by Frank Viola
These core beliefs do not belong to any one ecclesiastical tradition or denomination. Instead, they are the heritage of all genuine believers. And they reflect the voice of the church throughout history. These “essentials of the faith” embody what C. S. Lewis called Mere Christianity—“the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”
Thus the call to recover the ecology of the New Testament church doesn’t translate into a summons to reinvent the religious wheel on every theological issue. Nor does it include a rejection of all that has been passed down to us by our spiritual forefathers. At the same time, everything that is postapostolic is subject to scrutiny and should be critiqued by the apostolic tradition itself.
The call to restore organic Christianity sides with every voice of the past that has remained true to apostolic revelation—no matter what segment of the historic church to which they may have belonged. The primitive church was rooted in the soil of Christian truth. And staying within that soil requires that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. As C. H. Spurgeon affirmed, “I intend to grasp tightly with one hand the truths I have already learned, and to keep the other hand wide open to take in the things I do not yet know.”3
Ever since the fourth century, Christians have divided the body of Christ over peripheral doctrines. In this regard, the seamless coat of Christ has been unnecessarily rent.
On the other hand, there are doctrines that form the pillars of our faith, and some who “are not serving Christ our Lord” and use “smooth talk and glowing words” deceive the innocent by contradicting those teachings (Romans 16:18 NLT). Or as Peter put it,
But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. (2 Peter 2:1)
What, then, are these pillars of the Christian faith?
What follows are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed—two creeds I believe all Christians should be familiar with as they are part of our heritage.
While these creeds aren’t complete theological statements, they are correct theological statements. And they represent the consensus of the body of Christ throughout the ages.
So while the language is archaic and the content isn’t exhaustive, the meaning is accurate.
Oh, and while we are on the topic, my fiercest critics are people who reject the authority and reliability of the Scriptures as well as rejecting my affirmation of the Christian creeds. But I will not recant on either as I have yet to see compelling evidence to overturn them.
Here they are . . .
The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy universal church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Nicene Creed
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
And I believe in one holy universal and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Despite that these two creeds are imperfect, archaic statements, they rightfully set forth the orthodox tenets of the Christian faith. For example, the divinity of Jesus Christ, His death for our sins, His bodily resurrection.
How, then, should we treat a person who denies any of these “essentials” of the faith? Should we impale them? Should we verbally peel their hide, make them walk the plank, or shun them?
May I offer a proposal?
How about treating them the same way you wish to be treated if you were in their shoes (Matthew 7:12)? That includes gently correcting them, realizing that we ourselves only come to the knowledge of the truth by God’s grace.
Three additional points to ponder on this score.
The failure to understand a biblical doctrine isn’t the same as outright denying it. Often, when someone denies a scriptural truth, the reason is because they’ve never been taught properly about it. So instead of reacting with “Slaughter the villains! Off with their heads!”—how about trying to explain “the way of God more accurately” to them (Acts 18:26 NASB)?
It’s more important to God to be Christlike than it is to be doctrinally right. Because if you’re not Christlike, you’re not right, even if you have all your theological ducks in a row (2 Timothy 2:24–25).
Don’t make the common mistake of condemning a person through “guilt by association.” Just because an author may mention or even quote another author doesn’t at all mean that the first author agrees with all the viewpoints of the author they are mentioning or quoting.
All told, if a person denies a biblical tenet of the faith and begins pushing their false views onto others—thus causing division—that’s another story. The biblical term for this is heresy, which we’ll explore in our next chapter.
24
Who Are the Real Heretics?
It’s the mathematician that goes mad, not the poet.
~ G. K. Chesterton
This chapter was originally published on my blog. The blog post was entitled “Read This Before You Drop the H-Bomb on a Fellow Christian.” And it was written with Greg Boyd.
“Heretic.” It’s a favorite word that many Christians have no problem dropping on the heads of their fellow sisters and brothers.
In common parlance, the term is used to describe any person who disagrees with “orthodox Christian teaching.” The problem, of course, is that there are different perspectives on what exactly constitutes “orthodox Christian teaching.”
Some claim this for Calvinism, while others claim this for Arminianism or for Roman Catholicism or for Eastern Orthodoxy.
And we must not forget the many fundamentalist groups who reserve the term orthodox only for people who agree with every one of their distinctive beliefs and/or practices.
Two thousand years down the church history pike and the body of Christ is sliced and diced into over 33,000 fragments, some of which pull the heresy lever on everyone else without blinking.
