From the author of "The Paradise Complex" comes a new book that explores the lost message of the Messiah. Douglas Lockhart questions the "fact" of divine intervention and provides a detailed analysis of Jesus' life, his compatriots, and the roots of early Christianity.

"A brilliant book—sometimes frightening, occasionally funny, frequently unsettling and always a thrill to read. It probes painfully into the pathology of belief." — The Times From a celebrated classicist and author of The Darkening Age (“[a] ballista-bolt of a book”—New York Times Book Review), a biography of the many, diverse variations of Jesus who thrived in early Christian traditions—and how they were lost until just one “true” Christ survived. Contrary to the teachings of the church today, in the first several centuries of Christianity’s existence, there was no consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. Instead, there were many different Christs. One had a twin brother and traveled to India; another consorted with dragons. One particularly terrifying Christ scorned his parents and killed those who opposed him. Moreover, in the early years of the first millennium there were many other saviors, many sons of gods who healed the sick and cured the lame. But as Christianity spread, they were pronounced unacceptable – even heretical – and they faded from view. Heretic unearths the different versions of Christ who existed in the minds of early Christians, and the process of evolution—and elimination—by which Jesus became the singular figure we know today.

A lively examination of the heretics who helped Christianity become the world’s most powerful religion. From Arius, a fourth-century Libyan cleric who doubted the very divinity of Christ, to more successful heretics like Martin Luther and John Calvin, this book charts the history of dissent in the Christian Church. As the author traces the Church’s attempts at enforcing orthodoxy, from the days of Constantine to the modern Catholic Church’s lingering conflicts, he argues that heresy—by forcing the Church to continually refine and impose its beliefs—actually helped Christianity to blossom into one of the world’s most formidable 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 Luther’s 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. “Wright emphasizes the ‘extraordinarily creative role’ that heresy has played in the evolution of Christianity by helping to ‘define, enliven, and complicate’ it in dialectical fashion. Among the world’s great religions, Christianity has been uniquely rich in dissent, Wright argues—especially in its early days, when there was so little agreement among its adherents that one critic compared them to a marsh full of frogs croaking in discord.” —The New Yorker

The Fool and the Heretic is a deeply personal story told by two respected scientists who hold opposing views on the topic of origins, share a common faith in Jesus Christ, and began a sometimes-painful journey to explore how they can remain in Christian fellowship when each thinks the other is harming the church. To some in the church, anyone who accepts the theory of evolution has rejected biblical teaching and is therefore thought of as a heretic. To many outside the church as well as a growing number of evangelicals, anyone who accepts the view that God created the earth in six days a few thousand years ago must be poorly educated and ignorant--a fool. Todd Wood and Darrel Falk know what it's like to be thought of, respectively, as a fool and a heretic. This book shares their pain in wearing those labels, but more important, provides a model for how faithful Christians can hold opposing views on deeply divisive issues yet grow deeper in their relationship to each other and to God.

This study explores Marcion's ideas through his writings and the writings of early Christian polemicists who shaped the idea of heresy.

In opposition to those who would claim that Christian faith embraces God at the expense of the suffering world, Rollins shows how the true believer embraces God only inasmuch as he fully embraces a needy world.

'Voluptuous' may not be a common word associated with God, but the author speaks metaphorically of God in a way that calls us to laughter, love, and joy -- voluptuousness as 'full delight' -- and invites us to worship a God of intimacy rather than a God of distance. The light yet not trivial tone of this work supports the author's basic premise that we are meant to live our humanity joyfully, thankfully, and fully from our hearts. The book is rooted in the Christian tradition but affirms that truth can also be found in other religions, spirituality, and secular practices.