Heresy

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Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a "theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. By extension, heresy is an opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative." The study of heresy is heresiology.

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[edit] Etymology

The word "heresy" comes from the Greek αἵρεσις, hairesis (from αἱρέομαι, haireomai, "choose"), which means either a choice of beliefs or a faction of believers. It was given wide currency by Irenaeus in his tract Contra Haereses (Against Heresies) to describe and discredit his opponents in the early Christian Church. He described his own position as orthodox (from ortho- "right" + doxa "thinking") and his position eventually evolved into the position of the early Christian Church.

Used in this way, the term "heresy" has no purely objective meaning: the category exists only from the point of view of speakers within a group that has previously agreed about what counts as "orthodox". Any nonconformist view within any field may be perceived as "heretical" by others within that field who are convinced that their view is "orthodox"; in the sciences this extension is made tongue-in-cheek.

Heretics usually do not define their own beliefs as heretical. Heresy is a value judgement and the expression of a view from within an established belief system. For instance, Roman Catholics held Protestantism as a heresy while some non-Catholics considered Catholicism the "Great Apostasy."

For a heresy to exist there must be an authoritative system of dogma designated as orthodox, such as those proposed by Catholicism. The term orthodox is used in Eastern Orthodoxy, some Protestant churches, in Islam, some Jewish denominations, and to a lesser extent in other religions. Variance from orthodox Marxism-Leninism is described as "right" or "left deviationism." The Church of Scientology uses the term "squirreling" to refer to unauthorized alterations of its teachings or methods.

[edit] Religious heresy

[edit] Christianity

Main article: Christian heresy

The use of the term heresy in the context of Christianity is less common today, with some notable exceptions: see for example Rudolf Bultmann and the character of debates over ordination of women and gay priests. Popular imagination relegates "heresy" to the Middle Ages, when the Church's power in Europe was at its height, but the case of the scholar and humanist Giordano Bruno was not the last execution for heresy. Heresy remained an officially punishable offense in Roman Catholic nations until the late 18th century. In Spain, heretics were prosecuted and punished during the Counter-Enlightenment movement of the restoration of the monarchy there after the Napoleonic Era.

[edit] Orthodox Judaism

Main article: Heresy in Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism considers views on the part of Jews which depart from the traditional Jewish principles of faith to be heretical. In addition, mainstream Orthodox Judaism holds that all Jews who reject the simple meaning of Maimonides's 13 principles of Jewish faith are heretics.[1] As such, most of Orthodox Judaism considers Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism to be heretical movements, and regards most of Conservative Judaism as heretical. The liberal wing of Modern Orthodoxy is more tolerant of Conservative Judaism, particularly its right wing, as there is some theological and practical overlap between these groups.

The law "You shall not cut yourselves" (Deuteronomy 14:1) is interpreted by the Rabbis: "You shall not form divisions, but shall form one bond." (Source: Talmud Yevamot 13a, Midrash Sifre on Deuteronomy 96)

Besides the term "min" for "heretic," the Talmud uses the words "Hitsonim" (outsiders), "apikoros," and "kofer ba-Torah" (R. H. 17a), or "kofeir ba-'ikar[2]" (he who denies the fundamentals of faith; Pes. xxiv. 168b). Similar statuses may apply to some of those branded "poresh mi-darke tsibbur" (he who deviates from the customs of the community; Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 5; R. H. 17a). Some authorities opine that all of these are consigned to Gehinnom for all eternity (Tosef., Sanh. l.c.; comp. ib. xii. 9, apparently belonging to xiii. 5: "He who casts off the yoke [of the Law], and he who severs the Abrahamic covenant; he who interprets the Torah against the halakic tradition, and he who pronounces in full the Ineffable Name—all these have no share in the world to come,") or possibly have no afterlife at all.[3]

The Mishnah says the following have no share in the world to come: "He who denies that the Torah is divinely revealed, and the apiḳoros." R. Akiba says, "also he who reads heretical books". This is explained in the Talmud (Sanh. 100b) to mean "sifre Ẓeduḳim" (Sadducean writings); but this is an alteration by the censor of "sifre ha-Minim" (books of the Gnostics or Heretics). The Biblical version, "That ye seek not after your own heart" (Num. xv. 39), is explained (Sifre, Num. 115; Ber. 12b) as "Ye shall not turn to heretic views ["minut"] which lead your heart away from God" (see Maimonides, "Yad," 'Akkum, ii. 3).

