Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church

Rating:
Summary: Informative and Engrossing
Review: I felt like I walked through the valley of Christian history, and on every side of me lay dragons and lions of dissent, seeking to devour Truth and replace it with the viscera and bones of deception. Brown presents Christian history as the dialectic of orthodoxy, heresy, and the response to heresy. Without heresy, the Church would not be what we know today. For we defined ourselves by what became heretical. There would be no need to state the precise nature of the Trinity (or as precise as is possible) if there had not been those who denied it's existence. There would be no need to say that Jesus is one person, in two natures, one divine and one human, if some had not claimed that Jesus was only divine, or two persons. There would be no need to dwell on the grace of Christ's soteriology, if some had not believed that we were essentially good, and just needed to be reminded of the truth through Christ's example.

For those who would claim, as some do these days, that heresy was orthodoxy, and orthodoxy only the most powerful of the parties who wrote the histories, Brown convincingly shows how what we understand orthodoxy to be today is what has always been believed, from the earliest times, and the earliest sources. It is not however simple to uncover this truth, or simply that what we believe now must be what was first believed- this Brown also makes clear.

Perhaps one of his most interesting insights is how the Roman Church left the path it was on, in reformatting it's doctrine of transubstantiation, making it more exact than it needed to be. In so doing, they removed the personal efficaciousness of soteriology. And though the Eastern Church also believed in a literal transformation, with their less legalistic focus on mystery, they were still able to unite the average believer with her Lord. Unfortunately, this legalistic soteriology dependent on literal transformation of elements, which only priests could perform and thus be fully involved with, created a gap between God and man. This gap needed to be resolved, and lead directly to the Protestant Reformation, in Brown's opinion, as one possible solution. If only the Roman Church had been content to not innovate in doctrine, but allow for differences in understanding on the elements, the Church today might still be more united.

Brown does better on early heresies than later ones. Once he gets to the last few centuries, what he calls the End of the Age of Heresy, his writing style declines, and the story becomes much drier. Without heresy, a book on heresies is simply less interesting. And so it took me a good deal of time to wend through the end, though the first 4/5ths of the book took only a few days.

Rating:
Summary: majority rule?
Review: Since when is truth determined by adhering to majority opinion? Those that constitute the most powerful block can filter history and erase memories of those who are not acceptable. Several of the reviews mention the Trinity and Arianism as the "main" heresy. Review the histories of Harnack, Rowan Williams, and RPC Hanson. The 4th century historical context was not so black and white or good and evil. What of the Protestant Reformation, or the history of the Jewish people at the hands of Catholicism, the oldest "orthodoxy" (next to the eastern Orthodox). Does a judgment of hersy lead to persecution? Historically it has and it would again if enough people in our modern society hadn't become unbelievers due to dictated doctrine and practice by the powers that be among the large churches. People like Shelby Spong certainly react to that same rigidity. Think for yourself, our God is not to small to reach towards all that truely seek him.

Rating:
Summary: A History of Heresies in the Christian Church.
Review: _Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church_ by Harold O. J. Brown is an extensive overview of the numerous doctrinal disputes within Christendom from the early Church to the present. Brown writes from the perspective of a conservative Lutheran, which determines the somewhat narrow point of view in some parts of this study. However, the good in this book far outweighs its negativity. Part of the problem when writing about heresy and heresies is the difficulty when defining exactly who the "heretics" are, what doctrines and dogmas are acceptable and which ones are unacceptable and to be categorized as "heretical." Many ultramontane Catholics will consider the entire Protestant Reformation heretical, while conservative, and fundamentalist/evangelical Protestants of various denominations view the central tenants of Catholicism (Mariology, Papal infallibility, literal transubstantiation of the Eucharist, etc). Also, where does Eastern Orthodox Christendom fit in?

