The Heretic Next Door

Back in the first centuries of the Christian movement, a priest from Africa named Arius stirred up some trouble. Though Arius spent the majority of his days as a religious upstart at Alexandria, he was trained at Antioch. That’s an important bit of info. There were two main “schools” of thought in Christianity then: Antioch and Alexandria. Alexandria was known for interpreting the Bible in an allegorical fashion. Much of the Alexandrian writings are first year church history for seminary students. Antiochan giants like Theodoret of Cyrus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Diodore of Tarsus held to a strict literal interpretation of biblical passages. These are really important theologians who receive very little attention nowadays.

Arius began devoting his sermons to investigating the question: “Was Jesus really God or was he just a human?”Arius had trouble believing God and Jesus existed together prior to the incarnation. This really isn’t that surprising. Antiochian theology focused on the “humanness” of Jesus – it was only a slight misstep that would lead Arius toward a form of adoptionism. So, for roughly the next three centuries, Alexandrian-heavy councils dragged Arius and company through the mud in their writings using nasty words like “heretic.” And for most Christians, that’s all we know about him. Was Arius wrong? Sure. Jesus is God. But there’s more to the story.

People rarely ask why Arius struggled with the divinity of Jesus. His reasoning is not much different from many struggling Christians today. Most of us were taught growing up that God the Father was a sovereign despot concerned with protecting his image of magisterial omnipotence. Liberal Protestant preacher Lyman Abbot put it this way: God is a “kind of awful omnipotent police justice” and each of us is a “scared culprit who knows he is liable to punishment but does not clearly know why.”  And that keeps many Christians in line. Afraid of God…but in line.

There’s only one problem. Jesus looks very different than that…and in John 14, Jesus had the gall to say he was just like the Father. And that’s what bugged Arius so long ago. He had been taught that God was unfeeling (impassible) and Jesus seemed so different. And because God did not seem to possess the qualities associated with Jesus, Arius assumed they weren’t the same at all. He was protecting the Father’s impassibility over against the “human” suffering in Jesus. If God did not feel our pain, how could he become one of us? Arius’ answer was simple: he didn’t. Arius’ responded when asked if Jesus and God are the same: “No! I would never insult the majesty of God that way!” This thought pattern also affects how many view the cross today: good Jesus protecting us from bad God.

There’s a good lesson here. People’s actions make it in the textbook. But their intentions rarely do. And what’s important to note here is that a struggling priest was attempting to think outside the box when reconciling his ministerial training with what he actually read in the Bible. He’d been taught that God was a “police justice” and wasn’t sure what to do with the compassionate Jesus he read about in the gospels. No one else had a good answer either so he courageously took a stab at it and was branded a heretic for the ages. But really, he was just a man attempting to understand God a little better. Maybe we shouldn’t call him the heretic for the ages. How about the heretic next door?

We should be careful when reading our history books. While it’s important to oppose false doctrine, we need to be careful not to disdain the struggles, fears, and mistakes of people in the process. Arius was doing the best he could. May we have grace to do the same.

Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science

In 2007, Eastern Nazarene College hosted the Open Theology and Science Conference and Azusa Pacific University hosted the event in 2008. From the 2007 conference and with continued interest from those attending in 2008, Tom Oord put together Creation Made Free: Open Theology and Engaging Science (Pickwick Publications, 2009). When Tom solicited readers to review the publication, I jumped at the chance - mostly because I have regrettably been unable to attend either conference.

