Emasculating Heresy: The Battle for a Word
In all likelihood, the current myth that “Heresy is getting Jesus wrong,” which pops up from time to time, can be traced back to the Second English Act of Supremacy of 1558 (sometimes titled 1559, the year of its approval), which was part of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement under Elizabeth I which reestablished Protestantism as the faith of the Church of England following the reign of Mary I (Bloody Mary). It declared that anyone acting under the authority of the monarch…shall not in any wise have authority or power to order, determine, or adjudge any matter or cause to be heresy, but only such as heretofore have been determined, ordered, or adjudged to be heresy, by the authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by the first four general Councils…or such as hereafter shall be ordered, judged, or determined to be heresy by the High Court of Parliament of this realm, with the assent of the clergy in their Convocation.14
In his 1978 speech, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (who wrote the book that became the movie Blade Runner) wrote, “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984.” Forty-five years later we find ourselves living in a world where perhaps most of the conflicts in public discourse are somehow connected to the manipulation of words.
Suddenly, words like “gender,” “racism,” and “equity” don’t mean what they used to mean. Meanwhile, our ears and social media accounts are bombarded by new terms like “microagression,” “intersectionality,” and “cultural appropriation.” If it seems as though other worldviews are wrestling for control of the English language’s steering wheel that’s only because they are.
“Haven’t You Heard It’s a Battle of Words?”
It should come as no surprise that today’s word manipulators gravitate to terms that carry maximum impact on hearts and minds. This is true whether they’re coining new terms or plundering old ones. As Robert J. Lifton explained long ago, people who practice this, whom he called “totalists,” “live in an environment characterized by the thought-terminating cliché.”2 They conscript words and phrases into the service of their ideology, strip them of their former identities, shave their heads, and put them in new ideological uniforms. In the war of ideas, words are the boots on the ground. They must be drilled into disciplined troops.
Does the reigning ideology require that the LGBTQ+ agenda be accepted by Christians? Then positive, inviting words like “affirming” must be drafted into service and applied to those churches who cooperate with that agenda. Those who don’t are obviously “haters” and “bigots.” (These are but early assault troops paving the way for the full-on invasion of elite forces like “gender non-conforming,” “transphobia,” and “lived experience,” thus signaling that the occupation is fully underway.)
But what if the other side mobilizes its own time-tested terminology in defense of its opposing beliefs? For example, how does the ideology defend itself against a word like “heresy?” Obviously, that word must be captured, re-educated, if you will, and assigned to its appropriate place on the battlefield.
“LGBTQ+? Where Do the Early Creeds Even Mention That?”
One of the most common ways of doing that with the word “heresy” is to limit its firepower. To slightly mix metaphors here, throughout church history “heresy” has served as a kind of “military assault weapon,”3 if you will, in theological battles. In a far less tolerant time, countless people were executed, often rather gruesomely, for heresy.
Of course, for the past few centuries the worst thing that can happen to most people accused of heresy is that they might have to find another place to go to church. Even so, that is now considered cruel and unusual punishment in the rhetoric of today’s ideologues (who will gladly “cancel” you out of your career and social circle if you step out of their prescribed verbal line).4
So, in recent years, many have tried to retool the weapon of the word “heresy” to degrade its functionality. They realize they can’t scrap it altogether, so they try to rebuild it with a much shorter range and less ammunition capacity, mainly so that it can’t be effectively used against them.
Perhaps the most popular way of doing this has been to limit the number of doctrines that “heresy” is able to target by insisting that it can only be applied to a limited set of doctrines—specifically, those doctrines that were established within the first half-millennium of the Christian church concerning the Deity of Christ and the Trinity, specifically at early church councils like the one that produced the Nicene Creed, which is still recited in many churches. This way, they can claim that current controversies over issues of sexual morality have nothing to do with heresy.
