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Heresy
Topic Started: Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:08 (158 Views)
Mairtin
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As mentioned in another thread, I've recently been reading Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth by Alister McGrath - he's a Protestant theologian, who I regard as one of the best Christian writers around and I have found nothing in his works that is in any way offensive or contradictory to Catholicism.

I found the book fascinating and it brought home to me how 'heresy' is one of those words that we bandy around without ever thinking about what it really means.

I was trying to find time to write a review of the book but I came upon this review in Amazon - I hope nobody minds me taking the lazy route of quoting somebody else's review but it almost exactly sums up my own feelings about the book.

Amazon Review By Jordan M. Poss
 

Alister McGrath sets out to do two things in his Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. The first is to explain the origins and significance of heresy. The second is to defend the notion of orthodoxy from the postmodern infatuation with heretical ideas. Along the way, he corrects many popular misunderstandings and busts a fair number of myths.

The prevalent notion of early Christianity--thanks only in part to Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, and the Gospel of Judas--is of a plurality of competing "Christianities" which were eventually subsumed and stamped out by the Catholic Christianity, as practiced in Rome and championed by the emperor Constantine and set in stone at the Council of Nicaea. Heretical groups and leaders were ostracized and condemned and their ideas and writings suppressed by straight-laced, rigid groups that, by chance, had "access to power" and could therefore impose their version of Christianity upon the others.

The truth, McGrath points out, is far different. First of all, no Christian group of the first several centuries of the Church could be said to have any form of power, coercive or otherwise. It was simply beyond possibility for one Christian church to force its views upon another. And while McGrath concedes that, yes, the early Church was a much looser, less theologically policed entity than it was to become, orthodox ideas were already present and generally agreed upon. It was as the church solidified that heresy originated.

Heresy, McGrath says, is a set of ideas--or even a single idea--that maintains the form of orthodox Christianity while inadvertently undermining it. The church fathers who spent enormous energy in combating heresy characterized heresy as the intrusion of damaging outside ideas into orthodoxy, McGrath demonstrates that most heresy originated within the church as Christianity gradually found its footing and attempted to articulate precisely what it believed, especially on important or unclear issues. Of all the early heresies that confronted the Church, McGrath says, "Not one of them can conceivably be considered as the outcome of malice, egotism, or some kind of personal theological depravity. . . . all rest on serious attempts to engage major points of religious and spiritual importance" (p.171).

A case in point is Arianism, a heresy involving the identity and deity of Jesus Christ that began as an earnest effort by the Alexandrian Bishop Arius to make Christianity and Greek ideas--especially Neoplatonism--mutually intelligible. Greco-Roman thought held matter to be the creation of a lesser deity and therefore irredeemably bad. Christian orthodoxy held that God, in the form of Jesus Christ, became flesh and suffered as a physically real human being. In reconciling these ideas, Arius held Jesus to be physically human but not divine, since true divinity, that of the superior god rather than the lesser creator, could not be corrupted by flesh. Arius did not, however, decry the worship or adoration of Jesus or the belief that Jesus could grant salvation. Arius's detractors quickly pointed out that, if Jesus is not God, to worship him and believe that he could grant salvation were irreconcilable inconsistencies with the idea that only God can receive worship or grant salvation.

Heresy, then, is a sincere but misguided attempt to articulate something about Christianity that ends up being anything but Christian. The motives behind heresy, as listed by McGrath, include the desire to make Christianity relevant to prevailing social norms, to make Christianity more amendable to secular "rationality," and to shape a Christianity that is either more or less "morally restrictive." The motivations behind ideas that eventually become heretical are typically sincere, but say more about the time in which they develop than about Christianity itself. The implication is that even the most sincere Christian can do damage if their motivations, methods, or both are incorrect.

McGrath's book is very good, but not perfect. A section on postmodern ideas of heresy and its relation to "power," that omnipresent postmodern bogeyman, is muddled. I reread some passages but still didn't fully comprehend his argument. And while he deftly handles early Church history with beautiful concision, he trips lightly over the Middle Ages, stopping only to note that the definition of "heresy" seemed to shift to anything the Pope found threatening. Such a shortcut is disappointing, especially considering the very good chapters on the early Church which precede it.

One of the best things about McGrath's book is the "mythbusting" that I mentioned above. In addition to correcting the fuzzy history of the Church as peddled by Gnostic scholars and Dan Brown, McGrath also points out that Constantine had significant Arian leanings, early heretics were not condemned or executed, and the supposedly stifling orthodoxy decried by modern advocates of heresy was, in fact, more radical, more imaginative, and more liberating than the heresies it had to confront.


