In defense of heresy

Dogmatics, contemplation, and the limits of language

“Happy is he to whom truth manifests itself, not in signs and words that fade, but as it actually is.” — Thomas à Kempis, c. 1420 AD

¹Sometimes when we meditate on Scripture, or we meditate on God—which is a form of praise, a doxology in itself—we find ourselves in places that other people, or traditions, have called heresy.

And that’s ok.

---

Hold the pitchforks! Let’s back up a minute.

I’ll start with something we all believe to be true, at least about those other people: sometimes, people get too caught up in condemning those with the wrong answers.

Take, for example, the doctrine of original sin, which existed in some form in the early church but really took off with Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD). Augustine really wasn’t happy with the beliefs of one of his opponents, Pelagius, who thought that people actually had free will and the capability of not sinning, and that we only needed salvation because we sinned—not because we were born tainted. It’s funny, because in recent times we’ve come to understand that even though Pelagianism isn’t exactly correct, it’s not necessarily incompatible with the main tenets of Christianity; expressed a different way, it’s not heresy. On the other hand, ironically, it’s harder to say the same for some of Augustine’s views!²

Ole’ hereticus Pelagius in the Nuremburg Chronicle (1493)

Original sin is a great example, actually, because it reveals how language itself is a barrier to truth. There’s something True about what we call by the terms “original sin” or “hereditary sin” that people like Augustine, Luther, and Calvin saw clearly, but every way it’s ever been articulated (even when by my beloved Kierkegaard³) has been insufficient at best, its own heresy at worst. Every way we try to describe it or understand it, we obscure or disdain something important about God or humanity—His love, His upholding of our freedom, His sovereignty, or more. What’s worse is that we sometimes get so caught up in our theological systems that we refuse to accept everything said above and continually silence the questions and doubts and thoughts that attempt to rise up within us to a level of consciousness. I think this highlights the inherent problems with systematic theology as it is typically attempted and the need for a contemplative, meditative component to it.

This doesn’t mean that orthodox⁴ doctrine, or dogmatics, is unimportant—far from it! When we land places, when our philosophy takes us somewhere, we should turn right back around and look at church tradition. If I sound a little crazy, consider that the streams of Christianity with the greatest respect for tradition and dogmatics are, perhaps not coincidentally, often the best at moving beyond systematic theology and pure reason into a world of speculation, fideism, and mysticism.⁵

---

Before we go any further, we should probably talk about what heresy is. If we want the word to have any functional use, it has to mean more than just an incorrect belief about what God meant in the Bible. If that’s heresy, then we’re literally all heretics and we can toss the label into whatever bucket “fascist” is in these days.⁶ In the most basic sense, “heresy” is a belief in opposition to, or incompatible with, a belief system—Christianity in this case. If I were to say that God doesn’t (or isn’t) love, that’s heresy. It’s incompatible with every tenet of our faith and countless passages of Scripture would reveal the opposite.

So we agree this far, and we can agree a little further. But at some point, we run up against the difficulty of presuming that we know what truth is. And although truth might still seem obvious, with a little contemplation we realize it isn’t.

Let’s go back to original sin. Something really was lost when Adam sinned; something really happened to the human race. No one has ever explained the concept in a satisfactory way because it can’t be done (although sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking it can). There aren’t words, there aren’t ideas to attach to such a thing that don’t obscure some important element of the Christian faith or the character of the Christian God as He elsewhere reveals Himself in Scripture; those who systematize it are as heretical as the Pelagians they condemn.

Bold words, I know. But I’m not saying I can do better than Augustine. I’m saying no one can.

You can do this with any “heresy.”⁷ Take, for example, kenoticism (which I’ve written about), the heresy of taking Paul at his word a little too much in Philippians 2:7, where he says that Christ “emptied himself” (Greek ekenōsin) when becoming human. Of course, we know that Jesus is eternally God, and therefore He was God while a human, so any understanding of this verse that strips Jesus of His God-ness is heresy, right? Except that we don’t really have a good notion of how to describe God-ness without fancy words like “omniscient” and while Jesus was human He wasn’t that… I’ve already said enough for some fanatics to condemn me straight to hell, but whatever. I guess those people never read Mark 13:32⁸ or Hebrews 5:8-9.

