Patristics is a lively scholarly domain in which theologians and historians contribute to the study of Christian antiquity. But modern trends in patristic study (especially the application of contemporary critical theory to ancient sources) are not always conducive to theological research. This paper identifies the preoccupation in modern patristic study with heresy as a major source of problems. The modern study of Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345-99) provides an exemplary case in which some of these problems can be identified and explored. The initial presentation of modern scholarship will bring into focus the way that Evagrius' relationship to the sixth-century condemnations of Origenism is interpreted by most scholars. Next, the paper identifies and evaluates recent indications that Evagrius is prized precisely because he is considered a heretic. In the final section of the paper, attention is paid to the problem of presuming that subsequent events disclose the theological meaning of earlier writings and to the problem of foreclosing independent theological assessment in order to preserve ancient condemnations. The conclusions suggest that preoccupations with alleged heresy can be every bit as detrimental to understanding of theological writings as preoccupations with orthodoxy.Scholars have in recent years noted -occasionally, with something like a sigh of reliefthat the study of the fathers of the church or, more broadly, the era in which they lived (patristic scholarship) is increasingly separated from theology. 1 Some of the impetus driving this separation comes from the great strides made in the revisionist study of what was formerly called 'the Dark Ages' (roughly, from the third to the eighth centuries): research methods from classical philology have been fruitfully applied to material from the post-classical Mediterranean, with the result that 'Late Antiquity' is a vibrant field of study. 2 Another engine driving the development is the adoption of contemporary literary theory by scholars of early Christian literature. Conversations between social historians, literary theorists and historical theologians have eroded the distinction between ancient Christian theology on the one hand and Christianity in late ancient society on the other, both of which are subsumed under the general title of patristic study -as the scope of activity at the quadrennial International Conference on Patristic Study in Oxford makes abundantly clear. The proliferation of scholarly monographs and articles, conferences and symposia, attests to the fruitfulness of collaboration across traditional academic disciplines.Despite the productivity of this interaction, however, it should not be assumed that all these approaches to the subject matter are straightforwardly compatible. Modern approaches to heresy provide excellent specimens of some of the problems that inadequately integrated, multi-disciplinary modes of scholarship can create and compound. A few of these problems have already been identified in a brief but thoughtprovoking essay...