These books will make super resources for Sunday school classes, for thoughtful church leaders, and indeed for all Christians who want to take their faith, and its ecumenical history, seriously.
C ARL R. T RUEMAN , Paul Woolley Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary, PA
Faithful wisdom through the centuries needs to be explored for our own engagement with Scripture today. It takes a gifted scholar to survey these sources well and a gifted teacher to communicate them to the person in the pew. Justin Holcomb is that sort of scholar-communicator.
M ICHAEL H ORTON , J. G. Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary, CA; author, The Christian Faith
I welcome the Know series as an important companion in our lifelong quest to know God better.
C AROLYN C USTIS J AMES , author, When Life and Beliefs Collide
The Know series gives local leaders and churches short, succinct, accurate, theologically informed, and relevant sketches of big topics in theology. Pastors and professors will discover they are unable to keep students from these volumes.
S COT M C K NIGHT , author, King Jesus Gospel
Jesus promised that the Spirit would lead the church into truth. That means that history matters. These concise books from Justin Holcomb are invitations into that history, to see how the Spirit led the church to articulate the orthodox Christian faith and how that scriptural imagination helped them discern errors and wrong turns. We need this wisdom more than ever in our postmodern moment.
J AMES K. A. S MITH , Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview, Calvin College; author, Letters to a Young Calvinistand Desiring the Kingdom
With pastoral insight and historical integrity, Dr. Holcomb has provided us with an accessible handbook on the major heretics and heresies of the church. Holcomb not only helps to unravel the ancient heresies of the church but also shows how they relate to similar heresies in our own day.
B URK P ARSONS , copastor, Saint Andrews Chapel
Why do we need to know the heretics? In this brief, balanced, and readable volume, Justin Holcomb shows that the old heresies keep coming back or never quite go away. His book is an informative introduction to ancient heresy and orthodoxy, and provides necessary weapons for combating their contemporary permutations.
P ETER L EITHART , President, Trinity House, Birmingham, AL; author, Against Christianity and Defending Constantine
I applaud the Know series in its effort to equip the saints; I encourage pastors and laypeople alike to diligently read these books.
J AMES H. G ILMORE , coauthor, The Experience Economy
Books in the Know Series
Know the Creeds and Councils
Know the Heretics
ZONDERVAN
Know the Heretics
Copyright 2014 by Justin Holcomb
ePub Edition March 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-51508-1
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holcomb, Justin S.
Know the heretics / Justin S. Holcomb.
pages cm. (The know series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-310-51507-4 (softcover)
1. Christian heresies. 2. Christian heretics. I. Title.
BT1315.3.H65 2014
273dc23
2013049100
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Conclusion
Why try to understand the heretics? We learn something important from them: how to distinguish the apostolic teaching from those views of Scripture that are not consistent with original Christianity. The heretics warn us not to be deceived by well-meaning teachers who have not listened carefully enough to Scripture to articulate the faith as understood by the apostles. Classic Christian writers have pointed to Gods purpose for permitting heresies: to awaken the church to misinterpretations of the apostles intentions.
In Know the Heretics, Justin Holcomb has condensed a great deal of complex information into concise, well-informed, and simple explanations of why these ideas are other than (hairesis) that which has been consensually received by the major interpreters of the apostolic tradition over the largest possible time frame.
T HOMAS C. O DEN
First of all , a special thanks to Jeffrey Haines for his superb research assistance and editing. Much gratitude for those who also assisted with research: Jordan Buckley, James Gordon, Nathan Chang.
I would like to thank Carl Trueman for his insights and advice on how to approach the history of heretics and heresies.
At Zondervan, I would like to thank my editor, Madison Trammel, who supported the book and series marvelously.
The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable... It is always easier to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep ones own.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Who is Jesus? Is he divine? Is he human? How does he relate to the God of the Old Testament? How do the divinity and humanity of Christ relate to his work in saving humanity? How is the fact that Christ was both human and God connected to how he rescues humanity? What does that rescue look like? How does Jesus save by example or by some supernatural intervention?
These are the questions that the leaders and thinkers of the early church wrestled with after the time of the apostles. And as you might imagine, the answers were far from clear-cut. Over the course of the first few centuries, a large number of theories were developed to try to explain all that the Bible has to say about God and humanity. But not all of these explanations were equally well grounded many of them owed too much to the spirit of the times or cut out essential parts of the Bible in order to make the explanation fit. This book is the story of those theories what they were and why they did not become a part of mainstream Christianity. Some believe that these theories were rejected because the institutional church was unwilling to be open minded; however, although I have tried to represent them as fairly as possible here, I am taking the position that they were rejected because they simply did not measure up to the beliefs that were accepted in the end.