Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Connotation and Definition [1]
The term heresy connotes, etymologically, both a choice and the thing chosen, the meaning being, however, narrowed to the selection of religious or political doctrines, adhesion to parties in Church or State.
Josephus applies the name (airesis) to the three religious sects prevalent in Judea since the Maccabean period: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes.[2] St. Paul is described to the Roman governor Felix as the leader of the heresy (aireseos) of the Nazarenes;[3] the Jews in Rome say to the same Apostle: “Concerning this sect [airesoeos], we know that it is everywhere contradicted.”[4] St. Justin[5] uses airesis in the same sense. St. Peter[6] applies the term to Christian sects: “There shall be among you lying teachers who shall bring in sects of perdition [aireseis apoleias]”. In later Greek, philosophers’ schools, as well as religious sects, are “heresies”.
St. Thomas[7] defines heresy: “a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas.” “The right Christian faith consists in giving one’s voluntary assent to Christ in all that truly belongs to His teaching. There are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to believe in Christ Himself, which is the way of infidelity, common to Pagans and Jews; the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ’s doctrine selected and fashioned at pleasure, which is the way of heretics. The subject-matter of both faith and heresy is, therefore, the deposit of the faith, that is, the sum total of truths revealed in Scripture and Tradition as proposed to our belief by the Church. The believer accepts the whole deposit as proposed by the Church; the heretic accepts only such parts of it as commend themselves to his own approval. The heretical tenets may be ignorance of the true creed, erroneous judgment, imperfect apprehension and comprehension of dogmas: in none of these does the will play an appreciable part, wherefore one of the necessary conditions of sinfulness–free choice–is wanting and such heresy is merely objective, or material. On the other hand, the will may freely incline the intellect to adhere to tenets declared false by the Divine teaching authority of the Church. The impelling motives are many: intellectual pride or exaggerated reliance on one’s own insight; the illusions of religious zeal; the allurements of political or ecclesiastical power; the ties of material interests and personal status; and perhaps others more dishonorable. Heresy thus willed is imputable to the subject and carries with it a varying degree of guilt; it is called formal, because to the material error it adds the informative element of “freely willed”.
Pertinacity, that is, obstinate adhesion to a particular tenet is required to make heresy formal. For as long as one remains willing to submit to the Church’s decision he remains a Catholic Christian at heart and his wrong beliefs are only transient errors and fleeting opinions. Considering that the human intellect can assent only to truth, real or apparent, studied pertinacity, as distinct from wanton opposition, supposes a firm subjective conviction which may be sufficient to inform the conscience and create “good faith”. Such firm convictions result either from circumstances over which the heretic has no control or from intellectual delinquencies in themselves more or less voluntary and imputable. A man born and nurtured in heretical surroundings may live and die without ever having a doubt as to the truth of his creed. On the other hand, a born Catholic may allow himself to drift into whirls of anti-Catholic thought from which no doctrinal authority can rescue him, and where his mind becomes incrusted with convictions, or considerations sufficiently powerful to overlay his Catholic conscience. It is not for man, but for Him who searches the reins and heart, to sit in judgment on the guilt which attaches to a heretical conscience.
II. Distinctions
Heresy differs from apostasy. The apostate a fide abandons wholly the faith of Christ either by embracing Judaism, Islamism, Paganism, or simply by falling into naturalism and complete neglect of religion; the heretic always retains faith in Christ. Heresy also differs from schism. Schismatics, says St. Thomas, in the strict sense, are they who of their own will and intention separate themselves from the unity of the Church. The unity of the Church consists in the connection of its members with each other and of all the members with the head. Now this head is Christ whose representative in the Church is the supreme pontiff. And therefore, the name of schismatics is given to those who will not submit to the supreme pontiff nor communicate with the members of the Church subject to him. Since the definition of Papal Infallibility, schism usually implies the heresy of denying this dogma. Heresy is opposed to faith; schism to charity; so that, although all heretics are schismatics because loss of faith involves separation from the Church, not all schismatics are necessarily heretics, since a man may, from anger, pride, ambition, or the like, sever himself from the communion of the Church and yet believe all the Church proposes for our belief.[8] Such a one, however, would be more properly called rebellious than heretical.
III. Degrees of Heresy
Both matter and form of heresy admit of degrees which find expression in the following technical formula of theology and canon law. Pertinacious adhesion to a doctrine contradictory to a point of faith clearly defined by the Church is heresy pure and simple, heresy in the first degree. But if the doctrine in question has not been expressly “defined” or is not clearly proposed as an article of faith in the ordinary, authorized teaching of the Church, an opinion opposed to it is styled sententia haeresi proxima, that is, an opinion approaching heresy. Next, a doctrinal proposition, without directly contradicting a received dogma, may yet involve logical consequences at variance with revealed truth. Such a proposition is not heretical, it is a propositio theologice erronea, that is, erroneous in theology. Further, the opposition to an article of faith may not be strictly demonstrable, but only reach a certain degree of probability. In that case the doctrine is termed sententia de haeresi suspecta, haeresim sapiens; that is, an opinion suspected, or savoring, of heresy.