I once had a pastor in my own denomination tell me, “Heretics deny Nicea, not Westminster,”5 the Westminster Confession of Faith being one of our denominational standards affirming such things as the sole authority of Scripture and justification by faith alone, which are not found in the Nicene Creed. He couldn’t be more wrong.
If they can fool educated, conservative, Bible-believing Christians into accepting this canard, they will have effectively disarmed them of an important weapon in the battle over the teachings of God’s word.
A Recent Example
Several days before I wrote most of this on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, i.e., X, Megan Basham called out LGBTQ+ “affirming” pastor Kevin M. Young for “his heresies regarding sexuality.”6. Two minutes later, Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor Ben Marsh upbraided her, telling her to “get a life.”7 Less than a half-hour later, Basham asked Marsh to tell her “whether what Kevin Young teaches about homosexuality and transgenderism is heresy, which led to the following exchange a few minutes later.
-
Three Reasons to Study Historical Theology
To ignore godly teachers of the past is to ignore the very means Christ has given for the edification of the church (Eph. 4:11–16). As we humbly receive the wisdom of those who carried the torch of doctrinal fidelity before us, we can live in greater understanding of the theological language we use today, becoming theologically self-conscious and better equipped to face the rehashed heresies of our modern age. For these reasons, we should be invested in studying historical theology.
We see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young.
These words from Bram Stoker’s Dracula are spoken by Professor Abraham van Helsing in an attempt to help one of his colleagues understand the ancient evil they faced. Unlike the other characters, van Helsing was not blinded by the modern presuppositions that prevented them from identifying their enemy. While they couldn’t believe a vampire was the cause of their trouble (because of their presuppositions), he marshaled the wisdom of the past to inform the conflict of the present.
In one sense, this is also the task of historical theology. We are not the first Christians to think through theological issues, and we shouldn’t act like we are. There is a wealth of wisdom in the church’s past readily available for us today. While there are many reasons to plunder this wisdom, I would like to argue for just three here.
Accepting Christ’s Gift
The first reason we should study historical theology is that it recognizes Christ’s work in His church throughout history. Timothy George says practicing historical theology “involves an enlargement of our understanding of the church . . . the Body of Christ extended throughout time as well as space.”1 The point here is that Christ has given gifts to the church for its own benefit throughout time. Historical theology simply presupposes the usefulness of Christ’s previous work in His church.
Ephesians 4:11–14 teaches us that Christ has given the gift of teachers to the church for edification. Paul writes,
And [Christ] gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.
While this passage does not explicitly prescribe historical theology as a discipline, it does establish an important principle: Christ has given skilled teachers to the church throughout her storied history. To reject the contribution of skilled teachers in the church’s past is to reject Christ’s gifts to the church—the means He has given for edification.
Calvin anticipates those who will say they have no need of such teachers, whether contemporary or historical. He comments on these verses, “That those who neglect this instrument [i.e., God’s ministers] should hope to become perfect in Christ is utter madness. Yet such are the fanatics, on the one hand, who pretend to be favored with secret revelations of the Spirit,—and proud men, on the other, who imagine that to them the private reading of the Scriptures is enough, and that they have no need of the ordinary ministry of the church.” Shortly after this he adds, “Those who neglect or despise this order choose to be wiser than Christ. Woe to the pride of such men!” Historical theology helps us humbly learn from the gifts Christ has given to the church in the past for our edification in the present.
Read More
Related Posts: -
A Catechism that Makes Disciples
In this brief article, I am pleased to introduce the Genevan Catechism (1542/1545), the culmination of John Calvin’s concern to reach the unlearned audience of Geneva, and propose that the catechetical practice still stands as a useful strategy for training youth in the faith and incorporating them into the liturgical life of the church.
