Today's Inconsistency, Yesterday's heresy

Introduction

I was hoping today to publish the third in a series interacting with Sprinkle’s terrible book, From Genesis to Junia. But I want to get that third post right, so I am (sort of) taking a break to talk about something that, believe it or not, is closely related: the problem and promise of inconsistency. Now, before your eyes glaze over like you’re watching paint dry, just stick with me (get yourself a defibrillator if you need to). There is a lot of payoff in this discussion.

Inconsistency’s Promise

Inconsistency is not unmitigatedly bad; it makes dialogue possible. We all come to the Bible eclectically, hobbling together a jumble of dogma from Sunday School, VBS curriculum, parental instruction, sermons that we have heard, whatever college classes we managed to attend, Joe Rogan, and doomscrolling. We are all fairly inconsistent when we come to the things of the Lord. If we believe, however, that God is a God of order and not of chaos (1 Cor 14:33), we ought to recognize that it should not be this way. In other words, while we are inconstant in how we think about and understand the Scriptures, we should not want to remain this way. We should want to be coherent, logical, and clear in our thinking. If God, Scripture, and the gospel are consistent, we should be too; we should be conformed to them, not the other way around.

All of us are a few short clicks away from heresy. It is not this fact which saves us; it is the fact that we (hopefully) have at least a bit of orthodoxy mixed in with the rest of our Sunday school stew. Good dialogue is two people grabbing each other by the orthodoxy and creasing out the heresy. For example, I have serious reservations about the movement known as Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS for short). If consistently applied, EFS leads to a panoply of heretical impulses such as Arianism, Pantheism, and Trithelitism. I recognize, however, not all those who subscribe to EFS abort such important doctrines as the eternal generation of the Son or Divine simplicity. It is contradictory for someone to hold to both EFS and these doctrinal red lines, but people do. In theological dialogue, I want to grab them by the orthodoxy, and try to show them why they need to be more consistent to the orthodoxy than the heresy. I want to use the orthodoxy to even out the heretical wrinkles.

Let me give another example. I suspect that Preston Sprinkle believes in original sin and Adam’s federal headship; lots of egalitarians do. I don’t believe he is a heretic. Last week I argued that Sprinkle’s view was contradictory to original sin and Adam’s federal headship. I think Sprinkle can believe both, as I believe NT Wright and Ben Witherington III do. I just think the two do not easily coexist. How can Adam be the covenant head of mankind introducing sin, but not the head of his wife in Genesis 3? That is illogical and irrational and ultimately incoherent. But lots of people still believe it. Their orthodoxy can coexist with egalitarianism; it only does so inconsistently, however.

Inconsistency’s Problem

Someone cannot consistently follow the logic of what I have said so far and not spot a problem, however. If we are all a little inconsistent and moving to consistency in one way or another, what if the heresy wins out? What if someone becomes more consistent to the heresy than the orthodoxy? What if in holding to EFS, somebody ends up denying Divine simplicity? What if, once they have embraced egalitarianism, they end up walking away from the Biblical view of sexuality? What if, in rejecting divine impassibility, they end up coming to embrace a view of open theism, and, in doing so, they end up divorcing contemporary morality from its rootedness in the Scriptural texts (i.e., Christopher Hayes). Let’s not pretend that this does not happen.

What if, in embracing feminism, someone comes to embrace the whole range of critical theoretical ideologies and, eventually, discards Jesus himself as an out of step male. What if by embracing Hillsong and other charismatic worship—which is sloppy at best in its theology— someone comes to embrace the dark underworld of new age occultism? This happens more than we like to talk about. In fact, I could put at least one name to every single one of these.

And this brings me back to Sprinkle again. Because, it turns out, there are many who think that egalitarianism is so important to hold onto, they are willing to deny original sin and Adam’s federal headship. It turns out, Marg Mowckzo, a popular egalitarian, does exactly that. So does Philip B. Payne. How long before they tread into more fully Pelagian, legalistic waters? Today’s theological inconsistency quickly becomes yesterday’s heresy. And maybe they’re right, maybe that’s not what Paul meant in Romans 5. Then again, maybe the Church has had it right for 1500 years.

Precision in theology matters. Consistency matters. Constancy matters. Systematic thinking matters. Logic matters. The problem is that, at best, you and I are imperfect and inconsistent. We need to be challenged. We need to work the heresy out of our system, even though we cannot always see it. We are always just a few clicks away from soul-destroying heresy. The realities of inconsistency and consistency in theology make dialogue possible, yes, but also urgent. It is important to nail down your eschatology and soteriology and ecclesiology and theology proper. Your soul depends on it. And, if you are a pastor, all those who count on you depend on it too.