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).

The first part of the prayer is the words of the Angel. The "Mother of God" title comes from the Council of Ephesus in 431, fighting the Nestorian heresy. The last part of the prayer is a request for her prayers. The other parts of the Rosary are focused on meditation of the various mysteries of Christ. If the catechumen somehow finds this to be worship of Mary, I'm at a loss.

OK, you've missed the essence of what I just said. (The mathematics of 9 vs. 1).

Let's say I was your elementary teacher & I gave you a math problem: "Johnny's mommy has two former husbands. Each ex-husband has a child in Johnny's family and owe the same amount of child support and are steady in supplying it. But for every appeal Johnny's mommy makes to her first ex-husband for extra assistance, she makes nine such appeals to her second ex-husband. Who gets 90% of these appeals?"

Now I would think that an elementary student wouldn't do what you just did--start looking into the precise wording of the math problem to find where somebody might read into the interpretation that somehow Johnny's mommy was "devoted" in any way to either of her two ex-husbands.

IOW, my main point of the 9 vs. 1 reference was to show that the Catholic practice of the rosary only reinforces the idea in young Catholics that 90% of the "provision" power & "intercession" mediator power is not in Jesus Christ, but Mary. Mary is the primary provider. Mary is the primary intercessor.

Now once you realize this exterior experiential reality, then this whole question of devotional worship takes on understanding. My point is that it's not going to be just the bare word of "worship" that is directly linked to Mary in the same sentence of a catechism. Before a catechuman ever digests one word of the catechism, he/she has already been inaugurated & inundated in the presence of thousands of such prayers, and each utterance of that prayer in full is a 9-time petitioning of Mary, who then becomes identified as the "go-to" person (and Jesus then gets even further diluted when you toss in all the prayers to the saints).

I get if I had to give an analogy I'd pick Brigham Young and his 56-57 wives. Did Young love them all? Probably. (9 divorced him, so it wasn't always or remained always "mutual"). Did he give attention to all of them? Probably. But if he gave 9 times the communication preference to an add-on "wife" in comparison to his first, and then if each additional "wife" represented a saint in our analogy, then you see communicative dilution at work.

The question comes back to a question I asked another poster: "why, according to the Catholic Catechism, is your 'devotion to the Blessed Virgin...instrinsic to' your 'worship?'"

Regarding your VIS press release, do you have a link? I'd like to look the whole thing over before I respond.

http://users.stargate.net/~ejt/wc23.htm

Where does the priest talk about a "new plan of salvation"? He talks about God using Mary in the plan of salvation, giving us Christ through her. And you notice that everything he says is about us being perfected through her Son. Mary points to Christ, always.

(1) "Because without her the Lord did not want to save us without her"...

Oh really? The Lord-as-Savior & Redeemer of the World was 100% motivated by Mary to save us? (Change John 3:16 then from "God so loved the world..." to "Mary so loved the world...")

(2) "That we need her in our lives as Christians. We need a personal relationship with her just as we need a personal relationship with Jesus. In fact, it is her who is always bringing us closer to her Son..."

Well, boy the apostle John needed to know this...he would have properly re-edited John 17:3 then: "And this is eternal life, that you know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent." The "Marian" version of John 17:3, according to this priest, would be: "And this is eternal life, that you know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He sent, and Mary, whom He blessed and is full of grace."

(3) "There’s no faster way to the Son than through His mother. And that is true in general, and that is true in particular, for each one of us...We too can call her 'mother' and she will help us come to eternal life in her Son."

Sorry, but Scripture contradicts this, and Mary is usurping the role of the Holy Spirit here: ...no one can say Jesus Christ is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:3) [Oh, I know, I'm sure somebody may come back with a comment along the lines that "Mary is only a helper, advocate, and mediatrix to the Advocate Himself, the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit would in no way reject the mother of Jesus' intercession...that's not my point, and it wasn't the point of the priest. The priest explicitly said: "There's no faster way to the Son... -- he didn't just say there are multiple ways to the son, including Mary.]

(4) "We need her in our life to reveal to us her Son to be born through her as Jesus was."

