In Christian theology, there is a fair bit of leeway until you cross a line in the sand where you get your butt labelled as a heretic, and even more before you become apostate. Sadly, the church has not always recognised that, and organisations like the Holy Office have resulted. Recently, a Bishop Yvette Flunder of California caused a bit of a stir when she, among other things, claimed we needed a “third testament” because “the other two are problematic.” It seems now that the United church has failed to spot heresy among its own, swinging with the tides like the weak-willed shadow it has been for decades. I am going to get a bit blunt on this.
My attitude to claims the Bible is not the inerrant, inspired Word of God is well known; I have written about that before in “Bible: Revelation or Wrecked?” When an high ranking member of the clothe in a mainstream denomination calls the Bible “problematic,” that got my attention. I had encountered plenty of Christians who wished to modify what the Bible taught to suit their own moral agendas, but this is the first time I have heard a Christian, and a bishop no less, consider the idea of throwing out the Bible and rewriting with the “acceptable” bits retain.
That is until I remembered Marcion of Pontus, the founder of the Marcionite church. Marcion was a contributor to the push for a cannon of scripture. Most of the New Testament books we have in our own Bibles were already widely used, but there were differences between Christian communities. Marcion went a step further. Bordering on a Gnostic distaste for the old testament and anyting associated with the old religion of Yahweh, Marcion had a thing against the Jews, and slashed a whole lot of stuff out of the New Testament books in creating his own “canon.” Yet even Marcion, who Tertullian famously lambasted in the opening to his work against the Marcionite heresy, pulled back from throwing out most of the Bible and creating a Third Testament. It appears Flunder does not share Marcion’s caution.
This where the United church has truly crossed into heresy and lost much of what it means to be a meaningfully Christian organisation. The Bible is the central document by which Christians know their God and Jesus Christ. Without it, we have what Flunder claims in the article. She claims to hear from “God” and says she is a “believer,” but relegates the primary and sole concrete special revelation to the trash can. She is telling the truth. However, she is not hearing from the God of Jesus Christ, and she is not a believer in the God of the Bible.
What we believe about God truly matters, because what we believe has a direct influence on how we conduct ourselves in relation to God. The same also goes for other people and things in our lives. If you believe something can kill you, you will modify your behaviour to minimise that risk. See Jesus’ parable of the Servants for His insight on that issue. Flunder believes certain things about God and that has influenced her to make some decisions about what she believes.
The comment made by Josh Howerton strikes true here. Flunder is filtering and developing her view of God based on the culture around her, but rather, she should be viewing the culture through the lens of the Biblically revealed God. Where God is not the creator of culture, but merely something which changes with the cultural ebbs and flows, we do not have a God, but a pathetic image reflecting ourselves, as many atheists claim.
We need to test the spirits and, if they are not the Gospel Paul and other apostles preached in the New Testament, as John the Apostle said, they are “anti-Christ.” I have taken some liberties with this bit for effect, but I think my point stands.
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