Heresies

Misconceptions abound when this word is thrown around.  Sometimes it’s used correctly, other times it’s used to mark “us” from “them”.  Some people even impose it on themselves as some sort of honorary title.  The air has been muddled with various misunderstandings of this term; so much so that people no longer know a heresy when they see one and also at times will call themselves or others heretics without properly grasping the concept.  Just like the Gnostic post, I will try to give a small primer on heresy.  It’s a subject I love to study and it can sometimes get confusing with all of the semantics involved but for someone who is going to deal in church history or in theology, it is more important beyond my means of explaining.

Someone who leaves the faith is by definition an apostate, not a heretic.  Someone who removes themselves from the unity of the church to do their own thing is a schismatic, not a heretic.  All heretics are schismatics but not all schismatics are heretics.  Apostates are not heretics because they have left the realm of Christendom and therefore, by nature, are not changing a Christian dogma.  When someone is obstinately opposed to a clearly defined article of faith and begins teaching something contradictory, then they are a heretic.  Please understand that I am saying that it is a CLEARLY defined article (i.e. I know what some people are going to say, “Well it’s a man made system that put those rules into effect.  It’s just the church trying to stifle free thought”; it’s not and they aren’t). 

Almost every heresy was started with the best of intentions (and by the way, no one sets out to start a heresy).  Pelagianism for example was a teaching that was began essentially to make people accountable for their actions as Christians.  Pelagius’ fault lay in that he denied the doctrine of Original Sin and also claimed that mankind was responsible for their own salvation thus removing the redemptive quality of Jesus’ death.  Arius was striving to maintain the unity of God but in so doing he denied the incarnation of God in the man Jesus (Arianism).  Apollinaris of Laodicea was trying to defend the divine nature of Jesus in saying that Jesus was a human with a soul but with a divine nature (Monopysitism) thus denying that Jesus was fully God and fully man.  Cyrus of Alexandria tried to find a common ground by saying that Jesus had two natures but only had one will which does away with the divine and human will of Jesus (Monothelitism, also denying that Jesus was fully God and fully man).  Sabellius (like Arius) wished to protect God’s wholeness and stated that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were simply three different modes of one God which goes against the Trinitarian Three Persons of the Godhead (Sabellianism/Modalism).

Every once in a while we see an ancient heresy rear its head and start prancing around.  Some actually take hold and become rather sizable communities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moonies, etc.)  The trick is learning to be able to tell if something that sounds right is right.  I read a magazine article one time where the person they were reporting on said, “He was the Father in creation, the Son in the Redemption and is the Holy Spirit in Sanctification.”  In a smaller book that he wrote, this same person stated that Jesus ascended into heaven so that he could become the Holy Spirit.  Both of those statements are absolutely 100% undeniably heretical.  The problem here is the same problem that Christian theologians have faced for over two thousand years.  Here we have a man who is highly esteemed by his community for how he speaks and how he motivates.  People like myself are called nit-pickers and hair-splitters for even looking at those few lines and breaking them down to their fundamental fragments.

Now what is so bad about having separate thoughts in one church?  St. Augustine said, “In the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty and in all charity.”  To call yourself a Christian, which is a system of belief, you first of all have to believe something.  The Church for the first couple hundred years of its existence did everything it could to hammer out a belief system that was in the right way of thinking.  You don’t want to worship Jesus as God if he is only a human being and you don’t want to make the mistake of saying that Jesus is only a man if he is truly divine.  You may say that it is hair-splitting or just words but if you want to categorize yourself as something, you need to have a category to fall into.  If I make counterfeit money I can call myself the US Treasury all I want, it doesn’t change the fact that there is a US Treasury and I’m not it. 

To preserve the unity of the faithful there are certain belief structures we must have in common to remain unified (moral as well as theological, you can’t be a Christian who believes arson and battery are okay).  If that creepy uncle comes and tells the rest of the family that it’s alright for him to have sex with your children, no matter what other beliefs you may have in common with him that one idea is going to have horrific ramifications on the rest of the family if it’s allowed to be perpetrated or gains a following.  I know that these may seem like drastic examples but think about some beliefs that you hold that are absolutely central to who you are as a person and that is the equivalent of heresies and orthodoxies.  This is one of the main reasons behind the formation of the Creeds, so that all of the churches that called themselves “Christian” had a standard to go by.

Not all dissenting opinions are heretical.  A dissenting opinion on birth control (one way or the other, depending on what your church teaches) does not prove heretical.  Any thoughts on spiritual gifts (i.e. tongues and prophecy), no matter how much you may love or hate the subject, with a dissenting opinion on the matter is not a heresy.  I’ve always tried to tell people that there are a lot more non-essentials than there are essentials.  Sometimes we major in minors, it’s a human trait and we need to realize that not everybody majors in those same minors as we do.  This is why in all that we do and in all that we hold we need charity.

 

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