America’s Deepest Heresy

Studying heresies is a way of studying how orthodoxy came into full expression. As I said in recent post, heresy is the mother of orthodoxy. It is problems that give rise to solutions or resolutions or articulations. In that context Roger Olson, in his fine new book Counterfeit Christianity: The Persistence of Errors in the Church, examines what I would say is America’s deepest heresy: deism. It is both historic — Thomas Jefferson — and pervasive — in Moral Therapeutic Deism. It is with us and it is probably here to stay. To re-use an image Olson uses from Karl Barth lat in this chp, the gospel is a gift taken in hand, but some deist hands then think they can control the gift and reshape it.

Hence, a heresy. There are three parts here.... Read more