It seems to me heretics are in the eye of the beholder. My personal feeling is that we all hold heretical views. I've said this on several other threads. We are called to search for these items in our lives comparing them to the scripture which we know is our true measuring stick.
Many of the early church fathers held views that we would agree would be heretical today. Some things were simply because of their way they looked at God. I wouldn't call Luther a heretic any more than I would call you a heretic. I would say that Luther, you, I and a number of other Christians hold heretical views. But I don't go crazy if Luther states something weird. Nor if he stated one thing and ten years later seemingly contradict himself. It shows maturity-just like Augustine.
What point he is at in his writings doesn't make him any less of a Christian anymore than any one of us. And, if he is a Christian, God the Father loves him with every spiritual blessing on this earth. This should give us pause of how we treat other Christians.
On the other hand there are those who claim to be Christians but do not appear to follow scripture.
So I look at Luther and if I feel he was right on a matter, then I have to accept his view. If I feel that he has interpreted scripture incorrectly, then I need to make sure that I have my ducks in a row and correct his views as a brother.
I rarely get upset about anything and when I do it's mostly about the government-not theology. I'm not upset about Fudge's book. I'm only interested in what is true.
“So I look at Luther and if I feel he was right on a matter, then I have to accept his view. If I feel that he has interpreted scripture incorrectly, then I need to make sure that I have my ducks in a row and correct his views as a brother.”
So, ultimately, it’s all about your feelings. There’s no actual truth. No, no, no, it’s just your feelings. If you eat an “undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato” someone might be a heretic, but if you liked your steak and fries and dessert someone might be hunky-dory to you. You’ve reduced the Truth to feelings. How sad.
>> Many of the early church fathers held views that we would agree would be heretical today. <<
Ahh, that’s the great thing about being Catholic. If by “church fathers” you mean those who remained in union with the Church of their day, no, I wouldn’t regard a single one of them as holding heretical views. Some may have expressed themselves poorly, perhaps using the term “transformation” where Aquinas later uses the neologism, “transubstantiation” to emphasize that the *form* remains the same, but it’s rather the substance that is changed.
So when you say “heretics are in the eye of the beholder,” well, certainly we consider different assertions to be heretical. But the whole “ology” of Catholic theology is that it isn’t mere feelings, opinions or conjecture, but just like the laws of math, the laws of Catholic theology are based on logic, confirmed in the scripture and tested against history. Feelings are irrelevant.
(Please understand that not every theological assertion in the Catholic catechism is a doctrine, and that saintly Catholics can disagree with each other. St Charles Borromeo and Pope John Paul II caused to be publish catechisms which nearly contradict each other on the matter of the death penalty, for instance. But both acknowledged their assertions to be prudential, not dogmatic.)
>> My personal feeling is that we all hold heretical views. I wouldn’t call Luther a heretic any more than I would call you a heretic. <<
I’m concerned that you’re imbuing “heretic” with a modern sense of horror and scorn that is not proper to its original meaning. The word simply means someone who holds a heretical viewpoint. And no, it does not suggest that one should be burned at the stake.
Just about all Christians — and even nearly all Catholics — are heretics. But it’s true you typically don’t call someone a heretic unless they’ve publicly declared their heresy, had their heresy defined dogmatically as a heresy, had it identified to them by someone authoritatively, and continued to obstinately continued to proclaim their heresy. But the proper word, in that case, is actually “heresiarch.” You’ll notice that’s the term used in the trial of Hus to describe Wycliffe.
Other terms worth knowing:
Apostate: Protestants aren’t heretics. Heretics have to insist their false dogma is the Catholic faith. Once you acknowledge that you no longer adhere to the Catholic faith, you are no longer a heretic, but an apostate.
Schismatic: Most Protestants still aren’t apostates. An apostate is someone who was raised and intellectually and consciously formed as a Catholic, and renounced that Catholic faith. If you weren’t a Catholic to begin with, you aren’t an apostate. It’s worth noting that schismatics don’t necessarily hold heretical viewpoints; the Orthodox are schismatic, but there is no doctrinal error that any Orthodox Christian necessarily holds.
As an historical note, the Council of Trent infallibly declared that Protestants were anathema, but the Second Vatican Council called them merely “separated brethren” with a merely “deficient” faith. This apparent contradiction is based on a shift of what it meant to be Protestant. Protestants in 1521 were apostates, whereas Protestants in 1965 were mostly mere schismatics, likely with “indefeatable ignorance.”