Heresy

This page includes list of Heresies, schisms, and religions that counter certain core Catholic beliefs.

Definitions

heresy

• means "against accepted or established standards"
• = denial of the orthodox faith

Heretic

• one who practices a heresy

heterodoxy

• "hetero" (another, of the other) + dox = other opion
  • note: the suffix -doxy comes from PIE root *dek- "to take, accept"

• "heresy" is from Greek hairesis for "taking for oneself"

orthodox / orthodoxy

• "ortho" (true, straight, right ) + doxa (opinion, praise) = "right opinion
• = "the right way", what it is accepted as Catholic belief

schism

• deviation from orthodoxy without full denial of it
• an offshoot belief or belief system

The Way

• early Christians referred to following Christ as "The Way"

First Council of Constantinople, 381

Establishment of orthodoxy was essential for a unified Church and organized belief system. The Church Fathers constantly struggled with false teachers. Paul mentions those who have left the Way, such as we see in 2 Timothy:

Avoid profane, idle talk, for such people will become more and more godless, and their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have deviated from the truth by saying that [the] resurrection has already taken place and are upsetting the faith of some. Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands, bearing this inscription, “The Lord knows those who are his”; and, “Let everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord avoid evil.” (2 Tim 2:16-19)

... for Demas, enamored of the present world, deserted me and went to Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia,* and Titus to Dalmatia. (2 Tim 4:10) ... Alexander* the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.( 2 Tim 4:14)
   or

As the Church organized and diversified, it became essential to establish orthodoxy. Constantine, the Roman emperor, was distressed by the divisions within the church, and organized Councils to sort out belief. From The Canons of the Council of Constantinople (AD 381), we can see the type of struggles Church leaders faced:

I. The faith of the Fathers who gathered in Nicaea of Bythinia should not be annulled. Rather it should continue to have authority, and every heresy (should be)  anathematized, especially that of the Eunomians, or the Anomians, that of the Arians, or Eudoxians, that of the Semiarians, or Pneumatomachians, that of the Sabellians, that of the Marcellians, that of the Photinians, and that of the Apollinarians. 

Here for another translation

Divinity of Christ

most but not all heresies come from misunderstandings or heterodoxic teachings about the nature of Christ

• as all man
  • not divine, a prophet, not God
• or all God
  • not man, thus only present in appearance not substance of a man
• implicates understanding of Mary
  • Mother of God = gave birth to a man
  • as a divine "vessel": = carried God not a man
• implicates belief in the Eucharist
  • if Christ is all-man, or if Christ is all-God, then the Eucharist cannot be real
    • because, either way, the bread and wine are only material and not divine

Types of heresies and heretical beliefs

Examples of heretical views of Christ and the Trinity

Movement	Christ as God alone	Christ as Man alone	Christ as other
Adoptionism		Y	adopted by God
Doscetics	Y	N	Christ existed in spirit only
Gnosticism	Y
Islam		Y	prophet
Modalism	Y		God in the form of Christ

General categories of movements

• i.e., not a specific movement, but a type of heresy or belief that heretical movements adhered to or shared beliefs in

asceticism

• requires strict compliance with religious code
• adherence to self-mortification, including
  • excessive fasting
  • physical pain
• abstinence from pleasure, including
  • alcohol
  • sex
  • material goods
• isolation or monasticism
• Asceticism may be practiced by orthodox believers, especially Saints
  • but as a movement that requires strict adherence it becomes heretical

docetism

• believed that Christ was not mortal, did not actually die on the Cross
• believed that Christ's physical presence was illusionary

dualism

• belief in opposing forces or gods, generally good v. evil
  • sometimes, as in Gnosticism, spiritual v. material

gnosticism

• denied the humanity of Christ
• loathed the material world, saw it as corrupt
• believed in a "secret wisdom" that was revealed only to followers
• came of Greek traditional religion mixed with Christianity

modalism

• belief in one God who has different "modes" but not different persons
• strict monotheism

