Too Hard
There are at least three working definitions of what constitutes heresy. First is the view that all error is heresy. This view has as an advantage that it recognizes the unity of truth. Because God is one, and God is truth, truth is one. Any error that we hold, if carried to its logical conclusion will lead us to wicked, damnable errors. If we adjust all that we think to make it consistent with the error we hold, we will enter into heresy. The disadvantage to this view, like many broad definitions, is that it draws the circle too wide. If we are all guilty of heresy, and if all error is heresy we are certainly all guilty, then in a manner of speaking, no one is guilty. Definitions exist to differentiate, not to be all-inclusive.
Too Soft
A second view holds that heresy is holding to any doctrine specifically condemned as heresy at an ecumenical council. The Arian heresy, which denies the deity of Christ, was condemned as heresy in the first half of the first millennia of the church. The Pelagian heresy was likewise condemned. This view has as an advantage being tied to the labors of the church at its broadest. That is, it is the church as the church that names the heresy, rather than each of us as individuals. It has as a disadvantage the hard truth that there have been no ecumenical councils in quite some time. Such would be rather hard to pull off in our day. Heresy, however, is rather easy to pull off. This view ends up with too narrow of view of what heresy is.
Just Right
My own view is in the middle of these too positions. I agree with the second view that all those views which have been condemned as heresy by ecumenical councils are in fact heresy. I would add, however, that any denial of any element of any ecumenical creed, including the Apostles’ Creed, is heresy. That is, to avoid the charge of heresy, one must not only not embrace what the councils call heresy, but must affirm what the councils call orthodoxy. In light of the inability to put together an ecumenical council, indeed in light of the inability to reach agreement among all those claiming to be Christian churches, I would also add, though it is in the Apostles’ Creed only by implication, that one must affirm justification by faith alone in order to not be heretical. This doctrine Luther wisely called the article on which the church stands or falls.
Most of those councils which included condemnations of heresy dealt with issues of the incarnation and the Trinity. These are, of course, critical issues to the church. They should not, however, be given a privileged position about all the other affirmations of the Apostles’ Creed. To deny the resurrection, for instance, is as much heresy as to deny the humanity of Christ. To deny the virgin birth is as much heresy as to deny the two natures of Christ. Which means of course, that we have no unity with those who deny any of these things, whether we find these heresies in mainline denominations, or as in the case of denying the resurrection, whether these are held by those who would otherwise describe themselves even as “Reformed.” That is, among the hyper-preterists.
If my perspective is accurate on justification by faith alone, that too sets us apart from both Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy. Rome, which while in substantial agreement with Eastern Orthodoxy, but which speaks to the matter with greater clarity, not only does not affirm that we are justified by faith alone, but formally and unchangeably affirms that all of us who affirm that a man is justified by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, should be damned. See the sixth session of the Council of Trent.
To name heresy what it is is not to be unkind or unloving. It isn’t bigoted or narrow- minded. It is instead to guard the wisdom that has been handed down to us, and to protect His sheep from wolves. Truth be told, everyone, no matter how broadminded, draws lines somewhere. The only question is, are we drawing lines where God would have us draw lines? The answer to that, in the end, is found in His Word.
It is a common but dangerous business, our propensity to make ourselves the heroes of our own stories, and to see all who stand in our way as wearing the black hats. As a person with an interest in all things economic I see it in the realm of our buying and trading all the time. We all want to sell high and buy low. And we are all sellers and buyers. We all sell our labor in the marketplace. And we buy what we buy. The ones in the black hats, we think, are the ones keeping us from selling high, and from buying low.
First, when we sell our labor we all want to sell high. We might insist that the government make it illegal for anyone to hire anyone for less than what we think we ought to earn. We might simply grumble that we are being taken advantage of. We might cheat our employer on the ground that we are not being paid as we think we ought to be. In any of these cases the employer is wicked and must be punished.
Second, when buy goods and services we all want to buy low. We might insist that the government make it illegal for anyone to charge more than what we think we ought to be charged for the good or service. We might insist that the state give us money so that we can more easily buy what we want. We might simply grumble that we are being taken advantage of. We might steal from the business we are buying from on the ground that we believe they are charging more than they ought. In any of these cases the business is wicked and must be punished.
Trouble is, of course, that because we are all sellers and buyers we are all also buyers and sellers. Why should our employers not insist that the government make it illegal for anyone to work for more than they want to pay? Why should they not insist that the government give them money so they can more easily afford to pay us? Why should they not simply grumble that they are being taken advantage of? Why should they not steal from us, on the ground that we are charging them more for our labor than we ought? We may be, in selling our labor, a corporation of one, but we are a corporation.
