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Heretics : the creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the modern church / Jonathan Wright.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.Description: ix, 338 p. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 015101387X
  • 9780151013876
Subject(s):
Contents:
The heretics -- The invention of heresy. Ignatius ; Marcion and Gnosticism ; The Montanists ; Blunting the challenges : Christian unity ; Persecution ; The Church -- Constantine, Augustine, and the criminalization of heresy. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus ; Constantine ; Who was Christ? ; Donatism ; Augustine ; Whence and whiter? -- The heresy gap. Heresy redivivus ; Iconoclasm -- Medieval heresy I. Orléans ; Popular heresy ; Valdes ; Popular heresy : reality ; Popular heresy : myth ; The Cathars -- Medieval heresy II. Francis ; Where to draw the lines? ; The Beguines ; All the others ; Hus ; The fabled road to the Reformation -- Reformations. The revolution ; The Reformation muddle ; The other reformation ; Reformation certainty ; The new heresies ; Drowned without mercy : Anabaptists ; Servetus ; Plus ça change? -- The death of heresy? Caution ; Pragmatism l The Great Leap -- American heresy. New England ; Hutchinson ; Williams ; Quakers ; Revolutions great and small ; Jefferson and Madison ; The Republic -- The polite centuries. Emerson and Parker ; The sum of all heresies.
Summary: Looks at many of the famous heretics in history--from Martin Luther to John Calvin to the Libyan cleric Arius--and argues that heresy actually helped strengthen the Christian church into the powerful force it is today.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 273 W951 Available 33111006771055
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In Heretics Jonathan Wright charts the history of dissent in the Christian Church through the stories of some of its most emblematic heretics--from Arius, a fourth-century Libyan cleric who doubted the very divinity of Christ, to more successful heretics like Martin Luther and John Calvin. As he traces the Church's attempts at enforcing orthodoxy, from the days of Constantine to the modern Catholic Church's lingering conflicts, Wright argues that heresy, by forcing the Church to continually refine and impose its beliefs, actually helped Christianity to blossom into one of the world's most formidable and successful religions.

Today, all believers owe it to themselves to grapple with the questions raised by heresy. Can you be a Christian without denouncing heretics? Is it possible that new ideas challenging Church doctrine are destined to become as popular as have Luther's once outrageous suggestions of clerical marriage and a priesthood of all believers? A delightfully readable and deeply learned new history, Heretics overturns our assumptions about the role of heresy in a faith that still shapes the world.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The heretics -- The invention of heresy. Ignatius ; Marcion and Gnosticism ; The Montanists ; Blunting the challenges : Christian unity ; Persecution ; The Church -- Constantine, Augustine, and the criminalization of heresy. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus ; Constantine ; Who was Christ? ; Donatism ; Augustine ; Whence and whiter? -- The heresy gap. Heresy redivivus ; Iconoclasm -- Medieval heresy I. Orléans ; Popular heresy ; Valdes ; Popular heresy : reality ; Popular heresy : myth ; The Cathars -- Medieval heresy II. Francis ; Where to draw the lines? ; The Beguines ; All the others ; Hus ; The fabled road to the Reformation -- Reformations. The revolution ; The Reformation muddle ; The other reformation ; Reformation certainty ; The new heresies ; Drowned without mercy : Anabaptists ; Servetus ; Plus ça change? -- The death of heresy? Caution ; Pragmatism l The Great Leap -- American heresy. New England ; Hutchinson ; Williams ; Quakers ; Revolutions great and small ; Jefferson and Madison ; The Republic -- The polite centuries. Emerson and Parker ; The sum of all heresies.

Looks at many of the famous heretics in history--from Martin Luther to John Calvin to the Libyan cleric Arius--and argues that heresy actually helped strengthen the Christian church into the powerful force it is today.

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