35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timely history, November 6, 2009
This review is from: Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (Hardcover)
Alister McGrath sets out to do two things in his Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. The first is to explain the origins and significance of heresy. The second is to defend the notion of orthodoxy from the postmodern infatuation with heretical ideas. Along the way, he corrects many popular misunderstandings and busts a fair number of myths.
The prevalent notion of early Christianity--thanks only in part to Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, and the Gospel of Judas--is of a plurality if competing "Christianities" which were eventually subsumed and stamped out by the Catholic Christianity, as practiced in Rome and championed by the emperor Constantine and set in stone at the Council of Nicaea. Heretical groups and leaders were ostracized and condemned and their ideas and writings suppressed by straight-laced, rigid groups that, by chance, had "access to power" and could therefore impose their version of Christianity upon the others.
The truth, McGrath points out, is far different. First of all, no Christian group of the first several centuries of the Church could be said to have any form of power, coercive or otherwise. It was simply beyond possibility for one Christian church to force its views upon another. And while McGrath concedes that, yes, the early Church was a much looser, less theologically policed entity than it was to become, orthodox ideas were already present and generally agreed upon. It was as the church solidified that heresy originated.
Heresy, McGrath says, is a set of ideas--or even a single idea--that maintains the form of orthodox Christianity while inadvertently undermining it. The church fathers who spent enormous energy in combating heresy characterized heresy as the intrusion of damaging outside ideas into orthodoxy, McGrath demonstrates that most heresy originated within the church as Christianity gradually found its footing and attempted to articulate precisely what it believed, especially on important or unclear issues. Of all the early heresies that confronted the Church, McGrath says, "Not one of them can conceivably be considered as the outcome of malice, egotism, or some kind of personal theological depravity. . . . all rest on serious attempts to engage major points of religious and spiritual importance" (p.171).
A case in point is Arianism, a heresy involving the identity and deity of Jesus Christ that began as an earnest effort by the Alexandrian Bishop Arius to make Christianity and Greek ideas--especially Neoplatonism--mutually intelligible. Greco-Roman thought held matter to be the creation of a lesser deity and therefore irredeemably bad. Christian orthodoxy held that God, in the form of Jesus Christ, became flesh and suffered as a physically real human being. In reconciling these ideas, Arius held Jesus to be physically human by not divine, since true divinity, that of the superior god rather than the lesser creator, could not be corrupted by flesh. Arius did not, however, decry the worship or adoration of Jesus or the belief that Jesus could grant salvation. Arius's detractors quickly pointed out that, if Jesus is not God, to worship him and believe that he could grant salvation were irreconcilable inconsistencies with the idea that only God can receive worship or grant salvation.
Heresy, then, is a sincere but misguided attempt to articulate something about Christianity that ends up being anything but Christian. The motives behind heresy, as listed by McGrath, include the desire to make Christianity relevant to prevailing social norms, to make Christianity more amendable to secular "rationality," and to shape a Christianity that is either more or less "morally restrictive." The motivations behind ideas that eventually become heretical are typically sincere, but say more about the time in which they develop than about Christianity itself. The implication is that even the most sincere Christian can do damage of their motivations, methods, or both are incorrect.
McGrath's book is very good, but not perfect. A section on postmodern ideas of heresy and its relation to "power," that omnipresent postmodern bogeyman, is muddled. I reread some passages but still didn't fully comprehend his argument. And while he deftly handles early Church history with beautiful concision, he trips lightly over the Middle Ages, stopping only to note that the definition of "heresy" seemed to shift to anything the Pope found threatening. Such a shortcut is disappointing, especially considering the very good chapters on the early Church which precede it.
One of the best things about McGrath's book is the "mythbusting" that I mentioned above. In addition to correcting the fuzzy history of the Church as peddled by Gnostic scholars and Dan Brown, McGrath also points out that Constantine had significant Arian leanings, early heretics were not condemned or executed, and the supposedly stifling orthodoxy decried by modern advocates of heresy was, in fact, more radical, more imaginative, and more liberating than the heresies it had to confront.
