On Heresy

While the term “heretic” is often tossed around casually in contemporary apologetic discourse, it has a specific and limited meaning in the Church. As Fr. Seraphim Rose of blessed memory explains:

The word “heretic” is indeed used too frequently nowadays. It has a definite meaning and function, to distinguish new teachings from the Orthodox teaching; but few of the non-Orthodox Christians today are consciously “heretics,” and it really does no good to call them that.¹

In other words, a “heretic” is not someone who simply believes a doctrine that has historically been condemned as heretical. An Italian grandmother who happens to say “filioque” when she recites the Nicene Creed is not a heretic the way Nestorius was. Historically speaking, a “heretic” is not an external opponent of the Church; a heretic arises from within the Church. Hence, the most notorious heretics—Arius, Nestorius, Eunomius, etc.—were all ordained clergy. This is what makes heretics so dangerous, and why the Church has been so militant in identifying, refuting, and—when necessary—separating itself from them.

To the secular world, the Church’s opposition to heresy seems like blind dogmatism that, at its worst, becomes a justification for institutional oppression and violence (e.g. the Inquisition). This sentiment has even been echoed by supposedly Orthodox Christian writers today, who are quite outspoken about their own ideas and theories. But the enforcement of a stale repetition of doctrinal formulas has never been the telos of the Church’s opposition to heresy, and, in fact, it is precisely within the boundaries of Christian teaching that authentically creative theological development can take place. The “limits” of established doctrine are not restrictive but liberating, guarding against the “bad infinities” of human imagination, the fruitless dialectics of all systems of thought that deviate from the truth revealed in the historical Christ, who remains present and active in His Church until the end of the world.

The earliest heresy was the Judaizing heresy, which was a temptation even for the chief of the apostles himself (Acts 10–11). Like every heresy, it emerged from within the boundaries of the Church and acted as a foreign intrusion or parasite that poisoned the body from within. Many of St. Paul’s epistles were written to counter its influence in the early Church. Under my (partial preterist) reading of the Book of Revelation, chapter 12 likens the Judaizing heresy—in its famously cryptic symbolic language—to a flood of water that attempts to overwhelm the Church, and identifies the devil as its progenitor: “Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent” (Revelation 12:15). I read this event as referring to the Judaizing heresy, which might have overtaken the Church entirely had it not been for Paul’s opposition to it. The two preceding verses read:

When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach (Revelation 12:13-14).

The hurling of the dragon to the earth occurs when Christ ascends to heaven, vanquishing all the principalities and powers of the air. Immediately, the “dragon” begins working to destroy the “woman” (the apostolic Church) by violently pursuing her, which I interpret as the initial persecution of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, led by Saul of Tarsus. This event drove most of the Christians out of Jerusalem and throughout the Roman Empire, and it is in this context that the Epistle of James was written to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (James 1:1). Outside of Jerusalem, the Christians received protection from the Roman authorities, who—until the time of Nero—upheld a strict law that generally did not permit unjustified and extrajudicial violence, as seen throughout the Book of Acts (e.g. Acts 18:12-17). On an exegetical note, the “wilderness” signifies the Gentile nations, because wilderness/desert symbolism is strongly associated with Gentile lands throughout Scripture, and the “wings of the eagle” represent the Roman authorities, because the eagle was the central animal symbol of the Empire.

Note that when the devil is inspiring the Jews to persecute the Christians, he is referred to as a “dragon.” A dragon is a mighty and quite conspicuous threat, whose mode of attack is direct and violent. However, in the very next verse, the same figure is referred to as a “serpent.” Why? Because, upon seeing that the dispersal of the Jewish Christians throughout the Empire only served to spread the Gospel further, the devil shifted to a more cunning and subtle strategy. The dragon-to-serpent pattern is found throughout Church history, a notable example being the rise of Arius only a few years after St. Constantine the Great ended decades of imperial persecution. In the apostolic age, the devil first tried to violently destroy the Church as a dragon, and when that failed, he morphed into a serpent. The enemy inspired certain Jewish converts to bind upon the necks of the Gentiles the very yoke from which Christ had loosed them, teaching that faith in the crucified Lord was not enough, and that the nations must first be circumcised and take up the whole Law of Moses before they could be numbered among the saved.

