The Words you speak are true:

What must we do to prevent us from falling prey to the tactic of the heretic? It’s simple. We must immerse ourselves in the truth of God’s Word and be actively involved in a healthy, well balanced, Bible believing church where our faith can be nurtured and where we can grow in our relationship with Jesus. When this is done, we will be able to spot a counterfeit because we will be so acquainted with the real thing.

IMO, anyone who says "all I need is the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth" is, unfortunately, living in a false reality. While this phrase is essentially true, it just doesn't bear out in practice. What you end up with are people going in all different directions with their personal theologies, resulting in numerous conflicting claims of "truth". Yet they all swear they got their info from the Holy Spirit. How do individualists propose to establish exactly who is telling the truth?

I believe theology is crucial, at least, the core theology. It's really surprising how wacky theology can drag people away from the church, and yes, even away from Christ. Then the question becomes "which Christ?"

Thanks, Pastor Tim.  Your blog is more confirmation from the Lord to me  how he wants me to be into His word.  There's no excuse for us Christians in America not to be reading God's word--we have it everywhere in so many translations and media outlets--something else I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving season.  God bless, and happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Pastor Aminata, Amen! Good Word! There is so much truth there I could preach three sermon!

Suzzane and Deb, you are right. Immersing ourselves in God's Word is essential. I think that it was Spurgeon who said it was his goal that his congregation would be so immersed in God's Word that if you would get them they would bleed Bible verses.

The following are some websites that may be helpful.

Take an essential Christian doctrine test.  http://www.carm.org/doctrine/test.htm

Basic Christian doctrine Study - http://www.carm.org/doctrine/basicdoc.htm

Blessings everyone,

Pastor Tim

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines theology as: the study of religious faith, practice, and experience.  Based on this definition and 2 Tim. 2:15-16 the bible supports theology.  We must be Spirit led but we also must be rooted in the Word of God.  Thanks Pastor Tim for this word.

Hello Pastor Tim,

It is not how 'some' Christians use the term. hetrodoxy concerning the essentials is still hetrodoxy without being heresy. In order to teach there is a heresy, you need to demonstrate orthodoxy. On a historic perspective Protestant Christianity is not orthodox, and by view of orthodoxy, would either either considered hetrodoxy or heresy. The belief in purgatory in Catholic teaching is Orthodox, but according to Protestant Christianity heresy. So there is some presumptions in your reply, which I believe you need to address perhaps in a later article.

Being a pastor myself for many years, and a teacher, working in cult deliverance ministry and apologetics, I aquainted with many doctrines, dogmas, philosophies and theologies concerning Christianity. In view of Salvation, Calvinism and Arminianism differ completely in almost every aspect. Calvinism says there is total depravity and inability to be saved while Arminianism says mankind was injured by the fall but God has provided grace to make a decision to repent. Calvinism says that there is an unconditional election of those who are saved from the foundations of the world; while Arminianism states that it is by a free-will agency that God put the choice to be saved in our hands. Calvinism states that only the elect were ever chosen for salvation; while Arminianism  states that it is universal and every man the ability. Calvinism states that it is by irresistable grace that the elect will be inevitably saved; while Arminianism states not only can the call be resisted. Calvinism states that once saved always saved, while Arminianism states there is no security until you have preserved to the end.

By your own definition of what you think hetrodoxy is. If Calvinism is Orthodoxy, then Arminianism is heresy (and vise versa) because it deals with the essential doctrine of salvation! So are you sure you want to take the road of guilty by association and ask me if I am using the term as some Christians do referring to people who go against orthodox understandings while attempting to stay in the mainstream of Christianity. From your condition, that route hold many presumptions of what is hetrodoxy and heresy.

Pastor Tim, it is a good article and I agree with the preliminary point you make. Though the road of heresy is a fine line since what is considered orthodox even among the Protestant Church does not even agree on the essentials.

