The Great Heresies [Open]

From Christianity’s beginnings, the Church has been attacked by those introducing false teachings, or heresies.

The Bible warned us this would happen. Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths" (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Heresy is an emotionally loaded term that is often misused. It is not the same thing as incredulity, schism, apostasy, or other sins against faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him" (CCC 2089).

To commit heresy, one must refuse to be corrected. A person who is ready to be corrected or who is unaware that what he has been saying is against Church teaching is not a heretic.

A person must be baptized to commit heresy. This means that movements that have split off from or been influenced by Christianity, but that do not practice baptism (or do not practice valid baptism), are not heresies, but separate religions. Examples include Muslims, who do not practice baptism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not practice valid baptism.

Finally, the doubt or denial involved in heresy must concern a matter that has been revealed by God and solemnly defined by the Church (for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, the pope’s infallibility, or the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary).

It is important to distinguish heresy from schism and apostasy. In schism, one separates from the Catholic Church without repudiating a defined doctrine. An example of a contemporary schism is the Society of St. Pius X—the "Lefebvrists" or followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre—who separated from the Church in the late 1980s, but who have not denied Catholic doctrines. In apostasy, one totally repudiates the Christian faith and no longer even claims to be a Christian.

With this in mind, let’s look at some of the major heresies of Church history and when they began.

The Circumcision heresy may be summed up in the words of Acts 15:1: "But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’"

Many of the early Christians were Jews, who brought to the Christian faith many of their former practices. They recognized in Jesus the Messiah predicted by the prophets and the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Because circumcision had been required in the Old Testament for membership in God’s covenant, many thought it would also be required for membership in the New Covenant that Christ had come to inaugurate. They believed one must be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law to come to Christ. In other words, one had to become a Jew to become a Christian.

But God made it clear to Peter in Acts 10 that Gentiles are acceptable to God and may be baptized and become Christians without circumcision. The same teaching was vigorously defended by Paul in his epistles to the Romans and the Galatians—to areas where the Circumcision heresy had spread.

"Matter is evil!" was the cry of the Gnostics. This idea was borrowed from certain Greek philosophers. It stood against Catholic teaching, not only because it contradicts Genesis 1:31 ("And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good") and other scriptures, but because it denies the Incarnation. If matter is evil, then Jesus Christ could not be true God and true man, for Christ is in no way evil. Thus many Gnostics denied the Incarnation, claiming that Christ only appeared to be a man, but that his humanity was an illusion. Some Gnostics, recognizing that the Old Testament taught that God created matter, claimed that the God of the Jews was an evil deity who was distinct from the New Testament God of Jesus Christ. They also proposed belief in many divine beings, known as "aeons," who mediated between man and the ultimate, unreachable God. The lowest of these aeons, the one who had contact with men, was supposed to be Jesus Christ.

Montanus began his career innocently enough through preaching a return to penance and fervor. His movement also emphasized the continuance of miraculous gifts, such as speaking in tongues and prophecy. However, he also claimed that his teachings were above those of the Church, and soon he began to teach Christ’s imminent return in his home town in Phrygia. There were also statements that Montanus himself either was, or at least specially spoke for, the Paraclete that Jesus had promised would come (in reality, the Holy Spirit).

The Sabellianists taught that Jesus Christ and God the Father were not distinct persons, but two aspects or offices of one person. According to them, the three persons of the Trinity exist only in God’s relation to man, not in objective reality.

Arius taught that Christ was a creature made by God. By disguising his heresy using orthodox or near-orthodox terminology, he was able to sow great confusion in the Church. He was able to muster the support of many bishops, while others excommunicated him.

Arianism was solemnly condemned in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea, which defined the divinity of Christ, and in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople, which defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit. These two councils gave us the Nicene creed, which Catholics recite at Mass every Sunday.