In this essay, we are definitely not going to suggest that false teaching doesn’t exist. It existed at the time of Jesus and Paul, and it exists today.
What we are going to suggest is that many people are using the word heretic in ways that are not biblical and/or that do not align with its use in church tradition. And this, we believe, brings disrepute on the body of Christ.
Let’s start by looking at the words heresy and heretical more closely and ask two key questions:
What does heresy mean in the New Testam
ent?
What did heresy mean in early church history?
Heresy According to the New Testament Authors
Whenever we tell people how the New Testament authors understood the term heresy, they are shocked.
First, heresy wasn’t the equivalent of false doctrine. Heresy was a specific practice, and a fleshly one at that.
According to Paul of Tarsus, to be a heretic meant that you formed a schism within a local body of believers. Thus, what qualified someone to be considered a heretic wasn’t what they believed, but how they acted on their beliefs.
If a person divided a genuine church, they were guilty of heresy.
Consequently, a person could be a heretic with the truth!
A Look at the Greek
According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the Greek word hairesis denotes a choosing. The choice, says Vine, is an opinion that leads to a division or formation of a sect. “[It] properly denotes a predilection either for a particular truth or for a perversion of one,” he notes, “generally with the expectation of personal advantage.”
F. F. Bruce in his commentary on 1 Corinthians points out that hairesis in 1 Corinthians 11:19 and schismata in 1 Corinthians 11:18 are synonymous. Both words simply mean “divisions” or “factions.” Thus a heretic is a person who causes divisions, dissensions, or factions.
If you think that dividing an authentic church isn’t serious, think again. In 1 Corinthians 1:13a, Paul used the image of slicing Jesus Christ into pieces to depict how serious it is to divide an authentic church.
In Titus 3:10, Paul says to “warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them.”
Paul uses the word hairetikos in this passage and it means “a heretic.” But it doesn’t refer to a person who holds wrong beliefs. According to BDAG (Bauer and Dank’s Greek-English Lexicon), it “pertains to [one] causing divisions, factious, division-making, a division-maker.”
As we should expect, modern versions of the Bible translate it as “anyone who causes divisions” (NRSV), “divisive man” (NKJV), “divisive person” (NIV), “factious man” (ASV, NASB), “person who stirs up division” (ESV), “someone who causes arguments” (NCV), and “troublemakers” (CEV).
Not surprisingly, Paul lists hairesis (heresies or factions) as one of the works of the “flesh” (Galatians 5:19 NASB). A person who walks in the Spirit will always seek to build unity in the church. But a person who causes division walks in the flesh. Note that it’s not the person’s belief that is a “work of the flesh.” It’s their divisiveness.
As Ben Witherington notes in his social-rhetorical commentary on Galatians, hairesis (heresies) and dichostasiai (dissensions) in Galatians 5:20 both have in view those who “sever the body of Christ” and “use differences as an excuse to create factions.”1
So, in the New Testament sense of the word, “heresy” was the creation of a division, a sect, a faction, or a party. For this reason, the author of Acts uses the word to describe the different sects within Judaism (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5; 28:22).
Heresy involved the dividing of a local assembly, not the rightness or wrongness of what the dividing party believed.
It’s true, of course, that a heresy could be created by someone pushing a false teaching on a local assembly, causing it to divide. Peter alludes to this when he warns that false teachers will secretly come into the church and introduce damnable hairesis (2 Peter 2:1 KJV).
To understand this verse, it’s important to remember our earlier point that hairesis refers not to the rightness or wrongness of a belief, but to a choice that leads to a division or the formation of a sect.
This is what false teachers are going to introduce into the body of Christ, according to Peter, and they will divide the body. This is why he says they are “damnable.” Again, division is a very serious thing to God.
In fact, this meaning is confirmed in the very next verse when Peter warns that many “will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute” (v. 2).
If these false teachers had not introduced a choice into these congregations that led to divisions, they would still be false teachers, but they would not be heretics, according to the New Testament definition of the term.
In this light, we may say that a person who embraces a doctrine that we believe is false is misinformed (at best) or deceived (at worst). We may even consider them to be a potential heretic. But unless they use their belief to divide a body of believers by causing others to follow them and their false doctrine, they do not fit the biblical definition of a heretic.
So, if we wish to be biblical in our use of the word heresy or heretical, we should not refer to them as “heretics.”