It is fitting that the Judaizing heresy was inspired by the ancient serpent, since it is quite similar to the transgression of Adam and Eve. The tree of knowledge, like all of creation, was a sheer gift for man and, as such, it had to be received rather than seized. The serpent’s lie was that the ascent into wisdom could be seized: “you shall be as gods” by reaching out and taking, a purely human work rather than a gift and reception (synergy) that initiated from above. The Judaizing heresy is the same grasping in the form of the Law. It tells the Gentile that sonship and eternal life cannot be received in Christ through faith, but must be secured—earned, accomplished, grasped—by works of the Law, by a thing done to the body (circumcision). The serpent is within the boundaries of the Garden, acting as a foreign intruder who tempts man through words alone—a manipulation of language that inspires a false and impossible idea: that mankind can be deified without God.

What can we learn from all this? First, it reinforces what we established earlier, namely, that heresy is not merely a “belief.” Heresy is not simply an intellectual stance; it is a spiritual disposition of a person that puts them at odds with the truth of the faith and the unity of the Body of Christ. The intellectual dimension matters, of course, but it matters because of what it naturally leads to in the human person—it distorts our perception of reality, and therefore leads us to act wrongly. Heresy, however, is unique because it does not simply pervert one aspect of reality, but leads to a misperception of Reality as such, and hence puts the human person at odds with the fundamental truths of their own being. Thus, St. Athanasius does not condemn the heresy of Arius simply because it is “wrong,” but because it implies that salvation itself is impossible, since Arianism teaches that the eternal God did not assume and communicate His eternal life to humanity.

Heresy stems from pride, which is of the devil. And, like pride, it is more dangerous than external threats or even sins that take an “external” form (such as gluttony and lust). Heresy is a perversion of the heart, an active striving against the truth. Heresy is a descent into hell, while the purpose of human life is the ascent into glory; it is the striving for self-relation and self-sufficiency rather than humility and communion. Hence, a “heretic” cannot be someone who is simply outside the Church and in disagreement with its teachings, but someone who—from within its salvific boundaries—pridefully arises to teach things opposed to the Gospel. As St. Augustine writes:

For, in the first place, they ought to consider how intolerable it is, and how discordant with sound doctrine, to suppose that many, indeed, or almost all, who have forsaken the Church catholic, and have originated impious heresies and become heresiarchs, should enjoy a destiny superior to those who never were catholics […] For certainly he who deserts the faith, and from a deserter becomes an assailant, is worse than he who has not deserted the faith he never held. And, in the second place, they are contradicted by the apostle, who, after enumerating the works of the flesh, says with reference to heresies, “They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”²

Considering what the Fathers say about the seriousness of heresy and the meaning of a “heretic,” we—and I speak especially for myself—should be both careful in our teaching and charitable in our discussions. We are quick to identify those we see holding heretical beliefs, and there is a place for such vigilance; but the deeper danger of heresy lies in its interiority, and it is most threatening precisely to those of us who are already within the Body. The same pride that drove Arius from the priesthood into heresiarchy is a seed that lies dormant in every Christian, and it does not need a false doctrine to begin its work—it needs only the inward turn from reception to grasping, from communion to self-sufficiency, that first originated in the Garden. This is why Fr. Seraphim warned that even a theologically correct zeal can be spiritually wrong: to wield the word “heretic” as an instrument of self-congratulation is already to have surrendered to the very disposition that makes a heretic, even while professing all the right formulas. The boundaries of the faith were given to us not as a fortress from which to fire upon those outside, but as the walls of a garden within which we are being healed—and the work to which they call us is the slow crucifixion of the serpent’s grasp within our own hearts, that we might receive rather than seize the life freely offered in Christ, and so extend that same gift, in patience and love, to all whom He is still calling home.

1. Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works.

2. Augustine of Hippo, City of God.