plane was not the true faith. Salvation included a physical dimension of resurrection and extended into the material creation. (4) Jesus did not come only to point the way to faith, to be a prophet, merely a teacher of religious wisdom, or to be a mere example of religious faith. Rather, His work provided the means to salvation. Jesus was far more than a prophet, which is why He was worshiped and affirmed as sharing glory with God as His Son (208).
So, contrary to outsider-skeptics, Christianity did have an orthodoxy from the beginning.
And, I would add, contrary to insider-revisionists, Christianity still needs an orthodoxy. If, that is, newer kinds of Christianity are still intent on being Christian.
