Several years ago, Methodist theologian Thomas C. Oden announced a most unusual quest: "I am earnestly looking for some church milieu wherein the sober issue of heresy can at least be examined," he declared. He added, "I am looking, like Diogenes with his sputtering lamp, for a church or seminary in which some heresy at least conjecturally might exist."As Oden acknowledged, his announced quest was deeply ironic, for in the world of mainline Protestantism heresy has become an almost absent category. With so many alternative theologies, revisionist doctrines, and radical conceptions of Christianity, heresy has become the norm, rather than the exception. As Oden explained:
I have sought for some years to find a theological dialogue where a serious methodological discussion is taking place about how to draw some line between faith and unfaith, between orthodoxy and heresy. But almost everywhere that I have asked about the subject I have found that the very thought of inquiring about the possibility of heresy has itself become marked off as the prevailing archheresy. The archheresiarch is the one who hints that some distinction might be needed between truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Read the rest HERE
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