A Survey of Heresies in History

© 2006 Don McIntosh and Trinity Graduate School

Introduction: Centuries of Heresy

The Value of Such a Study

To the postmodern mind, an investigation of heretical movements and personalities in the history of the church may seem pointless, if not outright divisive. In an age of technological, commercial and cultural globalization, it may seem only natural for the church to embrace and even endorse those many, often well-meaning believers who seek to unite all parties as one under the umbrella of the kingdom of God. Consequently, relatively few pastors and church leaders nowadays have much time or tolerance for apologists, theologically conservative scholars, or “heresy hunters.” The work of polemics in the church, the use of reason to sift through opposing claims to the truth in order to properly recognize and defend that same truth, has fallen on hard times. As R.C. Sproul has pointed out, the fallacies of the “secular” world, including relativism, generally wind up in the “spiritual” church in one form or another: “The mind-set, or rather, anti-intellectual mind-set, of secular education has infiltrated and all but conquered evangelicalism. Evangelicals are sublimely happy to embrace both poles of contradictory ideas and accept radically inconsistent and mutually exclusive theologies.”

We believers have no one to blame for this situation but ourselves. In trying to explain the explosive growth of cults in the twentieth century, McDowell and Stewart suggest, “If the church fails to carefully and seriously provide spiritual warmth and a true exposition of the Word of God, those with spiritual needs will find other avenues of fulfillment.” The disconcerting fact of the matter is that the contemporary church has—in many quarters—simply lost its hold on the truth. The tragedy of that loss becomes all the more apparent when one realizes the tremendous energy committed to its defense by the church throughout the course of history. As G. K. Chesterton noted sardonically, “there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century.” Moreover, “heresies” often have arisen as little more than sincere attempts at reforming a visibly compromised and corrupted institutional church. Paul Johnson thus observed of the rise of heresies in the Middle Ages, “once belief in the Church’s system of confession, repentance, penance and redemption was undermined – no great problem – the only spiritual warrants were the outward signs of chastity, poverty, ascetism and humility, which the official Church, as a rule, clearly did not possess. These the heretics supplied.” A study of heresies in history should therefore serve a manifold purpose: to sharpen the intellect, strengthen convictions, encourage a spirit of accountability within the church, and build spiritual defenses. Moreover, a serious investigation of heresy may – paradoxically – help refine our understanding of orthodoxy. After all, the very concept of “heresy” holds no meaning apart from an implied understanding of orthodox, sound doctrine. “Even these departures,” said Louis Berkhof, “are important for the History of Dogma, since they often led to a clearer and sharper formulation of the truth.”

No less critical is an appreciation for history itself, into which the glorified Logos, Jesus Christ, “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:8) to become our salvation, and through the course of which fiercely loyal ministers of the gospel have perennially defended the faith. From the Gospels’ historical accounts of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ, to the many and varied accounts of the doctrines and experiences of the church, Christianity is nothing apart from the record of history. Josh McDowell accordingly declares what until recent years had always been obvious: “There is no doubt that much of the evidence for the validity of the Christian faith is rooted in history. Christianity is a historically founded faith.” Comparing it with historicism, C.S. Lewis defines history, particularly the history upon which Christianity is based, as “a story with a well defined plot…” The imaginative but thoroughly fact-based reconstruction of past events known as historiography is at root a social science, an empirically grounded field of research. Yet, as Charles Hendrick points out in his Ancient History, to try and conceal personal prejudices and motivations in the writing of history is rather pointless, as “modern academic historians,” along with the rest of us, “need to recognize that when they write, even about people as distant as the Greeks and Romans, they always inevitably also write about themselves.” History by any realistic definition cannot be reduced to a scientifically objective account consisting of so many primary and secondary sources, methods, monuments, letters, official documents, coins and inscriptions. Rather, human understandings of history—in this case, the doctrines of the Christian faith—find their expression as personal, if well informed and methodologically guided, interpretations of such evidence. Like the Scriptures themselves, raw historical data have surprisingly little to say apart from honest, rigorous human interpretation. History, then, circumscribes the point at which empirical evidence and religious imagination intersect, and thereby furnishes an ideal medium for defining and transmitting the faith.

Heresy Defined

According to Chas S. Clifton, heresies can mean anything from forward-thinking, innovative attempts at reform to outright rebellion against the authority of Christ and His church. Heresy by a most basic definition is deviation from orthodoxy. Using the Scriptures as the “rule of faith,” like the Reformers, this author holds to biblical-theological conservatism as the best representation of Christian orthodoxy. On the other hand, an adherence to ecclesiastical or “institutional” orthodoxy does not guarantee a foolproof interpretation of Scripture. Thus, for example, because he had to temporarily play the “heretic” in order to bring reform to the “orthodox,” Luther is included here along with other believers whom Protestantism would recognize as fairly orthodox. The Reformation serves as a powerful historical reminder that Scripture itself, and not any particular school of theology that lays claim to it, is and must remain the rule of faith for the church. We do well to recall that the Roman Catholic church descended directly from the primitive church of the apostles, and yet fell into gross error. Despite the pronouncements of today’s Protestant “orthodox,” the Reformed church could undergo the same sort of devolution. Heresies litter the landscape of the past, but also promise to endure well into the future. Warned the Apostle Peter, “But there were false prophets among the people, even as there will be false prophets among you…” (2 Pet. 2:1).

Heresies typically exhibit a number of distinct elements in common. Most notably, heresies are remarkably similar to the orthodoxy which they mimic. Though a diehard Roman Catholic himself, Hilaire Belloc was nonetheless on the right track when he said, “Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.” That is, a heresy is not some completely unheard of, revolutionary system of thought, but is rather a subtle deviation from the original system in some vital point of doctrine. At the same time it is important to emphasize the “vital” part. As Robert Bowman and others have taken pains to explain, not every questionable doctrine or aberrational teaching amounts to a denial of the Word of God. Unfortunately, for much of church history, any and all deviations from orthodoxy, no matter how slight or trivial, were judged outright as “heresies.”

Moreover, heresies—even after being thoroughly refuted and rejected by the church at large—have a well-documented tendency to reappear under various new labels. As the philosopher Santayana declared famously, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Berkhof suggests that errors persist only because believers fail to consider their own history in formulating doctrine, so that “ancient heresies, long since condemned by the Church, are constantly repeated and represented as new discoveries.” Gnosticism, for example, fades away at the turn of the third century, but then resurfaces in various modified forms, such as Catharism around the turn of the first millennium, then as Christian Science near the turn of the second. First century Judaic legalism only slightly altered becomes Pelagianism a few hundred years later, then New England Puritanism and the works-based “revivalism” of Charles Finney in the eighteenth century. The Docetism (denial of Christ’s physical reality) that plagued the early church reappears as “Jesus myth” theories now so popular among twentieth and twenty-first century theologians. And so on it goes.

It turns out that the history of heresies in the church has not been “evolutionary” or “progressive,” but rather depressingly cyclical. False doctrines have proven nearly as resilient as the gospel message itself. That lesson needs to be burned into the minds of modern believers. Contemporary Christians are called to fight the same good fight as did Paul and fellow apostles John and Peter.

I. The Birth of the Church to the High Middle Ages

First Century

The Lingering Influence of the Jewish Religion

As Berkhof and other historians have illustrated, the early church had to endure not only secular persecution from the Roman state, which came to regard Christianity as a threat to the political stability of the empire, but religious persecution from Jews defending the older, established tradition. Their respective religious belief systems became the chief ideologies competing with the Christian faith, and eventually worked their way into the church itself. Through the process of infiltration, the harsh reality of persecution introduced the subtle root of heresy. To oversimplify things only a little, most heresies can now be divided into two broad camps—legalism and Gnosticism—each with its heretical origins in the first century. This rough working dichotomy will help to organize and classify heresies, and at the same time demonstrate the historical persistence and resilience of false teachings.

The problem of legalism arguably began precisely when the church began, with the conversions of the Jews from the Jerusalem synagogue. James was the undisputed leader of the Jerusalem church, one who clearly had not yet grasped the concepts of Christian atonement and justification. A reading of church history, including the earliest history on record, the book of Acts, makes it clear that orthodox Jews and Greek (Gentile) Hellenists brought much cultural baggage with them into their new Christian experience. Apostles steeped in Judaism, such as James and Peter, had a tendency to relapse into the rigorous rites and demands of the Old Covenant, so that the Hellenists often found themselves treated as second-class citizens. At the heart of such legalism is always a denial that the work of Christ is sufficient to secure salvation for humanity.

Historian Paul Johnson observes that the object of Jewish persecution was “to purge the movement of its radical wing, end the Gentile mission, exclude the Greek element…and so complete the reabsorption of Jesus’ followers.” Here the value of Paul’s contributions to the doctrinal development of the early church becomes evident. Only a radically, supernaturally converted Apostle Paul had the combination of boldness and religious credibility needed to confront the legalism that otherwise threatened to abort Christianity in its womb. Paul’s letters to the Romans, and to the Galatians especially, demonstrate the depth of the Jewish legalism problem in the first century. His message was slow to be accepted, however, even among the leaders. F. A. Norwood comments accordingly, “Between Paul, the advocate of [the] free spread of the gospel emancipated from the bonds of Judaism, and James, the strict defender of the Jewish tradition carried over, Peter stood more or less in the middle, deferring now to the position of James and the elders, moving then to a broader vision not far from that of Paul.”

Incipient Gnosticism

Not to be outdone, the Gentiles brought into the church a more cosmopolitan if more loosely-defined belief system, what church historians refer to as “incipient Gnosticism.” E. R. Dodds explains: “Rather than postulate…a primitive Gnostic system from which all the rest derives, I should prefer to speak…of a Gnostic tendency which shows itself already in the first Christian century, notably in the writings of St. Paul, and in the second century finds its full expression in a series of imaginative mythological structures.” A number of diverse elements – from secular Greek philosophy to the spiritualism of the pagan mystery religions - help make up the polymorphous Gnosticismm that has haunted the church over the intervening centuries. Nonetheless, Gnosticism can be identified by a recognizable set of central operating assumptions, especially dualism. Popularized by Plato four hundred years before Christ, dualism is the idea that reality consists of two distinct, irreconcilable elements: physical and spiritual. Church historian Bruce Shelley contends that Gnostic dualism divided the world into “two cosmic forces, good and evil. In line with much Greek philosophy, they identified evil with matter.”