Highly recommended.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Much is to be gained from the book, shortfalls aside, January 8, 2010
This review is from: Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (Hardcover)
With the popularity of Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, has come an explosion of interest around "alternative Christianities" and "lost Christianities." The cultural mood in our postmodern world provides just the right conditions for these "Christianities" to flourish. Many of the postmodern way view orthodox Christianity as a function of political power, history's "winner" as it were. In reality, there is nothing intrinsically superior to orthodox Christian belief, they say, that would commend it above what has been deemed heretical belief.
By contrast, many postmoderns have nothing but the deepest sympathy for those falling under the rubric of heresy, much akin to what one would have for the poor and down-trodden. It is the heretics who are the true revolutionaries, the ones resisting the power structures of their day and seeing from outside the cultural worldview to call for freedom and equality.
Ah, how we've had it all wrong.
While the thinking person realizes that the cherished values of the 21st century (e.g., tolerance, egalitarianism) are not as closely associated with heretical beliefs in the early centuries of the Church's history as some would have us believe - and in many cases just the opposite - this love affair with heresy provides an opportunity for Christians to re-examine what heresy is.
In his book, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, Christian scholar Alister McGrath attempts to do just that. He takes the insights of contemporary heresiology and argues for a middle-of-the-road approach to heresy. McGrath argues that heresy is neither a "fundamentally malignant attack on orthodoxy" nor a "principled alternative to orthodoxy that was suppressed by the institutional church" (p. 11).
McGrath's book comes in four parts and the first part, naturally, addresses the question of what heresy is. McGrath takes a "3 D" approach (my description, not his) to heresy. He defines it as "a doctrine that ultimately destroys, destabilizes, or distorts a mystery rather than preserving it." (p. 31) Further, the fundamental character of heresy is "the maintenance of the outward appearance of faith coupled with the subversion of its inward identity." (p. 147)
To help understand this fundamental character of heresy, take the case of Arianism. Arius affirmed Jesus as the saviour of the world and one to be worshipped, thus maintaining the outward appearance of faith. Yet his interpretation of Jesus as a created being made it incoherent to view Jesus as the saviour of the world or as one who should be worshiped.
McGrath describes heresy as an outcome of the "journeys of exploration that were originally intended to enable Christianity to relate better to contemporary culture. Heresy arose through a desire to preserve, not to destroy, the gospel." (p. 176) Heresies are "byways opened up for exploration through the process of doctrinal development." (p. 66) Heresy is, in other words, a theological cul-de-sac on the Church's journeys of doctrinal exploration. The fault of heresy, according to McGrath, is not that it has failed to preserve the gospel. It is "its unwillingness to accept that it has in fact failed." (p. 31)
In the second part of the book, McGrath looks at the roots of heresy and contrasts his understanding of heresy with the so-called "received view," an established theory of the genesis of heresy by the middle of the third century through to the early 19th century.
The received view of heresy can be summarized as follows (pp. 64-65):
1. The early church was unsullied and undefiled.
2. Orthodoxy was temporally prior to heresy.
3. Heresy is an intentional deviation from existing orthodoxy.
4. Heresy is the fulfillment of New Testament prophecies of apostasy.
5. Heresy is a function of love of novelty, jealousy, or envy on the part of heretics.
6. Heresy lacks the coherency of orthodoxy.
7. Orthodoxy is global whereas heresies are chronologically and geographically provincial.
8. Heresy results from the syncretism of orthodoxy and worldly philosophy
The reason for the received view's decline was the recognition that the way the gospel has been preserved down through the centuries is not by proof-texting and hollow repetition of creeds, but by doctrinal development. Heresy, more or less, is one of the outcomes of these developments. Heresy is not a contaminant from outside a pure and pristine church, but a virus from within.
The third part of the book contains a brief but helpful summary of heresies in the early church including Ebionitism, Docetism, Valentinism, Marcionism, Arianism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. This historical excursus bolsters many of the claims McGrath has made about heresy. For example, though there is little question that Pelagianism subverts the gospel, Pelagius was within the church and interested in moral renewal. He was not motivated by a lust of novelty, jealousy, or envy so far as is known.
Finally, in the last section of the book, McGrath's offers a helpful list of "pressures that appear to be implicated in the genesis of heresy:" cultural norms, rational norms, social identity, religious accommodation, and ethical concerns (p. 180).
