White Heresy, Black Heresy (by Austin Fischer)

There’s a lot of talk about heresy nowadays. Much of it is sloppy—ad hominem accusations carelessly slung at those who have the audacity to disagree with us. But heresy is a helpful and inevitable concept, whether we think in terms of bounded sets (this belief is “out of bounds”) or centered sets (this belief is “a long way from center”). So I was delighted by Justin Holcomb’s cover page article in October’s Christianity Today: “How to Define Heresy.”

It was a great read—clear but charitable; simple but informed; reminding evangelicals of the centrality of things like the Nicene Creed. For example: “If a believer genuinely accepts the Nicene Creed, they should not be dubbed a heretic.” Amen!

But this morning I started re-reading James Cone’s black theology classic, God of the Oppressed, and received a startling reminder:

Heresy—as defined by white theology—and heresy—as defined by black theology—are two very different things.

White heresy (or what “official” Christianity would simply think of as heresy[1]) is all about wrong ideas. White heresy is about bad doctrines. White heresy is about attaching incorrect predicates to the noun “God.” White heresy is about orthodoxy. As Holcomb says, “Traditionally a heretic is someone who has compromised an essential doctrine…”

And this is an important way of defining heresy. We see it in the Bible. The zealous Jews who were teaching the Galatians they had to be circumcised appear to be singled out by Paul as heretics (Galatians 1:6-9, 5:2-12). Those who deny that Jesus is the messiah come in the flesh are condemned in 1 John (2:18-24, 4:1-3). The false teachers of 2 Peter 2. Examples could be multiplied.

But white heresy isn’t the only the only kind of heresy.

The central event of the Old Testament is not creation but exodus. Ask a Jew who Yahweh was and they would not recount the creation story but the exodus story. Yahweh, from the beginning, was, first and foremost, the God who liberated Israel from slavery. This is the paradigmatic moment in Jewish history; the action from which all theology springs. God does not unleash his infinite power to flex his muscles to the delight of his cheering section. God unleashes his infinite power to crush empires and gather up the damned and forsaken into a community called beloved and free.

Black theology has understood this better than most, and white theology has much to learn from it. In blunt terms, white theology works from above while black theology works from below, and heresy looks a lot different from below than it does from above. From above, heresy looks like a breakdown in orthodoxy. From below, heresy looks like a breakdown in orthopraxy.

[As an aside, I trust it is obvious I’m not saying black theology is less intellectual than white theology—I’m saying something close to the opposite. Following Cone, I’m saying that white theology often works under the delusion that it is more intellectual, objective and universal; that white people “do not recognize the narrowness of their experience and the particularity of their theological expressions. They like to think of themselves as universal people.”[2] This is a delusion sustainable only because we do not think of our whiteness as whiteness but universality; we assume the truth is most clearly seen from a white perspective; we think we’re more intellectual but in reality we’re just “more white.”]

Heresy, as defined by black theology, is about failure to do justice. Black heresy is about christening social, political, and economic structures that perpetuate systemic white supremacy and systematic black oppression, poverty, and humiliation. Black heresy is about affirming justification by faith while denying the racist foundations of America prosperity. I’ll give Cone the floor…

“Heresy refers to any activity or teaching that contradicts the liberating truth of Jesus Christ… What actions deny the Truth disclosed in Jesus Christ? Where should the line be drawn? Can the Church of Jesus Christ be racist and Christian at the same time? Can the Church of Jesus Christ be politically, socially, and economically identified with the structures of oppression and also be a servant of Christ? Can the Church of Jesus Christ fail to make the liberation of the poor the center of its message and work, and still remain faithful to its Lord?… Any interpretation of the gospel in any historical period that fails to see Jesus as the Liberator of the oppressed is heretical. Any view of the gospel that fails to understand the Church as that community whose work and consciousness are defined by the community of the oppressed is not Christian and is thus heretical.”[3]

And black heresy is in the Bible too.

Think of the prophets, skewering the false piety of the rich Israelites.

“How the faithful city has become a harlot,

She who was full of justice!

Righteousness once lodged in her,

But now murderers.

Your silver has become dross,

Your drink diluted with water.

Your rulers are rebels

And companions of thieves;

Everyone loves a bribe

And chases after rewards.

They do not defend the orphan,

Nor does the widow’s plea come before them.”—Isaiah 1:21-23

“I hate, I reject your festivals,

Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.

Take away from Me the noise of your songs;

I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters

And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”—Amos 5:21-24

Think of 1 John, condemning the one who hates his brother alongside the one who denies Jesus is the messiah come in the flesh (1 John 4:20). Think of Jesus, sending the goats into eternal punishment because they failed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, visit the prisoner—not because they “believed” inaccurate things about “God.” Examples could be multiplied.

White heresy is real and needs to be addressed, but it can also be a rather luxurious problem to deal with. Whites sit atop the pyramid (like, say, Pharaoh) and argue about how to properly arrange the mental furniture (“Should the sofa go here…or here…or here?”). Spending days, weeks, months, and years properly arranging mental sofas is a luxury most people don’t have unless they’re the “official” theologians: affluent, cultured whites. Cone muses that if Luther had been a black slave in America, he probably would have been less concerned about the ubiquitous presence of Christ at the Lord’s Table and more concerned with whether Jesus “was really present at the slave’s cabin, whether slaves could expect Jesus to be with them as they tried to survive the cotton field, the whip, and the pistol.”[4]

I would imagine that many white slaveholders had a perfectly orthodox Christology.

They were also heretics.

And as long as whites fail to understand what heresy looks like from the bottom, we will teeter on the edge of heresy.

And so in the end, I suppose I actually disagree with Holcomb, because if you genuinely accept the Nicene Creed but habitually trample the humanity of the oppressed at your feet, you’re a heretic. If you do theology to avoid doing justice, you’re a heretic. If you acknowledge the Trinity but ignore the slave, you’re a heretic.[5] And any attempt to reserve the dropping of the theological atomic bomb—“heretic”—solely for wrong beliefs and not also for unjust patterns just shows how deep the delusions runs.

And so, “Woe to us, white, bourgeois theologians! For we meticulously parse Greek words, and arm-wrestle over the New and Old Perspective on Paul, and endlessly theologize over the finer points of foreknowledge. And yet, we have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.”

Those who have ears—let them hear…or be a heretic.

[1] And this should not surprise us considering whites have been the major shapers of “official” Christian thought from the beginning.

[2] James Cone, God of the Oppressed, 14.

[3] Ibid., 33-34.

[4] Ibid., 13.

[5] And by designating someone a heretic, I’m not referring to my opinion about his or her “eternal destination.” I’m claiming that a belief or behavior is deeply unfaithful to the way of Christ and to orthodox Christianity.