When I was a first-year at The Seattle School, I celebrated my 23rd birthday with friends who still did not know me super well. My dear friend Bethany–who now knows me, I think, much better–made me a birthday cake celebrating the few things she DID know about me: I was turning 23, I loved the American writer John Updike, and I was absolutely fascinated by Christian heresies.

A lot has changed since then: I am much older and I am not as into John Updike’s writing as I had been, fresh out of undergrad. But I still love, love, love studying the heretics.

I love seeing how they were often so close to getting it right. And I loved to see how orthodox Christianity sometimes (though, as we’ve seen, not always) imagines a more equitable, complex, and inclusive theology than the ones the alleged heretics.

We’ll have some fun with the heretics this week. But first, you have some reading to do. The first two are intros to what we call orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The Wright text is super accessible, which is why I include it. It’s written for a popular audience, yet the author himself has a Ph.D. from Oxford. #legit

The Quash and Ward text is the prologue to a book I was assigned many moons ago when I took Theology at The Seattle School. The book is a good resource on the big heresies of the Christian church for those who have interest in the subject. (Pay attention to what’s at stake for Quash and Ward. It’s hard not to read a book called Heresies and How to Avoid Them without feeling like there’s a lot at stake for the authors!!)

The Young chapter is quite long, I know, and not super easy to read. HOWEVER, Frances Young is incredible and one of the noteworthy female scholars of historical theology. This particular text of hers integrates poetry and real-world experience alongside very rich and painfully detailed theological history. (If this were a true Church History course, I would have assigned this book alongside Justo Gonzalez’s text that I introduced you to this past week. But alas. 😉)

This chapter deals with more than just Christology–in fact, it spends a good deal in Theological Anthropology. I still think the whole chapter is worth reading, though, as she lays out the bigger picture of incarnation and Christ as the image of God.

Finally, please give the Apostle’s Creed (the early editions) a read. We will engage the more in class, but I want you to give it a go on your own.

One final note: Please be sure to sign up for Perusall before class as well. We will be looking at the Apostle’s Creed together! (Here’s our course code: SAWYER-BLC2H)