Teaching falsehood and being a false teacher

Back in the day, when I was working with Christian students, I was once asked to give a little talk about some aspect of eschatology.  I duly delivered, and only discovered afterwards that by a misfortune of timing a local church student worker had also spoken to the issue at hand during the week, and moreover had expressed opinions rather contrary to my own.  The students were a little flummoxed.  Being good conservative evangelicals, they were committed to the notion of truth, and they were aware that the differences they were hearing were not the sort of thing that could be explained as different perspectives or any such thing.  But unfortunately they were not equipped with a category for 'Christian teachers having differing interpretations' - if we were teaching differently, one of us must be a false teacher.  To avoid this conclusion, they opted to assume that they had simply misunderstood the talk in their local church.  They were not inclined to consider either of us a false teacher, and so they had to assume that we had not, in fact, disagreed - despite the evidence of their ears.

This story goes a long way to explaining some of my ambivalence about the term 'false teacher'.

What is clear, to me at least, is that on this occasion at least one of us was teaching falsehood.  I am, of course, inclined to think it was the other fellow.  Our views on the question under discussion were irreconcilable, at least in substance (although doubtless there were elements of truth present in both positions).  If what we were talking about was a real thing, then there is no doubt that one of us was substantially wrong (and of course, both of us may well have been entirely wrong; what is certain is that we were not both right).  But it seems to me that when Christians use the category of 'false teacher' they must mean more than this - more than a different opinion or apprehension on one matter of eschatology.  Since every Christian teacher has, at least from time to time, taught falsehood - by error of positive teaching, by omission, by neglecting or just failing to communicate clearly - the sort of broad category being deployed by these students would leave none of us standing.

So I'm keen to have a category for teaching falsehood without being a false teacher.

But there is no doubt that the NT does present us with people who have gone beyond this - people who are, deliberately or naively, leading the people of God astray through their teaching in a way which directs them away from the true God and away from right living.  And I've been thinking recently that we need to have the courage to recover this category and treat those who fall into it in an appropriate way.  This isn't an alternative to having a certain tolerance for error; it goes alongside it.  In fact, the parameters of orthodoxy are such that there is a wide field over which we can range without stepping beyond the bounds, and certainly within that field we can be and often will be 'wrong' - but without being destructively wrong.

I think it is that destructiveness that characterises the true false teacher.

Of course all error is to some extent destructive.  Truth builds up, falsehood pulls down.  But there are two particular types of error which are flagged up in the NT as destructive: error that leads people to such a false understanding of the deity that the God they worship is no longer recognisable as the Holy Trinity; and error that leads people into such egregious moral behaviour that their lives no longer bear the stamp of that holiness without which no one will see God.  These errors destroy people.

Because they destroy people, the appropriate response of the church, and especially of the pastors of the church, is an almost absolute 'no'.  The determined false teacher must of necessity be excluded from the church, treated as a pagan.  There is mercy - there is always mercy! - but in this case it needs to be mixed with fear, fear lest the destructive tendency of false teaching be let loose amongst God's people.

Looking at the confusion in the church on a hundred issues - from things as central to the understanding of God as the divinity of Christ, and things as essential to the moral life as the nature of marriage and sexuality - it seems to me that some lines need to be drawn.  Because I am a product of my time, and because I have the sort of brain and temperament that always wants to nuance everything and see the shades of grey, drawing lines makes me deeply uncomfortable.  But the alternative is worse, much worse: the destruction of faith and morals, with consequences which are potentially eternal.

We're not ready

I was recently reading the little treatise On the Lapsed by Cyprian of Carthage, and was struck by how relevant it is for the church in the West at the moment.  For those unfamiliar, Cyprian was bishop of Carthage for about ten years before his martyrdom in 258.  He was bishop through the Decian persecution, which kicked off with the Emperor Decius requiring every inhabitant of the Roman Empire to offer a sacrifice for the safety of the Empire in front of a magistrate; those who sacrificed received a certificate to that effect, whilst anyone refusing was harshly punished.  Whether the edict was particularly directed at Christians or not, it obviously had a great effect on the church.  By all accounts, the persecution was particularly harsh in Carthage (which had a larger than average Christian population), and many Christians made the required sacrifices.

Two things in particular struck me about Cyprian's treatment of those who have 'lapsed' - who have sacrificed to the pagan gods in order to save their skins and their social standing.

Firstly, he argues that the persecution was not the cause, but merely the occasion, for apostasy.  He looks back to the church before the persecution, and argues that it had become undisciplined.

Among the priests there was no devotedness of religion; among the ministers there was no sound faith: in their works there was no mercy; in their manners there was no discipline.  In men, their beards were defaced; in women, their complexion was dyed: the eyes were falsified from what God's hand had made them; their hair was stained with a falsehood. Crafty frauds were used to deceive the hearts of the simple, subtle meanings for circumventing the brethren. They united in the bond of marriage with unbelievers; they prostituted the members of Christ to the Gentiles. They would swear not only rashly, but even more, would swear falsely; would despise those set over them with haughty swelling, would speak evil of one another with envenomed tongue, would quarrel with one another with obstinate hatred.

The church which was not disciplined and committed to purity of life before the persecution could hardly be expected to stand up when tested.

Secondly, because that is how he sees the problem, Cyprian is not willing to lightly readmit those who have lapsed to fellowship.  The logic is obvious.  The roots of their apostasy did not lie in the persecution but in the failure to take the gospel and its call to purity seriously; the persecution merely revealed the problem which was already there.  So how could the problem be remedy through a relaxation of discipline?  A failure to be serious about the gospel cannot be addressed by not being serious about the gospel.

One reason I've been thinking about this stuff has been the Tim Farron debacle.  I wouldn't want to draw too many parallels between the hounding of the leader of the LibDems and the Decian persecution, but there are a few.  For example, all that is required to escape is to make a token gesture towards the prevalent ideology of the day; nobody requires that you take it too seriously.  Just say it isn't a sin, pay lip-service, and we can all move on.  But the main thought is: if this is a sign of things to come - and it is entirely conceivable to me that at some point it will become difficult for anyone who won't subscribe the new paganism, even if they're not the leader of the LibDems - well, are we ready?  Do we know what we believe and why we believe it?  Are our church communities disciplined?  Do we take the gospel seriously?

I confess, I worry a bit.