Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 1. 525.
2. Patrick Henry, “Why Is Contemporary Scholarship So Enamored of Ancient Heresies?” in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Patristic Studies, ed. E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), 123–26.
3. Peter Gay, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).
4. Will Herberg, Faith Enacted as History: Essays in Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 170–71.
5. The term “new atheism” is used to refer to a group of writings that appeared in 2004–7, especially Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004); Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006); and Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007).
6. For the original German edition, see Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr, 1934). For the more influential (and much later) English translation, see Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971).
7. See Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), 163–80.
8. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003). The significant subtitle was dropped from later editions.
9. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982).
10. In 2006 Leigh and Baigent (but not Lincoln) unsuccessfully sued Brown in the High Court in London, arguing that he had breached their copyright at this point and others. The issue concerned who had invented these ideas and thus held their intellectual property rights.
11. Brown, Da Vinci Code, 233.
12. See, e.g., Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 23–24: “The view that Teabing lays out is wrong on all key points: Christians before Nicaea already did accept Jesus as divine; the Gospels of the New Testament portray him as human as much as they portray him as divine; the Gospels that did not get included in the New Testament portray him as divine as much, or more so, than they portray him as human.” Ehrman’s comments are all the more significant, given his hostility toward traditional Christian accounts of orthodoxy and heresy.
13. Brown, Da Vinci Code, 234.
14. See Robert A. Segal, ed., The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture (Chicago: Open Court, 1995).
15. For this development, see Andrew Roach, The Devil’s World: Heresy and Society, 1100–1300 (London: Longman, 2005).
16. Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1979), 30–31.
17. See the analysis in Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion (London: Weiden-feld and Nicolson, 1997).
18. For an introduction to the field of reception theory, see Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978); and Robert C. Holub, Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1992).
19. Garrett Green, Theology, Hermeneutics and Imagination: The Case of Interpretation at the End of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 20.
20. For representative works in this debate, see April D. De Conick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (London: Continuum, 2007); Bart D. Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006); Elaine H. Pagels and Karen L. King, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (New York: Viking, 2007); and N. T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth About Christianity? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006).
21. Mail on Sunday (London), March 12, 2006. For a full discussion of the media hype and exaggeration of the importance of this document, see Simon J. Gathercole, The Gospel of Judas: Rewriting Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007), 132–49.
22. For this aspect of Gnosticism, see Birger A. Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).
23. The Gospel of Judas is representative of the specific form of Gnosticism known as Sethianism. See further John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (Louvain: Peeters, 2001).
24. Wright, Judas, passim.
25. For reflection on this point, see G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane, 1908), 131–32.
26. For an accessible attempt to engage with this question, see Ben Quash and Michael Ward, eds., Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe (London: SPCK, 2007).
27. H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954). Turner notes that there is a “fringe or penumbra between orthodoxy and heresy” (79); for a more detailed exploration of this image with reference to the doctrinal developments of the second century, see 81–94.
28. John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Christian Patterns (Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 1998).
CHAPTER 1: FAITH, CREEDS, AND THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL
1. William James, “The Will to Believe,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), 1–31.
2. See esp. Roy Baumeister, Meanings of Life (New York: Guilford Press, 1991).
3. Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 113–216.
4. Michael Polanyi, “Science and Reality,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18 (1967): 177–96, esp. 190–91.
5. There is a huge literature, including works such as Alister C. Hardy, The Spiritual Nature of Man: A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1988); and Jean Borella, Le sens du surnaturel (Geneva: Éditions Ad Solem, 1996).
6. Stanley Hauerwas, “The Demands of a Truthful Story: Ethics and the Pastoral Task,” Chicago Studies 21 (1982): 59–71; quote at 65–66. Similar points were made earlier in Iris Murdoch, “Vision and Choice in Morality,” in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Ian T. Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1966), 195–218.
7. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 101–2.
8. C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in C. S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church, ed. Lesley Walmsley (London: Collins, 2000), 1–21.
9. See here Mark McIntosh, “Faith, Reason and the Mind of Christ,” in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, ed. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhart Hütter (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 119–42.
10. McGrath, Open Secret, 171–216.
11. A theme explored in Stanton J. Linden, Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1996), 156–92.
12. Clarence H. Miller, “Christ as the Philosopher’s Stone in George Herbert’s ‘The Elixir,’” Notes and Queries 45 (1998): 39–41.
13. N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1961). Hanson thus argues that Tycho Brahe (who believed in a geocentric solar system) and Johannes Kepler (a supporter of the heliocentric model of the solar system) “see” very different things when observing a sunrise: Tycho sees the moving sun cross a stationary horizon, while Kepler sees a moving horizon dipping down to expose a stationary sun. For a detailed analysis, see Matthias Adam, Theoriebeladenheit und Objektivität: Zur Rolle von Beobach-tungen in den Naturwissenschafte (Frankfurt am Main: Ontos Verlag, 2002).
14. An excellent recent example may be found in Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007).
15. For the historical development of the creeds, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1981).
16. James L. Bailey and Lyle D. Vander Broek, Literary Forms in the New Testament: A Handbook (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 83–84.
17. There is a huge literature on this topic. See, e.g., Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).
18. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Complete Works, 7 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884), 5:172.
19. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Theology of Nature in Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Philosophy,” Science in Context 10 (1997): 529–70.
20. Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of “Creation Out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995).
21. There is a very large literature on this subject. See esp. Paul Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); and Paul Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).
22. See esp. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).
23. Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (London: John Murray, 1922), 80–112.
24. Gore, Incarnation, 96, 101.
25. Gore, Incarnation, 21.
26. See the points made in Rowan Williams, “Defining Heresy,” in The Origins of Christendom in the West, ed. Alan Kreider (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), 313–35.
27. Rowan Williams, “Does It Make Sense to Speak of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy?” in The Making of Orthodoxy, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 1–23; quote at 2.
28. Robert M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 1–13, 89–113.
29. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
30. See further Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 1–13.
31. Owen Ware, “Rudolf Otto’s Ideal of the Holy: A Reappraisal,” Heythrop Journal 48 (2007): 48–60. Recent work on the psychology of awe has emphasized the importance of this conceptual vastness in creating this response: Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual and Aesthetic Emotion,” Cognition and Emotion 17 (2003): 297–314.
32. Augustine of Hippo Sermo 117.3.5: “Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus.”
33. Andrew Louth, Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007), 205.
34. Gore, Incarnation, 105–6.
35. For accounts of this process, see Maurice F. Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967); and Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, 1–13).
36. Jerome Commentarius in epistulam ad Galatas 5.
37. See the classic analysis and commentary in Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2003).
38. Dominic Abrahams, Michael A. Hogg, and José M. Marques, “A Social Psychological Framework for Understanding Social Inclusion and Exclusion,” in The Social Psychology of Inclusion and Exclusion, ed. Dominic Abrahams, Michael A. Hogg, and José M. Marques (New York: Psychology Press, 2005), 1–23.
CHAPTER 2: THE ORIGINS OF THE IDEA OF HERESY
1. As noted in Fergus Miller, “Repentent Heretics in Fifth Century Lydia: Identity and Literacy,” Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004): 113–30.
2. Dietrich von Hildebrand, Trojan Horse in the City of God: The Catholic Crisis Explained (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1993). Hildebrand regards secularism as having gained a beachhead in the Catholic Church around the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), leading to an erosion of its values and beliefs.
3. See Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 2a2ae q. 11 a. 1: “[H]eresy is a species of unbelief, belonging to those who profess the Christian faith, but corrupt its dogmas.”
4. Syofiardi Bachyul Jb, “Two Former Al-Qiyadah Activists Get Three Years for Blasphemy,” Jakarta Post, May 3, 2008.
5. A similar debate erupted in Egypt recently over the views of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd. See Charles Hirschkind, “Heresy or Hermeneutics: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd,” Stanford Humanities Review 5 (1996): 35–50.
6. For a penetrating analysis of this point, see Lester Kurtz, “The Politics of Heresy,” American Journal of Sociology 88 (1983): 1085–1115.
7. Pierre Bourdieu, “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field,” Comparative Social Research 13 (1991): 1–43.
8. See the points made in John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Christian Patterns (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1998).
9. See Abigail Lustig, Robert J. Richards, and Michael Ruse, eds., Darwinian Heresies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), 1–13.
10. Egbert G. Leigh, “Neutral Theory: A Historical Perspective,” Evolutionary Biology 20 (2007): 2075–91.
11. For the basis of this suggestion, see Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002).
12. See Paul Root Wolpe, “The Dynamics of Heresy in a Profession,” Social Science and Medicine 39 (1994): 1133–48; and R. Kenneth Jones, “Schism and Heresy in the Development of Orthodox Medicine: The Threat to Medical Hegemony,” Social Science and Medicine 58 (2004): 703–12.