McGrath also deals with the popular view today that heresy is merely history's "loser," the ideology of the oppressed. He shows that this was certainly not the case in the "proto-orthodoxy" period prior to Constantine since the church had no power whereby to enforce orthodoxy. Even at the time of Constantine, McGrath makes the case that orthodoxy was more than a function of power politics. Arianism, for example, was found to be intellectually wanting apart from whatever politics were at play. McGrath does concede, however, that orthodoxy and heresy became political instruments in the Middle Ages.
***
McGrath's book is a nuanced read that gives the reader an appreciation for the complexity of the ideas of heresy and orthodoxy. For those of us who hold too closely to the views of church history propagated by Dan Brown et al., McGrath's book is a necessary corrective. Heresy is not a victim of theological oppression (p. 79). But the corrective force of McGrath's book applies also to those of us who reflexively assume the worst morally of men who have come to be associated with heresy.
Despite the wonderful things about the book, I do have a few complaints. For starters, I observed a fairly frequent repetition of content in the book as did other reviewers. I'm not sure why this was thought to be necessary, but it's distracting and annoying to the reader when coming across the same thing over and over again.
Secondly, for someone of McGrath's calibre, he makes a rather bold statement about the New Testament usage of hairesis that is, unfortunately, also a bald statement. On page 37, McGrath claims that the Greek word translated "heresy" is a neutral, non-pejorative term referring only to a school of thought in the New Testament era. Any negative associations with the word, McGrath assures us, are "linked to the social divisiveness and intellectual rivalry that these schools of thought sometimes created." Ignoring the fact that "intellectual rivalry" implies some sort of doctrinal difference, McGrath doesn't interact at all with the lexical authority on New Testament words, BDAG (3rd edition), which defines the use of hairesis in 2 Peter 2.1 as a reference to opinions or dogmas (p. 28). Instead, he asserts that influential translations like the Authorized Version obscured the true meaning of hairesis, which is "sect." He praises William Tyndale for translating hairesis in 2 Peter 2.1 as "damnable sects." No mention of the internal evidence for the Authorized Version's translation, "damnable heresies." No mention of BDAG. This is a glaring problem since the statement is no small point.
Other criticisms could be made, but the review is already too long.
Overall, much is to be gained from reading McGrath's book, these shortfalls aside.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtfully level-headed, December 23, 2009
This review is from: Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (Hardcover)
The central piece of his work is on 6 early heresies: ebionitism, marcionitism, gnosticism, arianism, donatism & pelagianism. He does a nice job describing them in an even-handed, level-headed way.
One of McGrath's overarching themes is that 'Christian' heresies evolved from within the Church. They were normally sincere & honest attempts at trying to explain Jesus that went astray. This constant thought keeps him from being a frothing-at-the-mouth fault-finder & heresy-hunter. In these core chapters he also shows how the first 3 heresies were not expunged by force or power-because the Church had no force or power. They simply either purged themselves (Marcion) or the Church simply grew to see their weaknesses & sort of turned its back on them (Ebionitism & Gnosticism). The later 3 heresies, the Constantianian Power was normally on the Heresies' side & not necessarily the Church's (esp. Arianism) & the sword was often wielded on behalf of the heresies & not on the side of orthodoxy. But the Church came to see that these heresies had taken a wrong turn & were headed for a wreck & resisted the pressure of the State etc. A.M. takes on Bauer & Pagels & those who romanticize the heresies. He makes some surprisingly helpful observations in this regard.
Surrounding the core chapters are chapters where he appears to be developing another thought: orthodox doctrine developed, or chrystallized or grew from a seed to a fuller flowering plant. Sometimes his approach would put him at odds with Eastern Orthodoxy, but I think he finally pounds out a sober case for what he means & what he is explaining, in a way that might be agreed on by both East & West.
One of his unspoken agendas appears to be with regard to the crisis in worldwide Anglicanism right now. It almost seemed to me that he was making a quiet & subtle case against the forceful manhandling that the African & [some] American Anglicans are promoting today.
Well, I'm sure I have sold A.M. short in my little synopsis, but maybe this will give everyone an idea & whet their desire to purchase & read the book.
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