The key difference between the ancient heretics and theological liberals of today, notes Brown, is the ancients sincerely believed what they espoused as Christian truth while today's skeptics are wishy-washy nay-sayers. Brown begins by noting the Greek/Hellenistic and Roman/Latin influence in the theological teachings of early Christianity. Many disputes, the most fundamental being the nature of God, the Trinity and the Person of Christ, were outside the material covered in the canonical biblical writings. Instead, theologians used Greek philosophical concepts and complicated language to explain Christian doctrinal concepts as they developed over time. This tendency (beginning with St. Paul) has been heavily criticized by moderns, (both liberal and evangelical/fundamentalist reductionists) as taking away from the original, Semitic contents of the Bible. The first major heresies, in the second, third and fourth centuries AD were those of Gnosticism and Arianism. Gnosticism was a loose collection of different sects teaching elaborate, dualistic cosmologies, and believing Christ was a being who illuminated mankind and brought freedom from the supposedly evil god of the Old Testament (Demiurge) creator of the material world. Gnosticism and its "knowledge (gnosis) falsely so called" was refuted by Ireneaus of Lyons, one of the first great theologians. Indeed, the process of formulating "Orthodox" Christian doctrine has been somewhat of a "dialectical process," as another reviewer notes, of an arising heresy followed by an Orthodox response and official definition. Ironically, the two other greatest defenders of Orthodox Christianity during the early Church period, Tertullian and Origen, later left the Church (Tertullian) and promoted some questionable doctrines, as Origen did when he speculated on the pre-existence of human souls. The Arians (named after Arius, a renegade priest) were a splinter group from Orthodox Christianity who believed that the Jesus Christ, the Son, was the greatest created being of God the father-not of the same nature as the Father. Constantine summoned the first Ecumenical Council to promote Christian unity at Nicea, and formally defined God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as all different persons of the same God. However, Constantine himself and a number of his successors tended to support the Arian position. Almost the sole defender of Christian Orthodoxy, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, led the battle at Nicea-Athanasius _contra mundi_, i.e., against the world.

The second phase concerned the nature of Christ and spawned the controversies of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople and the Monophysites of Alexandria. Nestorius focused on the human nature of Christ and did not want the use of "Theotokos" (strictly translated from Greek to English means "bearer of God," NOT "mother of God.") as a formal title for the Virgin Mary. The prelates of Alexandria, notably Cyril, who stressed Christ's divine nature, opposed Nestorius. A subsequent council condemned Nestorius. His followers broke off to form the "Nestorian" Church or Church of the East, which spread from Mesopotamia and Persia even as far as China by its missionaries. The next controversy arose during the fifth century and centered on around the political posturing of the Empire's four great cities: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. The primary dispute was between Antioch's theologians and Alexandria. Rome, Brown notes, at this time remained the most doctrinally Orthodox as it was removed from Christianity's center of gravity in the Greek speaking empire during this period, lacking the cosmopolitan theological innovators of the East. The outcome of this fourth council, Chalcedon, according to Brown, tended to lean back towards the "Nestorian" view of Christ with its doctrine Christ's human and divine nature. Alexandria, which triumphed during the early stages of this conflict, suffered a reversal. The Egyptian (Coptic) Church broke off from the official Church of the Roman Empire and Constantinople, forming the Oriental Orthodox Church, which has its branches in Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, Armenia and India. However, Nestorians and Monophysites (who maintained that Christ only had a divine nature) remain within Orthodox theology, unlike the Gnostics, Arians and the later Manicheans, Bogomils and Cathars.

During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church experienced a schism because of theological and political controversies. The Roman Papacy assumed the status of a temporal power in Italy. The worldly corruption of the Roman Church, its sale of indulgences, and it's doctrine of literal transubstantiation officially formulated during the 1200s all gave impetus for the coming Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s. But after the Reformation, who is to be considered a heretic? Brown admits that it is much easier for a Protestant polemicist to use the invective "antichrist" to describe the pope rather than "heretic." Here is where the shortfalls of a Protestant outlook come into play. It ignores the Orthodox Church, which kept the original faith "once delivered to the saints." Brown also notes the main issue with "Pietism" that arose during the 1700s in England and Germany. Pietism is doctrinally orthodox, but places its emphasis on personal conversion and personal faith experience. In the long run it looses its objectivity when it comes to actual doctrine and polemics against attacks on Christianity by today's forces of secularism and liberalism.