Dangers of Heretic Hunting
I am sometimes confused as to the reasons for the time and energy that Christians put into heretic hunting. It does not take long to find people being extremely critical of people such as Rick Warren, Rob Bell or N.T. Wright. I am not against conversation and even keeping each other accountable. But critics will call such men heretics and that is some of the nicer names.
They may respond to me by saying that the writers of the New Testament and early church fathers went after heretics. That is of course true. But the heresies of the early church were nothing like the concerns about people such as Warren, Wright or Bell. It is not a matter of overemphasizing one thing and under emphasizing something else. The heresies of the early church were things such as saying that the Old Testament God was not the true God, that Jesus was not God, that Jesus was not human and so on. It really is no comparison with what people are saying about these popular pastors, writers and scholars.
Again, I say we should have conversations. We should examine what people are saying and try to learn from their mistakes. But we should also rejoice when what they do expands the Kingdom, even if what they say is not how we would have said it. Stop trying to find a heretic behind every pulpit and work together on the issues we agree on and deal with the spiritual threats that are clear.
While I agree with you that we have better things to do than to be on a constant heretic hunt, part of the job of pastors and Bible believing theologians is to combat false teaching and heresy that tries to creep in the church. As for Rick Warren, I think people are overly critical of him, he is not my favorite pastor, but I don’t doubt his Christianity. N.T. Wright, however, has recently taken a dangerous turn that we ought to expose and oppose so that it doesn’t creep into our seminaries and churches. The New Perspective on Paul and Wrights view of justification is heretical and it will lead people away from salvation. I hardly think it is going to far to point that out. And Rob Bell I have heard say that mans problem is not that they don’t have faith in Jesus but that they don’t have enough faith in themselves. Now that is a dangerous and damning teaching. So, again, I agree that our sole purpose in life shouldn’t be hunting these guys down, but I think books like Jude and even the pastoral epistles and Jesus’ own teaching in Matthew 7 would tell us to be on the look out for such false teachers and be ready to refute them.
I agree that we have to watch for false teaching. But we have to ask: what does it take to be a heretic? Not emphasizing or expressing something the way I would? I was at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Atlanta and there was a conversation between N.T. Wright and two other evangelical scholars. I say a conversation and not a debate because they had trouble finding things they disagreed on. It became clear is was a difference in emphasis and wording more than anything else. It is hard to say how someone who affirms the Trinity, incarnation, salvation by grace, inspiration of the Scriptures, could be called a heretic. As for Bell, I have heard vague accusations about him but rarely any quotes that condemn his theology. I have watched many of his Nooma videos and have had no reason to suspect that he is a heretic. I have no problem disagreeing with people, but it is much different saying that Charles Taze Russell was a heretic and saying that N.T. Wright is a heretic. We need to be very careful how we use that label.
Oh you would say that, you heretic!
There, now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can agree with you (oh, but that makes me a heretic too!). I suspect that what motivates the critic to cry “Heretic!” is what would motivate me: a desire to label, to pigeon-hole, to cast outside the bounds (a motivation Jesus criticized), and thereby to at once dismiss that person and to feel more secure in oneself. None of those motives would be considered (I hope) honourable, other-centred, or loving. If we label as heretics all those who disagree about a particular doctrine we think essential, where does it end? I know people who are convinced a literal six-day creation is essential; are old-earth creationists therefore heretics? Surely not. Heresy is a serious charge, but we like to throw it at everyone who disagrees with us thereby watering down the impact when someone (like Russell) actually does diverge from orthodoxy. We follow our culture in this; everyone is a “hero:” teachers, postal workers, the guy shoveling the sidewalk for the shut-in. When someone demonstrating actual heroism comes along, their story is swamped by the background noise.
Howard, you are not the first person to call me a heretic. I once was called a heretic by a person at a former church. The reason was that they did not feel I was stressing the blood of Jesus enough. Little did she know I was stretching the church by talking about the blood more than they were comfortable with.