Gnostic dualism led naturally to asceticism and elitism, in that its devotees claimed special levels of knowledge into spiritual matters and looked askance at those who could not understand them. Curiously enough, it also led to antinomianism, literally “lawlessness,” as acts done in “the flesh” were often believed to have no effect on the “spiritual man.” Traces of the Gnostic problem in the first century can be detected within the pages of the New Testament itself, from the Gospel and letters of John to the Pauline epistles to the Corinthians and Colossians. John seems to have been dealing particularly with Docetism, a Gnostic-related heresy denying the physical reality of Jesus altogether. Evidence of Docetic teachings can also be found in the letters of Ignatius, a late first century bishop of Rome, who asked, “But if, as some godless men, that is, unbelievers, say, he [Jesus] suffered in mere appearance (being themselves mere appearances), why am I in bonds?” Though Gnostic leaders became more popular in the second century, at least a few made a name for themselves in the first. These include Simon Magus, described in the book of Acts as one “claiming to be someone great” (Acts 9), and Cerinthus, known for his denial of the deity of Christ and his disputations with the Apostle John.

Second Century

Gnosticism’s Development

Gnosticism continued to gain ground into the second century, as spokesmen such as Basilides and Valentinus further refined and ritualized their teachings, while carefully fusing them together with Christian doctrines. “Along with apostolic Christianity,” says Shelley, “they accepted the idea of salvation, the idea of a supreme deity, and the idea of heavenly beings at work in the universe.” At the same time, the Gnostics literally distanced the pure and spiritual supreme being from the physical, corrupt creation, by ordering the creation as a hierarchical “series of emanations.” Berkhof adds that Gnosticism was only able to flourish due to the general religious syncretism that marked the spiritual environment of the early centuries. It also held a certain appeal to those put off by the moral implications of the gospel, and especially to the large Hellenist element in the church. It offered an alternative soteriology, in which select, enlightened men are saved by knowledge of mysteries, rather than by faith in Christ. In keeping with their hierarchical cosmology, Gnostics classified themselves along three tiers of spirituality: the enlightened pneumatics, the middle-class psychics, and the spiritually dull hylics.

More than anything, Gnosticism attempted a serious, if defective, answer to the problem of evil in the world. “To the majority of Gnostics,” says Dodds, “it was unthinkable that such a world should have been created by the Supreme God: it must be the handiwork of some inferior demiurge—either, as Valentinus thought, an ignorant daemon unaware of any better possibility; or, as Marcion thought, the harsh and unintelligent God of the Old Testament.” Fortunately, even an allegedly more philosophically sophisticated, theologically defined Gnosticism could not check the passionate advance of genuine Christianity. It would experience the same fate as the Mithraism so popular among the first century Romans. Having faced off with the historical Christian faith, and its defenders—such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Tertullian—Gnosticism proper lost the battle and momentarily disappeared. Like most heretical notions, Gnosticism would resurface under various guises repeatedly throughout the history of the church.

Jewish Christianity

Of the prominent Jewish-Christian sects, the Ebionites were arguably the most influential. They emerged as a continuation of the Judaic elements who vigorously opposed the Apostle Paul, as first witnessed in Luke’s account of the Jerusalem conference (Acts 15) and mentioned so often by Paul in his letters (those “of the circumcision”). From the Gnostics, the Ebionites borrowed the repudiation of Christ’s essential divinity in order to, as Berkhof suggests, “maintain Old Testament monotheism.” According to the Ebionites, Christ’s only real contribution to the salvation of men was a higher interpretation of the Old Testament law. In Against Heresies, the early bishop Irenaeus complained that the Ebionites “use only the Gospel according to Matthew; they reject the apostle Paul, calling him an apostate from the law…” Eventually, says Clifton, Ebionitism came to be used to describe Jewish Christianity with existing links to practicing Judaism, and at the same time “to signify anyone who denied Jesus’s divinity and considered him to be only an outstanding moral teacher.”

Coming at the problem of Christ’s identity from another angle, the Elkesaites (or Elchesaites) affirmed the spiritual superiority, but not the divinity, of Jesus. “Their movement was probably an attempt to gain recognition for Jewish Christianity by adopting it to the syncretistic tendencies of the age,” said Berkhof. It could be said that while Ebionitism extended the Jewish legalistic tradition within the church, the Elkesaites offered a more general, cosmopolitan Christianity compatible with just about any belief system on the market. They represented the “liberal,” humanistic, pluralistic Jewish elements still thriving in the church today. Hippolytus complained, “They do not…confess that there is but one Christ, but that there is one that is superior to the rest, and that He is transfused into many bodies frequently, and was now in Jesus.” It should be added that this new, highly spiritual version of Jewish Christianity had much in common with the Gnostic movements afoot at the time. As noted for example by Sean Martin and others, the highly popular teachings of the Gnostic Mani had their roots in his Elkesaite experiences.

Third Century

Marcionism, Montanism and Manichaeism

The distinct, spiritually destructive movements and personality cults normally associated with heresies began to really develop in the second century and to proliferate into the third. Marcion, a Gnostic teacher who devised his own canon of Scripture – excluding the entire Old Testament and much of the New – was excommunicated by the church in Rome in AD 144, but his teachings lived on well into the next century and beyond. As Marcion saw it, the God of pure love, pure grace and unbridled freedom could not be reconciled with the “vengeful” deity described in the Old Testament. The apologists, Irenaeus foremost among them, challenged Marcion’s presumed superior spirituality and self-appointed authority to single-handedly define the canon. Irenaeus, in writing Against Heresies, bitterly opposed Marcion for advancing “the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself.” In elevating a fabricated “God of love” above the true God of Scripture, Marcion prefigured the antinomianism, moral compromise and theological emptiness that continues to plague the church.

Much of the same could be said of the late second century “prophet,” Montanus, who along with his sidekicks Prisca and Maximilla went about prophesying and claiming to have fresh revelation equal to that of Scripture. Appearing first among the small, poor villages of Asia Minor during a second century wave of persecution from Rome, Montanism embodied the “super spiritual” excesses first exposed by Paul in 1 Corinthians, and still enjoying a following among many Pentecostals and charismatics. Says Schaff, “All the ascetic, rigoristic, and chiliastic elements of the ancient church combined in Montanism.” In his Ecclesiastical History, the fourth century bishop Eusebius offers a glimpse of stern opposition to Montanism by the church: “And these people blasphemed the whole Catholic Church under heaven, under the influence of their presumptuous spirit, because the Church granted to the spirit of false prophecy neither honour nor admission.” On the other hand, it could be argued that the legalistic asceticism and charismatic exuberance of the Montanists actually served as needed reform elements for a church often inclined to laxity, worldliness and self-indulgence. Indeed, such was the influence of the Montanists that the great orthodox apologist (and noted anti-Montanist!) Tertullian eventually joined them, to the dismay of the church.

Possibly even more influential, however, were the teachings of Mani, yet another dualist and advocate of a sophisticated new brand of Gnosticism. Philip Schaff refers to Manichaeism as “the latest, the best organized, the most consistent, tenacious and dangerous form of Gnosticism, with which Christianity had to wage a long conflict.” Mani’s upbringing in the Persian mystery religions, along with Chaldean astrology and Asian Buddhism, clearly bore heavily on his late third century doctrinal distortions of Christianity. Thus Manichaeism features elements not only of a Docetic Gnosticism, but of Buddhist asceticism and pantheism. Mani appears also to have been one of the first anti-Christian cult leaders, proclaiming himself to be, in Schaff’s words, “the last and highest prophet of God.” Along with many historians, Paul Johnson describes the essence of Manichaeism as pessimistic dualism: “Like Gnosticism, it was dualist. But it was characterized by an intense pessimism about the potentialities of human nature and its inherent goodness, relieved only by confidence in the existence of a godly elite.” So widespread was Mani’s influence that among orthodox believers Manichaeism became virtually synonymous with any dualist heresy. A former adherent of Manichaeism himself, St. Augustine became its most vocal and effective opponent. As Schaff notes, “His nine years’ personal experience of the vanity of Manichaeism made him thoroughly earnest and sympathetic in his efforts to disentangle other men from its snares, and also equipped him with the knowledge requisite for this task.”

Novatianism

During all this internal division and spiritual strife, the church also experienced waves of external, physical persecution from the Roman state. Like Nero in the first century, the Emperor Decius had singled out Christians as the source of all the empire’s troubles, and had instituted a ferocious campaign to extinguish their fire of faith. Many leaders in the church understandably felt the need to distinguish between the real “saints,” believers who had suffered for their faith, and those backsliders who had lapsed under the stress of circumstance.

Working initially from the premise suggested by Bishop Cyprian, that “there is no salvation outside the church,” spiritual leaders pressured the churches to forbid reentry to those who had denied Christ, on the grounds that they had committed “the unpardonable sin.” Though Cyprian himself had decided upon a policy of readmission to lapsed believers, upon exhibiting a spirit of repentance and works of penance, a presbyter named Novatus (or Novatian) insisted that the church could not forgive such gross sins as apostasy. The early church historian Socrates recounted, “Novatus, a presbyter of the Roman church, separated from it, because Cornelius the bishop received into communion believers who had sacrificed during the persecution that the emperor Decius had raised against the Church.” In response the Roman hierarchy predictably defended its right to do anything, including forgive sins of the most notorious offenders. The heretical upshot of Novatianism was twofold: believers either held to the legalistic requirements of Novatus, or sought forgiveness from the Catholic church via the legalistic new sacrament of penance. Another lasting side effect of the Decian persecution was the veneration for the martyrs as saints.

Monarchianism

As the church endured challenges both internal and external into the third century, its foremost thinkers began to wrestle with issues of definition, or theological questions. The Alexandrian church fathers, Clement and Origen, had inadvertently contributed to the rise of theological controversies by embracing Greek philosophy, allegorizing Scripture and treating the nature of God and the dual natures of Christ as exercises in mysticism. In opening theological questions about the godhead, and establishing the Alexandrian-allegorical school of interpretation upon Plato and Philo as much as Jesus, it could be argued that Clement and Origen effectively laid the groundwork for, and thus led the church into, its great theological and Christological controversies.

