The Gospel according to Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy through Early Christological Conflicts, by David E. Wilhite
The Gospel According To Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy Through Early Christological Conflicts, By David E. Wilhite Actually, publication is truly a window to the world. Even many people may not appreciate reviewing books; guides will certainly consistently give the specific details regarding truth, fiction, experience, experience, politic, religion, as well as a lot more. We are right here a website that offers compilations of books greater than the book store. Why? We give you great deals of numbers of link to get the book The Gospel According To Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy Through Early Christological Conflicts, By David E. Wilhite On is as you require this The Gospel According To Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy Through Early Christological Conflicts, By David E. Wilhite You can find this publication conveniently here.
The Gospel according to Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy through Early Christological Conflicts, by David E. Wilhite
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Since what Christian doctrine denies can be as important as what it affirms, it is important to understand teachings about Jesus that the early church rejected. Historians now acknowledge that proponents of alternative teachings were not so much malicious malcontents as they were misguided or even misunderstood. Here a recognized expert in early Christian theology teaches orthodox Christology by explaining the false starts (heresies), making the history of theology relevant for today's church. This engaging introduction to the christological heresies is suitable for beginning students. In addition, pastors and laypeople will find it useful for apologetic purposes.
The Gospel according to Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy through Early Christological Conflicts, by David E. Wilhite- Amazon Sales Rank: #480065 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-20
- Released on: 2015-10-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .76" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
From the Back Cover "Written with good humor, clarity, insight, and sensitivity to various religious traditions, Wilhite's volume presents ten heresies of early Christianity that introduce the nonspecialist reader to the problematic questions of just what these heretics, as later defined, believed and why those beliefs were later condemned. I know of no better introduction to the topic to put into the hands of students and scholars alike."--Geoffrey D. Dunn, Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University"In the rapidly growing web of interpretations of early Christianity, this well-informed, popularizing study brings about order without imposing simplicity and addresses conflict without attempting to solve it. Turning 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' with dexterity and caution into analytical tools, Wilhite offers his readers effective insight into the complex world of the early church. His account is neither about winners nor about losers; what it offers instead is a strategy for piecing together a credible early Christian narrative in which history meets theology and both can benefit from the encounter."--Willemien Otten, University of Chicago"This book takes readers from the shallow end of the pool of early Christian theology into deep waters and enables them to float. It gives heresies their due while always keeping at least one eye on the positive message of Christian truth--that is, it is not transfixed by 'the dark side.' It is written with clarity both conceptually and in terms of expression, while being impressively learned. I appreciate in particular the attempt to discuss Reformed Protestantism in a retelling of the iconoclastic controversy and to broach the delicate and intricate subject of early Christian theology in relation to nascent Islam. It is quite a breathtaking achievement."--Mark W. Elliott, University of St. Andrews"This volume is a thoughtful and refreshing contribution to both academia and the church. Avoiding sensationalism, skepticism, and subjectivism, Wilhite carefully reinterprets heresy and orthodoxy with theological nuance, historical acumen, and ecclesial sensitivity. I commend this insightful and accessible book to scholars and students alike as readers are invited to search for the gospel according to orthodoxy, rooted in the grace of Christ, through the gospel according to heresy."--Helen Rhee, Westmont College
