| Heresy! |
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I am a weak swimmer. Years ago, I was swimming in the Pacific Ocean at Laguna Beach, and I went out a little too far. Suddenly, I felt as if I were being pulled by a strong force away from the land. The irresistible force was the undertow. Panic-king, I waved and yelled to my friend on the beach. He was a strong swimmer, and he came and pulled me to safety. I remember being exhausted and frightened, and glad not to have drowned.
An undertow is a current below the surface of the sea moving in the opposite direction. Sin is like a deep undertow pulling in the direction opposite to what we would like. A decision to swim the other way won’t always work.
Sin is an inevitable and tragic element in all of life. We have a deep sense that we are not as we should be within ourselves, with our neighbour, with nature, and with God. And we are very good at self-deception about our sin and its causes. The deeper we look at ourselves, the more we uncover our own pride and rebellion against God.
The doctrine of sin seems pessimistic if we believe in the innate goodness of people. As Pascal says, nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine.
Much sin is explained by free will, the God-given ability to make choices. About the year 400, a good and upright British monk named Pelagius went to Rome, and he taught that we have a free will that God expects us to use. He said that sin can be escaped if we make all the right choices. In fact, we could live a sinless life. He said, When we say that it is possible for a man to be without sin, we are praising God by acknowledging the gift of possibility which we have received. By using our natural powers and by our own efforts, we can become morally perfect, and thus go to heaven. It is our own free choice to commit sin or avoid it. We need to train our wills to achieve perfection. As Kant said much later, I ought, therefore I can.
God’s grace, for Pelagius, is God’s assistance in our making
conscious choices. Christ is our teacher and example, but our own wills save
us. The cross is at best a moral example to be followed, and Christ’s
atonement is unnecessary.
The problem with Pelagianism is this: if we really were perfectly free to
avoid sin, then all we would have to say is, I won’t do it. We would
just swim against the undertow.
If only it was that simple! Our free wills aren’t perfectly free. More than we’d like to admit, our choices are determined by our inherited temperament, social environment, learned habits, deep impulses, neuroses, and inner conflicts. Being proud, we can fool ourselves constantly. As Reinhold Niebuhr (who is very sharp on our self-deceptions) says, We are most free in the discovery we are not free. The more we discover our freedom, the more we uncover our own guilt.
It is not easy to do the right thing. Pelagianism turns Christ-ianity into a somewhat dishonest self-help program. The truth is, we need God’s grace.
The teaching of Pelagius was dealt with in 529 by the Council of Orange (so much nicer than Luther’s Diet of Worms), which said that human free will was so weakened by sin that we can’t believe in, love, or obey God apart from God’s grace. Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Pelagius did the church a favour: he made it focus on free will. But his solution, that our own wills save us, pushed some thinkers to the opposite extreme: God saves us without involving our wills at all! We are simply predestined to be saved, and that’s that. As always, heresy is a lack of balance.
Augustine, who long debated Pelagian thought, said that we cannot be saved by our own will, but God won’t save us without our will. Eastern Orthodox thought is balanced on the matter: God’s grace and our free will work together in synergy; we are fellow workers with God (I Cor. 3:9).
Pelagianism appeals to people who like to think of themselves as self-directed and independent, free to shape their lives to their own liking. Its the heresy of choice for the middle class businessperson. Its the religion of the stiff upper lip. The attitude to prayer is that grownups shouldn’t be bothering God for every little thing. Sadly, we can turn down God’s grace at the very place we need it most: when we are powerless over sin. Bishop Stephen Neill called Pelagianism the characteristic English heresy. (Angli-canism, p. 21) This may be true, despite the anti-Pelagian bias of the Book Of Common Prayer (read some of the Collects) and the 39 articles (IX, X, p. 702).
Pelagianism is also a problem for worship. If we are in charge of our own salvation, then we are like the proverbial self-made man who worshipped his creator! The danger is that we will address worship and hymns to ourselves, and Sunday morning turns into a pep rally whose message is, Try harder. The bad news is that we will become more anxious, not less; more guilt-ridden, not less. Ever been to a church that told you (out loud or very subtly) you’re never going to be good enough, and then told you (out loud or very subtly) to try harder?
If by our good works we attain salvation, then God’s role is secondary. God becomes like a coach on the sidelines, giving instruction and encouragement, but never getting in the game. On the other hand, if we have no say in how we play, free will is a waste of time, and we sit on the bench while the coach plays the entire game. One way to think of the Holy Spirit is as a player-coach, with fantastic skills and amazing teaching ability. The player-coach is in the game with us all the time, on every shift: playing, encouraging, teaching, leading, and attending to hurt players. He’s also the team owner!
