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The Heresy Myth

By Jeremy Myers
31 Comments

The Heresy Myth

Heresy Myth

A Centered Set approach to church tries not to restrict anyone from participating. Sure, there are rules about how to participate, but in a Centered Set, since there are not boundaries, everybody by definition is “in.”

But what about the heretics? The really bad hell-bound heretics? The apostates and wicked men who lead people astray by lies and deceit? Cannot we at least restrict them?

Heretics Don’t Exist

Well, it may come as a surprise to learn that there is no such thing as a heretic. They are fictional creatures invented by religious leaders who want to scare people into strict compliance to everything the leader says. Like parents who try to scare their children into obedience by telling tales of the bogeyman, some church leaders try to scare their congregation with tales of fire-breathing heretics whose ideas originate in the pit of hell.

Scripture on Heresy

But doesnโ€™t Scripture warn us about heresies? Yes, it does. More frequently than we realize.

The word heresy comes from the Greek word airesis, which is pronounced โ€œheresies.โ€ So the English word โ€œheresyโ€ is not a translation from the Greek, but is a transliteration, just like baptism (baptizล) and evangelism (euangelizล). Translators will often transliterate a Greek word when they are not fully sure how to translate it. They just take the Greek letters and change them into English letters, and call it good.

But itโ€™s not so good for English readers who donโ€™t know whatโ€™s going on behind the English. In the case of airesis, the translators knew what it meant, and most of the time, in most translations, it appears as โ€œsect,โ€ โ€œdivision,โ€ or โ€œfaction.โ€

Heresy in Acts

This is seen most prominently in Acts where Luke writes about the โ€œsect (airesis) of the Sadduceesโ€ (5:17), the โ€œsect (airesis) of the Phariseesโ€ (15:5), and the โ€œsect (airesis) of the Nazarenesโ€ (24:5). We are generally familiar with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but what was the โ€œsect of the Nazarenesโ€? They were the followers of Jesus. They were Christians (cf. Acts 24:14; 26:5; 28:22).

So, according to Scripture itself, Christianity was one of the โ€œheresiesโ€ at the time of the early church. This isnโ€™t a bad thing. It is not a condemnation of Christianity. It is just a way of describing a group of people within the broader religion of Judaism. It refers to a group who had some different beliefs and practices than other groups within the big religious tent of Judaism.
Sect Heresy

Heresy in Paul

Outside of Acts, there are only three more uses of the word airesis. The first two are found in 1 Corinthians 11:19 and Galatians 5:20, and both refer to โ€œdivisionsโ€ and โ€œfactionsโ€ that occur within Christianity, and both teach that such divisions are destructive and damaging. Rather than divide over doctrine, we are to be unified in the Spirit. Neither use refers to some sort of pit-of-hell false teaching that must be condemned by the true spiritual leaders. To the contrary, both passages condemn the practice of forming divisions and splits (airesis) within the Body of Christ. Paul recognizes that genuine Christians can become divided, but he instructs that such practices are works of the flesh, and not a result of life lived in the Spirit.

If this understanding of these two passages is correct, the danger of airesis is not bad theology, but divisions within the Body of Christ. A fight against โ€œheresyโ€ is not a fight against bad doctrine, but against disunity in the church. Certainly, disagreements over doctrine can create division, but the proper response is not to separate from each other over our differences, but to love each other despite our differences.

We will will look at the final passage tomorrow, 2 Peter 2:1. But for now, what do you think of this idea of heresy? Maybe you think that the idea itself is heresy. If so, why? But if you disagree, be careful how you respond, for according to Scripture, divisiveness is the true heresy.


God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Close Your Church for Good, Theology - General

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How did Jesus preach and teach?

By Jeremy Myers
4 Comments

How did Jesus preach and teach?

How did Jesus preach and teach? What was theย teaching method of Jesus? We already looked at this briefly in the post where we defined preaching and contrasted preaching and teaching, but let us look in more detail now at how Jesus taught, specifically in regard to His use of parables and the text of Scripture. We also discussed some of this here.

The Teaching Method of Jesus

Jesus Told Stories…So Should We?

Numerous pastors devote large portions of their preaching and teaching to storytelling. While there is nothing wrong with storytelling, the explanation and justification for this practice is that โ€œJesus told stories, and so should we.โ€ There are, however, numerous problems with such logic.

First, while there is no denying that Jesus told stories, His stories were not just stories. They were parables. These parables were not told to reveal and illustrate truth, but to conceal and hide it. Jesus spoke in parables to keep most of the people confused, not to help explain and illuminate the truth. How do we know this? Because Jesus said so. In Luke 8, after Jesus told one of His parables, the disciples did not understand what He was talking about, and so asked Jesus why He speaks in parables. He responded by saying that He speaks in parables โ€œSo that in seeing, they will not see, and in hearing, they will not understandโ€ (Luke 8:10). In other words, Jesus uses parables to mask the truth.
[Read more…]

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Close Your Church for Good, Discipleship

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The Primary Problem with Theology

By Jeremy Myers
11 Comments

The Primary Problem with Theology

The primary problem with theology is that it asks questions. This doesn’t sound like a problem, until you realize the danger of questions.

