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{"id":5366,"date":"2009-03-17T14:17:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T19:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/2009\/03\/17\/our-collective-faith-and-heresies-1\/"},"modified":"2009-03-17T14:17:09","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T19:17:09","slug":"our-collective-faith-and-heresies-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/03\/17\/our-collective-faith-and-heresies-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Collective Faith and Heresies 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"Heresies.jpg\"$ <\/span>The word \u201cheresy\u201d appears on this blog every now and then, and I have long wanted to do a series on heresy and heresies and have now found a perfect reason: B. Quash and M. Ward, Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe<\/a> $\"\"$
\n<\/strong><\/em>. I want to get this conversation started today. I begin with a set of questions:<\/p>\n

How do you define \u201cheresy\u201d? Who defines \u201cheresy\u201d? What have you heard \u2014 profound and absurd \u2014 that was called heretical? Do you think it is important to point out heresy? What are the dangers in pointing out heresy?<\/b><\/p>\n

This book is an edited collection of readable, brief, and incisive chps on various heresies: Arianism, Docetism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Adoptionism, Theopaschitism, Marcionism, Donatism, Pelagianism, Gnosticism, Free Spirit, and the book closes with a study of Bibical Trinitarianism and the purpose of being orthodox.<\/p>\n

Hauerwas writes the Foreword and makes the following (always provocative) statements:<\/p>\n

\n
\u201cGiven the diminished state of the Church some Christians might even believe that if we could gain more members by being heretical so much the worse for orthodoxy.\u201d\u00a0 But, if orthodoxy \u201cis used as a hammer to beat into submission those we think heterodox\u201d it \u201cbetrays itself.\u201d So instead of a hammer, \u201corthodoxy is displayed as an act of love that takes the form of careful speech.\u201d There are limits, and not all stick to the limits: \u201corthodoxy is the hard discipline of learning to say what needs to be said and no more.\u201d And this one: \u201cOrthodoxy shows why what we believe cannot be explained but can only be prayed.\u201d So Hauerwas.<\/p>\n

One of the editors of this fine book is Ben Quash, an Anglican priest, a professor at King\u2019s in London, and the canon theologian at Coventry. The other editor is Michael Ward, an Anglican priest and writer and former chaplain at the coolest college in Cambridge: Peterhouse. Quash wrote the Prologue.<\/p>\n

He opens with a definition: \u201cA heretic is is a baptized person who obstinately denies or doubts a truth which the Church teaches must be believed because it is part of the one, divinely revealed, and catholic (that is, universally valid) Christian faith\u201d (1).<\/p>\n

Why does this matter? Because our collective faith has \u201csaid that neither your race, nor your sex, nor your social class, nor your age could be a bar to full membership of Christ\u2019s body, the Church.\u201d How? \u201cThe answer was: your faith \u2014 what you believed in, as embodied in your practices and confessed with your lips\u201d (1).<\/p>\n

Thus: \u201cThe Church\u2019s identity and integrity were expressed in orthodoxy: the confession (and enactment) of a collective belief\u201d (1). Heresy thus threatens the glue that holds the Church together.<\/p>\n

$\"Irenaeus.jpg\"$ <\/span>He observes that Irenaeus shows that it is not just their hostility but they way they assimilate themselves to Christian orthodoxy. There is always an air of probability, he says, about heresy. They use Scripture and they tend to be one-doctrine problematizers. Theology is interrelated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key task for orthodoxy, it seems, is to keep a sense of what the larger shape of Christian belief is \u2014 a shapw which, if contemplated patiently and sensitively and with a concern to find its maximum integrity, will unlock its inner persuasive power, and display its glory\u201d (5). I totally agree.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t trust the individual; he believes the community must make these decisions. Orthodoxy doesn\u2019t create unity; it deepens the unity that is ours through the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Heresy is often the easier option.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"