On the other hand, it’s evident from the biblical understanding of heresy that a person could be a heretic who wasn’t espousing a doctrine of any sort. Anyone who divides an authentic church for any reason would qualify as a heretic, according to the New Testament.
Peddling a Truth Heretically
As we mentioned earlier, a heretic could even be someone who espouses something good, but who does so in a divisive way.*
For example, suppose that a new church is planted. There is unity among the members. Their single focus is Jesus Christ. They are busy pursuing, knowing, loving, and serving Him together.
One day, Bob—a member of the church—announces, “I just discovered something I had never seen before. God really loves the poor. And He wants us to help the poor more than we already are.” Serving the poor was one of the ways this congregation served their community, but Bob, with his newfound passion, wanted the church to be about little else.
Now, there’s obviously nothing wrong with what Bob has said. And if Bob had submitted his insight to the community for prayerful discernment and given people time to grow into it, it might be that God could have used him to help this new congregation assign a higher priority to this ministry.
Unfortunately, this is not what Bob does. He grows frustrated that the community as a whole isn’t catching his passion quick enough, so he begins to frequently invite to dinner the dozen or so in the church who seem more “on board” with his passion.
Caught in a snare of self-righteousness, he begins to use these times to sow seeds of judgment among his guests toward those in the congregation who “don’t get it.”
Before long, Bob announces that he and his recruits are leaving the church to start a new one that will reflect God’s heart for the poor, according to Bob’s standards. And he encourages others to join them.
Bob has just created a church split. He thus qualifies as a heretic in the New Testament sense of the word. Yet he is a heretic with the truth. Bob used a biblical truth in a fleshly way. He wielded it to create division among God’s people.†
Heresy Later in Church History
Later in church history, most of the heretics—those who were dividing God’s people—were peddling a false teaching. And so the word heretic came to be associated with false doctrine, very often doctrines that distorted the person of Jesus Christ.
But even in such cases, the label of heresy was applied to people who not only denied the foundational doctrines of orthodoxy but who actively worked against them.
Traditionally, the ecumenical creeds (Nicene, Apostles’, Chalcedon) defined the parameters of orthodoxy, and therefore, they defined the parameters of heresy.
In this light, we submit that the word heretic should be applied only to people who work against the historic orthodox church as expressed by these creeds. Interestingly enough, however, these creeds say nothing about the many topics over which Christians today liberally drop the H-bomb on their fellow sisters and brothers in Christ.
The Key Takeaway
So what’s our point?
Very simply, the way that countless Christians pull the lever of the H-bomb (heresy) on their fellow brethren today violates both the way the first-century Christians understood heresy
as well as the later usage of the term in church history.
As we noted earlier, instead of reserving the word heresy for those who actively work against the church, and instead of accepting the ecumenical creeds as the ultimate criteria of orthodoxy, many today set up their own particular belief systems as the standard of “orthodoxy” and then drop the H-bomb on any who merely believe differently.
Sadly, most of those who are wrongly called heretics by some fellow Christians today are people who are completely orthodox according to the historic Christian creeds, and they are not dividing local assemblies. But some people have called them heretics simply because they hold to a particular view of Christ’s coming, of ecclesiology, or of the gifts of the Spirit.
Others have been labeled heretics because they hold to a certain interpretation of Genesis 1, or to a particular understanding of God’s sovereignty, or of election, free will, or the nature of the future.
So our argument really boils down to this:
If a person holds to beliefs that are in line with the historical Christian creeds (Nicene, Apostles’, Chalcedon) and they are not dividing a local assembly of believers, then to call them a heretic is a gross and perverted use of the term.
And this kind of dubious branding grieves the Holy Spirit.
Our call, then, is for sisters and brothers in the body of Christ to align their use of the word heretic to the definitions of the New Testament and the early church. In so doing, we will see a whole lot less H-bomb dropping, and a whole lot less bloodletting in the body of Christ.
And that would give joy to the Holy Spirit!
*For example, those who were creating division in the church in Corinth over their favorite apostle in 1 Corinthians 1 (“I’m of Paul,” or “I’m of Apollos,” or “I’m of Cephas” [v. 12 NKJV]) were acting heretically with something that was good and approved by God (viz. apostles). While Paul doesn’t use the word “heresy” or “heretical” to describe these specific divisions, he does use the term schismata in 1 Corinthians 1:10, which carries the same essential meaning.