13. Brian Martin, “Dissent and Heresy in Medicine: Models, Methods, and Strategies,” Social Science and Medicine 58 (2004): 713–25.
14. Michelle Zerba, “Medea Hypokrites,” Arethusa 35 (2002): 315–37.
15. David T. Runia, “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model,” Vigiliae Christianae 53 (1999): 117–47. The plural of hairesis is haireses.
16. Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae 13.171.
17. See Andrew D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1–6 (Leiden: Brill, 1993). While I am sympathetic to the points made by Craig Blomberg, they amount to a demonstration of the New Testament’s concerns about the negative impact of false teaching rather than the more specific (and later) idea of heresy: Craig L. Blomberg, “The New Testament Definition of Heresy (or When Do Jesus and the Apostles Really Get Mad?),” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45 (2002): 59–72.
18. See Tyndale’s translation of 1 Corinthians 11:19; Galatians 5:20; and 2 Peter 2:1. Tyndale translated the Greek term haeresis as “heresy” at Acts 24:14.
19. The older English word “privily” (Tyndale: “prevely”) means “privately” or “secretly.” For discussions of these classic English translations of the Bible and their impact upon the shaping of the English language, see David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1994), 83–150; and Alister E. McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2001).
20. Richard Norris, “Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Late Second Century,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 52 (1998): 43–59.
21. Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church: From Apostolic Times Until the Council of Florence (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), 2.
22. As noted in Caroline Humfress, “Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 128–42, esp. 142.
23. Michel Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond: On Recent Scholarly Discussions of Hairesis in the Early Church Era,” Second Century 8 (1991): 65–82.
CHAPTER 3: DIVERSITY
1. For an excellent collection of essays on this theme, see Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds., The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).
2. See Frank J. Matera, New Testament Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999); Andrew Chester, Messiah and Exaltation: Jewish Messianic and Visionary Traditions and New Testament Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); and Ronald R. Cox, By the Same Word: Creation and Salvation in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007).
3. Raymond E. Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist Press, 1984).
4. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), 85–89. There is also much useful material, especially relating to the Roman context, in John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).
5. For the situation in Palestine, see James S. McLaren, “Jews and the Imperial Cult: From Augustus to Domitian,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 27 (2005): 257–78.
6. Larry Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000).
7. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
8. For a detailed analysis, see Raymond F. Collins, The Many Faces of the Church: A Study in New Testament Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 2004).
9. H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954), 239–378.
10. See the studies of Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1995); Kim Hains-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000); and Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).
11. Note especially the comments of Porphyry: Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2003), 126–63.
12. As Gamble suggests, “We must assume…that the large majority of Christians in the early centuries of the church were illiterate, not because they were unique but because they were in this respect typical.” Gamble, Books and Readers, 5–6.
13. Pieter J. J. Botha, “Greco-Roman Literacy as Setting for New Testament Writings,” Neotestamentica 26 (1992): 192–215.
14. Rebecca Lyman, “Lex orandi: Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Popular Religion,” in The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine, ed. Sarah Coakley and David Pailin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 131–41.
15. As noted in Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque, IIe–IIIe siècles, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985), 1:226–29.
16. Jerome Epistola 107.
17. Alain Le Boulluec, “L’écriture comme norme hérésiologique dans les controverses des IIe et IIIe siècles (domaine grec),” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 23 (1996): 66–75.
18. David Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994): 395–420. As Brakke correctly notes, Athanasius’s concerns were not limited to lists of books alone, but reflected more fundamental conflicts between competing visions and paradigms of Christian authority and ecclesial organization.
19. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
20. A point often made with reference to Priscillian of Avila (d. 385): Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995), 19–21. For a more detailed account of this issue, see Andrew S. Jacobs, “The Disorder of Books: Priscillian’s Canonical Defense of Apocrypha,” Harvard Theological Review 93 (2000): 135–59.
21. For a familiar critique of the idea of early Christian “orthodoxy,” see James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1990), 1–7.
22. Stephen Neill, Jesus Through Many Eyes: Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976).
23. See, e.g., the points made in Ernst Käsemann’s classic essay on New Testament concepts of the church: Ernst Käsemann, “Unity and Multiplicity in the New Testament Doctrine of the Church,” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 252–59.
24. Arland J. Hultgren, The Rise of Normative Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 86.
25. Dunn, Unity and Diversity, 11–32.
26. Dunn, Unity and Diversity, 2.
27. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, a Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 193–205.
28. For the issues, see Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007), 199–241.
29. There are obvious historical continuities between Socianism and Arianism. However, the former took on a specific form in the sixteenth century in the writings of Fausto Paolo Sozzini (1539–1604; usually known by the Latin form of his name, Faustus Socinus), setting its understanding of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth within a unitarian view of God.
30. Elaine H. Pagels and Karen L. King, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 31.
31. Thomas G. Guarino, “Tradition and Doctrinal Development: Can Vincent of Lérins Still Teach the Church?” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 34–72.
32. For some significant areas of difficulty at this point, see Mark Vessey, “The Forging of Orthodoxy in Latin Christian Literature: A Case Study,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996): 495–513.
33. This observation raises the fascinating question, too complex to be discussed here, of whether biblical criticism might be a resource for challenging and correcting heresy—a view cautiously propounded by Ernst Käsemann (1906–98). For an evaluation of this possibility, see A. K. M. Adam, “Docetism, Käsemann, and Christology: Why Historical Criticism Can’t Protect Christological Orthodoxy,” Scottish Journal of Theology 49 (1996): 391–410.
34. Ben Quash and Michael Ward, Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe (London: SPCK, 2007), 2–3.
35. See the analysis in T. E. Pollard, Johannine Christology and the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005). A similar issue arises concerning Marcion: see Ugo Bianchi, “Marcion: Theologien biblique ou docteur gnostique?” Vigiliae Christianae 21 (1967): 141–49.
36. See the analysis of a series of biblical texts set out in Eugene LaVerdiere, The Eucharist in the New Testament and in the Early Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 29–126.
37. The growing recognition of the essentially variegated character of early Christian worship is a case in point: see esp. Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002). The diversity of early Christian approaches to initiation is particularly significant (144–70).
38. This point is stressed by writers such as Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life: A Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980).
39. Prosper of Aquitaine Capitula Coelestini 8.
40. Paul V. Marshall, “Reconsidering ‘Liturgical Theology’: Is There a Lex Orandi for All Christians?” Studia Liturgica 25 (1995): 129–51.
41. On the Uthmanic recension of the Qu’ran, see Anna M. Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the Recited Qur’an in Indonesia (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 2004), 25–27.
42. See the analysis in A. I. C. Heron, “The Interpretation of I Clement in Walter Bauer’s Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum,” Ekklesiastokos Pharos 55 (1973): 517–45.
43. Turner, Pattern of Christian Truth, 9.
44. For the importance of the family image in forging a sense of shared identity across the churches, see Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), 164–69.
45. See the discussion in David G. Horrell, “‘Becoming Christian’: Solidifying Christian Identity and Content,” in Handbook of Early Christianity, ed. Anthony J. Blasi, Paul-André Turcotte, and Jean Duhaime (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002), 309–36.
46. For reflections on the importance of the “other” in forging Roman perceptions of Christian identity, see Lieu, Christian Identity, 269–97. Lieu notes how similar processes led to the Roman classification of other ethnic and cultural groups—e.g., Taci-tus’s role in forging Roman perceptions of “the Germans.”
47. The historical case for this is made in the landmark study of Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque, IIe–IIIe siècles, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985).
48. On the importance of this genre, see Averil Cameron, “How to Read Heresiology,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 471–92. Note also her subsequent points: Averil Cameron, “The Violence of Orthodoxy,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 102–14.
49. G. E. L. Owen, “Philosophical Invective,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 1–25.
CHAPTER 4: THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF HERESY
1. For its development, see Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
2. See Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott: Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Hin-rich, 1924), 16*–28*.
3. Epiphanius’s Panarion is widely believed to have drawn on the Syntagma, a lost work of Hippolytus of Rome at this point: see Einar Thomassen, “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome,” Harvard Theological Review 97 (2004): 241–56, esp. 242–43.
4. Marcion is also often represented as a dualist, arguing that matter was fundamentally evil. For an assessment of this aspect of his thought, see Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), 23–26.
5. Epiphanius Panarion 42.1–2.
6. Tertullian De praescriptione haereticorum 30.2.
7. Tertullian Adversus Valentinianos 4.1.
8. Tertullian De praescriptione haereticorum 1.1.
9. I here draw on the classic study of H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954), 3–8.
10. Tertullian De praescriptione haereticorum 7.9.
11. Peter Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum: The Function of the Patristic Argument in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon (Geneva: Droz, 1961), 162.
