A Thinking Reed

Calling all heretics!

Written by

Lee M.

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Chris at Progressive Protestant took issue with my somewhat tongue-in-cheek post calling for the return of the heresy trial:

I’ve read a handful of posts in the last week (this one today) about doing quality control on Christianity or various denominations, weeding out gays, kicking out the “heretical,” counterbalancing the open, seeker-friendly stance taken by a few denominations in recent years by some good, old-fashioned roastings at the stake. (Metaphorical ones, naturally—this is a kinder, gentler Christianity.) Looking at the withered fruit such ass-kicking, high-tension churches have born, I’m understandably wary of the usefulness of heresy trials.

I suggest Christians use a different rubric. If a branch of the Christian movement stops bearing fruit, cut it off before it infects us. As I’ve noted before, anti-abortion advocacy sucks up millions of dollars every year and only makes the problem worse—it should be torn out, and then we can actually engage the problems of teen pregnancy, poverty, and children born addicted to drugs. The heterosexist and anti-marriage rights movements (which are at their heart anti-family, holding to an idolatrous belief in the nuclear family above all others) deprive us of pastors, deprive faithful Christians of comfort and basic rights to health care and access to loved ones, and deprive children of good adoptive parents. The Christian Right shows signs of a blackened, cancerous faith—the emphasis on orthodoxy is not bearing fruit. Faith is not about answers to a couple of cultural questions about sex and the creation.

I’m not sure if Chris takes my post to be representative of all the evil nasty things he mentions or even if he means to include me in the category of the dreaded Christian Right (not an interpretation that would be borne out by much of what I’ve written – unless you can be a peacenik, a Green Party voter, a vegetarian, and pro-redistribution and still be a member of the Christian Right), but to forestall any confusion let me just explain what I was trying (no doubt ineptly) to get at.

The possibility of heresy is implied by the very definition of the church as I understand it. And it has nothing to do with any political laundary list. Let’s go back once again to good old Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession:

Also they [i.e. the evangelical churches] teach that one holy Church is to continue forever. The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered.And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike. As Paul says: One faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, etc. Eph. 4, 5. 6.

As this makes clear, the right teacing of the Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments are necessary and sufficient for the existence and unity of the church. There’s your Christian liberty right there! For the church to be present no one can demand any more of it than that. It is enough (satis est) to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.

Now, in the Lutheran understanding the office of the ordained ministry is that the minister is the one charged with ensuring that the congregation is, in fact, rightly preaching the Gospel and rightly administering the sacraments. The minister is the “paradigmatic preacher” as Robert Jenson puts it; she shows the rest of the congregation how to do Gospel.

But what if the minister fails to do her job? What if she is not preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ but some other gospel (the gospel of “positive thinking,” or the gospel of political revolution, or the gospel of saving the unborn, the rainforests, the whales, or the gospel of American power, etc.)? Well, in the ELCA the minister is accountable to the synodical bishop and ultimately the church at large. And if it isn’t also the bishop’s job to ensure that the church is preaching the Gospel, well, what is his job exactly? The possibility, at least in principle, of something that looks very much like a heresy trial seems to follow as a matter of course.

So “heresy” has nothing to do with politics per se, nor does it even have to do with “doctrine” as such. Preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments are the church’s first-order activity; doctrine is second-order reflection on that activity. I take it that ACVII does not preclude church unity amid doctrinal disagreements (which is not to say doctrinal division is unimportant, it just needn’t call into question the unity of the church). But where there is a denial of the Gospel, then you have heresy.*
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*Obviously someone could be unintentionally failing to preach the Gospel. The first step in any kind of church discipline should always be fraternal correction (cf. Matt. 18: 15-20) . Any kind of formal proceedings would only be necessary in the case of someone who obstinately persists in teaching manifest heresy.

Comments

8 responses to “Calling all heretics!”

  1. Chris T.

    I definitely don’t lump you in with the Christian Right (and sorry for not making that clear in the original post). Your post was the most recent and easiest to find on the subject of quality control/heresy trials.

    However, I don’t see any support for the notion of heresy in the community Christ advocates in the Gospels. I see it in Paul, certainly, but what I see in the Gospel narrative is concern for hospitality, not for doctrinal purity. If someone kicks dirt in your eye, you brush the dust off your sandals as a witness against them and walk away; if someone disagrees with your notions of God, it seems to me you’re supposed to look at the spiritual fruit their work is bearing and if it’s substantial and healthy, you’re not called to do anything more drastic than disagree with them.