About the Author David E. Wilhite (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is associate professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, in Waco, Texas. He is the author of Tertullian the African, coauthor of The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed, and coeditor of Tertullian and Paul.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Anathematize Them: A Review of David Wichita's The Gospel according to Heretics By Joseph Johnson Why should the Church ever listen to heretics? How do you define a heretic in the first place? In David Wilhite’s engaging and informative introduction to the early christological conflicts of the Church, The Gospel according to Heretics, he takes on these questions and more with admirable clarity, depth, and sensitivity. Wilhite teaches at George W. Truett Seminary in Texas and specializes in the study of North African Christianity in late antiquity, giving him a good background for taking readers into the world of the Patristic era.In much traditional Christian thinking, heretics were viewed as evil and malicious (p.2). They were to be avoided and their voices were to be silenced if efforts to persuade ended in failure. The early church father Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, records that the Apostle John supposedly once fled from a building in order to avoid the heretic Corinth’s (3.3.4). Ignatius also exhorted readers in his Letter to the Trallians to, “cover up your ears in order to avoid receiving the things being sown by them” (9).At first glance, defining heresy doesn’t seem so hard, and at one level, it isn’t: a heretic is someone who holds to false, incorrect teachings that have been rejected by the catholic, universal Church as being outside the boundaries of acceptable Christian belief (p.12). This brings up the complication, however, of who gets to decide what constitutes true doctrine, since heretics often insisted that they were the true “orthodox” believers and that their opponents were the real “heretics.” Thus, Wilhite writes:The point is that in the earliest Christian centuries one couldn’t simply say orthodoxy is the teaching that is true to the Scriptures, because both the Scriptures and their interpretation were being contested. The often-ill-defined core of the Christian faith—not a creed, not a set of Scriptures, but the gospel of Jesus Christ as known in the apostolic preaching and tradition—was the stated difference between orthodox and unorthodox. (p.16)It’s pretty safe to say that the early Church did not interact with heretics sympathetically, viewing them instead primarily as dangerous. In The Gospel according to Heretics, Wilhite questions whether this approach was at times too polemical, leading orthodox writers to sometimes demonize and misrepresent the views of their opponents (p.2). He adds:The best historical studies of the last century have found evidence to suggest that our understanding of the “heretics” is so one-sided as to need revising. This book attempts to take this scholarly assessment seriously, extensively revising our understanding of each heresy. Beyond an understanding of the heresies themselves, such a study of the various unorthodox alternatives that shaped traditional Christian thinking offers those who wish to understand their own orthodoxy a more complete picture. (p.7)Re-examining the early Church’s Christological conflicts is a provocative undertaking, so Wilhite does well to add a few clarifications in his introduction. He isn’t seeking mere sensationalism (think the DaVinci Code), and he also isn’t advocating a hyper-skeptical stance toward traditional Christian thought (pp.3-4). Just because an orthodox writer charges a heretic with immorality and denying the resurrection doesn’t mean that we can conclude the heretical figure must have been a paragon of virtue and believed in Christ’s physical resurrection. Wilhite writes that:This need for critical reading arises simply because of the admitted bias of the orthodox sources. They explicitly claim to be attacking what they think is a false and even dangerous teaching. The orthodox writers, therefore, have tried to tip the scales in their favor as much as possible—something everyone did at that time” (p.4).He also warns that those attempting to critically read orthodox and heretical sources must avoid repeating the mistakes of the 20th century search for the “historical Jesus” (p.5). It’s all too easy to produce a historical reconstruction of the past only to find out that it has sadly become a self-portrait. Complete objectivity may be unobtainable, but that doesn’t leave scholars stuck in a morass of absolute subjectivity. Wilhite correctly argues that, “Even if we accept Nietzsche’s claim that ‘there are no facts, only interpretations,’ we can also move past him with Clifford Geertz and insist that some interpretations are better than others” (p.7).Throughout the book, he takes readers on a case-by-case basis through ten early Church christological controversies, from early ones like Marcionism and Docetism to later struggles such as Apollinarianism and Monophysitism. To get a clearer picture of Wilhite’s project, let’s briefly look at his discussion of the Apollinarian controversy.The story of Apollinaris begins promisingly enough. His father, termed Apollinaris the Elder by historians, was a priest in the Laodicean church. Both father and son hosted the famous anti-Arian figure Athanasius on his way back to Alexandria at the end of his second exile. Apollinaris was a strong proponent of Nicene christology (pp.130-131). Unlike the Arians, Apollinaris had no difficulties affirming Jesus’ fully divine status (p.131). The problem, as Wilhite puts it, is that, “Apollinaris, with other Apollinarians like Vitalis, so emphasized Christ’s divinity that he allegedly lost sight of Christ’s humanity” (p.132).In Wilhite’s eyes, this was in part because some of the technical terms being used by Apollinaris were a bit ambiguous, especially the term hypostasis: This Greek word has the sense of “existence.” The question is whether it implies something’s inner being (i.e. essence) or whether