OK, on this one I just need to get "technical." Had he said: "We need her in our life for the revelation of His life proceeded from her womb," that would have been fine. But notice the future and present tense of this phrasing: We need her in our life to reveal to us... [Why would we need her to reveal anything to us other than what Scripture has already revealed thru her life and thru her sacrifice and thru her Revelatory Son?...While the example of her earthly life is tremendously beneficial to us, and the future of our heavenly fellowship with her will be a great blessing, it's not her current revelatory or intercessory status that we "need" her for!

Do we "need" all of the body? (Yes) But Scripture doesn't highlight for us details of how we "need" those who have gone on before us. Revelation-wise, we need the tri-une God, and that's it!

Beyond that (other needs), yes we need the body of Christ, Mary included...but no more Mary than anybody else in the body!

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. (1 Corinthians 12:21-23)

(The message we keep hearing from Catholics is, "Mary is indispensable to you, because she's indispensable to me." Well, the "error" of that according to 1 Cor. 12:21-23 is that the entire body--not just Mary--is "indispensable." The message we keep hearing from Catholics is, "Mary is the object of dulia worship, not lutria worship and we just 'honor' Mary." Well, if it's only "honor" why are ya stopping at Mary? According to the apostle Paul, "the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.")

This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him".[7]

Peter was not the head of the apostles. That title belongs to Christ alone.

"Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am." -- John 13:13

The bishops are not the "successors" to the apostles. The apostles had no successors and Peter had no successor because in order to succeed the apostles a man needed to be a witness to Christ's resurrection.

"Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." -- Acts 1:21-22

The Magisterium is not the authoritative teacher of the church. That title belongs to the Holy Spirit alone.

"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." -- John 14:26

"Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." -- John 16:13-14

"But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." -- 1 John 2:27

And the primary means of this instruction is the word of God made known to us by the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

I realize this unsettles many members of the RCC who feel adrift at having to search the Scriptures for themselves, and thus they prefer to rely on what they are told by an authoritarian body of fallible, inconsistent men. But that is not God's plan or purpose in giving us His word.

According to Catholic doctrine, [Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century] do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery[19] cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called "Churches" in the proper sense[20].

According to Scripture, there is no such thing as "apostolic succession." Those who have been given true faith in Jesus Christ are the church of Christ, guided by teachers and pastors, none of whom are "successors to the apostles."

According to Scripture, there is no such thing as "sacrament of orders." There are only two sacraments in the New Testament, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

According to Scripture, there is no "sacramental priesthood;" there is the priesthood of all believers who make up Christ's church on earth.

The "eucharistic mystery," or transubstantiation is a pagan abomination of the true spiritual sustenance Christ instituted at the Last Supper of our Lord.

The church of Jesus Christ on earth is made up of all the elect of God, from all the nations and races and eras, chosen by Him from before the foundation of the world to be among His family.

"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." -- Romans 10:13

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." -- Ephesians 1:4-6

As for being "proper," there are some churches more pure than others. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states (including footnoted Scriptural proofs)...

"V. The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error;[10] and some have so degenerated, as to become no Churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan.[11] Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth to worship God according to His will.[12]

I came into this thread rather late last night (I was watching the election returns and my wife was working on her Inter-session course she is taking), so I am not sure the entire context of the quote by Iscool.

I think more of the passage needs to read in the context of the entire passage, which is Peter’s confession that Christ is the “Son of God”. So if we look at it this way “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (c.f. Matt16:18-19). So, the symbols of Keys and binding and loosing, which was given to St. Peter alone, are clearly a power given to St. Peter by Christ to lead and guide the Church. As for gates of hell, which Iscool used, while that can be translated in that way, other translations use the word “netherwold”, which is also an accurate translation of the Greek word “hades”, which meant the place of the Dead. So, being brought into the Church, which is Christ’s body, through Baptism, one is incorporated through God’s Grace into the Holy Trinity. So, even death itself will be overcome by those people who are brought into communion with God through the Christ and his Church.

In summary, I respectively, but also totally, disagree with Iscool’s post and interpretation of the passage he quoted.

Regards

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