Heresy is Division in the Church

Heresy is properly defined as divisiveness, not merely believing a false doctrine. Heretics are divisive people. Those who state doctrines with which I disagree, but do so without insisting on division because of my belief, are not heretics. Thus calls for mutual understanding and patience.

As I have attmpted to refine my last outline page on the negative developments in Christianity from the second through the sixth centuries CE that led to the rise of Islam and other problems that continue to the present, it has become obvious that I need to give more attention to the definition of “heresy” before I proceed. So, for the next several posts, I will post in serial form an update of my chapters on the competing definitions of “heresy” from the book Our Oneness in Christ, which Lauston Stephens and I published in 2006 (the original is no longer in print except as an Amazon Kindle ebook). I will continue to refine my historical outline of second through sixth century Christianity as I post my updated sections of the 2006 book, and will proceed to an outline page on the influence of Christian errors on the rise of Islam when the refinements to the previous historical outline pages are complete.

Churches have traditionally taught that “heresy” is the same as “false teaching” and that heresy is dangerous because it causes division in the church. The next series of posts will show that “heresy,” as this term is used in the New Testament, is division itself, not false doctrine. That is, a mere false belief that does not grow into a division in the Church is not a heresy. Heresies grow when divisive people—“heretics” in the true sense—start to teach false doctrines for the purpose of leading away other believers after them, into separate groups under their control, for the heretic’s own profit. Thus, the New Testament places the emphasis upon our individual vigilance first to promptly correct, and then to avoid, divisive people in the church, rather than on policing individual believers’ private compliance with denominational creeds and doctrinal statements.

Here it must be stressed again that the underlying cause of all division in the church is sin–our desire to have our own way, to have what we want, regardless of what God wants or our brothers and sisters need–as I have shown at length in a previous post.

Before I set out a fairly long presentation that many may think to present an heretical view of “heresy,” and criticizing an important pastime of the Church for the last nineteen centuries—heresy hunting—I should present some general explanation of my approach.  The Christian life is at its heart a relationship—Jesus even calls it a friendship¹—knowledge of God, not knowledge about God. At the human level, I can know you, yet be mistaken concerning many things about you.  I can know you as a friend, and be learning to trust you, yet, for example, be mistaken about the sweetness of your temper.  The same is true of our knowledge of God in Jesus. God, of course, knows me perfectly.  But, while I know God as I would know a friend, I do not know him perfectly.  I know him, yet am undoubtedly mistaken about many things about him. I have much to learn. 

Balance is needed here.  Accurate factual knowledge—doctrine—is important.  I should be diligently seeking to learn the truth².  But doctrine is secondary to relationship.  Sound doctrine without relationship has lost its purpose and is dead.

Of course, I recognize that a person’s doctrine may be so far off the mark that the error indicates lack of relationship with God.  Assume that we both know Joe.  I describe Joe as a young white Scotsman from Edinburgh.  You describe Joe as a matronly black Kenyan grandmother from Nairobi. Obviously, the Joe I know is not the same Joe (or Jo?) you know.  In this hypothetical, it would be unreasonable for me to persecute you for misrepresenting “my” Joe.  I simply need to accept that you know a different Joe.  And when it comes to God, similar things can be said.  Many people say they know God, but really do not know him—their description of him shows that.  Yet the New Testament never suggests we should burn them as heretics or infidels, or even exclude them from our lives.  We need simply to recognize that our associates whose descriptions of God and of Jesus could not possibly describe the same person as the God with whom we are friends, are not in the Body of Christ at all—and accept them as such.        

 However, the doctrinal disagreements that we often feel are adequate justification for our divisions from other Christians are usually much less serious than this. For example, a misunderstanding about the sweetness of God’s temper—how his grace relates to his wrath—affects life profoundly, but may not nullify relationship with God. Your picture of God may be angrier and more demanding than mine, or vice versa, yet we may both be talking about the same God, just viewed from different Christian backgrounds, or from different stages in the growth of our respective relationships with him.  And we are, objectively, probably both wrong about God, to some degree.  He knows us perfectly, but we don’t know him perfectly.  Such differences call for patience, love, and attempts at mutual understanding, not mutual caricature, anger, shunning, or worse.

So disagreements about doctrine do not necessarily create divisions in the Body of Christ.  At a personal level, doctrinal disagreements create divisions in the Body largely because we have been taught they should do so. Historically, as the next series of posts will show, our divisions were initiated by divisive people who wanted to profit from the division their doctrines created (the content of the doctrines being secondary to their real divisive purpose).  Then, as the examples given in developing the historical outlines will show, our divisions are perpetuated across the centuries, long after the original heretics are dead, by the political needs of organizations—political needs that are more often manifestations of entanglements with secular politics than mere matters of church politics. Given this weakness of doctrinal disputes as justifications for continuing division, it can be asked, should we individually continue to respect the resulting divisions in our treatment of each other?

Next: The Meanings and Occurrences of the Underlying Words for Heresy.