One of the first noteworthy theological deviations was the Monarchian movement. “While the great heresy of the second century was Gnosticism, the outstanding heresy of the third century was Monarchianism,” says Berkhof. Like many doctrinal errors, Monarchianism began with the best of intentions, a desire on the part of third century theologians to defend both the unity of God and the deity of Christ. Dynamic Monarchianism, popularized by Theodotus of Byzantium, made the godhead a simple, fundamental unity, and therefore reinforced the error of the Ebionites. According to another Monarchian, Paul of Samosota, Jesus the man was so completely given to the will of the Father that he became gradually “deified,” thoroughly imbued with the nature of God. In general terms, Paul of Samosota’s doctrine typified the heresy of adoptionism—the idea that God conferred deity upon the mortal Jesus. The heresy of Sabellianism, on the other hand, emphasized the integrity of the godhead at the expense of its various “modes” or “manifestations,” of which Christ was but one. Sabellius maintained the divinity of Christ, but only by arguing that the Son was actually as much Father and Spirit as they were He, all of them equal manifestation of the one God. Tertullian, along with Hippolytus, the disciple of Irenaeus, denounced Monarchianism’s various expressions in no uncertain terms. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, rejected the “foolishness” of Sabellianism, namely, that “three names are attached to one substance.” These doctrines and the disputes which surrounded them led naturally to the Trinitarian controversies that marked the heresy-rich fourth century of the young church’s existence.

Fourth Century

Arius and Arianism

The fourth century may be considered one of the high water marks of heresy. While the Monarchian debates continued unresolved, a handful of new and significant deviant movements rose up around some starkly influential personalities. Arius, especially, deserves special mention among the heretics of history due to the sheer intensity of the debates he fomented. Berkhof observes that because the influence of Arius was so pervasive, “[t]he great trinitarian strife is usually called the Arian controversy.” In essence, Arianism applied the Monarchian notions of monotheism and adoptionism to New Testament theology, arguing that because the Son of God was “begotten,” He was a created being. In a letter to his friend Eusebius, Arius himself acknowledged that he and his followers were persecuted “because we say that the Son has a beginning, but God is without beginning.” According to a letter from the bishops at the Synod of Nicea, Arius was additionally condemned for suggesting that the free will of Christ implied His potential for sin and evil. So effective was Arius’ rhetoric, and so widespread were his views, that they largely precipitated the Council of Nicea in 325, whose delegates, Athanasius foremost among them, issued the famous Nicene formulation as a result: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father…” It could be argued that Arius served as the predecessor to those many cults which to this day make professions to Christian faith but deny the essential deity of Jesus Christ – from the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses).

The Donatist Contention

Just as Novatianism had risen up around the problem of lapsed congregants seeking readmission to the churches following the persecution of Decius, Donatism emerged as a response to the compromises of bishops during the Diocletian persecution. On the face of it, the controversy, described by Betteson and Maunder as essentially “a schism rather than a heresy,” concerned the validity of bishops who had surrendered up the Scriptures to be burned under pressure from Diocletian’s henchmen. At the root of Donatism, however, lay the old problem of legalism. Donatus and his followers held that bishops—even repentant bishops—who had relinquished the Word of God to pagans on demand (for them to burn) were insufficiently holy to minister further in the church. Saint Augustine fought the Donatists stringently, maintaining as always that any “holiness” to which the church, including bishops, could ever lay claim derived strictly from the grace of God. “When baptism is administered in the words of the gospel, however great be the perverseness of either minister or recipient, the sacrament is holy on his account whose sacrament it is.” Or to paraphrase Christ’s words to the Pharisees, “The Son of Man is lord of the sacraments.”

Although the Donatists duly earned the designation of “heretics” by invalidating the reality of grace, history again indicates some fault for the contention on the part of the orthodox leaders, whose luxuriant and even lascivious lifestyles continually provoked sincere if extreme reform efforts by fellow churchmen. In larger terms, Donatism thus represents the sorts of ecclesiastical “stumbling blocks” that traditionally have encouraged heresies and divided the church. As Sean Martin observed, “The moral life of the clergy became the rallying point for reformers, dissenters and disaffected churchgoers alike, and such was their stress on the moral stature of the clergy that the reformers [such as the Cathars] resembled the Donatists…”

Apollinarius

It could be said that the Christological controversies, essentially a subset of the lingering Trinitarian issue, began with the teaching of Apollinarius. A pastor from Laodicea, the evidently well meaning Apollinarius suggested that, as Bruce Shelley describes, “the divine Word (Logos)…displaced the animating and rational soul in a human body, creating a ‘unity of nature’ between the Word and his body.” Or as Berkhof says, he “sought the solution of the problem of the two natures in Christ in the theory that the Logos took the place of the human pneuma (spirit).” The result of Apollinarius’ sincere effort to refute Arianism, adds Johnson, was “a heresy of his own which denied that Christ had a human mind.” Thus Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople, warns his hearers not to be deceived by Apollinarians who claim that Christ “is without a human mind.” This teaching seems to have emerged not only as a response to Arius, but as a Christology, an attempt to rationalize the Incarnation. In debunking Apollinarius’ teaching, leaders such as Gregory revealed also its adoptionist flavor: “If any assert that the manhood was fashioned and afterward endued with the Deity, he…is to be condemned…” With its emphasis on rationality at the expense of revelation, Apollinarianism served as a precursor to the overly codified theology of the Scholastics.

Fifth Century

Pelagius and Pelagianism

If Donatus had caused Augustine considerable consternation, Pelagius tied him in knots in the early fifth century. Indeed, the battle between Augustine and Pelagius over sin and grace mirrored the Arian-Athanasian controversy from the previous century in its passion and intensity, and in its lasting effects on the history of doctrines. Probably because of Augustine and somewhat unfairly, Pelagius has been presented as the very embodiment of pride, self-righteousness and legalism in the church. As Johnson says, “Augustine saw in Pelagius a form of arrogance, a rebellion against an inscrutable Deity by an undue stress on man’s powers.” The errors of Pelagius lay in this “undue stress,” that is, in their emphasis more than in any inherent falsity. Along with so many other heresies, Pelagius’ teaching was more reformative and reactionary than rebellious. He seemed less concerned with openly advocating legalism than with pointing out possible abuses of grace under the Augustinian vision—“by imagining,” as he says, “that a man will be condemned by [God] for what he could not help; so that (the blasphemy of it!) God is thought of as seeking our punishment rather than our salvation.” Despite the fact that he has been accused and condemned for promoting raw legalism and repudiating grace, Pelagius himself confessed, “That a man has this possibility of willing and effecting any good work is due to God alone…”

For Pelagius, the Garden of Eden was therefore more than just a blessed paradise, but a place of precarious freedom—to love and believe God, or to rebel against him and sin. Grace, then, was given after the fall to help man along on his somewhat self-determined journey back to righteousness. These “semi-truths” eventually led many in the church to moral reform, and to embrace a middle view between Augustine’s and Pelagius’ now known as “Semi-Pelagianism.” Sadly, those same semi-truths left Jesus with no real purpose for sacrificing His life on the cross, and left the questions of sin and salvation unresolved. Augustine accordingly countered Pelagius with the powerfully rhetorical question: “How can a will be free if it is under the domination of unrighteousness?”

Nestorius

As the fifth century progressed, the Christological controversies initiated by Apollinarius began to escalate as well. Apparently in reaction to both the Christology of Apollinarius and the emerging Catholic doctrine that Mary was the “God-bearer” (or “Mother of God”), Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, countered that Christ received his two natures from his two separate lineages: His divinity came from God the Father, and his humanity from Mary. Consequently, Jesus was basically a vessel housing two separate, almost irreconcilably competing natures. According to Betteson and Maunder, Nestorius received his teachings from Theodore of Mopsuestia, who illustrated the “conjunction” of human and divine in Christ as something like the union of husband and wife. That is, the “one union” consisted of two distinct personalities with distinct natures. Paul Johnson remarks that like most heresies, Nestorianism was a reactionary belief, formulated in a time when orthodoxy was most elusive: “A right-thinking theologian, anxious to remain orthodox, tended to smash his ship on Charybdis while trying to avoid Scylla…. Nestorius...reacting from Apollinarianism, reasserted the manhood of Christ to the extent of questioning the divinity of the infant Jesus…” As a result Nestorius was condemned by a synod at Alexandria, upon the urging of its bishop, Cyril. The conflict between Nestorius and Cyril was actually part of a larger conflict between the “Antiochene” and Alexandrian schools of theology, the former tending to emphasize Christ’s humanity, the latter His divinity. The fate of Nestorius should also serve as a reminder that false teachings can arise from the best of intentions. False teachers are real men and often good men, not demons.

Eutyches and the Monophysites

Discovering the finer points of theological truth turned out to be no easy task. Another “reactionary” fifth century theologian from Constantinople, Eutyches maintained against Nestorius that Christ’s nature was wholly unified, almost as if chemically fused together following an initial process of union. This too proved unacceptable. Shelley thus summarizes the historical theological situation in terms of so many hair-splittings: “So against Arius the church affirmed that Jesus was truly God, and against Apollinarius that he was truly man. Against Eutyches it confessed that Jesus’ deity and humanity were not changed into something else, and against Nestorius that Jesus was not divided but one person.” Along with many heretics, Eutyches’ main contribution to the church was incidental and unintentional—in his case, the precipitation of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) and its construction of a relatively lasting, definitive Christology. In the “Tome of Leo,” the bishop of Rome used his considerable authority (and rhetorical skill) to sway the Chalcedonian council: “Each nature…performs its proper functions in communion with the other; the Word performs what pertains to the Word, the flesh what pertains to the flesh. The one is resplendent with miracles, the other submits to insults.” Though the bishops agreed with Leo and ratified their decision with their famous creed, Chalcedon did not entirely succeed. While unifying most elements of what would now be called Catholicism, Protestantism, and even Eastern Orthodoxy, the council repelled certain Christians (Monophysites) who maintained that the human and divine aspects of Christ were mysteriously combined into a single nature. Modern-day descendents of fifth century Monophysitism include the Egyptian Coptic church and the Jacobite Church of South India.

