Authority and Memory
Early Christianity contained competing Christologies, practices, scriptures, and visions of salvation. Canon and doctrine emerged partly to preserve communal continuity and guard against teachings judged destructive; they also narrowed which memories, texts, and voices could remain publicly authoritative. “Heresy” is therefore both a theological judgment and a historical question about authority. What did orthodoxy preserve? What did it exclude? Who gets to tell the story of Christ? The Royal Art need not declare every suppressed text truer than the canonical tradition. It can recognize that recovered diversity enlarges the field in which the Christic mystery is studied.