One of the things that I admire about Chesterton's book is how, despite his polemic and despite his rhetoric, he still manages to honor the person whom he is criticizing. At times he can seem a little heavy-handed; but, then again, rebuke is a heavy-handed thing. It is not pleasant, nor easy. But throughout Heretics, one gets the sense that Chesterton is attempting to be extraordinarily balanced. As a Christian, he cannot afford not to be.
The reason for that is because Christian Love demands, first and foremost, Grace. This is at heart of when Jesus says "First get the log out of your own eye!" So criticism, even judgment (when appropriate), from the Christian must always be a weighed and careful affair. But criticism and judgment, too, must be a direct, thorough, and, in some sense, painful affair, and that is because Christian Love also demands an accounting before a perfect, awesome, glorious God. Solomon says that "Better is open rebuke than hidden love," (Proverbs 25:17) because an inactive, hidden love is not truly Love at all. If my brother or sister has built their faith upon a faulty foundation, then my silence is not love; but if, with Grace first, I approach my brother or sister with a rebuke or correction (by the guidance of God's Holy Spirit), then I clearly Love them.
Even so, that whole rebuke thing is very difficult. I find myself continually wrestling through - as this issue and that issue come through our ever-revolving doors of stories - how much is or is not appropriate for me to engage, rebuke, correct, and the like. I too need rebuke and correction. I think that Chesterton knew this in writing Heretics; and throughout the book one sees him giving "praise where praise is due," sometimes saying good things about surprising groups of people. For Chesterton, the enemy is not the "heretic" per se, but the structure or belief that that heretic presents.
It must be added that this sort of response - the rebuke - has thorough biblical precedent. In the days of Jeremiah, there was a priest who said that the people would return to Jerusalem quickly; God told Jeremiah to declare judgment on that teaching. Paul time again writes his letters to respond to the spiritual crises in various churches brought on by rampant false teachings: whether they be antinomianism (Corinth), racial hostility (Ephesus), the Judaizers (Galatia; and the region thereof), or simply bad eschatology (Thessalonica). John, in writing to several unknown churches, specifically gives his audiences some wisdom about teachers:
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world*; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error."
(I John 4:1-6)(John defines "world" earlier in chapter 2: in effect, the world is all of the systems and desires within man to create a life outside of Christ; thus, always lusting with the eyes and the flesh, and boasting of a life separate from God. I present this as an alternative to the commonly-used notion of "world" as "pop culture." No doubt there are "worldly" systems within "culture," but the two are not interchangeable in light of Christian views of the Greek word kosmos. But I digress.)
This means that part of our orthodox Christian walk is to discern when voices are spirits of the world, rather than spirits of Christ. And this distinction, it is to be noted, is not as easy as "Christian" / "non-Christian." When John warns the churches of antichrists in I John 2, he says that they had come out from the church. When Paul warns the church of Galatia (and the region thereof) of the Judaizers, they had come from the church. On the contrary, when Jesus is talking with the woman of Syrophoenicia and with the Roman centurion, he applauds their faith, even though they both, up until that moment, believed entirely pagan worldviews. Likewise, Paul in Athens doesn't reject the Athenian philosophers for their rhetoric: he accepts their rhetoric and uses their own pagan poets to explain the Gospel.
For me the importance of this matter is deeply integrated with my calling in the Lord. God has called me to be an apologist for His church, one who learns the languages of those Athenians known as "Academics" and attempts, through my life and through discourse, to communicate the Gospel clearly and directly while in their midst. That's my missionary calling.
But in the course of that mission, in the course of that call to evangelism, I continually find myself running into unnecessary road-blocks which make the proclamation of the Gospel more difficult than it is and than it should be. Instead of the way being made clear for the lost, as Isaiah cries out: "Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples." (Isaiah 62:10), the way for academics is full of obnoxious, and unbiblical, obstacles. At first, these obstacles seem like part of the package: "Well, when you become a Christian, you always vote for pro-life candidate because that's the most important issue to vote on," or "Well, as a Christian you can't listen to anything that Darwin says cause he's dumb."
And some - I have to be insistingly clear here - are absolutely part of the package: as a Christian we have a Scriptural sexual ethic, we have a call to a community church, we trust in the authority of the Bible, &c. &c. I don't think that we help anyone ever by "watering down" the Gospel (as some would claim we should). But I do think that what Isaiah is getting at in saying "clear [the way] of stones" is that there are obstacles in the path of the Gospel that are neither the Gospel itself nor a part of it, and that it is the job of the evangelist (or the apologist) to make that way easier by clearing away those unnecessary roadblocks.