IV. Gravity of The Sin of Heresy
Heresy is a sin because of its nature it is destructive of the virtue of Christian faith. Its malice is to be measured therefore by the excellence of the good gift of which it deprives the soul. Now faith is the most precious possession of man, the root of his supernatural life, the pledge of his eternal salvation. Privation of faith is therefore the greatest evil, and deliberate rejection of faith is the greatest sin. St. Thomas[9] arrives at the same conclusion thus: “All sin is an aversion from God. A sin, therefore, is the greater the more it separates man from God. But infidelity does this more than any other sin, for the infidel (unbeliever) is without the true knowledge of God: his false knowledge does not bring him help, for what he opines is not God: manifestly, then, the sin of unbelief (infidelitas) is the greatest sin in the whole range of perversity.” And he adds: “Although the Gentiles err in more things than the Jews, and although the Jews are farther removed from true faith than heretics, yet the unbelief of the Jews is a more grievous sin than that of the Gentiles, because they corrupt the Gospel itself after having adopted and professed the same…. It is a more serious sin not to perform what one has promised than not to perform what one has not promised.” It cannot be pleaded in attenuation of the guilt of heresy that heretics do not deny the faith which to them appears necessary to salvation, but only such articles as they consider not to belong to the original deposit. In answer, it suffices to remark that two of the most evident truths of the depositum fidei are the unity of the Church and the institution of a teaching authority to maintain that unity. That unity exists in the Catholic Church, and is preserved by the function of her teaching body: these are two facts which anyone can verify for himself. In the constitution of the Church there is no room for private judgment sorting essentials from non-essentials: any such selection disturbs the unity, and challenges the Divine authority, of the Church; it strikes at the very source of faith. The guilt of heresy is measured not so much by its subject-matter as by its formal principle, which is the same in all heresies: revolt against a Divinely constituted authority.
V. Origin, Spread, and Persistence of Heresy
The origin, the spread, and the persistence of heresy are due to different causes and influenced by many external circumstances. The undoing of faith infused and fostered by God Himself is possible on account of the human element in it, namely man’s free will. The will determines the act of faith freely because its moral dispositions move it to obey God, whilst the non-cogency of the motives of credibility allows it to withhold its consent and leaves room for doubt and even denial. The non-cogency of the motives of credibility may arise from three causes: the obscurity of the Divine testimony (inevidentia attestantis); the obscurity of the contents of Revelation; the opposition between the obligations imposed on us by faith and the evil inclinations of our corrupt nature. To find out how a man’s free will is led to withdraw from the faith once professed, the best way is observation of historical cases. Pius X, scrutinizing the causes of Modernism, says: “The proximate cause is, without any doubt, an error of the mind. The remoter causes are two: curiosity and pride. Curiosity, unless wisely held in bounds, is of itself sufficient to account for all errors…. But far more effective in obscuring the mind and leading it into error is pride, which has, as it were, its home in Modernist doctrines. Through pride the Modernists overestimate themselves…. We are not like other men… they reject all submission to authority … they pose as reformers. If from moral causes we pass to the intellectual, the first and most powerful is ignorance…They extol modern philosophy… completely ignoring the philosophy of the Schools and thus depriving themselves of the means of clearing away the confusion of their ideas and of meeting sophisms. Their system, replete with so many errors, had its origin in the wedding of false philosophy with faith.”[10]
(b) Spread of Heresy
The growth of heresy, like the growth of plants, depends on surrounding influences, even more than on its vital force. Philosophies, religious ideals and aspirations, social and economic conditions, are brought into contact with revealed truth, and from the impact result both new affirmations and new negations of the traditional doctrine. The first requisite for success is a forceful man, not necessarily of great intellect and learning, but of strong will and daring action. Such were the men who in all ages have given their names to new sects. The second requisite is accommodation of the new doctrine to the contemporary mentality, to social and political conditions. The last, but by no means the least, is the support of secular rulers. A strong man in touch with his time, and supported by material force, may deform the existing religion and build up a new heretical sect. Modernism fails to combine into a body separate from the Church because it lacks an acknowledged leader, because it appeals to only a small minority of contemporary minds, namely, to a small number who are dissatisfied with the Church as she now is, and because no secular power lends it support. For the same reason, and proportionately, a thousand small sects have failed, whose names still encumber the pages of church history, but whose tenets interest only a few students, and whose adherents are nowhere. Such were, in the Apostolic Age, the Judeo-Christians, Judeo-Gnostics, Nicolaites, Docetae, Cerinthians, Ebionites, Nazarenes, followed, in the next two centuries, by a variety of Syrian and Alexandrian Gnostics, by Ophites, Marcionites, Encratites, Montanists, Manichaeans, and others. All the early Eastern sects fed on the fanciful speculations so dear to the Eastern mind, but, lacking the support of temporal power, they disappeared under the anathemas of the guardians of the depositum fidei.