The best response to the Pelagian heresy is a full surrender to God and the all-sufficient merit and grace and salvation of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (Lk.9:24, Mt.10:39, Mk. 8:35, Jn.12:25)
I remember old TV ads with refugees being fed and clothed that ended with, “This is Lotta Hitchmanova, with the Unitarian Service Committee, 56 Sparks Street, Ottawa.” Many good works were done by them. They seemed to be some type of Christian group, but that was all I knew.
What do Unitarians believe? They believe that God is not the Trinity, they deny the divinity of Christ, they teach that the atonement of Christ is not valid, and that salvation is by works.
Their roots are in early heresies. The Ebionites, a radical Jewish-Christian-Gnostic
sect, saw Jesus as human, but rejected all supernatural claims about him,
making Jesus purely an historical figure, to be spoken of only in the past
tense. Arianism holds to the truth that “God is one,” and so Jesus
can not be God in any sense.
Fast forward to 1550 to an Italian named Socinus, who developed the main lines
of Unitarian-ism: the Trinity is a false belief. Salvation comes by imitating
Christ, not through what Christ has done for us. Communion is just a memorial
meal.
Socinianism, later called Unitarianism, held to a high ethical doctrine while
being purely rationalist, calling Jesus “the best of men.” They
often stood for religious liberty, and persecution drove them far and wide.
Unitarians influenced Protestant churches in England, Germany and Holland,
and became a small but significant force in America. Unitarianism appeals
to sophisticated people who want a rational religion without dogma or mysticism,
with a high moral tone. It sees God as the love that lies behind all other
love, and humanity gathered up in that love without any limits upon it.
The Anglican theologian Frederick Denison Maurice saw the problem of Unitarianism not in their declaration of God’s great love – few have a problem with that! – but with their rejection of the uniqueness of Christ. “The idea of a divine humanity in one person is only rejected because it interferes with the acknowledgement of it in everyone . . . between this Unitarianism and Pantheism there is only an imaginary boundary, which must soon be transgressed.” (The Kingdom of Christ, 1842, p. 150-1)
Unitarianism sees us all as little Christs, in charge of our own salvation. “Yet for us, there is but one God, the Father, . . and there is but one Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Cor. 8:6, see Heb.2:10, Col. 1:20)
Related to Unitarianism is Deism, which sees God as the deity who created the universe, but like a clockmaker simply started it running by its own laws and declines to interfere in it. For Deists, religion is at best symbolic, at worst anti-rational mumbo-jumbo. Deists reject miracles. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were Deists.
Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) effectively argued against Deism that if God made the universe, there is no reason to doubt that revelation, Scripture, and morality also come from God.
Another radical sect emerging in the 1700’s is Universalism. Also anti-Trinity, Universalists say that all will be saved, no matter what. The Universalist asserts that since God is “all in all,” the notion that anyone could be excluded from God’s grace denies God’s saving love. Thus, all will be immediately blessed at the final judgement. The atonement of Christ sets forth an example of love, but makes no actual difference to our condition before God.
Universalism presents problems. Is God’s love finally to overcome even outright rejection and rebellion? Do the Hitlers and Stalins and all the other truly evil people get into heaven despite themselves? If so, God must have some method for removing their free will and forcing them to love God. But that’s not love, is it? A real relationship involves choosing to love, and risks rejection.
Christians have agreed that somehow freedom has to be left for us to choose the true freedom God offers us through Jesus Christ. If we want to say no, then no it is. The New Testament is clear both that God’s sovereign love can overcome every power that opposes it, and equally clear that there are powers and people that reject God, and in the full and final accounting to which we are all subject, they will be rejected. God’s love is great, and God’s holiness cannot finally allow sin to dwell in his presence.
Universalism says in effect, no matter what I do or decide, God will save me. It would be against God’s loving nature to condemn anyone. As Voltaire said, “Le bon Dieu me perdonnera – c’est son métier.” (“The good Lord will forgive me – it’s his job.”)
The problem is that our free will then is worthless. Why give us free will if our actions and choices simply don’t matter in the end? Can sin be such a minor matter? Further, why proclaim forgiveness in Christ, and invite people to accept it, if the decision means nothing in the end? Universalism is really another form of predestination, since all has been decided without us. The worst effect on the church is to take all need for evangelism away from us. Who needs it? Universalism says . . Nobody!
Romans 8 begins by saying that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and ends by saying that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ. So choose Christ!