Now, granted, this is not an introduction to Open Theism proper (though Oord does a good job of highlighting the basics in the introduction). There are better books for that - ranging from introductory (here) to scholarly (here and here). Richard Rice sums up the purpose of this book well in chapter 11: “Open Theism may now have reached a ‘post apologetic’ phase of its development, and Open Theists can turn their attention from their critics’ subsiding complaints to the welcome task of mining the constructive potential of their ideas” (p. 197, emphasis mine). For those in the Open Theist circle, this is a big deal. For the past two decades, Open Theists have been playing defense against the onslaught of criticism from more conservative branches of evangelicalism. This has made the opportunity to dialogue with the other end of the spectrum – Process theologians – much more appealing. But as Rice says, the zeal to “debunk” Open Theism is finally subsiding. And this is solely due to the tenacity of its main proponents and Open Theism’s acceptance on a popular level, mostly due to its ability to answer practical concerns in theology. The Open view is theologically sound. This compilation of essays reflects this new-found freedom to move on to “mining constructive potential ideas,” specifically in the area of science and creation.

The book is organized into four parts: Creation and Cosmology, Evolution, God’s Knowledge and Scientific Theory, and the impact of Open Theism upon anthropological issues. In the first part, Karen Strand Winslow deals with the creation account in Genesis and with the contextual issues surrounding the Hebrew terms for ”land,” “sky,” and “day.” She points out something simple but profound: our present reading of the creation account is loaded with the modern context of scientific discovery that was unavailable to ancient writers. In other words, telescopes and satellites were not part of the Genesis narrative, though we “read them in” when attempting to derive a “scientific” understanding of creation from the Bible (p. 27). Thomas Jay Oord follows with an essay using the kenotic love of God to derive a doctrine of creation for Open Theism. He draws from the anthropic principle and a cyclical universe model. Oord also ties in theodicy based on kenotic love and freedom at a quantum level. Michael Lodahl tackles the challenging subject of Islamic theology and Open Theism. Anna Case-Winters does an excellent job of exploring the role of the presence of God in the world. Rather than opting for a standard panentheistic role of Spirit in associating God with his creation, Case-Winters focuses on the incarnation as God’s way of existing “within” the creation (p. 71). However, Case-Winters uses this perspective to show why there’s no need for God to “risk” supernaturalism and ”external interventionism…can be avoided” in the natural order (pp. 73, 87). In doing so, she comes close to reaffirming the Newtonian closed system that Quantum mechanics has so quickly undermined.

In part two, Open Theists interact with evolutionary theory. Clark Pinnock supports the notion that evolutionary theory “poses no threat to faith.” Unfortunately, Pinnock falls back on apophatic explanations for specifics in the creative process: “we cannot pin God down in the details. If we could, God would be just another force in the world” (p. 106). In one of my favorite essays, Craig Boyd wrestles with the terms “good” and “perfect” in creation theology. After surveying the impact of Augustine, Boyd aptly supports the Irenaean choice of “good” in that it allows God to “play” within the created order (which fits well with both Open Theism and quantum mechanics). Greg Boyd further expounds on the Cosmic Warfare model from his God at War, specifically the ministry of Jesus and the Genesis account. 

Part three deals with knowledge, omniscience, and science. Alan Rhoda writes a masterful essay in which he expands the analogy of the “chess master” to one of game theory – a more flexible and resourceful model that is in keeping with Open Theism’s view of free-will. As Rhoda states, “changing preferences changes the game,” therefore Open theism posits not one model of divine providence but rather models (p. 168). Alan Padgett compares Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to human activity which is “free, indeterminate and unpredictable” (p. 185). However, Padgett opts for a more classical view of omniscience stating that though God may take risks, they are essentially non-risks since ultimately God will consummate creation eschatologically. Though I appreciate Padgett’s position, it feels as though he is side-stepping the issue on semantical grounds.  Part four addresses human issues in Open Theology. Richard Rice surveys psychological advances in understanding forgiveness and explains the importance of forgiveness in the Openness model. The futuristic potential found within the process of  forgiveness makes it highly compatible with the Open view. John Sanders explores linguistics and its relation to an experiential religious model.  Finally, Dean Blevins surveys the potential of Open Theism in discussing personal religious experience as a goal of spirituality.

