Category Archives: Heresy

The ‘cosmic Christ’ and the ‘historical Jesus’

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Over the years, a number of attempts have been made to put some kind of wedge between ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’.  Some, for example, have distinguished between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’.  Philip Pullman, in similar vein, would have us imagine ‘Jesus’ as a ‘good man’ and ‘Christ’ as a ‘scoundrel’.

A couple of months ago, I read Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016).

I had been prompted to read it by a friend, who had felt reassured by Rohr’s challenge to evangelicalism’s ‘exclusivism’ and thought that this book offered a new and better way.…

Seven marks of false teachers

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Summarising this post by Tim Challies:-

  1. False teachers are man pleasers.  They deal, not in what their hearers need to hear, but in what they want to hear.  See Gal 1:10; 1 Thess 2:4.
  2. False teachers oppose God’s most faithful servants.  So it was that false teachers dealt so brutally with our Lord himself.
  3. False teachers teach their own ideas, rather than God’s word.  See Jer 14:14; 23:25; 29:9.
  4. False teachers neglect what is of greatest importance in order to focus on what is less important. 
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Docetism in the Qur’an

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Docetism – the belief that Christ did not assume a truly human body at his incarnation – was around in the days of the later New Testament writings, as the epistles of John testify.

It was clearly as rather stubborn heresy, for it is also found within the pages of the Qur’an (7th century).  According to Sura 4:157-158.

Muslim scholars remained undecided about who they think took Jesus’ place on the cross: with some saying Judas, and others saying some other person.  …

Christ had a human body

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The term ‘docetism’ (from the Greek dokeo, meaning ‘to seem’) covers a range of speculations concerning the person of Christ.  The common feature of the Docetists was an insistence that God could not become man.

At the time of the early church, its main representatives were Cerinthus, Ebion, Marcion and Valentinus.  Their teachings were examined and rebutted by men such as Irenaeus (Against Heresies) and Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ; Against Marcion).…

A Unitarian ‘miracle’?

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Unitarians, as far as I can tell, don’t believe in miracles.  At least, they don’t believe in the kinds of miracles recorded in the Bible, including Christ’s Virgin Birth and resurrection.

However, while spending a bit of time exploring the beliefs and practices of Unitarians, I came across a rather extraordinary statement which, if true, would certainly have to be regarded as evidence for the miraculous.

I was reading the transcript of a sermon recently preached by Unitarian minister Rev Sarah Tinker. …

Personal salvation ‘a heresy’

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According to US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, belief in personal salvation is a ‘heresy’.  The grace of God, she is reported as saying, is given to the believing community, not to the individual Christian.

Of course, she may have been misreported.  It wouldn’t be the first time that the religious press has made someone out to be less orthodox than they really are.

Or possibly she just expressed herself badly.  Maybe she just meant to say that rampant individualism (a besetting problem in post-enlightenment liberalism as well as evangelicalism) is sub-biblical and sub-Christian. …

What should we do with heretics?

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John Stott has some wise and measured words on this subject.  He is, of course, writing from within an Anglican context.  But I think that the principles he espouses are worth weighing in other parts of the church too.

What should the contemporary church do with heretics? Is that a harsh word? I think not. A humble and reverent probing into the mystery of the incarnation is the essence of true christological scholarship. But attempted reconstructions that effectively destroy that which is supposed to be being reconstructed is christological heresy.Let me defend my question further.

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