When the Homily is about Immunology

What’s wrong with a little heresy?

To answer a common email question I've gotten: No, I don't expect to receive anymore requests for book reviews after this.

I get the impression from many PMEers and from Spencer Burke in his book "A Heretics Guide to Eternity" that theology (true or false – terms they’d never ever use) isn’t all that important. And while they would perhaps candy coat that with notations of the expression of theology being the real issue, it would appear to me from what is written in the book that we are seeing a call for not just a "remodel" on an existing home, but a new home altogether. Mr.Burke writes that theological truth was argued about primarily because the medieval church needed to maintain its power and authority over usurpers and underlings.

But such a predilection toward conspiracy is really out of place once it leaves Hollywood, don't you think? It's terribly common today to see such conspiracies leveled at institutions; if only those espousers of such things could discern the conspiracies in their own hearts perhaps they would not trust it to so easily recognize it in the medieval church or Walmart or Halliburton or who or whatever? It's really no different than the many protestants who so readily claim that a man they have never met, never heard speak, never read a word they wrote, and who died over 1600 years ago was never really never a Christian, but instead pretended to be one in order to win power – St. Constantine the Great. What astonishing abilities to judge the motives of others some of us believe we have!

In a chapter entitled "The First Heretic", Mr. Burke identifies the "the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed as a heretic" Priscillian of Avila, whose, Burke says, only mistake was to insist upon extreme asceticism, including the renunciation of marriage. He then ignores this point and goes on to talk about how the authority of the Church was threatened by him. Ahem...ummm...now I could be wrong, but I am guessing that the PMEers of the world would be the very first to condemn this man if he were booked as a speaker at the next Soularize conference and in his presentation he was to insist that they all stop eating anything but beans, fast strictly on Sundays, never sleep on anything but the floor, never own anything at all including Soularize T-Shirts, and leave their wives and families to live a life as celebate brothers and sisters. I mean sure, they wouldn't kill the guy, but if they didn't use the word heretic, what would they call him? Crazy? A Fundamentalist maybe? One thing left out of the story of Priscillian is the fact that his chief opponents, who objected to his rise to the episcopacy, were also the staunchest critics of the emperor’s decision to have him executed.

Mr. Burke says in essence that people today are much more interested in what you do rather than what you believe. Fair enough, but the example of Priscillian makes my point,which is: What you believe usually will spill over into what you do...and furthermore that will spill over into what you teach others to do. Another fantastic example is the gnostic heresy which generally affirmed that all material-fleshy things were evil, consequently they denied the doctrine of the Jesus' incarnation. AND consequently the gnostics suffered from all manner of "wackiness." If the body is evil, some gnostics argued, then it didn't matter what you did with it and so orgies and other depravities abounded. On the opposite end of the spectrum were the gnostics who advocated an extreme and abusive asceticism. In a very real way, what you believe affects what you do and no matter how seemingly harmless a heretical doctrine may seem, once you affirm it is okay to hold unorthodox beliefs, how will you know when you've gone too far? How will you know?

One last very important point and I suspect I will be done "reviewing" the book - as I said in the beginning, the foundational issue must be addressed and I am MORE than willing to discuss the matter. In the introduction, Brian McLaren admonishes us numerous times not to be judgemental toward Mr. Burke's book:

"It's easy for inquisition-launchers to go on fault-finding missions; they have lots of practice and they’re really good at it...perhaps even those who have become legally inebriated on the hops and malt of fault finding, those who are inquisition-aholics but think they can quit anytime..."

We are asked NOT to go on a "fault-finding mission" but a "truth-finding mission." Okay, but what if that results in finding fault?

I hope I am not going to be lumped into that crowd of "inquisition-launchers", but I suppose I will since I am willing to be critical of what Mr. Burke has written. But consider that these men (McClaren and Burke) have virtually made a career of finding fault with both modern and traditional Christianity, so I suspect such an accusation of "fault-finding inquisition-aholics" is a blade that cuts both ways. So, don't expect that people whose religious faith you have found and published fault with, will not return the favor. I don't say that to be mean...but rather as constructive criticism, the introduction came off too much as a "don't touch God's annointed" sorta thing. Better to invite fault finding, as long as it is done honestly.

That being said...I am always open to dialogue on this issue, just expect to be steered toward the foundational issue first. Authority.