Developing the Genevan Catechism
Calvin spent part of his life (1536-45) implementing an educational method for the unlearned. On three occasions, he tried to develop an effective summary of doctrine for children in his early ministry in Geneva. On November 10, 1536, he and Guillaume Farel presented the Confession to the city magistrates, a text intended for catechesis of children (after Calvin had taken up permanent residence in the city). In 1537, Calvin produced Instruction in Faith, originally written in French, and translated by him into Latin in 1538 as the Catechism or Institution of the Christian Religion of the Church of Geneva. Following the pattern of the Augsburg Confession (1530), Calvin clearly thought that “the best way to instruct children was to set forth in a clear, simple way the central topics of doctrine, according to the order of law, creed, prayer, and sacraments.”
Calvin changed his mind, however, during his exile in Strasbourg (1538-41). Deeply influenced by Martin Bucer, he learned and had the opportunity to develop his own version of his former catechism. Calvin adopted the dialogical form of question and answer in the Catechism of the Church of Geneva, written in French in 1542, following his return from exile. To spread the Genevan teaching and strengthen the ecumenical bonds with other Reformed churches, Calvin also translated his catechism into Latin in 1545.
In a nutshell, Christian education stood at the center of Calvin’s reforming work in Geneva. He believed that God’s truth could prosper only when doctrine was passed on by adequate instruction. Apart from a strategic program for instructing the unlearned, especially children, Calvin contended that there would be no success in reforming the church.
Therefore, he insisted to the city leaders that religious education, strategically condensed in his catechism, had to be implemented in a threefold manner: at catechism services on Sundays, in at-home instruction led by parents throughout the week, and in an adapted form in the new Reformed schools of Geneva. Calvin believed that these three groups of leaders in their respective realms: parents at home, pastors at church, and teachers at the new Reformed schools would raise the next generation of believers in Geneva. Despite the initial resistance by the city, Calvin achieved his objective of being supported by local authorities.
The Liturgical Framework of the Genevan Catechism
Calvin’s catechism is divided into fifty-five sections and contains in its four main parts a total of 373 questions and answers. The close relation between doctrine and worship is a striking feature of Calvin’s theology.
Read More -
Mercy, Justice, and the Academic Effects of Covid
Professors everywhere noticed the surge in urgent requests for mercy, for extensions, commonly presented days after an assignment was due or graded. For several seasons, faculty showed great patience and compassion. At length we realized that the virtue of compassion had become the vice of indulgence. Instead of showing patience, we were enabling irresponsibility. Further, when a student claims he can’t turn in a paper due to anxiety, we feel compassion, but we also know that we don’t relieve anxiety by permitting late work, we increase it, as the burden of unfinished tasks lingers and lingers.
Last January, a new professor wrote with a little conundrum. A student scored a 27% on his final, realized that he might fail the course as a result, and called the professor three weeks later to plead for mercy – a second chance – so he could pass the course. The student explained that he had been sick, his dog had been sick, his aunt had been sick, and he thought it would be enough to write a good term paper, so he didn’t really study for the final.[1] Would the professor let him study more thoroughly for the exam, take it again, and let that result stand? What, the compassionate new professor asked, should I do?
Give him the F he earned, I replied.
I wasn’t quite that blunt. I commended his compassion. I told him it’s his call, since he is the professor of record. But still, if the student earned an F, let his grade show it. There are practical reasons for this, but the theological basis is simple. God is both compassionate and just. He is merciful, but he does not leave the guilty unpunished (Ex. 34:6-7). For the Christian parent and leader, discipline is essential. We love people too much to let them think that irresponsibility is “no problem,” that every error will be forgiven and the consequences erased.
Actually, consequences rarely disappear; they simply shift to other people. In this case, student irresponsibility transfers to the professor. The second chance requires the professor to write a new test, arrange for the student to take it, then grade it, and take the necessary steps to change his final grade. The professor will be fortunate indeed if the process is completed within three hours and with fewer than ten emails.
But there are other considerations. The consequences of Covid and online education continue to rattle through the academic ecosystem. The greatest issue is the shift to an asynchronous education.
Read More
Related Posts:
