Defining Heresy

Recently I heard about a man calling another man a heretic. They were friends at one time and had been part of the same Christian community. But one of them moved on to another group of Christ followers and, because of his new affiliation, he was labeled heretic.

I was invited to speak at a small gathering of scholars where the first man was present. Before I arrived, he inquired about my grip on orthodoxy: Was I a heretic? He might have thought so. And I’m fine with that.

When it comes to Christian faith, there are good reasons for paying attention to things that could be deemed heretical. Some early detractors claimed that, if indeed God was fully present in the person of Jesus, then Jesus couldn’t have really suffered and died. God just doesn’t do that sort of thing. Therefore, it only seemed that Jesus died on that Roman cross. It was really just a divinely-inspired illusion. This prompted the apostle John to open one of his letters with the claim,

“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it . . .” (I John 1:1-2b)

It was a heretical thing to John to deny what he had experienced. He saw it all, he was there, he watched as blood dripped and life slipped away from Jesus. It was real and no illusion, and to say otherwise was to create a myth that denied reality. Heresy, in this case, would be a denial of the real.

But the definition of heresy—originally mean to “choose” another thing, something running counter to the tenets of the faith—morphed over time, and turned into anything that challenged dominant religious thinking. For example:

Jesus was a heretic because he challenged the religious elite’s hold on observance of the Sabbath and the forgiveness of sins.

Early Christians were heretics because they believed, along with the Jews, in only one God, denying the existence of the pantheon of gods and the divinity of the Emperor.

Franciscans were once considered heretics because they believed in the poverty of Christ.

And on it goes. But there are real heretics, ones who deny Christ, who set themselves up as ones to be worshipped, ones who demand unquestioned obedience from their followers, ones who create idols of thought and practice and invite others to bow down with them.

But it seems to me that the current definition of heresy, especially in conservative Evangelical circles, is telling me something I don’t already know.

One seminary website includes in its list of distinctive characteristics: The seminary reinforces my beliefs and I won't have to fight for them.

I know people (including myself) who have been labeled as heretics because they believe that there are more ways to try to wrap your mind around the atonement than just the theory of penal substitution. Or because they believe that the Bible is inspired and authoritative, but that the word inerrant is insufficient as an adjective. Or that TULIP is a flawed acronym for God’s reconciling work in the world in and through the person of Jesus Christ.

We need to work on this whole heretic thing. When we draw too many deep, uncrossable lines in the sand, we risk isolating ourselves from everyone else with walls constructed out of our own certainties, never considering that along the way, we just might have gotten some things wrong.

I’m glad that Peter and the first Jewish Christians, realizing that the Holy Spirit fell generously and without ritual qualification on the Gentiles, were able to admit that they had gotten something wrong, that their story was a story for the world and not just for them.

This coming from a group of people who had just spent three years with Jesus. And they still got some things wrong.

Do we have everything right? Is questioning our certainties tantamount to heresy?

A Lenten Reflection for February 27, 2013

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.
Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. (Romans 1:28-2:1)

Let your steadfast love become my comfort according to your promise to your servant.
Let your mercy come to me, that I may live. (Psalm 119:76-77)


It’s very helpful to have those people around. You know the ones—they’re responsible for doing all the bad things that we hear about. They provide us with the opportunity to objectify evil so that we know it’s out there with those people. That way we can be secure in the knowledge that it’s not in here with us.

But it is.

The apostle Paul was writing to help Jewish and Gentile Christians figure out how to live together, to be one body in Christ. In doing so, he leveled the moral playing field by making everyone culpable in acts of wickedness. Jesus did this too:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

The mind is tethered to the hand. I may not have committed adultery, but I have shared the same mind with the adulterer. I may not have committed murder, but in my anger I have opened the possibility of such an action. We’re not so far apart, those people and me.

I take comfort in remembering that, in Jesus . . . “we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15b-16).

I can’t really think about those people without recognizing that I am kin to them. But the recognition is important. It motivates me to turn to God, who, in the person of Jesus, has entered into the entirety of human existence. In that turning he rightly judges my life and draws me into a life that is new.

Just as he desires to do for those people.

On Being Right

I had a lively conversation with some of my students yesterday. We talked together about some of the more significant issues that Christian leaders are facing today: Same-sex marriage and ordination, illegal immigration, religious pluralism, and so on. These are issues that were not on the larger cultural table even twenty or thirty years ago, at least to the degree that they are now.

We talked about how we are always struggling with assumptions about what is acceptable, biblical, and right, while at the same time being confronted with principles that create difficult tensions for us. So our faith tradition might, for example, stand in opposition to same-sex marriage. Yet, if a same-sex couple were to approach one of us and ask for help and counsel, would we refuse them? What if their adopted child had been coming to our church with a friend, and the parents later showed up, wondering if they could be part of such a community of faith? What if we lead a church in a California or Arizona border town, where emotions run high regarding illegal immigration, and a family in our neighborhood—a family without proper US documentation—needs help, do we reach out or turn away because of their illegal status? Either way, do we feel an obligation to turn them in to the authorities?

These are not random, hypothetical questions. They happen. And without deep, theological reflection, we run the risk of sacrificing human beings on altars of rightness. The tensions are not insignificant, and Christian leaders need more than a list of rules in order to respond with integrity.

Here’s a precedent from the Bible. The rule for the first followers of Jesus was that, in order to enter into this new life and to receive the Holy Spirit, a person had to become part of the Jewish community. It made sense: Jesus and the disciples were Jewish, they were all in Israel, Jesus said that he came for his own people, and so on. But when the Holy Spirit fell upon a group of Gentiles in Antioch, a tension was created. Now the rules were crashing against a new reality that involved real human beings and the apparent work of God. The early Christians struggled with this, and the former rule of ethnic affiliation ultimately gave way to the new principle of God’s intentions for the world (see Acts 10-11).

We need to think a lot about where we begin with people. There is a tendency for us (and with most people) to put others in categories (gay, illegal, divorced, apostate, etc.) and react with sets of rules that keep things orderly. That way, we can end with things left in tact (this didn’t work for the earliest Christians, who found their whole world turned upside down when the Spirit fell on the Gentiles). Rather than begin in those categorical places of “sin” (as if we don’t fit in any of those categories), we might consider beginning with other people as co-humans made in the image of God, co-sinners seeking new life. That place of commonality changes our assumptions about others and draws us into the recognition of God’s common grace (as my Reformed friends might say) to us.

Along with Peter and the early Church leaders, we must hold loosely to our rules. After all, the people of God have a long and chronicled history of getting things wrong. We are not exempt from that.