"]A couple of weeks ago, Roger Olson–a theology professor at Baylor University–took up the issue of universalism on his blog, asking, “How serious a heresy is universalism?”
Of course, this is a loaded question. It assumes that universalism is a heresy. But how do we decide that? To engage this question seriously, we’d first need to wrestle with the concept of heresy itself. Olson does offer a brief definition of heresy in a parenthetical remark, saying that heresies are “theologically incorrect beliefs,” but he doesn’t consider the adequacy of this definition in the face of alternatives. A “theologically incorrect belief” is presumably a belief about God that doesn’t correspond with the way God really is. If this is what a heresy is, then we’d expect–as Olson immediately concedes–that all Christians are heretical about something or other, and that heresy needn’t be a very serious issue. The (laudable, I think) implication of this way of conceiving the matter is that the cry of heresy loses much of its force. Being a heretic ceases to be an eggregious matter, at least as such.
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