We get uptight about the idea that God became less-than-God while He was human on earth. And rightly so! He never ceased to be God. But the words in the Bible itself, given as it is to us in the flawed vehicle of human language, sure makes it sound like God was less than God for a minute! I mean, He died for God-ness sake! What kind of all-powerful being does that? Nietzsche was less of a heretic than everyone with their britches in a twist over a few words that spill over into dangerous territory.

“God is dead…And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?”

⁹Just because our words get in the way doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore both sides of the reality of the incarnation of Christ. What I’m getting at is that when our words highlight one facet of Truth over another, it’s gonna look a little bit like heresy and that’s ok. We should wrestle, we should constrain ourselves with an awareness of orthodoxy, but we should be ok with that tension. Like I said, we’re just talking about facets of the Truth here. Truth is like a diamond, but a diamond isn’t its facets: it’s the thing behind the facets. The only truth we ever touch with our words is the outer edge of Truth!

We can look at it another way: truth is like a bouquet of flowers. Imagine the sum total of truth as a bouquet of unimaginable size. What do we have access to? The best we can ever do is assemble a sub-bouquet with the flowers we find, but it’s never the whole bouquet. What’s worse, is that if we focus too much on our own little bouquet then we will start to get in the way of the other flowers out there, or in the way of the people trying to grow them or find them. In the most charitable sense, that’s what denominations of Christianity are. They’re little sub-bouquets held up proudly by people who often forget that there is more to truth out there—and that’s to say nothing of the wilted, false flowers in our bouquets that were never Truth. And we all know they’re in our bouquets somewhere.

Flowers in a Classical Vase (1600s)

Of course, analogies only get us so far. That’s kind of been my whole point. These abstractions can’t describe Truth any better than a formula or a systematic theology can. In reality, Truth is nothing like a diamond or a bouquet—Truth is a person (John 1:14)! But analogies help because they can help us move ever so slightly beyond the limits of language. In this case, they help us feel the barrier between our words and truth even if we can’t put our fingers on it like like we can the facets of a diamond. We can relate to not knowing what truth smells like, just like we understand that we can’t imagine the smell of a flower no one’s ever smelled before. Another aspect of analogies is that they can be dangerous, because they’re so untethered to concreteness they can be—to put it one way—an image of correlation when there is no causation.

But hey, language is one of the only tools we have for conveying Truth. Don’t stop using it on my account. I just want us to add tools to our tool belt.

A brief digression

Now, none of this is to say anything about absolving false teachers and lying prophets of their guilt. That would probably be heresy (lol), given how harshly the Bible speaks of those who mistreat or mislead their flocks for personal gain.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock?

…I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock.”

—Ezekiel 34:1-16, NIV

Those who mislead or mistreat others, especially intentionally, are guilty of very harmful wrongs. But we’re all responsible—you and I! When it comes to false teachings, we’re supposed to be alert and of sober mind, on guard and with wholesome thinking, and steeped in the love of God that informs our understanding.¹⁰ Not only are we responsible for looking out for ourselves and our fellow sheep, but we should actually be looking for victims of heresy we can extend mercy toward!

Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

—Jude 1:22-23, NIV

Back to defending heresy again

In the beginning of this post, I suggested that our systems of Christian belief, or dogmatics, are in need of a contemplative or meditative component. We can throw the word “mystical” in there too, if it doesn’t scare you too much. What I mean is that, since pure logic and reason and empiricism can’t get us across the abyss, we need something that can operate in the vacuum. We need to be ok with considering what can’t be proven, can’t be systematized, and we can’t wrap our heads around.

For a little example, we can turn to Psalm 77.¹¹ Our psalmist, Asaph,¹² is in distress, and it seems like God isn’t acting the way He promised He would—in other words, the world is presenting itself as a heresy. So Asaph meditates on what he knows of God’s nature to remind himself of the orthodox truth of who God is.

I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.

You kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak…

My heart meditated and my spirit asked:

“Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”

Then I thought, “To this I will appeal…

But there’s a problem, in one sense, with how Asaph responds. He doesn’t attempt to construct some proof of the love of God or biblical system that reveals it: he appeals to an utterly unprovable, unscientific, even irrational story of God’s miraculous parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus.

I will remember your miracles of long ago.
I will consider all your works
and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”

…You are the God who performs miracles;
you display your power among the peoples.

With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

The waters saw you, God,
the waters saw you and writhed;
the very depths were convulsed.

