What is the Walter Bauer Hypothesis?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is September 24th, 2020. And if you're reading along in our daily Bible reading, we're going to be in 2 Timothy chapter four.

Now, every day I don't always read the text because my encouragement to you is to read the text. This program is an encouragement to you to read the Bible and I always have a Bible related topic. But today we are actually going to be talking about a topic that relates specifically to the text that you're going to be reading today.

2 Timothy chapter four, I would encourage you to read it. I would encourage you even right now, maybe take an opportunity, pause the program, read the chapter and then come back because we're going to be looking at it.

The Walter Bauer Hypothesis and Early Christianity

We're going to be comparing it to Galatians chapter one and we're going to be doing so in relation to what is known as the Walter Bauer hypothesis. Now, I want to tell you, kind of give you my reasoning for this because I imagine the vast majority of you probably don't know what the Walter Bauer hypothesis is and you might be wondering why I'm bringing it up on the program today.

Well, as many of you know, we have a seminary class that we teach here at Sovereign Grace Family Church. We are connected to the Jacksville Baptist Theological Seminary and we have Sovereign Grace Academy, which is a once a week program.

And by the way, if you didn't know this and you are in the Jacksville area and you would like to further your understanding of scripture and you would like to receive training in the word of God, we have seats available in our class and we would love to have you.

Currently, we are going through a survey of the New Testament and in last week's class, I took the opportunity to talk about the fact that the first, we were talking about the synoptic gospels, which is Matthew, Mark and Luke, and I talked about the fact that the first two decades after the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, which would have been the, in the first century would have been the 40s and the 50s, there was not a written account of what Jesus had said and done, but rather that it was being promoted and taught by the apostles and by the evangelists, those who were going out and sharing the gospels.

And therefore we would say the first two decades, there was words about Jesus, but there was not a writing of his life and we talked about the fact, we talked about what oral tradition is and how oral tradition was understood and related in the ancient world and how important it was.

But one of the things that came up in the class and it actually came up after the class, I got a question from one of the students and I wanted to respond. This is a question regarding the Walter Bauer hypothesis.

The question was, was I referring to it when I talked about early oral tradition? But let me very quickly talk about what is the Walter Bauer hypothesis? Well, and I'm actually gonna read a little bit to you from, this is from Michael Kruger's website.

If you don't know who Michael Kruger is, Michael Kruger is the name in early church history right now. He is a very important teacher and if you've never heard him, I would say look him up. If you've never read anything that he has written, I would say it's worth your time, especially to understand the formation of the canon and how God brought about the process of that and how those things work.

And he expels a lot of the false notions of the canon, things such as the Bible was put together by Constantine in such foolishness as that, which a lot of people believe those things because they're very popular on the internet.

Michael Kruger absolutely demolishes those things in his books and in his lectures and his writings. But he mentions on his website, I believe this is his blog from 2015. This is a blog and what he wrote, he gives an example or gives an understanding of the Bauer hypothesis and I'm just gonna read it to you because I think it's very easy.

He says,. But 1934 was a significant year for another reason. Very quietly, behind the scenes, a book was published that would change the landscape of early Christian studies for years to come. Walter Bauer published his now famous monograph, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.

Compared to Hitler's rise, this was not very newsworthy. And Bauer's book did not have much of an impact at first. But in 1971, it was translated into English and since that time, things have radically changed in the academy of the English speaking world.

So that's how he introduces Walter Bauer in the history. But what was Bauer's thesis? What is it that Bauer was saying? Well, ultimately, in a nutshell, it's basically this, that within the early church, there was not Christianity as we know it today, but rather there were Christianities, plural.

There were competing views of who Christ was, what he taught, what he was all about and what the cross meant and all of those things. And there was not unanimity, there was not orthodoxy. And again, if you think about the title of his book, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, one of the things that Bauer is attempting to put forward and it is popularized today is the idea that there was not a cohesive belief among Christians in the early church.