Sixth Century

Paulicianism

First emerging in sixth-century Armenia, according to Sean Martin, the Paulicians exhibited a curious blend of Marcionite-Manichean dualism-adoptionism and an aggressive militancy. Unlike the Cathars with which they have been compared, the Paulicians were therefore not in the least pacifistic. Led by former officers of the Byzantine army, Paulicians evangelized with a Crusade-like military fervor, claiming to have been the extension of the original church at Corinth founded by Paul the Apostle. The Paulicians comprised one of the most radical and important heretical sects of the early medieval period. Largely an anti-institutional political protest movement with some military backing, “the fate of the sect varied with the policy of the Greek emperors,” says Schaff. Having run afoul of the Byzantine Empress Theodora, the Paulicians incurred violent losses of one hundred thousand, revolted under the leadership of a certain Karbeas, built a fortress on the Arab frontier, and, with the help of Moslems, made plundering forays into the Byzantine regions. Perhaps inevitably, they were crushed—not by the wit and wisdom of apologists or the scrutinizing rhetoric of theologians, but by the might and power of a more powerful Greek secular state. Chas Clifton suggests that among their contributions to history, the Paulicians laid the groundwork for the Bogomil heresy that would surface in the tenth century.

The Papacy

A couple of developments need to be mentioned in any history of this sort, though they do not traditionally qualify as heretical: The increasingly pervasive authority of the papacy, and the rise of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Whereas the Council of Chalcedon could not be expected to end theological disputes forever, it did, along with the earlier Council of Nicea, have the effect of defining orthodoxy and thus pushing dissensions to the fringes. From an official, institutional standpoint, therefore, the church had successfully fought off heresies and secured its highest level of unified orthodoxy. That seemingly enviable situation could only be bought with a price, however. The church of the early Middle Ages had in the meantime, even if for the commendable purpose of preserving orthodoxy, adopted a glaring heresy in the form of universal papal authority. Through appeals to the centrality of the early Roman church, coupled with an insistence that apostolic authority had been passed along in Rome by a process of historical succession, the bishop of Rome had, by the time of Leo in the fifth and into the sixth century and beyond, come to be widely regarded as the high priest of the empire. The Roman bishop became the Pontifex Maximus – the “Head of the Church,” the “Vicar of Christ.”

Here is one of the more noteworthy paradoxes of Christian history. At a time when the more readily identifiable heretical movements had been successfully put down, another was taking shape within the very ranks of the orthodox church. Along these lines, Berkhof suggests the existence of Gnostic elements even at the center of Roman orthodoxy, “with its peculiar conception of the sacraments, its philosophy of a hidden God, who should be approached through intermediaries (saints, angels, Mary), its division of men into higher and lower orders, and its emphasis on asceticism.” Flirting with Gnosticism may not have been Rome’s greatest error. While meticulously straining at the gnats of Trinitarian theology, the Catholic church swallowed whole the camel of idolatry in the form of pope-worship. It would take another seven centuries for the church to wake up to the fact that its supreme defender of orthodoxy was himself something of a heretic.

Justinian’s New Orthodoxy

Under the rule of the Roman emperor Justinian, the Roman state in the sixth century became virtually indistinguishable from the church. The old tension between church and state, spiritual piety and secular worldliness, vanished completely in the new vision of “Christian society” along the lines of Augustine’s conception in The City of God. Unsurprisingly, Justinian’s claim to unified secular and spiritual power as a Christian emperor—along with his failure to resolve the Monophysite controversy—would help to eventually provoke the Great Schism between East and West, Catholic Rome and Orthodox Constantinople. Moreover, Justinian would come to endorse icons, the identification of physical objects, edifices, images, and flesh-and-bone men with things holy, spiritual, angelic and divine. Idolatry again gripped the church through the veneration of icons and saints. At the same time, as McDowell and Stewart have noted, the schisms occurring within the main arms of Christendom are often overplayed at the expense of a remarkable unity on vital doctrines: “While there is some doctrinal disagreement within the three branches of Christendom—Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant—there is a general agreement among them as to the essentials of the faith.”

Seventh Century

Monothelites

In an effort to unify and fortify an Eastern church divided over the issue of Monophysitism, against the rising threat of Islam, Cyrus of Alexandria suggested pulling the opposing sides together through yet another theological formula. A compromise between the dual-natures Christology of Chalcedon and the Monophysite theory advanced originally by Eutyches, the new formula, as archivists Batteson and Maunder put it, “admitted the two natures but only one ‘divine-human operation or will’.” To an opposing party of Duothelites, the Monothelites were merely reasserting the error of Eutyches in regard to not only the nature, but now the will, of Christ. Berkhof adds that their doctrine took two forms: “either the human will was regarded as merged in the divine, or the will was regarded as composite, resulting from the fusion of the divine and the human.” Heraclius officially published this monothelite position in 638, which resulted in nothing but another schism, which led to another Council, in which the Monothelites were formally condemned by the Emperor, with the backing of the pope.

The Rise of Monasticism

As the church became immersed in that long, dark era of history known as the Middle Ages, heresies understandably became less common and less conspicuous. Because Christianity had consumed the society of which it had previously been but a part, it took unprecedented levels of courage and conscious effort to break away from the inclusiveness of the church. Gordon Leff’s comments help to explain the relative silence of heretical voices in the early Middle Ages: “Heresy…is defined in relation to orthodoxy. In the Middle Ages this was done by the Church, as the arbiter of Christian faith; and its decrees were binding upon all members of society, who were regarded by definition as Christian.” As a result of these universalist Christian presuppositions, heresy came to be defined in social and political, as well as doctrinal terms. Leff adds, “For the most part heresy took generations, occasionally – as in the case of the doctrine of Christ’s absolute poverty – centuries, to define.”

One of the more significant of Middle Age “counter-cultural” trends was the monastic movement, which had begun with notable personalities such as St. Anthony and Benedict. Irish monasticism, traceable to the missionary work of St. Patrick in the fifth century, caused considerable headaches for the highly structured, politicized Roman episcopacy. Unlike the heresies mentioned so far, this new Celtic Christianity was especially troublesome because it embraced the same doctrines as Rome. Paul Johnson notes: “Irish monasticism was thus an insidious challenge to the early Dark Age Church and its hold on society. Like the Montanist-type sects, it advocated a return to primitive Christian purity, but unlike them it could not be attacked on grounds of doctrinal error.” Though not branded heretics themselves, these intentionally poor and dedicated Irish monks laid the foundation for “heresies” to come, as Rome would eventually denounce vows of poverty and deviations from official Catholic structure and practice as heretical.

Eighth Century

The Iconoclasm Controversy

The tradition of venerating Christ, Mary and the saints through the vehicle of icons (images) came to a head in the eighth century. Borrowing moderately dualist concepts from Plato, the icon supporters argued that iconic depictions merely represent on earth the ultimate, eternal realities of heaven. Indeed, as Shelley points out, the more philosophical of the iconodules (icon sympathizers) held all of the physical realm to be a mere shadow, and eternity the true substance. An opposing party of iconoclasts (“idol smashers”), says Shelley, “wanted to replace the religious icons with the traditional Christian symbols of the cross, the Book (Bible), and the elements of the Lord’s supper. These objects alone, they insisted, should be considered holy.” Bradley Nassif adds that the iconoclasts “vehemently opposed icons” for three basic reasons: (1) Icons are idols (as, they felt, Exodus 20:4 made clear); (2) icons are not supported by church tradition, since church fathers such as Origen and Eusebius denounced them; and (3) as strictly physical objects, they deny the hypostatic union (dual-natures) Christology of the Nicene creed. Whittow’s description of icons as the basis of superstition bears repeating in full:

“Icons, the images of Christ, the Virgin Mary or the saints, made of mosaic or fresco and covering the walls of churches, or more accessibly painted on wooden panels where they were frequently found in private lay hands, were seen as doors into the spiritual world. Not only were the saints easily recognisable in visions from their images in icons, but the icon itself was regarded as having an intimate relationship with the holy reality it represented. Icons could bleed, sweat, and cry. The scrapings of an icon mixed with...water and drunk as a potion would cure illness.”

Ironically, the iconoclasts nonetheless found themselves the heretics. Convened by the stalwart iconodule, the Empress Irene, the seventh Council at Nicea condemned the iconoclastic movement, which, apart from a handful of scattered protestations, never really recovered. Icons remain to this day a major point of division between Eastern and Western versions of Christianity.

Ninth Century

Photius and the “Filioque”

A brilliant but highly ambitious Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius claimed his right to the patriarchate when the sitting Patriarch Ignatius refused communion to the Emperor Bardas and was consequently deposed. Ignatius appealed his right to Pope Nicholas I, who would be bound by law and custom to uphold Ignatius’ claim. Evidently sensing the potential for loss of favor among the Greeks, Photius instead built up a case against Rome based on pretexts, such as the papal endorsement of the Frankish kings as rightful emperors of the East, and especially the controversy between Greek and Roman churches over the insertion of the “filioque” (“procession of the Holy Spirit”) clause into the Nicean Creed at the Synod of Toledo back in 589. According to Philip Schaff, “the violent assault of Photius upon the Latin doctrine [of double procession], as heretical, drove the Latin church into the defensive.” The “filioque” episode serves as another fine example of hair-splitting trivial dissensions at the expense of the testimony of the church and the gospel enterprise. On what turned out to be one of the main causes of the East-West schism, Schaff adds: “The single word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest, and most nearly related churches divided since the ninth century, and still forbids a reunion. The Eastern church regards the doctrine of the single procession as the corner-stone of orthodoxy, and the doctrine of the double procession as the mother of all heresies. She has held most tenaciously to her view since the fourth century, and is not likely ever to give it up. Nor can the Roman church change her doctrine of the double procession without sacrificing the principle of infallibility.” Photius also implicitly denied the supremacy of the pope, a conviction that led to his excommunication by a Roman council in 858. Through various devices Photius thus succeeded in driving a wedge further into the pre-existing division between Rome and Constantinople, a schism that would be exploited again by Michael Caerularius in 1054, helping to bring about the larger and more permanent “Great Schism.” If causing divisions means heresy (Romans 16:17), then Photius certainly qualifies as a heretic.