    I have a very different idea of what the Gospel means than most Christians. I wish I’d restored the Romans discussion I had going on my blog early last year, but that’s the last bit of the archives I haven’t gotten to. The short version is, I put a lot of stock in Paul’s argument in the first few chapters about the importance of the law written on the heart of every human and the relativity of Jewish chosenness—I think the same argument applies to Christians.

    So when heresy trials and summits of bishops starting throwing stones at fruitful, spirit-filled ministers like Gene Robinson and Beth Stroud, I feel like turning tables over and breaking some Sabbaths. In my mind, any ideas about heresy trials and doctrinal purity, however watered down, are going to start burning spirit-filled people, which Christ himself declares an unforgiveable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit). I’d rather our definition of ekklesia let leaders who are bearing fruit in their own communities be judged by those communities and not from people in the conference over, or a diocese across the country, or a bishop on another continent, simply on the basis of doctrine. I’m afraid I see pretty much any notion of heresy leading to that sooner or later.

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  2. Lee

    Chris – Thanks and let me say that I think your concerns are completely valid. The abuse of ecclesiastical power is an ever-present possibility (just as the abuse of any power is).

    However, I do think that some form of church discipline is inevitable (which is basically all I was trying to say). Paul’s letters are full of admonitions to various churches that they are abandoning the Gospel. And when the question is moral deviance or laxity he almost always brings them back to the Gospel (don’t you know you are in Christ and have therefore died to sin?, etc.). That is, for Paul getting the Gospel right is the source of everything else (a good tree bears good fruit as Luther never tired of saying).

    Of course, “heresy trial” is a loaded term, but I don’t see it as anything more than ensuring that the Gospel the church preaches is the same Gospel that was preached by the Apostles. This, in my view, is one of the functions of Scripture in the church – to keep us accountable to that Gospel, rather than one of our own devising.

    Now I think that what form such accountability takes will depend a lot on church polity. For instance, in a congregational polity the minister will be accountable to the congregants. But let’s not pretend that this form doesn’t also have its risks. “Clergy abuse” is a real phenomenon. However, I think the question of what form of polity works best definitely falls on this side of the eschatological line and is a matter of finding what works best.

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  3. Joshie

    There appears to be some confusion between heresy and violating discipline here. Stroud blantently violated the discipline of the UMC. She did not commit heresy. Heresy is a teaching offense. If she had said, “The Son is of a different substance than that the father” or “It’s clear that Christ Christ is entirely spiritual and just inhabited his human body like a clam in its shell” that would be heresy. Being a “practicing homosexual” is a violation of what is expected of her as an ordained minister of the UMC not (necessarily) heresy. Not to say I belive what happened to her was good, it was just a violation of the rules she agreed to when she was ordained.

    In fact, theological orthodoxy has NOT been stressed in Catholic, mainline, and evangelical churches or seminaries for the past few decades. What has been stressed is warm fuzzy feelings, social action, ecumenism, the trend of the month (e.g. 40 days of purpose), politics and Christian Education (in the narrow sense).

    There’s nothing wrong with these things, per se. But most people in the pews are so ignorant of the Bible and what the church has historically taught as to be no better than people who don’t go to church in this regard (hence the popularity of the Passion of the Christ, the DaVinci Code and Left Behind). They have such a small base of knowledge in these areas, its impossible to move them forward or break new ground anywhere.

    As a result, very little fruit of any sort is being produced whatsoever, because the trunk and roots of the tree are so rotten, they are unable to support branches of any sort, let alone fruit.

    That said, I disagree with you Lee. 🙂 Heresy trials (in the true sense) could be called blasphemous, because they place human institutions in the place of God. The church is an expression of the Kingdom of GOD, and since its God’s kingdom, God decides who’s in and who’s out and what role they should play in it.

    The answer to the problem of heresy is not trials but education at all levels of church life. Seminarians and pastors need to be better educated in the tradition of the church and their specific tradition, and parishoners need to be better educated by their clergy about what the church and their tradition of it teaches. Its time for the church to stop being embarassed about teaching something and start relearning what it actually teaches.

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  4. Lee

    Josh – Thanks for that clarifying comment. I think that’s right on.

