How they arose, and how they were dealt with
It will be necessary for us in looking at this subject (without descending into any kind of pedantry or a profession of knowledge which I do not possess) to first of all think of the two key words, and the Greek words from which they are taken, because there is a good deal of misunderstanding as to what we mean when we talk about “heresy,” and what a heretic is.
The word that is translated heresy means “a choice, opinion, or sentiment,” according to Young’s Concordance. It is taken from the verb “to choose.” The Greek word is, in the English form, “hairesis.” It is the same word, if you look it up in Young’s Concordance, as the word “sect.” So a heretic, basically, is not somebody who has misunderstood a point of dogma. A heretic is a sectarian, somebody who has chosen to separate himself from the mainstream of opinion.
The word schism comes from the Greek word “schisma,” being spelt in almost exactly the same way, and this word means “a rent or a division.” It is the word Jesus used in the parable of the piece of new cloth in an old garment, when he said it would make a “rent” and the garment would be useless. “The rent is made worse” — this is the word schism. Perhaps this will help us get the two words in focus. A heretic is a sectarian, and schism means a rent, a tearing apart.
Moral judgment
It seems to me, having looked carefully at the New Testament uses of the word heresy, that it always carries the idea of deliberately leading away a party, forming another group. Titus 3:10 is a very well-known verse in this connection: “A man that is an here tick after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.” “A man that is factious,” the RSV, says. You notice here a moral judgment. This is not a man who has just misunderstood, who genuinely has been trying to understand and has come to a wrong conclusion; he is a man who is “factious,” and there is a moral judgment, because it says, “he that is such is subverted and sinneth, being condemned of himself.” What Paul has in mind here is not just a question of a genuine misunderstanding, but a desire to disrupt the body.
Similarly heresy is linked up with other sins of the flesh. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness” (Gal 5:19-20). I think it is clear that the word heresy in this context is being thought of as a moral thing. Here is a man who is guilty of a moral offence. It is as bad in the sight of God as these other “works of the flesh” and it links up closely in the context here with wrath, strife, seditions, and heresies.
It is interesting to notice that the Jews accused the Christians of being sectarians. It is not surprising that they should think of this new body, the Christian community, who grew out of Judaism in the beginning, as being heretics, or those who led away a party, who separated themselves from the mainstream. So Paul defends himself against this charge: “But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets: and have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:14-15).
Notice how Paul says that while they call it heresy, in fact what he stands for are the very things that the Law and the Prophets foretold should come. He is really standing on the same platform that they ought to be standing on. This is not heresy, or a breakaway party: this is a fulfilment of the religion which they have professed. And again “For we have found this man,” that is Paul, “a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5). And that is the same word as heresy. To the Jews, this was heresy — the heresy of the Nazarenes.
Again, after Paul has got to Rome and they sent a deputation to talk to him about his views: “We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). And that is again our word heresy. They looked on these men, Paul and the other preachers of Christianity, as being men who were leading away a faction. The Jewish religion was the true religion and Christianity, was an offshoot of it, in their eyes. It was a sect, or a heresy.
A division of opinion
Now the word schism, as I have said, means a division or a rent. I suppose that it comes from the same root word as scissors. Cutting up: that is just what schisms are, cutting up the body. Jesus caused a division: “So there was a division among the people because of him” (John 7:43, see also John 9:16, 10:19), in each case we read there was a “division” among the Jews, i.e. a schism. They fell out with one another over the claims of Jesus. Some said he is a good man, and others said that he is deceiving the people, and they were at one another’s throats, they were falling out with one another. This was a “schism” among them, a division of opinion.
Schisms or divisions, as we well know, were the bane of the Corinthian church. “For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this 1 say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ” (1 Cor 1:11). And so they were cut up, divided up into parties. It does not appear that they had stopped meeting with one another. They had not broken off and formed another “fellowship,” as we should say, but they were divided in their midst and there were those among them who said I am Paul’s man; I am Apollos’; or I am Cephas’; and inevitably if you start getting parties like this you get somebody who says “a plague on all your houses! I am for Christ.”
It comes out again: “For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions (schisms) among you” (1 Cor 11:18). And again we notice that they “come together” in the church: they had not broken off into little fellowships, having nothing to do with each other. They came together but they were divided off, into parties or factions.
How did divisions arise?
Now the question we are trying to answer is, how did these divisions arise? How were these sects formed in the early church? It is a very difficult question. Divisions at Corinth, which we may take as a pattern because the divisive spirit seems to have been more at work there than anywhere else, clearly arose from the contentious spirit of men and was always rooted in human pride. “You are puffed up,” Paul says, “for one against another.”
Notice that human pride does not always mean being puffed up for yourself. You can glory in someone else. They were glorying in men. They were puffed up for one against another, but they got some kind of reflected glory out of it themselves. Some were declaring: “Apollos is our man, he is a fine speaker, he has got a better presence than Paul, such an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures.” No doubt he appealed to many of the Greeks in the Corinthian church. They admired Apollos, so they got some kind of reflected glory for being one of his followers. The personality cult, we call it, is often responsible for these kind of schisms or divisions that arise in ecclesial life.