Gottschalk’s Double Predestinationism

A more moderately heterodox figure to emerge from this time was Gottschalk of Orbais, an outspoken monk whose pre-Calvinist views on complete double predestination (that God predestines not only everyone who will be saved, but everyone who will be damned) landed him at the Synod at Mainz, over which presided an old nemesis, Rabanus. To Gottschalk’s dismay Rabanus had been promoted to Archbishop, and to no one’s surprise, Rabanus condemned Gottschalk and handed him over, in Schaff’s words, “for punishment and safekeeping.” His punishment was severe. By Berkhof’s account, Gottschalk was condemned, scourged and sentenced to life imprisonment, all for the keeping of a Semi-Augustinian doctrine remarkably similar to that of his highly orthodox and equally unforgiving critics. His condemnation seems to have resulted from a personal grievance disguised as a theological concern. Indeed, the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests Gottschalk’s relative innocence of doctrinal distortions: “It is doubtful whether Gottschalk's doctrine on predestination was heretical. There is nothing in his extant writings that cannot be interpreted in a Catholic sense. He…taught that God does not wish all men to be saved, and that Christ died only for those who were predestined to be saved; but these doctrines are not necessarily heretical.”

Tenth Century

The Bogomils

One of the first of many dualist “reform” movements to challenge the Roman status quo, Bogomilism actually began in the mid-tenth century, otherwise a conspicuously quiet time for heresies. A Bulgarian priest, Bogomil taught dualism as a matter of genealogy – that God had two sons, Christ and Satanael (Satan). Bogomil and his followers rebuked and rejected the Eastern Orthodox church as a worldly, fleshly, materialist stronghold of Satanael. As historians such as Chas Clifton have noted, Bogomilism seems to have had a strong political element – in identifying the humble, common believers with the peasantry, and the evil, spiritually corrupt agents of Satan with ecclesiastical and territorial overlords. Taking the iconoclasts from the eighth century one further, the Bogomils refused to venerate even the cross, as it symbolized the weapon of execution used by Satanael to crucify Christ. Their rigid asceticism involved separation from society, abstinence from meat and wine, and refusing to marry or have children. Bogomilism also appears to have constructed the dualist philosophical foundation upon which Catharism and other emerging heresies could be built. The Bogomils were first publicly rebutted by Cosmas the Priest in his Sermon Against the Heretics, around 970 according to Sean Martin. A vigorous and persistent group, they were officially disbanded upon the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, but a remnant would continue to survive, by some accounts into the nineteenth century.

II. From the Great Schism to the Postmodern Era

Eleventh Century

Roscelin’s “Tritheism”

One uniquely heterodox eleventh century teacher was Roscelin, a monk and philosopher of the Nominalist school. Led by thinkers like Porphyry, and later, William of Occam, Nominalism proposed basically that universals, broad abstractions of reality, do not exist in themselves, but are merely words or names (hence nominalism) used to designate specific manifestations of reality. Thus individual real entities, like the pope or the blacksmith down the street, can be seen and described in terms of their specific and verifiable attributes, but there does not exist a corresponding abstract category of “popes” or “blacksmiths” that can be similarly verified and described. Those words are merely terms devised to conceptualize the more concrete reality. Drawing from this way of thinking, Roscelin suggested that the three Personages of the Trinity were of necessity three independent beings. Otherwise, he argued, the Father and the Spirit would be incarnate right along with the Son. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains: “He argues that if the three Divine Persons form but one God three have become incarnate, which is inadmissible. There are therefore three Divine substances, three Gods, as there are three angels, because each substance constitutes an individual, which is the fundamental assertion of anti-Realism [nominalism].” So deviant were Roscelin’s ideas that he was publicly and effectively refuted not only by the great Scholastic theologian St. Anselm, but even by a fellow freethinker, Peter Abelard.

The Orléans Heretics

Named after the Cathedral at Orléans which served as their home base, the heretics of Orléans were, says Chas Clifton, the first of the Middle Ages groups to be accused of devil worship – along with infant sacrifice, orgies and cannibalism. These outlandish suspicions set an unfortunate precedent that would fuel the Inquisition, along with witch-hunts and various persecutions, for the remainder of church history. One of the notable features of the Orléans heresy was its popularity among all classes—from priests to laypersons. Like so many heretical groups, the devotees at Orléans were essentially dualist. They also had Manichean tendencies, and were held together by a core of priests. And, again like so many other deviants from orthodoxy, their intentions were not completely demonic. Clifton adds: “Despite the accusations of devil worship and Manicheaism made by some chroniclers at the time, the Orléans heretics appear to have been neither…” Rather, the Orléans heresy evidently had its roots in skeptical intellectualism combined with a sincere desire to reform “what had already become a worldly and too frequently corrupted church.” Still, the charge of heresy was not without merit. Under threat of execution before a group of bishops in 1022 at the Temple of Sainte Croix, a group of clerics representing the heretical group admitted to teaching, among other things, that Christ was not born of a virgin, did not suffer on the cross and did not rise from the dead, and that the Scriptures and the sacraments were ultimately worthless symbols of a deeper spiritual life that depended only on the five senses and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Their confessions did not help them, as they (and their teachings with them) were burned to death a few days later.

Twelfth Century

Joachim of Flores

A standout among heretics, Joachim of Floris (or Flora) was a Benedictine monk whose disciplined studies led him to an imaginative theory of history in which eras of time corresponded to the three persons of the Trinity – the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son, and the Age of the Holy spirit. The Age of the Father, according to Clifton, was the period of Mosaic law and authority, including the entire range of history preceding the advent of Christ. The Age of the Son was the time of Christ, Paul, and the church. Joachim estimated that the Age of the Son would equal the 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus that preceded it, and therefore would also consist of 42 generations, meaning it would end around the year 1260. It would then be followed by the Age of the Holy Spirit, which, after tremendous social upheaval and a brief appearance by the Antichrist, would usher in an unprecedented reign of love and liberty by the Holy Spirit.

Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity suggests that Joachim’s “scientific” teachings on prophecy not only bore influence upon everyone from fellow abbots to Richard the Lionheart and Roger Bacon, but seemed almost a spiritual version of Marxism. Joachim was counted a “true prophet” for a time, but then, like most prophets true and false alike, eventually caught the attention of the pope and was condemned. His teachings did continue nonetheless to find a captive audience among Dominican and Franciscan orders in the thirteenth century.

Rise of the Cathars

Another loosely defined movement, Catharism first emerged in Northern Europe in the mid twelfth century. Johnson notes that the Cathars were a rather diverse assortment of groups, “also called Publicans, Paterines (in Italy), Bougres or Bulgars in France, or Arians, Manicheans or Marcionites. Around Albi the Cathars were termed Albigensians.” Though the names were diverse, as were the ideas, they did embrace a common ideology. “They aimed to substitute a perfect elite for the corrupt clergy.” Chas Clifton therefore proposes that Catharism can be traced all the way back to Novatianism, the first distinct “holier than thou” anti-clerical movement in the church. Catharism was tantamount to a revived Gnosticism. Says Shelley, “Like the Gnostics in the early church, the Cathari held that the universe is the scene of an eternal conflict between two powers, the one good, the other evil. Matter, including the human body, is the work of this evil power, the god of the Old Testament.” And, like the Gnostics, the Cathars divided their ranks into distinct levels of spirituality: the “perfect” and the mere “believers.” In The Cathars, Sean Martin summarizes their influence: “Catharism was the most popular heresy of the Middle Ages. Indeed, such was its success that the Catholic Church and its apologists referred to it as the Great Heresy… The Cathars found widespread support from all areas of society, from kings and counts to carpenters and weavers.” Perhaps their undeniable success to make converts explains why the Cathars were the only nominally Christian religious group to have been subjected to an official military Crusade by the church, the Albigensian Crusade conducted in the Languedoc region of France beginning in 1208. On the other hand, Leff proposes that “they were distinguished from all the other principal heresies [of the Middle Ages] in having a strong non-Christian element.”

Waldo and the Waldensians

Roughly contemporaneous with the Cathars was the movement established by Peter Waldo, a rich merchant-layman from Lyons who became disenchanted with his own prosperity, renounced his worldly possessions and converted to a poor and starkly “apostolic” version of Christianity. Though such a radical act of faith would have been enough to draw suspicion from the church, Waldo bolstered his heretical status by paying some priests to translate the New Testament from Latin to French. Waldo has been charged by church recorders with preaching rebellion against the church, but his primary message had a marked New Testament character – the gospel to the poor. As could have been expected, his approach found disfavor with the official church, and he found himself having to file formal petitions for the right to organize and preach. The pope refused, and Waldo, having pondered the example of the apostles in Acts, told his followers, “We must obey God rather than men.” They were of course condemned as a result, and sadly caught up in the Inquisition that formed in response to Catharism. Not generally given to intimidation, the Waldensians responded, according to Leff’s account, by “denouncing the Roman church in the language of the Apocalypse as the body of the damned (congregatio malignantium) and the Whore of Babylon.” Despite full-scale persecution from Rome, the Waldensians managed to thrive throughout Western and Central Europe, even to the present day, drawing on the strength of “the consonance of their practice with their apostolic beliefs.” Their example moreover inspired the Hussite and Lollard reform movements to come in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Thirteenth Century

Flagellants

Some of the more extreme ascetics in church history were the thirteenth century flagellants, so designated for their practice of whipping themselves and their brethren in penance for sin. Though flagellants were initially admired by churchmen for their poverty and self-discipline, the church eventually detected a threat in that the street demonstrations of penance appeared to replace the sacraments provided by the church. Clifton remarks that in the flagellants and related movements (e.g., the Beghards and Beguines) the church was also concerned about two developing “side issues”: that public displays of penitence undermined private devotion, and that the preaching of Jesus’s coming often evolved into millenarianism.

