The Falsity of Falsities
False Teaching on False Teaching
We are heading into inquisition season so I thought it might be a good time to figure out exactly what false teaching is. This is apt because many seem to misunderstand what is meant by terms like false teaching and heresy. Even within the ideas of false teaching and heresy, there is a different approach and different concerns between these terms. Heresy is defined by the Church catholic (universal) and is understood to be things which go against the great ecumenical creeds such as the Apostle’s creed, the Nicene Creed, etc. The creeds are distillations of the teachings of scripture, which were developed to address heretical teaching as understood by the Church. Heresy is not disagreement with the doctrines of a particular tradition or denomination, it is something which is not considered orthodox Christianity. Heresies include things like the denial of the deity of Jesus, the idea that Jesus and the Spirit are subordinate to the First Person of the Trinity, and other similar ideas. For the rest of this essay, we will move on from heresy and focus on false teaching.
False teaching. What a term that is. It gets bandied about a lot, especially in online forums and social media. Often the subject being discussed is really not a false teaching, but the thread gets runwayed by those who assume it to be false. It is especially troublesome when people make broad claims of false teaching when the discussion may simply be a difference of opinion on orthodox ideas that are assumed to be heretical. The worst experience is when people runway a thread with constant claims that something is against the doctrines of a denomination, even if those teachings are not in conflict. This context is typically just someone not liking the breadth of doctrinal understanding in non-fundamentalist churches.
Why is this important? The confusion between actual false teaching and assumed false teaching can lead someone to believing things are wrong that are actually orthodox Christianity or even fully within the doctrines of a denomination. You would think that the confusion would be limited to those who do not have the knowledge, are young in faith, or are laity. But the misunderstanding extends to clergy who either do not fully understand the doctrines of their denomination or choose to narrowly define the doctrines based upon an individual interpretive lens. Ironically, the runwayers and those who claim false teaching of fully orthodox or denominationally “approved” doctrine are the first to line up and accuse others. Ignorance or stubbornness makes it easy to decide that the individual is the arbiter of acceptable teaching.
So what is false teaching? Could it include those who accuse others? When Jesus is criticizing the religious leaders in scripture, he is criticizing the impulse to narrow or add to doctrines such that the relational aspect of faith in God gets subordinated to the rules. I can think of a few examples of where we can see those who make claims we could say are false. I am not trying to embarrass the people I will be discussing, so I will not give names.
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First is an example where a leader in the Church of the Nazarene (COTN) made a claim that progressive revelation is a mark of what they called “progressive Christianity” and should be avoided. Of course, as a leader, many saw that and agreed with it, thinking that the doctrines of the COTN reject progressive revelation. But that is not the truth. The COTN is within the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and as such has always seen progressive revelation as part of our hermeneutic (interpretive lens). What I found funny when discussing the podcast in which this idea was claimed is that a hero of those who prefer a more narrow understanding of doctrines or those who lean fundamentalist speaks explicitly of progressive revelation being how we read and understand scripture. Here is this discussion from Richard S. Taylor:
Now the deduction which must be drawn from this is quite obvious: The various parts of the Bible are uneven in authority. No one exhibited a higher regard for the Old Testament than did Jesus, yet in His discussion with the Pharisees about divorce He clearly implied that not all parts of Scripture were equally authoritative. Jesus appealed to the Genesis account of God’s original intention in creation: “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matt. 19:4–5, NASB). When they appealed to the authority of Moses, Jesus plainly implied that Moses’ regulations concerning divorce were deviations from the norm, as accommodations to human sinfulness, and must not be elevated to a level of authority which in effect would supersede the Genesis passage. The primitive Word of God was authoritative in determining the norm; any accommodation was subordinate and therefore temporary and local in authority. Here are two grades of authority, ultimate and secondary; and the ultimate controls the secondary, not the other way around.
But the principle of progressive revelation also means that the authority of certain portions of the Bible may not be, in detail or application, the same for us as it was for those to whom those portions were originally addressed. This is to say that authority also is progressive, and that the authority of one stage is modified or even superseded by the authority of a subsequent fuller revelation. It is on this basis (though the full working out of this cannot be traced here) that such matters in the Pentateuch as the dietary laws are not binding on us; nor is the right of the lex talionis our right; nor is it our duty to take our childless brother’s wife and raise up children for his name and inheritance. This principle of progressive revelation, and thus changing authority, was clearly illustrated by Jesus in His conversation with the Samaritan woman. (Biblical Authority, Ch 5)
The leader mentioned is not the only one who argues that progressive revelation is outside the doctrines of the COTN. In fact, a leader of an organization which claims to be recovering holiness in the COTN and other holiness groups wrote an article in that group’s magazine which denied the idea of progressive revelation; that person went so far as to claim that Jesus cannot supersede scripture. This sounds contrary to what Taylor claims and understands about scripture. Does this false claim by these leaders make them false teachers? That gives me something to consider.
What about including verifiably false claims in an essay by a leader of the organization reclaiming holiness and arguing for a specific understanding of doctrine in a denomination? That has occurred as well. Here we will look at the inclusion of a claim of human biology, which is easy to refute. For context, I let the editor of the book in question know about the error and mentioned it in my review of the book. Let’s take a quick look at that claim. “Literally every cell in our bodies has DNA that marks our sex. XX is female and XY is male. Every cell details this.” It’s a nice sentiment if you want to make a biological claim to back up a doctrinal thought, but it is also verifiably false. To have chromosomes, the cell must have a nucleus. The human body is filled with specialized cells that are crucial to life that have no nucleus - red blood cells. This is high school level biology. In fact, the estimate is that approximately 84% of our cells are red blood cells, so most cells in our body do not contain chromosomes. I could also point out that there are also those who have chromosomal differences from the majority XX XY, but that is a much deeper discussion and outside the scope of this essay.
Does this false fact make the person a false teacher? It is at least sloppy because following bibliographies, this idea came from a book by two Assemblies of God pastors who do not appear to have any training in human biology or science. That book contains exactly zero citations for any claims. The person who used that idea in an essay could simply lean into confirmation bias, but they also have made claims about other members of clergy about false teaching. It could be simple ignorance, it could be a misunderstanding of the science, or it could be willful deception. I don’t know anyone’s heart, so I choose to believe it is ignorance driven by an ideological point of view.
Could we fairly say that misleading information, or claims that are false rise to false teaching? I am uncomfortable with that idea. But what I do know is that it shows how hard it is to see the planks that might protrude from our own eyes. Maybe these are examples of hubris and certitude of a position, but that can be resolved with the humility available to disciples of Jesus. I am pessimistic that humility will enter, but until the teachers who claim false teaching come for me, I will try to approach things with the possibility that I could be wrong and be charitable with those who say things that end up being false.
Friedeman, Matt; Dean, Janet; Compton, Kevin; Powell, Brian; Largo, Alexander; Jones, Corey; Hoffpauir, Dale; Ayars, Matt; Henry, Jared. Biblical Sexuality: Why the Church of the Nazarene is Right (p. 83). Kindle Edition.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Organic/hemo.html