The Great Heresies
From Christianity’s beginnings, the Church has
been attacked by those introducing false teachings, or heresies.
The Bible warned us this would happen. Paul told
his young protégé, Timothy, "For the time is coming when
people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will
accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will
turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths" (2 Tim. 4:3–4).
What Is Heresy?
Heresy is an emotionally loaded term that is often
misused. It is not the same thing as incredulity, schism, apostasy, or
other sins against faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states,
"Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to
assent to it. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth
which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise
an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation
of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman
Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him"
(CCC 2089).
To commit heresy, one must refuse to be corrected.
A person who is ready to be corrected or who is unaware that what he has
been saying is against Church teaching is not a heretic.
A person must be baptized to commit heresy. This
means that movements that have split off from or been influenced by Christianity,
but that do not practice baptism (or do not practice valid baptism), are
not heresies, but separate religions. Examples include Muslims, who do
not practice baptism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not practice valid
baptism.
Finally, the doubt or denial involved in heresy
must concern a matter that has been revealed by God and solemnly defined
by the Church (for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence
of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, the pope’s infallibility,
or the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary).
It is important to distinguish heresy from schism
and apostasy. In schism, one separates from the Catholic Church without
repudiating a defined doctrine. An example of a contemporary schism is
the Society of St. Pius X—the "Lefebvrists" or followers of the late Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre—who separated from the Church in the late 1980s, but who
have not denied Catholic doctrines. In apostasy, one totally repudiates
the Christian faith and no longer even claims to be a Christian.
With this in mind, let’s look at some of the major
heresies of Church history and when they began.
The Circumcisers (1st Century)
The Circumcision heresy may be summed up in the
words of Acts 15:1: "But some men came down from Judea and were teaching
the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses,
you cannot be saved.’"
Many of the early Christians were Jews, who brought
to the Christian faith many of their former practices. They recognized
in Jesus the Messiah predicted by the prophets and the fulfillment of the
Old Testament. Because circumcision had been required in the Old Testament
for membership in God’s covenant, many thought it would also be required
for membership in the New Covenant that Christ had come to inaugurate.
They believed one must be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law to come to
Christ. In other words, one had to become a Jew to become a Christian.
But God made it clear to Peter in
Acts 10 that Gentiles are acceptable to God and may be baptized and become
Christians without circumcision. The same teaching was vigorously
defended by Paul in his epistles to the Romans and the Galatians—to areas
where the Circumcision heresy had spread.
Gnosticism (1st and 2nd Centuries)
"Matter is evil!" was the cry of the Gnostics.
This idea was borrowed from certain Greek philosophers. It stood against
Catholic teaching, not only because it contradicts Genesis 1:31 ("And God
saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good") and other
scriptures, but because it denies the Incarnation. If matter is evil, then
Jesus Christ could not be true God and true man, for Christ is in no way
evil. Thus many Gnostics denied the Incarnation, claiming that Christ only
appeared to be a man, but that his humanity was an illusion. Some
Gnostics, recognizing that the Old Testament taught that God created matter,
claimed that the God of the Jews was an evil deity who was distinct from
the New Testament God of Jesus Christ. They also proposed belief in many
divine beings, known as "aeons," who mediated between man and the ultimate,
unreachable God. The lowest of these aeons, the one who had contact with
men, was supposed to be Jesus Christ.
Montanism (Late 2nd Century)
Montanus began his career innocently enough through
preaching a return to penance and fervor. His movement also emphasized
the continuance of miraculous gifts, such as speaking in tongues and prophecy.
However, he also claimed that his teachings were above those of the Church,
and soon he began to teach Christ’s imminent return in his home town in
Phrygia. There were also statements that Montanus himself either was, or
at least specially spoke for, the Paraclete that Jesus had promised would
come (in reality, the Holy Spirit).
Sabellianism (Early 3rd Century)
The Sabellianists taught that Jesus Christ and
God the Father were not distinct persons, but two.aspects or offices of
one person. According to them, the three persons of the Trinity exist only
in God’s relation to man, not in objective reality.
Arianism (4th Century)
Arius taught that Christ was a creature made by God. By disguising his heresy using orthodox
or near-orthodox terminology, he was able to sow great confusion in the
Church. He was able to muster the support of many bishops, while others
excommunicated him.
Arianism was solemnly condemned in 325 at the First
Council of Nicaea, which defined the divinity of Christ, and in 381 at
the First Council of Constantinople, which defined the divinity of the
Holy Spirit. These two councils gave us the Nicene creed, which Catholics
recite at Mass every Sunday.
Pelagianism (5th Century)
Pelagius denied that we inherit original sin from Adam’s sin
in the Garden and claimed that we become sinful only through the bad example
of the sinful community into which we are born. Conversely, he denied that
we inherit righteousness as a result of Christ’s death on the cross and
said that we become personally righteous by instruction and imitation in
the Christian community, following the example of Christ. Pelagius stated
that man is born morally neutral and can achieve heaven under his own powers.
