Posted: 09 Feb 2015 05:07 AM PST
I wrote the following article about how Christians misuse the word “heretic” and “heresy” with my friend, Greg Boyd.
—
“Heretic.” It’s a favorite word that many Christians have no problem dropping on the heads of their fellow sisters and brothers.
In common parlance, the term is
used to describe any person who disagrees with “orthodox Christian
teaching.” The problem, of course, is that there are different
perspectives on what exactly constitutes “orthodox Christian teaching.”
Some claim this for Calvinism, while others claim this for Arminianism, or for Roman Catholicism, or for Eastern Orthodoxy.
And we must not forget the many
Fundamentalist groups who reserve the term “orthodox” only for people
who agree with every one of their distinctive beliefs and/or practices.
2,000 years down the church
history pike and the body of Christ is sliced and diced into over 33,000
fragments, some of which pull the heresy lever at everyone else without
blinking.
In this essay, we are definitely
not going to suggest that false teaching doesn’t exist. It existed at
the time of Jesus and Paul, and it exists today.
What we are going to suggest is
that many people are using the word “heretic” in ways that are not
biblical and/or that do not align with its use in church tradition. And
this, we believe, brings disrepute on the body of Christ.
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