And ultimately, what we believe today is simply the Christianity that won. And history is written by the winners, as many of you've heard. And so really, we don't know what real Christianity is because there was no such thing as real Christianity.

What it is, is there were all of these competing Christianities, such as the Gnostic view and these different views. And ultimately, that which overcame became known as the orthodox view or the correct view.

And so everything else was put aside. But the point, and this is often believed by many people, is that there was not a standard teaching of Christianity in the early church. And I wanna say this because I brought this up in class last week.

I was talking about the fact that there are what I referred to as skeptical scholars, but I was reminded after class is that there's actually a more proper term. And the more proper term is higher critical scholars.

That's typically, or historical critical scholars, ones who would look at the Bible and rather than trying to determine the meaning of what is said, rather, they try to determine what was accurate and what was true, and they take the Bible apart and say, well, maybe Jesus did say this.

Maybe Jesus didn't say that. Things like the Jesus Seminar, where their goal is to try to determine what parts of the Bible did Jesus actually say. And ultimately, they come down to very, very little is actually authentically Jesus.

And it's that type of liberal thinking. It's that type of, ultimately, what we might refer to as skeptical. But again, the proper term is higher critical thinking that has literally won the day in the academy.

As part of my preparation for my studies, for my Survey of the New Testament class that I'm teaching, I actually have been listening to a Yale professor, and he has disdain for the Bible, and yet he's teaching a Survey of the New Testament.

I can hear in his words, when he's reading scripture, he mocks some of what the Bible says, and he assumes that everyone understands that this is just wrong, that these things that are being stated are just wrong.

And somebody might say, well, why would you listen to such a person like that? Because I am trying to at least understand their perspective so that I can respond to it. I wanna hear what he has to say so that I can provide a proper response and as a teacher, I try to do that.

I try to not only put myself in an echo chamber where everybody I am listening to says the same things as I do, but I'm trying to listen to other people. And he said early on in this course that there's no such thing as Christianity in the first century.

It's only Christianities, plural. And he was essentially saying that the Bauer hypothesis is true and that we should all just accept it, that anybody who believes differently just isn't really dealing with the historical reality of what was happening in the first century.

Sound Teaching in 2 Timothy 4

So how do we respond to that? First of all, I wanna point out the fact that Michael Kruger, as I mentioned already, and I've read from his website, has done tremendous work in this area and has shown that the Bauer hypothesis actually doesn't hold water, that the amount of distinguishment between, or the amount of differentiation between different groups was not the type of vast, wild divisions that we would think, especially one would put forward by the Bauer hypothesis, that it was just some wild deviations all over the place and there were all these different views.

And so I would point you to Kruger's work on that. I would encourage you to read his works, go to his website, listen to some of what he has to say. But I wanna just point you to something from the scriptures.

If you look at our text today, you'll notice it says this, 2 Timothy chapter four. Now, I wanna go ahead and admit, critical scholars, higher critical scholars, they don't believe Paul wrote this. But I would say this, this is one of the most personal letters that Paul wrote in the New Testament.

He speaks to Timothy as a son in the faith. And I don't believe that there's a chance that this is not purely Pauline, but there are those who would argue it is. But that being said, I believe this is from the pen of the Apostle Paul.

I believe he is the one who is giving us this. And listen to what he says. Now, this is one of his later letters. And we're gonna look in a minute at Galatians because I believe Galatians is actually one of his first letters.

But we're gonna look, this 2 Timothy is his last. This is likely his last letter. And what does he say to Timothy? This would have been in the mid 60s that he's writing this. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, and with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endorse sound teaching, but have itching ears. They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, enduring suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Notice what is assumed in this short paragraph. What is assumed in this paragraph? One, that there is a word that can be preached.

He says, preach the word. Now, we have to admit at this particular point, he's talking more specifically about the Old Testament because the Old Testament is the word of God and the New Testament is still being written.

