Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-Making Heresy

Adam Powell is assistant professor of religious studies and director of the Master of Arts in Religious Studies at Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Center for Graduate Studies of Asheville, NC.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Approaching Answers
Outline

Part One
1.Heresy as Opposition: Debates and Definitions
Available Definitions
Relativity and Heresy
The Ideal Type
Toward a Sociology of Heresy
Heresy and Soteriology: The Process of Interaction

2.The Heretical Process: Its Assumptions and Predictions
The Sociology of Knowledge
Hans Mol’s Adaptation/Identity Dialectic
When Position becomes Confession
From Opposition to Salvation

Part Two
3.Locating Heresy: The Threefold Attack
Pagans, Jews, Gnostics, and Rome: The Irenaean Antecedent
Ministers, Mobs, Apostates, and “Gentile” (Protestant) America: The Early Mormon Example
Ferment and Fecundity

4.Resolving Heresy: Soteriological Schemas
Toward Resolution
Order and Salvation
Group and Self in the Soteriological Schema
God, Humanity, Resolution, and Adaptation

Conclusion: Salvation and Success
God-making Heresy
Finale

Bibliography
Index
About the Author