Diversity, including theological diversity, is a gift to the people of God, so long as we allow ourselves to see it for the gracious means of multifaceted revelation that it is. It is only when we let our fears control us that diversity appears as a threat, driving us to demand uniformity even though it will cost us our unity. But in love there is no fear, and so in love there is unity, there is trust, and there is joy.
Words like “heresy” and “orthodoxy” often trigger a distrusting response when people hear them, and for good reason. Many people have abused them as bludgeons, as though orthodox meant “I’m right and good” and heretical meant “You are wrong and evil.” But there are other ways to use those terms that are better, proper, and truer. Maybe the following will be helpful.
Orthodox doesn’t mean “this idea is right.” It means “this idea helps us stay rightly oriented toward Jesus.” Gregory of Nazianzus (old dead guy, pretty important in the history of Christian theology, but don’t worry if you’ve never heard of him) once said it this way: “To be only slightly in error is to be orthodox.” Orthodoxy isn’t “right,” it is just “getting close(r).” The truth remains still mysterious and beyond our ability to fully grasp. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.1
Heresy… more
Recently, Daniel Heck made this statement:
My problem with the sinner’s prayer really is that it is functionally super-Pelagian, even though it acts all anti-Pelagian. Funny the way we tend to become what we hate. When I’ve heard people use the sinner’s prayer for evangelism, they usually say a bunch of anti-Pelagian stuff about how nothing you do can set you right with God, etc etc etc, and then they say, actually, you know, there is exactly one thing you can do. Say this prayer.
I responded thus:
Regarding the sinner’s prayer and its associated problems, the underlying issue is the warped concept of salvation that it rests on. If one thinks that “being saved” means God saying “OK, when you die you’ll get to go to heaven,” and therefore that one “gets saved” in some punctiliar event—whether that is saying a certain prayer, or being baptized, or whatever… more
In response to Robby McAlpine’s comment on this blog post by Brad Blocksom. Robby wrote:
One thing I’ve seen from the academia side that bothers me is when some church leader asks whether or not they take the Bible “literally”. The academics have a great deal of semantic fun with this one, talking genre and form and how the questioner is clearly an uneducated dolt, and generally have a great snort-n-chortle amongst themselves.
But the questioner wasn’t asking for a dissertation on genre; they were just wondering if the academics consider the Bible authoritative in our lives today. And I suspect the academics knew that (they are supposed to be the smart ones, after all). They could have just answered the query that the questioner was actually asking. :)
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It can actually be pretty hard for an academic to answer such a question well, Robby… more