Or, why should the business we buy from not insist that the government make it illegal for anyone to pay less than they are willing to sell for? Why should the businesses not insist that the government give them money so they can charge less? Why should they not grumble that they are being taken advantage of? Why should they not steal from us, on the ground that we are paying less for their goods and services than they believe we ought?
There is an economic lesson here, but as is so often the case with economic lessons, there is also a life lesson- we are adept at justifying ourselves and castigating others. Our moral compasses are out of whack because we think we’re the center of the galaxy, because we believe in our own innate goodness and the innate badness of all who oppose us, even if what it means to oppose us is charging more, or paying less, than we would like. The truth is that prices, for both labor and goods and services ought always to be determined solely by the free interaction of those making the deals, by agreement of both parties. When I stick my credit card into the gas pump that reads $4.00 a gallon I am reaching an agreement. When the Kansas City Chiefs write Patrick Mahomes a check for $40 million, they are reaching an agreement. When I pick up my spatula at the local Burgers Cooked By People Making $5 An Hour joint, I have reached an agreement. And when those deals don’t get made, we’ve just agreed to disagree. No one needs to be vilified or hung. No one needs to call the feds. But what we all need to do is own our own sins. We’re the hero of the story when we keep our agreement. And those who use the force of theft or the state to get their way, those are the ones in the black hats.
Thesis 60 We must love each other.
It should, though it doesn’t, go without saying. There’s no question that the Bible teaches this. There’s no question that the Bible emphasizes this. There’s no question that we’re not very good at it. Why, when the command is obvious, are we so bad at obeying it? Because we’re no good.
Even a cursory reading of the gospels will reveal the connection between God’s love for and grace toward us and our call to love and be gracious toward one another. When we have been forgiven much we are to find it easier to forgive much. When we have received grace we’re to find it easier to give grace. We fail here, however, because we judge unjustly. We minimize our sins while maximizing the sins of others. We minimize the importance of others, while maximizing our own importance. Whether it is a marriage, a family, a friendship, or a church body, believing ourselves morally above others is a sure recipe for disaster.
When I find myself hated by others, including those who name the name of Christ, I try to find my comfort in the sure knowledge that my heavenly Father loves me. He knows how truly awful I am. Those who despise and accuse me are blind to my real flaws. My Father knows them all, and despite this loves me. When I find myself hating others, including those who name the name of Christ, it should be enough for me to remember that I am not due the love I receive. It’s not a bad first step. But I will do so much better if I remember not just that Jesus loves me, despite my sin, but that Jesus loves the one I’m despising, despite his sin. When we fail to love our brothers and sisters we put ourselves in direct opposition against the One who loves and redeemed us and who loves and redeemed our brothers and sisters. “Jesus loves me” doesn’t blow me away like it ought to. “Jesus loves them” barely registers with me. Because I am a fool.
Our love for each other makes manifest three things the world needs to know. First, that love is possible. How easy it is to grow jaded and cynical when living in a world untouched by God’s redeeming grace. Those fragments of the image of God that yet remain in the unbeliever long for love and acceptance. What a testimony when they see it among believers. Second, it shows that change in us is possible. My growing capacity to love the brethren is evidence that I am part of the family, that the Spirit is at work in me. When the unbeliever is discouraged in his own sin, it is light to blind eyes to see believers growing in grace, evidenced by increasing love one for another. Third, that acknowledging our sin is not a doorway to despair but the entrance into liberty. When the love others have for me is grounded not in me being good but in Christ being in me, when I have no need to pretend to be better than I am then I can know that the love I receive is for me, and not the image I project.
More important than all this, however, when we love one another we delight our heavenly Father.
Sinlessness. That is, the weaknesses that plague the contemporary church aren’t, in the end, all that different from the weaknesses that plagued the historical church. The more things change and all that, after all. It is said that one Lord’s Day a parishioner asked Martin Luther, “Brother Luther, why do you preach the same message every Lord’s day?” To which he responded, “Because every week we forget.” I’m not prepared to say that in the western world the church is at its lowest point. I am prepared to say that it’s not in good shape, just like normal. I would also suggest that what is missing is what is usually missing- a deep, heart, mind, soul and strength grasp of this message: I am in myself a vile sinner at war with a holy, omnipotent God. Jesus came and lived a perfect life in my place, then received the wrath of God in my place. Now, because the Spirit gave me faith, I am forgiven, beloved, adopted, secure.