In summarizing the Talmudic statements concerning heretics in Sanh. 90-103, Maimonides ("Yad," Teshubah, iii. 6-8) says:

"The following have no share in the world to come, but are cut off, and perish, and receive their punishment for all time for their great sin: the minim, the apiḳoresim, they that deny the belief in the Torah, they that deny the belief in resurrection of the dead and in the coming of the Redeemer, the apostates, they that lead many to sin, they that turn away from the ways of the [Jewish] community... Five are called 'minim': (1) he who says there is no God and the world has no guide; (2) he who says the world has more than one guide; (3) he who ascribes to the Lord of the Universe a body and a figure; (4) he who says that God was not alone and Creator of all things at the world's beginning; (5) he who worships some star or constellation as an intermediating power between himself and the Lord of the World.

"The following three classes are called 'apiḳoresim': (1) he who says there was no prophecy nor was there any wisdom that came from God and which was attained by the heart of man; (2) he who denies the prophetic power of Moses our master; (3) he who says that God has no knowledge concerning the doings of men.

"The following three are called 'koferim ba-Torah': (1) he who says the Torah is not from God: he is a kofer even if he says a single verse or letter thereof was said by Moses of his own accord; (2) he who denies the traditional interpretation of the Torah and opposes those authorities who declare it to be tradition, as did Zadok and Boethus; and (3) he who says, as do the Nazarenes and the Mohammedans, that the Lord has given a new dispensation instead of the old, and that he has abolished the Law, though it was originally divine."

It is noteworthy, however, that Abraham ben David, in his critical notes, objects to Maimonides characterizing as heretics all those who attribute corporeality to God; and he insinuates that the Kabbalists (of his time) were not heretics. Similarly, Biblical critics who doubt or deny the Mosaic origin of every portion of the Pentateuch, would protest against this Maimonidean (or Talmudic; see Sanh. 99a) conception of heresy (some ascribe a similar view to Ibn Ezra based on his commentary to Deut. i. 2).

[edit] Heresy in Islam

The two main bodies of Islam are the Sunnis and the Shi'as. These main denominations view each other as heretical. Groups like the Sufis, the Hurufiya and the Bektashi are regarded as heretical. Although Sufism is often accepted as valid by Shi'a and some Sunnis, fundamentalist Sunni movements like Wahhabism view it as heretical.

Both the Ahmadiyya and the Nation of Islam are regarded by many Muslim Ulema as being apostate, but in the case of the Ahmadiyya movement, attitudes towards designating the sect apostatical, heretical or Islamic differ depending on region or Islamic schools of thought. In Pakistan, where most Ahmadis live, the state consider the group to be apostatical; whereas in the neighbouring state of Iran, the same group is considered to fall within the bounds of Islamic belief. Another example concerning the Ahmadiyya movement is group is the Al-Azhar Islamic University in Egypt, which accepts a certain Ahmadi belief concerning the nature of prophethood in Islam, considered by other schools as being heretical, to fall within Islamic jurisdiction.

In Islam there are seven categories of Individuals:

  • Mu'min: used to describe a muslim Believer.
  • Fajir: used to describe a muslim who is wicked/evil doer, a sinner (by action).
  • Fasiq: used to describe a muslim who openly violates Islamic law.
  • Munafiq: Hypocrite, one who believes in another religion but declares to be a muslim. (sometimes used in non religious context).
  • Kafir: unbeliever in God, a sinner (by rejecting Islam), a person who hides, denies, or covers the truth. It is used to describe an unbeliever or an apostate from Islam)
  • Zindiq: A previous muslim who no longer accepts Islam.
  • Eh'le ketab: Believers of monotheist religions with a book. (Jews and Christians)

[edit] Contemporary heresy

Today, heresy can be without a religious context as the holding of ideas that are in fundamental disagreement with the status quo in any practice and branch of knowledge. Religion is not a necessary component of the term's definition. [1] For example, Charles Darwin of natural selection fame was considered a heretic of his day. Other people considered heretics were Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, and many others. The revisionist paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, who published his findings as The Dinosaur Heresies, jokingly treated the mainstream view of dinosaurs as the dogma of a religion.

