On Heresy

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

One of my most treasured belongings is also one of the most humorous. During graduate school at Boston University, I was known for calling out any and all comments that could even remotely be interpreted as heterodox. I assure you that I was not on some sort of intentional campaign. More often than not these comments were part of witty interchanges. But in the midst of this fun, another doctoral student gave me a wonderful gift, a bespoke stamp with the word “HERESY.” 

I’ve never actually used that stamp as a stamp. But at the beginning of classes, I’ve often brought it out to show it to my students with the promise that if they cite Wikipedia in their research papers, I will use it. A few times I did have students make heretical claims in their papers, but each time I would speak to them privately – without the stamp – and each and every time it was ignorance rather than heterodoxy that was really at play. 

Words such as heresy, apostasy, heterodoxy, or even their converse such as orthodoxy, are all ecclesiastical words with a great deal of history behind them. And they have meaning, even if in today’s ecclesiastical climate they’re not always used well. 

As Wesleyans, the Bible is our primary source for understanding God’s will for the creation, for “all things necessary to salvation.” We can also adopt Wesley’s affinity for “primitive Christianity,” not as equal to Scripture but in addition to it. Wesley believed that the early Christians held firmly to the faith despite numerous challenges to it both without and within the Christian community. He often lists church fathers as faithful guides. This early period is seen as part of the great consensual tradition of the Church, a tradition with general agreement on core Christian beliefs, sometimes referred to as the Rule of Faith. 

It was in this earliest period, though, where we see the use of the word “heretics,” particularly in Irenaeus’ broadside against Gnosticism. Various forms of Gnosticism held that the physical was itself evil and that select knowledge was the means by which salvation – freedom from the physical – could be gained. Irenaeus quickly saw that if these ideas were applied to Christianity, the core of the faith would be in jeopardy. And he was right to be alarmed. This Gnosticism when applied to the Christian message undermined key theological claims such as Christ’s Incarnation, the efficacy of his death, and his bodily resurrection. For the Gnostic, God would never become tangible; knowledge rather than the blood of Christ was the key to salvation; and anything close to resurrection would entail freedom from the body, not a resurrected one. At the heart of Gnosticism is escape from the physical world. At the heart of Christianity is the full redemption and renewal of God’s creation. The teachings of the church on God’s creating work, the nature of Jesus Christ, and of salvation itself were at stake. 

Gnosticism would recede but another challenge would arise with a man now called “the arch-heretic,” the Alexandrian cleric Arius. In later years, this battle is seen to be one between Arius and Athanasius, but it was a debate that roiled the Mediterranean world. Arius came to believe that God was completely ineffable, therefore out of reach and unchanging. His view of ineffability, however, forced him to view the Word of God, incarnate in Jesus, as less than God, created even. Arius’ “Logos” or Word was the means by which God created everything and was a lofty figure even above the angels. But he was not God. Athanasius saw the problem with this thinking very clearly: if the one who hung on the cross was not fully man, he could not represent the human race as its head. But if he was not also fully God, his death would be incapable of atoning for sins. Both the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity had to dwell in the person of Jesus or his death was not sufficient and salvation is lost. 

The First Council of Nicaea was called in 325 to address this conflict, and out of that council and another in Constantinople in 381 we have the Nicene Creed. The earlier Christians had creedal claims such as “Jesus is Lord” or even the beautiful hymn found in Philippians 2. We can also see in Acts how the church was faithful by “continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (2:42). But with Nicaea and Constantinople the church has a creed to convey the apostles’ teachings in outline, and to counter ideas that undermine the person and work of Jesus Christ or the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed is Trinitarian in content and form and gives careful attention to God’s work of salvation in and through Jesus Christ. The contours of the Rule of Faith have found written form in the Nicene Creed. 

But anyone reading it can see that it doesn’t touch on everything within the Christian witness. For example, it doesn’t once mention the Bible, even if its contents are biblical. Nor does it tell us how, exactly, the Bible is inspired. We believe that the Bible is inspired, but that’s not a doctrinal claim found in the creeds. The creeds don’t mention marriage either, even if we believe that marriage is, as the Book of Common Prayer states, “an honourable estate instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency” for the union of husband and wife. In fact, while it does include a brief mention of baptism “for the remission of sins,” it doesn’t mention Holy Communion, the central act of Christian worship. Even when it mentions the cross of Christ, it states it as fact under a number of descriptive clauses after “for our salvation.” But it doesn’t tell us exactly how Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are salvific. The point of the creed is that they are. 

The creed focuses on the nature of God and on the means of salvation in Christ. It’s bookended with the creation and its renewal. And it describes the nature of the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Most of it is taken up with the person and work of Jesus, “begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” But if we look closely, we can see that the creed provides an outline of the story, not its entirety or all of its details. There is room for interpretation and for exploring the mysteries of God’s work of salvation. 

At a foundational level, the creed assumes knowledge of the scriptural narrative. But questions such as the contours and details of the atonement are left to explore, perhaps as a mystery, but still as a central element of the Christian faith. The council gave us an outline of the orthodox faith. And by definition, it allows us to identify heresy when ideas arise in the church that deny the content of that outline.     

So what does all of this tell us about the use of terms such as “heresy” or “orthodoxy”? Hopefully we can see in the history of the early church, and in the Nicene Creed in particular, that we as Wesleyan Christians have a unifying and definite outline of the Christian faith that is shared by all believers. We can point to this historical witness and to this creed as faithfully conveying the scriptural message and drawing the line when heresy sought to undermine the foundations of the faith. We also have context for words such as “heretic” or “orthodox.” For example, knowing its history, a mature use of the word “heresy” will limit it to challenges from within the Christian community that undermine core Christian beliefs. 

Going further, I would argue that the use of these terms both negative and positive should be limited to core theological claims related to the nature of God and to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let’s look at the atonement one more time. Differences exist among faithful Christians as to how to describe the mystery of God’s saving work on the cross. Wesley, for example, combined at least three different atonement theories when he described Christ’s saving death in his own writings. And he did so within the bounds of orthodoxy. 

But why does this matter so much? It matters because words matter. And because we are called to faithfully communicate the gospel so that others might hear and believe. Our language is integral to our Christian witness. Christ himself admonished us in the Sermon on the Mount to “let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no,’ ‘no.’” He even added that anything else was “from the evil one.”  

In a time of division both in society and in the church itself, an age of hyperbole, polemics, and click-bait, we as the followers of the Word made flesh should speak clearly and justly. We can and should be honest about our differences, but our use of words – particularly damnable ones – should be equally honest. We should be ready to oppose what scripture calls “false teaching,” but even here if the teaching does not touch on core theological claims, “heresy” and “orthodoxy” might not apply. Too often the words that arose out of the intense debates of the early church about the core of the Christian message are usurped for quick gains and easy scandal and this shouldn’t be so. It is one thing to use them jovially with doctoral colleagues, but it is another thing altogether to flippantly use the words meant to safeguard the core of the faith, particularly around contemporary controversial ideas that do not touch on creedal matters. To do so is not simply problematic in its lack of integrity, but it questions the seriousness with which we should all maintain the core of “the faith once delivered.” 

Ryan N. Danker is the director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, DC and assistant lead editor of Firebrand.