Though the essays are solid (with a few home runs in there), the triumph of Creation Made Free is in its existence. It’s one of the recent publications concerning Open Theism that is free of polemical constraints. Scholars are merely assessing the validity of Open Theism in an interdisciplinary fashion without having to constantly defend their claims in the process.  In that setting, Open Theism is bound to make strides in the science-religion dialogue. I look forward to many more “post apologetic” writings in the future.

With Christianity, Less Is More

I love the Eastern Orthodox Church. Really, I do. There are a lot of reasons for this – one of which I would like to explain in this post. In Western forms of Christianity, we have the tendency to explore and systematize every single aspect of our faith…so much so that we find more disagreement than unity trans-denominationally. This is the exact reason I pointed out in my last post that we attack others so quickly with the term “heresy” when “heterodoxy” is a much better fit. In other words we are so restrictive and nit-picky with our doctrine that there’s no “wiggle room” for exploration and “out-of-the-box” thinking. We’re afraid to question and explore other biblical options for fear of crossing some invisible line that was created while we weren’t looking. Not so with the Orthodox.

Eastern Orthodoxy’s approach to doctrine could be stated as “less is more.” As Gregory of Nazianzus said, “To be only slightly in error [is] to be orthodox.” Now, that, my friends, is an amazing quote. While Western theologians dissected every theological detail focusing mainly on the intellect, Eastern theologians, like Gregory, did the exact opposite concentrating on “heart issues” like personal devotion and prayer. The Orthodox believe a Christian must experience the doctrines of theology, not just understand them. So, their theologians have rigorously maintained a small, essential list of beliefs, but have also allowed an openness to govern other doctrines that fell outside a few core essentials.

Yet, this “liberal” approach to interpretation where every “i” is not dotted and every “t” is not crossed has not produced the chaotic results Western Protestants would expect. Most Westerners would assume that such an approach would allow scriptural misinterpretation, self-seeking excess, and a blatant disregard for the traditions of the church. However, within Eastern Orthodoxy, the opposite has been the case. It has actually produced a theological conservatism among its adherents. Amazingly, their flexiblility, not their rigidity, has created this conservatism. The Orthodox, unlike Western Christians, have remained conservative and unified in their beliefs because of their limited dogma.

This illustration may help. Imagine you are stranded at sea with a single raft with no land in sight. Though you may occasionally take a leisurely swim, chances are good that you won’t stray to far from that raft. Why? Because that raft, though small, is your safety. It also represents your known point of reference in a sea of unknowns. For the Orthodox, their theology acts like a raft. The Orthodox never stray too far from their “raft” in order to get back to it. So, by maintaining a small, but exact set of beliefs, believers never stray too far from the essentials into a sea of philosophies and theological error. By allowing some individual creative freedom, they minimize doctrinal excess. Unfortunately, the opposite has been true in the West. Many Christians have reacted strongly against the church’s tendency to control theology by over-explaining doctrine to the point where it has stifled creative expression.

Fortunately, things are beginning to change in Western Protestantism. The postconservative evangelical movement is attempting exactly what the Orthodox have already done. Stanley Grenz, Roger Olson, Clark Pinnock, Kevin Vanhoozer, John Franke, and Nancey Murphy represent this tradition and have often drawn from the works of Bernard Ramm, Lesslie Newbigin, Alasdair Macintyre, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. They believe that much of the restrictive doctrinal trends in conservative evangelical circles should be relaxed. A core set of essentials should be rigorously upheld while at the same time a level of theological exploration and creativity should be embraced. This – if the Orthodox are “correct” – will produce an evangelical “raft” for the next generation. The funny thing about that is that in order to create conservatism, one must relax his grip on the non-essentials. You have to go “left” before you can go “right.” That’s difficult to do if you believe you already have reached the pinnacle of theology – which many conservative evangelicals believe they have.

