Are you a heretic?

This morning at ASLC Adult Forum we looked at two early Christian sects whom today we would regard as heretics, while they would have considered themselves to be orthodox Christians and us to be heretics.

Orthodox is derived from Greek words that literally mean "right belief", while heresy literally translates to "choice".
Thus orthodox Christians are those who hold the "right beliefs", while heretics are those who have chosen not to believe the "right beliefs".

The first group we looked at were Christians Who Would be Jews. These Christians, called the Ebonites, maintained their Jewish beliefs, practices and identities, while believing that Jesus was the Jewish messiah. That is, they believed that Jesus was the most righteous man on earth and, because of his righteousness, was "adopted" by God to be his son when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. The Ebonites believed that Jesus was not divine, but was fully human. Furthermore,they believed that because Jesus was the Jewish messiah, appointed by the Jewish God as the Jewish savior for the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law, obviously anyone who wanted to be right with God had to be (or, in the case of Gentiles, become) Jewish. The Ebonites claimed to follow the teaching of James, Jesus' own brother, who became the head of the church in Jerusalem after Jesus' death, and they did not think highly of Paul, who preached that a person is made right with God completely by faith in Christ's death and resurrection alone, and not by complying with Jewish law. In fact, they considered Paul's writing not to be part of the New Testament, and they had their own Scripture, one part of which was very much like what we know as the Gospel of Matthew (except for the parts dealing with the virgin birth.)

The second group we looked at were Christians Who Refuse To Be Jews. These Christians, called Marconites, were diametrically opposed to the Ebonites. Citing Paul as a reference, they insisted that the law of the Jews had no relation to Jesus or to his God. In fact, the Marconites believed that there were two Gods, the wrathful Jewish God who created the world, made Israel his people and gave them his law; and the God of Jesus ,who is a God of mercy and love, and that Jesus came into the world to deliver people from the God of the Jews. (The Jewish God required a death penalty sacrifice for those who sinned; given that Jesus died for others, the Jewish God was compelled to accept his sacrifice for the sake of others.) The Marconites believed that that Jesus was so much God that he was not really a flesh-and-blood human, but only a phantasm. Their Scripture excluded the entire Old Testament, and consisted of a Gospel, much like our Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul's letters, all edited to remove any reference to Old Testament beliefs and prophecies.

Keep in mind that both groups were comprised of pious Christians, who considered their beliefs to be orthodox (and based on Scripture) and our Christian beliefs to obviously be heretical. (At this point you may be wondering how it is that the beliefs we currently hold were determined to be orthodox, how our Scripture came to be accepted, and who was it that made those decisions. These questions will be addressed later in the course.)

Reading the discussions above may make you feel uncomfortable, or even angry, if you are complacent in your Christianity and comfortable in your beliefs. How dare we discuss "challenges" to the truth of "that old-time religion" that you learned as a child in Sunday School! If you believe that you will be a better Christian by maintaining a blind faith in Scripture, then you are correct that we should not be raising these impertinent questions. However, if you believe that you will be a better Christian by understanding how and why what we now call Scripture came to be recognized as the "right belief", then it is important that you understand the alternatives that were determined to be heresies by the early Christian church fathers. Does either view make you a heretic?

No matter what your opinion of these discussions is, you are invited to our next Sunday Adult Forum because divergent views make for a livelier forum. This Sunday we did not have much time for discussion because I felt it was more important that we see both 30 minute videos in their entirety. Next Sunday we will begin with more discussion of the Ebonites and the Marconites, and then view the 30 minute video lecture on Early Gnostic Christianity.

Dave Dudich

PS. I am well aware that the mailing list I use is far from inerrant. If you are aware of the e-mail addresses of anyone else who should be informed of our Adult Discussions, please forward this message to them with a CC to me and I will add them to the mailing list for future e-mails.