Orthodoxy and Heresy

Throughout his literary career, which spanned some four decades, Jerome consistently projected to readers the image of a mighty champion of theological orthodoxy. Rhetorically speaking, he curated this idealized image in part by defining himself in stark opposition to “heretics” whom he relentlessly cast as the damnable “other.” He adopts this same literary persona to the hilt in the four Pauline commentaries. This chapter first reviews his anti-heretical strategies in them before moving on to case studies in his three main heresiological preoccupations as an interpreter of Paul: Marcionite theology, anti-Nicene Christologies, and the Gnostic doctrine of fixed natures.