He meditates on what is essentially myth! These were miracles performed long ago by our psalmist’s day, and though they were part of Asaph’s religious texts they were at best an oral legend to the other nations, and he has no empirical facts to stand on for comfort. But Asaph understood that these stories of God’s miraculous acts revealed something deeper, that they carried the seeds of deeper truths about who God is than the historical facts themselves or the situation that prompted this psalm. I know our psalmist wasn’t a westerner and didn’t think about these things in the categorical, analytical way we do, but we don’t need to degrade his intellect or act like he was too stupid to understand the difference between “grass is green” and “God parted the Red Sea one time long ago.”

Untitled by Mark Rothko (1952)

We should meditate on God’s Word too. I’ve been speaking of all language as incapable of conveying capital “T” Truth, but this isn’t exactly true in the case of the Bible, because it’s alive (Hebrews 4:12), it’s eternal (John 1:1). But to experience the reality of the Bible being more than human words, we have to let it speak to us. This meditation inevitably leads to glimpses beyond what we have words for, and when we try to put it into words we find that they fall short. They don’t fit with the rest of the Bible sometimes, but then of course the Bible doesn’t always fit with itself either (materially speaking¹³). So wrestle with heresy and orthodoxy. Question whether your beliefs are compatible with Christianity—biblical Christianity—as a whole. But don’t be afraid.

I think when we do this in a healthy way, we equip ourselves to spot dangerous teachings because we are “kept in God’s love” (Jude 1:21).

In practice, this means that we sometimes have to tentatively accept doctrines that rub us the wrong way, even if we hold that they can only be expressed, within the confines of human language, in something like a heretical manner. Original sin is just such a doctrine for me, since I believe the Bible paints a picture of a God who affirms our free will and does not force us to sin against Him. On the other hand, it means sometimes shedding ourselves of ideas that feel great at first but upon deeper reflection are incompatible with Truth. For me, the idea that I can benevolently use proactive coercive force for the greater good is just such an idea—sorry for the word salad there, but I’m trying to be specific. And finally, it means being open to methods of exploring truth other than the analytical and empirical. For example, I think we can learn a lot from Christian esotericism and people often castigated as mystics (Simone Weil is one I’ve referenced before) without falling prey to heresies like Gnosticism.¹⁴ This is doubly important in a world full of propaganda in all psychological channels causing so many of us to adopt a sort of worldly, unbiblical mysticism of the self.¹⁵

We shouldn’t shed orthodox Christianity, but we—dare I say it—shouldn’t stop there either,¹⁶ at least in our own personal search for truth. It complements our systematic theologies, if we will only admit our own limits.

Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

—1 Timothy 4:15-16, NIV

1. Opening quote from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, translated by Aloysius Croft & Harold Bolton.

2. I don’t feel like opening that whole can of worms here but for one potential example I’ve already discussed, check out this post on Romans 13. For further reading, check out pg 2-29 of The Pelagian Mentality: Radical Political Thought in Fifth Century Christianity by Richard Fitch in Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives, edited by Alexandre Christoyannopaulos (2011), and Pelagius: A Historical and Theological Study by John Ferguson (1956).

3. For Kierkegaard’s view on the matter, check out The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin.

4. With a little “o”: as the subset of religious views which conform to Christianity as traditionally understood by the universal (little “c” catholic) Church.

5. I have in mind the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (big “O” this time).

6. Actually, there’s some merit to the notion that fascist as a category applies to more than just certain views in the authoritarian-right portion of the political spectrum, but holy cow, that’s a digression for another day.

7. Here, try it with every heresy mentioned in this video. Not hating on the kid, btw.

8. Cf. Matthew 24:36.

9. From Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann.

10. Cf. 1 Peter 5, 2 Peter 3, and Jude, all passages that deal with false teachers in the church.

11. There are better examples (Psa 137?), but this is the one I’ve been meditating on. If you’ve got one you’d like to share, feel free!

12. It may have been one of Asaph’s descendants or someone in an Asaphic “school” and not actually Asaph, but that’s not the point.

13. Or, as the author of Ecclesiastes would put it, “under the sun.”

14. I would actually argue that Gnostic heresies are already rampant in our churches. But that’s for another day.

15. Yeah, that’s gonna need a whole post of its own. But one great resource that touches on this is Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes by Jacques Ellul.

16. If we always stopped at tradition, we would never have had the Tyndales and Wycliffes and other “heretics” who gave their lives exposing the real heresies embedded within the institutional church.