So what are the essential themes that postconservative scholars uphold? There are only five: 1) the value and authority of Scripture, 2) the importance of conversion, 3) centrality of the cross, 4) the importance of sharing your faith, and 5) social transformation. Other than that, theology should be done with the heart, concentrating on the transformation of the individual rather than on the insistence of structured information. It may be that the Orthodox have had it right all along. Personally, as an evangelical, I welcome the change.

Heresy, Cults, And Crazy People: What’s all the Fuss?

I was watching a documentary on the History International Channel, which after watching it, should be renamed the Stylized Historiography Channel. The documentary was on cults and their destructive influence on society. Popular examples of religious freaks took up most of the documentary’s time – like Jim Jones and David Koresh. One phrase captured my attention though, simply due to its overt bias. In the conclusion, the narrator said, “In a world littered with cultic tragedy, others loom upon the horizon.” Wow. Now that’s some nice fear-tinged rhetoric there. As the narrator spoke these words, an image of a large group of Christian charismatics lifting their hands during worship appeared. Of course, that made me angry simply due to the implication. It’s hard to call a global movement of 500 million believers a cult. But what really irritated me in those words and images is the narrow understanding of the sociology of cults and heresy.

Contrary to popular views of religious history, “cults” or sectarianism has been the norm for religious belief, including Christianity. ”Cult” simply means a fringe alternative movement standing for something outside mainstream values. Globally speaking, that means that in Hindu or Buddhist nations, Christianity is the “cult” there. The values may even be the same – just a more intense desire for, say, holiness. Paul Tillich said that sectarianism is “the criticism of the church for the gap between its claim and its reality.” Usually the horror stories (like Jones or Koresh) come from sectarian groups that don’t develop a large following (a few hundred people). They normally pass into history unnoticed. However, all Western and Eastern religions that exist today started as fringe religious movements. Everyone has been a “cult” at sometime or another. That includes all major Christian denominations. Even Christianity began as a radical, marginalized sect of Judaism.

Sects/cults become credible over time as new members are added and others begin to accept their existence. As sects turn into more accepted denominations, they often breed spiritual complacency among their members who begin to desire to return to the “good old days” when the movement was smaller and more radical.  In turn, this produces more sect formation by dissatisfied members. These “renewal movements” only  become independent sects when the existing church rejects their overtures for spiritual renewal. They merely want to renew the spiritual life of the church. If they are accepted, we call them “revivals” and talk about how great they are. Pejorative labels such as “cult” are given by the mainstream body after rejecting the movement’s overtures for change. Often times, sects require strict adherence to beliefs and high levels of commitment – essentially an  ”all or nothing” approach. Conversely, sectarians believe that the stress of asceticism is rewarded with spiritual power – something the group that rejected them did not possess.

And that’s when all the heresy talk starts. Our understanding of heresy now (which is applied to all types of religious “infractions”) is not the same as the early church. Initially, it only dealt with foundational truths of the Christian faith – namely the divinity of Jesus. In the fifth and sixth centuries, it became associated with other aspects of Christianity - for example Origen’s musings about universalism. But honestly the modern term most commonly derives its nastiness from the writers of church history. Hopefully everyone knows by now that only the “winners” in history write the books. And the same is true of church history. Cult critics initially only disapproved of a group’s method of worship, not the doctrines themselves. But over time, as accusations are repeated in church histories, the doctrine was often deemed heretical as well. For example, the Montanists (initially apart of the church) were a rigorous and devout group of Christians – orthodox in their foundational beliefs. However, by choosing to recognize their own leaders and holding a place for women in leadership, they came under ecclesiastical fire. Along with that came the critic’s rejection of the Montanist’s use of spiritual gifts. It’s not that the gifts were wrong – but that women were allowed to practice them. Eusebius quotes Apollonius: “Does a prophet paint his eyelids?” The issue was not with prophecy but rather who was prophesying: someone the church had not sanctioned. Throughout church history, heresy had little to do with doctrine and much to do with issues of recognized authority.

