Literary Discussions

Is it the case that heretics have no heart? Is there such a thing as heresy? Is heart synonymous with Paul's description of a bishops task to "rightly divide the words of God's truth." I once looked at a HUGE coffee table book 1000 pages in length costing over $100 in the mid 1990s. I opened to the index and looked up HERESY and there was NO entry of heresy in the index. That same day I purchased a paperback by David Christie Murray entitled "The History of Heresy" and in the introduction he quotes one Anglican bishop who said that "the history of the church is the history of heresy." Murray was an Anglican priest who worked on that book for over 10 years. By the time he finished he was so transformed that he became a Quaker. It is useful to read Murray and Jaroslav Pelikan's History of the Devepment of Christian Doctrine as well as a book by John Henderson entitled "The Construciton of Orthodoxy and Heresy." Henderson studies the phenomenon of heresiography in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism and points out that often the HERESY precedes the ORTHODOXY and helps form the orthodox expression. One may see this in the Nicene Creed and in the first seven ecumenical councils. Certain denominations born in the 20th century encourage developing "a personal relationship with Jesus" and this notion is not something I find in the first 1000 years of Christianity but as misguided as that notion is it is superior to developing a personal relationship with Voltaire or Kant. Somewhere Jesus said "you are my friends IF you DO as I say."