it refers to a specific being (i.e. individual or entity). If it means “inner being,” then it would be synonymous with “essence” or even “nature,” and then God the Father and the Son are one hypostasis/Being… On the other hand, if it implies an individual, then God the Father and the Son are two different hypostaseis, or (we would say) persons. (pp.134-135).Apollinaris sided with the Nicene view that hypostasis should be understood to mean (in English) “person,” rather than “nature,” thereby affirming that the three persons of the Godhead are three in person while one in essence. He went on to insist that the Word of God incarnate was one hypostasis, not two. Wilhite tells readers that, “Some of his opponents could hear this statement on the incarnation as reverting to the earlier meaning of hypostasis as nature, as in the Word incarnate’s one nature” (p.136). For orthodox writers, this was a problem.Wilhite explains that, “For Apollinaris’s enemies, this idea has several possible implications. One is that Christ might only have a divine nature (clearly Apollinaris is not Arian), and therefore that Christ’s one nature/hypostasis is not human” (p.136). Another possibility would be that Christ only appeared to have a human nature, which falls into the error of Docetism. Apollinaris defended himself against these accusations by asserting that Christ was one hypostasis/person and therefore can suffer “in the flesh,” where the flesh is understood to mean the outer person or body (p.137). Wilhite adds, “Whereas the inner person is normally identified as the soul, Apollinaris simply taught that the Word was Christ’s inner person. By using the term ‘soul’ to express his idea, however, Apollinaris raised a number of problems” (p.137). Conceptually the Greek word for “soul” (psyche) included things like the experience of human emotions and human reason. If Apollinaris’s Christ lacks a human psyche, then how can He be thought of as fully human?It seems that Apollinaris did not actually wish to deny that Jesus had a human psyche. According to Wilhite, Apollinaris later shifted his terminology and argued that the Word of God took on a man flesh and a human soul, but that the Word of God replaced what is normally thought of as the human mind (nous in Greek) (p.140). Ultimately, orthodox writers still saw this as an inadequate explanation of Jesus’ full humanity and divinity. In response, they argued that if being fully human means having a human body and soul, and a soul includes a human mind, then the Apollinarian denial of Christ’s nous still resulted in a subhuman Jesus. In the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, “But if He has a soul, and yet is without a mind, how is He man, for man is not a mindless animal? And this would necessarily involve that while His form and tabernacle was human, His soul should be that of a horse or ox” (Letter 101).Ultimately, Apollinaris’s teachings failed to satisfy the famous axiom previously employed against the gnostics heretics. Again, from Gregory of Nazianzus, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved” (Critique of Apollinaris and Apollinarianism). By failing to truly assume a human body, the gnostic Christ failed to save/heal the human body. In the same way, orthodox writers concluded that by failing to truly assume a human mind, the Apollinarian Christ failed to save/heal the human mind, or worse yet, that Apollinaris did not see any need for it to be saved/healed in the first place (p.142).In the concluding chapter of The Gospel according to Heretics, Wilhite returns to the contested topic of how heresy should be defined. Throughout the book, he has shown that heretics were more often misguided than malicious. So how does he define it? Wilhite concludes that:Heresy is an inadequate attempt to articulate the gospel. Heresy, then, is a truncated gospel. It is preaching “a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:6-7), and so it must be anathematized (1:9) as heresy. Notice that Paul does not claim his opponents teach falsehood. They simply neglect the full expression of what Christ has done. (p. 248)More often than not, it was only in response to some heretical teaching that the Church formally articulated Christian doctrines (think of the Patristic councils like Nicaea and Chalcedon). In Wilhite’s eyes, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Church was “making up” doctrine. I like how he explains it when he writes that “‘the search’ for orthodox doctrine is not a defense of previously stated doctrine, nor a complete fabrication, but a search for something that is real and waiting to be encountered and discovered” (p.251).Wilhite’s The Gospel according to Heretics is a fascinating introductory work that takes readers on a guided tour to the depths of the debates. It’s a good first read for those who are curious about why terms like homoousios were worth fighting about. Even for those like myself who have read a few books about early Church heresies before, it is an enjoyable book that is worth the read. I recommend it.Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Academic through the Baker Academic Bloggers program. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Interesting and Helpful By Pastor Jim Gray I must confess I am no church historian. Like most Pastors I have been more concerned with the teaching of the Bible than the history of the church. However, I wanted to read this book precisely because of my lack of knowledge on the subject.The author deals with 10 heresies, after introducing the subject of orthodoxy and heresy. In his introduction he reports to revise our view on the subjects. He states that he is attempting to revise or reinterpret the heretics in light of the postmodern condition (p. 7). His says the approach is that of impartialness, although true objectivity is impossible (p. 10). He admits that the terms orthodoxy and heresy are both contested and illusive terms, and do not give precise definitions. Two factors must be considered: First, we must remember many of these heresies were formed before the books of the biblical canon were fully established. Second, the claim of the heretics was that they were orthodox. His purpose is to look at how each heretic and teaching came to be seen as unorthodox (p.17). At the end of the book he makes a good concluding observation: Orthodoxy is a response to heresy, and heresy is an attempt to be viewed as orthodox (p. 247). Is this not true today? He tries to get beneath the embellishments of the opponents of these labeled heretics, which is the source of most of what we know of these men and their views. At times he seems a little too dismissive of the orthodox defenders writings against these heretics. He views the heretics as mistaken more than spiteful. That there views were more inadequate views of the gospel (p. 248); not necessarily a denial of it (although that is the case as well).He endeavors to boil the early heretics down to their primary errors. There are ten early heresies he examines:1. Marcion and the doctrine of Supersessionism, with God of the New Testament supersedes the God of the Old Testament.2. Ebion and the doctrine of Adoptionism, which viewed Jesus as simply human.3. Gnostics and the doctrine of Docetism, that Jesus is God simply looking like man.4. Sabellious and the doctrine of Modalism, hold that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are just costumes of God.5. Arius and the doctrine of Subordination, that Jesus is almost God.6. Apollianaris and the doctrine of Subhumanism. Christ has a human body, but a divine soul or mind.7. Nestorius and the doctrine of Dyoprosopitism, God the Son is a different person who inhabits man Jesus.8. Eutyches and the doctrine of Monophysitism, Jesus is half God and half human.9. Iconoclasts and the doctrine of Antirepresentationalism, holds a nonincarnate Jesus.10. Muslims and the doctrine of Reductionism, that Jesus was a prophet, not God.Forms of these heresies are with us today. Thus, it is important to know and see their roots are longstanding in the history of the church, they rarely go away. Heretics are good at mixing the truth with what is false or inaccurate. Wilhite holds that which heresies presented an inadequate gospel; they did do a service to the church in that heresies helped formulate what was orthodox. (This seems to be the underlying thesis of the author). Heresies may not be equal, but they are equally dangerous by the perverting Christ and His gospel.I found the book informative and interesting. There are times I felt the author was a little too hard on those who stood up against the heretics, and a little soft on the heretics. It is reader friendly and will give an insight both in understanding these heresies and the development of orthodoxy in the early church. It is a helpful work.I received this book free from Baker Academics for the purpose of reviewing it. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Not For Beginners By Amazon Customer As the new year begins, I finally completed the review for a book I’ve had for several months. The Gospel According to Heretics was written to help Bible study students to understand certain ancient Christian heresies from the early church period.This book is not for beginners. Instead of introducing you to the early church, Mr. Wilhite assumes you are already very familiar with it. This book is not about why Christians teach what they teach. It is about why the heretics taught what they taught. You should read standard books on early church history before you will find this book useful. Although I had studied the early church at the college level a decade ago, I would have benefited from some review before reading this book.That said, Mr. Wilhite writes a good reference for people who can add it to their other study materials instead of reading it on its own. He explores 10 early “heresies”—variations from orthodoxy—and shows how they justified their spinoff teachings. He uses humor to make his points memorable. This humor is filled with inside jokes and will frustrate readers who are not familiar enough with the material (i.e. Apollinarianism is “God-in-a-bod.”) His ultimate point is that because of these heresies, the church fathers were driven to state their gospel more clearly. The heretics were actually good for the church in the end, although they did need to be removed. Mr. Wilhite also makes the suggestion that Islam can be seen as one of these early heresies, similar in tone and origin to them, but more extreme. This will be viewed as very controversial by many.Bottom Line: A good academic supplement. Not a great book for light informational reading.I was given this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
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