Pelagius denied that we inherit original sin from Adam’s sin in the Garden and claimed that we become sinful only through the bad example of the sinful community into which we are born. Conversely, he denied that we inherit righteousness as a result of Christ’s death on the cross and said that we become personally righteous by instruction and imitation in the Christian community, following the example of Christ. Pelagius stated that man is born morally neutral and can achieve heaven under his own powers. According to him, God’s grace is not truly necessary, but merely makes easier an otherwise difficult task.

After Augustine refuted the teachings of Pelagius, some tried a modified version of his system. This, too, ended in heresy by claiming that humans can reach out to God under their own power, without God’s grace; that once a person has entered a state of grace, one can retain it through one’s efforts, without further grace from God; and that natural human effort alone can give one some claim to receiving grace, though not strictly merit it.

This heresy about the person of Christ was initiated by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who denied Mary the title of Theotokos (Greek: "God-bearer" or, less literally, "Mother of God"). Nestorius claimed that she only bore Christ’s human nature in her womb, and proposed the alternative title Christotokos ("Christ-bearer" or "Mother of Christ").

Orthodox Catholic theologians recognized that Nestorius’s theory would fracture Christ into two separate persons (one human and one divine, joined in a sort of loose unity), only one of whom was in her womb. The Church reacted in 431 with the Council of Ephesus, defining that Mary can be properly referred to as the Mother of God, not in the sense that she is older than God or the source of God, but in the sense that the person she carried in her womb was, in fact, God incarnate ("in the flesh").

There is some doubt whether Nestorius himself held the heresy his statements imply, and in this century, the Assyrian Church of the East, historically regarded as a Nestorian church, has signed a fully orthodox joint declaration on Christology with the Catholic Church and rejects Nestorianism. It is now in the process of coming into full ecclesial communion with the Catholic Church.

Monophysitism originated as a reaction to Nestorianism. The Monophysites (led by a man named Eutyches) were horrified by Nestorius’s implication that Christ was two people with two different natures (human and divine). They went to the other extreme, claiming that Christ was one person with only one nature (a fusion of human and divine elements). They are thus known as Monophysites because of their claim that Christ had only one nature (Greek: mono = one; physis = nature).

Orthodox Catholic theologians recognized that Monophysitism was as bad as Nestorianism because it denied Christ’s full humanity and full divinity. If Christ did not have a fully human nature, then he would not be fully human, and if he did not have a fully divine nature then he was not fully divine.

This heresy arose when a group of people known as iconoclasts (literally, "icon smashers") appeared, who claimed that it was sinful to make pictures and statues of Christ and the saints, despite the fact that in the Bible, God had commanded the making of religious statues (Ex. 25:18–20; 1 Chr. 28:18–19), including symbolic representations of Christ (cf. Num. 21:8–9 with John 3:14).

Catharism was a complicated mix of non-Christian religions reworked with Christian terminology. The Cathars had many different sects; they had in common a teaching that the world was created by an evil deity (so matter was evil) and we must worship the good deity instead.

The Albigensians formed one of the largest Cathar sects. They taught that the spirit was created by God, and was good, while the body was created by an evil god, and the spirit must be freed from the body. Having children was one of the greatest evils, since it entailed imprisoning another "spirit" in flesh. Logically, marriage was forbidden, though fornication was permitted. Tremendous fasts and severe mortifications of all kinds were practiced, and their leaders went about in voluntary poverty.

Protestant groups display a wide variety of different doctrines. However, virtually all claim to believe in the teachings of sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone"—the idea that we must use only the Bible when forming our theology) and sola fide ("by faith alone"— the idea that we are justified by faith only).

The great diversity of Protestant doctrines stems from the doctrine of private judgment, which denies the infallible authority of the Church and claims that each individual is to interpret Scripture for himself. This idea is rejected in 2 Peter 1:20, where we are told the first rule of Bible interpretation: "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation." A significant feature of this heresy is the attempt to pit the Church "against" the Bible, denying that the magisterium has any infallible authority to teach and interpret Scripture.

The doctrine of private judgment has resulted in an enormous number of different denominations. According to The Christian Sourcebook, there are approximately 20-30,000 denominations, with 270 new ones being formed each year. Virtually all of these are Protestant.

Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, France, initiated this heresy with a paper he wrote on Augustine, which redefined the doctrine of grace. Among other doctrines, his followers denied that Christ died for all men, but claimed that he died only for those who will be finally saved (the elect). This and other Jansenist errors were officially condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1653.

Heresies have been with us from the Church’s beginning. They even have been started by Church leaders, who were then corrected by councils and popes. Fortunately, we have Christ’s promise that heresies will never prevail against the Church, for he told Peter, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). The Church is truly, in Paul’s words, "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).

It seems the case of Pope Honorius was raised somewhere back in this thread. As I have been away from this thread a while, I thought I would ping all those who seem to still be going strong after almost 1,100 posts. My post is somewhat long, but does try to address the Pope Honorius case directly.

The Monothelite Crisis was related to the Will of Christ, in that it was only a Divine Will. The passage from St. Luke 22: 39-42 (Mount of Olives” where Christ states “not my will, but thine, be done” was used to support the position. This heresy started in around 630 AD when the Patriarch of the Church at Constantinople, Patriarch Sergius, proposed the Monothelite formula as a theological position to reconcile the Monophysite’s and in particular the Monophysite Patriarch who was in charge at the former important Bishop/See in Antioch. The Church in Alexandria was also under the Monophysite’. . Remember, the Monophysite heresy was rejected at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD under the orthodox leadership of Pope St. Leo the Great. Eventually, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople would sign and agreement recognizing the Monothelite formula.

Warren Carroll (A Catholic Historian) in “The Building of Christendom: A History of Christendom Vol. 2”, pp. 223-224 points out that in all of the discussions among Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, Rome was never consulted. Finally, in 633 AD a monk named Sophronius of Jerusalem (who would become Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634 AD) voiced disapproval of the Monothelite formula but this disapproval had not reached Rome by early 634 when a letter from Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople reached Pope Honorius. In his letter, Patriarch Sergius told the Pope that the Monothelite formula had helped reconcile the Monophysites and the important Churches of Alexandria and Antioch. The letter also acknowledged that there were objections from Jerusalem and that as Patriarch of Constantinople; he would drop the usage of the phrase “one operation/will” of Christ if others would drop the insistence of “two operations/wills” of Christ. Pope Honorius’s letter of reply stated that it was better to not debate the question of “one operation” or “two operations” in Christ at this time as in any case, there could be no opposing wills in him since he always did the will of his Father.

With respect to Pope Honorius’s letter, Carroll writes (p. 224) “Somehow, through linguistic or intellectual incapacity or a culpable carelessness or timidity, the Pope entirely missed the point that even to talk about a man without a human will is philosophical nonsense and doctrinal heresy. A man without a will is not a man. If Christ had no human will He was not a man, but God only, and the Monophysites were right.

Papal infallibility was not involved, because the error was not one of ex cathedra teaching binding on all Christians, but a dangerous failure to teach at a critical moment in a major theological controversy. Of such a failure, the Pope was clearly guilty. Forty seven years later, he was to be condemned for it-—The only Pope ever to suffer such a condemnation.”

Around 642 AD, the Monothelite heresy began to be supported by the emperors of Byzantine who saw it as a political tool to reconcile the Monophysite Christians, all of who lived in the Byzantine Empire that was now being challenged by Islam. All of Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople’s successors were Monotheletes. When Theodore, a Greek, became Bishop of Rome, he had the ability due to a knowledge of the language to understand clearly the Monothelite heresy, wrote a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople stating Monotheleteism is heretical. Patriarch Paul of Constantinople reacted by throwing the Papal representatives in jail and destroying the Pope’s Church in Constantinople. In 649, Martin, who had been Pope Theodore’s legate to Constantinople, became Bishop of Rome (Pope). In 649, Pope Martin called a council to Rome to deal with the Monothelite heresy and some 105 Bishops came, including the Bishops from Jerusalem who read Patriarch Sophronius’s letters against the Monotheletes. The Council condemned Monotheleteism, all of its original proponents who had proposed the doctrine, and the current leader of it (Patriarch Paul) who had joined with the Byzantine emperors to push it in the Empire. Pope Honorius was not condemned in the Council.