You mention that some call hetrodoxy a decent from certain teachings and your example was hell. Well let us look at the creeds from the apostles creed to the nicene creed. Creeds were created to keep people in orthodoxy, as literacy was a priveldge to the rich and the clergy for the most part. The creeds were easy to remember statements of faith, which protected one another from the constant gnostic and pagan theologies and philosphies. The most glaring and obvious ommission to these creeds was the acceptance of a hell. So in the face of orthoxy, heresy and hetrodoxy, the teaching of hell has not been an essential doctrine and so any decent from the understanding from denomination to denomination, would in fact either be orthodox or hetrodoxy but could never truly be called heresy.

So it would appear in the end, that in Protestant Christianity has no problem calling hetrodoxy that which is essential to the faith and has no problem calling heresy what is secondary or even tertiary to the faith.

I still stand on the point, that what many Chrisitans believes is heresy is in fact only hetrodoxy and what many believe is orthodoxy is also hetrodoxy. Hetrodoxy covers more than the secondary or tertiary doctrines of faith.

My apologies if my response was sharp or too directed, it was for the sake of a distinctive point and discussion and not personal in any way. Many blessings to you Pastor Tim.

Craig

Hello Job, good points.

None of us would disagree that heresy is something to watch out for.  The difficult part is that every group is thought to be heretics by some other group.  This blog offers a list and a couple of tests of what is critical to the Christian faith, most of which are unquestionable, others of which deserve some discussion and are not critical IMO to one's salvation.  I just ran into a blog that fits well here, with what I would agree to be truly critical (with the excption of the carpenter part):  http://www.mychurch.org/blog/97226/We-Are-Called-To-Build-Each-Other-Up?nominate=MTI1NzI=  My concern here is which group decides which groups have it all right?  My church may think yours is wrong.  Your church may think mine's wrong . . . I reald in the paper just this morning that the Catholics will "lose their eternal salvation" if they vote for a candidate that's against something the church is for, or vice versa (abortion was the example given).  Do we overuse the heresy threat sometimes when it is merely a difference of opinion?  Because, as MIke said in his new blog, we all think we are right.  

This is an important and serious topic, and I absolutely agree that we need to be educated about the fundamentals of the faith.  Thanks, Pastor Tim.  This is an important discussion for all Christians.

Connie, Craig, Mike, Job, Kathy, thank you for your comments.

Kathy, indeed, what is determined to be heretical is not easy, and you have raised some good questions. “Throughout its history, Christian orthodoxy has been forced to define itself in response to heretical teachings.” Here are a few examples:

2nd Century – As a result of Gnosticism and Montanism, it forced the church to define its authority, which resulted in the canonization of Scripture.

4th Century – Arius propagated what is known as the Arian heresy which forced the Church to define the nature of Christ.

Don’t forget the protestant reformation. These are just a few examples. Each time, though, the Church returned to God’s Word in order to discern if what was being taught was heretical. Thus ultimate authority comes from God’s Word.

Kathy, you stated, “My concern here is which group decides which groups have it all right?” I would answer that by saying that no group has it ALL RIGHT. What I am concerned with are the issues central to the Christian faith, not whether Calvinism or Arminianism is true or whether we use a KLJ or not (I like the NIV ;-)).  These are non essentials which I know you would agree.

Tim,

I think we need to actively compare what we told to what scripture says.  In the early days of when I first eagerly and actively sought to know Christ, one of the fundamental questions I had to engage was, “Who’s giving me the straight scoop?”  It seemed like everyone was telling me why everybody else was wrong.

One of the precepts I adopted in this process was to test everything I was told.  So I dug through scripture to find a bunch of tests.   They were very easy to apply!  They were a tremendous help and let me let go of several candidates very quickly.  

One of these tests was that you will know a tree by its fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.   I simply read what many proclaimed , looked at how they lived, and then compared all of that to how Christ calls us to live.  It became very easy to make a decision.

It’s not enough to say we need to study God’s Word.  Avoiding heresy, in part, requires some understanding in what to do with what we study. 

The Other Gene

Bro Winter, not much charity in your last post there. Don't get me wrong though, I appreciate the dialogue.