It's still being inspired and being written down. And so the point though I'm making is that by saying preach the word, Paul is saying clearly that there is a body of truth that is non-negotiable, that should be preached, and that that's what you're gonna stand upon.

That's what you're gonna use to reprove, rebuke, exhort and teach with. It's the word. And then he goes on to say, there are going to be people who won't endorse sound teaching, but instead they're going to wander into myths and not listen to the truth.

The truth, the truth singular. That is the point. There was truth in the early church. Christianity existed. It is the truth and it was the truth. And Paul is holding Timothy accountable to the truth.

And he's saying that there are those who are not going to endorse sound teaching, but you preach the truth, which assumes that the truth is well understood and well known by those who were truly of the faith.

But now somebody might argue, okay, that's 2 Timothy. Somebody might say, I don't believe Timothy wrote that. Or I don't believe Paul wrote that. And I would say, I believe Paul did write it. So be that as it may, but somebody might say, yes, but that's late.

This is late 60s, likely the writing. And if that's the case, maybe Walter Bauer's hypothesis would fit into an earlier time period. And so I want to point you to, I want to point you to another book, the book of Galatians.

Now I take the position that Galatians was written around 48. And the reason for that is because the Jerusalem council, which is mentioned in Acts 15, would have been written somewhere around, or would have happened somewhere around 49.

And I believe that the Galatians, the book of Galatians written to the Galatians prior to that event. There's some internal and external evidence for that. I believe it's written to the Southern Galatians.

I believe that it was to, the entire book would be unnecessary if it were after the time of the council, because ultimately he's dealing with something that the council would later deal with. And so there's, I have reasoning to believe it's early, but even if it's not 48, it's certainly early 50s.

This is, and this is one of those books that not very many people dispute Paul's authorship. Even if they dispute Timothy and Titus and some of the later writings of Paul, not many people dispute Galatians as being very obviously Pauline.

Notice what he says in chapter one, verse six. I'm astonished that you were so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of truth.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be a curse. As we've said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be a curse.

Then the word there is anathema, let him be separated, let him be cut off. And you say, well, that's proof of the Bauer hypothesis because he's saying there's people preaching other gospels. Yes, but understand Bauer's hypothesis is that all of these gospels were legitimate.

They're not legitimate. Paul is here saying they're not legitimate. He's saying very clearly there is no other gospel. So as early as Paul's, what I would consider to be one of his earliest, if not the earliest letter, Paul is clearly saying what we understand about the gospel, what we understand about the cross, what we understand about justification, what we understand about faith, what we understand about Jesus, all of these things are so well understood that there can be no other way.

There can be no other gospel. And if somebody comes to you preaching another gospel, that person needs to be cut off. Now, I would argue that the people Paul is directly dealing with in Galatians is the Judaizers, those who are trying to introduce Old Covenant ceremonial law-keeping into the New Covenant church.

And we see later Paul says, don't do that. And I think that's what Galatians is about. But you go further out, you look at the writings of John, and I do think there are obvious points where John is dealing with Gnostics.

And the point is they're not, they are not part of the church. They're not another Christianity. They're not Christianity. And see, this is the argument. And this, I think, defeats the argument. The argument is there were a bunch of different Christianities, and they were all equal, and they were all just vying for position.

Not true. There's not an equality among them. The Apostle Paul and the other apostles clearly had a body of truth that they were preaching that, yes, there were those who denied it. Yes, there were those who preached other things.

But the gospel was clear, and Christianity was, in that sense, unified around the gospel, even in the first century. So that would be my initial thoughts and some simple, basic things to point out in regard to the Walter Bauer hypothesis.

I would encourage you to look up more about this on your own if you have more questions. And if you have something about this subject that you'd like me to go a little further on, I would encourage you to send a message, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist today. My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist. May God bless you.

Closing Remarks and Listener Invitation

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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening. May God bless you.