The “Heretick” in Titus 3

Titus 3:10 instructs whenever a divisive person approaches ME and tries to start an argument, I am to warn them twice about their behavior and then excuse myself. Thereafter I should ignore them, until they repent of their argumentativeness. It is a simple instruction by which I can avoid being influenced by divisiveness. It is not an instruction to the Church or the State to burn heretics.

But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and striving about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretick (hairetikon anthrōpon), after the first and second admonition, reject, knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

Titus 3:9-11 (KJV).

But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person (hairetikon anthrōpon)once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.

Titus 3:9-11 (NIV)

            This is the only passage in which the KJV uses the word “heretic,” variously rendered in other English translations, and the only place in which the Greek New Testament uses the adjective hairetikos.  In this verse, hairetikos modifies the noun anthrōpos, a “person.”  It is also the only place in the Greek New Testament that any word related to hairesis is used to refer to an individual person rather than to a group collectively. The NIV actually renders the phrase quite accurately, “a divisive person.” 

The immediate context of this passage, Titus 3:1-8, deals with the contrast that should exist between the way the world lives and our lives now that God has shown us his grace and love and washed us, renewing and restoring us by the Holy Spirit.  The first contrast mentioned is in our submissive response to secular, worldly authority—church authority is not at issue here. Then, in contrast to both our old life and the life of the world, we are to be peace-loving, gentle and to avoid speaking evil of others.  All of these are described as good works, works that are good and profitable for other people and that are done for others because God has saved us.  They contrast directly with the description of our old lives in verse 3, which was characterized by bondage to destructive desires we could not control, disobedience, deception, malice, envy and hatred.

            Verse 9 then tells us to avoid certain kinds of people.  The people we are to avoid can be recognized by their talk:  they are people who habitually look for controversies to debate (zētēseis), boast about genealogies (the “connections” that make them “important”),look for contentions, altercations or strife (ereis), and try to start fights (machas).  We are to avoid them because the quarrels they want to start are unprofitable—they only lead back to our old way of life, which is worthless and destructive.

It is only at this point in the discussion that we are commanded to first warn twice, then to reject a person who is a “heretic,” that is, a hairetikon anthrōpon, “one who fosters factions,” a “divisive person.” The emphasis is clearly on the person (anthrōpon)who is argumentative, as described in verse 9, not on the specific content of the person’s teachings.  It is also important to note that the command in verse 10 is stated in the singular, and the verb used (paraiteomai) here means to ignore or avoid a person. (Louw & Nida, Vol. 2, 334, 451, 469, definitions 27.60, 34.41, 36.27).  So the command is that, whenever a divisive person approaches me and tries to start an argument, I am to warn them twice about their behavior and then excuse myself.  Thereafter I should ignore them, until they repent of their argumentativeness.  It is a simple instruction by which I can avoid being influenced by divisiveness, on each occasion on which it manifests itself.  It is not an instruction to the whole church, the state, or all of “Christendom,” to exile or burn a “heretic,” in the technical church law sense of that term.

Here Paul gives Titus essentially the same instruction concerning divisive persons he gave to the Romans:

 I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.

Romans 16:17-18 (NIV).

  One again, the instruction is to notice which people in the church are using flattery and smooth arguments to cause divisions for their own benefit—serving their own appetites—and to avoid those people. Doctrine is a component of this, but for this purpose it is secondary to both the speakers’ motivation (feeding their appetites) and the intended effect of the speech (causing divisions and thus putting obstacles in our way).  This is not an invitation to demand of others that they declare total agreement with every word of “our” creed and to instantly “become offended” if they refuse.  We are to be avoiding those who cause divisions, not hunting for them.

As already shown, the immediate context in Titus 3 suggests that a “heretic” is a person who stirs up controversy for his own ends, inviting a division in the Church.  The word hairetikos also suggests this. Arndt and Gingrich, at p. 24, list as the primary meaning of hairetikos “factious, causing divisions,” then list “heretic” after the abbreviation “perh.” (“perhaps”).  Obviously these editors are not convinced that Paul used the word in Titus 3:10 with its later technical ecclesiastical law meaning in mind.  Thayer, at p. 16, lists the primary meaning of hairetikos—obviously as used in literature outside the New Testament—as “fitted or able to take or choose a thing.” The second definition listed is then “schismatic, factious,” and is conceptually related to the first meaning in that a schismatic person attempts to cause others to make a divisive choice.

As the passages from First Corinthians previously discussed illustrate, these words denote a “choice” of human leaders,  a “choice” to separate into groups representing our own social class (with separate leaders),  or at the least a choice to break into a separate group based on some issue, not a mere “choice” of an unorthodox idea. The danger against which the Church is warned is emphatically not the danger that some individual church members might privately harbor some reservations about the group’s doctrinal statement. Rather, it is precisely the trap into which the Church has repeatedly fallen — namely, the division of the Church into antagonistic, competing factions with separate, mutually jealous leaders whose members are trained to hate those in the other factions over disputes about words!

NEXT: False Teachers and “Damnable Heresies” in 2 Peter 2