This book provides a full account of the most important theologians in the early history of Christianity: it is due to his work that one can speak of an Orthodox or Catholic Christianity, with Scripture that includes a New Testament, a rule of truth, apostolic tradition and succession. Against the usual modern assumption that ‘orthodoxy’ is a rhetorical construction, excluding the ‘heretics’ on the basis of patriarchal power and intolerance, this book argues that the ‘heretics’ were