Don’t get me wrong, I love questions. I think everything should be questioned. But following the theme of Ecclesiastes 3, there is a time to ask questions, and there is a time to shut up and do actions.

Yesterday we looked at a famous theological question from the days of Jesus, and I suggested that Jesus hated the question, especially when the person that the debate was about was standing right in front of Jesus with a need that could be met.

When theology gets in the way of loving others, Jesus throws theology out the window.

But curiously, to make His point, Jesus begins by asking a question. I indicated previously that the reason Jesus asked the question is not because He didn’t know the answer, or because He thought His audience didn’t know the answer.

The reason Jesus asked the question is because He knew the answer, and He hated the answer.

By asking the question, Jesus is saying, โ€œWhile you religious leaders come up with your theologically correct answer to determine whether or not you can heal on the Sabbath, here is a real, live human being who is hurting and in need of your help, and all you can do is sit there and debate about him like he was a log blocking the road.โ€

[Read more…]

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Commentary on Luke, Discipleship

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How to Solve Biblical Difficulties

By Jeremy Myers
8 Comments

How to Solve Biblical Difficulties

bible mistakes

When dealing with the inerrancy of Scripture, it is important to recognize that there are typically only 24 problems that people point to, and of these, only 12 are fairly serious.

Here are some examples:

  • Genesis 1:11-12 says that the land produced vegetation, but in Genesis 2:5-7, it says that no shrub had yet sprung up from the land.
  • Many people like to ask, “Where did Cain get his wife?” Genesis 4:17 says that he had a wife, but up to this point in the text, the only people on earth were Adam, Eve, and Cain (Abel was born, but murdered).
  • Number 25:9 says that 24,000 died in a plague, but in talking about the same plague, 1 Corinthians 10:8 says that 23,000 died.
  • In 2 Samuel 24:1, we read that God incited David to take a census of Israel, but 1 Chronicles 21:1 says that it was Satan who incited David.

How can apparent errors in Scripture be solved?

There are, of course, way more than just 24 problem passages in the Bible.

Guidelines for Solving Biblical Difficulties

There are some basic guidelines for solving all biblical difficulties. Here is what I was taught in seminary:

  1. Recognize that the existence of tensions and apparent contradictions is not something new in the study of Scripture.
  2. The admission of certain textual problems is an honest and open response that invites study and positive evaluation.
  3. Be clear about the distinction between actual and apparent errors.
  4. Realize that the resolution of these problems must take place within an interpretive framework that takes account of the Bible as a whole.
  5. Remember that the doctrine of inerrancy teaches that solutions to problems in Scripture do exist, but the doctrine itself does not guarantee a ready solution.
  6. Recognize that there are currently unexplained difficulties, but this does not mean that they will always be unexplained. Further research in linguistics, archaeology, science, and Scripture may uncover a solution in the future. Many of the difficult Scriptural problems from previous centuries have been solved this way in recent years to the satisfaction of both Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals alike.

What do you think of these six points? To critics of biblical inerrancy, it sounds like we Christians are making the same argument as this man uses:
Bible errors
Is this what we do with Scripture? Do we need to be right so much that we arrogantly blind ourselves to the errors of Scripture, and when we cannot “explain away” some of them, we simply say, “Well, someday the Bible will be proved right”?

Or is it true that we really, truly have a book which is absolutely, completely free of all errors?


God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Theology of the Bible

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The Prophetic Imagination

By Jeremy Myers
20 Comments

The Prophetic Imagination

I keep of list of all the books I read in my 4000 books post, ย but a book I finished yesterday struck a chord with me, and so I wanted to say a few things about it. The book is The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann.

I think that if there is one thing the world needs today, it is prophets. Not the zany kind you get in some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches where apparently the goal is to connect Hotline in the business.

The Prophetic ImaginationNo, Bruggeman paints a portrait of the Biblical prophet as one who contends against the normal order of society and culture which has set itself up at the expense of the marginal, the outcast, the poor, and the weak. Bruggman calls this “the royal consciousness” but I think we could also refer to it as “the Powers that Be” and here in the United States goes by such names as “the multinational corporation” and “politics in Washington D. C.”

Bruggeman argues that the prophet does not contend against such entities with arms and use of force, but with the much more powerful weapon of imagination and creativity.

To make this point, he uses the examples of Moses against Pharaoh, Jeremiah against the Monarchy, and Jesus against the religion of Israel.

One of the things that so struck me about this book is that ever since I was in high school, every time I took one of those odd (and error-prone) “spiritual gift inventory” tests, I always came up with “Prophet” as my top spiritual gift.

When I was a pastor, and because I didn’t believe that prophets (the way I thought of them) were in use today, I interpreted this to mean that I was to proclaim or “forthtell” the Word of God, rather than foretell future events or predict the future.

[Read more…]

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Reading

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