Acts 17: What are the risks and what are the necessities in this approach/passage?

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2 Acts 17:16-34 The manner in which Paul engaged his Greek audience in Athens is widely regarded as a classic example of good witnessing. At the same time it is a risky strategy. Yet, it is also a necessary strategy. What are the risks and what are the necessities in this approach/passage?

3 There is no real ground for supposing that heresy was the outcome of evil and arrogant church leaders trying to destroy Christianity. OF

4 Heresy is a form of Christian faith that has either adapted itself so much (or held to terms and ideas so rigidly) that it has become destructive to the faith. Heresy Orthodoxy Heresy

5 Therefore, non-reflective faith habits have a significant chance of developing into heresy. For our own protection our beliefs must be continually evaluated lest they accommodate too much to culture or don t accommodate at all. In both cases our beliefs no longer bear witness to Christ. Reformed and always reforming.

6 It is necessary for Christianity to engage its cultural environment. Church history indicates that this has been an integral part of the process of Christian expansion through the ages. To acknowledge that this can lead to heresy is not to invalidate the process, but to mandate theological vigilance in its execution.

7 The 5 most significant heresy pressures 1. Cultural norms Heresy develops when we try too hard to accommodate Christianity to cultural ideas or try too hard to ignore cultural ideas.

8 The 5 most significant heresy pressures 2. Social identity Hersey develops when we try too hard to be fit in with society or try too hard to isolate ourselves from society.

9 The 5 most significant heresy pressures 3. Rational norms Heresy develops when we try too hard to fit Christian ideas into contemporary reason or try too hard to ignore contemporary reason.

10 The 5 most significant heresy pressures 4. Religious accommodation Heresy develops when we try too hard to blend Christianity into other religions or try too hard to not see any truth in other religions.

11 The 5 most significant heresy pressures 5. Ethical concerns Heresy develops when we try too hard to be excessively permissive in our Christian lifestyle or try too hard to be excessively restrictive in our Christian lifestyle.

12 The Protestant Problem The nature of Protestantism is such that it is difficult to use the term heresy to refer to different ideas within it unless they are ideas that the church as a whole has already agreed to be unorthodox. (We find a much wider orthodox diversity within the Catholic family than we do within a single Protestant branch). A heresy is a teaching that the whole Christian church, not simply a party within the church, regards as unacceptable.

13 The Protestant Problem Protestantism places its final authority for theology on Scripture. One must recognize however, that multiple interpretations of Scripture come about by those who hold the scripture as final authority. Therefore, the issue is not scripture, but scriptural interpretation (our attempt to understand scripture). If all appeal to scripture who/what determines which interpretation is orthodox or heretical?

14 The Protestant Problem This difficulty can be eased, but not resolved, by appealing to the judgment of the early church (first few centuries) in regards to which views they considered heretical or orthodox. Yet, Protestantism never elevates tradition alongside scripture and so it would wish to maintain the possibility that even the early church s judgments might be wrong or in need of revision in the light of ongoing biblical interpretation.

15 The Protestant Problem Therefore, Protestantism finds itself entangled in a web where different Protestant interpretations of scripture each claim scripture as their ultimate authority - and where church tradition and creeds can help sort through these problems, scripture always trumps tradition.

16 The Catholic Quandary Realizing the Protestant Problem the Catholic church gives scripture and tradition equal authority, since scripture informed tradition and tradition informed our understanding of scripture. Yet, what does one do with the various interpretations of scripture and tradition some of which even contradict each other?

17 The Catholic Quandary The church ends up giving the final authority to the bishop of Rome the pope. But what does one do, as has happened, when even the popes contradict each other?

18 Protestant Problem: What are the dangers of everyone having the right to interpret scripture for themselves? Catholic Quandary: What are the dangers of putting the right interpretation of scripture into the hands of a selected few church leaders? How then, do we determining which teachings are scripturally authoritative?

19 The Wesleyan Quadrilateral 1. Scripture (read in context and with the author s intent in mind as understood as a witness to Jesus Christ). 2. The Great Tradition of Christian thought (especially the first few centuries of the church and the 16th century Reformers). 3. The fundamental laws of reason (above all the law of non-contradiction). 4. The shared Christian experience.

20 Roger Olson The Mosaic Christian Belief, p. 68. A Christian belief, then, is one that arises out of Scripture and points to Jesus Christ, is generally consistent with the consensual tradition of Christian thought, and is logically coherent with other Christian beliefs and illumines the shared experience of Christians.

21 Orthodoxy To be Biblical and theologically orthodox requires humility and an openness to a certainly level of ambiguity. Dogma, Doctrine, Opinion. It also requires a great respect for the universal church tradition(s), as well as reason and experience.

22 Alister McGrath I am committed to the notion of constantly re-examining the formulas of faith, constantly wishing that the church uses the best and most authentic means of expressing the fundamental themes of its faith. Orthodoxy is thus, in a sense, unfinished, in that it represents the mind of the church as to the best manner of the formulation of its living faith at any given time.

23 Alister McGrath Paradoxically, those who woodenly define orthodoxy as the verbal repetition of the theological formulas of the past risk fossilizing the Christian faith, trapping it in one of its historic forms without giving it the freedom to remain true to the mystery it attempts to express and convey.

24 Conclusion The challenge is for the church to demonstrate that orthodoxy is both rooted and grounded, but at the same time imaginatively compelling, emotionally engaging, aesthetically enhancing, and personally liberating. In other words, being orthodoxy in one s Christian beliefs is never static, but is a living reality. *Put up John Calvin quote.