What is Heresy?

The flap over Rob Bell allegedly being called a heretic by Mark Driscoll raises an interesting question. What is heresy and how is it defined?

The late Harold O. J. Brown has suggested that after the Reformation, the term "heresy" is essentially meaningless. Why? Because the term seems to have referred to the notion of "going one's own way", that is: at a time when there was one unified church, those who departed from the teaching of that one unified church were heretics. Once the church ceased to be unified, "going one's own way" could no longer be termed heresy - there was no longer a singular arbiter of what was orthodox. In actuality, the term lost some of its meaning after the separation of the Eastern and Western churches in 1054. Can a Roman Catholic call an Orthodox a heretic with any real authority? It becomes a "he said/he said" conflict.

Yet the term is still used, probably too often. I do not think the term is meaningless, nor do I think Driscoll was entirely off base in saying Rob Bell was straying into heretical territory. Here's why.

Most church traditions, Catholic, Protestand and Orthodox accept the Apostles' creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed as valid summaries of essential Christian doctrine. The Apostle's creed defined orthodox belief agains the heresy of Gnosticism, which questioned the full humanity of Christ. The Nicene Creed set the limits of belief against the heresy of Arianism, which questioned the full divinity of Christ. The Athanasian Creed further clarified Christology. The end result is a fairly solid, lasting, clear set of boundaries regarding the nature of God as Father, Son and Spirit. That is orthodoxy. What violates those creeds would have been considered heresy then, and should still be considered heresy today.

What Rob Bell apparently wrote in "Velvet Elvis", was an attempt to downplay extreme rigidity on doctrinal formulations - not a horrible idea in itself. He compared doctrine to a trampoline, the idea being that doctrine sets limits - but that there may be a bit of flex in how those ideas are expressed from place to place, time to time, culture to culture. So far, no heresy, though careful theologians might be uncomfortable with the image.

But he also suggested doctrine is like a brick wall - that if you remove one brick the wall can still stand. The idea is that we may not get everything 100% right. When he suggested that the brick one might remove is the virgin birth, he got into trouble.

Why is this a problem? Because the virgin birth cuts to the heart of both the humanity and deity of Christ - both of which were clearly affirmed in the creeds and which have been considered essential to orthodox belief since then, one could argue as far back as the writing of the gospels. If Christ was not born of a woman, his humanity is in question. If he was not born of the Holy Spirit from a virgin womb, His deity is in question. This particular brick in the wall is simply not optional from the perspective of historic Christian belief. '

In Bell's defense, he did not say he himself did not accept the Virgin birth. He did, however, in writing what he did, suggest he would accept as "orthodox' others who do deny the virgin birth. As a result, I can only say that the warning that Bell might be "straying into heretical territory" is accurate. Not only is Bell potentially straying from what Driscoll might consider essential belief, he is straying from what the entire church has considered essential belief for most of church history.

The bottom line is that it is still possible to use the term heresy in a meaningful way. We should be careful with it, and reserve the term for clear violations of universally accepted beliefs, but we can't abandon it altogether without implying that nothing at all is settled in the doctrines of Christianity. Heresy is nothing more or less than the denial of Nicene Orthodoxy on some particular point. Perhaps one could say that all other doctrinal disagreements are controversies, not heresies.