“I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor 4:6-7 ESV).
I want now to look at this passage, because Paul says something there that I think is very important for us to get into our minds and our hearts today. What he is saying is this. I have chosen Apollos and myself particularly to show you that you ought not to range yourselves behind human leaders.
If there was one man above all that the Corinthians could have ranged themselves behind, it was Paul himself, because he had founded the Corinthian church and he was their father in the Truth. “For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me” (1Cor 4:15-16). They were his children, and he looked on the Corinthians with a particular kind of affection. This is clear from his writings. And yet he says, “Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? Was Paul crucified for you? And were you baptized in the name of Paul? How absurd it is for you to be ranging yourselves as Paul’s men or Apollos’ men or Cephas’ men or anybody else’s men. You are Christ’s. It was Christ who died for you and nobody else.” “Now,” he says, “I want you to learn by the example of Apollos and myself, not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.”
We know, and they knew, what was written of men in the Scriptures, that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9). “Men of low degree are vanity and men of high degree are a lie” (Psa 62:9), the Psalmist says. And we could go on making similar quotations which they ought to have known, and indeed would have known. This is what was written of human nature. This is what the Scriptures taught about the nature of human life. It counts for nothing in God’s sight. It is Jesus who is everything, and men are nothing. This is what Paul was saying. And if they would only get that into their thick heads, he says, then they would not start having these divisions, this cutting up of themselves into little parcels, and labelling themselves Paul, Apollos, Cephas or somebody else.
In almost all cases in the New Testament when we read the word heresy it seems to be allied to evil practices, and often to exploitation to selfish ends. We will look at one or two examples of it.
“But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not” (2Pet 2:1-3).
Note the type of people Peter is talking about here. These were not inoffensive men who had misunderstood some abstruse doctrine of Scripture, or some passage of Scripture had eluded their comprehension. These were evil men, that is what Peter is saying. Theirs was not just a misunderstanding, or a genuine endeavor, even if unorthodox, to understand truth, but a denial of the Lord that bought them. “And many shall follow their pernicious ways,” (their licentiousness RSV; their debauched lifestyles NET), and because of them the way of truth will be reviled and they will exploit you.
Now, in my experience in the Brotherhood, I have not met any brethren who have been really of this type. Although we may throw at them a passage that says they shall bring in “damnable heresies,” the fact is that I can honestly say that I have not met any people who were inciting me to licentiousness, or who were guilty of denying the Lord, and causing the Truth to be reviled by people outside, and exploiting us for their own ends. However, that these things were taking place in New Testament times is very clear, and I do not think we ought to be too naive and think that they never happen to us and never could. Clearly they could happen, but we should not manufacture them, and pretend that they are happening simply because we have fallen out with somebody else about the meaning of a passage of Scripture, and so start using verses that describe him as an evil man, who is defiling the truth, and guilty of pernicious practices, licentiousness and dissolution. This is the kind of man a heretic was in New Testament parlance.
Jude’s condemnation
In the Epistle of Jude there is a very famous verse that we know well. Jude is saying that he set out to write them a nice cozy little letter “about our common salvation,” but it became necessary to write unto them and exhort them “that they should earnestly contend for the faith, which was once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). Something has come to his knowledge that has made him change his plan. He intended to write to them about their common salvation, perhaps a general hortatory epistle, but he said, “it became needful for me to write unto you that you defend the faith,” because “there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).
Here is the same charge against heretics in New Testament times. They were evil men who had “crept in unawares,” and now were turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. I personally would identify them, although I cannot prove it, as the people who built upon Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith and said, “all things are lawful unto me,” and they actually went about teaching that it did not matter how you behaved. The more you sinned, the more scope you gave for the grace of God to operate, to which Paul indignantly replied: “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid” (Rom 6:15). But clearly there were those who were teaching this, otherwise he would not need to expostulate against it! There were those who were saying behavior did not matter, all things were lawful, anything goes, because Christ will wipe the slate clean. It is his righteousness, not ours, and therefore it does not matter any longer how you behave. You can do what you like. And this probably led to the introduction of these evil, corrupt practices, so that a party began to grow up who really were indulging in the sins of the flesh. “Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities… These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts” (Jude 8, 16).
From this it would appear that the “heretics” of New Testament times were vicious men who introduced corrupt practices into the church. Men were led to follow their own passions, thinking that it did not matter any longer. “These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit” (Jude 19) (“It is these who cause divisions” (ESV)). These people were schismatics, sectarians, dividing up the body, cutting it into pieces, and saying in effect, “Those who follow us do not have to bother any more, but can do what they like, and anything goes.” And in this way they were exploiting the believers and introducing corruption into the church. Essentially, then, heresy is the act of forming a breakaway party and schism is the result, of which, unfortunately, we have more than our share of experience in our Brotherhood.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One