MARRIAGE, CELIBACY, AND HERESY IN ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY: THE JOVINIANIST CONTROVERSY

"This book is the first study in English dedicated to Jovinian and the controversy sparked by his teachings. Previous studies of Jovinian have tended to take polemical positions, siding either for or against him, based on Protestant or Catholic assumptions about the value of asceticism. Hunter's aim is to approach Jovinian more historically, placing him within the context of the debates about asceticism that confronted Christians in the West in the later years of the fourth century. He argues that Jovinian should be placed within the context of the formation of 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' in early Christianity.

Tracing the development of an anti-heretical tradition that extended back into the second century, Hunter shows that this heresiological discourse was alive and well in a number of fourth-century authors and that Jovinian's teachings were not far removed from the views of other 'orthodox' writers"--Jacket.