The arguments in Catherine Nixey’s ‘Heretic’ remind us we’re never done contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
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Dad jokes aren’t particularly good. Most adults groan when they hear “Knock knock.” Yet young children lean in, giggling as they reply, “Who’s there?” Corny jokes don’t survive because they’re good. They survive because there’s always a new audience.
Similarly, Christian apologetics gets a new audience with every generation, as illustrated by Catherine Nixey’s book Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God. Nixey, a journalist who studied classics at Cambridge, argued in her 2017 book, The Darkening Age, that Christianity destroyed the classical world. Informed readers will detect echoes of Edward Gibbon’s thesis in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