That message is not new. It’s not especially insightful. Nor is it complicated. It’s not appealing to those outside the kingdom. It’s not especially appealing to those inside the kingdom. It is not the fullness of the message. It is, however, the center of the message, and the most needful thing to be proclaimed, believed and lived out in the church of Jesus Christ. It is the health of the church.
The irony is that everything in the contemporary church that shouldn’t be there would be quickly driven out by this simple message. A second irony is that the most potent weapon against our problem of sinfulness is a failure to believe this simple message. Programs, celebrity, entertainment, worldliness, compromise, these are the things we glom on to because we are not, as we should be, convinced of our own sinfulness, persuaded of Jesus’ payment for all our sins, comforted by the sure knowledge that our heavenly Father loves us infinitely, immutably, and by name. We have feel-good, white-washed, motivational messages because we feel bad, are ignorant of ourselves and are unmotivated to get back on the world’s hamster wheel.
As we come to a deeper grasp of our need and His perfect provision we are better able to stand on the Word, for we don’t need the world’s approval. We are better equipped to walk in the way, for we know where we are going. We are better driven, for we know our calling to run to the battle. We are at peace, for we know that we rest in the Son.
What the church needs in our day is what the church has always needed and will need until He returns. We need the gospel. We need to repent and believe. We need to teach our children that their need is the same, that our grandchildren will be fed the same truth. No branding, no marketing, telling not selling. It needs sheep that demand the message and under-shepherds who proclaim the message even when the sheep demand something else.
I have some degree of sympathy with the argument because I once made it myself. I was in high school, and served faithfully as the poster child for the National Sophomoric Self-Important Blow-Hard Association. I dressed in black, listened to Pink Floyd albums. I wrote morbid poetry, wore my hair over my eyes. And I made this incredibly profound discovery- the church is full of hypocrites. I know it’s shocking, but I was the one who blew the lid on the whole hypocrisy in the church thing. That was me.That was my excuse for not embracing the gospel. Jesus was more than alright with me. But those friends of His, how déclassé. Jesus and I were just too cool for the rest of those geeks that claimed to be His friends, and so I couldn’t make the claim that I was with Him.
It is powerful evidence of the potency of His providence that God could use my pomposity to illustrate two important points. First, it highlights the importance of our collective image. I’m not suggesting that we play to the crowd, pander to the audience around us. We will do Jesus no favors if we try to out world the world so they’ll like us. But that doesn’t mean complete indifference. While our goal is to be pleasing in the sight of God, we can know something of how we are doing by our reputation among the heathen. We are called to love one another, for instance. Whatever the world might think of this, we are still to do it. But we are likewise told that by this, our love for each other, the world will know we are His. Our obedience, steeped in a happy indifference to the thinking of the world, leads in turn to a happy difference in the thinking of the world.
We need to understand that while the lost may have some foolish ideas of what we are supposed to be about, we are nevertheless the incarnation to them. We are the Jesus they can see. That we are His body not only means that we ought never to have a war between the toes and the nose, it also means that we are the image of Him to all the world. If they would see Jesus, they must look at us. We not only make visible the invisible kingdom of God, but we make visible God’s invisible King.
This also answers, however, my own previous dilemma. Or rather it exposes my former folly. In another context Paul admonishes us that no one ever hated his own body. But for me to look down my nose at the church, and try to marry that with a love for Jesus, that just shows that I don’t know Jesus. His identity with the church isn’t limited to double imputation of our sin to Him, His righteousness to us. Remember how He responded to Saul, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute Me?” Jesus so identifies Himself with the church that those who persecute the church, persecute Jesus. We tear asunder what God has brought together when we claim to love Jesus, but despise His bride, His body, the church.
The two of these points, that we must be lovely because we are the body of Christ, and that we must love the body of Christ, come together when we consider our call to be prophetic. We all ought to be like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Or perhaps better still, we ought to be like Hosea. When we take the church to task, whether it be for worldliness, for faulty thinking or doing, we are not speaking to them out there. We are instead speaking to ourselves, to the body of Christ. It is because we are the body of Christ that we must bring the Word of God to bear in our common life. Our love isn’t a permissive love that allows us to continue, without challenge to besmirch the image of our husband. But neither is it a mean-spirited love that denies that we are the body of Christ. When the church succumbs to the wiles of the world, we chasten her/us, but never disown her/us.
Do you ever read the gospels, and long to be there? Do you ever think, “If only I could have been there to see this or that, then I would love Jesus better.”? To paraphrase Jesus with respect to His Father, “Has He not been with us this long, and still we do not know? He who has seen the church has seen the Son, for the Son and the church are one.” We haven’t learned the lesson enough if our response is merely to be less cynical about the church. We are called to love the church, to be filled with a holy passion.
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