Some reflections on “heresy” and charity

Friends, to put it mildly, have never been free of differences of opinion, and even faction. Nor should this be surprising, since factions appear throughout Christianity — and just about every other faith or ideology that one can name. (Indeed ,Rufus Jones once wrote a little. book called The Church’s debt to heretics.)
There are times when difference has resulted in tension or hostility, even schism. Such divisions, and the many little seams and fractures that be seen in Quakerism at whatever scale one looks, from a local group to a Yearly Meeting or larger organization, have always “struck at my life,” to borrow Fox’s phrase. They have seemed a standing reproach, a scandal (literally a cause of stumbling) that discourages those inside the group, and outside the group, in different ways.
Now, I have long understood that unity is not an accomplisment, something to be achieved once and for all.  Rather it is a process, a way of living (including how we think and feel). But I was led recently to reflect on what makes that process possible, and how to feel after unity when diversity threatens my inward peace.  Recently I happened to read two disparate things, which together sparked some reflection. The first thing was a recent announcement from Friends General Conference (FGC), and the second was a passage from Origen’s Contra Celsum.

The announcement from FGC invites us to their January conference on Changing Times.  The topics and leaders seem interesting and useful for individual Friends and meetings.  Though I am not free to attend, I can imagine it will be a good time.

But I have to say that there was some wording in the announcement that put me off. As always this feeling makes me question myself.  It is more and more the custom, at least among liberal Friends, to speak of “Spirit,” as in such harmless phrasing as, “In these changing times, how is Spirit moving among us? Join Friends from across North America in seeking what messages Spirit offers us…”

I am not going to write much about why I have this reaction, but just to be explicit before going on to the main point of this essay:  In present usage, the label “Spirit” can mean anything, and the meaning really is completely idiosyncratic.    I admit readily  that this very inclusive usage, which many people whom I respect and love have adopted, has the virtue of acknowledging that the Divine One is not the same as the names we use for it/her/him. When Moses demanded the name of the Being in the burning bush, the voice answered “I am ‘I am’…Say  ‘I Am’ sent you.”    But “Spirit” is at least vague as “Light,” and liable to some of the same tendency to individualism:  Have you not. heard someone speak of “your light” and “my light” and such like?  When I say “Spirit says to me…”  how can you know that I don’t just mean “This is what I think”?  The word can behave as a shifter (to use a linguistic term) like the pronoun “I,” which means always “the one who happens to be speaking it.”

Well, ok, enough about that for now. The point here is that this language, intended to be inclusive and irenic, does not appeal to me, and indeed is aversive.   So what is the consequence of this? Well, I feel that on this point, I am in the minority, and out of solidarity with my spiritual community.  It is reflective of the tendency in liberal Quakerism to retreat from any explicit relationship to Christianity.  FAQs about Quakerism often use roundabout statements like “Quakerism has deep Christian roots” with t the implication is that most of us have now moved beyond that.  (During one stint as recording clerk for my yearly meeting, I was once gently rebuked (in private) for using the words “the Spirit” in writing a minute, as opposed to just “Spirit.” Recall the story of “shibboleth” in Judges 12.).

This feels to me like faction, and of course the modern questions that swirl around the old question “Who do you say that I am?” have led to real separations, with much attendant pain and sin, among Friends as well as others.   All this is a source of continued uneasiness and sorrow for me, and the latest FCC announcement stirred this up again.

At the same time that I got the FGC announcement, I was reading slowly through Origen’s great treatise Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), written somewhere around 248 C.E. Celsus was an able Pagan critic of Christianity, who had composed a comprehensive attack on the emerging faith in the second century.  Though it was old news by Origen’s time, the great teacher was asked to answer Celsus point by point, because Celsus’s criticisms were still being used to justify attacks on Christians, who were still experiencing waves of severe persecution (Origen. himself would be severely tortured under Decius a few years later).

At one point, Celsus argues that Christianity is shown to be false because there are so many factions* within the movement.  If they’ve got ahold of a truth, how could there be any disagreement?  Origen answers (remember, read “heresy” as “way of thinking”)

heresies of different kinds have never originated from any matter in which the principle involved was not important and beneficial to human life. For since the science of medicine is useful and necessary to the human race, and many are the points of dispute in it respecting the manner of curing bodies, there are found, for this reason, numerous heresies confessedly prevailing in the science of medicine among the Greeks, and also, I suppose, among those barbarous nations who profess to employ medicine.

