<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A Critical Book For Modern Christians
Review: If you are a parent who has ever watched the painful consequences of wrong thinking in your children, you will immediately recognize the value of this book. While this concisely written book is historically accurate and highly beneficial as an introductory work on ancient heresies, it is profoundly valuable for its actual intended purposes: (1) to highlight the fact that heretical opinions are cruel to those who hold them, and (2) to alert and warn the reader that ancient heresies have a way of reappearing in modern forms. If a reader keeps in mind these dual purposes, this book is extremely valuable. It is cogently written in a readable style and its tone is pastoral. Moreover, it is highly practical. It increases the apologist's arsenal with the information that wrong thinking about theology hurts people. Not only are there serious theological implications to holding heretical views, but such views will hurt you, and the last thing a modern Christian wants is discomfort and pain. So, this book is a timely reminder that we should beware of thinking wrongly about God.
Rating:
Summary: A Critical Book For Modern Christians
Review: It is amazing how the institutional memory fails us. It is astonishing to hear an Episcopal Bishop regard the "pillars of Jerusalem," as Paul called those who knew Jesus and continued to worship in the temple as they waited for him, heretics, judaisers!
This chapter of Christian tradition is the most embarrassing and astonishing episode in our long anti Semitic history. No one who has read CONSTANTINE'S SWORD can do anything but shiver at this author's logic chopping. How long will it take us as Christians to understand that the creed is the whited sepulcher in which Constantine entombed the diversity and power of the early church. Allison does not consider what prompted Constantine's Council of Nicea, or for that matter what kind of military intimidation surrounded that gathering of Bishops outside the fabulous new city the Emperor was building. The central historical motivation for the crede is that Constantine needed vast amounts of money to build his Imperial City and used this ideological sword as pretext to confiscate enormous wealth from the old temples of the ancient religion of Rome and Greece as well as the wealth of whole communities who refused to surrender their right to believe in Christ as they chose. As a result of this creed, a river of gold and silver and treasure of all sorts flowed into Constantine's treasury allowing him to continue is Imperial building campaign on a colossal scale. This franchising of Christian Orthodoxy with good Roman steel is no cause for celebration: it is yet another Roman Imperial experiment which transformed the empire and created a funeral pyre for Christian diversity and religious freedom. The horror and repression which the creed has promoted across the intervening 1700 years is a matter of record. The irony of this title, The Cruelty of Heresy, seems totally lost on this Bishop. How many thousands of Gnostic Christians were crucified because of Constantine's demand for a single Christian franchise in which his was the original recipe? How many thousands of Jews were murdered because they were the worst heretics from this point of view. Orwell's 1984 was not prophetic, it was a memory of the kind of mind police set loose by Constantine. The burning of books this creed occasioned in order to establish the primacy of the One Book should be reason for any reader to weep. Yet Allison dismisses this history of horror by asserting that it is in reality the heretics who are cruel. If this weren't such a serious subject, this book might almost be comic. If you want to know why we Christians need to hang our heads in shame, read this book and be astonished at the overbearing narrow-minded, amnesiac quality of this defender of our faith. To be as unaware of our Christian History as this Bishop of the church is while he defends the gentile hijacking of both the Jewish Epic and a Jewish Prophet should disqualify him from the pulpit! That the Arch Bishop of Canterbury places his imprint on this book proclaiming it as a fine book, is doubly embarassing. How we shame ourselves when we neglect the particulars of our history.
Rating:
Summary: Great Explination of Christology
Review: Most of the heresies of the early era of the Church were concerned with the nature and person of Christ Jesus. This book delves into the contraversies that surrounded the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils and the key theologians that proposed both hetero and orthodoxy. I know of no other book that so strongly points out the practical consequesnces of theology. Far from dry theoretical speculation, the heart of life's meaning and experience was at stake. Sound over dramatic? Read it for yourself and find out! Other books of interest may include: "The First Seven Ecumenical Councils" by Leo Davis; "Fathers and Heretics" by Prestige; the works of Georges Florovsky; "INcarnation:Myth or Fact?" by Skarsaune; "Christology" by O'Collins. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Counterfeits are cruel.
Review: Mr. Eason reviewed this book and said "It is astonishing to hear an Episcopal Bishop regard the 'pillars of Jerusalem,' as Paul called those who knew Jesus and continued to worship in the temple as they waited for him, heretics, judaisers! " This is simply not the case. Paul argued, successfully, that the Gentiles did not need to convert to Judaism first and then to Christianity. The Judaisers that Paul complained about disagreed with not only Paul but with the Elders who met in Jerusalem as recorded in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles 21:19-25. They only required that the Gentiles refrain from eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols, from drinking blood, from eating meat from a strangled animal, and from sexual immorality. Following this decision by the leaders, they, still honoring Jewish practice, participated in a ritual cleansing and Temple sacrifice without any qualms. (Acts 21:26) There was no expectation that the Jews who believed in Jesus should suddenly abandon their Jewishness. There was only a decision that the Gentiles did not need to adopt Jewish practices in order to become beneficiaries of the Messiah Jesus. The Emperor Constantine is a different subject. He very well have recognized the political and monetary benefit of recognizing Christianity and exploited it. It was a bold risk if it was done without any belief on his part. It may be offensive to think that Constantine was an insincere convert, but the recognition and legalization of Christianity ended the horrible persecutions and martyring of thousands of believers. It is a testimony to the power of the orthodox message, that Christianity had spread to so large a percentage of the people of the known world even during so many years of brutal persecution. There is no need for an alternate explanation of Jesus. It would obviously be cruel to substitute a cheap counterfeit for the real Jesus.
<< 1 >>
| 
