Bishop warns about the cruelty of heresy By Robert P. Mills The Presbyterian Layman Tuesday, July 13, 1999
While in North Carolina to deliver the Jean Alexander Bernhardt Lectures in Theology at the First Presbyterian Church of Lenoir, Allison visited the offices of The Presbyterian Layman and offered engaging, insightful, and occasionally blunt answers to our questions. Is it important for lay people to have some knowledge of Christian doctrine, or can doctrine be left to pastors and theologians? Allison – Shaw was right when he said all professions are conspiracies against the laity. To leave doctrine and theology to the clergy is a fatal mistake. In the past, when Christendom was still assumed to be the root of our society, it wasn’t as urgently necessary that lay people be informed about the content of Scripture and the creed of Nicea as it is now. In the departure from the Judeo-Christian heritage it has become absolutely urgent for lay people to be informed about the doctrine and the content of the Christian faith. Are mainline churches doing a good job of teaching their members? Allison – Unfortunately, as Luke Timothy Johnson has said, the way we teach the New Testament in the brand-name churches is similar to rape. We say, “Have you had the New Testament?” The answer is, “Yes, it’s been done to me.” For example, teaching the synoptic problem is like giving a newlywed couple a book on urological pathology. If you start a love affair on the basis of pathology, you are going about it the wrong way. You need to start by telling the stories that turned the world upside down. You need to tell people the stories that teach people to know God. This is very different than teaching lay people the synoptic problem. We’ve had 150 years of Abelardian “you have to know to believe.” We’ve gotten away from Anselm and Augustine, “You have to believe to be able to know.” You would never fall in love if you did the Abelardian thing. You would observe your fiancee over time, write down how she reacted to you, test your hypothesis, and even then, you would never know if she really loved you. The only way to know her is to begin with some trust. If you don’t have some love for the object you are studying, you will never know it. How can church members acquire such knowledge? Allison – There is so much good literature available … [Twentieth century philosopher of science Michael] Polanyi has gone a long way toward breaking this Abelardian iceberg around Scripture. J.I. Packer’s Knowing God is a classic. I love Thomas Oden’s Ancient Christian Commentary series. Luther’s commentary on Galatians and Romans can still convert people. If you want to know what it means to be a new creature in Christ, and how we Pharisees still need to lay our burdens down, Luther’s commentary on Galatians still hasn’t been surpassed. The prejudice Episcopalians and Methodists have against Calvin can be resolved by reading his commentaries. It’s very interesting that every recent school of thought that has come along about Scripture has the word “critical” in it. This means that Scripture is not the judge of me. I’m the judge of Scripture. What is the role of the church in maintaining sound doctrine? Allison – To maintain the boundaries, just as a family would tell a child not to eat a gross of Hershey bars before dinner or to race go-carts on I-95. The church teaches that ideas have consequences. Ideas and teachings can be very dangerous and cruel. There scarcely are any new heresies. What is it that makes heresy a cruelty to Christians? Allison – It panders to our worst inclinations.
Allison – First of all is to realize that our hierarchies have often been captured by single-issue folk who are not committed to the historic faith and are imposing their issue in an attempt to commandeer the denomination. I don’t think you ought to subsidize something that is destroying and apostatizing the church. What are some of the consequences when the church fails to protects its members from heretical teachings? Allison –The church becomes very neurotic. When you have a self-esteem doctrine in which the church’s function is to help people feel good about themselves, then you turn the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector upside down, and Jesus is teaching bad hygiene when the masochist beating his breast is justified rather than the upstanding man who feels good about himself. It’s a clear affirmation of Phariseeism to have a religion of self-esteem. It’s so unbecoming. What happens to repentance in a religion of self-esteem? Allison – The bottom line is that a theology of self-esteem seeks to replace repentance and forgiveness with disclosure and acceptance. I come to work for you. I tell you I’m a procrastinator. I’ll come to work late and won’t get my projects done on time. Your job as my boss is to accept that. We have to realize that forgiveness precedes repentance. That’s an exotic idea today. There is a sense in which the kind of repentance necessary to make contact with a person is not true repentance, but simply the pigpen experience of the prodigal son, the lowest quality of repentance you can think of. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that it’s only after he’s received with such grace by the father that the prodigal son can even begin to realize how much repentance he needs to do. Only after we have experienced the love of God are we enabled to repent more truly. The law does not break bondage to sin. Grace breaks bondage to sin. Our responsibility is to be the vehicle that bears the word that breaks this bondage. |
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