The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church

Walter Bauer's 'Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity' created a stir with its argument that the teachings later condemned as heresy, in the later second century onward, were, in fact, dominant in the earliest decades of the church. This full-scale response by H. E. W. Turner has not enjoyed the attention it deserves. Turner's volume represents a learned and sophisticated restatement of the traditional view: what became official orthodoxy was taught early on by the majority of church teachers, albeit not in fully developed form.

H. E. W. Turner was Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, England.