A History of Heresy
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Book Overview
With the changes in Christian orthodoxy over the centuries, the term heretic has come to hold a wide range of meanings. Society condemned the first Christians, themselves, as heretics because they defied the doctrines of Judaism. Focusing specifically on Christian heresy, David Christie-Murray's cogent and lucid study surveys minority believers from the early Judaizers, who believed that salvation depended purely on the observation of Christian versions of "the law," through Gnosticism, Montanism, Monarchianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Pelagianism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and other movements and minorities, to the bewildering variety of heresies in the twentieth century.
Based on extensive scholarship, and yet compulsively readable, Christie-Murray's book explains the differences between different shades of Christian thought, and also provides an exciting, continuous narrative of the development of Christianity through the ages.
Based on extensive scholarship, and yet compulsively readable, Christie-Murray's book explains the differences between different shades of Christian thought, and also provides an exciting, continuous narrative of the development of Christianity through the ages.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0192852108
ISBN13:9780192852106
Release Date:October 1989
Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
Length:256 Pages
Weight:0.44 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 5.1" x 7.7"
Customer Reviews
3 ratings
The shifting boundaries between required and banned religion
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
This is a fascinating study of the shifting boundaries between required and banned religious expression. Naturally, those who condemned others had a tendency to violate their own rules. For example, Christie-Murray explores what happened when the Western Church moved toward reversing its rule on marriage for priests -- from forbidding divorce for priests (as ruled at the Council of Nicaea), to denouncing marriage for priests as a sin. While upholders of the new doctrine expressed dismay at the married clergy's moral depravity, the Eastern Church took an opposite view. In 867, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople accused the Roman Church of heresy for repeatedly ordering celibacy in church families. For Photius, the Western Church was succumbing to a Manichaean belief that matter and flesh were evil.
A History of Heresy
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
An extremely readable, engaging, and yet thoroughly scholarly examination of doctrinal issues facing the early church. An excellent choice as a primer for beginners not familiar with the details fo the issues involved.
Shamefully out of print
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
When I used to work at the Whole Earth Catalog, whenever a truly great book was out of print we used to thunder in bold faced type, "Get this book back in print!" That's how I feel about A History of Heresy. It is probably the most complete overview of the undertow to the Christian church available (or, well, formerly available). It is a Baedeker of everyone who challenged the ideas of the church from within through the centuries, and it is wonderfully well written. I learned enough here to "fake it" for the passages on Medieval heretics in my own book, The Age of Heretics.
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