Francis, the Franciscans and the Fraticelli

Francis of Assisi cannot be strictly considered a heretic. In fact, the monastic order originally founded by Francis was endorsed by the pope in 1210. Francis’ famous example of poverty and simple faith, however, frequently incurred the suspicions of Rome. As the Franciscan movement gathered steam, it increasingly brought to light the corruption and materialistic excesses of the papal hierarchy. In a sense, living a Christian example became a “heresy,” by way of disturbing the conscience of the church. Clifton comments: “Inevitably the issue of Franciscan poverty became a critique of ecclesiastical corruption in general….” Moreover, as their movement expanded, the Franciscans slowly began to align themselves with openly heretical personalities such as Joachim of Flores. As Gordon Leff says, “Joachim’s teaching on the coming of a new order of spiritual men who, barefooted, would renew the life of the Church in the thirteenth century had soon found a response among both the Dominicans and the Franciscans.” The Franciscans also spawned heretical groups of their own, the “Spirituals.” The Spirituals – unlike Francis – criticized the church at large and refused to honor its authority structure. Eventually they evolved into a distinct separatist movement known as the Fraticelli, who in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries openly denounced the pope and the entire Roman hierarchy. Leff adds that the Franciscan movement as a whole, along with the Waldensians, helped maintain a certain pressure upon the Catholic church to reform. In 1323, following years of uneasy toleration from Rome, Pope John XXII formally condemned the Franciscan doctrine of absolute poverty as heresy.

Fourteenth Century

The Free Spirit

Yet another manifestation of resurrected Gnosticism, the Free Spirit was the appellation given to a number of groups, especially Beguines and Beghards, who according to Clifton “rejected ecclesiastical governance and claimed to perceive God everywhere…” Followers of the Free Spirit movement earned their nickname for their assertions that they had so united their wills with God’s that they could do literally whatever they pleased. Moreover, their radically spiritual outlook reflected the old Gnostic tenets of dualism and emanations from the supreme deity. Although they were not officially organized, the Free Spirit adherents were officially condemned by Pope Clement V, with a bull issued in 1311 that summarized the Free Spirit’s heretical beliefs. Among those beliefs were, “That someone in this life could reach a state of perfection and be beyond sinning;” “That such a person had such control over his senses that he no longer had to fast or pray;” and the worst one for Rome, “That he is free from all obedience to the church.” Though the Free Spirit was definitely a heresy, its severity may have been exaggerated by a church protecting its own interests. Leff remarks, “The heretics of the Free Spirit sought to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Church rather than attack it; they challenged it not as a rival congregation but as a representing a different plane of experience which no longer had need of the Church’s mediation.”

Wycliffe and The Lollards

Over the course of centuries, the wealthy institutional church encountered more and more hostility from a poor, cynical but increasingly literate public. The church responded by demonizing and excommunicating its critics as heretics, and thus most “heresies” approaching the time of Luther were merely expressions of protest. Led by the fiercely independent preacher John Wycliffe, the Lollards for example committed themselves to fulfilling a vision of Christianity that included the gospel to all nations and tongues (through Bible translation and preaching), along with renunciation of the Catholic hierarchy as the work of the devil – and the pope its Antichrist. Like the Waldensians before them, the Lollards went forth “two by two” as poor itinerant preachers to audiences in marketplaces, fields and homes. According to Shelley, Wycliffe himself was so widely admired that the church could not lay a hand on him for fear of a large-scale revolt. His followers were unfortunately not always as well liked, nor as wise. In denouncing not only the church authority system, but the taxes and social policies of the entire civil order, activists in the extreme wing of the Lollards found themselves condemned by church and state alike. They proved resistant to persecution, however, and despite frequent burnings and imprisonments among their members, they maintained a formidable presence in England for fifty years or so. Their uncompromising convictions of Scripture inspired reform movements to follow, notably that of John Hus.

Fifteenth Century

Hus and the Hussites

The great Czech reformer John Hus discovered the religious philosophy of Wycliffe while serving as rector and preacher at Bethlehem Chapel near the University of Prague. A graduate of the University, Hus was inspired by the alternative vision of Christianity offered by Wycliffe. Shelley writes that on the walls of the Chapel “were paintings contrasting the behavior of the popes and Christ. The pope rode a horse; Christ walked barefoot. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet; the pope preferred to have his kissed.” These perceptions were confirmed through readings of Scripture, which became more and more readily available to the public through the efforts of Waldo, Wycliffe, and now Hus himself. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Hus did not consciously foment a rebellion. Rather, he gradually adopted biblical convictions that stood just outside the norms of the church, such as the “lay chalice,” the act of sharing communion openly with the whole body of believers. When pressed on those convictions, Hus stood by them respectfully but resolutely. For his efforts Hus was tried, condemned and executed at the stake. His legacy refused to die with him, as the flames of persecution merely accelerated his movement with the intensity of wildfire. Hus became a national hero and a symbol of a true, reformed Christian faith. Says Clifton, “Dead, John Hus was a martyr to religious reform and Czech nationalism. Hussite churches were formed, with Bohemians demanding the communion cup and free preaching with the approval of the hierarchy.” Shelley notes similarly, “The Bohemian rebellion refused to die with Hus.”

Bohemians and the United Brethren

Among the remnants of the Hussite movement were the two wings of Bohemianism, the moderate Ultraquists and the militant Taborites, named after Mount Tabor in Scripture. So militant were the Taborites, in fact, that they appointed a military leader, John Trocznowski, also known as Zizka; designed an “armored wagon” that turned out to be a forerunner to the modern tank; and successfully repelled Crusading armies in 1426, 1427 and 1431. Even after enduring serious losses through the ravages of war, an independent remnant of Bohemian-Hussite believers survived, and in 1457 reformed as the United Brethren or Unity of the Brotherhood. Having separated from both Catholics and Ultraquists, the Brethren rallied themselves behind an organized structure—at the top of which sat a council of elders and a presiding judge—and an austere moral code. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “The strictest morality and modesty were exacted from the faithful. All acts subservient to luxury were forbidden; oaths and military service were only permitted in very exceptional cases. Public sins had to be publicly confessed, and were punished with ecclesiastical penalties or expulsion.” Shelley adds that the Brethren “remained a root in dry ground” until the arrival of Luther.

Sixteenth Century

Luther, Calvin and the Reformers

For the papacy in Rome at least, and in terms of long-lasting effects on the organized church, Martin Luther was possibly the greatest of all heretics—a “wild boar” in the vineyard of the Lord, as one papal pronouncement declared. Luther and the leaders of the Protestant Reformation represent the most extreme example of “institutional heresy,” that is, heresy defined as non-compliance with church structure and protocol, rather than as deviance from the Word of God. Luther, after all, took his bold stand against the corruption of Rome on the basis of sola scritura, or the principle of sufficient authority in the biblical revelation alone. Contrasting Luther with Erasmus, Johnson assesses the former’s character: “not so much an intellect as a great force – a great spiritual force.” Luther’s combination of scholarly independence and sincere, childlike faith proved to be a shining example for Calvin, Zwingli, and many other reformers to come, the kindling that would set the Protestant Reformation ablaze. Indeed, the Roman Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc suggests that apart from Calvin, especially, the arm of Christendom known as “Protestantism” likely would not exist: “[T]he Protestant movement, which had begun as something merely negative, an indignant revolt against the corruption and worldliness of the official Church, was endowed with a new strength by the creation of Calvinism, twenty years after the upheaval had begun. Though the Lutheran forms of Protestantism covered so great an area, yet the driving power—the centre of vitality—in Protestantism was, after Calvin's book had appeared in 1536, Calvin.”

Erasmus, Galileo, Bruno

Erasmus, Galileo and Bruno deserve mention if only as noteworthy examples of the growing Renaissance trend toward scientific humanism and individualistic conscientiousness. Much like the slightly more famous reformer to follow him, Martin Luther, Erasmus was converted to an austere, unadorned form of Christian faith through hearing and reading a sound exposition of the book of Romans. Through this process he became captivated by the prospect of personally studying the Scriptures, drawing personal conclusions, and suggesting new interpretations. In that sense, Erasmus represented a new sort of heretic, whose “false teaching” was that science could help inform interpretation of Scripture – and not merely the other way around. In the case of Erasmus, the plunge into the sciences without a grounding in faith led to abysmal doubt. Galileo took the notion of discovery a bit further, putting the “heretical” heliocentric theory of Copernicus to the empirical test by way of the telescope, and running afoul of the Inquisition as a result. If Daniel Boorstin is correct, Galileo’s fate, following the publication of his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, was largely the result of external historical circumstances: “Galileo would be caught in the cross fire between Catholics and Protestants. The rising attacks of Protestantism made it necessary that Pope Urban VII respond by showing the determination of the Church of Rome to preserve the purity of ancient Christian dogmas. Protestants must have no monopoly on fundamentalism.” Galileo died at the ripe old age of 77 under house arrest in 1642. The intellectual Bruno, however, entertained such esoteric and clearly non-Christian philosophies that he managed to draw the ire of Catholics and Protestants alike. As the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, “Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.” With few friends in high places to support him, Bruno was burned alive as a heretic in 1600.

Socinians

According to Berkhof, “Socinianism represents a reaction against the Reformation, and in the doctrines of sin and grace it is simply a revival of the old Pelagian heresy.” Among near-contemporaries, Robert Barclay, a Quaker and disciple of George Fox, affirmed the doctrine of human depravity and therefore rejected “the Socinian and Pelagian errors, in exalting a natural light,” i.e., the light of reason above the light of revelation. Following the teachings of their rationalist leader, Faustus Socinus, the Socinians embodied the same spirit of certain modern-day liberal-humanist “Christians,” who hold that Christianity consists in nothing more than attempting to practice the virtues taught by Christ. Everything else – atonement, justification, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, in some cases even the existence of God – is dispensable. Berkhof again describes Socinians as those who deny original sin and affirm the inherent moral-spiritual “neutrality” of human free will, and therefore repudiate Christianity. “They need no Savior nor any extraordinary interposition of God to secure their salvation.” Various historians have recognized connections between Socinianism and the later phenomenon of Unitarianism.

Seventeenth Century

Arminianism

In 1603, a Dutch Professor of Divinity named Jacob Arminus formally charged that Calvinism—specifically the doctrine of predestination—made God the author of sin. Unfortunately, such an inflammatory suggestion resulted in the banishment of the Arminians (“Remonstrants”) from the Reformed Church in 1618 by a synod at Dort, leaving their more intriguing issues unsettled. Arminians argued, for example, that whereas grace is universal, it may not be “irresistible.” To the contrary, grace may on occasion be abused or rejected. Similarly, faith derives not only from God’s grace, but from the human will to accept it. Thus the first of the Five Articles of the Remonstrants’ states: “1. That God, by an eternal and unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ, his Son, before the foundations of the world were laid, determined to save, out of the human race which had fallen into sin, in Christ, for Christ’s sake and through Christ, those who through the grace of the Holy Spirit shall believe…” In accommodating human volition, this modified view of grace became a lasting feature of the Christian church. Even Reformed theologians like R.C. Sproul concede that the prescient view of predestination, that God in foreknowledge chooses those who will choose Him, is held by the “vast majority of Christians.” Most historians of church doctrine (e.g., Berkhof) nonetheless associate Arminianism with Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism. Among other historical legacies, the division of Methodism into the Wesley-Arminian and the Whitefield-Calvinist camps has been attributed to Arminianism.

