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AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State

Author: Charles Freeman
Publisher: Pimlico
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

2 reviews
Sales Rank: 75539

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3

ISBN: 1845950062
EAN: 9781845950064
ASIN: 1845950062

Publication Date: February 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book dispatched from stock in the UK

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Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars

Those Ghastly Christians! June 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

In late 4th century Constantinople the masseurs at the public baths, as they pummelled your body, debated vigorously with each other and their clients the finer points of Christian doctrine. Can you imagine the like today in say a modern sports club? An opinionated discussion about footie maybe,or in the City perhaps the Footsie? Shortly after finishing this book I embarked on Richard Hutchinson's The Last Days of Henry VIII and yet again in Tudor England we find the highest and lowest in the land passionately squabbling about Christian doctrine and often settling their disputes in the most horrible ways. I can't help thinking what a tragedy it was for mankind that for over 1200 years the finest intellects of the western world devoted themselves to sterile debate on the unprovable. And what a ghastly bigoted lot most of those early Christian fathers were irrespective of what side of the doctrinal fence they sat on. When the neo-platonist female philosopher and mathmetician Hypatia,arguably the finest intellect of her age but of course a pagan, was torn to pieces by a mob in early 5th c. Alexandria it was almost certainly at the instigation of their bishop.
This book is I think unlikely to prove compulsive reading for those with a casual interest in history even though it is clearly intended for popular consumption. You have to be interested in the late antique world, the history of Christianity or the history of ideas. That said, I found this book an engrossing read that brought into sharp focus much that I had encountered in various other works on late Roman history.

4 out of 5 stars

Original and challenging February 11, 2008
28 out of 30 found this review helpful

This book is a phenomenon - a study of doctrinal conflict in the Christian Church of the fourth century that is written not for scholars, not for students, but for the general public. It would be easy for professionals to point out various aspects of Freeman's treatment that are insecure - the over-estimation of the novelty of the decrees of Theodosius I (379-95) against heretics and pagan practices, the claim that he prematurely suppressed the Arian debate when in fact it had already become tiresome and unproductive, the pillorying of Nicene orthodoxy as oppressive when in fact it provided what has remained the decent minimum of common Christian belief ever since, the mistake of supposing that laws against heresy and paganism necessarily implied persecution when in fact they were primarily concerned to please God, and finally the unconscious clericalism of thinking that the leading role taken by the emperor was usurpation. But if we professionals leave the writing of non-academic books on this subject to non-professionals, we have no right to complain if they don't quite say what most of us would have said (particularly since 'we' are not in uniform agreement!). Surely we should thank Freeman for airing these matters in public, and for raising a major question that historians of doctrine too often ignore: was the price of Christian orthodoxy too high? Was the greater clarity gradually obtained over the Christian doctrine of God an adequate compensation for the restrictions on the freedom of debate that developed gradually in late antiquity (rather than suddenly under Theodosius I) and have remained a reality in most of the Christian churches (in varying degrees) ever since? Is Christianity, which claims to be based not on reason but on revelation, inevitably the enemy of intellectual freedom? However debatable certain features of this book as a work of history (and to say they are debatable is not to assert they are simply wrong), we must thank Freeman for pressing us on this vital question.