http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion ... orthodoxy/
In fact, I’ve finally gotten around to reading Peter Lampe’s superb book From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries and I like how he puts it:
Behind ‘orthodoxy’ stands the mass of uneducated Christian folk. The orthodox Christian does not need a perfect secular education to grasp the truths of his or her faith, as is often attested (Lactatius, Inst. Div. 6.21; Clement, Strom. 1.99.1; Tertullian, Praescr. 7.9-13; Origen, Contra Cel. 3.44. ‘Any Christian manual laborer can find God!’ (Tertullian, Apol. 46.9). The victory of orthodoxy was thus also a ‘majority decisions’: the followers of the heretics were numerically outnumbered; orthodoxy, easily comprehended by the masses, constituted the ‘Great Church’ (Origen, Contra Cel. 5.59: megalē ekklēsia; the term was coined by Celsus). Whoever has this ‘Great Church behind him succeeds. It is a simple law of gravity. (p. 383-84).
Note however:
http://www.amazon.com/Orthodoxy-Heresy- ... 0800613635
How dominant was heresy in the second-century? Based on literary production, Bauer asserts, "heretics considerably outnumbered the orthodox" (p. 194).
Finally note Udo Schnelle:
Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons.
(1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.
We thus make this analogy:
Gnostics : Educated : Few : Early :: Catholics : Uneducated : Many : Late
In other words, if there were a movement that consisted primarily of the educated, interpreting and creating texts, it was a "high grid" / "low group" social movement. The "high grid" refers to the high barrier to enter such a movement--the requirement was a level of functional literacy such that one understood the structure of the texts, implying an understanding of the hypertexts (scripture, apocrypha, myth) and of rhetoric--while the "low group" aspect means that there was little hierarchical imposition (little more than herding cats, as we call it).
This kind of movement represents the majority only when it doesn't have competition (i.e., in its early period).
The "catholics" inverted this, creating a "low grid" / "high group" social movement. The "low grid" refers to the low barriers to enter such a movement, as the Gospel stories were easy to digest for the regular uneducated people, when being read out in meetings (a la Justin Martyr's memoirs of the apostles). But the "high group" aspect refers to the high amount of hierarchical structure, with the obedience of presbyters and deacons to the bishop (what we now call the "monarchical" bishop) and with the cooperation of distant communities with the most ancient churches (such as Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch, and Alexandria), which themselves cooperate with each other through councils.
This kind of movement represents an "evolutionary adaptation" over the previous kind, both in that it quickly leads to a numerical superiority (by the early third century) and in that it is able to be co-opted by civil authorities, due to its "high group" command-and-control structure and "low grid" popular appeal.
PS-- With credit for the application of these categories here to Robert Price, who uses the categories of anthropologist Mary Douglas.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