12. Turner, Pattern of Christian Truth, 132–41.
13. For a fuller exploration of this important point, see Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 1–8.
14. This point has been examined thoroughly in the writings of Rowan Williams. See, e.g., Rowan Williams, “Baptism and the Arian Controversy,” in Arianism After Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth-Century Trinitarian Conflict, ed. Michel Barnes and Daniel Williams (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), 149–80; and Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2001), 235–36. For a discussion of this point, see Benjamin Myers, “Disruptive History: Rowan Williams on Heresy and Orthodoxy,” in On Rowan Williams: Critical Essays, ed. Matheson Russell (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), 47–67.
15. See esp. Renate Struman, “De la perpétuité de la foi dans la controverse Bossuet-Julien (1686–1691),” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 37 (1941): 145–89; and Richard F. Costigan, “Bossuet and the Consensus of the Church,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 652–72.
16. For the best analysis, see Hans Geisser, Glaubenseinheit und Lehrentwicklung bei Johann Adam Möhler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971).
17. Wilhem Maurer, “Das Prinzip der Organischen in der evangelischen Kirchengeschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Kerygma und Dogma 8 (1962): 256–92.
18. John Henry Newman, “The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine,” in Conscience, Consensus and the Development of Doctrine, by John Henry Newman, ed. James Gaffney (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6–30.
19. See Nicholas Lash, Change in Focus: A Study of Doctrinal Change and Continuity (London: Sheed & Ward, 1973), 88; Hugo Meynell, “Newman on Revelation and Doctrinal Development,” Journal of Theological Studies 30 (1979): 138–52.
20. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), 74.
21. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “L’immutabilité du dogme selon le Concile du Vatican, et le relativisme,” Angelicum 26 (1949): 309–22.
22. Thomas G. Guarino, “Tradition and Doctrinal Development: Can Vincent of Lérins Still Teach the Church?” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 34–72.
23. While Thomas Aquinas does not use the phrase “doctrinal development,” one can speak cautiously of “doctrinal development” in a deeper sense within Aquinas’s writings, as pointed out in Christopher Kaczor, “Thomas Aquinas on the Development of Doctrine,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 283–302.
24. Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (London: John Murray, 1892), 85–87.
25. See the important contribution of Yves Congar, “La ‘réception’ comme réalité ecclésiologique,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 56 (1972): 369–403.
26. Tertullian De praescriptione haereticorum 7.9. “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? quid academiae et ecclesiae? quid haereticis et christianis?”
27. Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 77–150.
28. See esp. Vera-Elisabeth Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta: Untersuchungen zum frühchrist-lichen Montanismus und seinen Verbindungen zur paganen Religion Phrygiens (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005). For an earlier study of this issue, see Wilhelm E. Schepelern, Der Montanismus und die phrygischen Kulte: Eine Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1929).
29. For a forceful statement of this position, see Kurt Aland, “Der Montanismus und die kleinasiatische Theologie,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 46 (1955): 109–16.
30. Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr, 1934). An English translation was published a generation later: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971).
31. See, e.g., Helmut Koester, “Gnomai Diaphorai: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity,” in Trajectories Through Early Christianity, ed. James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 114–57.
32. The shift in mood can be discerned in the excellent essay of Hans Dieter Betz, “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Primitive Christianity: Some Critical Remarks on Georg Strecker’s Republication of Walter Bauer’s Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum,” Interpretation 19 (1965): 299–311.
33. Koester, “Gnomai Diaphorai,” 114.
34. For magisterial surveys of the issue, see Robert M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1993); and Arland J. Hultgren, The Rise of Normative Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). For comments on some specific issues, see Daniel J. Harrington, “The Reception of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity During the Last Decade,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 289–98.
35. Hultgren, Rise of Normative Christianity, 10.
36. Martin Elze, “Häresie und Einheit der Kirche im 2. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 71 (1974): 389–409.
37. Adelbert Davids, “Irrtum und Häresie: 1 Clem.—Ignatius von Antiochien—Justinus,” Kairos 15 (1973): 165–87.
38. See esp. Thomas A. Robinson, The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in the Early Christian Church (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), 35–91.
39. Robert Wilken, “Diversity and Unity in Early Christianity,” Second Century 1 (1981): 101–10.
40. James F. McCue, “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Walter Bauer and the Valentinians,” Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979): 118–30, esp. 119–21.
41. Birger A. Pearson, “Pre-Valentinian Gnosticism in Alexandria,” in The Future of Early Christianity, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 455–66. This work was later expanded: Birger A. Pearson, Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt (London: T&T Clark, 2004).
42. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century A.D. to the Conversion of Constantine (London: Penguin, 1988), 276. Fox draws particular attention to the critical evidence assembled in the 1977 Schweich Lectures of the British Academy: see Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London: Oxford Univ. Press), 1979.
43. This is the position developed in the classic study of H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954), 81–94. Note esp. Turner’s reference to a “fringe or penumbra between orthodoxy and heresy” (79).
44. Robinson, Bauer Thesis Examined, 36.
45. Hultgren, Rise of Normative Christianity, 11.
46. Elaine H. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979).
47. For an early criticism of her work in this respect, see Kathleen McVey, “Gnosticism, Feminism, and Elaine Pagels,” Theology Today 37 (1981): 498–501. Note McVey’s view that Pagels offers an “appealing portrayal of the gnostic Christians as a beleaguered minority of creative persons deprived of their rightful historical role by a well-organized but ignorant lot of literalists” (499).
48. A related approach, equally dependent upon Bauer’s problematic model of the origins and nature of heresy, can be found in Gerd Lüdemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1996); and Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003). Sadly, Lüdemann’s work is marked by such an obvious bias against orthodoxy that it has restricted value as either a historical analysis or a serious contribution to the discussion of the nature and significance of heresy.
49. Antoine Guillaumont et al., eds., The Gospel According to Thomas (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 57. I have corrected the translation at one point, rendering the Greek hina in its proper sense as “in order that” rather than “that.”
50. Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Feminist Reconstructions of Christian Doctrine: Narrative Analysis and Appraisal (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 90.
51. For reflection on this point, see Rowan Williams, “Does It Make Sense to Speak of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy?” in The Making of Orthodoxy, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 1–23.
52. Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 494.
53. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 495.
54. Hultgren, Rise of Normative Christianity, 97–101.
CHAPTER 5: IS THERE AN “ESSENCE” OF HERESY?
1. These ideas are developed in writings such as Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003).
2. As emphasized in Fergus Miller, “Repentent Heretics in Fifth Century Lydia: Identity and Literacy,” Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004): 113–30.
3. See the analysis offered in Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999). There are also some useful comments in Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995); and Judith M. Lieu, “The Forging of Christian Identity,” Mediterranean Archaeology 11 (1998): 71–82.
4. See the detailed argument of Judith Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity (London: T & T Clark, 2002).
5. I borrow this phrase from Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994), 29.
6. Montanism, a second-century Christian movement noted for its asceticism, placed particular emphasis upon the importance of discipline. Its innovations did not concern “matters central to salvation, but rather the day-to-day disciplined living of the Christian life”: Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 215. As Trevett correctly points out, unorthodox theological trends that had not been present earlier began to develop within Montanism in the early third century, chiefly concerning the doctrine of the Trinity (215–17). Concern about heretical tendencies in ascetic movements continued in later centuries: see esp. David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy and Heresy in Ancient Christianity (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007), 88–129.
7. It is thus important to note that the term “heresy” is correctly used to refer to ideas, not to practices. Heretical ideas may at times give rise to questionable practices; nevertheless, those practices cannot themselves be described as “heretical.”
8. For an accessible introduction to this idea, see Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, “Doxa and Common Life: In Conversation.” New Left Review 191 (1992): 111–21.
9. See Robert M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
10. For some aspects of these developments, see Paul Keresztes, “From the Great Persecution to the Peace of Galerius,” Vigiliae Christianae 37 (1983): 379–99; David Woods, “Two Notes on the Great Persecution,” Journal of Theological Studies 43 (1992): 128–34; and William Tabbernee, “Eusebius’ Theology of Persecution as Seen in the Various Editions of His Church History,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 319–34. It may, of course, be argued that persecution served to enhance a sense of shared Christian identity, leading to a growing tendency to identify possible threats to this identity: see Daniel Boyarin, “Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 577–627.
11. The importance of this issue can be seen by considering aspects of Jewish history in Europe, where a loss of distinct cultural and religious identity was a constant threat. An excellent example can be found in the difficulties faced by the Jewish community in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it faced constant pressure to assimilate to Viennese culture. See the analysis in Stephen Beller, “Big-City Jews: Jewish Big-City: The Dialectics of Jewish Assimilation in Vienna c. 1900,” in The City in Central Europe: Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present, ed. Malcolm Gee, Tim Kirk, and Jill Steward (Ashgate: Aldershot, 1999), 145–58.