According to him, God’s grace is not truly necessary, but merely makes
easier an otherwise difficult task.
Semi-Pelagianism (5th Century)
After Augustine refuted the teachings of Pelagius,
some tried a modified version of his system. This, too, ended in heresy
by claiming that humans can reach out to God under their own power, without
God’s grace; that once a person has entered a state of grace, one can retain
it through one’s efforts, without further grace from God; and that natural
human effort alone can give one some claim to receiving grace, though not
strictly merit it.
Nestorianism (5th Century)
This heresy about the person of Christ was initiated
by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who denied Mary the title of Theotokos
(Greek: "God-bearer" or, less literally, "Mother of God"). Nestorius claimed
that she only bore Christ’s human nature in her womb, and proposed the
alternative title Christotokos ("Christ-bearer" or "Mother of Christ").
Orthodox Catholic theologians recognized that Nestorius’s
theory would fracture Christ into two separate persons (one human and one
divine, joined in a sort of loose unity), only one of whom was in her womb.
The Church reacted in 431 with the Council of Ephesus, defining that Mary
can be properly referred to as the Mother of God, not in the sense that
she is older than God or the source of God, but in the sense that the person
she carried in her womb was, in fact, God incarnate ("in the flesh").
There is some doubt whether Nestorius himself held
the heresy his statements imply, and in this century, the Assyrian Church
of the East, historically regarded as a Nestorian church, has signed a
fully orthodox joint declaration on Christology with the Catholic Church
and rejects Nestorianism. It is now in the process of coming into full
ecclesial communion with the Catholic Church.
Monophysitism (5th Century)
Monophysitism originated as a reaction to Nestorianism.
The Monophysites (led by a man named Eutyches) were horrified by Nestorius’s
implication that Christ was two people with two different natures (human
and divine). They went to the other extreme, claiming that Christ was one
person with only one nature (a fusion of human and divine elements). They
are thus known as Monophysites because of their claim that Christ had only
one nature (Greek: mono = one; physis = nature).
Orthodox Catholic theologians recognized that Monophysitism
was as bad as Nestorianism because it denied Christ’s full humanity and
full divinity. If Christ did not have a fully human nature, then he would
not be fully human, and if he did not have a fully divine nature then he
was not fully divine.
Iconoclasm (7th and 8th Centuries)
This heresy arose when a group of people known
as iconoclasts (literally, "icon smashers") appeared, who claimed that
it was sinful to make pictures and statues of Christ and the saints, despite
the fact that in the Bible, God had commanded the making of religious statues
(Ex. 25:18–20; 1 Chr. 28:18–19), including symbolic representations of
Christ (cf. Num. 21:8–9 with John 3:14).
Catharism (11th Century)
Catharism was a complicated mix of non-Christian
religions reworked with Christian terminology. The Cathars had many different
sects; they had in common a teaching that the world was created by an evil
deity (so matter was evil) and we must worship the good deity instead.
The Albigensians formed one of the largest Cathar
sects. They taught that the spirit was created by God, and was good, while
the body was created by an evil god, and the spirit must be freed from
the body. Having children was one of the greatest evils, since it entailed
imprisoning another "spirit" in flesh. Logically, marriage was forbidden,
though fornication was permitted. Tremendous fasts and severe mortifications
of all kinds were practiced, and their leaders went about in voluntary
poverty.
Protestantism (16th Century)
Protestant groups display a wide variety of different
doctrines. However, virtually all claim to believe in the teachings of
sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone"—the idea that we must use only
the Bible when forming our theology) and sola fide ("by faith alone"—
the idea that we are justified by faith only).
The great diversity of Protestant doctrines stems
from the doctrine of private judgment, which denies the infallible authority
of the Church and claims that each individual is to interpret Scripture
for himself. This idea is rejected in 2 Peter 1:20, where we are told the
first rule of Bible interpretation: "First of all you must understand this,
that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation."
A significant feature of this heresy is the attempt to pit the Church "against"
the Bible, denying that the magisterium has any infallible authority to
teach and interpret Scripture.
The doctrine of private judgment has resulted in
an enormous number of different denominations. According to The Christian
Sourcebook, there are approximately 20-30,000 denominations, with 270
new ones being formed each year. Virtually all of these are Protestant.
Jansenism (17th Century)
Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, France, initiated this
heresy with a paper he wrote on Augustine, which redefined the doctrine
of grace. Among other doctrines, his followers denied that Christ died
for all men, but claimed that he died only for those who will be finally
saved (the elect). This and other Jansenist errors were officially condemned
by Pope Innocent X in 1653.
Heresies have been with us from the Church’s beginning.
They even have been started by Church leaders, who were then corrected
by councils and popes. Fortunately, we have Christ’s promise that heresies
will never prevail against the Church, for he told Peter, "You are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will
not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). The Church is truly, in Paul’s
words, "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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