“How can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead?” (I Cor. 15:12)
The oldest heresy is also the most persistent: that Christ was not raised from the dead. Denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus was a problem for Paul in the church in Corinth, and the same heresy persists today.
John Spong once said in a radio interview that he could not tell his daughter, who was studying physics, that there is a bodily resurrection. I find this puzzling. If we accept that God created the universe, bringing galaxies into birth, and that God creates life in all its mystery and complexity, why not accept that God can re-create life?
To create the new body of Jesus, to raise him from death, points to who God is and what God does. Those who deny God raising Jesus seem to swallow a camel (God is the Creator) but strain at a gnat (God re-created Jesus in a new kind of body.)
Resurrection-deniers shift the emphasis that the Bible places on God’s mighty act, to emphasize what happens inside us. Typically, the argument goes like this: since no one was there in the empty tomb when Jesus was raised, it can’t be verified historically. (Of course, no one actually saw the exact place of impact when the iceberg hit the Titanic, but we’re pretty sure it happened). So, the argument runs, all we know for sure is that something happened to the disciples. (Assume an iceberg.) The historically verifiable fact is their belief that Jesus was raised. (The Titanic sank, there were survivors.)
Thus, as in Rudolf Bultmann, “the rise of faith in the risen Lord” is the “real” resurrection. (No iceberg is needed.) The bodily resurrection of Jesus is “legend,” or a “myth” they believed in which made sense of their experience. John Spong’s version of the resurrection (Peter figured all this out as he sadly trudged home to Galilee) is a kind of “Bultmann for Dummies.”
The problem with this view is obvious. The apostles did not proclaim the word and acts of a dead man. Christians proclaim the risen and living Christ, not a universal principle or cause or set of moral virtues, no matter how perfect.
Christians believe in the incarnate, crucified, resurrected and exalted Lord Jesus Christ. He was called forth from the realm of the dead to live in power, and he lives to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth to God through himself. This is not the work of a dead man, or an idea, or a religious movement, but the work of the living Lord.
Further, a God who fooled people into thinking that Jesus rose from the dead would not be worth believing. As St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith.” (I Cor.15:14) Or as J.B.Phillips put it, “your God is too small.”
Yet some persist in talking about the resurrection not as something God did in Christ, but as something that happens in us, a subjective experience. Some say that resurrection is a symbol, or a metaphor. Symbols and meta-phors point to something else. So, stories about the risen Christ point to . . . well, what? Is there something better than raising the dead? Here is where we get into hazy mysticism, or foggy psychology, as in “the ideals of Jesus live on in us.” Is that really what was going on in the church of the New Testament? The line taken by some thinkers today is, “Now we know; they didn’t really understand back then.”
Another type of resurrection denial is Gnosticism, which always calls the material world evil, the very thing they want to escape, so a new body is exactly what Gnostics don’t want. Two recent bestsellers go this route. The DaVinci Code is a novelistic rehash of old Gnostic heresies: Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had kids, his divinity was an invention of the later church, and so forth. Watch for the movie.
And we have our very own Canadian ex-Anglican priest, Tom Harpur, who tells us in The Pagan Christ that there was no historical Jesus at all, but there is a “Christos” in everyone. “Each of us is a fragment of God with divine potential within.” (CBC interview) The whole Jesus story is based on ancient Egyptian myths. Harpur has left Christianity behind for Gnosticism.
The “gods-in-all-of-us” thing appeals to people who want religion without the Bible or the church. No need to confess “Jesus is Lord,” since we are all gods. The bodily resurrection of Jesus, showing forth the power of the one God, is the one truth that Gnostics hasten to deny.
Forty years ago Francis Shaeffer warned that the end of the 20th century would be a time of “contentless mysticism.” When the bodily resurrection is denied, we go off into a spiritualism that cuts off the God who creates from the God who saves. We end up with a weird sort of cross-less Christ-less Christianity. Jesus Christ gets co-opted for do-it-yourself religious schemes, and Christian language is the debased coinage used for other religious projects, usually centering on the almighty self.
The final problem with denying the bodily resurrection is the Christian hope. Christians believe that Christ is the first to be raised, and the general resurrection awaits us. If I ask my church who would like a new body, most hands go up. Enough already with the arthritis and cancer! Resurrection is God’s healing of creation’s wounds.
As St. Paul says, “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.” (I Cor. 15:16) God has made us body and spirit, and both will be raised. Christians do not beleive in the immortality of the soul, as in Greek religion, but in something far more glorious: the final re-creation of the whole universe. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ points to the storm center of the universe, a destiny greater than we can ask or imagine.