Heretics for Armchair Theologians
The Gonzálezes point out that heretics aren’t necessarily bad. Those they discuss in six chapters on persons and two on conceptual magnets for heresy, the Trinity and Christology, were earnest believers, and the church profited from arguing with them, even when it decided at last to excommunicate or, rarely, kill them. The topics they contested included whether or to what extent Jesus was divine (by the Ebionites and many later groups), the nature of creation (by gnosticism), whether Judaic law and scriptures should be observed and revered by Christians (by Marcion), what standards of behavior were appropriate to members of the church (by the Montanists), relations of church and state (by the Donatists), sin and free will (by Pelagius), the constituency of the Trinity, and the kind of divinity manifested by Jesus. Most of these matters are now primarily of historical interest (not gnosticism, however, as the popularity of Elaine Pagels and many New Age enthusiasms attest), but the Gonzálezes, aided by Ron Hill’s humanizing cartoons, make them lively again. --Ray Olson