With the popularity of Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, has come an explosion of interest around "alternative Christianities" and "lost Christianities." The cultural mood in our postmodern world provides just the right conditions for these "Christianities" to flourish. Many of the postmodern way view orthodox Christianity as a function of political power, history's "winner" as it were. In reality, there is nothing intrinsically superior to orthodox Christian belief, they say, that would commend it above what has been deemed heretical belief.
By contrast, many postmoderns have nothing but the deepest sympathy for those falling under the rubric of heresy, much akin to what one would have for the poor and down-trodden. It is the heretics who are the true revolutionaries, the ones resisting the power structures of their day and seeing from outside the cultural worldview to call for freedom and equality.
Ah, how we've had it all wrong.
While the thinking person realizes that the cherished values of the 21st century (e.g., tolerance, egalitarianism) are not as closely associated with heretical beliefs in the early centuries of the Church's history as some would have us believe - and in many cases just the opposite - this love affair with heresy provides an opportunity for Christians to re-examine what heresy is.
In his book, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, Christian scholar Alister McGrath attempts to do just that. He takes the insights of contemporary heresiology and argues for a middle-of-the-road approach to heresy. McGrath argues that heresy is neither a "fundamentally malignant attack on orthodoxy" nor a "principled alternative to orthodoxy that was suppressed by the institutional church" (p. 11).
McGrath's book comes in four parts and the first part, naturally, addresses the question of what heresy is. McGrath takes a "3 D" approach (my description, not his) to heresy. He defines it as "a doctrine that ultimately destroys, destabilizes, or distorts a mystery rather than preserving it." (p. 31) Further, the fundamental character of heresy is "the maintenance of the outward appearance of faith coupled with the subversion of its inward identity." (p. 147)
To help understand this fundamental character of heresy, take the case of Arianism. Arius affirmed Jesus as the saviour of the world and one to be worshipped, thus maintaining the outward appearance of faith. Yet his interpretation of Jesus as a created being made it incoherent to view Jesus as the saviour of the world or as one who should be worshiped.
McGrath describes heresy as an outcome of the "journeys of exploration that were originally intended to enable Christianity to relate better to contemporary culture. Heresy arose through a desire to preserve, not to destroy, the gospel." (p. 176) Heresies are "byways opened up for exploration through the process of doctrinal development." (p. 66) Heresy is, in other words, a theological cul-de-sac on the Church's journeys of doctrinal exploration. The fault of heresy, according to McGrath, is not that it has failed to preserve the gospel. It is "its unwillingness to accept that it has in fact failed." (p. 31)
In the second part of the book, McGrath looks at the roots of heresy and contrasts his understanding of heresy with the so-called "received view," an established theory of the genesis of heresy by the middle of the third century through to the early 19th century.
The received view of heresy can be summarized as follows (pp. 64-65):
1. The early church was unsullied and undefiled.
2. Orthodoxy was temporally prior to heresy.
3. Heresy is an intentional deviation from existing orthodoxy.
4. Heresy is the fulfillment of New Testament prophecies of apostasy.
5. Heresy is a function of love of novelty, jealousy, or envy on the part of heretics.
6. Heresy lacks the coherency of orthodoxy.
7. Orthodoxy is global whereas heresies are chronologically and geographically provincial.
8. Heresy results from the syncretism of orthodoxy and worldly philosophy
The reason for the received view's decline was the recognition that the way the gospel has been preserved down through the centuries is not by proof-texting and hollow repetition of creeds, but by doctrinal development. Heresy, more or less, is one of the outcomes of these developments. Heresy is not a contaminant from outside a pure and pristine church, but a virus from within.
The third part of the book contains a brief but helpful summary of heresies in the early church including Ebionitism, Docetism, Valentinism, Marcionism, Arianism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. This historical excursus bolsters many of the claims McGrath has made about heresy. For example, though there is little question that Pelagianism subverts the gospel, Pelagius was within the church and interested in moral renewal. He was not motivated by a lust of novelty, jealousy, or envy so far as is known.
Finally, in the last section of the book, McGrath's offers a helpful list of "pressures that appear to be implicated in the genesis of heresy:" cultural norms, rational norms, social identity, religious accommodation, and ethical concerns (p. 180).
McGrath also deals with the popular view today that heresy is merely history's "loser," the ideology of the oppressed. He shows that this was certainly not the case in the "proto-orthodoxy" period prior to Constantine since the church had no power whereby to enforce orthodoxy. Even at the time of Constantine, McGrath makes the case that orthodoxy was more than a function of power politics. Arianism, for example, was found to be intellectually wanting apart from whatever politics were at play. McGrath does concede, however, that orthodoxy and heresy became political instruments in the Middle Ages.
***
McGrath's book is a nuanced read that gives the reader an appreciation for the complexity of the ideas of heresy and orthodoxy. For those of us who hold too closely to the views of church history propagated by Dan Brown et al., McGrath's book is a necessary corrective. Heresy is not a victim of theological oppression (p. 79). But the corrective force of McGrath's book applies also to those of us who reflexively assume the worst morally of men who have come to be associated with heresy.
Despite the wonderful things about the book, I do have a few complaints. For starters, I observed a fairly frequent repetition of content in the book as did other reviewers. I'm not sure why this was thought to be necessary, but it's distracting and annoying to the reader when coming across the same thing over and over again.
Secondly, for someone of McGrath's calibre, he makes a rather bold statement about the New Testament usage of hairesis that is, unfortunately, also a bald statement. On page 37, McGrath claims that the Greek word translated "heresy" is a neutral, non-pejorative term referring only to a school of thought in the New Testament era. Any negative associations with the word, McGrath assures us, are "linked to the social divisiveness and intellectual rivalry that these schools of thought sometimes created." Ignoring the fact that "intellectual rivalry" implies some sort of doctrinal difference, McGrath doesn't interact at all with the lexical authority on New Testament words, BDAG (3rd edition), which defines the use of hairesis in 2 Peter 2.1 as a reference to opinions or dogmas (p. 28). Instead, he asserts that influential translations like the Authorized Version obscured the true meaning of hairesis, which is "sect." He praises William Tyndale for translating hairesis in 2 Peter 2.1 as "damnable sects." No mention of the internal evidence for the Authorized Version's translation, "damnable heresies." No mention of BDAG. This is a glaring problem since the statement is no small point.
Other criticisms could be made, but the review is already too long.
Overall, much is to be gained from reading McGrath's book, these shortfalls aside.
