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Product Description

What don’t Christians believe?
Is Jesus really divine?
Is Jesus really human?
Can God suffer?
Can people be saved by their own efforts?

The early Church puzzled over these questions, ruling in some beliefs and ruling out others. Heresies and How to Avoid Them explains the principal ancient heresies and shows why contemporary Christians still need to know about them. These famous detours in Christian believing seemed plausible and attractive to many people in the past, and most can still be found in modern-day guises. By learning what it is that Christians don’t believe—and why—believers today can gain a deeper, truer understanding of their faith.

“This is a deeply refreshing book, full of exciting ideas. It manages both to be generous to the heretics and also to show the beauty of orthodoxy. It is theologically profound while being immensely readable.”
—Timothy Radcliffe, Former Master of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans)

“This is broad-band, big-picture theology, brightly clear and easy to read—not in the least bit 'dogmatic' in the contemporary, negative sense of that word.”
—The Very Revd Dr Paul Zahl, President and Dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Pennsylvania

Reviews

Within this book, edited by Ben Quash and Michael Ward, and featuring a foreward by Stanley Hauerwas, one will find twelve short essays divided into two categories: heresies concerning the person of Christ and heresies concerning the Church and Christian living. . . . Each essay is well written and provides evidence of solid research, and should prove useful within an ecclesiastical or catechetical setting.”
—Catholic Historical Review

"This overview of specific heresies includes discussion of key related scriptures, orthodox positions, and contemporary application of these debates. Heresies focused on the person of Christ (part one) are Arianism, Docetism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Adoptionism, and Theopaschitism. The balanced presentations of these show both the plausibility of the wrong view as well as the theological justifications for the orthodox view of Jesus Christ as fully divine and fully human, one person (not with a split identity, not a hybrid, but unified), with God the Son suffering in his humanity, not in his impassible divine nature. Part two covers heresies of the Church and Christian living, specifically Marcionism, Donatism, Pelagianism, Gnosticism, and the heresy of the Free Spirit, and ends with the orthodoxy of biblical trinitarianism. The sermons in this part warn against claims that Christians have all the answers, are perfect, can be saved through works, or have a special spiritual knowledge or special presence of God’s Spirit replacing their human will. The goal throughout is a balanced approach that resists errors and embraces truths from the right and the left, working against hypocrisy and idolatry and connecting orthodoxy to orthopraxy. This clearly written, accessible overview of heresies and orthodoxy could be useful in courses introducing Christian doctrines and in church lay discussion groups."
—Religious Studies Review

The Rev. Dr Ben Quash is Dean and Fellow of Peterhouse and is the author of Theology and the Drama of History (CUP, 2005).

The Rev. Dr Michael Ward is Chaplain of Peterhouse and author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (OUP, 2007.

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