Revisiting the Three Tiers of Christian Truth

Dear friend,

 

 

- James 3:17 -

 

The last few weeks my emails have focused on Christian unity and conversation as we approach Halloween, a notably controversial topic. This week will revisit the important truths of discerning theological tiers of precedence, a way to sift through theological topics to determine what issues are central to Christianity and what issues are “expressions of the whole.” If you’ve ever had someone call you a heretic for letting your child dress up as Spiderman, this email is for you.

 

Christians need to be very careful tossing around the words “heretic” or “heresy.” This word comes from the Greek for choice. The Catholic canon describes heresy this way: “ . . . the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt, after the reception of baptism of some truth, which is to be believed by Divine and Catholic faith.” In the Catholic Church baptism is a fundamental element of salvation. So as Protestants, we could say heresy is the denial or doubt after salvation of some truth, which is supposed to be believed, some core doctrine. 

Here’s the important truth: Heresy can only occur in unsettled, indispensable teachings of the church. Somebody believing a different end times theory than me is not a heretic, because end times theology has been debated over the course of Church history. It’s not a fully settled indispensable teaching. We can’t say, “Aha, this person is not pre-millennial or is not post-millennial, and therefore, they are a heretic!” Secondly, heresy can only occur if the person teaching claims to be a member of the body of Christ; unbelievers can’t be heretics.

 

In some church traditions there are two types of heresy: formal heresy and material heresy. Formal heresy is the outright rejection of a known and established Christian doctrine. Material heresy is the misapplication or misunderstanding of a doctrine. It’s accidental or ignorant. We commit material heresy often! When we talk about a doctrine without fully understanding it, and we maybe even teach it without understanding it, we make a mistake in how we talk about it. This is very different from formal heresy, which is a willful outright rejection of that known and established core Christian doctrine.

If that’s what heresy is, let’s go back to talking about orthodoxy, which G. K. Chesterton defined as “the Apostles’ creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian, and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed.”

 

Fr. Michael Cooper says this about Chesterton:

 

“Chesterton, writing in 1908 insisted that orthodoxy is a flesh and blood reality, not just an intellectual system. In terms of the believer, orthodoxy happens in the fullness of God’s truth, the person of Jesus Christ becomes integrated with the believer’s life. Without this fusion of right belief and right living in and with the living Christ, orthodoxy can become a joyless catalogue of dogmas, always searching for heresies in our midst.”

 

 

We don’t want to be out there hunting for heretics. We don’t want to be spiritual headhunters. But we also need to be discerning, and we need to know what’s going on in the world. This brings us to Dr. Albert Mohler’s theological triage, making a theological evaluation of issues, urgency, or “heretical level.” Here’s a summary:

 

First-order issues are doctrines essential to the Christian faith.

 

Second-order issues are denominational things that prevent fellowship under the same church authority. For instance, if you believe in infant baptism, you’re probably not going to go to a Baptist church. If you believe that spiritual gifts are for today, and you speak in tongues, you’re probably not going to go to a Reformed church. These churches tend to have a specific view on these things that prevent fellowship with those who do not hold that view. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t be friends, but it means that you’re probably not going to submit to a church structure that holds a certain view on that secondary issue. It separates the denominations even though they unite around the core doctrines.

 

Third-order issues are disagreements that still allow for close fellowship within one church body; for instance, views of how to school your kids. You’re in the same church, but one person homeschools and the other public schools and has biblical reasons for doing so. Maybe you’re in the same church, and you have different views on modesty, maybe different views on the end times or different views on how roles in marriage should look. There is freedom for diverse thought and Spirit-led conviction when it comes to third-order issues.

 

Mohler says this about the tiers of doctrine:

 

“The error of theological liberalism is evident in a basic disrespect for biblical authority and the church’s treasury of truth. The mark of true liberalism is the refusal to admit that first-order theological issues even exist. Progressive Christianity treats first-order doctrines as if they were merely third-order in importance and doctrinal ambiguity as the inevitable result.”

Just as we must use the word “heresy” with great restraint, the same is true of orthodoxy, especially when applying it to ourselves against anyone else. Fr. Cooper is saying that we should be very careful in accusing people of being heretics or applying the word “orthodox” only to ourselves. The more heretics that are out there, and the more heretics that we see and find, the more concerned we should be with what we call our orthodoxy. He also makes a great point that right belief and right living must be fused together. If that is not happening, if we do not have the person of Jesus Christ, our personal relationship with Him fused into our understanding of doctrine, it does become a long, joyless, legalistic list of dogmas that we just bash people over the head with anytime they disagree with us.

 

The problem in today’s Christianity on social media is that people delight in bashing people over the head with dogma instead of recognizing that the personal relationship should lead, the Holy Spirit should lead, and that true orthodoxy comes with compassion. As Francis Schaeffer so wisely said, “Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.” And it is. It’s monstrous, and it destroys, and it divides. We must know what orthodoxy is. We must know what these core doctrines are. But we cannot separate that from the personal, lived, daily, joyful relationship with Jesus. As soon as we do, we have elevated the doctrine about God above the heart of God Himself.