This myth is debunked in a book I just read by Thomas C. Oden, "The Rebirth of Orthodoxy": "Is the orthodox way merely a case of political "winners" eliminating "losers" - a survivor game on a grand scale? If so, the faithful have a right to know how they have been deluded by a series of cynical power plays. Here is the issue in a nutshell: Suppose that the only thing that various heretics through the ages lacked was clout. Suppose that Montanus and Marcion, for example, were just as right apostolically and doctrinally as their "orthodox" opponents but lacked the muscle - no army, no police - with which to coerce their position. Suppose the winners were by definition labeled as orthodox and the losers by definition as heretics. If that were the case, the history of orthodoxy would be nothing more than the history of a powerful majority; it would not be the history of truth. The above suppositions reflect a standard sophomore classroom objection to orthodoxy. The most familiar form of that argument is the Marxist or social-location argument, which challenges religious judgments on the premise that they can always be shown to come from some particular social location or vested interest within the economic order. The Marxist explanation of orthodoxy was simple: economic interests prevailed. Ideological winners imposed their views on ideological losers coercively - a matter of power. Though Marxism is now in disrepute, dreary echoes of the Marxist explanation of orthodoxy still linger - oddly enough, in university departments of religious studies, of all places. Vincent of Lerins noted it is self-evident that the martyrs for orthodoxy had no economic interest. Their very willingness to give their lives for the truth showed their contempt for all economic interests. Most had already given their fortune to the poor, so they had no material wealth to risk. During the height of the Arian heresy, many orthodox believers were hunted and persecuted by their more powerful opponents. There was no economic sense in which they could be described as winners......The 4th century Arians lived by collusion with political oppressors. They had plenty of intellectuals and power manipulators on their side, while orthodoxy had to be defended largely by nonscholars and laypeople, by modest men and women of no means, by lowly persons who had no training or special expertise but understood their lives in Christ. The power of numbers and votes in those days was clearly on the side of the Arians, who insisted on reinterpreting scriptural texts on the Son of God in a new and diluted sense. In response God put in his A-team: not scholars, but saints; not elite agents of power, but poor, uneducated, ordinary men and women willing to die for their faith. Many Christian wives and widows suffered during the Arian persecutions. By these iconic means God worked to renew the community of believers." Thoughts?