Monarchianism

• = the general umbrella for Docestism and modalism
• denies the Trinity
• claims that God is one person only
• strict monotheism

rigorism

• extremely literal and/or strict adherence to dogma (beliefs, Scripture, etc.)
• does not allow for exceptions or circumstances
  • ex. would consider all theft wrong without exception (such as dire need)
• may also ignore contradictory or qualifying dogma
  • ex. sin v. forgiveness

see

• List of heresies in the Catholic Church - Wikipedia

Heretical and Schismatic Movements from the Catholic perspective

Movement	Century	Belief	Category 1	Category 2	Heresy	Heterodoxy
Judaisers	1st	Judaism required for Christians			New Covenant	Jewish Law
Manachiasm
Donatism		Confession of faith required	asceticism		reconciliation impossible	Purity of sacramental office
Origenism
Pelagianism			asceticism		denied original sin
Marcionism	2nd	Christ only divine, denies the Trinity	gnosticism	dualism	rejected the Old Testament	Marcion believed in Christ as the "benevolent God" and YAHWEY of the Old Testament as evil believed that Paul was the only true Apostle, and he rejected the Old Testament and accepted only the Gospel of Luke and the Letters of Paul Marcionism differs from Gnosticism in that Marcion did not adhere to the doctrine of "secret wisdom," basing his beliefs on the Letters of Paul.
Adoptionism	2nd	Christ the man was "adopted" by God	gnosticism		rejected the Trinity	Various forms, but primarily believed the Jesus the man was not God but that God adopted Jesus at his birth and his spirit was returned to God at the Resurrection and Ascension
Montanism	2nd	Prophesy	prophetic			"New Prophesy" movement adhered to Christian orthodoxy but focused on prophesy and revelations from the Holy Spirit
Novationism	3rd		rigorism	asceticism		Novatian believed that no sinner should be allowed into a church; forbade remarriage denied return of Lapsi (apostates) after the Decian persecution; his followers called themselves the "Church of the Pure"
Arianism	3rd	Denied divinity of Christ
Nestorianism	5th	Christ human only			rejected the Trinity	denied Mary as Mother of God; taught the "prosopic union" of Christ as divine and human as separate entities
Islam	8th	strict monotheism	prophetic	docetism		Denial of divinity of Christ
Eastern Ortohdox	9th
Manichaean
Paulicians
Joachimites	13th	cultish worship of the Holy Spirit	milleniarian			followers of Joachim of Fiore who taught end-of-times millenarism that was to start in 1260
Lollards	15th
Protestantism	16th					Started by various anti-Church "reformers" of the 15th-17th centuries, protestantism holds that salvation in Christ comes from belief in Christ alone (sola fide); as such, protestants do not believe in most of the Sacraments, Holy Orders, and the Holy Catholic Church.
Mormanism	19th		asceticism	prophetic
Jehovah's Witness	19th
Universalism	late 18th-20th	All people will be saved	universal salvation			Belief that all people will, in the end, will find God's salvation; aside from contradicting the plain words of Chris, the belief ultimately reduces savlation to belief in Christ alone, regardless of one's other beliefs or actions. Universalism is a logical extension of protestantism's sola fidelis, and makes clear why that tenant is so dangerous.
Modernism	19th
Atheism	20th

Apostolic age

Judaizers

• held that to be a Christian one must first become a Jew and adhere to traditional Jewish (Mosaic) law
  • such as circumcision, diet, etc.
• Through Divine intervention, St. Peter declared all food "clean"
• St. Paul argued that Christ had fulfilled the Old Testament, thereby superseding the Law
  • while not negating it entirely, esp. Ten Commandments

Early Church age

Marcionism

• denied the Old Testament God
• held that Christ was divine only and only appeared as a Man, was not