12. Tertullian De praescriptione haereticorum 7.9.
13. Hippolytus De Christo et Antichristo 59. The image was also famously used by the nineteenth-century evangelist D. L. Moody (1837–99): “The place for the ship is in the sea; but God help the ship if the sea gets into it.”
14. Grant, Heresy and Criticism, 49–73; Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould, Jesus Now and Then (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 129–31.
15. James A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834–1881, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1884), 2:462.
16. This has important implications for the impact of secularism on Judaism: see Stephen Sharot, “Judaism and the Secularization Debate,” Sociological Analysis 52 (1991): 255–75. For the rival view, based on Maimonides (1135–1204), that one can speak legitimately of Jewish dogma, see Yitzchak Blau, “Flexibility with a Firm Foundation: On Maintaining Jewish Dogma,” Torah u-Madda Journal 12 (2004): 179–91.
17. Ulrich Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995). This corrects the highly influential earlier study of Adolf von Harnack, Marcion—das Evangelium vom fremden Gott: Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1921).
18. See, e.g., Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), 49–87.
19. See Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, 178. For a more nuanced approach, see N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991).
20. R. A. Markus, “The Problem of Self-Definition: From Sect to Church,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, ed. E. P. Sanders, 2 vols. (London: SCM Press, 1980–82), 1:1–15.
21. Wayne A. Meeks, “The Stranger from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972): 44–72. See further David L. Balch, The Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). For a critique of the notion of such “communities,” see Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).
22. Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1983), 84–107.
23. Important exceptions must, of course, be noted, such as the Egyptian monastic movement: Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995).
24. Tertullian Apologia 42.
25. Georg Günter Blum, Tradition und Sukzession: Studien zum Normbegriff des Apostolischen von Paulus bis Irenaeus (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1963). On creeds in general, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1981).
26. S. L. Greenslade, “Heresy and Schism in the Later Roman Empire,” in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 1–20.
27. George W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 11–12. For the significance of the Pauline letters in our understanding of the emergence of both orthodoxy and heresy, see further William E. Arnal, “Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction: The Pauline Ekklesiai and the Boundaries of Urban Identities,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 50–101.
28. Knight, Pastoral Epistles, 88–89.
29. For a representative argument that the concept of heresy is encountered in the New Testament and countered by the teaching of orthodoxy, see the influential paper of Craig L. Blomberg, “The New Testament Definition of Heresy (Or When Do Jesus and the Apostles Really Get Mad?),” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45 (2002): 59–72.
30. Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 108–18.
31. Herman N. Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 369–95.
32. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 605–14.
33. A point emphasized by John Zizioulas: see, e.g., Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 73–107.
34. See the careful study of William T. Cavenaugh, “The City: Beyond Secular Parodies,” in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward (London: Routledge, 1998), 182–200, esp. 196.
35. The imagery is due to Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1892), 96–97.
36. On which see Klaus M. Beckmann, Der Begriff der Häresie bei Schleiermacher (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1959), 36–62.
37. F. D. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928), 52. For comment on this emphasis, especially in relation to the tension it apparently envisages between the role of the church and Christ in redemption, see Paul T. Nimmo, “The Mediation of Redemption in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 5 (2003): 187–99.
38. Richard Hooker Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 5.54.10. For Hooker’s views on heresy, see Egil Grislis, “The Role of Sin in the Theology of Richard Hooker,” Anglican Theological Review 84 (2002): 881–96. Note that Schleiermacher differs from Hooker in identifying two “natural heresies” relating to the person of Christ and two relating to his work. Hooker regards all four natural heresies as relating to the person of Christ.
39. Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 98. See further Henning Paulsen, Zur Literatur und Geschichte des frühen Christentums: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 73–74.
40. It is instructive to compare Schleiermacher’s views on these two heresies with those of Karl Barth: for Barth’s judgment, see Paul D. Molnar, “Some Dogmatic Implications of Barth’s Understanding of Ebionite and Docetic Christology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (2000): 151–74.
41. See, e.g., George V. Vito, “Toward a Sociology of Heresy,” Sociological Analysis 44 (1983): 123–30; and Jacques Berlinerblau, “Toward a Sociology of Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Doxa,” History of Religions 40 (2001): 327–51.
42. For the general issue, see A. H. M. Jones, “Were Ancient Heresies National or Social Movements in Disguise?” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1959): 280–86; and W. H. C. Frend, “Heresy and Schism as Social and National Movements,” in Schism, Heresy and Protest, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 37–49. See also pp. 155–56 of the present study.
43. See the comments in Elizabeth A. Clark, “Elite Networks and Heresy Accusations: Towards a Social Description of the Origenist Controversy,” Semeia 56 (1991): 81–107.
44. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 78–84.
45. Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 4–5.
CHAPTER 6: EARLY CLASSIC HERESIES
1. For excellent recent accounts, see Philip F. Esler, ed., The Early Christian World, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2000); Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society from Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001); and Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
2. See especially the substantial body of material brought together in Charles Kan-nengiesser, ed., Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Although outstanding in many ways, this collection is open to criticism at points: Johannes van Oort, “Biblical Interpretation in the Patristic Era: A ‘Handbook of Patristic Exegesis’ and Some Other Recent Books and Related Projects,” Vigiliae Christianae 60 (2006): 80–103.
3. See, e.g., James D. Ernest, The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Elizabeth Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture Within Origen’s Exegesis (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Angela Russell Christman, “What Did Ezekiel See?”: Christian Exegesis of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Chariot from Irenaeus to Gregory the Great (Leiden: Brill, 2005); and Robert C. Hill, Reading the Old Testament in Antioch (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
4. Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 115–237.
5. Robert M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
6. Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): “I have written as a historian, not a theologian. I have taken ‘heresy’ to mean whatever the papacy explicitly or implicitly condemned during the period” (xi).
7. Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung um 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik (Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1935). For his later reflections on the theme, see Herbert Grundmann, Ketzergeschichte des Mittelalters (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963).
8. As pointed out in Othmar Hageneder, “Der Häresiebegriff bei den Juristen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts,” in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Louvain: Louvain Univ. Press, 1978), 42–103.
9. Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
10. The term “Ebionite” is thought to derive from the Hebrew word Ebyonim (“the poor”), perhaps originally applied to Christians because they came from lower social groups and tended to be poor (Acts 11:28–30, 24:17; 1 Cor. 1:26–29, 16:1–2). It may also possibly be drawn from the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth: “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20). Paul appears to use the term “poor people [hoi ptochoi]” to refer specifically to the churches of Jerusalem and Judea (Gal. 2:10). A number of early church heresiologists, unfamiliar with the Hebrew language, incorrectly inferred the existence of an individual named “Ebion of Pella” as the originator of the heresy, apparently on the basis of the assumption that all heresies were named after their founders: see Hans Joachim Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1949), 8–9.
11. For the best account, see Richard Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” in The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature, ed. Peter J. Tomson and Doris Lambers-Petry (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 162–81. This supplements and corrects the earlier study of Hans Joachim Schoeps, “Ebionite Christianity,” Journal of Theological Studies 4 (1953): 219–24 (based on his earlier study Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums).
12. For an early exploration of the issue, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Qumran Scrolls, the Ebionites, and Their Literature,” Theological Studies 16 (1955): 335–72.
13. For an excellent recent survey of the issues contested within early Judean Jewish Christianity, see Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); and Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 155–216.
14. Bauckham, “Origin of the Ebionites,” 162–71.
15. Michael Goulder, “A Poor Man’s Christology,” New Testament Studies 45 (1999): 332–48.
16. See the points made in Darrell D. Hannah, Michael and Christ: Michael Traditions and Angel Christology in Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 173–75; and Timo Eskola, Messiah and the Throne: Jewish Merkabah Mysticism and Early Christian Exaltation Discourse (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 307–9.
17. On Mark’s account of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth, see the excellent study of Morna D. Hooker, “‘Who Can This Be?’ The Christology of Mark’s Gospel,” in Contours of Christology in the New Testament, ed. Richard G. Longenecker (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 79–98.
18. Stevan L. Davies, Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (London: Continuum, 1995), 66–77. More generally, see W. D. Davies and E. P. Sanders, “Jesus from the Jewish Point of View,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Early Roman Period, ed. William Horbury, W. D. Davies, and John Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 618–76.
19. For comment, see James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 75–79.
20. See, e.g., Donald A. Hagner, “Matthew: Apostate, Reformer, Revolutionary?” New Testament Studies 49 (2003): 193–209, esp. 200–201.
21. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 14 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957–75), 1:402–3. See also Paul D. Molnar, “Some Dogmatic Implications of Barth’s Understanding of Ebionite and Docetic Christology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (2000): 151–74, esp. 156–58.
22. See, e.g., Gerd Lüdemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1996), 52–53.
23. For some aspects of this, see Lüdemann, Heretics, 27–60.
24. Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 147–62; 259–74.
25. This led Lüdemann to suggest that Paul was virtually regarded as a heretic in Jewish Christian circles; see Lüdemann, Heretics, 61–103, developing a point originally made by Walter Bauer (60).
26. Lüdemann, Heretics, 53–56.
27. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 155–214.
28. Moishe Rosen, Y’shua: The Jewish Way to Say Jesus (San Francisco: Purple Pomegranate Productions, 1982).
29. Juliene G. Lipson, Jews for Jesus: An Anthropological Study (New York: AMS Press, 1990), 15. See also David A. Rausch, Messianic Judaism: Its History, Theology, and Polity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982).
30. Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 69–77; Paul R. Trebilco, The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 694–96. Note esp. 1 John 4:1–3: “[E]very spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” This passage suggests that those who denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, but only “appeared” to take flesh, were to be rejected.
31. Irenaeus of Lyons Adversus haereses 1.26.1.
32. Ignatius was one of the earliest known Christian writers to argue that the church should observe the “Lord’s Day” (Sunday), rather than the traditional Jewish Sabbath, as the day of rest.
33. Ignatius, Letter to the Trallians, 9–10; Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 2–3.
34. Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 3.69.3, quoting from Valentinus’s lost letter to Agathapous.
35. As pointed out in Norbert Brox, “‘Doketismus’—eine Problemanzeige,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 95 (1984): 301–14.
36. Brox, “Doketismus,” 309. See also Michael Slusser, “Docetism: A Historical Definition,” Second Century 1 (1981): 163–72.
37. Following the excellent analysis in Guy Strousma, “Christ’s Laughter: Docetic Origins Reconsidered,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004): 267–88, esp. 268.
38. Ronnie Goldstein and Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Greek and Jewish Origins of Docetism: A New Proposal,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10 (2007): 423–41.
39. Goldstein and Stroumsa, “Origins of Docetism,” 430.
40. See esp. Norman Austin, Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1994), which has had a significant impact on how Goldstein and Strousma developed their thesis.
41. This phrase does not date from the classical era but is found in Christopher Marlowe’s drama Doctor Faustus, written around the year 1600: “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”
42. Plato Phaedrus 243a–b.
43. Goldstein and Stroumsa, “Origins of Docetism,” 429.
44. See the argument in Strousma, “Christ’s Laughter.” For the interpretation of the sacrifice of Isaac, see Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004).
45. Irenaeus of Lyons Adversus haereses 1.26.4. For comment, see Daniel Wanke, Das Kreuz Christi bei Irenaeus von Lyon (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 75–82.
46. Second Treatise of the Great Seth 55:16–35. See further Paul Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 80–83. For further Gnostic texts taking a similar position, see Gavrilyuk, Suffering of the Impassible God, 79–90. This “Sethian” school of Gnosticism differs from Valentinism in a number of ways.
47. Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 301–45. Lampe here speaks of the “fractionation” of the Roman church.
48. Antonia Tripolitis, Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 16–21.
49. For a recent account, see Roger Beck, “Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel,” Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): 145–80.
50. See the interesting collection of essays gathered together in Robert A. Segal, ed., The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture (Chicago: Open Court, 1995).
51. Hans Jonas, whose influence on the modern interpretation of this movement has been decisive, defines the essence of Gnosticism as “a certain dualism, an estrangement between man and the world”: see Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 3rd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 325. A similar position is taken in Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983).
52. See esp. Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), 43–44. There is also some useful discussion in Birger A. Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).
53. For the argument in detail, see Phillip A. Tite, “Categorical Designations and Methodological Reductionism: Gnosticism as Case Study,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religions 13 (2001): 269–92.
54. See, e.g., the conclusions of Karen L. King in What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003).
55. King, What Is Gnosticism?: “Because the core problem is the reification of a rhetorical entity (heresy) into an actual phenomenon in its own right (Gnosticism), the entire question of origin is a non-issue whose seeming urgency arises only because of its rhetorical function in the discourse of orthodoxy and heresy” (190).
56. King, What Is Gnosticism?, 224.
57. Following Christoph Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentini-anischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins (Tübingen: Mohr, 1992), I take the view that Valentinus did not hold some of the doctrines that were characteristic of later Valentinians.
58. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 376; 390–93. Note that the term “Valentinianism” is also regularly used in the literature. Both forms are perfectly acceptable.
59. As pointed out in Einar Thomassen, “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome,” Harvard Theological Review 97 (2004): 241–56.
60. The most detailed study to date is Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the ‘Valentinians’ (Leiden: Brill, 2008). As noted earlier (n. 58), the term “Valentinianism” is sometimes used in preference to “Valentinism.”
61. Irenaeus of Lyons Adversus haeresis 1.24.6.
62. Michael Kaler and Marie-Pierre Bussières, “Was Heracleon a Valentinian? A New Look at Old Sources,” Harvard Theological Review 99 (2006): 275–89.
63. Joel Kalvesmaki, “Italian Versus Eastern Valentinianism?” Vigiliae Christianae 62 (2008): 79–89.
64. On which see John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (Louvain: Peeters, 2001).
65. On this, see Birger A. Pearson, “The Figure of Seth in Gnostic Literature,” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, ed. Bentley Layton (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 472–504.
66. This quotation is taken from the Valentinian tract The Tripartite Tractate; for comment, see Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 50.
67. Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 28–30.
68. See the analysis in James F. McCue, “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Walter Bauer and the Valentinians,” Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979): 118–30.
69. McCue, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” 122–23.
70. For the importance of Irenaeus’s biblical interpretation at this point, see Jacques Fantino, La théologie d’Irénée. Lecture des Écritures en reponse à l’exégèse gnostique: Une approche trinitaire (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1994).
71. See the full discussion at Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses 2.2.1–4.1. Extracts of that discussion are reproduced here. For a fuller discussion of the issues, see the following classic studies: Georg Günter Blum, Tradition und Sukzession: Studien zum Normbegriff des Apostolischen von Paulus bis Irenaeus (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1963); and Norbert Brox, Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei Irenäus von Lyon: Zur Charakteristik der Systeme (Salzburg: Pustet Verlag, 1966).
72. See the points made in Adelbert Davids, “Irrtum und Häresie. 1 Clem.—Ignatius von Antiochien—Justinus,” Kairos 15 (1973): 165–87.
73. Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haeresis 1.24.6.
74. See Ragner Holte, “Logos Spermatikos: Christianity and Ancient Philosophy According to St. Justin’s Apologies,” Studia Theologica 12 (1958): 109–68.
75. See the classic study of Charles Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1981).
76. For some aspects of these themes, see Markus N. A. Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr, 1990); and John Joseph Collins, “Natural Theology and Biblical Tradition: The Case of Hellenistic Judaism,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 60 (1998): 1–15.
77. Note esp. 2 Tim. 3:16–17.
78. See G. W. H. Lampe and K. J. Woollcombe, eds., Essays on Typology (London: SCM Press, 1957).
79. Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 94. For a study, see Craig D. Allert, Revelation, Truth, Canon, and Interpretation: Studies in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
80. Justin Martyr Apology 1.26.
81. This theme is explored more fully in Ekkehard Mühlenberg, “Marcion’s Jealous God,” in Disciplina Nostra: Essays in Memory of Robert F. Evans, ed. D. Winslow (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979), 93–113.
82. Irenaeus of Lyons Adversus haereses 1.25.1.
83. Tertullian Adversus Marcionem 1.6.
84. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century A.D. to the Conversion of Constantine (London: Penguin, 1988), 332.
85. Stephen G. Wilson, “Marcion and the Jews,” in Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, vol. 2, Separation and Polemic, ed. Stephen G. Wilson (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Univ. Press, 1986), 45–58; Heikki Räisänen, “Marcion and the Origins of Christian Anti-Judaism,” Temenos 33 (1997): 121–35.
86. For an alternative perspective here, see Andrew McGowan, “Marcion’s Love of Creation,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 295–311.
87. Peter M. Head, “The Foreign God and the Sudden Christ: Theology and Christology in Marcion’s Gospel Redaction,” Tyndale Bulletin 44 (1993): 307–21.
88. John J. Clabeaux, A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul: A Reassessment of the Text of the Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1989).
89. Irenaeus of Lyons Adversus haereses 1.27.4.
90. Tertullian De prescriptione hereticorum 38.7–10.
91. The text of the prologues can be found in Daniel J. Theron, Evidence of Tradition: Selected Source Material for the Study of the History of the Early Church, Introduction and Canon of the New Testament (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1957), 79–83. For comment, see Ulrich Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995).