Arianism is the first heresy that gained a strong footing in the Church and seriously endangered its very nature and existence. Arius appeared on the scene when theologians were endeavoring to harmonize the apparently contradictory doctrines of the unity of God and the Divinity of Christ. Instead of unraveling the knot, he simply cut it by bluntly asserting that Christ was not God like the Father, but a creature made in time. The simplicity of the solution, the ostentatious zeal of Arius for the defense of the “one God”, his mode of life, his learning and dialectic ability won many to his side. “In particular he was supported by the famous Eusebius of Nicomedia who had great influence on the Emperor Constantine. He had friends among the other bishops of Asia and even among the bishops, priests, and nuns of the Alexandrian province. He gained the favor of Constantia, the emperor’s sister, and he disseminated his doctrine among the people by means of his notorious book which he called thaleia or ‘Entertainment’ and by songs adapted for sailors, millers, and travelers.”[11] The Council of Nicaea anathematized the heresiarch, but its anathemas, like all the efforts of the Catholic bishops, were nullified by interference of the civil power. Constantine and his sister protected Arius and the Arians, and the next emperor, Constantius, assured the triumph of the heresy: the Catholics were reduced to silence by dire persecution. At once an internecine conflict began within the Arian pale, for heresy, lacking the internal cohesive element of authority, can only be held together by coercion either from friend or foe. Sects sprang up rapidly: they are known as Eunomians, Anomoeans, Exucontians, Semi-Arians, Acacians. The Emperor Valens (364-378) lent his powerful support to the Arians, and the peace of the Church was only secured when the orthodox Emperor Theodosius reversed the policy of his predecessors and sided with Rome. Within the boundaries of the Roman empire the faith of Nicaea, enforced again by the General Council of Constantinople (381), prevailed, but Arianism held its own for over two hundred years longer wherever the Arian Goths held sway: in Thrace, Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul. The conversion of King Recared of Spain, who began to reign in 586, marked the end of Arianism in his dominions, and the triumph of the Catholic Franks sealed the doom of Arianism everywhere.
Pelagianism, not being backed by political power, was without much difficulty removed from the Church. Eutychianism, Nestorianism, and other Christological heresies which followed one upon another as the link, of a chain, flourished only so long and so far as the temporal power of Byzantine and Persian rulers gave them countenance. Internal dissension, stagnation, and decay became their fate when left to themselves.
(c) Persistence of Heresy
We have seen how heresy originates and how it spreads; we must now answer the question why it persists, or why so many persevere in heresy. Once heresy is in possession, it tightens its grip by the thousand subtle and often unconscious influences which mold a man’s life. A child is born in heretical surroundings: before it is able to think for itself its mind has been filled and fashioned by home, school, and church teachings, the authority of which it never doubted. When, at a riper age, doubts arise, the truth of Catholicism is seldom apprehended as it is. Innate prejudices, educational bias, historical distortions stand in the way and frequently make approach impossible. The state of conscience technically termed bona fides, good faith, is thus produced. It implies inculpable belief in error, a mistake morally unavoidable and therefore always excusable, sometimes even laudable. In the absence of good faith worldly interests often bar the way from heresy to truth. When a government, for instance, reserves its favors and functions for adherents of the state religion, the army of civil servants becomes a more powerful body of missionaries than the ordained ministers. Prussia, France, and Russia are cases in point.
[1] Wilhelm, J.. (1910). Heresy. The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved August 17, 2017 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07256b.htm .
[2] Bel. Jud., II, 8:1; Ant., XIII, v, 9.
[3] Acts, 24:5.
[4] Ibid, 28:22.
[5] Dial., 18:108.
[6] 2 Peter 2:1.
[7] II-II: 11:1.
[8] II-II, Q. 29, a. 1.
[9] II-II, Q. 10, a. 3.
[10] Encycl. “Pascendi“, 8 September, 1907.
[11] Addis and Arnold, “A Catholic Dictionary“, 7th ed., 1905, 54.