Heritic

I've been reading Newbigin's The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. He wrote this on page 40:
"In a pre-Enlightenment society there are only a few heretics in the original sense of the word, that is to say, only a few people who make their own decisions about what to believe. For the vast majority faith is not a matter of personal decision: it is simply the acceptance of what
everybody accepts because it is obviously the case. There is no alternative and no personal
chose. By contrast, in a post-Enlightenment society we are all required to be heretics, we are all required to make a personal choice."

I like this imagery of heresy as describing the authority structure Christians need to appeal to in a post-Enlightenment society. He opens the chapter discussing how an argument based on the authority of the Church or the Bible is not a valid approach because it is making assumptions about other people that simply aren't true, namely that others value the authority of the Church and the Bible.

However, to engage in this culture, we need to develop the idea of heresy. Namely, why is our personal choice to follow the traditions laid out in the Bible or through the Church. I think this is the challenge of the modern church. How will we communicate the validity of the traditions we hold to, when those traditions are no longer a valuable source of authority in our culture.

This has massive implications. Evangelism, for instance, has long been thought of as getting people to assent to some doctrinal statements (i.e. virgin birth) . If people believe, in the sense of affirmation, that certain doctrines are true then we have been successful in the evangelistic activity of the church. This also drives our discipleship. Christian education is concerned about getting people to believe the same thing, instead of getting people to be somewhat heretical in the sense that they need to understand the truth behind the authority for themselves. This a challenging viewpoint, especially in a non-congregational church polity.