The Joy of Heresy

{My research into Paul the apostle has led me to reading about Marcion of Sinope, a 2^nd-century Christian bishop who fell out of favor with orthodoxy over his claim that the God of Jesus was an entirely different God than YHWH, the creator God of the Old Testament. He based this on his reading of Paul’s letters, and he then interpreted (and “corrected”) the gospels accordingly. In a sense, Marcion was the original booster of Pauline Christianity, albeit in a form quickly condemned by other Christian writers. Since Paul’s writings also appealed to some Gnostic groups, he became known by critics as the “apostle to the heretics”. Marcion, with his doctrine of two Gods, had a substantial following, but, as Christian orthodoxy solidified, he was effectively banished from Christian history, only to begin making a comeback starting in the 19^th century. The point I’m trying to make is, Christian history is fascinating, and so are Christian heresies.}

So many heretics, so little time! Such was the lament of Professor Rufus Jones back in 1924, when he published his The Church’s Debt to Heretics. “My greatest difficulty in preparing this volume,” he explained, “has been the problem of selection. The material vastly overflowed my limits of space. I was compelled to choose a few specimens from the prairie harvest which the centuries laid at my hand.” A prairie harvest of heresy! There is a title waiting for its book to be written. “Some readers,” Jones acknowledged, “will look in vain for their pet heretic, while others will find someone praised and glorified whom they would prefer to see burned or at least left to oblivion.”

Christianity did not exactly invent the idea of heresy, but it certainly did its best to perfect and to promote it. Forbidden ideas and forbidden books drew the censure of church authorities ever since there was such a thing as “church authorities”. Paul himself warned against “false apostles” and counterfeit gospels; while his gospel was authorized directly by God and therefore could not be questioned, subsequent Christians had to rely on the Church to refine (and define) orthodoxy for them by sifting heresy from the voluminous deposit of faith—and by the occasional “inquisition” and burning at the stake to make sure everyone took orthodoxy and heresy seriously.

Despite the best efforts of the doctrinal gatekeepers, heresies refused to go away. The Protestant Reformation, by allowing heterodoxy to flourish, let a veritable clowder of heretical cats out of the bag; the Enlightenment came along and made things worse. Twenty years or so ago, Philip J. Lee, a Protestant pastor, felt compelled to write a book (Against the Protestant Gnostics) in which he denounced much of modern Christianity as infected by Gnostic and Pelagian heresies. More recently, the nationally syndicated columnist Ross Douthat, a convert to Roman Catholicism, surveyed the American religious landscape and pronounced it filled with heretics; his book was titled, straightforwardly enough, Bad Religion.

I raise the issue of heresy because I have been reading about post-apostolic Christianity, which was a veritable smorgasbord of religious oddities. My readings of, and about, Paul have made it clear to me that the original “Jesus movement” was much less unified than standard Church history would have us believe; Paul himself encountered resistance to “his” gospel, and his letters largely focused on combating what he saw as misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and demon-inspired opposition to that gospel. Neither Paul nor the other leading apostles—i.e., Peter, James, and John—were able entirely to control the religious and spiritual energies that their movement tapped into and unleashed. In the decades following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple (70 CE), and as Jesus’ original disciples and earliest followers died off, extravagant and increasingly inventive versions of the gospel were in circulation—most of which the Church managed, one way or another, to suppress.

One man’s heresy is, of course, another man’s orthodoxy; “right belief” is in the eye, and the heart, of the believer. Second- and third-century Christianity was something of a religious carnival in which various sideshow attractions congregated, from Marcionites to Valentinians and from Docetics to Montanists, with variations of each and with numerous hybrids in different combinations (e.g., Marcionite Gnostics, for instance). The label of “heresy” was applied to these sects both contemporaneously and after the fact by the version of Christianity that ultimately prevailed. Ironically, the Ebionites, a sect of Jewish Christians who hewed closely to Jesus’ teachings and lifestyle, were among the groups judged as heretical, raising the question of whether Jesus would have been accepted—assuming, of course, that he would have wanted to be—by the religion which he supposedly founded. ¹

The point of Rufus Jones’ book (The Church’s Debt to Heretics) was that orthodoxy was clarified, revised, and made explicit in response to “heresy”. He went so far as to claim that heretics provided (or provoked) “discoveries of fresh insight,” and that some of them, at least, were “recipients of new illumination, gifted leaders of unwon causes, prophets of neglected or forgotten truth, and profound interpreters of the deeper significance of life.” Then again, he acknowledged, some heretics were merely “capricious innovators, freakish disturbers, hysterical champions of novelties, and unhappy rebels against whatever exists.” Furthermore, as Jones pointed out, heretics are not necessarily more tolerant or open-minded than their orthodox opponents; in fact, “Heresy asserts a fiery infallibility” of its own. It “challenges the ideas of orthodoxy, insisting that its own ideas are more true and closer to the eternal nature of things.” It would be an exaggeration to say that within every heretic is a potential inquisitor, but it would not be altogether wrong. History is full of sectarians who break with orthodoxy and then attempt to impose their new orthodoxy on members of their sect.

Rufus Jones also noted this distinction:

Orthodoxy in all ages has been concerned with the preservation of an objective system that has come to be considered essential to salvation, since the mission of the Church, in the mind of the faithful, orthodox believer, is to be an instrument of salvation. Orthodoxy has thus, in the main, formed around the essentials for salvation and around theories of eschatology. Heresies, on the other hand, have been more concerned with life, with experience, with maintaining a continuous revelation of the Spirit here and now. They have inclined to shift the emphasis from heaven to earth.

Heretics speak both for the primacy of individual conscience and for the ongoing work of the Spirit. How can the Church, or anyone else, close the books on revelations? Heretics can be disruptive, of course—but is that not the nature of the Spirit? Churches, say the skeptics, are built not just as shelter for believers; they are built to keep the Spirit out.

How can we tell the difference, then, between constructive and destructive dissent? Well, we could ask the Authorities what They think and accept Their verdict. Or we could take our cue from the first-century Rabbi Gamaliel, as quoted in the Book of Acts: “I advise you, Leave these people alone! Let them go! If their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them.” When it comes to heretics, by their fruits, as it were, we shall know them.

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¹ I am being provocative, but only mildly so. Rufus Jones wrote, “What we may properly call ‘Galilean Christianity’ had a short life.” Christianity as it developed became more about believing in Christ than about living like Jesus.

The Heresy III floor-standing speaker from Klipsch