Heresy in The Early Church Issue 51 | 1996 Purchase this issue

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The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, edited by Everett Ferguson (Garland, 1995), covers the bases (and often more) on all the items in this issue. One general work of special value is Stuart G. Hall’s Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 1992).

Crystalline clarity marks Maurice Wiles’s The Christian Fathers (Oxford, 1982). He shows the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian theology.

Pride of place among textbooks goes to J.N.D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines (Harper San Francisco, 1978). Its balance, lucidity, and helpful organization have put countless students in his debt. Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (University of Chicago, 1971) is more impressionistic and written less with beginners in mind. But it is stronger than Kelly in long perspectives and illuminating insights.

Central to Christian faith is the person of Christ himself. Volume 1 of Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (A.D. 451) by Aloys Grillmeier (John Knox, 1975) is massive, and massively learned, but inescapable for those who want to delve deeper.

Church historians continue to dispute Arius’s teaching, especially in respect to its intellectual roots and central concerns. Rowan Williams’s Arius: Heresy and Tradition (Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1987) is not easy going but remains at center stage. A fine introduction to the mind of the Arians’ greatest opponent is available in Alvyn Petterson’s Athanasius (Geoffrey Chapman, 1995).

No book has created waves like Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Its German original (1934) was finally translated into English in 1971 (Fortress). In an age inimical to tradition ...