Top Heresy Among Christians?

In an age of unbelief and fee thinking words like 'heresy' do not have much meaning. Being told you are a heretic, for most people, is considered no big deal. The locus of decision making, in our culture, is the individual. This is one of the challenges in theological discussions. People do not really care about truth, they are more into 'opinions.' And this seems to be as true of so-called conservative Christians as it is for so-called Liberals.

There is another approach, one which respects the idea of "church" and the teaching authority of the church. People who embrace the creeds (like ancient Christians, you know, the ones who actually compiled the Bible) understand that there must be some balance when a person reads and interprets the Bible.

On the one hand, reading and reflecting can be a personal discipline helping someone draw closer to God and come to a clearer understanding of God and His ways. It is the data through which we encounter the Divine. On the other hand, the Church's doctrine is not something up for discussion. No Christian has authority to read the Bible and create his own theology. Those issues were debated and decided long ago. The humanity-divinity of Christ? Done. The Trinity? done. No need to spend endless hours trying to figure it out. Left to our own devices, we tend to formulate error and heresy [you can find a handy quickie review here:  http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/heresies.stm ]

I have often thought the most popular heresies (i.e. false teachings/beliefs-rejected by the Christian church) are probably about Jesus. Conservatives tend to be Docetist or Apollinarian. They declare the divinity of Christ and focus on that. Docetists say Jesus looks human, but when they are through talking you realize it is all an appearance....I think there may be some of that involved in the question, "Could Jesus be wrong?" (and I am not saying anyone is a heretic here, but the question itself may lend itself to that sort of thinking). Such a Jesus is "human" but not really. He is above and beyond all humanity as we know it. The more liberal heresy is probably the other extreme. It recognizes the humanity of Jesus (historically more easy to prove) but do not go much beyond that. He may have "become" the Son of God (this is called Adoptionism) and He is certainly held up as a good example (generally, today, because He is considered 'so tolerant and accepting' and He would bless what we think). It is what allows so many contemporary Christians to say "Jesus probably sinned." (Yikes!!!)  Both of these false teachings share the same problem, they deny the incarnation. They both have only one half of the equation and so they leave us where we started.

However, there is a third heresy which I believe rivals the other two. That is the belief in something called "The God (or god) of the Old Testament." The first advocate on record for this position was Marcion, a bishop who lived from c85-160. Based on those dates, he was a young man when the NT writings were coming to a conclusion. His theory was that the OT god was inferior. He tossed the OT and identified a truncated Gospel of Luke (edited to his approval) and the writings of Paul as the new Bible. His theory is more elaborate, but this is not my point. My goal is to identify that this urge to toss out the OT is heretical, an error and in contradiction to the Christian faith.

Some identify places where "God acts differently." Others merely say, "The OT is law and the NT is love." Much of this is presumed. In Exodus 34:6 we read "YHWH, YHWH, merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in kindness and faithfulness, keeping kindness for thousands, bearing crime and offense and sin; though not making one innocent: reckoning fathers crimes on children and childrens children, on third generations and on fourth generations." Richard Friedman's Torah commentary includes this: "This is possibly the most repeated and quoted formula in the Tanak providing 9 examples from psalms, prophets and other writings. Mercy to the 1,000 generation certainly trumps judgement to the 4th. The imbalance is palpable. [and judgement to the third and fourth refers to living family, in other words, it is possible for grand children and great-grandchildren to be alive and suffer the results of the patriarchs sins]

Assuming the OT is useless for understanding God ignores the fact that Jesus used it as scripture and He interpets His own life in terms of it. The Love of the NT includes all manner of punishment and threat. Read Acts and see what happens if you lie about giving to the church. Read Paul to the Romans. Sure there is grace-grace-grace, but what about whole chapters on sins which will exclude you from the kingdom? Jesus is not shy about judgment. He can be pretty hard and harsh. Real love does not sugar coat everything. Judgment and mercy go together. No one should assume we are free to do whatever we like. God never says that in either testament.

The Lord God of the OT and NT is the same Lord God. It is work to come to understand it. Are you a heretic? Do you care? Does truth matter? A good place to start is with C. Fitzsimons Allison's very readable book "The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy." Errant beliefs lead to bad practices. Wrong thinking does damage. Renewal of the human spirit begins with love and truth. Together. Come Lord Jesus and set us free!