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Angus Toanimo
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"The truth, McGrath points out, is far different. First of all, no Christian group of the first several centuries of the Church could be said to have any form of power, coercive or otherwise. It was simply beyond possibility for one Christian church to force its views upon another."

I wonder how McGrath works this out, since before the Reformation the only "Christian group" was Catholicism (Orthodox aside)? We Catholics should not read any works from Protestant theologians, even if what you're reading sounds kosher. It should be remembered that Protestantism is heretical, and its theologians heretics.
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Gerard

Quote:
 
before the Reformation the only "Christian group" was Catholicism (Orthodox aside)?


Looks like you need to read the book Patrick.

Groups of christians with heretical doctrines have been around as long as Christianity has been around. The first was "the circumcision party".

My reading is about 50/50. I think it essential that mature, intelligent, educated catholics read protestant writers. they have some good ideas - like saying Mass in English (beat us by about 400 years or so), translating the Bible into English (and actually reading it).

Looks like a good book Mairtin.

Gerry
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
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Mairtin
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Patrick
Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:19
"The truth, McGrath points out, is far different. First of all, no Christian group of the first several centuries of the Church could be said to have any form of power, coercive or otherwise. It was simply beyond possibility for one Christian church to force its views upon another."

I wonder how McGrath works this out, since before the Reformation the only "Christian group" was Catholicism (Orthodox aside)?
Read again what he was saying, Patrick. He's responding to the claims by people like Dan Browne and dismissing them as nonsense.

Also, Christianity was actually quite fragmented in physical and logistical terms in those days. The points that McGrath makes are:
  1. Despite the physical fragmentation, there was very little difference in belief and practice between various groups in spite of their physical isolation.

  2. Even if any one group had wanted to impose a particular set of beliefs, it was logistically impossible for them to do so.

Quote:
 
We Catholics should not read any works from Protestant theologians, even if what you're reading sounds kosher. It should be remembered that Protestantism is heretical, and its theologians heretics.

Speak for yourself, Patrick, your comments are charmingly medieval though your concept of heresy suggest you might actually gain something from reading that book! As it happens, I have no fear of any weakness in my Faith that might be revealed by reading a Protestant viewpoint. It also seems that I don't really have a lot of choice as our own church seems totally incapable of producing writers or orators of the calibre of people like Alister McGath or John Polkinghorne with the ability to tackle the sheer nonsense that gets promulgated by people like Dan Browne and Richard Dawkins.
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Rose of York
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Heresy is the refusal to believe that which the Church proclaims true, and one has difficulty in believing to be true.
Keep the Faith!

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Clare
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I'm very reluctant to bandy around the word heresy, because I know it means something specific and is over-used when it doesn't strictly apply. I only use it when I'm sure something is a heresy.

I tend to use the word heterodox.
S.A.G.

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Anne-Marie

Rose of York
Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 14:12
Heresy is the refusal to believe that which the Church proclaims true, and one has difficulty in believing to be true.
I think one needs a little caution in 'dismissing' something, just because the Church tells us to.

In 1950, an English Catholic priest was required to say Mass in Latin, with rare exceptions that had to be the Tridentine Mass - and the priest who had other ideas about saying Mass would soon be unfrocked if he persisted.

In 1970, an English Catholic priest was required to say Mass in English, and in the Novus Ordo form - and the priest who had other ideas about saying a Latin Tridentine Mass would soon be unfrocked if he persisted.

The Council of Trent (not just the pope of the day, but the 'Fathers' of the Church at that time) laid down the format of Mass 'for all time'.
And following (if not as decreed by) Vatican 2, all that was reversed.

Rightly or wrongly, the Church changes... so the issue of what is or is not set in stone for all time (or not as the case may be!) and for what a priest can be proscribed is actually a whole lot more fluid than those currently wielding power might like you to think.
What a pope or a Council sees fit to decry and for which a person may be excommunicated (banned from Heaven), may later be reversed by another pope or Council - as happened with the de-excommunications by Latin and Orthodox popes on each other: what popes see fit to ban from Heaven is not necessarily what God will take any notice of by keeping them out!
And that instantly gives rise to the issue of just what power over God popes and/or Councils actually have to bind God.
Which necessarily leads on to the uncomfortable (for us all) question of what really is, or is not, heretical....

I did not create this situation: the one, true Church has managed that all on its own.
And (for the record as a Catholic) I, for one, have no idea how to 'square that circle'.
Edited by Anne-Marie, Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 14:44.
Anne-Marie
FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI
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tomais

The One True Church as described and as it was and always has been a figment of generations of desperate imaginations.
A world,( and that word world is questionable too),flooded with " Chinese Whispers".
The much later came historical archiologists et al,with the so called tools for DNA identification.
Belief is and always will be in the individuals head; and in there? What mechanisms ???
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