92. See Robert Morgan and John Barton, Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988); and Bertrand de Margerie, An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, 3 vols. (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications), 1998.
93. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 31.
94. For details, see Dawkins, God Delusion, 237–50.
95. See Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott: Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Hin-rich, 1924). For a critical assessment, see Wolfram Kinzig, Harnack, Marcion und das Judentum: Nebst einer kommentierten Edition des Briefwechsels Adolf von Harnacks mit Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2004).
96. Kinzig, Harnack, Marcion und das Judentum, 200.
97. Gerd Lüdemann, “Zur Geschichte des ältesten Christentums in Rom. I. Valentin und Marcion. II. Ptolemäus und Justin,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 70 (1979): 86–114, esp. 95–96; Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 392–93; Thomassen, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” 242.
98. Thomassen, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” 245.
99. For reflections on the theological issues raised by Bauer, see G. Clarke Chapman, “Some Theological Reflections on Walter Bauer’s Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum: A Review Article,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 7 (1970): 564–74; and David J. Hawkin, “A Reflective Look at the Debate on Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,” Église et théologie 7 (1976): 367–78.
CHAPTER 7: LATER CLASSIC HERESIES
1. This theme is prominent in most contemporary accounts of religion. See, e.g., Bryan S. Turner, Religion and Social Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Sage Publications, 1991): “Religion may be defined as a system of symbols and values which, through their emotional impact, not only bind people together into a sacred community, but introduce a normative and altruistic commitment to collective ends” (xi).
2. Charles King, “The Organization of Roman Religious Beliefs,” Classical Antiquity 22 (2003): 275–312.
3. William R. Schoedel, “Christian ‘Atheism’ and the Peace of the Roman Empire,” Church History 42 (1973): 309–19.
4. Olivia F. Robinson, “Repressionen gegen Christen in der Zeit vor Decius—noch immer ein Rechtsproblem,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Ro-manistische Abteilung 125 (1995): 352–69.
5. J. B. Rives, “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999): 135–54.
6. The text of the decree is reproduced in Lactantius De mortibus persecutorum 34–35.
7. For studies, see Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100–400) (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1984); and Charles M. Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge, 2004).
8. Caroline Humfress, “Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 128–42.
9. Mark J. Edwards, “Justin’s Logos and the Word of God,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 261–80.
10. There is a huge literature on this matter. One of the best introductions remains Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: Mowbrays, 1975).
11. For standard accounts of Arius’s ideas and their background, see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988); Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2001); and Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004). For their abiding appeal, particularly for more rationalist approaches to Christianity, see Maurice F. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
12. See Arius’s letter to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, written around 321. This letter is reproduced, with slight variations, in Theodoret of Cyrus Ecclesiastical History 1.5.1–4; and Epiphanius of Constantia Pararion 69.6. See also Christopher Haas, “The Arians of Alexandria,” Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993): 234–45.
13. For an excellent analysis of this point, see T. E. Pollard, Johannine Christology and the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005).
14. Cited in Alexander of Alexandria Depositio Arii 3.
15. Cited in Alexander of Alexandria Depositio Arii 3.
16. For an excellent summary of the issues, see Thomas G. Weinandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 11–100.
17. This is rightly emphasized (though controversially interpreted) in Robert C. Gregg and Dennis Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).
18. See the points made in Larry Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000).
19. For an excellent study of this dimension of the controversy, see Timothy D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press), 1993. Barnes focuses on developments during the reign of Constantius, Constantine’s son, illuminating in particular the later aspects of Athanasius’s career. However, many of the factors that Barnes identifies as significant were already present under Constantine himself. For reflections on the politics and social psychology of the conflict, see Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ’s Divinity in the Last Days of Rome (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999).
20. The New Testament provides a record of the Council of Jerusalem (see Acts 15), generally dated to around the year 50, which brought together early Christian leaders to determine whether Gentiles could be admitted into the church. See Richard Bauckham, “James and the Jerusalem Church,” in The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, ed. Bruce Winter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 415–80.
21. Ambrose of Milan and Hilary of Poitiers reported 318 bishops in attendance, but this may be a symbolic allusion to the 318 servants of Abraham (Gen. 14:14).
22. There were, however, precedents for this in North African Christianity in the third century: Harvey J. Sindima, Religious and Political Ethics in Africa: A Moral Inquiry (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 77–79.
23. In the end, only two bishops sided with Arius, despite a slightly greater degree of support earlier in the council.
24. See the discussion in Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006).
25. Erik Peterson, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum (Leipzig: Hegner, 1935). For comment, see Christoph Markschies, “Heis Theos—Ein Gott? Der Monotheismus und das antike Christentum,” in Polytheismus und Monotheismus in den Religionen des vorderen Orients, ed. Manfred Krebernik and Jürgen van Oorschot (Münster: Ugarit Verlag, 2002), 209–34; Alfons Fürst, “Monotheismus und Monarchie: Zum Zusammenhang von Heil und Herrschaft in der Antike,” in Der Monotheismus als theologisches und politisches Problem, ed. Stefan Stiegler and Uwe Swarat (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006), 61–81.
26. See esp. the collection of critical essays in Alfred Schindler, ed., Monotheismus als politisches Problem? Erik Peterson und die Kritik der politischen Theologie (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1978).
27. See Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993).
28. Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (London: Methuen, 1947), 32–35.
29. The best study of the origins and development of this movement is W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). For some writers, Donatism ought to be considered as a sectarian or schismatic movement rather than as a heresy. In this section, I shall take the traditional view that Donatism is best understood retrospectively as a heresy.
30. Maureen A. Tilley, “Sustaining Donatist Self-Identity: From the Church of the Martyrs to the Collecta of the Desert,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 21–35.
31. The modern word “traitor” derives from the same root. Other terms relating to this persecution include sacrificati (those who made sacrifices to Roman gods), thurificati (those who burned incense at pagan altars), and libellatici (those who signed documents indicating their religious conformity).
32. Bernhard Kriegbaum, Kirche der Traditoren oder Kirche der Märtyrer: Die Vorge-schichte des Donatismus (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1986), 59–148.
33. See the excellent analysis in Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Heresy and Schism According to Cyprian of Carthage,” Journal of Theological Studies 55 (2004): 551–74.
34. Cyprian of Carthage Epistula 72: “[S]alus extra ecclesiam non est.”
35. For an excellent account of these, see A. H. Merrills, “Vandals, Romans and Berbers: Understanding Late Antique Roman Africa,” in Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, ed. A. H. Merrills (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 1–28.
36. For a useful survey of the issues, see W. H. C. Frend, “Heresy and Schism as Social and National Movements,” in Schism, Heresy and Protest, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 37–49. For the tensions between the churches of Rome and Carthage, see Werner Marschall, Karthago und Rom: Die Stellung der nordafrikanischen Kirche zum Apostolischen Stuhl in Rom (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1971).
37. For Augustine’s early views on the church, see David C. Alexander, Augustine’s Early Theology of the Church: Emergence and Implications, 386–391 (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).
38. For the background to this, see W. H. C. Frend, Saints and Sinners in the Early Church: Differing and Conflicting Traditions in the First Six Centuries (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985), 94–117.
39. James S. Alexander, “A Note on the Interpretation of the Parable of the Threshing Floor at the Conference of Carthage of A.D. 411,” Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1973): 512–19.
40. For a good account of the issues here, esp. in relation to the political response of Catholicism to Donatism, see John von Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 2001), 222–56.
41. For an excellent account of Augustine’s conversion, see Colin Starnes, Augustine’s Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I–IX (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1990).
42. Augustine of Hippo Confessiones 10.29. “Da quod iubes, et iube quod vis.” See further Peit F. Fransen, “Augustine, Pelagius and the Controversy on the Doctrine of Grace,” Louvain Studies 12 (1987): 172–81.
43. Robert Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (New York: Seabury Press, 1968), 66.
44. Gerald Bonner, “Rufinus of Syria and African Pelagianism,” Augustinian Studies 1 (1970): 31–47.
45. Eugene TeSelle, “Rufinius the Syrian, Caelestius, Pelagius: Explorations in the Prehistory of the Pelagian Controversy,” Augustinian Studies 3 (1972): 61–95. For further details, see esp. Guido Honnay, “Caelestius, Discipulus Pelagi,” Augustiniana 44 (1991): 271–302.
46. Jean-Michel Girard, La mort chez Saint Augustin: Grandes lignes de l’évolution de sa pensée, telle qu’elle apparaît dans ses traités (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1992), 133–38.
