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A United Methodist Bishop, Joseph Sprague, has been charged four times with teaching heresies, and denominational representatives have now acquitted him all four times.

Sprague clearly has taught against  Jesus' bodily resurrection, eternal divinity, and exclusivity as the only way to salvation. So what gives? United Methodist leaders must view heresy as somehow an outmoded concept. Or, at least, they must see the heresy trial as an inappropriate venue for addressing such teachings as Sprague's.

We are mistaken if we think modern objections to the prosecution of heretics come from sloppy thinking by those who don't know better. To put the best face on it, such extreme leniency seems to come, rather, from a principled revulsion to the ways orthodox Christian belief has in the past been defined and defended—and heretics prosecuted and punished.

In his compendium of Christians tried for heresy in this country, scholar George H. Shriver states eloquently a number of these objections. Central among these are two:

Those church leaders who have prosecuted heretics have often been motivated politically. "Politics, jealousies, power struggles, anti-intellectualism, miscommunication, limits of knowing, grudges, personal animosities, confusion of ethics with doctrine" have all entered into the motivations of those who sought to defend the faith against heresy.

Not just motivations but actions have been perverted in the cause of orthodoxy: "The heresy hunters have … often allowed themselves to pervert Christian ethics in their pursuit of their goal of discrediting persons they have labeled 'heretics.'"

First, we must admit that these two claims are well attested in church history.

However, those who would use this historical evidence to argue against heresy trials find it convenient to ignore one small fact. That is, that apart from Jesus, no one has ever been exempt from mixed motives and unsavory methods. We are involved in a church in which "the wheat grows up with the tares," and the dividing line between the two does not run between people, but through each human heart.

This means that the process of defining orthodox belief has always been mediated, as historian R. Scott Appleby puts it, by "human agents who have a tendency to let their own passions, misunderstandings, and political rivalries intervene."

So?

So, read the Old Testament. Or review the squabble between Peter and Paul over circumcision. The Holy Spirit has always found it necessary to work with the human materials at hand. And those materials have much always been the same—not pretty. There was metaphorical (and sometimes real) blood on the floor of every one of the early church councils at which orthodox Christian doctrine was defined and embodied in creeds.

Yes, it does take an act of faith to believe that the decisions of these councils actually reflect belief-as-God-would-have-it. It is the same act of faith that allows the Christian to look around a church, see the assortment of annoying and downright unsavory characters that occupy the pews, and affirm that the church is still, somehow, the "body of Christ."

Coming back to history, the point is this: The popular image presents the heretic as a courageous, powerless loner, exploring what fellow Christians refuse to explore and paying the price at the hands of unprincipled church leaders motivated by entrenched prejudice. This holds no more water than the picture of the heretic as a black-hearted subversive, and orthodox leaders as saints riding in on white horses.

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47