The term heresy is also used as an ideological pigeonhole for contemporary writers because by definition heresy depends on contrasts with an established orthodoxy. For example, the tongue-in-cheek contemporary usage of heresy, such as to categorize a "Wall Street heresy" or a "Republican heresy", are metaphors which invariably retain a subtext that links orthodoxies in geology or biology or any other field to the dogmas of religion (although religion may not necessarily appear as an explicit component). Heresy, in these expanded metaphoric senses, is intended to allude to both the difference between the person's views and the mainstream, and the boldness of such a person in propounding these views, despite their unpopularity or even forceful opposition.

In modern American history, the term heresy has been applied in the United States to the position of those Catholic politicians and voters who publicly and obstinately profess support for abortion. In July 2004, the group De Fide achieved wide notoriety when it coined the expression "Right-to-Murder Heresy" in reference to abortion. It and 3,000 other Catholics filed the first "class-action" denunciation for heresy against Senator John F. Kerry, soon followed by more denunciations against four other well-known Republican and Democrat senators also pro-choice.

Following those events, in February 2006, Bishop Robert F. Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon widened the national debate by becoming the first sitting Roman Catholic Ordinary to publicly raise the question of heresy in reference to those who support or vote in favor of abortion. Yet modern day heresy is not completely held in the sphere of politics and sociological issues that are contrary in viewpoint and end from Church teaching. Today the Church feels a large pressure from Reletavism and Modernism, especially in regards to the liturgy. In Pope John Paul II's documetn Redemptoris Sacramentum and in Pope Benedict XVI's Apostolic Exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis", the Vatican has shown great care and attention to liturgical abuses caused by heretical positions toward the Sacrament of the Eucharist that came about because of confusion on the teachings about the Eucharist immediately following the Second Vatican Council and the Liturgical Reform that followed.

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[edit] Selected quotations

  • Marcello Truzzi noted that Isaac Asimov distinguished between two types of scientific heretic: "Endoheretics are appropriately credentialed scientists. If the person is outside the scientific community or at least outside of his specialty, he is an exoheretic. If a person is an endoheretic, he will be considered as eccentric and incompetent, whereas if the person is an exoheretic, he will be regarded as a crackpot, charlatan, or fraud."[4]
  • James G. March on the relation between madness, heresy, and genius: "... we sometimes find that such heresies have been the foundation for bold and necessary change, but heresy is usually just crazy. Most daring new ideas are foolish or dangerous and appropriately rejected or ignored. So while it may be true that great geniuses are usually heretics, heretics are rarely great geniuses."[5]
  • John Milton wrote in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; Showing That it Is Not Lawful For Any Power on Earth to Compel in Matters of Religion (1659): "But we shall not carry it thus; another Greek apparition stands in our way, heresy and heretic; in like manner also railed at to the people as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them that heresy by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note, meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion, or any other learning; and thus not only in heathen authors but in the New Testament itself, without censure or blame Acts xv, 5, 'Certain of the heresy of the Pharisees which believed', and xxvi, 5 'After the exactest heresy of our religion I lived a Pharisee.' In which sense Presbyterian or Independent may without reproach be called a heresy. Where it is mentioned with blame, it seems to differ little from schism: I Cor. xi, 18, 19, 'l hear that there be schisms among you,' &c. 'for there must also heresies be among you,' &c. Though some, who write of heresy after their own heads, would make it far worse than schism; whenas on the contrary, schism signifies division, and in the worst sense; heresy, choice only of one opinion before another, which may be without discord. In apostolic times, therefore, ere the Scripture was written, heresy was a doctrine maintained against the doctrine by them delivered; which in these times can be no otherwise defined than a doctrine maintained against the light, which we now only have, of the scripture. Seeing, therefore, that no man, no synod, no session of men, though called the church, can judge definitively the sense of scripture to another man's conscience, which is well known to be a general maxim of the Protestant religion, it follows plainly that he who holds in religion that belief or those opinions which to his conscience and utmost understanding appear with most evidence of probability in the scripture, though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for a heretic than his censurers, who do but the same thing themselves, while they censure him for so doing." See the full text of this Treatise here, provided by Dartmouth College's Milton Reading Room.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised, by Marc B. Shapiro, ISBN 1874774900
  2. ^ See Maimonides, and his differentiation between different statuses in Hilchos Teshuvah
  3. ^ See Maimonides, and his differentiation between different statuses in Hilchos Teshuvah
  4. ^ Truzzi, Marcello. Reflection on the Reception of Unconventional Claims of Science. Frontier Perspectives 1 (1990).
  5. ^ Coutou, Diane. Ideas as Art. Harvard Business Review 84 (2006): 83-89.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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