A Ramble About Heresy

I'm going to do something that I rarely ever do. I'm going to start with the Scripture instead of leading into it. This particular Scripture has had more influence, albeit indirectly, on Church relations and history than most people realize. The Scripture passage is 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, and it deals with something the Church fought with vigorously in ancient times, and sadly has now come to dominate our thinking. It reads (in the World English Bible):

“Now I beg you, brothers, through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me concerning you, my brothers, by those who are from Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' 'I follow Apollos,' 'I follow Cephas,' and, 'I follow Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?”

Let's reword this, “I'm a Lutheran,” or “I'm a Baptist”, or “I'm a Catholic”, or “I'm Evangelical.” The biggest single concern on St. Paul's mind with the Corinthian church was schism, and members of the church splitting off into factions (which is actually what the word “heresy” literally means, “a faction or [political] party”). The truth is though we don't normally see this as a problem because every church and denomination now not only sanctions factionalism but actively promotes it. In many cases it's relatively innocuous and benign as different churches disagree, but recognize each other's validity and respect each other. But where it becomes a true problem is when one faction within the church starts trying to coerce or force other members of the body of Christ to follow their way of doing things.

Church history is rampant with our certainty that our personal faction within the Church is the way everybody should be doing it and those who aren't are either misguided or on their way to hell. One instance comes to my mind in the early eleventh century when Greek bishops and priests ministering to parishes in southern Italy began rebaptizing Latin speaking Christians because they rejected the validity of Rome's Sacraments. This was one of the grievances which led to the Great Schism of 1054. The wars of religion raged across Europe in the sixteenth century as Lutheran fought Calvinist, Lutheran and Calvinist both fought Catholic, and everybody fought the Anabaptists. An obscene amount of blood was spilled all while each side condemned the other to hell for their particular Christian practices and devotion.

The definition of a heretic is one who schisms. If this is the case, then just about every church and denomination in the world today is, by definition, heretical. Not because of their theological teachings, but because of their clinging to the underlying teaching that God will only truly work through their version of Christianity, and everyone else needs to come to them to get it right. The worst offender is the parent of my own faith, the Orthodox Church, which refuses to recognize that God's Grace is active in any other way beyond their own Sacraments. It is an irony that after centuries of trying to preserve itself from schism, it has become the most schismatic. Even the Roman Church has recognized that God does in fact on occasion work outside their borders.

I am Orthodox Old Catholic. I will never be anything else again. This is because this theological structure works for me and allows me to progress in my journey of faith towards the upward calling of God in Jesus Christ by Grace through Faith in Him. I am able to relate to and understand the writings of the ancient Church in ways I never could as an Evangelical, and this has opened the Scriptures to me in ways my previous path couldn't. But this is me. I know many people who have had the opposite experience growing up Catholic and being led away from the Catholic Church, any Catholic Church, into an Evangelical Church where they were able to truly begin their own journey of faith and begin to grow towards Him. I have observed that it is often the case that the church or denomination we grow up in somehow becomes a barrier to actually knowing our Lord and He will transplant us in order to make things more clear. I am now convinced that God doesn't see the denominational factional borderlines that we throw up. He only sees the Body of Christ, which oddly enough doesn't fall neatly into denominational boundaries.

If we truly want to walk in the Apostolic Faith, we must first give up our factionalism. It is only right to honor the Apostles and the Bishops who succeeded them because they fought so hard against it. We can never be truly Orthodox, and free of heresy until we do.