Over the next 25 years, Monothelite doctrines where still held by Constantinople and the emperors, due to the need politically ally themselves with the Monophysites, as Islam and Byzantium were now fighting constantly. In 678, the Byzantine Emperor proposed to Pope Donus that a Council of the entire Church be called to finally resolve the Monothelite crisis. In 680, The Church of Rome in Holy week had a local Synod and reiterated the findings of the Western Council in 649 led by Pope Martin that had rejected the Monothelite formula and once again stated the Church of Rome’s position. So, even before the Council, two clear positions had been taken by the Church of Rome. The Pope sent a letter to the Emperor reminding him of the inerrancy of the Church of Rome “in teaching Doctrine” as it had never deviated from the orthodox Apostolic Tradition. By the time the Council in Constantinople ended in September 681 AD, some 174 Bishops were present. The proponents of the Monothelite formula were challenged to find evidence that “clearly supported there position”. All the letters from the Patriarch’s of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, etc, were presented, by a monk named Marcarius of Antioch, as well as the letter from Pope Honorius. However, the Patriarch’s of Constantinople had already been condemned by Rome in 649 AD and there was no statement of clear support in Pope Honorius’s letter; on the other hand, there was no clear rejection. As Carroll states, clearly Pope Honorius had left the matter open. So, the Council then included him on the list of heretics.

So some 40 years after his death, the Council condemned Pope Honorius personally, even though he had never taught the doctrine, and the Church of Rome, which condemned the Monotheletes way back in 649 AD, did not condemn him since he did not “Define anything”. So Pope St. Leo II, when the decrees of the Sixth Council at Constantinople (680-681 AD) were to be confirmed by the Pope, Pope Leo II made it clear to Bishops in Spain and the Emperor that the Church of Rome never “taught Monotheleteism” and that Pope Honorius “had not endorsed Patriarch Sergius’s Monothelite views”, but he only refrained from condemning them. As Warren Carroll notes (p. 254), when writing the Byzantine Emperor, Pope Honorius was condemned because “he permitted the immaculate faith to be subverted”. Carroll notes that when writing to the Spanish Bishops, Pope St. Leo II states “Honorius was condemned for not at once extinguishing the flames of heresy, but for fanning them by his negligence”.

Warren Carroll sums up the Monothelite crisis (p. 254) by stating “Despite all of this, the fact remains that no decree of a council has effect in the Catholic Church unless and until it is confirmed by the reigning Pope, and only in the form that he confirms it. There is no “supreme law” prescribing how the Pope shall designate his confirmation. Pope Honorius, therefore, was never condemned by heresy by the supreme Church authority, but only for negligence allowing heresy to spread and grow, when he should have denounced it.; for this is all Pope Leo II ever said in announcing the confirmation of the acts of the council and explaining to the bishops of the Western church and the Catholic Kings of the West the meaning of what he had confirmed.”

Jaroslav Pelikan in Volume 2 of The Christian Tradition: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, which was written while he was a Protestant (Lutheran), also goes into the Monothelite crisis. Later in his life, Pelikan would enter into the Eastern Orthodox Church, which was the Church of his ancestors as he was of Slovakian and Serbian ancestry. Still, but he always hoped that West and East would re-unite and said as much when Pope John Paul II died. One gathers when reading his works, as I have, that his studies of Patristics brought about a respect for the Latin Church and Rome that he perhaps did not have as a Lutheran. His op-ed piece in the nytimes clearly expressed a desire for Rome and the East to return to Full Communion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/opinion/04pelikan.html?ex=1270267200&en=663197d39d729c94&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

In the section of Volume 2 “The Orthodoxy of Old Rome” (pp. 148-150), Pelikan reminds his readers of the “supreme example of orthodoxy of Rome in the period covered in Volume 1, the Catholic Tradition”, and in particular the role of Pope St. Leo were at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) the council Fathers stated “Peter has spoken through Leo”. Pelikan further notes that Rome had been on the side that emerged victorious from one controversy after another, and eventually it became clear that the side which Rome chose was the one that would emerge victorious. In the two dogmatic issues that we have addressed thus far, the doctrine of the person of Christ and the question of images in the Church, the orthodoxy of Rome was a prominent element, in the first of these perhaps the decisive element (p. 150).