And, again, since philosophy makes a profession of the truth, and promises a knowledge of existing things with a view to the regulation of life, and endeavours to teach what is advantageous to our race, and since the investigation of these matters is attended with great differences of opinion, innumerable heresies have consequently sprung up in philosophy, some of which are more celebrated than others.

Even Judaism itself afforded a pretext for the origination of heresies, in the different acceptation accorded to the writings of Moses and those of the prophets.

So, then, seeing Christianity appeared an object of veneration to men, not to the more servile class alone, as Celsus supposes, but to many among the Greeks who were devoted to literary pursuits, there necessarily originated heresies — not at all, however, as the result of faction and strife, but through the earnest desire of many literary men to become acquainted with the doctrines of Christianity. The consequence of which was, that, taking in different acceptations those discourses which were believed by all to be divine, there arose heresies, which received their names from those individuals who admired, indeed, the origin of Christianity, but who were led, in some way or other, by certain plausible reasons, to discordant views.

And yet no one would act rationally in avoiding medicine because of its heresies; nor would he who aimed at that which is seemly entertain a hatred of philosophy, and adduce its many heresies as a pretext for his antipathy. And so neither are the sacred books of Moses and the prophets to be condemned on account of the heresies in Judaism. (Chadwick’s translation, Book III.12)

This brought to mind Paul’s admonition about differences in practice in the letter to the Romans, in which he recognizes differences in practice as to diet, or the necessity of setting aside one day of the week, as opposed to holding all days alike.  “Let everyone live fully according to their own understanding.”  The picture that emerges is of a community whose faith and practice is fluid and experimental on many points, and in which each person is free to seek their own discipline.  In such a community, the ruling constraint is love.  This reflective, open stance is related to the conviction that our individual spiritual health is, in the end, God’s work.  As Paul comments, it will be for each of us to render account to God.  The community life plays its part, as each of us finds our place and work within the body of Christ, and here again, Paul’s letters reflect a community in which each person’s gifts emerge, and are seen and accorded respect — and are used and coordinated with others’ for the health of the whole body, under the direction of the head, which is Christ.

But here, then, is a continued matter of concern: When my brother or sister speaks of “Spirit,” what spirit do they mean?  For Paul trusts that differences in faith and practice are to be accepted in the fellowship because each member adopts their discipline, their way of life, as a way to. be faithful followers of Christ: “The one that eats [with no restrictions] eats for the Lord, because they give thanks to the Lord; the one that refrains from eating [certain foods] refrains for the Lord, giving thanks to the Lord…And whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

The goal is more and more to be transformed by the Spirit into conformity with Christ, though each of us will have our own path to follow.   It was in seeking to understand and live the gospel of freedom and renewal that I was led to Friends long ago. The chowder of different spiritualities that must characterize any group of active seekers has been from the beginning a gift and a delight.  It has, however,  been a matter of sorrow, even loneliness, to see Quakerism (in my part of the world) moving into a “post-Christian” norm.   The most important loss is the decreased opportunity to learn from and with others who have the same goal that I do, even if they are coming at it from quite different directions and with different emphases and “heresies” — ways of thinking.

One more thing:  Living in charity, and non-judging, we each taste the fruits that are borne by lives and ways of being, and take our part in the cultivation of our own and others’ growth.   But we need to make sure that our charity towards each other’s experimental, unfolding lives in God is not only a matter of rhetoric, of speaking unity but not doing it, not continuing to learn from each other.  This will require a commitment to dialogue.  It is good to encourage each other to speak each in our own heart language;  it is good to learn to “listen in tongues.”  But often, I think, these are practiced in so casual and uninquisitive a manner that they leave us unchanged, and leave our unity unstrengthened by loving but probing dialogue.

Translation, after all,  is an active and constructive process:  you need to really come to know the other tongue on its own terms, before trying to put it into your language.  The differences often require you to question your own assumptions.  In the process, you become very aware that even though you may have produced version in your own tongue, it is a shadow of the original, and that some of the truths of each language are lost in the process.  The learning is intentional and endless.

So,too, in our meetings, I would hope the learning will be intentional and endless, and the love, as well.

* The word “heresy” appears in Origen and of course in the passages from Paul I will quote later.  But recall that this meant, in those times, “faction” and in fact is a Greek word that means “a choice, a choosing; a way of thinking.”   It did not necessarily have the implications of false opinion that it carries in later centuries, though some factions were considered harmful or even blasphemous.