Of Heresy

Tonight at the Rector’s Forum we will discuss the early councils of the church and how they dealt with the polyphonic points of view that existed in emerging Christianity during the first five centuries of the Common Era. Differing Theologies abounded across the intellectual spectrum from Gnosticism, to Arianism, Apollinarianism and many many others. Heresy as it has become known, means a theology or belief outside the so-called “mind of the Church.” In antiquity after Christianity became the established religion of the empire, heresy would have been beliefs outside the consensus of the early councils of the church endorsed by the emperor, whose concern was not so much to achieve a strictly accurate belief system, but to achieve unity in the church and therefore unity in the realm, religious and political life being intimately related.

But heresy has a very positive and creative side to it as well, both then and now. The so-called heretics of the early church included men (and perhaps some bold women) who were genuine, intellectually curious, and imaginatively adventurous in their seeking to know the nature of the mystery of God in Christ. The early heresies provided substantive challenge to the status quo of church doctrine, and fostered a milieu of discovery with regard to what would be considered orthodox theology. The arguments were often fascinating, most were quite civil, but alas, some became bitter. Some bishops were exiled because of their beliefs. But suffice it to say the inchoate theology of the emerging church evolved in a passionate and creative dialectic, which produced syntheses of ideas that became accepted as “the mind of the church.”

The center of most of the arguments of the early church councils concerned the true nature of Christ. The writer of the Gospel of John informs us that the Christ is the incarnate logos, the divine Word of God in human flesh. But once said, what on earth does it mean? There were two divergent schools of thought: On the one hand the Syriac (eastern/Antiochene) school which held that Jesus was a good man, a wise prophet/teacher who by following the way of Torah, the very way of God, became the likeness of God in earth; one whom we are to emulate so that the world would live justly as God would have it. On the other hand were the docetics/pneumatics who believed that Jesus was truly divine, the very emanation of God in earth, God himself merely carried in a human body, if a human body at all. Naturally arguments travelled along a vast continuum between these extremes. Tonight we will discuss the tentative syntheses of these arguments.

Things have not changed really. Theological challenges, dialectics still abound. The church still struggles mightily with issues of theology, catalyzed to great extent by the Reformation and Counter Reformation of the sixteenth century and beyond. Today one can find quite easily vastly different theologies among Christian denominations, even within a single denomination. Moreover, now that the world has become so interconnected via the renaissance of technology, we now must contend with the theologies of the other world religions. Contend is perhaps the wrong word. Perhaps it is better for us to say that we are to be in genuine, imaginative conversation with all the world’s theological propositions, because in the final analysis all theologies are speculative, always have been, always evolving still to this day, always about discovery, discovery as to the nature of this God, the three in one, we call love. If all were settled what would be the fun of that? The sacred mystery still beckons us today as it did the early church fathers….we are still called to come and see.

1 Comment

  1. Jim, you manage, as always, to make the compelling case for the need of poets and artists capable of helping us negotiate the hazy fields between orthodoxy and – well, the “differently orthodoxed.”

    The creative finding and usage of language/images/music/plastic arts to approximate religious meaning is underfunded these days. I say underfunded because it seems poets and artists are no longer at the feet of theologians like they were 500 years ago, and my deeply shameful suspicion is that the Church generally helped them get up and leave. Of course, the theologian also used to be a durable voice in the academy – once an obligation, now a privilege – a “soft cost” of learning environments pretty much funded through research dollars, athletics, government, and private donors from industry.

    At the same time, the field has never been riper. If every message of every conceivable form is a readable text with its own background and ethic and potential religious p.o.v., then the whole thing’s a collage – a brilliant feast of heresy orthodoxy that calls for discernment and joy in discernment. Lady Gaga can hit the tenets of our faith and then split that arrow over again, and just as good or better than some old fool like me with his theological learnin’ papers hung up on the wall.

    Thanks, also for tendering the phrase “tentative syntheses.” I’m not sure what to do with it, but I like it.

    Torey Lightcap

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