Know the Heretics by Justin S. Holcomb Part 3

         Mysteries and Mindsets

I remember as a youngish teen asking my father to explain the Trinity to me. He sat for a minute then went to the study, took out his copy of An Australian Prayer Book (you know, the green one from the 70s), turned towards the back of the book, handed it to me, and told me to read the Athanasian Creed.

Anyone who knows my father would know that his not utilising this opportunity to talk at some length odd. He would explain to me the scientific principles behind anything and everything. And, as an avid reader, he would talk to me about his favourite poets: T.S. Eliot and Gerard Manly Hopkins. He would talk and talk and talk.

So it was odd when he didn’t.

As an adult I’m really thankful, though, that he didn’t talk. That he didn’t attempt to explain the Trinity in terms of an analogy (which, as it turns out, generally leads more to explaining than any understanding of the Trinity), but that he left it to the Athanasian Creed to explain the Trinity.

I remember at the time being a little confused by my father’s choice, but greater still was my confusion when I actually read the Athanasian Creed. Sure, it had been translated into English, but it may as well have been in the original Latin. Over the years my understanding of the Trinity has grown, and I have come to terms with the fact that, this side of Heaven, I will not be able to fully understand the Trinity, but, as Holcomb writes, that is ok, “Though we can apprehend the doctrine of the Trinity, we cannot fully comprehend it. Despite that fact, it is vital to maintain a Trinitarian faith.” (p. 96)

The second half of Know the Heretics can be divided into three focus areas: Trinity, Christology and human sin, looking at various heretics who erred in one (or more) of these areas. I don’t know a Christian who would say that they completely understand the Trinity and Holcomb looks at heretics who struggled, often with pastoral concern, to come to terms with the Trinity. Unfortunately, they came to the wrong conclusions. But born out of these struggles came orthodox theologians who worked hard at a doctrine of the Trinity that came closest to understanding its mysteries.

Holcomb is fair, clear and utilises primary and secondary sources at an appropriate level for such a book. He writes winsomely and with humility. Here are explanations of the Trinity, which you may have previously heard in a piecemeal fashion, presented in their historical context. Furthermore, Holcomb treats his reader (who may, through ignorance, hold heretical views themselves) with warm, pastoral concern.

In Holcomb’s ‘Conclusion’, he reiterates the stated purpose of his little book, going further to emphasise that the command is to love God with our entire person, including our minds. Yes, our faith is simple, but we are to use the way that God has made us, as intellectual beings, to know Him, and in that knowledge, to love Him.

As an educator, I have been reading recently about fixed and growth mindsets. A fixed mindset is someone who accepts the label (whether it be “smart” or “dumb”) about themselves and never seeks to change. They will avoid trying anything that may have them fail. A growth mindset, in contrast, will try new things, seeing every opportunity, whether it brings success or failure, as a chance to learn. In thinking about these two mindsets it has made me wonder about our propensity to shy away from developing our understanding of difficult, yet vitally important doctrines, such as Trinity and Christology. It requires effort, we may struggle (even fail) along the way, we may see ourselves as unable, as if pursuing knowledge of God is only for an academic elite. It isn’t. It is for everyone. Maybe it will take longer for you, or require more effort to grasp things, which for others is easy. It doesn’t mean we don’t try.

So, I’ll keep trying to understand the Trinity, pursuing its mysteries, knowing that on the Last Day all will be revealed. For as I do, I not only acknowledge my limited capacity, and therefore my dependency upon God, but I also get to know Him, and because of that I can love Him more.

About this month's contributor, Sian Lim
Siân enjoys reading, talking about literature, writing and helping people to do these things. She is delighted that she can earn an income doing this as a high school English teacher, whilst continuing to develop herself professionally by attending theatrical performances with her husband, and reading by herself and with her three boys. She is thankful to God for words: that he created by His word, that Jesus came as the Word incarnate, and that by the Spirit she can say “Jesus is Lord”.

Know the Heretics by Justin S. Holcomb Part 2

Each chapter of Know the Heretics is broken up into five parts: the historical background to the heresy, the specifics of the heretical teaching, the orthodox response, the contemporary relevance (or resonance), and discussion questions and further reading. Some of the chapters look at heresies that are associated with specific people or groups (eg. Marcion, Judaizers, Manichaenism), whilst others look at theological tendencies (eg. Gnosticism and Docetism). In the first section of the book (Chapters 1-5), the heresies tended to be an incorrect understanding of the following issues: the Old and New Testaments and their relationship to each other; that salvation is by grace alone, and not by our works; that God has revealed himself completely through his son; and that Jesus is fully human (and not just God).

