The Copts are not in communion with mainstream Christian churches (Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic). Historically, Coptic leaders had some deficient ideas about the nature of Christ.
Maybe.
Decades of ecumenical dialogue have done much to heal the wounds of this important division and the actual state of the division is beyond my ability to describe. The division between the Copts and the rest of Christendom is not yet (officially) healed but progress is being made.
Make no mistake: getting theology wrong is a bad idea, more dangerous than getting chemistry wrong in a laboratory. So am I inconsistent to hold up the examples of Coptic martyrs?
Not in the slightest.
Who cannot distinguish between the official teachings of a church and the daily beliefs of the followers?
Is the average Southern Baptist, Roman, Orthodox, or Copt doing their best to work out their salvation in fear and trembling a theologian? Most live in a cheerful ignorance or disregard the fringe teachings of their churches. Perhaps their church is wrong, seriously wrong, about important things but it is enough for them to deal with the world, the flesh, and the devil by God’ grace. They are busy raising children, burying parents, and receiving their daily bread from a good Father.
This is no justification for error. Every Christian should study and try to correct themselves, but all Christians acknowledge that we are (individually) not saved by our works, doctrinal or otherwise. How many Christians have a deficient view of the Trinity? This valuable film demonstrates to many of my students their inability to correctly describe this central truth.
Just as getting science right matters, though most of us are not up to explaining science, so getting theology right matters even if most of us lack the intellectual training to do a very good job with it. Willful ignorance or the intentional teaching of heresy by those who should know better is a horrific sin for this reason. Sheep trust their shepherds and when shepherds decide to disregard “old letters” or encourage sin, they face a double damnation.
There is mercy for their confused sheep with a lupine shepherd. For the wolf men there must be no quarter shown in argument . . . but as the church discovered, when we kill even that monstrous teacher, we may unintentionally make them too a martyr. It is possible that even the anti-trinitarian shines forth in his love of Christ as the flames lick up to his body . . . the great error subsumed in greater truths as he faces death.
Raise even Anne Boleyn to the scaffold and her sordid life is ennobled as fear of death concentrates her mind wonderfully. Kill Charles I and make him a martyr as he dies for his faith. Make brilliant, flawed Cranmer, a man at last, by burning him at the stake. Kill in the name of Jesus and you often make a man a saint as he learns to give all his hope and confidence to Jesus.
We have learned to give no quarter to false ideas, but for many reasons we pray God’s judgment on the heretics even though we are not God’s arm to bring that judgement. Their offense is against Christ and Christ will judge. Meanwhile, faithful Christians will break fellowship with the institution and its teachers while recognizing the complexities of life on the ground for the followers.
If the Coptic Church (as an organization) continues to mess up the nature of Christ, then as a faithful member of the Church, I condemn heresy as I must. But on the ground, where I live as a layman, I see no reason to condemn the Copts I know. We have never managed to get to the natures of Christ in the sweltering heat of Houston.
This I know: if secularists in North Korea or jihadists in Libya take us both to the wall for saying, “Jesus is Lord, ” then the blood of martyrdom and the confession of Christ will count more than even serious theological errors lightly held. When the Copts on the seashore said, “Jesus is Lord,” in the face of jihadi madmen, their blood and confession (by faith through the grace of God) was enough.
Right practice can trump confused beliefs by focussing the mind on the essentials at a key moment.
For all I know, these men, these twenty-one martyrs of Libya, were not “good” men before being held captive. The world, the flesh, and the devil may have tormented them as I am tormented. They may have failed in the way other saints, more righteous by grace, do not. And yet by God’s grace to them, these men got the big question right. Who is Lord? Jesus is Lord. Who is God? Jesus is God.
They confessed Jesus before jihadists and Jesus will confess them before the Father God. They died as Christ’s men . . . Christians.
They sealed their confession with their blood and that is enough theology for a loving and just God.
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