Is Heresy Possible Today?

                                                                                                                                                  Vol. X, No. 3, March 1997

           This “Heritage” item is taken from Timothy George’s chapter, “Toward an Evangelical Future,” in Southern Baptists Observed, Nancy Tatom Ammerman, editor (University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1993) pp 292-3. Dr. Timothy George is founding dean of Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, and well known Southern Baptist theologian, scholar, and author. He and his wife, Denise, edit the excellent series Baptist Classics, published by Broadman & Holman.

           Throughout their history Baptists have been explicitly orthodox in their continuity with the trinitarian and christological consensus of the early church. Major exceptions to this tradition, such as the General Baptist defection to Unitarianism in the eighteenth century, have been met with swift repudiation. Nevertheless, in recent years accommodationist views of the reality of God, such as those put forth by process theology, have vied for acceptance under the banner of tolerable diversity. Baptist theologians must have the courage to say no to such views, which, if carried to their logical extreme, would undermine the gospel itself.

           Southern Baptists must also face squarely the relativizing of the Christian assertion that personal faith in Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation for all peoples everywhere. This presupposition undoubtedly has undergirded the development of the Southern Baptist missionary enterprise from its humble origins to its present status as one of the leading forces of evangelical outreach in the Christian world. Yet it is challenged today by a host of competing ideologies. And theories ranging from religious syncretism and unchecked pluralism to “anonymous Christianity” and schemes of “second-chance” salvation. Had such ideas prevailed among Baptists of an earlier era, William Carey would never have gone to India nor Lottie Moon to China; or, had they done so, they would have merely affirmed the values of the Hindu and Confucian cultures they encountered, rather than calling men and women “out of darkness into the marvelous light.” That this topic was hotly debated at a recent meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society is evidence of its growing significance within all sectors of the Christian community.

           As Southern Baptists confront these and other explosive issues in our efforts to move toward a renewed framework of theological integrity, it will be helpful to keep in mind several affirmations. First, heresy is a possibility. The earliest Christians found themselves confronted with a pattern of teaching that they could not countenance while remaining faithful to their Lord (Gal. 1:9; 1 John 4:1-3). In the providence of God, heresy has sometimes served a useful purpose by calling forth a clearer definition of the true faith: Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture accelerated the formation of the New Testament canon, and Pelagius’s merit-based soteriology prompted Augustine’s exposition of the doctrine of grace.

           In much of contemporary mainline Protestantism, heresy as an operative doctrinal term is beyond the realm of possibility. (Interestingly, the World Council of Churches has declared South African apartheid to be heresy, and certain opponents of fundamentalism have not hesitated to label that movement heretical.) Surely we must be careful to distinguish the heresy from the heretic, and always reject censorious personal attacks against fellow believers, however serious their theological deviations may be. Still, the Church of Jesus Christ must be willing to recognize and to reject perversions of the Gospel when they crop up in its midst. A church that cannot distinguish heresy from truth, or even worse, that no longer thinks this is worth doing, is a church that has lost its right to bear witness to the transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ, who declared himself to be not only the Way and the Life but also the Truth, the only Truth that leads to the Father.