Abstract
This essay examines how the narrative of "the one church against the many heretics" was constructed in early Christian literature and how it has been deconstructed in modern scholarship. Taking its cue from Alfonso Di Nola's observation that the devil becomes a vehicle of ideological violence whenever the dynamics of power require the exclusion and demonization of inconvenient groups, I argue that the violence repeatedly manifest in Christian history does not stem directly from monotheism but from binary macro-conflict narratives that construct identity through the dehumanization and demonization of those designated as "the other."
Part One traces fragments of such a narrative's prehistory and early formation (One Church/One Truth – Many Heretics possessed by the Demons). The starting point is Eusebius of Caesarea, whose Ecclesiastical History establishes the decisive pattern: the one flock of Christ, led by legitimate successors of the apostles, stands opposed to a plurality of heretics who are not merely dissenting voices but instruments of Satan, wolves who infiltrate the flock and poison its members. Simon Magus serves as the paradigm, invoked repeatedly as the progenitor of all heresy. The essay then shows that this pattern does not originate with Eusebius. Already in New Testament writings — Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 John, Revelation, and above all the Pastoral Epistles — one finds the rhetorical construction of apostolic unity over against a demonized outside, in which supernatural forces are invoked the moment the author's gospel is challenged.
The tradition continues in Irenaeus and his regula fidei, which combines a para-biblical criterion of truth with the claim of worldwide unanimity, and culminates in the heresiological literature of Hippolytus and Epiphanius of Salamis. Fragments from the Ascension of Isaiah and the Coptic Gospel of Judas demonstrate, conversely, that comparable material and imagery also permitted counter-narratives composed from the opposing perspective.
Part Two traces this narrative into modern scholarship and considers how it might be broken open. Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity (1934) challenges the premise that orthodoxy came first, yet stops short of abandoning the categories. Alain le Boulluec, David Brakke, and Hartmut Leppin take the further step of treating early Christianity as diverse from the outset, replacing the single orthodox church and its splinters with a discourse of power between unity and plurality. Developing the author's own image of dancers observed from outside, the essay argues for a historiography conscious of its own constructedness, which replaces monumental macro-narratives with fragments and snapshots — because human lives are and have been at stake.
About Tobias Nicklas
Tobias Nicklas, Dr. theol., is Professor of New Testament and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies "Beyond Canon" at Universität Regensburg, Germany. He is author of more than 250 scholarly publications (including, most recently: Reading Christian Apocrypha [with Janet E. Spittler, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2025] and Spätantike Apostelerzählungen [TrC 17; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2025]) and (co-)editor of several major series (like Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum NT and Kritisch exegetischer Kommentar). His main research interests are in Christian Apocrypha, early Christian narrative, Apocalyptic Literature, Jewish-Christian Dialogue.