He was famously nicknamed “Crazy Moody,” and it’s reported that he reached 100 million people with the gospel, in a day when televangelists, radio preachers, and Al Gore (the Internet, ahem) didn’t exist.
In Moody’s case, he was poorly educated across the board. Yet the hand of God was undeniably upon him.
Interestingly, the first time Moody applied to be a member of a local church, he was denied because he failed an oral exam on Christian doctrine!
So, in the New Testament sense of the word, “heresy” was the creation of a division, a sect, a faction, or a party. For this reason, the author of Acts uses the word to describe the different sects within Judaism (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5; 14; 26:5; 28:22).
“Heresy” involved the dividing of a local assembly, not the rightness or wrongness of what the dividing party believed.
It’s true, of course, that a heresy could be created by someone pushing a false teaching on a local assembly, causing it to divide. Peter alludes to this when he warns that false teachers will secretly come into the church and introduce damnable heresies (2 Peter 2:1).
With the popularity of his Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, Clive Staple Lewis is regarded by many to be a “saint of evangelicalism.” The esteemed Reformed Anglican J.I. Packer called Lewis “our patron saint.” Christianity Today wrote that he “has come to be the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary Evangelicalism” as well as “the 20th century’s greatest Christian apologist.”
Nonetheless, despite his amazing contribution to the Christian faith, here are six shocking beliefs held by Lewis…
Most American evangelicals hold views condemned as heretical by some of the most important councils of the early church. Many evangelicals do not have orthodox views about either God or humans, especially on questions of salvation and the Holy Spirit.
The church in every age has faced theological confusion and heresy. We cannot assume the next generation—or even this present one—will catch an orthodox theology merely by being in the church.
The biggest problem with the internet is that it kills curiosity. We used to search for answers; now we just find information. The joy of the quest is dead.
Our hearts, minds, and souls are made for exploration, the cognitive thrill of the inexplicable. We are perplexed, enthralled, intrigued, and captured. Curiosity conquers our boredom.
Francis Chan tackles two of the most insidious and destructive lies that are commonly propagated today. People tend to think they are good people. The Bible says otherwise. Also, people have a problem with the idea that God has wrath and will punish. If that were so, would we still find God to be good if he did not oppose the wickedness of the Devil? Probably not. We only want God to refrain from punishment when it is we who are on trial. Make no mistake, we are not good and God will punish sin.
See previous post to see this point applied to parenting. (more…)
Today, though, doctrine is scorned. We imagine cloaked monks, closeted in their dusty cloisters, penning abstract dogmas on “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” The problem with doctrine is that we all have them; few of us admit it; and it’s killing us.