47. Two important studies of Pelagius should be noted in this respect: Peter Brown, “Pelagius and His Supporters: Aims and Environment,” Journal of Theological Studies 19 (1968): 83–114; Peter Brown, “The Patrons of Pelagius: The Roman Aristocracy Between East and West,” Journal of Theological Studies 21 (1970): 56–72.
48. For the Roman context of the Pelagian movement, see Charles Pietri, Roma christiana: Recherches sur l’Église de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son idéologie de Milt-iade à Sixte III (311–440) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1976), 1222–44.
49. F. G. Nuvolone and G. Solignac, “Pélage et Pélagianisme,” in Dictionaire de spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 12:2889–2942.
50. For the issue of dating, see Yves-Marie Duval, “La date de ‘De natura’ de Pélage: Les premières étapes de la controverse sur la nature de la grâce,” Revue des études Augustiniennes 36 (1990): 257–83.
51. See, e.g., Sebastian Thier, Kirche bei Pelagius (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999).
52. The best exploration of this point is Gisbert Greshake, Gnade als konkrete Freiheit: Eine Untersuchung zur Gnadenlehre des Pelagius (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1972).
53. Pelagius Epistula ad Demetriadem 16.
54. For the question of the attitude of the Roman bishops to Pelagius’s teaching, see Otto Wermelinger, Rom und Pelagius: Die theologische Position der römischen Bischöfe im pelagianischen Streit in den Jahren 411–432 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1975).
55. See Josef Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 250–330.
56. The writings of John Chrysostom were attracting attention at this time: see Duval, “De natura’ de Pélage,” 280–81.
57. For an excellent account of Augustine’s views, focusing on a later variant of the Pelagian controversy, see Donato Ogliari, Gratia Et Certamen: The Relationship Between Grace and Free Will in the Discussion of Augustine with the So-Called Semipelagians (Louvain: Peeters, 2003). For a detailed account of Augustine’s doctrine of grace, see Agostino Trapè, Sant’Agostino: Introduzione alla dottrina della grazia, 2 vols. (Rome: Città Nuova, 1990).
58. Augustine of Hippo De natura et gratia 3.3.
59. See esp. Pelagius’s treatise De induratione cordis Pharaonis.
60. For more detailed discussion, see Timothy Maschke, “St Augustine’s Theology of Prayer,” in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 431–46.
61. Stephen J. Duffy, The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 89.
62. Augustine of Hippo Tractatus in Johannem 27.7.
63. This point is emphasized in Ronald W. Dworkin, The Rise of the Imperial Self: America’s Culture Wars in Augustinian Perspective (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). Note esp. his comments on Pelagianism (39–58).
64. Dworkin has spotted it: Dworkin, Rise of the Imperial Self, 59–73.
CHAPTER 8: CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL MOTIVATIONS FOR HERESY
1. For comment on Newman’s views, see Rowan Williams, “Newman’s Arians and the Question of Method in Doctrinal History,” in Newman After a Hundred Years, ed. Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 263–85; and Thomas Ferguson, “The Enthralling Power: History and Heresy in John Henry Newman,” Anglican Theological Review 85 (2003): 641–62.
2. H. M. Gwatkin, Studies in Arianism, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., 1900), 17–21, 274. For a landmark response to Gwatkin, which some regard as marking the origins of modern Arius scholarship, see Maurice F. Wiles, “In Defence of Arius,” Journal of Theological Studies 13 (1962): 339–47.
3. For an important early statement of this approach, see Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994). For a recent overview, see Justin L. Barrett, “Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (2000): 29–34.
4. A good example of this is Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006). For a critique, see Justin L. Barrett, “Is the Spell Really Broken? Bio-Psychological Explanations of Religion and Theistic Belief,” Theology and Science 5 (2007): 57–72.
5. I here draw on Robert N. McCauley, “The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of Science,” in Explanation and Cognition, ed. F. Keil and R. Wilson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 61–85.
6. E.g., R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988).
7. This latter idea is known as “monarchianism” and played an important role in second- and third-century Christian thought. For its relevance to this discussion, see D. H. Williams, “Monarchianism and Photinus of Sirmium as the Persistent Heretical Face of the Fourth Century,” Harvard Theological Review 99 (2006): 187–206.
8. Mark J. Edwards, “Justin’s Logos and the Word of God,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 261–80. This study corrects some influential older misunderstandings of Justin’s approach.
9. Augustine of Hippo De doctrina Christiana 2.40.60–61.
10. Augustine of Hippo De civitate Dei 10.10.21. See the comments in Leonard Robert Palmer, The Latin Language (London: Faber & Faber, 1954), 191–94.
11. For the development of the Christian understanding of justification, see Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005).
12. Cicero Rhetoricum libro duo 2.53: “Iustitia virtus est, communi utilitate servata, suam cuique tribuens dignitatem.” Cf. Justinian Institutio 1.1: “Iustitia est constans et per-petua voluntas suum unicuique tribuens.” See further D. H. van Zyl, Justice and Equity in Cicero (Pretoria: Academica Press, 1991).
13. For his life and thought, see Josef Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung (Leiden: Brill, 2001). More specifically, see Andreas Urs Sommer, “Das Ende der antiken Anthropologie als Be-währungsfall kontextualistischer Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung: Julian von Eclanum und Augustin von Hippo,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 57 (2005): 1–28.
14. Ps. 31:1 (my emphasis). For analysis of this important point, see McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 6–21.
15. For a full discussion, see Alister E. McGrath, “Divine Justice and Divine Equity in the Controversy Between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum,” Downside Review 101 (1983): 312–19. There is also some useful material in F. J. Thonnard, “Justice de Dieu et justice humaine selon Saint Augustin,” Augustinus 12 (1967): 387–402.
16. Austin Farrer, “The Christian Apologist,” in Light on C. S. Lewis, ed. Jocelyn Gibb (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965), 23–43; quote at 26.
17. See the examples in Caroline P. Bammel, “Pauline Exegesis, Manichaeism, and Philosophy in the early Augustine,” in Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity, ed. Lionel R. Wickham and Caroline P. Bammel (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 1–25.
18. The best study is George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992).
19. See, e.g., Mihály Balázs, Early Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism (1566–1571): From Servet to Palaeologus (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1996).
20. Art de Groot, “L’antitrinitarisme socinien,” Études théologiques et religieuses 61 (1986): 51–61.
21. William S. Babcock, “A Changing of the Christian God: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century,” Interpretation 45 (1991): 133–46.
22. See the important collection of research assembled in John Hedley Brooke and Ian Maclean, eds., Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005). An earlier study is also of importance: Michael Hunter, “Science and Heterodoxy: An Early Modern Problem,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), 437–60.
23. See Stephen D. Snobelen, “Newton, Heretic: The Strategies of a Nicodemite,” British Journal for the History of Science 32 (1999): 381–419.
24. Maurice Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Ages (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), 62–134.
25. William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), 289.
26. A point emphasized in Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
27. Emily A. Greenfield and Nadine F. Marks, “Religious Social Identity as an Explanatory Factor for Associations Between More Frequent Formal Religious Participation and Psychological Well-Being,” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 17 (2007): 245–59.
28. A pattern noted and assessed in Wayne Meeks’s excellent study of the social realities of Pauline communities in the New Testament: see Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1983), 84–103.
29. See A. H. M. Jones, “Were Ancient Heresies National or Social Movements in Disguise?” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1959): 280–86; and W. H. C. Frend, “Heresy and Schism as Social and National Movements,” in Schism, Heresy and Protest, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 37–49.
30. This view is found in its classic form in W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).
31. Robert A. Markus, “Christianity and Dissent in Roman North Africa,” Studies in Church History 9 (1972): 21–36.
32. See, e.g., Augustine of Hippo Epistula 66.1.
33. Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), esp. 19.
34. See the detailed analysis in Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996).
35. Gerald Bonner, “Pelagianism and Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 33–51.
36. See Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996).
37. See David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jo-vinianist Controversy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007). Hunter’s analysis of the complex interaction of heresy and asceticism (87–170) merits close attention.
38. See the classic study of Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1972), esp. 10–13.
39. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), 151.
40. H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954), 97–163.
CHAPTER 9: ORTHODOXY, HERESY, AND POWER
1. Rowan Williams, “Defining Heresy,” in The Origins of Christendom in the West, ed. Alan Kreider (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), 313–35.
2. See John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Christian Patterns (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1998).
3. For accounts of critical realism, see Andrew Collier, Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy (London: Verso, 1994); and Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, and Douglas V. Porpora, eds., Transcendence: Critical Realism and God (London: Routledge, 2004).
4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1972), 64. For an assessment of this approach, see Hans Barth, Wahrheit und Ideologie (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 73–190.