Jansenism

Between the Reformers and the traditional papal hierarchy of the seventeenth century arose a bishop, Cornelius Jansen, who was, in Paul Johnson’s words, “a Catholic Lutheran.” Jansen stood against the political-mindedness of the Jesuit canon law, the spiritual corruption of the papacy, and the secular corruption of the monarchy. “The Jansenists,” says Johnson, “were the Manichees of the pre-Enlightenment, the first harbingers of modern philosophies of pessimism.” By an emphasis on the Augustinian doctrines of original sin, human depravity, and divinely appointed predestination, Jansenism also closely mirrored the more recently developed doctrines of Calvin, and probably struck too close to Protestantism for Rome to abide. Jansen’s writings were anathemized by orthodox theologians and the pope himself, but found receptive audiences in sensitive, reflective thinkers like Blaise Pascal. As a middle ground position between faith and reason, Pascal’s philosophy likewise failed to make any mark on the established church, but did help open the door to the Enlightenment to come.

Eighteenth Century

Enlightenment’s Intellectuals and Critics

As Renaissance learning advanced, still under the auspices of a Christian society, it slowly evolved into Enlightenment—a thoroughgoing philosophical rethink of history, science and epistemology, often culminating in a complete disconnect with Christianity. Thus the Enlightenment spawned skeptics like David Hume, deist social critics such as Diderot and Voltaire, pantheists like Spinoza, and a few outright atheists, Baron d’Holbach for example. Their efforts opened a virtual Pandora’s box of unbelief to an inquisitive modern society, a box that has never again been shut. The Enlightenment also featured a distinct political element, motivating thinkers as diverse as Locke and Rousseau to launch critiques of the secular monarchy right along with papal authority and the official Scholastic theology originally devised by St. Thomas Aquinas. The result was an unprecedented break in the entire system of “Christendom.” Johnson remarks, “The French Enlightenment emerged as the first European intellectual movement since the fourth century to develop outside the parameters of Christian belief.” Or as Shelley says, “The Middle Ages and the Reformation were centuries of faith in the sense that reason served faith, the mind obeyed authority. To a Catholic it was church authority; to a Protestant biblical authority, but in either case God’s Word came first, not man’s thoughts….The Age of Reason rejected that.” It turns out that the seeds of humanism, which would bear so much unbelieving fruit in the twentieth century, were actually sown back in the eighteenth.

The eighteenth century therefore brought with it a new and irreverent approach to biblical studies, notably in the resurrection-as-hoax theory suggested by H. S. Reimarus and published by GottwaldLessing. These new critical thinkers and their methods prefigured the famous “Quest” for the historical Jesus to be undertaken by scholars such as Schweitzer in the nineteenth century, and even the “Jesus myth” and “Da Vinci Code” theories still floating around in the twenty-first. The Enlightenment led most educated people to dismiss or trivialize accounts of the miraculous as religious fabrications. It could be argued that the real scandal of Enlightenment was an unwarranted yet wholesale rejection of history, hence of the very foundations of Christian belief. As Colin Brown summarized the teaching of Kant, “No generation should be bound by the creeds and dogmas of previous generations.”

Freemasonry

Freemasonry and the Masons make for one of the more elusive, ill-defined and esoteric heretical sects in history. The strange movement was “officially” born in 1717, by most accounts, at a gathering of Craft Lodges at a tavern in London. Regardless, says John L. Brooke, “The origins and growth of Freemasonry and the explosion of a revived religious occult in the late eighteenth century are topics of immense complexity.” Despite established connections with Gnosticism, millenarianism, Enlightenment rationalism and deism, alchemy and the mystery religions, Freemasonry survived largely by associating itself with a mystical kind of Christian faith. Among the false doctrines embraced by the Masons was, says Brooke, a belief in “the restoration of the paradisial powers of Adam,” with the rites of Freemasonry “paving” the road to perfection. This and other obscure, elitist doctrines appealed to certain believers, foremost among them Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. According to Dominguez and others, Freemasonry has been banned or condemned by the Catholic church, as well as by numerous Protestant denominations, including Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and even the Russian Orthodox church. Clearly Freemasonry cannot be reconciled with the Christian faith.

Nineteenth Century

Unitarianism

From the Enlightenment breeding on the European continent, a number of religious heresies were spawned, particularly in America. Increasingly well-educated Americans found “traditional” Christianity distasteful, and migrated toward an intellectually respectable version known as Unitarianism. With their “base of operations” at Harvard University, well known Unitarians included Henry Adams, John Quincy Adams and Oliver Wendell Holmes. According to Johnson, Unitarianism could actually be traced to the days of the freethinking reformer Erasmus, and in theological terms to Arius in the fourth century. Clearly it was sanctioned and empowered by the Enlightenment. Like Arianism, Unitarianism rejects the idea of Trinity, and in keeping with Enlightenment principles, promotes reason above revelation. Says the Columbia Encyclopedia, “Originally a scripturally oriented movement, in the mid-19th cent. Unitarianism became a religion of reason under the leadership of James Martineau in England and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker in the United States.” Most New England communities were somewhat divided among Unitarians and Congregationalists, whose modern day counterparts are liberal humanists and conservative Christians. Unitarianism was, and still is, marked by a curious duplicity: a professing love for all mankind, combined with a rather parochial intellectual snobbery. As Johnson recounts, “critics joked that its preaching was limited to ‘the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the neighborhood of Boston.’” Because they embrace a doctrine of universal salvation for all, Unitarians are also known as “Unitarian Universalists.”

Mormonism, or the Latter-Day Saints

Joseph Smith’s weird journey into false doctrine began with personal “visions” and revelations, some of which would constitute material for his books and doctrines. In 1829 Smith unveiled his new religion, one which—like so many heresies before and since—purported to embody a restored “primitive apostolic church.” The new books of revelations introduced by Smith boasted authority equal to that of Moses and Christ. Moreover, the revelations had been allegedly copied directly from gold plates, discovered by Smith on a hill in Manchester, New York, following a personal visitation from an angel. Mormonism thus featured its own prophets, its own sacred writings, and its own institutional church. In fact, his Mormon church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was intended to ultimately displace all other religions as the one, true faith. McDowell and Stewart say, “The claims of Joseph Smith and his followers are clear. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims it is God’s true church on earth while all others are wrong.” Other claims include an assertion that the Bible cannot be translated correctly, because the Catholic church took it over and corrupted it—therefore, revelation from God now depends entirely on a “true prophet,” i.e., Joseph Smith, or his successor, Brigham Young, or the currently presiding leader of the church, the “living prophet.” Mormonism also radically distorts Christian theology and anthropology, to say that God was formerly a man, and that man is destined to become a god. Smith himself intoned,

“As Man is, God was,

“As God is, Man may become.”

Led by Christian apologists like Walter Martin, Hank Hanegraaff, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, the Evangelical church at large has rejected the bizarre and exclusivist doctrines of the Mormons, correctly classifying their religious system as a cult.

Christian Science

In 1875, Mary Baker Eddy published her “principles” of spirituality, healing and metaphysics, in a book entitled Science and Health (to which was later added the Key to the Scriptures in 1883). Among Ms. Eddy’s more disturbing claims were her presumed status as a prophetess equal to the Apostle Paul in authority, her claim to have restored the healing power of Jesus that had been inactive since the days of the Apostles, and the appeal to her own writings as divine revelation. Like Gnosticism and so many other false teachings before and since, Christian Science maintains a firm distinction between “Jesus” and “the Christ,” even going so far as to assert, “Jesus is not God.” Contrary to the pessimism so typical of the Gnostics, however, Christian Science simply, glibly dismisses the physical realm and the evil that pervades it as illusory or unreal. McDowell and Stewart conclude rightly, “Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific…”

Darwinism and Evolution

As any Christian college student today would attest, Darwin’s theory of evolution had as much to do with theology as biology or geology, and eventually emerged as possibly the most pervasive false doctrine of the twentieth century. Published famously in 1859 in a race to the presses with Alfred Wallace’s own evolutionary theory, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species found a receptive audience among a freethinking nineteenth century public disenchanted with traditional Victorian religious moralism. As Colin Brown remarks, Darwinism not only removed the need for belief in God (by undermining natural theology), but “it chimed in with the optimistic, progressive spirit of the age.” For his part, however, Darwin was inspired to construct his theory not only on the basis of observations of nature, but for largely pessimistic, philosophical reasons. Ernst Mayr concedes that the death of Darwin’s daughter, Annie, “seems to have extinguished the last traces of theism in Darwin.” If nothing else, the historical evidence of Darwin’s theological disillusionment should help debunk the modern myth that scientists are guided only by an objective methodology based on facts.

Darwin directly inspired the “creative evolution” of Herbert Spencer, along with Marx’s historical doctrine of progress through struggle, and a host of pseudo-Christian, New Age belief systems involving “spiritual evolution.” Hunt and McMahon have noted perceptively: “Perhaps no other idea within the last few centuries has had more impact upon twentieth-century mankind than the theory of evolution. It has directly or indirectly influenced nearly every aspect of our modern culture. Evolution was an established religious belief at the heart of occultism and mysticism thousands of years before the Greeks gave it ‘scientific’ status.” But its theological implications are what make Darwinism stand out historically. As taught in textbooks, Darwinism openly repudiates the doctrine of creation. Nonetheless, Christian students and intellectuals to this day have attempted to somehow fuse the book of Genesis with the Origin, usually choosing to allegorize or otherwise water down Genesis rather than risk reproach from their peers by questioning or criticizing Darwin’s politically-charged theory.