As such, cults aren’t usually heretics in the authentic sense of the word. What cults oftentimes are is heterodox. Now that doesn’t mean “wrong.” It means outside of mainstream acceptance. Any evangelical historian worth their salt will tell you that “orthodox” simply means the “majority opinion” – it doesn’t necessarily mean that the majority opinion is “correct,” though many times it does. So, many of the “orthodox” opinions we hold today were at one time heterodox, until enough people accepted them. To step away from religion for a minute, we all hold gravity to be an “orthodox” part of science. But Newton developed the “heterodox” idea of gravity from occult beliefs in Paracelsian correspondences, Neoplatonism, and alchemy. That may surprise you. But that’s a perfect example of something “heterodox” evolving into an accepted mainstream and orthodox belief. If the origins of gravity embarrass you, then you’re missing the point. All things are heterodox at their inception - including religious belief systems.

So, what should you glean from all of this? First, stop throwing around the term “heresy” for every little religious belief that doesn’t match your preconceived ideas. Secondly, no matter what mainstream religious group you belong to, you can thank your original “cult” leaders for being persistent in the face of opposition from the mainstrean religion of the time. What people called “crazy” then, we call “normal” now. And, third, be kind to the people “beneath” you on the religious food chain – they will be were you are within a couple of centuries…

Muttism: The Next Big Thing in Christianity, Part I

This post (and the next) might be a little self-indulgent. However, I have good reason for writing them. I am constantly prodded by various people about my theological beliefs. Others never say it out loud but there’s this look in their eyes like, “What’s going on up there in that head of yours? Do you still believe in the virgin birth? How about the resurrection?”

When describing myself, I normally tell folks I’m a “spiritual mutt.” This is primarily for two reasons. First, since childhood I have been a member of Baptist, Methodist, and independent charismatic churches. I have served as a vocational youth worker, worship leader, and pastor within all three of those same denominations. Do you know how much work it takes to balance a theology that ministers to those different groups! Geez! It’s almost impossible. But it also creates the chance to blend those religious doctrines into an ecumenical approach that can meet the needs of various people groups. Though this makes me a little difficult to label, I see it as a postitive theological trait.

Here’s the second reason: I received Christ at age five and was “Baptized in the Spirit” as part of the charismatic tradition at age eight. Luckily, no one told me at that age I shouldn’t have expected God to manifest himself in an experiential way. People often have strong feelings about charismatic manifestations. Some see it as excessive or “unsafe.” I can understand that. Fortunately, my parents were generous enough to share that experience with their children. I can’t imagine the Christian life without it. My wife and I plan to do the same for our children.

Although I am tremendously thankful for my Christian upbringing, I adhered to a very strict set of doctrinal principles for a long time, with little critical analysis. What I had inherited was some seriously conservative Southern Baptist doctrine. And the more I explored (personally and academically), I realized that many of those doctrinal positions were rather inconsistent and limited in their approach to the larger Christian tradition.  More importantly, I also realized that same Baptist doctrine agressively rejects the spiritual experience I received at age eight. Yet, as I looked around, most charismatic believers were okay with this overly-conservative theology – one that did not even acknowledge their own charismatic experiences. I began to quietly look for something else.

So, I set out over the last ten years or so to develop a theological system for myself that is consistent with my experiences in the faith. That may sound grievously boorish to you, but when you take a decade to do it rather slowly, it’s enjoyable. So, what has developed is very much an orthodox Christianity, but one that also borrows various concepts from various systems. I wanted to arrive at an experientially-oriented theology that fit my personal experiences without contradicting basic evangelical beliefs. One theologian calls this approach ”pilgrim theology” – letting your theology develop as life informs it. I call it “muttism.” It’s a good way to do things - less stressful…kind of a “we’ll worry about it when we get there” approach. Since I’m not done living, I suppose my personal theology may evolve some more.  Remember, God is a relational being – not a system of beliefs. And mutts can be good dogs, too, you know.

Next post I’ll give you more theological details of my personal theology…