Synopses & Reviews
In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the Bible to provide answers. Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many "answers" that often contradict one another. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers:
- The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sin
- The book of Job, which offers two different answers: suffering is a test, and you will be rewarded later for passing it; and suffering is beyond comprehension, since we are just human beings and God, after all, is God
- Ecclesiastes: suffering is the nature of things, so just accept it
- All apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God will eventually make right all that is wrong with the world
For renowned Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, the question of why there is so much suffering in the world is more than a haunting thought. Ehrman's inability to reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of real life led the former pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church to reject Christianity.
In God's Problem, Ehrman discusses his personal anguish upon discovering the Bible's contradictory explanations for suffering and invites all people of faith or no faith to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world and each of us.
Review
"Ehrman writes in a clear and engaging style, bringing personal reflection and reason to bear on academically sound readings of biblical perspectives on suffering, from both the Old and the New Testament. Ultimately, the book is a very personal statement that will anger some and resonate with others." Library Journal
Synopsis
A top Bible scholar and New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus challenges the varied and contradictory biblical explanations for why an all-powerful God allows suffering.
Synopsis
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 Churchs attempts at enforcing orthodoxy, from the days of Constantine to the modern Catholic Churchs 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 worlds 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 Luthers 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.
Synopsis
A lively new examination of Christian heresy, from a historian who argues that heretical dissent helped Christianity become the world's most powerful religion.
About the Author
Bart D. Ehrman is the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestselling Misquoting Jesus. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the early Church and the life of Jesus. He has been featured in Time and has appeared on NBC's Dateline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, The History Channel, major NPR shows, and other top media outlets. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Table of Contents
Contents
1. The Heretics 1
2. The Invention of Heresy 14
Ignatius 14
Marcion and Gnosticism 19
The Montanists 30
Blunting the Challenges: Christian Unity 34
Persecution 39
The Church 44
3. Constantine, Augustine, and the
Criminalization of Heresy 50
The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 50
Constantine 54
Who Was Christ? 58
Donatism 69
Augustine 74
Whence and Whither? 78
4. The Heresy Gap 83
Heresy Redivivus 85
Iconoclasm 89
5. Medieval Heresy I 95
Orléans, 1022 95
Popular Heresy 102
Valdes 106
Popular Heresy: Reality 115
Popular Heresy: Myth 126
The Cathars 130
6. Medieval Heresy II 135
Francis 137
Where to Draw the Lines? 140
The Beguines 142
All the Others 145
Hus 150
The Fabled Road to the Reformation 156
7. Reformations 160
The Revolution 160
The Reformation Muddle 169
The Other Reformation 171
Reformation Certainty 181
The New Heresies 188
Drowned Without Mercy: Anabaptists 196
Servetus 200
Plus Ça Change? 204
8. The Death of Heresy? 212
Caution 212
Pragmatism 221
The Great Leap 225
9. American Heresy 238
New England 241
Hutchinson 245
Williams 251
Quakers 255
Revolutions Great and Small 262
Jeff erson and Madison 264
The Republic 271
10. The Polite Centuries 276
Emerson and Parker 278
The Sum of All Heresies 284
11. Conclusion 291
acknowledgments 303
notes 305
suggested reading 317
index 323