In thinking through the orthodox position on each of these topics, I was reminded how important they are to my faith. For instance, in the chapter on the earliest heretical group, the Judaziers, I was reminded that as a church (and I mean both generally and the church I attend specifically) we can exclude people on the basis of their behaviour, only welcoming those who practice our particular brand of Christianity. We can also open ourselves up to the sin of pride if our focus is on how we demonstrate our obedience to Christ: “In fact, since obedience can become a point of pride, doing good can even be detrimental- we must sometimes repent of our virtues as well as our vices.” (p. 30)

The chapter on Docetism looked at a general heretical theology that “taught that Jesus Christ was totally divine and that his humanity was merely an appearance. Although he seemed to have a human body, he was not subject to any kind of human experiences. This included being immune to human ‘birth, fatigue, thirst, hunger, suffering [and] death.’” (p. 56) As Holcomb points out, a lot of popular liberal theology, particularly of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries had a similar spirit, wanting to remove the miraculous and supernatural elements of Christ’s life and ministry, going so far as to deny the bodily resurrection. The danger of Docetism for us is found in its motivations, as we look for ways to communicate the Gospel to seemingly ever-widening cultural divides: “The root of Docetism was the desire to make Christ more palatable to a world that sees the cross as foolishness. But the more they tried to please the world, the farther they strayed from the truth contained in Scripture.” (pg. 59-60)

In reading these chapters, they affirmed for me what Holcomb established in his introduction: that heresies, in the end, lead people away from Christ, not towards him. The danger for us, as Holcomb touches on at the end of each chapter in the section on ‘contemporary relevance’, is that in our efforts to engage with the (various) cultures we find ourselves in, we will be selective. We might downplay certain parts of the Bible (maybe we don’t preach very often from the Old Testament, or avoid a Bible Study series on it), or aspects of Jesus Christ, or we may start to believe that it is what we do as Christians that makes our salvation secure. In the end, we are never very far from heresy in our lives as Christians. We should continue to pray Paul’s words to the elders of the Church at Ephesus “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.” (Acts 20:28-31)

About this month's contributor, Sian Lim
Siân enjoys reading, talking about literature, writing and helping people to do these things. She is delighted that she can earn an income doing this as a high school English teacher, whilst continuing to develop herself professionally by attending theatrical performances with her husband, and reading by herself and with her three boys. She is thankful to God for words: that he created by His word, that Jesus came as the Word incarnate, and that by the Spirit she can say “Jesus is Lord”.

Know the Heretics by Justin S. Holcomb

Introductions

This year, after a long season of having babies and completing an MA (which I sometimes refer to as ‘the other baby’), I have returned to teaching.  In doing so I have been reflecting upon the importance of introductions. I have spent many a lesson focussing my students’ attentions upon the opening of a film, the first lines of a poem, the beginning of a novel, or the introduction to their essays. Whether in a novel, essay, film or poem, introductions are vitally important. It is where the author imparts to the reader (director to the viewer) what they want to say and outlines how and where they will take us. A good introduction, like a good first date, should give us an accurate picture of things as they are and, hopefully, make us want to take them up on their offer for more.

Justin S. Holcomb offers us a clear example of a good first date introduction in Know the Heretics, the companion to Know the Creeds and Councils. Holcomb is very systematic in laying out his topic, defining the terms and parameters for his book. In defining heresy, Holcomb made the point that it was not the questions the heretics were grappling with that were the problem, but the answers they arrived at. Heresy is a choice to deviate from orthodoxy (right teaching). Looking through the history of Christianity, Holcomb notes that at times it has been the powerful and influential who have been the heretics, and that there is no straightforward ‘line’ to trace, except if we go back to Christ. For Holcomb, orthodoxy “is the teaching that best follows the Bible, best summarizes what it teaches” (p. 11). Thus heresy, as it is defined by Holcomb, is that which deviates from this (p. 12), but he does go on to show how the Catholic and Reformed traditions have noted that there are “three ‘zones’ between strict orthodoxy and outright heresy” (p. 16).

Holcomb also uses his introduction to establish the importance of this topic for contemporary Christians, touching upon our own, often poor, usage of the word ‘heresy’. He takes a broad sweep at two groups. The first “who think that heresy is anything that does not agree with their own interpretation of Holy Scripture.” Holcomb sees these people as making everything “central, [so] nothing is.” (p. 17). Holcomb also looks at a second group who, seemingly influenced by pluralism, want to be rid of the terms orthodox and heretical in descriptions of the early church altogether. Holcomb is at pains to stress that orthodoxy is demonstrably that which leads us back to Christ himself, something which “heretical groups were not particularly interested in doing likewise” (p. 19).

It would serve us, the readers, well if we stopped to consider which of these two groups we find ourselves straying into. In my own reflection, I could actually see elements of both!

In thinking back to the only time when I really did consider heresy in any detail, it was during Doctrine lectures while I was at Theological College. Various heretics would be examined to show how a particular doctrine was developed, “When teachers began to lead movements that were blatantly opposed to the apostolic tradition, the church was forced to articulate the essential elements of the faith(p. 19) This is the last point Holcomb makes, that the importance of knowing the heretics, is in knowing our past, knowing where we have come from:

Learning how Christians throughout history have wrestled with the tough questions of our       faith gives us a valuable perspective and keeps us from assuming that our own know-how, pat answers, or inspiring platitudes are best suited to solving the problems of the world. (p. 20)

About this month's contributor, Sian Lim
Siân enjoys reading, talking about literature, writing and helping people to do these things. She is delighted that she can earn an income doing this as a high school English teacher, whilst continuing to develop herself professionally by attending theatrical performances with her husband, and reading by herself and with her three boys. She is thankful to God for words: that he created by His word, that Jesus came as the Word incarnate, and that by the Spirit she can say “Jesus is Lord”.