Higher Criticism

“As serious as the challenge of science was to orthodox Christianity,” says Bruce Shelley, “it was clearly secondary to the new views of history.” One of the popular conclusions to come out of the higher-critical school was the belief that Moses did not in fact write the first five books of the Bible, or the Pentateuch. Rather, the “Documentary Hypothesis” proposed by scholars such as Julius Wellhausen suggested that the Pentateuch was penned by various writers representing various phases of Israel’s formation and history. Through the imaginative efforts of scholars like David Strauss and Ernest Renan, New Testament studies fared no better. The life of the “historical Jesus” was mapped out as that of a deluded if charismatic prophet whose politically disturbing message led to his tragic execution.

Twentieth Century

Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism

Around the turn of the twentieth century, 1906 to be exact, the Pentecostal movement officially began at Azusa Street in Los Angeles. After three years of revival—in the form of thousands receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, “with the evidence of speaking in tongues”—new Pentecostal denominations began to spring up around the U.S. These included the Assemblies of God, the Church of God, the Church of God in Christ, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Some sixty years later, a “Charismatic Renewal” began in the church at large, with believers from every major denomination having (or claiming) spiritual experiences of tongues, prophecy, and other gifts of the Spirit. Even Roman Catholicism sanctioned the movement within its ranks.

Pentecostals have proven highly evangelistic, effectively spreading their fire to Latin America and other regions. Their commendable emphasis on spiritual power and preaching to the poor and disenfranchised have doubtless contributed to their successes. At the same time, Pentecostalism frequently manifests a heretical underside. (I write this as a Pentecostal.) Much like the Gnostics and so many other dualist heretics, Pentecostals often draw overly sharp divisions between flesh and spirit, in everything from books, music and movies to dress. In many Pentecostal camps, speaking in tongues is used as a litmus test of spirituality, a means of discriminating between “Spirit filled” and lesser, ordinary believers. At the top of many Pentecostal spiritual hierarchies are the leaders, those “anointed ones,” like Oral Roberts or Jimmy Swaggart, who speak prophetically to the church. Because these leaders have been deemed more “spiritual” than ordinary believers, they often feel free to commit sins in the flesh, such as fornication, while claiming to still love God “in the Spirit.”

Theologians and scholars such as F. N. Lee have argued that in its emphasis on spiritual gifts and experiences at the expense of sound teaching, Pentecostalism also seems to have connections with the ancient heresies of Montanism and antinomianism. Says Lee, “Pentecostalism is essentially antinomian… It is ebullient, ecstatic, effervescent, and ephemeral entertainment.” Many of the aberrant splinter groups and movements that formed in the twentieth century, particularly in America, are Pentecostal in origin. These include The Way International, The Latter Rain movement led by William Branham, Oneness Pentecostalism, and more recently, the Brownsville and Toronto Charismatic revivals. The materialistic excesses of the “Word-Faith” (or “Positive Confession”) movement are likewise traceable in part to classical Pentecostalism.

Proliferation of Cults

The twentieth century was undoubtedly the century of the cult. Though clearly non-Christian, cults do often make Christian professions and lay claim to biblical revelations. Cults are hard to define, but may be best understood through the perspective of the follower, who according to sociologist Jean-Marie Abgrall, “weds himself to the doctrines of the cult, is effectively submissive to the guru and gradually cuts himself off from the rest of the world.” Through this process a dependency is created, which is fed through the rules, rites and rituals of the organization, all of which serve to “dissolve the individual into the group.” In terms of doctrine, say McDowell and Stewart, a cult is “a perversion, a distortion of biblical Christianity and/or a rejection of the historic teachings of the Christian church.” Some of the more notorious and wildly deviant cults include the Boston movement or Boston Church of Christ, the Branch Davidians (led by David Koresh), The Way International, The Worldwide Church of God, The Children of God, Erhard Seminars Training (EST), Heaven’s Gate, the People’s Temple (Jim Jones), the Church of Scientology, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (or Jehovah’s Witnesses), and the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The common denominator in this otherwise diverse set of cults is a set of heretical teachings promulgated and enforced through the leadership of a single dominant, if charismatic, personality.

Unity

Another twentieth century cult—and not even nearly the largest—deserves some space of its own simply for vividly demonstrating the cyclical persistence of heresies. Nearly 2,000 years after the Gnostics appeared and disappeared from the stage of church history, the Unity School of Christianity virtually mirrors every ancient Gnostic doctrine in detail. For good reason, McDowell and Stewart declare plainly that “The basic world view of Unity is that of Gnosticism.” Unity is dualist, as is Gnosticism, regarding matter as an evil. The God of Unity, like the supreme deity of Gnosticism, cannot be known personally, but only apprehended intellectually, as a revelation of the divine mystery or “principle” of love. And like the Gnostics, adherents of the Unity school regard Jesus and “the Christ” as separate entities—which helps explain why the Unity theory of atonement depends on reincarnation rather than faith in Jesus Christ. Unity moreover, and in seeming contradiction with its own philosophical dualism, encourages the attainment of health and wealth through the proper exercise of faith. Indeed, founder Charles Fillmore openly sported his greed as a virtue. Unity therefore has much in common with Word-Faith theology, as Hank Hanegraaff and others have observed.

The New Age Movement

One of the many outcroppings of the rebellion of the youth against the “establishment” during the turbulent sixties, the humanistic New Age movement has proven a lasting feature of the American social landscape. Hunt and McMahon have extensively documented “the fact that millions of people are now being trained to contact ‘spirit (or inner) guides’ through such proliferating Eastern meditation techniques as transcendental meditation, and mind dynamics courses such as Silva Mind Control.” These various techniques could be categorized under the broad heading of sorcery or Shamanism, but as Hunt and McMahon have observed, “The generic term for all these labels is ‘New Age.’” Astrology, fortune telling, channeling, holistic healing, séances, and other ancient “New Age” religious practices represent a dangerous heresy, in that Christians have imported them into the church with an alarmingly casual acceptance. Evidently, New Age, occult spirituality has found a place in the church for no other reason than that “it works.” Perhaps it does work. McDowell and Stewart concede, “There is a reality in the occultic experience which attracts many people to it. All of us desire some sort of ultimate answer for life’s basic questions, and the world of the occult gladly supplies answers.” Understanding that reality for what it is, Christians would be advised to recall that Satan enjoys a measure of spiritual power himself, and frequently poses as “an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).

Word-Faith, or Kingdom Now Theology

Also known as the “faith movement,” or the “positive confession” movement, Word-Faith teachings derive largely from Gnosticism, and bear clear similarities to the aforementioned Unity and Christian Science schools, and even classical Pentecostalism. According to Hank Hanegraaff, popular Word-Faith leaders Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland both unashamedly attribute the success of their ministry to Pentecostal evangelists such as T. L. Osborn and William Branham. Other Word-Faithers have drawn inspiration from the likes of Oral Roberts and A.A. Allen, whose personal behavior sapped their credibility in most other quarters of Christianity. However, as Hanegraaff points out, the specific “name it, claim it” theology of the faith movement can be traced almost unfailingly to the works of E.W. Kenyon. A cult leader of sorts himself, Kenyon advocated a neo-Gnostic theology that divides flesh and spirit in dualistic metaphysical terms, arranges believers along a hierarchy of presumed spirituality, and promotes special, supernatural “revelation knowledge” above the “sense knowledge” common to most ordinary believers. Like the second century heretic Marcion, Kenyon also expressed disdain for the Old Testament, and favored the letters of Paul as spiritually superior to the writings of the other Apostles. A prominent example of Word-Faith leadership, Kenneth Copeland teaches—among other things—that faith is a “spiritual force” that can be harnessed to gain wealth; that God and men (“little gods”) are virtually indistinguishable; and that God’s covenants represent financial contracts more than relationships.

Radical New Testament Scholarship

Following the tradition of Schweitzer’s “Quest for the Historical Jesus,” scholars in the twentieth century began excursions into form criticism, source criticism and more “quests.” Of these scholars, Rudolf Bultmann may have been the most perniciously influential. Bultmann asserted that a substantial majority of New Testaments texts and traditions were mythological in nature. To find the real Jesus of history, said Bultmann, it is necessary to strip the Gospels and letters of their mythical—i.e., spiritual or supernatural—content.

Following Bultmann, Paul Tillich expanded upon the former’s personalized, existential approach to faith. For Tillich, God was the “ground of being,” the deity who must be believed in if life is to hold any meaning. This should not be confused with an evangelistic appeal to salvation; Tillich’s theology can be reduced to pretty much whatever one would prefer it to be. As Colin Brown remarked wryly, “To pick up Tillich’s Systematic Theology after reading traditional textbooks is like wandering into a museum full of Picassos. Everywhere the perspectives are strange.”

In more recent years New Testament “scholarship” yielded the Jesus Seminar, a series of studies by radical critics that led to some strikingly heretical conclusions—for instance that Jesus did not utter the majority of sayings attributed to Him, that Jesus did not rise from the dead, and that perhaps Jesus never existed at all. Amazingly, many Christians accept these assertions, concluding that their faith resides ultimately in the teachings and the spirit of Jesus, not the historical genuineness of His birth, teaching and miracles, or His death and resurrection. Josh McDowell notes that the Jesus Seminar critics in effect “have undermined the historicity of Jesus by making a separation or dichotomy between a Christ of faith and a Christ of history.” This amounts to a modern declaration of Docetism, and a reminder of just how far unbelief will stray into the irrational.

Conclusions and Outlook

Thus by the end of the twentieth century, the church in its dealings with heretics had come full circle: The most destructive and deceptive of heresies from the first centuries had resurrected, seemingly with even more power than before. Twenty-first century Christians are therefore still called to combat heresies, because the same Gnosticism, dualism, antinomianism, Docetism and charismatic excesses that caused so much doubt and division in the early church are still thriving today. Some of the newer developments in the church that bear examination in this context include the suspiciously liberal Emergent Church movement led by Brian McClaren, and the tendency toward excess at the expense of doctrine in the Charismatic revivals, such as the Toronto and Brownsville movements dating from the mid nineties. Paul’s ancient counsel to Timothy proves equally pertinent today: “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine…” (2 Tim. 4:1-2). Until the time that no one is left who will hear, our calling from God remains, to counter falsehoods by declaring the truth of the gospel faithfully.

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Sproul, R. C. Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale, 1992.

Whittow, Mark. The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

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