Heresy

The fact that good Christians disagree on various doctrinal issues is a reality that every Christian must eventually come to grips with. There are, of course, easy ways out. For example, no one is going to heaven except those with my particular beliefs. This idea usually crops up in only the most insular churches and sects and isn’t very healthful for an honest intellect. Alternatively, one can make such disagreements totally irrelevant by tacit materialism. What matter is the doctrine of election if the purpose of the Gospel is simply to make us better people to one another? This may make one feel magnanimous in one’s tolerance and cosmopolitan outlook, but it ultimately eviscerates the God-centered heart of the Christian faith.

Given the unacceptability of these two options, the very fact of honest disagreement forces us to conclude that God simply does not perfect everyone’s (or anyone’s) faith or belief while on earth, regardless of which side may have claim to the truth. There has likely not been a person in the history of the earth who has fully and truthfully apprehended every nuance of Christian doctrine.

This begs the question of what beliefs are necessary for salvation. One can take the historical route of the Roman Catholic Church, and categorically anathematize certain beliefs (or at least the people who believe them). The Athanasian Creed is full of anathemas for those who don’t believe in certain nuances of the doctrine of the Trinity, for example. Of course, this approach again begs the question, what makes an idea a heresy, as opposed to a simple error? And further, who gets to decide?

History has shown that faith in Rome to decide such questions is misplaced. As with any extended order, central authority usually isn’t a very good solution. Yet most Protestants also tacitly accept a form of the idea. They carry with them a conservative list of categorical anathemas, and brush the question of “who gets to decide” under the table. Or worse yet, they arrogate the power to themselves.

Presumably any thinking person laboring under such assumptions would admit that heresy is to be discovered, not declared. Yet this simply moves the question from who to how. It still requires a distinction between heresy and simple error, a distinction which is problematic for several reasons, not least of which is that it’s arbitrary.

These problems arise because we apply the category of “heresy” to an idea or a belief in the abstract, independent of any particular believer. We say, “If you believe this, you are automatically excluded from the Church until you recant”. This is not a helpful statement. If we are to understand the nature of heresy, a belief, the holding of which precludes salvation, we must first define the prerequisite to salvation: faith is the apprehension of the self as meritless and of God as supremely valuable.

With this laid out before us, we can cast the question of heresy in the light of Romans 14:

Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this – not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
Romans 14:13-14

What can we glean from this passage with regard to heresy?

1. The category of heresy does not apply to an idea in the abstract. Nothing is unclean in itself.
2. Heresy is any belief that blinds one to the glory of God. Paul sets the locus of Christian liberty on the glory of God in a parallel passage: Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). This command comes in the middle of a passage which sounds very similar to Romans 14, talking about whether it is lawful to eat meat sacrificed to idols (it is, he concludes, so long as one’s conscience is not violated; i.e., so long as it confers no legitimacy to those idols). This means what is heresy for one believer may not be for another. There are many Arminian Christians I know and know of who have a strong and earnest desire for God through Christ. There are many more who had no sense of the glory and goodness of God until divesting themselves of notions of self-agency. Is Arminianism heresy? For some people, yes. For others, no. Faulty beliefs can obscure the glory of God the same way that eating sacrificed meat might inadvertently obscure the glory of God to a weaker brother by legitimizing the house of the idol. On the other hand, God gives to some a faith so strong that they apprehend his glory in spite of egregious doctrinal errors.¹
3. This presumes that the purpose of truth is that we might apprehend the Glory of God. There is no believer with a faith so strong that it could not be made stronger by the correcting of its errors. John reveals the purpose of his own letters in 1 John 1:4: These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete – joy in the glory of God through the sanctification of his readers. We have a duty to truth because the glory of God is the good of the elect. The more accurately we see God through the lens of the doctrine we hold, the more glorious he will seem to us, no matter how glorious he already seemed before.
4. The standard is not external. No human – Pope or Preacher – can anathematize another, for one cannot see except vaguely another’s concept of the glory of God. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore.

Having thus disposed of the distinction between heresy and simple error, we can nevertheless (roughly) call some ideas “more heretical” than others, keeping in mind that any idea cannot be categorical heresy; only “heresy to someone”. It is obvious, for example, that a belief in free human agency has less potential to obscure the glory of God than a denial of the humanity of Christ. Arminianism can thus be called “less heretical” than Gnosticism, as long as we remember that this refers only to its effect on particular believers.

On the subject of Gnosticism, though the idea of anathematization by council may have been misplaced, there is good reason that so many historical anathemas are centered around doctrines of Christ. The redemption of mankind through Christ is the focal point of the display of God’s glory on earth. This is precisely why knowledge of Christ is so essential to apprehending the glory of God, and thus to Salvation. Indeed, Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; whoever confesses the Son has the Father also (1 John 2:23). To deny the Son is to fail to apprehend the greatest display of God’s glory in history; a fortiori apprehension of lesser glory nevertheless does not avail to instill the pursuit of God as a behavioral axiom.

So perhaps Athanasius and the early church fathers (and certainly later pontiffs) went overboard in anathematizing various competing doctrines. But we must comprehend as they did so clearly the supremacy and centrality of Christ as a window to the glory of God, even if they did place too much stock in the church as institution.

1. This is God’s way of keeping me humble when I might be inclined to take pride in the effort I put into doctrine: the faith I have been given is so small, my spiritual sight so dull by nature, that I can apprehend the glory of God only through the clearest of lenses. Praise to God that he provides the lens along with that small measure of faith.