2002 NAPS Presidential Address: Hellenism and Heresy

Drawing on post-colonial theories concerning religion and culture, the author argues that the ancient history of Christian theological controversies should no longer rest on oppositions between "orthodoxy" and "heresy" or Christianity and Hellenism. Recent studies of ancient Roman religion and culture in fact reveal conscious negotiation by ancient authors that traditional terms such as "syncretism" or "eclecticism" have hidden. Reading the development of "heresiology" by Justin Martyr as a form of cultural negotiation concerning problems of universalism and tradition in contemporary Hellenism allows one to understand the creation of "orthodoxy" as both definitive for religious identity and inherently unstable.