So Pelikan discusses the case of Pope Honorius in the context of the previous discussion I cited above. He notes, correctly, that the case of Pope Honorius, was considered the strongest obstacle to the definition of Papal Infallibility even at the time of Vatican I (1870 AD). Pelikan cites the same sources as Warren Carroll does and goes into the case of Pope Honorius in detail. Pelikan draws a conclusion similar to Carroll and writes (p. 151) “If we distinguish between Monoenergism, the doctrine of one action in Christ, and Monotheletism, the doctrine of one will in Christ, Honorius must be identified with the latter but not the former, while many, perhaps most, who held to either doctrine held to both. Pelikan note that when faced with the question of one action or two, he (Honorius) had stressed one agent, the Lord Jesus Christ, who carried out the divine as well as the human actions through the humanity that was united to the Logos. Pelikan further notes that the question of one action or two actions was insoluble and thus was ruled out of discussion. So by stating “one agent”, who is Christ, “one action” was not explicitly stated. So Pope Honorius’s actions were based on not making it seem like Christ had “two competing wills”. Still, his failure to clearly reject Monothelitism makes it possible to explain why he was a Monothelete, and not to deny that he was one. In sum, the Council of Constantinople in 681 condemned the letter Pope Honorius and the Patriarchs of Constantinople (e.g. Sergius) and then describes how Pope St. Leo, while not condemning Honorius, did state that he had allowed for the Monothelete heresy to pollute the Apostolic Faith.

Pelikan goes back and states, as Carroll noted, that Pope Martin in 649 AD had condemned the Monotheletes’ and Honorius was not on the list. So as Pelikan puts it, while Honorius had agreed with the Monotheletes (Carroll does not come to that conclusion), Pope Martin when he confirmed the decrees at the Council of Rome in 649 AD, he could state that the we (Church of Rome) “that is, the pontiffs of this apostolic see, have not permitted them to spread this [error], or to steal the treasure of the faith’ (p. 153). Pelikan states, the case of Honorius apart, Pope Martin’s claim for Old Rome was borne out by record. What Rome decided in opposition to Monotheletism, in 649 and again in 680, was what the orthodox, catholic, and ecumenical church decided, in council assembled, in 681. Peter was sill speaking through the mouth of the Pope (p. 154)

In closing, the evidence presented from both Warren Carroll and Jaraslov Pelikan supports the notion that Pope Honorius did not “condemn the Monothelete heresy” when he first found out about it, and he may have agreed with it personally (although we don’t know that for a fact). However, what we do know is the following: 1) Pope Honorius did not teach the Monothelete doctrine via a Papal Letter that demanded “Full assent of the entire Church and Faithful” or 2) Pope Honorius did not call a Synod or Council that taught the Monothelete doctrine. We also know that the Church of Rome, when it chose to speak, spoke definitively against it in 649 AD at the Western Council in Rome called by Pope Martin and again at a Synod of Rome during Holy Week in 680 AD, some 6 months before the Council of Constantinople started in the fall of 680.

Finally (and I am speaking as a loyal son of Rome and make no apologies for it), thanks for the opportunity for me to show that Christ’s promises to St. Peter (Mt. 16:16-19) and his specific prayers for St. Peter, “I have prayed for you that your faith many not fail and when you have been converted, confirm your brethren” (c.f. Luke 22: 32) and commands for St. Peter to “Feed my sheep” (c.f. John 21: 17) as recorded in Sacred Scripture are still true today as the orthodox faith of the Apostles, which came from Christ, is still being protected and defended by the successor of St. Peter, currently Pope Benedict XVI. Using the language of the Council at Chalcedon (451 AD), “Peter is still speaking today through Pope Benedict.”

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