INIQUITY AS DOCTRINE

Heresies may not be wicked. It’s just that they are wrong and as such limit the fullness of our inheritance in God. To that extent they might be seen as evil in that they result in degrees of spiritual death in the face of the fact that we have access to limitless life in Christ.

FABRICATIONS
Many heresies embody a supposed separation from God. A bad form of it was seen in the Arian controversy where Jesus was seen as separate from the Father. It was put to bed by the Nicaean Creed but not put to death. It lingers openly in some Christian sects and subliminally in others. The essence of legalism is separationism – the illusion that we must undo a supposed separation from God. But the atonement of Jesus and the cross means that there is no separation in Christ Jesus.

DISINTEGRATING THEOLOGIES
A heresy that weakened the dynamism of the Kingdom Jesus began came from the Greeks – the notion of dualism ( although it was around long before them). This is the idea that God is separate from His creation. It surfaces in the assumption of sacred and secular and in the mind-body dualism derived from Plato. Its foundation is the knowledge of good and evil and its implied dichotomised life. Dualism surfaces in fundamentalism of every kind and was prominent in Puritanism and parts of Catholicism. God is not identical with His creation but has never been separate from it – even after the fall.

JESUS CHRIST COMES IN THE FLESH
Brian Kranick writes, “Gnostic myths, relying heavily upon Greek pagan philosophy, taught that worldly things were created by a wicked demi-god, Demiurge, and thus, evil. The evil material universe is then at odds with the goodness of the Supreme Creator and the spiritual world.”  This kind of thinking gives rise to mind/body dualism of the fundamentalist thinking and that saturates the writing of Ellen G. White and the notion of the great controversy. However, Jesus has made the two one in every way in His comprehensive atonement.

FLESH?
‘The flesh’ can refer to a life lived in Adam instead of Christ. Yet when Christ is our life, Christ has come in the flesh – which paradoxically is life in the Spirit. This is the incarnation establishing life in the One Spirit. Here we have an already achieved union with God, the healing of a fragmented self and the source of the grace to love others.

CARNAL HOUSES
Gnosticism finds a home in Masonry and some versions of Christianity. Gnosticisms’ influence is apparent in the mind/body dualism of Ellen White and in some sections of catholic and protestant puritanism. The notion of the Great Controversy espoused by Ellen G White where Satan is positioned as a rival to Christ is the essence of dualism and has more to do with Zoroastrianism than it does with the Christianity of the apostles.

SACRED/SECUALR DICHOTOMY
Dualism is germane to the practice of Sabbath-keeping where a holy day is contrasted to a secular week. It’s seen in the Platonist influenced theology that finds it hard to come to terms with Christ-likeness, sex and sensuality. A colleague of mine, a devout fundamentalist was shocked when it was pointed out that verses in Song of Songs indicates the sexual act as well as intimacy with Christ. Fundamentalists and others can find it difficult to accept the sensual sexual allusions are what they in Solomon’s Song.

DUALISM
Kranick continues, “Gnosticism descended into a form of Dualism, where the body and all matter are evil, and all that is spiritual is good. The world, and all that is in it, is to be rejected.” Such views can be common to fundamentalist churches and surface also in Islam. But it is safe to say that the dualist taint and body horror can be observed throughout Christianity and also in parts of the secular world.

TEMPLES
Incarnation means that Christ has come in our flesh and that we as Believers are living temples and expressions of God. Paul’s words about our bodies being the temple of God are much less about what you eat and mostly about the fact that God is woven into our being and we into His.

TOGETHER
We do not need to live in this dichotomised illusion, nor should we since it is neither whole or holy. The glory of the new creation is that all things have been made one in Christ. In Ephesians Paul writes, ‘And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth’ Eph 1.10. This began at the cross and will reach completion at the Second Coming.

The mystery and agency of the incarnation is its effectiveness in joining us to Christ and its empowerment of us to be agents of the new creation who imbue the institutions of the world with God’s spirit and life. In doing this we are bringing ourselves and the creation home – home to the original vision of God to make a race of beings who enjoy the richness and joy of trinitarian life and simply  BEING ALIVE.

HOME
Speaking of Home, Henri Nouwen observes,  “The story of the Lamb of God saying to us, “Come. Come to my home. Look around. Don’t be afraid.” Long before Jesus’ radical call to leave everything behind, Jesus says, “Come, have a look where I am.”(1)
 Jesus is a host who wants us around him. Jesus is the Good Shepherd of the Old Testament who invites his people to his table where the cup of life overflows.

WHAT TO REPENT OF
You are always at home with God who is Jesus Christ. Separation and alienation are foreign to the trinitarian oneness and definitely not a feature of Christ our life. This is why we must reject/repent of gospels that consist of overcoming separation that has not existed since the cross.

Nouwen continues, “This image of God inviting us to his home is used throughout scripture. The Lord is my house. The Lord is my hiding place. The Lord is my awning. The Lord is my refuge. The Lord is my tent. The Lord is my temple. The Lord is my dwelling place. The Lord is my home. The Lord is the place where I want to dwell all the days of my life. God wants to be our room, our house. He wants to be anything that makes us feel at home.” (1)
 
(1) Excerpt From: Henri J. M. Nouwen. “Following Jesus.” Apple Books.