Montanism

• or "New Prophesy"
• believed that God spoke to followers who were inspired by the Holy Spirit
• Montanus and his followers were known to "babble" while claiming to be filled with the Holy Spirit
• Montanus had two followers who also claimed gifts of prophesy, Prisca and Maximilla, two women who with Montanus claimed ecstatic visions
• they told followers to fast excessively in order to experience the same visions
• Montanus likely hung himself, as did Maximilla.
• afterwards, Prisca led the movement, which passed along to Quintilla, who claimed that Eve was heroic for having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge and followed the Hebrew prophetess Miriam (sister of Moses) as rationale for female priests
  • the movement became a form of Gnosticism

Pelagianism

• Pelagius argued that when born humans are not subject to Original Sin
  • and therefore had entire powers of a free will
  • sin, therefore, was a choice and avoidable
• the movement fell into asceticism as way of proof of one's purity

Medieval age

Cathars, Waldensians & the Medieval Inquisition

• The Cathar movement grew In the 1140s in Southern France, and the Waldensians around 1170 in northern Italy and Germany
  • Catharism was gnostic dualistic, in that it saw the universe as a battle between Good (spiritual) and Evil (material), and was thus polytheistic
  • the Albigensian Crusade defeated Cathar armies and the movement generally

• Waldensianism was a movement that denied the priesthood, holding that all Christians were among the "priesthood of all believers"
  • as such, the Walendsians denied the Sacraments and the Church itself
• the inquisitions to combat these heretical movements were designed to halt mob violence and to bring an orderly judicial process to their accusations
  • as well as to combat abuses of inquisitors by making them responsible to Church heirarchy
• during this time, if a person was found heretical and unrepentant, they were handed over to civil authorities who had the authority to execute them

Modern age

Modernism

• Pius IX and X warned of the dangers of modernism

Heresy in worldwide religions

While not "heretical movements," these main, worldwide religions share beliefs with Catholicism but disagree in such ways as to contradict Catholic faith:

Islam

• rejects Christ as God
• sees God as entirely one being, thus no persons of the Father, Son or Holy Spirit
• this view creates the problem of man's relationship to God as that of purely master and servant
• Islam grew out of Arabian culture and traditional religions mixed with elements of Judaism and Christianity

Hinduism

• follows gnostic formulas of good v evil and that knowledge of God comes of intense religious practice other revelation

Judaism

• rejects Christ as Messiah and God
  • sees the coming Messiah as a man, like Saul or David (both called "Messiah" in the OT)
• has notions of the "spirit" but no explicit formulation of the Holy Spirit
• while over the history of the Christian Church, there has been persecution of Jews, the Catholic Church never considered Jews heretical
  • the most common example of persecution of the Jews is that of the Spanish Inquisition

Mormonism

• essentially polytheistic, and therefore extremely problematic as regards Christ
• has non-Biblical beliefs such as "saints" (members of the Mormon church) as gods (polytheism)

Protestantism

• Protestantism's core belief lies in 'sola scriptura' and 'sola fide', which hold that
  • the only authority for Church dogma lies in the text of the Bible itself
    • for this reason, Luther, for example, discarded the Dueteronomical books that contradicted his positions on Purgatory, the Saints, etc.
  • belief alone leads to savlation ("justification by faith alone")
    • which thereby negates the need for the Priesthood and the Sacraments
• various modern Protestant churches may reject core Catholic beliefs of
  • Sacraments of Confirmation, Priestly Ordination, and the Eucharist
  • the Real Presence of Christ at Mass, especially in the Eucharist
  • the Saints
  • Church tradition and accumulated wisdom through thinkers, Saints, and tradition
• especially in its early period, protestant movements were seen as not merely schismatic but heretical
  • French protestants, for example, the Huguenots, were persecuted for heresy
  • as protestant churches were given official sanction by local rulers, especially in Germany, the movement became political, thus leading to wars such as the Thirty Years War, which was a political as much as a religious war

Sources

• Heresy in Earliest Christianity | Bible Interp (arizona.edu)
• List of Christian heresies - Wikipedia
• Top 10 Heresies in the History of Christianity (fordham.edu)