Heresy is now stronger than ever
Traditionally for Christians the soundness of any particular theological position was finally measured by how it stood on Jesus Christ. But now we have entered a period when our religious unity is to be found simply in the experience of a divine presence that takes multitudinous forms. This presence is variously called the Higher Self, the World Spirit, the Life Force, and the Creative Surge. A holistic vision has taken the place of the dualism of Descartes’ era; humanity and nature are now treated as dimensions of a single cosmic unity. Thus the utter transcendence of God is either seriously compromised or flatly repudiated.

Despite traditional voices within the Christian community, it cannot be denied that a new cultural paradigm, which is antagonistic toward any claim to exclusive truth, now holds sway over most of the nations of the Western world. This is also true for the nations of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, which are resolutely abandoning the inflexible dogmatism of Marxist socialism for freedom, autonomy, and individuality. If one considers the reigning mentality in academic religious circles today, one must conclude that there has been a paradigmatic shift of immense proportions from a theology of transcendence to a theology of radical immanence in which God, present in all creation, is indistinguishable from creation. Predictably, traditional dogma has been eroded in favor of relativism and mysticism. Heresy as a valid theological concern is now out of fashion, although heresy in fact is stronger than ever. The Christ of Chalcedonian orthodoxy is in palpable eclipse in most circles, except those of traditional Roman Catholicism, confessional Evangelicalism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. And orthodoxy is no longer even considered a worthy theological goal.

The new trends in biblical criticism further foster this relativistic mentality. Structuralism finds the meaning of the text in the literary form which the text embodies; questions of historical reliability and ontological truth are conveniently left to the historians and philosophers respectively. Reader-responsive criticism (McKnight) now finds the meaning of the text in the subjective response of the reader. For the deconstructionist, the literary structures are changing because language is fluid; there is consequently no solid text the interpreter can work with. The notion that the Bible gives infallible information concerning the will and purpose of God is regarded by most of the new biblical critics as a relic of an outmoded dogmatism.

The common thread in most of the new theologies is denial of Jesus Christ as the very God himself, as a divine person in two natures. Instead we are directed to a Christ who is the decisive realization of human possibilities or the embodiment of some eternal value or ideal. The new heresies verge toward either an ebionitic interpretation (beginning with his humanity) or a docetic interpretation (beginning with some abstract idea of Christ).

A reaffirmation of Biblical Christianity
In countering these new theologies we need to stand in perceptible continuity with the ancient ecumenical councils. Christ is not the maturation of the human spirit or the mirror of a transcendent ideal, or the flower of humanity, but the incarnation of the preexistent Word of God, the second person of the Trinity: in Christ we encounter the very God himself. Against the new theologies Christians faithful to the biblical revelation must again affirm what Emil Brunner aptly called the scandal of particularity—the inexplicable fact that God revealed himself among one particular people in history, the Jews, that God became man at one point in history, and that his revelation in this people and in this person is definitive and final. God revealed himself once for all in this particular event or events. In the catholic evangelical theology I uphold, the superiority of Christianity lies in its willingness to be continually purified and reformed in the light of the one great revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which cannot be duplicated but only heralded and obeyed.

As biblical Christians we must also affirm the scandal of universality, viz., that this one revelation is intended for all, that Christ’s salvation goes out to all, including the outsider and the sinner. The kingdom of God seeks to embrace not only the people of Israel, not only people of faith, but the whole world, including the enemies of faith, though the pathway into the kingdom is only through faith and repentance. Christ died not for the righteous but for sinners; he justifies not the godly but the ungodly.

Jesus Christ is God incarnate
As evangelical Christians we need to reclaim the biblical message that Jesus Christ is God incarnate and that he came into this world to deliver a lost humanity from bondage to sin, death, and the devil. Jesus is indeed our example as well as our Savior, but his mission was first to save, then to lead.

Biblical Christianity is focused on hearing, not seeing. The kingdom of God is not a visible reality but an invisible one that makes its way in the world only through the proclamation of the gospel. The new theologies speak of imaging God in order to make him real for human experience.5 Evangelical theology reaffirms the commandment against graven images and extends this to a prohibition against mental images of God as well. The true God is incomprehensible and invisible; he cannot be made known until he makes himself known. And he has made himself know fully and decisively only in one person, Jesus Christ. We make contact with Christ only through hearing the gospel, which we encounter in the Bible and the proclamation of the Church. Luther said, “In order to see God we must learn to put our eyes into our ears.’’ This, it seems, is the biblical way, and all other ways lead to obfuscation and deception.

Revelation includes the experiential and the conceptual, but it goes beyond these: it basically concerns the self-disclosure of the very reality of the living God in the person of his Son. Revelation happened in the divine-human encounter that we see in the life history of Jesus, but it happens ever again as the Spirit of God awakens us to the significance of that encounter for lives here and now. Revelation in the Bible indicates an authentic unveiling of the mystery of the divine presence and reality.

[This article was originally published in Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Summer 1991. Touchstone is a monthly ecumenical journal which endeavors to promote doctrinal, moral, and devotional orthodoxy among Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. Copyright © 2004 the Fellowship of St. James. Used with permission.].
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