I’ve been involved in some discussions recently revolving around figuring out what ought to count as heresy versus heterodoxy. Well, I should say, I’ve been attempting to introduce the heterodoxy category as a way to think about aberrant teachings without going to full ramming speed, and labelling everything we disagree with as heresy. The reason this has been coming up more on other social medias is because Kirk Cameron recently just came out as an Annihilationist (or Conditional Immortality proponent). So, predictably, folks have been calling him a heretic. But I protest.
It is better to identify teachings that we might disagree with, and that might be considered aberrant, as heterodox. The distinction I make between heresy and heterodoxy is as follows:
- Does it deny the eternally triune life of God (de Deo uno, de Deo trino)?
- Does it deny that the singular person of Jesus is both fully God and fully human?
- Does it deny that salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone?
If the answer to the above questions is yes, then I would identify holding these teachings as damnable heresies; that if someone is committed to them, they cannot be eternally saved. But if someone, like Kirk Cameron, has arrived at what I would consider to be a matter of adiaphora and/or aberrant, non-essential, teaching in regard to a doctrine of hell, then I would consider this heterodoxy. Surely, heterodox teaching can have serious effects on someone’s Christian spirituality and the way they interpret the world, and those around them; and for this reason, if something is heterodox it represents a serious matter worth debating over. But just because Cameron, in this instance, affirms an aberrant or heterodox doctrine of hell (in my view), this will not result in him spending an eternity in hell for affirming it. Cameron, I presume in good faith, doesn’t reject any of the three marks of heresy I have indexed above. As such, he is eternally justified before the living God in Christ, and not a heretic.
If everything we disagree with, in regard to Christian teaching, is just heresy because I disagree with it, then in reality nothing will be heresy in the end. There needs to be some nuance on the continuum of Christian teaching; that is, in regard to its relative intensity vis-à-vis the role it might play in regard to identifying a teaching that is in fact eternally damning. Annihilationism does not represent a damnable teaching, even if, in my view, it represents a heterodox position. Matters of adiaphora, like doctrines of hell, respective viewpoints on biblical eschatological positions, so on and so forth, can indeed, as noted previously, have some serious and deleterious implications with reference to someone’s daily experience as a Christian person. And for this reason, bad teaching ought to be identified and called out. But it ought to be done in such a way, that recognizes distinctions along a continuum of gravity, and discern therefrom.
That said, many consider me a Barthian heretic; so, my post could be self-serving in that sense Haha.