These are the issues that Paul and John take to task in their epistles: they clarify the deity of Christ, the importance of having a future hope in His Return, the necessity of Faith over Works (like circumcision; cf. Galatians), &c. These beliefs were roadblocks for both Christian and non-Christian in the early church. Now, I'm not going to go in-depth right now - that will be another post - but there seem to me to be a good handful of heresies going around in the church, especially the evangelical church in America, that are neither founded on Scripture nor should be treated with the fundamental value that Scripture is treated. Some of these are simply unbalanced beliefs, where one sort of belief (political, social, philosophical, economic, &c.) informs theology rather than the other way around; some of these are clear contradictions to apparent core theology in Scripture. Some of these "heresies" are the result of conservative politics, some are the result of liberal politics, and some are the result of entirely non-political forces. And, to be clear, what I will hope to enumerate will neither be an exhaustive nor completed list or overview of heresy in American Christianity; I only hope to observe and compare the power of certain Voices within American Christianity to the more important Voice of the Bible. In some cases I think that these comparisons will need no further extrapolation from me.
To be perfectly and utterly clear: I do think that there is a big difference between a Diversity of Views within orthodox Christian thought and Clear Heresy. This is different than the ways the word "Heresy" is often described by loud voices in Christianity. I personally come from an Arminian (but not semi-Pelagian), Charismatic, Egalitarian, and Premillenial tradition within orthodox Christianity, but I don't think that I have enough Biblical credence to charge Calvinists, Cessationists (although on that point I strongly disagree with them), Complementarians, and Postmillenialists with Heresy. On even further subdivisions of belief, one could list ecclesiological matters like Pedobaptism / Credobaptism, Episcopal / Congregational / Presbyterian church structures, and matters of the like. Heresy is a strong word; I don't think it's appropriate to bring it to theological matters with such diversity within the orthodox, Bible-believing breadth of Christian faith.
(This, by the by, is an important descriptive matter for evangelical ecumenism and nondenominational / interdenominational interactions; orthodoxy, "right-belief," is an important, theologically vital matter for Christians. As such, we can't take such distinctions lightly. But I would argue that the above Capitalized terms are all systems of Christian belief that we can find and constitute a substantial argument for using the Bible. "Heresy," on the other hand, as I will use it here, are non-Biblical beliefs, ones that are self-evidently not in line with God's Word.)
With that all in-hand, I think it's vital to discern and disseminate various "Voices" whom, for some reason or another, have been accepted, in this or that demographic, by the Church and whose voices are distinctly (that is, self-evidently; any honest comparison, looking outside of ideologies, could see that they are such) non-Biblical, and, in some instances, we shall see, actually anti-Biblical and fulfilling what John said was antichrist.
That, of course, will be a matter for another post... ... ...
(One final note: If you are non-Christian and reading this, you might find it strikingly polemical, or over-complicated. I apologize for not writing a more accessible post, which I usually attempt to do. I love and recognize the presence of my non-Christian readership, and I would love as much as possible not to isolate you, but to include you in my blog posts, Facebook conversations, and other social media engagements. I take this privilege of words, conversation, discourse, very very seriously; and I'd prefer, as much as I can, to include everyone in conversations.
But "Heresy" is actually not an appropriate term to apply to non-Christians. The etymology of the word even goes back to notion of "picking and choosing," and in the Christian context it is mostly appropriately used for the "picking and choosing" of non-Biblical beliefs within the Church. As such, I would never approach a non-Christian and say "You are a heretic," no matter how much I disagree with their belief. But I can (and morally ought to, as I said above) approach my brother or sister in Christ and engage them from the authority of the Bible.
Thus, the language in this post is a little heavy, my rhetoric is a little intense, because the intended audience is family and with family one can - and sometimes must be - a little more heavy and a little more intense. This is especially true when the members of your family are hurting people in ways inconsistent with the faith that you share with them. Out of love for my family, and out of love for the non-Christians who are being hurt by my family in various ways, as a Christian I have a responsibility to wade into deep, complicated, difficult, and heavy waters with my family. Sternness here should be understood as a deeply committed and loving sternness, without bitterness, without animosity (except, of course, toward false teachings themselves!).
That being said, I certainly invite you to engage as well nevertheless. As I said earlier, I approach this conversation because I am an apologist and because there is a media-driven image of Christianity (from both "liberal" and "conservative" media) that is not reflective of Jesus. I love Jesus, and I'd love to share Jesus with you, and maybe while I'm refuting the Voice of, say, Donald Trump (to pick low-hanging fruit; we'll hit more popular - and less controversial - figures too) I can share with you the Jesus who stands in direct opposition with that line of belief. The beautiful, lovely, radical, world-changing Jesus, you know, the one that you think really-should-exist-and-then-wonder-why-so-few-people-talk-about-Jesus.
In that way, I hope you too can enjoy engaging in this matter, even though I target it as a conversation for the Church. You are certainly welcome to listen in.)
