What is a “heresy?” The dictionary helps little. As a religion scholar and theologian (four graduate degrees) I claim qualification to define it. No doubt some will disagree.
A heresy is a serious deviation from a normed and norming doctrine of a religious community. “Heterodoxy” is a less serious one. Examples: For most Christian communities, including the World Council of Churches, “Jesus is God and Savior”is the central, unifying Christian doctrine. It is normed by the Bible and tradition and norms “Christian.” Thus, for most Christian communities, a denial of Jesus’s deity and saving function is heresy.
That is a kind of “macro-definition” of heresy for Christians. There are examples of heresy on that level such as “persons can save themselves by good works apart from grace.”
However, on a “micro-level” we need to talk about heresy in relation to specific Christian communities, denominations, churches. Among orthodox Christians, specific churches, denominations, exclude certain beliefs as heresies. For example, the Eastern Orthodox churches in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople has a list of heresies that is read out annually in every Orthodox Church (I was told by my EO professor in my doctoral studies). I don’t know if that is literally true, but I believe the EO communion has a list of heresies.
The Roman Catholic Church knows that some teachings, beliefs, are heretical. One of the, according to the Council of Trent, is Calvinism. I refuse to get into a wrangle about words. The basic ideas of Calvinism are excluded as heretical by the Council of Trent. Read its canons.
Some Protestant churches, denominations, identify certain teachings, doctrines, as heretical. Especially those that are “confessional,” that have official confessions and canons such as the Canons of Dort in Reformed churches. To the latter, Arminianism is a heresy. No matter how reluctant they are to say it “out loud,” that is what they are supposed to believe. A theologian of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) told me to my face that Arminianism is a heresy. He meant within his denomination. He did not mean in the general sense stated above.
What that means is that I, an Arminian, could not be an elder within the CRC or many other Reformed churches. Some would exclude me from membership only because I am Arminian.
Arminians have been very reluctant to identify Calvinism as a heresy. We have seemed to want evangelical Reformed Christians to want to be “nice” to us. “Don’t hate me because I’m Arminian” was the title Christianity Today gave to my article. I did not approve that title and would not have approved it. The editors didn’t ask me. I first knew of it when I saw the article in print. But I think it captures the sentiment of many, perhaps most, evangelical Arminians toward our Reformed brothers and sisters: “Don’t hate us.” I have rarely met or heard of a Reformed person who had that attitude toward Arminians (viz., “Don’t hate us”).
So what about officially Arminian denominations and churches? I don’t belong to one. I used to. We Pentecostals definitely did think of Calvinism as a heresy in that we would not allow a Calvinist to be an elder in one of our churches. My extended family included both Arminians and Calvinists—Pentecostals and Christian Reformed Church members. They, my parents and uncles and aunts, would discuss the differences but agree to disagree. It was clear, however, that they (my CRC relatives) and my parents thought each others were seriously mistaken about issues related to the extent of God’s sovereign control.
If I say that Calvinism is a heresy I can only be speaking my open personal opinion. I do not now belong to a church that confessionally affirms Arminianism. It certainly leans in that direction, however. (The Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective is held as a guiding statement of faith, not a creed.)
So if I say “Calvinism is heresy” I mean one of two things—either it is in the “macro” sense or in my own opinion.
However, there are officially Arminian denominations such as the Free Will Baptists. Most Wesleyan and Methodist denominations are officially Arminian. Within those communities one would be “safe” in saying “Calvinism is heresy”—meaning “compared with our denominational ‘orthodoxy’.”
I’m beating around the bush, right? It is my personal opinion, as a seasoned Christian theologian, that hard-core, extreme Calvinism such as it promoted by certain popular Calvinist teachers, speakers, writers, is heresy. By that I mean Calvinism that says God foreordained and rendered certain the fall and sin and evil and that certain specific people will spend eternity in hell without any real opportunity to repent and believe.
Do I mean that such a Calvinist is a heretic? No, he can’t be. A “heretic” is only someone who teaches what he or she knows is heresy. There are no accidental heretics. A person is only a heretic if he or she knowingly continues to teach what is contrary to his or her church’s orthodoxy after being told that is the case.
I would consider someone who teaches Calvinism within an Arminian denomination a heretic, especially if he or she knows what he or she is teaching is heresy. Many church communities permit heresy to be taught among them. I am sure I could find some officially Reformed churches that would not hesitate to allow me to teach Arminian theology within their ranks. At least their theologians would know that what I am teaching is heresy, but they are permissive about doctrine.
When I was Minister to Youth and Director of Christian Education in a mainline Presbyterian church I taught BOTH classical Reformed theology, using a volume of Reformed theology, AND Arminianism. I taught the adult Sunday School class Calvinism. Not that it is true but that it is what their official statement of faith, the Westminster Confession of Faith, teaches. For the most part they did not know that or care. Then I also taught them Arminianism as my theology. Nobody interfered, including the Yale Divinity School trained pastor.
However, if I should somehow be permitted to teach Arminianism as true in a PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) congregation, I predict that I would be interfered with and told to stop. I have known PCA ministers who have treated me as a brother in Christ while at the same time letting me know that, within their denomination, my Arminianism would be considered heresy.
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