The Merit of Heresy...

As anyone who knows me must realize by now, I am deliberately and intentionally orthodox in my Christian beliefs.

I know I fall short, as -- certainly -- we all do, but I make it my aim to conform to Biblical Doctrine.

So why, of all things, would heresy be something I would commend?

Let me be clear.

I do not endorse heresy, but I welcome the challenge they provide -- because good ideas survive strong challenges. In fact, these are precisely the crucibles in which good ideas become better.

Where would the Christian understanding of the Trinity be without the heretical challenge of Arius and those who followed him? What if the Early Church did not have to identify True Scripture in response to the pretender Marcion's pseudo-canon? Would Augustine of Hippo have written his doctrinal masterpieces if he were not arguing against Pagans, Donatists, Arians, and Manichaeans?

Would Luther have touched off the Protestant Reformation without Tetzel and Pope Leo X?

The list goes on, and extends to scientific and social critique, too.

Issues of suffrage, property rights, personal liberties, human relations (both micro and macro) were advanced by such battles of ideas, as were astronomy, medicine, agriculture, mathematics, physics, chemistry etc..

But in today's world, we have some who would silence dissent.

Could someone in today's world freely classify Islam as a aberrant pseudo-Christian heresy? (Without facing a human rights tribunal?) Probably not.

But that's exactly what it was characterized by St. John of Damascus (Biography here and here) in his work on Heresies from "The Fount of Knowledge".

See a long excerpt in context here. John outlines their core doctrines as outlined in the 8th Century.

But Islam refuses to be held to the mirror, and would rather lodge official complaints and harass free citizens exercising their right to critique, or stir international outrage which sometimes boils over into riots and worse. (Remember a certain cartoon, or the murder of a documentary-maker?)

As sometimes the Secularists do, when people won't dance to their tune.

Here is a current story about a Canadian Government Insider (Warren Kinsella) trying to force a broadcaster to exclude a dissenting voice. (H/T Ezra Levant)

There is a long-running criticism of the Church, in rejecting Galileo.

The Catholic Church did not believe Galileo's heliocentric universe, claiming it ran contrary to existing belief.

Did it actually run contrary to existing belief? Yes, it did.

But was it for THEOLOGICAL reasons? Not principally. It is incorrect to say that it was because of their religious views, mainly. They had accepted the scientific position of a 1st Century (probably pagan) scientist named "Ptolemy". Who was this upstart (Galileo) to contest some 1400 years of "settled science".

Like some liberal theologians of today, they had reinterpreted the Word of God in a way that could be wed to the prevailing scientific views of the age.