5. Engels’s depiction of the Peasants’ Revolt as fundamentally based on class warfare has subsequently had a significant impact on historical studies of the movement: see, e.g., Peter Blickle, “Communal Reformation and Peasant Piety: The Peasant Reformation in Its Late Medieval Origins,” Central European History 20 (1987): 216–28.
6. George V. Zito, “Toward a Sociology of Heresy,” Sociological Analysis 44 (1983): 123–30; quote at 126.
7. Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 68.
8. For a somewhat speculative exploration of this theme, see Meerten B. ter Borg, “Canon and Social Control,” in Canonization and Decanonization, ed. A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 411–23.
9. For an exploration of this issue, see Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995), 19–21.
10. Rowan Williams, “Origen: Between Orthodoxy and Heresy,” in Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzung des 4. Jahrhunderts, ed. Wolfgang A. Bienert and Uwe Kühneweg (Louvain: Peeters, 1999), 3–14.
11. See Rowan Williams, “Does It Make Sense to Speak of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy?” in The Making of Orthodoxy, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 1–23.
12. See the discussion in Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006).
13. For a standard introduction to the issues, see William P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation: The Struggle for a Stable Settlement of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970).
14. For these historical developments and their subsequent outcomes, see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 100–104. There are indications that Constantine himself was not entirely happy with the outcome of Nicaea, especially its treatment of Arius’s supporters.
15. The Council of Constantinople was convened by Theodosius I, whose authority was restricted to the eastern region of the empire. For its significance, see Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church from Apostolic Times Until the Council of Florence (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), 20–26.
16. For an overview of this analysis, see Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 167–260.
17. See the account in Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987).
18. Kathleen Cushing, Papacy and Law in the Gregorian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).
19. Jane Sayers, Innocent III, Leader of Europe, 1198–1216 (New York: Longman, 1994).
20. Cyprian of Carthage Epistula 72: “[S]alus extra ecclesiam non est.”
21. Jean-Maurice Rouquette, Provence romane: La Provence rhodanienne, 2nd ed. (La Pierre-qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1980), 50.
22. Francis Sullivan, Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992).
23. As pointed out in R. I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (London: Allen Lane, 1977).
24. See the discussions in Richard Landes, “The Birth of Heresy: A Millennial Phenomenon,” Journal of Religious History 24 (2000): 26–43; and R. I. Moore, “The Birth of Popular Heresy: A Millennial Phenomenon?” Journal of Religious History 24 (2000): 8–25.
25. Heinrich Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1200 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1998), 105–26.
26. The Cathars were also referred to as the Albigensians, from the town of Albi (Latin name: Albiga), northeast of Toulouse. For an accessible introduction, see Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (New York: Walker & Co., 2000). The term “Cathar” derives from the Greek term katharos (“pure”), referring to their emphasis on moral excellence.
27. Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170–c. 1570 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999).
28. Kantik Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 22.
29. Ghosh, Wycliffite Heresy, 67–85.
30. Richard Kieckhefer, “The Office of Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: The Transition from Personal to Institutional Jurisdiction,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 36–61.
31. For an early statement of this case, see Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung um 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik (Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1935).
32. See Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, 3 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990–94).
33. Norman E. Nagel, “Luther and the Priesthood of All Believers,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 61 (1997): 277–98.
34. See the discussion in Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
35. B. B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1956), 322.
36. See the important collection of material assembled in Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler, and Markus Wriedt, eds., Auctoritas patrum: Zur Rezeption der Kirchenväter im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1993); and Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler, and Markus Wriedt, eds., Auctoritas patrum II: Neue Beiträge zur Rezeption der Kirchenväter im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1998).
37. For Melanchthon’s important statement of this position, see the classic study of Peter Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum: The Function of the Patristic Argument in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon (Geneva: Droz, 1961). This analysis has been extended in Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
38. For details, see Massimo Firpo, “The Italian Reformation and Juan de Valdes,” Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996): 353–64.
39. The historical details of this controversy are not directly relevant here, as our concern is to note the difficulties Protestants faced when confronted with new ideas that could not easily be reduced to older heresies. Those wishing to follow through the historical and theological issues should consult Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990); Martin Mulsow and Jan Rohls, eds., Socinianism and Arminianism: Antitrinitarians, Calvinists, and Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2005); and Benjamin Myers, Milton’s Theology of Freedom (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006).
40. See Maurice Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
41. See esp. Benjamin Myers, “Following the Way Which Is Called Heresy: Milton and the Heretical Imperative,” Journal of the History of Ideas 69 (2008): 375–93. On Milton’s libertarianism in general, see Hugh Wilson, “Milton and the Struggle for Human Rights,” in Milton, Rights, and Liberties, ed. Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 21–30.
42. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1953–82), 7:247–48.
43. I develop this point in Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007).
44. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
45. This point also applies to orthodoxy. For the concept of “dogma” as a belief that is formally accepted by the community of faith as a whole, see Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 8–13.
46. Hilary Lawson, Closure: A Story of Everything (London: Routledge, 2001), 4.
47. Lawson, Closure, 327.
48. This is a theme explored in Karl Rahner, “Chalkedon—Ende oder Anfang?” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Alois Grillmeier and Heinrich Bacht, 3 vols. (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1951–54), 1:3–49.
49. This is the view expressed in Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2001). See further his essay “What Is Catholic Orthodoxy?” in Essays Catholic and Radical, ed. Kenneth Leech and Rowan Williams (London: SPCK, 1983), 11–25.
50. See further Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 1–8.
CHAPTER 10: HERESY AND THE ISLAMIC VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY
1. Richard C. Martin and Mark R. Woodward, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu’tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 202–3.
2. See the points made in Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007), 474–76.
3. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), 17–18.
4. Surah 4:167–70; 5:77. This could easily be interpreted, in quasi-pagan terms, as the divine Father, Son, and Mother.
5. For some examples, see David Thomas, “The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Abbasid Era,” in Islamic Interpretations of Christianity, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001), 78–98.
6. The name of this sect derives from the Greek word kollyris, “loaf of bread”—a reference to its practice of offering bread to Mary as a goddess.
7. For a detailed study of the issues, see Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian Constantinople (New York: Routledge, 1994), 114–21.
8. Schwager Raymund, “Christologie und Islam,” in Penser la foi: Recherches en théologie aujourd’hui: Mélanges offerts à Joseph Moingt, ed. Joseph Doré and Christoph Theobald (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1993), 203–15; David Thomas, “Explanations of the Incarnation in Early Abbasid Islam,” in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East Since the Rise of Islam, ed. J. J. van Ginkel, H. L. Murre-van den Berg, and Theo Maarten van Lint (Louvain: Peeters, 2005), 127–49.
9. For an excellent account of this point, see Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
10. Gnosticism and Nestorianism are often noted as possible influences on the Qu’ran. E.g., the Qur’an appears to refer to a story of Jesus giving life to birds that are made of clay (Sura 3:49; 5:110), found in the Gnostic Infancy Gospel of Thomas (4:2). Syrian influences should also be noted. See further Gabriel Said Reynolds, ed., The Qur’an in Its Historical Context (New York: Routledge, 2007).
11. Second Treatise of the Great Seth 55:16–35. See further Paul Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 79–90.
12. Surah 4:157–58.
13. For this and other examples, see David Pinault, “Images of Christ in Arabic Literature,” Die Welt des Islams 27 (1987): 103–25.
14. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, “Towards an Islamic Christology, II: The Death of Jesus, Reality or Delusion?” Muslim World 70 (1980): 91–121.
CONCLUSION
1. These concerns are noted sympathetically, though not endorsed, in Eleonore Stump, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” Faith and Philosophy 16 (1999): 147–63.
2. This concern was present even in the patristic age, as noted in Robert M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
3. Robert A. Segal, ed., The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture (Chicago: Open Court, 1995).
4. Patrick Henry, “Why Is Contemporary Scholarship So Enamored of Ancient Heresies?” in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Patristic Studies, ed. E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), 123–26. Henry’s concerns are not met by the kind of response found in Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995), 1–2.
5. See Philip E. Tetlock, Orie V. Kristel, S. Beth Elson, Melanie C. Green, and Jennifer S. Lerner, “The Psychology of the Unthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs, Forbidden Base Rates, and Heretical Counterfactuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (2000): 853–70.
6. For a critical account of this phenomenon, see the recent revisionist account of Timothy Larsen, Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006).
7. Arthur Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today (London: SPCK, 1972), 21.
8. A representative case for the necessity of doctrinal statements, including a critique of the notion of an “undogmatic faith,” can be found in Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology, vol. 3, Theory (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 3–76.
9. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 129–47; quote at 129–47. It is important to note that Chesterton bases his case for faith not so much on the basis of Christianity’s truth as on its capacity to answer our need for “an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of poetical curiosity” (3).
10. I borrow this phrase from William Lynch, Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1960), 157.