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Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries. By Maurice Wiles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. x + 204 pp. $55.00 cloth.
"Historians need not only that objectivity of judgement which alone can save them from lapsing into the prejudices of mere propaganda, but also some personal conviction about or empathy with the issues involved, if they are to grasp and record a narrative that makes sense of diverse happenings of the past" (165). Such qualities characterize Maurice Wiles's chronicle of Arianism through the centuries. The major portion of this study is devoted to telling its story as it unfolded in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As historical theology, Wiles's narratives of Arianism show that the achievements of Arian and Trinitarian theologians throughout the centuries are incomprehensible without reference to the social and political forces that shaped them (182-86). The Christian (Trinitarian) doctrine of God was not, contra R. P. C. Hanson, found but made (179-80). If there was a time when the Trinity was not, that historical judgment has been impeded by rhetorically motivated slander against Arius and successor Arianisms, an impediment whose removal may be credited to Hanson's study, as well as to that of Rowan Williams. But their success simply raises the theological ante: if having stripped the myth from the man, one uncovers a biblical theology faithful to the New Testament evidence concerning Jesus Christ, a faithful deployment of Ante-Nicene tradition, and a coherent use of reasoning (evidence for all three furnished by...