    Regarding heresy trials, I guess what I had in mind was not excommunication (i.e. we get to decide who’s in the Kingdom and who isn’t – which I agree is not our job), but rather what happens when someone who is charged with a teaching office in the church persists in teaching heresy? I’m thinking of someone like Bp. Spong in the ECUSA who pretty clearly denies many of the fundamentals of church teaching and persisted in that denial in his capacity as bishop. Do you think the church should have some formal way of dealing with someone like that?

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  5. Chris T.

    As a result, very little fruit of any sort is being produced whatsoever, because the trunk and roots of the tree are so rotten, they are unable to support branches of any sort, let alone fruit.This has not really been my experience (although I should add that I only have experience with mainline congregations in mid-sized towns in the midwest). My experience has been that aging conservative congregations that lean to the right are dying on the vine, while small (usually very small, <100 congregants) moderate and liberal congregations are doing fine and producing quite a bit of fruit. Even my childhood LCMS parish, which leans to the right but has a sufficient number of young folks, is bearing quite a bit of fruit.

    The problem seems to be that liberal-to-moderate congregations aren’t doing a good job, on a whole, of attracting young folks. When they do, the theology doesn’t get in the way of some pretty amazing work.

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  6. Joshie

    Well, as a young adult who teaches a young adult class in an aging moderate/liberal quasi-urban congrgegation, I see a great hunger for getting back to the basics of the faith alongside of a hunger to serve.

    In a denomination like the LCMS with a strong tradition of confessionalism where a “liberal” LCMS’er would be right of center anywhere else, I think things are a bit different than the picture I painted, although I might say it is traditionalism and dogmatism that may be getting in the way not the theology itself. That is, theology is not getting in the way, but people’s attitudes toward it. I hope that didn’t sound condescending, but my wife and I have had a lot of contact with LCMS folks (she went to Valparaiso)and this has been our impression.

    But most mainline and evangelical denominations (the LCMS doesn’t fit into either category) have so de-emphasized theology that people are wandering around in the dark without the slightest clue what they belive and why they belive it. Without knowing why (or even for whom) you serve and do good work, its hard to do it and do it well. I have heard this expressed by many of the ppl in our young adult group too.

    Lee: I really don’t know exactly what should be done about a nortorious case like Spong. I think the man is an arrogant blowhard, but I am inclined to say just let him be one, as long as there is someone around to make sure the orthodox position gets out somehow. The Holy Spirti always seems to find a way to make this happen.

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  7. Eric Lee

    Wow, I didn’t know that Spong was that popular. I get his e-mails that he sends out a couple times a week. I hadn’t heard of him until my girlfriend’s mother recommended him to us. I didn’t know much about him at first, until I asked my pastor about him and he had some very strong words about him. I really don’t think my gf’s mom knows much about Spong, or else she wouldn’t recommend him!

    Yes, Spong is totally is arrogant. I can barely read his stuff without feeling insulted sometimes. I read through a part of his book against fundamentalism. While I agree with the conclusions that fundamentalism can be and is a very harmful thing, I was completely offended by how Spong went about trying to make the argument for it. Basically, all fundamentalists are just primitives to him, and we’re in this new “age” of the twentieth century (when the book was written) and so people “just don’t believe in such things anymore.” Well, I know plenty of fundamentalist brothers and sisters with whom I disagree on many things, but I would never, ever use any of Spong’s language. It is really condescending and doesn’t seek to build any bridges whatsoever. Ugh.

    Reply
  8. Lee

    I think Spong (in addition to being an arrogant blowhard!) is the mirror-image of the fundamentalists he excoriates. He and they share the premise that we face a stark choice between “fundamentalism” (i.e. biblical literalism, inerrancy, dedication to ultra-conservatism on social issues, etc.) and “modernism” (bible as literature, abandonment of the docrtines of classical Christianity, various “liberationist” political agendas, etc.). But they both err in thinking that these represent all the options. Spong often writes as though modern fundamentalism is simply equivalent to the classic Christian tradition (an idea that fundamentalists also propagate, for obvious reasons), and that rejecting the former means rejecting the latter.

    From what I’ve read of him (his “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” is a textbook of false dilemmas, straw man fallacies, and ad hominem attacks), Spong evinces little or no familiarity with the tradition of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Hooker, Edwards, Wesley, etc.

    At the end of the day Spong and the fundamentalists are locked in a kind of mutual death grip that neither one can let go of. The fundies need someone like Spong so they can point to the (supposed) consequences of rejecting their views. Spong needs them as a bogeyman so he can paint himself as a brave independent thinker standing athwart an oppressive ecclesiastical authority. (His autobiography was actually titled “Here I Stand”!)

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